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Summer 2015 was hot.
Junhui doesn’t have the patience to sit down with a physical book and its unmoving words, so it makes sense that Junhui can’t read Wonwoo.
“Weren’t you there before I went to get ice cream?” Jun asks, poking him in the cheek. The air conditioning blows lightly into Junhui’s sweaty hair from above, and he relishes in it. Wonwoo is curled up on the sectional with a thick novel, head resting against the back cushions and long legs taking up the chaise. Junhui, behind the couch, doesn’t get a good view of his face.
“Probably,” Wonwoo responds.
“The same book also?”
“Yes.”
Jun pokes the other cheek and Wonwoo turns his head up, so Junhui sees his face upside down. “Is one word answers all you’ll say this morning?”
“It’s afternoon already, Junnie. Wrong word.”
“Oh,” Junhui says, covering his mouth in surprise. “Hey! I knew it was the wrong - I mean, I know the, I’m supposed to use the other phrase if it’s this time. But I forgot it was this late, because I was so... confused that you could lie here so long.”
“You don’t know me at all,” Wonwoo says with a laugh. “Soonyoung would’ve slapped me and told me to get up by now.”
Jun frowns, a little. “Sorry that I’m not him.”
Wonwoo loses his grin too. “I was just kidding.”
“...I know,” Junhui says, abstracted. He tries to smile. “It was a joke.”
Wonwoo looks up at him again. Junhui’s fingers are moving in ripples along the couch’s back, nervously. Junhui’s arm hangs there, and Wonwoo imagines pulling it towards him, with a force strong enough to overcome the barrier.
“Was it good ice cream?”
“Yes it was.”
Wonwoo gestures with his pointer finger, outlining a path that would take Junhui around the room to sit next to him. He repositions himself so that he sits upright and his legs are folded under him.
“Are you sure?” Junhui asks.
It’s not Wonwoo’s place to be frustrated here, but he is anyway. “Why do you always have to ask?”
Jun’s eyes flash, but he follows.
“I like to spend time with you,” Wonwoo says while Jun is walking and he turns to face Wonwoo at lightning speed.
“...Really?" Junhui asks, confused. “Why?”
“I just do,” Wonwoo says, so straightforwardly that Jun thinks there must be a hidden meaning. Should he ponder that a little longer?
Wonwoo never looks up. He reads his book like Junhui’s not even in the room, but that means he isn’t being kicked out, either. He thinks. So Jun settles down at the other end of the couch and opens his usual wuxia novel website on his phone. His head tucks into the folds of the cushion - Junhui’s knees unfold and his feet slide all the way to touch Wonwoo’s socks. Contact.
The difference between almost touching someone and touching them is that once you make contact, the other person knows. Wonwoo can feel it - the warmth.
The air is sticky and humid. Wonwoo doesn’t say anything.
Junhui could tell they had come in with high hopes, and it almost makes him change his mind in the middle.
“Please-”
“Not now, Hao,” Junhui says, cancelling the auto-replay. It doesn't work. Minghao says please again.
“But-” Mingyu’s voice quivers, unnecessarily.
“You can go without us. It'll be fine. Have some bonding time,” Wonwoo says, but not meanly - it makes Minghao and Mingyu blink their eyes and look at each other, and stop arguing with them.
Minghao asked them to go out and Mingyu almost sounds like he's begging, but it doesn’t convince them to come. Minghao feels a little angry at Junhui, not for himself but for Mingyu.
But Wonwoo and Junhui don’t even care, because they're watching cat videos on Junhui’s cellphone.
“Goodbye,” Minghao announces dramatically, as Mingyu can't say anything. They walk out of the dorm room, Mingyu banging his knee on the doorway and letting out a cry of pain. Minghao shushes him, but consolingly - then they can't hear anymore.
“You don’t have to feel guilty,” Wonwoo says, choosing a video from the recommendations.
“I know,” Junhui says, biting his lip. “I’m having a good time.”
“We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know.”
“Then it's fine,” Wonwoo says, stretching out his legs. He says it like it's the end of that, but he knows it can't be. Jun’s always looking at Minghao.
Maybe it’s a welcome change, Minghao thinks, when he turns back around and Junhui’s not waving back at him, not bouncing in his seat.
Maybe that was when I needed you, Minghao thinks, looking in the other direction.
It’s not like that when they go to the restaurant, way later. It was a lazy summer afternoon, fresh off debut and now, the winter a year and a half later, it’s not like that.
Mingyu drives his car slowly through the snow.
“So Seungcheol hyung was playing Overwatch, and he tried to explain how to play to me. He played this match with, uhh, who was it, Gongchan sunbaenim, and it was real fascinating-”
Minghao’s excited rambling fills up the car and fills up Mingyu’s ears. He nods throughout the story, but as he pushes his hair out of his face it almost takes all his attention, instead of the road, who rightfully owns it.
“And Jihoon hyung laughed at him because it was a bad move apparently, so Seungcheol hyung flicked him on the forehead and he ended up losing because he took his eyes off the game.”
Mingyu nods mindlessly. Minghao’s red hair fills up his peripheral vision, too.
“Really, Jihoon hyung is what made the next match even more interesting. Seungcheol hyung started getting really competitive, it was so funny.”
The car is still cold because they’ve only been driving for four minutes. Minghao leans over to Mingyu, breath hot on his cheek.
“But I think-”
Mingyu gets thoroughly distracted and has to slam the breaks.
Minghao laughs. “You’ve been driving for almost a year, dude, why is this-”
“Myungho. I’m sorry. But shut up.”
Minghao shuts ups.
When the light turns green, they drive in silence. It doesn’t take a long time for Mingyu to pull into the restaurant parking lot, sidled up against the wall. Snow crunches under the tires before it comes to a full stop and Mingyu finally jumps out of the car with a bright grin on his face.
“Finally we’re here!”
The restaurant is a few neighborhoods over so they always have to drive, but it’s Mingyu’s longtime favorite. In retrospect, asking a manager to drive this time would have been safer but Minghao worded it like this:
“You should drive me to the place you really like, with the weird fish hanging over the fireplace. I like this place. You like this place. So?”
“Yeah,” Mingyu says, snickering, but waiting for him to continue.
Minghao tilts his head to his right, rests his chin on his fist, and opens his eyes wide. “We should go, right?”
Mingyu regrets falling for it on the way home.
He doesn’t have any choice - Hao doesn’t have his license and they have a car to bring home. But he’s really sleepy and Minghao has to keep shouting at him to keep him awake.
“KIM MINGYU, OPEN YOUR EYES.”
“BUT THE ROAD IS SO BORING LOOKING!!!” Mingyu yells back.
The leftovers jostle in the back seat, swaying ever so left and right. The problem is that the road home is pure landscape, and landscape in a snowstorm is only white, and the shadows of post-sunset outside of the headlights’ range.
“It’s really hard to focus,” he complains.
“You ate too much,” Minghao says, tapping him on the shoulder. “And everyone gets sleepy after eating...”
“Yell at me some more,” Mingyu says in a defeated monotone. “It’s the only thing that works.”
“What if I tell you a story? I’ll make one up.”
“I’ll fall asleep at the wheel.”
Minghao thinks for a moment and laughs. “What if I drive?”
“NO.” Mingyu is adamant about this.
“Ok, pull over, this isn’t working. I’ll call our manager.”
“Nooooooo...” It gets to his pride if they have to ask for help, bother people at a late hour. “It’ll be okay. I’m not going to fall asleep. Trust me.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Just keep talking to me.”
“What if I turn on the radio?”
Mingyu, narrowing his eyes to focus and blinking every few seconds to stay alert, shakes his head. “No. Just talk.”
Minghao’s voice is not like a lullaby. He puts an edge into it, so every sentence cuts into Mingyu’s impending slip into dreams. And he’s clever about it too. Minghao talks about his first impression of Mingyu, about how worried and scared he was to come to Seoul and how strangely wonderful it felt to be welcomed.
Listening closely, hooked, Mingyu can’t go without a single word.
When they get home he collapses in bed, dropping his jacket and keys on the dorm floor the way there. Minghao passes by, laughing, knowing no one will clean it up for Mingyu if not him. But he won’t do it tonight. Mingyu will see it tomorrow and remember what happened.
Before Mingyu opened the door, he said something like this. Minghao can’t remember the words precisely. They went in and out of his ears before he had the chance to register them, and by the time he realized, Mingyu was in his room and probably already out cold. It was kind of like that when Minghao just recounted his own experience from three years ago. He didn’t know what he was saying until it came out of his mouth.
It was just something to hammer in what they really are to each other. How crucial one’s existence is to the other...
A constant in each other’s lives, Mingyu said. I’m so thankful.
There is a lot that Minghao never realized.
In response, Minghao thinks, maybe I valued you more than I even knew.
“We’re the boring team,” Wonwoo explains when Jihoon raises an eyebrow at them. Wonwoo is playing a cellphone game. Minghao is reading some self-help book in Chinese. Jihoon pours himself a cup of black coffee, adds creamer and stirs.
“I don’t acknowledge that,” Minghao says. “I just need a break. I can't remember what it was like to not see snow everywhere.”
“I just think it’s hilarious that of all people, I’m outside and you’re in here,” Jihoon says, sipping and then wincing when he burns his tongue. “I can’t believe I’m willingly playing in the cold.”
Akita is very cold, without a doubt. That’s precisely the reason that Wonwoo has hidden away indoors, but he can’t speak for Jihoon.
“You must be having fun,” Wonwoo says, “if you’re planning to go back out.”
Jihoon shrugs, brushing snow off his jacket. “Maybe I am. Haha.”
Wonwoo and Minghao exchange a look.
“You guys made the right decision,” he says before opening the door and re-entering the windy field, immediately knee-deep in snow.
The window of the lodge is large, so they can see the other members in the field, dressed in various colors. Jihoon goes to catapult snowballs at Soonyoung and Chan, who gang up on him in response. “Well, that would be why,” Wonwoo says. “He has a death wish.”
Closer to them, Junhui throws a snowball at Mingyu, laughing despite the bright sun hitting his eyes. Snow is probably bunching up in his socks, Wonwoo thinks, because his boots are untied. The shoe flap hangs open. Jun's bare ankle is visible, but he doesn't seem to complain.
“What a fool,” Minghao says, right hand on the window. It's so rough but so affectionate. Wonwoo thinks he couldn't even say that much.
And yet-
“For who?”
Minghao lifts his head incredulously, and then pauses as he reconsiders. “What’s this?”
Wonwoo looks away. “What? I didn’t say anything.”
“Ooooooh, Jeon Wonwoo,” Minghao starts, before the door opens and Seokmin comes in.
“I need my hat,” he says, ears reddened. “It’s so cold, won’t you guys come out?”
“Did you hear what you just said?” Minghao asks, smiling.
“Suit yourself,” Seokmin answers with a salute, running back outside. “We’re having fun.”
“I’ll be out soon,” Minghao calls before the door shuts.
Wonwoo turns to face Minghao, though everything in him is telling him to shut his phone off and go outside too.
“You're the romantic,” Wonwoo says to the boy with the sharpest tongue. “I have the heart of a rock.”
Now it's Minghao's turn to laugh, softly. He admits it but Wonwoo, whose favorite songs are sentimental ballads, is pretending not to care.
“As if.”
It almost gets drowned out by the pitter-patter outside, but Junhui can hear it anyway.
“Myungho, come over here,” Mingyu calls. Minghao doesn’t even glance over, smiling, and Jun laughs. Minghao can feel the pout from behind him.
“He’s always been needy like this,” Minghao says. Junhui can tell he enjoys the teasing.
“Myungho,” Mingyu says, suddenly right there, tugging at his sleeve. The fluorescent lighting in the tent shines on his face, away from Minghao’s phone.
“Alright, alright. Junhui hyung, we’ll look at this later. After the set.” Minghao slips out of the space left next to Jun’s shoulder.
When Wonwoo steps into the tent, performance dressed and makeup done, the two of them exit. It’s somewhat reminiscent of something past.
Junhui sighs. “They’re so cute.”
“Where are they going?”
“Who knows?” Junhui says, airily. Wonwoo laughs, standing next to him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I really don’t know, Wonwoo.”
“Okay.”
He pulls a book out of his bag on the table. Wonwoo lifts his pointer finger near his eyes, as if shifting his glasses up. Then he remembers he’s wearing contacts today.
“March rain is so heavy,” he comments.
“You sound like such a old philosopher,” Junhui says, pronouncing the words as cleanly as he can.
Wonwoo scoffs. “What?”
“Wonwoo’s so funny,” Junhui gushes to the ghost in the room. Wonwoo rolls his eyes. Junhui leans against the wooden folding table, palm flat against the surface, which rocks along the uneven pavement below them. Rainwater flows down the sloped ground around their feet. Wonwoo leans against the table too. His other hand holds a paperback in an open position - Junhui is holding nothing, so Wonwoo presumes he’s just looking into space.
Junhui lives in his own world.
Outside, Jihoon laughs. Wonwoo has his eyes trained directly on the top line of the left page but on the edges of what he can see, Junhui’s figure jumps off the table and towards the tent flap. He takes a deep breath.
Before he leaves, Jun holds the polyester open and turns back. Wonwoo can see the moonlight outside, around him. Junhui is a shadow.
“You can’t always get what you want, Wonwoo,” Junhui says with a smile.
When Junhui's out of his line of vision, Wonwoo answers, “You’re right.”
Mingyu lowers his microphone and fiddles with the buttons on his shirt.
“Wonwoo hyung, I just wanted to talk to you. It's been a while, right? Since we really talked?”
He nods, but slowly. Mingyu approaches him ever so cautiously in the corner of the backstage, but it still startles him.
Wonwoo wants to say something.
Instead he coughs. It starts as a light choke, dust in the air. Mingyu reaches for a water bottle - grasps it in his hand, for the length of his arm, it’s nothing - Wonwoo holds up his hand to say it’s fine. Mingyu stares at him, continuing to make that horrible racket.
It’s fine. Objectively, it’s fine. Wonwoo is in no danger, but the sound of his straining voice gives Mingyu chills anyway.
“You should drink the water,” Mingyu says, when the coughing stops. Wonwoo nods, expressionless.
There’s a pause.
“You know,” Mingyu says quietly. “I still really care.”
“I know.”
Wonwoo takes his hand, runs his fingers against Mingyu’s skin. It’s... calloused.
A lot of things have changed.
“Seventeen, you’re up next for the live stage,” the PD shouts. The other members sprint to the stage. Wonwoo lingers behind, moving slowly, retaining Mingyu with him.
Mingyu ends up saying: “Just eat well.” Without asking, Mingyu knows he will. But it's impossible not to express something.
Wonwoo squeezes his hand.
“Ah! Would you like some tea?” Junhui offers. Wonwoo pads into the kitchen unaware of what’s happening, hair ruffled and oily, sticking up in tufts. Junhui is already wearing a dress shirt and jeans.
“Please,” he says, yawning. “Isn’t that too much?” he asks, waving his hand up and down to call attention to Junhui’s clothes.
“Isn’t that too little?” Jun mocks, seeing as Wonwoo is wearing torn up sweats.
“It’s 5 AM, Junhui.” He smiles and goes back to pouring hot water near the sink.
Wonwoo sits down at the dining table, closing his eyes. Before long he opens them again because of the smell of eggs.
“What is all of this?”
“I was going to feast alone,” Junhui says firmly.
“You sure were,” Wonwoo mumbles, staring at the spread on the table. Junhui didn’t just make sunny side up eggs, he laid out what looked like the content of their entire fridge. Side dishes, white rice, leftover soup. To be fair, their fridge barely has anything in it because they never cook. But still.
“We don’t have very many days off this month. I wanted to enjoy one.”
Wonwoo can hardly believe his ears. “Did you set an alarm for this?”
“Nope! I just woke up and decided to eat. And now you’re here too. Did I wake you up?” Junhui suddenly looks very concerned.
“No... don’t worry, I don’t think you did.” He can’t really remember, honestly. Maybe it was his sixth sense.
“Well. Perfect timing then! It was fate,” Junhui concludes, setting Wonwoo’s cup of tea in front of him. “Let’s eat.”
The dining table is understandably large, but with just the two of them there sitting at the end, it feels like Junhui’s the prince of a mansion that Wonwoo accidentally wandered into.
“I should like, put on some real clothes,” Wonwoo says in horror when the disparity between their looks dawns on him. The caffeine has started to work on him, so there’s no going back to sleep now.
“You don’t have to, Wonwoo.” Junhui’s laughs are small, but they seem to echo in the room.
“You’ll wake people up,” Wonwoo whispers. At the least he makes the effort to comb his hair with his fingers.
“They’ll be up soon enough,” Junhui answers, but he quiets down a little. Outside the sky has already started to turn a vibrant dark blue. In the apartment, the only light on is in the kitchen. Even the dining room is dimly lit, because the chandelier above them has a million bulbs on it.
Wonwoo gets up to add hot water to his tea before Junhui speaks again. “What do you want for your birthday?”
He turns around. “Junhui, you don’t have to get me anything.”
“What would you want from someone that you expect to give you something?”
“Game credits,” he says, aware that it’s the most boring and predictable answer he could give. “Books, but every year my aunt gives me something I don’t end up reading. It’s hard to know what people like.”
“Hmm,” Junhui says. “What would you want that no one can actually get you?”
“I like being at home,” Wonwoo responds, sitting back down.
“Well.”
“What?”
“Theoretically, people could give that feeling to you.” Junhui stabs a potato cube with his chopstick.
“It’s not the same,” Wonwoo says. “I don’t think it could be.”
“But it might be possible,” Junhui replies, eyeing the cucumbers.
“I don’t know yet.”
Jun nods. “Okay.”
A light turns on in the hallway. Someone audibly shuffles across to the bathroom out of sight, a lot like Wonwoo’s subconscious walk to the kitchen. Wonwoo waits for the sound to cease. The bathroom door clicks shut to lock, and the shower starts running.
Junhui has turned to the window. “It’s really pretty outside.” All Wonwoo can see is the silhouette of tree branches.
“I never know what's going on in your head.”
“That's a good thing,” Junhui says.
Wonwoo looks down at his own bowl. The rice is gone. He should get up again to refill it, but something keeps him tied to his seat.
“It was hard to sleep last night. A sleepless, rainy night,” Wonwoo says, humming, resisting the urge to sing.
“Stop imagining so many things.”
“How do you know I’m imagining things?”
“So I’m right.”
“How do you know.”
“I’m a psychic.” He looks so proud of himself, the L-shaped hand on his chin. But Wonwoo won’t give him the satisfaction of being laughed at.
Wonwoo sighs. “You are not funny.”
Junhui is especially not funny these days. Wonwoo thinks that he spends an awful lot of time trying to be, and testing out his lame jokes on the other members. Maybe Carats think it’s cute, but Jeon Wonwoo, the master of lame jokes, certainly does not. The problem with it all is the delivery. Jun tries to sell it like it’s a measure of his own worth that he’s able to say something so cringey. It just makes everyone else unable to speak. Instead of that he should just-
“Look here,” Junhui calls, waving his hand in front of Wonwoo’s face. “Come back to reality.”
“Oh,” is all Wonwoo can say.
It is already bright outside. Seungkwan is at the refrigerator pulling out a container of orange juice and shaking the water out of his hair. “You should have woken me up,” he says joylessly. They did a clean sweep of the food, evidently, and now all that’s left are dishes stained with red sauce and drying grains of rice. Nothing for breakfast, then.
“Sorry,” Junhui tells him, “we were just finishing up what was getting old already. Mingyu’s mom sent these a while ago.”
“Don’t worry, I understand,” Seungkwan says sleepily, wandering back to the living room. “I understand...”
Wonwoo takes it all in and laughs to himself. Junhui notices.
“You need to pay attention, Wonwoo. Tsk.” Junhui starts collecting dishes, Wonwoo rinses them with water at high pressure.
“Any other day I could say that to you.”
“We’re both like this,” Junhui says from behind him. “Admit it.”
“I do.”
“Reality is where I am, Wonwoo.”
“Then keep me grounded,” he says.
Junhui smiles, placing plates in the sink. “I thought you would never ask.”
It turns to summer again, cyclically, two years from the start. It's not like that.
“It was a bad night to go swimming,” Jeonghan says from the balcony. Wind blows into the room.
Joshua sits on the hotel bed, still made up, looking outside to the best of his ability. The sides of the resort buildings are lit up with moving purples and blues and greens from the spotlights on the ground. “You don’t think they’ll catch cold, do you...”
“Well, they might,” he answers slowly. “I’m cold and I’m wearing a bathrobe.”
Joshua laughs. “And neither of them know their limits. In a foreign country, nonetheless.”
“I’d say this one is on you, Shua.”
“I’ll nurse them if it happens.”
As he watches, Jeonghan can only see miniature versions of Mingyu and Minghao moving around in the water, walking on the poolside concrete. There are yellow streetlights down there, surrounding the lounge chairs and rentable cabanas. The night is so chilly that everything is empty.
“No running by the pool,” he says gently.
Past the pool area, the beach is pitch black.
(They usually go swimming in the morning. Everyone knows this.
“Okay, so I want to teach you the card game I’ve been talking about,” Minghao says to Hansol, both sitting criss-cross on Soonyoung’s bed. Hansol nods enthusiastically, pulling a deck out of his backpack.
The entire group is piled into the suite, save for Jihoon and Wonwoo, who wanted to sleep early, exhausted from all the traveling and all the shows. Soonyoung jokingly argued he’d have joined them if they hadn’t all chosen his room to crash. Jihoon had said it was just his luck, laughed, and left.
Soonyoung is working on his revenge plan.
“It’s really pretty outside,” Chan says, opening the glass door open a crack. Their room is on the third floor, so they get a nice view of the resort from the balcony.
“Pretty cold,” Seungkwan says, making a face next to him. “Close it, it’s freezing.”
“It’s not really that bad hyung, it’s still summer, you’re just not used to it.” Seungkwan pinches his cheek in a huff.
“We’re going swimming tomorrow, right?” Seungcheol asks from the armchair.
“Yes,” three of them say in unison.
Joshua thinks for a moment. “But it may be warmer in the water now, because the whole day the sun was shining on it. Tomorrow morning it could be even colder.”
“It’s too cold,” Soonyoung repeats. Seokmin nods in agreement. It sounds like that settles it.
“I want to go swimming now,” Mingyu decides.
Almost everyone turns to look at him. Minghao keeps dealing cards.
“Mingyu...” Seungcheol sighs.
“Jisoo hyung is making sense...”
“I’m not telling you to go swimming tonight...”
“It’s too late, now I want to go.”
Hansol shrugs. “So how do we play?”
The room is silent.
Minghao attempts to place the leftover deck of cards on the comforter in a neat, rectangular stack. It comes out nicely, for a few seconds. Then Hansol shifts his weight to the left and it spills all over the bed.
“Oh, sorry hyung,” he says, covering his mouth and collecting the cards. Junhui helpfully gives them the ones that fell off the bed. Meanwhile, Minghao is acutely aware Mingyu is most likely staring at him with his best rendition of puppy eyes.
“I gotta go, Hansol. Let’s try again tomorrow.”)
The pools are truly completely empty by the time Minghao and Mingyu arrive down there. It’s not just the late hour - it is ridiculously cold for August, but Mingyu manages to smile when they step into the outdoor air.
“Thank you,” Mingyu says, clearly giddy.
“What are best friends for,” Minghao says lightly. “I can’t think of anything else but going along with their every wish.”
Mingyu tosses his t-shirt and sandals aside and dips his toes in the water. “It’s cold!”
Minghao slips fully into the pool, waist-down drenched in seconds, and gives him his biggest grin. “You have to get used to it.”
There’s a basketball hoop, which entertains them until the rebound from Mingyu’s throw hits Minghao in the head. After that Mingyu tries to do laps, but he gets a beautiful mix of tired and numb from cold after 15 minutes. The water is heated, but the wind is just too much for him to withstand.
Minghao sits in a chair with two towels wrapped tightly around him, shivering. “You can do it!” he shouts, laughing.
“No I can’t!”
In the end they just stand in the big pool, talking, and splashing each other, and unwinding. The place Pledis booked for them that night was really breathtaking.
The ocean is there, beyond the pools, beyond the sand, but it’s completely dark so they can’t see the water or the waves. It blends in with the starless sky, a mixture of pure black.
“It feels like we’re on the edge of the world,” Mingyu says, “like we could fall off if we walked into the water.”
Minghao stares up at the sky for a moment, heart in his throat.
In Minghao's mind, there are echoes of a past dream. Once he had wanted to just forget about it instead of ruminating on it constantly, but as he turns it over in his mind again and again, the memory is too fragile to be lost.
“I don’t think I could lose you.”
Mingyu doesn’t answer with words.
In the morning, when Jeonghan wakes up to the sunrise, he sees white sands, the line between the sky and the blue ocean, and an unending expanse of water.