Archive of Our Own

“I’ll bring it over when it’s ready, go sit down with your friends,” the elderly woman at the food stall said, wiping her hands and bustling around the food.

“Why would I want to spend more time with them, when I could be watching the pretty lady cooking my food?” Soonyoung asked cheekily. He winked at her with a large grin and crinkled eyes.

She made a ‘tsk’ sound, but let him stand there to watch as she mixed and plated his order.

“Thank you ahjumma, you know you’re the best, right?” Soonyoung praised. He curved his fingers to form the shape of a heart for her before scooping up the two servings of rice cakes, one in a bowl and the other in a bag.

The owner of the food cart sucked her teeth and pretended to swat him with a rag, which Soonyoung pretended to avoid with great effort by ducking his head. She scolded him under her breath for having almost dropped the food he was holding in the process, but there was still a smile plastered on her face.

He manoeuvered himself to the table out on the road, the streetlamps illuminating his path to the plastic red stools and two friends who had started eating without him. The weather was still warm enough that bugs flew around his head, flickering in out of sight from the dark night to the yellow glow. All the same, it was just chilly enough that wearing long-sleeved shirts and full length trousers were necessary, balancing a perfect temperature to enjoy the outdoors.

“Are you that hungry?” Seokmin asked, gesturing to Soonyoung with fingers stained red from the chicken feet sauce that also covered his mouth.

“Honestly, tell the truth, you don’t have any intentions of being an idol at all, am I wrong?” Seungkwan asked, before Soonyoung could answer. Seungkwan’s eyes were turned toward the mess on the lower half of Seokmin’s face, his nose was scrunched and his fingers were folded firmly together in his lap instead of around his chopsticks to finish his kimbap.

Soonyoung smirked and slid into a seat, settling in for Seokmin to sing-song loudly, “Lee Seokmin is Lee Seokmin, and he is not going to stop.” The laugh Seungkwan gave when Seokmin finished was loud and forced, and his face was drawn in an expression of pain.

To Seokmin, having Seungkwan turn his head away and shield his face as he finished his late dinner was of no importance, especially in comparison to the food filling his belly.

Soonyoung snapped his chopsticks apart and stabbed into a rice cake. He savoured the first bite and gave a cheerful hum.

“Ahjumma, you’re still the best!” He called out, giving her two thumbs up and receiving an fond exasperated shake of the head.

He took another bite, chewed thoughtfully, and glanced back at his tablemates. Seungkwan’s eyebrows were pulled together, and he was glaring at Soonyoung with one hand still covering half his face to avoid looking at Seokmin.

“Hey, you,” he bit out, “Image! Stop flirting with all the ahjummas you see, there was no reason for you to help that one cross the street yesterday morning and there’s no reason for you to be all flirty with this one now either!”

Soonyoung shrugged, swallowed, and said, “I was just being friendly. Besides, I got a free apple out of that one.” He peered down into his meal and picked out a piece of fish cake. “I’m pretty sure I got extra food from this one too.”

“To be honest, Soonyoung-hyung’s image is to be adorable and lovable and all that anyway,” Seokmin said around a mouthful of un-swallowed food while waving his hand casually. A bit of sauce went flying, and Seungkwan, temporarily forgetting that he didn’t want to look at Seokmin eating, watched it as it sailed across the table to land with a plop on the seat beside him. His eyes widened as he turned his head back to the undigested food between Seokmin’s teeth, and and looked ready to cry. It was probably a good thing he had finished eating already.

Soonyoung, not really wanting deal with Seungkwan wailing tonight, quickly tried to think of a new topic. It really wasn’t like Seungkwan was the cleanest member anyway, and he could have chosen to go to a restaurant with Seungcheol, or gotten burgers with the international members, so it was his own fault.

He finally settled on saying out loud, “So, it looks like I have the same recording length as you both.”

“As a main vocalist, I feel like I should be offended, but strangely, I don’t feel anything at all,” Seokmin said. Finally finished his noisy and messy meal, he wiped off his hands and mouth off with a giant stack of tissues. Seungkwan looked like he had found God and held hands with Him in the middle of the streets of Seoul. “Jihoon-hyung’s favouritism is way too obvious.”

Having collected himself from his happiness, Seungkwan nodded his head in agreement. “My pride isn’t even hurt anymore when it comes to you stealing all our line distributions and screen time.”

Soonyoung snorted. “Jihoonie and I are bound by a shared cursed fate, having to compose and choreograph things to accommodate the lot of you.”

“But you love us,” Seokmin said, grinning and waggling his eyebrows at him. Soonyoung ignored him, hurrying to finish his food since the others were done eating.

Seungkwan had broken out into practicing ad libs for the next day, and Seokmin, of course, could only join him. The musical interlude continued on until Soonyoung put down his chopsticks and made to pack up.

“Wow, are you really going to eat more at the dorm?” Seokmin said, stopping mid-vibrato as Soonyoung stood up and picked up the bag.

“Nah, going to bring this to Jihoon. He’s probably not going to get much sleep tonight either, but he might as well be fed if he’s composing.”

Seungkwan tilted his head, made eye contact with Seokmin, and raised a single eyebrow as high as it would go on his forehead.

“I’m going to leave first if you guys are going to sit around in the dark singing more,” Soonyoung said, pushing his seat under the table and not bothering to look back. “See you back at the dorm?”

“Yeah of course,” Seokmin said to his retreating back.

Soonyoung whistled as he walked away, swinging the bag back and forth. Even when he’d made it all the way down the street and out of sight, Seungkwan still hadn’t lowered his eyebrow.

§

The notes of the chorus thrummed to their end and Jihoon slammed his thumb onto the space bar to pause the music. He sighed and rubbed at his face with his hands. In the corner of the screen, the date had changed without him noticing once again.

There was either too much going on in the instrumentation and harmony, or not enough. Jihoon couldn’t tell which, but he knew it sounded wrong, and trial and error wasn’t helping him put a finger on the problem. It was taking longer than he thought it would to finish this song, especially considering the fact that he had written all of it in one go, and churned out the lyrics so quickly. This time getting all the pieces to fit together, however, turned out to be a battle that was driving him crazy. Usually he had good judgement with this sort of thing, but he usually also had more sleep under his belt.

Not that sleep deprivation was a stranger to him. For years he had poured his sweat into the spaces between the floorboards, in fact, most of Seventeen had contributed to the salination of their practice rooms. They had all spent long nights pushing their bodies past their limits, and pushing their need for sleep out of their minds.

After debuting it was only worse. They all thought their trainee period was hard and lacked time for play but that was nothing compared to their daily grind from morning to night. But even when everyone else finally called it a night, Jihoon’s day was only halfway finished. That was when he slipped into his studio spaced and got to his favourite part of the job.

Performing was nice, exciting even, and seeing new fans meant the novelty never really wore off. Composing though, that was what lit Jihoon’s soul. The feeling of creation, making something from nothing, and then having a product to show for it that other people – that was more reward than the cheering or applause. It could only be rewarding, though, if he actually produced something. They didn’t have a strict deadline for him, per se, but that didn't mean he wasn’t given constant hints to move faster. Which meant staying longer, getting maybe an hour’s nap at dawn, and repeating the process until his mind buzzed with the inability to discern between what sounded great and what sounded terrible.

Jihoon groaned and took off his headphones. It was only then that he noticed the pang of hunger in his stomach. He smoothed out his hair and rubbed at his ears as he considered the audio waveforms dancing in front of his eyes. If he took a break now, he would risk falling asleep into his food and wasting the night. If he kept at it, he would risk making some bad calls and still wasting the night. Better to be hungry and well-rested, he supposed, and kicked off from the wall, gliding across the floor in his swivel chair to open the door.

“Can someone get me some coffee?” Jihoon yelled through the gap. He hedged on Mingyu or Seungcheol remaining in the practice rooms to finish working or writing as well. He waited briefly for a response, rubbing on his eyes to relieve some of the stinging sensation from being awake too long. When he heard not a peep of noise, he yanked open the door all the way to find the place apparently deserted. There was a click of a door closing and some scuffling of shoes being toed off.

“Minions, please, coffee?” Jihoon ventured again, to whoever it was in the other room.

“Hey,” Soonyoung called, emerging in his line of sight and padding over in socked feet, “Watch who you’re calling a minion.” His expression was serious, but the tone of his voice was light and teasing.

Jihoon didn’t notice him talking, as his eyes had narrowed in on the white plastic bag in Soonyoung’s left hand. He stared at it, gaze unblinking. His nose took two quick sniffs of the delicious aroma of spicy rice cakes. His stomach let out an extended and loud growl.

Soonyoung stopped walking, blinked, and burst into laughter before thrusting the serving of rice cakes into Jihoon’s eagerly awaiting hands. Unabashed, Jihoon yanked apart the pair of disposable chopsticks and dug in. He didn’t notice Soonyoung leaving until after he had already returned, gently easing the empty disposable container out of Jihoon’s hands.

It was Jihoon’s turn to blink this time, as he suddenly found himself with a Styrofoam cup filled with warm strong coffee in one hand. His cheeks were puffed out from the rice cakes he had been stuffing himself on.

“Chew. That’s it. Keep chewing…Okay, now swallow,” Soonyoung instructed. Jihoon did what he was told, and immediately turned to his coffee.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. That’s hot, you’re gonna scald yourself.”

The warning was a little late, and Jihoon gave a full-body ripple when it went down his throat.

Soonyoung snorted. “You look like Wonwoo did when he was doing that dance in school.”

Jihoon snorted, glad he hadn’t taken another sip or he would have been spraying hot coffee everywhere. He swallowed methodically until his mouth was empty before speaking.

“Wonwoo’s a dancing machine, you wish you were as good as him.”

“Uhuh,” Soonyoung nodded, “Of course I do.” He watched as Jihoon took large gulps of coffee, finishing much faster than anyone had any right to do with hot liquid. Jihoon let out a satisfied sigh, and wiped his mouth with a tissue before handing back the empty cup to Soonyoung, dirty napkin wadded up inside.

“Stop. Don’t get any ideas. I’m not your minion just because I brought you food or coffee, and don’t expect me to always be cleaning up your trash,” Soonyoung said.

Jihoon grinned widely up at him, eyes rounded into half moons, and carefully rolled his chair over one of Soonyoung’s toes as he scooted back to his desk. Soonyoung yelped and swore, but Jihoon was fast, and had shut the door behind him before Soonyoung could do anything.

“I’ll get you back, you are literally the devil, I swear Jihoon–!” He could only kick at the door since his hands were full with the garbage from Jihoon’s midnight meal, preventing him from turning the knob to throw something at Jihoon’s head.

Jihoon waited until Soonyoung finished sulking and left to toss everything away before going right back to leave the door ajar as a peace offering.

Later, he barely noticed Soonyoung come in, the sound from his headphones drowning out the sounds of his feet and the door shutting. It was only the flicker of the shadows in the reflection of his screen that alerted him to the presence of someone else in the room. Jihoon didn’t bother turning around, Soonyoung was unfortunately comfortably at home in his space, and had been here often enough that he didn’t need babysitting.

He returned his focus to the song, and wondered what Soonyoung would suggest he should do with the instrumentation. He didn’t need to ask, the answer coming to him as he visualized exactly what would be in Soonyoung’s head, and Jihoon wondered if it would work. Leaving only the bare bones to lead into the chorus, and then adding more percussion… Always more percussion. Jihoon began making the necessary changes.

As soon as he finished he turned around, excitement flowing through his fingertips. “Soonyoung, listen to this!”

Soonyoung’s head was tilted back, the pad of paper and pencil resting in his limp hands, and his head jerked upon hearing his name. He cracked opened his eyes slowly, eyebrows drawn together and muttered groggily, “What is it?”

Jihoon tapped aggressively at Soonyoung’s knee with one fingernail. “Wake up and listen to this, I think I have the song down, I just need to do some arranging and putting together the demo but it’s almost done.”

“That’s nice,” Soonyoung mumbled, yawning and turning his head to the side to use the back of the chair as a pillow. He pulled his knee away only to rest both his feet in Jihoon’s lap.

“You’re gross!” Jihoon yelled in a strangled voice, pushing Soonyoung’s legs off of him, and wrinkling his nose at the smell. Soonyoung didn’t even open his eyes, opened and closed his mouth twice, and went right back to softly snoring.

Jihoon frowned at not being able to share his piece, but let Soonyoung sleep on as he finished working.

§

Wonwoo delivered the punchline with his weird voice and was met with silence, until everyone started laughing and clapping at once.

“Ah, I’m a little disappointed. Didn’t you say you were the funniest member, Wonwoo?”

Seungcheol lunged to shove Wonwoo’s face away from his microphone.

Junghan raised both his hands to make negative gestures. “No, wait, honestly, Wonwoo isn’t funny,” he said quickly. “We don’t think he’s funny, but he always calls himself the funniest. He just makes us laugh not because of his jokes but because of how not funny he is.”

“Hang on,” Wonwoo tried to say into his microphone, attempting to explain himself.

Mingyu, at this point, had wrested the microphone they were sharing out of Wonwoo’s grasp and Joonhwi had grabbed hold of Wonwoo’s chair, pulling him further away from the microphone. Most of the others were doubled over at this point in laughter and Wonwoo’s indignant squawking noises were only making the situation funnier. It took a while for them to settle down again.

“This must be what it’s like to have thirteen youngsters together, the energy in your dorm room must be very high,” the radio show host said fondly. “Wonwoo, you’ve learned something today right?”

His mic was finally returned to him in order for him to respond. “Yes, I know I will reflect and work harder in the future,” Wonwoo said smiling sheepishly.

“Okay, now how about the other members’ talents? Hoshi! the fans online say you can do taekwondo?”

“Yes, that’s true,” Soonyoung started, looking around at the small radio station studio, “but it might be hard to demonstrate that here.”

“You’re right, there’s not a lot of space.”

“Anyway, I’m not the only one who can do things like that, almost all of the members have a physical talent. Jun and The8 for example, they can both do Chinese martial arts, Dino can do Michael Jackson style dances, and Woozi can make cool beats with just his hands.”

“Oh really?” The DJ exclaimed, turning to look at Jihoon, “Can you show us a little?”

Jihoon ducked his head, embarrassed, and nodded. The tips of his ears were probably a little pink, Soonyoung knew, and he smirked, tugging a microphone for some slack to hold it in front of Jihoon’s hands. Almost on cue, Jihoon looked up to glare at him before plastering on a smile and starting his snapping skills.

“That was really cool, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before,” said the host when he was done.

“Thanks,” Jihoon responded awkwardly, and then narrowed his eyes at Soonyoung.

Throughout the rest of the recording, during Hansol’s rapping display, the trivia game they played, even while they were performing their songs live, Jihoon snuck dirty glares at Soonyoung whenever no one was looking and the cameras were turned away. They were always very short, and not extensive enough to be noticed, but Soonyoung knew he would get it when they returned to the dorm.

He was accosted while making coffee for himself. Chan wanted to go over some choreography ideas when they got back, which was likely to take up more hours than Soonyoung had awareness. Because he was so busy anticipating what was coming, he had forgotten to also anticipate Jihoon’s payback.

The shout of “Charge!” was all the warning Soonyoung got before he was kneed in the back by Jihoon perched on Mingyu’s back.

“Aargh!” Soonyoung shrieked. Hot foam got everywhere, and the coffee in his hand splashed all down his front.

Jihoon giggled madly, while Mingyu backed away, still piggy-backing Jihoon, as quickly as he could.

“Come back here!” Soonyoung screamed after them, peeling off his ruined sweater and pulling it over his head. “Fight your own battles and stop hiding behind your bodyguard!”

“I’m not his bodyguard,” Mingyu yelled, indignant. “But Jihoon-hyung said ‘Let’s fight!’ and then played dirty by pulling on my hair and not letting go so please take him from me, hyung!”

“You wanna fight, Lee Jihoon? Then let’s fight!”

Jihoon let out a peal of laughter as Soonyoung tackled him and Mingyu to the ground. Soonyoung got a hand around Jihoon’s arm, but yanked it away when Jihoon bit him and ran away.

Soonyoung swore, shaking off the stinging sensation. “That’s low, even for you!”

His rush to follow Jihoon was halted by a door opening in his face.

“Can’t you guys keep it down out here?” Seungkwan asked, peeking his head out of the room. He looked down at the heap of Soonyoung and Mingyu on the ground. “What are you doing? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

He scanned the scene before him to see Jihoon shuffling down the hallway away from them and Seungkwan had to pause. He looked back at Soonyoung, whose face was glowing with happy laughter. The arch of his eyebrow from their time at the street food stall returned, shooting up into his hairline.

“Interesting,” Seungkwan pronounced in English. Soonyoung had reached Jihoon and was trying to smack him with a pillow. Mingyu was laughing and dragged Seungkwan into the foray to help him tug the two others away from each other.

Jihoon escaped from Mingyu’s hold on his sweater to pull the pillow from Soonyoung’s grasp and lunged to hit Soonyoung, who ducked. Seungkwan’s “very interesting” was smothered when the pillow whacked him in the face.

§

The next time all thirteen of them had the day off, the skies above Seoul opened up for a torrential downpour.

“We probably could have still managed it if it were a little rain,” Seungcheol offered, “But it doesn’t make sense to go out to a park now and fall sick because we’re cold and wet.” His tone was apologetic, but he was in the same boat as all of them and his face showed his disappointment.

“I wish it would stop raining. I was really looking forward to seeing more of Korea,” Myungho mumbled, arms wrapped around his legs.

“Don’t worry, there’s plenty of time. We’ll definitely show you all of Korea sooner or later,” Seokmin consoled, patting Myungho’s shoulder.

They were all looking forward to the trip as it had been so long since they got a real break. Soonyoung knew that this wasn’t a terrible situation because they could use this time to rest, but it didn’t seem like even a full twenty-four hours of sleeping would make up anyone’s sleep deficit at this point and it would be easier to rejuvenate their moods by doing something exciting rather than lying around. Looking out at the menacing grey clouds and the incessant pitter-patter of raindrops on the window made him frown and shake his head slightly.

“Why don’t we watch a movie here?” Jisoo suggested, the words cutting through the the thick discontent filling the room with a bright voice and a kind smile.

Seokmin rose to his feet and pulled Myungho up with him. “That’s a good idea. Come on, rainy days can still be fun days!”

Myungho nodded and smiled, which wasn’t unusual, but Seokmin’s positive enthusiasm was at least infectious enough to get even Jihoon happier about the situation.

They corralled themselves from the dining room and kitchen area to squeeze in front of the television as Joonhwi set things up. Seungkwan and Chan had pooled together all the pillows in the dorms, while Hansol and Jisoo had pooled together all the DVDs they could find. Junghan was intrigued when he saw that they had managed to find the entire X-Men series, and helped Jisoo organize the movies in chronological order so that Hansol could join the others in squabbling over what to watch.

"Transformers was a horrible movie, I'm not watching it again!" Seungkwan protested.

Chan yanked the movie out of Seungkwan's hand. "But hyung, I haven't seen it before!"

"We should watch a scary movie, it's raining and dark and all of us are here," Wonwoo piped up.

At his suggestion, the room became quiet, and twelve heads turned around to stare at him with various looks of disgust, fear, and amusement.

"Aaaand anyway," Seungkwan began, turning around and ignoring Wonwoo's comment entirely. The rest of the members all started talking again, everyone trying to make their opinions known. Their leader, whose job was to keep all of them quiet so everyone could get a turn, was arguing with Mingyu about whether or not they should watch The Avengers for the fifth time.

"Honestly, you've watched the movie enough times to recite it to us. I've heard you in your sleep, you even talk in your dreams about The Avengers, I'm surprised you don't just run outside with the toy hammer and smack it down on the ground yelling, 'I am the god of thunder!' or something," Seungcheol attacked relentlessly. Hansol cackled in the background at the brutally honest argument, and Mingyu himself was unable to come up with any response to counter him, caught up in his own snorting laughter.

To the side, Seokmin pulled out a sheet of paper and was drawing a red, white, and blue shield with markers. "Captain America? Also Iron Man, and the big green angry monster, Hulk?"

"Oh!" Myungho exclaimed, finally understanding, "Yeah I like them, but we've watched the movie before, haven't we?" His question got Hansol snickering again, which Mingyu responded to by aggressively poking at all of them in the ribs.

Soonyoung huddled back into the corner of the couch, clutching a cushion to his chest. He watched as Joonhwi poured out all the snacks from his bag and added them to the bags of chips he had collected from one of the cabinets. Wonwoo had added his favourite vegetable crackers to the pile, and was helping Joonhwi sort the food to pass to different members.

"What's this thing?" Wonwoo asked, holding up a dark maroon coloured candy.

Joonhwi took the rolls of hawthorn flakes from Wonwoo's hands. "They're a type of Chinese food Myungho really likes." He got up to bring them over. He unwrapped a piece and held it out to Myungho, who took it without breaking from his conversation with Seokmin. Joonhwi stayed sitting on the other side of Myungho, settling in for the movie. Mingyu took up the spot beside Wonwoo that Joonhwi had vacated, and patted him on the knee in condolence for no one taking his suggestion of a horror movie seriously.

To no one's real surprise, Jihoon ended up victorious in the selection process. He bypassed all the debates around him and simply slipped X-Men: Days of Future Past into the DVD player, before joining Soonyoung on the couch and getting comfortable. It took a while for all the others to notice that a movie had started, but one by one they became silent (with the exception of Chan who was still whispering furiously at Seungkwan about how wrong he was until he was "accidentally" struck by Jihoon's wayward foot) and no one complained about the decision.

Soonyoung wasn't a huge fan of the X-Men series. The last time he tried watching one was when someone had bought the Wolverine origin movie and was playing it on their computer. Hugh Jackman was cool, but the movie itself wasn't that interesting unless you counted the action sequences and fight scenes that were too fast and narrowly framed to really see what was going on. When he watched X-Men First Class, Soonyoung had zoned out somewhere not long from the beginning and stopped paying attention to the subtitles. When he was focused on the screen again, the film had moved on and he had a hard time following the rest of the plot.

Beside him, Jihoon was leaning forward, although his eyes and facial expression betrayed nothing. Soonyoung only knew how excited he was because he could feel the slight vibrating from Jihoon's leg bouncing up and down beside his thigh. That, and the fact that X-Men was basically the only movie series Jihoon ever talked about. Soonyoung straightened his back to sit up with good posture, and pulled the pillow even closer to himself. If this was something his friend was so interested in, he should at least give it a shot.

"Hey," Soonyoung whispered, nudging Jihoon with his elbow, "who's that? What's her power?"

Jihoon whipped his head around to face Soonyoung with drawn eyebrows. "Shh!" 

Seeing him with his index finger pressed to his lips and an angry scowl, Soonyoung raised his hands in surrender, and sank back into the back of the sofa.

"Sorry," he whispered again. Jihoon didn't bother looking over this time, just took the pillow away from Soonyoung since he was no longer holding onto it, and swatted his head.

He was a little dejected, but Soonyoung turned back to the TV, determined to understand what was going on and enjoy the movie. It was his fault, anyway, for interrupting in the middle of the movie. It was his fault for not paying attention when they saw the previous instalments, and it was his fault for bothering Jihoon when he was so obviously entranced by the story.

There were several moments throughout the film when Jihoon laughed at jokes that Soonyoung didn't quite understand, either because he hadn't caught what the subtitles said, or because there was some X-Men universe joke for which Soonyoung didn't know the context. But by the last half of hour of the movie, Soonyoung was as emotionally compromised as the others, and a few tears escaped to his cheeks. He tried to rub at his eyes as covertly as possible, but he noticed some of the other members were also sniffling. Jihoon had dabbed at his eyes with his fingertips once, and Soonyoung didn't feel as bad about crying.

After the movie ended, some of the members got up and left. Junghan was asleep with his mouth slightly open, head resting on Jisoo's shoulder. Jisoo picked up his book (in English) and was reading it, completely unfazed.

"Wait, so, does that mean none of what happened in the beginning actually happened?" Soonyoung asked. Jihoon wouldn't be mad at questions now that the movie was over right?

"No it did happen, but now that's not the history of their timeline," Jihoon said, using his teaching voice.

"Right, I got that, but then how does Wolverine know what the history is? He didn't live through it, so does he have memories that align with their new timeline? Doesn't he only remember the old timeline? How does that work?"

Jihoon launched into a long and convoluted explanation, which Soonyoung tried to keep up with, but only resulted in him feeling a dull pressure between his eyes.

"Anyway, you liked the movie right?"

Soonyoung's expression was honest and sincere when he said, "Yeah, actually, it was pretty good." He then turned to look around the room and noticed almost everyone had left. "Wait, where did everyone else go?"

Mingyu looked up from making little braids in Seungkwan's hair. "They left to play basketball. It looks like the rain has let up, unfortunately too late for us to go anywhere more fun, but at least we can play outside for a little bit." 

Seungkwan winced as Mingyu tugged too hard on a few strands, and gently slapped his hand. Mingyu bowed his head in apology, but was snickering when he added, "We were going to join them after Junghan-hyung wakes up, did you want to come with us?"

Before Soonyoung could give his assent, Jihoon shook his head and told them, "No, now that I'm in the mood, I think I'm going to go marathon the other X-Men movies. You guys go have fun."

Soonyoung quickly changed gears and stood to follow him. "I'll come with you. I haven't watched most of them and I think a few things flew over my head just now, it'd be nice if I knew everything so I could follow what was going on."

Jihoon beamed wordlessly, and yet, Soonyoung felt as if he were just told he won the lottery.

§

For dinner, eight of them ended up at a Chinese restaurant near their dorm, while the other five opted to go for cold noodles at an eatery further away. For the sake of the restaurant owners, this was probably the best outcome. Even with only eight out of thirteen, their party took up almost the entirety of the shop, and their loud rambunctious chatter certainly would have scared off most other patrons. The owner of the Chinese restaurant, however, was endeared to them because Joonhwi and Myungho visited so often. As her favourite loyal customers, they always received extra attention and especially great service.

They were seated three on each side with one member at the head of either end of the three small tables that were shoved together. Their order was shared as a group, with various stir-fry dishes, rice, meats, and noodles taking up all the space that wasn't already used for their plates and cutlery. As usual, they let Joonhwi decide on the food since he was not only so familiar with the restaurant, but he also knew what dishes were tastiest in general. The food was brought over by the restaurant owner herself, and arranged to all fit even though they were sitting elbow to elbow. Joonhwi was now busy explaining what all of the dishes were to Wonwoo while heaping some of a braised eggplant with shredded pork, vegetables, and cilantro into Myungho's bowl.

Seungcheol was busy digging in, and pretending that he hadn't seen Mingyu flick rice into Seungkwan's hair, now devoid of braids. He averted his eyes so that he wouldn't have to watch as Mingyu, eating with one hand, had his other arm thrown around Seungkwan's shoulder and was surreptitiously trying to get Wonwoo to take a picture of Seungkwan looking ridiculous.

After watching this go on for a while, Soonyoung decided to save Wonwoo, who looked perplexed at Mingyu's hand gestures, and snuck a picture of Seungkwan, plus Mingyu's arm, by pretending to look something up on his phone.

Mingyu shot him a thumbs up sign and a grin, before carefully plucking the rice out and depositing it into a tissue, Seungkwan, for his part, had not stopped his discussion of their album position on the charts with Jihoon. Soonyoung couldn't be sure if Jihoon was playing along in the distraction, or genuinely hadn't noticed the flailing that had just gone on, but he belatedly noticed that Jihoon had some of the eggplant in his bowl.

Jihoon had once told him that cilantro tasted like soap to him, so Soonyoung picked up his chopsticks and started transferring the bits of green to his own bowl. Jihoon knocked his arm away, cheeks flushed.

"Oh my God, what are you doing?"

Taken aback, Soonyoung put down his chopsticks. "I was just trying to help since I know you don't like cilantro."

"Soonyoung," Jihoon complained, sounding rather put out, "I'm not nine years old or something, I can take care of myself. You don't have to do stupid things like that!"

Seungcheol had paused, chopsticks halfway to his wide open mouth, and the piece of beef he was about to eat slipped back down to his bowl. Jihoon seemed to notice the attention they had caught and started furiously shoveling rice into his mouth so he wouldn't have to look at anyone else, but even his ears were red now.

Soonyoung slowly picked his chopsticks back up, forced himself to turn back to the food, and stamped down his feelings of hurt. He made eye contact with Seungcheol, but shook his head slightly when it looked like the other was going to say something. It would be best if they didn't talk about it, and if instead, Soonyoung thought of some way to make it up to Jihoon for making him feel embarrassed.

They had been so carefree and happy in the dorms that Soonyoung temporarily forgot how prickly Jihoon could be nowadays, the stress and pressure of being a self-composing idol eating further away at him than any other member. He was aware of how much extra time Jihoon spent in the practice rooms, the recording studio, his own studio. Soonyoung had witnessed first-hand how many long nights Jihoon pulled, and how many times he had fallen asleep at his keyboard, halfway through his work.

And Jihoon did good work, amazing work, creating music he should be proud of. Soonyoung was certainly glad his friend championed their sound production for them, and he would trust no one more to do right by their group than Jihoon, who was a perfectionist, but also probably a genius.

But Jihoon, despite being the most valued member of the team, as acknowledged by all thirteen members, didn't realize that the others tried in their own ways to do what they could in order alleviate some of the weight on his shoulders. After years of teasing, Soonyoung reasoned, it made sense that Jihoon was sensitive to being perceived as weak. In that case, any attempts to help him would be perceived as undermining Jihoon's abilities and self-competence.

Soonyoung was quiet for the remainder of their meal, lost in thought about Jihoon's favourite foods and hobbies and thinking about ways to apologize. Jihoon had forced himself to stop blushing, and was, with fierce exaggeration, contributing to the conversations that floated around them.

No one made overt indications that something was wrong until Wonwoo made a horrible chicken related pun, and Jihoon replied "you're so funny!" while slapping the table for emphasis. The impact on the table, combined with the noise, startled Myungho into dropping his spoon and splashing soup all over him. Joonhwi lunged for tissues to start cleaning up the mess, and checked on Myungho’s hands for any signs of burns with a worried cluck of his tongue. Satisfied that Myungho would live, Joonhwi turned his attention to Soonyoung’s direction with narrowed eyes and pursed lips. His eyes glared daggers through Soonyoung, and broadcasted his message loudly and clearly, “Find some way to fix this or else.” The look lasted only a few seconds and Joonhwi was back to being hungry and playful before anyone else noticed.

Soonyoung shivered minutely, suddenly aware of Joonhwi’s martial arts training. He glanced sidelong at Jihoon, whose entire body had turned away from Soonyoung, and who was carefully maintaining a distance so that none of their body parts were touching, even in the confined space. Their positions were a stark contrast to Mingyu and Seungkwan’s, who had arms around each other’s chairs and were leaning into each other’s space. Jihoon looked uncomfortable to sitting so tightly, limbs stiff and muscles contracted. Soonyoung longed to reach out and press the palm of his hand between his shoulder blades to ease the tension there, but stopped himself. He sighed, wrinkled his nose, and looked back at Joonhwi with his shoulders slumped in defeat. “I don’t have any ideas,” he tried to convey with his eyes, “Anything I do would just make him angrier”.

“Well,” Joonhwi mouthed, “you could offer to pay?”

§

They returned to the dorms as a group, walking in twos and threes. The moment of awkwardness from dinner was glossed over with quiet chatter and remarks about how quickly the day had passed.

“Up and at ‘em early tomorrow!” Seungcheol chirped, trying to corral the mood of the group into looking forward to their schedules.

"Ugh, you mean up and them now," Jihoon muttered. Louder, he said, "I need to finish some stuff at before we do any recording tomorrow, so I'll see you guys back here later." He was well aware that by the time he got back, most of the others would already be asleep and he wouldn't be seeing them until they showed up to record their segments tomorrow.

He waved and started walking away from the group, but was stopped by Joonhwi shouting, "Wait! Soonyoung's coming with you!"

"Wha—" Joonhwi elbowed Soonyoung to prevent him from finishing what he was going to say.

"You were just telling me you left your choreography notebook back there and wanted to work on something tonight, right?"

Soonyoung appeared for a moment like he was about to say no, but he yelped a quick "Yes!" when Seungkwan stomped on his foot.

The scene was enough for Jihoon to turn back around silently and trudge up the hill towards the company building. He heard the others bicker quietly and the jostle of limbs as Soonyoung was pushed forward. He was aware of his presence just behind his shoulder, but Soonyoung was strangely quiet, and Jihoon didn't have anything to say either. They walked like that, one trailing slightly after the other, without speaking.

Jihoon expected Soonyoung to split up from him when they were on the stairs at the door to the dance practice room, but Soonyoung followed him all the way into his studio space, looking restless and fiddling with whatever objects he could find and floating from one corner to another.

With more force than he originally meant, he slammed the door and spit out "What do you want?" He crossed his arms over his chest and tapped his foot on the floor while waiting for a reply.

"Uh, um, I mean..." Soonyoung trailed off, looking at the ceiling, and then darted his eyes to door. He gulped, but Jihoon felt no pity. There was no reason for him to follow him here, and he didn't know what the others were thinking sending Soonyoung after him, but his chance to escape lasted the entire time they were walking.

Soonyoung fiddled nervously with his thumbs, and Jihoon almost reached out a hand to cover Soonyoung's to get him to stop. It was getting on his nerves, and he felt impatient enough as it was that any nervous tics were turning annoyance to anger.

"Jihoon-ah, please don't be angry," Soonyoung begged, not meeting his eyes.

Jihoon raised his eyebrows, and decided not to mention that it was a little late for that. The tapping foot got faster and louder.

Soonyoung sighed. "Never mind, I know you're already angry. At a lot of things, probably. I know I did wrong..."

In his head, Jihoon nodded once, and outwardly, he stopped tapping his foot as an indication to go on.

"I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Jihoon shrugged slightly, and slid into his desk chair. “Alright.”

“Wait what,” Soonyoung asked to the back of Jihoon’s head, “that’s it?”

“Yeah. You apologized coolly, so I have to accept coolly too. You’re making me into a better man.”

Soonyoung opened and closed his mouth several times.

“Well, weren’t you in here to do something?”

Soonyoung leapt up half a foot, scrambling towards a desk on the side wall, patted around, before holding a small spiral-bound notebook triumphantly over his head. “Found it! I was planning on doing some plans for the choreography but didn’t have my book.”

“Okay,” Jihoon said, pretending he hadn’t just seen Soonyoung pull the notes out of his pocket, place it on the desk under a sheaf of papers as if it had been there all along, and grab at it as if it were the first time he had seen it today. “Are you gonna sit on the floor?”

“Yup!” Soonyoung chirped with excitement, before throwing himself into a cross-legged position. Jihoon rolled his eyes and pulled his headphones over his ears to get to work, lost in the sound of a synthesizer. Soonyoung penciled tiny dots and dashes, filling blank pages with elaborate formations, and even more intricate transitions.

After several hours, Jihoon was jolted awake by dexterous fingers massaging his neck and shoulder muscles.

“Wha— Did I fall asleep?”

Soonyoung removed the headphones from Jihoon. “Yeah, it’s no wonder when you’ve been staring sitting in front of a computer for so long.”

Jihoon pressed the thumb and ring finger of his left hand to his temples, pressed down, and released. When he looked up, Soonyoung was resting against the desk, blowing steam away from a cup. Jihoon blinked blankly at him for a while, before slowly raising his arm and reaching out. Soonyoung handed him a nearly full mug. He lifted the cup to his mouth and took a long drink before almost choking. When he stopped coughing and wiped his mouth with the back of his sweater sleeve, he gave Soonyoung a perplexed look.

“This isn’t coffee?”

“No, of course not, it’s hot milk. It’s our day off, don’t you think you should go back to the dorms to sleep instead of staying awake all night?”

Jihoon whined, pouted some, but kept drinking. When Soonyoung wasn’t paying attention, he jabbed him in retaliation for the drink stunt.

“Weak,” he grumbled when Soonyoung yelped and rubbed at his arm.

Soonyoung tilted his head back and laughed again. “That’s true. I’m a weak man, but girls still love me.” He gave Jihoon a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows.

“Gross!” Jihoon protested, suddenly flushing red again. “Besides, you’ve never been on a date with a girl in your life.”

Soonyoung waggled his eyebrows again, and lifted his thumb and index finger in front of his chin. “You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”

“Stop, don’t lie to me, I know all of your secrets!” Jihoon stuck his tongue out and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Maybe I never told you this one since you’ve never even interacted with a girl who wasn’t a fan or directly involved with Seventeen in some way,” Soonyoung teased.

Jihoon’s pink cheeks flamed and he ducked his head. “So what?”

“Oooh,” Soonyoung sing-songed, “Defensive! Is our Jihoonie getting embarrassed?”

Jihoon covered as much of his face and ears as he could while Soonyoung continued to tease him good naturedly.

His ribbing ended with, “Don’t worry, I’ll share all of my tips with you when you finally lose your virginity at age 38 as an old man.”

Jihoon had smacked him in the shoulder blade, and Soonyoung immediately stopped, stomach plummeting at the expression on Jihoon’s face.

“You know, none of the others come in here or bother me,” Jihoon said coldly, pushing Soonyoung along the floor. “They all know that I’m working hard and that we can’t have a comeback if I don’t finish. They know not to disturb me. What makes you different?” At that, he slammed the door in Soonyoung’s face.

Well, shit. That ended Soonyoung’s plans of trying to get him to go to bed early. He trudged back cold and alone in the dark streets, and fell asleep telling himself, “Kwon Soonyoung, you idiot. I can’t believe you can fuck up that badly twice in a single day.”

§

After vocal lessons the following morning, during which Jihoon studiously ignored him, Soonyoung prepared himself a snack in the kitchen.

Seokmin bounded in yelling at him, “Hansol told me about the picture you took of me sleeping with my mouth open, I can’t believe you’d do that, delete it! Delete it right now!” He hugged Soonyoung around the middle from behind, and laughed at being able to lift Soonyoung up.

Soonyoung went limp and couldn’t bring himself to smile fast enough or widely enough.

“Are you okay? What happened?” Seokmin asked, lowering Soonyoung to the floor gently.

Soonyoung shook his head. He participated unenthusiastically in a round of “Hoshi and DK” as Seokmin tried to cheer him up, but he was still thinking about how a simple apology wasn’t going to fix things this time. Jihoon wasn’t one to pull his punches, but his shoulder blade really stung, and he noticed a large purple bruise in the shower this morning.

“Hey Seokmin, Soonyoung,” Seungcheol said in a tired voice, padding in with a towel draped around his neck and sweat still beading along his hairline.

“Did you fix your rather large small friend-shaped problem?” he asked.

Soonyoung shook his head miserably while Seokmin looked back and forth between them.

“Large small? What does that even mean?”

“It’s nothing,” Soonyoung said quietly. He placed the last of the apple slices he was cutting up into the bowl, and held it out to the others.

Both of them took a piece, muttered thanks, and watched Soonyoung leave the kitchen without anything else to say.

He nibbled on a bit of apple in the main living room, alone since most of the others had gone to get lunch. It was too quiet and he drifted into his own thoughts. Why was he so sad? Okay, he was fighting with his best friend, but that wasn’t a reason to get so pessimistic. Even the Cold War eventually ended.

Soonyoung thumbed idly through his phone, carefully deleting all the incriminating pictures of Seventeen members, documenting evidence of their weirdness. Just in case someone hacked his phone or if it got stolen, those photos probably shouldn’t be seen by anyone else. He hovered over a picture of Jihoon sleeping that he snuck months ago and hadn’t shared. It wasn’t a bad photo, nor was it particularly embarrassing. Jihoon just looked calm, peaceful. Not angry. There was a moment when he wavered, but he eventually skipped over it, deciding to keep it for now.

When he finished clearing up anything that could be messy, he pocketed his phone and headed to the bathroom. The face that reflected back at him in the mirror was sunken and sallow, but that had been from months of overwork. He splashed water on his face, rubbed it dry with a fluffy towel, and headed to the bedroom for a quick nap before afternoon rehearsals. He shrugged out of his jacket and snuggled into a comforter before turning onto his side and noticing Jihoon sleeping across from him on the other bunk bed. He closed his eyes and sighed. Should he leave? Was that silly? Everyone fought, that was natural between two people. Best friends fought all the time, just look at Wonwoo and Mingyu. Hell, Mingyu even fought with Seungkwan, and Joonhwi and Myungho were bickering all the time.

Soonyoung paused and opened his eyes with realization.

“Oh,” he whispered softly, and turned his head to look at Jihoon’s sleeping form again. He drank the sight in, the soft rise and fall of Jihoon’s body, the lightly closed eyelids and eyelashes fanning across pale cheeks. His eyebrows were always immaculate, and his hair, though bleached and coloured without end, looked soft and framed his face in a way that set off his cheekbones. Soonyoung’s eyes lingered on Jihoon’s jawline, and he wondered how he hadn’t noticed before.

Not about the fact that Jihoon was gorgeous, Soonyoung already knew that. The very first time they met, pushed to work together for the sake of idol-hood and their company, Soonyoung noticed how adorable Jihoon was. They were strangers at the time, so being in close proximity was weird, and they were self-conscious at first, always interrupting each other when they were speaking, unable to read each other’s body language, and not sure whether to be supportive or competitive.

Young Jihoon was more open and carefree, although just as awkward, and definitely still prickly. But he was also trusting and obvious with his caring, so they quickly, along with Seungcheol, became close friends. It might have been by necessity and close proximity, but Soonyoung liked to think that if they had met in any other circumstances, they would still be friends.

They had spent so many years together, singing, dancing, laughing, that the gradual becoming best friends snuck up on him unexpectedly. It wasn’t until the moment when Jihoon had snorted at dinner once and said, “Soonyoung’s my best friend and even he doesn’t know any of my weakness,” that Soonyoung had realized that their relationship had reached that point.

It seemed that being in love with his best friend, too, snuck up on him unannounced. He was fairly certain that it hadn’t been for long. He could distinctly remember a time when— well, maybe not. Maybe he had been in love with Jihoon the entire time and just couldn’t identify it before. That Jihoon made his heart race and his head light, that he would do anything to see Jihoon smile, that Jihoon’s laughter was his own happiness, his well-being Soonyoung’s own health. He could read Jihoon better than he could read himself, could predict his moods and reactions even if his own actions didn’t always lead to good. It was surely inevitable, when you made your world revolve around one person that you would end up falling in love with him. When you knew as much about someone as you could know, their faults, but also their strengths and beauty, what drove them to do what they did, the reasons for all their flaws, surely you couldn’t help loving them.

His emotions didn’t change anything though. They didn’t change the fact that he was being ignored, and it certainly didn’t change their relationship status. His feelings had to be hidden, there was no way he could burden Jihoon with something like this, not to mention the countless other reasons they could never be together.

Soonyoung’s resolve hardened, and he sat up. He took one last look at Jihoon napping there, before standing and heading for the door. Where no one could see him, he mouthed “I’m in love with Lee Jihoon. I will never tell anyone. I will get over this myself.” No sound came out of his lips, but he heard the resolution in his head, ringing true and strong. When he opened the door, he was determined, and strangely enough, there was a weight lifted from his shoulders.

§

Part 1 of Kwon Soonyoung’s Three Step Guide to Getting Over Your Best Friend: Socialize

“Ah, Sooyoung-noona, please! I can just sit on the side…Don’t forget who choreographed your point dance.”

“What? No way! That was you? Hang on.”

There was static on the phone, and Soonyoung waited for the muffled noises to subside before saying, “Obviously. Why do you think I know Orange Caramel dances so well?”

She scoffed, but continued puttering around the kitchen and gave Soonyoung the chance to continue.

“Look, I bet I’ll get there before Jinah-noona wakes up anyway. She’s still asleep right? And you’re making coffee for her? I’m going to be more active anyway, so I can just do stuff in a corner to wait.”

Lizzy paused, and the shuffling sounds subsided for a moment. “How can you tell what I’m doing? Do we have cameras in the dorm? Are you spying on us?” She asked, suspicious.

Soonyoung rolled his eyes and ignored her questions. “So yes I can come right?”

“Jinah is going to be pissed when she finds out we have a tag along for our weekly outing. You’re dealing with her wrath, not me.” There was the sound of slurping as she tested the sweetness and warmth of the coffee before her slippers slapped the wooden floorboards as she trudged off to wake Nana up.

“That’s totally a yes, I’m on my way!”

“Yah, kid! You’re just doing this for free food aren’t you? Soonyoung? Soonyoung?” He had hung up and she was left shaking her head while trying not to spill a drop.

She gave a deep sigh, and worked her way up to a smile. There was nothing for it. She gently shook Nana’s shoulder and muttered, “Jinah? Jinah, wake up. You’re not going to like this.”

When Nana didn’t stir she whined, “Unnie, please don’t get angry, I swear it’s not my fault, you know how bad I am at saying no…”

Nana groaned into her pillow and pulled herself up. Voice low and scratchy she demanded, “Don’t call me ‘unnie’ only when you’ve done something terrible. What did you do this time?”

“Well…”

§

Soonyoung was stretched, warmed up, and going over choreography for his own group when Lizzy and Nana finally toddled into the studio. He looked up at the noise, and waved at their reflections in the mirror.

“What took you so long?” He asked, bounding up to them.

“Jinah refuses to leave the house without having painted a face on, you know that.”

With a puzzled expression, Soonyoung blinked. “Did you have a schedule today? Why can’t you just cover your face with a mask? It’s not like you need make-up in here.”

Lizzy’s face turned dark and she narrowed her eyes. “Jinah’s hideous bare face is reserved for only me to see.”

Soonyoung ducked his head to avoid being hit. “Okay, okay. Jeez. Hurry up and do your rehearsal so we can go shopping!”

Nana rose from stretching her hamstrings by touching her toes, whipping her hair back in the process. “Who’s this hoobae telling us what to do? Do we even know him? Sooyoung, what if he’s a stalker fan?” She jabbed her thumb in Soonyoung’s direction, and turned her face to glare at him.

Soonyoung laughed, but retreated to a corner and sipped on water while he watched their practice.

The After School sunbaes teased him a lot, but they were a lot of fun to be around, if they ever had time. There was some awkwardness with the older members, but Nana and Lizzy, although both shy around strangers, never backed down if someone needed help or guidance from someone older and with more experience. They were also known for being the wildest when it came to downtime, so they were his first choice when in need of a light-hearted distraction.

Today they drove to a small fish market, and being good at taking care of their youngers, Lizzy and Nana pampered Soonyoung with food and snack purchases, ragging him around to try on obnoxious hats and ridiculous looking sweaters.

“You should buy it,” Lizzy said of a particularly fuzzy salmon-coloured one. “In fact, even if you don’t I’m considering buying it for you just so you’re forced to wear it out of respect for receiving a gift.”

“Don’t joke around like that,” Nana shrieked from underneath the brim of a huge black sunhat. “Just looking at it once is going to give me nightmares, if he wears that thing where other people can see it…” She shuddered.

Lizzy pouted, clutched at Nana’s arm, but eventually let Soonyoung shrug out of the itchy thing.

“How do you find these places? How did you convince the company to let you out into the public eye like this?” Soonyoung asked with wonder, as Nana navigated the stalls.

Lizzy shrugged. “We might be idols, but we still have to live right? Anyway, we research places that no one goes to, that are filled with old people who won’t recognize us, and make sure it’s small enough and on a weekday during a time when it’s not crowded. And then it’s just hedging our bets on luck.”

“Aha!” Nana shrieked. “Get over here Sooyoung, and bring your wallet.”

“What? Why am I paying?”

“Well, is Soonyoung going to pay?”

“I forgot my wallet,” Soonyoung said quickly.

Lizzy rolled her eyes and slowly started looking for her pocket. Nana was smiling as she stocked up on squid, octopus, and cuttlefish snacks.

“Jinah-noona looks happiest when she’s eating,” Soonyoung observed.

“Is that right?” Nana asked, and grinned more broadly. She handed over money to the ahjumma who owned the stall, handed the bags of food to Soonyoung, and patted a blubbering Lizzy’s back.

“Didn’t you say I was paying?”

“I decided I would do it,” Nana said, laughter in her voice. She nibbled on the piece of dried squid and continued, “You just looked very cute today so I wanted to treat you.”

“Unnie…” Lizzy looked ready to cry from happiness.

“Don’t get so sentimental. Hey, you should call me “unnie” more often when you aren’t about to give me bad news.”

They piled back into the car with satisfied tummies, and Nana tried to navigate the GPS.

Lizzy fixed her bangs in the mirror, pulled on her seatbelt, and turned around to look at where Soonyoung was sitting in the back. “I just remembered, why isn’t the other one with us? Jihoonie – doesn’t he normally join you when you bother us like this?”

Soonyoung tried to laugh, but the sound caught in his throat. He shrugged his shoulders, shoved a giant piece of cuttlefish into his mouth, and held out a bag.

“Oooh does this have spicy seasoning on it too?”

The topic was quickly forgotten, and they spent the ride home alternating between dozing off and reminiscing on the foods they couldn’t eat when they were supposed to be dieting.

When they parted ways, both girls gave him a tight hug.

“Whoops, I think I got BB cream on your collar.” Nana tried to rub it off with her thumb, and frowned when a stain remained.

“I’ll like it slide since you’re letting me keep all the snacks right?” Soonyoung asked cheekily.

Nana bopped him on the head, but laughed and waved goodbye.

“When did he get so insolent?” She asked Lizzy, before getting back in the car.

Soonyoung smiled as he watched them drive away. Save for one small blip, his plan was chugging along nicely.

§

Part 2 of Kwon Soonyoung’s Three Step Guide to Getting Over Your Best Friend: Throw Yourself into Your Hobbies

The electropop bop blasting through the speakers had a really hypnotizing beat. Hypnotizing enough that Chan kept jerking his head up and down when he was trying to pay attention to what Soonyoung was trying to teach them.

“We’re definitely performing this as a team for the comeback showcase so let’s try to be a little less sloppy than last time alright?” Soonyoung dabbed at his forehead with a towel, mopping up as much sweat as he could.

There was nothing to be done for their shirts, which had gone from dry, to damp, and would soon approach drench the way he had been pushing them. But the rehearsing was good, thinking about and moving his muscles to get the right movements and transitions was keeping his mind off of…other things. In fact, he was so preoccupied that he didn’t even notice when the track had stopped.

Joonhwi was standing over the speaker controls. “Again?” he prompted, finger hovering over the play button.

Soonyoung nodded, Joonhwi pressed down, and the beat returned, rhythmic and pulsating.

He danced, dragging his right hand across his chest from one shoulder to the other, popped down his shoulders, and splayed his fingers. There were entirely too many jumps in the choreography, and the choreography for all of their songs, frankly. They were young and spry now, but it took so much energy to keep up, and he was the one who came up with everything in the first place.

“Knee, other knee!” Soonyoung barked, catching someone shifting the wrong leg out of the corner of his eye in the mirror. They reached the chorus and all stopped.

“Uh, I actually kind of missed most of what you guys were doing during that. How did it feel? Did you get it?”

No one bothered to nod or shake their heads. Joonhwi simply said “One more time,” voice even despite the heaving up and down of his chest.

They went through the same section once, during which Soonyoung noticed something slightly off but couldn’t pinpoint exactly.

“I think you’re slow on this beat,” he said, counting out “five, six, seven, eight” and demonstrating the action with his body.

Joonhwi went over it a few times.

“Better.” Soonyoung remarked, “From the top, with music?”

They all nodded except for Chan, who shook his head. “Um, don’t hate me for this, but can we separate out the upper and lower body again because I can’t tell if the synchronization is right or not.”

Joonhwi looked thoughtful, but then nodded in agreement at this suggestion.

Soonyoung led them through all of the isolated movements again, doing his best to prevent them from losing the conscious processing of each move. If they got to the muscle memory stage, it would be really difficult to fix anything that was wrong, and even harder to break any shortcut habits that developed.

It was extremely slow that way, and he never let them repeat entire sections too many times or too quickly, only small individual motions.

They repeated the opening verse half a dozen more times before everyone was completely comfortable. Soonyoung made them combine it with the chorus they had been working on yesterday, demanding five flawless run-throughs, and restarting the count every time someone made a mistake.

When the last notes faded for the fifth perfect run-through, Soonyoung collapsed onto the ground.

His entire body was slightly sticky from the film of salt and sweat on his skin. The area around his hairline was soaking, and he covered his face with a towel. The soreness in his muscles felt deep enough to be eating at his bones, and his joints ached from repetitive movements.

One by one the others also sank to the floor, no longer able to hold themselves upright.

Chan sprinkled his face with water and wiped it all away before pulling up the cuffs of his sweatpants, trying to get as much air exposure to his skin as possible.

Joonhwi was the last one down, but only because he had collapsed into a chair first. Even that wasn’t able to keep him with his back up for long, and he eventually slid off to hug the ground.

“You know, we should do less of this thing where we raise our shoulders. I know they’re joints you like moving moving, Soonyoung, but it makes me look like I don’t have a neck.” Soonyoung couldn’t see Joonhwi’s facial expression, and couldn’t tell whether or not he was being serious.

“Duly noted,” Soonyoung mumbled into the floorboards. His forehead touched the cold surface, and he relaxed a little. The sweat cooled him quickly, until all that remained was a dull ache that occurred everywhere in his body and wouldn’t be alleviated for very long when he tried to stretch. Ugh. It had been months since they had worked this hard. At least they were really prepared.

Myungho was fanning himself with the bill of a baseball cap he found lying around and slightly panting. He raised his arm slightly above his head, to try to get Soonyoung’s attention without expending too much energy. “Can you slow down the music and watch for a bit? When we speed up I can’t tell if I’m hitting the position, and it kind of looks funny compared to you in the mirror but I can’t tell what I’m not doing right.”

Soonyoung nodded wordlessly, and raised himself up to be supported by his elbows. He reached out and stretched to grab a water bottle without moving, and took a long drink. “It’s a good suggestion. I want to go at half speed anyway to make sure we can be in sync when it’s slowed down. We can kind of slowly build up from there?”

“That sounds good,” Chan said, but none of them moved for some time.

“We should get up to do that,” Soonyoung pointed out from his prone position.

“We definitely should,” Joonhwi assented.

Still, no one stirred. In fact, no one even changed positions, or shifted any limbs.

“Aw, guys, no. Don’t fall asleep here, at least take a shower and change your clothes.” Soonyoung muttered, fluttering his eyes to a close.

“We definitely should,” Joonhwi murmured again, but within minutes he was letting out soft snores.

§

Part 3 of Kwon Soonyoung’s Three Step Guide to Getting Over Your Best Friend: ???

§

Jihoon found the performance team lying down and napping on the floor of the practice room with the lights on highest brightness and the air conditioner blowing a slightly cool stream of air through the studio. He rolled his eyes only a little, and crossed the distance between him and Soonyoung. He squatted down and his hand hovered by the other’s shoulder, prepared to wake him up in case they caught colds, or woke up stiff with muscle cramps from sleeping on the floor.

He stopped just short of touching him. He hadn’t forgotten Soonyoung’s jibes from the other day, nor why he was so hurt by them. What he did know was that he wasn’t ready to forgive yet, and wasn’t going to stop ignoring him until Soonyoung caved and apologized to him when he had something he really wanted to talk about. Jihoon wasn’t big on compromising, he realized, but it was one of those things he did so much as a child that people assumed he was a pushover. As if people didn’t already look down on him, literally. It was hard to unlearn what he conditioned himself to do in terms of holding people at bay.

It was getting late, and he shook himself out of his thoughts. If he woke them up now, they would probably get up and go back to practicing. There was no point in anyone overworking their bodies, and he had read an article earlier that day about the benefits of sleep on memory. Maybe it would be better if he let them continue sleeping.

Jihoon ran a hand through his hair, fiddled with his bangs, and sighed. Looking over them kind of made him feel maternal. He stood up again, stepped over Myungho’s leg to get to the door.

First, he carried four cushions collected from those strewn across the couches, armchairs, and lying about the practice rooms back to the dance studio and placed them under each member’s head. He was careful to slide them and not wake anyone up, so only Chan’s forehead was supported, since he seemed to start stirring, and Jihoon didn’t want to risk him waking up.

“Thank God you’re asleep and no one else is here,” Jihoon muttered quietly, as left the room once more. “Imagine if someone saw me taking care of them.” Just the thought made him squeeze his fingers together and his jaw opened to make a puking expression.

He returned again with the coats hung up in the closet by the entrance, and spread them out over each member. He covered their stomachs and tucked wayward collars or sleeves under chins, hoping it would keep them warm enough that they wouldn’t get sick. Well, more sick. Everyone was always slightly ill, and they went through bottles of cold and sinus medication almost as quickly as they wore through socks.

There. Finished, he admired his handiwork, and smirked when Joonhwi naturally cupped the pillow to his head. Best case scenario, they’d be comfortable enough to sleep off any muscle aches until morning, and Jihoon would be gone when they awoke so no one would be any wiser.

Before leaving for the last time, he reached down to brush Soonyoung’s hair out of his face, and then frowned when he felt compelled to do the same for all of the others in order for it to not be weird. Jihoon headed back to the dorms puzzled, but not interested in pursuing anything more than thoughts of sleep.

§

Redux of Kwon Soonyoung’s Three Step Guide to Getting Over Your Best Friend

A week after The Incident, which Soonyoung was privately using to refer to the moment he realized his own feelings, he was still feeling miserable. Trying to avoid someone who was also ignoring you when you lived in such close quarters, and were surrounded by 11 other pairs of eyes was a very strange task, if not a difficult one. It was easy to loose track of each other, sometimes, but as always, Soonyoung was hyperaware of Jihoon’s whereabouts regardless of the time of day.

He told himself that this was in order to cut off contact, and get him prepared to talk to him without any unwanted feelings getting in the way. It was similar to when people broke off from their phones for a few days, or did their “technology-free diets” to cleanse their minds, or so they said. Soonyoung supposed that in a way, he too was trying to cleanse his mind of all non-platonic emotions related to Jihoon. Which, he had a plan for, but wasn’t really working out.

Two days ago, or five days post-Incident, Jihoon had shot him a look when they were eating that seemed like he was confused. The longest Soonyoung had ever lasted in the past in not talking to Jihoon had been five days. The only time they had gone longer without talking was when they were visiting family, and even then they tried to text each other emoticons or funny anecdotes about their relatives.

Jihoon was right when he said he knew all of Soonyoung’s secrets. It was killing him not to tell his best friend about his revelation regarding his feelings toward him since Soonyoung had been turning to Jihoon as a confidant for years. Fucked up? Told Jihoon. Did good? Told Jihoon. Had a complaint about someone or something? Told Jihoon. Had a crush? Told…well, this time he wasn’t telling Jihoon anything.

But he needed to work faster, because if they kept this not communicating stick up for too much longer, someone would notice. Or worse, Seungcheol, who probably had already made the observation about what was going on, would start heavily implying to the others that something was wrong, and watching that would be brutal.

Of course, he couldn’t change his feelings quickly enough.

A few days later, when nothing had changed, they went on a variety show as a group and were split into teams to do various activities. The obstacle course didn’t give anyone too much trouble, and didn’t require group cooperation between Jihoon and Soonyoung, who were put together on a team with Seungcheol as ‘All Leaders’. Even the aegyo battle was fine, although they weren’t winning, they also weren’t required to interact, which was definitely a plus. Things were okay until they were asked to play charades.

Some of the Seventeen members were eerily good at guessing things, and Jihoon and Seungcheol were both generally considered to belong to that category of members. But Soonyoung sucked when he was paired with anyone who wasn’t Jihoon. Jihoon always used obscure references that were inside jokes between them, so Soonyoung always knew who or what he was talking about, even if the others couldn’t understand.

“That team isn’t even fair,” Seungkwan had started whining the minute the game was announced. “They have two of the best players, and the other member is basically a twin of one of the first two, and has the most creative use of his body.”

Seungcheol had teasingly suggested, “You’re just a sore loser. Don’t complain when we haven’t even played yet.”

Mingyu had patted Seungkwan’s back to comfort him, but that didn’t get rid of the pout on his face. The only thing that cleared it was when they started watching the Leader team start the timed trial.

It was tag teamed, so Soonyoung was trying to explain elephant with a swinging arm hanging from his nose. That was easily figured out by Seungcheol. Soonyoung’s animals, however, got worse and worse as the game went on, both due to the pressure and Jihoon’s increasingly agitated screams to, “Go faster! Why are you guys so slow? Oh my god Soonyoung do something else, that’s a horrible version. Pass! Pass! Pass!”

Seungcheol didn’t have as much problem with it, and Jihoon guessed quickly and accurately to get ten correct answers, compared to Soonyoung and Seungcheol’s four in sixty seconds.

Jihoon demonstrating for Soonyoung, however, was the real disaster.

It was hard to look at him now, after spending the past week and a half trying to rebuild the pieces of his life without Jihoon in him. But when he met his eyes, Soonyoung realized that Jihoon was permeating through the brick and mortar starting from the very foundation of his existence. He was too bright to be seen now, in this shadowy version of being alive that Soonyoung adopted, and painful to look at.

“Come on, you definitely know this,” Seungcheol prompted with some frustration.

Soonyoung could only look out of the corner of his eye or from beneath his eyelashes to see Jihoon flapping his arms manically.

“Bird?” Soonyoung suggested, voice neutral.

Jihoon rolled his eyes and continued jumping and waving his arms up and down.

“Oh um, eagle? Owl?”

Jihoon was jumping up and down with frightening vigour by this point, flitting to and fro, back and forth, side to side.

“Hummingbird?”

It was his first correct response, and had eaten away a quarter of their time.

They didn’t finish dead last, but did not much better and Seungcheol looked rather disappointed at their poor showing. He was the competitive one, while Jihoon and Soonyoung usually didn’t mind losing out, but it wasn’t Seungcheol who got angry at him after they finished the recording.

“How could you not get giraffe?” He screeched, “That was so obvious everyone else was calling it out for you! What on earth were you doing? What were you thinking? Were you even thinking? Get your act together, Kwon Soonyoung!”

Soonyoung took it in quietly, noting with bitter amusement that for the first time ever, Jihoon had broken their period of not talking to each other. Of course it would be to yell at him about something else. A hand shaking his shoulder brought him out of his reverie. He remembered that the arm belonged to Jihoon and he flinched out of the touch.

“Wha—? I’m serious, is there something wrong? Don’t make me beat it out of you.”

Soonyoung, unable to take any more of this contact with Jihoon when a confession was threatening to spill from his lips, did the cowardly thing and fled.

§

There was definitely something up with Soonyoung. Jihoon thought, while sat on floor with his guitar, strumming quiet harmonies to Jisoo’s singing and playing. They ended on a particularly resonant cord and Jisoo smiled on him.

“Wow Jihoon, you’re like a machine. I can’t believe how quickly you can come up with compositions like that,” Jisoo said in amazement.

“I’m not the machine, Wonwoo is,” Jihoon retorted automatically, “…A dancing machine.”

“Hm?” Jisoo asked, bug-eyed and craning his neck to try to understand what Jihoon was saying.

“Ah, never mind, old joke. Have you never seen the video? Here let me find it.”

He let Jisoo amuse himself with Wonwoo’s terrible high school dancing and busied himself with his guitar again.

There was an unsettled feeling underneath his skin, and he couldn’t pinpoint a name for the feeling other than to say that it was frankly weird to be spending so much time with the other members and not with Soonyoung.

These days, Soonyoung flinched whenever anyone touched him, and turned his head wildly to figure out who it was every time. He never made eye contact with Jihoon, even if they were seated across from each other. Soonyoung’s eyes always roamed around the room, or looked at others, particularly when they were speaking, but never let them land on Jihoon. He knew because he’d been watching him like a hawk.

It shouldn’t have bothered him. Soonyoung was clingy, and Jihoon hated physical contact. Soonyoung knew all his secrets, weaknesses, and insecurities, and Jihoon wanted a reputation as someone strong and self-assured. But Soonyoung was also his best friend precisely because of that. When it felt like no one else in the world knew how he felt, Soonyoung always implicitly understood without either of them having to say a word. That’s why they choreographed and composed together, and why Jihoon had never complained about his presence.

In fact, Jihoon rather cherished having Soonyoung around. And suddenly, he realized what he was feeling. He missed Soonyoung.

“This is amazing,” Jisoo’s voice cut in, “I can’t believe I’ve never seen this before.”

Jihoon smiled as genuinely as he could, before standing up. “I gotta go, see you later?”

“Yeah, thanks for everything!”

Jihoon left with determination in his gait and a weight lifted from his shoulders.

§

Soonyoung had been walking back to the dorms with Seungkwan and Seokmin when he spotted the food stall ahjumma crossing the street with her groceries.

“Ah ahjumma, are you opening up now? Let me carry those for you!” Soonyoung chirped, drawing up the charm and aegyo for her as always.

“Oh thank you, you’re always such a kind boy,” she said, and let him take the bags from her.

The laugh lines on her face were prominent from where Jihoon was standing a little way away, across the street. He made eye contact with her and glared as hard as he could and lifted his chin.

She looked confused, but also cognizant enough to want to get away from him, and quickly retrieved her shopping to escape.

“Huh. That was weird,” Soonyoung said, turning back to Seokmin and Seungkwan, and not noticing Jihoon slip away to hide. “Did she seem eager to get away from me? That’s never happened before.”

Seungkwan only rolled his eyes. “That’s what I’m saying to you though, stop trying to charm every ahjumma you meet, it’s weird and makes all of us look bad.”

“Hey, don’t act as if you don’t try to charm people all the time,” Seokmin interjected, “You’re such a hypocrite.”

Seungkwan laughed painfully, and slung an arm around Seokmin’s neck. “Do you want to die?”

Soonyoung joined in the laughter and wrote it off as a one-time thing.

But it happened again a few days later, when a little girl had dropped her ball and Soonyoung picked it up to give back to her. She took it and ran away, looking terrified of Soonyoung’s smiling face. Her grandmother ushered her off in the opposite direction as quickly as she could and Soonyoung stood up frowning.

Behind him, Jihoon rubbed at the tense muscles in his face from the strength of the glare he had sent them, and walked around the corner so Soonyoung wouldn’t notice him.

If Soonyoung hadn’t thought that something was wrong then, it was cemented in him that something had happened by the time he picked up the tiny gurgling baby. No sooner than he lifted his head over his shoulder, the baby started wailing uncontrollably, and Soonyoung had to hand him back over to his mother apologetically.

“Normally I’m pretty good with kids,” Soonyoung said sheepishly.

“That’s okay,” She said with a pained face, and stopped herself from patting his back and she noticed what had scared her kid.

Soonyoung flung himself across the sofa when he got back to the dorms, and sighed dramatically. Neither of the two occupants in the living room acknowledged him. He turned over onto his side, resting his head on the sofa arm and pouting. “Am I losing my touch?"

"I hate to break it to you, Soonyoung-hyung, but I don't think being in touch with reality is something you've recently lost," Seungkwan said without looking up from the book he was reading.

“No, seriously, everyone keeps avoiding me. It’s eerie. I’ve never had problems talking to other people before.”

“Well, I do wonder why I talk to you,” Seungkwan snarked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Soonyoung said, dismissing Seungkwan’s biting humour with a wave of his hand.

“I’m going to see what Mingyu made, it smells delicious. Are you two coming?” Seokmin asked, standing and stretching.

“I’ll go with you,” Seungkwan said, snapping his book shut and bouncing to his feet.

“Of course you will,” Seokmin deadpanned. “What about you?” he asked, nudging Soonyoung with a socked foot.

Soonyoung had closed his eyes already, and muttered, “Maybe later. I’m napping right now. This is just a dream. A terrible dream if you two are both in it and being so unsupportive of me, but still a dream.”

Seokmin gave a full belly laugh, nudged Soonyoung’s leg again good-naturedly, and the two left him to his own devices.

§

He came to on the sofa in a daze, with a slight amount of drool on the sleeve of his sweater. Soonyoung wiped it off on his jeans with a disgusted look and stood up to stretch.

“Where is everyone?” He wondered aloud, noticing how empty and deathly quiet the dorms were. He walked around, wondering if everyone else was napping too, and was slammed into a wall by a tiny pink-haired ball of rage.

“Gone. They all left when I glared at them, just like everyone else who has been running away from you this week.” Jihoon said, voice low and eyes narrowed while pinning Soonyoung to the wall.

“Jihoonie?” Soonyoung asked, confused enough that the slight endearment slipped out before he could catch it. “What are you doing? What do you mean, you were the one who was making everyone run away?”

“Yes, of course it was me, everyone loves you. Anyway that’s not the point, the idea was to finally get you locked away alone so I could talk to you, which my evil master plan has finally achieved.”

Soonyoung snorted a little, and Jihoon turned his glare on him, stilling him immediately. “Damn, that shit works,” Soonyoung muttered.

“Can I continue?” Jihoon asked.

Soonyoung nodded weakly. He shrank, cowered by Jihoon’s controlling demeanour.

“Tell. Me. What. Happened.” Jihoon commanded, his face inching closer to Soonyoung’s with every word. They were nearly nose to nose, and Jihoon’s eyes bore holes into Soonyoung’s.

And then, before he could stop himself, and probably still addled by his sleepy state, Soonyoung leaned forward and pressed his lips against Jihoon’s pursed ones.

He flinched backwards in alarm. There were fuck-ups, and then there were fuck-ups. Jihoon’s eyes had grown to the size of saucers.

“Look, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I did that, let’s pretend that didn’t happen, yeah?” Soonyoung babbled, trying to get away. But Jihoon had him pinned pretty securely and he struggled.

“Shut up, you dumbass,” Jihoon murmured, and then leaned up on his tippy toes to kiss Soonyoung.

Kissing, Jihoon was kissing him, Soonyoung thought wildly.

He instinctively chased Jihoon’s lips again when he broke apart but Jihoon leaned back and smirked. He twisted the hand by Soonyoung’s shoulder and jabbed his thumb into the junction between his collarbone and neck, causing Soonyoung to yelp and go still. Satisfied, Jihoon leaned up again, and pressed gentle closed-mouth kisses to Soonyoung’s lips before finally easing Soonyoung’s mouth open, and attacking him with teeth and tongue.

Soonyoung gave a quiet little whimper, and Jihoon pulled back, threaded his fingers through Soonyoung’s hair, and tugged.

“If this was all it was,” Jihoon said smirking, “You should have said sooner.”

“Yes that would have been a lovely conversation, hey Jihoonie, I know the very thought of having feelings gives you hives, but hey I’m basically in love with you, how do you feel?”

“Considering how special I treat you, if you didn’t realize that I felt the same way, you’re an idiot and everything is entirely your fault,” Jihoon whispered into Soonyoung’s ear, sending shivers down his spine from the tickling sensation, but also the words themselves.

“Conveniently,” Jihoon started, before nibbling on Soonyoung’s earlobe, “Everyone else is going to be gone for a couple hours…” He grinned like a cat, and dug nails painfully into the flesh of Soonyoung’s arm before dragging him by the wrist into one of the rooms.

He pushed Soonyoung up against one of the beds until his knees buckled and both of them collapsed onto it. He had straddled Soonyoung’s hips, still tightly in control of the situation, and had his hands splayed across Soonyoung’s chest.

“Oof. You’re heavy.”

Jihoon laughed openly, warmly, and pinched Soonyoung’s nose. He ground down with his hips for good measure, making Soonyoung gasp and grab onto Jihoon’s thigh.

“Don’t,” Soonyoung bit out, “Don’t start what you can’t finish.”

“What makes you think I can’t finish it?” Jihoon asked while unzipping Soonyoung’s jeans. He cupped Soonyoung through his boxers and Soonyoung’s breath hitched and his hips strained upward.

Jihoon grinned.

§

“And finally we’d like to thank all our fans who have been with us for so long and stuck it out through thick and thin, we couldn’t have done any of this without you guys,” Seungcheol finished, and dabbed at his eyes, still pretending that he wasn’t crying.

Seungkwan was supposed to be MC-ing, but had lost his voice as soon as Seventeen’s first win was announced, and hadn’t stopped sobbing since. Mingyu had found a tissue pack somewhere and was simultaneously trying to wipe his own and Seungkwan’s tears.

Jeonghan had his head buried in Jisoo’s shoulder, unable to show his crying face. Jisoo, for his part, was smiling as he picked confetti out of Jeonghan’s hair, and waving at all their fans.

Further down their line, Joonhwi was blinking back tears as well as he could to hold up Wonwoo, who had a stream of tears down his face but wasn’t making any noise, and tried to smile through it, and Myungho, who was actually managing to smile, but seemed to not be able to hold up his bodyweight anymore.

Chan, Vernon, and a wailing Seokmin were dancing in a circle with their hands joined, singing with joy.

“This was you. All of it was you. The composition, the lyrics, the music. We won because of you,” Soonyoung whispered furiously into Jihoon’s ear.

Jihoon pinched his hip. “Don’t act as if your choreography didn’t help get us noticed. We’re a team, don’t forget that.”

They clung to each other secretly, quietly, lovingly, and stared out at the spotlights with smiles on their faces and pride in their hearts.

Winning one music award show, however, wasn’t the end of their jobs. They continued to compose (Jihoon), choreograph (Soonyoung), and get in each other’s hair while they worked (both of them) interrupting productivity with fervent kisses and quick handjobs whenever they got a moment together alone.

They spent more time than ever in Jihoon’s makeshift studio together, headphones on, focused and productive, feeding on the energy generated from the presence of the other.

Sooner or later, Soonyoung would get hungry, and bring back food for himself and steaming coffee for Jihoon, without any words exchanged.

They had nearly finished their promotions at this point, and were thrust into the work for the next songs, in order to join the others on the week long break they were getting as a group.

Soonyoung leaned back in his chair and cheekily placed both his feet in Jihoon’s lap. Jihoon didn’t move, and continued working as if nothing had happened.

“What, you’re not going to call me gross and push me away?”

“Hm, I’ve had your grimy hand down my pants, Soonyoung, I think I’ll live,” Jihoon murmured with a smile.

Soonyoung giggled and closed his eyes, filled with happiness. When he started snoring, Jihoon took off his headphones and looked over Soonyoung’s face with a smile. All was well.