Archive of Our Own

Here’s what they don't tell people: for every pilot that is able to complete the training to become a Core, there are five more who fail.

It takes all kinds to become a Core. There are Cores who go in with the singular focus that they will become a Core, the ones with the highest concentration of genetics and determination and skill and destiny, with no back up plan because they refuse to fail.

There are Cores who go in thinking they're strong enough, talented enough, that it's their destiny - and they fail. The ones who don't have a backup plan because they're so determined, and in the end they slink away in embarrassment or move on to become a different type of pilot, or the determination leads them back to the beginning, banking on experience and maturity to give them an advantage.

Others, like Wookjin, go in with a back-up plan. There's a 20% chance - or less - he completes training and finds himself at the Core of a team. Six other people have to fit into him like puzzle pieces once he's completed training.

It’s for the best, it turns out. He can train for hours, be absolutely perfect at the actual job of being a Core, know every single thing about the theory, and … not be able to complete a bond with the rest of his team. All that training, all the simulations, and if he can’t complete that psychic bond, if he can’t become the mech, then his training is all for nothing.

Wookjin could connect to three of his teammates at most. On a good day. At worst, he couldn’t connect at all.

He’s pretty sure they hated him.

Sometimes it's hard to fight back the shame of knowing that he failed. That he couldn't overcome the last obstacle to his "destiny." It's not like he can't still be a pilot. There’s every chance he could still connect to a team, still bond with them. He just won’t be at the Core.

That's how he becomes the Head of the mech Savanna.

They're an experiment of sorts; only one of the mech's pilots hasn't gone through Core training, and all but one of them has failed out in some way.

Junhyung never went. He claims he could have, but none of them know whether or not it's actually true. He slides into the psychic bond so easily during their first training simulation that Wookjin finds it hard to believe he's never had any training other than as a Limb.

Taeyeob washed out of the program. Bonding with teammates had come easily to him, but controlling the mech once he was connected had proved impossible. He's happier as a Limb, actually, he swears to them. It's way less stress.

Sungho quit. Anxiety made it too difficult to allow him to give in, to let himself be controlled by so many other people, their thoughts, their actions. He'd still wanted to be a pilot; piloting a Limb and being a part and not the whole is easier, but he still depends on having a Heart who understands what he needs.

Kyubin has been through Core training twice, stubborn enough to try a second time before changing course. Like Taeyeob, he could either pilot or connect to everyone, but not both.

Jisung got to the same place Wookjin did. Placed into a team, trying his hardest to become the Core he was supposed to be. He hadn’t been able to fully complete the psychic bond for his entire team.

The idea is to see if a group of failed Cores can create a whole better than the sum of their parts. Will it make it easier on their actual Core? To connect, to maintain their bond, to reach back when he reaches for them.

Whether it's working or not, no one tells them. Maybe no one is ever going to declare Yongsoo the greatest Core of all time, but he pulls them together anyway and moves with ease.

It's not what Wookjin thought it'd be like when he was a kid, when he thought he was destined to lead a mech and a crew. But it's okay - they run their mech, they get their job done.

"I can already tell you that's completely severed."

Wookjin knows Junhyung is right before they even have the panel off. What they’ve been told is a simple repair job for a panel and damaged wiring is starting to look like a complete section replacement. Wookjin lets the base know that it's going to take much longer than initially estimated and they get to work.

Six hours into their repair disaster, Jisung notes flagging energy reserves from Yongsoo, dropping power reserves from both Arms. Sure, they could re-route a power reserve up from the Legs if they really have to, but that’s a last resort if they’re stretching to finish. With no end in sight, they either need help or to turn the repair over to another mech.

Wookjin sighs and opens up the line with the base.

It's not his ears that hear the explosion. It's someone else’s ears, but the sound hits him through the psychic bond all the same. He hears someone scream - at least one person, maybe two, maybe more - as the sound, the sensation, hits all of them at once.

Emergency alarms are blaring in his cockpit. He can hear the shriek of monitors in Jisung's cockpit. There are so many voices talking over each other.

Wookjin smashes the button to open the comms with the base, to any of the other mechs on duty, to the mech that's on the way to them right now. He looks up at the blinking lights on the screens in front of him. "At least one Limb damaged. Still docked, connections still active. We need help immediately."

Jisung is cursing, and abstractly Wookjin knows that Jisung must be saying words, and that they should make sense, but the words sound like they're coming from underwater.

Then they’re coming apart.

Disconnects, minor slips, things like that happen. They’re startling, but at most it’s an odd, swooping sensation, like free-fall. This isn’t a disconnect. This isn’t minor.

They're coming apart and it's painful, like part of him is being ripped away. Because part of him is. Then there's one long, shrill alarm shrieking - someone's already gone.

"Soo?" he asks, but his head is going fuzzy. He reaches out through the psychic bond - the real one, the one that ties them together all the time, not just in the mech - looking for Yongsoo first, but -

But there's nothing.

There's no Yongsoo. There's no one.

He's alone, in the dark, with only his own emergency alarm for company.

Then that stops, too.

Wookjin wakes up in the infirmary alone.

Completely alone.

It's been a long time since he's been completely alone in his head. He's been in the Savanna nearly four years, and now no one's there at all.

The last thing he heard before he passed out was emergency alarms, and now he listens to the steady beeping of his own heartbeat. Poetic, he thinks.

He lies there for a while, until being alone with his own thoughts becomes crushing. When he finally buzzes for a nurse, the nurse arrives almost instantly. He seems pleased to see Wookjin awake, but Wookjin quickly makes him regret it.

"Why can't I reach them?" he asks. "Why aren't they there?"

“Emergency situations can cause interruptions in the neural link,” the nurse explains, seeming surprised. “Under extreme circumstances, this kind of interruption can break the team bond.”

“Break,” Wookjin repeats.

“It’s usually temporary,” the nurse says. “Can you tell me your name, your position, and your mech?”

“Are they okay?” Wookjin asks him instead of answering. He doesn’t like the word “usually,” either.

“Your team are all alive and in stable condition,” the nurse says, which is an answer and a non-answer. Stable condition could mean anything. "Your name, your position, your mech."

"Jung Wookjin, Head, Savanna," he says. "What does stable condition mean? Was someone unstable?"

"I can't give you that information," the nurse says. Abstractly, Wookjin knows that there's some kind of patient-doctor confidentiality thing in play here, but this is his team. He needs to know about his team.

He tells the nurse as much. "They're my team," and it comes out of his mouth sounding exactly like he's fourteen years old again and being wronged by life, and at this moment he's pretty sure he absolutely is.

"If you answer my questions and you're discharged, you can go around asking all of the questions you want," the nurse tells him, tone dry and suddenly much less enthusiastic about having Wookjin awake.

Wookjin answers the questions.

He goes back to the dorm immediately after being discharged, still unable to contact any of his team members through their bond. The dorm is empty, but it's clear people have been there recently - there's a coffee cup left on the counter next to a takeout container from the mess hall that Wookjin knows wasn't there before their shift.

His watch tells him he was out for about 12 hours, and it's well into the afternoon of the next day. His bedroom door is open, both beds made and no sign that Kyubin has been back since the day before. Wookjin gathers clean clothes, and when he goes to shower, the shower room is still humid, confirming that at least one of his teammates has been there recently. Sungho's towel is still wet, draped over one of the bars.

Wookjin exhales slowly. He can't reach out and touch Sungho through the bond, but Sungho is okay. It makes the ache in his chest ease, if only the tiniest bit.

He washes off the sweat and the grime of the flight and the scent of the infirmary, dresses, and goes to try and find the rest of his team or someone who can tell him any information about - well, anything.

He walks to the mess hall after that, thinking that at least if none of his team is there, he can still get something to eat. He lucks out - he gets food and Sungho and Taeyeob are sitting at a table near the viewport. Neither of them notice him; Taeyeob is staring out the viewport into space and Sungho is engrossed in something on a data pad in front of him. They both seem surprised to see Wookjin.

Taeyeob hugs him so tightly that Wookjin feels his throat start to ache. Even with Taeyeob physically touching him, there's still no connection. Taeyeob still isn't there.

"Yeah, it's weird," Sungho says, like he does know what Wookjin is thinking, and maybe he does. If they're anything like Wookjin, all they can think about is how they're alone, completely, with no one sharing the space inside their heads through their bond. The bond just isn't there anymore.

Wookjin thinks about the way it had felt like he was being ripped apart. Like they were torn away from him.

"They wouldn't tell us anything about anyone," Taeyeob says, finally letting go of Wookjin to sit back down. "Other than 'stable condition.’"

"No, for about three truly thrilling hours they were telling us 'serious but stable,' but wouldn't tell us what was going on or even who it was," Sungho says. He sounds tired. He looks tired.

"Probably wasn't me," Wookjin says. He sits down with them, then after a moment, slumps over against Sungho, who wraps an arm around him. He likes the physical contact, and he always appreciates it, but it's not the same as the bond he's used to.

"No," Taeyeob says. "We're sure it's Kyubin-hyung or Yongsoo, but we don't know."

"It was Kyubin-hyung's Arm that exploded then," Wookjin asks.

"It didn't," Taeyeob says, almost defensive. "The piping did. Junhyung says they couldn't really tell that the piping was as damaged as it was because everything was such a mess."

"Then it gave out," Sungho says. He makes an exploding motion with his free hand. "And basically blew up in their faces. Junhyung was lucky he wasn't hurt, too."

"So he's okay?" Wookjin asks, not feeling any closer to finding out who is hurt, how badly anyone is hurt.

"Physically," Sungho says, and it's a cagey answer that Wookjin doesn't like.

"Where is he?" Wookjin asks.

"Gym," Sungho says.

"He's been alone in his head for twelve hours and he's not doing well," Taeyeob says. He rubs his hand over his face, then settles with his chin resting on his hand.

"And he feels guilty," Sungho says, his voice quiet.

That's relatable, Wookjin thinks. He's the Head, he should have noticed how structurally unsound the piping was, should have known they needed to pull out sooner than they had. That they should have - something. Anything that would have kept them from ending up here. What could he have done differently, what did he do wrong?

"It wasn't his fault," Taeyeob says. "It wasn't his fault, it wasn't Kyubin-hyung's fault, it wasn't -" Wookjin realizes that Taeyeob is looking at him. "It wasn't your fault, either."

"I'm the Head," Wookjin says. "That falls on me."

"It falls," Taeyeob says, "on the person who reported the damage as minor when it wasn't."

"We were perfectly capable of fixing it," Wookjin says.

"Yeah, we were perfectly capable of repairing it, if we'd known what it actually was and had any kind of idea what we were walking into," Taeyeob says. "This was preventable, but -" He sighs. "Maybe by us, but I don't think so."

"I should have prevented it," Wookjin says.

Taeyeob and Sungho both sigh, near perfect unison, like they're not disconnected. He's pretty sure they are, just like him, and can't reach out to each other through the bond. They just are, both exhausted and not willing to put up with Wookjin blaming himself.

"Kyubin-hyung and Yongsoo are both still in the infirmary," Sungho offers. "They're - I don't know. They won't tell us anything, other than the vague condition."

"Where is Jisung-hyung?" Wookjin asks.

Taeyeob shrugs. "He came back to the dorm, not long after they released me and Sungho, but then he left again. I don't know where he went."

Right, because Taeyeob and Sungho would've been the farthest from the explosion, each of them a Leg, mostly only affected by the interruption in the neural link. Jisung is their Heart, he was supposed to keep them safe, just like Wookjin.

He'd failed too, in a way.

Junhyung joins them after a while. He's clearly fresh from the shower - Wookjin must have just missed him as he was leaving their dorm - and there's a bruise on the side of his face. He has a protein shake and a bottle of water and looks as tired as Wookjin feels..

"What about the mech?" Wookjin asks.

"Damaged," Junhyung says. "Not unrepairable. Might take a while. Which is fine because -"

"If you say it again I'm going to kick you," Sungho threatens.

"You're not worried that we're not going to be able to connect again?" Junhyung asks. He's not a worse worrier than Sungho, but once something's in his head he can’t let it go.

And there's nothing in his head but this right now. No one else, nothing to push it out. Wookjin wants to laugh.

"We're going to be able to connect," Sungho says. "Once Kyubin-hyung and Yongsoo are awake and -"

"But it felt like - " Junhyung starts, then stops.

He looks up, meeting eyes with Wookjin, and Wookjin understands without them needing to be bonded. Wookjin has fallen out of neural links before, but they've been together for four years and he's never had the bond severed so completely, never been so entirely alone, never had it be all six of them shut off from him at once.

"It's not supposed to hurt like that," Junhyung finally says.

The experiment has both worked and failed spectacularly.

If the idea is for a team of potential - no, failed - Cores to be stronger by connecting to each other, to be able to keep themselves from falling out of sync even if one of them stumbled, or if Yongsoo slipped, to keep the mech from shutting down. After the first few months together, after they'd figured out what it felt like to fall out of sync - how it felt when it was each different one of them, when it started to happen - it had stopped happening. It hadn't happened in years.

So it had worked.

Except.

Holding onto each other so tightly for so long meant they no longer understood when they had to let go to protect themselves. The only way for the bond to break - not just the neural connection that allowed them to pilot the mech, but the bond, the connection that remained when they were outside the mech - was for it to be violent. Every part of the bond had to snap and separate all of them instead of just one of them.

In this, it had been a catastrophic failure.

They train for disconnects, for emergencies, for the kinds of things that happen to every mech team. Mechs are designed for construction, for repairs. Catastrophic emergencies like explosions are so rare that the training for it is infrequent.

They're lucky, actually, that it wasn't worse. It’s not like mechs are fragile, but they’re not exactly designed to be blown up.

But it's been nearly a month and the mech is still being repaired and they're all still disconnected. But not for lack of trying.

They're back in the training pod, doing their best to find each other again. They have to start over from the beginning, reaching out to Yongsoo before they can reach for each other again. But something keeps them apart, keeps them from completing the connection.

It's frustrating, and every day Wookjin leaves the pod with a headache. He's exhausted, not just physically, but emotionally.

"What happened was scary," his therapist tells him. "It was traumatic. Things like that can take time to get past. And each one of you has to overcome it in your own time."

It's another three weeks before they have any kind of breakthrough, and it's a feeling more than anything else. But he knows, suddenly, Yongsoo is there. Savanna's Core, their Yongsoo. Then he's gone again.

When Wookjin opens his eyes again, there are tears on Yongsoo's cheeks. Jisung gets up and leaves the room.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Five words. That’s all it takes to destroy Wookjin’s entire life.

Those five words are worse than the explosion, worse than the catastrophic disconnect, worse than failing as a Core.

Mechs need seven pilots.

Four Limbs. Head. Core.

Heart.

With five words Jisung rips out the heart of Savanna.

He rips out Wookjin's, too.

Wookjin doesn't sleep much in the days after Jisung leaves.

He lays in bed listening to Kyubin snoring softly until he can't take it anymore, rolling out of bed and dressing in the quiet dark. He slips out of the dorm, wandering through the hallways dimmed to an artificial twilight to simulate the station's nighttime hours.

He doesn't know how long he wanders, but eventually he finds his way back to the training pods. He finds Taeyeob and Yongsoo sitting in the hallway outside one of the doors, the one to the pod they've spent most of the last two months in.

They both look up at him. There are dark circles under Taeyeob's eyes, but Yongsoo smiles.

"Couldn't sleep?" Wookjin asks, sliding down the wall to sit on the floor next to Yongsoo.

"I want to keep trying," Yongsoo says. Taeyeob sighs and runs his hands over his hair, pushing it back behind his ears.

"We don't have a Heart," Taeyeob says. "Do you think they're going to send another pilot in to take over?" He shakes his head. "It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me," Yongsoo says. "It matters because it feels - I feel wrong not having you there. Both of you - all of you."

"What are we going to do with a link, Soo-yah? Sit and listen to each other's thoughts forever?" Taeyeob asks.

"I could do it," Wookjin says.

"What?" Yongsoo asks. "Pilot the Heart?"

"I think I could do both," Wookjin says.

"At the same time?" Taeyeob asks, skeptical.

"Why not?" Wookjin asks.

"Mostly because mechs aren't designed for that," Yongsoo says. "The Heart and the Head are separate. They don't have the same equipment. And you didn't train as a Heart."

"I could. What's a few more weeks down? Kyubin-hyung's still rehabbing his shoulder, so -"

"What about the mech? Are they just supposed to modify it so you can try this out?" Taeyeob asks.

"I don't know," Wookjin says. "But wouldn't it be easier if you had more options than just a team of seven?"

"Your team hasn't been able to reconnect since the incident," their director says when Wookjin brings up the idea. "We'd see no reason to modify the mech or waste our time and yours on the program if you can't even connect."

"Let us keep trying," Wookjin says. "I know we can do it."

He doesn't, but he wants to believe they can, and he's willing to keep trying until they do. If they are.

"You have a week," the director tells him. "If you can't make at least some progress on even the bond in a week, your team is shut down."

It turns out they don’t really have to worry about making progress before the week is up.

For weeks, the most he’s been able to feel is Yongsoo’s frustration. Wookjin can't hear Yongsoo's thoughts, can't speak to him through the broken bond, but he can tell Yongsoo is Mad, capital M, and Wookjin is starting to feel like they'd have more success banging their fists on the tempered plexiglass used for viewport windows trying to get through than they're having getting out of their own heads.

The first morning back in the training pod, they break through in the stupidest, most them way possible.

The lights have just dimmed for the simulation, and then -

Junhyung does what Yongsoo less than politely describes as the mental equivalent of headbutting him in the forehead.

Ten minutes later, Yongsoo is lying on his back on the floor of the training pod with his feet on his chair, holding ice to his forehead. Junhyung has a nosebleed, his head tipped back.

"I'd say that's progress but you two are a mess," Taeyeob says. There's a moment where it's clear that Yongsoo and Junhyung are communicating to each other and without the rest of them.

"Say it out loud," Sungho says.

"We're in. We're past whatever's holding us back," Junhyung says.

"I really have a headache though," Yongsoo says. "Maybe the rest of you can be a little more gentle?"

Wookjin has a breakout on his temple where one of the electrodes is stuck every day.

It itches, and he's absently scratching at it as they wait for the lights to dim on the morning of the second day. He’s not even attempting to connect when Sungho suddenly says, "you're gonna scratch all your skin off and then where will you be?"

Except - except Sungho's nowhere near him. They both sit up in their seats, startled.

"Man, the idea of you being ugly really got us going there," Sungho says. Out loud.

"Stop talking," Kyubin says. "I'm trying to nap."

"Shut up," Taeyeob says.

"Hyung," Wookjin says, and his voice cracks.

It's almost like a hand wrapping around his. Sungho is there, back inside Wookjin's head where he's supposed to be, and if they push hard enough together, maybe - maybe they can push through to where Yongsoo and Junhyung are. And once there are four of them...

Yongsoo's voice inside his mind for the first time in weeks feels like it lights up all of his neural pathways. He'd swear he can hear Junhyung laughing.

"I think I'm going to throw up," Taeyeob says, his voice so close, but when Wookjin opens his eyes, he hasn't moved.

"You're not going to throw up," Kyubin says.

"Oh," Yongsoo says.

"It's not going to break," Wookjin says, trying to keep his voice level. "It's not going to break, I feel like I'm going to choke on your anxiety."

"Sorry," Sungho says.

"You're gonna be the best little Franken-Heart in the fleet," Kyubin says.

"I need to get this thing off my forehead," Wookjin says.

The director is still skeptical, but he allows the project to move forward anyway. The engineers decide it will be easier to modify the Heart to accommodate the Head's function, rather than the other way around.

Sitting in Jisung's seat is weird and uncomfortable.

Being in the Heart is weird to start with, but knowing this place was Jisung's, and Jisung is gone makes it even worse.

"Sometimes fear and anxiety can be too much to overcome," his therapist tells him, and yeah, he thinks. Maybe that's it.

Maybe that's why Jisung left. Maybe the fear of it happening again, an accident, what the researchers have called a "catastrophic disconnect," kept Jisung from connecting to them again. Maybe the anxiety is what put up the walls between them.

Maybe it was too much. Maybe he thought they'd be better off, or maybe continuing to try and fail was too painful.

Maybe walking away was the best thing Jisung thought he could do for himself.

Wookjin would be lying if he said he hadn't thought about it himself.

He doesn't find it difficult to learn the job. He keeps an eye on the monitors and he can answer every question the engineers throw at him, even the tricky ones designed to trip him up.

The last step before actually putting them back in a mech is to test whether Wookjin can handle his job as the Head as well as monitoring his entire team. Under duress.

Flight simulation always makes him nauseous in a way actual flights don't - he watches as the little lines of his vital signs jitter, watches as one by one the other panels light up as the rest of his team docks, as the mech forms. It's not real - Savanna is still out of commission and they haven’t refitted it to accommodate the change - but it will give them an idea of whether this will work.

The simulation starts. They "dock" the simulated mech, and it feels so good to finally properly connect, bonded through their Core.

They reach the repair.

Junhyung starts laughing.

"This is a fucked up joke," Kyubin mutters.

Wookjin takes a deep breath. "We know what happens here," he says. On the screens he can see exactly what Kyubin and Junhyung are looking at: a simulation of the busted paneling that put them in this situation in the first place. "We know how to handle this."

"Sort of," Taeyeob says, a helpful pessimist.

Wookjin ignores him. "We have to fix the pipe first," Wookjin says. He keeps an eye on their vital signs - his own steady heartbeat, the way Kyubin's heart-rate has gone up slightly on realizing what's happening. "Clip the electric and focus on the pipe, then go from there."

They're quiet as they work.

But Wookjin is waiting. He knows what they're going to do to them. Why not test them with the exact same thing that already broke them?

He's ready when it happens. It doesn't mean he doesn't panic, just a little, when it happens. This time he knows where the explosion comes from, this time he's ready when he feels the slip, the break, as Kyubin disconnects.

"Soo-yah, you have to hold on, you're good," Wookjin says. He watches as Yongsoo's heart rate shoots up. Kyubin's Arm hasn't completely shut down, his biosuit still giving Wookjin readings, the sudden panic of being disconnected making alarms shriek in Wookjin's cockpit.

He feels Yongsoo starting to lose control, starting to let all of them slip. If he does, it's going to shut Kyubin down completely, it could shut all of them down. Wookjin reaches up and turns on the electronic comms.

"Hyung, are you there?" he asks. "Can you hear me?"

"This is so stupid," is Kyubin's response. "And they didn't have to actually zap me with something. That hurt."

"Are you fully disabled?" Wookjin asks.

"Yeah," Kyubin says. "I'm in the dark. Can't disengage."

"We still have comms," Wookjin says. "Your suit is showing intact, you're still pressurized. Just hold on."

"What's going on?" Sungho asks.

"Kyubin-hyung is dark, but he's still there," Wookjin says. "I need - just give me a second."

He looks at the screens, their vitals. They have the power, they have the oxygen.

"Junhyung," he says. "Can you patch it without Kyubin?"

"I -" Junhyung stops. "Yeah, I think so."

He looks up at the vital signs again. Kyubin's vitals are evening out. "Taeyeob," he says. "Sungho. Try to pull Kyubin back into the connection. Help Yongsoo."

"Thanks for remembering I'm here," Yongsoo says, teeth clenched.

"I know you're there," Wookjin says. "I know you can do this. I know we can do this."

There's quiet for a few moments, then - "I think they gave me some kind of electric shock," Kyubin says, suddenly back in their bond. "It hurts all over."

"Sucks to suck," Taeyeob says.

"I'm going to ask them to electric shock you next time," Kyubin says. "Just for fun."

"Bitch at each other later," Wookjin says. "Junhyung."

"Just a second," Junhyung says.

"We're almost there," Yongsoo says. "This is really hard one-handed."

"Well sorry," Kyubin says. "You know, the whole simulated explosion thing."

"Can we turn him back off?" Sungho asks.

They're cleared for duty.

They’ll be back to work as soon as Savanna is refitted for Wookjin's dual role. They run more simulations, manage to fight their way through every ridiculous scenario the directors and engineers can think up to throw at them. In all those tests, the engineers can only manage to get the neural connection to drop, never the bond.

Wookjin puts in as many extra hours of training as he can manage. If something goes wrong, he doesn't want it to be because he can't handle both jobs at the same time.

He can.

The first time he climbs into the cockpit of Savanna's Heart for real, he's terrified. It's a short shift, a simple repair, an easy assignment, and he can't help but think about how they ended up here because of a simple repair.

All of the mech's parts fit together perfectly, and so do they.

Replace a damaged panel. That's all. Pop the panel off, fix the short in the wiring, replace the panel. Simple, simple, simple.

Kyubin and Junhyung talk while they work, their controls, Yongsoo, the mech. It's inane chatter that Wookjin mostly tunes out, keeping an eye on the video panels that show him what they see to make sure there's not going to be some kind of disaster.

Sungho's blood oxygen spikes.

"Hyung," Wookjin says, managing to navigate the neural pathways to reach Sungho, just Sungho. "It's okay. We’re okay. Nothing's going to happen."

"Yeah," Sungho says, but it sounds strained.

"Imagine it's just another simulation," Wookjin says. "Don't let the anxiety control you. We're in control."

He feels more than hears the deep breath Sungho takes. "Yeah," he repeats. "We're in control."

"I'm here," Wookjin says, his voice soft. "I've got you. I'm not going anywhere."

Sungho is quiet. Wookjin keeps an eye on the monitors. Slowly, Sungho's blood ox drops and his heart rate slows.

"We're okay," Wookjin repeats to him.

Wookjin has had precisely one too many shots.

It's his birthday and the team keeps insisting and it's the first time they've all gone out together as a team of six, so what's he gonna do? Say no? And in twenty minutes when one of the hyungs fills his glass again, he's going to do that shot too, and maybe ten minutes after that Junhyung and Kyubin are going to have to play rock, paper, scissors for who has to carry him back to their dorm.

Kyubin throws an arm around him and pulls him in tight.

"You know," he says, putting his cheek closer to Wookjin's in a way that makes Wookjin a little nervous for what Kyubin is about to do. "You did a good job. With all this. With dragging us back."

"Thanks," Wookjin says. "You could have said all this from further away. You could even have said it through the bond."

"No," Kyubin says. "I wanted to use my words."

"Technically talking through the bond is using your words," Sungho says. He has also, perhaps, had one too many drinks.

"Shut up," Kyubin says. "My point is - you're my favorite member of the team."

"Excuse me?" Sungho asks.

"Don't tell Yongsoo," Kyubin says.

"Yongsoo heard you," Yongsoo says. "I'm literally right here. You've literally been playing footsie with me for like, ten minutes."

"I thought that was Junhyung," Kyubin says. He's still hanging off of Wookjin. "Anyway, my point is. I'm really proud of you," he continues. "And I love you."

"I'm so drunk right now," Sungho says. "I must be hallucinating."

"If you tell anyone I said I love you I'll kill you," Kyubin continues.

"You're so stupid," Wookjin tells him.

And Wookjin had known that something was up when Kyubin had gotten so close to his face, because Kyubin plants the biggest, wettest kiss in the history of mankind on his cheek, then proceeds to cackle loudly right in Wookjin's ear.

"I hate you," Wookjin says. "We're gonna have a Franken-Arm next."