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Yunseo knew better than to ask.
Still, the words slipped out of him like loose change.
"Junghyun," he said, nudging the other boy’s foot under the low dorm table, "were Hanbin-hyung and Taerae-hyung always that close?"
Junghyun, sprawled long across the carpet, made a sound that might have been a yawn, if not for the curl at the corner of his mouth.
"We all trained at WakeOne together," he said. "Back when Taerae-hyung still had inhibitions. Back when Hanbin-hyung made it his mission to break said inhibitions." A shrug. A lazy flick of his wrist. "They just… clicked, you know?"
Yunseo tugged at a thread unraveling from the couch arm. "Clicked how?"
"You’re thinking too hard," Junghyun said, voice folding into something soft with amusement. "They just get each other. Always have."
Outside, the world burned itself orange; the last cut of evening light dragged itself across the window like a body. Inside, the dorm flickered with the cheap buzz of overhead LEDs. Comfortable. Too familiar. Yunseo swallowed whatever else was trying to crawl out of him.
---
Later, the house slid into its nighttime hum—someone’s soft snore through the wall, the kitchen fridge coughing to life and back again. Hanbin lounged on the common room couch, socked feet propped up, half-buried under a hoodie three sizes too big. Phone in hand.
Scrolling.
Scrolling.
Scrolling.
Yunseo, crushed small into his corner, pretended to be scrolling too, though the screen of his own phone stayed stubborn and unlit in his palm. His gaze snagged, again and again, on the way Hanbin’s eyes sharpened—alert, bright—whenever his thumb paused. A grin pulling crooked at his mouth.
It didn't take much imagination to know that Taerae posted.
And they’re probably chatting about it right this very moment.
The thought set Yunseo’s chest alight with something sharp and reckless.
Not jealousy. Not exactly.
Something hungrier.
A want with no edges, no map.
Hanbin laughed, quiet in his throat. One of those laughs he saved for private things. Yunseo watched it slip free, weightless, like a fish through water, leaving him aching.
"You’ll sprain your neck staring that hard," Junghyun said.
Yunseo startled so hard he almost dropped his dead phone.
Junghyun was there—of course he was there—perched at the kitchen counter, abandoned cereal bowl in hand, the soft clink of spoon on porcelain betraying him. His grin was wicked in the bad lighting, all teeth and intention.
"I wasn’t," Yunseo muttered, cheeks blooming hot. He shoved his phone up between them like a shield, praying it passed for nonchalance. "I was checking—something."
"Sure," Junghyun said, dragging the word slow, like honey off a spoon. His look said more than his voice ever could. Something knowing. Something sharp.
Yunseo ducked his head, wishing he could burrow into the couch and simply evaporate. Behind his eyelids, Hanbin’s laugh replayed itself, unwanted, like a song he couldn’t shake.
If only he knew what it was—what spell Taerae wove, what gravity he commanded—that made Hanbin tilt his head just so, made him smile like no one was looking.
Yunseo clutched at the yearning with both hands.
Cradled it.
Named it: I want that.
The smile, the gaze, the quiet pull of attention.
Named it: I want Hanbin-hyung to see me too.
Even if somewhere, deep in the locked attic of his mind, another name flickered—half-formed, untouched.
"If that’s what Hanbin likes…" Yunseo thought, heart stammering against his ribs, "then maybe…"
He didn’t finish the thought.
Didn’t have to.
It sat heavy in his mouth, tasted like a dare.
Across the room, Hanbin shifted, thumb tapping away into the illuminated dark.
Behind him, Junghyun laughed again, low and private, and Yunseo didn’t dare turn to look.
---
The ceiling blinked back at him, as if equally unamused. Yunseo scrolled anyway, thumbing through the bright archive of Taerae’s bed selfies—post after post stitched into the timeline like a trail of breadcrumbs.
Loose cotton shirts, just low enough. Bedhead hair, tousled to engineered perfection. Sometimes no shirt at all, only a sheet folded soft across his chest, the rest left to the imagination.
And how could Yunseo even compete with the most recent one. Platinum Taerae, in a black tank top, sprawled lazy across his bed, forehead bared, mouth puckered in a pouty kiss toward the lens—half-innocent, half-lethal.
It wasn’t fair, Yunseo thought.
It wasn’t just Taerae’s face, or his body, or his open-eyed gaze that knew exactly what it was doing.
It was the way it seemed to cost him nothing.
The way he could offer himself up—pouting, smiling, baring the curve of his neck to the world—without apology, without fear.
Like it was second nature.
Like it had never even occurred to him to hide.
Yunseo’s throat tightened.
He didn’t know if he wanted to be him, or touch him, or tear the feeling out of himself altogether.
"Hey Junghyun," Yunseo muttered into the dark, words barely more than a thought. "You think fans would actually want to see a... sexy photo of me?"
From the lower bunk, a grunt, then a voice: low, still half-sleep heavy. "It's our job to figure out what fans want," Junghyun said. "Anyway, they'd like seeing you no matter what you post. Sexy or not."
Yunseo smiled into the dark, small and helpless. It didn’t feel like a compliment, exactly. More like a diagnosis.
He turned his phone over in his hand, thumb skimming the cool edge.
"You ever think the hyungs keep tabs on our posts?" he asked, voice too light, as if making a joke. "Hypothetically."
Junghyun made a sound like a chuckle if a chuckle had sharp teeth. "Keita-hyung, for sure. Leader stuff."
A pause. The shifting weight of Junghyun turning over below. "Jeonghyeon-hyung? Doubt he’ll bother to look."
"And Hanbin-hyung?" Yunseo's voice slipped out before he could catch it, raw and too fast.
Silence.
"Sometimes he compliments me if I post a good photo," Junghyun said, a little too blandly.
Yunseo clutched at that detail like a raft, heart snagging.
"You think..." He hated how small he sounded. "You think if I posted a good one, he'd notice?"
From below, a sigh, patient and endless.
"Yunseo," Junghyun said, almost fond. " I'm not helping you bait hyung’s attention."
"I'm not—" Yunseo began, but the protest died halfway down his throat. He rolled onto his side instead, burying himself into the warm thrum of his blanket, and tried very hard not to exist.
---
The dorm slipped deeper into silence, the kind you could bite into, heavy with dreams and old aches. Junghyun’s breathing evened out, a slow tide in the lower bunk.
Yunseo waited—counted out the minutes in the dark like rosary beads.
Then, careful as pulling loose a secret, he pushed the blanket back and sat up.
His hands trembled when he peeled his shirt off.
Not from cold. Not from shame, either, though something like it buzzed under his skin.
The phone's screen glared too bright in the dark. He fumbled for the front camera, squinting against the light, framing the shot by muscle memory alone.
Flat on his tummy, sheets rumpled artfully around him. Chin tilted just so. A slice of collarbone catching shadow.
The first photo was too stiff.
The second, too staged.
The third caught something—a blur of vulnerability, maybe, or desperation pretending to be allure.
Good enough.
His thumb hovered over the post button so long it went numb.
He thought of Taerae, blinking sleepily into the lens.
He thought of Hanbin, laughing into his phone.
He thought of Junghyun, breathing slow and steady below him, like the world would wait for him as long as he needed.
Yunseo posted the photo.
The moment after felt like standing naked on the roof of the world.
He curled back into bed, folding himself small.
If he lay still enough, maybe the jungle of the world wouldn't notice him trembling.
---
The post had been up for hours.
Hyung hadn’t liked it.
Hyung hadn’t commented.
Yunseo jammed another handful of chips into his mouth, tasting salt and disappointment. The notifications burned through his lock screen anyway—fans singing praises, the words sexy and all grown-up and boyfriend material skimming past like dragonflies.
He should have been happy.
He wasn’t.
He wiped his fingers on his sweats and refreshed the page again—a quiet, stupid ritual at this point.
Junghyun dropped onto the couch beside him hard enough to jostle him. A shock of warmth, thigh to thigh. Yunseo almost dropped the bag of chips.
"Nice photo," Junghyun said, voice easy, as if he were complimenting the weather.
Yunseo’s ears went hot. He crammed another chip into his mouth just to have something to do with his hands, his lips, anything. Cheeks burning. He swallowed wrong, coughed into his fist.
"You think…" Yunseo started, then fumbled. Tried again. "You think it could’ve been better?"
Junghyun snorted. He reached over, plucked a chip from Yunseo’s bag without asking. "It’s perfect already," he said, words dry like sunlight through blinds. "Besides," Junghyun added, and Yunseo felt it like a finger pressed lightly over his pulse, "it’s you. Can’t be wrong."
Yunseo stared at him, open-mouthed, forgetting for a moment how to do something as basic as breathing.
He tucked his face back into the chip bag. Safety in crumbs. Safety in salt.
"You’ve got some," Junghyun said, tapping his own cheek with two fingers—just beside his mouth, casual, like an afterthought.
Yunseo blinked at him, confused, wiping at the wrong side.
"No, here," Junghyun said, mouth tugging into something between a sigh and a laugh.
He leaned in before Yunseo could make another mess of it, hand reaching up—two fingers brushing the corner of Yunseo’s lips, soft and slow, deliberate.
A scrape of fingernail just sharp enough to make Yunseo’s chest catch mid-beat.
"I guess I’m lucky," Junghyun murmured, as if speaking more to the closeness between them than to the crumb. "The fans don't get to see this side of you. A little messy. A little too cute."
He plucked the crumb away like it was nothing.
His fingers ghosted back to his own mouth, placing the crumb on his tongue, a casual flick.
Gone.
"I think I’ll keep that picture just for myself," Junghyun said, voice low and even, like the thought didn’t weigh heavy in the air between them.
Yunseo froze, heart hammering inside him loud enough he was sure Junghyun could hear it.
"There," Junghyun said, like it was an ordinary thing, like he hadn't just set Yunseo's whole body alight with the simple, devastating gravity—depravity—of being seen. "All clean."
Yunseo forgot what planet he was on.
He stared at Junghyun, and Junghyun only looked back at him, unbothered, as if what he’d just done wasn’t swirling between them like smoke.
Yunseo crushed the bag of chips against his chest, a crackle of noise loud enough to cover the sound of his own heart trying to escape.
He didn’t know why he felt so rattled.
Didn’t know why the image of Junghyun’s mouth—his tongue, his teeth, his smile—seared itself behind his eyes, stubborn and bright.
He shoved another chip into his own mouth, trying to smother the thought with salt and crunch and noise.
It didn’t help.
Beside him, Junghyun laughed like he already knew exactly what Yunseo was trying to swallow down.
---
The room was still except for Yunseo’s phone camera capturing him in low light.
Another bed selfie.
Another failed experiment.
He checked the photo—shirtless, propped lazily on his elbow—and frowned. Too stiff. Too careful.
He rolled off the upper bunk, landing light-footed on the floor, and tried again. Standing this time, angling the camera just so, chasing that same wild, drowsy magic Taerae always managed to conjure.
The screen was harsh and greedy under his fingertips.
One shot. Two. Three.
None of them right.
He posted the first one anyway—the bed one—before he could think better of it. The tremor of it still rang through him even after the upload bar completed its climb.
He should have stopped.
He didn’t.
Yunseo kept snapping photos, cycling through poses: leaning against the bunk ladder, against the cold frame of the door, as if posture alone could summon the thing he was missing.
The photos blurred into each other, pixelated ghosts of want.
He sat heavily at the foot of the bed, scrolling through the gallery with a growing pit in his stomach.
The knock from the door startled him so hard he nearly dropped the phone.
Before he could speak, the door creaked open and Junghyun stepped in, flicking on the light without ceremony.
Yunseo blinked against the sudden brightness—half-dressed, half-exposed.
"You're back?" Yunseo croaked.
Junghyun shut the door behind him, shrugged out of his jacket, movements casual but eyes too sharp.
"Schedule ended early," he said. "Saw your post on the way home."
Yunseo's heart tried to leap out of his ribs. He pressed the phone flat against his chest, as if it could shield him.
Junghyun crossed the room in a few easy steps, looking maddeningly at home in their shared space, and dropped onto the mattress beside Yunseo.
He tilted his head, peering at the screen Yunseo hadn't yet locked.
"Let me see."
Yunseo hesitated a beat too long. Junghyun took that as permission anyway, plucking the phone from Yunseo’s loose grip with two fingers, warm and certain.
The gallery slid under Junghyun’s thumb—photo after photo flashing bright and damning. Yunseo wanted to shrivel up, to disappear into the floor, to die in a blaze of secondhand embarrassment.
Junghyun hummed low in his throat, a noise full of secrets.
"These are good," he said simply, like the sky was blue, like gravity existed. He flicked to another one. Tilted his head. "This one too."
Yunseo knelt down so he could get a look. He risked a glance at the boy beside him. Junghyun's face was close—closer than it should’ve been.
Close enough to see the way his lashes caught the light.
Close enough to feel the heat of him, the steady pull.
He smelled like laundry detergent and something very stubbornly Junghyun.
Yunseo’s throat clicked when he swallowed.
Junghyun turned another photo. Smirked.
"You’re way too harsh on yourself."
"I…" Yunseo started, but the words wouldn’t thread together.
Junghyun's thumb stilled on a photo—one where Yunseo was half-smiling, lazy and undone, shadows wrapping him up like a gift.
"This one’s my favorite," Junghyun said, voice dipping low enough to buzz through Yunseo’s bones.
Their shoulders brushed, just barely.
An accident. A question. An inevitability.
Yunseo couldn’t breathe right, couldn’t think straight.
Junghyun passed the phone back, fingers lingering longer than necessary, knuckles grazing Yunseo’s palm like a promise.
"Don’t delete them," he said. "You’re better at this than you think."
Yunseo clutched the phone like it was breakable, like he was breakable.
Yunseo shifted, the silence pulling taut between them.
He could feel Junghyun watching him—really watching him—like Yunseo was some rare thing, some constellation only he knew how to read.
"You don’t have to be anyone else," Junghyun said, voice rough around the edges, soft through the middle. "You don’t have to try so hard."
The words landed in Yunseo's chest with a weight that made it hard to sit still, hard to pretend he was just another boy messing around with his phone and too much time.
"You’re already..." Junghyun trailed off, like the word was too big for the space between them. "Enough."
Yunseo opened his mouth to say something—to laugh it off, maybe, or to thank him, or to pretend it didn’t matter as much as it did—but Junghyun was already moving.
Already leaning in.
Already bridging the space Yunseo hadn’t even realized he’d been desperate to close.
The kiss caught him halfway through thinking.
It wasn’t neat. Or rehearsed.
It was real—messy, warm, a little too fast at first before they eventually found the rhythm of each other.
Behind his closed eyes, all Yunseo could think about was Junghyun, stubborn and bright—his tongue, his teeth, his smile.
Junghyun’s hand cupped Yunseo’s jaw, thumb brushing lightly under his ear, anchoring him to this moment, to this feeling.
Yunseo gasped against his mouth, the shock blooming electric under his skin, turning his bones to static.
Junghyun tasted like lingering toothpaste and the faint salt of stolen chips.
Yunseo laughed a little, breathless, against his mouth.
"What’s funny?" Junghyun whispered, lips ghosting over Yunseo’s skin.
"I was thinking," Yunseo said, voice shaking, "maybe this is what the crumbs felt like when you snapped them up in your mouth."
Junghyun smiled against him, something wicked and fond.
"I don’t think I’ll be satisfied with just crumbs," he said.
He kissed Yunseo again—deeper this time, slower, like they had all the time in the world.
Yunseo melted into it, hands fisting in the fabric of Junghyun’s shirt, holding on like the earth might tip sideways if he let go.
And maybe it already had.
Maybe it wasn’t the world that had shifted.
Maybe it was just Yunseo—realigning himself, finally, toward something that had been there all along, patient and steady and real.
When they pulled apart, it was only far enough to breathe, to look at each other properly.
Junghyun’s forehead pressed lightly against Yunseo’s, their noses brushing.
"I see you," Junghyun said again, softer this time, almost a promise.
Yunseo closed his eyes.
For some reason, Hanbin didn’t even cross his mind.
He had named it wrong, he realized.
It was never about being seen by Hanbin.
It was just about being seen.
And somehow, without him noticing, someone had been looking his way all along.
Maybe that was where Taerae’s confidence lived—in the quiet knowledge that, even across distance, even in different groups, there would always be someone smiling at his stupid little selfies.
Maybe Yunseo could allow himself the same grace.
Junghyun, after all, didn’t seem to mind.