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After several grueling hours of dance practice, Donghwa lets out a sigh of relief when their manager calls for them to clean up and head back to the dorms. The members cheer and quickly break out of their formation to tidy up, excited to see their beds.
Donghwa takes a swig of his water bottle as the other members pack up their things. Juwang stuffs a long-discarded hoodie into his bag, Amaru drags Donghyeon to unstick the spike tape from the floor, and Minje unplugs his phone from a shared charger, smiling indulgently as Keiju jabbers on into his ear. Kyehoon walks up to him and steals the bottle out of his hand to gulp down an impressive amount of water, letting out a satisfied noise as he swallows.
Donghwa watches him fondly. When Kyehoon finishes, he places the water bottle back in Donghwa’s hand. He puckers his lips, shiny with water, and squeezes his eyes shut.
“Kish,” he insists, tapping his lips.
Donghwa glances at the manager, who’s busy wrangling a hyperactive Keiju, before placing a gentle hand on Kyehoon’s face and pushing him away.
“Later,” he promises. At Kyehoon’s pout, he raises two of his own fingers to his mouth and touches them against his lips before pressing them against Kyehoon’s. “That’s all.”
Kyehoon mumbles something about mean boyfriends and stalks back over to the mirror. Donghwa watches him, unable to hide his smile.
Their manager leaves first, joined by a yawning Amaru murmuring something sleepily in Japanese. Keiju trails after them, closely followed by his tall shadow. The speaker makes a sound as someone connects to it with Bluetooth.
“I’m gonna hang back for a bit,” Kyehoon announces, setting his phone next to the speaker. “I screwed up on the point choreo a couple times, I wanna get in a bit of extra practice.”
Donghwa frowns. “You don’t need extra practice.”
“I just want to perfect a couple moves. You saw me mess up.”
“We all mess up,” Donghwa refutes. “Messing up is just something that happens.”
“I’m just gonna go over it a couple times.”
Juwang slings his bag over his shoulder. “You can go over it tomorrow, c’mon, let’s go home.”
Kyehoon shakes his head. “I won’t be long. I just need to make sure I’ve got this move down.”
“They’re right, hyung,” Donghyeon pokes in, “it’s been a long day, we should get some sleep.”
Kyehoon reaches up to ruffle the maknae’s hair. “I know. I’m just gonna get a few minutes of solo practice in, to clear my head. I’ll meet you guys on the way back to the dorm.”
“I can wait for you,” Donghwa suggests.
Kyehoon shakes his head. “I think eyes on me might get me all shaken. I just need some time alone with the mirror. You guys head home.”
Juwang nods. There’s no use arguing with Kyehoon when he’s this stubborn on something. He hooks his arm in Donghyeon’s and pulls the younger out of the studio. Donghwa goes to follow them, but lingers by the door.
Kyehoon catches his gaze in the mirror and offers him a small smile. “I’m fine, Donghwa,” he promises. “Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m not worrying,” Donghwa lies.
“I know how you look when you worry.”
Donghwa crosses his arms. “You don’t usually stay back for extra practice.”
“It’s our first comeback. I can be unusual.”
“Not to the point of sacrificing sleep.”
“I’m not gonna sacrifice any sleep, jagi. I just need ten minutes to practice alone,” Kyehoon assures him. “You head back. I’ll catch up soon.”
Donghwa doesn’t want to leave him, but the sooner he does, the sooner Kyehoon will finish and return to the dorms, so he acquiesces. He slips his phone out of his pocket and sets a timer for ten minutes. “Alright. See you soon.”
Kyehoon nods, focused on pulling up the title track on his phone. Donghwa hangs back for a moment longer, watching him, before finally leaving the room and following the sounds of Donghyeon and Juwang’s voices down the hall.
Shortly after they arrive back at the dorm, the alarm on Donghwa’s phone goes off. He glances at the clock. 11:34. It takes about seven minutes to get from the company building to the dorm.
At 11:45, Kyehoon still isn’t back. Maybe he grabbed a snack. Donghyeon lets him know that it’s his turn to shower.
Donghwa dries his hair around midnight. Kyehoon hasn’t shown up. He considers texting him. He decides against it.
By 12:20, most of the members have gone to bed. Donghwa sits on their shared couch, watching the clock on his lockscreen. His screen turns off from inactivity, so he taps it again and watches the minute tick to 12:21. He gives Kyehoon five more minutes.
At 12:23, he decides that five minutes is too many minutes and stands from the couch. He tiptoes past the bedrooms and slips out of the door to make his way back to the company.
The light is still on in the dance studio they’d been using. Donghwa pokes his head inside and sees Kyehoon still dancing. He watches as Kyehoon dances sharply, hitting every beat until he messes up a move around the two-minute mark and makes a frustrated sound.
Instead of continuing, Kyehoon stalks over to his phone and hits the button to restart the song. He turns back to the mirror and begins to dance again. Less than a minute into the song, he misses a beat. Scowling, he storms back to his phone and restarts the song once more. He starts the choreography, but the music abruptly stops.
Kyehoon looks over at his phone, brows furrowed, to find Donghwa standing next to the speaker, Kyehoon’s phone in hand.
“What are you doing here?” Kyehoon asks.
“It’s been an hour,” Donghwa nags. “You need to rest. You’re done.”
Kyehoon clearly disagrees. He marches up to Donghwa and tries to snatch the phone out of his hand. “I need to keep practicing. It’s not perfect yet.”
Donghwa yanks his hand away. Kyehoon tries to swipe at it again, but Donghwa holds the phone just out of his reach, using the couple of centimeters he has on the older to keep the phone away from him. The tips of Kyehoon’s fingers graze Donghwa’s wrist helplessly.
Kyehoon quickly gives up on trying to retrieve the phone from Donghwa’s hand, hand falling limply to his side, exhausted from the extra practice. He stumbles back, a bit clumsy on his feet, and slumps to the floor, leaning back on his palms.
Confident that Kyehoon won’t try to be sneaky and take his phone, Donghwa sets it back down near the speaker and meets Kyehoon on the floor.
He places a hand on Kyehoon’s knee. “C’mon, you can’t fool me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“It’s nothing,” Kyehoon insists.
At Donghwa’s unimpressed glare, he quickly retracts his dismissal.
“I’m just… really stressed,” he admits. “It’s our first comeback. There’s a lot on the line. If we’re not perfect—if I’m not perfect, it’ll feel like I’ve failed.”
Donghwa squeezes his knee. “I understand. But you have us to rely on when you’re stressed. You shouldn’t shut yourself away and punish yourself. You’re not that frozen trainee anymore, hyung. You’re not alone. I’m here for you. We all are.”
Kyehoon shakes his head. “I can’t—I don’t want to burden you guys. I’m the leader, I have to be strong. You’re supposed to rely on me, not the other way around.”
“No,” Donghwa disagrees immediately. “You’re the leader because we respect your seniority and experience, not because you’re our sole pillar of support. We can all rely on each other.” He nudges Kyehoon’s side. “That’s what’s so great about being in a group.”
Kyehoon sighs, splaying himself on the hardwood floor and looking up at the fluorescent lights like he’s stargazing.
“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” he confesses. “I’m a good dancer, I know I am, and I know the choreography by heart. But I keep making stupid mistakes, and we’re so close to the comeback. I don’t—” his voice breaks— “I don’t know how to fix it.”
Donghwa lays down next to him, cushioning his head with his hand. “You’re trying too hard.”
“Hm?”
“You’re trying too hard,” Donghwa repeats, simply. “When you try too hard at something, and you push yourself to do it over and over, you start to mess up a lot more. And when you get frustrated with yourself for messing up, you start to lose your focus, which makes you mess up even more. Soon enough, you can’t stop thinking about messing up, and that just leads you to mess up again. Eventually, you just become a self-fulfilling prophecy of stupid mistakes that you hate yourself for making. It sucks.”
Kyehoon frowns. “Do you know how to fix it, then? You seem familiar with this.”
Oh, Donghwa is far too familiar. He takes Kyehoon’s hand and gives it a squeeze. “You just have to know when to put an end to the cycle.”
“That sounds like giving up.”
“It’s not.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s cutting your losses so you can start next time with a clear mind and a fresh outlook. Extra practice isn’t productive if you spend more time being angry with yourself than processing the choreo.”
Kyehoon doesn’t say anything, so Donghwa continues.
“Look, I know you have the choreo down. You know it too. You just have to stop beating yourself up when you make a mistake. We all make mistakes. Mistakes make us human.”
Kyehoon stays silent. He always gets quiet when he knows Donghwa is right, but doesn’t want to admit that he’s wrong.
Donghwa raises Kyehoon’s hand, still clasped in his, to his lips to press a reassuring kiss to the back of his hand.
“We should get some rest,” he declares. “We’ve got practice again tomorrow, and you need to give yourself a break.”
Kyehoon hums in agreement. “Dorm’s far,” he murmurs. “Let’s just sleep here. We’re already together.”
“The dorm is very close,” Donghwa points out. “And you need to sleep on a bed.”
Kyehoon curls against him, body warm against Donghwa’s. “I’ll just sleep on you, then. You’re like a bed, just smaller and bony and human-shaped.”
“That makes me not like a bed at all,” Donghwa whispers. Kyehoon makes a dismissive noise against his arm.
It takes every ounce of willpower in Donghwa’s body not to indulge his very sleepy, cuddly boyfriend. He wiggles out of Kyehoon’s hold and stands, prodding the boy on the floor with his foot.
“C’mon, let’s head back to the dorm. You still need to shower, stinky.”
Kyehoon whines at Donghwa’s absence from his arms and pulls at his shoelaces. “We have some time alone together now,” he says. “I wanna enjoy it. It’s been a while.”
Donghwa looks down to meet his gaze, deep brown eyes hidden by the dark shag of his bangs. He’s not wrong. Moments alone together have gotten a lot more rare since they debuted.
Still, it’s not the right time.
“We can cuddle at the dorm,” he promises, “but not on the studio floor.”
Kyehoon blinks up at him, his fox-like eyes blearily trying to focus on Donghwa against the harsh light behind him. He tugs at Donghwa’s pants leg.
“Just a few more minutes,” he requests. “Then we can go home.” He puckers his lips exaggeratedly.
Donghwa snorts, but he knows the smile on his face is fond. Obligingly, he kneels down over Kyehoon, his knees on either side of Kyehoon’s thighs, and leans down to connect their lips.
Kyehoon’s arms find their place hooked around Donghwa’s neck. They kiss sweetly, innocently, their lips naturally melding against one another. Donghwa pulls away to dot kisses around Kyehoon’s face. One on his forehead. Once over each of his eyelids. Twice on each cheek. Once on the nose. One more on the lips.
“This,” he says, pecking Kyehoon on the lips again, “is just another way that I take care of you as much as you take care of me. We all—” he pokes Kyehoon’s chest— “can rely on each other.”
Kyehoon nods sleepily. “But you can’t take care of anyone else the way you take care of me,” he stresses. “This Donghwa is a Kyehoon exclusive. Nobody else’s.”
Donghwa laughs and nods. “Of course. I’m only this way for you.”
“Promise,” Kyehoon insists, holding up his hand with an outstretched pinky.
Donghwa intertwines Kyehoon’s pinky with his. “Mhm. Promise.”
“Stamp,” Kyehoon presses, presenting his thumb.
Donghwa touches the pads of their thumbs together. “Stamp,” he agrees.
Kyehoon smiles and pulls him back into another kiss, deepening it with a swipe of his tongue.
“Mmf, love you,” he mumbles against Donghwa’s mouth.
“I love you, too,” Donghwa returns. “But we have to go home.”
“No, don’t wanna,” Kyehoon whines.
“We have to.”
“Wanna stay with you.”
“I know, hyung.”
“Wanna keep kissing you.”
“I know, hyung. We can kiss on my bed,” Donghwa suggests.
Kyehoon perks up. “I like kissing on your bed.”
“I know you do. C’mon,” Donghwa says, standing up and extending a hand. Kyehoon takes it and allows himself to be pulled to his feet. “Let’s go home.”