Chapter Text
The first time Joshua thinks maybe he is in love, he is sitting on the cold linoleum floor of Pledis’ second practice room, knees pulled to his chest and hoodie damp with sweat. It is almost three in the morning and someone left the door cracked open, so the hallway light cuts a sharp line across Jeonghan’s face where he is lying flat on his back beside him, chest rising and falling slow like the ocean pulling in and out.
Everything feels suspended in the quiet, no music bleeding from the speakers, no instructors barking corrections, no desperate energy of thirteen boys trying to prove themselves. Just the distant hum of Seoul’s sleepless pulse and two teenagers too exhausted to maintain the careful distance they have learned to keep.
They have been here for six hours, running the same eight-count until Joshua’s knees started to shake and his throat started to burn from exertion. The others had filtered out one by one, Mingyu muttering about proper rest schedules, Jihoon practically sleepwalking as Soonyoung steered him toward the door. But Joshua had stayed, and naturally Jeonghan had stayed too.
Joshua tilts his head, studying the way the shadows pool in the hollow of Jeonghan’s throat. His hair is getting longer now, curling at the ends where it is damp with perspiration, and he is always tucking it behind his ears during practice, complaining about the heat but never quite ready to cut it. There is a small bruise blooming purple on his chin from a missed step earlier, and for a moment, Joshua’s fingers itch to touch it, just to confirm he is real.
“You still awake?” Joshua asks instead, his voice barely disturbing the silence.
Jeonghan hums without opening his eyes. “Barely.” A pause. “You thinking again? I can hear your brain from here.”
Joshua’s mouth curves into something that might be a smile. “Always.”
He does not say what he is thinking. He does not say: I keep watching you like I am trying to memorize something that is slipping away. He does not say: Sometimes I catch you looking back and my chest forgets how to expand. He does not say: I do not know what this is between us, but I am terrified of it ending.
Instead, he lets the silence stretch until Jeonghan speaks again.
“You’re different from the others,” Jeonghan murmurs, still not opening his eyes. “Softer, maybe.”
“Because I’m not from here?”
“Maybe. But not just that.” Jeonghan’s voice is thoughtful, careful. “You don’t try so hard to be someone else.”
It should not make his heart stutter, but the hummingbird flaps its wings inside his chest regardless. Joshua shrugs, even though Jeonghan cannot see it. “You’re not exactly tough either.”
Jeonghan cracks one eye open, looking at him with something close to amusement. “I am. You just don’t see it.”
And Joshua, not thinking, or maybe thinking too much, whispers, “I see you.”
The words hang in the air between them, heavier than they should be. Jeonghan goes very still, both eyes open now, searching Joshua’s face in the dim light. For a long moment, neither of them breathes.
Then Jeonghan closes his eyes again and rolls onto his side, facing away.
They don’t speak again until morning.
It begins the way most important things do. Quietly, in the spaces between words.
November bleeds into December, and Joshua starts noticing things. The way Jeonghan’s eyes find his across the practice room when their vocal coach demonstrates a particularly difficult run. How Jeonghan always seems to end up next to him during their cramped lunch breaks, close enough that Joshua can smell his shampoo, something clean and faintly sweet that makes his stomach do uncomfortable things.
One evening, Joshua finds Jeonghan in the empty practice room, working through a bridge that has been giving him trouble. His voice cracks on the high note, and he stops, frustrated, running his hands through his hair.
“Want help?” Joshua asks from the doorway.
Jeonghan looks up, startled. “I didn’t hear you open the door.”
“You were concentrating.” Joshua steps inside, closing the door behind him. “Try it again, but think about the emotion, not the technique.”
“What emotion?”
Joshua considers this. “Longing, maybe. Like you’re reaching for something you can’t quite touch.”
Jeonghan tries again, and this time his voice soars clean and clear through the glass of the room’s window. When he finishes, they are both quiet for a moment.
“Better?” Joshua asks.
“Yeah,” Jeonghan says, but he is looking at Joshua instead of the lyrics sheet. “Much better.”
They start staying after practice together more often after that. Not talking much, just existing in the same space. Jeonghan stretched out on the floor reviewing choreography while Joshua works on his Korean pronunciation, occasionally asking for help with a particularly stubborn sound. Jeonghan’s corrections are gentle, his fingers sometimes brushing Joshua’s jaw to adjust his mouth shape, and Joshua has to concentrate very hard on not thinking about how warm his touch is.
The other trainees notice in the way teenage boys notice everything and nothing, with jokes that graze the surface without ever cutting deep. When Jeonghan falls asleep during a particularly dry music theory lecture, his head gradually tilting until it rests against Joshua’s shoulder, Seungkwan snickers.
“Jeonghan-hyung really will use anyone as a pillow,” he whispers to Chan, loud enough for the others to hear.
Joshua stays perfectly still, afraid to wake him, and does not correct the assumption. Let them think it is casual. Let them think it means nothing. Even if his heart is beating so hard he is sure everyone can hear it.
They are not dating. Not even in the way some of the others play up for Seventeen TV. Soonyoung and Seokmin’s exaggerated skinship that makes everyone laugh, Mingyu calling Wonwoo “baby” during vocal practice just to watch him turn red, the way Seungcheol and Jihoon bicker like they are already married. Joshua and Jeonghan are different. Quieter. More careful with the space between them, as if what they have is too fragile to survive being acknowledged.
The conversation happens in the bathroom at 2 AM, both of them brushing their teeth after a particularly brutal dance practice. Late at night in the hours that bleed into the morning, as most of their life together seems to be. Jeonghan catches Joshua’s eye in the mirror and something passes between them.
“My family knows,” Jeonghan says around his toothbrush, foam making his words slightly slurred.
Joshua pauses, toothbrush halfway to his mouth. “Knows what?”
Jeonghan spits into the sink, rinses, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “That I like boys. Girls too, but boys.”
The admission settles between them like morning mist. Joshua sets down his toothbrush, suddenly aware of how small the bathroom is, how close they are standing.
“How long have they known?”
“Since I was fifteen. I got caught with my neighbor’s son behind the convenience store.” Jeonghan’s voice is steady, matter-of-fact. “Thought my mom would lecture me about reputation, about what people would think. Instead, she made my favorite stew for dinner. Extra spicy, the way I like it.”
Joshua can picture it. Jeonghan’s mother in their kitchen, hands steady as she cuts vegetables with the same care she shows everything else about her son. The tenderness of it makes his chest ache.
“That’s really beautiful,” he manages.
“Your mom doesn’t know, does she?” Jeonghan asks, and there is something gentle in his tone, like he already knows the answer.
Joshua shakes his head, staring at his reflection in the mirror. “She calls every Sunday after church. Asks about my training, my health, whether I’m reading my Bible.” He pauses. “She prays for me to find a nice Korean girl to marry someday.”
“Do you think she’d stop loving you?”
The question hangs in the fluorescent lit air. Joshua closes his eyes, thinking of his mother’s voice on their weekly phone calls, warm and proud as she tells him about the neighbors asking about her son, the idol group trainee in Seoul.
“I don’t know,” he whispers. “I don’t want to find out.”
Jeonghan does not say anything else, but when Joshua opens his eyes, he finds Jeonghan watching him in the mirror with an expression so soft it makes his throat tight.
Spring arrives with cherry blossoms and promises. Debut is not a distant dream anymore, it is a plan, a reality that is close enough to touch. The atmosphere in the building shifts accordingly. There are more eyes watching from corners, more whispered conversations behind closed doors, more careful consideration of who stands where during practice.
Joshua notices the way their vocal coach lingers when he and Seokmin harmonize, nodding approvingly. He sees how the creative director positions certain trainees together, testing combinations like a puzzle. They are all still kids, but everything feels like audition tape footage that will be analyzed frame by frame.
The pressure changes things between them, forces them to be more strategic. In front of others, Jeonghan becomes tactile with everyone, draping himself over Seungcheol’s shoulders during breaks, playing with Chan’s hair while they wait for their turn, leaning against whoever is closest with practiced ease. Joshua learns to mirror it, offering quiet jokes to Jun, creating the kind of easy camaraderie that looks natural on camera.
But there are still moments. Like the afternoon Joshua finds Jeonghan alone in the empty cafeteria, methodically peeling a tangerine with his fingernails, the rind coming off in perfect spirals.
“Where is everyone?” Joshua asks, sliding into the seat across from him.
“Seungcheol took the younger ones to Mcdonald’s. Jihoon’s working on something in the studio.” Jeonghan does not look up from his tangerine. “I told them I had a headache.”
“Do you have a headache?”
Jeonghan finally meets his eyes. “No.”
Joshua waits. He has learned that Jeonghan speaks in his own time, that pushing only makes him retreat further into himself.
“Sometimes I need to remember who I am when no one’s watching,” Jeonghan says eventually. “When I’m not trying to be the perfect trainee or the dependable oldest or whatever version of myself they need that day.”
He offers Joshua half the tangerine. Their fingers brush as Joshua takes it, and neither of them pulls away immediately.
“Who are you when no one’s watching then?” Joshua asks.
Jeonghan considers this, chewing slowly. “I don’t know yet. Still figuring it out.” He pauses. “But I think… I think I’m someone who wants to be here. With you. Like this.”
The words hang in the air between them, simple. Joshua’s throat feels tight when he says, “Me too.”
They finish the tangerine in comfortable silence, the evening light slanting through the windows and painting everything golden.
One night in March, Joshua cannot sleep. The dorm is unusually quiet, even Mingyu’s snoring has subsided to a gentle rumble, but his mind will not stop racing. Monthly evaluations are coming up again, and with them, the constant, gnawing uncertainty about whether their debut is actually real unlike the last times.
He is not sure what makes him get up, but he finds himself padding barefoot to the kitchen for water. Jeonghan is already there, sitting at their small table with his hands wrapped around a mug of tea, steam curling up in the dim light.
“Couldn’t sleep either?” Joshua asks.
Jeonghan shakes his head. “My brain is too loud.”
Joshua gets himself a glass of water and sits across from him. The dorm is still quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of Seoul’s late-night traffic. Through the window, he can see the lights of the city stretching endlessly, all those people living their lives while thirteen boys chase an impossible dream.
“Do you think we’ll make it?” Joshua asks, the question slipping out before he can stop it.
Jeonghan considers this, turning his mug in his hands. “I think we have to believe we will, or what’s the point of all this?” He pauses. “But I’m glad we’re doing it together, whatever happens.”
“All thirteen of us?”
“All thirteen of us,” Jeonghan confirms, but when he looks at Joshua, there is something in his eyes that suggests he means something more specific too.
They sit in comfortable silence until Joshua’s eyelids start to feel heavy. As he stands to go back to bed, Jeonghan catches his wrist gently.
“Joshua,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “Whatever happens, with the group, with everything, just know I meant everything. That this is real. What we have.”
Joshua does not ask what ‘this’ means. He does not need to. They both know some things are true whether they are spoken or not. “I know,” he says. “Me too.”
He goes back to bed and finally falls asleep, dreaming of stages that might never exist and the way Jeonghan’s hand felt warm against his skin.