Work Text:
Vernon was in the studio recording for his next solo track when his phone lit up. It was a text from Jeonghan in their main group chat, a simple “Floor 3 reserved, doing an experiment.” He didn’t think much of it at the time, simply liked the message to show he read it, but on the walk home he began to speculate.
They had the top four penthouse floors of one of Seoul’s biggest skyscrapers, all connected with varying levels of amenities. Floor 1 was the living room, dining room, and kitchen; Floors 2 and 3 housed everyone’s bedrooms along with a common space; and Floor 4 had a couple little offices, a game room, gym, and bar. Floor 3 was mostly occupied by the vocal team, but Vernon and Jun were the odd members who also shared it. Which meant access to his room had been “reserved”. Normally, if a member wanted to reserve something, they took one of the offices. Minghao painted there, Woozi worked on tracks there, and they all did live streams in them.
Grumbling as he took the elevator up, he pondered what could possibly be categorized as an experiment. If he knew his hyungs, it was some kinky shit. But to reserve an entire floor? What could Jeonghan possibly be doing?
The elevator opened to their living room, where Wonwoo sat watching a movie Vernon had seen hundreds of times before. “Ah hyung,” he said as he shuffled out of his shoes and placed them on the rack, “Do you know what Jeonghan’s doing?”
“I have no idea, but Mingyu’s involved. He wasn’t in his room so I texted him but I got a text from Jeonghan first saying he was alright.”
“What do you think they’re doing? Did Jeonghan say how long he wanted it for?”
Wonwoo stuck his hands up in mock defense, “I don’t question Yoon Jeonghan. But if I had to make a guess, I have a feeling Mingyu was a little too… preoccupied to use his phone.”
Vernon sighed and furrowed his brow. Great, Wonwoo also thought they were doing weird kinky shit. The group had never officially defined what they were, but everyone knew everyone else’s kinks–at the very least nothing straight was happening on Floor 3. There were some partnerships that were more clear than others, Wonwoo and Mingyu, for instance, but no one was terribly possessive.
“Stay here and watch this with me,” Wonwoo offered, clearly offering an escape route.
“Thanks hyung, but it’s my floor too. He can’t just call dibs on an entire floor.”
Wonwoo nodded and saluted him, an old joke between members. It meant, you’re braver than I am . Vernon chuckled and walked up the first flight up stairs, past the hip-hop and performance teams' common space. Jun, Hoshi, and DK were cuddled up on their couch watching some C-Drama, Jun supplying translations when the captions disappeared too quickly. He continued up to the third floor, and was greeted by absolutely nothing. He quickly threw his stuff in his room and continued on towards the common area, which was on the opposite side of the staircase.
He heard voices before he saw anyone: “But is it personality-based?”, “It’s hard to say, maybe more so security-based…”, “There’s even the possibility that intelligence comes into play here”
As Vernon turned the corner, the first thing he saw was Seungkwan, Jeonghan, and Minghao in honest to god white lab coats. Each of them held a clipboard conspiratorially, jotting notes down as they discussed. They hadn’t noticed him yet, but all their heads turned towards him when he let out a small gasp at the state of the rest of the room. Dino was curled up on a dog bed, chewing a toy, while Mingyu and Joshua were on their hands and knees playing tug-of-war with their teeth.
Jeonghan waved him over gleefully, and Vernon quickly obliged, walking up to the… scientists? His mind supplied three different possibilities: either this was a kink he didn’t know about where people dressed as scientists and the other group pretended to be crazy; Dino, Mingyu, and Joshua were in pupspace (unlikely, it wasn’t really Dino or Joshua’s thing) and the rest were observing; or this was actually some god awful psychological experiment, Stanford Prison style.
“Hansol, you’re just in time!’ Seungkwan said as he passed him a folded up lab coat.
He instinctively started putting it on, but then shook his head. “What the hell is happening?”
Mingyu and Joshua had gotten bored of the tug-of-war, and were now play-wrestling with each other. “Okay,” Jeonghan started, “you know how we all feel differently under hypnosis?”
Hypnosis. Everything clicked into place. Everyone in Seventeen found at least something about hypnosis hot, and it was a common pastime for the group–sexually or otherwise. But since coming back from their vacation, there’d been a noticeable uptick in hypno-activity.
“Uh, yeah. I guess?” Vernon responded. He had been put under a lot, but the feelings were always the same for him. It just felt like nothing, but times a million. But when DK described it, he talked about feeling floaty and light-headed, while Minghao had told him the experience was different for him every time.
The Chinese man spoke up then, clearly putting together what Vernon was thinking. “We’re running some tests to see how cognitive abilities under hypnosis differ. Jeonghan-hyung put them under with a group induction, so theoretically they should be the same right?”
Vernon hesitantly started putting the lab jacket on. “I guess?”
“But obviously they’re all really different under hypnosis,” Jeonghan added, “we chose these three specifically because we think they represent a pretty broad spectrum.”
The lab coat fit perfectly. “Where did you guys get these?”
“Amazon.”
“And you need them because?”
“To make it official,” Jeonghan continued. “You want to help us out?”
“Just to be clear, they all consented to this?” Hansol swept his hand over towards the three men on the ground. There wasn’t a world where Mingyu would pass up doing any kind of puppy play, but Dino and Joshua, as far as he knew, weren’t as passionate about it as Mingyu. Although, no one was as passionate about it as Mingyu.
“Of course, Ver,” Seungkwan said, “look they even signed participant agreements!”
Vernon gave the paper Seungkwan showed him a once over. Informal contracts weren’t unheard of in the penthouse, to make sure everyone was on the same page before a scene they were sometimes drafted up. These ones looked more official, but in essence all the same stuff was there. “Alright. This is crazy, but I’ll help.”
The trio in lab coats excitedly handed him his own clipboard as they walked across the room towards their bandmates. Mingyu brightened as they approached, clearly excited to get attention, but Joshua was still trying to play with him. Dino remained completely focused on demolishing the toy in his mouth.
“Okay puppies, line up please,” Jeonghan said. Immediately all three sprung to form a haphazard line in front of them, panting as they waited for their next command. “So Hansol, we brought them under with a pretty simple induction, then did some basic associations. Stuff like ‘you only have dog thoughts’, ‘serving master is pleasure’, those kinds of things. But what’s really important is they all heard the same instructions.”
Hansol looked down at the paper on his clipboard. Phase one had been labelled Psychic .
“Okay puppies, pay attention please,” Jeonghan began as Seungkwan and Minghao brought pencils to their clipboard. No one had given him a pencil, so Hansol just watched. “One at a time, I’m going to pet your head. When I do you will say all thoughts that come to mind immediately. Just for this short time, you will regain human speech.”
The oldest in the room stepped up to Joshua, the second oldest in the room, and playfully began scratching Joshua’s head. The second their bodies made contact, Joshua began immediately blurting out, “so good, so nice! Being pet by master, doing so good! Master takes care of us, no need to think, good dogs obey…” as Jeonghan lifted his hand, Joshua’s frantic speech returned to panting.
Minghao scribbled something down then said, “He’s repeating all the instructions you directly gave him in trance.”
“Bingo!” Jeonghan said, “His subconscious is only pulling from my commands. I told him to be a dog, I don’t think normal dogs are going around thinking ‘no need to think’.”
Seungkwan nodded, “He’s interpreting the commands on a very literal level, using them as mantras, repeating over and over in his head.”
Quickly, Hansol stole a pencil from Seungkwan’s pocket. He wrote down ‘mantra’, ‘literal', and ‘commands’. “But isn’t that what everyone does?”
Minghao and Seungkwan nodded, but Jeonghan shook his head. “Very rarely am I repeating instructions over and over in my head. But if all three of you do, and obviously Josh, then maybe that is the average experience.” He moved towards Mingyu’s head, “Ready?” Everyone nodded.
“I’m being so good, I get scratches! Maybe owners will give a real treat later, maybe a new toy! Puppy would love a new toy, or maybe we’ll go for a walk, or maybe cuddles, or maybe dick, or maybe pool-time, or maybe more puppies come to play…” Unlike Joshua, When Jeonghan took his hand off, Mingyu reverted to yipping and barking, until he calmed down and went back to panting.
“Anyone, any insights on that?”
Jeonghan called on Seungkwan, who had for some reason raised his hand. “He’s interpreting the commands, not just repeating them. He has his own internal dog dialogue that was informed by your commands, but it’s not just a copy paste. I think he said dick in there, and we gave him no instructions to be horny. There’s definitely a bit of Kim Mingyu sneaking in there.”
At his name, Mingyu barked with a dopey grin on his face, his tongue sticking out.
Hansol nodded (When had he gotten so invested in this?), “Maybe because he loves puppy play and master/owner stuff, his subconscious already knows all the commands. He’s just more focused on what a dog would think like.”
“But obviously some of his conscious mind is retained, you heard what he said about a dick and other puppies coming to play,” Minghao butted in. “Like Seungkwan said, that wasn’t us.”
“Part of me thinks he’s less under than Joshua because of that, but he was way more dog-like so I don’t know,” Hansol responded.
“He’s definitely under, he just processed the commands differently. Joshua’s thoughts were replaced by the commands, Mingyu’s thoughts,” Mingyu barked again as Jeonghan continued, “were shaped by the commands. Sort of like, Joshua’s taking a memorization test, and he’s taking an application test.”
Minghao tapped his pencil to his forehead, “It’s exactly like that hyung! It’s like you scooped out Joshua’s brain and replaced it with your commands, but his brain was just… remodeled by the commands.”
“He had better syntax and grammar, all the content he said was doggish, but the way he said it was human, more human than Joshua at least.” Seungkwan looked proud at his contribution.
“We’ll study more later, but let’s look at our final participant.” Jeonghan stuck his hand into Dino’s hair and everyone waited, but nothing spilled out of his mouth except his tongue. He looked up at Jeonghan with big, confused eyes, and continued panting.
“Say your thoughts boy, go on,” Jeonghan goaded, but the man under him remained completely silent. Jeonghan stopped petting him and shrugged. “I guess when you don’t have any thoughts at all…”
Hansol paled. Did Dino really have no thoughts while under hypnosis? Even when he was made completely blank, an odd stray thought always showed up in Vernon’s mind, he just couldn’t act on it. “You really think he’s not thinking at all?”
“Yep. I think he’s so deeply under and trusting that he’s completely letting his subconscious control him. Normally, our conscious mind watches, oversees, so you’re not completely isolated. But I think Chan is a special kind of hypnotee, a somnambulist. He goes so far that his conscious mind can’t even pull him out.”
“You think he really trusts us that much?”
“Seems like it. Hoshi described feeling like that under trance, like his head was truly and completely empty. They could both be somnambulists.”
“I can’t even imagine that,” Minghao shuddered, “I always know I have the ability to disobey a command, that I could stop if I really wanted to. His brain doesn’t give him that option?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to ask him about it out of trance. In the meantime, we can move onto phase two.”
Phase two, according to the clipboard, was labelled ‘ Reaction ’. Seungkwan and Minghao picked up three empty, plastic water bottles and handed one to Jeonghan. “You guys think you could fill me in on what’s going on?” Hansol asked.
Jeonghan flipped the bottle in his hand, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “You’ll see. Three, two, one…” and on one, they all lightly tossed the empty bottle towards one of the pups' heads. Mingyu swiftly shifted his torso to avoid it, Shua winced the moment it was thrown and scrunched in on himself, still getting hit, and the bottle donked off Dino’s head without any acknowledgement. He looked slightly confused after, and knelt down to sniff at the bottle.
“There’s no way we’re not committing some kind of psychological war crime right now,” Hansol said as the others furiously wrote notes. More than the kink stuff, what scared Vernon most was how clinical his hyungs were about this whole operation.
“Dino didn’t react at all!” Minghao either didn’t hear him or was ignoring him. “That’s exactly in line with what you were saying earlier Jeonghan!”
Seungkwan took pity on Vernon, and leaned over with a whisper. “We did this before they were hypnotized. They all dodged it or, in Chan’s case, batted it out of the air. We told them we were going to do it when they were hypnotized, it’s a test to see if they remembered. Obviously…” Seungkwan pointed towards Chan, who was now curiously pawing at the bottle, “some of them were more successful than others.”
“I think Shua’s reaction is the most interesting here,” Jeonghan said over Seungkwan’s whispers, “did you see how he braced for impact? Like he knew what was coming but couldn’t do anything about it.”
“And Mingyu completely avoided it. I’m telling you, he’s got a lot of himself poking through.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing, Minghao. Do you think it is?”
“Not bad,” Minghao scrunched his shoulders, “just different. Vernon said earlier that he was less hypnotized, but I’m not sure that’s the case. I have a feeling he’s more likely to do something he wouldn’t do out of trance. If his regular mind is peaking through, maybe it’s logical to conclude he’s enjoying this more than the other two. Sort of a ‘he would enjoy this anyway’ situation.”
Jeonghan nodded and Seungkwan finished filling in Vernon. The singer piped up, “Dino’s reaction totally makes sense, especially if he can’t think anything like Jeonghan-hyung said. Shua seems like he remembered some of the memory, or maybe he just retained his instincts to duck when someone throws something at you. It’s not unreasonable. And it looks like Mingyu completely remembered.”
Jeonghan stuck his hand into Mingyu’s fluffy hair, “Was that the first time we threw those bottles at you?” He asked as he made slow circles over his scalp.
Mingyu’s eyes brightened, “No, played before. Owner’s game is so fun!”
Jeonghan stopped touching Mingyu, and moved to Joshua, asking the same question and softly caressing his hair. “Uh… not sure,” the puppy said, looking confused, “puppy feels like it knew…” he trailed off into silence, and Jeonghan bent down to give him a kiss on his forehead.
“It’s alright pup, you don’t have to think so hard anymore.” A grin spread on Joshua’s face when he heard those words and he nuzzled Jeonghan’s leg.
“He’s so cute!” Seungkwan shrieked, “Can we get a break to play with them?”
At first, Jeonghan looked like there was no way he’d agree to a break, but Mingyu and Seungkwan both shot him puppy eyes. “Fine, quick break.”
The dogs began playing with each other, Seungkwan, and the toys while Jeonghan observed, still scribbling notes. Hansol pulled Minghao aside while Joshua licked Seungkwan’s face, “You have to fill me in, how long was this planned for?”
“Uh… I’m actually not sure. Maybe since yesterday?”
“Yesterday?” Vernon tried to hide the shock on his face, but failed.
“Amazon does overnight shipping.”
“Wow. Alright then. But what’s really up with this whole experiment thing, is it just an excuse for Jeonghan to have hypnotized puppies? Especially Josh?”
“I think his reasons for including Joshua were probably pretty selfish, but the experiment on the whole is really just to test them out. We were going to present our findings at the next monthly meeting.”
Vernon was about to ask one of the dozens of questions still left in his head, but he felt something small colliding with his calf. When he looked down, he saw their maknae softly headbutting him, holding a shiny red ball in his mouth. He plucked the ball from Chan’s teeth (who growled lightly in protest) and threw it across the room. The man on the ground took off towards the ball.
Minghao put a hand on his shoulder as a grin spread on Hansol’s face. “And yeah, it’s fun for us too.”
Joshua was still getting his belly rubbed by Seungkwan, but Mingyu was collecting all the toys strewn across the room into a pile. Dino walked back towards Vernon with the ball in his mouth, but the larger dog pounced on him, roughly pinning Dino to the ground. The ball bounced out of his mouth, and both scrambled to get it back. Triumphantly, Mingyu scooped the ball up first and proudly showed it to Chan, who barked and growled at him. While Mingyu began trotting back to his pile of toys, the younger pup nipped at his heels and wrists, getting his teeth a little too close for comfort.
“Chan!” Jeonghan shouted from across the room. Immediately, Dino curled in on himself, barely making eye contact with Jeonghan. “No biting!”
Mingyu barked at the younger man with what Vernon could only describe as an I-told-you-so inflection. Dino kept his head low as he slowly made his way over to Hansol, then hid behind his legs whimpering quietly. Hansol tousled his hair affectionately before looking towards Jeonghan. “Hyung, was that really necessary?”
Jeonghan strugged. “You saw him, he might have hurt Mingyu. If our somnambulist theory is correct, it might not even occur to him that biting is bad. Puppies do it all the time, after all.”
“The real question,” Minghao started, “is does Chan think that puppies don’t think about biting other puppies.”
“We’re getting too deep here. That’s like saying we could command him to murder someone and he would do it.”
“Seungkwan’s right, there’s no way his conscious brain isn’t present at all,” Hansol agreed.
Jeonghan wrote something down, then put his pencil behind his ear. “We can test the murder theory later.” Hansol didn’t love that idea, but before he could object, Jeonghan continued, “Let’s get back to the task at hand, yeah?”
All the men in lab coats nodded, and Jeonghan instructed the hypnotized puppies to line up again. Flipping to the last page the clipboard housed, Hansol saw the word Memento written next to phase three. Minghao produced three items he recognized immediately: their team rings. He hadn’t noticed initially, but Mingyu, Joshua, and Dino weren’t wearing theirs.
If a member was spotted in public without their ring they would get flooded with sulky messages in the groupchat, and the official punishment was preparing dinner for the group. (Hoshi had gotten around this a number of times by hiring a private chef in his steed, while Mingyu had never been caught without his ring but volunteered to make dinner occasionally for those who were.) All three subjects stared at the rings, but there was no recognition of any significance in their eyes.
“Hyung you’re not going to-” before Hansol could finish, Jeonghan raised a lighter to one of the rings. None of the men on the ground moved, not even a twitch, but Vernon smacked Jeonghan’s hand away from the flame.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Hansollie, calm down.” He leaned in and whispered, “It’s a fake ring.”
It looked real as anything to Vernon, but like Minghao had said, Amazon ships overnight. He took a step back away from his hyung who returned the lighter to its previous position below the ring.
If Mingyu, Dino, or Joshua cared, they sure didn’t show it. Dino’s head was still bowed but he made steady eye contact with the fire, while Mingyu and Joshua watched with wide eyes. Eyes that began to lose their spark as the metal heated, glazing over and drooping.
As their facial features began to relax, Vernon looked towards Jeonghan: “I think they’re dropping.” He turned his head to confirm with Seungkwan or Minghao, only to see similar expressions on both of their faces, their eyes reflecting the flicking edges of the flame.
Jeonghan laughed, cocking an eyebrow towards Hansol. “Well I guess you’re owed an explanation. Minghao and Seungkwan expressed interest in doing some pet play hypnosis, but both had reservations. Minghao didn’t think he could tolerate the embarrassment of being a pet while Seungkwan didn’t think he could do it in front of his hyungs.”
He cooly tossed the ring into the sink, where it landed with a clang. Jeonghan brought the flame closer to Minghao and Seungkwan's face, their eyes crossing to get better views of the fire. Hansol flashed back to last weekend when Dino hypnotized the entire maknae line and DK into being pets, Seungkwan hadn’t seemed uncomfortable then. But then again, Dino was younger than them, a little bit easier to trust in the pecking order. Seungkwan liked being hypnotized by Vernon or Dino, he often said it was easier to slip when he didn’t think of the hypnotist as being a ‘hyung’ to him.
In Hansol’s experience, it was the exact opposite, but to each their own. Jeonghan continued as Minghao and Seungkwan’s eyes lazily followed the swaying lighter, “They asked me to put them under and make them pets, but I couldn’t do it, even using Dino’s previous programming. So instead, I cooked up this whole ‘experiment’ thing to give them exposure to other hypnotized pets. Hopefully, now that they’ve seen how much Josh, Dino, and Mingyu enjoy it, they’ll be able to let themselves go. I hypnotized everyone in a group today, then erased their memories of being interested in this kind of hypnosis at all. They really thought they were part of the experiment…”
Jeonghan brought a hand up to Minghao’s jaw, holding it gently as the Chinese man unconsciously leaned into the touch, “when really they were just two more subjects. We’ll see if it worked.” Jeonghan snapped twice, and the once bleary-eyed seemed to shake off the stupor. At first, Minghao and Seungkwan looked confused, but when they saw their bandmates sitting on their knees and panting, they quickly assumed the same position. Both looked a little hesitant at first, but after Jeonghan pet their heads a few times they looked identical to the puppies across from them, tongues out and slobbering on the floor.
Hansol brought his own hands to both of their heads, and they sighed contentedly as he pet them. “So this whole thing-”
“Was a scene for them? Yep. Dino and the others were in on it too.” The three puppies curiously sniffed at their new companions, Mingyu looked especially excited. Jeonghan gave them the go-ahead to play and the biggest of the pups immediately tackled Seungkwan and peppered him with puppy kisses, while Joshua and Dino simply nuzzled every inch of Minghao they could find. The newcomers looked blissful.
Jeonghan sidled up next to Hansol as they both watched the chaos unfold. He rested his chin on Hansol’s shoulder and whispered in his ear, “Do you want to join them?”
A laugh erupted from Vernon’s chest, but he quickly got it under control and turned to look his hyung in the eyes. “You’re seriously scary, you know that?”
“Yeah, duh.”
Hansol rolled his eyes but let Jeonghan walk him through an induction, and soon six hypnopuppies were playing and cuddling, reeking havoc on the third floor common space.