Archive of Our Own

hate that i feel like
i should protect myself from you

— scared of love, min jiwoon

Sungmin has always treated wanting with care.

He learned early that desire rearranges people. It loosens them where solidity should hold, sharpens them where gentleness might have served better. He has seen the pattern often enough to recognize it without effort: wanting begins small, almost reasonable, then widens until it occupies more space than it deserves. Until a life becomes a sequence of reactions. Adjustments. Explanations shaped around someone else’s gravity.

So, Sungmin taught himself how to remain upright. He learned to keep his weight centered, to trust his own balance rather than lean into people, feelings, or futures that demanded hope as a condition of entry. He learned how to stand without reaching, how to stay intact without asking to be held in place.

Ambition, however, never required such discipline. It has always come easily to him. He moves before certainty arrives, choosing motion over comfort, embarrassment over stagnation. There is a quiet defiance in the way he commits himself to forward momentum, in the way he refuses to wait for permission from readiness. He believes in action. He believes in timing shaped by movement rather than perfection. He believes that whatever reaches for him deserves to be met halfway—no more, no less.

Even so, there are moments when the present resists explanation.

His life holds a shape that unsettles him—precise, deliberate, arranged carefully around his edges. Sometimes it feels as though the world once opened briefly and he stepped into the space without realizing how exact the fit would be, how closely it would contour him. Close enough to pass without comment. Close enough to be convincing. He tells himself this feeling has a name: opportunity. He tells himself unease often travels alongside growth, that discomfort is not the same as misalignment.

People call him lucky.

They gesture toward the group, toward the structure that holds them together, toward the way progress unfolds under lights bright enough to forgive quiet failure and reward loud success. They point to the consistency, the effort, the fact that he stands among people who show up and stay. And inevitably, they point to Jingxiang—whether his name is spoken outright or allowed to hover just beyond the sentence, implied but unmistakable.

Jingxiang noticed him at a moment when attention required intention. Jingxiang offered belief freely, without framing it as generosity, without asking to be thanked for it. Sungmin understands this. He also understands how gratitude changes shape over time, how kindness gathers weight, how easily it begins to feel like something owed rather than given.

From the outside, the arrangement holds.

Sungmin has a place. A counterpart. A narrative that moves cleanly from beginning to end. Jingxiang occupies his role with effortless confidence. The audience responds to the symmetry, the clarity, the comfort of a story that appears to know exactly where it is going.

Sungmin understands the appeal of such completeness.

And yet, something in him remains untouched by it.

The feeling is not hunger so much as displacement. The life he inhabits feels borrowed—tailored carefully, closely enough to wear, but never dissolving into him. It rests against his body without becoming part of it. He is always aware of its seams, its construction, the quiet expectation that he will continue to carry it well.

That awareness, more than anything else, is what unsettles him.

The persistent knowledge of standing inside something that fits—and still does not belong.

────‪‪❤︎‬────

Yeojun is half-sprawled across Sungmin, all loose limbs and borrowed warmth, complaining about Minwook the way he has been for weeks. One leg is slung carelessly over Sungmin’s thigh, heavy enough to pin him there; an elbow digs into his ribs whenever Yeojun gestures too hard, which is often. He smells faintly of citrus shampoo and sweat, the lingering proof of a long day that never quite resolves.

The story never really changes. Only the emphasis does. Why doesn’t he take me seriously? Why does he look straight through me? Did you see him today?

Irritation keeps looping back into reluctant admiration, circling the same point over and over, as if Yeojun can’t help orbiting the very thing that unsettles him most. The gravity is undeniable. Sungmin recognizes it instantly—he’s seen it before, felt its pull in other people, learned early how to brace himself against it without being dragged under.

There is comfort in the repetition.

Practice, rehearsal, meals, sleep—his days move with the dull precision of machinery, predictable and enclosed. Each hour slots neatly into the next. Yeojun’s gossip cuts through that rhythm, messy and uncontained, alive in a way that doesn’t bother to ask permission. Whispering about their leader like this, bodies tangled on the practice room floor, carries a faint, illicit thrill—the intimacy of something unplanned, unpolished, untouched by choreography or expectation.

For a moment, Sungmin allows himself a different version of the world.

In it, they are not idols. He imagines himself at Yeojun’s house instead—friends measured in years rather than months, stretched upside down on Yeojun’s bed while Yeojun talks himself in circles about the older boy next door. There are empty bowls scattered between them, popcorn kernels stubbornly caught in their teeth, fingers sticky with sugar and melted candy. The room smells like something burnt and sweet. They stay up too late, laughing at nothing in particular, and fall asleep wondering—quietly, privately—whether any of it might come true for Yeojun one day.

The fantasy settles easily around him.

It asks very little. It doesn’t demand belief.

But their reality remains where it is.

Sungmin folds the thought away and handles it the way he has learned to handle most things—briefly, carefully, with practiced restraint. He doesn’t linger long enough to want more.

Yeojun sighs and buries his face into Sungmin’s shoulder.

“I hate you,” he says, muffled into fabric and skin.

Sungmin startles, glancing down at him. “Why?” A pause. “What did I do?”

“You’re handsome,” Yeojun mutters. “You’re living the idol dream, and you have someone who actually likes you back. It’s irritating.” He shifts, nose pressing harder into Sungmin’s collarbone. “I swear, I want to be reborn as you in my next life.” A beat. “Also, you’re tall, which feels excessive.”

Laughter escapes Sungmin before he can temper it. The sound comes out wrong—too quick, edged with something tight beneath his ribs.

“Who are you talking about?” he asks, even though he already knows.

Yeojun lifts his head. His eyes are half-lidded, unguarded in a way that makes Sungmin shift despite himself. “You and Xiang. From the beginning, it felt inevitable. Like—ugh.”

“Nothing is happening between us,” Sungmin says at once.

The denial arrives too smoothly.

Yeojun hums, unconvinced. “You don’t have to say that for my sake.”

Sungmin looks past him, at the far wall where old scuff marks map out the movements of other people, other days. He lets Yeojun’s weight stay where it is, anchoring him in place. The words settle anyway, slipping into places he’s been careful not to touch.

“Jingxiang-hyung and I aren’t together,” he says again, slower this time. “It’s fan service.”

Yeojun shifts, draping more of himself over Sungmin’s arm, settling in as if the answer has only confirmed his decision to stay. “Even if I believed that—and I don’t—he still looks at you like you’re holding something precious.” His breath leaves him in a sound caught between a laugh and a sigh. “I feel like Ken. Barbie looks at him once a day, and that’s his entire emotional economy.”

Sungmin exhales a short laugh, more breath than sound. “You aren’t pathetic.”

“I kind of am.”

“You’re honest,” Sungmin replies, because the truth costs him very little. Honesty, when it isn’t his own, is easy to give away.

Yeojun presses closer again, the weight of his shoulder warm and familiar, voice quieter now. “Everyone wants to be seen like that.”

The words land more heavily than they should. “Everyone wants something,” Sungmin says. “That doesn’t make it real.”

Yeojun tilts his head, studying him in that open, searching way that makes Sungmin feel briefly misaligned. “Everyone wants Jingxiang-hyung to look at them.” A pause. “Sungmin—he looks at you.”

The scoff comes on instinct, sharp enough to shield him before the thought can settle. “Jingxiang is a cliché,” Sungmin says. “Attention comes easily to him.” He shifts, feeling Yeojun adjust with him, weight recalibrating. “He gives it freely if you stay close long enough.”

Yeojun pulls back, frowning. “Are you calling him easy?”

Sungmin rubs a hand over his face, fingers pressing briefly into his eyes. Irritation blooms—at Yeojun, at the question, at how close it comes to something he doesn’t want to name. “That isn’t what I mean.” He exhales through his nose. “He’s familiar. Universally appealing.”

The explanation flows more smoothly than it should, rehearsed from repetition. “Being loved by Jingxiang doesn’t make anyone exceptional.”

His shoulders lower as he finishes the thought, as if setting something down.

“It makes them ordinary.”

The practice room hums around them—air conditioning ticking softly, music bleeding faintly through the walls, someone laughing down the hall without restraint. Life continues at its own indifferent pace, untouched by the quiet unraveling happening on the floor.

Yeojun’s voice softens. “Then what do you want to be?”

Sungmin opens his mouth.

Nothing comes.

The silence presses against his chest, louder than an answer would have been, so he settles for a shrug instead—small, contained. “I’m not sure,” he says, forcing lightness into his tone like a shield. “Grateful, maybe.”

He counts it off on his fingers, even though there’s nothing there. “A good group. Good music. A convincing fake boyfriend.” He sighs, exaggerated, aiming for humor. “Tragic, really.”

Yeojun laughs and shoves him, the contact familiar enough not to sting. “You’re impossible,” he says. “You really don’t know what you have.”

Sungmin doesn’t correct him.

He lets himself sway with the push. The moment smooths itself out the way it always does, edges dulled by humor and habit. Gratitude is an easy performance.

“Maybe,” he says lightly.

Then, so softly it barely registers even to himself: “Jingxiang-hyung and I are fine like this.”

Sungmin leaves the sentence where it lands.

He’s still deciding whether to add something—something heavier, something closer to the truth—when the door opens.

Minwook walks in without looking their way. Already talking into his phone, already distracted, moving with the easy confidence of someone who never needs to check who’s in the room. His reflection crosses the mirror first, then his body, passing behind them on his way to the speaker system.

Yeojun notices immediately.

Sungmin feels it in the way Yeojun’s weight shifts, in the shallow hitch of his breath. Minwook doesn’t glance over.

Doesn’t pause.

Doesn’t register them at all.

Yeojun exhales slowly, controlled, the sound of something carefully swallowed before it can surface. Sungmin leans sideways without thinking, resting his head gently against Yeojun’s. The contact is small, almost tentative—but it’s the only acknowledgment Yeojun gets.

“You know,” Sungmin murmurs, “you’ll always have me.”

Yeojun scoffs quietly. There’s no bitterness in it—just tired clarity. “Yeah,” he says. “But you’re already someone else’s.”

Sungmin frowns, denial rising on instinct.

I don’t think that’s true.

The thought stalls when he catches Jingxiang’s reflection in the mirror—standing in the doorway now, gaze settling on Sungmin with that familiar, unreadable softness.

Sungmin doesn’t know what to call that.

So he stays quiet.

Lets his head rest where it is, and tells himself—for now—that being someone’s friend will have to be enough.

────‪‪❤︎‬────

Later, Sungmin tries to imagine what love would look like now.

He pictures something that follows him from room to room, something with presence and mass, something that cannot help but be seen. At this point in his life, love arrives already illuminated. It refuses to remain private or small. It stretches past late nights and shared glances, past the soft, unspoken grammar of two people learning how to exist near one another. It becomes something legible to others. Screen-captured. Paused, dissected, rewritten by people who have never learned the sound of his voice when he is tired. Love asks for angles. For explanations. For boundaries carefully rehearsed. Love asks to be managed.

He remembers another version of himself—near enough to recognize, far enough to ache for. A time when caring for someone carried ease instead of foresight. When affection moved without strategy, without the need to justify its direction or measure its reach. When he could have been a single face in a crowd—beautiful, replaceable, unremarkable—and that freedom would have been enough. Back then, wanting cost nothing beyond the wanting itself.

Joining the group altered something fundamental.

At first, the change arrived quietly, almost kindly. He learned when to soften his smile, when to hold his gaze steady, when to shape his expressions into something readable and safe. Over time, the skill spread until it touched everything. Somewhere between debut schedules and mirrored rehearsal rooms, Sungmin understood that love had changed its shape. It had become a liability. A narrative. Something other people could hold, interpret, and claim as partially theirs. Wanting someone now meant surrendering the luxury of ordinariness in how that wanting could live.

So, he learned to loosen his grip on the idea.

Life and love—the versions meant only for him—became things best approached from a careful distance. He repeated this belief often enough that it settled close to the truth, if not fully inside it.

There are nights when sleep refuses him anyway. Nights when the dark stretches wide and the quiet sharpens rather than soothes.

On those nights, his thoughts drift toward Jingxiang.

Jingxiang earlier that day, leaning into him at the fansign with practiced ease. Jingxiang bumping his shoulder as they pass, fingers catching briefly at a loose strand of hair, just to see what expression it earns. Jingxiang who knows exactly how far he can go while remaining within the shape of play—affectionate, precise, controlled. Jingxiang who says he’s proud of Sungmin as if pride exists without condition, as if it arrives fully formed and asks for nothing in return. Jingxiang who opens doors without thinking, who makes a habit of lingering outside Sungmin’s room to say goodnight, a ritual formed so early it now feels inevitable.

The moments remain small. Sungmin knows this. He handles them with care. He reminds himself that gestures come easily, that kindness travels faster than commitment, that care wears many faces. He has learned where to draw those lines, especially when his sense of balance depends on it.

Still—lying awake, eyes fixed on the ceiling, hands resting loosely over his chest—he allows himself one quiet truth.

Just one.

If love ever returns to him gently. If it arrives without asking him to erase himself, without requiring him to shrink or dissolve into it.

He hopes it carries Jingxiang’s shape.

Sungmin leaves the thought where it is, untouched.

He turns onto his side.

He closes his eyes.

He lets the night continue without asking anything more of it.

────‪‪❤︎‬────

Morning arrives.

Sungmin moves through it on instinct. Shower. Clothes. Food he barely tastes. He keeps his thoughts trained on neutral things—the order of the day, the dull ache settling into his shoulders, the way the hallway light flickers before it commits to brightness. He does not think about Jingxiang. He does not think about the night before. By the time he leaves his room, the memory has been pressed flat, reduced to something manageable. Something that understands restraint.

Jingxiang is in the hallway anyway, exactly where Sungmin expects him to be—one foot braced against the wall, phone loose in his hand, attention already angled elsewhere.

“Morning,” he says, smiling like the word carries history.

“Morning,” Sungmin answers, the reply arriving without effort.

Jingxiang closes the distance between them and pulls Sungmin into a hug, decisive and familiar, as if he’s marking time rather than greeting him. Sungmin returns it automatically. Their bodies find balance, settle into it. For a brief moment, neither of them moves. The hallway breathes around them—distant doors opening, someone coughing, a cupboard rattling at the far end.

“I missed you,” Jingxiang says, his voice pressed into Sungmin’s shoulder.

Sungmin exhales, a quiet huff of amusement. “You saw me last night. You made sure of it.”

Jingxiang hums, unbothered.

Sungmin doesn’t answer right away. He stores the moment carefully, the way he has learned to handle things that might ask for more later.

Footsteps approach.

Minwook appears at the end of the hall and slows when he sees them. His gaze passes over Jingxiang, lands briefly on Sungmin. There’s nothing to read in it—no pause, no reaction, no acknowledgement beyond the glance.

Sungmin waits anyway.

He isn’t sure what he’s waiting for.

Minwook adjusts the strap of his bag. “Practice in ten,” he says, already moving again. “Anyways.”

The space closes behind him.

Sungmin steps back first, unsettled by how sharply he noticed the absence of commentary. “Why doesn’t he ever say anything?”

Jingxiang’s smile sharpens, pleased, as if he’s been handed a familiar line. “Because you can’t interrupt true love.”

Sungmin huffs. “And what exactly makes this true love?”

Jingxiang doesn’t answer right away. His fingers remain curled loosely in Sungmin’s sleeves, swaying them back and forth in a lazy, absent rhythm, as if the motion exists without intention. After a beat, he leans in and murmurs near Sungmin’s ear, low and unguarded, “I don’t know. It just feels right.”

Sungmin laughs softly, the sound arriving a fraction too late. It surprises him—caught somewhere between disbelief and something warmer he doesn’t name. “You say things like that so casually,” he murmurs.

“You think too much,” Jingxiang says, gentle and fond. He reaches up and ruffles Sungmin’s hair, the touch light enough to hesitate under. Then—before Sungmin can step back, before he can recalibrate—Jingxiang cups his face.

It’s brief, tender in a way that isn’t trying to be anything else.

“Sungmin,” Jingxiang says, quieter now. “Sometimes I think you’re the best thing in my life. You know that, right?” Jingxiang’s thumbs move as he speaks, slow and absent-minded, brushing gentle circles along Sungmin’s cheekbones. They settle with the ease of something already believed.

Sungmin’s breath shifts, deeper this time. Each pass of Jingxiang’s thumbs seems to steady something inside him, aligning him with the moment, whether he means to be or not. He becomes acutely aware of the closeness between them, of how easily affection has taken shape around his face, his name, his presence.

Jingxiang drops his hand as easily as he lifted it, already glancing down the hall, halfway gone. “I gotta get ready,” he adds lightly. “I’ll be thinking of you.”

Sungmin finds his voice by reflex. “How romantic,” he says, tone deliberately flat. “Thinking of me while you’re loudly blow-drying your hair.”

Jingxiang grins. “That’s when I think best.”

And then he’s gone—footsteps fading, a low hum trailing behind him like the afterimage of sunlight in the hallway.

Sungmin stays where he is longer than he means to. His chest feels tight. His fingers brush absently at the sleeves Jingxiang had been holding. He tells himself it’s a joke. That it always is. That Jingxiang speaks this way, the same way he breathes—easily, without weight, without consequence.

He takes one step and nearly collides with Kyoungbae. Oh? He hadn’t even noticed him there. For a heartbeat, he wonders if Kyoungbae saw everything—if he’d caught the tilt of Jingxiang’s hand, the way his thumbs had moved across Sungmin’s face, the soft certainty in those words.

Kyoungbae watches him, eyes wide, curious in a way that’s rarely malicious. At his age, curiosity comes naturally—sometimes harmless, sometimes sharp enough to cut. And now, in that instant, there’s a glint there that unsettles Sungmin: the look of someone who knows too much and, most likely, knows exactly what he shouldn’t.

“Sorry,” he says automatically.

Kyoungbae pauses, studying him for a heartbeat too long. Then he smiles, soft and knowing, and hums under his breath—a gentle, looping sing-song: Love… love… love…

Sungmin freezes. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Kyoungbae says lightly, already moving past him. “You just look happy.”

The hum drifts down the hall, leaving warmth in its wake.

Heat creeps up Sungmin’s neck, settles there. He presses his lips together, schooling his expression back into neutrality before anyone else can notice. He tells himself it doesn’t mean anything. That being seen, being thought of, isn’t the same as wanting.

Still, the thought follows him—quiet, persistent, unwanted—all the way into practice.

────‪‪❤︎‬────

Practice breaks arrives. The music cuts off mid-count, the echo of it still hanging in the room like something unfinished.

Sungmin slides down the wall and doesn’t think about where he lands. His shoulder finds Kenshin’s automatically, muscle memory more than choice. Kenshin adjusts without looking, steadying them both, and Sungmin lets himself lean—just enough to feel held there. The floor is cool beneath them. The air hums faintly with lights and lingering heat.

For a while, they don’t speak.

This kind of quiet has always come easily with Kenshin. It doesn’t ask Sungmin to explain himself. It doesn’t try to turn into something else.

“Why do you think Minwook-hyung never says anything,” Sungmin murmurs eventually, voice pitched low, “about Jingxiang and me?”

Kenshin blinks, the question catching up to him. Sungmin watches the thought settle across his face and feels that familiar fondness tug at his chest—easy, unguarded. Kenshin isn’t always articulate, not the way Sungmin is, but he’s attentive. He listens as it matters.

“Why would he?” Kenshin says. “It’s good for the group. Fans like it.”

Then, like it’s an afterthought: “Also, I think Minwook-hyung is too busy pretending he’s not into Yeojun-hyung.”

Sungmin exhales, something like a laugh pressing against his ribs. It makes sense when Kenshin says it like that. Yeojun’s open warmth. Minwook’s careful gravity. A quiet orbit Sungmin has always watched from the outside.

Jingxiang is different. His attention doesn’t flare or crowd. It settles.

Sungmin leans more fully into Kenshin’s shoulder. “Sometimes it feels like I’m outside the joke,” he admits. “Like everyone else got handed instructions, and I missed mine.”

Kenshin nods once, encouraging him to keep going.

“I don’t think I ever said it out loud,” Sungmin says. “That I was doing this. The fan service thing. It just happened.” His fingers worry at the hem of his sleeve. “So sometimes it feels like I skipped a step.”

“I get that,” Kenshin says, simply.

Sungmin tilts his head. “I know how it works. Technically. I just—”

“But it feels real,” Kenshin offers, gently.

The words land more heavily than they should.

Sungmin goes still.

Kenshin notices immediately. “Not real-real,” he adds quickly. “Just easy. People like easy.”

Sungmin stares out across the practice room. Scuffed tape on the floor. Water bottles tipped on their sides. Things left where they were dropped.

“I don’t mind it,” he says, quieter. “Most days.”

“I know,” Kenshin replies.

Sungmin lets his head rest more fully against Kenshin’s shoulder. He likes this closeness best—the kind that doesn’t perform, doesn’t demand. Being someone’s favourite without it becoming a story.

The speakers click. Someone cues the track.

Kenshin nudges him lightly with his knee. “If it helps,” he says, hesitant, “I don’t think you look stupid.”

Sungmin snorts. “I’m honoured.”

Kenshin squints at him, gears visibly turning. “Wait. Didn’t you talk to him first? On Project 7?”

Sungmin stiffens.

“That was—” He stops.

The memory doesn’t wait to be invited. The first day. The noise. The way everything felt slightly off-balance. Jingxiang standing a little apart, composed, like he was waiting to be told where he belonged.

Sungmin remembers noticing him before he remembers deciding anything.

He remembers thinking, I should say something.

He remembers doing it.

“It doesn’t count,” Sungmin says. “That was just situational.”

“Situational,” Kenshin repeats.

“I was being polite.”

“You’re not polite to everyone.”

Before Sungmin can answer, Kenshin pokes his side. Hard enough to startle him.

“Hyung,” Kenshin laughs, “you’re ridiculous.”

“Kenshin—” Sungmin twists away, but Kenshin follows.

“You started it,” Kenshin says, sing-song.

The sound of Kenshin’s laughter cuts clean through the fog in Sungmin’s head. It’s grounding in the way familiar things are—like being reminded where he is, who he’s with. For a second, it works. The tight coil in his chest loosens. He lets himself laugh too, the tension slipping its hold.

This is a joke, Kenshin’s laughter seems to say. This doesn’t need to be held so carefully. Nothing is as serious as Sungmin keeps trying to make it.

And Sungmin wants to believe that. He wants to let it stay light, let the moment pass without asking anything of him.

He doesn’t know why his heart aches a little more at the thought.

“Stop,” Sungmin laughs, shoving him. “People are watching.”

A few heads turn. Someone snickers. Sungmin hides his face for a second—then lowers his hand when the laughter settles warmly in his chest.

Kenshin grins. “See? Smiling.”

“You’re unbearable.”

“I know.”

The music restarts properly. Someone calls them back.

As Sungmin stands, fingers tug lightly at his sleeve. Jingxiang is there, closer than he expects, close enough that Sungmin has to recalibrate.

“What was that about?” Jingxiang asks, nodding toward Kenshin, who’s already laughing with someone else.

Sungmin follows his gaze—and catches Minwook watching. Just long enough to be intentional.

Then Minwook looks away.

Yeojun stands a little apart, eyes fixed on Minwook with something unfinished in them.

Sungmin exhales.

The room feels full of things left unsaid. Of glances that stop short. Of feelings everyone seems to be carrying without knowing where to set them down.

Without thinking, Sungmin leans forward and rests his forehead briefly against Jingxiang’s shoulder. The contact is grounding, and for a moment, he wonders if naming things has ever helped him.

Jingxiang steadies him. “You okay?”

Sungmin straightens. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

Jingxiang studies him a beat longer.

“Really,” Sungmin adds.

There’s a soft mechanical whir behind him — a camera waking up. The red light blinks on, and once he notices it, he can’t un-notice it. He registers it the way you register a change in air pressure, a shift you feel before you name it.

Footsteps approach. A hand gestures vaguely between him and Jingxiang, adjusting distance like props on a set. “Can you go back? Just for a second,” a staff member says, already stepping away. “Yeah. Like before.”

Jingxiang laughs easily, compliant without thinking, and Sungmin follows the movement because it’s simpler than resisting. Their bodies fall back into place, familiar and rehearsed, the shape of something that reads well from the outside.

The camera hums.

Sungmin holds still, aware of the exact angle of everything — where his hands rest, how close is close enough, how much warmth is allowed before it starts to mean something else.

This is what it means, he knows, to be good at this. It's all part of the job, feelings aside.

The staffer murmurs a quick thanks. The camera clicks off, interest already gone.

Sound rushes back in — the scrape of sneakers, someone counting under their breath, the first beat snapping into place, and the music swells. 

He steps back into position, lets the count pull him forward, and moves—quietly holding what still doesn’t have a name.

Sungmin waits until practice has ended properly before he moves.

The after settles in. Bodies loosen. Laughter spills too loud and unfocused. Everyone sheds the version of themselves that counts. Phones come out. Someone groans dramatically and collapses onto the floor. The room exhales.

It feels important not to rush. Like if he goes too soon, whatever he wants to say will turn stiff, prearranged. Like the timing itself matters.

Minwook is near the mirrors, towel dragged over the back of his neck, phone loose in his hand as if he’s forgotten it’s there. Even now, Sungmin has to measure the distance before approaching him. Their rhythms rarely line up on the first try—always a half-beat off, a fraction too late or too early.

Sungmin knows, without needing proof, that Yeojun’s restlessness has a shape, and that shape is Minwook. He knows it the way you know when a room has been argued in: the air remembers, even if no one says anything aloud. So he keeps his voice careful when he speaks.

“Hyung.”

Minwook looks up immediately, attention settling on him fully, unguarded. “Yeah?”

The directness makes Sungmin hesitate. He shifts his weight, then says, quieter, “Can we talk for a second?”

“Of course.”

They move a few steps away. The room stretches around them, sound thinning out, the edges of other conversations blurring. Sungmin clasps his hands together without realizing it, fingers pressing tight, then forces himself to let them fall apart again.

“About Jingxiang-hyung and me,” he says. The words come out steadier than he feels. He adjusts them carefully. “About the fan service.”

Minwook blinks once. “Okay.”

“If it ever feels like too much,” Sungmin continues, “we can dial it back. I just wanted to say it. Out loud.”

“Oh,” Minwook says—and this time the surprise is genuine. He tilts his head slightly. “I hadn’t noticed it was bothering anyone. Is it bothering you?”

“No,” Sungmin says too fast, then reins himself in. “Not exactly. I just—” He exhales. “I don’t want it to feel like we’re taking up space that belongs to everyone.”

Minwook hums, thinking. “Right.”

The silence that follows doesn’t rush to resolve itself. Sungmin feels it settle, familiar and uncomfortable, like standing onstage in the dark before the lights come up. Like waiting to see what kind of person you’re expected to be.

“Hyung,” he says again, softer. “You never say anything about us. I’ve always wondered why.” Sungmin shifts his weight from heel to heel, tilts forward, then back, teeth idly pressing against a hangnail, hands twisting together in the brief, precise ways he always does when he’s trying to wait for an answer without moving too fast.

He thinks—if he can just draw an answer out of Minwook, corner it gently, give shape to why something this important has gone so unremarked—he might feel steadier. Watched, at least.

Minwook is a person Sungmin has never quite learned how to reach. He doesn’t fear him like Seungho, doesn’t admire him like Yeojun, doesn’t need him the way he leans on Kenshin or Jingxiang. He isn’t becoming him the way Kyoungbae seems to, copying his expressions, mirroring his gestures until the resemblance startles. With Minwook, Sungmin draws a blank—a space he can’t map. If he weren’t caught in the spiral of Jingxiang, he might be caught in Minwook instead, which would irritate Yeojun endlessly.

Most days, Minwook exists at the edge of his awareness, steady and precise, like a metronome, always present yet never intimate.

Minwook studies him for a long moment.

Listening—not just to the words, but to whatever’s underneath them. Deciding how much truth to let through.

“Well,” he says eventually, “you’re both old enough to know what you’re doing.” A pause. “And I guess I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

Sungmin opens his mouth, then closes it again.

The answer doesn’t come because it doesn’t exist yet. He wants reassurance without being coddled. Permission without consequence. To be told that everything is fine without having to explain what everything includes.

“I don’t want to be doing something wrong,” he says finally.

Minwook’s expression softens, almost imperceptibly. “Wrong according to who?”

Sungmin looks down.

The list forms on its own—fans, expectations, headlines that haven’t been written yet, the version of himself he keeps running from without ever turning around.

“I don’t know,” he admits.

Minwook nods once. “Then I don’t think there’s much for me to weigh in on.”

Something tightens in Sungmin’s chest, like warmth spreading where there was space a moment ago, filling it too quickly. He presses his thumb into his palm, grounding himself, but the feeling lingers.

“That’s not very helpful,” he says, and he hates how small it sounds once it’s said.

Minwook blinks. “Sungmin—”

“You always do this,” Sungmin cuts in, quieter than he means to be, which somehow makes it worse. “You just step back. Like everything’s neutral ground.”

Minwook exhales slowly. “I’m not going to tell you what to do. Or what not to do. That’s never really been my style.”

Sungmin laughs under his breath. It comes out wrong—thin, brittle.

“Right,” he says. “I guess that only applies to me.”

Minwook stills. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sungmin hesitates. He should stop. He knows he should. But the words have already shifted, restless, pressing forward.

“You know a real leader would have some real advice,” Sungmin says, voice sharper than he means.

“Sungmin, stop. You’re not—you’re not mean.”

“You don’t know what I am!”

“I don’t know what you want me to say, just because you’re not getting your way—”

“I bet if I were Yeojun,” Sungmin cuts in, eyes fixed on the floor, “you’d say something. You’d care.”

The air shifts, subtle but heavy, like the calm before a storm. He feels it immediately: the weight of every gaze threading toward him, the faint heat of scrutiny that spreads across his shoulders. Yeojun’s name lands like a stone, and Sungmin knows it—knows it’s a strike that won’t go unnoticed.

Minwook doesn’t often burn. His anger flares then fades, leaving behind that quiet authority Sungmin has always felt pressing at the edges of the room. And now, in this space, Sungmin is unsure which is worse: that fire, or the silence that follows.

A pang of fear coils low in his stomach. He feels exposed, as though the shift in emotion has carved out a blank space, one where he might have made an enemy without realizing it.

Minwook’s voice drops. “Sungmin. What’s going on?”

Sungmin looks up then. The concern on Minwook’s face lands heavier than any reprimand could have. It makes his chest ache—tight, embarrassing, too full.

He realizes how loud he’s been. How close the room has crept back in.

Someone across the floor goes quiet.

He doesn’t have to look to know Jingxiang is watching him. He feels it the way he always does—like a presence just behind him, a hand hovering at his back, unsure whether it’s allowed to touch.

“Thanks a lot, hyung,” Sungmin mutters.

The words come out sharper than he intended. He doesn’t take them back.

He turns and walks out before anyone can say his name.

The hallway is cooler. His breath comes shallow, uneven, like he’s just sprinted without warning. He presses a hand to his chest, counting the seconds until the racing slows, until the tightness eases.

For a fleeting moment, he wishes Minwook could see inside him—could shove him, scold him, remind him to stop staring at Jingxiang as if forgetting himself mattered. You’re bandmates. You’ll never be real lovers. It’s wrong—don’t go there.

“Sungmin?”

He turns. Relief folds over him first, sharp and warm: it’s not Jingxiang. He isn’t ready for Jingxiang to witness this, unsteady and too exposed. Relief curves into something quieter, heavier—sadness, maybe, or the faint ache of wanting simplicity in a world that rarely allows it.

Yeojun steps closer, deliberate and careful, like approaching something fragile. Sungmin feels the familiar flutter of nerves along his ribs. If his heart weren’t already threatening mutiny, he might have rolled his eyes at the careful choreography of Yeojun’s approach.

“Sungmin, are you okay? We're worried.”

Sungmin swallows, voice thick, words hesitating. “Did Minwook-hyung send you?”

“No,” Yeojun says quickly, voice low, soft, steady. “I came because I wanted to check on you myself. Did he say anything to you? You know hyung doesn’t mean it, right?”

Yeojun. He loves, really loves, and somehow keeps both sides in his heart. And Sungmin, he’s making it harder than it needs to be.

Sungmin tilts his head, searching for the right words. “Why do you assume it’s hyung’s fault? I was the one yelling at him, making it worse.”

Yeojun pauses, expression thoughtful. “I know,” he says gently. “But, Minwook-hyung can be off-putting sometimes. You know that. He’s direct. Intense. And yet, he really just wants to help.”

Sungmin lets that settle in the quiet. He watches Yeojun’s face—the slight furrow of his brow, the way his lips twitch before he decides whether to speak, the tilt of his head that somehow softens the lines of attention. He notices the faint warmth in Yeojun’s eyes, like sunlight filtered through thin curtains, steady but patient, holding space without demanding it. The familiarity is dizzying, like standing in a room whose walls hum with a melody he’s always known but never noticed.

He can almost feel it: the weight of Yeojun’s care brushing against him, subtle as a heartbeat under skin, steady enough to make him aware of the uneven rhythm of his own. The intimacy of knowing someone so well, so completely, without judgment, presses into him with a tenderness that is almost painful—like the first time you realize you’ve been holding your breath for no reason.

And then he understands: Yeojun doesn’t just know Minwook. He loves him. Even with the sharp edges, the small irritations, the quiet stubbornness.

Sungmin had just lashed out at the person he cared for most, spat words sharper than he meant—words Minwook didn’t deserve. Minwook has someone who loves him, patient and steady, though perhaps he didn’t realize it, or wasn’t ready to trust it fully, and here was Sungmin, tangled in the same mess of longing, trying instead to make someone else feel the ache he carried inside. It was unfair, cruel, almost by accident, and it twisted something in him.

And there was Yeojun, patient, steady, trying to untangle a knot that didn’t exist, offering understanding for a problem he couldn’t see.

He didn’t know—couldn’t know—the half of it.

“Yeojun. I was serious,” Sungmin says, words raw, brittle along the edges.

“Serious about what?”

“Jingxiang-hyung and I, we aren’t together.”

The quiet stretches, settling around them. Yeojun freezes, brows drawing together, lips parting slightly. Then, soft and almost to himself, he murmurs, “Then… oh. Oh, Sungmin.”

The words hang in the air like something fragile, something that might shatter if pressed too hard. Sungmin feels the tension in his chest ripple, hot and confusing. He swallows, tasting the weight of it. “You said it yourself,” he whispers, voice trembling. “That he looks at me like I’m holding something precious. You said that.”

Yeojun nods slowly, deliberately, the motion careful, almost reverent.

“But, if you thought we were in a relationship,” Sungmin continues, voice quieter now, “then how do I look at him?” His fingers clutch the sleeves of his shirt, knuckles whitening. Heart hammering, pulse loud in his ears, he feels the edges of himself unraveling, holding more than he meant to.

The silence stretches, heavy and tangible. The truth sits between them like a living thing: he is in love with Jingxiang.

Yeojun doesn’t answer right away. He moves closer, the warmth of him brushing against Sungmin, a quiet weight that steadies without words. “Does it have to be a problem, though?”

“I don’t want to be in love, Yeojun,” Sungmin admits, rough, fragile, voice breaking somewhere between whisper and plea. “I don’t.”

Yeojun tilts his head, watching him, patient and steady. His hands settle lightly on Sungmin’s shoulders, grounding him.

“Why is that a bad thing?”

Sungmin swallows hard, chest tight, words catching like stones in his throat.

“It’s not supposed to last for people like me. Jingxiang-hyung, he’ll get bored once he notices.”

Yeojun leans closer, breath warm against his hair. “Notices what?” His voice is soft, careful, anchoring. “Sungmin, slow down.”

But Sungmin can’t. The tears come, hot and sudden, trembling through him. Hands fly to his face, trying to stem the tide, but it slips anyway.

“It’s too much. I… I—”

Yeojun doesn’t answer with words. He moves closer, arms sliding under Sungmin’s, lifting just enough for the weight he carries to settle.

“Then don’t,” Yeojun murmurs, voice nearly swallowed by the quiet around them. “Don’t be in love. That’s okay.”

Sungmin leans fully into him, body trembling, tears soaking into the fabric of Yeojun’s shirt. The pulse of him beneath his palms, the faint warmth of breath on skin, the steady pressure of his hands—all of it presses into Sungmin.

The practice room empties, spilling into the hallway. Sungmin freezes, caught between disbelief and embarrassment, the heat of his tears still lingering on his cheeks. For a moment, he wants to laugh—at himself, at the absurd intensity of feeling this way over a boy—but then his gaze lands on Jingxiang.

Something in his expression gives him away. Sungmin sees it immediately.

Before he can speak, Kenshin, Kyoungbae, and Seungho are on him, arms folding around him in a careful, chaotic embrace. “Sungmin-hyung! What happened? Are you hurt? Should we call someone?” Their voices tumble over one another, anxious, grounding.

He presses his sleeve to his damp cheeks, the fabric cool from repeated wipes. “Okay,” he mutters, mostly to the floor. “I’m okay.”

“He’s fine,” Yeojun says finally, his arm still resting on Sungmin’s shoulders, a solid line keeping him upright. “He just needs a moment.”

“What happened?” Minwook asks, voice low, careful. Sungmin glances up and sees him fully for the first time in the hallway’s fluorescent light. His expression is a strange mix—sadness and confusion pressed so tightly together it looks like he might break. His lips tremble ever so slightly. Sungmin’s chest tightens painfully.

Minwook has always hated seeing anyone else hurt. He used to say, almost like a joke, that he’d rather bear the pain himself than watch someone else crumble. Sungmin feels awful, ashamed, the weight of what he’s done pressing him down. He knows he’s left Minwook with something he didn’t deserve—confusion, worry, a glimpse of fragility Minwook rarely allows himself to show.

Then Jingxiang’s voice cuts sharply across the space. “Shouldn’t you know? You were the one talking to him last.” The words are light but clipped, precise enough to sting.

Sungmin notices how Minwook flinches slightly, as if the rebuke unsettles him more than anger ever could.

He looks smaller under Jingxiang’s glance, a little lost, and Sungmin’s chest twists. He wants to take it all back. He wants to say something to protect Minwook, to tell him it’s not his fault, but the words don’t come. All he feels is the heat of guilt, the absurdity of causing pain to someone who barely ever lets himself feel it.

Minwook turns fully then, trying to mask the vulnerability, trying to claim control again. “I don’t like what you’re implying,” he says, voice steadier than his face. But even as he speaks, Sungmin sees it: the flicker of a hurt he didn’t deserve, the tight squeeze of shoulders, the soft exhale of someone trying not to collapse.

“And I don’t like this,” Yeojun says, rubbing a hand down his face. His voice is firm but edged with fatigue. “You’re both not helping. Sungmin just needs to go home.”

The word lands oddly, like a nudge to something fragile. Sungmin sways.

Hands crowd him—too many, too careful. Kyoungbae’s fingers drift through his hair, slow and absent-minded. Kenshin’s hand is warm where it laces through his own, anchoring him, pressing into a space he didn’t realize was so unsteady. Seungho’s hold on his wrist is light, almost distracted, but it still roots him, another quiet tether. The concern presses in from every side, holding him upright even as it steals his air.

“I think,” Sungmin says finally, voice quiet, “I just need to be alone for the next couple of days.”

Kenshin’s grip tightens. “We can’t leave you like this.”

“I’m not—” Sungmin swallows. “I’ll go back to my old place. I still have the key. I’ll find my own way. I’ll be at practice tomorrow.”

The group falls quiet. Some glance instinctively at Minwook, as if waiting for him to decide.

“You can’t let him leave, hyung,” someone says, but Sungmin doesn’t register who.

Before Minwook can respond, he pulls free. Clumsy, abrupt—the shoulders slip, fingers loosen. The sudden absence of touch leaves him lighter and worse all at once. He walks before anyone can say his name again, the hallway stretching long and fluorescent before him.

He thinks, distantly, how ridiculous it is—crying like this over a boy, over a look held too long, a care that maybe wasn’t meant for him. The thought almost makes him laugh. Almost.

He doesn’t stop until the stairwell. The door is heavy in his palm. He counts nothing, breathing in the cool echo of cement steps.

When the door creaks behind him, he knows without turning.

“Hey,” Jingxiang says, voice careful, stripped of the earlier sharpness. “Is there anything I can do?”

Sungmin keeps his back to him, eyes tracing the worn scuff in the concrete. Loving Jingxiang has blurred everything at the edges—made him generous where he should’ve been cautious, hopeful where he should’ve known better. He realizes how much he’s wanted not to see this, and yet.

“I’ll be okay,” he says. Words thin, but true. “I promise.”

There’s a pause. Jingxiang doesn’t argue.

Maybe that’s the kindest thing of all.

“Sungmin, wait.”

Before he can turn, Jingxiang’s there. Hands light but sure at his back, drawing him in. The hug is careful at first, testing permission, and then it settles—solid, familiar, real. Sungmin’s throat tightens immediately.

He folds into it, forehead pressing into Jingxiang’s shoulder. The warmth of him, the steady rise and fall of his chest, unravels everything Sungmin had just tried to hold together.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Jingxiang murmurs near his ear, low and close. “But feel better, okay?”

Sungmin nods, chest aching with the effort not to fall apart again. Jingxiang’s hand slides up, cradling the side of his head, thumb brushing gently through his hair. Then, softer still, a brief, unguarded kiss touches the crown of his head.

Sungmin closes his eyes.

Everything is too much and not enough. The way his body leans in as if this is where it belongs. The quiet, consuming swell of love in his chest. Loving Jingxiang feels like standing on the edge of something endless, knowing the only way forward is to fall.

Too late, he thinks.

He pulls back before Jingxiang can read it on his face. Fingers curl around the cold metal of the door. He opens it, steps through, and lets it close behind him, not looking back.

────‪‪❤︎‬────

It was during a pre-debut meeting, ostensibly about fan service, that Sungmin first saw the true shape of his place in the group and just how unusual his connection with Jingxiang was. The discussion began practically enough: smiles, handholds, timing, angles, gestures that made fans swoon. But it quickly turned to pairings, chemistry, and compatibility — who looked natural together, who struggled, who already had fans invested before even stepping on stage.

Sungmin sat quietly, absorbing it all. He knew these conversations were private, the kind that shaped careers, controlled perceptions, and quietly dictated what fans would see and believe. Most of the members were learning how to bend themselves to the rules, practicing gestures until they seemed effortless. Weeks of forced familiarity stretched into long hours of careful mimicry.

Then one of the directors turned toward him. “Look at Sungmin,” they said, voice measured but carrying weight. “He got along with everyone on Project 7. He’s a model for how to approach these dynamics. Pay attention.”

Sungmin blinked, almost startled by the words. He wanted to nod, wanted to smile and take the praise in stride, but inside, it was more complicated. Yes — he did get along with everyone, and yes, that made him useful, unifying, palatable. But it wasn’t a strategy. It was all he had. His easy rapport, his willingness to listen, to notice, to accommodate — it was what kept him afloat in an environment where every gesture could be scrutinized, every misstep amplified.

The thought is still settling when something brushes his hand.

At first, he thinks it’s an accident—knees too close under the narrow table, shifting chairs, the small chaos of bodies packed together. Then fingers curl around his, deliberate and warm. Sungmin stiffens, breath catching, and turns his head just enough to see Jingxiang beside him, gaze forward, expression calm.

Before Sungmin can make sense of it, Jingxiang speaks:

“I think Sungmin makes it easy for people to feel comfortable,” he says, voice steady, thoughtful. “He remembers things. He listens. You don’t feel like you have to perform around him.”

The room quiets. Even the directors pause, attention shifting. Sungmin’s pulse spikes; his hand is still trapped, still held, grounding and terrifying all at once.

“He doesn’t try to stand out,” Jingxiang continues, glancing briefly in Sungmin’s direction now, eyes soft. “But somehow he still does. Plus, he has a great smile. But he's more than his looks; he's thoughtful and hardworking, and he'll make a great team member for our group.”

There’s a beat of silence. Seungho lets out a small laugh, half-awed. “So, we should all try to be like that with each other?”

One of the directors smiles, shaking their head. “There’s no need. You already have something good going here.”

Their gaze flicks between Sungmin and Jingxiang, knowing in a way that makes Sungmin’s stomach twist. “That kind of chemistry isn’t something you teach.”

The word lands wrong. 

Sungmin forces himself to breathe, to keep his face neutral. His hand is still warm where Jingxiang holds it, and he hates how much he wants to squeeze back. The praise sinks into him unevenly—sweet and sour at once. He feels seen, cherished even, and yet reduced to something useful, something already decided.

Under the table, Jingxiang’s thumb presses lightly against his knuckle.

A quiet reassurance or, maybe, a promise.

Sungmin can’t tell which makes him feel worse.

────‪‪❤︎‬────