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The thing was, it had been nothing. San was certain of this. He had been certain of it from the moment it happened, all the way through the encore, through the van ride back, through the elevator and the corridor and the door of his hotel room, and he was still certain of it now, pacing the small stretch of carpet between the bed and the window while Wooyoung lay across his bed like he owned it and said absolutely nothing in the most irritating way possible.
"It was nothing," San said, in case the room needed to hear it again.
"Sure," Wooyoung said.
"Fanservice. We do it every night."
"You do."
"Exactly." San stopped pacing. "I do. That's my point. I do it all the time. I do it with Jongho, I do it with you, it means nothing, it's for the fans, and Yeosang knows that, and I know that, and —"
"Sure, fanservice. What are you so wound up about then?"
San started pacing again.
The problem was that Yeosang had gone off script. San had pressed a kiss to Yeosang's cheek the way he had a hundred times before, easy and automatic, the kind of thing his body did without consulting him. And Yeosang had turned his head, just slightly, and kissed his cheek back. Soft. Deliberate. And then turned back to the crowd like he had simply returned a pen someone had handed him.
San had stood there for three full beats before his legs remembered what they were supposed to be doing.
It had been nothing. Yeosang was like that, he drifted into things and drifted back out, he didn't always track what he was doing, everyone knew this. He had probably not even registered the geography of it. He had probably been thinking about something else entirely. The next song. Whether the setlist was running long. Literally anything.
"He was just going along with it," San said. "You know how he is. He just lets things happen."
"Mm," Wooyoung said.
San turned to look at him. Wooyoung was scrolling his phone with the focused serenity of someone who was absolutely paying attention to every single thing happening in this room and finding it extremely entertaining. San wanted to throw a pillow at his face. He did not, because he needed Wooyoung to confirm this was a normal reaction to an unexpected moment and throwing pillows would complicate that.
He started pacing again. The carpet was not long enough for the kind of pacing this situation required but he was working with what he had.
The thing about Yeosang was that he was very pretty. That was just a fact, an objective and widely acknowledged fact that had nothing to do with anything. San was a person with functioning eyes who had spent years standing next to someone like that, and it would be strange if he hadn't noticed. It would be weirder, actually. It would suggest something was wrong with him.
So yes, he noticed. Of course he noticed. Everyone noticed. That was just Yeosang's whole situation, it wasn't personal. Everyone liked to look at pretty things. It was refreshing for the soul.
And yes, San touched him a lot. During practice, when Yeosang was about to walk into a monitor because he had drifted somewhere internal and lost track of his own body in space. When he lost his balance during a formation change and San's hand was just there, automatic, catching him by the arm or the shoulder or whatever was closest. He did it because someone had to, because Yeosang moved through the world at a slight remove from it and the world had edges and San had fast reflexes. It was practically a safety concern. Anyone would do it.
And then there was the other thing. The way Yeosang looked when something caught his attention for real, the moment he actually locked in and focused. He got very still. His expression changed in a way that was hard to describe and easy to notice if you were paying attention, which San was, because San paid attention to the people around him. It had nothing to do with Yeosang specifically. Even though Yeosang was especially cute in those moments and could bring out San's cuteness aggression.
Last week at training he had brought drinks for everyone and a cake, the specific kind Yeosang had mentioned once, three weeks earlier, in passing. He had been at the bakery anyway. He had seen it and thought of Yeosang and bought it. That was called being a good teammate. That was completely normal behavior that said nothing about anything. He did the same for Jongho. He would never do it for Seonghwa, though, because that guy took sick pleasure in eating the last strawberry mochi every time San had some in the fridge.
It was fine. It was completely normal. Anyone who spent enough time around Yeosang would end up paying attention to him and would want to care for him, and maybe also give him a kiss or two. That was just what happened.
San stopped pacing. He sat down on the edge of the bed. He looked at Wooyoung, who was looking back at him with the expression of someone who had already arrived somewhere and was waiting.
"He's pretty, and cute, obviously everyone thinks so, that's not —" San stopped. Started again. "And when he drifts you want to catch him, you don’t want him to be hurt, you just —" He heard his voice doing something he hadn't authorized. "You want to be there. You want to be the one he turns to when —"
He stopped. The room was very quiet.
Wooyoung looked up from his phone. He looked at San for one long second.
Then he started laughing.
It was not a short laugh. It was the laugh of someone who had been waiting patiently for a specific thing to happen and had just watched it happen exactly on schedule. San sat on the edge of the bed and listened to it and did not say anything because there was nothing left to say.
"Sure," Wooyoung said, when he had finished. "We all feel that way about Yeosang." A pause. "And then there's you."
"I hate you," San said. He grabbed the pillow and put it over his face.
Wooyoung made a sound that was not quite a laugh. He was smiling though. San could tell without looking. He kept thinking about it anyway. The turn of Yeosang's head. The soft press of it. Two seconds, then back to the crowd, easy, uncomplicated, completely unaware.
Damn it. He was going to have to stand next to him at practice on Monday.