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Jo has never met a vacant practice room that didn't beg him to be in it.
There's something about the echo of that emptiness, still impossibly loud even when everyone else has gone. It's a different kind of cacophony, the air vents whispering and creak of the building as it settles, the fluorescent buzz of the overhead lighting, bright white and abrasive. He likes the sound of his footsteps, thunderous and clear, when he drills the choreography over and over. Every thud, scrape and squeal as the rubber soles of his sneakers slide along the polished vinyl. The scattered rhythm of his breathing and the metronomic pound of his own heart.
These things are his. Personal. Hard fought and hard won. He likes the way it feels to deserve something. Likes the sweat at his brow and his heels going numb and the ache in his molars, jaw snapped shut, grinding down to focus. Alone like this, he doesn't even play the music out loud. He doesn't need to. He already knows it. Every note, by heart.
There are lots of things Jo knows.
He knows he's tired. He knows his ankles are starting to hurt. He knows it's getting late, and he should probably go home before he sprains something.
He also knows that his foot work could be cleaner—that his arms still look awkward at the end of the second chorus and his expressions aren't nearly relaxed enough. Not yet.
One of the lights flickers. A pipe squeals down the hall and the air-con kicks on, hissing through the hollow space. It rings like an exhale. Like the building itself is a beast begging more of him. Growling still, even after all he's fed it.
Jo rolls away the ache in his neck. He knows he'll keep pushing even if he doesn't know why. Push until it's perfect. Until it feels earned.
"Jojo."
Euijoo materializes in the doorway. Jo can see Euijoo's reflection in the mirror, though his back is still to him. He hadn't heard him come in despite the studio's utter silence, ears still ringing with residual commotion from the eight straight hours of practice with the music blaring.
Euijoo's willowy silhouette glows, back lit with light from the hall. His voice is mild, sweet like always, but his eyes are alight with unease. They say everything his mouth doesn't, deep brown and wide like saucers. The perpetually upturned corners of his lips fight a frown.
A motorbike engine revs on the street below and Jo blinks when its tires shriek over the asphalt. The noise sets his teeth on edge. He says nothing, but his jaw tightens. A minuscule thing. Just the tiniest contraction.
Euijoo exhales, long and knowing. He's a good leader. The best, really.
"Jojo," Euijoo says again, somehow, impossibly softer.
Jo turns away from the mirror then, meets Euijoo's gaze beyond their reflections. His shoulders shrug awkwardly, shrinking on instinct, fingers fumbling to fuss with a hangnail on his pinky. He thinks Euijoo looks lovely even as this awful down lighting casts shadows over his face. Lean and gentle. Skin clinging to bone, honey tan and clear, collar bones peeking out from the loose neck of his t-shirt. Euijoo's hair has dried fluffy near the nape of his neck from sweating all day and his under eyes are kissed with the light purple hue of exhaustion.
A petal of guilt blooms in Jo's stomach. He hadn't expected anyone to wait. Of course not, he would never want that. He hadn't meant to hold Euijoo up. He'd only wanted to run the chorus again. Just once more—twice maybe—but when he checks the clock over the door it's already past eleven.
God. The last van must have left ages ago. They'll need to take a cab back.
Jo's wheels spin, cheeks pink with self-reproach and Euijoo observes, lashes fluttering thoughtfully against the tops of his cheeks before crossing the room. He floats, footsteps soundless, as he approaches and sets a hand on Jo's waist, palm bleeding warmth through the fabric of the younger boy's tank top.
Jo's ears flush, hot red resignation on contact. He curls himself down slightly, shoulders sagging as his whole body reacts to the sensation. Euijoo's touch buzzes all the way up the back of his neck. It's an odd feeling. Entirely affecting, standing at the crossroad of recognition and desire. Euijoo has such a wonderful serenity about him, eyes shining like dew drops in the day's first rays of sun, thumb rubbing tiny circles above the protrusion of Jo's hip bone.
The hinge of Jo's jaw creaks to slacken, relaxing into the older's embrace. He unspools under Euijoo's hands, stops vibrating, slowly coming to realize that this is perhaps the calmest he's felt all day. The comforting caress of Euijoo's fingers at his side, finally enough to lull him out of fight or flight and stop the endless loop of music playing in his head. He melts into the relief of the single layer between them. Thin cotton and nothing else.
Euijoo smells of early spring. Something clean and close to citrus. So distinctly Euijoo, but also a bit like Yudai. This close, Jo can pick out the woody heart notes of the eldest's cologne. A faint amber and powdery spice lingering in the gap of closing space between them. Euijoo must be wearing one of Yudai's shirts. Borrowed, or insisted upon. Yudai likes that kind of thing. Laying claim when he dresses them up in his clothes. Using all the same room sprays and fabric softeners and shampoos. A perpetual whisper of him. Always around, even when he isn't.
Jo thinks it feels good to be loved like that. An echo of the three of them in everything. He has the strongest urge to drop his forehead to Euijoo's shoulder and breathe the scent in, to savor the coalescence of them but stops himself just short of folding. He sighs instead, unlacing, leaning into the touch when Euijoo brings his free hand up to cup the left side of his face. Euijoo's skin is so soft. His fingers, unimaginably delicate as the pad of his thumb glides over Jo's cheekbone.
Jo's eyes flutter closed involuntarily and through the thin skin of his eyelids he sees the shadow of Euijoo's head tilting back and forth watching his expression thaw, cheek pressed to the heat of his palm. He opens his eyes again sometime later. Dazed, but practically reborn. His pulse has slowed. Exhales, coming even and steady. He can't say how long it's been. Seconds, minutes maybe, but a wave of gooseflesh breaks out over his arms the instant his gaze locks back on Euijoo. If one could feel their own pupils dilate, Jo imagines that such a sense would plague him.
It's funny really, only a centimeter or two between them and somehow, they both still manage to look up at each other.
"I didn't wait long—promise. I only wanted to take you home," Euijoo says, smiling lightly.
He's lying, obviously. Euijoo is such a bad liar. Yudai always says so, and Jo can't help but think about how right he is even if he's too endeared to care.
Euijoo chuckles. A low, benevolent thing that vibrates the space between them and leaves Jo feeling boneless. The light casts a deep shadow over his mouth, lips bruised a tormenting shade of cherry and Jo registers, with alarming intensity, how much he wants to kiss him. In fact, if Euijoo keeps looking at him like that, he thinks he could dissolve right here.
He can only nod as Euijoo takes his arm, fleeing the studio hand in hand, air-con still hissing behind them.
Jo succumbs to their gravity on the ride back. He can't stop himself from nosing into Euijoo's neck, lips brushing over the worn cotton collar of his t-shirt. It's dark, pale moonlight casting their profiles pearl and a breeze blowing in through the cracked window of the taxi as the city blurs past them.
It's amazing how weightless he feels now, light as a feather while he breathes Euijoo in. Their scent is the strongest at the juncture of Euijoo's shoulder. Grounding, bright mandarin undercut with briny sweat and Yudai's cologne. Jo's jaw throbs with it. Something primal. He's close to purring when he folds his hand possessively across Euijoo's thigh and squeezes, pulling their legs flush together.
Now that he's got a taste for it, he can't help but want more. He misses Yudai's hands on him. He misses Euijoo even though he's right here. Jo wonders why everyone describes love as a soft feeling, because for him it aches. Sprouts legs and fangs to slither behind his eyes and carve out space in the cavity of his chest. A bite here, a sting there, crawling his skin day in, day out.
It's blessedly loud with the windows down. The wonderful kind of noise outside of Jo's head instead of in it and he feels drunk on the resonance. On the wind and the scent of the three of them. On the texture of gooseflesh raising over Euijoo's skin where the pout of Jo's mouth meets his clavicle, dragging his lips along the jut of the bone.
Euijoo shudders, but Jo can feel him smiling even as he feigns indifference. He's managing his expression, but Jo knows Euijoo loves this even if he's still playing the good leader.
There are lots of things Jo knows.
He knows Yuma will pretend to be pissed that he bailed on starting that new anime together to stay back and practice.
He knows that the shower will inevitably run lukewarm because Harua always exhausts the hot water when he’s first in the rotation.
He knows Euijoo will hold his hand the whole drive back, tracing the lines of his palm. That when they get home and Euijoo drops him off upstairs, he'll kiss both corners of Jo's mouth sweetly before coaxing his tongue in slow enough to burn. He knows that after Euijoo kisses him stupid, the older will hike back down the two extra flights of stairs he didn't have to climb, but did anyway, just keep their fingers laced a while longer.
He knows that when he walks into his bedroom, Yudai will be there, freshly showered with his hair splayed out over the pillows because Euijoo will have texted him to wait up. He knows the two of them will always dote on him that way and has half a mind to be ashamed about it if only he could find it in himself to compartmentalize the overwhelming fondness.
He knows he'll laugh, bass and dulcet, while Yudai helps him undress despite his halfhearted attempts to swat the older away and that he'll tremble fiercely, a fawn on new legs, when Yudai presses a kiss to the nape of his neck before herding him through the shower. He knows Yudai will stand in the steam of the bathroom to help him dry his hair after. That he'll tuck Jo into bed, only to walk halfway to the door before sighing, doubling back and crawling under the sheets beside him even though Jo's bed is much too small to fit them both comfortably.
Still, Jo knows that he will fall asleep immediately, head heavy, Yudai’s exhales tickling his ear and the expanse of his right palm still tingling from where Euijoo cradled it.
These things are his. Personal. And though they have never felt earned, they are still his anyway. Entirely perfect without practice or sweat at his brow.
He's never really known how to feel about that. Relieved maybe, or grateful.
All the same, it is finally quiet.
Jo thinks he's always liked hotel rooms.
They're a blank page. Novelty, only in fractional increments. All clean lines and white linens, just new enough to flutter his stomach. Four walls he hasn't lived behind and carpet he's never walked on, but still thoroughly predictable. There will always be a remote on the dresser, tiny soaps in the bathroom, curtains that never quite close properly, and perhaps his favorite thing, a bed large enough to accommodate three people over one hundred and eighty-three centimeters at the same time.
The sun is setting. A soft stream of orange light beams in through the curtains, washing peach over the linens.
The day has not been kind. A long, grueling thing that's left Jo's skin too tight and his nail beds gnawed into. He's exhausted—barely managed to drag himself through the shower after rehearsal, hair still wet and trickling beads of water down the back of his neck to dampen the collar of his sweatshirt.
Yudai is sprawled out over the sheets, long limbs stretched across the bed of their shared room like he owns the place with Euijoo tucked prettily against his side, legs curled and looking terribly small for someone of his stature. They're dozing together, soft exhales harmonizing.
Jo feels fizzy as he regards them. Impossibly weary from the day's events, yet undeniably restless as remnants of adrenaline buzz through his veins, mind still racing with misstepped footwork and scathing criticism from the festival director. He's bouncing his leg, perched on a chair in the corner of the room. His sketch book sits in his lap, a graphite pencil staining the tips of his fingers black as he spins the lead over his knuckles. Without much thought, his left hand takes to scribbling, tracing over the page in self-soothing arches and, before he knows it, he's got the shape of them. A good outline. Narrow strokes and soft shading. The subtle tilt of Euijoo's mouth pressed into a sleepy pout against Yudai's shoulder and the shade cast from the length of the Yudai's lashes tickling the tops of his cheeks. A simple portrait of their fingers tangled together resting across the eldest's stomach.
In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.
Jo doesn't realize he's breathing in time with the two of them until his shoulders start to fall. He feels lighter with a pencil in hand, bolstered by the fact that his two favorite subjects are arranged attractively, pillows ruffled around them in perfect composition with golden light spilling in to frame their faces.
At home, his desk is littered with drawings of Yudai's eyes and Euijoo's hands. Pages upon pages of irises and knuckles. Cuticles and fluttering eyelids. One hundred and thirty-four eyelashes on Yudai's left eye and one hundred and twenty-six on his right. Every line of Euijoo's palm, an inscribed memory— learned in kind and mastered insofar that he could map them should anyone ask.
Jo wishes he would have packed his colored pencils. He'll need to remember the color of their cheeks flushed apricot. To come back to this later and take his time to blush them as vividly as he sees them now.
Yudai stirs on the bed, exposing the porcelain skin of his abdomen where his shirt rides up. Euijoo scrunches his nose, roused by the movement and shifts, blinking his eyes open.
Jo meets his gaze like a cautious deer. Not startled, it's far too gentle for that, though he still feels caught. He flushes as a small, tired smile creeps onto Euijoo's face. The older extends an arm, waving him over, and Jo matches Euijoo's smile, but shakes his head shyly before returning to his drawing. He's made quite a good start on the sketch, chest still humming with the low thrum of anxiety, and he'd rather not waste the momentum. The temptation of another illustration to tuck away, too enthralling to surrender.
Euijoo presses his lips thin. He blows out a tiny breath, amused, and lifts his head to rouse Yudai from his cat nap. Euijoo pecks a series of languid kisses to the side of the older's neck, tongue flicking out over Yudai's jugular. "You need to tell Jo to come to bed. He won't listen to me."
Yudai cracks one of his eyes open, squinting against the light, growing dimmer as the day wanes. He hugs Euijoo close, arms circling his waist, then narrows his gaze to Jo across the room.
"Come here Jojo," Yudai calls, near a whisper, voice clinging to the gravel of sleep.
Jo taps his pencil to the page, marking up one of the corners. He shakes his head again, a rare blaze of autonomy flaring through him. No bite. A hard sell for defiance by any measure considering the soft smile tugging his mouth up, but the lingering restlessness emboldens him. Jo always goes easily. This time, just once, he wants to push.
Yudai gets this look in his eye then, a sparkling glint of a challenge. It reminds Jo that Yudai is still an athlete at heart; that even after all these years he can't bring himself to back down when denied.
A clever smirk distorts the older's face when he speaks, measured, stressing each word. "Feeling independent today, are we?" Yudai asks, quirking his eyebrow. His timbre drips with honey.
Jo's breath hitches, already affected from the change in tone. Yudai props himself up on his elbows and Euijoo sits up alongside him, expression wide and curious. The eldest's eyes flick down to Jo's sketch pad.
"How do we look then?"
Jo's mouth opens, then closes again. The words dissolve on his tongue. He could write novels on the two of them, wallpaper rooms with adjectives if only he could find the words. That's always been his problem though. Finding the words. The perfect praise in a barrage of lovely things. The penultimate tribute to everything wonderful and gorgeous and unbearably tender about them. He thanks the sun and stars that a picture is worth a thousand.
Jo steels himself, spins the pencil once more and summons the only adjective he can muster with two pairs of glorious eyes burrowing into him. A simple sentiment, glowing with the brilliant truth.
"Beautiful," he says.
Yudai smiles. Blinding white. He cocks his chin proudly.
"Really?"
"Like always," Jo whispers, pink dusting his cheekbones. A delicious feeling makes home in his chest as he says it.
Euijoo scoffs fondly, bending to mouth at Yudai's shoulder, and the eldest preens under the attention. Jo watches the ember in Yudai's eye catch flame.
"Well, why don't we give you something interesting to draw then?" Yudai teases. "Something more dynamic."
Jo swallows. He blinks, the sheets ruffling as the older two shift closer.
Yudai stretches to catch Euijoo by the chin, the pads of his fingers sinking in to either side of Euijoo's cheeks, dark eyes dragging over his face.
It's like torture how slow he leans in, how lazily he runs his tongue along the seam of Euijoo's lips, kitten licking at the pout of them. Still pliant with fatigue, Euijoo submits. He giggles into Yudai mouth and smiles sleepily, opening up, tilting his own head to deepen the kiss.
They look so pretty like this. Flushed from their nap, eager hands already dipping under t-shirts and fingers tangling in the hair at the back of each other's necks. Jo can't imagine he'll ever tire of it. His mouth waters as he thumbs over a new sheet of paper in his sketch pad, fingers twitching to commemorate the scene playing before him.
Jo likes it when Yudai kisses Euijoo's neck. Euijoo makes all these charmed little sounds that get Yudai laughing, and oh— when Yudai laughs it makes Jo laugh too. Full and bright and real.
Yudai crawls over into Euijoo's lap. He starts whispering pet names, tugging Euijoo's earlobe between his teeth, and Jo sketches the shapes his mouth makes around the words. Baby. Angel. Darling. Yudai peppers kisses across Euijoo's jaw only to nip at the pout of his bottom lip until Euijoo relents, licking back into his mouth with equal vehemence.
It doesn't take long before Jo starts to fidget. The once confident lines of his sketch grow thin and reedy with every passing second, grip turning sloppy as his eyes start to linger at the view. Dawdling, spinning the pencil over his knuckles when Euijoo peels Yudai's shirt off, Euijoo's own quick to follow under the heat of eldest's hungry hands.
Things devolve quickly. The quiet gives way to breathy exhales, soft moans and the wet lap of mouths sliding together. Jo crosses and uncrosses his legs. He scribbles a line or two, then stops entirely, pencil balanced between two of his fingers, and soon enough all impetus flees him. It pales in comparison to the throb of desire nearly doubling him over.
It's a shame really. He'd like them memorialized this way. Just once, he wishes he could draw them properly. More than the half-sketched mess he makes when he's too turned on to worry himself with precision. He would paint miles of canvas in their image if he could. Every tiny detail. Each stray hair falling over Euijoo's brow and the crease of the dimple Yudai's thumbprint leaves, pressing against Euijoo's carotid. Consumed with the will to enshrine it.
At home, when they get time to themselves, Jo tries all the time. He'll ask nicely. Fuss over the lighting, then sit down near the edge of the bed with his pencils and say—just a minute, I want to remember— pen eagerly scribbling, eyes flicking back and forth from the tangle of the older two to the page, again and again. Watching them adorn swaths of bare skin with bite marks, soothing over the bruises. Kissing and touching and aching until, inevitably, Jo's kettle boils over.
His kettle always boils over.
It's singing now, high and bright, as he swallows the saliva pooling in his mouth and attempts to refocus on defining the shadow of Yudai's collarbones, the lines of his abdomen and the chisel of his jaw as it works against Euijoo's torso. Pretty pink tongue gliding wet trails over Euijoo's chest. A nip at the swell of his ribs and a bright red mark sucked to the skin even the stylists won't see.
It's times like these that Jo wishes a sketch were more than just a static image. He thinks if only he could capture the kinetic shift of Euijoo's expression when Yudai swallows him, he would want it tattooed. Every inch of skin etched with the image of them.
That scares him. It thrills him too.
His mouth has dropped open to gawk. The drawing, long abandoned amid Yudai's low purrs and Euijoo's panting. In response to a particularly affecting whine from Euijoo, Jo jams the lead of his pencil into the page, tasting iron, teeth driving deeper into the flesh of his tongue.
Yudai flits his eyes up to Jo across the room. He holds his stare the whole time as he sinks down once more on Euijoo before pulling off, a thin strand of saliva connecting him to his last transgression. The eldest's lips are licked raw, blushed an electrifying shade of crimson. Euijoo blinks his eyes open, shivering with pleasure, long lashes clumped with tears. He stares. At Jo, or maybe through him.
The pencil snaps, wood splintering across the page.
A victor's grin splits Yudai's face in half.
"You'll come to bed now, won't you Jojo?"
Jo can't find the words to answer. He never can. Perhaps because there's nothing more to say. He just nods, as if the choice was ever really his to begin with.
They flee the scene the next morning, hair mused and dressed in each other’s clothes. In their wake, a mess of black graphite smudges stain the crisp white hotel linens.
The incidental deposit charge comes two days later with a long repetitive scolding from their manager as they lounge against each other in the green room. Euijoo kisses Jo's knuckles and Yudai flashes a blinding smile as he whispers something teasing.
Jo blushes. He pays the fine, gladly.
Jo's heart hammers out of his chest.
It's been one of those days where a portion of yogurt, three iced americanos and a caffeine pill on an otherwise empty stomach has somehow managed to float him to half past six in the evening and by the time he thanks the driver and steps out of the van toward the dorm, his eyes are already welling. He doesn't even make it all the way to the elevator before hot tears are streaking down his face.
It's nothing really, only everything in general.
It's the schedule, mostly. The lengthy shoots. It's the fact that he can count on one hand the number of hours he's slept in the last two days. It's the late nights and even earlier mornings. It's landing in Korea at 7am, then passing out on the couch in their dorm back in Tokyo just before midnight on the same day. It's more flights, more recording, dance practice, tour prep, running on fumes and good will.
It's nothing really, only hardships he should be grateful for.
Still, Jo can't stop the tears from falling.
Fuck. He really is sorry.
Taki does his best not to look too worried when Jo stumbles through the front door. The younger boy hugs him tight, dries a few stray tears with his sleeve and sets him down at the table before flitting from the stove to the fridge and back until a bowl of gyudon wafts a layer of steam over Jo's face. Taki practically force feeds him the first bite, breaking him of his tearful catatonia before retreating to the living room.
Jo can hear Taki on the phone. Hushed whispers of "how long" and "he needs you". He doesn't bother asking who Taki called. He already knows. Euijoo's flight back from Seoul won't be in until tomorrow afternoon, but he'd noticed Yudai's running shoes missing from the genkan.
Taki returns to keep Jo company at the table, trying and failing to appear apathetic while scrolling his phone. He hums softly, fidgeting around the loaded silence until the metallic whir of the lock interrupts. There's some rustling in the hall before Yudai strides into the kitchen looking every bit as ethereal as always, clad in his running gear, neck flushed pink from catching his breath. His chest heaves with the effort of someone who's just cut a thirty minute ETA to fifteen.
Yudai ruffles Taki's hair in greeting and reaches out to pinch one of the younger boy's cheeks between his fingers. He seems characteristically calm, steadfast like usual, but something in the tense of his shoulders gives him away. When Jo really looks, he can see the slight tremor of Yudai's hand and the light behind his eyes dimmed with concern.
Sensing the dense atmosphere, Taki excuses himself to his room, leaving the two of them with a soft smile and a firm squeeze to Jo's hand.
Jo's eyes are still watering when Yudai replaces Taki across the table. The eldest sighs, observing. He tracks the wet lines down Jo's face all the way to his chin where rolling tears drip off onto the table. Yudai's mouth is set in a discerning pout, eyes softening as he reaches out to cover Jo's hand with his own, soothing on contact.
A familiar twinge of guilt twists in Jo's chest. It ricochets off the bars behind which he so carefully keeps it. Crying like this, in front of Yudai of all people, feels selfish.
"I'm fine," Jo squeaks, voice watery. "I'm only tired. That's all."
It comes out thin.
Yudai's thumb traces over the ridge of his knuckles and Jo wonders if Yudai and Euijoo have always been well versed in saying so much without speaking or if it's a skill they've mastered with him in mind.
The way Yudai looks at him—Jo can't help but shiver. His whole body lights up under the weight of the eldest's gaze.
Yudai takes another breath, then rises and pulls Jo up to stand. He's still holding his hand when he draws them nose to nose, leaning in to press the softest kiss to the skin beneath one of Jo's eyes. A tiny pool of tears gathers there, trapped from falling by the older's lips. Yudai pulls back, only to lean in once more to kiss down the side of Jo's face, pecking away the tear tracks, slow and thoughtful, all the way down to the line of his jaw. Yudai licks at the pearls of saline beaded there. His tongue is hot against the skin, slicked with spit and perspiration. After laving most of the tears, he finally drags over to catch Jo's mouth with his own.
Jo tastes himself on the older's lips. Salt, vanilla chapstick and the powdery talc of his bleeding makeup. The air between them is wild with humidity, but he sinks into their embrace like breathing, gasping lightly when Yudai pries his mouth open. For the first time all day, Jo can't hear his heart pounding in his ears. A perpetual blessing of Yudai's presence. All the things their eldest carries and still, he grants this peace. Jo lets himself melt, a total acquiescence, wilting against the older as Yudai's hands drift down to his hips to hold him. They stay like that for a long while, kissing until the calm takes root in his gums.
It's nothing really. Only everything.
Eventually, Yudai tugs him by the hand and leads them to the bathroom. Yudai takes his time there, washing Jo's hair, mouthing over the planes of his back, and every time his lip threatens to quiver, Yudai pushes him softly up against the tile to kiss away the wobble.
Jo is out of his body by the time they crawl under the covers together. He rests his head to the eldest's chest, listening to his heartbeat. Forty-eight pulses in the sixty seconds it takes for Yudai to settle and fish out his phone.
Euijoo answers on the second ring.
No one says hello, but a single pitiful sniffle and another long sigh is all it takes for Euijoo to start cooing into the receiver. He praises Jo endlessly and Yudai nods along, tapping kisses to the crown of Jo's head until he's liquid. Molten from the inside out, like his fascia has dissolved into a viscous goo binding him together.
It goes silent for a while. Jo, feeling unzipped and the three of them breathing together. He rubs the fabric of the sheet between his forefinger and thumb, still restless. An unquiet energy bubbles up his throat, wholly unlike his usual demeanor. The manifestation of a fatigue so all consuming that his body feels too small to hold it. Jo hasn't anywhere to put it all. He thinks he ought to cry again or maybe scream.
Just then, as if clairvoyant, Euijoo hums, shifting in the sheets of his own bed an ocean away and Yudai leans in to whisper against the shell of Jo's ear.
"Talk to us Jojo. Tell us something good," Yudai breathes.
Jo chokes on something half-way between a laugh and a sob. To be known, they say.
He yields. For them, he thinks he always will.
Jo starts to talk, throat ragged from crying and too tired to be self-conscious. Once the words start to flow, they don't stop, even as his eyes begin to weigh. Yudai and Euijoo praise him. They tell him they love his voice and with every sentence Jo feels himself sink further into the mattress. He thinks if they asked, he could talk for hours so long as he knew they were listening.
Jo tells them about home. He talks about his mother's garden, and the pattern of the Persian rug in his father's office, and the downy gray fleece of Mint's fur. About his brothers and all the ways they used to play. He talks about his school days. About drawing in the library for hours after class and how sometimes he wouldn't go home until well after dark. He prattles about night study, about the snack cart and how all the prettiest girls used to leave sweets in his locker and sports drinks on his desk, but he never knew what to say to them after "thank you". He holds the phone close, deliriously whispering about everything that comes to mind and eventually falls asleep with his nose pressed between Yudai's shoulder blades and Euijoo's crackling exhales in his ear.
He comes to eleven hours later, a Poccari Sweat and two Hi-Chew candies waiting on his pillow. The sheets still smell faintly of Yudai's perfume. After rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he stumbles from the cave of his room to find Yudai in the kitchen fiddling with the dishes.
Jo clears his throat, the candied aftertaste lingering on his tongue, honey thick with glucose and citric acid. The sports drink bottle dangles loosely in his grip.
"Thank you," he says quietly, voice still leaden with sleep.
Yudai smiles. A knowing thing. Terribly smug. "Sleep well?"
Jo scoffs, head full of confetti. He crosses the room in two quick strides to kiss Yudai up against the cabinets just because he can, tasting of electrolytes and artificial strawberry, and when Yudai laughs into his mouth, Jo has to hold himself back from trying to swallow it.
They spend the day in bed.
Euijoo finds the mess of them when he gets in around three, both bare beneath the covers, lips swollen and chests littered with marks. He joins them the best he can in a bed so small, lying atop each other. Sharp elbows to the ribs and knocking knees. Trading whispers and stomach aching bouts of laughter until one of them ends up on the floor and they resolve to simply drag the duvets out to the living room to lounge together with more leg room.
Taki, sweet as he is, spares himself the potential to overhear anything compromising by fleeing downstairs for the night to tuck himself away with Yuma and Maki.
At Jo's request, they have a picnic. He helps Euijoo fix three portions of ramen for dinner while Yudai makes a run to the convenience store for snacks and they spend the whole evening feeding each other butter chips, snapping chopsticks and giggling between bites.
By midnight, they're nothing more than a jumble of too long limbs heaped on the living room floor. Blue light from the TV sets the room aglow and Yudai's fingers card through Jo's hair, scratching along his scalp as a Korean film plays in the background.
Jo can hardly focus long enough to understand any of the dialogue with Euijoo mouthing at his jugular, tongue prodding lightly over the artery just enough for him to feel his own heartbeat stutter under the pressure. His eyes slip closed with the sensation, feeling so unbound that it's as if the hard lines of his person hood start to fade. In time, there are hands on him everywhere and he can no longer tell whose. Only that somewhere in the crawl of fingers toward his hips and hot press of palms to his torso, he gives himself up. Adrift in the lapping waves of an ocean halcyon. Bathed in a cobalt sheen of light, wrapped in sheets washed with matching fabric softener, they are his and he is theirs, in sum and totality.
He wakes the next morning with a stiff neck and his bones full of stardust. Late morning light spills through the blinds and the apartment smells of Taki's cooking.
One of them, probably Euijoo, had the sense to redress them halfway during the night, and with that blessed foresight comes Nicholas' cackle from the hall and Maki crawling his way into their pile to prod at Yudai's ribs until the eldest bullies him into a headlock.
The other members trickle in slowly for breakfast on a rare day off, taking time to poke fun at the three of them turned inside out for each other.
"Think you could quit making out long enough to help set the table?"
"You guys are fucking gross. Someone open a window, it smells like sex in here."
"Oh my god— spare us the details please."
Yudai pecks the nape of Euijoo's neck and nips fondly at Jo's ear before hauling himself up to tease Taki about the eggs he's frying and Euijoo graces Jo with the softest stare he's ever seen, only to tap a sweet kiss to the inside of his wrist before rising to help Fuma set out the silverware.
Jo yawns. He gathers up the duvets strewn over the floor and sets off down the hall toward the laundry room. He loses the detergent cap behind the machine, fiddles with the settings too long and spills fabric softener everywhere, but despite the mishaps, when he catches a glimpse of himself in the glass window of the washer, he's still smiling so wide it looks painful.
It's almost embarrassing how clear his eyes are, cheeks flushed rosy from the heat of his own breath, dwelling on the portrait of the three of them from the night before. Jo shoves his nose into the sheets he's cradling and breathes in, holds it in his lungs to brand the scent there. His jaw throbs. Every sense, engulfed with affection.
He can hear Maki humming something loudly from the other room, Nicholas and Harua poking fun. Fuma's belly laugh and Yuma and Taki bickering over something ridiculous.
"Jojo," Euijoo sings down the hall. "We're waiting on you."
A chorus of his name follows from the others. Bright and harmonic.
Sometimes Jo thinks he must have dreamed them up. These people. This life. His heart could burst. They live there in its chambers.
They've always called him Jojo. He once asked Euijoo why and it still floods his chest with warmth to think of his answer.
Once doesn't feel like enough, he said. We can't help but call you twice.
"Jojo, hurry up!"
It's Yudai this time. His voice is gentle but deliberate and Jo can hear his smile even though he can't see it.
Jo's cheeks are starting to ache from the strain of his own grin. He chuckles under his breath and leaves the laundry half done, two syllables weighing his name instead of one. Somehow, lighter for it still.
Jo has never met a vacant practice room that didn't beg him to be in it.
It is a different day. There's something inevitable and new to practice for, but this—this is always the same. He has his hand on the doorknob, ready to press in. The echo sings to him. The silence that isn't really silence. The familiar buzz of the overhead lighting and hum of the air-con, perpetually beguiling.
It's late. The moon hangs low and yellow in the sky, constellations glimmering above the city. The last van idles in the parking lot with its passenger door open and taillights flashing.
Jo knows he should get in it. He knows just as well that he shouldn't.
Even from the hall, he can see his beckoning reflection in the mirror. Ten minutes it says. Just the bridge. You're still late in the first chorus. His grip tightens on the knob, gums aching from grinding his teeth. The glass fogs when he exhales against the window, forehead pressed to the cool plate of the door.
He has to wonder if he's damned in perpetuity to find himself here. To circle this endless merit forever, heart rattling inside his chest, wondering why he has to bleed to feel he's earned it. Maybe that says something about him, or maybe it's not for him to know.
Just then, a series of footsteps sounds from behind him. The symmetry of long, agile strides that Jo would know anywhere. It's the same drum of feet that haunt his dreams. The same heel-toe rhythm that walks him up the stairs and pounds the pavement to race to his rescue.
Yudai rounds the corner first with Euijoo just behind, whispering about something, glossy lips glinting under the awful down lighting. The bags under their eyes mirror Jo's own. Matching lilac crescents that Jo aches to press his mouth to.
A standoff begins when he meets their stare. A battle of resolve, waged within the confines of his skull. The hallway distorts in Jo's vision, stretching and widening like a mouth, harsh white light beaming down to frame Euijoo and Yudai at the opposite end. From here, they look like twin angels come to save him. Like one hundred and eighty-six centimeters of celestial being, halos and all, looming just beyond the edge of the corridor.
Jo doesn't tell them how he found himself here. It would only be redundant. They know it all, better than anyone. Every ounce of his substance. His triumphs and flaws. Every crack beneath the surface that they pour their own light through. Their gentle fingers have skimmed down the knots of his spine, have knit him back together as his seams have come loose. He is their gold lacquered kintsugi, carefully mended by deft hands and displayed on their highest shelf.
"Jojo," Euijoo says dreamily. It comes out near a whisper and reverberates through the hallway. His smile falters slightly at Jo's countenance, reading the mood and exchanging glances with Yudai. They speak nothing aloud, but they don't need to.
In the vacuum of this moment, words couldn't possibly say more than the look on Yudai's face, brows furrowed and the quirk of his lips so humane it turns Jo's bones to dust. It is not a pitying look. Not even close. They have never made him feel small. Even like this, marred and beaten by the whip of perfection at his own expense. They look him right in the eye, swim in his irises so that they might see him whole. So that they might come to understand him and offer up something sacred of themselves to absorb the collateral damage.
At once, they move to close the empty space between them. Two bodies, one entity, pattering lightly down the hall until Jo is enveloped by the scent of them, spring green and powdery amber flooding his senses. Euijoo takes Jo's free hand in his to massage the tendons and Yudai tucks his chin over Jo's shoulder to nose at the shell of his ear. Their proximity alone is an abatement. It strips Jo down to his studs and foundation. Trims away his defense until all that remains is the frame of this home they've built together, three names carved into the free-standing wood.
In real time, they untie the knot of him. He lets go of the doorknob. Euijoo takes Jo's dropped hand to knead a flush back into the blanched knuckles and Yudai taps a kiss to Jo's temple.
"Let's go home baby," Yudai whispers. Soft and sweet and alluring.
Euijoo leans in too, brushing a few stray hairs away from Jo's face. "Come on sweetheart."
Euijoo brings the back of Jo's hand to his mouth and runs the swell of his lips along the skin. Jo shivers and meets the eyes of his own reflection in the mirror again. He grasps the weight of it, but it disintegrates in his hands, chest suddenly swollen with tenderness. Feeling airy and buoyant, muscles loosening, lungs lighter. Yudai's breath fans over his neck and the expanse of Euijoo's palm clasps his warmly.
He could ask them to wait. Jo knows they would. One run through. Five minutes, ten, twenty. He knows they would wait if he asked.
He won't.
He just nods and lets himself be pulled. Yudai takes the first step and Jo follows, Euijoo trailing a few inches behind. Down the hall and into the elevator and through the parking lot.
They hold his hands in car. Warms shackles of flesh and bone that bind him to the tranquility. To this sanctuary of the three of them. Solace, taken human form, forged in braided limbs under the bedsheets and shared breakfast the next morning.
A love that Jo is overcome with. That crawls his skin and makes home in the ventricles of his heart. A love that is, unearned maybe, but ever present.
He's never really known how to feel about that. He's still trying to find the words, but thinks relieved is one of them, and happy another.
All the same, it is quiet again and he is exceedingly grateful.