Chapter Text
Hongjoong should have known something was wrong when the dorm was quiet, like real quiet. The kind of silence that didn't (and shouldn't) exist in a house full of eight grown men who all believed volume control was a myth. Well, maybe it was truly a myth because if there was ever a time the dorm went silent, it usually meant something catastrophic had happened… or was about to.
He had been awake since seven, which, by ATEEZ dorm standards, was practically the middle of the night. The others were slow risers on their days off: Seonghwa with his elaborate morning skincare, Yunho folded like a question mark under his weighted blanket, and Mingi dead to the world until noon if you let him. On the other hand, Yeosang had the uncanny ability to exist somewhere between wakefulness and sleep for hours, like a cat that watched you move around the house but couldn't be bothered to react. Jongho, by some miracle of discipline, woke up early but spent that time in silence. He was either reading, stretching, or existing peacefully in ways that made Hongjoong genuinely envious.
And then there were Choi San and Jung Wooyoung.
Those two operated on a different timezone entirely. Not earlier, not later, just different. Like they had made a private agreement with the universe to exist somewhere outside normal hours, emerging when the mood suited them, and then exploding into full activity within three seconds of opening their eyes. There was no transition and no warming up. Just zero to catastrophe with absolutely no warning.
This morning, they had been suspiciously absent from the living room when he'd padded out in his slippers, hair still flat on one side. Hongjoong made his coffee, sat on the couch, opened his laptop, and enjoyed twenty-seven consecutive minutes of uninterrupted peace. Hell! He had even started to feel something dangerously close to optimistic.
He was sitting on the couch with his laptop open on his lap, trying to edit a demo for their next comeback when the peace was shattered by the sudden roar of the blender. It wasn't the sound itself that startled him but the rhythm. The beat. It was ridiculously blending in perfect sync with someone's off-key singing voice.
"Don't stop me now, I'm having such a good time—"
The blender roared louder.
Hongjoong froze. "No," he muttered. "He wouldn't."
Choi San would. Of course, he would.
In the hallway, he nearly collided with Yunho, who was shuffling toward the bathroom with the slow gait of a man who hadn't quite decided whether he was awake yet. The taller boy blinked down at him, cereal bowl inexplicably already in hand.
"Is that—" Yunho started.
"Yes," he sighed.
"Should we—"
"Yes."
Yunho nodded solemnly and followed him toward the kitchen.
By the time they entered the space, San's voice was echoing through the dormitory like the ghost of Freddie Mercury trapped in a smoothie commercial. The younger member stood proudly in front of the counter, hair messy, apron halfway on, and holding a plastic spatula like a mic. The blender sat on the counter, lid off, fruit splattered across the backsplash, and Wooyoung, of fucking course, was behind his phone and filming the entire performance like a proud stage mom.
"Sannie! Give me more emotion!" Wooyoung cheered.
"I FEEL IT!" San screamed back, and spun around with one arm extended, completely knocking a banana off the counter.
Yunho watched it hit the floor. "...He's been practicing," he said quietly.
"Practicing what? Ruining my morning? Hongjoong grumbled. "Give me patience. CHOI SAN!"
San didn't hear him, which was impressive considering he had practically shouted. The ‘99 member was too busy swaying dramatically with his eyes closed and one arm raised as if the ATEEZ dorm's fluorescent light was a concert spotlight. The blender kept roaring, faithful and miserable, like a backup vocalist that had never agreed to this arrangement.
"SAN, STOP THE BLENDER!"
San opened his eyes mid-chorus, grinned, and said, "Hongjoong hyung, I'm recording a cover!" as if that explained everything.
Wooyoung, spotting him and Yunho in the doorway, immediately adjusted his camera angle. "Don't look at the phone, Sannie!" he hissed at his partner-in-crime. "It breaks the immersion!"
"I'M EMOTING!" San snapped back, whipping back around to face the blender.
Hongjoong stared at the two troublemakers, then at the poor blender, which whirred like it was trying to escape. "You're recording a cover with a kitchen appliance?"
"It gives natural reverb!" San insisted. "Listen—" He pressed the pulse button. The blender shrieked and something pink and vaguely fruit-like splattered onto the wall.
Wooyoung lost it. "YES! That's the high note!"
"That's not a note, that's murder," he said. "Turn. It. Off."
Yunho, who had been watching from the doorway with his cereal, made the fatal mistake of taking a step closer to see better. His yellow sock with a mysterious hole slid on the strawberry that had hit the floor, and he did an impressive little hop to recover, sloshing milk dangerously close to the edge of his bowl. He steadied himself against the counter. "I almost died," he announced.
"We're all going to die in this dorm," Hongjoong said without looking at him.
San hesitated, then finally hit the button. The blender sputtered and died with a sad whine, like even it was tired of this nonsense. He looked around: strawberry carnage on the cabinets, bananas on the floor, and ice cubes melting into tragedy. He exhaled slowly through his nose.
"Okay," the captain said, voice eerily calm. "Who thought this was a good idea?"
Wooyoung pointed at San. San pointed at the blender. The blender, the poor thing, said nothing.
Yunho pointed at both of them.
"Traitor," Wooyoung said.
"I'm not getting involved in this," Yunho said, eating a spoonful of cereal.
"You're already involved, you pointed!" San protested.
"Pointing is not the same as involving—"
"EVERYONE STOP," Hongjoong said.
They stopped. Even the blender, already dead, seemed to flinch.
"Unbelievable," he muttered. "I leave you two alone for ten minutes."
"It wasn't ten minutes!" San protested. "It was, like, five! Maybe six!"
"Five minutes too long!"
Wooyoung, still laughing, said, "But hyung, it's content! We could post this! #SingingChefSan!"
"Post this, and I'll delete your TikTok account."
That shut the younger member up real quick. The grin didn't disappear entirely, but it went underground, buried under the specific expression Wooyoung wore when he was recalculating.
On the other hand, San pouted, clearly upset that his "artistic breakthrough" wasn't being appreciated. "I was just trying to multitask! Smoothie and singing practice, you know? Efficiency!"
"Efficiency would be not turning the dorm into a crime scene," he shot back.
"To be fair," Yunho offered, setting his bowl down and surveying the splattered wall, "it does look kind of like modern art."
Hongjoong looked at him.
The tallest member held up a hand. "I'm not defending it. I'm just observing."
"Then observe while you help clean."
Yunho's face fell. "Hyung—"
"You walked in voluntarily. You're involved now."
"He said pointing wasn't—" San started.
"San."
"Right. Sorry."
Hongjoong grabbed a towel and started wiping pink goo off the counter. "We're not even going to have a kitchen by the end of this tour."
San bent down to pick up a strawberry that had rolled onto the floor, then looked up sheepishly. "Do you think it's still edible?”
"San."
"…Right. No."
Wooyoung, having survived the TikTok threat, had drifted closer to San with the quiet ease of someone who had done this a thousand times. He crouched beside him and helped gather the fallen fruit into a pile with one hand while his phone sat face-down on the counter. It seemed to be a gesture of goodwill so transparent it was almost charming.
"We could make jam," he offered brightly.
San's eyes lit up. "Oh! Strawberry jam! Hyung, can we—"
"No one is making jam," Hongjoong said.
"It's a good idea," San said to Wooyoung in a low voice, as if he couldn't hear him from two feet away.
"The best idea," the latter confirmed solemnly.
San grinned and it was that particular grin, the one that started at one corner of his mouth and climbed. "We'll make it when he's in the studio."
"I can hear you," Hongjoong said.
"No you can't," they said at the same time, without looking up.
From the hallway, Jongho's voice drifted in, groggy and unimpressed. "Hongjoong hyung, if you break the blender, you're buying me a new one."
"IT'S OUR BLENDER," he yelled back.
"Yeah, and I use it responsibly.”
"Good morning to you too," Yunho muttered into his cereal.
San whispered, "Traitor," under his breath, though whether this was directed at Jongho or Yunho was genuinely unclear.
Seonghwa appeared next, emerging from his room with the quiet dignity of a man who had learned to move through chaos without acknowledging it. He was fully dressed, hair perfect, holding his own mug of tea. He surveyed the kitchen (the splatter, the towels, the guilty parties) with an expression so carefully neutral it could have been painted there.
He looked at Hongjoong. Hongjoong looked back at him.
"I'm not asking," the oldest member said.
"Probably better," he agreed.
Seonghwa stepped over a rogue ice cube, poured hot water into his mug, and retreated toward the living room without another word. At the doorway, he paused. "The wall," he said, without turning around. "Top left corner. You missed a spot."
Hongjoong looked. He had, in fact, missed a spot.
"Thank you," he said flatly.
"Mm." Seonghwa disappeared.
He tossed the towel into the sink, looked at the two culprits, and sighed. "You know what? I'm making a rule."
Wooyoung perked up. "Like a dorm rule?"
He nodded, already typing furiously on his notes app. "'Rule number one,'" he said aloud, "'No, San, the blender is not a microphone.'"
San gasped. "You're naming it after me?"
"It's not an honor, San."
Wooyoung snorted so hard he nearly dropped his phone. "Oh, it is an honor."
San grinned and threw his arm dramatically around the other member's shoulders. "At least my name's first in the rulebook," he said proudly.
"If you keep this up," the captain muttered, turning back to the counter, "your name will be in every rule."
Wooyoung tipped his head toward San, considering. "Worth it," he murmured, just low enough to pretend it was private.
San turned to him, eyes crinkling. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," Wooyoung said. Then, louder: "Hyung, what if the rule had exceptions? Like, if the acoustics are genuinely good—"
Hongjoong's right eye twitched. "Keep talking, and Rule Number Two will be 'No Wooyoung in the kitchen.'"
"You wouldn't dare."
"Try me."
────── 〔✿〕──────
That night, after the chaos had subsided, Hongjoong found himself still wiping dried fruit off the cabinet doors, muttering under his breath about "kids these days." He looked over at the counter, at the now-clean blender, and shook his head. It sat there like nothing had happened, innocent and shiny under the dim kitchen light.
Earlier, he'd caught a glimpse of San and Wooyoung at the dining table. The smoothie mission was long abandoned, replaced with a shared bag of chips and Wooyoung's phone propped between them, both watching something with their heads tilted toward each other at the same angle. They were like two people who had been gravitating toward the same spot for so long they'd stopped noticing. San said something Hongjoong couldn't hear and Wooyoung shoved him lightly, laughing before he could stop himself, the way people laughed when they hadn't planned to.
Hongjoong had looked away before they saw him watching.
He stared at the blender for a long time, wondering if this was his destiny… not as leader of an idol group, but as the reluctant father of seven overgrown kids with no sense of danger or shame.
"Unbelievable," he murmured. "We sell out stadiums, and I can't even trust them with a kitchen appliance."
In the morning, he woke up and saw the taped paper over the fridge that read:
DORM RULE #1: No, San, the Blender Is Not a Microphone. (Written by Hongjoong. Inspired by chaos. Enforced by trauma.)
And in permanent marker, someone, probably named Jung Wooyoung, had added below it:
Exceptions may apply if vocals are good enough.
And underneath that, in handwriting that could only be San's, big and loopy and completely unashamed:
Wooyoung said my high note was beautiful. The blender agreed. Two votes vs. one, Hongjoong hyung.
Hongjoong stood in front of the fridge for a long moment, re-reading it. Then he went to find a marker, and added beneath all of it, in small, tired letters:
I am the captain. My vote counts double. Motion denied.