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Baek Junhyuk was always just that—Baek Junhyuk. It was Baek Junhyuk who won third place on a poorly promoted survival show at sixteen years old, it was Baek Junhyuk who got into JYP at twelve years old, then SM shortly after. It was Baek Junhyuk who had an inexplicable desire to be seen, and known, and loved, even at a young age. And becoming a celebrity, he thought, was the easiest way to do that. So he did.
Since debuting, however, he’s no longer simply Baek Junhyuk. Instead, his name often tends to be mentioned in tandem with someone else’s. Someone who he was surprised even ended up debuting, in all honesty, considering the fact that he was only a trainee for ten months. A person who has become, however, someone which he can’t imagine not having debuted with, can’t imagine not sharing a room with, not travelling to school every morning with.
He and Semin are the only two members still in school, and although this means they’re the same age, oftentimes Junhyuk can’t help but feel older than him.
It’s in the way he carries himself, he assumes—like everyone exists to either be infatuated with him, to adore his childish nature, or simply haven’t gotten to know him yet. It fascinates Junhyuk, because he’s never been anything like that. He’d assume it’s because he’s the youngest in his family if he wasn’t too, but maybe it’s different when you have an older brother instead of an older sister. If his brother was held to certain standards, being the oldest male in the house, his parents were probably more lenient with Semin, having already tested it all on him. But Junhyuk didn’t get that, because he and his sister weren’t raised similarly at all.
It’s infuriating when he thinks about it—that he didn’t get a chance to make mistakes. He rarely did, of course, but he would’ve liked the freedom to. Now, it’s as if anything less than perfection is sickening, even without his parents breathing down his neck. Semin’s loved whether he’s perfect or not, and that, recently, has been bothering Junhyuk. It’s been bothering him a lot.
And he also hates the fact that Semin has him wrapped around his finger.
It’s an odd situation they’ve gotten themselves into. He’s not even sure who initiated—maybe Junhyuk’s gaze lingered on Semin for too long whilst he got dressed, the two of them the only ones awake in the entire apartment, the morning sunlight through the heavy clouds leaving a dusky haze over everything, making it all feel slightly less real. Maybe Semin’s touch wandered an inch too far during jacket photoshoots. Maybe they were just incredibly touch-starved teenagers, and felt it’d be easier to take that out on one another, rather than make it anyone else’s problem.
Junhyuk’s always been responsible like that, he prides himself on his maturity, so maybe it was his initial idea after all.
“Ugh,” Semin groans into the top of Junhyuk’s head, muffled by his hair, as his mouth travels lower. Down the nape of his neck, to his collarbone, grazing skin with his teeth. He keeps alternating—licking, biting, sucking—and Semin seems to be enjoying it, if the noises he’s making at the moment mean anything. He’s kind of glad he can take him apart like this. He’s completely at his mercy. “Don’t— don’t stop.”
Junhyuk can’t help but laugh at that. As if he was ever going to.
Against Semin’s pale, soft chest, his laugh sounds unfamiliar. Like he’s elsewhere, looking down on himself, at what he’s doing to somebody else. Someone he’s not even all that close to, if he’s being honest.
Semin starts to run his hand through his hair, which he tends to do when he doesn’t want him to move any lower, so Junhyuk keeps to where he must. There’s an invisible line drawn, somewhere through the middle of Semin’s heart, and Junhyuk has to try very hard not to pass it, but he mustn’t. Semin might not want to do this with him anymore if he does.
He raises his hands to cup Junhyuk’s face, which makes him grin, eyes crinkled, all sharp teeth and smile lines, and Semin smiles back. When he moves back in to kiss him, they fall into a steady rhythm, nothing like how desperate it’d been when they’d begun. Junhyuk’s head tilts to the left, Semin’s to the right, and he matches his movements, how much tongue he wants to use, where he wants to keep his hands. He’s the one who wants this more, so of course he goes with whatever Semin desires. He’s the one entertaining him. Doing him a favour.
And it is strange; to sit next to one another on a bus in silence, or sit with their separate friend groups, up until they all get off and they’re the only two left, then come home to an empty apartment and do this. Obviously he recognises that.
But it’s become routine now. It’s like Junhyuk’s itching to be touched by him. Not even in a romantic sense—more like he needs it. As if it’s the air he breathes, or the blood through his veins. He wonders how he survived seventeen years without being touched like this.
Now that Seonghyeon’s graduated, they talk to one another more often. It’s not as if they didn’t in the first place but it was different—it was mainly about work, or class schedules, or which of them was going to clean their room (although that responsibility usually fell on Yonghoon, being their designated “babysitter”, even though Junhyuk knows he doesn’t need one, and probably never has), but now it’s different.
Like, occasionally, Semin will ask Junhyuk a hypothetical, because he’s bored of sitting in silence, or Junhyuk will ask him what he misses about Gokseong, and watch as he lights up. He talks about his old friends, about weekly trips to the cinema because they got half-price tickets since one of them worked there, or going to the decrepit bowling alley down the road from his aunt’s restaurant since it offered the best flavour slushies (all they did was mix each of the different flavours they offered, but Semin thought of them as geniuses), even though all the bowling balls were covered with graffiti, or singing Red Velvet songs at karaoke up until late in the evening.
“You liked Red Velvet too?” Junhyuk asks, to which Semin laughs, all golden sunshine and warmth.
“Yeah!” He answers, giddy. He has that look in his eyes, that undeniable sparkle, that means Junhyuk knew he was about to ramble endlessly, and he’d listen intently because, well—of course he would. “I’m surprised you did too! I never took you as a girl group fan, what with you being all masculine and strong and stuff. I would’ve expected, like, Ateez or something. Who was your bias?”
“Irene,” Junhyuk responds, much too fast. “She’s so cool. You know, I auditioned for SM because of her? Got in too.” He lets that statement hang in the air, hoping that Semin will find him impressive, or awesome, like he does Yonghoon and Wonbin. But maybe that’s only reserved for those older than him. Maybe Junhyuk’s destined to just be Baek Junhyuk, same-aged friend and fellow group member, rather than anyone worth looking up to. And he can’t help but admit, “I still miss it, sometimes.”
“Are you dissing Starship right now?” Semin says, to which Junhyuk laughs, full-bodied. Semin laughs too, then continues, “because— because if you are, I’ll— I’ll have to tell Yonghoon-hyung. He’ll kill you.” He keeps laughing between his words until he’s no longer able to breathe, red in the face as if he’s just run a marathon. Junhyuk knows he’s only joking. Even if he never mentions how much he despises the Starship higher ups, he knows Yonghoon must, deep down. Or maybe he hasn’t yet accepted that you can be grateful for what something’s done for you and still hate it.
Once they’re no longer laughing, the silence heavy between them, a bit awkward—like they’re newly formed school friends who haven’t decided which topics are and aren’t appropriate to talk about with one another, instead of roommates and groupmates and something else altogether pathetic and inexplicable—until Junhyuk comes up with another hypothetical.
“Semin,” he starts. “If Yonghoon-hyung wasn’t the leader, who do you think would be?”
Semin still hasn’t completely stopped laughing, not really, tears still welling in his eyes from his overwhelming merriment. Junhyuk likes that about him; how when he feels something, you can see it in his body, the way it shakes when he laughs, and his shoulders hunch over when he cries (the first time he sees him cry, he’s having a complete meltdown, nose snotty and panting, naked and raw and wailing like a newborn baby, and he doubts he’ll ever forget it. Junhyuk had accidentally walked in on him, apologised awkwardly, then sat outside the shut door listening to him sob until he stopped. It’d taken hours, but Junhyuk hadn’t moved once). It’s like he can’t hold anything back, the way a child cries when they’re homesick even though they’re at a sleepover with their friends and they’re not even sad, not really, but they are. Actually, maybe it’s not only children who do that. Maybe seventeen-year-old newly debuted idols do too.
Teasing, Semin responds, “I bet you want me to say you, don’t you?”
“No?” Junhyuk says, a lilt to his words suggesting he got caught and he’s not really trying hard to hide it. “I thought you’d say, like, Minjae-hyung or something. I would.”
“Well, it’s not like you’d make a bad leader. I just can’t imagine it,” Semin shrugs.
“D’you remember when the staff played that prank on you, where they said you’d be the leader, and that they were trying to be original by making the youngest the leader,” he chuckles as he retells the story, fondness seeping through his pores. “It’d be like that but, like, better. Because I’m way more responsible than you.”
Semin pushes him lightly, incredulous, yelling, “You wish!” Junhyuk’s surprised at how easily his dialect slips. It’s cute, and it’s been happening much more often recently, although Semin wouldn’t ever admit it.
It happens again the first time they kiss. Junhyuk knows Semin prides himself on having a really good Seoul accent compared to his friends from home, so he’s surprised a situation like that had brought it out of him.
“Hyung,” he says, straight into Junhyuk’s mouth as he brings his bottom lip into his mouth, nibbling and gnawing at it, and it’s strange because he’s never said that before. “Ah, you—you’re really good at this. Why are you so good at this?” He’d asked, breathing heavily, increasingly sounding like someone born and raised in Gokseong.
And Junhyuk was flattered, obviously, because he’s never actually kissed anybody before. When would he have had the time? Junhyuk does wonder, for a split second, if Semin’s just saying that because he’s never kissed anyone before either, and doesn’t actually know how it’s meant to feel.
But then, as he’s kissing him, one hand on his neck, his other hand travels lower, and lower, and lower, until it finds a place on Semin’s thigh. As he runs his hand against it, only lightly, Semin begins to squirm, and then he’s breathing even heavier, and then as his hand moves further and further in, to where they’re barely even kissing anymore, just breathing into each other’s mouths, Junhyuk’s hand finds its way to Semin’s crotch.
He’s shocked to find he’s hard. And from the way it feels under his hand, he’s painfully hard. He flinches, pulling his hand away, and when Semin looks up, he looks mortified. His face is redder than it was before, now with humiliation mixed in rather than pure arousal like it had been earlier, and Junhyuk, because he’s an idiot, smiles so wide he thinks his mouth might reach his ears.
“I’m— wow, I’m flattered, really,” he teases, and at that, Semin brings his hands up to his crimson face, curls into himself out of embarrassment, and begins to cry. It spills out of him, like it always does (Junhyuk knows now, because he cries a lot—almost as much as himself), and when Junhyuk tries to get him to stop, shaking him by the shoulders, Semin pushes his arms away so Junhyuk can see his face in its entirety. Glassy, puffy eyes, bright red cheeks, and sweat collecting in his hairline due to the heater being turned to full blast, to stave away the mid-January chill. “Wait, stop crying,” he tries, practically pleading, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s—” Semin tries, but he’s crying so hard it comes out stilted, “It’s not you, I— I’m sorry.”
Junhyuk brings a hand up to his shoulder then, not to shake it, but in what he hopes is comforting. “It’s okay, you don’t have to be sorry. Seriously, dude. No worries.”
“It’s just— I don’t know what to do, I mean— is this not embarrassing?” He groans.
“I guess, but, I mean,” Junhyuk shrugs, “I’ve got nothing else to compare it to, this being my first kiss and everything so, I don’t know, it’s not that big of a deal. And you don’t have to do anything,” he continues, much less confident now, or at least as far as he’s aware. He’s unsure how he’s coming across to Semin at the moment—maybe he looks just as out of his depth as he feels. “I can take care of it for you, I mean— if you want. But I don’t have to. No pressure.”
“No,” Semin pleads, “no, please, that— that’d just make this even more embarrassing than it already is. I’m sorry, I think, I don’t know— maybe I should just leave. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“If that’s what you want, Semin.”
And then he was gone, leaving Junhyuk with the aftermath of the situation, most likely to sleep beside Yoochan, but incredibly unlikely to tell him about anything. Not that Junhyuk would mind or anything, it’s no big deal, but it would probably make things awkward between everyone. Before he sleeps he envisions Semin’s crying face in his mind, and thinks Yonghoon can probably see how huge his smile is from his bed on the other side of the room.
“Ow!” Semin yelps, bringing a hand up to his head, which brings Junhyuk back to the present. He’d been trying to make himself comfortable on Junhyuk’s lap, but being on the bottom bunk made that much more difficult than he’d expected, and so he’d bumped his head, hard, on the bunk above.
“You okay?” Junhyuk asks. Semin nods and, in response, Junhyuk continues, “we can move to Yonghoon-hyung’s bed, if you want. It’s not like he’s ever gonna know.”
“Don’t be weird,” Semin scoffs, to which Junhyuk responds, “You like that I’m weird.”
And that’s too much too soon, evidently, because Semin looks like he short circuits. When he finally says, “Yeah, you wish,” it comes out less confident than he’d been expecting. And Junhyuk wants to ignore it, he does—he doesn’t want to embarrass Semin any more than he already has—but if there’s any chance that he might just be interested in him, even if Junhyuk doesn’t really like Semin back, he’s still going to jump at an opportunity to find out.
Junhyuk manoeuvres the two of them, careful not to hit his own head on the top bunk, so he’s looking down at Semin from above, right into his eyes. He remembers the wig he’d worn in today’s schedule, the way it complimented the pink of his lips (which are currently bitten and red, which causes something to stir deep in Junhyuk’s gut), seafoam blue and ethereal, and he doesn’t say anything.
“What— what is it?” Semin asks, increasingly bashful. Junhyuk knows he probably feels like an ant below a magnifying glass, burning under his gaze, but he can’t help it.
“You like me, don’t you?”
“What?” Semin asks, incredulous. “What the hell, no? Why would I like you?” Junhyuk leans down to shut him up, running his tongue along his lower lip and sucking it into his mouth, and Semin begins to squirm once again.
“Because,” he says, voice low and taunting, “you’re like this. Because of me.”
And before Junhyuk can get an answer, someone’s knocking on the door. They’re lucky they’d locked it. “Guys, can you open the door?” Yonghoon’s disembodied voice comes through. “I need my charger.” Semin takes that opportunity to escape, unlocking the door for Yonghoon before running straight past him.
“Where’d he run off to?” He asks to which Junhyuk, still on his bed, shrugs. It’s fine, anyways. He’ll know how the other boy feels about him eventually.