Work Text:
It's an interesting idea for a photoshoot, Seungcheol will give them that. He can see the vision, and he thinks it will look good. Or, he thinks it should look good. He doesn't know if he's the right person to make it look good.
Choi Seungcheol is not a person with enormously low self esteem, he knows he's reasonably handsome, and that there are a lot of people around the world who think he is somehow more than just reasonably handsome. There's also a very special person who, by some miracle, thinks he's more handsome than everybody else and frequently has sex with him about it, so it really isn't that he has severe doubts about it his clearly perfectly acceptable appearance. And he doesn't hate modelling, or doing photo shoots, not by a long shot. They aren't his favourite part of the job, but they can be fun and exciting, and he likes seeing the magic transformation afterwards, the alchemical compound of all the separate skills combining into one beautiful thing, making him a beautiful thing. It's flattering. How many people get to show off like that, get to be looked at like that?
This is a bit unusual, though, and he has some doubts about his ability to pull it off, partially because of his doubts about his ability not to feel supremely fucking awkward as he does it. Also, won't it be uncomfortable?
"A bathtub?" Jeonghan asks down the phone. His words are muffled, as though he's holding something in his teeth as he speaks. His next words are clearer. "That's not that odd. Minhyukie-hyung did one like that. Mingoo probably has too."
"Yeah, but, with water in? In the clothes?"
There comes an abrupt bout of coughing on the other end of the phone.
"I beg your pardon?"
Seungcheol had thought, erroneously, that Jeonghan finishing his service would give them more time together. But he jumped straight from his teaching job into preparations for his album with Shua, and Seungcheol is excited for them, he loves them and wants to show them off to the world, but he also feels a little bit irrationally excluded. He's been making a nuisance of himself by showing up to meetings he's not needed in, just to feel involved, just to sit in the same room as Jeonghan and get a moment or two beside the coffee machine in the Pledis floor kitchen. The few nights Jeonghan has had time to come over have been nice, but they haven't had one day where he has been able to lie in in bed or sit and have a long breakfast, constantly tripping out at dawn to get into a car that has brought him something to eat on the way somewhere else. The few nights Seungcheol has gone and let himself into Jeonghan's instead, which for some reason he still feels odd about doing even though he knows Jeonghan has told him he can, he has always felt rather at a loose end. He wants to be helpful, to putter about putting laundry away or emptying the dishwasher so Jeonghan can come home to something better than he left, but Jeonghan has always been a better adult about those things than him, and there isn't an awful lot he can usefully do. It makes him feel uncomfortably like a dog left alone waiting for its owner to come back from work. He suspects that Jeonghan, from how often he encourages him to come over even when he's working particularly late or early, is trying to train him into being more comfortable with that scenario.
But Choi Seungcheol is not a dog, or an unsuccessful house husband, he is a professional idol who people want to take weird sexy photographs of, and he would like his very busy boyfriend's thoughts on this own thriving career of his.
"Do you think it'll look weird?" he finds himself whining. "I don't think it'll feel nice, but they're really certain about it. Don't you think I'll just look… awkward?"
The thing is, Seungcheol knows this wouldn't be the most daring concept he's ever done, technically. He's done photo shoots in beds, an inch from someone else's face, hell, he went shirtless for CXM. But that's sort of the point. That's always going to be sexy. Any idiot can hit the gym and take their clothes off, and it will be a one strike kill every time. This is odd and artsy and erotic, rather than just sexy. He doesn't know if he's got that in him. What if he just looks like a guy who got drunk and fell in the bath with his clothes on? What if he looks like that one video of the girl in the tub that Joshua mimics under his breath whenever they get caught in heavy rain? What if he looks like a sad dog somebody left outside in monsoon season?
"Cheollie-yah," Jeonghan coos seriously into the phone. "You're telling me you're going to wear a designer suit and get all wet and stare down the camera like it ought to get on its knees for you? I think you might cause an apocalyptic level masturbatory crisis in multiple countries."
Blood rushes to his face, and he tugs the mask over his mouth further up, glancing forward to the rearview mirror where his manager is, luckily, singing along to a girl-group song on the radio instead of listening in to his phone call.
"Yah, Yoon Jeonghan," he whines. "Don't— stop being silly."
"I'm not being silly," Jeonghan says pleasantly. And loudly. Jesus, Seungcheol hopes he's the only one in the room. "My very sexy boyfriend is going to do a very sexy photo shoot and everyone is going to see it. You're going to cause a wank-fest that will measure on the Richter scale. They'll have to do news articles about it."
"I'm hanging up! You're terrible!"
"OK jagi, see you tomorrow night," Jeonghan trills.
There isn't even any satisfaction in pressing the red button to end the call. Typical Yoon Jeonghan. Seungcheol slumps down in his seat until his t-shirt is practically by his ears, hiding in the collar of it.
Ridiculous. He's being ridiculous.
He's also definitely agreeing to do the shoot.
Goddamn it.
📸 📸 📸
There is a standard, written agreement that any activity involving a Seventeen member, unless expressly forbidden by other collaborators or the member themself, is always open to visitation from the other twelve. It can't always be taken up, but a surprise at an individual schedule or an in-person delivery of cheering up food is one of their favourite collective ways to show they care. In a slightly more cynical sense, it makes for good behind the scenes footage for SNS too.
Seungcheol isn't expecting any visitors today. He may or may not have downplayed the importance of his schedule this afternoon, easy enough when "photo shoot" is such a common activity for the lot of them— for all the rest know, he could be taking insert photos for a Going Seventeen episode, rather than doing a full designer-styled editorial shoot in one of the most expensive hotels in Seoul. Jeonghan knows, of course, and has spent the past few weeks teasing him relentlessly in a way that either suggests he is incredibly excited about it or that he knows Seungcheol wants to be and is trying to help him get there. He's so manipulative. Seungcheol would kill for him.
Their preparations have calmed down a little, with Joshua focusing on his individual projects for a bit, and as such Jeonghan is a lot more available. He's managed to stay over for three nights in a row, even if two of them he arrived a little late, and they've actually been able to spend a normal morning together more than once, including this morning. It was so nice to have time, to see bedhead and stubble and have more than one conversation at once without having to prioritise what to say, or else avoid saying much of anything because they didn't have time to get into it properly and save it for texts or late night phone calls. It was so nice to sit pressed into Jeonghan's side on the sofa as they drank their coffee and ate their way through their breakfast. And it was very nice the way Jeonghan had hyped him up ahead of the shoot by telling him he was handsome and sexy and then doing a number of wicked and despicable things to him to really drive the point home convincingly.
As such, Seungcheol starts his working day with a disgustingly healthy protein smoothie, but also something of a spring in his step. The magazine staff are delighted. The company staff, his manager who he has known for years, who were all witness to his initial hesitation and childish whining over the concept, are slightly more suspicious.
"Isn't it wonderful," a noona who has been with the company since before the takeover says, conspicuously loudly and out of seemingly nowhere, "That Jeonghanie is back with us? It's so nice that we're all seeing a bit more of him."
She does not look at him as she says it, but Seungcheol takes the unsubtle hint and tones down the obnoxious delighted puppy behaviour a notch or two. He settles into some approximation of professionalism for the first outfits and sets, summoning the S.Coups who takes photo shoots in his stride rather than the Seungcheol who giggles at the concept of a smoulder. By the speed, the appreciative noises and lack of frustrated sighs and furious whispers, it seems to be working well enough.
After barely two hours it's time for the big one, and he goes obediently to change into the suit and get his hair and make-up reset while the crew sort out the bathtub. The hotel suite they're shooting in is very nice, and he makes a point of saying this while name-dropping the hotel to the behind-the-scenes camera without prompting, having played this game enough to know that will have been a condition of filming there. He is done before the room is, it would seem, so he toddles off to the small lobby room where the snack table is, only to find a familiar masked and hatted figure taking handfuls of the fancy grapes and putting them in a tupperware box.
"Han-ah?"
Jeonghan looks up, some of the grapes clearly having made it into his mouth, bulging at the cheeks like an indulgent rabbit. Anyone else might look like a rodent in headlights but he just munches his haul happily, snaps the lid on his box and shoves it into a hidden hoody pocket.
"Oh, a celebrity!" He teases brightly when he's chewed and swallowed.
Seungcheol laughs in surprised delight.
"What are—"
"Jeonghan-nim?" A young staff member from the magazine crew has rounded the corner, either to collect Seungcheol to restart the shoot or to fetch a snack for herself, only to be confronted with an entire and unexpected Yoon Jeonghan. "We didn't— I'm sorry, nobody told us you were coming."
"Oh, Cheollie must have forgotten," Jeonghan says cheerfully, inspecting then pocketing a particularly juicy looking asian pear. "He's taking me out for dinner after this."
"I am?"
"Yes. Our table is booked for seven— honestly, he's so forgetful," he admonishes fondly. "Well I'm sure they need you again. I'll just hang around until you're done."
He breezes away, nails digging delicately into the skin of a tangerine, leaving Seungcheol and the young woman to stare behind him.
He blends in so well, milling inconspicuously amongst the staff with his mask and his dark jacket, that no-one else even seems to notice he's here. Seungcheol, of course, can't help but notice, bubbles fizzing in his tummy as he gets ready and climbs into the uncomfortably tepid water in the bath, trying hard to concentrate on what he's being told, how they want him to pose as they adjust the lights and the camera set up to make his skin pop, whatever that means. He can't see Jeonghan anymore, round a corner somewhere, but he knows he's there now. His presence is as impossible to ignore as it always has been, and Seungcheol sits in both the soggy clothes and in the intoxicating, world-bending knowledge that the only reason Jeonghan is in this room is because right now it is the room that Seungcheol is in. In this current moment he and he alone is the sole purpose of Jeonghan's geographical positioning in the world.
What a bizarre power to have.
The water sloshes. The suit gets heavy in its sogginess. He summons as commanding and arrogant an expression as he can and stares down the lens, to appreciative professional murmurs form the assembled staff as the camera clicks and flashes and the photographer instructs with both hands an voice where to tilt or turn or look next.
"Wah, so sexy!" comes a distinctly unprofessional cry from somewhere in the main room.
He can't help but burst into laughter as a ripple of confused whispers of Is that Jeonghan-nim? Did you know he was here? pass through the magazine staff.
"Make Yoon Jeonghan go home!" he shouts in return, and just catches the wild giggle it provokes among the more demure, good natured chuckles from the staff.
He's giddy with it. It keeps him warm and buoyant for the rest of the shoot, even as he can feel himself cramping up and his knee getting that chill inside the bones that it gets now every so often that makes him feel like an old man. They wrap it all up relatively quickly. He does another few different positions, they mess around with the lighting, he runs a hand through wet hair (courtesy of a solemn lady with a spray bottle rather than dunking it, as he'd feared) and does a traditional chat with the behind-the-scenes camera while wrapped in a somewhat ineffective towel. It's for the visual of the thing, really. And besides, it's the height of summer, no-one is worried about him catching a cold.
Through it all Jeonghan hovers happily in the background, out of the way but inescapably present. When they finally declare the shoot over he claps and cheers with the rest of them, nonsensically bowing and thanking people for their hard work, as though he were involved himself, as though he had some stake in it. Maybe he does, Seungcheol supposes. They're responsible for presenting something of his to the world, after all.
WHen Seungcheol is changed back into dry clothes, make-up mostly removed, Jeonghan swoops in and holds him lightly by the elbow and informs their manager that Seungcheol has booked them both dinner and they'll be leaving first to make their reservation. His pocket rattles dully as he walks, and once they reach the car park and make it to his car— a nice one, comfortable and expensive but less ostentatious than Seungcheol's own— he discovers the noise is from the tupperware of grapes that he removes and hands to Seungcheol when he slides into the passenger seat. He winces a little as he does, and Jeonghan wordlessly reaches over to push the lever to glide the seat back, before reaching into the glove compartment to withdraw a hotpack.
"Babe," he says incredulously, taking it from the insistent hand all the same. "It's the middle of summer."
Jeonghan tuts at him.
"For your knee. Stretch it out in the footwell, there's enough room."
Seungcheol blushes and grins to himself as he remembers how they first discovered there was enough room. He settles the hot pack on his knee, and relaxes a little more as it draws out that chill, even as the back of his leg starts to sweat into his jeans. Jeonghan tugs off his mask and jacket and flings them into the backseat, a flash of gold around his wrist catching Seungcheol's attention as he turns on the aircon. He's styled his hair too, and Seungcheol feels a little underdressed in his henley and jeans.
"You look handsome," he says, leaning against the headrest to watch as Jeonghan backs out of the parking space and drives smoothly toward the exit. "Are we really going for dinner or is that just an excuse to run away?"
Jeonghan hums as he navigates merging into the traffic.
"Check your credit card bill," is his only reply.
He then opens his mouth and makes a little aaah sound, and Seungcheol is well-trained, so he snaps open the tupperware and selects the juiciest looking grape to place into Jeonghan's mouth, narrowly avoiding the blunt little teeth that chomp down around it. Seungcheol doesn't question the wisdom of eating before dinner, just continues to feed him, occasionally taking a grape himself, until the box is empty.
"I've got a nice pear in my pocket," Jeonghan tells him, a little distracted as he crawls through the twisting hills of Yongsan-dong. "We could ask the chef to make Baesuk for dessert."
The restaurant is tiny, a bar around an open kitchen, but with proper, comfortable chairs instead of the trendy hard barstools some of the omakase restaurants they've been to before have. There's currently no-one else— aside from a smart waiter in a crisp suit and two chefs in their whites and checked trousers— in the room.
"Choi Seungcheol," Jeonghan says as they enter, drawing a wallet from his pocket and handing over what is definitely Seungcheol's credit card.
The waiter smiles and introduces himself, and then the two chefs, all bowing in turn, as he guides them unecessarily toward the only places laid at the bar. Soon a steaming pot of barley tea is brought and poured into the little cups waiting politely in place of plates before their seats.
"So," Seungcheol asks, after they have both refreshed themselves. "What am I paying for tonight?"
"You have very thoughtfully booked us a personalised tasting menu, with ten small courses of dishes made to our own preferences."
"Sounds like I've been very generous."
The waiter is meticulous but not over-involved. He blends into a corner of the room, appearing magically whenever a glass is empty or a plate is finished or a napkin falls on the floor. The chefs slice up raw fish and stir bubbling pots and fry vegetables and noodles in front of them, introducing each dish as they are given it. Seungcheol is poured a tumbler of smooth, fiery whisky, a type he's had once before and enjoyed immensely, while Jeonghan drinks little delicate cups of various teas the chef tells them will complement each dish.
Seungcheol's chopsticks slip and he drops a piece of beef into a little bowl of spicy broth so heavily the soup splashes out over Jeonghan's sashimi, and Jeonghan laughs so hard he snorts tea out of his nose. They steal bites from each other's plates, even though they're eating the same thing. Jeonghan pulls the pear from his pocket during their first course and very sweetly asks if the chef could prepare it for them as an extra dessert— he's worked very hard today and his friend here has said he will cover any expense for him to treat himself. It's delicious and luxurious but fun, because everywhere with Jeonghan is fun, and even the most serious and professional of middle-aged chefs will melt under the tilt of his head and the sweetness of his smile. Neither of them is particularly dressed up, but Jeonghan's hair is half pulled up and he's wearing the bracelet Seungcheol bought him. Seungcheol loves him in his unwashed pyjamas, and he loves him in his perfectly styled fashion-week outfits, and he loves him like this, too, somewhere in the middle. There's something… normal, and grown-up about it. Like maybe the work they share is in an office, or a school, or a shared business. A shop. A restaurant.
At one point, Seungcheol is gesturing with his third glass of whisky as he explains the importance of competent back-up in the video game he's become obsessed with, that he plays anonymously with other people in the middle of the night, and Jeonghan looks around the room to check the lack of attention from the staff before he darts in and kisses him on the cheek.
Seungcheol is halted, mid-rant.
"What was that for?" he asks, too stunned to worry about the people who may not have noticed the action but can definitely now hear his reaction.
Jeonghan just shrugs.
"I feel very lucky today."
After an hour and ten courses, the pear is brought out in a single bowl with two small spoons, and Jeonghan insists that he takes the first bite. It's delicious, soft and sweet and fragrant with the spices the chef has added, and they devour it at an indelicate speed. Seungcheol wonders if it tastes better because Jeonghan stole it, unnecessarily, just for him.
He's pleasantly tipsy by the time they're thanking the chefs and the waiter is handing Jeonghan back Seungcheol's credit card— they take a bland but well framed photo with the sign outside the restaurant with the intention of posting it in a few days, a thank you for their indulgence, although Seungcheol knows he will have paid handsomely for it. The giddiness he has been feeling half the day crests in his diaphragm at the remembrance of Jeonghan so casually pickpocketing him, spending his money as though it belongs to him.
Jeonghan drives them through the traffic back home and Seungcheol's gaze catches on his strong, slender hand on the gearstick. It's the wrong hand, he realises, when he's already reached for it, but he trails his fingertips gently over the ridges of his fourth knuckles anyway. Transfixed by the reality of skin and bone and muscle, and the potential for precious addition, he picks it up and presses it to his mouth. They're stationary in traffic, but all of the windows are tinted, and they are protected from any potential stares or notice. They are cocooned and safe even here, in the middle of the buzz of the city.
"You know I'd ask you, don't you?" Jeonghan says out of nowhere. "If it was possible. I'd have asked you already."
Or, well. It isn't really, is it?
"No, you wouldn't."
"Would too, what the fuck?"
"You wouldn't, because I'd have asked you first," Seungcheol tells him, the simplest truth of them all. He'd have done it the first night, at dawn on New Years Day those years ago, before injuries and enlistments. He would have done it as an eighteen year old in an ugly green basement with no certain future. He would've done it in an office, a school, a shared business, a shop, a restaurant.
"No, you wouldn't."
"Would too."
"Would no— this isn't a competition!"
"Is too."
"Is not," Jeonghan insists.
He's deadly serious, even in the face of Seungcheol's roaring laughter, so loud it must trail behind them as they finally speed off out of the deadlocked traffic and into the night.