the first step to acceptance (1/2), sunggyu/woohyun, nc-17

[mammothcock]

I have no idea how this got so out of hand, but I'm pretty sure inspiration in the form of Dana had a lot to do with it. For rebreak, my lovely, flawless princess, whose pigtails I am often inclined to pull. Happy birthday Dana! ♥ No amount of digital text can possibly do my love for you justice; I can only hope that this monstrosity will make you adequately happy on this special day of yours!

Title: The First Step to Acceptance
Pairing: Sunggyu/Woohyun
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 11,700
Summary: All good things start with avoidance. Sunggyu hardly believes responding to Woohyun's extravagant displays of affection can end anywhere else but down his metaphorical drain of failures, but it's not like he's got a talent for making good decisions either. Sequel to Tension Comes In All Forms.


The topic of their kiss went untouched for the following week. It was, suffice to say, the worst week of Sunggyu's life.

Sunggyu woke up half-believing everything had been the product of his depraved subconscious. The streets were wet though, shining with morning dew and the remnants of last night's thunderstorm, the morning sun piercing the windows through its reflections on various vehicles. It served as enough of a reminder of what had gone down, and what was to come.

Frankly speaking, if it weren't for his raging hard-on and the damp sheets, the result of Woohyun's spectacular ability to miss his target, he probably would have had himself convinced that the outrageous acts of affection last night had never happened, because -- it was hardly likely, wasn't it, that they argued so much and yet shared the same feelings for each other, and Sunggyu was reminded vaguely of Woohyun's disgustingly over-confident claims that a Sunggyu could not function without an Woohyun.

Woohyun had already left the room, leaving Sunggyu with vague echoes of hyung it’s time to wake up and I am not going to waste my time here because I need to pee. He rolled over, blinking weariness from the lids of his eyes, and deliberated between risking a quickie in bed and waiting for the shower.

The sound of the bathroom door opening clicked outside, and Sunggyu was out of the room in a flash. Stripping himself with all the speed of a male moulded and shaped into the very idea of efficiency, he flung his clothes on the floor and stepped into the shower. Curving a fist around his cock, he turned the water on with his free hand and was just about to lose himself in the friction when a series of rapid knocks attacked the door.

"I'm busy," he yelled, working himself off and keeping a calculating hand on the shower knob. Some things just weren't meant for the members' over-imaginative minds, regardless of the pathetic levels of privacy they had all been reduced to. The knocking ceased in intensity.

"I'm here on an official visit to the toilet," Sungyeol yelled back. "It's urgent!"

Sunggyu closed his eyes and tilted his head back against the shower's spray, drowning out Sungyeol's subsequent complaints about business needing to be done in the roar of water around his ears. He came a moment later, choking a groan in the back of his throat and shuddering from his toes up, thighs tensing. Watching with mild disgust as his come swirled down the drain, he took the shower head off of its place on the wall and washed the remnants of his early morning orgasm away. Just like how the industry would wash all traces of Kim Sunggyu away if the public ever caught a whiff of the intimacy he and Woohyun shared. Sunggyu felt his stomach jerk violently at the thought, and it wasn't a good sort of violent jerk.

"Look, I don't care about indecent exposure, I really need --"

Sunggyu swung the door open. "All yours," he said, securing a towel, still slightly damp from Howon's morning shower, around his hips. Sungyeol nearly fell in.

Outside, Sungjong fixed him with a baleful glare from his perch on the floor. "This is going to ruin our entire bathroom routine."

From inside, Sungyeol cried, "Could you not leave your underwear on the floor, I refuse to have the superior version of a banana peel in the house!"

Sunggyu shrugged and headed back to his room, grinning slightly. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and Sungyeol had seemed pretty desperate.

When he entered the room, Woohyun had already changed into a clean shirt, although 'clean' was a relative, if not completely irrelevant, term to them, so it could be days-old for all he knew.

Then his train of thoughts derailed when Woohyun stepped into his jeans, belt buckle clanging noisily from where it hung, and his eyes trailed up before he had the quickness of thought to look away. He felt the memory of Woohyun's thighs slipping against his tugging at the corner of his mind, and an instantaneous pang of nausea bulldozed through his stomach.

Woohyun turned around. "Ever heard of knocking?"

"You do realise you're asking me to knock for permission to enter my room, don't you?"

"You never know what I could be doing." Woohyun raised his eyebrows suggestively.

"I -- you. What." Sunggyu squatted down and busied himself looking for decent smelling clothes. "Are those bedroom eyes you're giving me?" He asked, looking up.

Woohyun's eyebrows disappeared under his fringe. He needed a haircut. Sunggyu would speak to the stylists. "Would you like them to be?"

"I am not continuing this conversation," Sunggyu said with an air of finality. Members did not kiss and members definitely did not jump from the unstable platform of a friendship based on their work into the potentially fatal boat of intimacy. Then he noticed, somewhat belatedly, that he was still appallingly naked under the towel. "And I'm going to change now."

"Are you chasing me out of my room?"

"Fair exchange."

"We'll be getting a new dorm soon anyway," Woohyun said, grabbing his bag and heading out. "If we're lucky, there'll be enough rooms for all of us to use individually."

Well. That certainly put things into perspective. Sunggyu slipped the towel from his grip, telling himself that his mouth only tasted bitter because he hadn't brushed his teeth yet.

Opinions and expressiveness were never the right formula for an equation that required peace. It was no big wonder that Sunggyu and Woohyun were often at odds with each other, but by and large they had managed to work out a sort of push and pull relationship, and if there were frequent intervals of heated glares and clenched fists, well. That only went to show that some things didn't have to be stagnant to remain constant.

"That is one enormous zit," Sungjong said, leaning forward and peering over Sunggyu's shoulder.

Sunggyu stared back at Sungjong's reflection through the mirror. They both looked like they had taken a shower in sweat, tiny droplets tracking down their faces, necks, backs. Gruelling did not come close to describing that day's practice.

"Why do you even care," Sunggyu said, not so much a question in light of his exhaustion. It must have been Woohyun's delightful little splash last night, ruining his face.

"Why don't you care?" Sungjong asked, tilting his head to catch the fluorescent light of the practice room, unabashedly inspecting his own complexion. Annoyance settled low in Sunggyu's chest. Of course he cared.

Across the room, he caught the reflection of Woohyun's eyes in the mirror. Woohyun looked furious, mostly because Sunggyu wanted synchronisation and Woohyun had a short fuse for a temper, and this offered nothing but trouble. As far as he was concerned, the only reason why they had stopped to rest was because Woohyun put up a nasty fight about practice and its similarities to slave-driving.

Sunggyu believed Woohyun was completely unjustified in his argument.

Woohyun flicked his gaze away, setting his jaw and leaving the practice room. To get a drink, Sunggyu presumed, because this was the worst Woohyun could do in these circumstances. There was no power struggle in a group in which he was officially appointed leader. Nothing could contest black and white print.

"Let's try again," Sunggyu said, turning around from the mirror when Woohyun had left. "Let's get this right once and for all."

The hours passed. Time was a tricky thing that did have an annoying tendency to disappear, but there was always more to win perfection over to their side. Humanity took priority at times like this, though, when the members bid a collective goodbye and Sunggyu was left in the practice room to cover up the gaping black hole in him where others had the ability to dance.

Woohyun, in a stroke of hypocrisy, stayed back as well. The both of them danced silently, looking at each other in the mirror, keeping an alert eye for errors. Sunggyu watched the arch of Woohyun's shoulders, balanced out the angle of his knee and the angle of his elbow, and lost himself in the slight roll of Woohyun's hips. Woohyun licked the perspiration off the top of his lips, his shirt lifting off the waistband of his jeans to reveal a tantalizing stretch of hip bone, and --

"Pay attention, hyung," Woohyun said.

I am, Sunggyu thought. To you.

"We're done for tonight," Sunggyu said instead. He broke his ending pose and turned off the music. Woohyun flashed Sunggyu a glance.

"I call dibs on the bathroom," Woohyun said, shouldering his bag and heading for the door.

Over his dead body. "No," Sunggyu said flatly.

"No?" Woohyun grinned, an impish smile twisting his features. "I'll race you."

No, fuck -- he was terrible at races and Woohyun had already sprinted off, and -- god he still had to switch off the lights --

Before he could even process his thoughts, Sunggyu had picked his bag up and left the room like lightning, the cold night air hitting his face like a wet towel.

Woohyun won anyway. Sunggyu jumped at the opportunity to corner him in their room, where Woohyun had been digging around haphazardly for a towel. He leaped on Woohyun, the combination of his weight and impact bringing Woohyun to his knees.

"No, no no no I won, hyung!" Woohyun protested, staggering under Sunggyu, who had him in a headlock in one arm and attempted to snatch the towel with the other. Midway, Sunggyu found himself laughing.

"All is fair in showers and war," he wheezed, pushing Woohyun down. Woohyun reared back up, tripping Sunggyu and backing him into the wall. For a few glorious moments, they fought, all manly pushing and elbow-shoving. Woohyun grabbed Sunggyu's shoulders and thumped them back against the wall, winding his legs around Sunggyu's, and how he remained standing was a mystery. Woohyun was having obvious difficulties in the breathing arena, and likewise, Sunggyu's breath rattled in his lungs, struggling for a semblance of normalcy and failing spectacularly. He half-expected Woohyun to smirk, to say something like why bother running a hopeless race?, but aside from their laboured breathing, Woohyun was silent, looking at him with eyes Sunggyu lacked the talent to read.

Sunggyu was suddenly acutely aware of how close they were, how terrifyingly compromising a position they were caught in. Unable to tap into his verbal ability, he braced his palms against Woohyun's waist and shoved instead, waiting for Woohyun to stumble back before sliding from his grip as smoothly as possible. Woohyun regained his balance in a matter of seconds, but that was more than enough time for Sunggyu to grab the towel from the floor and hightail it out of the room.

Woohyun caught up to him just as Sunggyu threw himself into the bathroom, holding the door open with muscles he'd trained for over the last couple of months.

"Nope," Sunggyu said through clenched teeth, struggling to keep the gap between the door and its frame as small as possible.

"Gyu-hyung," Woohyun replied, and scowled. Something small flickered through his expression then, something that Sunggyu wouldn't have recognized had he not seen it in his own eyes so often.

Expectance.

A wild thought struck him: Woohyun expected Sunggyu to give the bathroom to him anyway, because last night's kiss should have at the very least made them both more selfless toward each other. Woohyun expected something in their relationship to change, but Sunggyu was not entirely certain he was ready for the acknowledgement yet.

Behind them, the members cheered their support. Adding to noise pollution, Sunggyu wanted to remark, but his mouth seemed to have lost all connection to his brain. A moment's hesitance took away any words of surrender on his tongue, so Sunggyu did the next best thing pride bid him do and threw his entire body on the door, slamming it shut in Woohyun's face. The following silence had never picked on Sunggyu's conscience so badly before.

He made the shower as quick as possible, and when he stepped out of the bathroom he was still breathing heavily. In the meantime, Myungsoo and Dongwoo had fallen asleep on each other on the floor, snoring the living daylights out of each other while Howon and Sungjong battled it out on Woohyun’s iPad. Speaking of Woohyun.

Sunggyu stepped over their sprawled bodies and asked the room in general, "Where's that idiot?"

Sungyeol looked up from his laptop. "He left a while ago, after you snatched the shower from him."

"Why?"

Howon lifted a shoulder. "Said something about locking up the practice room because the managers had already gone home."

Oh. He would say something to express his surprise, but his vocabulary seemed to be in a pathetic state existing only in monosyllables, so Sunggyu kicked at Dongwoo's and Myungsoo's legs instead. "Go to bed."

"I am in bed," Dongwoo slurred.

"You're having sleep-induced delusions," Sunggyu told him.

"Go to floor?" Myungsoo asked.

"Their levels of intelligence have been rendered negligible, don't bother trying to appeal to them with logic," Sungyeol remarked.

"I. You take care of them," Sunggyu said, giving Myungsoo one last vindictive kick and pointing to Sungyeol, whose face fell like Sunggyu had just assigned him to Mission Impossible.

"Why me?" Sungyeol asked plaintively.

"Because you opened your mouth," Sungjong replied, fingers flying all over the screen. Howon grunted his agreement.

The door opened and Woohyun walked in, lips pale from the cold. He was soaked through, shirt clinging to his frame and dripping water everywhere. If anyone slipped and fell, Woohyun would have to take responsibility.

Woohyun shivered a little, and Sunggyu suddenly found himself involved in a phenomenal battle of self-control. One part of him ached, the most absurd kind of yearning, to kiss Woohyun's brains out, while the other wanted to punch him in the jaw and question his intelligence, because walking around in the rain was not exactly the key to good health. Sunggyu had a knack for thinking too much and acting too little though, so by the time he had processed and carefully kept his different urges in a little compartment in the back of his mind to dwell over later, Woohyun was brushing past him into the bathroom, leaving damp traces on Sunggyu's arms and a cold sort of atmosphere.

"Someone's not very happy," Sungyeol mouthed to Sunggyu.

One day he was going to die from over-exposure of both extremes of the emotional spectrum, and Infinite would be the crux of the problem. What he needed right now, Sunggyu decided, was a good night's sleep. There was nothing like a good night's sleep to dull his emotions.

Woohyun, as it turned out, should never have walked around outside without a jacket or an umbrella.

"No," Woohyun muttered into his pillow.

"Come on, Woohyun-ah. I'm not used to waking up first." Sunggyu nudged Woohyun with his feet. "Get up, hurry!"

"No," Woohyun repeated.

"Are you talking to your pillow?" Sunggyu asked, exasperated. "We need to be in the practice room in twenty minutes. Dongwoo's already awake."

"Talking to you," Woohyun mumbled. "Go away."

Sunggyu would bodily haul Woohyun out of bed if he wasn't likely to have a fist in his face for his efforts. Instead, he rolled Woohyun around to rest on his back and did what Woohyun loved doing -- he got all up in his personal space. If there was ever a time for reciprocation, it was now.

Woohyun squinted up at Sunggyu, where he hovered threateningly. "You're not going away," he said, a hint of annoyance edging into his voice.

"I believe it is my duty to drag your sorry ass out of bed when you're not doing the ass-dragging yourself," Sunggyu replied.

"Okay, fine," Woohyun snapped, sitting up abruptly and cracking his forehead against Sunggyu's in the process. He might have lost a couple of brain cells from that.

"Twenty minutes," Sunggyu called after Woohyun, who gave him the finger-equivalent of 'fuck you' and stumbled out of the door.

Half an hour into practice, it began to dawn on Sunggyu that Woohyun was not entirely in an appropriate state of physical health for another day of vigorous dancing. His movements were slow and always a split second too late, like he was submerged in water and forced to keep up. The instructors, fresh with new choreography and a handful more reasons to scold, gave Woohyun the hardest time of them all.

Bizarrely enough, Woohyun only stood there and absorbed their criticisms, face drawn and weary. He nodded at the appropriate moments, murmured an "I'll do better" at others, and slid his eyes over to the mirror to meet Sunggyu's. Sunggyu jolted a little but otherwise remained in his position, stretching his overworked muscles.

"Can we take a break?" Sunggyu suggested, directing the question to the instructors. The instructors themselves looked on the brink of collapse, so it wasn't much of a surprise when they nodded in mutual agreement and filed out of the door, leaving them to their own devices for the next five minutes or so. The sweat and heat in the room felt like a warm blanket pressing down on them, suffocating.

"What's going on?" he asked Woohyun the moment the door closed. The other members flinched, hiding their expressions behind bottles of water. Woohyun only sighed and slid down the wall to sit in an unceremonious heap on the floor, shoulders shrugging.

"I feel like shit." Woohyun rubbed at his arms. "But we all feel like shit so that isn't anything new," he amended.

Sunggyu threw him a bottle of water. Woohyun reached out to catch it, but his fingers closed around thin air. The bottle fell with a thud, rolling to rest against the wall next to Woohyun, whose mouth twisted into an ugly line of frustration. Sunggyu raised his eyebrows.

"You're dancing like shit. You --"

"I don't know, alright?" Woohyun snarled. "I apologise for not meeting your impossibly high standards; I would do something about it, except you give me no hope to -- to run on, to -- you just don't get it, do you? I feel like shit, the end, I feel like shit worse than all of you, and --" Woohyun inhaled, exhaled, and sneezed. "-- it would be appreciated if you could, you know, lay off."

Sunggyu wanted to open his mouth, tell him he had it all wrong, but sometime between Woohyun's claims of his high standards and inability to lay off, Sunggyu's good sense had escaped alongside his diminishing levels of tolerance.

Instead, he stepped an unstable path to Woohyun, sat down, and propped the bottle upright. Then he put a hand on Woohyun's thigh to gauge the possibility of being punched in the face and reached over a moment later, placing a hand on Woohyun's forehead.

"You feel like an oven," Sunggyu said. "God, Woohyun, you're burning up."

"Doesn't take a genius to figure that out," Woohyun bit out.

"I'll talk to the managers. Drink more water." Sunggyu handed Woohyun his bottle, preparing to get to his feet. He hesitated. "Dongwoo, could you get the managers? Tell them they need to bring Woohyun back to the dorm to rest. We have the music video shoot tomorrow; we can't afford to have a sick member in our midst."

Dongwoo nodded and, casting an anxious look at Woohyun, left the room. Howon followed suit, presumably to provide moral support.

In front of him, Woohyun's shoulders stiffened. "Of course," he said flatly. "So sorry for endangering your health."

"Woohyun-ah," Sunggyu warned, patting Woohyun's thigh. "The world doesn't revolve around you."

"Wish yours did," Woohyun grumbled, but to Sunggyu it sounded a lot more like an unintelligent noise of disagreement.

Sunggyu reached out and plucked Woohyun's cap off of his head, tousling his hair as he did so. Woohyun nudged his head up into his palm, only just slightly, just enough for Sunggyu to detect Woohyun's exhaustion and frustration and silent plea for comfort. He dug his fingers into his scalp, ruffling Woohyun's hair and trying not to grimace at the sweat and oil collecting on his fingertips. Woohyun remained silent, but his eyelids dropped and his defensive stance relaxed.

Sunggyu continued combing his fingers through Woohyun's hair until the managers came, whisking Woohyun off with angry mutters composed mainly of his 'irresponsibility' and 'idiocy'. All bull, Sunggyu thought with unnecessary intensity.

Sunggyu turned around to a room full of owlish stares. "What? Why are all of you looking at me like that?"

"We thought he was done for," Sungyeol said.

And -- and the thing was, they were right. Before, Sunggyu would have thrown caution out of the window and fought with Woohyun within an inch of his life, but now -- now the only thing he felt was concern and slight irritation at Woohyun's stupidity. He was certainly not struggling with unreasonable urges like locking Woohyun out of his room, when it came down to the basics. Sometime between their kiss and idol life, Woohyun had managed to dig himself a place in Sunggyu's heart.

Well, shit.

"Not staying back?" Dongwoo asked, slinging a towel over the back of his neck.

Sunggyu shook his head. "I need --" he paused, searching frantically for something else to say besides take care. "I need to see to Woohyun."

They left the practice room with the rest of the members, feet dragging and knees knocking. "I can't slip back into my usual hand-eye-feet coordination," Sungjong complained. "Walking feels like an entirely new thing now."

"Take care of yourself too," Dongwoo said to Sunggyu, taking his elbow. "Don't fall ill in the process of helping him recover."

"I won't," Sunggyu said, patting Dongwoo's shoulder lightly. Dongwoo took that as his cue to run along and join the others while Sunggyu hung back, wondering just when he had lost his place amongst the members and found a place next to Woohyun.

When they got back, Woohyun was sprawled out all over both of their beds like a demented starfish, fast asleep. Hyoan-hyung told Sunggyu he had caught a slight flu, nothing a good night's rest and a lifetime of kickass medicine couldn't solve. To be safe, Sunggyu was encouraged to move in with Dongwoo and Myungsoo for the night.

Sunggyu did, feeling extremely out of sorts, and woke up the next morning to a hideous twist in his hair and a peculiar creak in his back. Breakfast came hand in hand with a total frost-over in Woohyun's attitude, something Sunggyu was wholly unprepared for.

"What's wrong with him now?" Sungyeol asked, staring as Woohyun stalked back into their bedroom, looking for all the world like he'd woken up with storm clouds hovering over his head.

"I don't know," Sunggyu muttered into his mango. He picked at a piece of fruit stuck between his teeth with his tongue. "Why do you always think I know everything going on with him? He's being unreasonable today."

"Is he still on bed rest?" Sungjong asked, sighing wistfully. "If only we were in a relationship. I'd have no difficulties falling sick if we made out."

Howon grimaced. "Not while we're eating, please."

"You guys just don't understand my brand of humour," Sungjong said defensively.

Sunggyu's insides squirmed uncomfortably. The idea of Sungjong and Woohyun making out invoked an uncomfortable amount of displeasure and -- and possessiveness, of which he wasn't entirely sure how to deal with.

"He's not," he said abruptly, aiming for distraction and failing miserably. "We have to shoot our music video today."

"A hundred won says he's back in bed, fast asleep," Myungsoo said.

"Don't," Sunggyu said. "How many times do I have to repeat myself, money is not a plaything."

Sungyeol made a face, and Dongwoo mimed a snore.

"You'd better check, hyung," Dongwoo said. "I won't go so far as to say Myungsoo is wrong."

"Yeah," Sunggyu said. "Okay."

He made his way to their bedroom, cracking the door open to get a general idea of his chances at entering unscathed. Woohyun was lying on his bed, doing that melodramatic thing that involved staring at the ceiling.

"Got out of the wrong side of bed today?" Sunggyu asked, pushing the door wide open and leaning against the frame.

"Go away," Woohyun said.

When no other protests seemed forthcoming, Sunggyu entered the room, sitting down next to Woohyun and sliding his fingers through his hair. Woohyun softened visibly at the touch, eyes sliding closed.

"It's more like I got out of an empty bed," Woohyun admitted a moment later, voice raspy with sleep.

"Oh," Sunggyu said, hand stilling.

"Don't stop," Woohyun complained.

Sunggyu's hand left Woohyun's head completely. "I think it's high time you got out of bed, young man."

"But I --"

"We're filming our music video, remember? Unless you don't want to be part of it?"

That got Woohyun wide awake. "Threatening me, are you," he grumbled, grabbing Sunggyu's thigh and using it as a means to hoisting himself out of bed. "You've just unlocked another level on the lowness scale, congratulations."

"Whatever works," Sunggyu replied cheerfully, rubbing absentmindedly at the spot where Woohyun's fingers had left slight indents in his skin.

"If I collapse halfway through, I expect you to take responsibility," Woohyun called, crossing the space of their living room, what little of it they had left, all things considered, and into the bathroom.

"What responsibility is there to take?" Sunggyu asked, following him out and kicking a cardboard box aside. It clattered into a stack of empty cardboard boxes, completely ruining any ghosts of a structure they'd retained by the wall. The bright yellow post-it note stuck on the wall told him they had one week left to pack up all their things for the move into their new dorm. True to form, none of them had so much so as laid a finger on the boxes.

"Medical bills, TLC, the works," Woohyun replied through the bathroom door.

"Why would you need tender loving care?" Sunggyu asked, sitting down beside the bathroom door and quirking an eyebrow at the members, who were attempting fruitlessly to look like they weren't paying attention.

"You're not usually this dim, hyung, brighten up a little, would you?"

"Only after you get your ass out of the bathroom," Sunggyu answered, tangling a loose thread in the hem of his shirt around his fingers. He pulled, and it snapped.

"I just got in!"

"Because sulking in the room was higher up your list of priorities than personal hygiene."

"I was not sulking."

"Oh, my apologies, you were making faces at the ceiling."

It was silent for a moment. "My verbal sparring abilities don't work too well in the morning, try again later," Woohyun said.

The shower stopped, the bathroom door inching open in quick succession. Woohyun's face appeared, dripping water all over the floor, and Sunggyu had to avert his eyes from the remarkable view beside him. "Where are the towels?" Woohyun demanded.

"That's what you get for being the last one up," Howon said, sprawled out on the floor like a sad excuse for a pillow, with Dongwoo on his thighs and Sungjong on his tummy.

"Don't just lie there!" Woohyun said, sounding more than a little exasperated. "Pass me a towel. Anyone?"

No one moved. Sungyeol and Myungsoo stared at Sunggyu, and if gazes could be intense enough to bore holes, Sunggyu was pretty sure he would have four holes right smack in his face. Not a pleasant thought.

"Okay, okay," Sunggyu allowed, if only to escape death by staring, and got up from the floor. "You guys are the laziest bunch of idiots I've had the misfortune to live with."

"We're the only bunch of idiots you could tolerate living with," Myungsoo countered, sounding extremely satisfied with himself. "I think that makes the lazy part of your sentence redundant."

Sungyeol fell about in hysterical laughter. Sunggyu took that as his cue to leave.

"Speaking of living together," Dongwoo said, voice drifting over as Sunggyu made his way into his room, attempting to sift through the army of dirty laundry on the floor with his feet in search for a towel that could pass off as relatively clean. "Should we start packing soon?"

"I hear there are going to be security guards and marble floors," Sungyeol piped up, sounding a second away from dissolving into raptures. "Who's sleeping with whom?"

"I'm calling dibs on leader," Woohyun said abruptly. Sunggyu tripped over a sock.

"No one was planning to contest you for him," Sungyeol shot back.

"Why, am I not likable enough?" Sunggyu asked, faking upset in his voice. "Someone needs to save me from this tyrant!"

"Hyung," Woohyun protested. "Where's my towel? Is your back giving you problems again?"

"I -- what! There is nothing wrong with my back," Sunggyu said, with failing conviction. "I just can't find it."

"It's his eyesight," Sungyeol explained, all too loudly. "His eyes are never good in the morning."

The room dissolved in an uproar of laughter while Sunggyu drowned in his indignation and attempted to rectify the situation to the best of his abilities. "I think it's time we started packing, don't you?" he called, walking into the other rooms with all the dignity of a miffed cat. "Maybe you guys could start while I search for a towel for darling Woohyun."

The front door slammed open. Sunggyu's heart nearly committed suicide out of his ribcage.

The managers bustled in, complaining about their tardiness and grabbing their nearest victims by the elbows, herding them out, all while Woohyun made extraordinary noises in the bathroom that would have sounded hilariously like a chicken if Sunggyu wasn't so anxious to find a towel, and soon.

"You, get Woohyun out as soon as possible," was the last thing Sunggyu heard before the door banged close and the customary shrieks of fans started up outside.

"Are you sure there isn't a towel in there!" Sunggyu asked, with all the exasperation of a panicked mother.

"Of course I'm sure, my eyes are perfectly fine!"

"How do you explain their disappearances then?"

"The Case of the Missing Towels," Woohyun intoned, still poking his head out of the door. "I'm cold."

"Suck it up," Sunggyu grumbled, throwing the covers off Sungyeol's bed. "I think you're going to have to --"

A loud crash, bang, and unmistakable cursing interrupted him mid-sentence. Fearing the worst, he turned around, and.

Sunggyu prided himself on his ability to freak the fuck out in situations that called for it, but this -- this was truly bizarre, to the extent that the requirements of a proportionate freak-out was well out of his limits.

"Ow," Woohyun said, in the midst of the debris they once called (not at all affectionately) their bathroom door. He curled his legs up in a belated moment of self-consciousness. It was the saddest attempt at decency Sunggyu had ever seen.

"Pfft," Sunggyu said and, a short moment later, buckled over in a fit of laughter.

"I am in actual pain here," Woohyun cried, laughter curving his words into crescents, still sitting gracelessly on the floor, completely naked. "And you're not helping!"

"I just -- of all things," Sunggyu stuttered, taking a wobbly step in Woohyun's general direction before letting out a howl of mirth. His coherency had always been temperamental anyway, even at the best of times. "Do you think the members heard --"

"Do you think the fans heard --" Woohyun managed to choke out, looking constipated for all the muscles twitching in his face, as though he was trying to keep a straight face and just -- couldn't.

"Thank god for soundproof walls," Sunggyu remarked, eyes half-filled with tears as he clutched his stomach, stumbling over to Woohyun and lending a hand. "I hear they're great for keeping noise within four walls --"

"Don't step on me, you great big buffoon, I've already suffered enough --"

"Hey, where's the respect in that --" Sunggyu yanked Woohyun up, and then Woohyun was in his face, laughter caught halfway up his throat, lips moving around silence.

"I --" Woohyun said, stopped, and tried again. "I don't." He barely made an effort to pull away, choosing instead to stay, where their lips were in immediate distance of kissing, and Sunggyu shouldn't, shouldn't shouldn't shouldn't. Woohyun was so close and it seemed fitting to just -- to stop all the teasing and playing around and cautious glares, to reduce the space between them. It only required a basic level of brain-to-limb instruction, but to Sunggyu it seemed like an unfeasible task.

The moment ticked by breathlessly and Sunggyu dropped Woohyun's hand, putting a safe distance between them, inclusive of a buffer zone in case his body decided to betray his brain and lunge back at Woohyun. "You're sick," was the first thing out of his mouth, something that felt a whole lot like justification and sounded entirely too fake. Clothes. That's what Woohyun needed. Not kissing. This equation did not involve any lip action.

"Much as I enjoy a healthy breeze around my," Woohyun waved his hands to complete his point, grinning weakly. "I'm thinking that towels are a lost hope for me." He stood there in the middle of the living room, hair askew, legs positioned in the most awkward manner imaginable, and Sunggyu had to tear his eyes away.

"I'll get you some clothes," Sunggyu said, if only to get away. Out of sight, out of mind, that's what they always said.

"I think --"

Sunggyu left before Woohyun could finish his sentence with the rest, I think I can get my own clothes, pulling a pair of jeans from the hangers before realizing that they were his jeans, and he in actuality hadn't the slightest clue what Woohyun wanted to wear.
"Thanks," Woohyun said, following him into the room. Sunggyu tried not to let the surprise show on his face. "I'll be out soon."

"I -- yeah. Yeah, make it quick," Sunggyu answered, stuffing the pair of jeans back into the racks and leaving the room, grabbing Woohyun's bag of medication as he did so. Nothing was faultier than Woohyun's ability to take care of himself.

They ran out of the dorm with all the speed of a pair of lumbering beasts, Woohyun fumbling with the shirt around his torso. When they threw themselves into the car, Sungyeol leaned forward, grinning. "What did you blow up this time round?"

"Woohyun did it," Sunggyu said instinctively.

"What, no, it wasn't me!"

"He --"

"The door --"

"-- too heavy for the door --"

"-- you can't put me to blame --"

Eventually, they managed to narrate their situation through stilted, interrupted sentences and various accusations of inanimate objects, while Sungjong burst out in thigh-clapping laughter and their managers sighed in dismay. They had almost started in on their lectures when Myungsoo cut in, saying, "I thought hiding the towels was a pretty good idea --"

"-- but you guys definitely exceeded our expectations," Sungyeol finished, a shit-eating grin plastered all over his face.

It was silent between Woohyun and Sunggyu for a short moment.

"You."

Woohyun's glare could wilt flowers.

"I'm a genius."

"Maybe, if you lived in a world of pathetic creatures like you."

Sungyeol settled back in his seat with a maddening air of self-satisfaction. Sunggyu nudged Woohyun's shoulder good-naturedly, who only shot him an indecipherable look and looked out of the window.

Spending the entire day and most of the night with someone you had almost kissed, as it turned out, was no easy task. Everywhere Sunggyu turned, Woohyun was there, which in itself was understandable enough, but did not explain at all why Woohyun was back in his Let-Me-Ignore-Sunggyu-While-I-Pretend-To-Have-Fun-Without-Him present state. Frankly, it was quite upsetting, certain as Sunggyu was in his belief that Woohyun was faking his grins and laughter. Woohyun was good at that, but Sunggyu was better at sussing him out.

Several times, Sunggyu caught Woohyun coughing into his collar, his shoulder, anywhere but his hands. Every attempt of his to present Woohyun with his medication, frustratingly enough, was rejected.

"You're only going to get worse," Sunggyu said in the afternoon, grabbing Woohyun by the elbow a distance away from the house they were using onset.

"Wouldn't you like that," Woohyun said, shaking his hand off and not even pretending to make it look like it was unintentional. Sunggyu was not entirely sure he liked this change in attitude.

"What's your problem?" Sunggyu asked, regretting his words one second too late. So much for thinking before doing.

As expected, Woohyun's face tightened, every muscle tautening in sync to the angry bob of his throat. "My problem," he said, too loudly for Sunggyu's comfort.

"I'm tired," Sunggyu hissed, "of this." The elusive smiles; the delicate, too often overlooked, line separating tolerance from intolerance.

"What? What, this? You started it, don't you dare throw it back in my face."

"What the hell are you talking about --"

"You never understand!"

"Fuck, Woohyun, is it so hard to stop speaking in metaphors and give me something that makes actual sense?"

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about, most of the time," Woohyun spat venomously, features contorting into an expression of bitter malice.

"Just --"

"You think you're so impenetrable," Woohyun continued. "Ordering us around, telling us what we can and can't do. How's that for literacy?"

"I have a right --"

"Goddamn right you do!" Woohyun shouted, nostrils flaring, hands circling into fists. If Sunggyu ever once said Woohyun had to try very hard to look unappealing, Woohyun was giving it his all right now. "If you ever thought that maybe, maybe you weren't right all the time --" Woohyun stopped, closing his eyes in a brief moment of what looked to Sunggyu a lot like pure, unadulterated anger. "I'm just --"

He looked at Sunggyu, eyes hard and resolute. "I don't know why I bother," he snapped, turning on his heel and kicking the ground with enough vigour to send pebbles flying.

"Likewise," Sunggyu shouted.

He half-wished he could have formed a better comeback, but it was no big secret that wit was not his strong suit. Woohyun wouldn't have appreciated it anyway.

He stalked back to the set, hands strange and restless, like they were having difficulties picking a spot on his body to settle on. He would hang them by his sides, but that felt too loose and left him with a discomfiting number of options to hold his hands; he could fold his arms, but that would make it look like he was angry, which he was to a very far extent but gave Woohyun too much leeway in the Triumph District. He settled for picking the buttons on his suit instead. It was hot and far too sunny for his body's idea of a preference, and before long he'd broken out in an uncomfortable sweat. His armpits were perspiring again. He probably stank.

It was his turn next. The stylists mopped his brow and fixed his make-up, passing the latest gossip material over his head and intercepting it with various repetitions of "relax your face, Sunggyu-sshi, if you will".

The director waved him to the staircase, telling him to defy nature walking down the steps backwards. He was supposed to make it look like he had spent a lifetime doing just that, but Sunggyu froze the moment the director called action, because he wasn't prepared, didn't know how to kick start his body into working order. He stood there, clutching the rail, for one second too long.

"Cut!"

"I'm sorry," he said immediately, bowing slightly out of habit. "I'll do better."

They tried again, four times, with Woohyun waiting at the bottom of the staircase to continue where Sunggyu finished with his line. Each time, all Sunggyu could think about was Woohyun and his level gaze, his relaxed posture at the foot of the stairs. The sixth time round, Sunggyu had it down pat, willing himself to think love and not Woohyun, although he did have the oddest suspicion that these two words had become synonymous a long time ago. The sixth time round, he walked too far back, lost his grip on balance, and fell right into Woohyun -- and past him.

He stumbled wildly, grabbing Woohyun's shoulder and righting himself a breathless moment later. The director stopped the cameras and muttered something to the scriptwriters, who muttered something back.

"Sunggyu," he said eventually, annoyance a heavy pitch to his tone. "We're changing the script. You won't be walking down the stairs; Woohyun will."

It felt like someone had dug a pitchfork into his stomach.

Woohyun shrugged his shoulder from Sunggyu's grip, where he had unwittingly left his hand out of pure habitual routine. The universe must be mocking him, because Woohyun breezed through his part without the slightest shade of a mistake.

"Stop looking so angry, Woohyun-sshi. You're supposed to look pensive, not pissed."

"I'm not. Angry."

Sunggyu slackened his thighs and settled back in his seat, pulling at the creases of his tailored pants.

Part 2