#3. B1A4 (CNU/Sandeul, Jinyoung/Sandeul friendship)

[almostkiwi]

Fandom: B1A4
Title: Call it Intuition
Rating: pg-13
Pairing(s)/Focus: CNU/Sandeul, Jinyoung/Sandeul friendship
Length: 7,351
Summary: Really, it’s all shitty guitar solos and uninspired singing-until someone gets drunk. Then, it’s the best roller coaster life has ever taken you on.
Warnings: None
Notes: I have no idea how two drabbles turned into a 7,000 word fic.

Remixee author: bulletthestars
Title of work you remixed: untitled b1a4 drabbles (....lol ;_;)
Link to work you remixed: http://bulletthestars.livejournal.com/12688.html#cutid3

can't even settle on a name to call themselves; if Jinyoung fills out
the competition forms, he might think of something witty, like
“Legend.” Most of the time, he'll just put “Jinyoung's Band.”'>

The first bad decision had been letting Jinyoung get him drunk that night.

The rest-well, it went downhill from there, down a hill so steep it might as well have been a fucking cliff. And now, Junghwan's standing in a drug store at roughly eight in the morning, scanning hundreds of pill bottles in an effort to keep his raging headache at bay.

For a band, they aren't admittedly all that close-they can't even settle on a name to call themselves; if Jinyoung fills out the competition forms, he might think of something witty, like Legend. Most of the time, he'll just put Jinyoung's Band. Sunwoo likes to call them The Best Damn Thing that Your Eyes Have Ever Seen, but that name doesn’t fit so well on the form, so Jinyoung ends up crossing out half of it and leaving The Best Damn Thing that.

Junghwan reaches a hand out gingerly, and next thing he knows, he's got half the rack of bottles lying on the floor and the cashier giving him a hard, early-morning glare. Junghwan could make Jinyoung pay for it-if Jinyoung didn't have them all wrapped around his little finger, being the self-acclaimed 'composer'; Junghwan will get the pleasure of singing the high C if he says so much as a word to Jinyoung-and that was what had started all this nonsense in the first place, this you sing better when you're drunk nonsense that Jinyoung had passed off as a scientific experiment.

Junghwan groans. Fucking science.

“It's an experiment,” Jinyoung had said, a bottle of hard liquor in one arm and a whining (how did you even obtain that) Junghwan hanging off the other.

The logical progression would be that Jinyoung had been the one to get him drunk in the first place, so Jinyoung should be the one going out to get the hangover pills today, but nothing is ever quite logical in the Jinyoung-Junghwan household-so, here Junghwan is, cashier-ready with his hood pulled over his head and drawstrings tugged tight. He'd heard somewhere in college that excessive drinking was supposed to affect your memory, but he remembers every damn thing that had happened to him last night, from dragging Dongwoo, long time friend and technical assistant, backstage, to Jinyoung barking at him over the phone about how worried they were-yeah, Junghwan thinks with a clench of his fist, probably more worried about Junghwan-the-lead-vocal than about Junghwan-the-guy-who-lives-in-Jinyoung's-apartment.

Junghwan rubs his temples with one hand and slams the bottle onto the counter with the other and makes sure his face says that he clearly doesn't want anything to do with anyone right now and just keep the change.

“What took you so long?” Jinyoung mumbles when Junghwan closes the apartment door behind him.

“Look, if this is going to keep happening after every performance, then-”

Mention performance, and Jinyoung catches on immediately. Jinyoung always catches on whenever it has to do with Legend, or Jinyoung's band. “Did you hear the crowd last night?” he says, voice flat as if chatting about the weather.

“They were partly cloudy,” Junghwan grits out, and Jinyoung glances up.

“They loved us,” he says, and Junghwan slumps down onto the couch.

“The mics were pretty good,” he mumbles, throwing an arm over his eyes, and Jinyoung sighs.

“Stop changing the subject.”

Junghwan peeks out from under his sleeve. “I'm not-”

“If you can sing like that without the help of alcohol, then I'll let you off the hook,” Jinyoung says, eying Junghwan. “Until then, though, drink up.”

“I thought you were supposed to be the good influence.”

Jinyoung shrugs, standing up to pour a third cup of coffee, no nutritional breakfast in sight and hair hanging over his charcoal-smudged eyelids. “I'm the one who convinced you to drop out.”

“I still regret that,” Junghwan says, and Jinyoung gives a hoarse laugh, ruffling Junghwan's hair and grabbing his composition notebook from between the couch cushions.

-

All Junghwan can think is that it's way too fucking bright outside when he opens the door later that day. “What do you want,” he mutters, expecting Chansik, but a deeper voice replies.

“You, uh, left this last-”

Junghwan snaps his hand out toward Dongwoo's face, effectively shushing him. “Thanks,” Junghwan whispers, sliding his fingers through the remains of that shirt from last night, wrinkle-ridden with most of the buttons either pried loose or gone. “Did I-”

“Go home shirtless?” Dongwoo says, voice muffled by Junghwan's palm. “Yeah, you kind of did.”

“Fuck everything,” Junghwan says with a groan, and Dongwoo shifts awkwardly on his feet, looking Junghwan, clad in an oversized hoodie and not much else, up and down, and taking in the situation as if he doesn’t already fucking know.

“You're good,” Dongwoo had said to Junghwan the first time they'd officially 'met', after an impromptu jazz interpretation of Avril Lavigne's 'Girlfriend' with Jinyoung's secretly recorded arrangement playing in the background.

“You're hot,” Dongwoo had said to Junghwan the second time they'd met, with his hand on Junghwan's back.

“What,” Junghwan squeaked, tensing up, because Dongwoo had definitely been looking somewhere near Junghwan's lips.

Dongwoo laughed then, patting Junghwan's shoulder. “Oh, it means your mic is on,” he'd said, pointing to the little foam ball near Junghwan’s mouth. “You're hot. Everyone can hear you.”

Cue a subsequent, “That's a pretty impressive range, Junghwan,” from Sunwoo somewhere backstage.

“So,” Dongwoo says, reaching forward to open Junghwan's hood just slightly. His fingers graze Junghwan's cheek. “So.”

“You know what, let's just forget that ever happened,” Junghwan says, pursing his lips.

“I don't-”

“Right,” Junghwan continues, throwing his hood back and shaking out his hair. “You're the best sound technician we've ever had-okay, the only one, but I don't want to lose you over-”

“No, I don't want to forget,” Dongwoo says, voice low, and Junghwan's mouth hangs open in mid-sentence. Dongwoo brushes his own hair back with his fingers and pushes his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. “Just-just keep that in mind,” he murmurs, turning and taking the steps down to the sidewalk two at a time, jacket fluttering behind him. It really is way too bright outside.

“Who was that?” Jinyoung says, towel over his head and billowing clouds of shower steam trailing after him, and Junghwan closes the door, leaning against it with his hands over his forehead.

“Wrong number,” Junghwan says. Jinyoung raises an eyebrow but doesn't say much else.

-

They start practice at around four in the afternoon, and Sunwoo always gets a kick out of swinging the microphone stand around and bellowing, “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Best Damn Thing that Your Eyes Have Ever Seen will be performing tonight!” Usually, Junghwan enjoys it, too, tapping Sunwoo's bass drum with the side of his foot, but today, he isn't in the mood.

Their opening songs usually start out with something like, “Yo, count me in-Jung Jinyoung, and L-L-L-Legend,” and no one in the audience remembers The Best Damn Thing that anymore-and Sunwoo gets pissed and drums harder, which usually results in everyone playing a little harder. Jinyoung has all these quirks figured out; he serves four roles at once-composer, guitarist, manager, and PR, and no one really minds until he gets a little too bossy, which starts to happen sometime around eleven at night when they're still working on the same song and Chansik has class the next day.

“Who was that?” Jinyoung asks again, after Chansik and Sunwoo have left, and Junghwan points to his throat, feigning laryngitis.

That night is the first night Junghwan really has time to think things over, the first time he really has to himself to wonder whether or not he feels like a changed man. “I'm gay,” he mumbles; Jinyoung, in the loft bed, has headphones on and music blasting, and Junghwan curls toward the wall, patting his own butt lightly. Because one night ago, he'd been fucked up the ass and it'd felt fucking amazing, besides the fact that he'd been both drunk enough to go initiate it and aware enough to remember every damn thrust. The best of both worlds.

That, and Shin Dongwoo is one fine specimen of a sound technician.

He goes to the same university as Chansik does, making him both easily accessible and smart, and Junghwan wiggles his toes, weighing out the pros and cons of actually being able to face Dongwoo again after another day or two of thinking things over.

Junghwan had been both drunk enough to agree to cover Justin Timberlake, of all people, and climb all over that poor microphone stand, and aware enough to notice every hooded stare that Dongwoo had sent his way, every time Dongwoo had turned away from the stage, only to be drawn back in a few beats later. To be honest, it had only succeeded in egging Junghwan on. “I'm gay,” Junghwan repeats-in the silence, and Junghwan freezes when Jinyoung shifts above him.

“What was that?” Jinyoung says, sounding pretty much oblivious, and Junghwan lets out a breath.

He'd met Jinyoung first year, first day-they lived on the same floor, only one room apart, and after a while, Baekhyun and Chanyeol had mutually agreed to just do a little roommate reorganizing after Jinyoung couldn't take more of Chanyeol's excuse for rapping and Junghwan himself didn't know how much longer he could tolerate Baekhyun flicking the bathroom lights four or more times in the middle of the night before finally returning to bed. So, it's been three years for them, a couple months or so with Sunwoo and Chansik, whom Jinyoung had scouted off some online job listing when he'd realized he might need a drummer before he could actually call them a band. “It doesn't matter how you get them, as long as you get them,” Jinyoung had said-and honestly, Junghwan doesn't mind, now. Chansik is obedient and hardworking, and Sunwoo had gotten them the makeshift studio in the basement of his aunt's apartment complex.

It's hard to keep a secret from Jinyoung. He does this thing where he just sort of nods whenever you tell him something, making you wonder if he'd even heard you or not. But then, he'll end up bringing it up months later in conversation, remembering it forever in that big, confident head of his.

“Big head, my ass,” Jinyoung had snapped one day in the studio, leaving Junghwan choking and Chansik, the not-so-innocent college junior, cackling in the corner of the room.

So, admittedly, Jinyoung is the one whom Junghwan considers telling first-because it’s hard to keep a secret from him anyway, and Dongwoo is a lot more than a little white lie.

Junghwan purses his lips and stares up at the loft facing him and a chunk of Jinyoung’s red hair dangling over its edge. Jinyoung’s breaths are quiet and slow, kind of like how he breathes when he’s waiting, waiting for Sunwoo to look up at him with that challenging glare, or waiting for Chansik to finally sigh and go through the riff again until Jinyoung’s satisfied. “I’m g-” Junghwan starts, then cuts himself off, squirming closer to the wall. Jinyoung’s breathing doesn’t show any sign of picking up. Junghwan mumbles into the wall again, minutes later, “I’m-I’m g-”

It’s then when Junghwan remembers the time when they’d been in that café.

Located deep in the winding, grassy paths of Chansik’s university’s campus, the café had been a popular student hangout, and Jinyoung and Junghwan had only gone there after finding a lost university ID in front of one of the dorm buildings on Chansik’s campus. It’d been common practice, at least at Junghwan’s school, to take advantage of the meal plan-just once, fun and relatively harmless-before returning the card. So Jinyoung had bought them both coffee and they’d people-watched like proper college drop-outs for a good few hours one afternoon. Jinyoung’s reaction, though, to a boy who’d looked vaguely like Chansik with a girl leaning on his shoulder, had been to promptly (and quietly) flip his shit, snapping a pencil in his fist and nearly toppling the entire table with his forearm. “Our reputation,” Jinyoung had explained not too long afterward, dusting off his shirt after making sure several times over the kid indeed had not been Chansik.

“What reputation,” Junghwan said with a laugh, holding Jinyoung’s cup in a tight fist.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Jinyoung replied, brushing his hair back and letting a fond expression fall over his face, a soft smile as he’d pieced the pencil a little futilely back together.

Junghwan doesn’t understand-still doesn’t, because what does it matter; what does the band matter in the long run, when they’re old, greying, and living in this same apartment off whatever money they still get from social security or unemployment pensions. The thing about Jinyoung is that he dreams big and never quits early, making it all the way to the top before falling a long, painful way to rock bottom. Not to say that Junghwan isn’t a dreamer, a competitor, an all-or-nothing winner-an all-around winner, he thinks, grinning to himself and rubbing the hickey on the back of his neck-he isn’t sure how he’d be able to tolerate Jinyoung if he weren’t nearly as ambitious himself. The thing about Jinyoung, though, is that he doesn’t have a single reservation about it. “It was worth it,” Jinyoung will say as he pores over the bills and signs papers with a trembling, permanently calloused hand.

“I’m-going to the bathroom,” Junghwan says, but Jinyoung is already asleep by then.

-

The thing about Jinyoung is that he knows exactly how to push Junghwan’s buttons.

“Junghwan, this isn’t a performance at some bar,” Jinyoung says, brushing his hair back and leaning over Junghwan’s bunk so that he blocks out most of the light. “If it were, we could just open the mic and call it a night.”

“Just open mic for this, then,” Junghwan mumbles, and Jinyoung grunts in frustration, leaning down to squeeze Junghwan’s shoulder, none too lightly.

“Lee Junghwan, this is a competition, now get out of bed and get ready.”

Junghwan pushes himself closer to the wall, curling his toes. “Fine, why don’t you go get some whiskey, and we’ll get this show on the road.”

“That was for one night,” Jinyoung says, sitting down on the bed. “It was a joke. It wasn’t like you hit all your notes that night, either-it was just-”

“You’re not exactly the most encouraging leader, you know,” Junghwan snaps, and Jinyoung frowns.

The heating clicks on for the first time that autumn, and Jinyoung shifts again, probably crossing his legs and letting his chin fall into his hands. “You know,” he says, voice soft. “While you were moping around, that Dongwoo guy called.” Junghwan’s breath catches in his throat, and he almost wonders if Jinyoung had noticed it, because Jinyoung continues in a voice slightly higher, “He called my cell phone because you weren’t answering yours. He’s worried, you know.”

“Worried, my ass,” Junghwan says, just because he can’t come up with anything better.

“Yeah, well, he might be worried about your sorry little ass,” Jinyoung mumbles, and Junghwan shoots up in bed, nearly hitting his head on the loft.

“What?”

Jinyoung continues with something about making and easy, and with strength that Junghwan sometimes forgets he has, Jinyoung tugs Junghwan off the bed and nearly throws him at the dresser. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes to do your hair,” Jinyoung says.

“You know the judges don’t care what we look like, right?” Junghwan calls after him, rubbing his shoulder, and Jinyoung pauses in the doorway, back still turned.

“Yeah, but someone does,” he says.

-

(Jinyoung has always been a bit of a perfectionist, anyway, Junghwan assumes.)

-

Before Junghwan can make it ten feet into one of the back corridors of the performance hall, he’s assaulted with hands that he recognizes instantly-it’s hard not to, if those hands, anyway, had been certain places-

“What,” Junghwan says, checking the switch on his microphone, and Dongwoo laughs.

“No, it’s not that,” he says.

“You know this place too well,” Junghwan mutters, because it’s literally black; he doesn’t know exactly where Dongwoo is, nor is he sure if he wants to.

They stand for a moment, Dongwoo’s hand still on the small of Junghwan’s back, before Junghwan continues, running his hand over his microphone again, “You know I was drunk that one time, right?”

“Yeah,” Dongwoo says. “I tried not to think about it.”

“You really like me, don’t you?” Junghwan says, and Dongwoo pulls his hand away-and suddenly, Junghwan feels lost for a second, feels an unbearable need to latch on to something, an anchor, a railing, because it’s literally black, and suddenly, he wants to know exactly where Dongwoo is.

“I-I try not to think about it,” Dongwoo says, and Junghwan slides toward his voice. “I came here to find you.”

“Of course you did,” Junghwan says.

“No, I mean-” Dongwoo continues, then laughs again, letting out some tension. “Shit, why do you have to be like this-I mean, you’re going the wrong way. The multi-purpose room you guys usually practice in is in the other hallway.”

Junghwan sputters, then turns the other way-not that he really has any idea which way is which, and says, “Isn’t there, like, another passage-”

“You said it yourself,” Dongwoo says, setting a hand on Junghwan’s shoulder. “I know this place too well.”

And by the time they reach civilization, Junghwan is breathing out multiple sighs that he hadn’t known he’d been holding, and Chansik-it’s always a pleasure to see Chansik, because it always seems like such a pleasure for him to see you-is wrapped around Junghwan’s neck, pushing him toward the multi-purpose room. “We’re on in about half an hour,” he breathes, leaning on Junghwan a bit more than necessary. Junghwan is about two seconds away from elbowing him in the ribs when Jinyoung grabs his arm.

“No,” he says, and Junghwan looks up at him. “Chansik isn’t feeling well today.”

“Probably because of all the late-night practices,” Junghwan mumbles, and Jinyoung ignores him.

“That’s why I sent Dongwoo to go get you,” he says, and something clenches inside Junghwan when he realizes that Dongwoo had been sent. “Hey, Chansik-your hands, you can skip practice if you want, but you have to perform.”

Junghwan looks down, and Chansik’s hands are bandaged up from the tips of his fingers to his knuckles. “Don’t worry,” Chansik says quietly to Junghwan, curling his fingers. “I’ll take them off before the performance, of course.”

Junghwan frowns, tapping at the palm of Chansik’s hand. “Idiot, that’s not what I’m-”

“Hey, I got the tuner working,” Sunwoo calls from a nearby corner, and Chansik bounces away, and really, it’d been a gift-it was nice of Jinyoung to notice, really, nice of him to say a few words about it-Chansik-the-quirky-university-student, rather than treating him as Chansik-the-bassist. It could’ve been worse. Jinyoung could’ve said-

“Wouldn’t want you to bleed during the performance, anyway.”

Junghwan’s head jerks up, and he opens his mouth to shout, but Dongwoo holds him back with a hand. “Let it go,” he mumbles. “It’s a little complicated.”

Implying that there’s a lot that Junghwan doesn’t know about.

-

Like the surgery the next week, that Junghwan isn’t informed of until Jinyoung calls out, voice echoing through the apartment like some sad imitation of his guitar amplifier, “I’m going to the hospital to visit Chansik.”

“The what?” Junghwan shouts, scrambling to his feet and tossing his music in the corner. What has been a reoccurring theme lately; suggesting that Junghwan’s life may or may not be passing him by without him actually being aware of anything.

“Oh, I thought I-”

“You think a lot of things that might not be true,” Junghwan says, throwing on a jacket, and Jinyoung slings an arm around Junghwan’s shoulder, squeezing it.

“We’re friends?” Jinyoung says as they lock the apartment door and meet a chilly October afternoon, skies overcast and shadows weak and blurry around the edges.

“Mhm,” Junghwan replies, a little more than miffed by a number of things, Chansik’s condition included, and the fact that Dongwoo hasn’t left any messages lately. Junghwan supposes it’s his own fault, because he has Dongwoo’s number staring at him in the face, he has Dongwoo’s number memorized, but he never bothers to answer any of his phone calls-or, rather, he deliberately doesn’t answer. Later, he’ll realize that he probably shouldn’t have said what he’s about to say, but-the only thing scarier than the future is knowing the future, and Junghwan mutters, voice purposely sharp, “We’re bandmates?”

Jinyoung’s hand freezes on the door handle. He turns to look at Junghwan, eyes piercing but clouded over, like the sky, almost weak, or maybe just blurry around the edges. “That’s different, Junghwan.”

They don’t talk until Dongwoo joins them in the lobby, carrying a big bunch of flowers and a big, hopeful smile that drops when he spots them, walking a distance apart. “Um, these are for Chansik,” he says. “They’re, um, peonies. For healing.”

Junghwan thinks that he might need some peonies himself. He wonders whether he should give them to Jinyoung, or whether Jinyoung should give them to him-or whether they should just throw them into the space in between that’s seemed to be growing lately, like a bunch of flowers.

-

The first date doesn’t happen until a couple weeks later, in an odd café some two feet off campus where Dongwoo had helped install lighting once as an odd job. When Junghwan arrives, Dongwoo is already there. “Sorry I’m late,” Junghwan says, and Dongwoo laughs.

“You’re not, I was just early.”

Junghwan glances at him before sitting down, then mumbles, “You’re crazy.”

“You love me,” Dongwoo offers, and Junghwan sighs and leans his elbows on the table, head resting in locked fingers. “So, what’s up?”

Because it’d been Junghwan who’d actually initiated this date thing, after all those weeks of Dongwoo sending him errant messages and asking him about his day, the band, Chansik; if there were one person he knew he could talk to, it would be Dongwoo.

Jinyoung, between the two of them-Junghwan and him-was the one who’d brought up going back to college-specifically, Junghwan going back to college. “You could transfer your credits from your first two years, and then go to Chansik’s school or something. I’m sure they’d let you in.” Junghwan doesn’t know if that’s really how it works or not, but he hadn’t had the heart to say anything. Jinyoung had been fiddling with his composition notebook at the time, rewriting notes with Junghwan leaning over the back of his chair but not actually touching him.

Conversely, Junghwan was the one who’d brought up moving out. “I-I might have to live on campus or something,” he’d said, voice small, but right in Jinyoung’s ear.

Jinyoung had paused, smearing one note across the page. “Is that what you want?”

Junghwan hadn’t said much after that, just bounced his knee to try to make things a little more palatable, and then, after a while, mumbled a quiet, “Do you want me to go back to school?”

It’s funny, how you think you know someone so well.

“I’m kind of torn,” Dongwoo says, tracing the edge of the paper cup with his finger. “I want you to come to my school, but-”

“The band,” Junghwan finishes. “I know. Right? How could he say something like that? I thought-”

“Well,” Dongwoo says with a quick glance up at Junghwan, “You did suggest moving out. And I thought the relationship between you two was important to you.”

“I was just finishing what he started,” Junghwan protests.

Dongwoo looks up at Junghwan for a while this time, over his glasses and through an air crackling with tension, and at the same time, comfort-and expecting Junghwan to get something, but when he doesn’t, Dongwoo sighs and says, “How do you know he isn’t thinking the same thing?”

Junghwan’s hot chocolate tastes a little too sweet. He picks at the marshmallows with a straw, and Dongwoo watches him, wrapping his hands around his own cup of coffee, warming them until they come out a pretty pink and seem to glow against the white cardstock. “The thing about relationships,” Dongwoo continues, “is that it isn’t really finishing what the other person started.” He shifts around a bit, flinching when some coffee spills from between the edge of the cup and the lid and drips onto his hand, and he looks uncomfortable for the first time in a while. “It’s more about finishing what you started.”

-

The second date is more of a double, or triple date, or just a group gathering between friends, but since Junghwan had asked Dongwoo and all that, Junghwan, somewhere in the back of his mind, wants to consider it a date. Dongwoo arrives early again, waiting outside the practice room on a chilly November morning. And by the time Junghwan and Jinyoung finally arrive, dodging traffic with Jinyoung rubbing his eyes and Junghwan juggling a breakfast between mittens, the tip of Dongwoo’s nose is flushed a deep red. “You don’t have to get here so early all the time, you know,” Junghwan breathes, and Dongwoo grins, pulling his cell phone from his pocket.

“No, this time, you guys were late.” Dongwoo glances down the steep stairway heading from the sidewalk into a door about a floor down. “So, what’s up?”

Junghwan looks expectantly at Jinyoung, who stares back. “It’s about the lights,” he says, unlocking the door and swinging it open. “We have two sets of track lights on each side of the room. I was here last night, and-”

“You were here last night?” Junghwan says, head snapping up.

Jinyoung looks at him, eyes narrow, and-tired. “Yeah, and?” There’s one kind of tired, the tired that Junghwan has known like a good sibling for the past three years-the kind of tired you get when you’ve been working at something for so long that your body literally gives out on you. He can’t count the number of times that one of them had actually fainted in the practice room, and the others had just sort of dragged his body to a corner and given him some water and went on until he’d woken up. The kind of tired you just fit into; it’s always there, but it’s a good kind of persistent, because you know that, after enough work, after just the right amount of practice, repair, rebuilding-you’ll get there.

But something in Jinyoung’s eyes today says that he doesn’t actually believe he’s going to get there.

The wind just about seems to catch the edge of the railing, and it blows right down into the stairway, continuously, like some kind of cruel practical joke. Junghwan honestly doesn’t know why he’s letting this bother him this much-or at all, really; Jinyoung comes to the practice room every day, and he’s frequented night sessions, too, when he’d suddenly been inspired, and Junghwan remembers almost every time he’s heard the key turn into the lock at about 4:30 in the morning, then turn again around 7 or 8, Jinyoung coming back a little haggard, but happy. But, maybe that’s part of it-“You didn’t go anywhere last night,” Junghwan says, as if it’d been not Jinyoung, but himself.

Jinyoung furrows his eyebrows for a moment. “Yeah, I did,” he says slowly, carefully. “I came here. You probably just didn’t-”

“I know when you go somewhere,” Junghwan insists, leaning against the doorframe. “I wake up every time.”

“You were probably just-”

“And I thought you said this was for a new song,” Junghwan grunts. “Not-not lights.”

Jinyoung lets out a sigh through gritted teeth. “Okay, if I did, I lied. I’m sorry. It’s about the lights, I need Dongwoo to help-”

“I thought this was for the band.”

“The lights,” Jinyoung growls, “are just as important to the band as any other stupid fucking song.”

It always starts with little things, little sticks, and rocks, and things hitting the front window and leaving these erratic trembles that never quite fade away-so that next time, that little rock, that little piece of debris flying off the granite truck driving in front of you hits your window and it shatters into a million pieces and you’re left with two choices-get a new window, or get a new car. They’re arguing about lights, fucking track lights that Junghwan could’ve removed with a twist-and-pull that he’d learned first year of high school when he’d helped out as a stage manager before actually being allowed to act in the annual musical. They’re arguing about lights, and yet, Junghwan can’t seem to get it out of his head that-“You could’ve just asked me.”

“Holy fucking shit, Junghwan,” Jinyoung snaps, and Junghwan turns away, storming up the stairway with his hand shoved deep into his pockets. “How was I supposed to you know that you-”

Junghwan doesn’t get the rest of it through Dongwoo’s footsteps chasing after him and rush of Tuesday morning traffic, but somewhere in the back of his mind, some place that he knows is right, but he’d rather not listen to, fills it in for him: How was I supposed to know that you cared?

-

So, that’s how the third date ends up happening in Dongwoo’s dorm room that evening, a corner room that was supposed to have been a triple, but had somehow ended up a single, leaving all the hundreds of square meters to Dongwoo. “Yeah, I don’t know how it happened, either,” he says, pushing open the door, and Junghwan blinks at the general homey-ness of it all-he’d imagined something simpler, or neater, maybe; not to say that it’s messy, but Dongwoo does have all sorts of little picture frames and knick-knacks sitting around that he seems to have collected over the years. “I almost wish it were smaller, because then I wouldn’t be obligated to keep all this junk, but I’ve been turning into a pack rat.”

“No, I kind of-I kind of like it,” Junghwan says, running his hand through a rack of unused scarves, and Dongwoo squeezes his shoulder.

The first thing Dongwoo does is go around turning on all the extension cords-a thing that Junghwan finds cute, because it isn’t like Dongwoo’s paying the electric bill himself.

“You’re sure you don’t mind, right?” Junghwan says, and Dongwoo glances up.

“You kidding? I’m glad to have you.”

“Even after how I acted this morning?”

Dongwoo sighs and walks over, reaching out a hand for Junghwan’s duffle bag. “Listen, I don’t know to get you to trust me,” he says quietly, leading Junghwan into the room, the full-sized mattress lying in the corner, taunting them. Dongwoo sits down on the edge of it, long legs shifting awkwardly to find a comfortable position that has everything resting on one thing or another, as if he were too exhausted to even hold himself up. “I’ve done everything right,” he continues, and Junghwan sits down next to him, pushing his knees together and twisting the sheets in his fingers. “Okay, I befriended you. I let you make the advances. I befriended your friends. I sent flowers to your friends. I showed up early to the date, I-”

And Junghwan finds it all so overwhelmingly endearing, the way Dongwoo lists it like some sort of checklist, ticking off boxes in his head and breaking into a frustrated laugh of sorts, rubbing his temples with his thumb and middle finger. Junghwan finds it all so overwhelmingly endearing that he doesn’t really know what to do with himself, and Dongwoo continues, “I let you stay here, you can ha-”

So Junghwan kisses him.

Junghwan kisses Dongwoo in the corner of his mouth at first, because he’s still speaking, but a couple seconds later, when Dongwoo eases his mouth closed and turns his head to meet Junghwan’s lips, Junghwan is holding Dongwoo’s shirt, running his thumb under the neckline.

“Finishing what I started,” Junghwan breathes against Dongwoo’s cheek. “I-”

“Like you?” Dongwoo says, and Junghwan laughs, pecking Dongwoo’s jaw.

“Love you?” Junghwan mumbles, and Dongwoo shifts forward, sliding between Junghwan’s legs.

“Sure.”

-

About eight months ago, a little after they’d first performed in the quad at Chansik’s university, Sunwoo, in turn, had referred them to a local television station, which had ended up interviewing Sunwoo some weeks later. Not that the rest of them had much better to do-so they’d stood around behind the camera, making funny faces and listening on to what he had to say. There was one question, though, that Junghwan had left (more for a bathroom break than anything else) before he could hear the entire answer to.

Junghwan, sitting on the edge of Dongwoo’s bathtub at two in the morning, calls Sunwoo up and is answered promptly with a, “What the actual fuck, Junghwan.”

“Do you remember that one interview?” Junghwan says, his voice coming out thick and quiet.

It’d all been so fascinating to them, the television world, with its bright lights and strange set-ups, a warm living room in an otherwise blackened studio, a wall in a wall, a room in a room; Sunwoo had even laughed afterward and said, “Alright, we’re never doing that, okay?” implying that they’d go on in their little indie way, playing in competitions and picking up side jobs to help pay the bills. They hadn’t gotten much money from that interview, anyway-most of it had gone to the television channel, and sales didn’t surge or anything. Jinyoung hadn’t really responded, and they’d forgotten about it a week after it aired.

“Sure,” Sunwoo replies, yawning. “The one with that cute camera girl.”

“Yeah, with the glasses,” Junghwan says, and Sunwoo laughs. Sunwoo had warmed up to Junghwan immediately after joining the band, even going to Junghwan when Jinyoung was being too hard on him, and something about it was exhilarating, fun-trying to hide Sunwoo’s constant phone calls when Jinyoung was sleeping in the same room. They’ve gotten close, but never really too close, because for being as outgoing as he is, Sunwoo has never been one to volunteer information about himself. It’s mutual understanding, though, and Junghwan says, “Remember when they asked you who you thought would leave the band first?”

Sunwoo pauses for a moment, then, slowly, he mumbles, “Yeah.”

It’d been a sort of blow below the belt, a cheap question that the interviewers probably wouldn’t have asked if the rest of the band hadn’t been standing right there-maybe the interviewers had felt threatened or something, overwhelmed. And Sunwoo had handled it to the best of his ability, which had been pretty well, too, with only a few yeahs and ums before he’d come up with a plausible answer. “Well, two things,” he’d said. “It wouldn’t be about bad relations between us or anything, more about ambition, and different goals. So in that case,” he’d said with a small, almost nervous laugh, “probably Jinyoung.” And Jinyoung had remained silent through the whole thing, holding his left elbow with his right hand and leaning on one hip, with a sort of unreadable expression. That was when Junghwan had excused himself, grabbing a few hard candies on the way out.

“What was the second thing?” Junghwan says, hunching over to lean on his knees.

“What?” Sunwoo says, and Junghwan sighs. “Weren’t you there-”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Junghwan says. Sunwoo had known when Junghwan left, had even looked over, Jinyoung had told him a little while later, because you were being such a distraction. Junghwan gets used to it though-drawing the shaky, broken line between criticisms that don’t matter and criticisms that do. “Two things,” Junghwan says, fumbling with his phone-“what was the second thing?”

There’s another pause, rather long this time, and after two minutes or so, Junghwan wonders if Sunwoo had hung up on him somewhere in there-until Sunwoo murmurs, “It was you.”

Junghwan doesn’t know if he’d seen it coming, or if somewhere, in the back of his mind, he wouldn’t have been surprised even if he hadn’t been expecting it.

“It was you, Junghwan,” Sunwoo continues, “If it weren’t Jinyoung, it would’ve been you. You’re just as flighty as he is, maybe with a little temper mixed in.” Sunwoo sighs then, a loud, distressing crackle over the line. “You don’t know this, but Chansik and I are always on the lookout for new jobs. You know I work part time at the instrument store. Always kind of on our guard. Because we don’t know how long this is going to work.”

“You don’t trust us,” Junghwan says.

“Trust,” Sunwoo mumbles, “is a hard thing to gain.”

Junghwan glances at the open door after that, wondering whether or not Dongwoo has woken up, whether or not Dongwoo is waiting for him, or deliberately ignoring him-but there’s trust, there’s a trust there that Junghwan hadn’t even known Dongwoo had been fighting for, a trust that Junghwan knows now, a little too well, as he breathes into the phone and bites his lip and doesn’t know how to defend himself-or whether he even wants to defend himself. “I don’t know,” Sunwoo says with a yawn, “maybe we’re all a little too flighty.”

There’s a moment when Junghwan wants to say something, but it gets choked up in his throat, breath and all, and after a while, all he can croak out is, “Right.”

Sunwoo laughs then, and says, “Now, go back to sleep. I have an evaluation tomorrow.”

-

The hardware store opens bright and early every day at eight, and Dongwoo and Junghwan had gotten there at around 7:50 with tens of thousands of won to waste-“Spare,” Dongwoo had corrected, patting Junghwan’s shoulder, and Junghwan shrugged his hand off.

“These aren’t going to be as easy to take off,” the clerk had said, turning a replacement light fixture around in his hands, “but they’re going to last for longer. Same price. I’ll give you a buy three get one free deal.”

As expected, it had taken Dongwoo a long time to come to any sort of decision, deferring to Junghwan in the end, anyway, with an, “It’s your practice room.”

It’s Jinyoung’s, actually, Junghwan thinks with an incoherent grumble as he tugs the stepladder over from a back corner and starts installing the lighting. “He was here last night,” Junghwan had said when they’d been standing outside the practice room earlier that morning, staring at the locked door. “You can tell because the handle gets all stiff after about ten hours or so, and it’s not stiff right now.”

“You have the key,” Dongwoo points out, and Junghwan glances down at him.

“Yeah, I guess I do. But it’s still-”

“He trusted you with a copy of the key,” Dongwoo says, and when Jinyoung walks in then, sleepy-eyed and hands fuller than what looks comfortable, Dongwoo tilts his head toward the duffle bag that Jinyoung’s holding.

“If you were thinking about kicking me out,” Junghwan says, and Jinyoung jumps, looking up with squinted eyes, “I will personally walk over to you and strangle you.”

Jinyoung gapes for a moment, hoarse voice getting the better of him, and looks up at Junghwan with an expression that speaks a novel that Junghwan isn’t coherent enough to voice. Perhaps Jinyoung will, in a song one day-then he’ll give the lyrics to Junghwan to sing for him, and sing well, for an agency or a company or something that Jinyoung has wanted for years now, chasing after silly dreams that contrast with the mature image he always seems to have. “Good to know,” Jinyoung says, smiling that dimply smile that Junghwan doesn’t know how much he’d missed until he sees it again, lines forming in the sides of Jinyoung’s chin. “I put the registration form on your bed.”

It’s then that Junghwan also realizes that he hasn’t simply been tolerating Jinyoung all this time-no, he’s been following Jinyoung. Because part of him wants that same dream; because part of him, as silly as it seems, thinks that they’ll get there, too. Part of him trusts Jinyoung. “I’m not going back to college-”

“No,” Jinyoung says with a grin this time, admiring Junghwan’s handiwork and the pile of old track lights lying in the corner of the room, “I mean the registration form for the Attack of the Indies competition next month-about a week before Chansik’s midterms.”

“Who needs midterms, anyway?” Junghwan says, and Jinyoung laughs, taking the last set of old lights from Junghwan’s arms.

“I like how you think.” Jinyoung shoves them into the corner, watching as they settle into a stable pile and squinting up at the new, as if the now-whiter structures really make that much of a difference-but somehow, they do. “And by the way, if you thought I’d willingly let you live on campus, in an apartment-alone-with your boyfriend, you are absolutely wrong.”

Dongwoo drops the duffle bag he’d been holding, and Junghwan’s foot slips on the last step of the ladder, sending him tumbling into an awkward kneeling position. “Y-you knew?”

Jinyoung shrugs. “Since I got home that first night at the bar, and you were in bed, un-showered and wearing everything except your fucking shirt. Like, how else would that even happen.”

Junghwan sits up, dusting his pants off and curling a finger into the corner of his pocket. “Then, how did you know we got together after that?”

Jinyoung chuckles, and says, “Call it intuition.”

There’s a knock on the door, but Jinyoung ignores it, gaze fixed on the rim of Sunwoo’s drum set-the genius gaze, Chansik used to call it, jokingly, of course, because the genius gaze is generally more of a bother than anything else-like now, when Chansik and Sunwoo are waiting in the cold morning air and Jinyoung’s too distracted to open the door for them.

“That’s it!” Jinyoung says in one of his little shout-whispers. “That’s the next song-Intuition!”

Junghwan hears a groan from outside the door-turns out their practice room isn’t as soundproof as they’d thought-and Jinyoung likely has the entire chorus composed in his head and is scrambling to get it all down in his notebook, one of the many notebooks, because really, who has time to go looking for one particular notebook when you’ve got lyrics in your head and a dream to chase.

They perform it at what was supposed to have been their last competition together, but Junghwan doesn’t think he’ll ever tell Jinyoung that, anyway. One of the judges tells Jinyoung that if he can churn out three more solid tracks, they might talk about a record deal; and, of course, that gets Jinyoung busier and more sleep-deprived than ever. “All in a day’s work,” Junghwan says, glancing down at the blank page in Jinyoung’s composition notebook one Sunday afternoon-the page has been blank since that morning, and Junghwan has made more cups of coffee than he can count.

“You can’t force creativity,” Jinyoung grits out, and Junghwan laughs.

“Want to try some, uh, whiskey?” he says, glancing at the bottle gathering dust in the back corner of their kitchen. After all, that was the first bad decision, among others. But, it comes with the territory-“The singer-Junghwan, right? Great runs, vocal acrobatics. Very emotive,” one of the judges had said, and Dongwoo had kissed him backstage with a hand on his hip and a tongue in his mouth and the whole world in front of them, laid out like a blank composition notebook.