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“Hey,” Euijoo says, sliding closed the tiny door of Nicho’s tiny dorm room behind him, and leaning back against it.
Nicho, typing something on his phone, looks up and smiles at him. There’s a playful light in his eyes and Euijoo feels a little of the tightness in the centre of his chest untwist. “Hey there Xiao Joo,” Nicho greets him. “Two seconds… there,” Nicho chucks the phone onto the bed, pulling his feet up to curl under him, to make some space on the slim single mattress. “Come. Sit.”
Euijoo comes, and sits. Nicho, his brain full of languages, has this habit of speaking in a small ration of words, and it can make life feel wonderfully simple. Euijoo, sitting, feels the softness of the covers under his thighs, and smells the scent of Nicho’s bed, of Nicho’s aftershave. These rooms are so small, barely more than cupboards, and joining someone in one always feels intimate. With most members, Euijoo would call them to the shared living area if he wanted to talk. Now, he takes a deep, steadying breath, tilting his head back, leaning back on his hands, closing his eyes.
“That bad, huh?” Nicho murmurs, tone gone softer, and Euijoo feels the shift of the mattress as Nicho moves closer, and then as he strokes Euijoo’s arm through the fabric of his hoodie. Euijoo keeps his eyes closed, and Nicho gets up and rearranges them, coming to sit behind Euijoo, holding Euijoo in the circle of his arms. Nicho’s warm, and his arms feel very strong.
“Want to talk about it?” They’re in the Tokyo dorm right now, and they had been speaking in Japanese, but now Nicho has switched to Korean, making it easier for Euijoo to process. Euijoo wishes, sometimes, that he knew Mandarin, or at least that they had a member who did, so that Nicho could have this ease too. This chance, for a while, to not have try. “Did something come up in the meeting with management?”
“No, just the usual stuff.” Euijoo sighs, and feels Nicho’s arms tighten around him. “I just…” He feels the words sit in his mouth.
Nicho runs his hands up and down Euijoo’s sides. It’s nice. It reminds Euijoo about his own body, in a way that’s helpful and grounding. He consciously relaxes his muscles, and feels his weight falling more onto Nicho’s chest. Nicho meets him, not letting him fall.
“You’re a really good leader,” Nicho tells him softly, “and you’re doing the best you can. You can’t solve every single thing.”
Euijoo takes a deep, deep breath. His ribs expand and contract, and he can feel the solid wall of Nicho’s muscle behind him. Nicho, Yūdai and Fuma are all so built, so strong, Euijoo the one member of the group’s ‘hyung line’ who’s composed along more wiry specifications, but there’s something about Nicho’s body that always strikes him differently to the others. He’s never particularly wanted Yūdai to hold him – which is just as well, because Yūdai would never sit still long enough – and when Fuma hugs him it’s really nice, but it’s brief, they clap each other’s backs and finish it quickly. Whereas with Nicho Euijoo feels like he could just rest here for hours. Like it would be easy.
“Four years ago,” Nicho continues, and Euijoo knows what he’s going to say, because he’s said it before, and they both know how helpful Euijoo finds it. “Four years ago, we were in the training camp. In that old unused school. Two hours’ drive from Seoul. The ENHYPENs were having their debut. We thought we’d never debut. The staff put us two in a room together, and you were scared of me. You didn’t talk to me properly for about three days…”
“Three hours! Maybe!” Euijoo protests, as always. Nicho giggles into the side of his neck and continues:
“…and we didn’t imagine we would be like this. That we’d be debuted, both of us. And together. And we would have all this.” Nicho gently butts his head against the side of Euijoo’s, voice lowering, soft. Euijoo can feel the warmth of his breath. “You never know what’s going to happen.”
They have so much now, it’s true, even if management always wants more, even if the HYBE Labels Japan and the central HYBE management can’t agree on what, or how, and Euijoo and Fuma can be left stuck between them, trying to figure out how best to advocate for the group. But they’re debuted, they have albums, music videos, a fandom, a light stick, they went on tour. Thousands of trainees and hundreds of idols would kill for their chances.
“And…” Nicho says, and then he takes another breath, and stops.
“What?” Euijoo prompts. Then he tries to twist in Nicho’s arms, to look at him. It’s not like Nicho to hesitate. “What were you going to say?”
“Oh,” Nicho makes a scoffing sound, moving himself back a little. “Nothing. I don’t have good words for it,” he adds, and looks away. It’s an excuse Euijoo can’t challenge him on. “Hey,” Nicho continues, “move up, I need to piss.” And he scrambles off the bed, onto the tiny distance of floor between the bed edge and the sliding door. “Stay there. I’ll come back and we can make ramyeon and watch that cartoon. The one you like.”
Nicho prefers to watch superhero movies with lots of fight scenes, but for Euijoo he’s gone through so many episodes of Bojack Horseman. Euijoo smiles up at him, and Nicho throws him a grin before opening and closing the door.
Leaning back on the bed, Euijoo looks up at the white textured ceiling and sighs. He feels so much better than he did. Nicho always does that for him.
He does think back to his eighteen-year-old self, in that post-I-LAND training camp. Being embarrassed and slightly annoyed to find himself rooming with another line-up reject, a boy he’d never found it easy to talk to, who’d also been through the dystopian awkwardness of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ the show had so consciously fostered. A boy he’d assumed would be brisk and brutal, for reasons he can’t now explain without having to acknowledge the flimsiest of prejudices. Nicho had reminded him of some of the boys who’d been less than kind to him at school, perhaps, but Nicho isn’t like them at all. Nicho can look stern, at rest, but anyone should be able to see how easily a smile forms around his eyes, the dimples ready by his lips. And he’s gentle, gentle enough to coax forward a kitten. Euijoo wants to travel back in time to that original show and give himself a shake - see that contestant there? See Wang Nicholas? Don’t you understand he’s the best friend you’ll ever meet? Can’t you realise you ought to go over and talk to him?
The idea that he could, perhaps, have gone through life never really getting to know Nicho at all, is enough to make him shiver again. And the delight rises, as he thinks about it; the somewhat mystified delight that Nicho is interested enough in him to be friends the way they are. Nicho charms everyone, snuggles everybody, but he’s serious, with Euijoo.
A resonant ping interrupts Euijoo’s thoughts, and from the small vibration carried through the bed, he realises it’s Nicho’s phone.
He looks down at it on instinct, drawn by the sound and the way the screen lights up.
And that is when he sees it. The picture that has just come onscreen.
-
By the time Nicho gets back from the bathroom, Euijoo thinks he’s composed himself fairly well.
“I didn’t mean to see it,” he says, and watches as the easy smile on Nicho’s face changes to confusion.
“Close the door,” Euijoo prompts, before Nicho can say anything.
“Joo?” Nicho asks him, having complied. “What is it?”
“I didn’t mean to see it,” Euijoo repeats. His voice sounds so strange. Stilted. He’s never been good at putting words to negative emotions. “It just came onto the screen. I think you must have left the chat open.”
The understanding he can see rising in Nicho’s eyes removes any hope he was holding onto that this might be something Nicho hadn’t solicited.
“Give it to me, please,” Nicho says. For whatever reason, he’s switched to Japanese again. He holds out his hand, and Euijoo gives him the phone.
There on the screen is the chat, all in Mandarin, Euijoo has no idea of the specific context. Just from the different coloured chat bubbles it’s a group chat, rather than with just one other person. And the most recent entry, after an exchange that by the timestamp was happening just before Euijoo interrupted Nicho, is a photo of a man’s… well…
And not just, not just like a casual snap. Not something that could be a joke, a laddish thing, boy humour. No, this man is aroused. And resting across his pale skin is an arm that is much more tanned, this other hand framing the base of the… as if to show it off.
“It’s my friends,” Nicho says quietly. “You know. Tsung-sheng and Li-Chen.”
Euijoo blinks, and glances a look over to the corkboard on Nicho’s wall. There’s the photo, pinned to the board, so familiar to Euijoo from hours sat on this bed, hanging with Nicho - Nicho’s room and Nicho’s stuff as well-known as his own. There, pinned in amongst the postcards of sights from tour cities, a few charms and some foreign candy wrappers, is the photo Nicho got printed from his last trip home. It’s a sunny day, outdoors in the courtyard of a historic temple site, under some blossom trees. Nicho is standing between two others, between a skinny pale man, Tsung-sheng, the data systems analyst and Li-Chen, bronzed from his time on the baseball field. ‘My friends from school, from way back,’ Nicho had called them. And then he’d explained that the two of them were engaged to be married. To each other.
Euijoo feels dizzy. “But why would they… to you? That’s not right!”
Nicho shrugs. His face has closed off, stern again. And he huffs, the way he does when he’s searching for words. “Couples can… flirt,” he tries.
“Are you in love with Tsung-sheng?” Nicho is very fond of that friend in particular, Euijoo has always noticed that. He’s often talking about memes and videos Tsung-sheng has sent him.
“No!” Nicho laughs. He shakes his head. “I like them both, a lot! We’ve always been close, like this. They’re my best friends!”
Euijoo tries not to wince at that, at the way it hurts.
“But,” Nicho continues, and waves his hands in the air, huffing again. “I am not romantic about them. They aren’t romantic about me.”
“So, what’s this about?” Euijoo exclaims. He feels sick.
Nicho meets his gaze, raises an eyebrow. “Sex.”
Euijoo feels his skin go hot and then cold. “We can’t… we’re idols, we can’t just…” he draws himself up, tries to sound firm. The dismay, the horror he feels in his skin, it’s his responsible nature, his leader instincts, he can’t believe Nicho could be so rash. “I forbid it! You can’t be doing this! It’s too risky!”
“Euijoo,” Nicho says, slowly. “It’s fine. I would trust them with my life. They’re my friends, so they’re helping me out. And I’ve got to… I can’t do five years of this,” he gestures around them, at the dorm, at the job, at the life that Euijoo is all too aware can feel like it’s entirely consumed by the job, “with nothing.”
Euijoo takes a sharp breath. He’s staring at Nicho, studying him, trying to find some part of this that is familiar, that will make this make sense.
“It’s safe,” Nicho repeats. “I promised you, didn’t I? I promised you I would help you keep this group safe. This is safe. Safer than going on a website and getting some virus that reads all our email. It’s safer than sexting with a stranger, it’s safer than… It’s not like I even ever get to touch them.” He says with so much resignation, so much wistfulness. “I’m only human, Euijoo.”
Euijoo had always felt like he knew Nicho better than anyone else in the world, but he was a fool, wasn’t he? Because he hadn’t known this. Nicho. Human Nicho. Of course he’s human, he might be the most real, feeling person Euijoo has ever known. His gentle, warm, strong body, and Nicho yearns to use that body to… of course he does. Euijoo feels very dumb, and very young.
“I’m sorry you saw it,” Nicho adds. “But I’m not ashamed. Of the photos, or of liking men.”
Obviously, that doesn’t matter to Euijoo – it hurts him again, that Nicho could think it would. Perhaps they never truly saw each other at all. Perhaps… “I have to get to… dance practice,” Euijoo manages, and pushes past, and leaves.
-
When he’s older, Euijoo is pretty sure spending half the night in the dance studio isn’t going to be an option any more, but for now it’s a welcoming escape. He left the dorm after nine, and it’s now nearing two in the morning, and as he stills, panting, feeling the sweat drip down his body, he looks at himself in the mirror.
For all he’s been moving, drilling himself over and over again in the most complicated steps from their routines, his brain hasn’t stopped working. He keeps seeing that photo and then Nicho’s face. The way Nicho had said it. Sex, he’d said. I can’t do five years of this with nothing.
It’s been going round and round in Euijoo’s head. It’s a problem he often has, worries circling and circling on a loop. Over the years, he’s learned at times like this to get exercising, to try and let the increased blood flow and higher breathing rate help his brain yield some kind of result as it whirs and processes. And he thinks now that he’s had a flash of inspiration.
He looks at himself in the practice room mirror again, at the lines of his body in his baggy practice clothes, and nods at his reflection. It’s a good idea, he’s sure it is. Surely this will work?
In the practice room showers, it’s deserted. There’s a night porter in the reception downstairs, there are cameras in the studios and hallways, but Euijoo’s well established good behaviour means for trips between the dorms, studios, and local minimart he can travel alone, and there’s no manager with him now.
Euijoo strips off his practice clothes, piling them on one of the benches between the lockers. In the mirrors over the sinks, he once more catches his own reflection.
He couldn’t do this in the dorm, with nine of them no one ever gets much time in the bathroom alone and there’s only so much hot water. But here, even if there’s only very basic soap and shampoo, he can get warm, and runs his hands over himself, slippery and wet.
They’re my friends, so they’re helping me out, Nicho had said.
Nicho does so much for Euijoo. Doesn’t he realise he could have asked for this too? If Nicho’s willing to hold Euijoo so close, for so long, when Euijoo isn’t strong enough to just put up with it, with the stresses of getting everything he wanted, surely Nicho could have understood it’s only fair that Euijoo should do this for him?
Euijoo’s head is pounding, and he has a stray moment wondering when he last hydrated. And he’d forgotten to eat, because he’d been going to do that with Nicho, safe and warm with Nicho watching cartoons and eating Chinese takeaway that Nicho would complain wasn’t quite the real deal. ‘When you come to Taiwan,’ Nicho always said. ‘When you come to my home, I’ll give you the best food you’ve ever had.’
Euijoo runs his hand down his chest, over his stomach, and then between his legs. He’s already a little hard. That can happen, sometimes, when he’s stressed. Sometimes it’s a little awkward, if Nicho holds him and he’s feeling… edgy like that. Nicho never really touches him other than his torso, but if his hand had ever accidentally gone lower…
Euijoo hisses, and tightens his grip on himself, the soap and water easing the way. He’s not muscular, and he’s neither that pale or that tan, and unlike that photo – unlike Tsung-sheng – he’s got long, messy pubic hair he’s never bothered to tidy, because who would see it? But his… well. Well, he’s bigger, than that picture, he’s pretty sure. And he’s truly hard now, flushed with it, to the point where it’s a struggle to take his hand away. Because of the scant privacy in the dorm, he almost never gets a chance to do this. Although, based on today, Nicho clearly has all that figured out. Maybe Nicho worries less about getting a mess on the sheets in their rooms, maybe Nicho… maybe just before Euijoo gone into Nicho’s room, maybe Nicho had been…
Euijoo feels a thrill of electricity from the base of his toes, and flings his hand back and against the wall, away from himself. Looks down. He’s never really understood the appeal of pictures like this. It’s not something he’s sought out himself. If he thinks of ‘erotic’ photos, he thinks of something in black and white, maybe a muscular guy in a really tight sweater, maybe… But, anyway, if you like this kind of thing then surely what he has to offer is a decent enough example?
Moving carefully, he turns the water off, reaches out for his towel and then with a newly dry hand to his phone, which he’d left carefully propped just outside the cubicle. He takes the photo and sends it before he can think again.
Finishing his shower takes a bit of time (he’s too aroused to ignore, and so he finishes himself off quickly into the towel, careful to avoid spilling anything onto the communal facilities). Then he has to dry his hair and get dressed, and when he spots the public water fountain and leans over it, he realises how intensely, achingly thirsty he’s been. Wiping the water off his mouth with the back of his hand, he feels a pain in his stomach that he finally recognises as hunger. He goes back to his bag, and digging through it yields a slightly flattened protein bar which he rips open eagerly.
There’s a chime on his phone, and Euijoo pauses. The food and drink are clearing his brain a little. The intensity of his concern, and the intensity of his conviction, are both ebbing. Suddenly, he’s acutely aware that it’s a random weekday evening, and that he’s just…
He opens the phone – he might as well know the worst – but it’s a message from Fuma:
If you want company at the studio, let me know. I’ve still got too much jetlag to sleep anyway
Euijoo swipes it away, and opens up his chat with Nicho. There’s the picture. Oh God, the picture, and he didn’t even try and pose it properly or anything, it’s looks so amateur. And he can see that Nicho has seen it, but there’s no response at all.
-
Their first schedule the next morning is a magazine shoot. It’s just Euijoo, Yuma, Jo and, unfortunately, Nicho.
Euijoo had managed to get back to the dorm without meeting anyone, and he’d lain his bed for a couple of hours, unable to sleep, thinking about what had happened in the near-identical dorm room he’d been in earlier. Eventually, he’d determined that he could only check his phone every fifteen minutes at most. Then he’d given in and started playing a colour-matching game, aware that it had settings to allow message notifications to push through from selected contacts, which included his parents and the members. But nothing had arrived from Nicho.
He can’t skip breakfast too, but he grabs a bottle of energy drink and a wrapped triangle gimbap from the fridge, occupying himself in the car with eating them. He and Jo sit in the front seats, Nicho and Yuma behind, and Euijoo manages to avoid meeting Nicho’s eye.
Then they’re into the shoot, and being pulled in different directions by stylists and make-up artists. He and Nicho are in the same room, but Nicho’s face is like a mask. He looks tired, though, Euijoo thinks, with a pang.
Can he pass it all off as a joke? Can he pretend it wasn’t his own… body, that he photographed? That he found the photo on the internet? But then isn’t that weirder?
What had he been expecting Nicho to send back to him? Last night he never got as far as thinking of that.
Nicho, not looking at him, never looking his way when Euijoo can’t help but cast a glance over to him, probably can’t come up with any way to be polite, or kind, about what a mess Euijoo has made of everything. And Nicho always tries to be kind. It’s one of the things that makes him one of the most important people in Euijoo’s life. How could he risk all that?
“Euijoo-chan, relax!” one of the photographers calls out. “You look like you’ve heard you failed an exam! Think about something you like, this is supposed to be a fresh, bubbly concept!”
Euijoo catches Yuma’s concerned face, and tries to make his own happier. Nicho is still looking fixedly forward, and keeps on, all through the shoot. It’s probably not one of their best, overall, and Euijoo feels bad about that too.
Afterwards, though, as the car is taking them once more to the practice studio for a run-through of the new choreo, Nicho leans forward in his seat, his face suddenly close to Euijoo’s again. Euijoo sits back, wondering if everyone can see his blush.
“Euijoo and I are supposed to do a video call with our Japanese teacher,” Nicho announces. “It was arranged last night. It won’t be on the schedule but she said she would send a text.”
“Let me check,” the manager says, opening his phone. “Oh, OK, I see it. Why is she sending texts that early in the morning?”
“It was urgent,” Nicho explains. “Ahead of the award show, you know? The interviews we might have to do. So, you need to drop me and Euijoo at the dorm. We’ll walk to the studio when we’re done.”
Euijoo braces himself. He’s so embarrassed. But Nicho is always kind, so he’ll be gentle about this too, surely.
-
“Look, I suppose I can’t scold you” Nicho says, in Korean, confronting him the second they’re through the dorm door. Everyone else is at the studio, and so the two of them are in the small kitchen/diner which is full of shoes and video game wires and random blankets and bits of stray Lego that get underfoot. “But you said that. And then you did that. So, I think it’s a bit upsetting.”
“What?” Euijoo blinks. Then, thinking: “Do we have to call Sensei?”
“That was all a cover,” Nicho explains, and then as Euijoo opens his mouth. “Fuma arranged it with her for me, she knows we needed an excuse for something. We ought to send her a gift basket later. And don’t worry, I didn’t tell Fuma details. Just said it was for you and he agreed immediately.” He sighs heavily, and Euijoo notices he’s clenching his fists at his sides, setting his shoulders. “Look, Euijoo, I don’t know who you meant to send that… picture to, last night. But you sent it to me. And I just think it’s a bit much, for you to lecture me about sending pictures to people and then do it yourself. Can you trust this person? After everything you said, can you trust them? Can you trust them the way I can trust my friends? Because,” Nicho licks his lips, “you can’t get hurt, Euijoo, OK? There are bad men out there.”
Euijoo blinks at him. “What?”
“Look,” Nicho says, and he gets his phone out, opening his app, “you sent this to me, by accident, you…”
“No!” Euijoo reaches out, grabbing his wrists before that dreadful picture can sit between them, in the light of day and under the eyes of Taki’s Transformers toys. “No, I mean, of course I know I sent it to you!”
Nicho looks at him. Really looks at him, for a long minute. Then, with something in his face Euijoo can’t read. “Joo, you didn’t… Did you mean to send it to me?”
The incredulity in his tone is more awful than any amount of anger. Euijoo turns away. “It was stupid. I’m sorry, I was really tired, still and I just wanted to… I wanted to fix something and I thought…”
“Euijoo!” Nicho interrupts him, and steps forward, reaching for his hands, like it’s just another time he’s soothing him. Except this time, he hesitates, and doesn’t actually touch. “Euijoo,” Nicho repeats, earnestly. “Joo, why did you send it?”
Euijoo bites his lip. He tries to read Nicho’s face. He thinks of a lot of things he could say, a lot of ways he could try to explain this, his brain once again firing off in all directions. He thinks about how he used to struggle to understand how safe Nicho was. He thinks about wanting to go back in time to 2020 Byun Euijoo and tell him to trust Nicho with everything.
He looks at Nicho’s hands, the way they hover, not touching him, because Nicho is being careful. He thinks about how he feels in Nicho’s arms, when they do touch him.
“I just think,” Euijoo says slowly, his mouth gone dry, “that if someone is sending you pictures like that… that it ought to be me.”
Nicho flushes, a quick sharp surge of pink to his cheeks and the tip of his nose. His mouth opens slightly. He’s so beautiful, Euijoo thinks.
“Because?” Nicho prompts him.
Euijoo chews his own lip again. “Because you’re mine,” he says, letting it out, the grasping, wanting thing, the badly-behaved thing, the part of himself he’s always hidden from everyone, except, sometimes, this boy.
And then, with a sudden, high noise, Nicho has pressed him up against the dorm wall. He’s warm and solid, up against Euijoo’s chest. He smells so good. He smells like safety, like home.
“You want this?” Nicho is asking, still asking, still holding himself back. “You like this? With boys?”
“I guess so,” Euijoo tells him. In this moment, Euijoo can admit that he might have wanted this from the first nights they roomed together in 2020. He can tell how close Nicho’s mouth is. He’s aching, his skin is aching with how close Nicho is, and isn’t.
Nicho cradles his face and then draws him in.
Euijoo is on fire. The euphoria of relief and the heat of anticipation and the high of the scent of Nicho, the touch of Nicho, Nicho closer rather than drawing away. His mouth, nearing Euijoo’s, almost…
But then Nicho is pulling back, eyes wide. “It should be slow,” Nicho is saying. He looks so distressed, suddenly, and so pink. He looks up and down Euijoo’s body, once and then again. “Oh, it should be so slow for you, I want to…” And then he does kiss Euijoo, hard, and then he’s pulling back once more, panting, resting his forehead against Euijoo’s. “Joo, do you…” he huffs, he’s frustrated again, looking for words.
Euijoo puts his hand to Nicho’s jaw, cradling it, tilting his face up so that their eyes meet. He wants his mouth back. He can feel the echo of it on his own. “Nicho?”
Nicho is gazing at him. It’s electric, that shared gaze. Nicho’s lips are plump, reddened. Euijoo wants to bite them. “Joo, I… I feel romantic. About you. Not just sex. Do you understand? Is that what you want?”
Euijoo can’t breathe.
“If you just want sex,” Nicho says slowly, and he’s really pulled back now, and it feels so cold without him. “Then I can’t…”
Euijoo surges forward and kisses him again. Puts both hands to his face and draws him in, his lips to Nicho’s, greedy, the way he wants to be. “So romantic,” he says, using the words Nicho used, because then he can be as sure as possible Nicho will understand them. “I feel so romantic about you. Nicho. My Nicho.” He opens his mouth further, and pulls Nicho’s lower lip between his teeth, relishing the sudden roll of Nicho’s hips in response.
“Bed,” Nicho murmurs at him, in Korean and then in Mandarin and then in English and then in Japanese. “We go to bed.”
Euijoo stumbles after him, holding his hand, and into the tiny dorm room. Nicho’s bed has never really been big enough for both of them, but they make it work, Nicho lying down and pulling Euijoo on top of him, which feels so good, luxurious, indulgent, Nicho’s heat and hardness under him, right there for him to press against.
“Fuck,” Nicho swears, “fuck, fuck, Xiao Joo, fuck, the way you look,” and he so carefully puts his hands down on the curve of Euijoo’s backside, moving him so they’re pressed together even better, and Euijoo hears himself whine.
Afterwards, still panting, still warm, they lie on the bed, still wrapped around each other.
We have this, Euijoo thinks. He takes Nicho’s hand into his, interlacing their fingers. The sunlight comes through the skylight, cutting over them on the bed, painting them in gold. Nicho puts an arm around him, snuggles him in close, and Euijoo closes his eyes, for a moment all his tension soothed.