It was hot. It was really hot, and they had been practicing for hours. Seunghyun was tired, cranky, and a little bit loopy (dehydration?). All he wanted to do was sit down…so he did. His hair was gross from sweat, and as he sat down in front of the wall of mirrors (dropped himself unceremoniously to the floor) he made sure not to lean his head back against the wall; though he was certain that that would make him the most comfortable. He didn’t want to get the mirror all sweaty and gross, and he was afraid that if he did get even just a smudge on the mirror, Jiyong would have minor heart failure (he looked a little peaky as it was).

In a fit of glee (because he is prone to nothing less) Daesung slid Seunghyun his camera-phone with the happy exclamation of “We have to document everything!” as if that made taking pictures of his sweaty head into a grand idea. Either way, Daesung’s beaming smile and his dehydration-induced loopiness (as he would claim later if he needed to) left him no choice but to start taking pictures.

He tried to be serious, he really did. But that was never really his thing unless he was onstage, so they quickly degenerated into ridiculous half-serious head-shots. It was while he was taking one where his head was tilted back and his mouth was open that Youngbae walked in front of him. It wouldn’t have been a big deal (he hadn’t even noticed YoungBae move from the corner he had been standing in) except that Youngbae noticed him making the face and walked toward him, trying to hold back a smile.

“Picture time?” he asked as he got closer. Seunghyun vaguely ignored him, trying to find the best pose for his next shot. When Youngbae sat down next to, and slightly behind him, he didn’t really have a choice; he couldn’t ignore him.

“Smile pretty,” Seunghyun said, by way of an answer. Youngbae smiled obediently, the hat on his head covering his hair and any possible traces of sweaty-grossness; though Seunghyun highly doubted Youngbae’s body even had the decency to sweat, he probably only sweat when he wasn’t spending ridiculous amounts of time dancing (not that Seunghyun was bitter or anything, but really).

“You aren’t smiling, hyung! Are you mocking me!?” Youngbae asked loudly, pouting slightly as if Seunghyun’s facial expression had hurt him deeply.

Seunghyun just smiled briefly, “look tough in the next one.”

“Only if you do too!”

Seunghyun stopped himself from laughing at the boy, and leaned back so that he and Youngbae were on the same level. He transferred the camera to his right hand so that the picture would be taken from between them, and they both made ‘tough’ faces for the camera.

Seunghyun didn’t even pause to look at it, “Another one, I’ll smile this time, you stay ‘tough’.”

Youngbae nodded quickly, “You’ve gotta look pretty for the camera, hyung. Don’t forget!”

They laughed over their faces in the pictures for a good three minutes, and Seunghyun wondered briefly what had possessed him to shove his hair up off of his forehead like that. In the end, it didn’t really matter; they had to get back to practice so the fun had to end, and his hair needed to get sweatier. He was happy that Youngbae had come over though, because silly pictures aren’t as much fun without friends; and during all of their endless practices it was nice to have times like that that reminded him that he did have friends. They were silly, funny, goofy, sweaty, hard-working, rough, and talented; and they were friends, and that’s all that mattered.