A/N: Aagh, its been awhile since I've updated in this fic dump. XD hii~

This is a little gift fic for kwonxxleader <3 Thank you for all the extremely kind words and support. *hugs* I don't know if you'll like it...but hey look, fluff! *hides*

Also, I'm still up for requests, or more gift fics. XD. kthnxbye~

---

 

  Jiyong, ever the misfit, is particularly keen with who he chooses as his bait. Fools attract to the easily fooled and maknae, at first, seems as gullible as they come. The boy is baby-faced, only sixteen, pre-debut. What's more, his small frame claims to be that of a dancer, yet he's sloppy, and Jiyong thinks maknae has bad form simply because Jiyong is older and his mother dragged him into ballet class as a kid a few times.

     Besides that, maknae is impressionable. Jiyong is the fox, hauty and cunning, and maknae is just a pup hound, yearning to be as daring of a hunter as his hyung. Jiyong has the experience, the talent, the boss's interest. Maknae feels the urgency to catch up as fast as he can, and his commitment is so focused that he can't even see the barricade that hyung is trapping him into.

    It doesn't take much more to lure maknae in before he's fallen head-first into a deep well that he'll simply never be able to crawl out of. In this case, it all starts in a small white porcelein bathtub, with Jiyong's winning smirk etched into the distorted reflections of tiny soap bubbles.

~

 

"You can't be serious," Youngbae tells Jiyong dryly, slamming his locker shut in a small locker room of a local gym that Master Hwang urged them to use. They're only eighteen, easily the youngest members of the gym, and a few of the older men in the locker room side-eye Youngbae when he raises his voice.  

 

"It'll be fun," Jiyong pleads, pushing at a shoulder. Youngbae rolls his eyes and pushes him back.

"You're cruel," Youngbae laughs,"Maknae won't like you."  

"Sure he will!" Jiyong laughs back. He's never felt so optimistic before, and he likes it. Little Seunghyun will be different, Jiyong thinks, than all the other maknaes he's teased.  

Youngbae grabs a fresh towel to rub at the back of his neck, but Jiyong's already dry, so he walks ahead of his best friend as they exit the gym to be driven back to their cramped dorm.  

"Just don't drag me into this," Youngbae sighs, "I just know you're going to harass him too roughly."  

Jiyong normally listens to his best friend, but just this once, ignorance is bliss.  

 

~  

 

A month passes, and Master Hwang hasn't seen any improvement in Jiyong.  

"," Jiyong curses aloud on the drive from dance practice with the other members. Big Seunghyun laughs and joins along with Jiyong's frustration as he also hasn't improved much at all. Daesung is smiling in amusement at the rappers as they start their own thrown-together war of dirty language spewing, and Youngbae simply shakes his head at them with an ear bud in his ear. Little Seunghyun appears to be asleep in the backseat, and that's when Jiyong figures its time to shut up.  

Jiyong finds himself staring, almost as if he's waiting for the right moment to pounce on his prey. Maknae is so pretty, and it almost hurts to watch him sleep, as he finds excuses to turn around or meet maknae's reflection into the van's rear view mirror.  

Maknae's long fringe sweeps delicately across his forehead, covering his thick eyebrows. His eyelashes are strikingly dark against his lightly tanned skin, and the grey pockets under his eyes almost make him look ill. Maknae's jaw is relaxed, mouth slightly open, revealing a few baby teeth beneath the soft pillow of his upper lip and chapped lower lip. With each inhale, his chest swells, and what Jiyong notices is that maknae's results from weight-training are easily the most noticeable, besides that of Youngbae. Maknae is still growing, after all. He has that excuse.  

And that's when Jiyong has his first doubt about messing with maknae.

 

~

 

Maknae doesn't talk much with Jiyong at first, so hyung thinks its a good idea to watch tv together. There's always a new episode of the Princess Hours drama to watch from the DVR recorder, so the two choose to view it while waiting to take their turns in the dorm's shower.

Jiyong doesn't even know how they started watching it. Its just another romantic drama where the female lead cries too much. But sometimes Jiyong sees maknae's eyes watering, and its just so cute. Jiyong wants to hold him, and sometimes he does. Most of the time, maknae whines and pushes him away, but every now and then he'll be too tired to move around. So maknae stays still and puts up with it.

Its on such a late night as this, watching a drama together, that Jiyong finally realizes just how smart maknae is. Maknae knows very well that he has to obey hyung's orders, do his laundry last, take his showers last, but what Jiyong learns early on is that maknae has attitude, confidence, a strong sense of self. Hyung loves that spunk in Little Seunghyun, even as it creates problems with his plans at first, but eventually Jiyong uses maknae's strength to his disadvantage.

"I'm going to go take my bath now," Little Seunghyun announces late at night. There's too many commercials, and Daesung left the bathroom about an hour ago, so maknae figures the water will be warm enough and their drama episode had ended anyway.

"Don't take too long in there," Jiyong warns him, voice thick with sleep while getting up from the tv room's couch. "We have a schedule tomorrow."

Maknae diligently replies "Ne, hyung" before he's gone, and once again the dorm smells of soap and sounds of streaming water.

 

~  

 

The dorm for five boys only contains one bathroom, so of course its quite well lived-in, and of course Jiyong is the picky one about keeping each room clean. Maknae is the one stuck with cleaning after the hyungs, and he's seen Leader's anger flare about such things more than once, so he's started to make it a habit of scrubbing the bathtub and sink before even looking after himself.

Its on such a night that maknae takes too much time, and Jiyong finds himself barging into the bathroom out of irritating worry.

"Yah! Maknae! I thought I told you- "

Little Seunghyun is crouched, knees pulled up to his chest in the small bathtub, surrounded in a pool of white soapy foam. His hair isn't even wet yet.

Maknae's eyes are wide as he gapes in shock and tries to shrink himself even smaller into the water.

"Did you just get in or-"

Hyung suddenly notices just how pearly the tub looks, how radiant the faucets shine, how he can actually see the tiled floor because the dirty clothes that have been splayed about are finally picked up.

Hyung also notices the way maknae's brow has traces of sweat, how exhausted maknae looks, but also how maknae's cheeks are a rosy pink.

"Oh," Jiyong utters lamely, stopping himself from any further accusations. Maknae's lips curve down into a frown.

"Hyung! You could have at least knocked."

Jiyong can't help but to roll his eyes while inwardly thinking that maknae trying to be modest is kind of cute.

"We're all guys," Jiyong laughs, and now he figures its an opportune time to be a good hyung.

So Jiyong quickly peels off his own attire, and kneels down into the mass of white foam to face his maknae.

"Hand me the shampoo," Jiyong orders, right palm faced up. Maknae's cheeks are still burning. Little Seunghyun, only sixteen, hasn't seen this much skin before. Not of his high school sweetheart, not of his baby sister Hanna. It feels almost as if he's guilty at first just for having a pair of eyes. If maknae were to speak now, his voice would surely crack.

As soon as the bottle of shampoo meets with hyung's grip, he uses his free hand to press down at the top of maknae's dry head to dunk him. Maknae flails his arms, splashing about, and hyung just laughs.

"Hyung!" maknae shouts once he's up for air. Still chuckling, Jiyong presses an index finger to Little Seunghyun's lips before promptly squeezing soap into his hair.

"Just be quiet and let me help you," Jiyong instructs, fingers swirling a mush of soap-lathered hair around while applying pressure into maknae's scalp. "You've done enough cleaning for the day."

Maknae keeps his head down so that the sudsy water won't drip into his eyes, staring at the field of little white bubbles below. He finds himself grateful for choosing a bubble bath. His calves ache from all the dance practice anyway, so standing in the tub for a shower just wasn't an option. He remains silent until hyung dunks him again.

"Aish, at least give me warning," Little Seunghyun whines softly. Jiyong chuckles again, and now he's satisfied that maknae's blush has faded significantly. He seems more relaxed with hyung, though he still flinches as hyung's fingers sweep across maknae's wet skin between the bits of sponge.

"Turn around now. I'll scrub your back," Jiyong directs in a pleased tone.

"I can clean myself, hyung," Little Seunghyun whines again,but Jiyong is giving him a look, so he just sighs and swivels around inside the cramped tub. Jiyong his lips and smiles. Maknae has a nice back. Its once again obvious that maknae is doing beyond well with Master Hwang.

"I'm jealous," Jiyong sighs,scrubbing away down maknae's spine.

"Of what?" Little Seungyun inquires, twisting his head around, tone incredulous that hyung would actually be jealous of maknae.

"Little Seunghyun is going to be popular," Jiyong says cheekily. "You have a good work ethic, you grow fast,"he admits.

"Hyung works hard too," maknae says comfortingly, wincing as the sponge scrubs up towards his shoulders.

"I'm at a stand still," Jiyong sighs, smiling wistfully at the expanse of maknae's soapy shoulders. Little Seunghyun doesn't know what to say.

Jiyong grabs a small bucket and rinses the soap off of maknae's shoulders with water, causing him to shiver a bit; the bath water is tepid by now.

"I just need some inspiration, some new motivation. That's all," Jiyong confesses, reaching his arms forward. With maknae's back still in front of him, Jiyong pinches his fingers at the tops of maknae's ears. Its not quite a , but there's something about the soft cartilage that comforts Jiyong upon it.

Maknae is so soft, and that's when Jiyong discovers he is the fool, not maknae. As cliche as it sounds, touching maknae feels almost feels magical, as the water remains luke-warm but his chest burns, glows with an inspiring, creative need, a need that is dependent on maknae alone.

Jiyong didn't listen to the best friend, and now he's gone too far, touched too much, and maknae is flinching away again.

And now, though maknae is facing away from him, hyung is sure that maknae is wearing that pokerface that he only recently started practicing, and he's flustered. Jiyong couldn't even laugh at him for it. Maknae's fallen into the deep well, but so has hyung.

"Yah! Hyung! What are you doing?" maknae whines again, his own hands pinching at his ears to claim them back from hyung.

"Forgot to clean behind your ears," Jiyong manages to lie in the form of a tease. It seems to work, as maknae pouts and pulls at the drain plug below his knees.

As the water drains, gurgling and rumbling down the water pipes; as the white foam sticks to the bottom of the tub even after all the water is emptied; how maknae gets up from the bath without saying anything- its the sound of the crackling flame of ideas in Jiyong's mind, the rhythm of heart beats, the echo of the well, the flush of cheeks, the fox and the hound- its the start of it all.