“Kai, bai, bo!”

“Hahaha, you lose! Again!” Jongin sniggers triumphantly as the three study their extended hands, two of which are fisted, the third held in the form of a V – a pair of scissors crushed between a couple of rocks. “Come on, drink, drink!” he urges and motions at Sehun to refill the elder’s glass.

Baekhyun gulps back sweetened bile, a gallon of ginger ale bubbling up his belly, as he whimpers, “I can’t take any more. If I drink another drop, I’m going to gag…”

It’s a week to their debut, and of EXO-K’s six members three are making use of what will prove their final chance in as many years to spend the night at home with their families. Their leader and law-enforcer, Kim Junmyeon, youngest and cagiest hyung, Do Kyungsoo, and second youngest, if second to none in rowdiness, Park Chanyeol, away, EXO’s maknaes, Kim Jongin and Oh Sehun, poorly chaperoned by the third, Byun Baekhyun, have been busy these few hours at play.

Were they of age, or a little less cowardly, this ten-round tournament of rock-paper-scissors would be played for real beer, not ginger ale. But being as they are short a year of the first and not at all of the second, capacity rather than intoxication is the name of the game, and its perpetual loser, Baekhyun, has just about overfilled his. With trembling hands he reaches for the fizzing glass and with still more unsteady a stomach chugs its contents, slams it on the low wooden table and wipes his mouth in revulsion.  He’s drunk before, though never to a stupor, and he could swear that wet sickness wasn’t half as bad as this dry one.

“Okay, final round,” Jongin declares, prematurely topping the elder’s cup.

Baekhyun shakes his head in protest and instantly regrets the act as the ale gurgles up his throat, forcing him again to swallow hard. “No, I can’t, I really can’t. I can’t even move. I’m going to sleep right here on the floor. You know my stomach’s weak as it is, stop torturing your hyung.” Jongin and Sehun exchange a wicked look, chillingly disguised by the most cherubic smiles, and Baekhyun blanches.  Evil, pure evil, the pair of them and with those wide-eyed faces as well.   

“But it’s the most fun,” Jongin retorts and the youngest nods in assent.

“Yah, Kim Jongin, just because I’m naturally indulgent doesn’t mean you maknaes can take advantage whenever you like!”

“When have we?” Jongin demands, his ample lips projecting in mock-petulance.

Baekhyun sniffs and tapers his eyes. “When have you not?!”

Jongin looks to Sehun for reinforcement, but the latter only shrugs. “Joesonghamnida, Hyung,” the two sing in chorus, affecting contrition. 

“That’s better. Now make some room, I have to lie down. I’m not kidding, if I move one inch I will vomit, and neither of you wants to be the one to clean it up. Sehun-ah, I have some breath-mints in the left side-pocket of my backpack, get it for me, will you? My mouth tastes like hell.”

“Don’t you mean ale?” Jongin quips with undue self-satisfaction, while Sehun rolls his eyes and quietly goes about his mission.

Baekhyun grimaces at the younger. “Kai-ssi, EXO-Kai, puns aren’t your thing. Stick to teleportation, yeah?”

This time with true embarrassment, Jongin pleads, “Joesonghamnida.”

Delivery in hand, Sehun returns to his seat and extends it to the elder. “Here you go…Hyung.”

Baekhyun shakes his head – another mistake. “Can’t move,” he asserts and opens his mouth, signalling the youngest to feed him the mints instead.

Sehun blinks in momentary hesitation, swallows visibly, nibbles at his lip. He takes one of the mints and lightly places it on the elder’s tongue, the tip of his forefinger grazing its edge as he does. Out the corner of his eye, Baekhyun catches Jongin’s observing them, his expression abnormally intent, and what’s stranger still, feels his skin bristle at it. “Alright, nae dongsaengdeul, off to bed with the pair of you,” he prompts in a tone of brotherly benevolence, as he droops onto the floor and clasps his painfully distended stomach. “I’m staying put tonight.”

For once showing real concern, Sehun exclaims, “You can’t sleep on the floor, you’ll catch a cold, and we’re days away from debuting! Come on, we’ll carry you to bed.” He kneels by Baekhyun and hooks the elder’s arm about his shoulder. Jonging follows suit and the two hoist their futilely objecting senior to his feet and haul him up the small staircase to the room he shares with Chanyeol. They lay him on the bed and slump at his sides, snuggling up to him for lack of space.

“Yah, this bed barely fits me and you want all three of us to squeeze in here together?!” he cries, the heat emitted by their bodies augmenting his discomfort. “Get up and get out!”

Overstatedly Jongin exhales. “Hyung, exactly how much do you weigh? I think I pulled a muscle,” he gripes, then flashes the elder, whose face is all indignant exhaustion, a puckish grin that instantly unwinds it. “Just kidding. Give us a sec to catch our breath and we’ll be out of your hair – right, Sehunnie?”

Sehun gawps at him a moment, but his eyes soon constrict and he nods at Jongin conspiratorially as he recaps, “Catch breath, out of hair.”

Baekhyun can’t bring himself to argue when he’s already half unconscious with oversaturation. “Five minutes,” he conditions, all the while mutedly whinging at the unrelenting nausea. “God, I feel like my stomach will explode! I need to sleep it off. Five minutes, you hear me?” he reiterates and shuts his eyes without awaiting their reply. His falling asleep he won’t recall. His awakening he’ll never forget.

It’s the heat that does it – the heat and the weight. It trickles down his temples, encumbers his chest. Groggily he undoes his eyes to find both boys where he left them, Sehun to his right, Jongin to his left. The latter’s head is resting on his shoulder, his arm stretched across his chest, the tips of his fingers clutching at the shirt of the former whose face is a mere hairbreadth away from Baekhyun’s, his long leg overlapping the elder’s. What is this? His eyes dart from end to end, panic building up his body as wakefulness whets his senses. I can’t move. Didn’t I tell them five minutes? It must have been longer than that… Briefly he considers stirring up a scene, but thinks better of it as he scans their dormant faces – beautifully serene – and instead smiles at them gently. Eighteen and perfect, he reflects with a pang of wistfulness as he gauges their contrastingly-wrought, if similarly striking, visages, Jongin’s as warm as the Seoul spring, Sehun’s as cool as its autumn. They chose you well, nae dongsaengdeul; you’ll take each other far…and us.

As he watches him, Sehun’s feline eyes slowly flutter open to centre on Baekhyun. Wordlessly he observes him, his smooth cheeks gradually catching colour. Baekhyun’s body tenses at the inspection, his small eyes enlarging at the peculiar amalgamation of innocence and impiety in those of Sehun.

“Are you better now, Hyung?” he asks in a lisping whisper that engorges the elder’s heart. He’s still a boy, still wet behind the ears, his scent still sweet – like honeyed milk. Baekhyun feels the strangest tenderness whenever he looks at him.

The elder nods. “A bit. Not so sick anymore.”

Sehun smiles – in earnest relief, Baekhyun decides, if something more besides, something he can’t altogether quantify. “That’s good,” he murmurs, drawing his face to the elder’s so that their foreheads touch, and sighs. “That’s really very good.”

Baekhyun stares at him in dumb bafflement. The boy can show affection when and where he so wishes, yet never quite so effusively. I’d say he was drunk, but we didn’t, and he didn’t even drink that ginger ale. Is this what he’s like when he’s sleepy? It’s weirdly adorable…he is. His lips twitch into a tentative smile that promptly disappears as, suddenly, those of Sehun press against them, while Baekhyun lies utterly arrested in both thought and deed. With increasing audacity the younger kisses him once, twice and again, steadily travelling from his mouth to his collar and meeting with no hurdles as he goes. Baekhyun never moves but allows Sehun to move at will. He can no more reason for his own passivity than he can the boy’s actions. He ought to be screaming, fighting, he knows, and yet he can’t resist. Abruptly something closes on his nape – warm and fleshly. It’s a moment before he recalls the other who’s sleeping beside him, behind him – Jongin – and another before he realises it’s the younger’s mouth that’s on him.

“What the hell are you doing?! Have you lost your mind?!” Baekhyun hisses and wriggles free of them both, his wits at last reclaiming him.

Jongin wilts. “Only Sehun? Is it only okay for Sehun to touch you? Can’t I?” he asks in a tone of childish injury, his deep-set eyes drooping in discontentment, as though Baekhyun were a treat given one and denied the other…and unjustly at that.    

Baekhyun is amazed. “It isn’t okay for either of you to touch me and I don’t understand why you’re still here when I told you to get out after five minutes!” he glowers at Jongin. 

The boy is unaffected. “You looked so pitiful,” he explains, his mien all the time sweetening, “like a sick little puppy; we didn’t want to leave you…right, Sehunnie?”  

“Mmm,” Sehun mutters and smiles at the elder with such tenderness as momentarily causes Baekhyun to forget what it was that riled him to begin with.

“Stop spurring him on!” he yelps, if a fraction too feebly, then clears his throat the better to bay before completing, “What sick little puppy? You were told to get out and that’s what you should have done. Now get out and let me sleep!”

“Hyung,” Sehun suddenly murmurs in his ear and the elder shudders at his breath and the wet sound produced by his lips as he parts them to speak, “last week when you came into my room while I was sleeping – why did you do that?”

Baekhyun seizes, his already loudened pulse now booming in his ears. He’s always been tactile with his brothers, a little more so perhaps than propriety permits, but that evening he overstepped even those distant bounds set by him…

Back in their dorm after a hard day’s practice, Baekhyun was mid-search of his favourite computer-game when Chanyeol told him he had lent it to Sehun and to go look for it in his room instead. When he knocked on its door and received no answer, he assumed Sehun had gone out and let himself in only to find the boy sprawled on his belly, dead asleep. He looked so harmless, so perfectly innocent, hugging the pillow and pouting, his cheeks flushed, his hair on end, his long lashes sporadically fluttering, like a babe in his crib, Baekhyun couldn’t help himself. He tip-toed toward him, knelt by his bed and sank his teeth into his left cheek. Only rather than that on his face, he did it to the one at his rear. Sehun slightly flinched but continued on sleeping, while Baekhyun, having narrowly escaped a nervous fit at the same, thanked his Heavenly Father and vowed never again.  

You were awake?! he cries internally, his brain reeling at the implications of Sehun’s failure to confront him about the misdeed. 

“What are you two talking about?” Jongin probes, his tone again protesting his exclusion from their private activity.

Imploringly Baekhyun peers at Sehun. If this got out…

The younger deliberates a moment, the air about him growing cool in calculation – so cool, it chills the elder to his core – then, “Jongin-ah, we have to get up early in the morning. Let’s call it a night, yeah?”

Jongin’s brow crinkles in surprise. “S-Sure. Are you?”

Sehun glances at Baekhyun, who’s still strung tighter than a spring, sniffs and says, “Yeah. We’ve played enough for one evening.”

Hesitantly Jongin follows the directive as he rises from the bed and with a plaintive peek at the elder starts to leave the room, while Baekhyun mutely gasps at the recognition of Sehun’s being the one in command, though the pair affects the opposite.

“Sleep well, Hyung,” Sehun bids with a furtive grin and goes to join Jongin.

Baekhyun watches them in mounting incomprehension, to himself wondering whether the entire episode might have been a fever-dream induced by his sickness. Yet this is cut short by Sehun’s suddenly throwing his arm over Jongin’s shoulder and whispering something in his ear – something that causes the latter to blush and bite his lip, the former to smirk allusively, and the eldest to lose his sleep.

Alone at last, Baekhyun settles into his pillow, wrings his eyes and loudly releases the air that’s been trapped in his lungs from the instant he awoke to his juniors lolling beside him. He wants to forget it all, turn over and sleep, but the lingering sensation of Sehun’s over-soft lips on his own, on his neck, of those of Jongin on its nape, and the shamelessness in the latter’s seemingly timid response to Sehun’s murmured speech prevent him. He tosses and turns a while before finally deciding on a glass of cold water to help soothe both his nerves and his body. He tip-toes about in the dark until finding the fridge and takes out a bottle of the medicinal water he keeps for relieving his ofttimes swollen stomach, then starts back to his room.

As he goes, he passes by the one shared by Jongin and the group-mate closest to him – Kyungsoo. The door is ajar and the fissure reveals that inside is light – a half-light, like candlelight, though undoubtedly electric. It’s none of your business. Just mind your own and go to sleep, he tells himself and takes the stairs. Midway ascending the fourth, he hangs his head in self-frustration, purses both his eyes and his mouth and climbs back down again. As he nears the door, unexpected speech hinders his step…

“I thought you wanted to.” It’s Jongin, Baekhyun’s certain. Stealthily he peers through the slit and finds Sehun is seated on the edge of his bed. Propped on his hands, his legs are spread wide, his head skewed, his jeans ed and his torso bare. Jongin is stationed by his table, back facing both of them. He’s fiddling with something, but what it is or might be Baekhyun can’t tell.

“I did,” Sehun returns, his expression somewhat thwarted, “but he’s not ready yet, and I’m not too keen on the idea of you touching him, after all.” 

Jongin turns his head and smiles incitingly. “Wasn’t he supposed to touch me?”

Sehun slits his eyes, clenches his teeth. “That I’m even less keen on.” He straightens in his seat and extends a slender arm, his tone as he resumes his speech enticingly imperious. “Jongin-ah, come here.”

The latter willingly obeys. He parks himself between Sehun’s legs and coyly smiles. The younger winds his arms about Jongin’s trim waist, rests his chin upon his shoulder, takes his thin shirt by its hem and ably does away with it, leaving his thick chestnut hair impeccably dishevelled. The cloth disposed of, Sehun resumes his position enfolding Jongin as slowly his lips trace his bare shoulder from clavicle to jawline, whilst the elder curves himself to the touch, his diffidence fast dissolving into desire.

Baekhyun watches the scene with unblinking eyes, though his mind is a flurry of questions. In the year since his entering the company and being made into their group and house mate, he has never known Sehun and Jongin to be particularly intimate. Beyond the practice room, the two would at most play the occasional game or share a cup of instant ramen. For Jongin, it was always Kyungsoo’s company that he sought and seemed most at ease with, for Sehun, Junmyeon’s and Chanyeol’s, and neither of the three, Baekhyun is sure, would call the youngers anything other than casually friendly.  And yet, watching them now, who in their right mind would think that these two were first-time lovers? Years…how many? What did Chanyeol say...? That they were roommates for a while after Sehun joined the program, then he moved in with Junmyeon-hyung. Joined the programme…how old were they? Fourteen? He shudders at the prospect and again as Sehun runs his fingers up Jongin’s chest, and taking him by the chin, kisses the three months older boy with shocking greed. Honeyed milk, was that it? Baekhyun could curse himself for his naivety. The boy is nothing of the sort – he’s a toxin not a sweet.

But more than Sehun’s control, it’s Jongin’s compliance that astounds him, his submissiveness to the younger when in their group interactions it’s always Jongin who takes the lead. It’s like mirror writing – they’re actually the opposite of how we read them, aren’t they? Mid-kiss, Sehun undoes the elder’s trousers and reaches down them. Jongin gasps and with him Baekhyun. His stare fixed on that of his lover, Sehun begins to , his pleasure growing in time with Jongin’s, as though it were its strength and sustenance. The elder’s mouth comes undone, his breath gusting, his eyes glaze over and constrict, slowly his head tilts back and nestles into the younger’s shoulder. His neck now fully exposed, Sehun alternately kisses and nibbles at its smooth skin, drawing forth from Jongin likewise spasmodic whimpers, while altogether arresting Baekhyun’s respiration.

Abruptly, Jongin grips Sehun’s hand and pushes it away. He gets up from the bed and goes to his desk to retrieve something. He turns and tosses it onto the bed, then takes off his trousers, crawls atop it and settles on his abdomen. Sehun smirks, at once contented and critical, and Baekhyun realises that he had planned to tease the elder longer still before advancing to the final act. He rises and removes his jeans and underwear. Eighteen and perfect, Baekhyun internally reiterates, his lower body fast matching the excitement of the younger’s.

“Sehun-ah,” Jongin mutters, his hips twitching – with eagerness, Baekhyun acknowledges at the similar reaction of his own and bites his lips half in shame, half in craving.

Sehun’s smirk distends into a grin that in turn amplifies Baekhyun’s quavering. “You’re so impatient,” he critiques, though his tone is far from scathing. “Would you have been like this for him as well?” he probes and Baekhyun gulps at the recognition of the him in question being himself. He could have been there – with them, between them…how would it have felt? He clamps his eyes and shakes his head. The viewing may be inexcusable, but partaking would have been criminal.

“I don’t know,” Jongin confesses, “I’ve only ever had you.”

Sehun snorts. “Should we change that?”

“Not tonight,” Jongin returns and slightly arches his back, at last inducing the younger to claim it.

He takes to the bed and reaches for the object Jongin had tossed there. It’s a vial – a lubricant surely. Sehun uncorks it and dispenses its contents directly onto Jongin who lightly flinches at its temperature. He readies him so expertly; Baekhyun can’t help but admire him. The elder shows not the least sign of discomfort. He accepts the younger’s touch as a rite that must be held, moreover, throughout it, he constantly repositions himself the better to aid Sehun in finding his sensitive place, and when he has, reflexively, Jongin goes to his hands and knees, and the younger at long last retracts his fingers.

He retakes the bottle and this time pours the substance onto himself. Baekhyun stops breathing. The following is a foregone conclusion. He knows the way of it. Rationally, he understands their need, understands their taking comfort in each other when there’s none to be had elsewhere. He can’t condemn them, but something keeps him from condoning them, and that thing…to name it, to think it, to feel it he mustn’t let himself. No matter what they do, no matter what they play at, they are your juniors and your brothers, Byun Baekhyun, remember that.   

With as much of deftness as he demonstrated in preparing Jongin for the same, Sehun enters him. The elder exhales in staccato, Sehun in a drawn-out sigh, Baekhyun not at all. He leans forward and lightly kisses Jongin’s nape, then straightens his back, takes his waist, and pulls Jongin towards him whilst pushing himself deeper into Jongin. Fitfully, the elder nods. Sehun closes his eyes, faintly smiles – not in triumph or snide amusement, Baekhyun decides, but relief and gratitude and a curious sort of tenderness that shocks his heart above any and everything he’s experienced this evening.  

A second longer and he starts moving. Baekhyun is entranced by the cadence: Sehun neither dithers nor rushes but paces himself to build up their pleasure beat by beat. He knows Jongin’s body, knows how to manipulate it, when to withhold his touch, when to augment it, and the elder responds accordingly, jolting and panting and biting back moans with little success. He balances himself on one hand and with the other takes his . No matter how deft his lover, Jongin is still male – instinct compels him to drive, not merely be driven. He tends to his own a moment, but at this Sehun withdraws and causes the elder to his back, replaces his hand with his own and promptly re-enters him. Jongin purses his mouth to muzzle his cries, but it soon comes undone and his voice – thickly sweet and breathy – fills the room and through the crack in the door echoes across the hallway and the length of Baekhyun’s body. He cannot conceive of pleasure sufficiently strong to reduce a man to such singing. It can’t be right, can it, for a man to feel it? But for this much, for this boy, his honeyed-milk maknae, being in the wrong might well be worth it.

No. You can’t. He begins to retreat. Sehun’s sudden sob stops him in his tracks. He retakes his watch and sees that the boy is suppressed with sensation, his beautiful features distorted with it. He’s close. That sort of friction…it must be torture holding back this long. Baekhyun gulps. He ought to leave now, this one moment, this one secret at least he should let them keep amongst themselves. But he wants to see it, to see Sehun in his utmost pleasure. As if to further thwart their elder, just as he comes to it, Sehun buries his face in Jongin’s chest, while the latter clutches his hair, blocking Baekhyun’s view of him entirely. They peak within seconds of one another, Sehun first, then Jongin. Spent, the younger collapses onto the elder, both unmoving as their lungs chase after air.

Blankly Baekhyun observes them. He feels doubly depleted in the face of their fullness, like a starving man made to sit at a feast without partaking of it and then asked that he be satisfied, having witnessed others eat. Between them? You couldn’t squeeze a pin in there, never mind a man. He turns and edges down the hall, clambers up the stairs, goes into his room and slumps onto his bed. It smells like Sehun – honeyed milk – the sweetest aroma, the odour of innocence. He’s nothing of the sort, Baekhyun reminds himself. He’s poison, the kind that kills you drop by drop, stealthily. Better to bleed it out now, while there’s still a chance of surviving him. He hugs his pillow where Sehun’s head rested and inhales his fragrance deeply. By morning it will have faded, he reassures himself, shuts his eyes and waits for sleep to reclaim him. The latter never comes. The former never fades. It will take a further three years and eight months to replace its false sweetness with a new and truer scent.