“Everybody’s music vitamin! Live Broadcast: SBS Inkigayo, the Maknae Edition!”

Krystal’s eyes sparkle as she speaks, though Taemin knows it isn’t her own enthusiasm that he sees reflected in the stage lights. Instead it’s the makeup she’s been coated in that keeps catching his eye, and he hates it. This girl standing beside him, so cheerfully greeting the viewers with a sweetly shy smile, is not the real Krystal Jung. No, Taemin has tasted her, has uncovered the truth of her deepest essence, and he despises the pretense she performs here.

It’s a petty hatred, the one he wrestles into submission in front of the camera without ever losing his relaxed stance and easy grin. She’s an idol after all, just like he is, and neither one of them is a stranger to putting on the perfect act.

Still, the combination of cold sweat and flushed cheeks remains heavy on his tongue, and there’s a certain ownership in that remembrance. She belongs to him. Not the girl with whom he’s currently filming the first of three Inkigayo, maknae-themed broadcasts, no, but the one who’d squared her jaw in angry defiance when he’d pressed his mouth against it; the one who’d stepped between Taemin and Kai like a lone wolf fighting for a place to belong; the one who’d so delightfully entered Taemin’s arena and fallen right into his well-laid trap.

He wants to laugh—wants to laugh like Kai had laughed—because it is so clear to him, even through the makeup she wears against him like a shield, that Krystal thinks she’s beaten him. He can’t give in to his amusement, of course, not right now as they stand before thousands with a show to perform. But eventually he’ll be the only one in the dorm who’s still awake at 3am, or the only one left perfecting their newest choreo in front of the mirrors in their dance practice room, and then Taemin will himself go. Then he will laugh.

It’s two days after that first broadcast before he allows this humor to surface so freely. His glee has not abated, yet his laughter is subdued by his own asive sense of self-control. He cannot laugh like Kai laughed simply because Taemin will not allow himself to become like Kai. They both are men with nothing to lose, this much is true, but Kai is also broken and afraid in a way that Taemin is not and can never be.

Taemin is still his own god, dating scandals be damned; and, if the Inkigayo episode ratings are anything to go by, even now the world worships him.

The only person who worships Kai is Krystal, and even then that’s but a maybe on the chessboard in Taemin’s head. She’s the type to protect herself above all others so her fierce loyalty to Kai had surprised Taemin at first, but now he’s sure she’ll throw Kai to the wolves if Taemin plays his cards correctly. Only Taemin is himself the ravenous wolf in this scenario, and he knows there must be a strategy that brings them both into his possession, if only he can find it.

Krystal is his already; she believes herself above his games but her stubborn persistence in ignoring his existence outside of their shared broadcast is an amusing pastime for Taemin in its own right.

It is Kai who Taemin wants but doesn’t have yet, and it irks a little to know that Kai is yet again Taemin’s reason for wanting when he hasn’t wanted anything in so long. And more than that—more than just having Kai and having Krystal—Taemin wants to keep them; to control them; to make them bow at his feet and worship like all the rest.

And more even than that, Taemin doesn’t want to want at all.

It’s this thought that shuts off his laughter as abruptly as it started, and has him sinking to the floor with his back against the mirrors and his shoulders still trembling slightly with the echoes of spent amusement. He’s angry now, livid in a snap, and today is not a day when he choses to revel in that feeling. Instead he’s primed to act, his whole body tense with impatience, so he does.

A mere slip of his hand into the pocket of his sweats retrieves his phone and an easy swipe of his thumb has it unlocked and opened to messages. He sends one almost absentmindedly, eyes on his own face reflected in the mirror across the room rather than on his screen, and it’s not until he receives a response that Taemin realizes he’s made a mistake.