A/N: So it’s been awhile… my bad. I honestly didn’t expect it to take nine months but hey, life. It will mess with you. I think I’m crawling out of my rut, I managed to get enough motivation to finally finish this chapter so I hope you enjoy it and stick with me.

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Description: You recently moved in next door to 9 guys. You have befriended Jongin & Yixing but don’t really know the others yet. One morning you wake up in the wrong place and everything starts to change.

Requested: No

Genre: Fluff, , bits of angst. Comedy because I think I’m hilarious.

Pairing: Probably everyone x Reader

Word Count: 4,088

Warnings: Nothing in this chapter.

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Masterpost

“It’s too damn early for this. Why do you hate me?” You mumble as you pile into one of the vans with Sehun, Chanyeol, Yixing & Jongin. It was around 6 am and you’d been roused from the comforting embrace of sleep to accompany the guys to their comeback performance on Show! Music Core.

Yixing laughs as he hands you a coffee. “We have to get there early. We need to go through hair, makeup, get changed, do a rehearsal then pre-recording and then perform, take a short break, get changed and repeat the process.”

“Aren’t you tired?” You ask as you look at each of their faces. “I know I am just by hearing your schedule.”

Jongin sighs and shrugs. “We haven’t gotten much sleep since the comeback special but that’s kind of the nature of the comeback week. We’re excited and want to perform as much as we can and share the new stages with our fans but we’re also exhausted for the whole comeback.”

“That’s like a double edged sword or something.” Sleep is threatening to take you back into its clutches as you wait for the caffeine from the coffee to take effect. You yawn and try to sit up, rubbing the sleep from your eyes as the van sets off towards the studio.

They nod. “Yeah, but ultimately it means that we get to perform for our fans so it’s worth it.” Sehun adds.

“Didn’t you do this yesterday?” Sleep clings to you, making you confused.
 

“That was Music Bank”  Chanyeol chuckles as you groan and lean against him. “You’re really not a morning person huh?”

“You should see face she just pulled hyung.” Sehun laughs. You whine and burrow into Chanyeol’s hoodie as you try to drift back to sleep. 

Yixing taps the cup in your hand and playfully pokes your face. “You can’t sleep now noona, you gotta wake up. We’ll be there soon and you don’t wanna be half asleep in front of everyone, do you?” You mumble and shake your head. “Drink the coffee, it’s stronger than you think it is. How the hell do you think we’re so bright right now?”

You slowly lift your head out of the soft shoulder of Chanyeol’s hoodie and stare at the coffee in your hands. “Exactly how many shots are in here?” You ask slowly. These guys might be used to an absurd amount of caffeine in one hit but you were more of a continuous wave of hits throughout the day kind of person. Jongin grimaces as the cup and even your half asleep self remembers that he isn’t fond of coffee. You’d caught him drinking a caramel latte one time and he had told you that he can’t handle the iced americano’s that most of the members drink but the sickly sweet coffees? Those are his kind of coffees.

Yixing shrugs. “Honestly I don’t remember. I stopped paying attention after 2.”

You hold out your free hand to him. “Give me your phone.”

 

“What? Why?” He asks.

“I’m gonna ask the only person who would know. Minseok.”

“Oh.” He breathes as he scratches his head. “Uh, well my phone is in a bastardised mix of Mandarin, Korean & English so I don’t know how well that will work for you…”

“Sehun?”

“Noona I like you but I don’t hand my phone over to anyone.” He fidgets.

“Here.” Chanyeol hands you his phone after unlocking it. “Just make sure you send it in our group chat. We’ve got notifications turned off for everything else because people find out our phone numbers.”

You open KKT and find their group chat, ignoring the insane amount of msg requests on his phone and the fact that it’s ringing constantly. “That . I’m sorry that people obsess and don’t understand that there is a line between fan and idol for a reason. Like, can they not just support and appreciate you without going down the stalker or harassment route?” 

They all murmur in agreement. “I don’t think of them as fans because fans would not treat us like this, but for simplicity’s sake, most of our fans are great and do exactly what you just said - appreciate, love and support us from a safe distance and still go about their own lives - the small, tiny, almost non-existent number who harass and stalk us are just the ones who are unrelenting. We miss important calls from family because of their constant calling, lose touch with friends from changing our numbers so often, don’t receive messages and can’t receive voicemails because the inboxes are full. Their actions mean that we need security with us at all times and that we need security for our family. It’s wrong and it disgusts me but if we respond then we’re the bad guys.” Chanyeol adds, getting steadily louder as he speaks, his frustration peeking through his usually calm facade. He shakes his head and limbs to disperse the anger that was building up. “So we do our best to ignore them and not let them interfere with our lives. Has Minseokkie replied yet?” You chuckle at the use of the nickname that Minseok vehemently discourages (but secretly doesn’t hate).

“Not yet.” You reply as you hand Chanyeol his phone. “Someone let me know when he does.”

***

As it turned out, the coffee that Yixing gave you was an extra special one ordered by Baekhyun & Jongdae. “Wait. They told me that was for Chanyeol. Those pricks did they give that to you?!” Minseok rang your phone as soon as he saw the KKT message. You’d assumed Yixing was exaggerating saying he lost count after 2 shots but according to Minseok, who was now worrying about the odds of you having a heart attack, it had four and a half shots in it so by the time the cars pulled up you were fidgeting and needing to be out of the confines of the vehicle so that you could move about. It was far more caffeine than you usually had in one hit and you were going to kill the two beagles once the come down took effect but that would have to wait until you weren’t at a tv pre-recording and in the privacy of the dorms. Logically you knew that you had to wait to exact your revenge but that didn’t mean that you didn’t have to continuously remind yourself to not murder them in public. 

Sehun found the whole thing hilarious as he checked on you for the tenth time in half an hour, failing at hiding that he might also be a little worried about you. “That would be bad noona. Funny and deserved, but bad.”

You grumbled as he and Minseok fussed over you. “They deserve it…”

“I’m not refuting that, but we kind of need them to be in one piece.” The maknae tried to reason with you.

“Plus they are ing loud so there is no way to sneakily get away with it here.” Minseok murmured.

“Hyung!” The younger exclaimed.

“What?” He innocently smiled as Sehun moved to leave the room, chuckling to himself.

“Just let me know when it’s gonna happen noona. I wanna be there, front row.”

Minseok was completely onboard with your revenge plan & more than willing to offer his knowledge later in the day. The eldest of the group had a sneaky mean streak in him, it was no wonder they all tried to stay on his good side. He hoarded knowledge of everything they were scared of, hated or were embarrassed by incase he ever needed to use it against them. Honestly, you were impressed and the opportunity to mess with Jongdae and Baek was too great a temptation to pass up. 

After some waiting around the guys are whisked away for hair, makeup and wardrobe so  you had some time to yourself to explore the studio before fans were let in and the organised chaos of filming began. Weirdly you expected the stage area to be bigger. Seeing it on TV made it look like this huge stage when it was simply a TV soundstage, made to look bigger with camera trickery. It was large enough for large groups to fit onto and safely perform but the scale amused you. 

You had been expecting the red and black tattered clothes but slowly the guys appeared in leather, still fitting the red and black theme but looking like they’d stepped out of The Lost Boys. You watched from your spot in the empty audience area as they moved toward the stage and waited to be mic’d up. Kai appeared with his blonde hair, not slicked back today, in a leather trench coat followed by Minseok with his almost anime styled hair, the red jacket he was wearing made him look vampire royalty. Jongdae spotted you and dramatically waved to you, making you laugh as you momentarily forgot that you were mad at him. His hair was left unstyled and flat today and someone had thought it was a good idea to let him wear a red leather jacket, fans were going to be beside themselves.

One of the stylists had touched up Chanyeol’s firey locks, no dirt like makeup marring his or Yixing’s faces today. Yixing had similar hair to Minseok today as well as a shorter trench coat and tight fitting shirt. Sehun looked like he’d walked off the runway and into everyone’s hearts as he sported a chic look with a fake bruise and cut under his eyebrow that looked good enough to be real. The fans will love this you thought to yourself. Suho, Kyungsoo and Baekhyun appeared last, Suho’s light hair in striking contrast to Kyungsoo’s and Baekhyun’s black locks. They looked expensive. Gone today were the fake piercings and chains all over the members, something you lamented. Still, they weren’t holding anything back with this performance from the visual aspect. This darker concept was out for blood and such a contrast to their past comeback costuming. If you weren’t working for the company you would be inclined to send them a fruit basket for their efforts. Instead you found the stylists and told them they’d done a fantastic job with the Monster concept. 

“It’s just nice to not have to make them all cutesy for the third year in a row. They needed a drastic change.” 

“Yeah, SM is great at the whole boyfriend/boy next door concept but we’re so happy to finally have something else to work with for them. You might want to find earplugs before the fans are let in, it’s gonna be painfully loud in here real soon.” 

You chuckled and left the ladies to their work, they still had to finish making last minute changes to the Lucky One outfits. All you saw was a lot of coloured leather pants and light tops but you were excited to see how it contrasted with the black and red of the Monster outfits.

There was still a few minutes before fans were let in so remained in your seat in the audience area as you watched the boys run through a rehearsal, making sure their moves were in sync and that the cameras would be able to catch the killer points on the choreo and focus on the right members for their close ups. There was so much more to this than you could have imagined. You’d kind of figured that they practices then rocked up, performed and left but they had logistics and everything needed to work in order for them to get the best possible performance filmed. 

It was always fascinating to watch these nine guys in work mode. They still had fun but they were focused, the fatigue disappearing from their features as they amped themselves up to perform. As soon as you heard the ten second countdown you hastily left the audience area and took refuge behind the stage, watching on one of the monitors. 

The guys had left the stage as you heard the EXO-L’s enter the area, quickly filling the audience area and wasting no time before breaking out into a fan chant. You were still jittery from the coffee as you looked around for the guys, expecting them to appear in the small waiting are that you were in but after a few minutes you figured they must have gone to a different area, or you were somewhere you shouldn’t be. 

You tried to find your way around the corridors and waiting areas so that you could find where you should be, left you get into trouble with SM. After 3 failed attempts at finding the guys you were starting to get a little frustrated, you were in a TV studio not an outdoor maze, this shouldn’t be this hard. It wasn’t your fault that you were jumpy and couldn’t focus due to all of the caffeine in your system. A hand reached out and pulled you into a darker corridor and you swung at the assailant but forgot to scream. He caught your arm and pinned it against the wall above you. Your eyes tried to adjust to the lighting in this area but all you could make out was the silhouette of a male who was a little taller than you and who was definitely stronger than you. “Noona, I’m pretty sure everyone will be mad if you punch me in the face right before I’m supposed to perform.” His voice momentarily calmed you because you recognised it. Your heart was thundering in your chest half from fear and half from that stupid coffee. The calm was only momentary because whilst you no longer thought something awful was going to happen to you, you now wanted to murder the guy in front of you even more than you had earlier today.

“Baek, what the !” You seethed. “You scared me half to ing death!”

“I did? Well , that’s not the right reaction.” He replied. His face come into vision and you made out the confused look he was wearing. You could still feel his fingers gripping your wrist above your head.

“How was I supposed to react?! I couldn’t see you, was suddenly pulled off the path I was on by a stranger and pinned to the wall. Seriously.”

“You couldn’t see me?”

“Dude it’s ing dark back here.” 

“That makes sense then. My bad.” He took a step forward, bringing his body closer to yours and used his free hand to push your hair behind your ear and then slowly trailed his hand along your jaw until he reached your chin, which he lightly grasped. “Noona, can you see me now?” 

You could see him properly now, and it reminded you of another time you’d been this close in proximity with him. Though last time involved more alcohol and less clothing for you. Last time also didn’t come with leather and kohl lined eyes. You drank him in, taking a mental picture to remember this by later because Byun Baekhyun looked ing good. He always looked good, they all did, but in stage makeup and this styling… you were weak. It could only be worse if it was the half torn clothing and the piercings… you’d be in trouble if he was wearing that today.

He cocked his head and watched as your eyes roamed over his features. “Noona? Are you gonna answer me or should I start to be concerned that you’ve lost your vision?” His tone was playfully mocking.

You managed to force the words out. “I can see you.” He was too close. He was so close that he was making your thoughts all kinds of confused. 

He smirked and whispered in your ear. “See something you like?”

Your breath hitched as you registered the words. How did he have this level of composure right now? He was throwing your own taunting words back at you and you were damned if it wasn’t working. “Don’t start what you can’t finish.” you whispered back.

He chuckled as he moved back slightly from you, still pinning your wrists. “Can’t or won’t?” He smirked as he trailed a finger down your neck, between your s and stopping at the top of your jeans. “Ah, but you’d like that wouldn’t you noona?” You were too distracted. So much so that everything else ceased to exist outside of the small bubble that was Baekhyun and you. You wondered what kissing him would be like with that lip ring, how the chill of the chain would feel against your skin as he pressed you against the wall and ravished you. A suggestive scoff brought your back to the present, reminding you that the lip ring and chain were nowhere to be seen today. “You left me high and dry after the cheerleader stuff, so unfair of you noona. So unfair of you to leave me with that image burned into my brain when I saw it in person, in my room.”

“Baek-”

“Now I know you feel something for me. This is now the third time we’ve been caught in a precarious position. I ruled the first time out since we were both a bit drunk, then the second time because you were just fulfilling a dare… and maybe trying to tease me in the process but this time, this time I know that you feel something too. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love an excellent flirtation as much as the next guy but at this point I do feel the need to tell you that you’re missing out on so much more by not taking it just that little bit further with me.” He winked, let go of your wrists and stepped back into the shadows. It was an overload of information for you and you had no idea what to do with it. Was this his way of confessing? Or was he trying to let you know he was game for more? You had no idea.  

“Uh”

“Just think on it, that’s all I ask. I’m like the others, we all love your company and hanging out with you but there’s no denying that you’re hot as and that you and I have excellent chemistry. I’m leaving it up to you to make the move though, that’s 100% in your court.” He glanced over his shoulder. “ we’re on soon. I’d better get back to the others. Enjoy the performance noona.” He smirked as he ran off down the corridor, leaving you speechless and more confused than you’d been in months. Also . That er had made you so aroused that you were uncomfortable.

Unfortunately for you, you couldn’t exactly deal with that issue right now so you took off down the same corridor that Baekhyun had just disappeared down hoping that you’d find the rest of the group. As you hurried along you replayed what had just happened in your mind, mortified that he was confident enough to pin you to the wall like that in a building full of kpop stans. He was either stupid or smart enough to know he wouldn’t be spotted where he’d done it. You really really wanted to settle on stupid, moronic even but he’d been in the business for long enough with almost no issues to not be savvy about meeting anyone outside of his group members.

“Noona! Over here!” Junmyeon called out, waving you over to the group with a kind smile on his face. “We thought we’d lost you for a minute there, did you walk the whole building or something?”

You blushed. “I got kind of lost backstage and just wandered in circles. It’s seriously dark back there.”

“Did you see a ghost?” Jongin asked, a truly concerned look on his face.

“No ghosts, you’re safe. Just a lot of empty waiting areas. Had to wander until I found the right one.” He was visibly relieved by your answer. You made a mental note to ask him about this ghost thing at a later time, there was no time now to unpack that whole thing. You looked at each of the members, they were a mix of nerves, excitement and joy. Some were fixing their performance mics to make sure they fit correctly, others going over dance moves for the umpteenth time and some pacing, shaking, vocal warm ups. It was tense but it was a good kind of tension, one you were sure they’d been through more times than you could count. Smiling you asked “Are you guys ready to wow everyone with your performance?”

Chanyeol grinned, energy practically pouring off him. “Hwaiting!” He yelled before continuing to shake his limbs to expel excess nervous energy, his pvc trench flapping about his lithe form.

“Noona? Do you have a sec?” Jongdae asked.

“Yeah, what’s up?” You replied.

“Open this once we’ve gone on stage.” He said as he handed you a small envelope. “Not before!” He seemed really concerned that you were going to open it while everyone was there which made you even more curious, and a little wary, about what was inside. After all he was one half of the reason your heart rate was off the charts today. Stupid strong coffee.

You placed the envelope in your pocket and smiled gently at him. “Don’t worry, I’ll wait. I promise.” That seemed to ease the tension he was carrying because he exhaled, grinned and thanked you before running back off to do vocal warm ups with the others.

It was organised chaos backstage. One minute everyone was doing their own pre stage rituals and the next, a stage manager gives them a 5 minute cue, then stylists were all over them like a wet rag - adjusting clothing, fixing make-up and hair then Junmyeon called them together to do their group chant and BAM! They were off to the stage.

One of the noonas pulled you over with her to watch the performance on one of the screens. “We always watch the first run through from back here, then we watch out there for the next two, then back here for the last one.”

“Wait. They’re performing the two songs five times?!” No wonder they were living off ridiculously strong coffees like the one they’d given you this morning. You felt the need to make them a hearty meal once this week was done. 

She nodded. “Yeah. First run through is a practice run, the second is usually the main audio cut used for the show. Third and fourth are touch ups for inserts and the min video content and the last is to fill any gaps with footage and to have a bit more fun with the fans.”

“Aren’t they exhausted by the end of that?”

“Dead on their feet.” She said as she patted your shoulder. “Welcome to comeback week.”

You’d seen them perform the two songs before during the comeback special but this was different. The comeback special was an event purely for their fans but this, whilst the audience might all be there for them, not everyone watching at home would be so they had to use their performance to win those viewers over. How anyone couldn’t support them after witnessing Monster was beyond you but hey, people were weird.

They performed Monster five times in a row, with only a short break in between each taping to fix hair and makeup then went and changed into the Lucky One outfits and somehow mustered up the energy to perform that song four more times without looking as exhausted as they must feel.

During the third performance of Lucky One you remembered Jongdae’s note and snuck back to the monitor where no one else was so that you could open it. Inside the envelope is a small invitation, simple in its design. The card is a soft green with brown borders and letters. It looks like a reservation for a restaurant but you’d need to look it up to be sure. If it hadn’t had the addition of Function - Private Tutoring embossed on the card you could have thought he was asking you out on a date. You smiled to yourself as you recalled the lesson options you’d planned for him. Your smile grew when you realised that it could also be a perfect setting for revenge for today’s prank. This was going to be fun.

A/N: Thanks for waiting it out and not abandoning me. I hope it was worth the wait. Next will be Chen’s lesson and following that will be his reward or punishment. There is a LOT planned for those 2 chapters and I’m just hoping that it doesn’t take me as long to update this time. Life needs to let me have my motivation and hobbies dammit. Thanks for reading, any and all feedback is welcome, unless you’re being a hateful prick but like… don’t be that person.