Jinyoung

While we were back to reading our fan letters and not being worried about Mark anymore, I wondered why they had seemed a bit.. awkward when they came back. Not so much awkward between them, I mean, they were literally holding hands and giving each other adorable smiles while they probably thought no one was watching, but awkward towards me and the other members. 

The looks on their faces when I told them I had seen them in the bathroom were filled with confusion and something that looked a lot like fear, although I couldn’t tell why. It also seemed a bit off to me when Jackson had to ask again if I saw them, while he wasn’t the type to be unsure or embarrassed. Hell, he would walk around our apartment half , so why would he care about me seeing him giving Mark a hug?

It only seemed like the normal thing to do, to hug a friend that is upset. I would’ve done the same if I had been the first to find him. Now that I thought about it, I also remembered them holding hands and quickly letting go when they walked back in the practise room. Why were they suddenly worried about us seeing them being affectionate? They were being cute together during the fan meeting just less than an hour ago, so why were they being weird now? Was it just fan service? 

It was all just very confusing to me, and I contemplated wether I should talk about it to them later. I realised this would be an awkward thing to do, but good group dynamics and communication was more important to me. Maybe it was a bit sensitive for them to talk about, but I really had no idea why they were acting this way, and the more I thought about it, the more my curiosity grew. 

Jaebum, who was sitting beside me, suddenly nudged me in my side and showed me some fan art someone had made with an adorable wide grin that made his eyes disappear. The fan had drawn the two of us standing back to back, wearing our outfits from the “Bounce” MV, with “JJ Project” written above in big letters. I couldn’t help but chuckle, as the drawing was actually really good, but why, why did this fan have to bring up our (cringey) past? 

Out of ing nowhere, Yugyeom appeared behind us and exclaimed “Oh my god! JJ PROJEEEEECT!!!” Bambam stood up as well and joined in with the “shake it and shake it for me” dance Yugyeom of course had to do as well. ing brats. I felt too tired to give them a proper beating, so I just shook my head disapprovingly. Youngjae, Mark, and Jackson just laughed in the background. But I would lie if I said I didn’t have to fight back a smile, too. 

After catching his breath from his near-death-from-laughing experience, Youngjae teasingly said “You guys make a cute couple though”, earning a playful slap on the arm from Jaebum, which only made him laugh more. Jaebum couldn’t help but join him and I shook my head again with a sigh. Then it suddenly hit me. I looked over at Mark and Jackson again, who were now comparing the fan art to each others faces, trying to match their expressions to the ones on paper, being adorable as usual. Were they..? No, they couldn’t possibly… right? 

Jackson

Making Mark laugh was currently my top priority. We were comparing our faces to the lovely fan art our fans had made. Mark held up another portrait of me, where I had my cheeks puffed and pouty lips. I did my best to recreate the face, and blinked at mark innocently while making a noise that was something between a whining puppy and a dying seal, and holding up a peace sign. Mark snorted out the most adorable laugh and held up his hand to his mouth in embarrassment. I caught his wrist and pulled his hand down. “Don’t” I said, “You’re so cute when you laugh, seeing you laugh makes me infinitely happy” I added with possibly the biggest smile ever.

Mark stopped laughing but was still smiling widely. A light shade of red found its way to his face, and he shyly brought up his hands to cover his blushing cheeks and looked down. I ruffled his hair, I just couldn’t hold myself back, and he looked up at me again, letting out a small giggle. His giggle was infectious and I found myself giggling along with him.

Bambam suddenly shouted from across the room “Eeeeeww get a room you two, seriously! That’s disgusting!” While he pointed at us with a teasing grin. Jinyoung suddenly stood up and made his way over to him “You better shut it, you little ” he said somewhat aggressively, somewhat lovingly with a smile, before smacking Bambam across the back of his head and tackling him to the ground, making Bambam let out shrieks of distress and laughter.  

Jinyoung was being oddly defensive considering Bambam wasn’t teasing him or Jaebum for a change. I briefly wondered if it had anything to do with the bathroom incident, but quickly shook off the thought, not wanting to worry too much and wanting to focus on making Mark laugh instead. “He’s just jealous” I said to Mark with a wink, quickly bringing back that rosy colour on his cheeks and earning a slap against my shoulder. 

Mark

In this moment, I felt extremely happy. But despite my efforts to ignore it, something at the back of my head and at the pit of my stomach told me that this wasn’t going to last long. That this perfect little bubble of happiness was just an illusion and could burst at any moment. But looking at Jackson and seeing the little spark in his eyes whenever he looked at me made me feel at least a bit more at ease. 

It didn’t take too long before our manager walked in, telling us we had to grab something quick to eat before getting to individual practise. Since our voices had already worked hard during the fan meeting, we all decided to work on our dancing, and lucky for Jackson and I, our martial arts tricking instructor had made some time for us today. We all ate some snacks and fruits our manager had brought and quickly started our practise.

If there’s one thing that was predictable, it was how we spent our individual dance practise. Jinyoung and Jaebum were probably the only ones getting some actual work done, with giving each other helpful feedback. Well, mostly Jinyoung giving Jaebum feedback. Youngjae usually joined them as well, getting in a few helpful pointers before calling it a day and falling asleep on the couch.

Hit-the-stage-Yugyeom would usually work on his individual dancing for a while, before getting bored and joining Bambam in practising girl group dances “because it was important to prepare for variety shows”. Their practise would usually end up in the two of them screaming for god knows what reason and Jinyoung getting annoyed at them and Jaebum occasionally holding him back from beating up the kids. Youngjae would still be sleeping despite all the noise.

Jackson and I would either join the others in practising the general choreo (also known as teasing each other for our expressions we were supposed to give during the performance), or practise our martial arts tricking in a different practise room with our instructor. Today was the second option for us, so as soon as we finished eating we headed towards the practise room. 

Today’s practise actually went quite well, and I was able to clear my head for a while. Whenever one of us fell, the other would rush over immediately to see if everything was okay. Our instructor just rolled his eyes and let out something between a sigh and a chuckle, because literally the entire floor was covered with soft mats so we wouldn’t hurt ourselves. Of course, he would always make sure we were being careful and doing things step by step. But that didn’t stop me or Jackson from being overdramatic. 

After practising for a few hours, it was time to head back to the apartment. We all got inside the van, Yugyeom and Bambam still chattering excitedly even after such a long day, Jinyoung and Jaebum still discussing practise-related things, while Youngjae was sleeping on Jaebum’s shoulder. I followed his example and leaned my head on Jackson’s shoulder while we were discreetly holding hands. Jackson was rubbing the back of my hand with his thumb, and leaned his head against mine, making me feel even more safe and protected. 

Jinyoung

I looked back at Mark and Jackson who were sitting behind me, and saw them leaning on each other half asleep while holding hands. Even though they weren’t doing much out of the ordinary, it still seemed a bit weird to me. They usually wouldn’t hold hands, actually, and it was strange that they were doing it without being annoying and telling everyone about it. The biggest Markson shippers were Mark and Jackson themselves, after all. Maybe Jackson a little bit more than Mark.

If they were really actually together now, I would of course be happy for them and support them, but somehow it worried me a bit. Especially since they didn’t tell us about it, and we usually didn’t hide anything from each other, let alone something this big. But, let’s not jump to conclusions just yet. Maybe something else happened between them that they wanted to keep private. Whatever it was, my head was filled with one question; What is going on between them?