He is Never Drinking Again, Mino thinks, as he cracks a bleary eye open and is immediately assaulted by far too much sunlight, which only exacerbates the painful throb humming behind his temple. He tries to bring his hand up to rub at his eyes, but finds it pinned down by a warm, body weight pressed against his side.

He rubs at his face with his other free hand and blinks, and Seungyoon’s face comes into focus, soft cheek squished up against his shoulder and red mouth hanging open as he snores softly.

It isn’t unusual for them to wake up together - so many a time they have just collapsed together onto the nearest soft surface they could find after late nights in the studio that turn into morning light streaking the dark sky - but today is different, because Seungyoon’s skin is bare and smooth against his own.

Mino vaguely thinks at the back of his mind that he should be panicking about this current state of affairs, that he should be worrying about how they got here, because bandmates - friends - don’t sleep undressed with each other, but the headache pounding at his temples wins out over logic and he closes his eyes again, lets the feeling of Seungyoon’s skin, pressed soft and warm up against him, seep into his own skin, settle into his bones.

maybe, just maybe he’s wanted this for so long, even if he has never dared to translate the hazy s of want into anything more

He lets Seungyoon’s even breathing lull him back to sleep.

To be honest, he can’t tell where it started, can’t trace back the ridges of his memory back to one particular point to shove a starting flag down into the ground and say decisively that it was here, that it was at this very point, that it all began.

He recalls only landmark moments like when they’d gotten their first little gig opening for bigger names, back in that stone-walled bar where Seunghoon used to work part-time as a bartender. He remembered sitting speechless, after the call ended, Jinwoo banging out a celebratory (albeit a little too heavy on the cymbals) mess of notes from where he was hopping around his drum set, Seunghoon just numbly repeating we ing got it over and over again, and Seungyoon’s knees giving way and the way he had let himself fall into Mino’s lap, pressing his face into Mino’s shoulder.

it felt like he had the world in his arms then, and a little more

He only knows that the want crept up on him slowly. He could name, perhaps, small little landmarks along the journey of the past few years.

Then there were those times when they were on stage, and his fingers stilled over the strings for the bridge of that particular song, and Seungyoon closed his eyes and sang with his soul bare for all to see - under the stage lights he looked almost ethereal, and something would tighten in Mino’s chest.

The endless, nameless moments where they’d sit into the wee hours, just the two of them, quietly pressed up against each other’s sides, working on music together.

And then there was that one day, back in the dressing rooms during an intermission when he’d absentmindedly looked into the mirrors and caught a glimpse of Seungyoon from all the way across the room, as he wrapped his lips around the mouth of a water bottle distractedly, trying to watch the stage relay playback at the same time. If Mino hadn’t dared to acknowledge it before, the want came pushing to the surface now, his mouth suddenly Sahara dry. He clenched his jaw and forced the thought aside, but -

Alone later that night in bed, and he closed his eyes and for the first time, let himself think about Seungyoon’s lips, the way it had wrapped about the mouth of that bottle, think about how it might look wrapped around him - he wrapped his fingers about himself, a poor substitute for what might be wet velvet warmth, how maybe it would feel amazingly like nothing he’d ever felt before maybe, maybe, maybe

He came hot and hard over his hand, into his sweatpants, and in the afterglow of his he lay there, breathing hard, and he hated himself a little more.

When Mino next rouses, it’s to Seungyoon murmuring “what the ,” as he rustles awake and confusedly struggles to extricate himself from the sheets tangled about both their legs.

“Stop moving around, my head still hurts,” Mino groans. He really should let up on the alcohol.

“How on earth did we end up-”

“I don’t know, man, I can barely remember what happened after Jinwoo ordered that fourth round of soju-” even as the words leave his mouth, a hazy recollection surfaces, of the smoky barbecue restaurant, of an inebriated Seungyoon resting his head on his shoulder, wrapping his arms about his waist and pushing warm hands under his shirt - he tries to shake his head to clear it, but it only intensifies his headache and he falls back on the pillows.

“Why are we only in our briefs?” Seungyoon mutters, voice still rough from sleep, finally managing to yank the sheets free from their legs, and Mino doesn’t know whether to be relieved or not that they aren’t completely .

“You kissed me, at the concert afterparty last night,” Mino recalls in a sudden moment of clarity, as the cold afternoon air hits his bare legs. He racks his brain, but nothing more surfaces, and he wonders just what came after for them to end up like this. He hopes he kissed back, at least.

Seungyoon stares back at him, eyes dark and oddly unreadable. It’s a little jarring, because Mino is used to, more or less, being able to read Seungyoon’s thoughts, but it’s only later, after Seungyoon shakes his head, looking away and climbing out of bed, that it occurs to him that maybe Seungyoon had been hoping he didn’t remember.

It’s past four in the afternoon by the time they stumble into their basement studio, and only Seunghoon is there, half-drooping over the console as he fiddles with the backing keyboard track for the new song they’re currently working on.

“Where’s Jinwoo hyung?” Mino asks, looking around.

“Still passed out upstairs in bed. He woke to puke then went back to sleep. I had to actually check that he was alive and breathing earlier.”

“We should really stop drinking so much at afterparties,” Mino whines. Even an aspirin hadn’t been of very much help and the walls of his mouth still felt somewhat like sandpaper.

“Speak for yourselves,” Seunghoon twists around in his seat, and eyeballs the both of them.

“Hey,” Mino begins, but Seunghoon interrupts.

“I’m not the ones who got pissed drunk and started making out in the middle of the barbecue restaurant last night,” Seunghoon rolls his eyes. “The whole restaurant was practically holding up numbers at one point.”

“Oh.” Mino says, risking a glance sideways at Seungyoon, whose mouth is twisted into a weird, crooked pout. He waits, half-expecting Seunghoon to nag, but Seunghoon just turns back to the console with a huff. “I kinda thought you were gonna yell at us for that.”

“Why would I,” Seunghoon shrugs. “About bloody time, if you ask me.” Seungyoon makes a kind of a gurgling, choking sound beside him, and Mino blinks. “Stop dancing the around each other-”

tell Mino something he doesn’t know

“Don’t think I don’t know,” Seunghoon says, and he looks up at them. “Ever since-”

Maybe ever since he’d let himself think, for the first time, that he’d never been happier. Doing what he loved, with possibly his favourite people in the world, even if they tended to bicker quite a little (a lot).

He’d never been this happy, and it was unsettling, almost like his overflowing cup would be tipped over at any moment if he’d tried for more, and he’d lose it all, worse off for ever having been happy at all, because now he knew what happiness felt like.

He’d asked Jinwoo about it once, when he thought the older boy had had enough whiskey in his system to perhaps not remember what he’d said by the time morning dawned. But Jinwoo’s eyes had sharpened, and his gaze had held Mino’s steadily enough.

“Why can’t you be even happier than you are now?”

“It’s like going against the world,” Mino mumbled. “It feels tenuous enough as it is, it would all crumble. I just know-”

“But you don’t, that’s the thing. Nobody on this plane of god's green earth can actually know-”

“What if we fall apart just because I wanted more than what I had,” Mino said. “It’s not just Seungyoon and I. It’s us as a whole, hyung.”

Jinwoo hadn’t looked surprised at the mention of Seungyoon’s name, and Mino couldn’t be bothered to qualify - since he’d shoved his foot in, he might as well go all the way.

“I wish I could tell you that things have to be done a certain way, that they have to follow a certain sequence of events,” Jinwoo said, looking up at Mino from his slump over the kitchen table, and suddenly he seemed so much older than Mino, so much more like the eldest hyung he really was. “But that’s how it really is - is that we just grow into things, we grow into the things that make us happy, and before we know it, here we are. I mean, look, we grew into this band, from a bunch of stupid college kids always never paying attention for our arts degree but somehow still managing to make a name for ourselves out there.

You grew into Seungyoon, and I wish I could tell you that you’d be better off never breathing a word about it, or running out right now to his room to tell him everything, but I can’t.” Jinwoo paused and hiccuped, almost as if for dramatic measure.

“Want another drink?” Mino asked faintly. Maybe he should have waited until they’d reached the bottom of this bottle of whiskey. As it was, they were only about two-thirds through, and Jinwoo sounded too sober for his liking. If he stopped to think about it, maybe he was too sober himself, too. He reached for the bottle to pour himself another drink, but Jinwoo grabbed his wrist to get his attention.

“You - and Seungyoon - are idiots, y’all know that?”

“Thanks, hyung, for that vote of confidence,” Mino sighed, as Jinwoo yawned and buried his face into his arms, beginning to snore before Mino could tip the next glass back.

Seunghoon pauses. “I don’t even know ever since when.”

Mino nods solemnly. He doesn’t know either.

Seungyoon has sidled off to the couch at the other end of the studio, picking his guitar up, and his face reads discussion closed, and Mino wonders if the equilibrium he’d been trying to keep still held, if his glass had spilt, and when the resulting dampness on the ground would creep up onto him. He hates wet shoes.

Jinwoo bangs into the studio then, hair sticking up everywhere and yawning, and Seunghoon tugs at Seungyoon’s sleeve to ask him about redoing the keyboard backtrack and the moment is broken.

It’s past three in the morning, and as usual, it’s just them left in the studio, Jinwoo and Seunghoon preferring to keep more normal hours than he and Seungyoon do.

They haven’t talked about it, and the thought that they probably should has been tugging at the back of Mino’s mind for the whole day, but there’s his equilibrium to think about. And anyway, Seungyoon kissed him first, he thinks rather childishly. Sure enough-

“Do you regret it?” Seungyoon asks suddenly, from outside the recording booth, when they’re right in the middle of ironing out Mino’s rap part and his voice is a little tinny from the booth’s external playback, but even then Mino can hear the hesitation, the slight waver of his voice towards the end, and even though Seungyoon cuts off his channel to Mino immediately after he’s spoken Mino can see in the slump of Seungyoon’s body the shuddering exhale of breath Seungyoon lets out afterwards, can almost hear the whisper of the quick rush of air in his head.

He realises, with a jolt, that Seungyoon is afraid. That he’d chosen to talk about it when they have the protection of soundproofed glass and walls between them, when they have to use sound equipment to communicate. That perhaps, just like him, he was afraid.

“Yeah,” Mino says, keeping his eyes fixed on Seungyoon through the booth’s glass windows, and he knows Seungyoon well enough to notice the stiffening of his shoulders, the white-knuckled grasp he has on the computer mouse- “I do regret it. I regret not being sober, I regret not remembering how your mouth felt like against mine, even though I’ve wanted that for longer than I can remember. I regret not even being able to remember if I kissed you back.”

He takes a deep breath, and he’s clutching his song sheets so hard he can feel the paper tearing under his fingers. Go big or go home. “I regret never telling you all that, but I was afraid I’d lose you and everything else, and I don’t think I could handle that.”

Seungyoon stands up, and with a sudden chill stabbing through his heart Mino thinks he’s going to leave, but he blinks and the next moment Seungyoon has pushed his way through the soundproofed doors and into his arms, burying his face into Mino’s shoulder. Mino wraps his arms about him and pulls him close, feeling Seungyoon’s lean body tremble under his touch, and pressing his nose into Seungyoon’s tousled hair.

“You washed your hair today,” he says conversationally, hoping to lighten the mood, and Seungyoon draws back and kicks him in the ankle.

“You’re an ,” he says, voice rough around the edges, but when they lock eyes Seungyoon’s eyes are clear, steady, earnest -

And Mino doesn’t think, cannot think, leaning in to press his mouth to Seungyoon’s. Seungyoon kisses him back easily, lids fluttering shut, tilting his head to into Mino’s mouth, kissing him firm and sober and sure -

the time Seungyoon had first kissed him when they were both faced drunk was a hazy memory, almost like those vintage soundless black and white films, but today, Seungyoon’s mouth warm and pliant under his, the fire real and scorching and coursing under their skin -

we were in screaming colour

They’re on stage, and Mino hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol that day but he’s so high he feels like he’s floating on cloud nine, as they finish their encore piece to delighted whoops and shrieks from the audience. Seungyoon comes up to him, all sweaty and flushed - Mino thinks he’s beautiful - slinging his guitar off and onto the stand, and leaning in to wrap long, thin arms about his waist. Mino pulls him in tight, and Seungyoon fits perfectly in the crook of his arm, and a fuzzy warmth settles in the pit of his stomach as Seunghoon and Jinwoo close in, too.

they say happiness isn’t an end goal, but something you grow into, along the way

The rounded handle of Jinwoo’s drumsticks is pressed a little painfully into his hip, and they’re all damp and hot, but Mino thinks this is the best feeling in the world, as they take their bows.

If he’d thought he couldn’t have been happier, he realises he can.