** small note: this is actually a song from the Tom and Jerry movie. A quick google search will pull it up. It's a sweet song.

--

Hyuck woke up that morning with a dull headache in his room, so he knew he had a good night. He groaned as he moved his arm around to search for his phone, bolting upright in his bed when he made contact with something warm, living, and breathing.

Mark was asleep next to him in his bed, wearing what Hyuck was sure was his shirt.

He spotted his phone underneath him and very carefully pulled it out from underneath Mark, freezing when Mark moved a little bit, but he stilled.

He had a few messages from Jeno and Jaemin, and a few from you. He opened up your messages and saw a picture of him kissing Mark on the cheek after that game of beer pong with the caption “this is something you probably remembered happening.”

The next picture made his heart stop. It was a picture of Mark with his arms wrapped around him, kissing his cheek from behind him. “This is something you probably did not remember. You’re welcome. <3”

Hyuck stared at the photo for the next five minutes in disbelief. He glanced over at Mark, who finally groaned and started rubbing his eyes. He tossed his phone over to his nightstand and shoved at Mark a few times.

“Ugh… stop… five more minutes…”

“You’re wearing my shirt,” Hyuck croaked out. His voice was nearly gone, and he couldn’t wait to hear the stories from Jeno and Jaemin later.

Mark forced his eyes open and looked down, frowning when he realized it wasn’t his shirt.

“What the heck? What happened?”

“I don’t know. I just know you didn’t make it to your bed across the room, I guess.”

Mark groaned again and kicked the blankets off of him while Hyuck laid back down and pulled them back up over himself. Mark rolled over Hyuck, making the other boy croak some more which made Mark groan even louder until he landed on the floor.

“Get up, Hyuck.”

“No.”

“We’ve got Saturday practice today.”

“… . Are you serious?” Hyuck sat up and reached for his phone again, and sure enough, as soon as he the screen, his alarm letting him know that practice was in two hours. “Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. .”

--

Jeno left the party early because he, unlike Hyuck, remembered there was Saturday practice. He was glad that you stopped by the party, but he felt a little bad that he couldn’t talk much more with you.

He woke up at the crack of dawn, like he usually did, and took his usual jog through the mostly empty campus. He slowed down towards the end of his jog, breathing hard and wiping some sweat away from his forehead.

Then a notification interrupted his music, making him frown. There were only a handful of things that interrupted his music during jog time, so he pulled his phone out from his arm band and took a look over his notifications. A text from Jaemin, a text from Mark. Some school emails. He dismissed them until he came upon an alert for a new post on Ghostie’s tumblr.

It was a picture of a silhouette of a person, looking up at the stars and the moon. Jeno zoomed in on the person, trying to see if he could make out any discerning features, but it was too dark. He sighed and backed out of the picture, scrolling down to read the caption.

Do I miss you?

Count the stars.

Multiply by ten.

Of course, I do

More than now and then.**

Jeno googled the caption, but nothing came back with an exact match to the words, and he was frustrated again.

--

Saturday practices were a little more casual, just some time for Coach Minho to go over the plays in the last game and pointing out improvements or mistakes that were made. They were held once a month, usually at the end of the month so that month’s games were played and analyzed.

Hyuck was surprisingly quiet during stretches, along with Mark. Jaemin seemed as cheery as always, and Jeno was distracted.

“Alright, what gives, Hyuck? You haven’t said a word all practice, not even to complain,” Coach Minho said, giving him the eye.

Hyuck opened up his mouth and all that came out was a rasping noise.

--

After practice was over, Jeno called over to Hyuck as they were leaving the locker room. He stopped and waited for Jeno to catch up to him as he pulled out his phone.

“Does this look familiar to you? Is it like a poem from a book, or…”

Hyuck read the words on the screen, and Jeno felt like he took a little too long to read what was on there. He pursed his lips and shrugged his shoulders.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “No idea.”

--

You were having a late lunch with Jaemin when your phone rang. You looked down to see Hyuck’s picture and debated about answering the phone. “Why’s he calling me? Didn’t you say he lost his voice?”

Jaemin shrugged, dipping his fry into his ketchup. “Dunno. Answer him.”

You picked up the phone. “Hyuck?”

“Where are you? I knocked on your door for 5 minutes and the RA is threatening to kick me out for making too much noise.”

You could hardly hear his whisper over the phone. “Couldn’t you have texted me instead?”

“This is urgent! Where are you?”

“Having lunch with Jaemin. Why? What’s going on?”

“I’ll see you in a minute.” And he hung up on you, leaving both you and Jaemin confused.

“Weird…” You put your phone down and stole a fry from Jaemin’s food, laughing as he gave you an indignant look.

“You have your own fries!”

“But I already ate them all.”

Jaemin’s eyes crinkled with his smile as he playfully batted at your hands reaching for more of his food, but he let you have it anyway.

You two were talking about music when you felt a hand smack you in the back of the head. Hyuck sat down and gave you a look of disbelief.

“Are you trying to give yourself away?” he rasped out angrily.

“What are you talking about?”

Hyuck sighed in exasperation and pulled out his phone, pulling up your post and jabbing at the caption.

“I saw that earlier today,” Jaemin said. “I was gonna ask you what it meant.”

“You still remember it?” you asked Hyuck quietly.

Hyuck sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Of course I remember it.”

You turned to look at Jaemin with a soft smile on your face. “It’s a lullaby Hyuck wrote for me when we were younger. We didn’t see each other often, and he was my only friend.”

“I’m still your only friend,” he whispered, reaching for your burger.

You rolled your eyes. Jaemin looked between the two of you fighting over the remains of the burger and rested his head on his hands.

“So… how long have you two been friends?”

“Too long,” you said, sticking your tongue out at him. He flipped you off with one hand and stuck the burger into his mouth with the other.

“Found her on an old baseball field, trying to learn how to hit a ball. No hand eye coordination at all, let me tell you,” Hyuck mumbled with his mouth full.

“He invited me to watch the little league games, and they were at the field pretty close to my apartment, so I walked there a lot. My parents were always too busy for me to be involved with stuff like that.”

“Oh. So really, you’ve known all of us for a while now, huh?”

You shrugged. “I guess. I’ve known of you. Hyuck was too embarrassed to introduce me to his friends, so he always came over on the weekend to teach me how to play by himself.”

Jaemin perked up. “You know how to play some baseball?”

You shook your head. “Not really. I don’t remember the last time I hit a ball.”

“You can’t remember something you’ve never done- oof!” You hit Hyuck in the stomach, and he had to cover his mouth to keep from getting the wind knocked out of him.

“Let’s go knock some balls around then. You’re not doing anything today, right?” Jaemin looked over at Hyuck finishing the last of your food. “Call Mark. See if he’ll come too.”

--

Hyuck and Mark sat in the dugout, watching as Jaemin threw soft underhand balls to you as you tried to hit them. “A little lower. Don’t twist your arms, move from your waist, and shift your weight with the bat.”

Your cheeks were pink from working so hard outside, and Hyuck couldn’t help but remember the old days and how endearing you were.

“She’s cute. Look at how hard she’s working.”

You managed to hit the ball and dropped the bat in excitement, making Jaemin laugh.

“Look at you! You’ll be hitting home runs in no time.”

“She’s always been like that,” Hyuck said quietly, keeping his eyes on you. “Always afraid to stand out, always afraid to be noticed. She keeps saying she’s invisible, or like background noise. I just wish…”

“Not everyone can be like you Hyuck,” Mark said, watching as you hit another ball and clapping for you loudly. “Some people just prefer to be alone, or in the company of a few trusted people. In a lot of ways, she and Jeno are very similar.”

The boys yelped when a rogue ball flew into the dugout.

“Sorry! My bad!” Jaemin yelled. Mark and Hyuck sighed and got up, grabbing a few mitts on their way out.

“Now that you can hit a ball, let’s see if you can catch a ball.”

--

Jeno had been trekking across campus in his spare time to find the locations of your photos. He found a few of them, marveling at the actual view itself. He knew those pictures were of Hyuck, whether he admitted it or not, but Jaemin convinced him to leave him alone, since he was just respecting the artist’s wish.

He thought back to the response to the message he sent to you and felt the tips of his ears go red.

Thank you. Here’s to many more.

More? Were they closer than he thought? Was it someone he knew? Jeno glanced down at his watch and sighed. He was currently hunting for a specific location, and he could tell it was higher up, but he couldn’t figure out where. It was coming time for his tutoring lesson though, so he had to save this for another day.

You were already sitting at the usual spot with your books laid out as Jeno approached the table. He smiled at the way your eyebrows furrowed as you wrote question marks next to a problem you didn’t understand.

“You’re here early- oh my god. What happened to your eye?” You looked up as Jeno pulled the seat out and sat down, scooting up to the table, and he saw a purple bruise on your cheek that reached around your eye.

You sighed. “I was playing catch with Hyuck, Mark, and Jaemin. We were doing pretty well. They were throwing hard balls to each other and soft balls to me.” Jeno could see where this story was going and winced.

“And Hyuck momentarily forgot so he turned to me, threw me a hard ball, and realized his mistake as the ball left his hand. It would’ve hit me square in the nose if I didn’t move.”

Jeno winced again. “I hate to say this, but it happens pretty often so I’m guessing they took good care of you?”

“I’ve never heard Hyuck apologize to me so many times before in my life,” you said with a smile, but when you winced a little bit from the pain, Jeno wanted to reach out and hug you.

“Anyway, before we get too sidetracked, I have a couple questions on the homework we got… I picked up some extra credit stuff too, just in case my score was really bad…”

Jeno watched you for a moment as your eyes went back to the paper. You were genuinely working so hard, he couldn’t help but admire you a little bit.

“Sure. Where do you get lost at?”

--

While you were packing up your things at the end of the session, Jeno cleared his voice, making you look up from your bag.

“Have you been friends with Hyuck and them for a while?”

You half shrugged. “Hyuck and I have been friends since we were little. Actually…” You trailed off for a minute and gave him a small smile. “We all actually went to the same high school.”

“We did? Oh. I’m sorry. I don’t really remember you from… Now I feel bad. Why didn’t you say anything before?”

You stood up, pulling your backpack onto your shoulders. “It’s not really important. You’re gonna be late for practice,” you said with another grin, punching his arm as you walked past him to leave.