Kris looks up as the elevator doors open and Jongin, Kyungsoo, Luhan and Sehun step into the loft. “Wow, you ers actually made it here early,” he says, impressed.

                The four of them don’t reply; they’re too busy looking around in shock. “You’re sure we don’t have to pay for any of this?” Luhan asks nervously.

                The walls and ceiling of the loft are completely starch-white and adorned very simply with some small black-and-white photographs, the wood beneath their feet a deep chestnut-brown that looked to be recently polished. There’s a receptionist desk to one side, some more small desks pushed up against the walls and littered with piles of paperwork, and clothing racks stuffed with outfits everywhere. The entire back wall is made up of window, filling the room with natural sunlight and giving a fantastic view of the downtown area, facing the lakeshore, and in the back corners are two different area sets, each surrounded by tons of equipment: the one on the left has a vintage rug placed against a grey paint-splattered back drop, giving the illusion of decaying drywall, and the one on the right is just a plain white backdrop with a lone stool sitting the centre. The photography club is flitting around the place, adjusting the lighting and cameras and going over the details of the shoot with the makeup and wardrobe crew, all of them wearing matching black cotton V-necks with a white dolphin splayed across the back and the words Kaleidoscope Photography underneath.

                “You’re telling me that they’re letting use all this stuff just for a shirtless photo of me?” Jongin asks in disbelief.

                “Well, that helped a bit too, but for the most part they’re just really into studio work,” Kris grins, standing up as they walked over. He’s already prepped and ready to go, dressed in black skinny jeans and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, hair tousled just so. “Not to mention they don’t actually like taking pictures of each other so they pounced on the chance to have some voluntary subjects.”

                “,” Luhan shakes his head, still looking stunned. “So who’s here and who’s missing?”

                “We’re still waiting on Tao’s group. Jongdae, Minseok and Joonmyun came with me,” Kris says, pointing towards the area where there’s a couple of vanity tables with mirrors blaring bright showcase light bulbs and a large purple curtain enclosing the dressing area. “You guys can go ahead and head on over to wardrobe, they’ll find something for you to wear.”

                “Wait, so we’re actually doing the Calvin Klein thing?” Jongin asks, eyeing Kris’ outfit.

                “Kind of but not really. We’re mostly going for cheap and simple.”

                “Considering where we’re standing right now, I highly enjoy the irony of that sentence.”

                Kris rolls his eyes and shoves on their shoulders. “Just hurry up and get dressed.”

                “I’m actually kind of excited now,” Kyungsoo admits, still taking the place in with eyes even wider than usual. “I’ve never had my photo taken professionally before. Well, besides the ones for school and stuff.”

                “I hardly think that counts as professional,” Luhan snorts, eyeing one of the cameras as they walk past. “You know, if I got to play with this stuff all the time, I think I’d like to be in the photography club too.”

                “But we both know you can’t take photos for ,” someone suddenly breathes down his neck.

                Luhan flinches and spins around. “God, Jongdae, you’re so ing we—wow. You actually clean up pretty good.”

                “I honestly don’t know whether to take that as an insult or a compliment,” Jongdae frowns, hands stuffed into his own black skinnies.

                “By the way, did you hear?” Luhan says, hooking an arm around Jongin’s neck to stop him in his tracks as Kyungsoo and Sehun keep moving towards the wardrobe crew. They turn back to look at them with a frown, but Luhan just waves them off. “Go on ahead, we’ll catch up,” he says.

                “Wait, what’re you doing?” Jongin starts squirming in Luhan’s grasp. “, you’re a lot stronger than you look.”

                “Shut up. Anyways, today our dearest angel Kyungsoo established the date context with our good friend Jongin here,” Luhan says, patting Jongin’s head as he continues to struggle in his grip.

                Jongdae’s eyes nearly fall out of his head. “Are you serious.”

                “He didn’t!” Jongin protests, finally throwing off Luhan’s arm, face red. “You guys are reading between the lines too much.”

                “And you are in a constant self-induced state of denial,” Luhan retorts. “What are you so afraid of, anyway? Isn’t this supposed to be a good thing?”

                “Believe me, it would be, but did you forget that I still told Kyungsoo he has a secret admirer? I still haven’t figured out how to deal with that, you know, and instead of putting me into a headlock you could be a little generous for like two seconds and—”

                “Hey.” Kris suddenly pops up again. “So I heard Kyungsoo established the date context.”

                Jongin stops mid-sentence and blinks. “Wait, wha—”

                “He-ey, Jongin!” Minseok calls from across the studio, giving him a thumbs-up as he walks past. “I heard the good news! You finally did it, you sneaky bastard!”

                “What are you talking about? What’s going—”

                “Hey Jongin.” Joonmyun walks by to pat Jongin approvingly on the arm. “I heard Kyungsoo established the date context. Keep up the good work, you’ll be there in no time.”

                “Wait, how the hell does everyone—”

                “You motherer.”

                “HOLY !” Jongin screams, when he turns around as sees Baekhyun, Chanyeol, Tao and Yixing all crowded behind him and staring at him intensely. “What the ?!”

                “We heard the news and came as fast as we could,” Chanyeol reports.

                “But—you—how—?!”

                Everyone looks over at Jongdae, who smirks and waves his phone. “Beautiful thing, technology,” he says pleasantly.

                “I can’t believe Kyungsoo had to establish the date context,” Baekhyun says, shaking his head. “I’m starting to wonder if you’re going to end up bottoming.”

                Jongin lets out a strangled noise and falls to his knees in despair.

                “, I think you hit his manly man pride a little too hard,” Luhan says, looking down at Jongin curled over painfully on the ground.

                “What manly man pride?” Kris mutters under his breath.

—∞—

                They take the group shot first, on the set with the rug and the grey backdrop. Three simple wooden chairs are placed in the middle, and the twelve of them crowd onto the set, taking various positions standing, leaning against the wall, or sitting on the chairs and the ground.

                “Ugh, I really want to scratch my nose but I don’t want to mess up the makeup,” Sehun says, scrunching his face up and wiggling his nose like a rabbit.

                “Just keep your face still, it’ll go away eventually.”

                “What kind of expression are we going for?” Joonmyun asks as they shift into their positions.

                “Just make yourselves look really serious,” Kris advises. “Not like grim serious. Like, really cool serious. Like you want to crack the lens of the cameras just using your eyes.”

                “That was actually kind of helpful,” Luhan says in surprise, turning to look at Kris, hair styled up and away from his forehead. “Guess having you become President wasn’t a total waste.”

                “Nice valley girl accent by the way,” Jongdae snickers.

                “Just shut up and pose already.”

                “How long are we supposed to stand here?” Baekhyun whispers out of the corner of his mouth, already in place. “I don’t know how this works.”

                “The guy said to just change your position slightly every time the camera flashes. Not drastically, but enough so that they can try to catch your good angle.”

                The photography crew bustles around the cameras and the nearby monitors, rushing over to adjust someone’s hair or clothing every once in a while, until they were satisfied and fell back behind the cameras. Then they start snapping shots one after another, all of them shifting around a bit with each flash.

                “I’m going blind,” Minseok hisses out between clenched teeth. “My eyes are burning.”

                “ it up, Minseok,” Luhan shoots back, barely moving his lips.

                “No, seriously, I can’t see —”

                “Minseok.”

                “My eyes are watering, I’m gonna mess up my make-up—”

                “Then stop staring directly into the light and look somewhere else.”

                “…Oh.”

                “Serves you right for having big eyes,” Jongdae mutters under his breath.

                “Shut up Jongdae, half of this group has bigger eyes than me, do you see them having any problems—”

                “Will you all shut the up before I hurl you out the window?”

                Finally, some twenty shots later, the club president calls out, “Okay, you can come look at them now.”

                “That’s it?” Chanyeol says in surprise, relaxing.

                “Guess so.”

                The photography president spins the monitors around towards the group before displaying all the shots. “You guys can pick the ones you want to keep.”

                The guys crowd around the computer screen. “Holy , we look really ing good,” Tao says, eyes widening.

                “Not this one,” Sehun says, pointing to one near the top. “You can’t see my eyes properly. And this one makes me look like I’m constipated.”

                “Too much information, dude.”

                Jongin’s eyes roam over the shots, and his breath hitches when his eyes land on one near the bottom, where Kyungsoo’s got his head tilted to one side while he pulls on the collar of his white t-shirt with his hand, revealing the full pale expanse of his neck and part of his shoulder. It looked like he was flexing his neck, for God’s sake.

                “This one,” Jongin says firmly, pointing at the photograph.

                The others trail their eyes to look at it. “I can live with that one,” Kris says.

                “You look really good in that one, Jongin,” Kyungsoo says, leaning in closer to study it, and Jongin realized he hadn’t even checked how he looked in that shot. Well, if Kyungsoo thought he looked good…

                “I dunno, I kind of like this one too,” Yixing says, pointing to a different one.

                “We don’t have to toss the rest of them, if there’s other ones you want to keep. You can use it for your cover photo on Facebook or something,” Joonmyun says.

                “That’s actually a really good idea. I might just do that too,” Minseok says, eyebrows raised.

                “Can you send us this one, this one and this one?” Kris asks, pointing them out to the club president.

                The guy nods back from underneath his dark blue cap. “We can arrange that. If you guys are happy with the shots then you can head back to wardrobe and get changed for your singles.”

                “Hahaha, awesome,” Tao says, bounding for the dressing area. “This is fun . We should do this more often.”

                “No way, dude. I don’t like having to sit there for so long while they do hair and makeup,” Jongdae says as the rest of them follow. “I really had to use the bathroom after a while but I didn’t want to ask and get up halfway through.”

                “Your weak bladder control is not my problem.”

                “Okay, can we not turn this into a discussion about bladders, please?”

                “No,” Luhan gasps suddenly, stopping in place. “No no no no no—”

                “Oh God,” Minseok winces, “don’t tell me it’s—”

                “! I lost my contact again!”

                “God dammit, Luhan!”

—∞—

                Kris stares. “Sehun.”

                “Yeah?”

                “What are you doing?”

                “I’m gonna watch you get your singles done.”

                “No, I mean what are you doing with a plate of food the size of Mount Everest?”

                “I got hungry,” Sehun replies, but it sounds more like “I guh hrmmgwy” because he chooses this exact moment to shove half of a sandwich into his mouth and does not bother to wait before answering around his mouthful.

                “Didn’t you just eat?”

                “Waab yo poin?”

                “My point is you just had lunch and now you’re eating again you ing fatass.”

                Sehun swallows. “But you were the one who—”

                “Look, can you just do that somewhere else?”

                “Why?”

                “Because I haven’t eaten anything all day and you’re not helping by eating in front of me.”

                Now it’s Sehun’s turn to stare. “Why the haven't you eaten anything?”

                “I didn’t want a muffin top for the photo-shoot.”

                “You didn’t even eat breakfast?”

                “No.”

                There’s a long pause, before Sehun takes the fork that’s sticking out from his pile of food, stabs at a huge chunk of cake, and without breaking eye contact with Kris he shoves the fork into his mouth.

                “Oh my god,” he moans loudly, so that a bunch of the photography crew turns to look at him. “This cake is so ing good—”

                Kris’ eye twitches. “Yo.”

                “This is literally the best cake I’ve ever tasted—”

                “You are about two steps away from getting ed up real bad my friend—”

                “Oh god, and it’s still warm...so moist and creamy...”

                “...Wait...”

                “Ohhhhh, it just melts in your mouth—”

                “Okay you need to stop because this is starting to turn into something I don’t want to hear—”

                “Damn, was that a cherry?”

                “OKIE DOKIE THERE,” Kris shoots up from the stool that had been placed on set for him and quickly herds Sehun away from the cameras and their respective ogling crew members, “let’s just give that cake away to someone else before you find any more little, er, surprises.”

                “But don’t you want to taste—”

                “No.”

—∞—

                “You know,” Jongin says, shifting uncomfortably and fiddling with the hem of his t-shirt as all eleven of the other members crowd around behind the cameras and stare at Jongin with the utmost concentration, along with more than half of the female portion of the photography crew, “I don’t think it’s really necessary for you guys to watch, I mean there’s a waiting area, you know, with like, really soft couches and free champagne and—”

                “Irrelevant. Besides, this is us taking initiative to be a loving, supporting team. Aren’t you grateful?” Kris asks sweetly, as Luhan chokes a snort.

                “Oh yeah. Super grateful.”

                “You can do it, Jongin,” Kyungsoo says, by far the most genuine gesture of “support” that the rest of them had shown yet, and Jongin has to clear his throat and fight off the blush for all he was worth because he was currently standing in a brightly-lit area, alone, with a bunch of other people watching.

                “You know, I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that in order to have a shirtless photo-shoot the subject of said photos should be shirtless,” Sehun calls out.

                Jongin glares. “Your point?”

                “Just take it off already!” Jongdae snaps then, causing both Minseok and Luhan to start howling with laughter.

                “Shut the up Jongdae, I’m not taking this shirt off unless—”

                “Okay, you can take the shirt off now,” the photography president says then, sauntering over to the cameras, and this only causes for Luhan and Minseok to laugh all the more loudly.

                Jongin mutters under his breath about “stupid ing pricks” before taking a deep breath and pulling off the t-shirt in one smooth movement, trying to make as little a show out of it as possible.

                Which of course does absolutely nothing to help.

                A handful of the girls start screaming, and about half of the members scream right along with them. “HE’S SO Y,” Sehun shrieks, grabbing onto Tao’s arm and shaking him around as Tao pretends to swoon against him.

                “TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS,” Chanyeol and Baekhyun holler at the same time.

                “I AM NOT GOING TO TAKE MY ING PANTS OFF.”

                “You do have them hiked up pretty high, though,” the president says, looking over. “They’re low-rise. Pull them back down a little bit.”

                “Please don’t make me do this,” Jongin begs with wide eyes.

                “Jongin,” Kris says seriously, “I will come over there and do it myself if you don’t—”

                “OKAY OKAY FINE.”

                Everyone watches as Jongin shimmies his pants half a millimetre down his hips. “A little bit more,” the photographer instructs.

                Jongin obeys, albeit reluctantly.

                “Lower,” Kris barks. “Lower. Lower…”

                “LOWER!” Baekhyun yells again.

                “SHUT THE UP BAEKHYUN.”

                “Alright, that should be good.” The president takes his place behind the camera. “The look you had from the group shots was good, so just do that again and it should be fine.”

                “Um,” Jongin balks, eyes scanning nervously over the crowd and at the intense, judging looks he’s getting from the other members.

                Joonmyun, thankfully, seems to take notice and looks over at the others. “Hey, don’t stare so hard, guys. You’re making him nervous.”

                “Thank you, Joonmyun—”

                “Don’t want the poor thing to wet himself.”

                “—and I take it back.”

                The president gets the lighting crew to dim the lights a little bit before nodding approvingly and starts snapping his camera away. Jongin does his best to kind of block out the others and the fact that he was currently standing in front of everyone without a shirt on, and tries to put all of his focus into posing instead.

                “,” Yixing murmurs thoughtfully from behind the cameras. “Jokes aside, the kid is quite the looker.”

                “It almost upsets me that he doesn’t put his good looks to some real use on a regular basis,” Kris frowns. “Imagine all the things you could do with a face like that.”

                “Probably a lot, but the big difference is that he isn’t a bastard twenty-four-seven—”

                “Tao, shut the up before I shove this pole up your .”

                “,” Luhan mutters in between fake coughs, and Sehun stifles a giggle.

                “Try and relax a little bit,” the president calls out then, so that the attention is turned back towards Jongin, who, indeed, was looking a little stiff around the shoulders.

                Jongin shakes himself out a bit in an attempt to do so, but he’s still kind of uncomfortable in his spot. He’s not really sure where he’s supposed to look, mostly because the majority of the places that his eyes end up were either on one of the female photography club members, who all looked as if they’d been punched in the face with a bag of stardust, or on one of the other club members, and depending who it was in particular he either got a teasing, greasy smirk or a kissy face and just no.

                His eyes keep shifting restlessly until he catches something and kind of does a bit of a double take. It’s Kyungsoo, who’s half hidden behind Joonmyun and watching him with this utterly engrossed expression. When their eyes meet, Kyungsoo’s cheeks blush this really pretty pink colour and he grins sheepishly at him, giving him this little wave, and Jongin’s lips twitch with the beginnings of his own smile before he remembers that he’s supposed to be looking serious, and just like that all of his focus is back, and he stares off into the distance with relaxed muscles and thumbs hooked into the pockets of his jeans.

                “That’s it, that’s good, keep it up,” the photographer pipes up encouragingly, and this time Jongin has no trouble keeping himself composed as he adjusts his position every so often and tries tilting his head to capture his best angle. Not even a stray wolf whistle from his group is enough to break concentration now.

                “Alright, that’s a wrap,” the president straightens up again. “Good work, you’re free to go.”

                “Finally,” Jongin sighs, looking at the ground around his feet as if in search of something, “that took way too—wait. Where’d my shirt go?”

                “Your what?” Luhan asks innocently.

                “My shirt. MY SHIRT. Where did it—” Realization hits him then and Jongin whips around to face the group with an accusing wide-eyed look. “GIVE ME BACK MY SHIRT,” he whines, already stalking towards where the group was standing with long, determined strides.

                “Dude, we don’t have your shirt—”

                “PLEASE JUST GIVE ME MY SHIRT BACK.”

                They all just stare at him with lips pressed tight as they fought back their laughter, and Jongin looks at all of them before his eyes land on a one very suspicious-looking Sehun.

It’s clear from the way Jongin’s eyebrows narrow that he’s done playing nice. “You,” he growls, advancing on him. “You have it, don’t you?”

                “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sehun says, even as he’s backing away fast with hands behind his back.

                “GIVE ME BACK MY SHIRT ER—”

                “Go long!” Sehun yells, throwing the balled-up t-shirt over Jongin’s head, and Minseok catches it mid-air before quickly shoving it into Jongdae’s arms. “RUN, FORREST,” Minseok shouts in Jongdae’s face.

                “Wait, no,” Kris interrupts, eyes going wide, “stop, stop, if we break something we have to pay for it—”

                “What the , why did you give this to me?! Oh my god, someone help me!” Jongdae cries out as he starts pushing through everyone in a desperate attempt to run away from a fast-approaching Jongin.

                “Jongdae, you little , give me my shirt back—!”

                “PAY,” Kris screams indignantly, as he joins in running after Jongdae and Jongin in an attempt to stop them. “WITH REAL MONEY!”

                “, we probably should stop them,” Luhan says, as he and the others remain entirely unmoving and watch the three of them scrambling around the equipment, all with Jongdae still clutching onto Jongin’s shirt, the thought of simply giving it back clearly never having crossed his mind.

                “Hell no, I’m not getting caught up in that.”

                “Aren’t you the one who usually breaks this sort of thing up?” Sehun asks, looking over at Joonmyun, and from where he was running past the group again Jongdae overhears them and shoots a desperate, hopeful glance in Joonmyun’s direction.

                But Joonmyun merely inclines his head to one side. “Sorry, but that’s a little too risqué for my taste.”

                Jongdae wails. “MOTHER PLEASE—”

                At that moment, just as Jongdae was about to shoot past them, Kyungsoo calmly steps forward and plucks the shirt out of Jongdae’s grasp with ease, as if the article of clothing was not encased in a death grip sprinting at fifteen miles per hour, and while Jongdae nearly crashes into a camera trying to comprehend what just happened, Kyungsoo turns to Jongin, who screeches to an ungraceful stop in front of him and stands there panting and wild-eyed.

                “Here’s your shirt,” Kyungsoo grins, holding the t-shirt out to him.

                Right. He was still shirtless. In front of his crush. Jongin blushes all forms of red as he takes the shirt and quickly moves to cover himself up. “T-Thanks,” he stammers, casting his eyes towards the ground in embarrassment.

                Everyone else stares. “Did anyone else find that a little too perfectly coordinated to be human?” Chanyeol whispers.

                “Yeah.”

                “. . .”

                “I’m kind of scared.”

                “Me too.”

A/N

Wow okay so many things but I'm probably going to forget something 

Okay so firstly I ended up writing a little extra chapter thing but I didn't know how to incorporate it into the canon so you can now find it here. There might be others that start popping up as the story progresses I dunno

Secondly, I'd like to give a big thanks to the people (who may or may not see this) who saw my blog post and went out of their way to reassure me that the baekyeol and hunhan shippers do in fact still exist. Basically I was having an existential crisis on behalf of the fic because there's all these ships popping up and I kinda got scared that the ot12 pairings that were so prominent in the MAMA era were starting to like, die