When their coach introduces Lee Taemin, Jonghyun can only think about how this kid really, really, really needs to eat a lot more than however much he’s eating presently. And then he wonders why they had to all gather here so early for this even though practice is usually before school anyway. It still doesn’t change the fact that it’s earlier than usual because the coach wanted extra time before they started to introduce the seventh-grade-student-prodigy or some similar .

          Jonghyun doesn’t really think introductions take up half an hour because that’s half an hour of sleep lost and when the is he ever going to get that back? Taemin can be introduced whenever they have time, but Jonghyun will never be able to sleep that lost half an hour ever again.

          But then the coach sends them off to their warm-up laps and says that today will just be an easy swim-as-you-please day since it’s Taemin’s first time with them and they should make him feel welcome and part of the family and welcome him as the maknae and all of that good stuff that supposedly makes people feel warm and fuzzy inside except Jonghyun really can’t because it’s January and freezing even in the indoor pool within their school.

          Minho takes Taemin off to one of the sections while Jinki kind of roams about talking to their coach. Jonghyun is putting his cap and goggles on a shelf where they won’t be taken and looks around, searching for his target.

          His target is currently lowering himself onto the edge of a lane in the five-feet-section, pale legs dipping and swinging in the water lightly, hair still slightly messy because of the early wake-up call. Jonghyun admires the angled shoulders and the arch of the pale back because there are, of course, great perks to being on the swim team and even though it’s not the main reason why Jonghyun loves swimming, it never hurts to have something pretty to look at while he’s waiting for his turn. And on days where they get free swim like this.

          He walks to the edge of that section, easily sliding into the water entirely. Kibum’s eyes watch him curiously. Jonghyun grins to himself, going underwater and surfacing with his head between Kibum’s legs, his back to the edge of the pool. He hears Kibum laugh incredulously, surprised as Jonghyun reaches back with both arms, grabbing the younger boy by the waist and hoisting him forward so that he’s sitting atop Jonghyun’s shoulders.

          “Hyung,” Kibum shouts, and his voice is breathless with laughter, “hyung, what the ?” His hands are loose against Jonghyun’s chest, and the second year feels Kibum’s stomach against the back of his head, soft thighs against his ears and shoulders.

          He looks up and smirks, “Yeah?”

          “Jonghyun-hyung, put me down,” Kibum laughs again, as Jonghyun wades down the lane, spinning around every few steps and making Kibum grip the older boy’s wet hair to keep from falling off.

           “Why?”

          “Because you just like being between my legs,” Kibum says, as Jonghyun finds the first year’s hands and holds them, pulling the younger boy forward. He tips his head up and kisses Kibum upside down.

          Jonghyun grins. “Yeah—it’s pretty comfortable down here.”

          “ert,” Kibum shoots, but his smile is huge and Jonghyun can only react by grinning back just as hugely because he’s the one who put that smile there—Jonghyun is the one who made Kibum laugh like that, perfectly with his lips parted and teeth gleaming.

          Jonghyun raises his eyebrows. He lets go of Kibum’s wrists, jerks backwards and Kibum topples off into the water so fast that the younger boy doesn’t even get to make a sound. There’s a loud splash and Jonghyun spins around and grabs Kibum by the waist the moment the first year surfaces, pressing their bodies together—skin on skin, wet and dripping. “Stop being so hot, then,” Jonghyun says with a smile, fingers digging just slightly into the waistband of Kibum’s swimming trunks.

          “You wouldn’t want me anymore if I stopped,” Kibum says, rolling his eyes and smiling back.

          It’s meant as a joke.

          It’s a joke—it’s supposed to be a joke, just teasing, just playing, and Jonghyun knows that. Jonghyun knows that Kibum isn’t only bantering on, but for some reason that bothers him. For some reason, Kibum suggesting that Jonghyun is only interested in the first year because of his looks hits the bottom of Jonghyun’s stomach in all the wrong ways. It just doesn’t sound right—doesn’t feel right and Jonghyun doesn’t know why. Other than the fact that it’s not true—which Kibum knows, which Kibum should know.

          Kibum knows it’s not true.

          Right?

          Seungho wonders if it’s really that difficult for Joon to find something better to do during his lunch period than intrude upon his Literature regulars freshman class and physically assault him. He’s been wondering for the past few weeks, and he’s wondering right now while he’s ensconced, as per usual, in a bone-crushing, breathtaking hug in front of twenty or so freshmen who probably think that Joon is either some close, relative of Seungho’s or just mentally wrong.

          The teacher wishes that he was allowed to tell them that Lee Joon is just mentally wrong.

          But then again, he doubts that they would believe him since more than not, the regulars classes are often filled with the popular kids—easily identifiable by the fact that they way they wear their uniforms warrants at least five dress detentions every day which Seungho never gives out on account of not wanting to have to sign that many detentions—that are just below the cusp of Lee-Joon-level-popular which is a different brand of popular. Joon is popular in the sense that he can party till dawn and at the same time have every teacher in love with him.

          These students are popular in the sense that they will party till dawn, get high in the afternoons, drink in the morning, show up inebriated to school, and sleep during classes.

          “Changsun-ah,” Seungho says, stomping repeatedly on Joon’s foot discreetly behind the desk and trying his best to un-octopus the student, “I have a class to teach.”

          “Yah,” Joon says, eyes wide and offended, “I—I—I—I—have a lunch—and—and—enduring hunger—you—just—for you, hyung.”

          Seungho uses the tiny window of opportunity in which Joon is preoccupied with speaking to whack the student on the head with his lesson planner and break himself out of Joon’s arms. “You don’t have to endure it—you can go eat right now so I can teach. Leave before I give you detention.”

          Joon sends him sullen looks all the way to the door.

          Seungho thinks that mentally wrong is a mild way of putting that boy’s case.

          He looks out at the class and doesn’t even sigh like used to do when he first found out that no matter how much he wished he could bring them back, most of them were lost causes unless they all had a simultaneous group epiphany to not aim for being hobos on the streets of Seoul—at least, for the boys. For some of the girls, Seungho could very well imagine most of them selling themselves off as trophy wives to eighty-year-old CEOs.

          At least a quarter of the class is asleep, another quarter texting very obviously beneath their desks, and the other half glaring balefully up at him.

          “Okay,” Seungho says, standing up, “is anyone absent?” He glances around at the desks briefly.

          Hwayoung, a tiny girl with large eyes, is curled in her front row seat so that her tiny white legs are on full display and her tiny skirt flashes sights of something red and lacy and probably warranting lots of detentions like everything else she does—including failing every other test Seungho gives out. “Yah,” she says, raising her eyebrows, hand in her hair, “are you friends with Lee Joon-oppa?”

          Seungho blinks.

          Suddenly, the entire room grows quiet and all of the girls sit a little bit straighter in their seats—the boys are staring, too.

          It doesn’t even register in his mind to be bothered by the fact that his student just spoke informally to him—although he gave up on that during his third time with this class since all of his older colleagues more or less told him that insisting upon proper speech with a regulars class at a rich-and-swanky high school like this is just cause for headaches and parents angrily calling their school with the disbelief that their perfect spawn could ever do wrong.

          “Not—I mean—I just tutor him sometimes,” Seungho says, occupying himself by checking in the attendance on the computer, “and I coach track.”

          “So—wait,” says Nara—a girl who comes every week with her hair a different color, sometimes a different length, and has maintained a healthy C- average in Seungho’s class for the semester, “you’re not—like—family friends with him or anything? Like Jung-seonsangnim? You just know him.”

          Seungho stands up again after submitting the attendance records to the main office, and takes the review notes for the midterm. “Yeah—more or less.”

          Nara and Hwayoung exchange looks across the classroom—the rest of the class all exchange looks across the classroom, with the people next to them, behind them, all around. “You’d better not think, Seonsangnim,” Hwayoung says, ping her pencil bag and taking out a compact mirror, “that just because Joonie-oppa gets all up in your face—it doesn’t mean he likes you or anything.”

          Insu, the boy who sits on Hwayoung’s left, looks at her as she adjusts her eyelashes, thick with pitch black mascara, with the edge of her pinky. He looks at her oddly and grins with raised eyebrows, drumming against the desk and flashes teeth at Seungho expectantly. “Yah—don’t say it like that,” he says, eyes alight, “it’s not like our Seonsangnim is gay or anything, right?”

          Seungho’s fingers press into the paper of the notebook, press against his desk. The beating of his heart is steady—is loud and clear and unwavering. He merely looks back at his students.

          “Yah—Seonsangnim,” Nara smiles and leans the side of her face against her palm, “you think Joonie-oppa is hot, don’t you?”

          “ing ,” Sunghwan, a seat behind Insu, says with wide eyes and a smirk, “you’re not going to go all raging homo and us, are you? We’re pretty attractive guys, too, Seonsangnim.”

          Seungho raises the notebook in his hand. “You have midterms in less than two weeks and we’re not even halfway through the review. Get out your outlines for Romeo and Juliet—we’re going through act three today.”

          The class has a collective groan—a collective eye-roll—and only a quarter of the students actually start shuffling into their backpacks to look for the most-likely-nonexistent outlines considering these students have the ability to lose everything Seungho gives them by the end of the day.

          Insu slaps his own crumpled outline onto his desk, looking thoroughly unhappy about not getting a reaction out of Seungho. He leans sideways towards Hwayoung sullenly and says out of the corner of his mouth, clearly meant for her only, but loud enough to resonate around the room, “ Lee Joon—that kid’s so retarded he probably doesn’t even know how to use his own .”

          It happens before Seungho can stop himself.

          Before he can stop himself, his right hand is the front of Insu’s uniform, and his right hand is digging through the pockets of the student’s pants, searching and grabbing for what he knows is there—what he knows is in most of these boys’ pants, what he knows is in most of these girls’ bras. It’s something he always ignores because there’s a limit to how far teachers can change their students, and that limit is even greater with students like these who have parents like those—parents who are so drowned by their own status and money that they fail to do anything but defend everything their child insists is right.

          Insu is yelling and sputtering and the fear in his eyes is so obvious that Seungho almost starts laughing—except that would probably make this situation worse than it already is, but right now that doesn’t even cross his mind. All that crosses his mind are those words—words that came straight from Insu’s mouth—words that no one is ever allowed to say in Seungho’s presence—words that no one is allowed to say period if they don’t know Joon because who the ing in ing ’s name dares call Lee Joon retarded and means it?

          Seungho’s fingers wrap around several small plastic bags and he yanks them out of Insu’s pocket and throws them down onto the student’s desk. He slams Insu back down into his seat, banging his palm on the wooden surface loud enough and hard enough to make the plastic bags of dark, dried crinkled leaves bounce—hard enough that Insu very visibly winces and shrinks away.

          The entire classroom is as silent as death.

          Some of the girls have covered their mouths with their hands.

          “Choi Insu,” Seungho says quietly—so quietly, “you are going to take these,” he points at the bags, “take the hall pass, and go up to the center office, to the front desk and ask for the headmaster, okay?” He stands back to let the boy out.

          Insu’s eyes have expanded to cover half his face. “Yes, sir,” he whispers, gathering the bags into his hands and stumbling out of his desk. He stumbles all the way to the board to grab the pass and stumbles a bit more on his way out the door. Seungho can hear his footsteps escalate into running as soon as he left.

          Seungho turns back to the class, and raises his eyebrows calmly. “So,” he says, as multiple boys suddenly pat their pockets nervously, “Romeo and Juliet, everyone. Who wants to tell me what scene they think the turning point is?”

          For the rest of the period, Seungho might as well have been teaching students from Seoul University.

          Kikwang wonders if maybe he’s not as attractive as Jonghyun always tells him that he is. Or as the fact that his number of girls-who-accidentally-bump-into-him-in-the-halls actually has a chance at coming within the same range as Joon’s daily amount. Or maybe there’s just something wrong with him in general that he doesn’t know about—something that directly relates to how appealing he seems to other people. Something that directly relates to how appealing he is to certain people. Something that directly relates to how appealing he is to Dongwoon.

          Because he’s mused before that ever since they started together, nothing really changed other than the fact that now they kiss. A lot. Very often. To Junhyung and Jonghyun’s great unhappiness. And discomfort. And to Doojoon and Yoseob’s cheering. And, Kikwang supposes, they do kiss quite efficiently, tongues and grinding hips and all of that sort of thing—Dongwoon’s hands like to hang around beneath Kikwang’s shirt on a regular basis whether they are kissing or not.

          But it’s safe to say (according to their hyungs) and sad to say (according to Kikwang) that nothing has happened below the belt.

          It’s sad, he knows.

          It’s pathetic too, he also knows.

          Pathetic, not so much on Dongwoon’s part because it’s not like Kikwang is a girl—he doesn’t expect Dongwoon to make the first move, the first intention, the first hint. If Dongwoon wants to, then that’s fine, go ahead. But Kikwang should probably shoulder some responsibility too, if nothing else, since he’s older. He’s older and he doesn’t know, not really, what Dongwoon thinks of him in terms of experience because growing up together, most of Kikwang’s love life conversations with Dongwoon consist of crying and sleeping and crying himself to sleep.

          And Dongwoon’s love life conversations with Kikwang usually consist of patting the older boy’s back while he cries or sleeps or cries himself to sleep.

          Needless to say—

          They are ed.

          And not in the positive life-affirming way.

          Just ed.

          Like Jonghyun when he needs to think.

          Also, Kikwang wants to say in his defense that he might have seriously, honest-to-God, made a move earlier on when this wasn’t frustrating. He might have talked it over with Dongwoon—about a time, about when, about the pacing, about it in general. He really, honestly might have at least skimmed this topic with the first year when he knew that Dongwoon was old enough to talk about it were it not for the fact that—

          You know—

          Just—

          Yeah—

          Kikwang blames Jonghyun for everything.

          Every part of Kikwang’s no-longer-a- is Kim Jonghyun’s fault.

          Although, he supposes that some of the blame has to be put on Joon too since that was the third year was the deflowerer, but Joon can’t be blamed for anything terrible that happens involving him. It’s like blaming a baby for the fact that his bottle is leaking when it’s clearly the fault of the mother or father for not securing it better.

          Plus, it’s not like it wasn’t a good deflowering anyway.

          “I don’t like you,” Kikwang feels he needs to express to Jonghyun while they are working in pairs in English class.

          “I don’t like irregular past participle verbs, but I’m dealing,” Jonghyun says, looking confused.

          “Not well,” Kikwang says, turning back to the dictionary tacked onto the end of his textbook, “you have a C in this class.”

          Jonghyun huffs. “Well, I don’t like you either.”

          “It’s all your fault,” Kikwang says, “that I can’t have with Dongwoonie.”

          Jonghyun laughs into his elbow, head leaning back precariously as his eyes shut tight and Hongki turns around a full one-hundred and eighty degrees to stare at the burst of laughter. “This again?” Jonghyun says in disbelief. “Really? Really? For ’s sakes, I don’t get how your guys’ ual frustration has anything to do with me. Maybe he can’t get it up and doesn’t know how to break it to you.”

          “No,” Hongki pipes in suddenly and Kikwang wants to kill himself because how it’s two against one, “he can definitely get it up. I caught him after you two finished making out yesterday.”

          Kikwang hates his classmates. He wishes he was a first year—the people in that grade are so much nicer.

          “Kikwang-ah,” Jonghyun says, eyes not at the other boy’s face but at the other boy’s workbook, swiftly writing down answers, “do you know how many guys and girls want to be able to say that they got their cherry popped by Lee Joon during their first semester of first year? And do you know what they’d give to be able to say that?”

          Kikwang stares at him sullenly.

          Hongki starts choking from laughing too hard.

          Jonghyun’s eyebrows furrow at one of the questions in Kikwang’s notebook and he grabs Hongki’s instead. “Anyway,” he says, using his free hand to slap Hongki in the back so Jonghun won’t end up single by the end of the period, “just ing tell Dongwoon. It was one of those things that happens, and it’s not like you’re madly in love with Joonie-hyung. You’ll just have more experience and that way things won’t be awkward as when you guys actually manage to e.”

          Hongki regains his breath—and his life—and looks at Jonghyun, curiously. “I thought you were failing biology.”

          “I have an A+ in Ed,” Jonghyun says dismissively as Kikwang wonders if maybe he can convince a custodian to give him the keys to the school roof.

          You know.

          So he can jump off and kill himself.

          “You’re annoying—get away from me,” Yoseob says and kicks at the general direction of Doojoon’s face. The goalie sinks deeper into his pillows and glares at the pages of his textbook, standing on his stomach in order to provide a wall between Yoseob’s eyes and all the things that tempt him away from midterm revision. Namely, his laptop, his cell phone, and Yoon Doojoon.

          Unfortunately, Doojoon isn’t inanimate.

          But if he keeps trying to interfere with Yoseob’s attempts at not failing his midterms, then the captain is going to be inanimate. Forever.

          Yoseob is at Doojoon’s house, in the middle of Doojoon’s bed, ankles crossed, back and head on the mountain of pillows, trying to get through chapter four of AP Economics or at least remember what chapter four is about, except Doojoon has other ideas because the captain is stupid and retarded and has already finished reviewing for his first three exams and Yoseob doesn’t even know how that is supposed to be possible since he’s usually with Doojoon for twenty-three-and-a-half hours a day and fifty-five percent of that time is spent doing something that no one can multitask studying into.

          Because mitochondria and s don’t go together.

          “Seriously, hyung,” Yoseob says, determinedly staring at the highlighted term of cost-benefit analysis and not at Doojoon sitting on the edge of the bed. “Go away.”

          “This is my house, you know,” Doojoon says dryly.

          Yoseob flaps one hand at him. “Assert your masculinity to someone who cares.”

          Doojoon smiles.

          Only Yoseob isn’t supposed to know that Doojoon smiled because Yoseob isn’t supposed to be looking at Doojoon. Yoseob is supposed to be looking at a graph that compares the production possibility frontiers of Greg and Tom and how Tom produces coconuts better than Greg. Yoseob isn’t supposed to be looking at the soft amusement that lights up in Doojoon’s eyes, the little crinkles that form when the captain smiles at Yoseob’s remark, the way Doojoon actually isn’t bothering Yoseob—he’s just sitting there, quiet and waiting and distracting without being distracting because why is Doojoon’s existence so ing distracting?

          “Want me to test you?” Doojoon asks.

          “No,” Yoseob says waspishly, “you fail at econ. Leave me alone.”

          This time, Doojoon outright grins. “I don’t know,” he says playfully and Yoseob tries to make himself care that Greg is a badass at catching fish while Tom at it and picks coconuts better. “I mean, I somehow manage not to bankrupt my parents while buying you all that ing cake.”

          Yoseob sighs audibly, gives one last withering look to firms and households, slams his textbook shut, and throws it onto the nightstand. Doojoon’s eyebrows go up in surprise—the captain puts his leg up onto the bed so he can look fully at Yoseob. The younger boy takes Doojoon’s hand wordlessly and threads their fingers together one by one, bringing the intertwined hands to his face and brushing his lips over Doojoon’s knuckles.

          Doojoon slides in closer.

          “Fine,” Yoseob says, “fine—but, you’re doing all the work.”

          The captain rolls his eyes. “You’re going to fail all of your exams if you keep procrastinating,” he says, his free hand lightly touching Yoseob’s waist. He swings his other leg onto the bed and hovers over Yoseob on all fours.

          “You started it,” Yoseob says because Doojoon always starts it. Ever since school started up, Yoseob has done nothing and Doojoon always has to act the part of a needy temptress, thus leading Yoseob astray from his studies, down the broken road of a failure student—or Kim Jonghyun. It’s all Doojoon’s fault that Yoseob might get an A- on half of his exams and Yoseob hasn’t gotten an A- since Joon tried to reason to him during their first year that Switzerland has to be next to Sweden because Europe is arranged in alphabetical order.

          Now Doojoon outright laughs, warm breath huffing and puffing gently onto Yoseob’s face. “Right,” the captain says, “right—you’re absolutely right. I’m just too sneaky like that—seducing you by sitting here staring at the wall. Right.” He leans in and kisses Yoseob’s forehead, lips gliding over the skin of the smaller boy’s face, the bridge of his nose, his cheeks, jaw line, throat—

          And then his lips are against Yoseob’s ear—whispering, his voice hot and low.

          “Yang Yoseob,” Doojoon murmurs and Yoseob wonders if it’s possible to from pure sound alone, “no until you get through econ, bio, and gov.”

          “No s—“ Yoseob begins in outrage.

          But Doojoon already has hands beneath Yoseob’s shirt, fingers dancing teasingly down his sides, maddeningly slow until they finally grip his waistband and Yoseob watches, mesmerized, as Doojoon stops to rest his chin on Yoseob’s thigh and looks back up at Yoseob playfully with that smile that never fails to distract the out of Yoseob. “I got you,” he says softly, tilting his head and grinning. “But after this, I’m testing you on all of your vocab for econ and if you don’t get every single definition right word for word, you won’t see my until February.”

          Yoseob bites his lip to stop the smile from spreading too widely. “But I’ll see it now?”

          Doojoon reaches up to chuck Yoseob’s chin. “Nope—but I’ll see yours.”

          The goalie wonders if, after he finishes reviewing, Doojoon can teach him how to pants with your teeth like that.