Jiho always makes sure to be the first awake, every morning.

He sets his alarm, an ambiguous electronic screech that never fails to startle him up, an average of thirty minutes before the others are set to go off.

He doesn’t really know why he does it, probably just because it feels like something a leader is supposed to do.

Nevertheless, he’s one of the most groggy every morning, dragging his feet and scrubbing his hands over his droopy eyes. The others are good at giving him his space early on in the day, all well versed in how grumpy he can get when the lack of sleep catches up with him.

All but Kyung.

Kyung is a morning person through and through, and expects everyone else to be just as awake as he is, no matter how early the time. He’s up and singing in the shower before everyone else, everyone else but Jiho.

Jiho, who is forced day in and day out to suffer through Kyung trying to sing three part harmonies to Orange Caramel songs by himself as he pours his daily bowl of cereal. Sometimes Kyung will stay blessedly quiet, leaving the others to actually wake up to a peacefully silent dorm in the morning and Jiho to remain headache free for thirty minutes. But that usually means something is wrong, and Jiho much prefers Kyung’s noisy morning habits to the brooding frown stuck on Kyung’s face on the quiet days.

Lately, Jiho has been exhausted.

The upcoming comeback has him working twenty hour days six days out of the week, nearly all of his time spent either in the studio, the practice room, or the convenience store across the street to pick up another cup of instant ramen. It’s showing in the hunch in his shoulders and the darkness around his eyes, and in the snappy way he’s starting to direct the other members.

They start to avoid him, quiet down when he’s around. He notices, and he feels like a right , but he just can’t find the energy to be nice.

Not when he’s running on three hours of sleep for the second day in a row.

Right now, with his alarm blaring and his eyelids gummed together with the sleepy crust he’s managed to build up the forty minutes he’s been in bed, he feels sick.

His head pounds in time with his heartbeat, which pulses in time with that damned alarm clock, so he sits up and slaps it off. The pounding in his skull doesn’t go away, but his heartbeat does slow down. He sits up lethargically, muscles feeling tight and tired and resisting every movement. With a stifled grunt he swings the covers off of his trembling legs and stands, one hand supporting himself on his bedside table. He stumbles into yesterday’s pair of jeans and pulls a hoodie over his head as he walks out of his room, heading straight for the kitchen to scrounge up some –

Coffee.

Sitting on the counter, still steaming. Freshly made.

Jiho blinks once to clear the sleep from his eyes, twice to clear his fuddled mind, and walks to the counter.

There’s a post-it note under the cup, edges soggy from condensation, and Jiho picks it up with heavy fingers and struggles to read.

‘You look like lately. Drink this and cheer up, kid! <3’

The horrible handwriting and the stupid little heart drawn after the blunt message has Kyung written all over it.

A sniff at the coffee itself, and Jiho’s suspicions are confirmed. It’s made just how he likes it, something that only Kyung has been around long enough to pick up on. He takes a long pull of the hot liquid, smirking around it as he feels it’s heat travel down his throat and throughout his body.

There’s a small bottle next to where his wonderful, beautiful coffee had been, and he picks it up to find it contains the highest possible strength Advil, another shaky heart drawn on the lid with the same sharpie used to write the previous note. There’s another post-it under this bottle too, and Jiho unsticks it with a small smile tugging at his lips.

‘I’ll wake the others up, get to the studio early and take a nap. I’m not kidding, you look ugly with those baggy eyes~’

Jiho smirks, heart feeling lighter as the caffeine works through his system.

Kyung’s always looked after him, ever since they were kids.

As he pops open the lid of the Advil and shakes out three little red pills, Jiho wonders just how he’ll thank Kyung for this one.

 

Kyung doesn’t do too much whenever they have downtime.

He doesn’t visit his family like Jihoon or Taeil, he doesn’t have a significant other to go bother like Yukwon, and he doesn’t have his own house like Minhyuk to disappear too over break.

So he sits at the dorm, and he reads.

He reads fantasy fiction and biographical nonfiction and short stories and memoirs and Jaehyo’s journal, anything he can get his hands on really.

Jiho likes to make fun of him for it, but Jiho is dumb and Kyung is not so he just ignores it. He’s too busy reading to listen to him nagging anyways.

Like now, Kyung is sitting on the kitchen counter, newly hairless legs tucked beneath him as his eyes bore into the pages of the book in his hands. He’d first climbed up there to wait for his ginseng tea to brew, and it had. Thirty minutes ago.

It’s been cool for twenty of those minutes, the scent of the sodden leaves leaving the room after ten, but Kyung has yet to notice. His backside is numb and his toes are chilly and heavy feeling, the cold countertop having leeched the heat out of them a half hour ago, but he still isn’t moving.

His eyes are flicking rapidly ever the stamped ink on the pages of the mystery novel he’s reading, his every attention focused solely on the story unraveling before him.

“Yah, get your dirty feet off the counter.”

And there goes his story world.

Jiho blunders into the dorm like he always does, his steps heavy, stomping his way in as an aggressive ‘hello’ to everyone inside.

Kyung tries to ignore him, rolling his eyes once in acknowledgement, but Jiho is an attention starved child that demands all of Kyung’s focus.

In short, he takes Kyung’s book and holds it up too high for him to get it back.

“Jiho, come on!”

Kyung hops off the counter and grimaces at his shaky, colt-like legs, scowling at Jiho’s smug face. He tries to jump up and get it, but the tips of his fingers are still at least five inches from the bottom of his book, and he gives up before he starts to look too pathetic.

He pouts at Jiho, shoulders slumped as he turns to grab his tea and shove it into the microwave to reheat. His book falls heavily onto his head the second the timer beeps a minute later, and he jumps, startled, as Jiho barks out a husky laugh behind him.

“You’re so jumpy, staying here alone is taking its toll on your mind.”

Kyung mutters something about Jiho being the one taxing his psyche as his neatly places his novel on the counter. He turns to watch Jiho putter about the kitchen as he spoons sugar into his mug, chin held up lazily with his fist. Jiho is wearing a multitude of layers, and Kyung is suddenly struck with the knowledge that it’s cold outside.

He looks down at his own boxers and old t-shirt combo and sighs.

Jiho really, truly despises Kyung’s bad moods.

On the dual, sometimes contradictory points of view of a best friend as well as a leader, he just really hates whenever Kyung works himself into a funk.

Mainly because Kyung’s bad moods are quiet.

They’re silent and brooding and characterized by frowns and wet eyes and frequent trips to the restroom, trips he returns from with a runny nose and mottled red cheeks.

These moods don’t come about often. Kyung is the most optimistic member of the group, him and Jihoon are the glass half full types. He’s normally the one picking everybody up after music show losses or long practice sessions or another deeply upsetting sasaeng attack.

He’s observant and nice about it, and Jiho appreciates it more than he can say.

So Jiho is not feeling too good about today’s interview.

Kyung is pissed, and he’s not trying to hide it for once. He and Taeil had a fight late last night, and the both of them have been silently seething since Taeil had stormed out of the dorms at one a.m. to calm himself down at a friend’s apartment nearby. Jiho had tried to get him to stay, trying to sternly reminding him of the next day’s schedule while trying to soothe his anger at the same time.

An angry Taeil is not one any person wants to have to interact with.

But Taeil was not to be swayed, and Jiho was forced to sit and watch him storm out with a backpack hurriedly stuffed with necessities in hand, and listen to Kyung stomp around his room the rest of the night.

It was obvious the next day that neither had slept, both nappy-headed and scowling through swollen lips. Jiho sighs as Jihoon immediately gravitates towards Taeil, hesitantly tapping his shoulder and smiling timidly when Taeil turns around. Taeil doesn’t smile back, but he doesn’t step away either, and Jiho feels a bit of the weight he’d been carrying around since the fight slough away.

Jihoon will get Taeil’s spirits back up.

Jiho’s job is Kyung.

It would be, at least, if he could find him.

He’d disappeared sometime after the coordi-noonas had claimed him for their chair and before Jiho had been attacked as well, slipping away while the others were distracted with their own hair and makeup.

Jiho searches for him vainly, and it’s all too soon before they’re getting called onto the set for the interview.

Kyung trudges onto set last, expression tight and annoyed, and Jiho just hopes he’ll be able to put on his game face for the actual interview. They do have an image to uphold.

Turns out that hope was futile.

Kyung is obviously agitated throughout the whole ordeal. He’s tapping his feet and rolling his eyes and brushing away Jaehyo’s placating touches with tight, intolerant smiles stapled onto his thinned lips. Jiho is mildly put out with his attitude, but he’s more concerned than angry.

Nobody had actually heard what Kyung and Taeil had been so upset with each other about last night. There hadn’t been much yelling, a raised voice here or there, but neither Kyung nor Taeil are the type to scream and spit when they get mad. They fume, force spear-headed words through clenched teeth and hurl them at their unfortunate target like the weapons they are.

Whatever had set the two off must have been big, though, because Jiho hasn’t seen Kyung like this in months, years even.

He’s livid, and Jiho isn’t too good dealing with a livid Kyung. It’s not like he gets much practice.

That doesn’t mean he’s not gonna try his hardest, though.

He goes as far as he can on an actual broadcast, acting crazy and cute (as cute as he gets, at least) and desperately trying to distract his friend from whatever thoughts are putting that glower on his face.

And shockingly, it starts working.

The worry lines between Kyung’s eyes get thinner and thinner as the interview drags on, his hands unclench from those white-knuckled fists with every gag Jiho pulls off and every slap Jiho lets him get away with.

Every now and then Jiho will turn his attention to Taeil, patting his thigh and rubbing circles onto his knee for solidarity, but his main focus is Kyung.

And Kyung seems to get it.

 

Kyung loves the studio.

Maybe not as much as Jiho or Taeil, but in his own way.

He loves the atmosphere, the memories it provides. He remembers the first time he ever produced with Jiho in this studio, both of them scrawny and pimply faced and shaking with excitement. He remembers Jiho telling him of how big they’d make it someday, how Block B would be a household name in just a few years with this tiny, breathy little voice. Like he was scared that if he spoke too loudly the wish would seem that much more idealistic than it already did in a whisper.

They may not have made it there yet, but damn are they on their way.

Now, sitting in one of the two cushy polyfoam desk chairs at the sound board, Kyung doesn’t know if what they have now isn’t even better.

Jiho is beside him, face scrunched in concentration as he taps at two sliding knobs on the board, changing the pitch of a backing track beat so minutely Kyung can’t even tell what he changed. All he can hear is that it changed something, something fundamental in the song that somehow transformed the whole mood of it, made it so much better.

Jiho is just that good.

They’ve both been there for coming on six hours, working tirelessly on the comeback title track. Sometimes when they get bored, like now, Jiho will pull up a folder of unfinished tracks he hopes to put on future mixtapes, and the two work on them until their deadline looms once again on their minds and they tuck it away for later.

This latest song is something aggressive and angry sounding, Jiho’s voice like a roar through the headset, but there’s this gentle little grin on Jiho’s face while he listens.

Kyung can tell this one is gonna be big.

He feels this song in his chest, vibrating and pulsating and bouncing off of his vertebrae to ring around his ribcage in an intoxicating high. He knows Jiho feels it too, can see it in the way his eyes crease as he smiles and squirms in his chair like a child.

Neither of them can really pull off the childlike-look at the moment, though.

They haven’t washed in hours, haven’t showered properly (properly meaning using soap) in over a day. A quick dip in the miniscule showering room in the studio’s restroom hadn’t afforded them time to wash their hair or even shave.

Kyung’s never had too much of a problem with facial hair, but Jiho is a whole different equation.

Jiho’s jaw is already colored a shade greyer with dark stubble, stubble he can’t help but to reach up and itch every couple of minutes, unused to the feeling.

Kyung doesn’t envy him in that aspect.

“Kyung, listen to this. Is the bass too obvious?”

Before Kyung can agree to it Jiho is shoving the headset over his ears and pressing the play button on the keyboard.

Something low filters in through the wire grating of the headset, something foreboding and aggressive. The bass line is heavy, yes, but it also sounds brittle, delicate, insubstantial. Kyung reaches out to pause the song after about thirty seconds, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“I’d actually add more if I were you, this one is kind of weak sounding.”

Jiho pulls a confused face, left hand once again going to scratch at the stubbled point of his chin, but he roughly reclaims the set and gets to work nonetheless.

Kyung switches between watching Jiho’s fingers fly across the soundboard to watching the graphics on the screen twitch minutely to napping fitfully for about thirty minutes before Jiho gets his attention. He shakes Kyung’s shoulder to snap him out of his doze with an impish grin straining at his cheeks. He wags his finger at the computer screen excitedly before unplugging the headset and pressing play.

The beat that pours from the speakers is much stronger than it had been previously. The bass line is no longer wispy and soft, but now pounds away with an unrivalled strength that both dominates and submits to the deep rasp of Jiho’s voice. There’s a melody to the beat behind Jiho’s lyrics, something far gentler than the words Jiho is practically spitting on the recording, and it makes the whole thing cohesive, makes it a track befitting the great Zico himself.

A smile flirts at the corners of Jiho’s mouth, eyebrow raised and hands spread cockily when Kyung looks over at him after the songs fades out.

“Huh?” He prompts, nudging Kyung’s elbow with his own suggestively.

“It’s pretty good, man. I like it,” Kyung scoffs. He knows Jiho knows how much he really likes it when he sees the gratitude that shines in his tired eyes, and he gently cuffs his younger friend on the back of the head.

“Thanks though, for the advice.” The unspoken ‘You’re always here when I need it’ is clear anyways, and Kyung just shrugs.

What else are best friends for?

 

 

A/N: Hope you enjoyed it, Alpha Queen~ Please comment on what you thought, everyone!