“Hyuuung.” Jiho whines, tugging at Taeil’s sleeve.

Taeil sighs and looks up at the younger man, who is staring straight back at him with a pleading expression on his face. He narrows his eyes.

“I need a cigarette, desperately. Please?” He pleads, clasping his hands in front of him like he’s in prayer. “I will die if I don’t.”

Taeil keeps flipping through the shirts on the rack in front of him. He knew taking Jiho with him to the local shopping mall to get a birthday present for Yukwon would be a mistake; he can barely keep the leader in check with the other five to back him up; going solo is difficult.

“Jiho, the center is about to close. We’ve been here for hours and every time I pick something out you put it back. Let’s just get this over and done with, and then you can have your cigarette, okay?” He speaks patiently, kindly, like he’s speaking to a child, but Jiho grabs his hand and begins pulling him out of the store, shirts forgotten.

“Hyung, I need one now. Come on.” Jiho calls over his shoulder, pulling Taeil faster now, up some stairs and into the cool spring air.

Taeil looks around as Jiho reaches into his back pocket for his cigs and lights up, drawing in the smoke with a relieved groan. They’re on the rooftop carpark, and it’s nearly abandoned. He looks at his watch and relents; they can afford a smoke break.

“Thanks, hyung. I was dying there.” Jiho croaks out, smoke flowing out of his lips as he talks. Taeil is mesmerised. “Want one?”

“What?” He snaps out of his daze and flicks his eyes back up to Jiho, who is smiling at him – almost laughing at him.

“Want a smoke, hyung?”

Taeil smirks and moves upwind of Jiho’s foul smelling smoke. Both the leader and Kyung are addicted to the damn things, and there’s nothing more Taeil hates than them coming in at 3 in the morning, fresh off a bender, stinking up the dorm with smoke. He’s admonished them more than once, and Jiho knows he doesn’t like it.

They stand there in silence for a while, watching the sunset. It’s peaceful, the only sound Jiho taking long drags. Taeil keeps sneaking side-glances of the younger man out of the corner of his eye, hoping he won’t notice.

This is when he loves Jiho the most, when it’s just the two of them and they can be together, in total, comfortable silence. He knows he should quash this crush before it starts, but as the smoke leaves Jiho’s full lips, he can’t stop watching.

In fact, he is lost in watching Jiho smoke for so long that when he finally snaps out of it, Jiho’s on his fourth cigarette and it’s ten past closing time. Taeil looks at his watch and lets out a yelp.

“Oh my god, Jiho, !” He yells, flicking the cigarette out of Jiho’s hand and dragging him back to the stairs where they came from.

However, unlike when they had first ascended, the lights are all off, and Taeil feels his heart sinking as he starts jogging, and then running. Past all the stores with their shop fronts closed, looking dark and threatening, and straight into –

The glass door.

“Oh, .” He murmurs, his head pounding, as he hears Jiho approaching.

“Hyung? Hyung! Are you okay?” The younger man rounds the corner and kneels by his side, his eyebrows drawn together and lips twisted. “What happened?”

Taeil sits up, slowly, his head pounding. Gingerly, he feels his forehead and winces. “What happened is you smoked for too long. We’re locked in. For the night.”

Jiho looks around, his expression unreadable. When he completes his assessment and looks down at Taeil, he shrugs. “So? No big deal. We’ll just wait it out.”

“Wait it out?! I don’t think so. Call manager hyung, he’ll get someone to fix this.” Taeil grumbles, getting to his feet.

Of course this had to happen the day before Yukwon’s birthday. Of course Jiho had to be super annoying and smoke for too long, and of course Taeil had to let his daydreams get the better of his usually impeccable time-management skills.

He’s trying to figure out if he’s bleeding from where he smacked into the glass when Jiho wails, a sound so uncharacteristic Taeil’s first thought is that he has ran into the glass, too. But no, he’s holding his phone, looking very sheepish.

“It’s… out of battery.” He looks down at his feet and kicks his toes.

Taeil’s head is about to implode. He closes his eyes and clenches his fists, trying to find some shred of patience. “Jiho, I’ll give you five seconds to tell me that you’re joking, and that you’ve already texted manager hyung.”

“No joke. It’s dead. I must have forgotten to charge it.” Jiho whines.

The pounding in his head increases tenfold and he wants to scream, use Jiho as a battering ram to break the damn door down so he can get some ing painkillers and go home.

“Well… what the hell do we do now, Jiho? It’s 9 pm, we’re locked in the mall, I have the headache from hell and we have no way to contact anyone.” He says, fists still clenched.

Jiho smiles. “First, we fix that headache of yours.”

//

“Okay, Jiho, this is illegal. Very, very illegal. It’s breaking and entering.”

Taeil is pacing up and down as Jiho is picking the lock to the gate of the pharmacy in the mall.

“Oh, hush. I’ll tell the cops you were about to die.” He throws over his shoulder, continuing to jimmy the lock, his tongue sticking out in concentration.

Not the time to think about that. “Okay but it’s still illegal. I mean, I act tough, but I don’t want to go to jail. Oh my god! We could go to jail. Can you picture me in jail? And the prison tattoos…”

“Aha!”

Taeil stops pacing and stares as Jiho folds back the gate and gestures wildly into the dark pharmacy. “Wow. I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”

Jiho winks, which sends a tingle down Taeil’s spine despite the soreness of his head and the lump that is beginning to come up on his forehead. “You underestimate me, hyung. Now come on, let’s get you fixed up.”

//

Of all the places Taeil had pictured he could be, sitting on the counter of a dark pharmacy while Jiho applies antiseptic to a forehead wound he got from running straight into a glass door is not one of them.

Not that he minds. Because if he’s honest, he would smack his head open a million times if it meant that Jiho was this close to him. They’re so close, in fact, that Jiho’s long hair is brushing Taeil’s face, and he has to keep tucking it behind his ear.

“You really bumped yourself hard.” Jiho whispers.

Taeil winces as the antiseptic stings him. “Yeah, I was running because of you, remember?”

Jiho doesn’t look down, but he smiles, and good god his lips look so luscious and full Taeil wants to touch them so bad to find out if they are as soft as they look, but his hand twitches and is still.

And then.

Jiho’s hair falls out from behind his hair, again, and he takes his hand away from Taeil’s forehead to tuck it back, again, but before he can, Taeil tucks it back, his fingers lingering on Jiho’s face for a moment before falling back to his side.

Jiho looks down at Taeil, the surprise on his face showing in the wide eyes, the mouth that falls open, the hand that stills on Taeil’s head.

So he closes his eyes, and a tense moment passes where Taeil isn’t sure if Jiho is going to say something, but it passes, and Jiho continues swabbing his forehead like nothing has happened.

//

“What now?” Taeil asks, probing his forehead gently to see the damage Jiho has done.

Jiho grabs Taeil’s hand and pulls it away, and Taeil can’t breathe for a second but Jiho quickly drops Taeil’s hand and smiles. “Now, hyung, we can do whatever we want. What shop do you want to break into next?”

The thought of that spikes Taeil’s heart rate and he shakes his head. “Maybe a bed shop? So we can get some sleep? The more shops you break into the more trouble we will be in.”

Jiho grins, his evil, -stirring grin, and Taeil knows he’s in trouble. “Oh, no, hyung, that’s way too boring. Let’s do something fun!”

So that’s how Taeil finds himself leaning against the wall, watching Jiho ride one of those little car rides they have in malls all around the world, aimed at children.

“Jiho. Please. You are 24 years old.” He deadpans, although inside he’s holding back his laughter. Not that he’d ever give Jiho the satisfaction.

“You’d be surprised by how fun this is.” Jiho says, poking random buttons on the little car’s dashboard as it rocks gently back and forth. “Crap music, though. They should play some of our stuff. Hey, hyung! Come and join me.”

Jiho’s smile is too infectious and without really realizing he’s doing it, Taeil sidles over and folds into the seat next to Jiho, trying to organize his legs. “What the ? I swear these things used to be huge when I was a little kid.”

The absurdity of the situation hits him when he turns to the younger man and sees him smiling, his eyes lighting up in the dark mall, and they both fall into peals of laughter as the car rocks them back and forth. Every time they stop and catch their breath, all Jiho has to do is look at him and that sets Taeil off again; they laugh for so long and for so hard Taeil thinks he’s going to faint.

“Stop! Stop, my stomach hurts from laughing.” Taeil pleads, the combination of laughter and the rocking car making him feel a bit sick.

Without warning or notice, Jiho’s cool, rough hand slides into his, and squeezes. Taeil gulps, comically, but can’t say anything or do anything, he is completely frozen.

“Hey. Hyung. I’m glad it’s you who is stuck in here with me.”

And before Taeil can respond, Jiho clambers out of the car and takes off down the mall, whooping and yelling and jumping about, just like a kid.

//

“A lingerie shop? Come on, Jiho.” Taeil is trying hard not to roll his eyes.

“Oh, hyung, please. I wanna see what this is like, up close and personal.” Jiho shoots over his shoulder, kneeling down and picking the lock of the shop.

“It’s a lot of lace, a lot of underwire and from what I’ve been told, it’s not very comfortable.” He replies, seriously. “Surely Mr. Womaniser Woo Jiho should know that.”

Jiho doesn’t reply, but in the darkness Taeil can hear him snort, and before he can even begin to ponder what that means Jiho is spilling into the darkness of the shop, face-first into a rack of bras.

“Wow, you weren’t kidding about the wire.” Jiho says, pulling one off his head and feeling it. “Why do women wear this ?”

Taeil shrugs. This conversation is starting to tread in dangerous territory. “I dunno. Some guys find it y, I guess.”

“Some, huh?” Jiho muses, making his way to the back wall where rows upon rows of thongs are hanging on the wall. He runs his hand through them, making the coat hangers clink together. “Not you, though?”

And there it is, the million-dollar question. Taeil ignores Jiho and heads to the front of the store, where the change rooms are. He peers inside one, desperately trying to think of a way to get out of this safely.

“Well?” Jiho whispers, his breath heating up Taeil’s ear.

Taeil shrieks and spins round, smacks Jiho lightly on the shoulder. “Jesus Christ, Jiho! Don’t do that.”

Jiho tilts his head to the side, innocently. “Don’t do what, hyung? Scare you? Or ask questions you don’t want to answer?”

He is literally and figuratively backed in a corner, with Jiho blocking the exit of the change room, the curtain swishing behind him. And he’s still talking.

“Because, you know, if you don’t like girls, that’s fine, you know. I mean, I’m – ”

Taeil panics. And as always when he panics, he does something incredibly stupid, which this time ends up being shoulder-charging Jiho in a complete state of confusion, and they both tumble to the floor, Jiho clipping a row of underwear with his shoulder.

“ing – Taeil, if you were that angry at your head being sore because of me, you could have just told me, you know, instead of giving me a matching wound.” Jiho groans from somewhere under a pile of leopard-print boyshorts. Taeil winces and uses Jiho’s chest to push himself up, watches as Jiho rises up through the underwear like some kind of monster.

He starts giggling, his high-pitched laugh reverberating around the shop. Jiho looks utterly ridiculous, a pair of underwear on his head and another draped on his shoulder. The younger man plucks it off with two fingers and flings it away like it’s dirty.

“Oh, god, Jiho, you should see your face.” Taeil howls, one hand holding his stomach – still feeling the pain twinges of previous laugher – and the other removing the other pair of underwear.

“Yeah? Well, you should see yours.” Jiho growls, his eyes narrowing as his fingers instantly find Taeil’s weak spot, his waist, and dig in.

Taeil hates being tickled, so he starts smacking Jiho half-heartedly, but he can’t get enough purchase to do enough damage and besides, the situation is so nonsensical he’s laughing too hard to do any real damage.

And then Jiho grabs Taeil around the waist, shifts his hips and flips them both over, so that Taeil is lying on the floor, a coat hanger digging into his head, and Jiho’s arms braced above him. Their faces are so close together he can see where Jiho has been chewing his lip, and as his laughter trails off, Jiho leans down and kisses him.

It’s gentle, and soft, but that – Taeil has wanted Jiho for too long to deal with this now so he grabs the younger man’s hair and gives a gentle tug and feels Jiho’s mouth open and their tongues touch and, oh , now Jiho’s hands are at his shirt, touching his hips and waist, worming their way up to his , and his hands are sliding around the back of Jiho’s jeans –

Jiho breaks the kiss first, leaving both of them gasping and hard in the pile of leopard print underwear. “Okay, I’ve been waiting to do that for a while, but that was even better than I’d imagined.” He pants.

Taeil smiles. “Yeah? Did you picture our first kiss to be here, like this?”

“What, in a pile of underwear?” Jiho murmurs, Taeil’s cheek with one finger. “No, but it fits.”

“Rather unlike the underwear.” Taeil sneers, before being shut up by Jiho’s mouth on his.