NOT SO SUBTLE

Chapter 5

Gerald and Yuta are sitting at the balcony, looking around the tall buildings. It’s no joke when people say Gagnam is an expensive neighbourhood.

“You’re not going to ask him?” Yuta says to Gerald and he nods, sipping his coffee.

“He has every right to his own privacy and if he doesn’t wanna tell us where he was yesterday then it’s fine, we shouldn’t force answers from

him”

“He’s just twenty two, i’m worried about him”

“Ha that’s funny, you said it wasn’t even a huge deal when Sehun brought up the dating rumour”

“Well that’s because i thought it was a girl, not a boy”

“Girl or boy, we’re as shitty as the company for agreeing to use San as bait just to promote ourselves”

“Our albums sales dropped and it’s understandable that we need to draw more attention to ourselves but it’s not exactly a bad thing if we don’t do well at some point. San’s solo song is currently still at number three on the billboard”

“Yeah, wonder how they claim to hate him but still watch his every move, it’s crazy”

“Yeah and we can’t tell him not to use his phone, he’s definitely going to get curious and starts browsing about himself. He has a fake twitter account too so he could see tweets about himself”

“He really needs to stop, he’s going to ruin himself if he keeps listening to the awful things people say about him. It shows how much he’s successful because we’re all bound to have haters, that means we’re doing something right”

The door suddenly opens, revealing a sleepy San as he takes in the two members sitting and talking. They turn to him, waiting to hear whatever he has to say while the boy rubbed his eyes.

“Hyung, can i talk to you?” San says and the two boys share a look, trying to decipher which hyung he’s talking about till he adds, “Gerald”

Gerald gets up, following the boy out of the balcony and into his room. When they’re finally alone, San grabs an elastic band off his study desk filled with his journals, where he writes his thoughts and he doesn’t really bother to hide it, somewhere nobody could find it since he only thinks of it as a journal and not a diary. It’s pretty much the same thing. He hands the elastic band to Gerald.

“Can you help me put my hair into a bun?” He says, turning as he speaks so his back is facing Gerald so he could put his hair up into a bun for him.

Gerald takes the band, dropping his coffee on the desk before gathering the boy’s soft hair and twirling the elastic band around it till it looked good enough, what San wanted.

San turns again so they were facing each other, barely inches apart and he reaches out to hold onto the end of Gerald’s shirt.

“I’m sorry for not taking your calls yesterday, i just wanted to be alone” San says, the apology sounded genuine but Gerald wasn’t angry at him. They all have their bad days when they want to be alone and they might be family, living together and all but they don’t necessarily have to share everything with each other, especially things they don’t want to share.

Gerald stroked the side of his neck, his thumb casually drawing circles on the boy’s neck and San tried to lean into his warm touch but decided against it.

“It’s fine, are you okay though?” Gerald asks, tilting his head to the side to get a better look at San before pushing a strand of his hair behind his ear.

“Yes- yeah..fine.....i’m fine” San doesn’t exactly know why he stuttered, maybe because Gerald’s big hands stroking his neck feels good, too good that his words weren’t coherent.

“Okay then, if you’re okay then it’s alright. I’m on duty to make breakfast today, do you wanna help me or you want to sleep some more?”

“I’ll help you” San says, maybe too fast and Gerald chuckles. He grabbed his coffee and they headed outside of his room and into the kitchen to make breakfast.

While they’re gathering the ingredients and San is pouring a good amount of rice into the rice cooker, Chan walks in with his phone in his hand and a song blasting off it.

Their song.

“We need to work on this choreography, it’s not giving what it’s supposed to give” Chan says, plopping on the couch and sitting cross legged on it.

“It looked pretty good to me yesterday” Yuta says, sitting beside him and looking into his phone.

“See this part, Daniel was a bit slow and San had to cover up for his mistake” Chan explains, gesturing to the phone as he speaks. “We need to change the whole thing”

“Yah yah, we worked really hard on this choreography, we can’t just change everything from beginning to end” Yuta says, his brows creasing as he frowns.

“okay fine, we’ll change a few things” Chan says, sighing before getting up and standing by the kitchen counter to watch San and Gerald cook.

“Hyung, you’re seriously getting bigger by the day, what’s your work out routine?” Chan asks, walking up to Gerald and feeling his arms.

“The usual, i just lift weight these days to increase my stamina” Gerald answers, walking towards the sink and he bumps into a clumsy San who’s trying to reach the cabinet and grab the ramen.

They both chuckled at the collision, Gerald grabs the ramen for the boy, his hand casually resting on San’s waist before walking to the sink and Chan wants to roll his eyes at them so bad.

Daniel is the last to walk into the room, with his glasses on and they know what it meant, he’s drafting another dance routine and they all groan.

Chan mainly teaches them the choreography after Daniel shows him exactly how it’s supposed to be. It’s not always an easy routine, it’s never an easy routine, it gets harder every single time.

When there’s a new song, it’s mostly written by San or Chan and when it’s time for the choreography, Daniel drafts it out on his journal then shows it to Chan. Gerald always writes his own raps, sometimes Chan does it for him and sometimes he prefers San to do it because his lyrics always stand out so well.

“Baby, do you want extra orange juice?” Gerald says to San in a quiet tone and the boy blushes, it’s not a pet name Gerald hasn’t called him before but every time he does, especially in his deep voice, it always stirs something at the bottom of his stomach.

Arousal.

Gerald knows exactly how the boy reacts to the pet name and whenever he’s in the mood to tease him, leave him in a blushing mess, he uses the pet name.

“Yes thank you” San finally says and Gerald shakes his head at him.

“Don’t have to thank me, set the table?”

“Okay”

*

All the members gather around the table as they take turns grabbing their foods and settling down to start stuffing their face.

“A lot of people are actually shipping you and Jisung” Yuta says to San and he chokes on his food, grabbing a cup of water immediately to ease the pain.

“They are, why?” San asks, eyes wide and Yuta smiles at his reaction.

“They say you both look great together, a lot of people enjoy bromance y’know” Daniel adds

“I was with Jisung yesterday” San blurts out and they all stiffen, shocked as they stare at San. Waiting for him to say he’s joking but he just smiles nervously as them.

“Are you serious?” Yuta asks,dropping his spoon and San nods at him.

“I even got his number” San takes the chance to get his phone out of his pocket and unlock the device before turning the phone for them to see that he really has Jisung’s number.

“That could be anyone’s number you saved that way” Chan chimes in

San dials the number and it starts ringing, the rest waiting to see if the supposed Jisung picks up and as if on cue, he picks up.

“San? i was about to call you too, how’s your wound?” Jisung‘s deep but calm voice says over the phone and Yuta gets up, muffling his scream and San just chuckles at the child-like behaviour.

“Ohhh hyung, it’s fine, i’m fine. Thank you for yesterday, i really had fun” San says and he hears shuffling in the background.

“You’re welcome at my place anytime, i can also pick you up whenever you want me too, if i’m not busy”

“You mean that? okay, i’ll let you know. I’ll call you later”

“Okay, i’ll be waiting”

San hangs up and the members gawk at him, then at his phone and then they’re throwing questions at him.

“How did you guys meet?”

“Does he really smell like lavender?”

“What does his place look like?”

“Does he really love pain, more tattoos?”

“How did you guys get so close?”

“You even call him hyung”

San doesn’t know who’s asking what but he’s smiling at them, Gerald beside him, not saying anything except laughing at the other member’s reaction, how surprised they all seem.

“We met yesterday at the company and he took me to his place”

“He does smell really good, like really strong rich lavender scent”

“Does he have an actual scar at the side of his cheeks?” Gerald is the one who asks this time and San turns to him.

“He does, looks really cool on him. He’s really handsome too, sexy and pictures don’t do justice to him at all. He’s so much hotter in person and i got a glimpse of his neck tattoo” San says

“God, you’re so lucky to chill with Jisung. I wanna be in a dating rumour with him if that means i can chill at his place” Yuta blurts out and they glare at him. It’s not exactly a good experience, the hate part.

“I almost forgot, the place he took me to is his studio, according to him and he has an arcade in one of the rooms”

“Wahhhh, i wanna go there too. Think you can take me along next time?” Daniel asks with a small grin and San just shrugs.

He doesn’t know if Jisung will like the idea of having tons of people in his work space.