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It was hiccups of laughter he had grown familiar with over the last few months that woke him up from a nap he didn’t even know he had taken. As soon as he hazily started to shake off the remains of sleep, aggravated shushes took over.
Maybe Jonghyun didn’t know when he had fallen asleep, but he sure as hell knew why. It wasn’t like he usually slept a lot anyway, sure. This new unit with Woohyun had clearly taken a toll on him though; resulting in insomnia even worse than he was used to. When he wasn’t writing lyrics, he was he was composing. When he wasn’t doing either, he was in the gym getting his body ready for their second title performance. And when he wasn’t doing any of that, he was stressing about how he should be working for this; sacrificing every cell of his body. Nothing less than perfect would suffice. Neither for himself nor for Woohyun.
Speaking of the devil, his friend had gone suspiciously quiet after the outburst that woke him up. In an attempt to make his head stop ringing by simply ignoring it, he rubbed the last bits of sleep out of his eyes to take in his surroundings. No wonder he didn’t hear so much as a peep anymore. Kibum had apparently found his way into their dressing room while he had been sleeping – how long had he been out for? – and was now fixating their friend with a glare that could freeze over hell. While Woohyun wasn’t usually one to get intimidated, especially by Kibum, right now he was sheepishly grinning at the other.
“Sorry”, he whispered. “He’s been out cold ever since his ass touched the couch anyway.” From where Jonghyun was sitting, Key didn’t look too impressed by that answer. Woohyun seemed to gather as much. He quickly scooted a little closer to his friend. “He’s got to wake up in a few minutes anyway. And wouldn’t waking up to my laughter be better than waking up to your ‘I-am-the-no-fun-friend’-face?” He immediately dodged the hand that flew to slap him.
“When did you become such a brat?!”
“Must be because I’m hanging around you too much. If you just left Jonghyun and me alone, I would still be as angelic as ever.”
That did finally make Kibum snort. “Yeah right, because the both of you are such angels when you grind on each other half naked with blindfolds.”
Jonghyun knew if nobody stopped them they would go on like that for hours. Which would ultimately make them miss their performance so he decided to make it known to his friends that he was awake.
“Your laughter woke me up beautifully, Woohyun.”, he announced cheerily. “Indeed much better than Kibummie’s, what did you call it, no-fun-face?”
As if on cue, their heads whipped around to the sound of his voice. They looked hilarious with their dumbstruck faces, staring at him like a pig driving a car. Jonghyun made sure to tell them as much through his quiet laughter. Insults, apparently, worked wonders to get them back to planet earth.
“Ha!”, Woohyun smugly turned around to point at Key, “told you he didn’t mind my beautiful voice.” Kibum simply swatted it away with an annoyed huff. “Keep telling yourself that, Hyun. I gotta go, you’ve got”, he quickly glanced at his phone, “approximately 5 minutes left until you have to get to the stage. I’ll see you guys later. You better win!” With that he waved over his shoulder and let the door fall shut behind him.
Jonghyun’s eyes widened in panic.
“5 minutes?! Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?” He scrambled to get up from his still slouched position on the tiny couch he was currently occupying. Good thing they’d be performing Winter Light first. He was already dressed for the performance and from what he could tell, his clothes weren’t rumpled badly.
As he hunched over in front of the mirror to check his hair and his make up for smudges, Jonghyun saw his partner smile at his reflection. He halted his actions confusedly.
“What? Is something wrong with my hair?”
“No, no.”, the younger assured quickly. “It’s just been, what?, 10 years since your debut? You still get nervous before performances.”
“Actually, WE just debuted 11 days ago so I have every right to be nervous. Which I am not, by the way. I just think I messed up my eyeliner a bit when I rubbed my eyes earlier.” Promptly, he went back to fixing it. Even though there wasn’t much to fix, but you would probably be able to tell in a close-up.
Woohyun shuffled closer in an instant and turned the other around to face him. “Let me, you just woke up. I know you can’t even really see yet.” And yeah, true, so he simply closed his eyes and let Woohyun work his magic with his wand, the Q-Tip. It only took him a minute or so until he declared his job done. “You have another 2 minutes to take the world’s shortest most powerful power nap or drink this.” This being the coffee he held in front of Jonghyun’s face.
They quietly drank their coffees on the way to the stage, taking turns humming a bit to the tune of the song they would perform shortly.
“What did Kibummie want, by the way?”
“Hm? Nothing. Just came by to wish us good luck for the performance and nag. Oh, and he brought the coffee so you know who to thank.”
Jonghyun hummed to that, content with simply finishing his coffee and getting into character for the stage until he remembered their little competition regarding their mutual friend and their SNS.
It was fairly stupid, if your thought about it, but Woohyun did have a way of talking you into everything. And when he had started calling Jonghyun a chicken and even did a little dance around him, well Jonghyun had to agree. So that's how the both of them ended up betting on who would be able to post the most pictures with Kibum on their SNS accounts.
“How many, Woohyun?”
The other innocently looked at him with big eyes. “How many what? Minutes to our performance? I don’t know, maybe not even a full one.”
“How many pictures?!” he repeated unimpressed.
Woohyun, however continued his innocent puppy act, which would surely work on a 13 year-old, but certainly not on someone who frequently used it for himself. Before he could confront him, however, they were ushered on stage. It wasn’t until they were seated on their huge swing in a cloud of fake fog next to each other, seconds before the first note would be played that he felt lips touch his ear, whispering “Seven” that he finally cursed the day he agreed to form a unit with Nam Woohyun of all people.