Chapter Text
Yudai let his aching body slide down the practice room mirror at his back until his long legs came to rest on the slightly wet, sweat-covered floor.
“K-hyung,” Yuma’s voice reached him from the opposite end of the practice room. Before his dongsaeng could continue, Yudai signaled him that he’d take a five minute break.
It was pretty rare for him to take a break before the others did. As the team’s performance leader, he was usually the one to keep going, to keep helping the others, to keep motivating the team to do better and become more in sync. So for him to take a rest before anyone else did, he had to be damn tired…which he was.
The members had been keeping an unbelievably taxing schedule in order to prepare for their upcoming new Asia Tour, Blaze The Way.
It was going to span more countries than before, following an incredibly successful Korean debut as double million sellers in Korea and Japan and another very successful Japanese comeback that managed to get them a win on a Korean music show even though the track was released on a Japanese album.
They had been very successful, but sometimes it all just felt like a dream to him. Though &Team had been steadily growing for a while now, he sometimes still found himself in a bit of a daze, unable to fully believe that what the nine of them had continuously worked so incredibly hard to achieve together was finally within their reach.
Thinking about just how much they all had grown together, endured together, and how incredibly talented each of his team members was, Yudai couldn’t help but feel an immense swell of pride rush over him as he watched them…
…Which lastet all but ten seconds…
Taki suddenly made a very dramatic and hilarious gesture, which had half of the members on the floor laughing while the other half ran around the room chasing him, Nicholas among them.
Cute, Yudai thought to himself, while laughing at how his team members always managed to turn from cool and charismatic to dorky, cute, and chaotic in the blink of an eye, Yudai usually among them.
But today he was happy to just sit on the sidelines and watch them, much more content to just fully bask in their adorableness.
“Grraargh,” Nico playfully growled, finally catching up with Taki and tackling him, the two of them ending up rolling around on the floor together like two little puppies - although Yudai was sure that Nico thought he was imitating a full-grown wolf with the clawing gestures he made with his hands.
Chuckling to himself about how adorable Nicholas always was when he was trying to be cool and intimidating but in actuality just looked so cute that you wanted to hug him and take a bite out of him, Yudai was just about to call out to him and let him know just how cute he was…
…but he stopped himself.
For as long as he’d known his members, Yudai had always been vocal about how cute he found them. If one of them or more of them did something cute, Yudai was almost always the first one to openly point it out. And he’d never thought twice about it. It was something natural, something to point out, not something to be embarrassed about.
So he’d never shied away from telling anybody who would listen how fucking adorable his fellow members were. And even now, if any of the other members, except for Nicholas, acted in a cute way, he would always tell them about it.
So why then, whenever it came to Nico, did he suddenly find himself unable to openly tell him he was being cute?! Yudai didn’t exactly know when…or even why it had happened, but since perhaps a few days or a week ago there had been a definite shift.
Yudai pulled his gaze away from the two puppies on the floor, let out a soft sigh, and forcefully shook his head as if he could hereby magically undo whatever the hell it was that was suddenly wrong with him.
“Let’s continue, guys,” he called out to the others, making them all quickly gather together for another practice round. Maybe if he just continued to focus on things he could actually understand, everything else would work itself out in time.
Nicholas carefully watched through the mirror in front of him as the hairdresser slowly but surely cut away at the mullet that had accompanied him since pre-debut, feeling a bit nostalgic but also excited about getting a brand new look and showing a new side of himself to Luné, but also to the members.
He could already picture some of their responses, smiling to himself as he imagined some of them crying and dramatically writing an entire epitaph to his iconic mullet while other members would tell him how great and fresh he looked or how much more cuter he’d become.
That last thought immediately and inevitably brought K-hyung to mind. He was always the first to tell him how cute he looked, and the only one of his members who then directly proceeded to lock him into an impossibly tight hug and smother him because he got afflicted by the most severe case of cuteness aggression.
Just thinking about his hyung’s shenanigans immediately made him laugh out lout, the sound of his laughter expressing the warmth his hyung’s hugs always carried.
But his laughter died quickly, even before the hairdresser could wonder about or ask him what had suddenly prompted it.
Nico didn’t exactly know what had happened or if he perhaps was only imagining it, but something seemed to be going on with K lately. At least, that’s the impression Nico got.
But when he’d quietly asked other members if they’d noticed any changes in K’s behavior, they’d denied it, except for Fuma-hyung and Euijoo, who hadn’t given a reply at all. In the end, Nico seemed to be the only one who had noticed anything.
So perhaps he was wrong and simply overthinking things. It had been only a few days, maybe a week after all. K was probably just really tired and focused on their performances. There was absolutely no need to be overly dramatic just because someone who had always had the habit of touching and hugging and cuddling him suddenly just stopped doing so…out of the blue…without any explanation…
…Right?…
Nico’s lips unconsciously formed into a frown, so much so that the hairdresser seemed a breath away from asking him if he was disappointed with his new haircut.
So Nico quickly turned his frown into an engaging smile instead, pretending that everything was fine - just like he’d been doing with K over the past couple of days. It was fucking exhausting.
“Do you like it?” the hairdresser asked, seemingly a bit nervous and anxiously awaiting his approval as she held up a small hand-held mirror for Nico to see his haircut from every angle.
“I do,” Nico replied, still getting used to this new and unfamiliar haircut but finding it charming in its own right.
“I’m so happy you like it,” the hairdresser replied, seemingly feeling relieved.
“It’s certainly a new look for me,“ Nico said,“ I think it makes me look…err…“
But Nico’s struggle to find the right word was suddenly interrupted by the hairdresser.
“Cute…I think it makes you look very cute.“
And there it was!
C U T E…
Nico was so used to hearing K-hyung call him that so many times a week that it was even more so blatantly obvious that he had suddenly just stopped doing so.
Nico thanked and paid the hairdresser and made his way back to the dorm to grab his training clothes before heading out to meet the other members for practice. They had about four days left until the new tour started and really needed to get everything sorted out.
When he entered the dorm, Nico‘s thoughts were still circling around K…
…and how his behavior toward him had suddenly changed…
…and how he really missed being cuddled and called cute by him(not that he would EVER admit this even under torture!)…
And before he realized it, Nico abruptly found himself face to face with the very person whose strange new behavior toward him had occupied the entirety of his thoughts for the past week.