Chapter Text
The room smelled like sweet basil chicken, soy sauce, and someone’s forgotten gym bag. Po’s camera bag was half-open near the corner, cords spilling out like impatient snakes. Thame sat cross-legged on the floor, chewing a toothpick and drawing a dick on Nano’s water bottle with a Sharpie. Nano didn’t care—he was half-asleep on the sofa, legs slung over Jun’s lap like a cat who paid rent.
Dylan was in the producer’s chair, hoodie pulled low, expression unreadable except to those who’d known him for a decade. Which, unfortunately, all of them had.
Jun had claimed the stool by the door, swinging one leg while spinning a phone charger around his fingers like it owed him money.
Ming stood dead center, clipboard in hand, her patience the only thing keeping this meeting from dissolving into chaos.
“Ten years,” she said, ticking her pen once. “We don’t do a photobook and a live clip and call it a day. We do a full-length album. Real one. Twelve tracks. You lead it, Dylan.”
Dylan blinked slowly. “No.”
Jun chuckled.
Ming arched a brow. “Didn’t ask.”
Dylan turned toward her, elbows on knees, tone flat. “I haven’t produced a full album since ‘Gravity.’ That nearly broke us.”
“You said ‘nearly,’” she replied. “That means you didn’t. That means you can.”
The room went quiet. Jun leaned back, his hand sliding up to Nano’s shin. Absent-minded comfort. Familiar.
Pepper shifted where he stood, arms folded, eyes on the scuffed-up corner of the whiteboard. “Do you believe we have one more in us?”
Dylan didn’t answer.
Nano sat up slowly. “You’re not scared we can’t do it. You’re scared you’ll care too much again.”
Everyone turned toward him.
Nano shrugged. “You always crash when you care too much.”
Thame muttered, “Shit. Give the kid a mic.”
Jun smiled, crooked and low. “He’s not wrong.”
Ming moved closer to the whiteboard, uncapped a pen, and wrote 10th ALBUM in clean block letters. “Here’s the idea. Each member leads a track. One turning point. One real story. No filters. The rest we build around you.”
“And if I say no?” Dylan asked.
“Then you stay in the room anyway and find a reason to say yes,” Jun said lightly, voice lower than before.
Dylan didn’t look at him—but his fingers tapped the armrest.
Pepper cleared his throat. “We’ve always been five or none. If this is how we go out, let’s make it the most honest thing we’ve ever done.”
Po lifted his camera, capturing the moment with a quiet blink of the lens.
Gam walked in just then, arms full of fabrics, moodboards already spilling. “Who wants to look like a goddamn dream?”
“Always,” Jun said, without missing a beat.
Gam tossed him a roll of silk. “You’d better back that up in vocals, playboy.”
Thame whistled. “She’s in designer mode. We’re dead.”
Dylan rubbed his jaw, still silent. Then, finally: “We start from scratch. I need a full memory board from all five of you. Lyrics, colors, samples, smells—anything.”
Ming nodded. “You have two weeks. First pitch meeting, next Friday.”
Jun’s voice was quieter now. “You’re really doing it.”
Dylan looked at him, steady this time. “Yeah. But this time, we do it on our terms.”
Their eyes held for a second too long.
Jun just smiled, soft and unreadable. “Good. I’m tired of half-truths.”
The studio after midnight was a different world. The kind of silence that wasn’t empty, just full of things waiting to happen.
Jun poured the last of the soju into two mismatched mugs—the kind stolen from hotel breakfast buffets over the years—and slid one toward Dylan, who didn’t look up from the keys. He’d been sketching out a chord loop for half an hour now. Soft, minor sevenths with a dissonance at the end that didn’t resolve.
It was beautiful. Uneasy.
“Sounds like heartbreak,” Jun said, leaning back into the couch, stretching like a cat.
Dylan played the loop again. “Sounds like track one.”
Jun watched the way Dylan’s fingers moved across the keys—confident, lean, and unconscious. The kind of skill you only got from a thousand sleepless nights and nothing left to prove.
“You know what yours would be?” Dylan asked, eyes still on the keyboard.
“My track?” Jun hummed. “Easy. The Bangkok river show. Rain came down like hell. You told the tech to keep filming.”
“You hated that night.”
“I hated being soaked. But the crowd? The way you mixed my bridge live?” He smiled. “Felt like we were gods.”
Dylan looked at him now. Really looked.
“You still chase that?”
Jun shrugged. “Don’t you?”
A pause. Dylan took a sip of his drink, then said, quieter, “Not sure I believe in gods anymore.”
Jun’s smile faltered. “Still believe in us?”
Dylan didn’t answer.
The loop played again.
Jun stood, crossed to the keyboard, and without asking, hit stop. The silence felt intimate—delicate.
Then he slid onto the bench beside Dylan, knees touching, unbothered.
“You remember when we first debuted?” he said.
“You had blonde hair. It was awful.”
“I looked like a lemon popsicle.”
“You looked like sex. But also a lemon popsicle.”
Jun laughed. “I remember you wouldn’t talk to me for a week.”
“You were flirting with the choreographer.”
“I was flirting with everyone.”
Dylan snorted. “Still are.”
Jun leaned in just a bit. “But not with you.”
“Bullshit.”
Their eyes locked.
A breath. Two.
Jun’s voice dropped. “Okay. Not seriously.”
“That’s the difference,” Dylan murmured. “Isn’t it.”
Jun’s hand brushed against Dylan’s thigh. Not intentional. Not accidental.
Dylan didn’t move away.
For a second, they just sat there—knees pressed, air charged, the only sound the hum of a hard drive cooling.
Then Jun said, low, “You ever think we’ve been circling the same line for too long?”
“I think,” Dylan said, turning slightly, “you’re drunk.”
“I think you want me to be.”
And just like that—like gravity shifted—they kissed.
It wasn’t soft.
It was five years of teasing and three years of pretending and six months of not saying what they were both thinking. Dylan’s hand tangled in the back of Jun’s hair. Jun’s breath caught. It was heat, tongue, teeth. It was everything they’d avoided wrapped into one messy, beautiful crash.
And then—
Dylan pulled back first. Lips swollen, breath heavy. He didn’t move far.
Jun looked at him, dazed but steady.
No one said sorry.
No one laughed it off.
They just sat there, side by side. Warm.
“I’m not doing this halfway,” Dylan said, eventually.
“I don’t do halfway,” Jun replied.
Silence again. Comfortable now.
The loop played on the screen, still open.
Jun reached forward, hit record, and whispered, “Let’s make it count.”
---
“Are you hungover or just love-struck?”
Thame’s voice cut through the room like a blade wrapped in silk. He was holding a cup of iced coffee, barefoot, hair tied back in a lazy bun. He looked far too awake for someone who’d only slept four hours.
Jun didn’t even flinch. “Neither. Just radiant.”
“You’re late.”
“No, you’re early.”
“Dylan’s been here since seven.”
Jun’s smile twitched. “Of course he has.”
The main studio was warm with movement. Po’s camera crew floated between corners, capturing shots of tangled cables, scribbled lyrics, candid chaos. Ming stood by the window in a blazer over a band tee, clipboard already thick with post-its. Nano sat on the floor with three synth pads and a cinnamon roll. Pepper had commandeered the whiteboard and was already sketching timelines.
Dylan didn’t look up when Jun walked in. Just clicked twice on his DAW and dragged a reverb layer across a vocal loop.
Jun took his place near the couch, unwrapping a mint and popping it in his mouth like a shield. He could still feel the ghost of last night in the way Dylan’s lips had lingered after pulling away. Not regret. Just restraint.
Po glanced up from behind the lens. “We’re starting.”
Gam swept in behind him like wind wrapped in silk and red lipstick. “Visual concept,” she announced. “We're leaning timeless. Neutral palettes. Fabric that moves. I want to see muscles through sheer shirts and bare feet on concrete.”
Nano raised a hand. “I volunteer for the sheer.”
“Everyone’s getting sheer,” Gam said. “Except Pepper. You get linen. And dignity.”
Pepper nodded solemnly. “My time has come.”
Jun smirked as the energy shifted, chaotic and comforting. This was home. The teasing, the grind, the slow build of something brilliant.
“Alright,” Ming clapped once. “Focus. Dylan, you’re producing. Talk to me.”
Dylan stood, face unreadable, voice calm. “We’re writing the story of ten years. Five anchors—each member leads one track. Those become the spine. Everything else supports it.”
He clicked open his laptop, screen projected across the wall: a rough outline of the album flow.
1. Track 1: “First Light” – Jun
2. Track 2: “Low Frequency” – Thame
3. Track 3: “Static Noise” – Pepper
4. Track 4: “Undercurrent” – Nano
5. Track 5: “One Point Four” – Dylan
“These five are personal. Confessional. You bring me lyrics, samples, textures. We’ll start building demos this week.”
Jun’s eyes lingered on his name at the top of the list. First Light. He hadn’t chosen the title. Dylan had.
Later, when the meeting broke and the room emptied out, Jun wandered over to the console where Dylan was tweaking vocal filters.
“First Light?” he asked, quiet.
Dylan didn’t look up. “The memory you told me about. River show. You said it felt like we were gods.”
Jun blinked. “You remembered.”
Dylan finally turned, eyes soft now. “You think I forget anything about you?”
That pause again. That damn pause.
Jun leaned on the edge of the desk, eyes narrowing. “You’re dangerous when you’re kind.”
“And you’re terrifying when you’re honest.”
They didn’t touch.
They didn’t have to.
Po’s voice echoed from the hallway. “Lighting test in ten!”
Gam breezed by with a handful of fabric swatches. “Jun, I need your torso!”
Jun chuckled, backing away. “Hold that thought.”
“I’m not the one running.”
Jun glanced back over his shoulder as he left. “Aren’t you?”
Dylan didn’t answer.
But his eyes followed Jun all the way out the door.
---
---
The studio at 1:17 a.m. was barely lit, soft glow from the console dials casting shadows over Dylan’s face as he looped the same vocal take for the twelfth time.
“First Light” was a ghost he couldn’t quite catch. Jun’s verse had been scratch-recorded earlier that day—warm, raw, off-key in places, but something about the tone stayed with Dylan. That texture, that honesty. He stripped away the autotune and left it bare.
Just breath, a little shake in the phrasing, and the sound of a throat catching at the memory of rain.
He layered in distant crowd noise, clipped from an old field recording of their 2018 stadium show. Then a soft piano loop, played once, deliberately imperfect. It felt like memory. A little warped, a little too tender.
He was halfway through trimming a click-pop from the vocal track when the door creaked open.
Jun.
Barefoot, hair damp from a shower, hoodie loose over his frame. He carried a tub of mango sticky rice and a second spoon.
“You eat yet?”
Dylan didn’t answer, just hit save and leaned back in his chair.
Jun slid into the spot beside him like he belonged there. Because he did.
“Didn’t expect you to be working this late,” Jun said, digging into the rice and handing over a spoon.
“You always expect me to stop before it’s perfect.”
Jun looked at him sideways. “No, I expect you to stop before it kills you.”
Dylan took a spoonful and kept his eyes on the waveform. “This is the good kind of killing.”
Jun didn’t laugh.
Instead, he let the silence sit, then pressed the spacebar. The loop played again. His voice filled the room—raw, naked, searching. He didn’t speak while it played, just listened to himself like someone else had sung it.
When it ended, he turned to Dylan. “It’s ugly.”
“It’s real.”
“It’s… honest.”
“That’s the point.”
Jun leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Do you remember what I looked like that night? The river stage?”
“You were barefoot. Hair dripping. Mic in your left hand instead of right, because the wind was blowing so hard.”
Jun blinked.
“You jumped the riser during the second chorus. Thame panicked. Nano started crying backstage.”
Jun exhaled slowly. “You always remember details like that?”
“No,” Dylan said. “Just yours.”
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It was something else. Charged. Gentle.
Jun leaned back again, stretching his arms overhead. “You gonna kiss me every time I get emotional in the studio?”
“No.”
Jun raised an eyebrow.
“I’m gonna kiss you when you stop pretending it’s just sex.”
Jun blinked. The air felt thinner.
“Why’d you kiss me last night then?” he asked.
Dylan smiled, soft and sharp. “Because you didn’t want me to.”
Jun’s voice was a whisper. “I did.”
Dylan turned his chair toward him fully. Stood. Took a step closer. “I know.”
The kiss this time was slower. Less crash, more burn. Dylan’s hand slid to the back of Jun’s neck. Jun made a sound—soft, involuntary—and kissed back like he was starving.
When they pulled apart, Dylan didn’t say anything. Just brushed a thumb over Jun’s lower lip and returned to the console.
Jun stayed standing, breath uneven.
“You’re really not gonna talk about this?” he asked, almost amused.
Dylan hit play.
Jun’s voice filled the room again—raw, imperfect, unforgettable.
“I am,” Dylan said, eyes on the screen. “I just talk in layers.”
--
“Three, two, one—rolling.”
Po’s voice echoed across the studio as the red light blinked on. The camera swept slowly from Nano tuning his synth module, to Thame sitting cross-legged with a pen between his teeth, to Pepper standing silently in the vocal booth, headphones on, eyes closed.
Dylan sat at the console, Jun beside him again—less a habit now, more a gravitational pull.
Today was Pepper’s track: “Static Noise.”
Dylan had prepped the session with care. Pepper had sent him a late-night voice memo weeks ago—a shaky, half-mumbled melody and the line:
“It all goes silent when you leave the room.”
That became the refrain.
They’d built the beat around analog crackle and detuned guitar. The feeling was stillness. Like grief you don’t name. Like walking through your childhood bedroom after everything’s been packed away.
Jun rested his chin on his hand, watching Pepper through the glass.
“He’s shaking,” he murmured.
“He’s always shaking,” Dylan replied, eyes scanning the levels. “He just hides it better than we do.”
Po stepped back, giving Pepper the signal.
The verse began. No beat yet—just his voice, low and grainy.
> “You left the key on the windowsill,
said, ‘This isn’t goodbye, just breathing room.’
But the house still smells like you,
and I’m not sure I’ve exhaled since.”
Jun exhaled sharply. “Fuck.”
“Yeah,” Dylan muttered. “He wrote this two months after his dad died. Never showed anyone.”
Jun blinked. “Not even Gam?”
Dylan shook his head.
Pepper finished the chorus. Then silence. He took off the headphones slowly. Didn’t cry. Just nodded, once. Then left the booth.
“Use the first take,” he said to Dylan.
Dylan nodded. “It’s perfect.”
“No,” Pepper said. “It’s real.”
He walked out without another word.
Jun watched the door close behind him. “You think this album’s gonna destroy us before it saves us?”
“I think destruction’s part of the process.”
Ming stepped in with a folder, brisk as ever. “All right. Visual schedule’s ready. Gam needs everyone for styling tests next Thursday, and I need you two—” she pointed at Dylan and Jun—“for interviews tomorrow. First ones.”
Jun groaned. “Sexiest men in Asia: broken and barely caffeinated.”
Ming smirked. “Exactly the image we’re selling.”
She moved on. Po trailed after her, camera still rolling.
Dylan leaned back in his chair. “You gonna keep showing up like this?”
Jun raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Every night. Every studio. Every kiss you don’t want to talk about.”
Jun paused. Then leaned in, voice low. “I want to talk about all of it. I just don’t want to ruin the album.”
“You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
Dylan’s fingers tapped the desk. “I know that I’ve worked with a hundred vocalists. Slept with half. Fought with most. None of them made me sound like you do.”
Jun’s throat caught.
He wanted to deflect. Joke. Flirt his way out of it.
Instead, he whispered, “Okay.”
Dylan looked at him, just looked, for a long moment.
Then went back to the mix.
Jun didn’t move. Just sat there, close enough to touch, quiet enough to let the music speak for them both.
--
The studio lights were warmer today—soft yellow pooling over the hardwood floors like morning sunlight, even though it was well past 8 p.m.
Thame’s track was up next: “Wreckless Mercy.”
He called it a love song, though it didn’t sound like one. Built on layered harmonies and twisting time signatures, it was beautiful but restless. Like someone in love with a person who never stayed long enough to be trusted.
Dylan adjusted the compression on Thame’s live vocal feed, watching the lines shape themselves on the screen.
Jun sat on the floor, back against the wall, guitar in his lap. Not plugged in. Just noodling around as Thame tested phrases in the booth.
Nano was on the couch with a sketchpad, one sock on, the other foot bare, bouncing. He’d been quiet today, but his eyes were sharp, following everyone.
“Can we drop the fourth harmony on the bridge?” Thame’s voice crackled through the comms. “It’s too tight. I want it to feel like it’s falling apart a little.”
Dylan nodded. “You want fragility.”
“I want it to hurt.”
Jun looked up from the guitar. “You’re in a mood.”
Thame just smirked through the glass. “Aren’t we all?”
They ran the take again. This time, the bridge frayed perfectly—vocals bleeding into each other, the last note left hanging like a question unanswered.
“Holy shit,” Nano murmured. “That’s gonna break people.”
Jun grinned. “Like a gift.”
Dylan tapped the console twice. “Print that.”
Thame came out of the booth, sweat at his temples, but smiling.
Po, camera in hand, had been moving around them all night—quiet, observant, filming what he called “emotional atmospheres.” His lens moved like a dancer’s eye: framing truth, not perfection.
And it caught something now—Dylan, reaching down to take Jun’s hand and help him up from the floor. The camera caught the way their hands lingered a second too long. The look. The ease. The shift.
Jun didn’t let go immediately.
Neither did Dylan.
Po lowered the camera, but said nothing.
Later, when the team broke for food—som tum, grilled pork, sticky rice—Po pulled Jun aside.
“You’re in love with him.”
Jun paused mid-chew. “With Dylan?”
Po smiled, one brow raised. “You gonna pretend that’s news to you?”
Jun swallowed. “It’s not.”
“Then don’t run from it.”
Jun glanced across the room—Dylan laughing at something Thame said, sleeve pushed up, veins at his wrist visible, eyes crinkling in that rare, real way.
“I’m not running,” Jun said.
Po didn’t press further. Just nodded, filmed another shot of Nano sleeping half-upright on the couch.
Back in the booth, Jun laid down background harmonies for Thame’s chorus. Dylan manned the controls, never once looking away.
And when Jun stepped out, sweaty and slightly breathless, Dylan handed him a bottle of water and said, “You sound better when you’re not thinking.”
“Then maybe I should stop thinking about you.”
Dylan’s smile was soft. “No. Don’t.”
---
“You’re doing what?”
Nano stood in the middle of the control room, chin lifted, confidence burning through his grin.
“I want to produce one of the interludes.”
Dylan blinked. “Do you even know how?”
“I’ve watched you since I was twenty-one. I’ve been watching all of you. You think I don’t know how emotions sound by now?”
Jun leaned back in his chair, impressed. “Let the baby cook.”
Nano shot him a look. “I’m not the baby anymore.”
Ming walked in just in time to hear that, raising an eyebrow. “He’s right. We’ve grown up. And we don’t gatekeep growth. Dylan?”
Dylan glanced at Nano, then at the notes scribbled in his own notebook—Nano’s name already listed next to the third interlude, like he'd known this would happen.
He didn’t say yes. Just turned to the console and started building a new session. “Then you better bring something that rips our hearts out.”
Nano beamed. “Already started.”
---
Downstairs, Gam had taken over the styling studio.
Fabric scraps, color swatches, sketches, and half-formed jackets cluttered the tables. Pepper sat shirtless as she adjusted the shoulder of a military-inspired coat, muttering to herself about “symbolic armor” and “intimate silhouettes.”
“This album isn’t just a comeback,” she said, pinning fabric right under Pepper’s collarbone. “It’s a confession. You should look like you’re bleeding truth, not just flexing ego.”
“I missed you,” Pepper murmured.
She stopped, glanced up at him, surprised by the softness in his voice.
“You’ve only been gone three days.”
“I still missed you.”
She smiled and kept pinning. “You say that every time.”
He kissed her shoulder. “I’ll keep saying it until you believe me.”
---
Later that night, Jun and Dylan ended up alone.
They were the last to leave the studio, the night stretched long and hushed. Dylan offered to drive Jun home—something he’d done before, but rarely when the air between them was this thick with unsaid things.
The car ride was quiet at first. The city blurred past—Bangkok neon and shadows, motorcycles weaving between lanes, the occasional flash of taillights through tinted glass.
Jun looked out the window. “Do you ever wonder if we’re already past the best version of us?”
Dylan didn’t glance away from the road. “No.”
Jun turned toward him. “Why not?”
“Because we haven’t fucked it up yet.”
Jun laughed, surprised and a little breathless. “That’s your bar for optimism?”
“No,” Dylan said, voice steady. “That’s my bar for truth. We fuck it up when we stop being honest.”
The red light turned green. Dylan kept driving.
Jun spoke again, softer now. “I want to stop pretending I don’t want you.”
That made Dylan finally look at him.
Streetlights moved across his face, gold and fleeting.
“I never asked you to pretend,” he said.
Silence again. But this time it wasn’t empty—it was brimming, electric.
They pulled into Jun’s building.
Jun didn’t move to get out.
Dylan leaned forward, elbow on the wheel. “Come over tomorrow night. After we record Pepper’s second.”
Jun nodded. “Okay.”
“And Jun?”
“Yeah?”
“Wear that stupid blue shirt you wore in 2019. The one that makes me insane.”
Jun grinned. “You’re still thinking about that shirt?”
“I’m still thinking about what I didn’t do when you wore it.”
---
Pepper stood alone in the booth, holding the headphones like they weighed more than they should.
The track behind him—“Ruin You Gently”—was quiet, stripped, raw. Just a piano, a faint heartbeat of synth, and the rasp of his breath before the first note.
Dylan sat at the console, fidgeting with a worn pick. He said nothing. Just waited.
Po had his camera trained through the glass, but his hand wasn’t steady today. He felt this one too much—maybe because it was Pepper, maybe because it was true.
The song was about love that leaves marks. Not scars. Not open wounds. Just that tender ache that comes from someone knowing you too well.
And as Pepper sang the first verse, no one in the room moved. Not Thame, who was curled up on the floor behind Dylan’s chair. Not Nano, who’d stopped sketching mid-line. Not even Jun, who’d arrived silently mid-recording, wearing that ridiculous blue shirt—too loose on the shoulders, too low on the collar.
Dylan glanced at him once.
Once was enough.
Pepper’s voice cracked on the third line.
No one flinched. That crack was gold. That crack was the truth.
When he finished, no one spoke.
Po lowered the camera slowly. “That’s not a performance,” he whispered. “That’s a confession.”
Pepper stepped out, eyes glassy but composed. “Use it as-is. No tuning. No edits.”
“Done,” Dylan said.
Pepper walked past Jun, paused. “You wore the shirt.”
Jun smirked. “You always said it made me look like trouble.”
“It still does,” Pepper said. “But now he wants trouble.”
---
Later that night, Dylan’s apartment
Jun stood in the doorway like he’d never been there before, even though he had—many times. But never like this.
Never on invitation.
Never in that shirt.
Dylan was barefoot, hair damp, wearing a sleeveless tee and low-slung sweatpants. He looked unfair. Unbothered. Utterly aware of the effect.
“I brought wine,” Jun said, holding up a bottle.
“You’re not here for wine.”
Dylan took it anyway, uncorked it, poured two glasses.
They sat on the couch, not touching. Not yet.
“You sure you want to do this?” Dylan asked, voice low, almost hoarse.
Jun looked him dead in the eyes. “I’ve wanted to do this since the day I met you. I just didn’t know I was allowed.”
Dylan set down his glass.
“Now you do.”
Jun leaned in.
And this time, there was no pullback.
No joke to interrupt. No safe distance.
Just mouths finally moving together with the rhythm of a truth they’d been writing in every lyric for years.
Dylan kissed like he produced—deliberate, consuming, electric in its precision.
Jun kissed like he performed—passionate, teasing, with something secret buried just beneath the heat.
Clothes came off slowly, like unpeeling a past they didn’t want to rush through. Familiar bodies, finally given permission. Skin remembered what denial had tried to erase.
They didn’t fuck like strangers. They didn’t fumble like first-timers.
They moved like two people who’d watched each other too long, imagined too much, and were done pretending they could keep this professional.
And afterward—quiet, breath shallow, limbs tangled—Jun whispered into Dylan’s hair:
“Still think we haven’t fucked it up?”
Dylan kissed his shoulder, lazy and warm.
“No. This is the first time we got it right.”
---
Po stood behind his camera, filming Nano sketching in the early morning light. The youngest member sat cross-legged on the floor of the studio lounge, a warm chai forgotten at his side, pencils moving fast across thick paper.
“He said the interlude should feel like déjà vu,” Nano murmured as Po moved silently around him, catching the light behind his ears, the curve of his concentration. “So I drew what it looks like in my head.”
The sketch showed five silhouettes walking into a glowing soundwave—each figure distinct in posture, but all in motion toward something luminous. Together.
Po zoomed in, catching the grain of pencil lines on Nano’s fingers.
Later, Po would pair this shot with one of Thame, sitting alone in an empty rehearsal room, rewatching an old dance rehearsal on his phone. His own voice could be heard in the background, cracking from laughter. But his face now was quiet. Stripped.
---
That night, Thame shared something no one expected.
The group had gathered for a brainstorming session on the album’s midpoint—a turning track, one that would pivot the story from nostalgia into reckoning.
“I want to write about what I lost before MARS,” Thame said, gaze steady. “A boy I loved. When we were kids. He drowned.”
Silence.
Then Po reached for his hand under the table.
Dylan exhaled slowly. “What kind of sound do you hear?”
Thame smiled faintly. “Water. But not the scary kind. Gentle. Like forgiveness. Like memory refusing to rot.”
Jun blinked, a little stunned. “Fuck, Thame.”
Nano’s voice was soft. “Let’s build it. From the silence up.”
And so they did.
Dylan and Thame layered slow loops of filtered ambient water—lake sounds, soft echoes of submerged drums, a heartbeat turned metronome. The lyrics came in pieces—dreamlike, half-remembered, but true. It would become one of the album’s most haunting tracks.
---
Po filmed everything.
He captured Dylan’s hands moving over the console as he adjusted reverb on Thame’s vocal—his fingers tender, as if afraid to over-polish something so raw.
He caught Jun lying on the studio floor, arms behind his head, humming in harmony as Thame recorded the final chorus.
He caught Nano slipping his lucky charm—a small polished stone—into Thame’s hoodie pocket when no one was looking.
He caught Pepper and Gam dancing alone in the corner of the lounge, barefoot, no music, just holding each other like the world outside didn’t exist.
And most of all, he caught the way Jun and Dylan looked at each other now.
Less teasing.
More knowing.
Like they’d crossed into a place there was no going back from—and didn’t want to.
---
At 3AM, when the others had gone, Jun pulled Dylan aside in the dark of the mixing room.
“Your hands,” Jun said, leaning back against the console. “They’re different now.”
Dylan raised an eyebrow. “My hands?”
“You touch the music softer. You touch me softer.”
Dylan reached for Jun’s hip, tugging him forward. “I only touch things I want to keep.”
Jun breathed out. “Good.”
And they kissed again, there in the studio, surrounded by unfinished demos and the soft hum of sleep-deprived magic.
---
It happened on a Tuesday.
Dylan was asleep for once—Jun curled beside him, skin still warm, their limbs tangled like they’d done it a hundred times.
Then his phone lit up.
Twenty unread messages. A group chat in flames. A call from Ming, missed. Two from Pepper. One from Po, text only:
> Check Twitter. It’s real.
He opened it.
And froze.
Someone had leaked a rough cut of “Ruin You Gently.” Pepper’s vocals, untouched. The rawest take. No mastering, no context—just the unfiltered ache of his pain broadcasted across the internet. Worse, it was already trending.
#RuinYouGently
#MARSUnfiltered
#WhoseHeartIsThis
By the time Dylan got to the studio—Jun behind him, hair tied up, face hard—Ming had already locked the doors and shut down the servers.
“I don’t know how it got out,” she said. “It was a private folder on our internal cloud. Timestamp says four hours ago.”
Pepper sat in the corner, elbows on his knees, unreadable.
“Do we pull it?” Nano asked. “Force a takedown?”
“No,” Pepper said.
Everyone turned.
He stood slowly. “It’s already out. People are listening. Feeling it. That means it’s doing its job.”
“But it’s not finished,” Dylan said, jaw clenched. “It’s not what we—”
“It is finished,” Pepper cut in, voice low. “I told you. No tuning. No edits. That was the realest version of me I’ve ever recorded. Let them hear it.”
Ming closed her eyes. “Then we shift the narrative. Own it.”
---
They did.
By noon, Po had cut together behind-the-scenes footage of the recording—Pepper in the booth, that single cracked vocal line, Jun clapping quietly after, Dylan’s proud half-smile. He released it with a caption:
> Not a leak. A heartbeat.
Track 03. “Ruin You Gently” — MARS, 2025.
It went viral.
Within hours, the conversation turned—from scandal to reverence.
“Is this the rawest idol vocal we’ve ever heard?”
“No filters. No masks. Just music.”
“Maybe MARS really is what they say—unbothered and unbreakable.”
---
But inside, the band wasn’t unshaken.
That night, Dylan paced the studio, fists clenched. “Someone accessed our files. That’s not art. That’s betrayal.”
Jun leaned against the console, watching him. “You think it’s someone inside?”
“Not on purpose,” Ming said. “But maybe someone clicked the wrong link. We’re stretched thin. Overworked.”
“We’re not careless,” Po added.
“But we’re exposed,” Thame said softly.
Nano slid a hard drive across the table. “Backups. Analog copies only. No more cloud.”
Dylan looked at him. For once, no sarcasm. Just gratitude.
---
Later, when the others had gone, Dylan sat alone, rubbing his temples. Jun stepped behind him, slid his hands over Dylan’s shoulders.
“You’re carrying too much,” he whispered.
“It’s my job.”
“No,” Jun said. “It’s ours.”
Dylan turned, slowly.
Jun straddled his lap, fingers trailing down Dylan’s jaw. “Let me help.”
Dylan’s voice broke on a whisper. “You already are.”
And again, they came together—not as a distraction, not as relief—but as something deeper. Sex that felt like anchoring. Like a promise. Like saying I see you without needing the words.
---
The leak changed the album’s direction.
It made them braver.
They rewrote lyrics. Took out filters. Left in the breaths, the cracks, the mistakes that made it real.
The tenth anniversary wouldn’t be about perfection.
It would be about truth.
And they were finally ready to tell it.
---