By the time they got back from the TV station it was already past midnight. Kaede washed off his makeup fast, took a quick rinse, and lay back down. Just as he was drifting off, Kaede felt the mattress shift. He snapped his eyes open to find that, at some point, Lan Yu had slipped onto the bed, straddling his thighs and tugging his own shirt off.

"Not sleeping yet?" Kaede asked, faced with Lan Yu's unexpected advance.

"niisan, make love to me." Lan Yu's hand wrapped around Kaede's cock; he bent at the waist to press his body to Kaede's and kissed him.

The room was too dark to read Lan Yu's expression, but Kaede could tell he was trying to use sex to escape some dim heaviness. Kaede didn't ask. He answered the kiss in silence. Their tongues wound together; in the quiet they could hear the wet pull of it, the swallowed breaths, like they might devour each other. Unlike other times when he'd yielded to Kaede's lead, tonight Lan Yu was fiercely proactive—his tongue swept every corner of Kaede's mouth, teasing him until he ached, hardness building fast below.

Skin to skin, their naked bodies wove themselves into a melody of desire, made tangible in the moans that, every so often, spilled from Lan Yu's mouth; the sound reverberated through the still room, wrapping every pocket of shadow in a humid, lust-heavy haze. Lan Yu's hand slid down, and in one smooth motion, closed around Kaede's burning-hot cock. He didn't say a word, but the hunger was spelled out in that tight, deliberate grip; under his palm Kaede's desire swelled and thickened. Lan Yu could almost hear the thudding pulse of that heavy length—like a voiceless surge of feeling breaking over him—a silent stirring whose language of expectancy and want only he could read. He bent and took that quickened pulse into his mouth; the heat filling his mouth reminded him of the unspoken connection and bond he had come to know in this relationship.

As Lan Yu folded himself into that raw moment, his inner weather dragged at him. Every place Kaede's fingers traced lit a fuse deep in him; what had been packed tight in his chest flared higher.

Even so, Lan Yu still chose not to show it.

Over the next few nights, Lan Yu kept climbing into Kaede's bed in silence; he would slip out of his sleep shirt and go down on him, and Kaede would meet him there without questions. Neither of them said much about it—until, on some night he couldn't number, Lan Yu crawled up and said, "niisan, let's try this." He handed over his phone.

Kaede took the phone and saw it was a fic post on a shipping site.

"'Luke's fingers explored behind Lan Yu. Even though it was his first time, instinct had him slip in his index finger, then his middle finger. "Yu, you're so tight back here."'"

As Kaede read it out in Luke's tone, he also slid his own fingers into Lan Yu's ass. But with Kaede's Tokyo accent, no matter how he imitated Luke, it sounded unreal to Lan Yu.

"'The equally inexperienced Lan Yu couldn't help moaning at the intrusion of those foreign fingers.'"

"Lea... Leader-nim... it feels weird... d-don't touch there..." Lan Yu supplied the next line—though, from the breath catching in his voice, it was hard to tell whether he was reading or speaking his mind.

"'When Luke pushed a third finger into Lan Yu's body, Lan Yu slowly began to get used to the strange sensation.'"

"Leader-nim... y-you can put yours in now..."

"'"What exactly does Yu want me to put in?" Luke asked, and it was impossible to tell whether he truly didn't get it or was just playing dumb, the way they do in private.'"

"Th-this..." Lan Yu reached for the thick cock already standing hard under Kaede and guided it back toward himself.

"'Luke, lying down, didn't stop him. He was afraid of hurting Lan Yu, but his desire had crested; he couldn't hold back anymore. He wanted to join their bodies together. "Can I really go in?" Luke asked, the last shred of reason making him say it out loud.'"

Kaede's cock pressed to Lan Yu's entrance; slick with lube, the thick length circled and nudged at the rim. To Lan Yu, it felt less like the fic's "begging-for-permission" and more like Kaede punishing him with his body.

"Why hesitate now, Leader-nim?" Lan Yu, straddling Kaede, looked down at the man beneath him, both hands braced on Kaede's chest—as if ruling over him from above.

"'Luke didn't say anything more. Even with the hint of hesitation, his cock still speared straight in, driving to Lan Yu's depths. Though it was their first time, maybe because of all the time together since debut, Luke quickly found the spot that made Lan Yu light up.'"

"ここ?"

The line that should have been a question to Lan Yu came out in Japanese; along with it, Kaede's imitation voice dropped away, back to himself.

At first Lan Yu was too lost in the jolt of pleasure from Kaede's sudden push to notice the switch—especially in that familiar Tokyo cadence. It didn't even register that Kaede had never used Japanese in their sex before, just as he'd never used Chinese; the two of them had always chosen a tongue foreign to them both to voice their pleasure.

"きついな...気持ちいい?"

For some reason, Kaede speaking in that Tokyo lilt felt strangely alien; the man under him didn't feel like Kaede, but like a stranger from Japan.

"いくぞ?"

It should have been a question, but Kaede's thrusts said he wasn't waiting for an answer. With Lan Yu sitting astride him, Kaede could only grip Lan Yu's arms and drive upward—but that position let his cock reach deeper than ever, into places untouched.

"Ah... niisan..." Swamped by the rush, Lan Yu forgot the role he'd been playing and spoke from pure sensation. "Slow... slow down... I'm... I'm gonna..."

"本当?" Kaede caught Lan Yu's arm as he tried to pull back and held him down; Lan Yu felt that thick length slam into a depth he'd never felt before. "でも、とても気に入ったような..."

"..." Lan Yu couldn't answer at first. Kaede wasn't wrong—he did like it. Especially now, with Kaede deliberately buried inside him without moving, the itch of it drove Lan Yu to rock his hips in tiny, greedy arcs, chasing what he wanted.

But Kaede acted as if he hadn't heard the answer Lan Yu wouldn't say. He didn't respond. He didn't move. He simply watched Lan Yu grow restless on top of him.

"......喜欢的......" Lan Yu finally yielded—and he said it in Chinese on purpose, knowing Kaede would understand something this simple.

Kaede let out a quiet laugh, then snapped his hips harder. Before Lan Yu could catch up, his own cock was wrung to a sharp crest, seed jerking out in hard ropes; a heartbeat later Kaede emptied himself deep inside Lan Yu.

As their movements slowed, the dim room sank even darker, and only their breathing came and went in ragged waves.

After that scripted-feeling sex, neither of them brought it up. By day they kept running between TV stations for music shows; at night, before sleep, Lan Yu would climb onto Kaede's bed and have sex with him—though they never again acted out a fic line by line the way they had that first time.

He knew Kaede wouldn't turn him down, and he knew Kaede wouldn't take it on himself to ask what was going on until Lan Yu had really sorted his head out and chosen how to speak. That had always been their way; before, there just hadn't been sex as the bridge. Now there was simply one more layer of touch before Kaede reapplied Lan Yu's ointment.

Lan Yu couldn't even say why he'd been this off the past few days; it felt like a long-stale pressure in his chest had finally burst, leaving him at a loss for where to put himself.

And still, something had shifted—he could feel it. Under the steady online fixation on him and Luke, the feeling only sharpened. He knew perfectly well that was where the knot came from.

He wasn't naive about what choosing to be an idol entailed: almost all private space would have to be ceded, relationships included. He and Kaede both understood that, which was why they settled on the half-acknowledged arrangement—friends with benefits. At least it wasn't a story owed to the public, nor one they would ever be permitted to explain.

But he and Luke? That connection felt like that day in the utility room—because it began in a jolt, there was no predicting where it would go next. Walking out of that room hadn't frozen it in place.

The group reality show had been a company assignment from the start, and Lan Yu had to admit that's the only reason he and Luke had crossed paths this much. Maybe they did play the beats the script asked for, but the link outside the lens was real. That part wouldn't be caught on camera. What people loved were the pieces performed to plan.

With Kaede, the feeling had to be hidden even deeper behind the lens. If whatever lay between him and Luke was merely not captured, then what lay between him and Kaede was something that must not be captured. He had to keep playing the scenes he was given while tucking his real situation out of sight.

Lan Yu knew his feelings were just merchandise the company packaged and sold in front of a camera.