Chapter Text
The bathroom of the MARS group house looked like a salon had exploded mid-existential crisis.
Dye boxes. Gloves. Towels. One mirror already fogged up from someone forgetting to turn off the hot water. And seated defiantly in the middle of it all, like a cat that accidentally agreed to a bath, was Dylan.
They had originally planned on starting the hair-saviour session in the backyard but when its almost mid-morning and mid of June it’s more a heat torture than a hotness retrieval process.
“I’m only doing this because Pepper said the pink would ‘match the spring concept,’” Dylan muttered, arms crossed as Jun tugged on plastic gloves. “And because Nano wouldn’t stop tweeting polls about it.”
“Sure,” Jun replied, popping the cap off the dye bottle. “You volunteered. Loudly. After Nano posted a fan edit of you with a pink mullet and 20K people said you'd look ‘dangerously edible.’”
“I volunteered for the group,” Dylan corrected, looking at his reflection like it had personally betrayed him. “It’s marketing. Not vanity.”
“Of course,” Jun deadpanned. “This has nothing to do with you stalling for ten minutes in front of the mirror yesterday and muttering, ‘I could pull it off.’”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I heard you say that.”
“You weren’t even in the room.”
Jun leaned over, just close enough that his breath grazed Dylan’s cheek. “I was in the hallway. Thin walls, pretty boy.”
Dylan went quiet.
He always did when Jun got too close — not that Jun ever pointed it out. But it was in the way Dylan’s shoulders stopped their usual lazy slouch. The way he blinked slower, like rebooting. The way he suddenly had nothing to say, which for Dylan, was suspiciously loud silence.
Jun pretended not to notice as he tilted Dylan’s chin slightly with one gloved finger, pushing his bangs away.
“Hold still. I don’t want to accidentally dye your soul pink too.”
“Bold of you to assume I have one.”
Jun smiled to himself. There it was — the usual rhythm.
“I’m starting with the roots,” he said, brushing the bleach across Dylan’s scalp with more gentleness than necessary. “Because your hair is so tragically golden it’s practically begging for a redemption arc.”
Dylan smirked, looking forward. “You talk a lot.”
“I’m literally doing your hair.”
“You’d be talking even if you weren’t.”
Jun hummed, applying more bleach. “You’re just mad I’m right most of the time.”
“I’m mad you think that’s something to brag about.”
“Better than bottling all your emotions and acting like an aloof anime protagonist.”
“I’m not aloof,” Dylan said, eyes narrowing. “I just don’t believe in oversharing my trauma to sell records.”
Jun paused, blinking. “That was...actually kind of deep.”
“Yeah well, don’t get used to it.”
For a moment, the room was quiet, save for the soft slick of dye and the distant hum of the washing machine across the hall. The kind of domestic silence that felt almost intimate.
Jun dipped the brush again, this time with the soft pink dye.
“You’re not gonna back out now, right?” he asked. “Because once this goes on, there’s no turning back. You’ll be reborn. Like a strawberry phoenix.”
“I’m already committed,” Dylan said. “Might as well match the chaos aesthetic Nano’s curated for me.”
Jun leaned down again to start on the back of his head, his fingers brushing the nape of Dylan’s neck.
Dylan tensed — not a lot. Just enough for Jun to feel it. Like a wire pulled taut beneath cool skin.
Jun didn’t say anything. He kept working, but his voice was lower when he spoke next.
“You’re quiet.”
“I’m always quiet.”
“You’re extra quiet.”
“Maybe because someone’s practically breathing on my neck like a vampire with pink dye.”
“Would you prefer I leave you with half your head unpainted?” Jun teased, letting his voice get just a little closer. “You’d look like a half-eaten macaron.”
“I’d still look better than you when you tried silver that one time.”
“That was for art. And your exact words were, ‘weirdly hot, like a K-pop ghost.’”
“I was delirious from tour fatigue.”
“You liked it,” Jun said with a grin. “You’re just scared I’d out-hot you.”
“I’m not scared of anything.”
“Oh?” Jun stepped around to the front again, now facing him directly. “Not even fan cams of us going viral every time we accidentally breathe in the same room?”
Dylan flinched — not visibly, but Jun caught it. That little tick in his brow. That subtle twitch of his lip.
“I don’t care about that stuff,” Dylan muttered.
“Right. That’s why you deleted the tweet where Nano tagged us in a ‘soulmates’ meme.”
“I deleted it because Nano spelled ‘soulmates’ as ‘solemeats.’”
Jun snorted. “Admit it. You’re embarrassed.”
“I’m annoyed.”
“You get quiet when you’re embarrassed.”
“I get quiet when people get too close.”
Jun blinked. He hadn’t expected Dylan to just...say that. Not without a sarcastic buffer or a dodge disguised as apathy.
Their eyes met. The moment thinned like stretched sugar — fragile, glittering, just a touch too warm.
Jun swallowed. He meant to pull back. Meant to laugh it off.
But Dylan didn’t move.
Neither of them did.
Jun’s hand, still gloved, was hovering just under Dylan’s jaw. Pink dye clung to his fingertips like something inevitable. Dylan’s hair was half-processed, messy and soft and glowing under the yellow light.
“You know,” Jun said, voice lower now, quieter, “this whole ‘we hate each other’ thing? It’s getting hard to sell.”
Dylan tilted his head slightly. “Then stop trying to sell it.”
Jun’s breath caught.
There was a heartbeat — his or Dylan’s, he didn’t know — that echoed so loud he swore it rattled the bathroom tiles. The air crackled. The silence was a storm surge.
Their faces were inches apart now.
Not accidental. Not incidental.
Deliberate.
Jun’s fingers brushed Dylan’s jawline as if daring him to pull away. Dylan didn’t. His eyes flicked to Jun’s mouth. Once. Twice. A blink too long, a breath too deep.
Neither of them moved forward.
But neither of them moved back.
The heat in the room wasn’t from the dye.
It was from the words they weren’t saying. From every moment like this that they’d laughed off, every ship name they pretended not to hear, every charged argument they’d used to hide the thing boiling beneath their skin.
Jun leaned in just a little more. “If we do this, I’m still going to argue with you.”
Dylan’s voice was husky. “Wouldn’t want it any other way.”
There was a pause.
One second longer, and they would have crossed it — that line they danced around with every breath.
But fate — being the petty gremlin it is — had other plans.
KNOCK KNOCK.
“Hey!” Nano’s voice. Too loud, too chipper. “You guys still alive in there? Pepper says if Dylan comes out with a blotchy dye job he’s quitting the group.”
Jun jumped back like he’d been electrocuted. Dylan blinked, the spell broken, suddenly blinking hard like he was trying to reboot his cool.
Jun cleared his throat, voice too high. “We’re fine! Almost done!”
Dylan said nothing. He just stared forward, cheeks slightly pinker than his dye.
Jun hesitated, hand still mid-air.
“You okay?” he asked, quieter now.
Dylan finally looked up at him, that unreadable expression back in place.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just... don’t miss any spots.”
Jun smiled, small and real. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”