#lmh

Minho: Did something

Minho: If anything happened

Minho: Are you worried over finals?

Minho: Those papers are no match for you. Don’t stress over it too much

Minho: Changbin won’t say it to you, but he’s

Minho: Changbin is pouting about the song you wouldn’t listen to. Put him out of his misery, would you? He’s been working on it for months

Minho: Have you eaten?

Minho: You haven’t been spamming me with pictures lately

Minho: Did what Felix said scare you? Nothing has to change. We’ll wait for you

Minho: I know things have been

Minho: You don’t need to tell me, but

Minho: [Image of a cat, seemingly asleep sitting up.] This looks just like you.

Minho: I think Hannie needs

Minho: Hannie’s rut is coming up. He can get kind of

Minho: Hannie’s rut is coming up. He isn’t feeling great. If he could hear from you

Minho: Han’s rut is over. He should be back to normal now. Did he

Minho: Are you eating well?

Minho: I’m here whenever you’re

Minho: I’ll come straight to you if you

Minho: I had the same kinds of banchan you made me at the hotel today. Catering. None of them tasted right.

Minho: I had the same kinds of banchan you made me at the hotel today. There was a lot of vinegar in the

Minho: I’ll bribe you for your banchan recipe. This hotel room has a kitchen, so

Minho: Is it all of us? Or just one?

Minho: Is it me?

Minho: I’m not the best at advice. But if

Minho: Are you still working on that last book I sent you? Did your reading speed slow so much the moment you graduated?

Minho: Yah, if you really hate the book that much, then

Minho: I know you don’t like nonfiction. I’m sorry I didn’t listen. Next time, I

Minho: Seungmin’s voice cracked during sound check today. I’m telling you, since I know he won’t.

Minho: Seungmin said

Minho: Am I supposed to just act normal? Is that what you want?

Minho: Do you need space?

Minho: Is this enough space?

Minho: Today Jeongin said

Minho: Today I

Minho: It’s been a month since I’ve heard your voice

Minho: I saw a movie you’d like. Hyunjin

Minho: I saw a movie I think you’d like. It was pretty scary. I wrote the name down for you.

Minho: I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want

Minho: I looked up the name of the flower you asked me about, around when we first met. It was a naengi plant. I’m sorry I never told you.

Minho: Are you eating well?

But Alex likes a challenge. He likes having someone he can truly measure himself up against, someone who will push back against the feedback he’s giving if he feels differently, someone who he doesn’t have to remind not to do stupid shit because there are always cameras on them, always. It’s exciting, it’s energizing, it makes him want to be better.

And Carlos really is great. He has good instincts, and good insight, and good hair—even better than Alex thought, and regardless of whether he’s just been in the car, or on the bike, or in a meeting for two hours, taking notes in his surprisingly neat script. He’s also upsettingly charming, and competent, and actually does make a good cortado, so it wasn’t just a bit of Ferrari PR. Which doesn’t have anything to do with his driving ability, but Alex can’t help but notice anyway. Because how can he not notice, what with how much they’re around each other lately, and—

Well. There might be one thing he regrets about encouraging JV to sign Carlos.

He confesses his burgeoning crush to Lily over FaceTime one night, feeling vaguely guilty about the whole thing even though it’s something he’d never even dream of acting on. Lily just snorts and says, I mean, have you seen those eyelashes? Join the club. And then she says, Honestly, his girlfriend, too. Now that’s a foursome I would—

And then Alex says Whoa, okay, and lets his shoulders loosen a bit. Laughs and manages to put the whole thing out of his mind as Lily spends the rest of their call reading him passages from whatever novel about sadomasochistic fairies she’s currently in the middle of reading that are filthy enough to make his ears go pink.

-

But then, in Miami, when Alex tells Carlos that Lily will be coming to the race on Sunday, Carlos says, Oh, Rebe too. We should all get dinner. And then at dinner, when Lily meets Carlos, she greets him with a hug, looping her arms around the back of his neck, and says, finally, someone who knows how to play golf. And then, when Carlos’ girlfriend, Rebecca, goes to hug Alex in greeting, he notices how she’s nearly as tall as him in her heels. How she’s got piercing blue eyes, and a pouting pink mouth, and curling chestnut hair, and how all these things combined make her look a little bit too much like—

So like, maybe Alex sort of regrets asking JV to sign Carlos.

-

By some miracle, Alex manages to make it through dinner mostly unscathed, thanks in no small part to him strategically dropping a sentence or two about his and Lily’s last golf trip as they eat. This, of course, inevitably prompts Lily to recount every way that Alex had managed to embarrass himself through all eighteen holes, an activity which he knows can keep her entertained for a significant amount of time with little to no actual input from him. Not to mention it has the added benefit of getting Carlos going, too, (Twelve over par? Mate, that is not even, like, a real thing), and he and Lily spend a solid forty minutes bonding over how shit Alex is at golf.

The plan backfires when, across the table from him, Rebecca nudges Alex with her foot and mouths, grinning, How long do you think it would take them to notice if we just left? And Alex goes to really, really look at Lily and Carlos, and he sees Carlos’ big hand on Lily’s shoulder as they laugh, and he thinks, Oh, shit.

And then he turns back to Rebecca, and he sees her take her lip between her teeth as she watches Lily and Carlos chat, and he thinks, this time with feeling, Oh. Shit.

Yeah. Alex is pretty sure he regrets asking JV to sign Carlos.

-

He regrets it almost as much as he regrets agreeing when Lily suggests they should all head up to Alex’s room for a nightcap. Lily orders a bottle of room service champagne, and Alex watches as she hands it to Rebecca, who shakes it up before popping it open on the balcony, letting the foam run wetly across her fingers. The sight of them shining and sticky makes Alex’s mouth go dry.

“Ha,” Rebecca says, turning to Carlos. “It’s like I got P1 this time.”

“Oh yeah?” Carlos asks. He shifts his gaze from Rebecca to Lily, then Alex, then back to Lily. “What did you win?”

“Hm, I don’t know.” She locks eyes with Alex, and Alex feels his dick twitch in his trousers. “I have a bit of a thing for golfers,” she says, gaze sliding over to Lily, “Alex, do you mind?”

Alex turns to Lily, and watches as her head tilts ever so slightly in question. Well?

Alex swallows. Directs his words to Rebecca, but stares only at Carlos when he says, “Yeah, uh. Same, actually.”

-

He doesn’t know who goes for who first, only that they do. The next half an hour is a heady blur of hands and mouths and bodies, warmth and wetness and hazy pleasure.

It’s hard to tell where one of them ends and the other begins, but none of it really matters, anyway. Carlos’s hands on his hips, his mouth between Rebecca’s thighs. Lily keeps one hand around Alex’s wrist as Rebecca sinks two fingers into her, like they’re two kids trying not to lose each other at an amusement park. She squeezes it hard when she comes, turning the thin skin of his wrist nearly white with pressure. Alex goes to kiss her, because she likes being kissed just after she’s come, and he wonders if she can taste Rebecca on his tongue as he does.

Later, he discovers that Carlos’ hair feels just as good as it looks when Carlos sinks to his knees in front of him and takes Alex in his mouth. He buries his hands in the soft strands, uses it to direct Carlos where he wants him, revels in the choked-off noises he lets out with every tug. He spills inside Carlos’ mouth with a soft groan, and his brain nearly starts leaking out of his ears when Carlos directs him to stick his fingers in his mouth and gather the wetness there. To slide them into Rebecca with a slick noise that Alex thinks he’ll never forget until he dies. She comes like that, Alex’s fingers inside her and her hand wrapped around Carlos’ dick, who groans into Lily’s mouth when he follows Rebecca over the edge.

It’s maybe the hottest thing Alex has ever seen in his life. Maybe the hottest thing that has ever happened to a person in the history of mankind.

-

“So,” Rebecca says, once the four of them have all cleaned up and Carlos and Rebecca have re-dressed. “I will be at the race in Spain at the end of the month. If you wanted to do this again?”

Alex can feel Lily’s smile on his skin as she presses a kiss to his shoulder. “Hm,” she says, “I think we can make that work.”