Chapter Text
“We’re too old for this, Wooyoung-ah.”
Hongjoong doesn’t even look at him when he says it.
He sinks deeper into the beanbag, phone held loosely in his hand as he speaks in a low voice gone rough from a day that had stretched too long.
“Yeah I’ll get that done later, thanks Maddox-hyung.”
Seonghwa remembers – distinctly, vividly – Hongjoong declaring something very different barely three hours ago after a jacket shoot that had wrung the life out of all of them.
Palms slamming on the table, eyes blazing with conviction –
No one’s working anymore tonight. We’re gonna get fried chicken and drinks and we’re gonna chill.
It was a very motivating speech.
It was a blatant lie.
To his credit, he delivered on the rest of the promise, at least. The goods are currently being unboxed in the kitchen by Jongho and Yeosang.
Mingi had offered to help. Sweet, thoughtful, Mingi. Unfortunately for him, he had to be physically removed from active duty after a near-physical altercation with Wooyoung.
Because it’s common knowledge, borne from repeated, painful, real-life experience, that when Song Mingi transports food, food vanishes. In this case, it’d likely be three chicken thighs miraculously disappearing somewhere between the five-meter walk from the kitchen to the living room. Amen.
No one is willing to accept those losses tonight. Least of all Wooyoung, who had announced, six separate times and counting, that he was starving.
Starving Wooyoung is scary Wooyoung.
"Don't be such a loser," Wooyoung shoots back, with the blatant disrespect that only he can aim at Hongjoong and walk away unscathed. "No one is ever too old for Truth or Dare, Captain."
Hongjoong’s gaze finally raises.
The corner of his mouth twitches, a ghost of a scolding on his lips. But Seonghwa prides himself in knowing Kim Hongjoong – better than most, perhaps even better than Hongjoong knows himself. He knows exactly what’s going to happen.
Absolutely nothing, that’s what.
Because Kim Hongjoong can deny it until he loses his voice, but Kim Hongjoong has favourites. He always has. And Jung Wooyoung has been at the top of that list since approximately the first week and never left.
And so, sure enough, just as Seonghwa expects, Hongjoong says nothing. He only rolls his eyes, leans back further into the beanbag, and hides the beginning of a smile behind his soda can with valiant effort and very little success. He nods into the phone, Maddox’s voice muffled through the receiver.
Across his living room floor, said favourite shifts deeper into San’s hold, wriggling just enough to get comfortable. His back settles fully against San’s chest, head leaning backwards to rest on San’s shoulders. His husband barely reacts, just adjusts automatically, arms coming up to drape loosely across Wooyoung’s middle. His chin drops to the curve of his neck before he places a soft kiss to his nape.
It happens so easily. So normally.
San’s shoulders are broad now. Broad enough to swallow Wooyoung whole, to make him look smaller than he is.
Seonghwa remembers, too clearly, when they weren’t.
He remembers how their shoulders used to be the same width all those years ago, how he’d sometimes even mistake them for each other when their backs were turned – two boys with the same restless, coiled energy.
But that was all so long ago, before the world got hold of them. Before gym sessions and pressure and expectation turned San into someone who looked built to carry things, people, pain.
Before Wooyoung and San stopped being separate names in Seonghwa’s mind and quietly became something singular.
Them.
From the corner of his eye, Seonghwa sees Hongjoong’s smile widen as Maddox continues talking. It doesn’t sound like it’s entirely about work anymore. Hongjoong makes a casual remark about how amazing Maddox’s samples are and Maddox says something in return that makes Hongjoong laugh, loud and tinkling.
When’s the last time he laughed like that with me?
The thought arrives unwanted and shame follows immediately after at the recognition of the ugly feeling bubbling in his gut.
"You go first, then," Yeosang’s voice cuts neatly through his spiralling.
He emerges from the kitchen where he's attempting to transport approximately twenty cans of soda in his arms with no realistic plan on how to keep them there. One can teeters dangerously near the edge of his grip, wedged between two bags of chips, a tangible display of what appears to be willful optimism and a blatant disregard for the concept of gravity. "Truth or dare?"
Wooyoung doesn't even hesitate. "Dare. Obviously."
“Dare is actually harder,” Yunho huffs out a quiet laugh from where he’s stretched across the floor, long limbs taking up significantly more space than necessary as he lazily scrolls through their Spotify playlist on his phone. Ice on My Teeth blasts through the speakers three seconds later.
“For dramatic effect,” he says.
Then he props himself up on his elbows, resting his chin on his open palms as he considers thoughtfully. “I genuinely cannot think of a single thing you wouldn’t do.”
“Why, thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
"I’ll take what I can get," Wooyoung says, turning to beam at him while nuzzling into San's cheek.
"I'm mildly terrified," Jongho says flatly.
He and Yeosang settle onto the floor, knees cracking like bubble wrap, having successfully transported half a fried chicken franchise from their kitchen without any casualties. A feat, truly.
They arrange the six boxes of fried chicken and a deeply irresponsible number of drinks in swift procession until they consume the entire real estate of their coffee table. It’s not a small table. It should not disappear this easily.
Then the cheese sticks come out. And the ddeokbokki – four boxes of them, stacked.
Seonghwa catches Hongjoong staring at the architectural wonder of carbs and processed food. His mouth flattens into a line so thin it nearly disappears and he pulls his phone away from his ear with a loud sigh.
“Whoever decided to order so much ddeokbokki I swear I’m gonna–”
Seonghwa reaches for a box.
“It was me. I’m really hungry.”
The threat evaporates. Hongjoong's jaw snaps close. He's quiet for the briefest moment.
“… Anyway,” he says into the phone far too quickly, “talk to you tomorrow, hyung.”
Maddox is still speaking faintly through the receiver when Hongjoong clumsily shoves the phone into his pocket without waiting for a proper goodbye.
Then he beats Seonghwa to it.
He reaches out and pushes the nearest box of rice cakes toward Seonghwa's side of the table, stopping neatly within reach. He swats Yunho’s hand away when the younger reaches for the plastic bag to rummage through it and produces, two seconds later, a pair of chopsticks. Then he pulls them apart, smooths the splintered edge with his thumb, and places them neatly in front of him.
Seonghwa doesn’t know what to do with that.
Across the table, Yunho mutters something deeply offended under his breath and reaches for a cheese stick instead.
Hongjoong's elbow catches an open can on the way back. The soda tilts towards Yeosang, fizz already breaching the lip –
But Jongho is faster. His hand shoots out without looking and catches the tipping can, pushing it further back into the table. Then, without a word, he quietly pushes the rest of the cans that are arranged too close to Yeosang back toward the center of the table.
“Are you okay?” he asks the blond. The voice he uses is softer, quieter, a version of Jongho the rest don’t often get.
The look Yeosang gives him when he nods is small. Barely there. Gone before it fully forms.
But Seonghwa catches it.
Of course he does.
He's worn that look himself for years – he’s probably wearing now – since the early dorm days when Hongjoong slept easily in the bunk above him, entirely unbothered, while Seonghwa lay awake cataloguing all the specific ways this could go wrong, how this was wrong.
In practice rooms where the air was thick with sweat and thicker still with the effort of desperately trying not to speak the words threatening to split him open.
On stages where he stood just close enough to Hongjoong to feel the warmth of him, to hear his breathing. And had to remind himself before he forgot, quietly, again, and again, and again, until the words lost their shape from overuse –
It’s not him.
It’s not him.
It’s not him.
So he'd kept it in.
And kept it in.
Because he didn't deserve to feel this way for someone the universe had destined to not belong to him.
And somewhere along the way, he got good at it. Good enough that loving him somewhat became… manageable. He could sit shoulder to shoulder with Hongjoong at a table far too cramped for the eight of them, thighs pressing against each other’s, and not flinch. Could hand him a drink and not let his fingers linger. Could exist in Hongjoong’s orbit without feeling every nerve in his body alight, without feeling the small sliver of skin just above his heart begin to burn –
Mostly.
But then Hongjoong wordlessly slides the hot sauce to his side of the table (because Seonghwa had mentioned once, just once, that he couldn’t eat fried chicken without it). And before Seonghwa can react, the ghost of a thank you, as casual as he can muster on his lips, Hongjoong is moving again. He ignores the cans of cider nearest to him, ignores the beer. Instead, he reaches all the way to the far end of the table for a can of sikhye, popping it open and setting it directly in front of Seonghwa.
The skin just above Seonghwa’s heart sears.
It sizzles and pops, mean and familiar. It’s a warning perhaps, to stay in his lane, to not be greedy.
Or maybe it's simply the universe reminding him. Because the universe has always been very good at that. At the precise moment he grows careless, at the precise moment Seonghwa starts to hope –
He’s reminded that the man he bleeds for, the one who he would hand every soft, hidden part of himself to without hesitation, was never meant to be his.
The universe, Seonghwa thinks bitterly, has an ugly sense of humour.
See, everyone is born with a name on their chest, right above their heart.
Seonghwa was eleven when he stood in front of the bathroom mirror and looked at it properly for the first time. Tried to make sense out of the three characters of his chest, a name that he never chose, a name the universe had given him the same way it gave him two hands and a particular shade of eyes. Just a fact about him. Just something he was.
He was branded as his since the day he was born.
Kim Hongjoong.
He hadn't known anyone by that name. So he'd gone back to his room and thought nothing more of it for years.
At eleven, it had meant nothing.
At seventeen, it ruined him.
Kim Hongjoong.
He remembers with an aching clarity that nine years have done nothing to soften. The cramped Recording Studio 3 that could fit a table and two chairs – three if you were willing to sit pressed thigh to thigh and accept that personal space was a myth. The low light, the stale smell of coffee that clung to cheap, peeling leather. Their manager’s easy voice as he made introductions.
And Hongjoong who had looked him up and down before greeting him with a firm handshake and a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
Seonghwa had felt the world tilt beneath his feet.
Then he’d waited.
He’d waited through the awkward silence that settled after their manager left them alone in the studio, through the small talk they had over dinner, through the first week and the second and the third – he'd waited.
He’d waited for a crack in that painfully neutral expression – widened eyes, parted lips, a hitch in his breath, some small, involuntary thing that would mean that he knew. That it’s you. I know it’s you.
He'd waited for Hongjoong to come undone the way Seonghwa had come undone the moment he stepped into Recording Studio 3.
He’d waited.
And he'd waited.
But Hongjoong never said anything.
And because Seonghwa was a coward, neither did he.
It hadn’t been love at first sight.
“You might not even feel anything when you meet them,” his mother had told him once over dinner one day, chopping vegetables while steam curled lazily around the kitchen light. “I didn't feel anything when I met your father. Didn't even know his name at first because all his friends called him by his nickname. But I fell for him before I knew it was him.”
She accepted the soft kiss Seonghwa’s father pressed onto her cheek.
“Though the name is just a shortcut. You still have to choose each other. You still have to do the work.”
But it came quickly regardless. The sweaty palms, the ridiculously quickened heartbeats, how his eyes would automatically scan for Hongjoong the moment he entered the room and how, only when their eyes met, would his heart ease. As though it finally came home.
But Hongjoong never pressed a hand to his chest the way Seonghwa saw some people do when they recognised a name. Never looked at him like destiny had cracked open at his feet. Never looked at Seonghwa like he knew that his existence was something far beyond that of a band member, a colleague, a friend.
And so that’s the part Seonghwa played, had learned to play so well. He learned the shape of restraint, learned how to stand beside instead of reaching, learned to be dependable, steady, the one person Hongjoong could lean on after long days and difficult schedules.
He learned to be Hongjoong’s friend – his only friend, his best friend – like how Hongjoong had told him, the world, told anyone who would listen, time and time again.
Seonghwa learned to survive on scraps – attention so casually turned to him but treasured like something finite.
Seonghwa looks at Hongjoong beside him, mouth filled with the sweetness from the sikhye and words. Too many words he can never say –
I love you. I want you. Please look at me. Please tell me you feel it too. Please.
But Hongjoong’s gaze doesn’t even grace his direction.
His Captain pops a cheese stick in his mouth and shouts something at Mingi that makes him gasp incredulously, and just like that, the moment ends.
“Okay,” Mingi announces from the couch, giving Hongjoong a dismissive wave, and Seonghwa is entirely grateful for the interruption. The words in his head are getting too loud to bear.
Mingi is lying down, having achieved an inspiring level of horizontal comfort despite spending twenty minutes earlier passionately insisting that the sofa in his, Seonghwa's, and San's dorm was objectively superior in both size and fabric and ‘vibes’. Whatever that means.
“I dare you,” Mingi says, pointing lazily at Wooyoung, “to show us the last photo you took of San.”
Jongho inhales his drink.
“Wait–”
Yeosang's hand finds his back immediately – automatic, unhesitating – offering soft steady pats while Jongho coughs himself back to life. Neither of them seems to notice he’s done it.
Seonghwa does.
"That's a dare for all of us," Jongho manages hoarsely, eyes watering. "What is wrong with you? Why would you ask that?"
“Felt like it.”
“You felt like seeing Choi San’s di–”
"It's fine, Hojong-ah," Wooyoung says airily. He wriggles out of San’s loose embrace as he sits up, hand reaching into his pocket.
“It is not fine.” Jongho shoots a glare at Mingi who responds with a shrug so nonchalant Seonghwa sees Jongho’s nostrils flare. “Change it. Use your three brain cells and think of literally anything else. Because you may want to, but I genuinely, sincerely, would like to continue living my life without seeing his husband’s penis–”
Too late. Wooyoung has already produced his phone and with the confidence of someone who has nothing to hide, or someone who has long since made peace with having everything to hide, he holds the screen up.
At full brightness.
It's a photo of San, shirtless and asleep, the blanket pooled somewhere around his waist at an angle that suggests a very casual relationship with the concept of coverage and dignity. No one's worst fear is realised, technically. But the blanket-to-bare-skin ratio is deeply, profoundly wrong for a group setting.
The room promptly explodes.
"JUNG WOOYOUNG—"
“Is that his pubic hair–“
“Oh my fucking god–”
“WHY,” Jongho asks, with the spiritual collapse of a man whose every life choice has led to this moment and none of them were the right ones.
There are so many answers to that question, to which, Seonghwa thinks sadly, Jongho will receive none.
“Hey, it’s not that bad,” Mingi chirps brightly.
Jongho promptly responds by throwing a sock at him.
San moves with a speed that is frankly impressive for someone who had been entirely relaxed three seconds ago. He lunges for the phone. Wooyoung yanks it out of reach, nearly horizontal, cackling.
“Give it–”
“No, it’s an amazing shot.”
“Jagi-yah, I’m naked–”
“Honey, you look amazing naked. I’m doing you a favour!”
“When did you even take that–”
Yunho has buried his face in his hands, shoulders shaking. It's unclear whether he's laughing or experiencing a spiritual crisis, possibly both. Mingi is making a sound that isn't quite a word, just a sustained high-pitched note far beyond his usual vocal range. Hongjoong has abandoned all pretense of dignity and is laughing openly, head tipped back.
Seonghwa sees how his loose shoulders, slightly flattened hair, the smudged concealer around the stubborn pimple at his chin.
Beautiful and painfully, carelessly ordinary.
Jongho is staring into the abyss, receiving what Seonghwa thinks to be irreparable mental damage while Yeosang pats his shoulder with as much sympathy as a man who’s just had the privilege of seeing the outline of his member’s penis can offer.
“You’re handling this well,” he says softly.
Jongho turns to stare at him.
“Am I?”
San finally slumps back onto the ground, hand still stretched out weakly as Wooyoung beams at the screen.
"Delete it," San says, now attempting negotiation having failed to retrieve the phone. “Please.”
“No.”
“Jagi-yah–”
Wooyoung turns and looks at him. The glare is almost convincing.
"I took this photo," he begins slowly, "because you looked so handsome. Because all I could think about was how lucky I was to have you as my soulmate. My husband. About how much I loved you."
His eyes narrow.
“And you want me to delete it.”
“Jagi-yah–”
“This photo is proof of what we have. Of what we are to each other. And you want me to do what?"
“I’ve seen your camera roll,” Mingi snorts from the sofa, not looking up from where he's been picking the chicken skin off his drumstick for the last two minutes. “It’s not that deep. One deleted nude won’t kill you when you have six hundred more and three hidden folders.”
“I will put my toenail clippings in your lunchbox tomorrow.”
The room reacts to this with the appropriate level of horror. Mingi, to his credit, does not flinch.
Wooyoung holds the phone up again, loudly declaring the photo to be worthy of being considered modern art, and Seonghwa's eyes slip before he can stop them.
In the photo – past the unfair lines of San's shoulders, past the sprawl of him against some sheets Seonghwa vaguely recognises as the ones from Wooyoung's room — there's the ink on his chest.
Jung Wooyoung.
Right over his heart, clear as anything: the name the universe has given to him.
And he knows whose name is on Wooyoung’s chest as well.
Seonghwa remembers how it happened. How San went silent when their manager introduced Jung Wooyoung to them. How his eyes had followed Wooyoung around the practice room afterwards with something raw and almost frightened buried inside them. How Wooyoung’s eyes had always met his with the same impossible intensity.
Three months.
That’s how long it took.
Then finally, one night after a long day of practice, they sat everyone down in the dorm living room and admitted the truth. That they were soulmates. That they had known immediately.
Seonghwa recalls Wooyoung shaking when San called him Jagi-yah for the first time that night. The cries got louder when San pressed a kiss to his temple.
Seonghwa recalls looking at Hongjoong then, waiting for his leader to look up and say something. Anything.
Hongjoong had sat there very still, keeping his gaze steady on the ground. And said nothing.
Now, across the room, Wooyoung’s wedding ring catches the light above as he waves his phone, yelling loudly at Mingi.
Seonghwa looks away again before anyone notices him looking.
“Soft porn? Fuck you I’ll show you soft porn–”
“Please don’t,” Jongho says, immediate and pained.
San reaches for him then, one hand gently wrapping around his upper arm. The shorter goes quiet immediately and lets himself be pulled back into San’s steady embrace without protest.
San leans in and says something directly against his temple, quiet enough that it belongs only to Wooyoung. Whatever it is makes Wooyoung’s eyes widen and Seonghwa notices the faintest flush rise up Wooyoung’s neck. He coughs once and swats weakly at San’s thigh.
"... fine," Wooyoung mutters, suddenly demure.
"Thank you."
"Locked folder."
"Jagi-yah."
“That’s that,” Wooyoung clicks his tongue.
He looks up at Hongjoong who, to his credit, probably tried. He’s seated a considerable, strategically calculated safe distance away from him, but unfortunately there’s no one else between them as buffer.
“Okay, Captain,” Wooyoung’s eyes twinkle. “Truth or dare.”
Hongjoong sighs, the low, dying sound coming from somewhere deep in his chest.
“Dare.”
Immediately, Jongho pauses mid-bite.
"Hyung," he says carefully as he chews with deliberate, pointed loudness. "Are you sure."
Hongjoong’s brow twitches once. “What’s wrong, Jongho-ah?”
“Nothing,” Jongho shrugs his shoulders. “I just think there are much better uses of free will.”
Yeosang nods easily beside him and hands him a tissue without looking when a few stray crumbs land on his lap.
Wooyoung taps his chin and speaks before Hongjoong can retaliate.
“Who’s the last person you called?”
Hongjoong raises an eyebrow. “Maddox-hyung.”
“Okay then,” Wooyoung smiles sweetly. “I dare you to call him and tell him you wanna suck his dick.”
Something in Seonghwa flares, quick and instinctive and sharp.
"Jung Wooyoung. Enough."
Seonghwa hears his own voice come out lower and sharper than he intends, hardly ever a tone he uses with Wooyoung, and the room registers this immediately. The room quietens, a sticky layer of tension settling over everyone like a change in air pressure. Mingi’s hand stills over his chicken. Yunho pauses mid-sip. Jongho blinks once.
Yeosang’s eyes flick toward Seonghwa, unreadable, then quietly away again.
From the edge of his vision, Hongjoong has gone still. And Seonghwa’s heart only thuds harder, because his leader isn’t looking at Wooyoung anymore.
He’s looking at him.
And Seonghwa distantly recognises how absurd this is. Because they’re all just having a bit of fun, aren’t they? And who is he to be upset, be jealous, be possessive over someone who was never his to begin with?
He has no right.
Wooyoung blinks. A beat passes, too long for it to be accidental. Then the corner of his mouth curves, slow and knowing. It makes Seonghwa want to look somewhere else entirely.
"Wow, so protective,” he hums lightly. Seonghwa does not look at him.
Wooyoung waves a hand dramatically. "For Seonghwa-hyung's delicate emotional wellbeing, I'll choose something else. Have you ever met someone as benevolent as me?”
“I’ve literally never a worse mispronunciation of fucking annoying in my entire life.” Mingi rolls his eyes and grabs another piece of chicken from the box.
”Shut up, Mangi.”
Mingi snorts loudly, fingers moving a little too quickly, too practised at picking the skin off the chicken thigh.
"Song Mingi, I said three minutes ago not to eat on the couch! If I find a single crumb on it you're buying us a new one."
Ah, so that’s what Hongjoong was shouting about.
Wooyoung shoots Mingi the filthiest, most self-satisfied grin imaginable before turning back.
"Okay I need a moment. My brain can’t move this fast. Hongjoong-hyung, ask your wife first."
Seonghwa’s mouth goes dry.
He should correct it. He should.
He should point out that, for the record, they are not the group’s mother and father. Never have been. How can they be when the universe had already made it abundantly clear from the very beginning that there was no use hoping for that sort of thing?
But he doesn’t. He hasn’t.
Not once, not ever, not when the joke first started, not when it stopped being a joke, not even now when it sits between them like something half-believed and half-prayed for.
Not now.
Though neither has Hongjoong.
And Hongjoong doesn’t say anything tonight either.
He just turns to look at Seonghwa, long auburn bangs falling slightly into his eyes, expression softened by exhaustion and the late hour. This is the version of him that only exists long after the sun sets, when he’s with people he has chosen and have chosen him back. Seonghwa swallows. He loves this look on Hongjoong. Has always loved it.
“Truth or dare?”
Seonghwa pauses for just a moment.
“Dare.”
“I dare you to…” Hongjoong pauses. The pause extends.
And Seonghwa watches, fascinated, as Kim Hongjoong – genius producer, terrifying leader, man capable of commanding arenas full of screaming people – visibly buffers in the face of one stupid party game and Jung Wooyoung.
Seonghwa finds it, unfortunately, unbearably endearing.
“I dare you to call my mother,” Hongjoong says finally, very seriously, “and tell her that you love her.”
Seonghwa blinks.
”That’s it?” Yunho boos from around a mouthful of chicken. “That’s the dare?”
“Yes.”
Mingi makes a deeply disappointed sound. “We sat through the San photo for that?”
“We wouldn’t have needed to sit through anything,” Yeosang says calmly, “if you had used your brain cells properly.”
“Yeosang-ah,” Mingi sighs loudly, “can you not take Jongho’s side for once in your life?”
Yeosang sputters, the flush moves from his neck to his ears at an impressive speed. “I’m not taking anyone’s side. I’m just stating a fact.”
Mingi responds with a hand gesture that would get them cancelled.
Seonghwa reaches for his phone, keying in numbers that he’s long since committed to memory without ever meaning to. It lives in a particular catalogue in his brain, slotted beside his own mother’s, beside the members’, beside all the numbers that matter.
Mingi stares at him in complete silence. Then he turns to Hongjoong, scandalised.
“Hyung, come on. Look at him, he didn't even need to look her number up.”
“Because I bother,” Seonghwa say through gritted teeth.
“Because you call her more than you call your own mother,” Wooyoung rolls his eyes and takes an aggressive bite off his cheesestick. “Not exactly a challenge is it? Telling your future mother-in-law that you love her.”
Seonghwa nearly drops the phone. ”Wooyoung–“
But the call connects before he can say anything else. Before he registers the look Hongjoong gives him.
“Hello? Seonghwa baby?”
Seonghwa's heart leaps, the way it always does, the way it has since the first time she called him that. Wooyoung will get it later, after this.
“Eomoni,” Seonghwa can’t hide the smile in his voice. “How have you been?”
“Oh, my baby!” Hongjoong’s mother coos into the phone. From around him, the members throw him hardly disguised pleased looks. “I’ve been wonderful, sweetheart. And you?”
“I’m well too, eomoni,” Seonghwa smiles easily. “I miss you.”
"I miss you too. Come visit soon – you and Hongjoong, okay?"
“Of course, eomoni.”
You and Hongjoong.
Always together in her sentences. Always said like one thought.
Wooyoung is already flapping his hands aggressively, mouthing hurry up like an angry mime, and he lets it go, filing the thought away somewhere he won't examine.
“Is everything okay, baby?” she asks then, quieter now, sounding more attentive. “Why are you calling me out of the blue?”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Seonghwa’s voice softens into something warmer. “I just wanted to tell you that I love you.”
The dead silence on the other end lingers for a moment too long. Seonghwa frowns.
“... eomoni?”
“Seonghwa baby.”
“Hmm?”
“You and Hongjoong…” A slow, careful pause. “Did he finally tell you–”
“Umma!”
Seonghwa has never seen Hongjoong move this fast in his life.
The phone is out of his hands before he's fully registered it happening, the speaker cutting off mid-air. Hongjoong turns halfway around.
“We’re playing Truth or Dare,” he says quickly, voice pitching half an octave too high, the words tumbling out faster than usual, “I dared Seonghwa to call you and say that. That’s all, okay?”
Hongjooong’s mother’s voice comes out muffled, entirely too soft for Seonghwa to hear what she’s saying. Hongjoong mumbles something into the phone, letting out a low groan as he runs his fingers through his hair.
The room goes completely silent and Wooyoung looks one second away from achieving spiritual enlightenment.
Then, faintly –
“So he doesn’t love me?”
Seonghwa gasps.
“No!” he says immediately, leaning over Hongjoong’s shoulder toward the phone before he can stop himself. “I do love you, eomoni. Hongjoong didn’t have to dare me.”
A delighted sound crackles through the speaker and Hongjoong visibly ages five years.
“Okay,” Hongjoong says immediately, exhausted already. “We’re hanging up now–”
More muffled sounds. Hongjoong's expression cycles through several things in quick succession — exasperation, embarrassment, something softer that he wrestles back under control.
His eyes cut to Seonghwa.
He hates how little it takes.
Warmth rises stupidly, helplessly – cheeks first before his ears catch up and tingle. Then it moves down to his throat, where it tightens with words that he wants so desperately to say, pressing against his teeth. They’re sharper than glass but he chews them slowly so that they come out as nothing. A neutral expression, an easy laugh. Something manageable. Safe.
And then – last, always last, the way a bell finishes ringing – his chest.
Left side, just above his heart. That small patch of skin no larger than a thumbprint.
Maybe it’s placebo, maybe it’s all in his head, but he swears it’s real, the faint, phantom pain that blooms right over his chest before it sinks deeper into his soul and dulls into something permanent. It’s a familiar sensation, one that’s lived with him for years now. He’s stopped expecting it to leave.
Because Hongjoong always looks at him like this in soft moments. Like he’s something familiar, something safe, something chosen.
And Seonghwa, the pathetic creature that he is, still lets himself ache over it.
Hongjoong looks like he’s just narrowly escaped death when he hangs up and sets the phone face-down on the cushion next to Seonghwa.
"Right," he says, taking a deep breath. "Next. Mingi?”
"Not so fast," Wooyoung says sweetly.
Hongjoong looks up.
"You never got your dare."
"I– Wooyoung,” Hongjoong gestures vaguely at Mingi, who is by proximity, even with the added width of the sofa, is nearest to him. Mingi is vertical now and is on what Seonghwa estimates is his third (fourth?) piece of chicken and Seonghwa sees him nudge a few crumbs that’s landed on the floor beneath the sofa. “The game moved on–"
"Yes. To you." Wooyoung's eyes don't leave Hongjoong's face. "I did say we'd come back to you, didn't I? I'm many things but I'm not inconsiderate."
“I’d much rather you be inconsiderate right now, thank you very much.” Hongjoong mutters.
“Duly noted,” Wooyoung hums. “I’ll be extra considerate tonight then.”
Hongjoong’s face goes slightly pale. “Can I at least choose truth then?”
Wooyoung tilts his head, already gearing up for chaos. But San, sensing impending disaster, pats him once on the thigh and gives the faintest shake of his head and somehow, that’s enough.
”Fine, fine,” Wooyoung huffs like a child denied the right to eat dirt. “Now I need to think of something else to ask. I had such a good dare too.”
"A tragedy," Mingi licks his thumb. Seonghwa sees a crumb drop onto the sofa. Seonghwa sees Hongjoong not noticing the crumb drop onto the sofa. "A genuine loss."
“Thank you, Mangi.”
“I’m being sarcastic.”
“I know, I’m choosing to ignore that.”
“Can I ask something?” Yeosang pipes up.
Jongho turns to him immediately. “Of course, Yeosang-hyung.”
Seonghwa notices that look again. But Yeosang blinks and it disappears.
“Do you ever wish you had a soulmate mark?”
There’s silence. Immediate and total.
Seonghwa turns to stare at him, horror arriving a full second before he can moderate his expression. "Yeosang-ah–”
Yeosang glances at him – brief, steady, the glance of someone who knows exactly what they're doing and has decided to do it anyway – and then turns back to Hongjoong.
And Hongjoong has gone very still.
All those years ago, Seonghwa remembers how Hongjoong never said anything. And how confused he was that he didn't.
He found out twenty months later exactly why he didn't.
-
Hongjoong had been napping in their room when Seonghwa walked in, one iced tea and one ice lemon water sweating through his fingers. Sometime during the sweltering summer afternoon, the blanket had been kicked off entirely.
For a second, Seonghwa’s eyes didn't understand what they’re looking at.
By that point they were close, genuinely, properly close. But soulmate marks were still private, far too intimate for even the type of bond they had to unlock. Seonghwa, in particular, had been extremely careful about this. And so they never walked around topless and changing of clothes was done quickly and behind closed doors. Or under blankets. They improvised.
But Hongjoong had still walked in on him changing far too many times in those early months. Who could blame him, though? With eight boys living together in an apartment that you could walk from one end to the other in twenty steps – personal space and privacy started becoming a theoretical concept, a distant memory, an occasional luxury.
Seonghwa remembers nose-diving into the mattress once while Hongjoong stared at him like he’d lost his mind.
Hence why he registered, first, because he’s a deeply unfortunate man seeing such beauty for the first time, that Hongjoong was shirtless (sweet baby Jesus).
The second thing he noticed was the absence.
For where something should have been.
For where everyone had something.
Ink, a name, a declaration by the universe.
There was nothing there.
Seonghwa had stood in the doorway for a long time.
He'd spent months confused by Hongjoong's silence on the subject.
In the dimmer, darker corridors of his mind, Seonghwa circled through explanations that Hongjoong never gave.
Maybe Hongjoong knew and hated it. Hated him. Maybe he had taken one look at Seonghwa and decided in that instant that he wanted nothing to do with him. Or perhaps he was just hoping that if neither of them brought it up, that this entirely undesirable situation would politely bury itself, lost beneath words unsaid and confessions unspoken.
But beneath all that, underneath the explanations, the sensible conclusions that he kept arriving at, some sick, twisted, delusional part of him had hoped.
Had wished, prayed, begged, against all rational reason, that Hongjoong was simply waiting for the right time. That he too, felt as undone as Seonghwa did, but was choosing professionalism, trying to practise restraint, choosing to hold everything that threatened to take him apart carefully at arm’s length.
Because Seonghwa had hoped that they could have been inevitable.
That maybe, just maybe, the universe had seen what the two of them had built in quiet moments – in practice rooms where they, just the two of them, stayed in for hours far longer than needed, the quiet conversations they seemed to save specifically for each other, the way they’d started to grow and mould around each other’s existence – and decided to honour it.
How couldn’t it?
But standing in that doorway, looking at the unmarked skin of Hongjoong's chest, everything clicked into place.
That explained everything, didn't it?
The Kim Hongjoong written on his chest was not the Kim Hongjoong in front of him.
Not the man Seonghwa had accidentally built his entire heart around. It would be someone else entirely. Someone he hadn’t met yet, someone the universe would select for him with the same indifferent precision it applied to everyone else.
And every time Seonghwa looked at them, he’d be reminded, quietly, of this. Of him. His first love. His first, entirely mistaken, love.
Because that’s what this was all about. He had mistaken coincidence for destiny, had carelessly let himself, in the quiet hours when the universe wasn’t listening, imagine a version of them that was never meant for him to have.
When Seonghwa was never meant to be anything beyond that of a band member, a colleague, a friend.
And so Seonghwa very quietly, carefully, turned and closed the bedroom door behind him. He walked to the kitchen and placed Hongjoong’s iced tea in the fridge. Because.
Hongjoong gets thirsty when he wakes up.
Hongjoong likes his drinks cold.
Then he stood in their small, shared kitchen, hand curled on the refrigerator handle. He didn't know for how long – Seonghwa learned that day that time stretches strangely when you’re mourning the loss of something you never had the right to have. But the cold air kept spilling out against his face and somewhere between one hitched breath and the next, he noticed how the tears running down his face had gone icy.
Eventually, he closed the fridge door. It felt strangely ceremonial, like laying flowers at the grave of something that had never truly lived at all.
He took his now-lukewarm glass of lemon water, dried his face, and sat on the sofa until the sky turned dark.
It didn't matter, did it?
It didn't matter that the name of Seonghwa’s chest didn’t belong to Hongjoong.
It didn't matter that there was no name on Hongjoong’s chest.
It didn't matter that Seonghwa had no place there, no claim, no right to feel the way he did.
Because he was desperately, maddeningly, irrevocably in love with Kim Hongjoong all the same.
And when Hongjoong joined him on the sofa hours later, iced tea in hand, hair tousled from sleep, shirt back on, he smiled – wide and toothy.
“You’re really the best friend I could ask for, Seonghwa-yah.”
Seonghwa smiled at him, as easy as he could when everything inside him was breaking, shards of a heart too broken to ever be truly whole again laying lifelessly by his feet.
-
Hongjoong is silent for a stretched moment longer. Then slowly, he shakes his head.
“No.”
Wooyoung blinks. “No?”
Hongjoong doesn’t respond. Not with words at least. He reaches for his can of soda, takes a sip, and sets it back down, allowing his answer to hang in the air.
Yeosang quirks his head. “Why?”
”My turn’s over, Yeosang-ah.” Hongjoong smiles, faint and patient. “It’s Mingi’s turn now.”
”I’m not asking for the game, hyung,” Yeosang nudges again. Seonghwa studies him, sees the way his eyes widen, glossed over with something that looks strangely like hope. “I’m asking you. Why?”
Not all of them have spoken of their marks.
In fact, only a few have – Wooyoung and San, naturally. They’ve not shut up about it since 2017.
And Hongjoong. Just once.
Five days.
Five days after that sweltering afternoon, the eight of them were huddled on the floor of the dance studio, sweat-soaked hair plastered to their foreheads, speaking easily of everything and nothing at all. Someone – probably Wooyoung – had stolen the standing fan and angled it directly at himself while the others complained weakly.
Then Hongjoong cleared his throat.
Eyes on him, he lifted his shirt.
And there it was — or rather, there it wasn't. The same bare skin. The universe hadn't seen fit, in the span of five days, to give anyone the privilege of laying claim to Kim Hongjoong.
The revelation had been met with noise at first. Jokes, disbelief, half-cooked reactions meant to fill the space before anything real settles in. Then the questions started – soft, cautious, like stepping on something they didn't know when would shatter.
Now, years later, Hongjoong glances at Yeosang, then away again, down to the soda in his hands.
“I just…” he exhales softly, turning the can once. “I think about it sometimes. Of course I do. It’d probably be nice,” he nods toward Wooyoung and San, “to have that kind of certainty.”
“Probably?” Wooyoung’s voice cuts through in immediate offense.
San pats his knee once and Wooyoung settles instantly.
Hongjoong smiles faintly before it fades again.
“Okay fine, it would be nice,” he amends. “Obviously, to have someone chosen for you. To not have to figure it out. To just know. But I think it’s fine if the universe skipped me.”
His fingers tap lightly against the can.
“I think it’d be okay to fall in love by myself, take time to figure things out, maybe mess up a few times.”
Across from him, Yeosang hums, soft and unreadable.
”Sounds like heartbreak.”
”Yeah, maybe,” Hongjoong agrees easily. “But I get to choose.”
This time when he looks up, it isn’t at Yeosang.
It’s at Seonghwa.
It’s hardly a flicker of eye contact. A single fleeting glance. And before Seonghwa’s heart has the chance to lurch in his throat, Hongjoong is taking another sip of his drink again like nothing happened.
“And hopefully I’ll get it right eventually.”
-
Seonghwa volunteers to clean up because he knows no one else will. Or rather, no one else will do it properly and he will end up having to clean again anyway, so honestly, this is the easier option.
From where he is, Wooyoung’s room is already loud again. His voice rises above Yunho’s as he explains with far too much passion for this time of night, why Yunho needs to eat more yogurt while San attempts – softly, hopelessly – to negotiate peace and quiet on behalf of their neighbours.
At some point, from Hongjoong’s room, he hears Mingi talking about jewelry. Jongho apparently hears something he doesn’t like and the shouting starts immediately.
Seonghwa doesn’t even look up.
He’s halfway bent beneath the sofa, sweeping up the truly absurd amount of crumbs Mingi somehow left behind – honestly, Song Mingi owes him his life and half his bank account at this point – when he hears footsteps behind him.
Yeosang speaks before Seonghwa has the chance to turn around.
“You’re not going to tell him.”
Seonghwa’s grip around the broom handle tightens for the briefest moment. Then it loosens and he keeps sweeping.
“No.”
Plastic rustles softly behind him and he hears the repetitive sound of abandoned soda cans being picked up and dropped into the trash bag one by one.
“He’s willing to try,” Another can drops into the plastic bag with a hollow clink. “You heard him.”
“I did,” Seonghwa brushes Mingi’s crumb collection off the sofa. “But that’s got nothing to do with me, Sang-ah.”
“Why not?”
And suddenly Seonghwa is no longer standing in the living room.
He is twenty-two again. Years after Hongjoong’s reveal. Years after the devastation of discovering the name on his chest belonged to someone who wasn't the man he fell in love with.
-
He was fresh from the shower. Skin still warm from steam, a towel hanging low around his waist as he pushed open the bathroom door, halfway inside the rare luxury of an evening of silence and solitude and glorious peace.
Only to collide with Yeosang in the hallway who had come back earlier from his MC schedule. Who was right there. Who had nowhere to look but at him.
Whose eyes had dropped, probably involuntarily, thoughtlessly, and perhaps out of pure curiosity, to Seonghwa’s chest. And stayed.
The hallway went unbearably quiet.
And Seonghwa watched, in horrible real time, how his expression broke.
“Hyung…” Yeosang had said, voice fragile, hardly above a whisper. “Hongjoong-hyung–”
“No–”
The word cracked out of Seonghwa before he realised he’d spoken.
Seonghwa’s hands had flown immediately to his chest, pressing flat over the name like he could physically erase it if he covered enough of it quickly enough, fingers slipping slightly against his damp skin.
“No, Sang-ah, it’s not him. You saw it yourself, he doesn’t have one. He doesn't have a mark, remember? So it can’t be him, it’s not–” Too fast, too desperate. His voice did something he couldn’t control, chest suddenly cold despite the steam still clinging to his skin. "It's not him–"
"Hyung–"
"It's not him," Seonghwa repeated, quieter this time.
His eyes darted uselessly – at the wall, the floor, their group photo hanging on the wall by the television. At anywhere, everywhere but at Yeosang's face. Because if Yeosang looked confused, disgusted, or worse – pitying, Seonghwa thought he might actually die.
"Hyung," Yeosang's voice had gone impossibly gentle. "Seonghwa-hyung, look at me."
Seonghwa did. He wished he didn't.
Yeosang wasn’t looking at him with confusion. Nor disgust. Nor pity. His eyes were steady, carrying something close to knowing. To understanding. And in that, Seonghwa’s vision was already blurring, eyes already burning.
“It doesn’t matter, does it?” Yeosang said quietly.
Seonghwa stared at him blankly.
“What?”
“Whether it’s him on your chest or not.”
Yeosang swallowed once.
“You love him.”
Something inside Seonghwa lurched violently it almost hurt
Seonghwa’s eyes had gone wide, mouth parted, but nothing came out. He should deny it, brush it off with an awkward laugh. Say no, Yeosang-ah, what are you talking about?
Because that would have been easier. Hiding, running, avoiding – all the things he’s been doing, and gotten so frighteningly good at.
But his body betrayed him.
Perhaps it was the exhaustion of carrying this alone for years, the pain of reaching out to someone that you knew would never be there to catch you, or the sheer, unbearable relief that he was finally allowed to share this burden with someone else. Whatever it was, one awful inhale, and his knees simply gave out beneath him.
Yeosang caught him before he hit the floor. Arms strong and steady, one arm around his waist, the other cradling the back of his head.
The first sound that came out of Seonghwa didn’t even sound human.
“It’s okay, hyung,” Yeosang whispered, holding him close.
Seonghwa didn’t even realise he was crying properly until his body shook. Until his face pressed helplessly into Yeosang’s shoulder and he felt how he was soaking into his shirt – tears and snot and wet hair.
His breath snagged painfully as his chest heaved.
He should have stopped them, should have apologised for losing himself, for showing this shameful side to someone who called him hyung, who relied on him to be the steady one. The reliable one.
Instead, before he could stop himself, before he could swallow it all back down like he'd done a million times before, the truth broke loose.
“I love him."
Barely audible. Words already shattering as soon as they left his trembling lips.
And Seonghwa froze. Because he had never let himself say it before. Not out loud. Not to anyone. Not even to himself. That was the first time he allowed those words to exist out loud. They echoed loudly in the dimly lit hallway, a reminder of how mortifyingly pathetic he was.
“I love him,” he whispered again, and this time his voice cracked completely. “I love him, Sang-ah." Seonghwa choked, fingers curling desperately into Yeosang's cardigan. "I love him so much and I know it’s not him but I can't stop loving him–”
“I know,” Yeosang said into his hair, holding him tighter.
“It’s not fair–” Seonghwa forced out between cries that had now turned violent. His tears continued to soak into Yeosang's shoulder, pride be damned. “Why isn’t it me? How could it not be me?"
So painfully, childishly honest.
"I love him so much, I'll love him more than anyone ever will, I promise I will–”
Yeosang’s grip tightened around him and held him close. Close enough for his voice to disappear into damp hair.
“I understand.”
At the time, Seonghwa hadn’t understood it. Hadn’t understood what Yeosang meant, hadn’t understood why Yeosang understood.
Not until much later.
Not until he started noticing the way Yeosang looked at Jongho when he thought nobody else was paying attention.
Not until he realised Yeosang knew exactly what it felt like to love someone the universe did not choose back.
They never spoke of it again.
Until now.
-
Seonghwa stops sweeping.
“I saw him, hyung,” Yeosang says softly, carefully.
“What?”
“I saw him, hyung, the way he looked at you. And it’s not just tonight, I’ve seen him for years, I see the way he looks at you, how he’s always looked at you and–”
“Yeosang-ah–”
“It’s there, hyung, it’s obvious. I can see it, Wooyoung sees it, we all do–”
Seonghwa’s head snaps up.
“Stop.”
It comes out sharper and harder than he intends.
Yeosang goes still.
And Seonghwa feels it somewhere deep inside him, that old, quiet grief that he’s kept packaged for years, the humiliating, practised ways he maintains being fine. The hope he starves until it behaves. They stir, bubble, ugly and hot and finally tonight, he doesn’t have the energy to push any of it back down.
“Don’t do that,” his voice low, throat working around every syllable that comes out. “Whatever you see, it’s wrong. He’s just being Hongjoong. He cares for all of us like that. That’s just who he is.”
“Are you seriously saying that?” Yeosang steps closer now, voice clipped. “You know him better than any of us do. You know the difference between how he treats us and how he treats you. I know you do.”
Does he?
Yes, perhaps.
He knows Hongjoong remembers things about him that sometimes he himself forgets about.
Knows Hongjoong unconsciously looks for him first in crowded spaces.
Knows Hongjoong gets visibly irritated when Seonghwa skips meals but only sighs at everyone else.
But knowing is different from believing.
Seonghwa looks away before the thought can settle.
"He’s right," Yeosang picks up another can. "He can choose whoever he wants."
He turns the can once. Twice.
”And he can choose you.”
Seonghwa shakes his head.
“He won’t.”
“Says who?”
“Says–” Seonghwa closes his eyes, mouth twitching in a flash of frustration. “Sang-ah, the universe wrote the name of someone with the same name as him on my chest as a joke, and left his bare. That means something. It has to mean something."
“Why do you care so much about what the universe tells you?” Yeosang mutters lowly, there’s an edge to his voice now. “The universe can make mistakes too, can’t it? Hongjoong-hyung is living proof of that.”
His eyes drop to his own chest instinctively before lifting again.
”And shouldn’t we get a chance to choose too?”
"I do choose." The words come out quietly, with the weight of something that has been carried for a very long time. Seonghwa sweeps up a candy wrapper that’s already been swept twice before. "I chose him then. I choose him now. I'll choose him every day of my life, Sang-ah. I'll choose him even when I eventually meet whoever the universe actually chose for me."
“If he’s willing to try,” he says again, softer now, “why won’t you let him?”
”Because he can choose.”
“I don’t understand,” Yeosang says more quietly. “If you love him this much, and he loves you this much–”
“No–”
Seonghwa cuts him off immediately. He cannot survive hearing that sentence completed out loud. Not when some awful, starving part of him wants so desperately to believe it.
Not once has he had this conversation, or any version of it, with any of the members before.
Never.
He’s never spoke out about Wooyoung’s teasing comments tossed carelessly across their dinner table and in practice rooms that suddenly felt too small. Never addressed Yunho’s eyes darting between them whenever Hongjoong’s voice dipped into something too gentle, too tender for someone you told yourself was just a friend. Never returned the knowing looks Yeosang has been giving him for years now, quiet and perceptive and unbearably gentle.
But standing here makes everything feel horrifyingly real.
Because saying it out loud means admitting it exists beyond his daydreams and his fantasies. Means acknowledging that maybe he has not imagined every lingering touch, every softened look, every moment that felt dangerously close to becoming something else.
He takes a shaky breath, trying to force his pulse back under control. Trying to stop his eyes from burning.
“What if he doesn’t choose me to be his eventually?” The words come out finally, raw and aching. “You think I haven’t thought about this a million times before?”
Seonghwa looks up, feels the back of his eyes burn.
“Sang-ah, I want to be brave. I truly do,” his fingers tightening around the broom. “But if I tell him, then he has to decide what to do with it. And what if he really does try to love me back, and then one day realises I was never actually what he wanted?”
Seonghwa laughs again, but there’s nothing happy in it.
“What if he chooses to figure it out with someone else entirely and I have to stand there and watch and be happy for him because I love him and that’s what you do when you love someone–"
The words run out.
Because it’s true. Sometimes when the night was especially quiet, he’d let himself think, imagine a version of him that was braver, who’d try. Who doesn’t decide that the only outcome of this is heartbreak.
That version of him would walk straight to Hongjoong and say it simply.
I love you. I’ve always loved you.
And in that imagined silence afterward, Hongjoong would look at him like there was never any question at all. Like he’d been waiting all this time for Seonghwa to say it first.
But morning always comes.
Light spills through the curtains. Mingi burns toast in the kitchen. Wooyoung starts yelling from San’s room before seven in the morning for reasons no one understands. Reality settles itself back into place.
The version of him that is brave doesn’t survive daylight.
He presses his lips together and sweeps at the same spot for the third time, just to have something to do with his hands.
“Because we're not inevitable.”
Yeosang’s gaze sharpens immediately.
“That’s not a reason,” he says quietly. “That’s an excuse, hyung, and you know it.”
Seonghwa flinches.
“Having a soulmate mark doesn’t guarantee happiness,” Yeosang continues. “So why does going against it guarantee unhappiness? Why do you trust the universe more than you trust yourself?” His eyes glint faintly. “More than you trust Hongjoong-hyung?”
The can in Yeosang’s hand crumples in his tightening grasp.
“You think loving someone means deciding everything for them before they even get the chance to choose. But that’s just the easier option, isn’t it?”
“Yeosang–”
“It’s easier to not start. It’s easier to not try. Because then you’ll never hurt, you’ll never be rejected. I understand that,” his voice breaks. “But don’t tell me, tell yourself that you’re choosing him when you won’t even give him the chance to choose you back.”
“Enough-” Seonghwa snaps, clipped and defensive.
But Yeosang doesn’t back down.
“There’s nothing impressive about suffering in silence, hyung. I know you know, I know you see what we see. But you’re just running away because you’re scared–”
“Aren’t you doing the same thing?”
Yeosang’s jaw snaps shut. His eyes widen for a moment with raw shock, grief scribbled across his features, not knowing where else to go.
“That’s–” Yeosang starts, then stops. Swallows. “That’s different, hyung. I don’t–” His fingers curl slightly against his palm. “We don’t–”
“Is it really?” Seonghwa’s voice is quieter now but no less sharp. “You’re telling me that you’ll choose him too? That you’d risk it all just because you think you know better than what’s written on your skin?”
Yeosang’s mouth opens slightly, then closes again. Nothing comes out.
Seonghwa exhales once, strained.
“You don’t know what it’s like to have to hope against the universe, Sang-ah.”
Yeosang doesn't say anything for a long moment.
When he does speak, his voice is terribly quiet.
“I do know, hyung. You know I do.”
Seonghwa’s gaze snaps up.
He sees it then, how crumpled Yeosang’s face is. It’s a very specific, awful, fragile expression that exists only when you’ve carried a love so deep inside for so long that it’s become indistinguishable from grief. It’s a look Seonghwa recognises immediately because he sees it in the mirror everyday.
Seonghwa understands exactly what he’s done.
"Oh, Sang-ah–"
He’s moving before the words are fully out, crossing the room in two quick steps. His hand catches Yeosang’s arm gently.
"Sang-ah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that – I know you do, I know, I–" His voice soft and full of regret. "Baby, I'm sorry–"
“It’s okay, hyung,” Yeosang’s hand comes up to cover his. He smiles, tired and small. “I’m sorry too, for pushing.”
Seonghwa looks at him, the beautiful but tired face of the one person who’s seen him, who’s kept his secret, carried his pain with him for years without once making him like a burden.
He lifts a hand and brushes Yeosang’s hair back, then leans forward and presses a brief, gentle kiss to his forehead.
"Go join the others and get some rest, Sang-ah," Seonghwa says softly. "I'll finish up here. You’ve had a long day."
Yeosang holds his gaze for a moment longer.
Then he turns, picks up another can from the coffee table, and drops it into the plastic bag. Then another. And another.
He says nothing more.
And neither does Seonghwa.
They finish in silence – two people bound by the same kind of love, the same kind of grief, cleaning up after the people they love, carrying the weight they carry because neither knows how to put it down.
From down the corridor, the noises from Wooyoung’s and Hongjoong’s room continue filtering down, loud and uncaring and unknowing.