Archive of Our Own

They’re the last ones left in the studio when Hongjoong says, “Okay, let’s run through the bridge again and then do a few takes of the outro, and then that’s it.”

It’s late, but Seonghwa doesn’t feel tired. Instead, his body buzzes like he’s downed three energy drinks one right after another, his leg bouncing where he sits sprawled in a chair in front of the workstation, right next to Hongjoong.

They’ve been at it for a while now, picking up where they left off on their last session. Even Ollounder came by for a moment to check in on them before heading home, then left with a wave and a promise of having coffee delivered for the two of them. The coffee arrived fifteen minutes later while Hongjoong was going over the interlude again, tweaking until he was satisfied. They’d recorded the vocals for that part in their first session the day before, but Hongjoong has kept going back to it over and over again ever since they stepped foot into the studio today.

Seonghwa hasn’t even touched the coffee, jittery enough already. So here he is now, sitting in his chair, swinging a little from side to side and bouncing his leg while he waits for Hongjoong to finish.

Watching Hongjoong work is always a little breathtaking. Seonghwa has been here for nearly everything, except for those first steps Hongjoong had taken before Seonghwa came to the company. Everything that has come after, though, Seonghwa has been there to witness. And Hongjoong—Hongjoong has never lacked boldness in pursuing his dreams with abandon, but it took him some time to fully come into his own. Now, though, there’s an ease and confidence about him when he’s in the studio, the kind of commanding presence that Seonghwa sees most often on stage. Hongjoong is, in many respects, a genius, and it’s very hard not to be in love with him just a little bit.

Seonghwa stopped trying a long, long time ago.

“Yah, are you even listening to me?” Hongjoong says, waving a hand in front of Seonghwa’s face. “Park Seonghwa-ssi, Earth is calling.”

Seonghwa blinks. His eyes follow the movement of Hongjoong’s hand, the pretty curve of his arm. Hongjoong is wearing a loose t-shirt that exposes his collarbones and makes his tattoo peek out whenever he raises his arm. It’s not quite see-through, but the fabric is sheer enough that Seonghwa can just about make out the contours of his body beneath it—the defined shape of his sturdy chest, the flat planes of his stomach.

“Sorry, I must have spaced out,” Seonghwa manages, shaking off whatever has come over him.

Hongjoong gives him a considering look. “Are you tired?” he asks. “You usually don’t stay up so late…”

Seonghwa shakes his head. “No, no, I’m good,” he reassures Hongjoong. “Really, I’m good to go whenever.”

This entire experience has been a fever dream, blurry around the edges of Seonghwa’s vision, the colors a little too bright, too vivid to be reality. At times he thinks there’s nothing left for him but to wake up, yet for some reason, he keeps on dreaming.

It’s a good dream, too. Not only does he get to do the kind of music he’s wanted to try for so long, but he’s doing it with Hongjoong, of all people. The only person he would’ve trusted to understand what he really wants out of this project. The only person he wanted to do this with.

After all, Hongjoong knows him better than anyone else.

It’s the most they’ve been around each other since they moved out of their old dorms, and Seonghwa finds himself thrown out of his equilibrium every once in a while. He thought that years of sharing a room with Hongjoong had inoculated him against the mesmerizing power of Hongjoong’s presence. But this whole process has only served to remind Seonghwa how impossible it is for anyone to take their eyes off Hongjoong, how inevitable that one would be affected by his gravitational pull.

Seonghwa’s name might hide a star within its strokes, but in truth, he’s been orbiting around Hongjoong for the longest time.

By the time they finish, they’re almost delirious with giddiness, the frantic energy refusing to dissipate even once they pull their headphones off and lean against each other, laughing. It’s the kind of laughter that comes with exhaustion and the exhilaration of a job well done, the kind that rises in the pit of the stomach and bubbles up, impossible to tame.

They recorded the last take of the outro with their arms around each other’s shoulders, spitting their words into the microphone, loose-limbed and resting their heads against each other. Now, Hongjoong is glowing where he leans with his arm around Seonghwa’s neck. He’s beautiful like this, the most alive a person has ever looked.

Neither of them can stop smiling.

“I missed you,” Seonghwa mumbles nonsensically into the side of Hongjoong’s head, his hair tickling Seonghwa’s lips when he speaks.

Hongjoong hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s been here the entire time, through comeback preparations and the tour, and practice and studio time. They’ve seen each other nearly every day, and yet it still feels like Seonghwa has only just now regained access to some part of Hongjoong that was unreachable to him for months.

He missed Hongjoong even while standing right by his side. That is a truth Seonghwa doesn’t quite want Hongjoong to know.

“Huh?” Hongjoong cants his neck to look up at Seonghwa, still grinning.

Seonghwa responds with a grin of his own. “Nothing,” he says. “Wow, I can’t believe we actually did it.”

Hongjoong laughs, exuberant, throwing his head back, and Seonghwa’s heart clenches in the tight vise of his ribs.

“C’mon, let’s check the last take and see which one we want to keep, and then we can wrap it up,” Hongjoong says, but neither of them is eager to let go. Instead, they keep clinging to each other, feeding the frenetic energy that crackles between them.

Eventually, though, they stumble out of the booth, only to be rewarded when they listen back to the last take and turn to each other at the same moment.

“That’s the one, right?” Hongjoong says.

Seonghwa nods. “Yeah,” he says. They sound so good, like they were always meant to do this together. Seonghwa wants to kiss Hongjoong so bad his hands are shaking. “Yeah, that’s the one.”

“Okay. Okay,” Hongjoong keeps repeating, like he can’t quite believe this, either. He saves the files and logs out, then shuts down the equipment.

The digital clock hanging on the wall above the sound booth window announces that it’s nearing one in the morning. It doesn’t matter. Neither of them would be able to fall sleep right now anyway.

“Come on, Seonghwa-ssi,” Hongjoong teases as if reading his mind, pulling on the wide, kimono-style sleeve of Seonghwa’s shirt playfully. “Let’s celebrate.”

Seonghwa wrinkles his nose. “Seonghwa-ssi?” he parrots.

“Seonghwa-ya.” Hongjoong says it softly, quietly, there-and-you-miss-it.

Seonghwa doesn’t miss it. “Where are we going?” he asks as Hongjoong turns off the lights and then the door closes behind them with a beep of the electronic lock. Some pochas might be still open even this late into the night, but they probably shouldn’t risk it.

“My studio,” Hongjoong says, dragging Seonghwa behind him by the sleeve of his shirt, like he has to make sure Seonghwa will follow. How silly. Seonghwa would follow him anywhere. “I have some whisky stashed in there that I got from Leez-hyung last time he went abroad.”

Seonghwa frowns. “You don’t even like whisky,” he says. “I don’t even like whisky.”

Hongjoong just looks at him over the shoulder and smiles. “Don’t worry, I should have a bottle of Coke there, too, so we can mix it.”

Walking the hallways of the Edenary studios this late into the night, Seonghwa feels like he’s a trainee again, sneaking where he doesn’t belong. But the truth is, he has his own studio space here, and he’s just finished recording a song that he participated in writing. The concept came from him, too—the sound, the idea, the aesthetic. He has every right to be here, no longer just a sneaky usurper pretending to fit in. It still feels a little surreal. It feels like he could do anything right now.

Hongjoong breaks off into a jog when they round the corner to where his studio is located, only to almost trip over a shoelace that has come undone. Seonghwa catches him at the last moment and they both go careening into a wall, landing with an audible oof pushed out of their lungs. For a moment, everything is quiet, and then they break out into giggles at the same time. They’re still laughing, slightly hysterical and on the verge of tears, as Hongjoong takes three tries to unlock the door by punching in the code, then finally reaches into his pocket for the ID card. The door beeps quietly when he swipes the card over the scanner, and then they spill inside, the giggles finally subsiding.

“You need to be more careful, Hongjoong-ah,” Seonghwa tells him.

“I’m fine, though. I’m fine.” He twirls in place before coming to face Seonghwa again and smiles, one corner of his mouth lifting up playfully. He takes a step closer—so close Seonghwa can feel the rush of air when he exhales. “See? Not a scratch.”

Danger.

Hongjoong usually doesn’t get this close. Not like this—like the air is charged between them, making the hairs on the back of Seonghwa’s neck stand up.

He swallows, throat dry and tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. “The drinks?” he says, just to burst that bubble around them. As expected, Hongjoong snaps out of whatever has possessed him and takes a step back.

All returning to normal. A balancing game. That’s how it always has been between them.

“Yeah, yeah, hold on, let me find some glasses.” With that, Hongjoong turns and drops into a crouch, rummaging through the cabinet tucked into the corner of the room, then emerges with two glasses that are most definitely not whisky glasses, but they will do. Then, from the bottom drawer of his desk, he produces an unopened bottle of whisky and two cans of Coke.

Neither of them is really a whisky drinker, but it’s not that difficult to mix a drink when all you have are two ingredients.

“Wait, hold on,” Hongjoong says, “I think there’s some ice left in the freezer. I’m gonna go get some.”

He leaves the door ajar as he makes his trek to the mini fridge they keep in the little nook at the end of the hallway. From his spot on the couch, Seonghwa can hear the clanking of ice cubes being transferred into a bowl, the way Hongjoong fights the freezer drawer that gets stuck sometimes when the fridge hasn’t been defrosted in a while. The heels of Hongjoong’s shoes click against the floor when he makes his way back, the sound getting closer and closer until the door swings open again and Hongjoong steps onto the rug that lines the studio’s floor.

Suddenly the only audible sound in the room is the sound of their own breathing. Hongjoong closes the door and locks it, trapping the intimate silence in with them.

“Do you want to listen to it?” he asks, already booting up his computer as if anticipating the answer. “It won’t be the final mix, and we’re still waiting for the spoken interlude part, but I can have the rough track ready in, like, ten minutes. Five. Just give me a moment to—”

“Yeah,” Seonghwa says, nodding frantically. “Yeah, I want to hear it. Please.”

Hongjoong works for a moment while Seonghwa drinks. It’s not too bad, even though it’s not Seonghwa’s favorite. It doesn’t matter, though. That’s not the point of this. The point is that Seonghwa can sit here and watch Hongjoong transform a raw idea Seonghwa had into something tangible, something real.

Once it’s done, no one will be able to take it away. It will be theirs forever, belonging to just the two of them. A proof of something, maybe.

“Okay, I think it’s as polished as I can make it right now,” Hongjoong says, spinning in his office chair to face Seonghwa. “We’ll have to work on it some more with the producer hyungs, but for now, here goes.”

He clicks play, and the first notes of the track echo from the sound system, haunting and menacing, and just the way Seonghwa imagined it. The beat is so, so dirty—Seonghwa has already known this, but now, with their voices properly layered over the track, the stark contrast brings that heaviness out even more. He’s been here for every stage of this project, from the initial idea to this—almost-final-but-not-quite mix—but it still feels surreal to listen to the sounds spat out by the speakers.

Hongjoong turns up the volume until the bass gets almost deafening. Seonghwa feels like the walls are shaking around him, blood rushing in his ears, heart knocking wildly against his ribs. It’s everything he’s ever imagined, and more. He can’t believe Hongjoong made him sound like that.

“Wow,” Seonghwa manages once the last notes of the outro fade into silence. “That was so good. Hongjoong-ah, you’re a genius.”

Hongjoong squirms under the praise, opting to reach for his own drink instead of responding. It’s only once his glass is half-empty that he asks, “Do you think the fans will like it?”

Seonghwa is intimately familiar with the kind of doubt that plagues Hongjoong. It’s not what the fans would expect from the two of them. They’d most likely want something softer, more tender. More romantic. Seonghwa is not an idiot—he knows what people are saying about them, how they read their interactions. The worst thing is—it’s not all just for show. If it were just fanservice, that would be one thing: a mask Seonghwa pulls off at the end of the day, when the cameras are off. Instead, it’s so much worse. Seonghwa means it when he looks at Hongjoong like that, when he demands his attention. He’s doing it for the fans’ benefit, too, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

“I think they’ll understand what we’re trying to say,” he tells Hongjoong, then gestures to the empty half of the couch. “Come, sit with me. Let’s toast.”

Their glasses clink when they bring them together, and Seonghwa finds that he minds the taste less and less with each sip of his drink. The underlying smokiness of the whisky and the mildly unpleasant burn it leaves at the back of his throat are still there, but with the Coke mixed in, it tastes fine. The ice has mostly melted by now, leaving the glass sweating on the outside, droplets of water leaving darker spots on Seonghwa’s loose-fitting linen pants. It’s warm in Seoul, and Seonghwa sweats easily enough as it is.

“Do you like it?” Hongjoong asks.

His eyes glint and glitter in the low light of the studio. He had some mood lighting installed a while ago, and the room is now bathed in pinkish-orange hue that casts deep shadows across Hongjoong’s face. He looks beautiful like this. His hair keeps falling into his eyes, shiny and dark. He’ll bleach it soon for the comeback, and he’s decided on blue for the music video and promotions, but for now, Seonghwa gets to enjoy him like this.

“Hongjoong-ah, I love it.” He feels dizzy with happiness, the unbridled joy spilling over. Seonghwa tucks his feet under himself on the couch, bringing him closer to Hongjoong, their knees nearly touching. “You’re like—you’re like magic, you know? You can do anything. I just had this vague idea, and then you turned it into this.”

“Aish, Seonghwa-ssi, stop talking like it was just me,” Hongjoong chides. “If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have even considered going for this kind of sound. So if there’s anyone here who should be thanking anyone, it’s me.” He takes another sip of his drink, breaking out into a grin around the rim of the glass. “It’s good, though, right?”

“It is,” Seonghwa admits. “It’s so fucking good.”

Even once the first drink turns into the second, the giddy energy doesn’t dissipate. Seonghwa is still riding the high of listening to their song for the first time, in a more or less finished state, and Hongjoong seems to be the same—restless, fidgeting in his spot on the couch. Their bodies keep brushing, and for once, Hongjoong doesn’t shy away from the touch.

No—that’s not fair to him. It’s not like Hongjoong and Seonghwa never touch. But usually it’s Hongjoong who initiates, and Seonghwa only follows suit, all too aware of the feelings that bubble in his chest. He doesn’t mean to overstep, to take something Hongjoong is not willing to give. Always careful, always tiptoeing around the kind of intimacy he really craves. But tonight Hongjoong leans into it—leans into Seonghwa and reciprocates, watching him with the kind of expression that Seonghwa could only describe as hungry.

“You know,” Hongjoong says, staring into the bottom of his glass like it soothes the sting of whatever intimate truth is about to spill from his mouth, “I’m really glad it was you. I’m really glad I got to do this with you.”

“Me too,” Seonghwa says easily. “I really wanted to do this with you.”

That is a constant truth of Seonghwa’s life. A never-ending list of things he wants to do with Hongjoong. At least he gets to have this, despite everything. One item to cross off—not too bad, considering.

By the time Hongjoong pours for them again, they’re—not drunk, not really, but maybe something approaching tipsy. The drinks have been more Coke than whisky, and Seonghwa feels only pleasantly loose-limbed, shoulders shrugging off some of the tension he usually carries. Hongjoong seems to be in a similar state, relaxed but still strangely restless at the same time, like the energy they’ve accumulated within their bodies has had nowhere to go. It still buzzes just beneath their skin, demanding to be let out.

“Can you play it again?” Seonghwa asks.

Hongjoong gives him a cheeky, lopsided smile. “Oh?” he teases. “So you liked it that much?”

Seonghwa swats him on the knee. He intends to pull his hand away immediately, but the touch lingers. “Don’t be like that,” he says, finally letting his hand fall, but it stays where it is, right there between them on the couch. Hongjoong shifts, and the side of his knee is now touching the back of Seonghwa’s hand.

It could be an accident.

Hongjoong presses play again, then curls up more comfortably on the couch, his head falling back. He’s closer than he was before, one knee drawn up and bouncing with the unspent energy. He keeps looking at Seonghwa with the kind of expression Seonghwa has never been able to decipher.

They drink until there’s nothing left in their glasses, but neither of them makes a move to pour again.

Around them, the heavy beat of the song resonates all the way down to their bones. Seonghwa can feel it in his teeth, his jaw, rattling his skull. He feels like he could take on the entire world right now. He’s more raw energy than flesh and blood right now, dizzy with the exhilarating newness of this. Seonghwa has been an idol for a while, but this is an untrodden path for him, and he has Hongjoong to guide him.

They could be anything together.

They could be invincible.

Hongjoong is moving his head to the beat now, leaning even further into Seonghwa’s space, biting his lower lip like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing this. His fingers keep moving with the rhythm, rings catching light every once in a while. Their voices echo in Seonghwa’s ears, clear and powerful and hungry.

They could be anything.

Anything they wanted.

Anything at all.

Seonghwa kisses Hongjoong just as the outro comes in—too sudden, too fast, too much momentum. Their lips get crushed together, and Seonghwa freezes for a moment, beginning to pull away with dread pooling like ice at the bottom of his stomach, but Hongjoong drags him in and parts his mouth, lips slotting together.

Seonghwa is barely breathing, acutely aware of all the places they’re touching. His hand on the side of Hongjoong’s neck. Their knees bumping together on the couch. Hongjoong’s grip on the front of Seonghwa’s shirt, fabric crumpled as his hand closes into a fist. His other hand, resting against Seonghwa’s waist, fingers digging into the skin.

It’s been so long since Seonghwa last kissed anyone, and he feels clumsy, out of practice, but it doesn’t matter, not when Hongjoong keeps kissing him.

“Come here, come here,” he whispers against Seonghwa’s mouth and pulls him forward until Seonghwa understands and climbs into his lap, knees sinking into the couch cushions where they bracket Hongjoong’s hips.

Oh, god, Seonghwa thinks. Oh, god, this is really happening.

They should talk about it—and they will, but Seonghwa doesn’t want to spook Hongjoong, not when he’s reciprocating every movement, every slide of Seonghwa’s lips against his. One of Hongjoong’s hands slips beneath Seonghwa’s shirt, palm flat against his stomach. The touch sends sparks down the column of Seonghwa’s spine. Hongjoong’s hand is a hot brand searing itself into Seonghwa’s skin.

Hongjoong groans into Seonghwa’s mouth when Seonghwa shifts in his lap, and it’s then that he realizes Hongjoong is starting to get hard. That knowledge lights something up inside Seonghwa. He feels electrified, live current jumping between them in little arcs wherever their bodies brush. Hongjoong’s hand continues roaming beneath Seonghwa’s shirt, fingers splayed wide as he touches everywhere he can reach—Seonghwa’s abdomen, the stretch of his ribs, fabric rucking up when Hongjoong touches his chest.

“Please,” Seonghwa breathes into Hongjoong’s open mouth, and he barely knows what he’s asking for himself—something, anything, whatever Hongjoong is ready to give him.

The answer to that seems to be everything, if the way Hongjoong slides his hands to cup Seonghwa’s ass, pressing their groins together, is any indication. The friction is too much and not enough all at once—the clothes are in the way, but even this touch makes Seonghwa lose it.

They’re close enough that they can hear each other’s breathing even with the song still playing on loop, filling them with the reverberations of the sound. It’s the kind of music to fuck to, and both of them have been skirting this topic throughout the whole process, but they must have known it all the same. They’ve called their track many things, except that one. That doesn’t make it untrue.

The heavy beat of it pulses in time with Seonghwa’s heartbeat, with the flow of blood in his veins, his entire body throbbing with it, and he knows that Hongjoong must be the same. It makes them even more frantic as they kiss, spit and tongue and teeth clacking once or twice, both of them a little rusty but no less eager.

Seonghwa keeps grinding down on Hongjoong, who meets him thrust for thrust, the drag of fabric over their clothed cocks maddening. It’s been literal years since Seonghwa managed to get off with someone else rather than his own hand, and it’s enough to make him lightheaded. He touches Hongjoong all over—hands running over the side of his neck, across his chest, up the muscular lines of his arms, fingers burying themselves in Hongjoong’s hair. This close, Hongjoong smells like the most stubborn notes of his perfume, still lingering after a full day, and his favorite dry shampoo.

The music keeps going, neither of them having the presence of mind to turn it off, but that’s good, too, letting them keep the pace, giving them a rhythm to follow. It feels fitting.

Seonghwa can’t stop feeling it with his entire body. It pulses in his orbital bone and pounds in his ears. He can taste it, deep and savory, on the tip of his tongue.

Hongjoong, though—Hongjoong just tastes sweet, and a little bit like whisky. Seonghwa wants him so bad he can barely breathe.

They fall into each other when Hongjoong moves a little too abruptly and Seonghwa topples, leaving them chest to chest, Seonghwa’s face in the crook of Hongjoong’s neck. He kisses him right there, where he’s warm and a little salty with sweat. When Hongjoong’s hands don’t stop their roaming, Seonghwa grows bolder, too. He tugs at the flimsy sleeve of Hongjoong’s t-shirt to expose his bicep, then leans in to press his mouth to the stark black of the tattoo.

Beneath him, Hongjoong groans, his hips jerking furiously, so Seonghwa does it again, and again, kissing up towards his armpit, his lips on every part of the tattoo, soft and tender.

There’s really no one like Hongjoong, and Seonghwa wants to make sure he knows this.

“Hey, hey, let me,” Hongjoong says feverishly.

Before Seonghwa can collect his scattered mind enough to ask what kind of permission Hongjoong is waiting for, he feels the searing heat of Hongjoong’s palm touching Seonghwa’s abdomen, the tips of his fingers slipping beneath the waistband of Seonghwa’s pants. And Seonghwa wants this—he wants this so much; he grabs Hongjoong by the wrist and pushes his hand further down, a groan torn out of his throat when Seonghwa feels Hongjoong’s fingers close around his cock.

“Yeah, like that, please,” Seonghwa whispers before he leans in to kiss him again, his breath growing labored when Hongjoong’s hand begins to move. It’s an awkward angle, and Seonghwa has no idea how much experience Hongjoong has; his movements are a little clumsy, a little halting, but it’s the best thing Seonghwa has ever felt. He keeps rocking into the touch with his hips until they establish a rhythm that has Seonghwa panting into the crook of Hongjoong’s neck.

Hongjoong’s mouth keeps pressing hot, frantic kisses to any stretch of skin he can find—he sucks on the underside of Seonghwa’s jaw, kisses down the column of his throat, soft lips and hot tongue and just a hint of teeth.

Seonghwa is so close already, but he doesn’t want it to end.

Beneath him, Hongjoong’s hips keep bucking, seeking friction. Seonghwa taps his wrist and Hongjoong releases his hold on Seonghwa’s cock, hand slipping out of his pants, sticky with precome.

Oh god, Seonghwa thinks, mortified.

He always gets so wet during sex, so sloppy. It’s been a turnoff for some people he slept with in the past, but Hongjoong doesn’t seem to mind. Before he can think about it too much, though, Seonghwa shuffles backwards, then slips down to the ground to kneel between Hongjoong’s parted legs.

The heavy bass pounds in Seonghwa’s ears when he pulls down the zipper of Hongjoong’s jeans and reaches into his underwear to pull his cock out. He doesn’t tease—instead, he gives it a few strokes and closes his mouth over the head, sucking.

A choked-off, broken sound spills from Hongjoong’s mouth, his hips jerking, but Seonghwa doesn’t mind. He’s never had much of a gag reflex, and he just sinks down deeper, cheeks hollowed and tongue working the underside. Seonghwa knows he’s good at this—he knows that he can make it good for Hongjoong, best he’s ever had. Hongjoong’s thighs keep trembling as Seonghwa sucks him off with single-minded focus. It’s wet and hot and obscenely loud, the sound almost drowning out the music in Seonghwa’s ears.

“Fuck,” Hongjoong breathes when Seonghwa’s mouth sinks all the way down. His hands move: one to rest at the crown of Seonghwa’s head, fingers tangling in Seonghwa’s hair; the other one to cup the side of Seonghwa’s face, thumb stroking where Seonghwa’s cheek bulges with the girth of Hongjoong’s cock.

Seonghwa keeps going until his jaw begins to ache and his lips start to tingle. Hongjoong must be close already, but before he can come, Hongjoong pushes Seonghwa away by the shoulder with a whine, then grabs at him to haul him back to his feet and into Hongjoong’s lap. Seonghwa follows, just to be dragged in for another filthy, open-mouthed kiss.

Hongjoong’s hand sneaks between them to work Seonghwa’s pants open and get his cock out, and then he’s wrapping his palm around both of them, barely able to maintain the grip with how small his hands are. Seonghwa helps, fingers tangling with Hongjoong’s around their erections and they move together, easy as breathing. They’ve always been in sync, and that extends to this, too—their bodies following the same rhythm, moving to the heavy beat drumming in their ears.

Seonghwa is sweating in earnest by now—perspiration dripping down his spine, pearling at the temples and in his hairline, gathering just above his upper lip. His shirt clings to his back, and he breaks away for a moment to pull it over his head and toss it to the side.

They never stop kissing.

In the end, Seonghwa ends up sprawled face-down on the couch, bracing himself on his elbows as Hongjoong drapes himself over him. He keeps pressing kisses to the back of Seonghwa’s neck, his shoulders, the column of his spine. Seonghwa’s pants are pushed just halfway down his thighs, and he feels so exposed like this, so vulnerable. It drives him crazy that he can’t see Hongjoong’s face, that he can’t tell what Hongjoong is feeling, but maybe this is better, too, because he’s already getting overwhelmed.

Seonghwa can feel the heavy weight of Hongjoong’s cock sliding against his ass each time Hongjoong grinds down, and it’s almost like—

“Don’t,” Seonghwa says, and feels Hongjoong still behind him. God. Maybe he’s blown it just now. Maybe this is it—the point where Hongjoong comes back to his senses. “Not—not inside.”

He can’t have a repeat of the last time he did this with someone.

“I won’t—don’t worry, I won’t,” Hongjoong whispers into Seonghwa’s nape, then licks at the skin there, sweaty and salty. Seonghwa’s hair is plastered to the back of his neck, damp and dripping. Their song keeps playing, their voices fading in and out, the beat rattling Seonghwa’s body all the way down to the bone each time Hongjoong moves against him.

Behind, there’s the sound of spitting, followed by the slick sound of Hongjoong working his hand around his cock, and then he’s back, sliding in between Seonghwa’s ass cheeks, a low, throaty sound dragged out from his chest. Seonghwa is freshly waxed, coming off an appointment just two days prior, and the glide of Hongjoong’s cock is smooth, sending shivers up and down Seonghwa’s spine.

Is this good?

Am I good?

He wants to ask, but he doesn’t dare open his mouth, eager to lap up all the sounds Hongjoong keeps making—breathy, ragged, broken, and so, so quiet that Seonghwa almost misses them, drowned out by the loud music.

There’s a sound to Seonghwa’s left—a rustle of papers falling to the ground as Hongjoong reaches out with his hand too far to steady himself and topples over a haphazard pile. Seonghwa doesn’t even care, too far gone to worry about it.

Hongjoong’s arm loops around Seonghwa’s waist, palm closing around his cock. It feels so good, so right that Seonghwa is on the verge of tears, too overwhelmed to do anything other than hold on. He wants to kiss Hongjoong, but he can’t see his face—not right now, not when Hongjoong is not-quite fucking him, each slide that brushes against Seonghwa’s hole making him clench in anticipation.

But no, he said—not inside. Not this time.

Hongjoong loses it eventually, breathing heavily with his forehead pressed between Seonghwa’s shoulder blades, draped all over his back as his hips keep jerking and stuttering. Seonghwa feels the moment Hongjoong comes—he stills, and then a spray of warmth hits the small of Seonghwa’s back, the swell of his ass. That’s enough to tip him over the edge—the dirty filthiness of it, the thought that Hongjoong just came all over him—and Seonghwa spills into Hongjoong’s fist with a strangled moan and his eyes screwed tightly shut, toes curling.

They stay like that for a moment, catching their breath.

It’s the music cutting out mid-verse that alerts Seonghwa to the fact that Hongjoong is no longer draped over him. He needs—a tissue, a wet wipe, a shower—something to clean himself up with, but when he turns around and sees Hongjoong’s face, he understands immediately what’s about to happen.

The silence in the room is deafening. Seonghwa’s ears are ringing.

Hongjoong, wide-eyed and clearly horrified by his own actions, says, “Seonghwa, I—” Pause. “We—I don’t think we should have done this.” And another one. “I’m sorry.” He tucks himself in, zips up his jeans. Like nothing ever happened. Like his come isn’t drying on Seonghwa’s back. Seonghwa can already see the cogs turning in Hongjoong’s head, the justifications he will repeat to himself until he believes them. “We just got carried away, that’s all.”

Seonghwa’s face shutters.

Of course. How silly of him to think this actually meant as much to Hongjoong as it did to Seonghwa. How silly of him to expect anything at all.

God, he’s so stupid.

The papers are still on the floor.

“Right,” Seonghwa says, tongue wooden in his mouth. “Right, of course. That’s—yeah. You’re right, we just weren’t thinking straight.”

He pulls up his pants without wiping himself clean, but he doesn’t care—not when doing that would mean asking Hongjoong for a tissue, bringing his attention back to the fact that he came all over Seonghwa not even two minutes ago.

“I’m just gonna get these,” Seonghwa says, kneeling to collect the papers strewn across the floor, “and then I’ll get out of your hair.”

His hands are trembling, but with his back turned to Hongjoong, no one needs to see it.

“Hey, Seonghwa, just leave it,” Hongjoong says, tone urgent, but he doesn’t approach. Doesn’t try to touch Seonghwa. Doesn’t do anything at all. “Seriously, leave it, it’s fine.”

Seonghwa can’t turn around yet. His eyes keep stinging. His throat and chest feel tight. Stubbornly, he picks up all the papers and forces himself not to throw up. Mechanically, he sets the stack of papers back on the table and picks up his phone, wedged between the couch cushions, to stuff it in his pocket.

He needs to go.

He needs to not be here right now, bearing witness to becoming one of the greatest regrets of Hongjoong’s life.

But it was Hongjoong who drove them to the studio earlier, in his own car. It’s two in the morning now, and Seonghwa could call for a company car, but this late, he’ll be waiting for a while before it gets here. The subway is no longer running.

“If you wait five minutes, I can take us—” Hongjoong says, as if reading Seonghwa’s mind, but Seonghwa just shakes his head.

“It’s fine,” he reassures him. He forces himself to look at Hongjoong and smile. “You must have things to take care of here. I’ll be okay on my own, don’t worry about it. Goodnight, Hongjoong-ah. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Seonghwa slips out of the studio before Hongjoong can say anything else, closing the door behind him with a soft click. Now that the initial shock has worn off, Seonghwa only feels numb as he takes the stairs down to the main entrance, and then out into the humid summer night in Seoul. It doesn’t matter. His shirt is already clinging to his back with the disgusting mix of sweat and drying come.

It doesn’t matter. Not like he can do anything about it now.

He pulls a mask over his face just in case, the flimsy cowl of his shirt over his head.

It’s not too far from the Edenary studios back to the dorms—not as close as it used to be back when they all lived together, but it doesn’t matter. Seonghwa can walk.

He holds it together through it all—the walk, the elevator ride up to their floor, the door opening with a quiet beep when he punches in the code. Thankfully, the apartment is dark and quiet, everyone else asleep.

His phone lights up with a text from Hongjoong just as Seonghwa puts his shoes away onto the rack by the front door.

Hongjoongie
[02:48 am]
let me know you got home safe, please…

Seonghwa presses his lips together. He’s not going to cry in the middle of his dorm at nearly three in the morning. That would be silly. Instead, he takes a deep breath, and then another, and reacts to the message with the thumbs up emoji. He doesn’t know if he can muster up a response to Hongjoong right now.

As quietly as he can, he tiptoes into the bathroom and turns on the shower, cranking the heat up as much as his body can take it. Then he scrubs himself methodically, everywhere, until no trace of Hongjoong is left on him, everything rubbed away. He must be red all over now, his skin raw and tender, and smelling of nothing but the nice, expensive body wash he uses that doesn’t aggravate his eczema.

Good.

It’s not until he’s lying in bed, staring into the ceiling, that Seonghwa’s eyes begin to sting, tears carving hot, salty tracks in his temples and soaking into the pillow. He’s quiet about it, sobbing into his hand to muffle the sound. No need to make a spectacle of himself.

It’s fine. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.

“Hyung, you got in pretty late last night, right?” Mingi asks at breakfast. “I woke up and heard you moving around.”

Seonghwa, who slept all of two and a half hours—fitfully, miserably—freezes in his seat at the table. The croissant he’s eating for breakfast tastes like cardboard all of a sudden.

“Sorry I woke you up, Mingi-ya,” he says. “Our session at the studio ran long, but we managed to finish last night.”

“Guess that explains why Hongjoong-hyung never came home,” San says, slurping his morning protein shake. They’re all going to the gym after this. “Wooyoungie said,” he adds like he even needs to explain. “I bet he stayed back at the studio to mix it, huh?”

Seonghwa swallows with difficulty. “I think so. I left earlier.”

He wonders if it’s too late to fake food poisoning and spend the day in bed. They have no schedules today, which is worse, because there’s nothing to distract Seonghwa from the fact that he and Hongjoong had sex last night. Nothing to distract him from how disastrously the whole affair ended.

Soon, Seonghwa will be an adult about this, but he needs at least a day to swallow down all the disappointment, all the hurt.

In the end, he ends up tagging along to the gym with Mingi and San. Staying alone in the dorm with nothing but his thoughts for company is an even less appealing prospect than sweating on the elliptical for an hour, and Seonghwa hopes it will be just the three of them. Inside, they find Seeun, Jinsik and Sumin, and they all greet them with a deep bow before returning to their exercise. Other than that, there’s no one else there—definitely not Hongjoong, who is probably still asleep in his studio or already up and working.

Seonghwa runs and does pull-ups; goes through a series of planks and sit-ups until his abdominal muscles feel like they’re on fire; San even talks him into doing some bench work and offers to spot Seonghwa, which is very sweet of him. Time passes, because it always does. At least Seonghwa is not looking at his phone, turning the last message from Hongjoong in his head over and over again.

It would be so much easier if he could be angry with Hongjoong. If he could be pissed off enough to block his number or at least mute their conversation so he wouldn’t have to see the quiet care Hongjoong always extends to Seonghwa. It would be so much easier if Hongjoong had been an asshole about this whole affair.

He wasn’t, is the thing.

Seonghwa should’ve seen it coming before he let Hongjoong rub himself off against his ass and come all over his back. He should’ve realized that this was just a spur of the moment thing for Hongjoong, who had no way of knowing it had been anything but that for Seonghwa. It was uncharacteristic of Hongjoong, who, to Seonghwa’s knowledge, has always been either extremely discreet about his hookups, or he simply never hooked up in all his time as a working idol. But that’s where Hongjoong was right—they did get carried away, too caught up in the moment to think clearly. Seonghwa can admit that. They were reckless and irresponsible, propelled by the infectious, giddy energy, the thrill of hearing their song for the first time, hungry for more.

Seonghwa shouldn’t have kissed Hongjoong at the studio. Maybe he shouldn’t have kissed him at all. But he did, and Hongjoong kissed him back, and then he shoved his hand down Seonghwa’s pants and let Seonghwa suck him off, so Seonghwa refuses to take all the blame for this.

Still, it hurts. For a moment there, straddling Hongjoong’s hips, with Hongjoong’s hot mouth sucking at the side of Seonghwa’s neck, he thought that maybe this would be the start of something. That maybe this was Hongjoong’s way of telling Seonghwa that they were finally on the same page.

Maybe not.

There’s still a faint bruise blooming where Hongjoong sucked a little too hard—nothing a little concealer won’t cover, but it’s the only surviving reminder of last night. Seonghwa loves it and hates it at the same time. It doesn’t hurt at all, but he can feel it all the same, like a strange phantom sensation of Hongjoong’s mouth on him.

It doesn’t matter. None of it does.

When Seonghwa checks his phone once they’re done with the workout, there are no new messages from Hongjoong. Nothing since last night—but Hongjoong has been messaging the fans here and there, which means he’s awake.

Ah, yeah, you caught me, I was at the studio all night again, Hongjoong has written.

Our Tiny know me so well!

Don’t worry about me, though! I’m resting well, and soon I’ll have some really nice surprises for all of you!

That’s a secret though…

Oh, you want me to spoil a little?

Hmmm…

Okay, here’s a spoiler: you’ll be able to hear my voice in your ear!

How’s that for a spoiler? Hehe…

I’ve been working hard, too, so please cheer me on! Fighting!

Seonghwa shakes his head, uncontrollably fond despite himself.

The feeling tugs at his heart, which lurches in his chest, bruised and aching. He likes observing the way Hongjoong speaks to their fans, because there’s always something infectiously honest about it. No matter how much he teases Atiny, Hongjoong always speaks his mind with them. Seonghwa is a little envious of that.

They don’t see each other until the following day, when they’re scheduled for more studio time to record Dreamy Day. Seonghwa is not the first one to arrive, and he welcomes the buffer of Yunho and Yeosang, who speak to Hongjoong and Maddox the next room over.

Hongjoong must notice Seonghwa’s arrival, but he simply raises his hand in a greeting like he would do any other day and tunes back into the ongoing conversation.

Seonghwa drinks his herbal tea in slow, measured gulps—a gift from his mom, supposed to help him keep his vocal cords in good condition. It doesn’t taste particularly good, but the effect it has is nice and soothing. Seonghwa will take it—especially with how much time they’ve been spending at the studio lately, in between concerts and other schedules, and with the phantom of the comeback hanging over them.

He’s a lot more even-keeled about everything today than he was yesterday. Seonghwa has given himself a day to be miserable about it and he’s sticking to it. But being an adult about it is much more difficult now that he can see Hongjoong in person again, acutely aware of how soft his lips are and how nice he smells in those secret places in the crook of his neck and just behind his ear—those that others don’t get to touch. It’s like a secret message Seonghwa has written for himself that burns through the bottom of his pocket, demanding to be read out loud in front of everyone.

But he can’t.

He can’t.

Those things are not for other people to know. Seonghwa’s knowledge of this feels stolen, too, especially now.

Hongjoong acts like nothing ever happened.

The recording session happens, and everyone sounds good. They’ve all been working hard in preparation for this as well as the rest of the tour and the impending comeback, taking regular vocal lessons on top of all the other things they’ve been doing.

Seonghwa is fine. His recording session goes fine. He feels a little stronger, a little taller when Hongjoong gives him praise through the intercom.

They don’t talk about it.

After the recording is done, Hongjoong invites all of them out for a meal. He sits close to Seonghwa, with only Jongho between them, and when their hands brush accidentally over the bowl of ssamjang, it’s only Seonghwa who almost drops his chopsticks. Hongjoong just pushes the bowl in Seonghwa’s direction.

Afterwards, Hongjoong takes Seonghwa, Wooyoung and San back to the dorms in his car, and there’s a moment when Seonghwa, sitting in the front passenger seat, thinks Hongjoong is going to say something. San and Wooyoung are preoccupied with each other in the backseat enough that Hongjoong and Seonghwa could probably have a little privacy.

But Hongjoong says nothing—just keeps driving through the afternoon traffic, strong, veiny hands resting on the steering wheel.

They come back to the dorms and Seonghwa is the last one out of the car.

They don’t talk about it.

If anyone notices that something is off between them, they don’t say anything. Truthfully, Seonghwa doesn’t think that anything is visibly off between them at all—they’re both acting like the adults they are, falling into familiar patterns. Sometimes Seonghwa thinks that Hongjoong’s eyes linger on him a little too long, but he always shakes it off. He’s just imagining whatever he wants to happen.

The only thing is that Seonghwa starts to avoid Hongjoong’s studio altogether. Before, he used to knock on his door at least once a week, bringing takeout for lunch or dinner, depending on which Hongjoong was more likely to skip that day. Sometimes he would hang out for a while, watching Hongjoong at work and messaging fans at the same time.

Now, Hongjoong’s studio might just as well not exist.

Seonghwa wonders idly if Hongjoong has noticed a change in the pattern—if Seonghwa is just making it pathetically obvious to him that things are not as okay between them as they used to be. For the first time since they moved, Seonghwa considers the fact that he’s no longer sharing a room with Hongjoong a blessing. He doesn’t know what he would do if he had to exist in the same space as Hongjoong at his most vulnerable.

The week before the comeback, Mingi catches Seonghwa on his way out.

“Hyung, can I ask you a favor?” he says, balancing on his heels as Seonghwa puts his shoes on in the entryway. “You’re heading to the studio, right? Can you give this to Hongjoong-hyung? I was supposed to give it to him yesterday but I forgot.”

Mingi ducks his head sheepishly, scratching at the back of his neck. In his other hand, in the outstretched palm rests a USB flash drive that might just as well be a bomb.

“Sure,” Seonghwa says, snatching the flash drive and shoving it in his pocket before he can change his mind. “I’ll pass it along.”

Mingi mumbles a quiet thanks and shuffles back into the apartment. It’s his day off; Seonghwa wouldn’t want to waste it on a round trip to the studio just to give Hongjoong a flash drive, either.

It’s a busy day at the Edenary studios when Seonghwa arrives. Maddox is there, as well as the entire Xikers rap line, talking by the front entrance; in the elevator, Seonghwa runs into Oliv and Ollounder. When he gets off on their floor, he almost barrels straight into Eden, bowing apologetically three times before going on his way.

Hongjoong is in his studio, too, just as Seonghwa expected. The door is unlocked; when Seonghwa knocks, Hongjoong simply calls out to enter.

Seonghwa sees the moment Hongjoong realizes who’s on the other side of the door. The expression that shows on his face is like a ripple on the surface of a pond—there one moment and gone the next. But Seonghwa doesn’t miss the way Hongjoong’s eyes dart to the couch, then back to Seonghwa before he schools his face into something more neutral, less revealing.

They both know they’re thinking about it.

They don’t say anything out loud.

“Mingi wanted me to give you this,” Seonghwa says, plastering a smile onto his face. He takes a few steps further inside and sets the flash drive on Hongjoong’s desk, on top of a haphazardly stacked pile of papers.

Hongjoong nods, as much as the giant headphones around his neck will allow him. “Thanks. I was actually about to message him about this.”

“Right,” Seonghwa says, painfully aware of how awkward this whole thing is. It’s been far easier to interact with Hongjoong like he usually would in places that didn’t carry the memory of Hongjoong’s body under Seonghwa as he straddled him, the way he touched and kissed Seonghwa like he was a starved man sat down in front of a feast. “I’m going to go, then.”

Without waiting for a response, Seonghwa turns to leave, only to be interrupted by the touch of Hongjoong’s hand around his wrist. They both look down at the same time, and Hongjoong snatches his hand away as if scalded.

There must be something to it, too, because the place where he touched Seonghwa burns like a brand.

“Actually…do you have a moment?” Hongjoong asks, a little uncertain. As if Seonghwa could ever refuse him. “I’ve been working on something and I’d like your opinion.”

“Of course,” Seonghwa says, pulling up another chair. It’s more of a stool, really—hard and uncomfortable and small, kept around more to put stuff on top of rather than to sit, but Seonghwa is not moving to that couch. “Is that for the next album?”

Hongjoong nods, unplugging his headphones and turning on the speakers. “I’ve been playing around with this and at this point I have no idea which of the three versions I have is actually worth anything.”

When Hongjoong plays the track, Seonghwa stills in his seat. The beat is unlike anything he’s ever heard Hongjoong produce, and the melody is at the same time powerful and hopeful. It soars to heights they’ve never reached before, cresting like a wave before it crashes against the shore and mellows out into something full of joy, like the ocean lapping at the sand on the beach.

“That’s beautiful,” Seonghwa says in a quiet, awed voice. “Hongjoong-ah, did you—is it yours?”

It sounds like Hongjoong—effervescent, exuberant, full of life. It would make sense that it came from him.

Hongjoong nods, visibly pleased. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve been working on it for a while, but I got stalled at some point. Wanna hear the other arrangements? One is more—I don’t know, orchestral, I guess? And the other one is more pared down, almost acoustic. I like the original one a lot, though. I just…I don’t know. I think I’m second-guessing myself on this.”

Seonghwa listens to the two other arrangements, and they’re both good—they’re really, really good, but Seonghwa still likes the original one the most. When he tells Hongjoong that, there’s a sigh of relief as Hongjoong leans back in his chair, feet dangling ever so slightly off the ground. It’s so endearing, Seonghwa doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Hongjoong admits. “I kept thinking it sounded just the right amount of full, but not too full for what I was going for, you know? Or too empty, like the acoustic might turn out to be.”

“They’re all good,” Seonghwa reassures him. “And we’d be lucky to have any of them on the album. But I think you’re right, the original arrangement feels just right. It feels like joy. Like freedom.”

“Oh.” Hongjoong’s head snaps up, eyes finding Seonghwa’s. Almost like he’s surprised. As if Seonghwa could ever witness his brilliance and not comment on it.

“Does it have a name?” Seonghwa asks.

Hongjoong looks away for a moment, quiet. Then he says, “Yeah. It’s called Starlight.”

Oh, Seonghwa thinks.

Hongjoong is still avoiding his gaze. Seonghwa doesn’t want to read into this—Hongjoong can be skittish about unfinished tracks sometimes, and this could be one of those cases, but the way his eyes keep darting to Seonghwa and then away the moment he feels himself be watched feel pregnant with something Seonghwa can’t quite name. Like they’re teetering on the edge, then taking a step back.

They’ve been here before—and really, Seonghwa should’ve known better. He should’ve known they were hurtling toward that inevitable end, body to body, stealing breath out of each other’s lungs. Back on tour, when they were recording the guides for their song in Hongjoong’s hotel room late at night, they both must have felt that incredible pull, the atmosphere charged between them. What happened that night in Hongjoong’s studio wasn’t random or spur-of-the-moment, then—everything had been building up to it, some invisible force pushing them closer and closer until one of them tipped over.

“It feels like starlight, too,” Seonghwa says. “Building to something bigger than ourselves.”

Hongjoong smiles, pleased. His fingers pick at a loose thread in his distressed jeans, bottom lip sucked into his mouth.

“Ah, thank you,” he says. “I’m glad you like it, you know? I’ve been meaning to show it to you for a while.”

That doesn’t make Seonghwa special—he has to remember that. He has to stop looking for signs where there are none, because whatever happened between them, Hongjoong clearly considers it a closed matter. They might both be feeling the pull, but it takes two to let themselves be yanked forward, into each other.

Seonghwa smiles, a little pale but sincere, and lets the matter be.

Between the comeback and the tour, as well as finishing the last of the work on the next album, it gets a little easier to be around Hongjoong. With the buffer of the other members between them, Seonghwa can stop mentally looping the moment he looked up while he was blowing Hongjoong just to find his eyes already on him, dark and heavy. He can stop remembering what Hongjoong felt like draped over him, rutting into the cleft of Seonghwa’s ass.

God, he should’ve just let Hongjoong fuck him. He should’ve let Hongjoong do whatever he wanted, if that was the first and last time. Seonghwa should’ve made it last longer, just so he would have more to remember.

He’s fine, though. He understands that it is what it is. Hongjoong has made it perfectly clear where he stands on this.

It’s fine.

It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.

The summer is a blur of flights and concerts and interviews. They travel between cities and countries and continents, constantly on the move. Beside them, the shadow they cast over the industry grows bigger and bigger as their fame reaches new heights.

The album is selling well. The title track is a hit. Everyone is doing the dance challenge. It’s all over TikTok, all over YouTube.

Among all this, Seonghwa lets himself be carried by the rhythms of their daily life, ebbing in and out of Hongjoong’s vicinity. They go out together to eat a few times, just the two of them, and it’s like it used to be. Almost. Similar enough.

Gradually, Hongjoong starts to touch Seonghwa again—casual, light, fleeting touches that make Seonghwa feel like he’s about to self-immolate. At concerts, he’ll tease and knock into Seonghwa easily, and it’s like nothing ever happened. Like there wasn’t a stretch of time when Hongjoong would pull back each time there was even a sliver of possibility that he and Seonghwa might brush against each other.

The world keeps moving.

They shoot the music video for their next comeback in Thailand. When the stylists roll out the racks of clothes, Seonghwa goes through them with a single-minded focus, knowing the general look he’s going for. Then he finds something else—a sleeveless garment that’s corseted at the top, then extends into a long skirt, open at the front. From afar, it would look like a dress. Seonghwa remembers the lace sleeves he looked at earlier and the pair of black pleasers standing inconspicuously on the shoe rack and thinks, Maybe.

He wants to put it on so bad it makes his throat tight.

Maybe just to see. If it’s too much, he can always take it off, put on the other corset and the white shirt he picked out earlier as one of the possibilities.

Just as the stylist finishes lacing Seonghwa into the corset dress, Hongjoong comes in to pick out his outfit. He staggers a little in the door like he’s lost balance for a moment, steadying himself with a hand against the frame.

“Oh, hi, Seonghwa-ssi,” he says, teasing, as he walks over to his rack to start going through the items the stylist picked for him. “Didn’t expect to find you here. Wasn’t it Sannie’s turn?”

Seonghwa pulls up from where he’s been bent in half, zipping up the pleasers. “Ah, Sannie was pretty quick,” he says. “So I came earlier.”

Outfit completed apart from the jewelry, Seonghwa stands in front of a mirror, taller than he’s ever been. The shoes give him a good fifteen centimeters on his actual height, so much so that the top of Seonghwa’s head is barely visible in his reflection.

It’s…a lot.

Behind him, Hongjoong makes a sound.

Seonghwa turns in his direction and finds him already looking. “Do you think this is too much?” he asks, strangely flustered all of a sudden. “This is too much, right? I don’t think I should—”

He can see the way Hongjoong swallows, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. “You should wear it,” he says with emphasis. “You should wear whatever you want. It fits you.”

Seonghwa can feel his cheeks grow hot. It’s a ridiculous reaction in the face of a man who’s already seen him naked and knows what Seonghwa looks like when he comes.

“Thank you, Hongjoong-ah,” he says quietly.

In the end, they decide against the outfit so Seonghwa’s clothes can go a little bit better with what San is wearing. Hongjoong gives him a long, considering look when Seonghwa shows up for the photoshoot ahead of the music video shoot, but he never says anything. It’s not judgmental, more—wistful, almost. Like he’s regretting Seonghwa’s choice for him.

Either way, it doesn’t feel good.

The rest of the summer and fall is filled with more concerts, more flights, more photoshoots. Chuseok comes and goes, and with it the last full breath they can take before the album drops in December.

With one comeback still echoing in the industry and beyond, preparations for the next one are already fully underway. In between festivals and special stages and other appearances, they pull off more than they’ve ever managed before—several distinctive shoots, long hours spent under the ruthless heat of the lamps as they film footage for the behind the scenes vids and take more photos than ever before.

Hongjoong keeps teasing him all throughout their unit shoot, and Seonghwa teases back, to Hongjoong’s surprise and mock-dismay.

Hongjoong touches Seonghwa’s face for the picture—an echo of the tender touch of Hongjoong’s hand as Seonghwa sucked him off. Seonghwa swallows and swallows and swallows and says nothing. He can feel the phantom sensation of Hongjoong’s hand on his face long after he’s gone.

Things are good between them, even if Seonghwa still dreams about it sometimes—the insistent touch of Hongjoong’s lips against his own, the way he lightly scraped his teeth down the side of Seonghwa’s neck, dragging a shiver out of him, his wandering hands touching as much of Seonghwa as possible.

He’d never felt more wanted than in that moment.

Seonghwa should stop, he knows. He should stop replaying those images in his head with such startling regularity. Stop living in the briefest sliver of the past.

Still, time moves forward, not waiting for Seonghwa—more hours spent on the plane, more days spent meeting their fans all over the world.

There is a lot of happiness, a little sorrow. Seonghwa braves it the best way he knows how.

They’re the first ones to film their unit music video. Those were announced earlier in the fall, but it’s only now, brainstorming ideas in Hongjoong’s hotel room bed, that Seonghwa realizes what this is going to entail. Two days of shooting with Hongjoong and Hongjoong alone—not counting the BB Trippin hyungs—being closer than they’ve been since that night they finished recording. The two of them have been sending each other ideas for the music video for weeks now, but now they need to sit down and compile all of them into a list so they can hash out the details of their performance.

There’s next to no choreography in the music video itself—they’re saving that for the performance video—but that only means they’re free to do anything they want, within reason. They got the rough storyboards for both videos the day before, and now they’re going through the sets and scenes, coming up with details to enhance their performance.

“Yeah, and here—” Hongjoong points to one of the slides on his iPad, “here we could just lean in real close, with the two of us in the shot. You in the front and me in the back, sort of—” Hongjoong swallows, “draped over each other.”

Seonghwa doesn’t have to imagine it to know how it would feel. He knows Hongjoong is thinking about it, too. He nods. “Yeah. I think it would look good.”

The silence that follows stretches like hot glass, ready to snap at the slightest disturbance in the air.

“I got some photos from wardrobe, too,” Seonghwa says eventually. He’s hyperaware of the fact that they’re on the bed, their knees touching. “And look. They still have this.”

He turns his phone around to show Hongjoong the photo. It’s his coat—the same one he wore for their Say My Name photoshoot.

Hongjoong’s eyes dart down to the screen, then back up to Seonghwa’s face. “You should wear it,” he says decisively. “It would look good on you.”

Seonghwa’s stomach clenches. “You think so?”

Hongjoong nods with conviction. “You should wear whatever you want,” he says, like an echo of the title track shoot. “And if you want the coat, you should wear the coat.”

“Okay.” Seonghwa licks his lips. He could swear Hongjoong follows the movement with his eyes. “I’ll tell them to get it for me from the storage, then.”

They film both music videos over two days in November—the performance parts first, everything else second. The shoot passes by in a blur, all the excitement and anticipation building up to jitters that Seonghwa feels in his entire body. He’s giddy—they both are, nervous energy bubbling over as they get through the scenes.

Seonghwa can’t stop looking at Hongjoong in between takes. He looks incredible as always, dark hair and sharp undercut, his hair pulled away from his forehead. Under the white t-shirt, Seonghwa can just about make out the solid shape of his chest.

Hongjoong has always been larger than life, but it’s never been more apparent than it is now, as Seonghwa secretly watches Hongjoong go through his solo shots on the second day of shooting.

It’s been a stormy day since morning, hail and rain falling down on them as if the weather decided to play along with the rebellious mood of their music. Seonghwa finished filming his solo shots earlier in the morning, but he doubled back to the set quietly while Hongjoong was in the middle of shooting, bringing them coffee and tea. Now he watches, hidden behind the equipment, as Hongjoong lets loose up on the balcony. It’s a stunning shot—the monochromatic grayness of the building looming overhead, Hongjoong the only spot of brightness in his orange coat. He looks tiny like this, a dot of color among the dull backdrop, but the moment the music starts to play and Hongjoong begins to move, Seonghwa stops breathing for a few seconds.

This, right here, is why Seonghwa has always known Hongjoong was destined for greater things. The way he commands attention and draws the eye, making himself look like a giant even among the grand enormity of the cityscape behind him is something others can only envy.

Something Seonghwa can only envy.

He should, probably. But he doesn’t. Instead, he can only admire Hongjoong and be glad that he gets to call him a friend. My amazing friend, Hongjoong called him yesterday. That’s all they’ve ever been, after all.

It feels only a little bittersweet.

“Yah, Seonghwa-ya!” Hongjoong’s voice startles him, booming from across the set. Seonghwa’s head snaps up just to find Hongjoong sitting at the edge of the balcony, legs dangling. “Seonghwa-ssi! What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were done with your solo shoot!”

In response, Seonghwa dangles the takeout drink holder up in the air, and Hongjoong gives him two thumbs up, grinning like a maniac.

They end up sipping the coffee (Hongjoong) and chamomile tea (Seonghwa) while the crew sets up another shot. Hongjoong is sweating despite the cold weather, patting at the back of his neck with a tissue. The tips of his hair are wet at his nape and around his temples even as the makeup noona works to touch up his foundation.

“We don’t start filming our stuff together until late in the afternoon, though,” Hongjoong says with his mouth still wrapped around the straw. “Why are you here instead of catching up on sleep? I know your call time was six in the morning, so don’t even try to pretend you’re not tired.”

Seonghwa shakes his head. “I couldn’t sleep right now even if I tried. Too much excitement.”

He brings the rim of the cup to his mouth and takes a drink, tilting his head backwards a little as he swallows. The tattoo is still there—stark black against the skin of Seonghwa’s neck—and Hongjoong’s eyes stray to Seonghwa’s throat when the movement exposes it better.

It’s not the first time, either. Hongjoong has been staring at the tattoo ever since Seonghwa emerged from hair and makeup on the first day—surreptitious glances and lingering looks when he thinks Seonghwa doesn’t notice.

Maybe he just thinks it looks cool—because it does, and each time Seonghwa goes to touch his throat, a secret thrill runs down his spine. It’s something that’s theirs and theirs only, and Seonghwa is wearing the mark of it on his skin. Just like the coat—first worn by Hongjoong, now worn by him—it sparks something inside Seonghwa, a strange sort of possessiveness. He wonders what Hongjoong thinks about it—Seonghwa wearing his coat, wearing their name on his body.

He never says anything.

Instead, he sheds his burden of leadership around Seonghwa, releasing the more playful, youthful side of him. He runs around, laughing, unrestrained, goofing off in front of the camera while Seonghwa keeps talking. The entire day, he keeps hanging off Seonghwa’s shoulder whenever they’re not shooting, body to body, not even realizing the kind of heat that awakens in the pit of Seonghwa’s stomach.

It’s fine. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. They’re friends. That’s what friends do.

By the time they’re done with the last scene, they’re dripping with sweat and a little light-headed with exhaustion and excitement in equal measure. The PD yells cut and the two of them collapse against each other, laughing.

They trudge all the way back to their changing room, eyes barely open after a long day of shooting, and Seonghwa pulls Hongjoong flush against him, waiting for him to stop struggling in the embrace.

It’s past midnight.

“Happy birthday, Hongjoong-ah,” Seonghwa whispers into the sweaty crook of Hongjoong’s neck. “I hope everything you dream of comes true.”

“Yah, don’t get too sentimental on me, Park Seonghwa,” Hongjoong teases, but his arms tighten around Seonghwa’s waist.

This is nice, Seonghwa thinks. His throat feels a little strangled; his eyes sting a little.

He wants to kiss Hongjoong. He could even laugh it off, say it’s a birthday gift, but that would cross a boundary.

Eventually, they let go of each other but neither of them takes more than half a step back as they look at each other, the air charged between them. Hongjoong’s mouth is parted, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Seonghwa licks his lips and watches Hongjoong follow the movement.

Slowly, Hongjoong raises his hand, fingers trailing over the letters painted across Seonghwa’s throat. The touch is gentle, barely-there. It makes a shiver run down the column of Seonghwa’s spine and crackles like electric discharge where their skin meets.

Outside, voices carry along the hallway, and from even further away comes the clamor of the raised stage being already dismantled by the crew.

Hongjoong lets his hand fall and takes a step back.

“Thank you,” he says.

He doesn’t say if he means the birthday wishes or something different.

The comeback is upon them before they can so much as breathe. Everything always feels fast at the end of the year, like whatever hasn’t happened yet that was meant to happen suddenly rushes to catch up, but with their second studio album out and breaking all kinds of records, Seonghwa feels that all the more acutely.

There are music shows and more flights, performances, long days and even longer nights with little sleep, but it’s all worth it.

They’re in the studio, recording for the next album, when the news of their #1 on Billboard 200 breaks, and Seonghwa watches Hongjoong get a little glassy-eyed, a little choked up. They all pile up in a hug and Maddox comes out with a congratulatory cake, like it was a foregone conclusion to everyone that they would go further and higher than ever before.

“I’m so happy,” Hongjoong says in a small, astounded voice. He and Seonghwa are sitting side by side on the couch, their legs touching. It must be deliberate, then, when the pressure of Hongjoong’s knee against the side of Seonghwa’s thigh increases, and he repeats, “I’m so happy.”

Just like the old times, a moment later Seonghwa feels the weight of Hongjoong’s head against his shoulder. His body freezes for a split second, surprised by the freely-given affection, and he can feel Hongjoong tense in turn. Like he’s not sure he’s allowed to do this anymore. Like he’s second-guessing his every movement, every gesture in the wake of what happened at his studio all those months ago.

Seonghwa forces his body to relax, and Hongjoong eventually follows suit.

It’s fine. They’re just friends. Friends do these things all the time.

There are more things to celebrate, more charts they enter, more achievements that come with the word first attached. It’s the kind of thing they used to only dream about as rookies, always hungry for more. If the Seonghwa of five years ago saw him now, he would hardly believe it: from not even five hundred first-day sales to topping Billboard 200 and charting in places many other groups have never even broken into, rushing around the world to perform in front of tens of thousands. They did all that—they and their fans.

Everything else that comes with it—the lack of sleep, the long nights, the even longer hours spent in the practice room—is worth it.

Seonghwa is happy. He should be happy, and he is. Professionally, he’s getting everything he could ever wish for, and more. All the fears that came with his dream of becoming an idol: of failing, of wasting years chasing a dream that was never meant to be—all of those are now laid to rest.

But there’s another part of him—the part that doesn’t exist in the spotlight, tucked safely away from the cameras pointed at his face—that chafes with the lack of closure, lack of clarity. The echo of what happened at Hongjoong’s studio all those months ago still casts a shadow over him, growing longer and longer as the sun rises lower and lower over the horizon. He’s tried to ignore it, pretend it doesn’t exist, but now, in the dead of winter, Seonghwa can finally admit that it makes him a little miserable.

It’s so stupid. They’re having their most successful year yet, finally on the cusp of something great, and here he is, feeling sorry for himself because Hongjoong had sex with him once and decided it was one of the biggest mistakes of his life directly afterwards.

Seonghwa has tried to get past it—he’s really, really tried, clenching his teeth through the past several months until his jaw hurt. Now he can only wonder if he’s fucked up his relationship with Hongjoong for good.

Things are fine between them. They are good. But Seonghwa can’t unknow what it’s like to kiss Hongjoong. He can’t unknow what his cock looks like when it’s fully hard, the sounds Hongjoong makes, quiet and stifled, like he’s always afraid of being found out, the way his fingers can’t quite fully close around Seonghwa’s girth.

Still wanting someone who’s already told you to your face that you were a mistake is a sad, pathetic thing, which Seonghwa guesses makes him a sad, pathetic person. Maybe he should make a resolution for the new year: fall out of love with Hongjoong. Maybe, after over five years and one disastrous hookup, it’s finally time. It would be the right thing to do. But Seonghwa has been in love with Hongjoong for so long he can’t remember what it was like not to love him anymore. More important yet: he doesn’t want to fall out of love with Hongjoong. He just wants Hongjoong to love him back.

The knock on his door comes just as Seonghwa has finished dusting. They’ve been in and out of their dorms so much that some dust has managed to accumulate despite Seonghwa’s best efforts, and the tiny dust bunnies on his desk were driving him crazy. He has a candle burning that smells like hot cocoa and contemplates hopping on live for a little while to say hi to Atiny.

Before he can do that, though, the knock repeats and then Yunho sticks his head in the door. “Hi, hyung,” he says with a smile. “I’m going out to eat. Wanna tag along?”

Mingi is at the studio today, and San is off to put in more time at the practice room with Wooyoung and Yeosang, so Seonghwa was expecting a quiet, lonely lunch. Yunho’s presence here is actually a nice distraction.

“Where are we going?” he asks.

“I was thinking maybe the jokbal place down the street?” Yunho says.

They have good food and haven’t ratted them out to the sasaengs yet—who knows, maybe the elderly owners don’t even realize who they are. That’s why they eat there a lot when they don’t feel like ordering in. It’s a small place, too, and there’s one booth that’s tucked away from the rest of the dining area that they usually end up occupying, feeling safer with their backs to the rest of the room.

“Sure, let me just change and we can get going.”

After a short walk in the brisk winter weather, the interior of the restaurant welcomes them with warmth and an array of smells that make Seonghwa’s mouth water. The glasses he wore as a subtle disguise and a small fashion statement in equal part fog up when they enter and he takes the next step half-blind, waiting for the temperature to even out.

They order a pile of food that they probably shouldn’t be eating, but they don’t have a recording tomorrow, so it doesn’t matter even if Seonghwa is a little bit bloated. Seonghwa falls on the food as soon as it’s delivered to their table, piling up banchan and tucking into the meat with enthusiasm while Yunho eats at a slightly more sedate pace. It’s tasty as always, and piping hot, leaving the roof of Seonghwa’s mouth slightly scalded after he takes the first bite a little bit too soon.

The salty, savory goodness spills all over his tongue, and Seonghwa makes a quiet sound of contentment. From the other side of the table, Yunho gives him an indulgent smile.

“It’s good to see you enjoying yourself, you know?” Yunho says, still watching Seonghwa, and it’s only then that Seonghwa realizes this is more than just Yunho extending a friendly invitation to lunch.

No. Yunho either came here of his own initiative, or he was sent here. Seonghwa doesn’t know which one is worse.

“I’m fine,” Seonghwa reassures him and watches Yunho blink quickly a few times, as if surprised by how quickly Seonghwa has seen through the façade. “But I appreciate the company.”

The food suddenly tastes like cardboard in his mouth. He thought he wasn’t obvious about it, because if it’s been obvious to Yunho and the rest, it must have been obvious to Hongjoong, too.

“Hyung—is everything okay with you and Hongjoong-hyung?” Yunho asks gently, and when Seonghwa raises his gaze from above his plate, he finds Yunho’s eyes fixed on his face, waiting.

Yunho is the worst person to be doing this—he’s just too nice, too sympathetic, too well-intentioned and it’s very hard to lie to him. If Seonghwa were to tell him the truth, he would get sad on his behalf. He would want Seonghwa to know how sorry he is.

Seonghwa is barely hanging on by a thread as it is.

It’s all the promotions, he thinks—all the time spent with Hongjoong, sometimes just the two of them. They’ve been promoting them a lot as a unit this comeback, which makes sense, with the song and everything, but it also means that Seonghwa has had a lot of time to think about what it would be like if things were different between them. If they could secretly hook their pinkies together in the back of the car on their way to their schedules. If, after they were done, they could go out to eat and press their ankles together under the table, then kiss the moment they were back at the dorms.

As it is, Hongjoong keeps polite distance off-camera, not distant, exactly, but mindful to stay out of Seonghwa’s personal space in a way that can’t be seen as anything but intentional.

“Hyung?” Yunho prompts, cocking his head to the side to peer at him across the table, and Seonghwa realizes it’s taken him too long to respond. “It’s just—you’ve been a little quiet lately, you know? When the cameras are off, and when you think no one’s looking. And we wondered if—if something happened. Between you and Hongjoong-hyung. We’ve noticed there’s been some…tension.”

We. Right. Of course.

God.

“I’m sorry,” Seonghwa says, and watches Yunho frown. He can feel his throat tightening. “I didn’t mean to worry all of you. Nothing’s wrong, I promise. It’s just the comeback, the promotions, all of that. We’re all tired. Sorry if I’ve seemed off, but that’s not—it’s nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”

Yunho takes a bite of his tripe stew and chews. “Huyng, I’m really sorry to say this, but you’ve just said nothing is wrong in three different ways in the span of five sentences, which means that something is wrong. I’m not going to rat you out to Hongjoong-hyung, I promise. We all worry about you, you know? You always help everyone, but you don’t really come to us with your own problems…”

Seonghwa swallows. He’s been trying to be better about this—relying on the other members, letting them be the shoulder to lean on—but at the end of the day, he’s their hyung. There’s no reason to burden them like this. Not when the issue is so entangled with the very essence of what Seonghwa and Hongjoong have been to each other from the very beginning. Everything and nothing all at once.

“Yunho-ya…” Seonghwa implores. “Me and Hongjoongie—we’re okay, I promise. The rest of you don’t need to worry.”

It’s hard to get the words out, but even if he wanted to tell Yunho the truth, he could never do this here, where they might be overheard.

Yunho doesn’t look convinced, but he eventually drops the issue. Seonghwa, though, can barely taste what he’s eating for the rest of the meal, his stomach a big, painful knot. The back of his neck prickles with the shame of being so obvious about everything. He’s really thought he has been covering his tracks well, letting nothing slip through. All of his interactions with Hongjoong have been completely normal; he doesn’t understand how Yunho and the others have guessed that something hasn’t been quite right between them.

Seonghwa thought he was better than this. Now he hardly knows what to do with the revelation that apparently his insides are showing through the cracks.

Bundled up and with their bellies full, they make the walk back to their apartment complex, but they walk at a sedate pace for once instead of rushing. Seonghwa pushes his hands into the pockets of his coat and watches Yunho do the same at his side. Like this, their elbows keep knocking into each other as they walk. It’s nice.

The sky above them darkens, promising more snow. The wind picks up, too, and Seonghwa pulls his scarf over his nose until only his eyes peek out.

It would be so much easier if he were in love with someone like Yunho, who’s not afraid to show affection and doesn’t act like offering the tiniest bit of emotional honesty would make him shrivel into dust. But as much as Seonghwa loves Yunho—as much as he loves all of them—he’s not in love with him. That would be too easy.

“Hyung,” Yunho says as they reach Seonghwa’s building, “let me know if you want to grab a meal again soon, okay?”

Next thing, Seonghwa feels Yunho’s hands squeeze his fingers in a reassuring gesture. It’s brief and friendly, and impossible to misconstrue for anything else. Seonghwa is glad. The meal he’s being promised is not just a meal, and he’s glad about that, too. Even if he can’t say anything to Yunho, it’s nice to know that someone cares enough to look out for him like that—they all do. So does Hongjoong, in his own way.

It’s fine.

The KQ end of the year party falls just shy of the actual end of the year. They’ll be spending New Year’s Eve at Gayo anyway, and this way they all get to meet up before the year is over. Jongho and Wooyoung are MC-ing this year, with the trainees putting on a show to kick off the whole thing. The girl trainees go first, and then the boys—both groups doing medleys of songs that range from their own company’s discography to that of other artists. Jongho sings, too, as well as Jinsik and Hyunwoo, who have prepared a duet, and Hunter does a dance solo.

It's not too stuffy as far as work functions go, and the dress code is relaxed if not entirely informal. Seonghwa feels nice and cozy in his cream cashmere sweater that accentuates his collarbones and gives just the smallest hint of cleavage. It’s soft and warm, and Seonghwa knows he looks good in it. Just before he left, he put a pretty silver earring in his ear that sways each time he moves his head.

The food is good, too, and there’s wine, which is how Seonghwa ends up drinking a couple glasses—not enough to get drunk, but enough to turn a little mellow, a little melancholic. He spends most of the time at his corner of the table with Yunho and San, peeling tangerines for everyone in the vicinity.

“You should eat too, Hongjoong-ah,” he says, passing the peeled fruit to Hongjoong across the table. “It’s good for you.”

He expects resistance, but Hongjoong just takes the tangerine and starts eating without a word of protest.

He’s looking good tonight—dressed in a white t-shirt with a loose neckline under a black and white Balmain jacket, and wearing clear-framed glasses to complete the look. There’s jewelry, too—silver studs in his ears, a necklace swooping down his chest. They catch the light each time he turns his head, glinting like stars.

Eventually, people start breaking off into smaller groups—some going home, some taking the party elsewhere. They don’t have any schedules the following day; no one needs to be in bed early.

San, Wooyoung and Yeosang leave first, then Yunho and Mingi. Jongho stays behind, talking to Maddox and Eden. Eventually, it’s just Hongjoong and Seonghwa left at their end of the table. Hongjoong took his car to get here earlier, but he’s had a few glasses of wine as well, so he’ll be leaving it to pick up the following day, no doubt.

“Wanna walk back together?” Hongjoong asks once it becomes clear that no one is expecting them to stay any longer. Even their CEO is making rounds around the room, saying his goodbyes. It’s past midnight already; the trainees have long been escorted back to their dorms by the managers, and all of Xikers are gone, too.

Seonghwa nods before he can think better of it. He probably shouldn’t, not when he’s in such a maudlin mood, but it might be nice to take a late-night walk with Hongjoong, just the two of them.

They gather their things and Seonghwa wraps a thick scarf around his neck, buttons up his wool coat. Hongjoong appears at his side a moment later, also bundled up and sans his glasses, and they head out into the winter night. There aren’t too many people out at this hour in this part of Hongdae, so Seonghwa doesn’t bother putting on his mask, and neither does Hongjoong.

Above their heads, big, fluffy flurries of snow dance in the air, getting tangled in their hair before they melt. When Seonghwa looks to the side, in the yellow light of the street lamp, he can see one of the snowflakes getting caught up in Hongjoong’s unbelievably long lashes. Seonghwa looks away and feels a little bit like crying.

Enough.

It has been enough.

He can’t drag this with him into the new year.

“You know, I’ve made a New Year’s resolution this year,” Seonghwa says quietly, walking side by side with Hongjoong. Their path takes them through the park, away from any prying eyes. Far in the distance, they see a man walking his dog, but even he goes the other way to eventually disappear between the trees.

“Oh, yeah?” Hongjoong says, turning his head in Seonghwa’s peripheral vision to look at him. He has his hands in his coat pockets, hips swaying as he walks. He looks calm. Relaxed. “What kind?”

Seonghwa swallows. “I’m going to try to fall out of love with you this year,” he admits, keeping his voice as even as he can. He speaks without stopping, afraid that once he does, he’ll never get the words out. “It’s not going to be easy, and I might fail, but I’m going to try. So please, forgive me if I can’t do it, but I’m going to try my best, okay?”

He presses his lips together, in a mostly futile attempt to stop them from quivering. Taking a deep breath, and then another, he glances to the side to find Hongjoong stopping in the middle of the path, staring at Seonghwa, face stricken.

“What?” he asks, uncomprehending. There’s a frown line between his brows and another one pulling at his mouth. “What are you talking about?”

Seonghwa clenches his hands into fists in the pockets of his coat, nails biting into the tender insides of his palms. He halts as well and turns to Hongjoong until they’re face to face. “I know it makes you uncomfortable,” he barrels on. “You could barely look at me after we—after that night in your studio. You wouldn’t even touch me for months, and you’d flinch each time you thought we might touch accidentally. I—I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you that night, but I did, and I’m sorry for that. That’s why I need to do this. I don’t think this is good for me, and it’s not fair to you.”

He can’t believe they’re finally having this conversation, five years too late, under the open sky, with the snow falling over them.

“I—” Hongjoong stutters. “I don’t understand. You’re in love with me?”

And that—that stings. God, it stings so bad, Seonghwa can feel the burn all the way down his throat.

“You could at least do me the courtesy of not pretending you don’t know what I mean,” he says. He clenches his fists tighter in a desperate attempt to keep it together. “I think I’ve been obvious enough. Yunho came to give me a pep talk and ask what’s wrong. The others know, too, even if they won’t say anything. So please, Hongjoong-ah, just…don’t pretend you don’t understand. This is difficult enough already.”

Hongjoong says nothing for a beat—two—three, and Seonghwa finally moves, forcing his feet to uproot themselves from the pavement. He makes it two steps before Hongjoong reaches out, grabbing at Seonghwa’s forearm.

“But—you left that night, like you couldn’t even stand the sight of me,” he says, confused. “You wouldn’t even look at me.”

“The first thing you said afterwards was that it was a mistake and we shouldn’t have done it,” Seonghwa says, keeping his voice quiet but firm. “Was I supposed to stay there so I could witness first-hand what being someone’s greatest mistake would feel like?”

He looks up towards the sky, blinking furiously against the tears that pool despite his best intentions. He promised himself that he wouldn’t do this. That he wouldn’t cry in front of Hongjoong.

It seems like all of Seonghwa’s resolve inevitably crumbles into dust when faced with Hongjoong, though.

Don’t fall in love with him, he told himself all those years ago, and then he did.

Don’t let him know, he told himself afterwards, once he realized what the feeling crushing his ribs in an invisible vise was, then spent years openly yearning for Hongjoong’s attention and affection.

Don’t cry when you tell him, he told himself not even five minutes ago, and here he is, once again breaking his own trust.

“I get it,” Seonghwa continues before Hongjoong can say anything. “I kissed you that night and you let yourself get carried away. We got caught up in the excitement of the moment, and I was a warm body next to you. I get that. I’m not stupid, you know? I can read between the lines. I’ve been reading between them for the past six years. I just—back then, for a moment I thought that maybe— But I was wrong. Of course I was wrong.”

The contours of Hongjoong’s face blur and shiver before Seonghwa’s eyes. Seonghwa wipes furiously at his cheeks, his heart pounding. Embarrassment sits sour at the bottom of his stomach. He’s making such a fool of himself, and Hongjoong is not saying anything, just staring at him in disbelief.

“I think I’m gonna make the rest of the way on my own,” Seonghwa announces in his last attempt at saving at least one last shred of his tattered pride. “Goodnight, Hongjoong-ah. Stay safe, okay? Text me when you get back. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

This time, when Seonghwa goes, Hongjoong doesn’t try to stop him. He doesn’t call out. Doesn’t reach out to catch Seonghwa by the wrist.

It’s okay. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter.

The dorm is empty when Seonghwa gets back. He checks his phone: as expected, San has left a message saying he’ll be staying the night over at Wooyoung’s, and Mingi has messaged to let them know that he went back to play games with Yunho and will most likely spend the night as well.

Good.

Seonghwa turns all the lights on until the living area and the kitchen drown in the bright glare. There’s a glass that’s been left on the table, and a ring of dried liquid underneath. A tangled up blanket on the couch. The throw pillows Seonghwa bought recently messy and crumpled. A stack of unsorted papers on the kitchen counter.

He starts cleaning methodically, forcing himself not to rush through it. Sanitize and wipe down the kitchen counters. Clean the stove. Sort the recycling. Wipe down the electric kettle. Scrub at the kitchen sink until there’s not one drop of water left on the surface. Fold the blanket and fluff the throw pillows. Rearrange them on the sofa and get the lint off the upholstery. Water the plants in the common area and on the kitchen windowsill.

Seonghwa cleans and cleans and cleans until his mind is blank and he stops feeling like he’s about to throw up. His stomach is still a giant, painful knot and the back of his neck is hot with embarrassment, but his head is no longer spinning.

How humiliating, the way Hongjoong didn’t even say anything—just kept staring at Seonghwa without a word, shock written all over his face.

Has Hongjoong been really that oblivious? Seonghwa finds that hard to believe. But Hongjoong is not cruel; he might tease and prod, but he’s not cruel. Seonghwa has been making it so, so obvious, though. So transparent. He cringes at himself, remembering all the times he’s found himself wanting Hongjoong’s attention so openly, so plainly. So how could Hongjoong not know?

Seonghwa’s head hurts, a stress headache that crushes his skull.

He’s doing a really good job, he thinks, not crying about it. He can feel the burning sting behind his eyes, the way his jaw tenses, and fights it with everything he has. Seonghwa might be easily hurt, but there’s no reason for him to cry over it—it’s not like he expected anything different. He’s known all along where Hongjoong stands on this.

I don’t think we should have done this.

We just got carried away, that’s all.

There’s a particularly stubborn spot on the counter where something—tea, coffee, maybe—has seeped into the grain and stayed there, clinging to the microscopic grooves in the surface, impossible to get out. Seonghwa keeps rubbing at it furiously, knuckles white where he grips the cloth.

It’s not coming out—he keeps going, harder and harder, but it does nothing beyond carrying the horrible squeaky noise across the space; the stain is still there, mocking him, taunting.

The front door opens with a quiet beep and Seonghwa freezes. His face is wet, and he doesn’t even know when that happened, because he was doing so, so well, not crying about it. Seonghwa refuses to turn around—if it’s San, he’s going to want to know what happened, and if it’s Mingi, he’ll just get upset on Seonghwa’s behalf, and that’s the last thing he wants. Instead, he just keeps wiping at the spot on the counter, trying to stop his shoulders from shaking.

“Seonghwa-ya,” Hongjoong’s voice says quietly behind him, and Seonghwa goes rigid all over. Oh, this is worse. This is so, so much worse. “I—what is this? What are you doing?”

Seonghwa doesn’t respond at first, too afraid of what sound would tumble out if he were to open his mouth.

“Just cleaning up a bit,” he says at last, moving on from wiping at the stained spot to wiping down the entire counter again, just to keep his hands occupied and his back turned. “You know, coming into the new year with clean personal space and a clear head. It’s supposed to help, and I don’t feel too tired yet, and without San and Mingi around I don’t have to worry I’m in their way when I’m cleaning, so… But, you see, there’s this one spot that won’t come out, and it’s like— It’s like—”

It's the same with him and Hongjoong. It doesn’t matter how hard Seonghwa tries—Hongjoong has already left the kind of mark on him that will always remain there, a little tender like a half-healed bruise. Everyone who meets Seonghwa afterwards will have to understand who Hongjoong is to him if they want to know Seonghwa at all.

There are footsteps behind him, coming closer and closer. Seonghwa swallows and blinks furiously. He tries to smile, ready to put on a brave face in front of Hongjoong, but even without a mirror he can tell it’s more of a grimace. His throat is tight with the tears he won’t let spill.

“Hey,” Hongjoong says, “can you look at me?”

Seonghwa doesn’t move. “What are you even doing here, Hongjoong-ah?” he asks, buying time. With his back still to Hongjoong, Seonghwa goes about straightening the counter space again—the salt and sugar containers, standing a little crooked, the lids askew. The coffee bean jar, haphazardly closed and improperly sealed. Teabags spilling from an open box. He opens and closes things, moves them around. Never turns to look at Hongjoong. “Shouldn’t you be in bed? It’s late, you must be tired. Or did you—did you need something from me? Sorry, I wasn’t checking the phone, I—”

“Seonghwa-ya,” Hongjoong says, pleading, “can you, please, turn around and look at me?”

At last, Seonghwa spins on his heel like he’s on stage, anchoring his body against the centrifugal force. He still has a kitchen towel grasped in his hands. Whatever Hongjoong finds in Seonghwa’s face must shock him—his eyes widen and he nearly takes a step back, mouth falling open the slightest bit.

It’s only then that Seonghwa can fully take in his appearance. Hongjoong looks flushed with the kind of flush that only staying out in cold weather for a longer while can give—cheeks, nose, and the tips of his ears bitten red by the winter chill. There’s melted snow in his hair, like he’s just come in from the cold.

“That song—it’s for you,” Hongjoong says. “About you.”

Seonghwa frowns. “What?” he asks. “But I already know—”

“No.” Hongjoong shakes his head. “Not that one. Starlight. When I look at you—that’s how I see you.”

Seonghwa’s heart clenches in his chest. “What?”

“It’s like—it’s like you’re this…bright thing that I can look at but I can never touch,” Hongjoong says and it’s only now that Seonghwa realizes his eyes are glassy and red-rimmed. “You’re not supposed to touch a star, right? That’s how you burn. But I did, and then I—I—”

Hongjoong takes a shaky breath. His throat clicks audibly.

“Hongjoong-ah…” Seonghwa says, confused.

“But you’re not supposed to, right?” Hongjoong continues, smiling a watery smile. There are tear tracks where the skin tint has washed away. “Even if you want it so much, you can’t. So…what am I supposed to do, then?”

He sniffles, wipes his nose with the back of his hand. It’s disgusting. Seonghwa wants to hug him.

“You can just let yourself,” he says. He can’t believe they’re standing here at one in the morning, having this conversation in Seonghwa’s dorm kitchen. “You don’t— You can just have it. It doesn’t have to be so hard.”

Hongjoong’s mouth quivers as he laughs, a little wistful, a little bitter. “It’s not that simple. I can’t just—”

“What, be happy?” Seonghwa asks. “Why not?”

Hongjoong sniffles again, dabbing furiously at his eyes. He raises his face up to the ceiling, like it will do anything to staunch the flow. “You know why,” he says.

Seonghwa swallows, then exhales shakily. “Why are you here, then? If nothing has changed, Hongjoong-ah, then why are you here?”

Hongjoong’s face crumples. “I don’t know,” he admits as he visibly attempts to wrench back control. “I had to see you. Tell you that it wasn’t—it’s not like that. You were never a mistake. The mistake was all mine.”

Seonghwa’s mind is reeling, his hands clutching the kitchen towel tighter like it’s the only thing grounding him in this moment. “But you still regret it?” he asks. That was what Hongjoong said, wasn’t it? That they shouldn’t have done this. That it was a mistake—regardless of whose.

In response, Hongjoong squeezes his eyes shut, mouth pressed into a thin, shivering line, and shakes his head. He raises his hands to his face, pushing the heels of his palms against his eye sockets as he breathes heavy, ragged breaths.

“No,” he says in tiny, broken voice. “I tried to, because I should, but I can’t.”

Seonghwa goes to him then—he crosses the distance that separates them and wraps Hongjoong in a tight hug. His face is nestled in the crook of Seonghwa’s shoulder as he takes shaky, trembling breaths.

“Shhh, it’s okay. It’s okay, Hongjoong-ah,” Seonghwa whispers into his hair, himself on the verge of tears again. “Just tell me what you want. Not what you think you should want for the good of the group and our careers. Just what you want.”

Slowly, Hongjoong’s breathing evens out, but Seonghwa doesn’t let him go.

“I—” Hongjoong attempts, voice muffled. Seonghwa loosens his hold, leaving it up to Hongjoong whether to stay or go. He pulls back a little—just enough to be able to look Seonghwa in the face—and tries again, “I—I want you to find another New Year’s resolution.”

Seonghwa’s heart is in his throat, drumming furiously. The rush of blood in his ears nearly deafens him. Hongjoong is no longer crying. Instead, he looks mildly queasy but determined, like he’s expecting Seonghwa to tell him no.

“I think I would fail anyway,” Seonghwa admits, his eyes never leaving Hongjoong’s face. “I’ve been trying stop for the past five years. I don’t think another year would make a difference.”

Hongjoong’s eyes widen. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he looks ready to cry again. “I didn’t— I knew I couldn’t want things like this, so I just…pretended not to see, not to understand, until I convinced myself, even though I wanted it, too. I’m sorry. I didn’t know how else to tell you.”

“So you wrote a song?” Seonghwa asks and watches Hongjoong nod. They’re still touching, Seonghwa’s hand closed around Hongjoong’s wrist.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Hongjoong says. “My thoughts were all messed up, and you were everywhere, and I had no idea how to get you out of my head. So I just kept thinking about it—about how you make me feel, about the way I see you when I look at you…”

Seonghwa shifts, letting his hand fall from Hongjoong’s wrist and tangling their fingers between them. “When I listened to it for the first time that day, I thought it sounded like freedom.”

“I just—” Hongjoong says, voice a little strangled. “I wanted that for myself so badly, you know? I wanted it and knew I couldn’t have it, but now—”

Seonghwa blinks away the tears. “I’m right here,” he says. “I’ll always be right here. But I need you to take that last step. You don’t need to worry—I’ll meet you halfway.”

“Okay,” Hongjoong says. “Okay. That’s—I would like that.”

He shuffles closer, reaching for Seonghwa’s other hand, tangling their fingers together. They’re so close Seonghwa can feel Hongjoong’s breath on his chin, brushing right over his Adam’s apple. Hongjoong’s hands are shaking just a little bit. Seonghwa’s heart clenches painfully in his chest.

But Hongjoong has always been brave, so he holds on tighter and leans in closer, tilting his head up, eyes searching Seonghwa’s face.

True to his promise, Seonghwa closes the distance between them. It starts with their foreheads pressed together, a shared breath, and then another one, and then they’re kissing, slow and tender, like they’re both afraid to disturb the moment.

It’s just as good as the first time. Hongjoong’s face is still slightly chilly from the cold, but Seonghwa doesn’t care—not when Hongjoong keeps kissing him back like he’s been starving for it since summer. He lets go of Seonghwa’s hands—one arm wrapping itself around Seonghwa’s waist as Hongjoong presses him against the counter, the other hand sneaking up Seonghwa’s arm to the side of his neck, thumb and forefinger cradling the curve of Seonghwa’s jaw.

Seonghwa touches Hongjoong’s chest—palm over the frantically beating heart he can feel even through the layer of clothes, his other hand sliding up to cradle the back of Hongjoong’s head as the kiss grows more hungry, more insistent. It leaves Seonghwa lightheaded and they’ve barely done anything yet.

It’s just kissing. They kissed last time, too, but now, knowing they want the same things to come after, it feels even better.

With each slide of Hongjoong’s lips against Seonghwa’s mouth, Seonghwa grows painfully aware of the low fire in the pit of his stomach, the way it spreads out to his limbs, through his entire body. He bites at Hongjoong’s lower lip, soft and plush and malleable between his teeth—it’s not enough to hurt, but enough to get a reaction, a low hiss, and then Hongjoong is kissing him harder, pressing Seonghwa further into the counter. Seonghwa can feel his knee, insistent, pushing his legs apart to settle in between his thighs.

And Seonghwa wants that—god, how he wants that, and so much more, but he needs one final reassurance, conveyed in words instead of the feeling of Hongjoong’s growing erection pressing against Seonghwa’s groin.

“You’re not going to be gone in the morning, right?” he whispers into Hongjoong’s mouth in between kisses. “You’re not going to decide it was a mistake again?”

Hongjoong kisses him again, sucking Seonghwa’s lower lip into his mouth, then says, “No. No, I won’t. And you were never a mistake, Park Seonghwa. That—that was all me.”

“Okay,” Seonghwa says and kisses him again. “Okay.”

He flushes a little at the implicit promise that they’d be spending the night together that Hongjoong never denied, but there’s nothing to get embarrassed about now. It’s not the first time they’ll be having sex. It’s just that this time Seonghwa won’t be doing his walk of shame in the middle of the night, on the verge of tears and still covered in come.

“Let’s go, then,” Seonghwa says. He pulls Hongjoong by the hand towards his bedroom and closes the door behind them. Then, “Oh no, we left the lights on.”

“Leave it,” Hongjoong says, letting his hand travel up the flat plane of Seonghwa’s stomach as he buries his face in Seonghwa’s neck and presses a string of kisses there, a little ticklish. “Leave it, c’mon, who cares—”

“I’ll be just a minute, promise,” Seonghwa says, then steals another kiss. “I’ll be right back.”

He sprints out again, turning all the lights off as he goes. When he comes back, he finds Hongjoong sitting at the edge of his bed, still fully dressed minus the jacket, thumb running along the hem of his shirt. Seonghwa takes a moment to really look at him as he approaches, taking in the way Hongjoong’s body fills his clothes, teasing with just hints of the sturdy muscle Seonghwa knows hides beneath. Hongjoong looks so good like this; he’s always been beautiful, but now that Seonghwa is allowed to watch openly, he’s noticing so much more than he could in those brief, pained glimpses. Hongjoong is watching him, too, lips parted and chest rising and falling rapidly. His legs are open, and Seonghwa can see the line of his cock pushing against the fabric of his slacks.

Hongjoong looks indecent like this, flushed and disheveled, and it’s all Seonghwa’s doing. It’s proof of how much Hongjoong wants him, how much Seonghwa turns him on, and that makes Seonghwa feel powerful—makes him dig deep to unearth the confidence that usually emerges only when he’s performing.

Stepping between Hongjoong’s spread legs, Seonghwa leans down to kiss him again—his mouth, his cheekbone, the shell of his ear, the beauty mark on his neck. “Can I suck you off, please?” Seonghwa asks, watching as Hongjoong’s eyelids flutter, teeth biting into his lower lip. “You liked it last time, didn’t you?”

His hands are at Hongjoong’s belt as soon as Hongjoong nods, working the clasp open. He pulls the whole belt out of the loops and settles it on his computer chair half-blindly, then pops the button of Hongjoong’s slacks open and slides down the zipper.

The last time they did this, they barely undressed, so this time Seonghwa taps at the side of Hongjoong’s hip, encouraging him to lift himself off the mattress, then pulls his pants all the way down along with the underwear.

“This is okay, right?” Seonghwa asks, then, when Hongjoong nods, follows it with, “The shirt, too? I want to see you.”

He watches, mesmerized, the subtle ripple of Hongjoong’s muscles as he pulls the shirt over his head and tosses it to the side with no care for it. It’s not like this is the first time he’s seen Hongjoong fully naked. They shared a room for five years, and have changed in the same rooms for just as long. But Seonghwa has never seen Hongjoong fully naked like this, with intent.

In response, Seonghwa pulls his sweater over his head as well, folding it before returning it to the chair behind him, but he keeps his jeans on to avoid bruising his knees too much on the floor. There’s a fluffy rug by the side of his bed, but an additional layer won’t hurt when he’s planning on spending some time here.

The last time they did this, it was a brief, rushed affair. Today, Seonghwa intends on savoring the moment and showing Hongjoong just how much he can do with his mouth.

He starts slow, kissing a line up the inside of Hongjoong’s thigh. With his unoccupied hand, he reaches out to feel for the bottle of lube in his drawer by the bed, and he uncaps it with a quiet snick, then pours a generous amount into his palm. Hongjoong is cut, same as him, and Seonghwa starts slow, spreading the lube all over the length of his erection, palm loose around the girth.

The squelching sound is so loud in the still night air, but Seonghwa doesn’t care, not when that makes Hongjoong bite his lip and throw his head back with a strangled moan, so quiet Seonghwa nearly misses it.

“There’s no one here,” he says, jerking Hongjoong off with slow, almost lazy movements. “You don’t have to be so quiet, Hongjoong-ah.”

Hongjoong licks his lips, his eyes flicking down to where Seonghwa kneels between his thighs. He’s holding himself up on outstretched arms, palms splayed flat on the mattress, but when Seonghwa leans in to mouth at the warm, soft crease of his thigh, one of his hands finds its way to cup the side of Seonghwa’s face.

It’s heartachingly tender.

Seonghwa’s entire chest constricts when Hongjoong’s thumb brushes the corner of his mouth. He leans into the touch, turning his head to kiss the center of Hongjoong’s palm. Above him, there’s a gasp, and when Seonghwa looks up, he finds Hongjoong staring back at him, mouth parted.

“I don’t want to rush this,” Seonghwa confesses. “Not like—well, you know.”

He doesn’t want what they had back at the studio—rushed, illicit, tinged with regret. The memory of that night still sits sour in his gut, despite everything. Instead, he wants Hongjoong the way he’s meant to be—unrestrained, free with his emotions. Hongjoong has always been a free spirit, and Seonghwa wants to see him like this, too, not watching over his shoulder in fear of being found out.

“I’ll make it so good for you, Hongjoong-ah,” Seonghwa promises. “Just hold out a little, okay?”

He keeps stroking Hongjoong in a loose hold all the while, just enough to keep him hard but not enough to rile him up further. No, that’s for Seonghwa’s mouth—for his lips, kissing at the base of Hongjoong’s cock, for his tongue licking up the underside. The vaguely chemical taste of plain lube isn’t one of Seonghwa’s favorites, but he doesn’t care, not when it is soon replaced on his tongue with the taste of Hongjoong’s skin, clean and a little salty with sweat.

He laps at the underside of Hongjoong’s cock, tongue working over the protruding vein that runs up the length, Seonghwa’s own cock jerking in his jeans when he reaches the head and feels Hongjoong leak precome right onto his tongue.

“Oh fuck,” Hongjoong manages through clenched teeth, his eyes following Seonghwa as he swallows a little harder than necessary, just for show.

He’s been told before that he looks good with a cock in his mouth, and he desperately wants to know if Hongjoong thinks so, too, always eager for praise. Seonghwa looks up as he closes his lips around the tip, swirling his tongue around, and feels Hongjoong’s hips jerk, then still, like he’s just realized what he’s done.

Seonghwa pulls back with a wet, sucking sound. “I don’t mind,” he says, his voice suddenly that much deeper despite not having done anything yet. “You don’t have to hold back on my account.”

Above him, Hongjoong swallows audibly.

Seonghwa returns to his task, running his hands up and down the muscular columns of Hongjoong’s thighs. He loves how, despite being so deceptively small, Hongjoong’s body feels powerful under his touch—solid and sturdy and there. There’s so much about idols’ bodies that’s a constant lack, it feels good to grasp something that feels so viscerally present.

His mouth stays on just the tip of Hongjoong’s cock for a while, teasing him. Seonghwa purses his lips as he sucks around the head, making sure to keep his eyes glancing up, coy and seductive at the same time.

Hongjoong keeps cursing under his breath, muscles straining beneath Seonghwa’s touch.

It’s quiet in the room, save for their breathing and the sounds of Seonghwa’s mouth around Hongjoong’s cock—no deafening bass drumming in Seonghwa’s ears, rattling his bones; no rhythm deep enough it reverberates all the way in his heart. He can focus only on the soft noises falling from Hongjoong’s mouth, the slick slide of their bodies where they meet.

Finally, Seonghwa sinks down lower, swallowing more of Hongjoong to a breathy moan from above. He enjoys the way Hongjoong’s cock fits in his mouth, pushing further past the soft palate and down his throat. Hongjoong is not the biggest he’s ever had, but he’s up there—almost too much to handle, leaving Seonghwa with a sensation of fullness that makes him float a little.

Once again thanking the universe for gifting him with no gag reflex, Seonghwa pulls up, then sinks back down again, establishing a rhythm that takes Hongjoong’s cock deep, deep into his mouth, with no need for Seonghwa’s hand to assist. His previous partners—the few that there have been, most pre-debut—have always found it hot, and Seonghwa watches for Hongjoong’s reaction now, pleased to see the tell-tale fluttering of Hongjoong’s eyelids, the way his flush spreads down his neck, the intense heaving of his chest. Each time Seonghwa’s nose presses against Hongjoong’s groin, Hongjoong’s hips stutter forward a little, pushing his cock further down Seonghwa’s throat with a wet, clicking sound.

It's obscene. It’s the best thing Seonghwa has ever felt—making Hongjoong lose control like that, by increments. His hands, unoccupied, roam across Hongjoong’s thighs, his toned stomach, slide down to cup his balls.

Seonghwa takes his time with it, realizing that he doesn’t want Hongjoong to finish like this, as much as the thought appeals to him. He would swallow so well, so neatly, taking all of it and kissing Hongjoong right after—but not this time.

When he feels Hongjoong’s thighs begin to tense, Seonghwa pulls off all the way, watching Hongjoong’s cock slap against his abdomen with a wet sound.

“What…?” Hongjoong slurs out, looking a little cross-eyed, and Seonghwa ducks his head to smile, pleased with himself.

“Don’t worry, Hongjoong-ah, I’ll take care of you,” Seonghwa promises, pulling himself off the floor to take off his jeans along with his underwear, the elastic waistband of his boxer briefs snagging on the bulge of his cock.

Hongjoong is watching him from his place on the bed, lower lip pulled between his teeth. His gaze roaming all over Seonghwa’s body feels hungry.

With the kind of confidence that is eighty percent real and twenty percent feigned, Seonghwa moves to straddle Hongjoong’s lap, like a mirror of that night at the studio. Hongjoong is quiet, looking up at Seonghwa with so much tenderness it makes Seonghwa flush. He’s not used to this kind of open adoration from Hongjoong—at least, he’s not used to witnessing it in the moment. He has seen the clips, the compilations of Hongjoong staring at Seonghwa with the sort of awed softness that made even Seonghwa felt like he was intruding. But in all of those video clips, he was already looking the other way.

“Do you want to fuck me?” Seonghwa asks quietly, feeling a little shy despite his best attempts at putting on a brave face and blessing his rigorous shower routine at the same time.

Hongjoong’s eyes widen in response, mouth falling open a little bit. “Oh,” he says, looking a little dazed. “Are you sure? I just thought… Last time you said— I just thought maybe you didn’t want to, or you just don’t do it, and I—I don’t care, okay? You don’t have to—”

Oh, Seonghwa thinks. Oh, right.

“No, I—” Seonghwa stutters, trying to explain himself. God, this is probably ruining the mood; he shouldn’t have said anything, not right now, because it’s not like it matters. They could’ve just done that some other time. Embarrassment curdles like sour milk at the bottom of his stomach, and Hongjoong must pick up on that, because he reaches out to touch the side of Seonghwa’s face, cupping his cheek.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he says. “We don’t have to.”

Seonghwa takes a deep breath. “No, it’s not that,” he says. “I want to. It’s just—last time, we were rushing, and the last guy I’d done this with, we’d been both in a hurry, and he’d gotten a little pushy a bit too soon, and that hadn’t been…well, it hadn’t been a lot of fun for me. And I just didn’t want to—I didn’t want us to be like that, you know? Something I wouldn’t like to remember after the fact.” He laughs to cover the embarrassment, but it doesn’t quite work. “Sorry, I ruined the mood.”

Hongjoong’s brows knit together in a frown. “Do I know him?” he asks, shifting on the bed, which is not at all what Seonghwa was expecting. “The guy who—”

“It doesn’t matter, okay?” Seonghwa rushes to reassure. God, he shouldn’t have brought this up. He really, really shouldn’t have. Of course Hongjoong would get mad about this—Seonghwa should’ve known. “It doesn’t matter, I don’t care about him, I don’t want to think about him. I only want to think about you.”

“Seonghwa-ya…” Hongjoong says, still unwilling to let it go.

“No, really.” Seonghwa touches the side of Hongjoong’s face, leans down for a kiss. “Unless you don’t want to, obviously—sorry, I didn’t even think—”

Stop talking, he tells himself sternly. Just stop talking, god… What are you doing, Park Seonghwa?

“Hey.” Hongjoong catches him by the forearms, firm but gentle at the same time. He cranes his neck a little to look up at Seonghwa, who’s still sitting in his lap. “I want to. But—it’s been a while, okay? A long while, actually, and it was only a couple of times back then, so—”

“I don’t care,” Seonghwa says. “I’ll take care of you, I promise, Hongjoong-ah. We’ll figure it out together. I’m meeting you halfway, remember?”

Hongjoong still looks like he’s torn, eyes darting to the side. “I—uh, do you have the stuff? I mean, you have lube, obviously, but do you have—you know, condoms?”

Seonghwa doesn’t. The last time he hooked up was about two years ago and the other guy brought the condoms. No reason for Seonghwa to risk getting photographed buying more when he knew he would be avoiding random hookups for a longer while.

“I don’t care, I don’t care,” he says frantically in between kisses, feeling a little delirious.

He’s never let anyone—but it’s Hongjoong. And Seonghwa doesn’t want to have sex with anyone else other than Hongjoong ever again. And it’s been years, apparently, since either of them was with anyone. They’ve had multiple check-ups in between.

It’s fine.

It doesn’t matter.

“You can just— You can fuck me without a condom,” Seonghwa says. Briefly, he spares a thought for the cleanup, then decides it’s a problem for Seonghwa an hour from now. “If you want. I don’t care, I really don’t care, just, please…”

Hongjoong’s eyes are so big when he stares at Seonghwa like he can’t believe the words falling from his mouth. Seonghwa can hardly believe himself, but he’s too far gone for reason. It gets him a little bit hot, too—the thought of Hongjoong fucking him with nothing between them.

“Okay,” Hongjoong says, “okay, just let me blow you a little first? And do you want me to, uh, stretch you? Or would you rather do it yourself?”

Seonghwa reaches around until his hand closes around the bottle, then passes the lube to Hongjoong. “No, no, you can do it,” he whispers against his mouth. “I can never reach well enough, and then my hand starts cramping…”

His body goes hot all over, the flush spreading over his face when Seonghwa realizes he might have said too much, but Hongjoong just nods before going about rearranging them on the bed—Seonghwa on his back with a pillow under his ass and Hongjoong kneeling between his spread legs.

“Just a word of warning,” Hongjoong says with a nervous giggle, “I haven’t done this in ages, either, and even then… You know.”

Seonghwa pulls him over himself, tilting his chin up for a kiss. “Just do what feels good.”

That seems to settle the last of Hongjoong’s apprehension. He kisses Seonghwa, cupping his jaw with one hand while the other one reaches to wrap itself around Seonghwa’s cock, jerking him off in a slow, measured rhythm. Seonghwa’s mouth parts around a silent moan, eyes slipping shut.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about it, you know?” Hongjoong tells him when they break apart. His hand continues its movement as Hongjoong shuffles backward, kneeling on his heels again. “Each time I stepped into my studio, I would be reminded of what we did. I couldn’t focus for days afterwards. I—I got off to that memory a lot, you don’t even realize. I don’t think I’ve jerked off that much since I was a teenager…”

He ducks his head, visibly embarrassed by the admission, but Seonghwa can only be flattered. All this time he thought Hongjoong was simply trying to forget any of it happened in the first place.

“Hongjoong-ah,” Seonghwa says, his voice turned to whine when Hongjoong presses his thumb against the slit, smearing precome all over. Seonghwa is so wet already, leaking onto his stomach, and it would be mortifying if it weren’t for the way Hongjoong watches it, eyes wide, then leans forward and laps at the little puddle with the flat of his tongue.

“That’s so hot,” he says, a little awed. “Do you always get like this?”

Seonghwa throws an arm over his eyes before he admits, “Yeah. Sorry—ah, sorry if that’s too much…”

“Yah, Park Seonghwa, I literally just said it’s hot,” Hongjoong reprimands him. “It’s not nice to fish for compliments like that.”

This makes Seonghwa pull his arm away, let it fall to the mattress just in time for Hongjoong to slide the tip of Seonghwa’s cock into his mouth. Seonghwa makes a strangled sound, bunching up the sheets in his fists as he fights the urge to buck his hips up, up, into the tight, wet heat of Hongjoong’s mouth.

He clenches his jaw and lets Hongjoong explore instead, chest heaving as Hongjoong gets bold with it, never one to hesitate for long once he decides to leap. Seonghwa’s cock isn’t the biggest he’s ever seen in real life, but it isn’t small, either, and it’s on the thicker side when hard, which makes Hongjoong struggle a little at first, figuring out how to fit it in his mouth and mind his teeth at the same time. There’s some nervous tension in his shoulders as Hongjoong tries to swallow Seonghwa down, always the overachiever, as if Seonghwa wouldn’t like whatever he does.

But that’s Hongjoong—always wanting to do his best, no matter what. He chokes a little when he pushes himself too much, and pulls back, coughing. “Sorry,” he says, his voice raspy, but Seonghwa drags him up for a kiss as a reassurance.

“It feels so good, Hongjoong-ah,” he whispers like a secret into his mouth. “You feel so good.”

Eventually, Hongjoong finds a rhythm—Seonghwa can tell he doesn’t have much experience, but it doesn’t detract in any way from the incredible feeling of the hot seal of his mouth around Seonghwa’s cock. It’s a little messy, spit running down the shaft and down Seonghwa’s groin, but he doesn’t care when it’s Hongjoong between his thighs, working so hard to give him pleasure.

Once he gets more confident with it, Hongjoong opens the lube and reaches to spread Seonghwa’s thighs wider, keeping his hand in the crease of Seonghwa’s groin to help soothe the faint burn of the stretch in his adductors. Seonghwa tenses a little at the first touch of Hongjoong’s finger, but he doesn’t push inside straight away. Instead, he massages the tender skin around Seonghwa’s entrance, warming up the lube and letting him get used to the sensation. When he finally breaches Seonghwa with his finger, it slips inside with very little resistance. Seonghwa breathes out, willing his body to relax as Hongjoong works his finger in and out. Usually, when he’s on his own—on those rare occasions he has enough time and privacy—Seonghwa doesn’t need much, starting with two fingers right away, but he’s never been able to relax enough with another person for that.

After a while, Hongjoong shifts on his knees and pulls off Seonghwa’s cock, replacing his mouth with his hand. “Hey,” he says, “you’re a little tense. Is everything okay?”

Seonghwa nods enthusiastically, because everything is fine; he’s just always been like this. When he tells Hongjoong as much, Hongjoong frowns a little—there one second and gone the next—then says, “You should be comfortable, though.”

“No, it’s fine, really,” Seonghwa implores, reaching out to drag Hongjoong in for a kiss. He can taste himself in Hongjoong’s mouth, which shouldn’t make him feel like he’s just licked lightning, but it does. “You can keep going.”

Hongjoong gives him another considering look but doesn’t withdraw his hand.

“Hongjoong-ah, you can add another one now,” Seonghwa says after a while, feeling his body finally give, muscles relaxing as Hongjoong sinks another finger inside him, pressing against the front wall to brush against Seonghwa’s prostate. The initial pressure nearly makes him jolt, a strangled moan spilling from his lips and straight into Hongjoong’s greedy mouth.

Hongjoong’s hands are small but deft, fingers reaching deeper inside Seonghwa at this angle than he can usually get himself.

“Hey, hey, Seonghwa-ya. Let me know if you need more—anything,” Hongjoong says, his eyes never leaving Seonghwa’s face.

Having Hongjoong’s undivided attention has always been an overwhelming, all-encompassing feeling. Seonghwa has always felt naked under that intent gaze, too exposed, too conscious of everything that might show in his face. Now, though, there’s nothing for him to hide, nothing to feel self-conscious about in the face of Hongjoong’s scrutiny.

It feels good to know that for that one moment, nothing else exists in Hongjoong’s world, only Seonghwa.

Once Seonghwa fully relaxes, it doesn’t take long. Soon, Hongjoong’s fingers meet no resistance where they slip in and out of Seonghwa, aided by a possibly excessive amount of lube that squelches each time Hongjoong moves his hand.

Seonghwa should be embarrassed. He doesn’t care.

Eventually, Hongjoong pulls his fingers out and Seonghwa expects him to replace them with his cock. Instead, Hongjoong tugs at Seonghwa’s wrist, pulling him up and taking his place on the mattress, lying back against the pillows, legs parted lazily.

“Like this, okay?” Hongjoong says, reaching for his cock with a slippery hand to slick himself up. “So you can go at your own pace.”

For a moment, Seonghwa feels a little bit like crying. His chest constricts, elation mixing with pain, but it’s as momentary as the breath he takes to loosen up the hold of his ribcage over his heart.

Summoning all the confidence usually reserved for the stage, Seonghwa slips his expression into something darker, more sultry, and watches Hongjoong’s eyes darken in return. His leg swings over Hongjoong’s lap and Seonghwa takes a moment to position himself, keeping his movement fluid and slow, almost teasing. Reaching behind himself, Seonghwa closes his fingers around Hongjoong’s cock and raises himself on his knees, letting gravity do its work as the tip of Hongjoong’s cock slips inside him.

It’s a lot, even with the stretching, and Seonghwa takes a moment to refamiliarize himself with the sensation.

Just breathe, just breathe, he tells himself, remembering that it’s Hongjoong he’s here with—Hongjoong, who has given all control over to Seonghwa for the time being. It’s not like the last time. You’re fine, you’re good, just breathe.

Seonghwa works hard for every fraction of an inch, grateful that Hongjoong doesn’t interfere, trusting him to stop before it becomes too much. His hips grind down, slowly, inexorably, Seonghwa’s mouth falling open a little bit more with each roll. Below him, Hongjoong makes a strangled sound; when Seonghwa glances down, he finds Hongjoong looking dazed, awed, like something has punched clear through his chest and left him reeling.

The fact that it’s all Seonghwa makes him feel powerful.

He stops for a moment once he’s fully seated, breathing through it as his body adjusts. Hongjoong’s eyes are closed, teeth biting into his lower lip, a small line forming between his brows. An involuntary sound escapes him when Seonghwa moves a little—a quiet whine that borders on a whimper.

“Wait, wait,” Hongjoong whispers frantically, hand coming to clutch at the protrusion of Seonghwa’s hip. “I need—I need a moment.”

Seonghwa stills once more, letting his body relax some more, knees digging into the mattress on both sides of Hongjoong’s hips. Then, after a few seconds, he leans forward, dragging another sound out of Hongjoong.

“Hongjoong-ah, are you close? That’s so hot,” Seonghwa says to Hongjoong’s tiny nod, like a mirror of Hongjoong a little while ago.

It does something to Seonghwa, to know that Hongjoong is so close to losing it just because of him.

Seonghwa gives Hongjoong approximately thirty seconds that stretch into infinity before he moves. It takes him a moment to fall into the rhythm. He feels the burn in his thighs, unused to this particular position, no matter how much Seonghwa stretches and contorts his body in dance practice, but that only adds to the sensation.

He’s forgotten how good it can be—with the right kind of person. In the right kind of circumstances. The undulating movement of his body, the way he opens for Hongjoong, the rise and fall of his hips—all of that makes something warm and light unfurl in Seonghwa’s chest that almost makes him want to sob.

It would be so silly to cry right now, but here he is, already tearing up.

He breathes through it and swallows, bracing his palms of Hongjoong’s chest, leaning forward. The change of angle has him gasping, Hongjoong’s cock dragging against his prostate each time Seonghwa sinks down on it, chasing his pleasure.

“Hey, hey, are you okay?” Hongjoong asks, raising his hand to touch Seonghwa’s face. Seonghwa realizes then that an errant tear or two must have slipped out, because he suddenly feels the wetness at the corners of his eyes, wiped away by Hongjoong.

He looks concerned, searching Seonghwa’s face, who only leans further forward and sucks Hongjoong’s lower lip into his mouth. “I’m fine, I’m fine, Hongjoong-ah,” he reassures him. “Just…feeling really overwhelmed, but in a good way, you know? You’re making me feel good.”

Hongjoong kisses him in response, deep and filthy, leaving no doubt as to what Seonghwa is making him feel. “I—” he says, then stops, clearly searching for words.

“I know, Hongjoong-ah.” Seonghwa kisses him again. “I know.”

Soon, though, it becomes too hard for Seonghwa to think, let alone speak. It’s like his body takes over completely, drowning him in the overwhelming sensation of Hongjoong’s body moving against him, hips snapping up to meet the slow, deliberate grind of Seonghwa’s hips. It feels like his entire body is electrified, fingertips tingling with the static charge. His toes curl when he arches his back, taking Hongjoong even further inside him.

He's sweating, beads gathering in the dip of his philtrum and running down his temples. His hair clings to the back of his neck. It’s the best thing he’s ever felt. Hongjoong is not much better, the faint sheen of perspiration catching the low light with each deep breath, each snap of his hips as he buries himself inside Seonghwa.

Soon, Seonghwa begins to falter despite the mounting pleasure that threatens to spill over at the slightest touch. He can feel the burn in his thighs that much more acutely now, his movements becoming erratic, bordering on clumsy despite Hongjoong’s hands on Seonghwa’s hips guiding him.

“Wait, wait, hold on,” Hongjoong whispers, voice rough. He maneuvers Seonghwa off his cock, giving him a gentle push to make him lie down, then wedges a pillow under Seonghwa’s ass and crawls between his spread legs. “Let me know if it’s too much,” he adds before resting one of Seonghwa’s calves against his shoulder.

Like this, Hongjoong’s hands keep roaming Seonghwa’s body, bent nearly in half. They keep kissing, too, sloppy and uncoordinated, while Hongjoong picks up the pace, hips snapping frantically. It’s so, so much—too much, almost, six years of yearning spilling out like a waterfall, drowning Seonghwa in feelings and sensations so intense it almost feels like the waters of the lake closing overhead. Seonghwa is left floating, his body nothing but a vessel for pleasure.

All of this is so good—Hongjoong’s hand at the side of Seonghwa’s neck; the weight of his body over Seonghwa, grounding and solid, the only thing tethering Seonghwa to reality in his floating state; the drag of his cock inside Seonghwa.

It keeps building—soaring higher, higher, until Seonghwa is reduced to nothing but the overwhelming, all-encompassing feeling that trembles through his body like the reverberation of a gong being struck over and over again.

In the end, all it takes is one touch of Hongjoong’s hand, fingers wrapping around Seonghwa as he pulls his leg off his shoulder. The glide of his hand is slicked with precome that keeps dribbling everywhere, making a mess. Hongjoong swears under his breath and leans forward to kiss Seonghwa again, and then Seonghwa is coming, all over his own stomach and Hongjoong’s hand, back arching and mouth falling open around a moan.

Hongjoong makes a sound of his own, like all air has been punched out of him, and pulls out frantically, only to come all over Seonghwa’s chest and neck a moment later. Some of it catches his chin, too, but most of it lands on his neck, pooling in the dip of his collarbone.

Above him, Hongjoong’s eyes go wide, like he’s just realized what he’s done. “Shit, I—” he starts, but Seonghwa shakes his head.

One of his hands reaches to drag his fingers through the mess on his neck, lips parting as Seonghwa’s tongue slips out to wet his mouth.

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” he says hastily. “Don’t say you’re sorry, Hongjoong-ah… That was so hot. See?” Seonghwa runs his fingers across his throat again. “Just like the tattoo…”

Hongjoong’s eyes widen further, and Seonghwa could swear that his cock jerks even as he’s slowly beginning to go soft. Once the euphoria of the orgasm dissipates, Seonghwa will probably be a little disgusted at the mess he’s making of himself right now, but he doesn’t care. There’s something so hot in this little display of belonging and ownership in equal measure. That’s what the tattoo was about. This is just an extension of that.

Not thinking much, Seonghwa raises his hand to his mouth to lick the mess off his fingers, eyes locked with Hongjoong all the while. This way, he can see how flustered Hongjoong gets, how pink in the face, the flush travelling down his neck and chest.

“Oh my god, you can’t just—you can’t just do these things,” Hongjoong whines, hiding his face in his hands, but Seonghwa disregards that completely in favor of dragging him forward to press a kiss to Hongjoong’s slack mouth.

Seonghwa knows that Hongjoong must be able to taste himself on his tongue, and that makes another secret thrill run down his spine like a spark of electricity, igniting him from inside. Hongjoong makes a sound, muffled by Seonghwa’s lips against him.

“That was so hot,” Seonghwa says once he lets him go, settling for bringing their foreheads together instead. “I love you.”

Hongjoong startles at that, like he’s so unused to those sorts of declarations that even hearing it from someone other than himself is a surprise. He glances down at Seonghwa, holding his gaze as he visibly struggles to fit the words in his mouth.

Instead, he leans forward to kiss Seonghwa again, trailing his mouth down the line of Seonghwa’s jaw, kissing the spot just behind his ear.

“I—I do, too,” Hongjoong admits eventually, voice quiet, further muffled with his face tucked in the crook of Seonghwa’s neck. He kisses Seonghwa again, down the ticklish side of his neck, up to nudge the tip of his nose against Seonghwa’s earlobe, then press a kiss there, too. “I should probably—no, I should apologize for that night at the studio, too. It wasn’t fair to you. I panicked and made a mess of things.”

Seonghwa contemplates this for a moment, then turns his head to kiss Hongjoong’s temple. “I won’t say it’s fine, because it wasn’t. But I understand why, I think.”

They stay like this for a while longer, until Seonghwa becomes excruciatingly aware of how sticky he is with lube and come. He nudges Hongjoong, who obediently rolls away, then pulls him after himself only to be met with half-hearted resistance.

“Come on, Hongjoong-ah, we need to wash up,” he pleads, but Hongjoong just responds with a whine. “Come on, I have a spare toothbrush for you in the bathroom.”

“It’s past two in the morning, don’t you have wet wipes here or anything?” Hongjoong whines some more, making a face.

Seonghwa huffs, suddenly acutely aware that they’re both still completely naked. “Yah, I’m not going to sleep with lube and come all over me, and neither are you,” he says. “I’m sticky everywhere.”

Hongjoong looks like he’s two seconds away from kicking his feet in protest.

“Fine,” he says eventually, in a tone that suggests to Seonghwa that he’d be rather doing anything else.

It’s so sweet that he goes anyway.

Seonghwa takes a quick shower, then does his skincare routine while Hongjoong rinses himself off. They brush their teeth side by side, and it’s almost like they’re still living together, sharing the same bathroom.

“You’re going to stay, right?” Seonghwa asks, a little anxious despite his best efforts. It’s one thing, wrapped up in the frenetic energy of having sex, and it’s another thing in the aftermath, with a clear head.

Hongjoong gives Seonghwa a look. There’s toothpaste at the corner of his mouth, beginning to dribble. He spits into the sink and rinses his mouth, then says, “Why would I go?”

“No reason.” Seonghwa shakes his head. “Just—thinking too much.”

“Seonghwa-ya, listen to me,” Hongjoong says, his voice serious all of a sudden, and Seonghwa looks up, meeting his determined gaze. “I’m not going anywhere. Now or later. That’s a promise, okay?”

Seonghwa wakes up late in the morning. It’s nearing half past nine when he opens his eyes, roused from sleep by the insistent need to use the bathroom. Beside him, Hongjoong is still sleeping, slack arm thrown over Seonghwa’s waist and face buried in the crook of his shoulder.

Seonghwa disentangles himself as carefully as he can, though not without waking Hongjoong up for a few seconds, enough for him to mumble, “Nooo, don’t go, come back,” and promptly fall back asleep when Seonghwa doesn’t give in.

His slippers shuffle on the hardwood floor as Seonghwa wraps his robe around him a little tighter. He yawns and rubs at his eyes with his knuckles, startled a moment later by movement in his peripheral vision. When he turns, though, it’s just San and Yunho, of all people, sitting at the breakfast table and eating what looks like street toast.

“Morning!” San says, a bit of cabbage sticking to his cheek right next to his mouth. Then, “Ah, hyung, has Hongjoong-hyung messaged you at all?”

Seonghwa freezes.

“We thought he just stayed the night at the studio because Wooyoung said he apparently never came home last night,” Yunho jumps in to explain, his voice carrying, “but then Mingi went over in the morning and he’s not there, either. And he’s not answering his messages.”

Oh, Seonghwa thinks. That must have been the faint buzzing he remembers just prior to waking up.

“You should keep your voices down a little,” Seonghwa tells them, steeling himself for the next sentence. “Hongjoongie is sleeping in my room.”

They’re both staring at Seonghwa, incredulous. Then Yunho’s face becomes awash with understanding. “Oh,” he says. “That’s—that’s really good, hyung.”

Beside him, San’s eyes widen, his mouth forming a little o of surprise as he elbows Yunho in the ribs.

Seonghwa releases the breath he’s been holding all this time, tension seeping out of his shoulders.

“Hyung,” San says, lips turning into a pout, “if we’d known, we would’ve brought back more toast for breakfast!”

Seonghwa shakes his head. “It’s fine, you kids should eat. We might go out for breakfast. Or I can cook, I don’t mind.”

Once Seonghwa takes care of business and comes back into his bedroom, escorted by San and Yunho’s curious looks, he finds Hongjoong awake and sitting up with his back against the headboard, scrolling through his phone. His eyes flick up to Seonghwa’s face when he sees him enter.

“So the kids know, huh?” he says. “I just got three messages from San that say, Hyung, fighting, and some hearts and rainbows, and one from Yunho that says, Happy for you, Hongjoong-hyung.”

Seonghwa’s stomach twists. “Oh,” he says, tucking his hair behind his ear, and then again. “Did you—did you not want them to know?”

Hongjoong keeps watching him intently. “Is that what you really think?” he asks, a little teasing, but mostly serious. “That I would ask you to hide?”

Seonghwa looks away, clenching his jaw. “We’re going to have to hide anyway.”

Hongjoong extends his hand and pulls Seonghwa into his lap, cradling the side of his face in his palm. It’s unbearably tender, and not at all what Seonghwa expected from Hongjoong. But maybe he should have. Hongjoong has always been very sweet with him, in his own ways.

“Not here, though,” he says. “Not at home.” Hongjoong presses a kiss to the corner of Seonghwa’s mouth, warm and reassuring. “You can be anything you want here, Park Seonghwa. I’m not going to ask you to hide.”

“Okay,” Seonghwa whispers against Hongjoong’s lips, neck already craning for a proper kiss. “I’ll hold you to that.”