Chapter Text
Early autumn was usually Seungmin’s favourite time of year. The trees changed colour one leaf at a time, and the air smelled more like rain and earth than hot pavement. Normally, by September, he felt more himself than at any other point in the year. This year, though, everything felt slightly out of focus, as if someone had nudged the whole world a few centimetres sideways.
This summer had disappeared into a blur of antibiotics, follow-up appointments, physiotherapy, and the horrifying indignity of needing help to get dressed. His arm still ached in damp weather, a deep grinding pain that settled into the bone, and the pneumonia had left his lungs annoyingly raw if the weather was too chilly. But he was definitely healing, albeit slowly.
He was singing again too. Tentatively at first, voice rough around the edges, but now it was coming back stronger every week. Songs had started appearing in his head at inconvenient moments again, in the shower, while cooking, halfway through nightmares. Yesterday he’d gone in to see his agent at STA. They wanted to record Let Me. Apparently half the country did now, after the video of him singing at the 325 had exploded online. He had other songs he wanted to try, too. They’d talked albums, co-writers, studio sessions. One woman in very expensive trainers had called him “authentically raw,” which Seungmin still suspected was executive speak for looks tired but marketable.
Dog walking, on the other hand, was less glamorous. Several clients had promised faithfully to return once he was fully recovered. Others had apologetically drifted toward more reliable walkers. Seungmin couldn’t altogether blame them -dogs still needed walking even when their dog walker had nearly drowned. Hyunjin had done his best to hold things together while Seungmin recovered, but there were limits to one man, one pair of arms, and one increasingly ancient van.
Well. One van total now.
Hyunjin’s had died a heroic watery death in the flood, which meant he’d been using Seungmin’s for the past few months. Another reason Seungmin couldn’t imagine going back to full-time walking even if his body allowed it. The idea of taking the keys back from Hyunjin made something in his chest actively recoil. Besides, every future he imagined lately seemed to contain Hyunjin automatically.
He sat in the passenger seat while Hyunjin wrestled Kongi into the back.
“Kongi, if you bite me again,” Hyunjin warned, breathless, “I’m selling you”
Kongi barked triumphantly.
“He knows you’re bluffing,” Seungmin said.
Hyunjin slammed the van door and pointed at him. “One more word and you’re walking home.”
Seungmin grinned despite himself. It still startled him sometimes, how easy it was now. After the hospital, after everything. Especially after the months before that, when things between them had gone strange and fragile and painfully polite. Hyunjin climbed into the driver’s seat, fingers brushing briefly over Seungmin’s knee before he started the engine. That tiny touch still managed to rearrange Seungmin’s internal organs. They parked beside the woods half an hour later, and the dogs exploded out of the van, straining at their leads.
Seungmin climbed out more slowly, stretching carefully before instantly regretting it as pain tugged through his arm. Hyunjin noticed immediately, of course.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
“That sounded very convincing.”
“Seriously, I’m fine. Just a twinge.”
Hyunjin gave him a look but didn’t push. He’d become strangely good at that over the summer, knowing when to fuss and when to let Seungmin keep his dignity. The woods smelled damp and earthy, leaves slippery beneath their boots as the dogs charged ahead through puddles. Hyunjin kept glancing sideways at him every few minutes. Eventually Seungmin snorted. “If you stare at me any harder, I’m going to start charging you.”
“I’m not staring.”
“You nearly walked into a tree just now.”
“Hey! That tree came out of nowhere.”
Seungmin laughed, properly laughed, and Hyunjin’s whole face changed at the sound of it, softening. And there it was again -that look. The one Hyunjin got sometimes when he thought Seungmin wasn’t paying attention. Like he still couldn’t quite believe he was here. Seungmin’s chest tightened.
The nightmares hadn’t stopped for either of them. Some nights Seungmin woke gasping with river water in his lungs all over again. Other nights he woke to Hyunjin jerking awake beside him, breathing hard, eyes wide and terrified in the dark. Neither of them talked about it much. It sat between them quietly instead, an obstacle neither was ready to acknowledge.
Ahead of them, Kongi launched himself directly into a muddy ditch, followed by the golden retrievers.
“Oh, brilliant,” Hyunjin muttered. “They’re marinating themselves.”
“They were clean for almost seven minutes,” Seungmin said. “Is that not a new record?”
Hyunjin shook his head, smiling despite himself.
Then, more quietly, “You’re tired.”
“I’m not.”
“You just slowed down.”
Seungmin opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again because unfortunately Hyunjin was right. Hyunjin stopped walking. “Sit down for a minute.”
“Hyunjin…”
“Seungmin.”
There was something in his voice that made Seungmin finally look at him properly.
Fear. Still there, hidden under all the teasing and normality and gentle care. Fear that if he looked away for too long, Seungmin might disappear again. Something inside Seungmin cracked softly open. He sat down on the fallen log with a sigh. Hyunjin hovered for a second before sitting beside him, shoulders bumping together. For a while they just watched the dogs tear around the woods.
Then Seungmin said quietly, “I’m sorry.”
Hyunjin frowned. “For what?”
“For ever making you think I didn’t love you.”
The words settled between them, soft and cold in the autumn air. Hyunjin went very still.
Seungmin swallowed hard. “I think I did all along. I was just…” He grimaced and trailed off.
Hyunjin shook his head.
“You scared the absolute shit out of me, you know.”
Seungmin’s chest tightened. “I know.”
“No.” Hyunjin looked down at their joined hands. “I don’t think you do.”
Something in his voice made Seungmin go quiet. Hyunjin exhaled shakily. “I saw you get taken by that water and I thought that was it. And all I could think was that I never got enough time with you.”
Seungmin stared at him. Hyunjin laughed once under his breath, embarrassed now he’d started, then looked over at him, eyes bright and helpless all at once.
“You have genuinely no idea, do you?”
Seungmin frowned slightly. “No idea about what?”
About half a dozen emotions crossed Hyunjin’s face in quick succession.
“How much I’ve loved you,” he said softly.
Seungmin’s breath caught. Hyunjin gave a small shrug, trying for casual and failing miserably. “Before the flood. Before the hospital. Before any of it.”
The woods suddenly felt very still around them. Seungmin’s smile faded.
“You stayed through all of it,” he said quietly. “Even when I was… honestly, I was kind of awful.”
He looked down at their hands, thumb brushing gently against Hyunjin’s knuckles.
“I just keep thinking,” he admitted, “most people would’ve run.”
Hyunjin’s expression changed instantly.
“Seungmin,” he said softly, almost startled. “Never.”
Seungmin looked up.
“You really don’t see yourself the way everyone else does.” Hyunjin smiled sadly. “The way I do.”
That landed somewhere deep in Seungmin’s chest and stayed there. To his horror, he could feel his eyes burning.
“Oh God,” he muttered. “Don’t make this emotional again.”
Hyunjin leaned forward, resting his forehead briefly against his shoulder.
“I love you,” Hyunjin said quietly.
This time Seungmin didn’t hesitate.
“I love you too.” He smiled faintly. Behind them, Kongi launched himself at a squirrel with the unearned confidence of a man who had never once won a fight in his life. Neither of them moved apart for a long time.
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With Christmas fast approaching, Seungmin should probably have been panic-buying questionable presents for his family in a crowded shopping centre somewhere. That was his usual festive tradition. Leave everything until the last possible second, buy his mum some crap she pretended to like, and get Changbin and Minho something stupid that would almost certainly get binned by New Year’s Day.
Instead, he was sitting beneath the blazing studio lights of Pop World, guitar resting against his thigh, trying not to visibly shake. The stage smelled faintly of hot electronics. Crew members moved around him with terrifying efficiency while someone adjusted a camera track nearby. His first television performance.
Not just television. Pop World. nThe biggest music show in the country.
If someone had told him a year ago that this would happen, he’d have assumed they were either concussed or lying to him. Seungmin flexed his fingers against the guitar strings and tried not to think too hard about any of it. Unfortunately, thinking too hard was one of his core personality traits. Privately, mostly late at night beside Hyunjin, he’d admitted that sometimes this all felt a bit temporary. As if he’d accidentally wandered into someone else’s life. The label interest, the interviews, the thousands of followers online. The fact people now occasionally recognised him in supermarkets while he was buying meat.
It all felt too tied to the flood, to the story of it. What if people only cared because tragedy made better marketing? Hyunjin, naturally, had called him an idiot.
“A talented idiot,” he’d clarified. “But still, an idiot.”
Now, sitting centre stage with a microphone mere centimetres from his mouth, Seungmin could practically hear Hyunjin saying it.
The floor manager pointed at him.
“Stand by.”
The studio lights dimmed slightly.
1.
Seungmin adjusted his grip on the guitar.
2.
His heartbeat thudded in his throat.
3.
The backing track began softly behind him, and then instinct took over. His fingers moved automatically across the strings, muscle memory carrying him through the opening chords as he leaned toward the microphone. His voice came steadier than he felt. The studio disappeared after the first verse. So did the cameras and the audience. It became just the song.
“I’m slipping under
And you’re calling me home
Through the rain and the river roar
I’ll never sink alone
I’m slipping under…”
The lyrics settled over the studio so quietly that Seungmin could hear someone shift in the audience.
He swallowed hard and kept going. Because he knew that when this aired, it would be the first time Hyunjin would hear it. Seungmin had guarded the song fiercely for weeks, deflecting every attempt Hyunjin made to hear even a single line. Partly because he was superstitious about unfinished music, but mostly because the song felt too much like handing someone his entire heart.
“You pulled me from the current
But I’m still learning how to breathe…”
Emotion caught unexpectedly in his chest halfway through the bridge. Not enough to stop him singing, but just enough to make it real. By the final chorus, his hands were trembling slightly against the guitar.
“I’m not scared, I’m slipping under,
I’m falling into your love…”
The last note faded into silence.
For one awful second, nobody reacted.
Then the studio audience erupted into applause.
Seungmin ducked his head immediately, overwhelmed by the sudden noise and heat flooding his face. It felt deeply unfair that he could confess his entire heart in song and still be embarrassed by eye contact afterward.
“Great,” the floor manager called cheerfully. “That’s the one!”
Seungmin blinked. “Seriously?”
“You want to do it again?”
“Oh, absolutely not.”
That got a laugh from one of the camera operators as Seungmin carefully stood, still feeling strangely disconnected from his own body. Backstage passed in a blur after that. His manager hugged him hard enough to nearly dislocate his recovering shoulder. A trio of smooth skinned teenage boys preparing for their own debut performance told him the song was “actually sick,” which Seungmin thought was probably a compliment. One of them asked how old he was. When Seungmin answered, the boy said, “Oh wow.”
With sympathy.
Seungmin ached.
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By the time Friday evening rolled around, the flat was full. Hyunjin had invited everyone.
Seungmin’s family occupied most of the sofa while Minho sat on Jisung, and their other friends spilled onto the floor. The coffee table groaned under the weight of bowls of crisps and bottles of wine.
His mum looked tearful before the programme had even started, which was a common reaction from her these days. Nearly losing her youngest son had apparently unlocked some sort of permanent emotional instability. Changbin pointed as Seungmin walked into the room. “There he is! Our local celebrity! Don’t forget us when you’re rich and famous, eh?”
Hyunjin appeared carrying more drinks, smiling in that soft, absent way he always did when looking at Seungmin now. Like even months later he still occasionally caught himself thinking you’re alive.
That feeling moved quietly through the room sometimes. Never spoken aloud but always there.
Hyunjin handed Seungmin a drink before settling onto the floor between his legs, back resting comfortably against the sofa. One hand reached back automatically, squeezing lightly at Seungmin’s calf.
Tiny touches, constant ones. Seungmin rested his hand briefly against Hyunjin’s shoulder in return.
Then the Pop World intro music started.
“Oh my God,” Changbin said immediately. “It’s actually you!”
“Shut up,” three people hissed at once.
The room fell quiet. Onscreen, Seungmin appeared beneath the stage lights, guitar in hand. For a moment, watching himself there felt surreal, as if he was looking at a stranger who happened to have borrowed his face.
Then the version of him on the screen started singing.
The room didn’t move or breathe. Seungmin kept his eyes fixed stubbornly about 4 inches above the television instead of looking at Hyunjin, because hearing the song was one thing, but watching Hyunjin realise it was about him was another thing entirely.
In front of him, he felt Hyunjin slowly go completely still.
For months after the flood, Seungmin had dreamed about drowning. But sitting here now, with Hyunjin’s hand on his leg, and his song still echoing through the flat, he realised something quietly extraordinary:
He wasn’t afraid of slipping under anymore. Not when Hyunjin had taught him how to swim.