Chapter Text
“Nice,” the voice crackles over the intercom. “I think we got it, Jonghyun.” On the other side of the studio glass, Bumzu, Dongho, and Minhyun give him thumbs ups.
Jonghyun hangs up the Sennheisers carefully on their pedestal, and emerges from the studio. “You really wanted to keep me in there, didn’t you.”
“Maybe it’s because your style has changed a little?” Dongho teases, and plays the sample back for them.
“I’m still the same,” Jonghyun says quickly, mostly to get Dongho to turn it off. Yes, he’s a recording artist, but he still doesn’t actually like the sound of his own voice replayed back at him. It usually takes him a few days in between recordings to get used to the sound of his own voice—by then, he’ll have listened to it enough times that it begins to take on an otherworldly quality, that it becomes abstracted and someone else’s.
Or maybe some part of him is reassuring Minhyun, who is sitting on the couch, fixating him with a wide-eyed gaze. “It was really good, Jonghyun-ah.” The way he says it sounds cool enough to the untrained ear, but Jonghyun can sense the breathiness in Minhyun’s voice that makes his compliment just shy of adulation. He looks away before his ears can go hot.
Now that they have everyone’s parts in, Bumzu promises to send the first cut tomorrow. His fingers are already moving even though he’s not looking at the screen; Jonghyun can hear the muffled sound of the track from his headphones, his own raspy rap coming through tinny.
“Should we get something to eat?” Dongho’s wide-eyed and keen, about to rise from his chair. They all know what Dongho means; knife cut noodles from the joint two blocks down from Pledis, where the owner knows their names, followed by a wild spree at the bakery across the street, and enough pastries to last them for the next few mornings. It’s coming to dinner time, after all.
“I recall somebody saying,” Bumzu intones, without lifting his head from his computer, “that somebody wanted to get ripped by his first comeback with Minhyun?”
Dongho’s grinds his teeth. “Then maybe I’ll join for dinner later,” he mutters. “Apparently Bumzu and I have work to do.”
“You kids have fun,” Bumzu says stoically. With a quiet laugh inflected with relief and some nerves, Jonghyun says to Minhyun, “guess it’s just us, then.” He hopes Minhyun can’t hear it, but Minhyun’s already halfway out the door, coat on, calling out for him to hurry up, he’s starved.
Outside, the February air hits them like a surprise, tingling and refreshed. Jonghyun thinks it must be colder than usual, but it might because he feels warmer than usual. They wave off the chauffeur—Jonghyun says that they’re just heading down for dinner down the street at the noodle joint—but when they’re supposed to cross the road they don’t, and they keep going and going until they end up at Bongeunsa Temple, where the Lunar New Year’s festival is in full swing.
“We might get caught,” Minhyun says, nose wonderfully pink and shiny. Jonghyun bristles a little bit.
“Shall we?”
“Shall we what?”
Jonghyun doesn’t reply, just zips Minhyun’s puffer coat up to his nose and pulls down his beanie, Minhyun’s laugh puffs through the down material in a dissipated cloud as his eyes go half-moon, delighted.
Jonghyun zips his puffer all the way up to match. “Let’s go,” he says.
The sun is setting and in the haze of golden hour in the cold winter light it’s hard to make out the contrast of any individual’s features, plus people are with their families and loved ones, while others are old enough not to recognize them or care. Minhyun buys Jonghyun deep-fried yakwa cakes and Jonghyun buys Minhyun fried chicken and they pass through the main temple under the criss-crossing stream of paper wishes strung up above the lotus plants, worming their way through the bulging crowd of merrymakers to the back lanes of the temple grounds. Up a trail into the hills and away from the merrymaking, they duck into the shadow of a worn-down pagoda to watch the crowds of merrymakers from afar as the sun sets for the day.
“Dongho would have liked this,” Jonghyun says, offering Minhyun the last bite of fried chicken.
“You think?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it bad that we left him behind?”
“Technically, he did need to help Bumzu if we’re going to review the first draft by tomorrow. But I guess.” Jonghyun looks a little glum, furrowed brow evident.
Minhyun looks up, suddenly startled.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Minhyun says. “But I think they know.”
“They know?” Jonghyun wants to ask, but he doesn’t want to jump to conclusions.
“I’m pretty sure they know.” And Minhyun’s voice is oddly deadpan, as if he’s snuffed out all the emotion and fear, leaving behind only a wave of pure logic. “My lyrics for our single were originally about you. Bumzu heard everything.”
“Milano Hwang’s love confessions at ten thousand feet in the air.” Jonghyun watches the moon climb up high in the sky—full, voluptuous, ascending, hanging like a lens in the middle of an azure sky quickly darkening navy.
“Come fly with me,” Minhyun sings softly, his breath tickling Jonghyun’s ear. “Come fly, come fly away.” And the way he pauses after that, the way his breath stutters in his throat, brings Jonghyun to the edge of his toes, waiting for a plunge.
“Minhyun—”
“Jonghyun. I’ve missed you.”
“Me too,” Jonghyun says, and his face flames pleasantly at the admission.
“But I know, I know,” Minhyun interjects quickly, and steps back. “We have to be careful, right?” His hands are shoved deep in his pockets, like he’s trying to burrow away. Jonghyun, something pulled out of him desperate, suddenly unthinking and impulsive, shakes him to his core. In a flash Jonghyun’s hands dart out and envelop Minhyun’s hands in his, pressing Minhyun’s knuckles to his lips, eyes locked deep. Minhyun leans in and captures his lips and Jonghyun in an astounding loss of control opens his mouth to let Minhyun’s tongue slip in, electric—
“No, wait,” Jonghyun steps back, hands on his lips, eyes darting left and right.
“Jonghyun, please—”
He can see Minhyun trying so hard to hold back. Minhyun’s whole body is pitched forward, yearning, straining, and Jonghyun can feel his own too, gravitating toward Minhyun like the earth to the full moon, like the tide rising. And he’s trying very hard not to kiss Minhyun again, and thinks about anything, thinks about how cold it is, how he can’t feel his toes, how everything is just one, big, electric dream around them, and god damn he wants to be kissed again, to just melt, to surrender—
“You’re going to make me wait until the end of time, aren’t you.”
Minhyun’s cool tone of voice and breathy, aristocratic laugh is his go-to when he’s acting. It’s shaky and his expression is at odds with his tone of voice, but if there’s anything Minhyun is great at, it’s bending his voice to suit his reality. And it’s all just enough of a barrier between them that Jonghyun snaps back to reality.
“It won’t be that long,” Jonghyun promises. “We just need to—for one, find a better place to do this in, because there are all these people around and we smell like chicken and secondly, I think, we have to consider the other members—”
Minhyun interrupts him with a level gaze. “Jonghyun, did you know you’re really fetching when you’re shy?”
Jonghyun blusters. “I’m not shy.”
“And you’re the cutest when you’re embarrassed.”
“Minhyun, I’m really not embarrassed,” Jonghyun says embarrassedly.
“So you really can’t blame me for liking you for as long as I have,” Minhyun says, aloof and warm all at once, and somehow making it sound like it is Jonghyun’s fault and Minhyun is just tolerating it.
“It’s not my fault,” Jonghyun says, watching helplessly as Minhyun assembles his aristocratic mask piece by piece, puts himself neatly in order, slips into a well-worn shell that’s meant for everyone else Jonghyun finds himself wanting, wanting so bad, to break the princely facade and just dig into Minhyun’s soul until Minhyun’s writhing beneath him and begging, begging prettily just like he was before, Jonghyun, please—
“Come on then,” Minhyun calls out to him, already halfway down the hill, and Jonghyun is left to scamper down, all the while praying his feet don’t slip on the worn stone path.