Archive of Our Own

Han Dongmin doesn’t make a habit of weakness.

It doesn’t suit you, Jaehyun had told him once, affectionately pressing his thumb into his cheekbone. He’d swept the pad of his finger back and forth, rubbing small shapes into the dark circles under his eyes. Dongmin dug his fingernails into his palms so harshly that the dents lasted for two days. 

I don’t think you’re weak, he’d said. He had that look on his face—rounded, soft eyes and a lopsided smile that tugged more on one corner of his lips than the other, like he was trying to permanently press that grin into his cheeks.

It’s ironic. Jaehyun presses relentlessly into his chest, digging his fingers into skin and pulling until it gives. He presses against Dongmin’s ribs until they start to crack, and the thick, sticky feeling between them begins to leak through his fingertips.

He wonders if Jaehyun has enough cruelty in him to just reach into his chest and tug until his heart comes loose, dripping syrup and sugar, aching quietly in the palm of his hand. He wonders if Jaehyun will keep it if Dongmin just cracks through his own ribs and forfeits it himself.

Dongmin doesn’t make a habit of weakness. That isn’t to say it doesn’t exist.

There’s a sort of vulnerability he allows himself from time to time, when he’s tucked away from the blinking red lights perched atop the cameras. When he’s allowed to shed the exterior of Taesan; when he returns to Han Dongmin. He often wonders what kind of person he would be, if Taesan didn’t exist. If there was no stage waiting for his arrival, no microphone dangling between his fingers.

Probably a record shop owner, he remembers Jaehyun saying. His smile had been different that time—the sort of smile that had to be born from a laugh, the sort of smile that scrunched his nose and pinched his eyes into little crescent moons, sparkling with joy. You’d have so many records. Stacks of old blues, maybe some jazz. And then you’d have all the rock’n’roll records framed on your wall. The type of music that no one listens to anymore—that old retro vibe.

What are you even saying, Dongmin had huffed, shoving him lightly into the practice room mirror. Jaehyun had pressed against his own reflection and bounced right back against him, lightly bumping their shoulders together. Their reflections had been smiling. It was a strange thing to witness, like he was observing something that wasn’t made for him to see. 

(It was bright. He had bitten back the feeling rising in his throat and forced himself to look away.)

I think I’m in trouble, he’d quietly told Woonhak that same evening, sprawled across his cramped twin-sized mattress, fingers twisting into the sheets. His heart felt like it was being weighed down by buckets of sticky, thick honey. I think I’m in really big trouble.

Woonhak had snored lightly in response, the soft huffs of his breath luring him into an almost deceptive sort of calm. He’d started to count the small bursts of fireworks that he could see behind his eyes, tiny little groups of red and green, and when Woonhak had woken up to Dongmin’s wide, reddened eyes, he found that he had only been counting the same two clusters of stars—over and over again.

I think I’m in trouble, Dongmin had croaked out again, fingers trembling as they rubbed against his eyes. Stars exploded behind his eyelids, the overhead light dissipating their silhouettes before they could form any lingering supernovas. I’m really done for, Woonhak-ah.

Woonhak had glanced at him once, a toothbrush trapped between his teeth, the back of his hair sticking up at several different, increasingly odd-looking angles. His eyes were narrowed to slits, an unimpressed gleam there that shone bright enough to illuminate his whole face.

We’re always in trouble, hyung, he’d said, severely unamused. Don’t make it a spectacle this time.

Oh, he’d said in reply, and then Woonhak furrowed his brows at him and left the room. 

Dongmin had laid there for three hundred and thirty two seconds, trying to hold down the fluttering weightlessness in his stomach with the heavy-feeling thing in his chest. When Dongmin had counted to three hundred and thirty three, he stood up and left to eat, so that when Woonhak returned, there was nothing left of him but crumpled sheets and the imprint of his silhouette pressing into the mattress.

Did you sleep well? Jaehyun had asked, when they were all seated on the couch, teeth tugging at the corners of granola bars and half-toasted bread. Dongmin had told him yes, with his reddened eyes, puffy face, and dark circles, and Woonhak had stared at them like knew and he just couldn’t bear the sight of Dongmin’s bare, fickle heart.

I think I have something to tell you, he’d said, later that afternoon, as he stared at his reflection in the shine of the practice room floor. His voice was a trembling, clumsy thing, staggering and wavering under the weight of his heart. 

Woonhak had cut him off with a sudden grace that neither of them had ever truly possessed before, soft empathy smoothing the furrow in his brow and pressing small dimples in the corners of his smile. Dongmin was so grateful for it all that he’d almost wept.

It’s okay, hyung, he’d said, gathering Dongmin into his arms, and he knew that it wasn’t pity that warmed the spaces between their embrace. I think I know what you’re talking about. 

(He had pressed his palms into the curve of his back in response, and tried desperately not to let his weakness spill, in little droplets, onto the back of Woonhak’s shirt.)

Dongmin has never made a habit of weakness, but now it pours out of him in waves.

You’ve changed, Sungho had told him off stage once, his tank top clinging to his shoulders, his chest, his back. Damp patches of sweat were starting to form where his shirt was stuck to his side, but he didn’t seem to mind or notice at all.

Dongmin, who was still in the process of shedding Taesan’s skin off of his own body, had nearly kicked a mile into the air in surprise. It was with Taesan’s voice that he’d replied, I don’t really change, hyung. Nobody ever really does.

Sungho considered this in silence. As Dongmin scraped the rest of Taesan off, he’d listened to the boisterous cry of Jaehyun’s laughter from the other side of the room, watching the way he brought his hand up to shield his expression as his grin molded his entire face into something open, something achingly beautiful. Dongmin wondered if he had learned that from watching him, wondered how Jaehyun could even think of hiding such radiant joy when it poured out of him like a waterfall.

No, Sungho had eventually agreed, shaking his head with a look that Dongmin recognized to be exasperated and inexplicably fond. No, you didn’t change. I thought it was changing you, but…I don’t think it is, anymore.

(I think it was always there, Dongmin had heard, in the lull between his soft breaths. For as long as I’ve known you.) 

What’s “it?” Dongmin had asked, still watching the smile on Jaehyun’s face as Sanghyuk told him one of his terrible jokes. Sungho had followed his line of sight and choked out a weak, disbelieving little laugh—awestruck.

I dunno, Taesan, he’d shrugged. He’d placed two fingers over Dongmin’s chest to get his attention before tapping the area twice. You should be telling me these kinds of things.

Dongmin curled his thumb and index finger around the circle of Sungho’s two fingers, but he didn’t move to pry them from his chest. It didn’t hurt, and it didn’t feel heavy, so he let Sungho linger, tracing lightly up and over the slopes of his chest, his shoulders, and his back.

You’re soft, Dongmin-ah, he’d said, quietly, as if the statement held enough weight on its own to be spoken without volume. Dongmin stared at his reflection in the mirror like the harsh cuts of his jaw and nose would somehow flatten and curve into something more palatable, like the house fire in his eyes would dim down to a gentle spark.

I don’t think so, he’d replied, lips pressed into a firm line. The skin around his heart felt tender, like if Sungho pressed against it hard enough, it would cave in on itself and tear. Maybe you’re just imagining things.

Dongmin’s weakness is a strange thing. Sungho takes it into his hands and smears it across his own face, grotesquely open. He wears it with a pride that defies all sensibility, wears it like the brambles of a twisted olive wreath.

Maybe, Sungho had said, after a long stretch of silence. Jaehyun was still laughing, this time at something else Sanghyuk had said. Dongmin wondered to himself when his laughter had stopped sounding so ridiculously foolish. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. And then he patted Dongmin on the shoulder, a single firm squeeze, before turning away and sauntering to where the rest of them sat.

Dongmin had stared at the mirror, counted to one hundred and thirty. When he stood up to join them, almost all of them had gone, their chattering fading as they walked past the hall. Only Donghyun remained, both of their bags slung over his shoulder.

He’d tilted his head at him, expression open. Curious.

Ready to go? he’d asked. Dongmin got the feeling that he wasn’t talking about leaving the waiting room.

When did you realize? He wanted to ask, but instead he’d said, Yeah. I think so.

He had smiled softly at him before walking out the door, trusting him to follow. Somewhere halfway, Dongmin had stopped to realize that the answer to his own question didn’t really matter as much as the answer to Donghyun’s.

He’d walked out of the door without glancing back. He didn’t stop to think of anything, only to hope that Donghyun hadn’t forgotten his headphones, and to wonder what Woonhak and Jaehyun would like to order for dinner.

(He’d shoved his hands in his pockets, taken a deep, shuddering breath, and somehow, it had felt like aching relief. A boy reborn.)

Han Dongmin doesn’t make a habit of weakness. That isn’t to say he never is.

“He wants to see you,” Sanghyuk says now, his face washed in the hazy purple glow of the studio lights. There’s some distance between where he sits and where Sanghyuk stands, a line between the dim shadows of his interior and the clinical lighting of the hallway.

“I’m busy,” Dongmin—Taesan—grits, pulling his headphones back over his ears. He doesn’t need to ask who the he in question is, and Sanghyuk doesn’t need to clarify. His presence has always been large enough to fill a room—the fact that he isn’t in it is just a technicality. “And his room is on the other floor, anyway.”

“No, he’s still here,” Sanghyuk shrugs, an almost imperceptible rise and drop of his shoulders. Taesan doesn’t turn to look at him again, just keeps jamming at his keyboard like it might do something to get him out of this situation. Do, Re, Fa. The noise grates on his ears. “He’s tired, but he’s here. He said he texted you.”

“I didn’t see it,” Taesan lies, because he had stared at the offending notification bubble on his screen before his phone had clicked off by itself.

Last sent fifteen minutes and twenty four seconds ago. His phone is face down on his desk now.

 “I’m busy,” he says again, like it’s a good enough excuse to get Sanghyuk to leave, or at least close the door behind him. “If he wants to see me so badly, he can come over himself.”

Another lie. Everyone knows that when Taesan’s in the studio, it becomes his own space. It’s probably why Sanghyuk is lingering awkwardly in the doorway instead of settling on the couch.

There’s irony in that statement, too. Sanghyuk catches it, eyebrows raised and lips pinched. His expression looks a lot like, if you love him, why won’t you see him? and neither Taesan or Dongmin can handle the weight of that question right now, so he buries his face into his hands and hopes Sanghyuk has enough sense left in him to at least lock the door and leave.

“Hyung,” he croaks out, and he despises it, despises the Jaehyun-shaped chasm in his chest, the melody of Jaehyun’s laughter spread across the keys. “Just head back without me.”

It’s a solid thorn of pity, jamming into Sanghyuk’s resolve. He wavers and frowns, hesitantly taking a step back from the little opening. Taesan internally makes a small noise of triumph.

“You can avoid this,” he says, suddenly, and Taesan whips to face him so fast that he nearly detaches his head from his neck. Sanghyuk is still there, a foot in the door, face brighter in the hallway than it was in the studio. A sliver of light pours in through the crack, spilling across the floor until it stops at the wheels of his chair. “I won’t try to stop you. There’s no point in trying to convince you to listen. But it’s…”

His voice cracks. Taesan would laugh at it if he was a little crueler, a little less vulnerable. Maybe tonight he isn’t Taesan at all. He can feel himself slipping slowly back into his own skin, back into the  infinitely smaller Dongmin.

(He’s not blind. He sees the way Sanghyuk looks at Donghyun, and he sees the way Donghyun looks at Sanghyuk. He’s watched the latter smile at Donghyun’s dancing form in the mirror, watched Donghyun’s eyes meet the floor as Sanghyuk tries to stifle his bubbling laughter.)

He wonders if Sanghyuk counts fireworks, too, and then ultimately decides that he doesn’t want to know the answer to that question. Dongmin glances at his rigid form in the hallway and sees the firm hand that he keeps on his chest, to keep his heart from tumbling out and rolling to a stop at his feet.

“Just take care of yourself,” he finally finishes, after a careful pause. Dongmin scrubs at his eyes roughly with his sleeve until the skin there feels tender to the touch. Sanghyuk smiles, gently, when they meet eyes. “Let me know what you want to eat when you get back. Woonhak says he’s hungry.” And then he clicks the door closed before Dongmin can think to form a proper response. 

With the swing of the door goes the rest of the air in the room, leaving a daunting, quiet stillness. With Sanghyuk himself goes all perceptions of the outside world, leaving alongside the soft shuffling of his sneakers. Dongmin’s senses dull like a worn blade; sharp distinctions melt into blurred lines, colors splash behind his eyelids like spilled paint on a blank canvas.

He squeezes his eyes once and turns to thumb at the scrawled lyrics on his desk, some words scratched out so violently that they make minuscule tears through the page. He runs his finger over the sheet, marveling silently at the dents from his pen.

Dongmin flips it over, carefully tracing around the bumps and tears, trying to push them back in on themselves. The paper fits itself back together. He pauses, then resolves to crumpling it between his palms, squeezing it twice for good measure.

He moves to toss the paper into the trash, a mess of bleeding syllables strewn right across, and then there’s a single knock at the door to prepare him before it’s swinging all the way open.

He opens his mouth to tell Sanghyuk off again, annoyance seeping into the bone-deep ache that weighs his chest down. “Hyung, you don’t need to keep—”

And then his words die in his throat, because Myung Jaehyun is standing at the door, a chilled juice box in his hand, shaking it lightly in his direction like an invitation. His shirt is rumpled, half-tucked into his sweatpants. Sweat plasters his curled bangs to his forehead, and his glasses are lopsided—the ones with the thick plastic frames. He’s smiling too, propped up against the door frame, and it’s all so terribly bright. A tidal wave of lyrics crash into Dongmin’s mind, uninvited.

“Oh,” he says, dumbly. Jaehyun invites himself into his space—their space now, really—and closes the door behind him.

“Hi.” Jaehyun’s whispering, but somehow it’s enough to carry the open affection plastered all over his face. It makes Dongmin feel disarmed, shoulders tensing to account for the rapid-fire beating in his chest. “I texted you, and you didn’t respond.”

He carefully places the juice box on his desk, the cold droplets of condensation dripping over his fingers and onto the wood. Jaehyun gingerly peels the wrapper off of the straw and stabs it through the packaging, offering it up. Dongmin takes it, biting down on the straw as he drinks.

“S’rry,” he mumbles, around the plastic in his mouth. “I was busy.”

Jaehyun doesn’t reply. He just hovers silently over Dongmin’s shoulder, watching him awkwardly toggle with the instrumental settings as he chews on the edge of the straw. Fiddling quietly with the keyboard, conscious of the way both of them track the movement. He changes a single note in the bassline. Mutes the drums, unmutes them. Sets the synth one measure forward before he decides that he hates it, and then resolves to mute the keys entirely.

“Taesan-ah,” Jaehyun murmurs as he watches, eyebrows pinched. Dongmin wants to writhe in response, wants to say, Don’t call me that right now, hyung. “Do you want to head back? It’s late.”

He always knows when Dongmin runs headfirst into a creative block; knows when he’ll burn all of his energy trying to drive through that wall by way of blunt force. Jaehyun lays a hand over his own, resting on the mouse, and rubs soothing little circles into the bone of his wrist. 

Dongmin just shakes his head in response. The invisible hand in his chest is back, squeezing his ribcage in a vice grip.

(Hyung, he’d thought bitterly to himself several nights before, when the thought of his smile became too much to bear. I’ve been this way since we were trainees—ever since the coat and the flowers. I wish you’d realized it sooner. 

The smiling Jaehyun hadn’t responded, had only taken his hand and laughed as he’d faded back into the recesses of Dongmin’s mind.)

“Do you want me to stay?” Jaehyun asks. Dongmin wonders how to tell him that this happiness is terribly familiar—that his smile is pressed firmly into the folds of his heart, like dried flowers tucked carefully between the browning pages of an old book. The same story, over and over again.

Dongmin thinks of all the songs they’ve written together, finishing each other’s verses in separate rooms, two clean-cut halves without the need to be together. He thinks of doing his best to preserve each of Jaehyun’s drafted lyrics, the hoarseness of his voice spilling over the paper, trying to carefully frame such tender wounds. He remembers trying to imitate that sore, stinging love, and then realizing that there wasn’t a need for imitation at all.

(We can start over, Jaehyun had told him before, after listening to one of Dongmin’s midnight projects. Scrap the whole thing, if you don’t like it.

I don’t hate it, he’d replied, even though his eyes were squeezed shut and his hands were balled into fists, still trembling in his lap. He’d forced himself to keep the headphones on, even though he wanted to chuck them across the room. Maybe along with the laptop, for good measure. 

Then why do you look like that? Jaehyun had laughed, reaching over to pinch at his ear. He’d yelped and ducked, swatting his hands away. You can say you don’t like it, you know.

I think I like it too much, he’d said, oddly honest. Forced himself to look at the monitor as he spoke, tracing over the waves of each instrument line. Each individual sound. It’s really—I think I did pretty okay.

There was a beat of silence, and then Jaehyun had told him, You’re really strange, Han Taesan. You’re an anomaly, y’know?

Dongmin had silently saved the file without responding. His voice, rough and sore in the draft, was left unfiltered. The guitar stayed just slightly off-key, and the beat was so harsh that it still grated on his ears. It was so ugly that it was perfect.

Are you going to edit it later? Jaehyun had asked, watching him star the file before closing the tab. He’d already placed all of their things inside of his bag, thrown all of the plastic cups and wrappers into the trash.

I don’t think so, hyung. He’d stood and stretched until he imagined that his fingers were brushing the stars. He wondered if Jaehyun could recognize the mirror image of himself, tucked between every melody line. Some things are better unfinished.)

Jaehyun traces his fingers over the stitching of the studio chair, his blurry reflection frowning through the laptop screen—staring at the same rhythm, the same dying pulse. Dongmin rips his eyes away, stares at a cold droplet of juice trickling down the side of its container. He hopes he imagines the way Jaehyun’s face morphs into something helpless, his heart creasing in on itself like the first draft of a lyric sheet.

Dongmin-ah, he sees Jaehyun mouth, before he processes the corresponding sound of his voice ringing in his ears. “Dongmin. Are you okay? Have you eaten?”

There’s two opened candy wrappers aligned neatly next to his keyboard, crinkling every time his hand shifts too close. He winces silently, reaching for both of them and preserving them in the pocket of his jeans.

“A little,” he says. Jaehyun purses his lips together and turns away.

“Hey,” he scoffs, punching him weakly in the shoulder. His voice catches, shaky little bursts of sprinting sound waves. “Take care of yourself, stupid.”

(Weakness doesn’t suit you, he’d huffed so long ago, gently rubbing warmth into the corners of his drooping eyes. The dimming practice lights flickered like falling stars in and out of his vision, a steady pulse thudding in his ears. Somewhere between his ribs, a little stray cat had roused from sleep to bask in the sunlight, somehow seeping through the gaps in his chest.

Because I’m strong? he’d murmured drowsily, right into the space between Jaehyun’s wrist and palm. Jaehyun stared at his closed eyelids and squeaked out a dumbfounded little noise.

No, he’d finally said, and Dongmin opened his eyes to honeyed brown and dimpled cheeks, a reckless sort of intimacy spreading across his cheeks in splotchy smears of pink. I think you hate it too much.

Speak for yourself, he’d replied. The little cat had crawled out of its bony cage to curl up in Jaehyun’s lap, purring quietly beneath the press of his fingers. His lips were raw, bitten and picked into a cherry red. It looked like it stung. He wondered if that tingling feeling would pass into his lips if he’d pressed them together and pulled Jaehyun close enough for their skin to melt and fuse. I don’t think I hate it at all.)

He swallows. Wonders if Jaehyun can feel the fur of a little black stray clinging to the heels of his sneakers, yowling quietly and clawing at his shoelaces.

“You should eat more,” Jaehyun mutters, pressing his thumb into the junction between his neck and his shoulder. Dongmin slumps under the touch, wincing at the bite of his nail—his gentle way of scolding him. “You’re so thin already.”

“I’m not that frail,” he laughs, but that simmering feeling is back in his stomach, beginning to heat into a boil. There’s something else there, something more that his heart means to make known—something that leans too far into damning, reprehensible.

His voice wavers embarrassingly, and he forces down the lump in his throat. I’m not weak, he means to say, but there’s a pair of wide, surprised eyes gazing straight through his skin, burning little scars over his chest. “I’m not—”

“Dongmin,” Jaehyun says, gently.

The spark behind his eyes begins to dance down the rope of a cheap little firework, worming towards the tightly packed bunch of nerves strung throughout his body. Crackling and sizzling—ready to burst.

“I’m not weak, hyung,” he blurts, screwing his eyes shut. He closes his fist around the juice box in his hand, feels the cold liquid trickle down over his knuckles, pooling in the curves between his fingers.

There’s a sudden stillness, a pause that digs deeper into Dongmin’s skin the longer he waits. He can feel Jaehyun’s startled hesitance without needing to open his eyes. He can even almost feel its physical form, reaching out with wispy fingertips to cradle his face in both hands.

“I didn’t say that,” Jaehyun finally replies. He tentatively steps forward, brushing the fringe from Dongmin’s eyes. There is the cool brush of his fingers against his forehead, soothing in its concern. He wonders what he will find when he opens his eyes—pity? Affliction?

“Hey,” he murmurs. Not weak, but soft. “Look at me.”

He cracks his eyes open, pries them apart despite the stinging, and forces himself to look. It’s been so long since he’s allowed himself to look, to trace the soft slope of his jaw, the curve of his cheeks. He finds that he’s missed it with a hollow sort of pain, a phantom yearning that lingers even as he drags his gaze upward.

Fondness, he thinks, when he finds Jaehyun’s eyes in the hazy purple lights. No. Something else.

“Dongmin,” he says, and the world of the studio, the building, the muffled noises of late-night traffic outside of the window—it all fades, like the backing track in a recording booth. What matters is this: the thumping, steady drumbeat of his heart, the electric spark that zings through his arteries, the lulling melody of Jaehyun’s voice.

“Hyung,” he exhales, resting his palm over the front of Jaehyun’s chest and curling it into a half-formed fist. His last line of defense. “Jaehyun—”

“Do you think I’m weak?” he asks. His eyes seem to be ablaze with the glow of the computer screen. Dongmin opens his mouth to speak, to say no, to vehemently protest, but he cuts him off with a sharp shake of his head. “Of course I am. I should be.”

“You’re our leader,” Dongmin shoots back, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. He can feel Jaehyun’s heart, pulse jumping beneath his knuckles. You’re my leader, he wants to shout, wants to grip at his shoulders and shake until their frustrations bleed into a single, shared rage. You’re supposed to be strong for us. You’re supposed to be strong for me.

Jaehyun smiles sheepishly, glancing out of the window. He makes no move to remove Dongmin’s hand. “I cry often, these days. At a music show, at a showcase, at home.” He pauses, biting the inside of his cheek, before continuing. “I have a short temper. I fought with Sungho yesterday because I forgot to separate the clothes in the laundry. I fought with Woonhak the day before that because he left a half-eaten cup of ramen by the sink.” He turns back to face him, smiling fondly. “I fought with you and cried because I thought you didn’t like me.”

“That,” he pauses. He remembers the moment vaguely, in the back of his mind—Jaehyun’s watery-sounding shouts and his own deadpan drawl. “That was so long ago.”

“I know,” Jaehyun smiles. “I’m proving a point.” He curls a warm palm around the wrist still pressed to his chest, letting it linger. “I’ve always been a crybaby. I don’t think it’s ever going to change. It’s that weak spot in my heart, maybe.”

“That’s not weak,” he protests, the words spilling out of his mouth. “That’s—”

Dongmin remembers the first trophy they had ever taken home. Jaehyun had cried both on and off camera, the salty tears dripping into the open spaces between the plaque and the golden cup. Woonhak had stomped his foot and whined that their name would rust right off of the award, but he’d simply choked out an ugly little sound in response and curled into Donghyun’s side, hiccups causing his body to jolt between sobs.

I don’t care about the cup, he’d said. Dongmin had stared at him in semi-disbelief as he’d lifted his head, glossy eyes gleaming a pretty thing. He’d looked at him the same way when he had bought the flowers for Dongmin’s graduation—eyes twinkling and shoulders pushed back, like if he made himself look larger, then his own presence could account for the two empty seats next to him. I don’t care about the trophy at all.

(He’d lost the flowers, right after his graduation ceremony. Jaehyun had just scoffed lightly after his meek apology and adjusted the collar of the coat that he’d loaned him. The flowers don’t really matter, Dongmin-ah. I just wanted you to have something to hold.)

I don’t care about the trophy, he’d said again, with conviction. Sungho had moved first to start an awkward three-way embrace, and then Woonhak had bounded in, and then Sanghyuk had no choice but to be dragged into the circle. Dongmin had watched them join, one by one, before carefully slotting himself into the waiting place between Jaehyun and Donghyun.

Jaehyun had tilted his head up to stare at him, teary eyes twinkling with a certain sort of pride, and Dongmin had realized something, and the world began to shift on its axis. He’d rubbed his fingers against his palm and felt the fabric of a long, worn coat, the soft petals of roses.

His world had turned, but Jaehyun—Jaehyun had looked at him as if…

“Oh,” he says. He can see it now, the parallels between Jaehyun’s crinkled eyes and the hole in his chest. A weakness, perhaps, in its very nature—and yet.

Jaehyun’s still looking at him, the same way he did years ago, days ago, just moments ago. Dongmin feels like a fool. Even adoration feels too weak of a word for the twinkle in his eyes, the heart-like shape of his lips when he laughs.

“Dongmin?” he asks, equal parts concerned and…that something else. He can’t bring himself to name it, too afraid to force it into a place where it does not want to belong. He itches to shove it away, to close a worn cardboard lid over the whole ordeal and let it collect dust in the crevices of his mind.

He digs his nails deeper into Jaehyun’s shirt, an irrational lump forming in his throat. His half-fist trembles over the white cloth, the tightness of his fingers lightly pulling at the wrinkles until they appear smooth. “That’s not fair, hyung,” he grits out again, forcing himself to look down at his lap. “You’ve never been that way. You’ve always been so…”

Strong, he wants to say, but his heart beats to the same rhythm that Jaehyun’s does, and there is no strength in the way that he falls before his blooming smile.

In a handful of hours, the sun will start to crawl up on the horizon. The skyline of Seoul will be painted in blinding shades of crimson and apricot hues. Somewhere further, out on the beach, the clear water will begin to ripple with emotion, a desire to dance, and the sea will glitter with the shine of the morning—only for a moment, but enough for the earth to shift in its sleep.

Jaehyun takes his hand, and somewhere in Dongmin’s distant mind there is an early morning dawning just before them. The inky black of midnight begins to bleed into vibrant pinks and cerulean blues. Two skies that shouldn’t mix, finding a way to coexist in the silence of a sleeping metropolis.

“Maybe you’re a little weak,” Jaehyun says. Dongmin thinks about how he should begin to tell him that his weakness exists as a person: as a watery-eyed, naive boy whose heart is larger than the rapidly expanding edges of the universe. “You don’t have to be strong all the time. Even mountains crumble to the sea, right?”

He says it so cryptically that Dongmin can’t help but laugh, a startled noise forcing its way out from his stomach, like a bird bursting from its cage. “Don’t try being a poet, hyung. It doesn’t suit you.”

Jaehyun just shakes his head in reply, a muted endearment warming the corners of his gaze. Dongmin’s head faintly rings—a question, a memory. He brushes his fingers over Jaehyun’s knuckles, watches him relax into his hold.

“Doesn’t suit me, huh?” he huffs, squeezing Dongmin’s hand twice. “I can think of a few other things that don’t suit me.”

Monochrome colors, he doesn’t say, a careful spark flickering and spreading through his fingers. Bulky jewelry. Expired candy in half-opened wrappers. The sharp lines of an electric guitar, the curved pick that goes with it. Rock’n’roll records. Timid street cats. Han Dongmin, in the form that has hands and legs and arms too large and too soft for his prickly heart.

Jaehyun takes his sudden silence in stride, pulling him upward, out of his chair. His eye catches on the starred folder as he stands, wobbling on his feet. Dongmin staggers, leaning into his side, and Jaehyun lets him stay there, unashamed of the strange image they must make.

“Dongmin,” he says, severely. “Do you think that you’re weak?” There’s something a little funny about it, the ferocity in his eyes and the ever-so patient way in which he presents perhaps the worst question he’s ever been asked in his twenty years of life. He bites his lip, ponders his answer.

Really, the thing is—before Taesan and Dongmin had to cram themselves into the same body, pressed crushingly close and spilling into each other, there was just Han Dongmin. A singular person who had just enough space to grow outward; a clumsy, eldritch thing. There is something to be noted about how even the first Dongmin didn’t have this distortion of a heart bleeding all over his palms. There is also something to be noted about how Taesan holds it as an extension of himself, a stage persona that falls away to a bursting sincerity.

So what is this, then? Dongmin wants to crack himself open, wants to dig until he finds the miniature replica of a warmer, softer thing nestled within: a heart within a heart. Perhaps it should be a horrifying thing, to find that there is something that should not be where it is, to find two things that should not exist in tandem bound together by arteries and veins. But as he chips away at each splintered bone, he finds no fear or disgust—just an amiable sort of acceptance. There has always been enough room in his body, shivering with a cold sort of loneliness, so what’s a second heart that beats a little faster and fits itself snugly in place?

(And if Jaehyun was the one who put it there, how can he be blamed if Dongmin opened his chest first, flaunting rows of mutilated tissue and muscle with a pride that he didn’t realize he had?)

“Not often,” he replies, because it’s true enough. And then, a little more truthfully, “I don’t really like to think of it in the first place.”

Jaehyun’s still holding his wrists, holding him upright. “Does it hurt?” He tilts his head, and Dongmin realizes that he is being squeezed like a mound of sand slipping through shaky fingers, like Jaehyun cannot bear the thought of letting him go. “To think of it?”

“Maybe by your standards, hyung,” he laughs. It doesn’t waver, but somehow, he wishes it does. “It’s bearable enough.” He jerks his head towards the computer, shrugging towards the piled archives of words unspoken, of a desolate mourning carried by droning chords. “It’s preferable, in these kinds of situations, isn’t it?”

A faltering silence sweeps over the studio like a crisp sheet over a mattress. Paper thin, like the bare bones of a larger body—but still warm in his hands. He waits, watches the distress play out on Jaehyun’s face like a poorly conducted soap opera.

“I wish you wouldn’t think of it that way,” he responds, releasing Dongmin to take three paces back. He counts each step in eighth notes: one-and-two-and-three-and.  “Like it’s…like there’s some sort of benefit to it.” There’s a small twitch in his brow, a little gesture that lives in the limbo between frustration and exhaustion.

Music is Dongmin’s reason; music is Jaehyun’s cause. Jaehyun loves every dotted quarter, every pitch, every fret on the guitar like it’s his own. Dongmin loves music like an outsider peering through a window, cherishing old vinyl and worn record players still encased in plastic, eternally preserved. There is a difference in the way that they press the same pen to paper, a frantic, impassioned scrawling versus a practiced, faux ease.

“What should I think of it?” he begs, and this—this is the final climax of a desperate belting, the twang of a guitar swelling until it reaches the peak of its crescendo. There is a dissonance, a lingering tension between two predetermined, existing things, and Dongmin forfeits his right to the cadence of the measure, pressing his obscenities and professions into Jaehyun’s waiting hands.

“Don’t think of it at all,” Jaehyun murmurs, reaching up to rub languidly at the corner of Dongmin’s eye. He curls his fingers behind his ear, nails brushing against the long, uneven ends of his hair. “Why should you hate a thing for existing? It’s yours, anyway.” 

Jaehyun presses the little black cat close to his chest, easing it into the crevice of his arms, and then there is a sort of grief that begins to blossom across his face like clusters of dandelions, wavering as its tufts drift in the wind.

Before his eyes, there is a sweet summer field adorned in honeyed yellows and forest greens. Jaehyun stands in the midst of it all, crowned with a garland of twisting stems and petals, steeped in the same color of the clashing supernovas in the sky. He laughs, his circlet lopsided, and Dongmin takes a single shaky step towards him and his steady palms.

“I don’t think so,” he replies, heart thudding in his chest. He curls his fingers around the drumsticks and brings them down in a blinding arc, slamming them against the running bassline and the rapid descending of the keys. The music is underwater now, and he fights against the muffled melody and the crackling speakers to shout the final notes of the chorus. 

He starts to sprint through the grass, fingertips catching onto the tips of flower buds and leaves, desperately stumbling towards the silhouette of his back lit by the midnight stars.

Hyung, he shouts, and his voice is beginning to bleed, lodged with thorns and a longing that has been stuck there for as long as Jaehyun had torn his way into his life. He pays it no heed, continues to run until his lungs burn and his chest heaves. Hyung!

Jaehyun turns, eyes alight with a growing curiosity, and Dongmin crashes into the curve of his spine, an explosive collision between two roaring stars. He flings his arms outward, wrapping them around the curve of his side, tangling his fingers tightly around the front of his shirt. The Jaehyun in his mind’s eye makes a surprised sound, smiling as he turns to face him.

Jaehyun-hyung, he hiccups.

Hyung’s here, he says, and Dongmin shakes like a leaf in his loose embrace, still gripping at the fabric of his blouse. Jaehyun’s smiling up at him, eyes scrunched up into little crescents brimming with devotion. Tell me.

“It’s not—” Dongmin breathes. There’s no wreath of sunflowers resting on top of Jaehyun’s tangled hair, no red nova illuminating the side of his face. He pushes forward anyway, past the roaring wind-kickdrum-heartbeat in his ears. “It’s not that I feel weak. It’s just that you…”

It shouldn’t be this difficult, he knows. The jagged words are pushing out against him from the inside, trapped behind a bony cage of apprehension and all-encompassing fear. He sucks a breath in through his teeth, grips his heart from the base, and tugs at it until the force of it shoves him back into his chair. He watches it fall forward, thudding once and stopping at the heel of Jaehyun’s shoes.

Jaehyun glances at it, crouching down to cradle it in his palm. Dongmin swallows thickly, watches his tangled hair fall like a curtain over his eyes, pink lips pursed tightly in thought. He bites his lip, opens his mouth to say You can have it if you want, but what comes out instead is—

“Hyung,” he says, and to his horror it comes out as a pathetic little hiccup, barely audible under the deafening screech of his little crowd. Dongmin’s fingers are bleeding across the strings of his guitar, bruises forming in little clusters around his nails, but he presses them harder into the frets and forces himself to strike his last few notes. He picks at the same string twice, listens to their parallel sound waves chase each other across the stadium. 

(There is no distance between the interval of a perfect prime.)

“Hyung,” he starts again, biting back a weak laugh at Jaehyun’s open bewilderment. How much longer is it going to take you? he wonders, but the thought of it isn’t tinged in bitterness, anymore. It feels lighter, carried by a blooming fondness that he can finally allow himself to have, even if it’s only just this once. “I love you, you know.”

Jaehyun blinks once, a rapid fluttering, before letting out an uncertain, startled laugh. “Han Taesan, what’s gotten into you? What’s with the sudden sentimentality?”

In some distant, improbable universe, he thinks he would’ve liked to tell Jaehyun in the late afternoon. There could have been cherry blossoms rustling in the warm wind, petals falling all around them—like an oddly romantic drama scene. Maybe they would’ve been on the street in front of their school, because Dongmin would have liked them to be students—toeing the line between leaving adolescence behind and growing into maturity. Maybe he would’ve brought a single flower, and maybe his other classmates would’ve laughed at the sight of an absurdly tall boy trembling with anxieties unspoken as he shoved his slightly-wilting rose in Jaehyun’s face. Maybe they would’ve cheered. It didn’t matter so much, because he probably would’ve blocked it all out anyway.

There’s some sort of beauty in this moment, too. The tentative silence of the world, both inside this room and outside of it, waiting with bated breath for his next words. This small, charged space between both of them, electric and alive with a tense hesitation, filling slowly with something glowing and warm to the touch.

“I love you,” he says again, and this time, the relief slams into him with all the gravitational force in the world, drops him down and yanks him upward. His shoulders tremble, as if the removal of weight upon them will allow him to grow wings and soar up, higher and higher until he breaks through the atmosphere and drifts into space. For a brief moment, fear is abandoned, and he knows only the adrenaline of flying. “Not in—not in the way you’re probably thinking of.”

I’m in love with you, he doesn’t say. The distinction doesn’t need to be made at all.

“Oh,” Jaehyun says, after approximately ten seconds, eyes growing wider than saucers. And then he folds in on himself, dropping his face into his palms and scrubbing at it helplessly. “Oh.”

Dongmin chuckles softly at the sight despite himself, slowly dragging his chair to where Jaehyun is now crouched on the floor, leaning forward to meet his eyes as he tilts his head upward. “Jaehyun-hyung,” he huffs. He wonders if this will be the last time that he can smile at him, full and absolute. “Do you want me to say it again?”

“I think I got it the first time,” he manages, shoving weakly at his knees. Dongmin laughs at it, quiet but ridiculously wide, and doesn’t bring a hand up to cover it. Jaehyun stares at it like he’s burning it into memory. 

“You—” His hand is still frozen in midair, pushing back against the empty space where Dongmin used to be. The bubbling laughter dies in his throat as Jaehyun stares. “Since when?” he demands faintly.

He hesitates and looks up, closing his eyes. Dongmin tries to remember what the heavy air of his school gymnasium felt like—the weight of the first bouquet that Jaehyun had given him, its sickly floral scent clogging his senses until he felt that he was bursting at the seams with it all: gentle petals and fuzzy wool.

“Probably since my graduation,” he admits. He resolutely decides not to look at Jaehyun’s face, decides that he doesn’t want to see the wreckage blooming there. The responding quiet is imposing as the sound of shattering glass, delicate and awful. Jaehyun holds the pin-drop silence and lets it recoil like the snap of a rubber band.

“That was almost two years ago,” he finally murmurs. It rings in Dongmin’s ears.

“I know.” The silence stretches, four-count rests for sixteen measures. Dongmin splits the rhythm of each one, half notes and eighth notes and whole notes, still clinging to the fixed constant of the beat: one, two, three, four. He breathes in, the stillness of empty space swallowing the sharpness of his inhale, and then says, “I’m sorry.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Jaehyun whispers, and Dongmin startles out of his trance to find torment cut across his face like a scar. “Why—why didn’t you—”

Surprise comes first, folding itself over his tongue and jamming at the words forming in his throat. For a moment, all he can do is gape silently at Jaehyun’s face, disbelieving and wounded, framed in his mind’s eye like a mosaic in a museum. He traces his fingers over the glass, and the scorn comes next, livid and hot and hurt.

“What could I have said?” he says quietly, folding his arms across his chest. “Neither of us would have believed it.”

And it’s true. If Dongmin had held Jaehyun’s hand in this same room two years ago and looked up with a tenderness that he didn’t yet know how to hold, Jaehyun would have laughed in his face and told him to look at something else. Dongmin would have laughed at himself, vicious and cutting, before turning to the nearest blank sheet of paper to jot down some poor imitation of a faux emotion. Two awkward magnets hovering around each other, still unsure whether to push or to pull.

“So your solution was to say nothing for two years—”

“I didn’t—”

“Nothing,” he seethes, and he’s teary-eyed again, in his beautifully irrational way. Dongmin’s heart twists itself into knots, drawing itself tighter until it threatens to snap. His resentment deflates in on itself, doused by Jaehyun’s own fury. “Were you planning to take it to your grave? Was I supposed to find out on your deathbed, Dongmin?”

Anger, denial, remorse, uncertainty. Dongmin sorts out the boxes that the shape of Jaehyun’s voice could belong to and turns the prism over in his hands, watching as it catches the light and spills tiny freckles of rainbows all over his skin.

“Hyung,” he mumbles, shivering and uncertain. He wants to reach out, to soothe or to comfort, but his hands stick to his sides in doubt. Like a cat that doesn’t know how to retract its claws, every light press of its nail leaves thin little scars. 

Of course Dongmin’s love is a repulsive, grotesque thing—bruised and lopsided, cracked bones protruding from beneath his skin. He tries to press everything back into its place, tries to mold the shape of himself into something more digestible—but the state of him stays, like a little clay doll drying in the sun, imperfections and all. He blinks owlishly up at Jaehyun, a confused, misshapen mass of undiluted affections, and Jaehyun just looks back, uncaring of it all.

He’s always looked. Dongmin wonders if it’s better that way.

Jaehyun takes a sharp, shaky breath, the line of his shoulders trembling. He’s crying, Dongmin realizes belatedly, little hiccups forcing their way from his throat. His head is bowed, but Dongmin knows that tear tracks are already digging into his cheeks, soaking through his skin and dripping down to the bone.

Dongmin raises his hands cautiously, fluttering them all about before resting them on Jaehyun’s shoulders, gently squeezing a soothing pulse into the skin there. It’s strange, holding him like this—an embrace at an arm’s length. The distance between them is a chasm, wide and daunting, and he anchors himself close, clasping his hands tightly before either of them begin to drift away.

Jaehyun makes a keening sort of noise, high and tinny, into the sleeve of his shirt. Dongmin presses his thumbs against his shoulder blades, soothing his choked sobs out from his lungs. He imagines they would look like marbles, swirls of color dancing in tiny spheres, clinking against the desk as they rolled in any which direction.

“Jaehyun,” he says, squeezing at the flesh under his fingers until it feels solid. Jaehyun twists and writhes under his touch, cracking and melting before settling into his own body. He shudders, turning around to latch himself onto the collar of Dongmin’s shirt, fists closed tight, still ducking away from his gaze. 

Dongmin gently brushes his bangs out of his face, and Jaehyun tilts his head to face upward with the movement. His eyes are red-rimmed and wet, small rivers tracing their way over the curve of his jaw. Everywhere from the tip of his nose to the apples of his cheeks are flushed a light pink, and Dongmin’s heart clenches uncomfortably beneath his shirt. “If you’re crying, what does that make me?” he tries to joke, but it comes out as a whisper.

“I’m sorry,” Jaehyun breathes out, hoarse and watery, and Dongmin’s heart drops all the way down to his toes. A pit opens in his stomach, and Jaehyun starves the monster living inside: mouth empty but jaws still pried open, stuck in something of an eternal hunger. A lingering want. “Hyung’s so sorry, Dongmin-ah.”

“Why are you sorry?” he huffs lightly, watching Jaehyun’s hands slide back into his lap. The imprint of his grip remains, wrinkled and folded into Dongmin’s sleeves. His eyes flit to the window, watching a lone taxi drift along the road, heaving itself along the gravel under the fluorescent green gaze of the stoplight. “Don’t be sorry.”

It’s a strange expression to say, because he doesn’t ever mean it. Jaehyun will always be clumsy and open. Will always be overwhelmingly sorry, tripping over himself with misplaced guilt that has nowhere to go. Dongmin could never just ask him to simply stop. His apologies are as essential to his being as breathing, seared into the space right over his throat.

Dongmin collects Jaehyun’s lingering regrets and carefully piles them next to his bedside, precariously balanced words stacked atop his record player, scratching through the memory of his favorite songs until the notes are dissonant and muffled. He watches the world unfurl before his eyes, tipping out and over the ledge of stained glass five stories above the ground, buckets of old souvenirs covering the streets in glitter and paint. Jaehyun will still be sorry, despite it all—with puffy eyes and wet cheeks. Dongmin will always cave, structures collapsing in on themselves, celestial bodies condensing and blistering before rushing outward in a spray of multicolored freckles.

“I’m sorry,” he hiccups again, insistent. Dongmin thinks of pressing a needle to a shiny black record until it cracks, until the voice packaged inside stops its crooning. The same measures, looped infinitely for as long as there is friction, but only just enough of it. Let’s record again, he hears in the distance, clear through his headphones but muffled and trapped between the carpeted walls of the recording booth. Again. One more take, Taesan-ssi. Try to stay on beat, this time.

“Stop that,” he chides. He doesn’t swallow, despite the dryness lodged in his throat. It will hurt obscenely, and Dongmin has had enough of bleeding all over his own broken bones. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“Two years,” Jaehyun whispers, and he looks like a boy witnessing a freak accident on his way to wherever he might be headed—witnessing glass and rubber burning and falling like rain, glinting in the dark like stars on earth. Dongmin feels alight, like something melting, something twisting in on itself, and Jaehyun is watching. Is it selfless or selfish to want his condolences layered over his affections, thin wax paper wrapped around an awkward oblong figure and decorating it in a faint glossy sheen? Jaehyun wipes at his tears like he’s trying to peel them off of his skin, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “How could you ever…?”

“It wasn’t difficult,” he says, even though it makes him curl in on himself, sheepish and shy. The Jaehyun in the field laughs at him, carefree and wild, and Dongmin remembers how he’d laughed like that just yesterday in the practice room, and the day before that in their shared studio space. He remembers Jaehyun humming to himself in the kitchen as he’d boiled soup for himself, and Dongmin had been caught in the hallway, trapped and rooted to the doorknob by the sheer force of his adoration. He remembers Jaehyun listening to one of his songs for the first time, the tangled wire of his earphones in his lap, eyebrows lifted and lips parted. This is incredible, he’d said, and Dongmin had known right then and there—of course he’d known, how could he not? He’d known he would love someone like Jaehyun all his life. “It wasn’t hard,” he smiles. “You don’t have to apologize.”

Jaehyun doesn’t respond, just looks. Dongmin bites the inside of his cheek, anxiously running his nails over his fingers. His leg begins to bounce in time with his pulse, mapping out the same tempo for both of them to see.

You can tell me now, he wants to say. He wants to steel himself for it, to prepare for the crushing weight of the world to collide with him as he falls, but his own skin makes for flimsy armor, and it’s better not to pretend, anyway. He presents himself before Jaehyun, bare and wounded, and tries his best to not expect anything at all. You can tell me.

“If you want another love song,” he blurts, nudging lightly at Jaehyun’s leg, “you’d better reject me now, so that I can get over it faster, right?” His voice doesn’t shake, but there’s something of a sharp shift, burrowed into his tongue. Dongmin doesn’t mention that he thinks he might write songs about him for the rest of his life. He doesn’t think he has to, even with his eyes downcast. He sets his jaw and forces himself to lift his chin up, to be unafraid, just for a minute. 

Jaehyun stares at him. For the first time, when Dongmin looks at him, his expression is unfamiliar, foreign. Not blank, never blank—but something else entirely. Panic rises in his chest, so cold that it’s scalding, and he desperately tries to sift through his mental catalog of all the ways he’s looked at him, because he’s absolutely sure that Jaehyun has never, in his whole life—

“Nineteen,” Jaehyun says.

Dongmin startles. “What?”

“Nineteen,” he repeats, a little slower. Dongmin blinks, taking the world in, the ground beneath his feet. “Do you know what that number means to me?”

Nineteen could mean a multitude of things, really. Jaehyun was barely nineteen when he’d strong-armed his way into the debut lineup by brute force, spitting rapid-fire lyrics into the narrow walls of an audition room he would never have to see again. Jaehyun was nineteen when he’d made his debut with the rest of the group, shedding his delinquent image for something a little lighter, a little brighter. Dongmin has nineteen songs publicly credited under his name, seventeen of which he’d written with Jaehyun. And still, none of them feel quite right, so he presses his lips together and shakes his head.

“I’ve written nineteen songs,” he says. Dongmin furrows his brow and begins to protest, because Jaehyun has probably written hundreds of songs, if not thousands. Some of them have only been conceptualized lyrically, stuck inside a two-dimensional plane of existence, and some have probably been long forgotten—saved onto broken and trashed computers. Even more of them Jaehyun has saved to give away, scraps of his heart uploaded onto digital drives for someone else to sing, and Dongmin doesn’t understand how he could ever possibly try and shove all of his potential, his craftsmanship, into a little palm-sized container labeled nineteen.

“Nineteen and a half, technically,” he continues, shrugging. “Nineteen and a half songs that nobody’s ever listened to more than once, including me.” He smiles, red-eyed and sniffling, and Dongmin can only stand, rooted to the floor as Jaehyun waits for him to figure out something that’s always existed in the fissures of the earth, in between the rifts and gaps of their intertwined hands. He waits, eternally patient, and Dongmin thinks that Jaehyun would wait for anyone if he wanted to; until dust and ash would wash over his frame and encase him in stone.

Logically, Dongmin knows that the world doesn’t shift over trivial things like love. But if, somehow, he could preserve this moment—if he could find a way to stop the earth’s rotation to frame and properly cherish the way Jaehyun looks at him—then the earth would be still before his hands. The natural order of the universe, he knows, is almost comically insignificant to the human heart. To Dongmin’s heart, and to Jaehyun’s.

“They’re all about you,” Jaehyun says, and the ground does not split apart to swallow Dongmin whole, the sea does not rise to wash over the Seoul skyline, and there is no violent earthquake to bring either of them to their knees. Still, he falls like a fool, wild and unrestrained, reckless and without any inhibitions. If he opens his eyes, there is the galaxy all around him, and there is no peak or bottom, just an endless open abyss. Gravity will keep him afloat for a while, of course—but naturally, it is a human thing, to desire falling. And then all Dongmin will know is the burning sensation of his body ripping through time, sinking faster than the universe grows. He will streak like a comet through the sky, hurtling forward aimlessly, until some unfortunate planet will impede his path and catch him as he crashes, returning to his own body.

“What are you saying?” Dongmin asks, breathless.

Jaehyun laughs at him, this time. His smile is dimpled at the corners, like craters dug into the moon. “What do you think I’m saying?” he prods, and they’re fitted together again, the way they should always be. Dongmin stumbles forward in his haste, reaching forward like a man in a trance, and Jaehyun catches him, resting his hands carefully over his arms. The aching hope hits Dongmin with the force of a freight train, and he has Jaehyun in his hands, simply holding. Jaehyun reaches upward, lightly cups his face in his hands and rubs his thumb against the space under his eye.

Dongmin catches his wrist in his own hand. “How long,” he begs, hoarse. The tips of Jaehyun’s nails scratch lightly at the back of his head, affectionate. He tries valiantly not to crumble in his grasp, but to no avail. He’s always been weak to Jaehyun’s little stunts, anyway. “Hyung, I need to know. How long?”

“Nine months,” Jaehyun says. Dongmin forces himself to breathe, short little puffs that work their way around his racing heart. He squeezes his eyes once, twice, but Jaehyun is still standing there, holding him and smiling. There’s a brief lull, a sharp inhale. “I always thought that you’d—” He hesitates, starting to cut himself off by pressing his lips into a thin line, but Dongmin squeezes him once, desperate and trembling. Jaehyun shakes his head, turning to face the edge of the room. “I thought you’d hate it,” he whispers, a guilty admission that pierces through Dongmin like a knife. “I didn’t know what to do if you’d told me that you—”

“Jaehyun,” he exhales.

“I thought you wouldn’t want me,” he says, quietly. “I thought you didn’t even want me in the first place.” He turns to face Dongmin, and whatever he finds must be overwhelmingly abundant, because he tears his gaze away to stare at the floor. His hands are the only thing anchoring them together, two lost pieces of space debris bobbing along the waves of a distant ocean. “I’m sorry.”

Jaehyun lays himself bare like a patient on an operating table, stripped down to his essence for everyone to see. He takes the scalpel himself, cutting through ligaments and tendons until he feels he’s sober enough, stitching himself up and taking his leave before he can allow himself to bleed over the floor. Dongmin can only watch from a distance, witness the flash of the equipment before it disappears, observe the clench of Jaehyun’s teeth as he hisses out silent profanities. The way Jaehyun knows him is a double-edged blade that Dongmin feels with every breath that he takes, little surgical cuts that snip at him with refined precision.

“Jaehyun-hyung,” he says, and squeezes at his shoulders until he looks up. Dongmin wants to pull him close, press him against the thundering pulse in his chest until everything is right again, but the action feels too daunting to attempt, so he settles for holding Jaehyun at an arm’s length in a makeshift embrace. He inwardly cringes, fingers curling tight against the fabric of Jaehyun’s shirt, but he soldiers forward despite the discomfort. He wants to say something dashing, something that will make him swoon, but Dongmin’s never been too good at great speeches either way. This will have to do.

He drags the backs of his fingers up the side of Jaehyun’s neck, watches him squeeze his eyes shut and shudder under the touch, and wonders if he can feel the vicious greed that seeps from every pore in his body. His hand slides up to cup his face, and Jaehyun twists his face into something torn between longing and anticipation. His eyes flutter open, eyelashes casting short little shadows across his cheeks, and Dongmin sees his own unsteady want reflected in the pool of his irises. He wants, and he wants, and he wants.

For today, Dongmin resolves to let himself fall, will let himself succumb to what is not weak—what has never been.

(Only this once, he tells himself, but he will crave Jaehyun like he craves oxygen, the warmth of his palms, the lopsided pull of his grin. He will return to him like a tide to the shore, inevitable and irrefutable, pulled by the gravity of the moon—rising until he collapses and crashes onto the sand. Only this once, he says, but he will want Jaehyun like the dewdrops on summer grass want to catch the light, straining to reach the first few rays of the sunrise. For today, he says, but Dongmin knows that he means for the rest of his life.)

Please catch me, he begs silently, thumbs toying with the sides of Jaehyun’s hair. He almost doesn’t know what to do with it, the right to touch, and to hold, but he’s observed it enough to understand. “Please,” he says, cracked and bruised, into the side of Jaehyun’s cheek, and the only thing he can do is plead—plead to be held, to be brave, and to try and express, in his own clumsy way, the unwavering ends of a devotion that he wants to prove for as long as Jaehyun will let him. “Please?” he whispers, and Jaehyun pauses before shakily nodding once, a minuscule jerk that Dongmin barely catches through the blur in his vision.

He gives himself a single measure to brace himself, four slow counts before he exhales against the dip of his cupid’s bow and carefully observes how Jaehyun steadies himself against his fingers, like Dongmin is the only thing tethering him to the earth. The way his breathing slows, content and calm, eyes slowly falling shut. The way he waits for him is almost picturesque, a state that Dongmin silently commits to memory and frames in his mind before bowing his head and fitting their lips together.

His first thought is, He’s soft. He doesn’t find it in himself to form a proper second thought at all, just an incoherent static and a scrambled mantra of Jaehyun, Jaehyun, Jaehyun-hyung.

Jaehyun only hesitates for half a beat before melting, liquid smooth against the surface of Dongmin’s chest. He presses himself close, and closer still, winding his arms around the back of his neck, reeling him in until he stumbles forward, one arm propping Jaehyun up while the other pushes against the edge of the desk. Dongmin makes a surprised little noise, and Jaehyun chases after it, desperately pushing forward until they begin to melt, magma boiling and spilling over as something new is born from their connection—something sparkling between cooling rock and rising smoke.

He doesn’t know how long they stay there, two silhouettes framed against each other under the dim light of the studio—anywhere from three seconds to three hours would be plausible enough—before Jaehyun rocks back onto his heels, tipping his forward to rest his forehead on Dongmin’s shoulder. He laughs, disbelieving, and his short puffs of breath trail across his collarbone. Dongmin resolutely does not think about the warmth of it, spreading around his neck and tickling the underside of his ear.

“You’re crazy,” Jaehyun says. He doesn’t sound surprised by it at all, just fond. Matter-of-fact. “And really stupid.”

Dongmin cautiously settles his free hand over the small of Jaehyun’s back, tracing minuscule stars into the space there. “Mm,” he hums, helplessly, into the empty and open air. Jaehyun laughs again, hot against his skin, and Dongmin preens. He stands, stunned by the solidity of the boy in his arms, his heart beating right above his own. Thump-thump-thump-thump. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Jaehyun parrots, peering up at him through the curtain of his mussed bangs. He watches Dongmin thoughtfully—or whatever parts of him that he can make out, from this close. His hands begin to absently play with the ends of Dongmin’s hair, twisting it between his fingers. Dongmin wonders what Jaehyun sees, when he looks at him. Something softer, maybe. Jaehyun presses his thumb into his jaw first, and then presses his lips there. He pulls all the way back, so that Dongmin can witness the grin that spreads across his entire face. “Thank you.”

He wordlessly threads his fingers through Jaehyun’s hair again in response, pulling him close. This time, Jaehyun squeaks a startled noise against his mouth before dissolving into light giggles. Dongmin greedily chases after them all, dissolving each of them with the weight of his lips, over and over again. When his laughter subsides, Jaehyun knocks his forehead lightly against Dongmin’s, smiling. His eyes are closed, bliss radiating off of him in waves. Dongmin wants to keep him like this forever.

“I really do like you, you know,” he says to Jaehyun’s lips, so that he can swallow the words down and breathe them in. Jaehyun shudders once against him, burrowing closer. “If that wasn’t obvious.”

“So it’s like now?” he teases, opening his eyes to flick Dongmin on the forehead. He grits out a weak noise of protest back, whiny and petulant. “Weren’t you just professing your love for me earlier? What happened to that?”

“Be quiet,” he gripes. And then: “I love you.”

He slips his hand into Jaehyun’s before he can say anything about the mildly aggrieved look on his face or the flush biting at his cheeks. He takes one step back, two, and then three, watching their arms swing in tandem. Jaehyun huffs at him, amused. He’s beaming so brightly it threatens to split his face in half. 

“Woonhak’s hungry,” he finally blurts, properly disgruntled. Jaehyun snickers at him for it, but he doesn’t prod any further—simply waits while Dongmin collects his bag off of the desk. There’s nothing on the file he has open, but he saves it anyway. “I think we should order something on the way back. Did you want something too?”

Jaehyun blinks slowly, once, twice, before letting out a quiet pfft. He ribs Dongmin in the side, but keeps their hands clasped together. “I don’t mind,” he says. “As long as you share your portion with me, I’m fine with anything.” Dongmin scrunches his nose as he pockets his keys, shaking his head.

“You’re impossible.”

“Whatever, Han Dongmin.” You adore me, he doesn’t say, because he plays fair enough. “Let’s go home.”

In a few hours, the sun will begin to creep over the horizon. Dongmin will be elbow deep into washing dishes, and Jaehyun will be dozing on a couch that isn’t his, arm thrown haphazardly across his face to shield it from the onslaught of light. The sound of Sanghyuk’s alarm will startle him awake, and Dongmin will mourn not being able to watch the sunlight frame Jaehyun’s sleeping face. Jaehyun will rise groggily and attach himself to Dongmin’s back, burying his face into the junction between his neck and shoulder, and Woonhak will stumble in to yell various expletives and profanities at them—all while grinning like an idiot. Jaehyun will fall asleep against his shoulder in the car to work, slumped over and snoring, and Dongmin will take approximately seventy six photos in increasingly worse angles before Sungho throws a fit in the back row and tells them to get the hell out of my face as he bites down a smile. Dongmin will walk back into the studio by himself, and the production team will ask him if he has any ideas for the upcoming album, and Dongmin will say yeah, I think so.

But for now, Dongmin thinks he’ll take Jaehyun’s arm and walk him home. They’ll probably freeze to death trying to get back on foot, but it’ll be worth it if it means Jaehyun will chase him around the block trying to dump snow down his shirt, tackling him to the sidewalk before laughing so hard that he almost forgets to breathe. Dongmin might kiss him, and Jaehyun might kiss him back, and Donghyun might stare at them suspiciously when they return and ask, why are you two smiling like that, right before he connects the dots and slams the door shut in their faces.

Jaehyun might laugh. Might say, what a bummer, before dropping the boxes of takeout to cup Dongmin’s face in his hands and kiss him just for the sake of doing so. Dongmin might scold him for spilling the noodles before unlocking the door himself and dragging Jaehyun in by the collar. Sanghyuk might take one look at them across the table and flatly say, congratulations, and Jaehyun might say thank you so earnestly that he chokes on his first spoonful. Woonhak might try to scowl, and Sungho might cover his mouth and turn away, and Dongmin will most definitely be sporting the most poorly-concealed smile known to mankind—but none of it matters right now.

Right now, he zips up his coat and slips their intertwined hands into his pocket. Jaehyun begins to hum some nonsensical ballad on their walk to the elevator, head bopping along. Dongmin scoffs but indulges him all the same, squeezing his hand to the beat as the elevator doors slide open. He makes sure to buy a juice box on their way out, pressing it to the back of Jaehyun’s neck just to watch him kick a mile into the air and throw a tantrum. He pockets it for later.

“You really suck,” Jaehyun complains with a pout as they step out of the building, leaning close enough for their shoulders to brush together. Dongmin watches his words fog up and disappear into the night sky. “You’re so mean to me.”

“You like it,” he shoots back, kicking at a pebble on the gravel. It skips down the sidewalk, tumbling and clicking as it goes. He stares at it until it fades from his line of vision, and turns to find Jaehyun grinning up at him, cheshire. His sharp canines glint under the streetlights, and Dongmin’s throat suddenly feels incredibly dry.

“Maybe,” Jaehyun sighs, theatrical. “You’re lucky I put up with so much because I like your face,” he drawls, and then he slides a hand around the collar of Dongmin’s jacket to yank him downward, tiptoeing to meet him halfway. He hums three syllables into the space between his lips, and Dongmin’s heart trips all over itself, brings him close enough to bruise.

Han Dongmin doesn’t make a habit of weakness. Tomorrow, he might start trying.