Archive of Our Own

Donghyeok is eyeing the shaver that rests innocuously on the table, and without so much as lifting his gaze to him, Doyoung says, "Don't even think about it."

In his peripheral vision, he sees Donghyeok's impish grin return with the admonishment, like a reflex, which is what Doyoung had really been aiming for, anyway. The quiet panic that has settled itself behind Haechan's eyes since the morning is entirely unbefitting of him. This mischief is much better, more at home on his soft features.

Donghyeok lifts his hands as if in false accusation, his mouth twisting into a pout and eyebrows lifting in that targeted way he uses to get under an adversary's skin, artfully irritating. Doyoung can't help but let his gaze linger fondly on the jut of his lower lip.

"I wasn't going to say anything," he says, affronted. "And in any case, hyung knows I would do a much better job than Jungwoo's Pure and Innocent Hair Salon."

Doyoung shudders violently at the thought, and in the corner, their manager laughs quietly.

It isn't that he'd wanted Jungwoo to miss this, but he's glad all the same that he'll be late because of his own schedules. In fact, it's sort of odd that the only person around is Haechan, who's almost the hardest to get ahold of on any given day. The others had assured him they'd make it for lunch, but had all apologised privately that they wouldn't be present when he'd planned to buzz his hair in the morning, citing one reason or another.

Not that it matters much, really, but it's markedly odd considering how much they'd joked and teased about it, with the underlying promise of being there to watch. More suspicious had been the satisfied glint in Haechan's eyes when he'd walked up to Doyoung in the lobby, stating casually, "It's just us, right?"

Or, it's likely that Doyoung is making a mountain out of a molehill, which, along with singing and dancing, is his other main trade. 

He casts the thoughts aside as their manager drapes a paper gown around him, feels his mind go blank at the disproportionate weight that settles on his chest alongside it.

It's not a big deal, really. It's not-

A hand on his shoulder. "You sure you won't let me do it?" Dongyoung just manages to settle on the curved edge of that smile, caught in the mirror.

He rolls his eyes. "I said, don't even dream about it, you brat. I'd sooner let Mark do this than you."

A genuine gasp, this time. "Take that back, right now." But the hand at his shoulder only squeezes, comforting.

Then softer, in the breath that it takes for their manager to move away to get something else he needs: "Are you scared?"

What an odd thing for him to ask. Donghyeok hates questions with obvious answers.

It sends Dongyoung's gaze flitting around the room, sharpening unnaturally at specific places. Again, the shaver on the table. His own face and full head of hair in the mirror. The bulging backpack at the corner of the room. The dark, endless twin wells of Donghyeok's eyes.

There are two facts to face here—Haechan isn't in the habit of asking questions with obvious answers and Doyoung isn't in the habit of avoiding his feelings.

There are a great many things for him to be scared of, and the most intimidating one looks back at him through the mirror, the windows to him bared, steady gaze unwavering—incomprehensible as he has been from the moment Dongyoung had first seen him, really and truly.

2014

The hallway outside the evaluation room is cold but the cold is supposed to be good for your throat, so Dongyoung sips from the ice water in his bottle and tries really hard not to think about how much he needs to use the bathroom.

"Oh? Hyung, hello," comes the voice, the one that's becoming increasingly, gratingly familiar. Like a housefly that hasn't gotten the message after three days of him swatting violently at the air.

Donghyeok ambles down the hall even as he bows politely to him. Somehow he still manages to make the action look sincere. He's grown up a little, in the past year. This is the kind of thing you can't notice from taking someone in through flashes and glimpses every day but from when they walk up to you for the first time in a hallway reserved for senior instructors' lessons with senior trainees, and you think, oh.

They practise together frequently, but only recently have there been serious talks about Donghyeok's potential to join the older boys proper in training as a team, despite the fact that he's not quite joined Mark in his latest growth spurt. Dongyoung hadn't been around when they'd broached the subject with him but he imagines there must have been no small amount of gloating. He can't imagine there must have been any small amount of apprehension, at all.

"Hi," he says, when he realises Donghyeok has performed his ambling all the way to a stop, looking up at him curiously.

"Has hyung gone already?" Donghyeok nods towards the trainer's—their trainer's—door. His eyes flick down to the well-worn watch on his wrist, something Dongyoung thinks, amusedly, his own older brother might have worn when he was younger. "I'm supposed to go in a bit."

"I'm after you, probably."

Donghyeok widens his eyes at him. "Wow, dedication. How early did you show up to your slot, hyung?"

He is such a little shit—it's really only the quickness with which his expression melts into awe that clues Dongyoung in to the fact that he's being teased.

Well, that, and patterns of recognition. Twelve times out of ten, Donghyeok is teasing.

But there's also the little fact Dongyoung has picked up from catching glimpses of him watching the older trainees in the mirror—that when Donghyeok is truly taken by wonder, it spreads slowly across his face. Something like daybreak. Something that pushes him onward when his lungs are burning, to prove himself worthy of that quiet, secret admiration.

This, though. This goes back to the grating. This is another hole in the grater. 

Dongyoung checks his own watch. "Earlier than—two minutes before, come on, Donghyeok-ah. Seriously? You're going to be like this for your first private evaluation?"

Twitch of the jaw, an almost comically angry expression on such a youthful, cherubic face. "I was in the basement," Donghyeok grits out, petulant, "practising. If I stand around waiting for too long I'll start to get nervous."

It's a big show of vulnerability from a fourteen-year-old kid, so Dongyoung tries to meet him halfway. "Yeah? Yeah. I actually really have to go to the bathroom."

Donghyeok snorts, then giggles. So quickly amused. Dongyoung really doesn't get him, most of the time, and that's fine. It isn't particularly a failure because there hasn't been a particular effort. But sometimes, on occasion, fleetingly—dealing with him feels easy, and a little bit rewarding.

"See? A hyung should know better than me, seriously." He pats Dongyoung's shoulder. "There, there," he says, like he's speaking to a kindergartner, "Dongyoungie will do fine."

"Yah."

"Sorry, sorry, Dongyoungie-hyung. You act just like my little brother sometimes, it's hard to remember."

Dongyoung stares pointedly at all the space between his chin and the top of Donghyeok's messy hair. 

"Hey, I'll catch up to you soon enough," Donghyeok says, easily. Even during his little show of vulnerability earlier, there had been almost no trace of anxiety in the set of his features—and still, there's none. Impossible. "Just you wait."

The door to the trainer's room opens. "Is Lee Donghyeok here?" When she spots Dongyoung, she sighs. "Dongyoung-ah. I told you, there's still two slots left until your turn. Go practise in the next room, okay? Donghyeokie, come in."

Donghyeok breezes past him to follow. When their eyes meet, he widens them again a little bit, a silent fighting! but Dongyoung can't tell who he means it to be for.

He sighs, and does as he's told, tapping his ID card to enter the next room—oh, there's still that rush at being able to do that, isn't there?

But instead of standing with his feet shoulder-width apart and trying to activate his core for vocal warm-ups, Dongyoung sinks into the cushioned seat and slumps back against the headrest. So, maybe being three time slots early to every evaluation isn't so easy for him. Maybe it's a little overkill. But it's the kind of overkill that's allowed him to hear things. The instructors like to gossip on their breaks.

If Donghyeok is going to be a serious candidate for the Rookies, they say, then eventually he will need a stage name. Lee Donghyeok is a little too plain for his purposes. He needs something brazen enough, to heavily mask his imperfections. Something extravagant enough, befitting of his talent, this voraciously growing thing that feels like the steady approach of a comet, magnificent and impossible to deter.

Dongyoung hears him begin to sing, clear and bell-like even through the wall that separates them, and wonders, a little blasphemously, if it isn't exceedingly obvious to them all.

That Donghyeok has already started on the inexorable path he's charted, towards being brazenly magnificent.

2024

There's something magnificently brazen about inviting your hyung to your place for dinner, hanging up before he can finish detailing the reasons why he's not up for it, then calling him back to remind him to bring his own banchan.

As it stands, Doyoung was one of the first to comprehend Donghyeok's capacity for being this way. Unfortunately, ten years later, he's somehow still the one primarily suffering the outcomes of what has developed into a definitive proclivity, on Donghyeok's part, for being this way.

It's not so bad, really. He carries everything from his fridge to the comically large tote bag hanging by his door to his car to Haechan's lobby up to his front door, where Haechan peers into the bag before even meeting his eyes and clicks his tongue. "Hyung didn't make gyeran-mari?"

Doyoung shoves past him to dump the bag on the table by his entryway. He doesn't bother to suppress his smile at Haechan's laughter, though he could have done so with practised ease. 

To his credit, Haechan nudges him towards the living room while he heads to the kitchen, and so Dongyoung eases onto his fancy couch-

("That's one minute of travelling from here to my bed that I can save for sleeping," he had explained, matter-of-factly, when everyone had ribbed him for the splurge at his 'not-housewarming' dinner. "Two minutes, back and forth.")

-and stares out of the window at nothing.

The spring rain trickles steadily down the glass panes, rendering the world outside blurry and unrecognisable. Everything is finding its place and so everything is leaving. Or so Taeyeon-noona croons, from the speaker sitting by the tea table. When he breathes, there's a chill in the air—but no, that can't be right. The thermostat is turned up for once, still mindful of the lingering spring cold— oh.

The chill is in his chest, really. That's relief. The tightness there had uncoiled before he'd even noticed.

Haechan sings softly along to the ending notes of the song as he brings a pot over, brimming and nearly spilling over with broth, the way he always makes ramyeon for two. "Calling out your name won't hurt so much- hyung, make some room, please."

The final set-up is a jumble of the banchan Donghyeok's mom had left in his fridge and the refashioned leftovers that Doyoung has brought over. It all takes up too much space on the overflowing tea table and half the dishes will be covered and thrown into the fridge for tomorrow because the two of them have always had eyes bigger than their stomachs.

Donghyeok makes a low, satisfied sound when he settles down cross-legged, rubbing his hands together. "Perfection. Hyung, shall we film for Muk2U? Surprise episode, featuring the specialty delights of Lee Dong's restaurant." 

It's late enough and Doyoung has already spent most of the day caught up in his thoughts, wound up in them tight, that he only sighs wistfully. "I wish." It had been work, yes, but it had been fun work. A perfect outcome of Donghyeok's vision. "Anyway, if anything it would be Kim Dong's restaurant, you little shit, I'm the one who actually contributed to this meal."

Haechan draws himself up, dramatic gusto waiting to pop to the surface at a moment's notice. "Wah, this hyung- okay, look here. I'm a filial son, so everything that's mine is my mother's. So, everything that's hers is basically mine. So are you saying that your Frankensteined takeaways are a more significant component of this meal than my mother's home-cooked food?"

Donghyeok rattles all of this off while already portioning out some of the jeyuk bokkeum Doyoung had switched up with a little bit of leftover kimchi jjim, sucking air between his teeth in expectation.

Always so contrarian, just for the sake of it.

Doyoung just watches, for a moment, as he eats. The near-imperceptible shakes of his head. "Wah," Donghyeok says, throwing his head back with a happy, satisfied smile. "Wah, hyung. Nevermind, ignore me, what do I know? Wah, hyung, it's delicious."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. If you look at me like that any longer you'll really start dripping honey from your eyes."

Dongyoung blinks. Swats at his shoulder. "Brat. You eat so well, what can I do?" He lets it melt into baby-talk towards the end, but Haechan is looking at him with something indecipherable in his eyes. There's always something indecipherable in his eyes but this time it feels less like Dongyoung is bad at reading him and more like Donghyeok means to keep it a secret and wants him to know the fact.

He succeeds, then—it tugs at his teeth sharply, the look, the feeling. "Why?"

"What, why?"

"Why do you have that expression on your face?"

"Why this sudden rudeness? This is just my face, I'm sorry."

"Haechan-ah. Donghyeok-ah."

It had been easy for Doyoung drop the consonant in his name because it had always felt a little old-fashioned for him, anyway, and it's not such a drastic change that it matters. But Haechan is different. Haechan is bright and eye-catching in the way that he deserves, but in a way that does him an injustice, too, making invisible the soft underbelly of him.

That, or it's just Dongyoung who feels wronged. A little estranged—a lot, toyed with.

Doyoung is just himself, but Haechan is Donghyeok and Donghyeok is Haechan and he likes it, he basks in it, in flicking his wrist to swap the cards held between his fingers like a magician more fond of entertaining himself than his audience.

That satisfaction drips from him right now, an impossibly quick switch-up from the subtle brooding he'd sunken into that had prompted this line of conversation in the first place. Always running circles around Doyoung, his favourite pastime. 

"Hyung is too concerned about me," Haechan says lightly. "I'm perfectly normal. It's hyung who I thought could use this, so you don't wither away in your apartment."

Doyoung laughs, quiet. "Now who's too concerned?"

Donghyeok shrugs. "If I don't take care of hyung, who will?" His head dips over his bowl as he sips a spoonful of broth, throat rumbling in satisfaction.

"It's good?"

"So good. Always hits the spot after a tour, I can't believe the others would rather get Chinese."

Doyoung pauses, where he was reaching out for the pickled radish. "The kids are out together?"

"Hm," Donghyeok hums, mouth full. He swallows haphazardly, and Doyoung pushes his glass of water closer. "We got back in the morning, said we'd rest and then get dinner, but seriously. After getting it most of the time for the past few months, why Chinese?"

He feels a bit like he's trapped in the vortex of a crowd, pushed from all sides so that he's just stumbling in place. Stuck, on this miniscule thing. "Shouldn't you be with them? Isn't it a celebratory thing?"

Donghyeok shrugs. "It's nothing formal, and all we've been doing is eating together and reflecting. I actually think it'd be good for us to give it a rest, but you know how Mark likes it. Chenle and Jisung, too. Anyway, I think Jeno dipped, and Renjunnie wouldn't be there, anyway."

He reaches out to lower Doyoung's still-hovering chopsticks to the dish, until there's a clink against the porcelain. Smiles, bemused. "Why?"

"Aren't you tired? You didn't have to cook." It's less like the crowd is entrapping him now and more that those eyes are. Arresting, even when Donghyeok isn't trying particularly hard to keep him in place—to keep him, at all.

"It's ramyeon. I think it's an offense to my actually well-made meals to call this cooking."

"I don't know," Dongyoung says, confused, helpless. The casual cruelty of Donghyeok is what grates at him, these days, not any other intended slight. Donghyeok doesn't realise, the calling that lines the way he holds himself within Dongyoung's proximity, the promises he makes inadvertently through his mindless remarks.

"I don't know," repeats Doyoung, "I just- if you turned the others down, then you should be resting, why did you call me over?"

"I wanted to eat with hyung. I don't know what you want me to say."

"I want you to take care of yourself before anything else."

The silences between them are so comfortable these days that it's easy to distinguish when they're borne from tension. From one person's temper winding up—though the other is never far behind.

"Hyung should know better by now," Haechan says, softly. A chill runs down Dongyoung's spine. "I know what's good for me. I'll take care of myself."

He really should know better by now. There are too many things he should understand better, by now, on the cusp of thirty, of a ten-year run in the industry, but the older he grows the more of his rational self is peeled away and sitting in front of him is the prime culprit.

"Okay," Doyoung says. "Okay, I'm sorry. Let's move on."

A bit of marinated crab finds itself in his bowl. "My mother left some extra to give to you, after I told her you liked it, last time. Remind me to pack it for you before you leave."

Which might be later in the night, but more likely in the morning, after Donghyeok crashes on the couch too early and Dongyoung makes his way to his bed. 

Outside, the spring rain pours on. Taeyeon sings, still, into the quiet of the living room. Their stiltedness has never stopped them from coming together in this. The rain thrums against the windows and the song thrums between them, almost tangible.

So many nights,
with our gazes gradually deepening,
gathering time between you and I...

"How do you think recording will go, tomorrow?"

Doyoung laughs, frazzled. "I don't know what I'm going to do about the title. Ah, what am I going to do?"

Haechan makes a dismissive noise. "Hyung will tear it up, obviously. I'm more concerned about the B-side, Rain Drop. I wanted to ask hyung..."

And so it steadies on, as it always does. This firm, reliable drawbridge, between them. A sweet-spice fragrance unlike the one emanating from Donghyeok's favoured humidifiers, filling the room around them.

The speaker crackles as the song changes, into the known promise of a sultry beat and a masterful voice, seductive in timbre.

Yeah, I feel it like, the sweet rain is soaking into my dried-up heart, I don't need any answer because you’re my favourite, there aren't words to capture it...

2019

Donghyeok is far from his favourite, but there's an undeniable pride in his chest, regardless, when the world finally begins catching up to what Doyoung has known for a while, now: Lee Donghyeok is a little beast.

It makes panic clutch at him, too, in cold tendrils. Imposing, compensating for the insatiable appetite of a nineteen-year-old who's coming into the realisation that his limits are far higher than he'd secretly feared.

"Where's Haechan?" They're filtering into the cars back to the dorm when he does a perfunctory headcount to find one missing.

Taeyong is miles ahead of him, naturally. "Extra practice, for Dream's comeback."

Ahead of them, where he's climbing into the car, Mark twitches. Then he settles resolutely into the backseat.

Doyoung eyes him, then looks back at the building. "He's been practising since the morning."

It's past two in the dead of night. Everyone is tired; no one wants to belabour the point. What hours Donghyeok keeps isn't anybody's responsibility, isn't something they can rightfully intervene in, anymore, even with the best of intentions. It doesn't stop them from attempting to, still. This helpless need to look after their youngest who still looks achingly like that thirteen-year-old kid.

"You're welcome to reason with him, Doyoung-ah," Taeyong sighs. "But it's not our business. Are you getting in, or not?"

Mark's jaw is clenched, in spite of his headphones closing firmly over his ears. 

Doyoung has been practising since the morning, too, of course. His limbs scream from the exertion, but he lets the car door slide shut in front of him. Through the dark glass that separates them, he sees Mark close his eyes and relax into his seat, chest heaving with a breath of relief. That's what really carries him back through the sets of doors, the winding hallways. But it's not enough to wrestle the impending dread at the conversation he knows is about to play out.

The stench of sweat intermingling with that distinct air-conditioning scent never gets easier to deal with, especially once you've stepped out into the evening breeze—relatively more fresh even if it's mostly city smog—and find yourself having to step right back in. 

Haechan is there, near the mirror, arms extended into the sharp angles that come to him so gracefully, head tilted in consideration. His gaze barely waver as Doyoung enters. The low beats of Dream's upcoming title rumble through the studio floor, guide vocals providing an approximation of the melody Doyoung subconsciously fills in with Donghyeok's voice. It's a good song.

"Haechan-ah."

"Did you forget something?"

Dongyoung shakes his head. Walks over to the wall furthest from him and slumps down into the cushioned seat lining it, letting his head tilt back against the wooden panelling.

There's an abject stillness in the air as the music drones on for a long moment, before coming to an abrupt stop. 

"Go home, hyung."

"I'll wait."

"Hyung."

"Am I bothering you?" He tilts his head back down, eyelids fluttering open, feeling heavier than he'd realised. "I didn't think you could get shy."

"You are," Donghyeok says, sharply. "You're bothering me. Sorry for being rude, or whatever, but I know what you're doing and I don't appreciate it. Manager-hyung said he'd pick me up in a couple of hours, I'm fine. I just need to get this done before practice tomorrow."

"Today."

"What?"

"It's today. Your practice is in," Doyoung flicks his eyes to the clock on the wall, "what, eight hours?"

Donghyeok rolls his eyes. "And what about hyung? Your filming is in, what," his voice pitches mockingly, "eight hours?"

"Closer to sixteen, actually," Dongyoung replies, evenly. "It's an evening shoot. Which is why I'm here. I know my limits, Donghyeok-ah."

"What the fuck are you trying to get at?"

"Hey," Dongyoung says, warning.

A scoff, an unrepentant tilt in the line of his shoulders. "Sorry."

Lee Donghyeok is far from his favourite because he always reduces Dongyoung to the most distressingly juvenile version of himself. Barely knowing what to do with his own temper, much less that of a kid's. Oh, how Donghyeok would detest that—the temper of a freshly-turned adult's, then.

"Don't apologise if you don't mean it," Doyoung says, tightly. "You never do anything if you don't want to, so why this?"

"If you know that, then why are you fucking pushing me?" Donghyeok's voice is a little too loud—for the practice room, for the late hour, for the ever-tentative balance, between them.

Doyoung waits. 

Donghyeok groans, stumbling over to the wall, sliding down against it. Mirroring Doyoung from across the great expanse of the room. "I don't know what hyung wants from me. If you were in my place you would do the same. I don't understand why it's such a big deal for all of you just because I'm the only one right now who has to deal with this. If it was Mark-"

"If it was Mark, we'd double down worse," Doyoung says, sharply. "If it was just up to him, you'd be running yourself even more ragged. You think I don't know that? You're both adults, you're both professionals. I'm conscious of my place and I won't impose. But I also fucking watched you grow up and learn all his best and worst habits, Donghyeok-ah, even as he learned to be more cautious for your sake, if nothing else. If you falter now and he's not here to take responsibility for it—who'll be witness to that?"

"I'm not going to fucking- falter, whatever you mean by that."

Doyoung is on his feet before he knows it, crossing the distance easily, kneeling beside Donghyeok as his eyes widen at their sudden proximity. His hand comes up to the point on Donghyeok's shoulder that he's been flexing subconsciously at least once every five minutes, all day. He prods at it, but even in the building tide of anger he can feel in his throat, behind his eyes, he still can't muster the venom to jab very hardly. It doesn't matter, though—Haechan makes a sound like his touch is scalding iron. 

It's too late for him to take it back. Because Doyoung is watching for it, he sees the drench of panic, then a cool indifference that does little to hide it after having borne witness to it. "It's just- a sprain. Barely that, even."

"Then do the fucking responsible thing," Doyoung bites back at him, "like the rest of us have learned to, and take a damn break so it doesn't become worse than barely that, even. If you want so badly to be a professional, then be a damn professional."

The twitch of Donghyeok's jaw, still the same, five years later. Only slightly less unsuited to his youthful face, cutting now into harsher, more protruding lines. Their branding team is happy with the change—Dongyoung is not. It's only evidence of one too many skipped meals. Donghyeok's face isn't right if it isn't softened at least slightly around the edges.

But that's so far beyond his place to comment on, so much so that he can't even dream of it. All he can do is to register the fact with a startling pang of sorrow.

Under the pads of his fingers, Haechan has relaxed, gradually, like butter left to out to melt in the tepid resolution between them. "Fine," he says. "Fine."

This isn't the time to gloat, and it's the expanse of four years between them that allows Doyoung to bite his tongue, no matter how much the urge seizes him. He settles for smoothing a hand over Donghyeok's head, swiftly. Surprising himself with the affectionate touch. They aren't averse to it, not at all, but never has the air between them reverted from such a place of strain, either. The precedent washes over the touch softer, more apologetic.

"Is there anything you want to eat?"

Donghyeok huffs. "Don't push your luck, hyungnim, I'm still not happy with you."

"Okay. Is there anything you want to eat?"

A laugh, evidently delighted even if it's quiet. Doyoung smiles to himself, as he switches off the lights in the room and gets his phone out to text their manager that he'll get Haechan home. "I want kimchi bokkeumbap."

"Brat. It's two in the morning."

"Hyung is the one who asked!"

Dongyoung considers it. "We can go halves. And I want makgeolli. I'll let you sip some of mine."

"Hyung, did you forget I can drink, now? I drink with you guys all the time?"

"You know makgeolli tastes better when you drink secretly from an elder's bowl. I'll even pretend not to look, for the full experience. Hurry, come on."

Supper is quiet, but the two of them have learnt over the past year of touring and splitting off into unlikely groups that this is one more thing in which they are unlikely twin matches. Eating well, comfortably, quietly.

"Hyung," Donghyeok says, breaking the silence. "I'm not going to slow down by much. I can't do that- I won't."

"No one is asking you to." They know their place, they're reminded of it every time they watch him get on stage with Dream and take the lead on stage, the way he's meant to. Every time he comes back to them and demonstrates his improvement, quiet, extravagant, unbelievable.

"I'm going to do everything I want to do. I'm going to do it all."

"I don't doubt you. But, you- you really don't get scared, do you? Sometimes I think it's an act-"

"Hey-"

"-but then it hits me that you really became fearless this year, Donghyeok-ah. What's your secret? Tell your cowardly hyung." Donghyeok looks a little blindsided at his sudden self-deprecation, and Doyoung smiles to himself in quiet amusement.

Donghyeok spots it, sharp as ever, and laughs. "Ah, okay. I'll divulge my wisdom since hyung has lowered himself enough to ask for it. See, every morning, I wake up, and I look at myself in the mirror, and-"

"Oh, dear, you must get startled, a little?"

"Yes, at my handsome face," Haechan says, without missing a beat. "Then—don't interrupt, hyung is the one who asked—then, while I'm brushing my teeth, I just go over this thought, which is—do I have anything to be scared of that I haven't already been scared of and still overcome, from when I first started out?"

Doyoung blinks. Processes. "Wait. Why is that- kind of comforting?"

"You're being too much, sounding so surprised. Hyung literally asked. I'm never sharing my wisdom again." He still sounds a little proud of himself, though, and this time Doyoung has to squash his smile before Donghyeok spots it and goes all prickly.

"So the fear is familiar to you? Every time, it's the same? It doesn't change as we go along?"

Donghyeok looks at him curiously. "Is it like that for hyung?"

It felt like a given, the answer to that. From when he'd started training, and all the way into the first few months of debut, fear wasn't something he could separate from himself, something that came and went. It was just there, all the time. Seizing his shoulders, making him shake, but still forcing him to work harder to push it away for good.

Now, though—it's different, surely.

"It's like..." The words feel far away, the good ones. He can only settle on something rudimentary, but rudimentary works for him and Donghyeok. "It's like a really frustrating worm."

Donghyeok barks a laugh, incredulous. "And here I thought you were going to say something profound. A worm?"

"Yeah, a worm. Do you know how difficult it is to get rid of a worm? I'm scared to kill them, because then the worm ghosts might come back and haunt me, or their surviving relatives will swarm me. So I just stare at the worm but I'm so conscious of it. And it wouldn't even matter because it wouldn't bother me if I didn't know it existed, but since I do, it- torments me. That's what it feels like, nowadays."

"..." 

"You asked," Dongyoung says, now, scowling.

"No, I'm just thinking about it," says Donghyeok. "Like, actually, that is a little bit profound?"

"Don't," he warns, but there—there's daybreak, spreading slow and subtle across Donghyeok's features. Wonder, hidden away behind the translucent curtains of his bravado, his humour, his easy confidence. Washing away his exhaustion in real time before Doyoung's eyes.

"I get your anxiety," Donghyeok says, "but I don't think I'm like that."

It doesn't surprise him that the metaphor doesn't land even if he seems to understand its facets. He and Haechan meet on bridges, always. Coming to a compromise even if they can't cross into the other side. Taking what the other offers and reworking it into something more intuitive.

"If fear's a worm," Donghyeok decides, eyes sparkling, "then all I have to do is squash it under my feet."

Dongyoung smiles, in spite of himself. "Big talk, for someone who shrieks at the sight of bugs."

Donghyeok shudders. "Hey, that's different. Those fuckers can fly. But worms are there to be stepped on."

"You're cruelhearted, really. What did worms ever do to you?"

"I thought it was a metaphor!"

It is and it isn't. Doyoung works with metaphors and figurative approximations to make sense of his life, while for Haechan they belong on songs, not at dinner tables.

But whether he acknowledges or not, the bridge is real. It works for them. Even when they stand on opposite ends it's solid underneath them. When Doyoung reaches for the rest of his makgeolli he feels it, sturdy beneath their feet, and breathes a sigh of relief, soft but practically tangible in the space between them.

Donghyeok tilts his head. "Hyung?"

"It's nothing," says Doyoung, shaking his head.

It's nothing, to Haechan, at the end of the day. This particular brand of rumination, getting lost in his own head, drawing circles into burrowing pits—this is one gap between them that can't be bridged.

2022

Overthinking is a curse that extends to the most unlikely of situations:

The fact that he's been going though airports more often than he goes back to his apartment doesn't stop Doyoung from wondering the most nonsensical things about their workings.

For instance, he wonders, while waiting for his suitcase to come round the other side, whether the people monitoring it through the x-ray machine are the same ones on who'd been on shift when they left for Jeju, and whether they'd laugh amongst themselves at the pathetic, untouched state of his stash of condoms and lube.

Unlikely, but it'd be a good representation of the little demons in his head, mocking him.

Haechan is waiting for him on the other side. Now that they're back in Seoul the lines of him are less blurry around the edges and the colours don't bleed over as much. It occurs to Doyoung that he wouldn't have been the type, as a kid, to shade inside the lines. Not because he was incapable but because it would have been no fun to stick to what was given when he knew he could make it better.

"I'll see you at the company then," Donghyeok says, gaze snapping up from his phone, startling Doyoung. He quirks a brow, waving a hand in front of Doyoung's glasses. "Hello, is anyone in there? Hyung, we have to come back to work mode, as much as I hate to say it."

"Yeah, yeah," Doyoung grumbles. "This is really all your fault, you know. Out of nowhere, you say, hyung, let's go to Jeju. Out of nowhere, you tell me, hyung, you have to stop thinking about work. Now, out of nowhere, you say, hyung, time's up, let's go back."

Donghyeok splutters, baffled. "How was the last one my fault? We both got the call at the same time, what the hell?"

Doyoung sighs. "Yeah. It's more satisfying to blame you, though."

"This hyung," Haechan clicks his tongue, walking off. Expecting him to follow. Doyoung is only following because they're headed the same direction, alright? There's only the one taxi stand at this terminal. "So ungrateful."

Well, that won't do.

Doyoung lets his suitcase roll to a gentle stop and, without warning, wraps his arms around Donghyeok, lining them up chest to back, a searing column of warmth against his body.

He feels Donghyeok stumble lightly, before catching himself. His hands fly up to where Doyoung's rest on his waist.

They're in the middle of the airport and it's stupid but it's just for a moment—just a moment. And if anyone recognises them and uploads a video, it'll be dismissed as a cute, endearing glimpse into their everyday dynamic. Like they do this all the time—which isn't so far from the truth.

But this time it's different, and the difference is palpable, in the air.

"Hyung," Donghyeok says, softly. "What are you doing?"

Doyoung squeezes tight, one more time, before letting go and grabbing the handle of his suitcase.

The thing in him that had felt so heavy after wrapping up their tour was left behind in Jeju. Donghyeok had made sure of it. But just as easily, something else has taken its place. He pities Donghyeok, mourns his efforts. Dongyoung is not an easy person to try to take care of.

"Thank you," he says, still. "Really."

There's only silence, in return, but he hadn't expected anything else.

"Let's go," he says, pushing past Haechan. Expecting him to follow, this time, a little smile tugging at his lips. "The sooner I get home the longer I have to recover and wake up into work mode."

Haechan barks out a laugh. "What's this? Hyung, I think we've really spent too much time together, you're starting to sound just like me."

"Too much? That's a given, isn't it?" They exit into the evening chill and Doyoung sniffs when the cold floods his nose.

Sure enough, it's still there, swirling around him, a blanket of warmth. The sea breeze, and the warm-spice scent of Donghyeok's family's living room.

It wasn't that he had been hoping for them to have sex, exactly, but there was no shame in being ready for what felt like a distinct possibility.

Between the two of them, they had in the past couple of years closed the distance of age and disposition, and in doing so had fallen into a lot of talking, and watching, and knowing. In Doyoung's experience, most of the time, this meant something. It wound up amounting to something. It was a build-up that was a known, mutual effort; an intimate and thrilling thing in and of itself.

But him and Haechan have never really been partners. Teammates, yes, surely. But partners is a wildly different contract, and so perhaps Doyoung had been mistaken. Not in that they were building up to something, because he's rarely wrong about that by virtue of how much he thinks about and weighs every little sign and passing remark.

No, what he'd predicted wrongly was the point of tipping over—of no return. 

It turns out, Haechan is much more cautious than anyone would give him credit for. Doyoung should have known this, maybe, but for all that there's talking, watching, and knowing, between them, there is not much of doing. It's hard to predict without a known basis, to estimate a trajectory without points to plot. This is all the more true when you deal with someone as stubbornly unpredictable as Lee Donghyeok.

Take for instance, at the car rental booth when they first land in Jeju. Dongyoung is distracted by the distinct sense of escape even on familiar, homely land, allowing himself to be led through the airport without thinking much about anything at all. Just relishing in the way his heart is beginning to thrum, slowly but surely, with excitement.

It isn't an unpleasant surprise when Haechan slides his license over at the rental kiosk, telling him, "I rarely get to drive up to my house, hyung, let me." Well, the idea of Donghyeok behind the wheel is a little nerve-wracking. He so rarely gets the opportunity to put his license to use. But the surprise of the house visit isn't so daunting, because Dongyoung is good with parents.

But because Doyoung is good with parents, it does still make him understandably concerned. "We're going to your house? I haven't bought any gifts!"

Haechan clicks his tongue. "Aish, you don't need to bother with the formalities."

Dongyoung steps up to him, the tips of his shoes meeting the heels of Haechan's, and drops his forehead against the soft beanie hiding his fluffy head of hair. "It's called being a polite guest, Haechan-ah."

"Just relax, hyung," he says, laughing lightly, sinking his voice a touch deeper, rougher. "I'm not bringing you home to be a polite guest."

"Then what are you bringing me for?"

Haechan thanks the attendant, spinning the ring of the key around his finger, and turns to Doyoung. The proximity leaves them a little closer than is comfortable. Doyoung's gaze drops to his mouth, and when he tears his gaze away immediately, the glint in Haechan's eyes tells him he's been caught out. "Just be patient, and you'll see."

Anticipation, thrumming. He feels it burn through him, intermingling only a little with shame, as he trails after Haechan in the direction of the car.

He's familiar enough with Donghyeok's parents but not at all with their hospitality. The extent to which the warmth of their household and their welcome sinks into his bones, deep down to the marrow, is enough to overwhelm him, late into that first night. Against his instincts to be a polite guest, he excuses himself quietly and they point him in the direction of the swing on the balcony, easy as anything. 

Not all houses in Jeju have a splendid seaside view but this one does, the one Donghyeok's family moved into a couple of years after his debut. Dongyoung is looking out at the sea, crashing gently into the shore, over and over. His stomach is full and his heart is warm and still his chest feels hollow. He wants to be embraced like that, a gentle crash, over and over. He wants to be kissed—to be fucked—to be held to sleep. He wants a hand reaching into him to block up the gaping fucking hole at his breastbone.

A hand, trailing up the column of his spine like a whisper of the wind. "Hyung," Donghyeok says. "Hyung, I just had the most brilliant idea. You and I should have a mukbang show."

Dongyoung blinks.

The interruption is abrupt and crass and whiplash-inducing, at once all things aligned with and antithetical to Donghyeok's existence.

But he can feel the next breath his lungs take, can feel the release as he exhales. Feels himself come back to the ground beneath his feet. "What?"

"Didn't you notice, at dinner? Our tastes really match better than I'd realised, even better than mine and my parents'. And we sort of react to food the same way, too? It would be so fun, think about it," Donghyeok says, leaning happily into Dongyoung's shoulder as he settles into the swing beside him.

It's much too small for two grown men. Likely, the challenge had tempted Donghyeok. "We can go around to different famous restaurants, give recommendations. Anyway, you're the only one who appreciates Korean food at least half as much as I do."

"I really don't know how your mind works," Dongyoung says, absently.

His eyes are still fixed on the ocean but the hot line of Donghyeok against him is making it impossible to really see anything at all. The ease in his breathing feels like it had been a cruel reprieve. Now all the air is sucked out of his chest and instead of a mind flooded with thoughts all he can hear is blaring white noise. He's sick of the world and of himself and of this goddamn temptation, this promise of release that never seems to intend on actually—

The soft kiss against his neck could nearly be dismissed as another whisper of the wind, if not for the shiver it sends down his spine. A hand comes up to trace the line of it again—this time more deliberate. "You don't have to know that," Donghyeok says softy, leaning his cheek against Doyoung's shoulder, nestling into the crook of his neck. "Hyung always knows what I'm thinking, anyway. Even if you're afraid of recognising that it's true."

"I don't know what you mean."

He can feel the stretch of Donghyeok's smile against his shoulder, the warmth bleeding in through his woollen layers. "There you go again."

"No," Doyoung insists, frustrated, "I really don't know."

Donghyeok is nose to nose with him in the next moment, dark eyes transfixing as ever, even as they're cloaked in the night's shadow. "Really?"

Or maybe he does know, after all. Maybe Donghyeok is right, yet again. He knows what Donghyeok wants, knows it's what he wants. And all the same, knows they can't possibly be on the same page.

But the hole is there, begging to be filled, to forget its own raw edges.

Donghyeok tastes like the kimchi stew he can't get back on the mainland, spiced by his mother's expert hand. Beneath that, he tastes like salvation.

Before he knows it, Doyoung is clutching him close, fingers gripping the back of his head, the curve of his spine, licking desperately into his mouth, a man starved, a man crazed, but Donghyeok is there with him, too, so he can't be that crazed, after all.

He makes a low, quiet sound in the back of his throat as his hand slides up to cup Doyoung's face, the cool metal of his watch digging into his throat, making him tremble.

Donghyeok kisses him slow, dirty, rubbing a thumb along the crest of his cheekbone, hand slipping under the hem of his sweater to grip his waist hard, squeezing, running along the line of it. His touch is searing and Doyoung shudders. Donghyeok sucks languidly on his tongue, and he has to hold in a weak noise. 

The crashing of the waves fades away until it's just the sound of blood rushing in his ears and the soft noises Donghyeok makes, unexpectedly responsive under his touch.

Doyoung kisses down the column of his throat, long and lingering, feeling Donghyeok tremble under his mouth. His precious, precious voice. So often Doyoung gets the urge to worship it, just like this, just so Donghyeok can finally understand what a wonder he is to them—to him.

Donghyeok's breathing grows more pronounced in the quiet of the balcony as Dongyoung kisses down to the elegant jut of his collarbone, and when he nips tentatively at the skin there, a noise escapes him, still soft but damningly loud in their seclusion.

"Shit," Donghyeok breaks away, laughing, leaning back into the curve of Doyoung's neck. His breath is warm against the skin there, sweet. "Maybe, um. Maybe we shouldn't do this here." He's still looking at Doyoung with those dark, dark eyes, and it's Doyoung who casts a panicked look over his shoulder, cursing lowly. 

"Hyung," Donghyeok says, amused. "It's chill. Even if they could have seen—which they couldn't have, I'm not an idiot—they won't care."

"I care," whispers Dongyoung vehemently. "What the hell. I can't come to your house for the first time and have your mother see us making out on the balcony, what the hell."

Donghyeok quirks an eyebrow. "That's a strong phrase for what we were doing. Or barely got to do."

"I was-" Dongyoung splutters, "you were- your hand is up my shirt, Haechan-ah."

Humming, Donghyeok squeezes again, thumb stroking at the jut of Dongyoung's rib underneath his palm. Smiles, when Dongyoung's breath hitches. "So, let's do something about it."

"Fuck you, seriously," Doyoung tells him. "You had to choose here? Now? Of all places?"

"It's not like I built up to it on my own, hyung," he says, shrugging. "I told you. We know each other a little too well, maybe. And it takes two hands to clap."

Doyoung shoves at him, and Donghyeok breaks down into laughter proper, as Doyoung twitches again at a distant sound from the living room.

"Hyung," Donghyeok says, still giggling, "relax."

"I can't," admits Doyoung. "I can't, this can't-"

"Don't worry, I'm not actually going to proposition you in my family home, Doyoung-hyung," says Donghyeok, wryly. "I have some modicum of shame."

"Didn't look like it, a few moments ago."

Donghyeok meets his gaze evenly. "I'm not ashamed of asking for what I want." His eyes trail over Doyoung's frame, slow and sticky, and there, that's what he'd wanted, that's what he'd needed. There's the greed hidden behind those impenetrable eyes, ravenous enough to numb Doyoung's bleeding edges, to fill the hollow.

"But," Donghyeok says, jerking him out of his thoughts, "I do understand the concept of time and place. You care so much about it that it makes me want to go against my gut, just for that-"

Brat, Doyoung thinks, doesn't even say, knowing it'll come out too fond.

"-but also, I don't want to..." Donghyeok trails off uncharacteristically. Doyoung tilts his head in question. 

Donghyeok shakes his head. The heat in his gaze seems to have multiplied, tenfold, but so has its opacity. Dongyoung only sees what he's allowed to see. He swallows, nervously.

"I don't know," Donghyeok says, after a long pause. "I don't know. I'll take you to this village on the other end of the island, in a couple of days."

Unspoken is the invitation, tell me then, if you still want it. Or is it more of a challenge? The ball is in his court, and the same thing that had cut away at Dongyoung's insides has struck him with a paralysis for months. He is not one to lift his racquet, first, not right now. Donghyeok has to know this.

Still, that's how Donghyeok chooses to leave him. When the sea breeze swings over the balcony again it's impossible cold, and they both shiver in tandem. Donghyeok makes to head back in but doubles back, gaze snapping to the floor. "Oh, hyung. It's a worm. Do you want me to kill it?"

Doyoung follows his line of sight, a little disbelieving, but it is a worm, after all, wriggling along the edge of the balcony. It looks awfully lonely. Pathetic. "No, it's fine."

"Did you get over your fear, then?"

"Get lost, brat."

Donghyeok laughs as he leaves and it's almost enough to warm him again, but still the cold cuts him to the bone after having the furnace-warmth of Donghyeok pressed up against him, heating his skin with the swell of his desire.

Dongyoung's eyes drift from the sea and the shore, coming together over and over, drawing envy from all other estranged, isolated souls, down to the worm.

He empathises, viscerally. He, too, had been minding his own business, wriggling along in the world, when Lee Donghyeok had made clear his lack of hesitation in trampling on pathetic things that were within reach of his feet.

They do drive down to the other edge of the island. Donghyeok stays stubbornly at the wheel the entire time, shades high on his delicate nose, on elbow resting at the lowered window of his seat. Looking for all the world as though he does this all the time, comfortable behind the wheel. Doyoung watches him, watches the sprawling island go by them. Sings along, to every perfect song that blares from Donghyeok's playlist, track after track picked straight from his subconscious.

The songs are old, straight out of their childhoods, but the way their voices intertwine in harmonies feels like daybreak. Fresh and exhilarating. Ringing as far from the recesses of a recording studio, a practice room, as could be. Dongyoung raises a hand to his breastbone and feels it solid, beneath his fingertips. The hollow is still there, surely, but less like an open, gaping wound. More like something he might be able to fill, on his own.

"You have good taste," Dongyoung tells him, grudgingly, as they roll up to a stop, at a homely-looking inn. 

Donghyeok scoffs. "Isn't that a given? I know hyung, I know what you like. Don't say obvious things."

Dongyoung smiles, soft. "My bad."

They pass two nights and a day, there, before the calls from the mainland come. The condoms and lube stay untouched. Haechan holds him to sleep and Doyoung thinks, we'll talk about it one day. Not now. One day.

2025

The days have come and gone and come and gone and apparently enough has changed that Donghyeok likes saying obvious things, now.

"Are you scared?"

The question comes back at him across the lunch table, except now everyone is gathered around them. The others look equally curious, having heard Taeyong and Jaehyun's answers, months prior.

Maybe him and Haechan have spent too much time, together, after all, and their affinities have exchanged places. The question rubs him the wrong way, for some inexplicable reason. Like when someone puts him on the spot when he's unprepared, mind turned off from his responsibilities, and the humiliating blankness of his mind washes over the expanse of his skin.

Doyoung shrugs, not meeting anyone's eyes. "I mean, as much as anyone else is. I don't know, it's something everyone does, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Johnny agrees, a touch sheepish, and Doyoung nudges him, laughing, "but everyone seems to go in with some sort of goal, or direction. Do you have anything like that?"

It's nothing they haven't discussed any other night in the past few months, over drinks or otherwise. But it strikes Dongyoung that for all he thought about how this will affect his life he hasn't spent much time considering how it will affect himself.

He meets Donghyeok's eyes from across the table. Sees his lips quirk, the words lining that smile. Always thinking away your feelings, this hyung, he says, in not saying anything at all. You think you've done your due introspection and then you wind up blindsided, anyways.

Is that what I've done with us, Dongyoung wants to ask him. Wants to take him by the shoulders and get him to set things straight, if he's so adept at it. The clock on the wall is ticking and like always, it comes down over Dongyoung like a tidal wave, the imminency of change, the weight of all the words unsaid. There had always been time, until there isn't anymore.

"I want to come back the same," he says, almost absently, but the table hunkers down to a stop for a brief moment, all eyes tuned onto him.

It is, admittedly, an odd thing to say for a man grown. Juvenile and childish. But that's what Donghyeok's burning gaze always reduces him to.

"I didn't think hyung would say something like that," he says now, out loud. The low, honeyed notes of his voice are jarring, spoken out loud.

Jungwoo nods along. "I thought you would have some kind of resolution," he says, laughing. "Something you want to achieve."

Dongyoung can see it, how the conversation is on the verge of spilling into what resolution that might be, but Haechan cuts through it, as he is prone to cutting through bullshit. "No, that's not it," he says, voice sharp, but only to Dongyoung. "I didn't think hyung would be such a coward."

The table stares at him, tired and affronted, but he only looks steadily back at Doyoung. Let me be the bad guy. Is that what it'll take? Look at the clock, hyung. When will you open up your mouth and spit it out?

Mark's tone is warning in a way it hasn't had to be, towards Donghyeok, for a long time. "Haechan-ah."

"No, no, he's fine," Doyoung says, mildly. "He's right, that's what I was getting at, anyway. I do feel kind of cowardly. You know how I am, with worms and all," he says, and the others blink in confusion, in his periphery, but Donghyeok averts his gaze, chastened.

"Anyway, it's scarier, today, than I'd anticipated." If Donghyeok can speak volumes through silences then Dongyoung has mastered throwing words together to say nothing at all, hiding behind them, within the embrace of the hollow.

If there's one thing Donghyeok can't understand, about him, it has to be that. It always comes back to that. Donghyeok, who's grown more intimately aware of its torn edges and crevices than anyone else, more familiar with it than Dongyoung had ever wanted him to. Still, he doesn't know how difficult it is to leave its hold. Dongyoung hopes he never finds out.

The conversation moves along and leaves them in place, together. They both slurp down hot soup, uncharacteristically silent at the rambunctious table. It does nothing to scorch the unsaid words from their throats.

Still, Donghyeok has grown up well. He comes up to Dongyoung when they're saying their goodbyes, hand finding his wrist. In that breath Dongyoung sees the expanse of a practice room between them and feels it fade away into the summer air. 

Under the daylight, there's nothing brazen or magnificent about him. He just is; all-consuming, burning, brilliant. Dongyoung waits, content to watch him. The way his thoughts run under the surface of his skin as he contemplates them, the way the words gather on the tip of his tongue, telling in the line of his throat. The line Dongyoung still remembers the taste of, intimately.

"Take care, hyung," is all Donghyeok says. Then his warm, juniper scent is flooding Doyoung's lungs, his arms wrapped around him, a little too tight for the cameras and the bodies surrounding them, but Doyoung clutches him close all the same.

It washes over him the same as always, a tidal wave. I could never resist him, he thinks. I haven't been. 

And oh, here is fear. This is the fear.

This is the knowledge that has the capacity to survive in his heart, a freezing, writhing parasite.

When he returns, Donghyeok will reach out to tug him across the span of eighteen months to be at his side once more, and they will no longer be anywhere close to the precipice of something.

The drop over the edge, the one they've been teetering at for months upon years, edging closer and then receding, months spent together and then apart, words gone unsaid and realisations suppressed and the bridge too familiar between them, the distance never decreasing. It will be ripped from him at fifty, eighty, a hundred miles per hour—faster, really, if there was anything at all that he knew about this exponential boy.

And they will be side by side once more, warm bodies pressed together, but no longer in the each other's orbit. Or really, Donghyeok will have gone past him into a life without the whispered threat of hollows drawing him back into the empty darkness and Dongyoung will be helpless to gather speed.

When he'd first registered what he'd felt, or had the potential to feel, for Donghyeok, he'd gotten drunk and tried to rationalise it away. But being overly familiar with rationalising feelings means he knows where they can't be neatly explained away. 

The others had assured him it was fine, that it was understandable, but that had never been the problem. Only Mark had looked back across him at the table, knowing. That to fall for Donghyeok meant to anticipate the loss of him, and Dongyoung isn't built to bear that loss. The moment he registers it, he knows the hollow would expand, and collapse, bringing everything down with it. He was not built to be left behind.

But here they are, Donghyeok clutching him like he knows one of them will have to leave, soon. And it isn't Dongyoung.

Donghyeok is warmer than ever in the circle of his arms, almost searingly hot, and Dongyoung thinks back to a few nights after he'd first confided in the others, when Mark had sought him out. I wrote so many songs, he'd admitted, raw and open. To work myself through it. To get it all out so that maybe it would go away. They had such opposing approaches, and Dongyoung hadn't asked if Mark's had been successful. Was too scared to hear the answer. A lot of them came back to Icarus.

Who?

It's this myth. About a boy who wanted to fly towards the heavens and fell to his death, because of the sun.

They'd sat there in silence for a long time, and Dongyoung thought they must have been thinking the same thing. They are two different things, to strive towards the heavens, and to yearn for the sun.

The little sun in his arms is stepping away, now, and all the unsaid words between them gather in Dongyoung's throat, threatening to rip out of him, violent. Wait, he wants to say, but Donghyeok's not the one leaving, not to the rest of the world.

"Doyoung-ah," their manager says. "Time to go, really."

Everyone chimes in a final goodbye, a see you on break here, a don't get hurt there. All promises that echo across their surroundings, a multitude of goodbyes. Everyone does this. No one else's world is on the verge of ripping past them, cruel.

Donghyeok tugs the brim of his cap down, and the moment is gone before he can grasp at it. Doyoung turns, and trudges on into the rest of his life.