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There are so many children, young girls and boys and all their mothers at the fan greet that day. Yunho feels like he’s one of those men dressing up as Santa Claus in American shopping malls, bouncing crying babies on his knee and asking kids what they want for Christmas.
“I want oppa,” one teenage girl breathes, and asks Yunho to sign her personalized photo album with Yunho’s face on the cover. To his left, Changmin snickers, but Yunho takes the Sharpie from him and signs his name graciously on everything he’s handed. He’ll do anything for their fans waiting so long to see him in the cold, especially when he’s rewarded with little girls in pink puffy coats being hoisted onto the table to kiss him on the cheek.
It starts to snow thirty minutes in, and Yunho is hopelessly endeared. He beams at Changmin, who’s been busy chastising a fan for bursting into tears as she came forward in line, but held her hand as one of the aids scrounged her up a pack of tissues. He sucks on a candy cane from one of the gifts bags, lips bright and full, and raises a perfect eyebrow back at Yunho.
“You look happy,” he snorts, the tips of his ears and nose a shiny red. If only he was wearing Yunho’s set of fluffy reindeer antlers right now, to complete the picture.
“It’s a great time of year,” Yunho agrees, and sticks a bow onto the front of Changmin’s sweater.
They’re approached by so many kids and couples and families that day, bright with love and cheer that Yunho feels his heart start to ache with it all. He falls in love with every child he holds, keeps the memory of all the adoring smiles, traces his eyes along the soft curve of every girl’s cheek. His shoulders start to droop, and he thinks it must be the chill, but having to pull his coat tighter around him doesn’t explain this sense of foreboding he can see at the far end of the crowd around their tent: his future, dark and empty, spent alone without love every holiday, every year.
Changmin starts munching noisily on homemade cookies. He marvels over how the fans wrote his name on them in drippy frosting, and Yunho suddenly wants to cry.
When the MC suggests at the end they both hug to finish the fanmeet, Changmin pulls Yunho in first, smelling of peppermint and cinnamon, and Yunho holds on tight.
--/--
Yunho reads over some of the fans’ cards on the ride back to the apartment. They say, Yunho oppa, fighting! We love you!! Cassiopeia forever! ♥ He has to swallow past the lump rising in his throat and covers his mouth with his hand.
Changmin rests his cheek back against his new neck cushion that looks like a strawberry. “You’re so cute, hyung.” He rolls the hard candy around his mouth with his pink tongue. “You might’ve gotten more presents than I did, but everyone wanted a picture with me. My hair looked so good.”
“It did not,” Yunho scoffs. “Your bangs kept covering your eyes.”
“Your coat made you look like a polar bear and you rubbed the bottom of your nose too much,” Changmin retorts. He settles back against the seat. “I want barbecue for dinner, hyung.”
“Again? Last week, we already—” Yunho cuts off when he glances out the window and is stricken with the sight of couples all along the sidewalk. He pauses, then says, “I’ll make us dinner tonight.”
Changmin raises his eyebrows. “Really? We just got back…and I don’t want just rice and kimchi.”
“It’ll be good to eat with just the two of us,” Yunho says firmly.
It turns out all they have back in their dorm is actually just rice and old kimchi, along with a couple beers and boxes of Changmin’s chocolate ice cream bars frosted over and officially deemed inedible. Changmin, looking smug, dumps the contents of their fridge into the trash and triumphantly leads the way back out to the car, and has two of their managers join them for barbeque. But then he looks almost apologetic and directs them to Yunho’s favorite restaurant.
“We can go grocery shopping together later, hyung,” Changmin offers.
Yunho holds the door open behind him for a large, happy family in cozy sweaters and knitted scarves and sighs.
Their managers tap on their Blackberries the entire time and tell them both to monitor their meat to vegetables intake, while Yunho lets Changmin take all the chili sauce. He knows Changmin will eat it straight from the dish while they wait for the meat to cook.
Yunho knows a lot about Changmin. Like how he has to first delicately prepare an entire plate of lettuce wraps before starting to eat, even if Yunho has already cleaned off the rest of the grill and either has to wait or just order another round of onions. He knows there is nothing more dangerous than standing between the coffee pot and a homicidal Changmin at five in the morning; that he will take his coffee with either two sugars or cold, in a can. He knows Changmin will eat his weight in kimchi jjigae only to spend three and a half hours at the gym the next day and deny it to Yunho later; Changmin is the hardest worker Yunho’s ever met, and he trusts him completely. And Yunho knows Changmin is here, at his side: at SM, in Seoul, after all this time, for a reason.
He chews thoughtfully. “Changminnie, do you believe in fate?” he asks.
“Fate?” Changmin says incredulously. “Have you been watching dramas on the plane again?”
“Well, yes,” Yunho says. “But it’s nice to think that somewhere out there is the person you love and are meant to be with, right?”
Changmin looks at him steadily, then puts his half-finished lettuce wrap down on his plate. “It’s a lazy way of thinking, hyung.” Yunho winces; Changmin has adopted the voice he uses whenever Yunho does something that displeases him, or if he’s about to lecture someone on the importance of cleanliness, or a good meal. “It’s an excuse for people to think they can just live their lives without giving a damn and hope for everything to just work out in the end.” He looks strangely irritated at the thought. He adds, “It’s all about doing. You won’t find this person just by riding the subway.”
“It’s romantic,” Yunho frowns.
“Whatever.” Pointing at him with his chopsticks, Changmin insists, “It’s all about doing. Effort and time, not leaving anything to chance.”
Of course, Yunho knows Changmin is an overly serious person, that Changmin will nag at him about this for days afterwards so he just says, “I get it, I get it,” and piles more meat on Changmin’s plate.
“You don’t need fate, hyung,” Changmin tells him sweetly, mouth full of fried onions and pork. “You have me.”
Yunho sighs.
Yunho wakes up feeling hollow some mornings, until the sharp rap of knuckles on his door rings out at 5:50 and Changmin barks, “Hyung! Get up!”
5:54 AM: Yunho tugs on a pair of old sweatpants under the covers and lies there until
6:11 AM: Changmin opens the door loudly, comes in, and kicks the foot of the bed. “Get up,” he says, and stalks back out.
6:15 – 6:35 AM: Shower, breakfast— “Sorry, hyung, thought you weren’t coming so I ate it all”—running out to the van on an empty stomach. On the ride to the studio in sleepy silence, his head lolls and knocks against the glass of the window. It’s cold out, but Yunho forgot his extra fleece jacket in the rush.
7:00 – 11:30 AM: Yunho practices new choreography on newly waxed floors and frets over the fine lines at the corners of his eyes in the mirrored walls.
“Are those premature wrinkles?” Changmin asks when they stop for a break, running a towel over his face.
“I’m only twenty-six,” Yunho moans.
“You know there are groups debuting this year with kids that are seventeen, right?” Changmin says with glee, and for the rest of practice he counts the beat to “Ah-ju-sshi” and rolls his pants up mid-calf like Yunho’s.
Yunho thinks at least half of his wrinkles are caused by Changmin alone.
12:15 PM: Someone runs to the nearest convenience store to grab them both lunch boxes, and they inhale lukewarm rice and milk as they change and run to their next location on schedule.
Yunho tries not to notice the strain in his shoulders as he climbs in the van, tells himself it’s only precautionary when Changmin, in the front passenger seat, slaps a healing patch on the back of his neck.
12:43 PM: It’s 48 degrees outside, but the director insists Yunho’s skin be as milky white as the baby lamb he’s forced to cradle in his arms.
Changmin doesn’t even pretend to get the concept, is busy laughing at Yunho so hard the make-up artists can’t get him to stay still long enough to get his eyeliner done. Yunho, gritting his teeth and wearing only a thin, sheer top, thinks, this is the life I’m living now.
He spends the rest of the photoshoot zoning out in front of the cameras, wondering how his life might’ve came to be at this point, until Changmin tugs on the ends of his scarf, still laughing, cheeks pink.
4:47 PM: A blur of getting to the next venue, the next filming location, to the Incheon Airport to catch their flight on time at
10:11 PM: and Yunho is trapped in a swarm of fans before he gets to the terminal; he’s handed gifts from all directions at once and is so flustered he trails tissue paper as he goes and drops a four-pound tin of Christmas cookies on his foot. Just as he’s accepted his fate of headlines reading the next day, ‘U-Know Yunho of TVXQ Steps on Fans’ Cookies and Hearts Alike', he’s shoved onto the boarding dock and onto the next flight to Hong Kong.
On the plane, Yunho rests his forehead tiredly against the cold glass of the window until a warm hand touches his shoulder and Changmin murmurs, “Hyung, wake up.”
One of the stylist noonas brings her young nephew to the set and Yunho thinks this is what love must be like. He holds little Taehyun’s hand and asks if he wants a drink or if he needs to use the bathroom, and when it’s his turn to film, demands a kiss from him before he’s dumped into a disgusted Changmin’s arms.
The women fawn over Yunho and child, and Yunho has to fend off comments like, “So when will you ever bring your son to see us?” or “Any woman will be lucky to have Yunho-sshi taking care of her children!” before his heart starts to ache.
Yunho’s playing DS with Taehyun on his knee when Changmin approaches them with that haughty, cagey expression he dons whenever he’s not the center of attention.
To Yunho’s surprise, Changmin sits down next to both of them and reaches a hand out to pet Taehyun’s head, awkwardly. “Didn’t you say in an interview once that you wanted twenty kids, hyung?” he asks conversationally.
“Twenty-five,” Yunho says and laughs. “I really love kids. They’re so cute.”
“Well, you’re not getting any younger,” Changmin says.
Yunho bounces Taehyun on his leg, rolling his eyes. “Do you really hate me that much, Changmin? You think I don’t know this already?”
Changmin looks uncomfortable. “You’re always just…there, hyung,” he says. “It’s hard to imagine you settling down, having kids, a wife. I know you’ve always wanted it, but—” He pauses, drums his fingers on his knees. Yunho has no idea where this conversation is headed, is so completely unused to Changmin admitting that he ever thinks about anybody besides himself.
“But what?” asks Yunho. Taehyun looks up at them curiously, eyes round.
“It’s not possible for us to have that life anymore,” Changmin says sharply. “Everyone in Korea knows your name, and if you can’t see that, you’re delusional.”
“Optimistic, maybe,” Yunho tries.
“If you’re not happy with what you have now, then it’s hopeless,” Changmin insists, and gets up, stalking over to the lunch spread without looking back.
Yunho is all too used to Changmin’s indignant outbursts and usually doesn’t think much of them, but Yunho does know an idol’s life can never really end one day, of course, that Yunho’s name will always be known and—hopefully—remembered by the adoring public. But to keep this lifestyle up for as long as he has toned thighs and a sharp jaw and can nail all the carefully choreographed dance moves, leaves the rest of his future a hazy, distant unknown. As much as he loves his fans, performing, and dancing—Yunho is a soft soul, his mother always said. He’d much prefer home-cooked meals, lazy mornings in bed, and walks in the snow. Yunho thinks back again to fate, and resigns to consoling himself with thoughts of maybe in the next life.
Changmin, as a rule, doesn’t apologize. But today, he looks Yunho in the eye after rehearsals and asks carefully, “Everything okay?”
It’s selfish to always keep wanting more, Yunho thinks.
“Okay,” he says, beaming. “Even if I really miss Taehyun.”
Changmin scoffs, but his shoulders relax and he moves in to fix the collar of Yunho’s shirt. He pats Yunho’s chest, once, his hand right over Yunho’s heart.
Changmin’s laughing.
Yunho’s brow furrows.
He feels the brush of something light across his cheek, and his eyelashes flutter.
Hyung, Changmin urges.
Yunho hyung actually fell asleep, Changmin laughs.
Yunho opens his eyes, his eyelids letting in the light and flash of the cameras like a rising curtain. The chair is hard on his legs and the tags of the sweater they put him in nags at the back of his neck like an angry wasp. Yunho aches.
We had a long flight back, Changmin explains.
During the interview, Yunho’s smile is strained. Changmin jitters at his right and laughs too loudly from cups of strong tea and a pretty make-up artist who dabs at the bags underneath their eyes. Yunho sags slightly against Changmin’s side, which is warm and offers support.
You two seem very close.
Of course we are, Changmin insists.
We’ve worked together for over ten years, Changmin says.
You might know U-Know Yunho, but not like I do, Changmin laughs.
Yunho’s eyelashes flutter on his cheek. He sits up.
“Over ten years,” he tells the interviewer. “Rivers and mountains change in ten years.
“Changmin has always been by my side through everything, the happy times and the sad. We’ve been together for a long time. I’m confident, having him next to me.” Changmin’s shoulder presses closer, and Yunho adds, “Together, we can create history. He is my support, and with him I have no fear.”
I feel like we can do anything, Changmin agrees.
What would you want to change in the future?
He doesn’t have to want anymore, Yunho reminds himself, but it’s what keeps him going.
Just as long as I have hyung, Changmin says.
The interview goes well, Changmin doesn’t say anything that will embarrass them both in the press tomorrow, and their managers are pleased. Yunho blinks tiredly. The make-up artist touches Yunho’s wrist as she goes, smelling of lilacs.
Yunho walks into the dressing room, and Changmin turns around.
“My mother’s in Seoul,” he says, and smiles.
--/--
It’s cold and quiet as the snow comes down; a kind of quiet that leaves even the streets of Seoul in a sort of calm as Yunho crunches his boots over snow dirty from the roads. Through the soft flurries, he can see Changmin’s smile as they walk in companionable silence along the sidewalk.
“It must’ve been nice to see your family again,” Yunho says wistfully, stuffing his gloved hands deeper into his pockets. Taepung barks and tugs his wrist free, running forward.
“Mm,” Changmin replies, still visibly warm and happy from homemade cake and kimchi jjigae; Mandong trots along faithfully by his side. The snow flecks the broad shoulders of Changmin’s black overcoat and melt away one by one, in single breaths, like a whisper.
“How long as it been?” Yunho asks.
“Seven months,” Changmin says. “Maybe longer.” He twists his mouth ruefully and adds, “She’s changed a lot. Says I have too.”
“Oh? How?”
“What, you don’t see?”
They stop so Taepung can sniff curiously at a blade of green poking out of the frozen dirt. “I see,” Yunho says, “a brat who still can’t remember to clean the water off the sink after he’s done with dishes, or hang up his clothes when finished, or turn the front doorknob when he comes back home at two in the morning.”
“You can’t fix what isn’t broken,” Changmin says as if he didn’t hear anything at all, tossing his head. “I’ve gotten more handsome, hyung.”
“Your own mother has to say that, or you’re not her son at all,” Yunho laughs.
But stress isn’t as kind to Changmin as good food and enough sleep is. His skin already pulls taut over his high cheekbones, and with another three pounds lost, they will look hollow and old and need another fifteen minutes spent in the make-up chair every morning. The line of his jaw is sharp enough to hurt, whenever Changmin rests his head on Yunho’s shoulder or throws his head back during practice as Yunho watches.
“I’m a man now,” Changmin insists.
But oh, Yunho knows. Onstage, Yunho will look to his right and always find Changmin underneath the lighting and flashing special effects. Onstage performing in front of thousands, there is a hush where they feel both untouchable and undeniably beautiful (Yunho’s asked Changmin, before, and they both agree without having to say anything—there is nothing quite like it). But here, standing in the fading residue of yellow from a cracked and spider-webbed porch light, Changmin glows. Yunho feels an ache in his chest that doesn’t go away even as he wraps his scarf tighter around him.
Changmin keeps walking, happily chattering along to his dog, and they pass by happy couples, old and young in varying stages of life and love, but Yunho watches Changmin skip ahead of him, just out of reach.
Yunho wants to, if he were close enough, reach out and brush the back of his knuckles along Changmin’s thinning, and yes, handsome, cheekbones. To wipe the melting snow and frost away.
“We’ve gone too far,” he mutters instead, into the folds of his scarf. He reigns Taepung back in. “Let’s head back.”
Changmin throws his head back to laugh, and Yunho aches.
It must be the cold.
They’re at Kiss the Radio one Thursday afternoon, and Yunho sits near the door checking his phone for updates on his grandmother’s stay in the hospital, not entirely with the rest of them.
“’For over ten years’,” Sungmin says dreamily, folding his manicured hands underneath his chin. “It’s so sweet how you’re still together.”
“And hyung hasn’t yet killed Changmin, how?” Kyuhyun asks with a wide smile that looks like a leer. Yunho pauses in scrolling through his text messages. He’s slightly terrified of Kyuhyun.
Changmin rolls his eyes and pops another kimbap in his mouth. “Same how all your hyungs haven’t kicked your ass into shape, you little shit,” he says. “No, wait—at least Yunho actually likes me.”
“We like Kyuhyun sometimes,” Ryeowook says.
“You can afford someone better,” Changmin says, waving a hand.
“Sometimes?” Kyuhyun snaps.
“Shut up, all of you,” Sungmin says. “Yunho-sshi, I think it’s about time you moved out. At our age, we’re at our prime. It’s time to live the independent and free lifestyle! You might even get more fans that way.”
“Sexy, free, and single?” Kyuhyun says.
“I like the dorms just fine,” Yunho says. “I don’t mind, really—”
Changmin shakes his head. “He likes living with me. He needs me there, you know. What would he do without me?”
“Possessive isn’t a good look on you, Changmin,” Sungmin says.
“What would I do without your wet socks left in the shower, indeed,” Yunho says dryly.
“You need me,” says Changmin heatedly, turning towards Yunho. “Who else could wake you up in the morning? Who remembers to buy the cheese-flavored chips? Who else knows when to record your favorite dramas?”
“Alright, alright,” Yunho says, removing Changmin’s grip from his shirt.
“You need someone who isn’t tying you down,” Sungmin mutters with a sigh, and pats Yunho’s shoulder comfortingly as if to say, good luck.
When Yunho was still a trainee, he already gets glimpses of his fame to come (“I want my name to be known all over Korea,” he tells a grumpy Changmin when they’re fourteen and cramped in cheap dorms with poor air conditioning.
“Shut up. It’s two in the morning.”
“They will know Jung Yunho,” Yunho says firmly).
When he dances onstage, Yunho is fearless, and adored by millions of people (“Your name, boy?”). He is so loved by everyone (“Jung Yunho.”). How could he ever feel lonely if he has all his fame, his stage, his talent? (“What can you do?”)
“U-Know Yunho,” Changmin reads aloud one day, after their debut, as if he’s trying to fit the syllables in his mouth.
Yunho nods. “I want everyone know my name. What do you think?”
“It’s you,” Changmin says simply, and Yunho decides to go ahead with it. One day in the future, he will be known.
(“I dance.”)
“Fuck—I’ll just move out, then,” Changmin snaps.
There’s a buzzing sound in Yunho’s ears that might be Changmin’s hair dryer held slack in his hand, too loud at 3:30 AM and waking Yunho up after getting back just two hours ago, or it might be the result of hearing,
I’ll just move out!
and
leave you here alone
because
You need me.
I don’t need you. I don’t love you. It’s been over ten years.
“—hyung?”
Yunho is so very tired. His neck hurts, his grandmother’s still in the hospital four hours away from his dorm. How long has it been that Yunho’s been this lonely?
“Hyung,” Changmin says again, strained. “You know I don’t mean it,” but Yunho just turns around and walks back into his bedroom.
He thinks it must be jetlag, but sore feet and a dry throat don’t explain the foreboding he can now feel at the foot of his bed: his present, past and future dark and empty, spent alone every year.
The next morning, Yunho walks into the kitchen where Changmin is already sitting at the table, viciously ripping open two packets of sugar with his teeth. He dumps both into his mug and takes a big gulp without stirring.
“Did you see this?” he demands, flapping their schedule at Yunho. “Our dear manager forgot to mention we have filming on our supposed day off.”
Yunho goes to fix himself a rice bowl. He can feel Changmin’s narrowed eyes on his back. “Did you have plans?” Yunho asks.
Changmin just glares sullenly as Yunho sits opposite him with a plate of fish. Changmin slides the kimchi over roughly, and a piece lands on the table with a plop.
“I’ll tell him you’re still jetlagged,” Yunho offers.
Changmin slurps his coffee and sucks air between his front teeth. The collar of his dress shirt is crisp and tidy, poking out from underneath his white sweater. Changmin likes things to be neat and certain: their daily schedules are always to be maintained and adhered to, like how the fringe of his bangs should always be kept shorn just above his brow (unless it’s a new concept, then he’ll just sweep them up and be done with it). So Yunho shouldn’t be still in his black, rolled-up sweatpants and old t-shirt at 10:37 AM, at the table in their dorms where anybody with a camera and film crew could walk in and see.
Yunho likes surprises. He can deal with change. He would’ve sat in bed and watched dramas all day, otherwise (he likes the ones where two friends learn to love each other slowly, intimately, in such a world so unlike Yunho’s). He and his soft soul are quite content to spend the day with just hot tea and sweet rice cakes.
But then he eventually gets lonely, and goes looking for Changmin.
When Changmin is concerned, his eyebrows furrow together and he pouts, like a child. “Yunho hyung?”
Yunho chews his rice and looks over the schedule. “We’ll leave in twenty minutes.”
When (if) Yunho sleeps, he doesn’t dream.
This year he’s not granted an extended vacation to return to Gwangju, so he thinks he might just hold his breath until the holidays and the New Year are officially over. His parents and sister will hold up fine with phone calls and mailed souvenirs brought back from Japan because they always have, even if Yunho yearns hearing their voices through static on his mobile and he doesn’t return to the dorm some nights because no one will be there.
If he isn’t grabbing sleep curled underneath the water table or being herded over to their next venue, he takes to hiding from his managers/PDs/noonas/Changmin in a utility closet across the hall from his dressing room.
He’s ruminating on a dream he wishes he could have again, of waves crashing on the beach, when the door is forced open and there’s the click of the light bulb overhead.
Yunho removes his arm flung over his eyes and looks up at Changmin, haloed in light.
“Hi,” says Yunho.
Changmin cocks his head, but squeezes the door closed behind him. He says, “Hello,” and sits down with his legs stretched out over Yunho’s thighs. “Manager’s looking for you. Told him I’ll sell you out if I get chicken for lunch.”
But if Changmin was serious, he wouldn’t be pushing up Yunho’s sleeve and massaging his arm, as his sort of apology. Changmin’s hands are always unforgiving on all the wrong spots, but the promise of his warmth has Yunho relaxing back into the pillow of his arm. They’re pressed close together in the damp, musty closet, and Yunho smells Bvlgari Man underneath bath salts and Changmin’s favorite orange cream candies.
“You’re supposed to be getting your bangs done right now,” Changmin says lightly, fingers digging into the sore muscles in Yunho’s biceps.
Yunho hums. He moves his free hand and runs his knuckles along the seam of Changmin’s trousers, down to the cuff just above the tongue of his shoe. Yunho thinks, whatever he doesn’t have, he usually manages to find in Changmin.
In the comfortable silence, he asks, “Do you ever get lonely, Changmin?”
Their manager calling in the background and Yunho blinking sleep out of his eyes, Changmin answers only much later, “Not if you’re there, hyung.”
“You smell nice,” Changmin says.
“Thank you,” Yunho tells him.
“New shampoo?”
“Your mom’s. Ah, I mean—the one she bought you.”
“Ah.”
Stop giggling! the director yells.
Changmin’s bangs are tousled in front of his eyes, and Yunho blows at them out the side of his mouth. Changmin smiles and settles his chin on Yunho’s shoulder, draping a muscled arm around the other one. Yunho rests his cheek on his fist and blinks up at the camera. They’re both only wearing t-shirts, and Yunho is overwhelmed by the smell and feel of Changmin all over him.
Sexy! the director calls.
“Sexy?” Changmin laughs into Yunho’s ear, warm and soft. Leaning closer, he says, “Remember the lamb? That was sexy.”
Yunho laughs, and his muscles shift against Changmin’s.
“Hyung is always sexy,” Changmin breathes. When he laughs, his brown eyes squeeze shut and the gums of his teeth show.
Yunho moves back slightly to look at him. “Am I?”
Changmin raises his eyebrows: but then he smirks, and Yunho’s pulse starts to race.
Then Changmin’s leaning in closer and closer and his breath is ghosting along the side of Yunho’s face and if Changmin would move in that little bit, the pressure would be real—
He whispers something into Yunho’s ear, and Yunho smiles.
Their new stage outfits are…back-baring, and Changmin laughs himself silly until he realizes they’re the final designs.
Yunho stands with his arms held out patiently as they take his new measurements—he’s gained two pounds and lost another four over the last week and a half—and gives them his shoe and sock size.
Changmin studies a design with rainbow-striped sleeves critically. His eyes still sore after last night’s performance, he wears large-framed glasses perched on the edge of his nose. “This?” he says to Yunho, pointing a judging finger, “this is not fashion.”
Yunho raises an eyebrow. He knows for a fact, if he were to walk into Changmin’s room (first stating his purpose, then getting permission and promising to touch nothing) and look through his impeccably organized closet, he would find nothing but pressed blouses and oversized sweaters in varying distasteful designs. Changmin really likes sweaters. He’s wearing one with an alligator on it right now.
When Yunho tells him as much, Changmin bristles. “I know fashion,” Changmin says indignantly. He then looks up and down at Yunho, first pointedly, which then becomes shameless, eyes drifting over Yunho’s black polo and jeans to his bare arms. A leer plays at the corners of his mouth, and Yunho feels his cheeks go hot.
Yunho is glad to be ushered into the dressing room, then. He tells Changmin over his shoulder, “It’s whatever makes you look good.”
He drapes the outfit over the chair in the room and undresses. There is a scar on his left arm from a training incident, and another deep mark on his right thigh that brings him back some days to playing in the outskirts of the city, in fields with deep marshes and tall blades of grass. His muscles are lean—not so much as Changmin’s, but the line of his body is still flat with grim, devastating angles. He itches at the dry skin on his hip, and zips up the sides of the outfit.
“Very nice,” and “Looks good on you,” the stylist noonas say approvingly when he steps back out. A few of their eyes glaze over and Yunho shifts self-consciously.
He pokes at the sparkly, billowing sleeves. “What do you think, Changdola?”
When Yunho turns around to face him (his back feeling exposed and cold), Changmin’s eyes are dark with something Yunho can’t place. At first Yunho thinks he’s angry again, but then he tilts his head and Changmin’s face is carefully blank again.
He purses his lips and looks considering. After an long while that stretches into awkward, he suddenly says, “That color looks good on you, hyung.” When Yunho looks at him, he sniffs and turns away. “I like purple.”
Yunho approves the outfits.
“Put the napkin down, will you?”
“Look, it’s a crane! Here.”
“I don’t want—okay, thanks, now at least pretend to look like you’re listening? Please?”
“How about you listen instead of whispering in my ear? I don’t owe these pompous grandpas anything, except maybe my own, better long-winded speech about how my tie looks good on me.”
“…We’re at a charity event. For cancer.”
“I need charity, I’m starving. God, dinner must’ve been two hours ago! How long have we been here?”
“Stop yawning, it’s rude.”
“I’m tired.”
“You’re getting water all over your jacket! Oh, great.”
“Shut up, my god. People are looking at us now.”
“Because you’re being difficult while we’re supposed to have the honor of sitting before the president of our company and other distinguished guests.”
“Hyung, admit it, you’re bored too. I’m so telling our manager when we get out of here. If we ever do.”
“You’re such a brat. Keep your voice down.”
“We’re sitting too far away for anybody to take offense. We must not be as important as you think. Does that make you sad?”
“Stop laughing, that wasn’t even funny. You’re not funny.”
“…Give me my crane back.”
“What?”
“Give me—back—my crane—”
“Changmin, no. Hey, what are y—argh, let go—no, stop—”
Two days later, Changmin taps his fingers on the keyboard of his laptop thoughtfully. He tilts his head. “The pictures make it look like I’m giving you a blowjob,” he says.
“I would only be so lucky,” Yunho says flatly, and carefully avoids fansites for two weeks afterwards.
A typical SM after party is resplendent yet stagnant: at least, as Yunho sees it standing by the drinks table and letting everyone else walk up to greet him. His high collar is stiff under his chin and all the faces he sees pass by him in blurs of light and a slight haze of champagne.
Someone comes up behind him and leans close into Yunho’s ear, whispering, “Want to get out of here?”
Yunho whips around (if it’s Kyuhyun again, he swears he’s calling Leeteuk), and finds Changmin, champagne flute in hand, smiling wide.
“Changmin,” Yunho breathes, willing his heartbeat to slow.
“Hey,” Changmin says brightly, taking a sip. He looks like he was made to wear these lapels, the black studs a fascinating contrast against the pale length of his neck. “C’mon, hyung, let’s blow up this popsicle stand.”
“Wow,” Yunho says. “Have you been working on your English?”
Changmin laughs, a sound brighter than all the neon lights in the room. “No, really,” he says, eyes alight. “Let’s leave. You know how long these things last, and I think I’ve had enough of strobe lights and girls I don’t know.”
Yunho raises an eyebrow and says, “Girls not cutting it for you tonight?”
Changmin looks at him archly. “What are you trying to say?”
“There’s no way out of here now,” Yunho just says. “Be patient and maybe we can go out for real drinks later.”
“I don’t want to be here,” Changmin says. “I want barbecue for dinner.”
Yunho laughs, startled. “You want barbecue now?”
“Right now. Let’s go.”
“…How?”
Changmin puts his glass down on the table and grabs Yunho’s wrist, commanding and impatient. His smile is playful like Yunho hasn’t seen since they’ve been getting an average of two and a half hours of sleep a night. “Like this,” he says.
Tugging Yunho along, Changmin weaves their way through the crowd right up to the doors leading out into the hall.
“Wait, Changmin,” Yunho protests, looking back at their managers, but Changmin just squeezes his wrist reassuringly.
And like that, they just walk out.
Yunho feels a little dizzy, bursting out the center’s front doors and into the evening chill. “No one even noticed,” he says.
Changmin is looking very proud of himself as he lets Yunho go and buttons up the front of his suit jacket. “Wanted to test the theory,” he says. “Our managers would never expect us to just leave. So we did.” He pauses. “We could do anything we want, right now. Together.”
Yunho leads them both away to start walking down the street. He’s not so sure, while they’re still in stage makeup and dress: the corners of Changmin’s eyes are smoky and glittery while Yunho’s hair is swept up high. They’re already getting noticed by schoolgirls returning home from preparatory classes.
Changmin seems to be thinking along the same lines, because he waves at them and grins ruefully at Yunho. “Barbecue?” he asks.
“Barbecue,” Yunho agrees.
They get a secluded booth in a family restaurant, where the parents look past them disinterestedly and the girls are too young to brave coming up to them for autographs. Yunho pats down his bangs as Changmin starts throwing meat on the grill.
“This is nice,” Yunho says, resting the side of his cheek in his hand. “I really wasn’t feeling like dealing with your drunk ass tonight.”
“You’re always really good about it, though!” Changmin says, shameless, eating the chili paste straight from the dish. “But this is very nice. I was hungry.”
“They’re going to lynch us for this, you know that, right?”
“Might as well eat as much as we can before that, then,” Changmin says, folding lettuce wraps at an impressive speed.
Yunho watches him, the line of his shoulders folding and relaxing in the buttery warmth of the restaurant booth, and he laughs. He laughs fully until he’s sliding down the old plastic of the seat and covering his face with his hands, and when he looks between his fingers, Changmin’s staring at him. There’s soy sauce, ridiculously, on his cheek, and Yunho starts laughing again.
“There’s something wrong with you, hyung,” Changmin says, attempting to steal the meat off Yunho’s plate.
Yunho flicks his chopsticks away and reaches across the table to wipe Changmin’s face with his thumb. “I like you,” he says fondly.
Interestingly enough, a pink flush rises, hot and fast, on Changmin’s cheeks spreading to his ears. It could be the heat rising from the grill, but that doesn’t explain the shock on Changmin’s face that he tries to play off a second later.
“I like hyung too,” he says, flustered.
Yunho feels warm all over, down to his toes, and even when he’s being chewed out for behavior ‘unrepresentative and unappreciative of the company’ afterwards, he smiles and thinks, maybe, he’d follow Changmin anywhere.
5:50 AM: The sharp rap of knuckles on his door rings out and Changmin barks, “Hyung! Get up!”
6:05 AM: Yunho tugs on a pair of old sweatpants and gets out of bed. He opens the door and almost collides with Changmin trying to force his way into the room.
“Oh,” Changmin says, looking embarrassed. “You’re already awake.”
Changmin’s hair is sleep-tousled and his eyes still sleepy, and Yunho rushes past him into the bathroom before he can recognize the sudden interest spiking in his gut.
6:09 – 6:30 AM: Shower, breakfast— “Hyung, stop, you’re eating it all!”—running out to the van with hair still wet and parkas tangling their arms. They ride to the studio in silence, Changmin’s head drooping and coming to a rest on Yunho’s shoulder. His hair tickles the bottom of Yunho’s chin, smelling of oranges.
7:00 – 11:45 AM: During practice, Yunho watches Changmin.
He sees the fall of sweaty bangs in Changmin’s eyes, the damp sheen on the back of his neck when he spins, the stretch of Changmin’s lean torso all the way down the endless length of his legs.
Yunho trips over his feet during his own choreography and falls straight on his ass.
Yunho is distracted.
12:11 – 12:35 PM: There are three people on guard in case Changmin tries to spirit them away again, so they eat, subdued, on the practice room floor and memorize their scripts for the next event they’re hosting.
Yunho feeds Changmin when he looks up from a page, who leans closer and puts one hand on Yunho’s wrist to steady him. Changmin’s eyelashes are long and he smiles at Yunho with his mouth full, and Yunho is hopelessly endeared.
12:47 – 1:12 PM: Walking into the building, the cameras flash, and Yunho is afraid they’ll all notice he forgot to comb his hair after practice. He throws his hood over his head and tries to duck in unnoticed, but Changmin comes up behind him and grabs hold of his arm, using Yunho to wave at the cameras as he throws kisses.
He tries to peck Yunho on the cheek, causing the girls to scream and Yunho to almost fall over.
1:30 – 3:00 PM: During lessons, Changmin stumbles over phrases and tries to hide his garbled Japanese, and when he throws his head back to laugh, Yunho watches the line of his throat and feels the want in waves.
Changmin meets his eyes over the table, eyes warm and bright and—
Huh, Yunho thinks.
Yunho dreams that night.
He dreams of being on the beach, to sit and let the waves break over his feet. He dreams of Changmin, there with him and happy to be there, looking at Yunho like Yunho is the only one he sees.
Changmin blinks up at Yunho, sweet and lovely, and kisses him. He smiles against Yunho’s mouth and his hand comes up to rest against Yunho’s cheek and—
Yunho wakes up, heart pounding.
--/--
He stumbles into the kitchen late that night; both of them always seem to gravitate towards coffee and soup, if not to each other.
Sure enough, Yunho finds Changmin in a dark blue robe and his glasses framing large tired eyes, making ramyun on the stove. Swallowing down the sudden apprehension in his gut, Yunho walks in and starts to make himself a cup of tea. He leans into Changmin’s shoulder, and there’s a small smile on Changmin’s face; he blinks over at Yunho, sweet and lovely, and Yunho freezes. He isn’t sure what comes next, or if he’s still dreaming.
Changmin smiles at Yunho for real. He brings the pot over to the table along with a pair of chopsticks and starts eating straight out of it. “Couldn’t sleep either?” he asks.
This is probably an invitation to stay and keep Changmin company during their typical sleepless nights. Yunho looks at the empty chair across from him and the other two never used. He thinks of Changmin’s hands cupping his face and takes a deep breath.
He sits down and looks at Changmin.
Changmin looks back.
Changmin is handsome; devastatingly so, even with bangs sweat damp sticking to his forehead and oil bright on the bridge of his nose. In the warm glow of the kitchen light, Changmin looks so soft that Yunho could reach out and run his hand along the side of his face and down the wool of his robe. He decides instead to store this moment away: the smell of kimchi and oolong strong on his nose, the feel of the table hard underneath his nails, the sight of his Changmin, so wholly real and touchable in front of him. The night drifts along like Yunho’s still in his dream, on the waves of the ocean. Yunho smiles, delirious with the warmth of the moment, and Changmin, Changmin—
Yunho thinks of Changmin waking him up in the mornings, massaging his sore arms and back, of barbecue dinners when Yunho is feeling lonely, Changmin whispering in his ear, tugging on the wrist, the long line of his throat and the sound of his laugh—
“—hyung?”
Yunho swallows.
“It honestly feels like we’re never here,” Changmin continues, blowing the steam from his ramyun.
Yunho stares.
“I’ve missed my bed,” Changmin complains, stretching his neck to the side. “I can’t find my pillow, either. Did you take it again?”
Yunho can’t believe it.
“I’m hungry,” Changmin whines, mouth still full.
Yunho’s in love.
Changmin raises an eyebrow, his glasses crooked on his nose. “What the hell have you been looking at?”
Yunho’s fucked.
Actually, Yunho wouldn’t call it love (it runs so much deeper than that), but he isn’t able to look Changmin in the eye for a week afterwards. (He has no idea what he’d call this—cowardice?)
At dance practice, rehearsals, at the gym, Yunho throws himself into whatever he’s doing, and doesn’t have time to spare any encouraging words for Changmin. It’s been over ten years; they don’t need each other that much anymore. He wakes up ten minutes earlier than Changmin now, and nods off completely in the van on the way to the studio. He keeps two steps ahead of Changmin as they hurtle from one schedule to another and looks away whenever he catches the confused frustration on Changmin’s face.
Yunho doesn’t say much anymore; his dancing has always spoken better for him, after all.
On the plane back to Korea, Yunho purposely sits in the row behind Changmin and goes over his script during the entire flight back, going straight to their next stop as soon as they’re out of the airport.
Their manager decides to just book them both a room that night, and they follow him into a hotel far too extravagant for Yunho’s tastes, with white colonnades and a chrome finish. He sidles away from the revolving doors where fans are already queuing up and leaves a sulking Changmin on top of their luggage on a cart.
“One room,” their manager tells the man behind the front desk.
“Two beds,” Yunho rushes to mention, and his manager gives him a blank look.
Yunho turns around, and Changmin is glaring at him.
When they key into the room, Changmin is still glaring daggers into Yunho’s back.
Yunho takes a deep breath and drops his duffel onto the bed nearest the window. “I’m going for a walk,” he says.
“You’re tired, hyung,” Changmin snaps. “You didn’t even nap at all on the plane.”
Yunho shrugs. “Can’t sleep.”
Changmin grits his teeth as Yunho pulls on his jacket. “Fine,” he says. “I’m leaving too.”
“Be back soon,” Yunho says, not meeting his eyes. “We have to be up early tomorrow.”
“NO,” Changmin yells, and slams the door behind him.
With Changmin gone, Yunho doesn’t go for a walk. He lies down on his bed with a silk bedspread and tries to go over the rest of his script, but he falls asleep when the clock on the bedside table reads 1:32 AM.
The door handle jiggles open two hours later, and Changmin bursts in loudly. Yunho jerks awake, his glasses slipping off his nose.
He blearily looks up to find Changmin throwing his clothes aside on the floor, a little drunk and a lot angry. He sees Yunho stir on his bed and comes forward to face him.
“Where the fuck did you go?” he snaps.
“I took a walk and came back,” Yunho yawns, getting up to look for his sweatpants.
“No,” Changmin says. He comes up to stand right next to Yunho. “Where have you been for the past week?”
“Right here,” Yunho says, blinking up at him. “Right beside you.”
“You haven’t really been here,” slurs Changmin. “You haven’t been here with me.” Pink is rising high on his cheeks and the carefully composed look Yunho’s always hated is gone—Yunho can see every emotion as they fly across Changmin’s face, from anger to disbelief and to, possibly, hurt.
“Did I do something wrong, hyung?” Changmin asks, voice unsteady, and Yunho stills.
Changmin is a good bit taller than Yunho, and he hovers over him slightly, breath too hot and his eyes bright.
“Go to bed, Changmin,” Yunho hears himself say, and Changmin’s face falls. “It’s late.”
The next morning, Yunho tries not to let his eyelids fall for too long, and Changmin does a passable job at not appearing hungover. They maintain an uncomfortable distance unless it’s completely necessary to acknowledge each other, and Changmin firmly keeps the microphone out of his hand. He doesn’t look at Yunho once, staring instead at his fingernails, the potted plant next to him, at the MC and anyone who is not Yunho.
As they’re leaving the main hall of the hotel, they’re greeted by a few fans bearing gifts.
One of them bows to Yunho so deep her hair tumbles over her shoulder and hits the floor. She sobs Yunho’s name and introduces herself as Jeanet, thrusting a large gift bag at him overflowing with ribbon and something that smells like apples. Yunho smiles at her. “Thank you,” he says warmly. “I love purple.”
Changmin blinks at him.
“I love you, oppa,” the girl sobs, and before they’re led away, Changmin pats her shoulder, as if in understanding.
Changmin doesn’t understand.
“I don’t understand,” he explodes one day. He’s slightly sweaty, as if he’s run all the way back to the dressing room to where Yunho is sprawled out on the couch. It’s their free hour, which means Changmin must’ve skipped lunch to come looking for him.
“What?” Yunho asks.
Changmin clenches his hands into fists. “Hyung, I—” He looks completely frustrated.
Yunho’s isn’t sure what’s going to happen next. He launches himself off the couch and starts for the door. “We should get lunch while we still can, Changminnie, I—”
“I’m sorry,” Changmin blurts.
Yunho stops with one foot out the door. He turns around, jaw slack. “Huh?”
“I’m sorry for coming home late all the time,” Changmin says, looking determined and eyes clear, completely sober with his face composed.
Yunho knows Changmin. And Changmin never apologizes.
“I don’t—”
“I’m sorry for being a bad dongsaeng, for never cleaning up the sink after I do the dishes, for yelling at you if you don’t take off your shoes, and whatever else I’ve done all these years,” Changmin rushes over him in one breath.
“Changmin,” Yunho says, feeling completely terrible.
“Are you tired of me or something?” Changmin says.
Yunho stares at him. Their manager starts calling for him from down the hallway.
“Hyung,” Changmin tries desperately, taking a step for the door. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Don’t—don’t do anything,” Yunho says, strangled, and rushes out the door without looking back.
“Yunho hyung, forgive me, but sometimes you’re incredibly dense.”
“What? Kyuhyun, when did you even come in here?”
“But it’s okay, I’m used to that sort of thing from my hyungs too.”
“Huh?”
“I really wish I could sic Heechul on you right now.”
“What are you talking about, Kyuhyun?”
“Are you avoiding Changmin, hyung?”
“…No? He’s just filming right now?”
“He was drunk that night, wasn’t he? Don’t tell me you can’t recall that.”
“How do you know about that?”
“It was my wine.”
“He was tired. We both were.”
“I heard he apologized to you for being a bad dongsaeng.”
“Who told you that?”
“He did, hyung. He tells me everything about you.”
“…What else has he told you?”
“That you’re avoiding him and he doesn’t know why. He’s sad.”
“I’m not avoiding him…”
“He thinks he did something to make you hate him—”
“And I definitely don’t hate him—”
“—and I didn’t want you to hear it from me, but.”
“But?”
“I can’t believe I have to be the one telling you this, but please don’t hurt Changmin.”
“…”
“Do you get where this conversation is going?”
“It isn’t like that—”
“Oh?”
“No.”
“Over ten years, hyung. Remember that.”
“Changmin should know that I’m not mad at him, then. You tell him that.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Well, because I…”
“Please don’t hate him.”
“Don’t you have to get back to the rest of Super Junior right now, Kyuhyun-sshi? Aren’t they waiting on you?”
“Over ten years, Yunho hyung.”
At Incheon, the crowd is even larger than usual in the holiday bustle and Yunho keeps losing Changmin.
The fourth time he spots the back of Changmin’s swiveling neck all the way at the back of the line, he just grabs Changmin’s sleeve and holds him there. “We have somewhere to be,” Yunho hisses.
Changmin keeps his head down, cowed, but then he shifts his arm and Yunho feels Changmin’s hand slipping into his for a fleeting second. They’re pushed forwards in line, and Changmin keeps very close to Yunho, pressed up enough that Yunho feels his warmth even through his thick peacoat.
It’s light and quick, so maybe the cameras didn’t notice, but then Changmin leans into Yunho behind him and presses his forehead into his shoulder.
Yunho exhales, and leans back into the touch.
“Hyung,” Changmin says, and his blush reaches all the way to the tips of his ears.
Changmin is twenty-four, a man now and not the sullen fourteen-year-old Yunho reprimanded for not working hard enough, once. Changmin is a hard worker, he knows, in all of SM and the music industry maybe, abandoning a life of studies and comfort to be with TVXQ. And Yunho.
Sometimes, if it’s late enough and Yunho is too tired to care, he remembers them as five and allows himself to be sad.
Sometimes, he looks ahead to the future and wonders what is left there for him.
But now—and there is no time like the present—Yunho can just look over to his right to remind himself of what he has, right now.
It’s a love that Yunho has always been aware of, constantly and consciously, based on years of friendship and passion and rage due to pressures of the industry and constantly being pushed beyond one’s comfort zone. It is impossible for Yunho to ignore, to recognize what’s behind the exasperation and jabs, when he knows every line of Changmin’s body and exactly what he likes down to the style of his favorite trousers. He knows each crafted angle of his skin, of the exact shade of deep brown in his eyes, and the tilt of his smile when something happens that Changmin likes.
Changmin likes to know things; to know what’s coming and what has been the same for years. He is twenty-four now, and Yunho is two years his senior. But Yunho loves change, and he sees the desire mingling with fear when he leans in and kisses Changmin on a cold night in January.
Food forgotten for once (and Yunho takes this as a compliment), Changmin sighs, the tense line in his shoulders gone, and holds onto Yunho’s shirt in what should be a painful grip.
“Changmin,” Yunho breathes against his mouth, and Changmin uses that as an invitation to get closer and push them both to the kitchen floor instead of listening to Yunho’s confession of sorts—
But perhaps they’ve both always known.
“Wake up, hyung,” Changmin breathes, right into Yunho’s ear.
Yunho jerks awake, grabbing onto his covers wildly, and blinks up at a smirking Changmin, whose dark eyes run down the length of Yunho’s body covered only by a t-shirt and boxers.
Yunho swallows.
Changmin leans down, and Yunho closes his eyes automatically, only to have his old sweatpants thrown into his face.
“Used up all the hot water again,” Changmin’s saying, already walking out of the room. “And you better hurry up if you want breakfast.”
Yunho yells at him afterwards, but it doesn’t keep the goofy smile off Changmin’s face even when Yunho sabotages the coffee pot at six in the morning.
Yunho is not lonely—he never was—when Changmin is by his side. He leans in for another kiss, and then steals the rest of the rice.
Changmin grudgingly lets him. And Yunho knows, laughing, that he is so, so loved.
THE END