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If Maki wasn’t already self aware enough as it was when it came to his… clinginess towards Harua, scrolling through TikTok in the dead of night and invading Lunèville territory would definitely fix that.
A lot of them were innocent, just fans pointing out how close the two of them had become since The Incident during &Audition. (Maki suppressed a shudder at the embarrassing memory, wishing he could erase it from the internet forever.) But after hours of scrolling and liking a few just for fun, he realized a little too late just how deep he’d sunk into fan territory.
Maki remembered teasing Euijoo and Nicholas for the clips that had circulated after their Tingle Salon video. All of the members had joined in on the teasing for that, cooing over them and showing them all of the fans speculating about their relationship- unaware just how close to the truth they were.
Now, he wished he could go back in time and slap his past self for initiating that teasing to begin with.
Comments he’d made to and about Harua during their own Tingle Salon episode were being edited with flowery music, montages of other ‘cute’ moments they’d shared in the last few months following after. The #Harumaki tag written in the description felt too incriminating.
A clip of him kissing the top of Harua’s head played- a clip he hadn’t known existed in the first place- when he’d gotten a burst of cuteness aggression in the background of a group live and had just… gone for it.
It wasn’t anything unusual. He’d done the same to Euijoo, Taki and even Yuma once or twice. Physical affection was the most prevalent love language in &Team after all.
Yet there Maki laid, the pad of his thumb pressed to his lips, wondering when he’d get the chance with Harua again.
That wasn’t a thought he’d have about Euijoo, Taki or Yuma.
The soft sound of footsteps passed his bedroom door, most likely Yuma or Taki sneaking to the kitchen for a late night snack. The idea of being caught watching edits about himself and Harua set alarm bells off in Maki’s head- he turned his phone off and shoved it under his pillow.
He knew he had feelings for Harua. Feelings that probably weren’t appropriate for him to have for a bandmate. Euijoo and Nicholas were an exception, it had always been an inevitability, something they all knew was written in the stars. The same could be said for Yuma and Jo, a classic case of opposites attract- even if it had taken Jo a while to build up the courage to confess, because Yuma saw love as war, and it was one he wasn’t vulnerable enough to lose.
He also knew that his feelings weren’t something he could keep hidden for much longer, now that they’d blossomed from admiration to a puppy crush to something Maki was pretty sure he could call love.
Harua and Yuma were similar in the way they viewed romance, though Harua was more what you’d consider ‘Kdrama final boss’ material. The kind of guy who had ridiculously high standards; ones that Maki would probably never meet.
K and Fuma hadn’t raised a quitter, though, and Maki feared Nico’s relentless teasing about his ‘obvious crush’ more than he feared the inevitable rejection from Harua.
If he confessed, at least he could say he had tried before Harua shot him down.
When that opportunity would arise was anybody's guess.
Maki hoped it wasn’t anytime soon.
~
Unfortunately for Maki, the world wasn’t on his side very often anymore. It seemed that all of his luck had been used up on the day he was announced as a member of &Team, and it had yet to accumulate again.
Only two days after his late night doomscrolling, management announced that a pipe in their company building had burst and their practice room had been one of the few affected. On such short notice they had been unable to find an available room, so practice was cancelled and they had the day all to themselves.
“I think it’s better if we all stay home, though.” K said through a yawn, hair messy and still in his pajamas. He and Taki were huddled under a blanket on the sofa, the latter already snoring again after finding out practice was cancelled.
Euijoo nodded, looking no better than K as he leaned against the living room doorframe. “Just in case they manage to find us a spare room, it’ll be easier to get there if we don’t have to call everyone and pick them up separately.” He agreed.
“At least we don’t have to try and wake Nico up,” Harua sighed, his body rag-dolled over Maki’s beanbag on the floor. He had gotten to the spot before Maki, who had resigned himself to fate and sat on their second sofa with Fuma and Jo- the three of them having woken up too late to score a spot on the one that was actually comfortable.
Forget Nico, “I’m more scared of waking Yuma..” Jo frowned, and Maki agreed.
“Didn’t he try to bite you last time?” Maki gave Jo a pitying glance.
Jo’s eyes widened, like he was having war flashbacks. “He didn’t try, he succeeded.”
The end result of a night spent gaming with Fuma till the early hours of the morning, apparently. Yuma had been less than thrilled when poor Jo had woken him up to ask if he’d like to go and get breakfast with the rest of them.
“Alright well, I’m glad that’s settled.” K hummed, fingers running absentmindedly through Taki’s hair. “I’m definitely stuck here for the next hour, but the rest of you can scatter and do whatever I guess.”
Harua made a noise akin to that of a dying animal, and Maki was impressed when Taki managed to stay asleep through it.
“What the hell?” He laughed at the look of pure misery on Harua’s face.
Harua glared at him, but otherwise ignored him- instead turning to the certified parents of the group with a pout. Maki himself was weak to it, even though he knew Harua too well by now, and knew it was definitely a manipulation tactic to make the elder members give in to his wishes.
“Can I at least go for a walk to the take-out place down the road?” He asked, laying on the aegyo thick. Damn, he was good. Euijoo had already folded, and Fuma was close to it- the hardest to shake was K, who had built up an immunity from Taki trying the same thing over the years. “It’s so boring at the dorm.”
“Rua, what did we just decide?” Fuma raised a brow.
K frowned, “and we know you, you won’t just go to the one place. If we let you go, you’ll be all the way on the outer skirts of Seoul before any of us even notice.”
“But I always go out,” Harua’s voice turned whiny, and Maki observed, entirely enamored by Harua’s way of whittling away at the Hyung’s weak spots until they couldn’t help but give him what he wanted.
Harua acted bratty, but he was probably the most in tune with the members out of all of them- he knew what made everyone tick, the little intricacies that not even Euijoo or Fuma were able to pick up on when it came to the members personalities and habits.
Harua noticed the finer details, and Maki noticed Harua.
Maki also could not help himself when it came to Harua, it seemed.
K wasn’t going to budge, from the look of it. He’d already decided his word was final, and Harua didn’t have a chance of changing his mind.
“What if we go together and get brunch for everyone?” Maki threw in, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible- as if he wasn’t both jumping for and dreading the chance to go out with just him and Harua. “That way I can make sure Harua doesn’t make a run for it, but he still gets to leave the house for a little.”
The Hyung's seemed to consider it for a moment, and Jo, the pure angel he was, chimed in with his support.
“Sounds like a good idea to me?”
K let out a breath, both amused and exhausted by the Maknae's. “Fine, but if you’re not back in an hour, expect an earful from me.”
“Yes Mom,” Harua rolled his eyes.
K’s hand paused in Taki’s hair. He eyed his phone on the arm of the sofa next to him. “I have your real Mom’s number, don’t test me.”
Harua mimed zipping his lips shut, shooting to his feet at record speed and grabbing Maki by the hand. He dragged the younger off the sofa and out of the living room before K could make good on his threat, leading him to the entryway where all of the members' shoes were scattered haphazardly. Some had managed to make it to the shoe rack, but the vast majority were on the floor, separated from their pair in the battle of nine people all trying to get to bed after a long day.
Harua picked a pair at random, one that Maki was sure belonged to Yuma. Normally he’d snitch, but Harua was terrifying when he was mad, and even more so when it was an argument with Yuma.
Instead, Maki shrugged and grabbed a pair of his own. If Harua wasn’t going to respect dorm rules, Maki would make sure at least one of them did.
“Thank you,” Harua said, a little while after they’d left the dorm, walking through the quieter streets of Seoul. South Korea was nothing like home, and if they didn’t want to be mobbed, it was better to stay out of sight as much as possible.
To be honest, Maki was a little surprised that Euijoo and K had let them leave the house without a manager to look out for them. He wouldn’t linger on it though, it was better not to look a gift-horse in the mouth after all.
Maki shrugged, “it’s no big deal. I know you feel confined in there, I think the others know that too.”
Harua smiled softly, kicking loose pebbles on the footpath as they walked side by side. Maki’s hand itched to reach out and join their fingers together, but South Korea wasn’t Japan, and they weren’t with the other members. Harua wouldn’t read into it, but the tabloids would- and neither of them could risk that.
“My parents were strict, especially my Mom.” Harua muttered, staring directly ahead as they walked. “I wasn’t allowed to leave the house on my own as a kid because they worried I’d get bullied by the bigger kids, or even worse, that somebody would see me as an easy target to kidnap.”
“Rua…” Maki’s chest hurt. He had known, briefly, quietly, that Harua and his parents had had problems in the past- that Harua had been forced to mature a lot faster than most kids his age. But he’d never known the extent of it, because Harua didn’t like to speak about it.
Harua laughed, Maki couldn’t tell if it was real or not.
“I threatened to run away from home, once.” He shot a glance at Maki, a spark shooting down his spine at the look in Harua’s eyes. A fire had been lit, and he was choosing to let Maki in- to confide in him about something he probably hadn’t told many others.
“You did?”
“Yea,” Harua said. “Told them then and there, if they didn’t let me move to Tokyo to fight for my dreams…. I wouldn’t give them a choice, and they’d never hear from me again.”
Maki stopped, his jaw dropping.
Harua paused a few steps later, looking over his shoulder and smirking at the shell-shocked expression Maki knew he was wearing.
“But… you love them.” His voice cracked midway through. “They love you too, so much. I see it when they come to visit, or when they’re at our concerts.”
“I do. They do, too.” Harua agreed. “But what I went through as a child wasn’t an act of love, it was obsession and a constant need for control. Love isn’t supposed to make you feel smaller, or trapped within the same four walls. Love shouldn’t be suffocating.”
Maki stepped closer, as far into Harua’s space as he could without making it seem too intimate. He reminded himself they were still in public. He couldn’t do any of the things he longed to out here, and maybe that was why Harua had chosen now of all times to share this with him.
He was reminded of &Audition, and even further back during their time spent together as trainees. Back when Harua would flinch away from his touch and dance out of his line of sight as if he knew what Maki would end up feeling for him if he allowed the younger boy to get too close.
Maybe he did know, and maybe he had known all along.
Harua knew all of the members intricately, knew all of them like the back of his hand.
Maki falling in love with Harua was written into existence by the hand of fate, and that was something Maki had never questioned. But Shigeta Harua was the boy who had grasped fate by the throat and commanded it to let him write his own story.
“Where is this going, Harua?” Maki whispered, meeting Harua’s eyes. Harua didn’t look away, something in his gaze that prompted Maki to continue. “This was never about you feeling trapped in the dorm, was it?”
“Come with me.” Harua said, and Maki listened like the overgrown puppy Harua always said he was.
He always denied it, but as usual, Harua had been right all along.
He would do anything, so long as it was Harua asking it of him.
This time, Harua didn’t drag him by the hand or the wrist. He walked, and Maki followed.
Suddenly, it didn’t matter that they were supposed to be buying food for the other members. It didn’t matter that Maki had accompanied Harua to stop this exact situation from happening.
All that mattered was going wherever Harua asked of him, and listening to whatever Harua had to say.
~
“You’re too much, you know?” Harua smirked, and finally, finally joined their hands together.
It felt electric, it felt like fire in Maki’s veins.
It felt like coming home.
“I’m not sure what you mean.” He responded, unable to hide the tremor in his voice as they huddled together in the photo booth of an arcade. The arcade itself was almost empty, save for a few random adults wasting their hard earned money away. It was during school hours, so they’d been saved from the battle of shoving their way through hoards of middle schoolers and high schoolers looking to ditch supplementary classes.
Harua had drawn the curtain shut behind them, and the photo booth was small enough that they had to stand toe-to-toe. Not unlike the eye contact challenge they’d had to endure during the Idol DKDK Club content.
This time, Maki didn’t dare look away.
Harua hummed, a soft noise that made Maki want to kiss it from his lips.
“Your little puppy crush was annoying, at first.” Harua scolded, but his tone was anything but harsh. The expression on his face was far from annoyed. “I thought you’d be just like them. Controlling, possessive… especially when you cried over me that night, in front of everybody else. In front of the cameras.”
Maki couldn’t tell where this was going.
Harua knew. He had known all along.
But was it right for Maki to get his hopes up? To let his heart open up to the possibility of Harua returning his feelings.
“It was ridiculously cute, though.” Harua sighed, fiddling absentmindedly with Maki’s fingers in his hold. “I thought it would fade over time, but you’re awfully persistent Riki.”
Maki shivered at the sound of his given name coming from Harua’s lips. “Harua-”
“I’m not finished.”
Maki shut his mouth.
Harua smiled up at him. “You know K-hyung talked to me a while ago? He said I needed to make up my mind and either let you down easy, or finally talk this out with you.”
Maki blinked, his mind drawing a blank. “He did…?”
“He did,” Harua confirmed. “So I thought about it, and I think I finally have my own feelings sorted out.”
Maki sucked in a breath, his chest tight all of a sudden. “And?”
Harua dropped Maki’s hand, and he tried not to let the feeling of loss show in his expression. He knew it did anyways; he had never been able to hide anything from Harua, after all.
“Did you mean it?” Harua asked, staring into Maki’s eyes so intently that he wouldn’t be surprised if Harua could see directly into his soul. “Everything you said during the Tingle Salon interview. Did you mean it?”
He didn’t even need to think before speaking, the answer so ridiculously clear to him that there was no room for doubt whatsoever.
“Yes. I meant every word.” Maki answered.
Yes, Harua was the prettiest person in the entire world.
Of course, Harua was the person who Maki felt the most comfortable with. They had the most history, after all.
Harua could be moody, bratty, he liked to egg Maki on just to see his emotions reach their limit. But Maki had the ability to do the same to Harua.
While Harua observed, calculated, judged the world around him and adjusted accordingly- Maki observed Harua, so that Harua would always have someone to fall back on in case he ever misjudged.
“Every single thing I said was the truth, Harua.”
Harua nodded and a contemplative silence filled the air.
Maki didn’t interrupt, didn’t say another word. He stood there, silent, waiting for Harua to work through whatever he needed to.
Finally, after what felt like hours but was really only a minute, two at most, Harua held his hand out once again- and Maki gently grasped it in his own.
“I knew you’d find a way to make it happen, when I wanted to leave the house today.” Harua muttered, staring down at their hands with what Maki hoped was fondness. “I also knew you’d come with me.”
“Was there ever a doubt?”
Harua laughed, airy and small, but genuine.
“No.” Harua said, clear as day. “And that made me realize something.”
“Yea?”
“I thought I knew everything about you, but I was so, so wrong. I kept shying away from it… from you. I misjudged your affection, I thought you’d be no different from my parents in the end.” Harua explained, squeezing Maki’s hand. “So I tested you, one last time. To really be sure, even if it was a little cruel of me to do. And… I’m sorry for making you wait this long for me, Maki.”
With his heart threatening to burst out of his chest, Maki dared to hope. “You mean…”
Harua took a deep breath, looked up at Maki with those impossibly wide and sparkling eyes, and finally said the words that Maki thought he’d only ever hear in his wildest dreams.
“I love you, Riki Maus.”
Maki felt faint, any and all possible words failing him. Japanese, English, Korean, German, all blurred and oozed out of his brain- he needed to sit down.
He dropped down onto the bench in the photobooth with a whimper, not unlike a wounded dog.
“Maki?” Harua asked, concerned. He knelt down in front of Maki, eyebrows furrowed as he tried to gauge Maki’s condition.
Maki gave a weak thumbs up in response.
“That’s really not helping,” Harua stressed.
He felt tears welling up in his eyes, and when they spilled over, it was embarrassment that spurred him into finally finding his words.
“You’re awful for springing that on me.” He sniffled, smiling. “I love you too, Harua.”
“I know,” Harua hummed.
Maki choked back a sob. “You took so long.”
Harua’s gaze softened, and his hand found its place gently cupping Maki’s cheek. “I know…”
“Apologize,” Maki said. “Apologize to me again.”
Instead, Harua huffed out a laugh.
A soft sensation spread across Maki’s lips, and his heart skipped a beat, his eyes closing on pure instinct when he figured it out.
Harua was kissing him.
Harua was kissing him, and Maki was kissing back like it was the first and last taste of Harua he’d ever get.
His hands were fisted in Harua’s pastel blue sweater, and he couldn’t help the small noise that crawled its way from the back of his throat when Harua’s thumb softly caressed his cheek.
Harua pulled away first, laughing fondly when Maki tried to chase his lips.
He pressed his free hand to Maki’s chest, gentle but the intention clear.
“Once we’re back at the dorm, we can talk or do more of… this.” He hummed. “But we should probably go get that food first, or K-Hyung is going to kill us.”
Maki groaned, dropping his head forward onto Harua’s shoulder.
“You’re killing me, Rua.”
Harua pressed his lips to the side of Maki’s head, short and sweet.
“Come on lover boy, we’ve got starving bandmates to feed.”
“Can we kiss more, after that?”
“You’re insane… but yes.”
Maki grinned, finally allowing himself to be pulled out of the photobooth and back on track to their original mission.
When they did finally make it back to the dorm, K took one look at them; Maki with an iron grip on Harua’s hand, and Harua with perhaps the smuggest grin on his face, and his original words died in his throat.
He accepted the bags of food- a random assortment that Maki hadn’t even paid attention to when Harua was ordering- and retreated back into the living room.
“Glad you sorted your crap out, don’t get caught!” He called, and Maki knew their eldest Hyung was grinning ear-to-ear without having to see his face.
Harua sighed. “Guess you’re not the only one who’s too obvious, now.”
“Are we about to be worse than Nico and Euijoo-hyung at hiding this?” Maki grimaced.
A familiar laugh came from down the hall, and Maki groaned in response.
Nicholas poked his head around the bathroom doorframe, a self satisfied smirk on his lips.
“You always sucked at hiding it.”
It was true, even though Maki hated to admit it.
But looking at Harua, and feeling the weight of their joined hands…
They could make it work, the fans already knew Maki was down ridiculously bad for Harua.
Would it really be so bad for them to find out it was mutual?
“I love you,” he whispered, just for Harua to hear.
Harua smiled, letting out a soft breath.
“I love you too, Maki.”