Archive of Our Own ^beta

When the lights dim, the crowd behind Hongjoong springs to life. A light sheen of sweat still clings to his skin from their own performance, and he stands in wait for the next act to take the stage.

His arms are crossed over his chest, hip jutted out in typical, comfortable posture despite being anything but. He wonders if he's selling the act, if the fans maintaining their eyes on him can see the discontent nestled into his body.

The bass from the sound system booms, and Hongjoong feels it rattling in his chest. It's not unlike the quick, steady thud of his heart, though it's stronger and far more demanding of his attention. A sort of anxiety settles in his gut as red and white colored lights illuminate the arena; perhaps not anxiety, but anticipation. He isn't entirely willing to make sense of it at this current point in time.

Still, he gazes up from his spot beside the stage and watches as eight people come forward and take their designated spots. The fans often pit them as rivals, and in some ways, Hongjoong sees it, too. When the days are long and his mental health wanes, it can only be expected for thoughts to wander to less than ideal places of comparison. A nonsensical approach to the topic, he knows, because when the costumes come off and he shuts off his phone—these are his friends at the end of the day.

Hongjoong's eyes drag towards Minho despite his insistence otherwise.

"They look good."

He isn't expecting to be spoken to, in fact, Hongjoong realizes he has completely forgotten that besides the packed attendance of the building, he is not standing here alone.

Glancing towards Wooyoung, he gives a small nod and simply says, "Yeah."

"Good setlist tonight too," Wooyoung adds. "Felix looks cute."

"Yeah."

"Wow, you're really locked in, huh?"

Hongjoong's sights have already traveled back to Minho, but he clears his throat and leans towards Wooyoung to shout over the musical intro, "You're being rude. Pay attention."

The comment earns him a playful bump with a shoulder, and with a sort of dumbfounded expression, Hongjoong finally turns to look at Wooyoung again. He doesn't particularly like what he finds waiting there for him; narrow, suspicious eyes and a half-grin that he knows means nothing good for him. Hongjoong rolls his eyes and tries to disengage before he has to hear something that he knows he isn't going to enjoy. Too late for that, as it would turn out.

"Ah, I see. You're watching him."

"I'm watching everyone."

"Only because your line of sight might be interrupted."

"Do you want to die?" Hongjoong bites back, though in all likelihood the retort is fully drowned out by the volume of the sound system. That doesn't matter to him as much as the intent, thankfully. "Watch your friends."

"Sure," Wooyoung agrees with ease, settling back into place as the members on stage begin to take their formations. The arena quiets for a very brief moment, and without missing a beat, he takes the opportunity for evil. "You should talk to him after this. Say hi."

"I'm going to kill you," Hongjoong replies, but the words die out under the infectious, heavy boom of the Ceremony beat.

⋆⁺₊⋆

The wind outside is painfully cold, a biting chill that leaves Hongjoong regretting ever having left the warmth of his bed.

Going out these days is hardly ever worth it with the kind of popularity and recognition that ATEEZ have, but he has made more of an effort as of late to not become the kind of person that remains confined by the walls of his safe haven. If he is honest with himself, staying home is easy; work on some music, reply to piled up emails, and doomscroll for a bit. Hell, the mess of clothing he has thrifted from various countries through their travels has begun to peek out from its designated corner in the closet—begging for his attention.

But Hongjoong knows he needs to leave the house and breathe some fresh air, so today that is precisely what he has forced himself to do.

Staying near Hongdae is a poor choice when wanting to tend to himself, and so Hongjoong stares out of the window of the taxi and longs for the creature comforts of being a regular person again. There have been some passing rumors about a cafe that many of his colleagues have been going to over the past several months, one that is lowkey and quiet. Most of all, however, it is still completely unknown by curious, hopeful fans.

When the car comes to a stop at the arrival point, Hongjoong thanks the driver and carefully ushers himself out onto the street. He glances around himself in such a way that he knows will appear suspicious to anyone watching him, but the concern in his motions is something far stronger than his will can possibly grasp.

Eventually, he allows himself a sigh of relief and makes his way towards the warmth of what he hopes to be a worthwhile beverage.

"Welcome!"

Hongjoong flinches at the sound of a perfectly kind greeting shouted his way, wishing nothing more than to blend into the walls as if not being there, at all. He does, however, come to realize that he recognizes many of the faces already occupying the seats surrounding him, and offers insecure bows in numerous directions.

The light scent of freshly brewed coffee lingers in the air, paired with that of bread that almost demands to be consumed. He looks around at the crisp, white walls and the ornate, pastel orbs hanging from the ceiling and takes in a good, hearty breath for what feels like the first time since he has left the house.

Stepping into the short line, Hongjoong's gaze wanders just that much more until eventually his sights set on Giselle. They exchange slight smiles and bows of acknowledgment before he misjudges the space between himself and the person in front of him—knocking himself awkwardly into a firm, broad shoulder.

"Sorry, I—" he goes to say, but the person on the receiving end of his clumsiness is already turning towards him, pulling down their mask, and shooting him an incredibly pointed yet indecipherable look. "Oh."

"Oh?" A single eyebrow pops up.

"You're…" Hongjoong, unsure of exactly where to go with the remainder of his sentence, settles on the most obvious thing. "Here."

"Yes," Minho agrees, "I am, indeed, here. So are you, I hope that clears things up."

Pulling his mask down, Hongjoong's eyes narrow. There he goes again, he thinks to himself. More of that snarkiness. Can't he ever just have a normal conversation with someone?

"Are you here with anyone else?"

"What? Like a girl? Wouldn't you like to know."

Hongjoong rolls his eyes. "I was thinking more in relation to the members, not a girl."

"So, you don't think I'd be out with a girl?" Minho says.

"It doesn't have to be this hard."

"Doesn't it?"

"I don't even know what that means!" It's already too late by the time Hongjoong catches how elevated the volume of his voice has become, and when he turns to glance behind him, a handful of his colleagues have looked up from their own conversations in an attempt to make sense of what all of the fuss might be about. Inching himself closer to Minho, Hongjoong lowers his voice to barely above a whisper and says, "I'm just trying to make friendly conversation!"

And much to Hongjoong's surprise, this appears to placate Minho. His lips curl into a sort of lopsided half-smile that comes off as nearly sinister despite likely not intending to and he says, "I'm not here with anyone."

"Cool." Much to his immediate displeasure, Hongjoong realizes at that moment that he has not yet planned out the course for what remains of this conversation. A few painstaking seconds of silence pass them by where his eyes dart around in hopes of finding something else worth discussion, but once he fails he has no other option than to grasp at straws. "Me too. I didn't come with anyone, either."

Minho is next up in line to order, and after quickly greeting the woman behind the counter he turns his attention back to Hongjoong and says, "And now you're hoping we'll sit together and really start to hit things off!"

Hearing those words out loud makes Hongjoong's face twist into a grimace so hard and fast that it nearly aches. "What? No!" he lies. It barrels through him long before he has the opportunity to consider whether or not that is actually what he wants to say. A defense mechanism, set off entirely by having been seen. "Why do you think I'd want to do that?" he continues on, hopefully selling the story a lot more than he actually believes it.

Much to his surprise, Minho's face drops as if his words have hurt him, and he turns back towards the woman to give his order.

Fuck. One of Hongjoong's hands flexes with discontent at his side. Fuck, fuck. Has he actually upset him? This isn't how the ordeal was meant to play out.

"I just mean…" Stammering through the beginning of a half-baked thought, Hongjoong feels as though he can't afford to waste time on the details of whatever it is he needs to say to save this. "It's just that we both came alone, so it's not unreasonable that we both want to be alone! It's not that I would hate sitting with you, or that I don't want to, it's just that reading between the lines it seemed pretty obvious that—"

"You know," Minho begins, handing over his card, "Chan told me you're kind of a ball of nervous energy. I guess I never really saw it that much because we haven't interacted a lot, just the two of us, but now I'm sort of starting to understand what he meant by that."

If being interrupted isn't enough to stop Hongjoong's word vomit dead in its tracks, that little tidbit of lore certainly is. He feels his face twist into something ugly all over again and makes a mental note on how he really needs to get his gut reactions under control—a concern for another day. Reeling back, he says, "Wait, he said that?"

"Yeah, back during Kingdom," Minho says, taking a step away from Hongjoong and creating space between them. Something that Hongjoong cannot understand the point of in favor of turning over this most pressing matter in his mind. "Probably after those little one-on-one crossover dates we all did, if I had to guess."

"Why would he say that? I was so normal during those." Squinting, Hongjoong stares into the nothingness hanging between them as he tries to recall the tiniest, most minute details of that interaction. "If anything, he was the one that was all anxious and weird! I was perfectly composed!"

Huffing out a laugh through his nose, the expression on Minho's face turns into one nearly akin to pity, and that snaps Hongjoong out of his daze quicker than he ever fell into it.

"You're doing it right now. Literally as we speak, you're doing the thing." Shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket, Minho nods towards the empty space in front of the counter and the waiting staff member and says, "It's your turn, by the way. You're holding up the line."

"I'm not—"

Turning to look behind him, Hongjoong catches a glimpse of several other people he is at the very least, mildly acquainted with. He does not linger there and quickly steps forward to man his station.

"Gonna sit by the window and carve a bunch of Jureumi's into the table," Minho says. "Come tell me more about how you're totally calm and relaxed, that's pretty amusing."

⋆⁺₊⋆

Hongjoong does not sit at the same table as Minho does. He chooses the one just up ahead, so only two empty chairs and table lengths hang between them.

"Well," he eventually says, watching Minho carve shapes into the table precisely as he said he would. "I've heard you're a little crazy, aggressive and violent and always threatening the other members. So I guess we both have unfounded things being said about us!"

There is a hope that the words will grab Minho's attention; give him pause, drag him back to Hongjoong in an effort to refute such ridiculous, unfounded claims.

But Minho doesn't stop his task. Hongjoong watches his hand move with the small pocket knife to bring his character to life, and it leaves him with no other option than to further take in the uninterrupted sight of him.

More often than not, when the two of them meet it is the result of work. Heavy make-up marking their skin, elaborate, beautiful costumes for the lights to catch and shimmer off of. It is the way that Minho looks in Hongjoong's mind when he has the unfortunate displeasure of being plagued with the thought of him, but seeing him across the way feels like something intimate that is not at all meant for his eyes to see.

Worst of all, Hongjoong recognizes that there's nothing particularly special about the scene. A simple, black tee hangs from Minho's torso, a matching black cap barely sitting on top of his head and bleached blonde frizzy strands of hair sticking up every which way from being kept underneath. He had noticed that Minho wasn't wearing any make-up when they were standing in line, though the opportunity to mull it over was not granted to him until now.

Turning to his right, he catches the muddied reflection of himself in the window and wonders how he stands up to a similar kind of scrutiny right now. He isn't particularly insecure about his appearance in general, but Minho has the kind of face that is a difficult one to forget about.

He would know.

"That's true."

Not expecting a response, the words jar Hongjoong back to the present and he stares across the ridiculously large gap between them. "What?"

"All that stuff you said is true. If people are saying it, then it's true!"

Frowning slightly, Hongjoong sits defeated and mutters under his breath, "I think Hyunjin mentioned it." As if that is meant to make any difference.

It does, however, grant him Minho's attention, and with a moderately sinister smirk he says, "If he said it then it's definitely true."

"You shouldn't be so proud about it."

"And why not? It's all in good fun." Seemingly finishing his work, Minho closes the knife and shoves it into his pocket before slouching back in his chair. "You think nobody is saying the same thing about you? You have a short fuse, my friend. Everybody knows it. Quick to fly off the handle, raise his voice… heard you've got a bit of a mouth on you, too. We're the same."

Hongjoong wants to make a face but at the very least, this time he is able to control it. Somewhat. He knows he makes some expression, and if it's not as heinous as the previous ones then that's a job well-done as far as he is concerned.

"We are not the same."

"Scorpios, we're the same."

"You've got to stop saying that…"

A lazy shrug follows from Minho as he takes his drink into his hand. "Anxious and crazy, what a combination."

"I'm neither of those things!" Sitting up at full attention, Hongjoong juts a finger towards Minho that might be poignant if not for the ridiculous distance left between them. "You don't know anything about me! You've never made an effort to get to know me, barely spoken to me when we're around one another despite so many of our members being friends, but you think you've got me figured out because, what? We share the same astrological sign? Are you into crystals, too? Maybe tarot?"

"Struck a nerve, huh?"

Hongjoong sits back abruptly with a loud scoff, doing his best to ignore the prying eyes of so many people that they both know. He puts on his best nonchalant costume and takes a sip from his cooling beverage, but doesn't bother answering the asinine question.

"Crystals are probably pretty cool, ya know," Minho says eventually, and Hongjoong can't quite decipher if it is meant to be as condescending as just about everything else he has said so far. "Don't knock it 'til you try it."

⋆⁺₊⋆

"He just kept saying: we're the same, we're the same. I've never wanted to put my head through a glass window so badly in my life."

Laid out on the couch in their living room, Hongjoong retells the events of the morning with incredible detail and excessively flailing limbs to accompany it. He isn't entirely sure if Wooyoung is still listening, because occasionally he is cut off by the sound of a random video playing from the phone in his hand across the room.

Wooyoung is laid out on the floor, not dissimilar to Hongjoong's current posture. Though his replies have been few and far between, Hongjoong can't help but notice that the last line he recites seems to draw attention.

Allowing his phone to fall to the floor, Wooyoung finally sits up to look at Hongjoong and says, "I mean, he's kind of right. You are."

Hongjoong shoots up into a seated position as well, scowling. "You can't be serious right now."

"Oh my god, are you serious?" Rolling his eyes in what appears to be utter disbelief, Wooyoung shakes his head and says, "There's something very funny about the fact that you've been eyeing him from across the room for months and now that you've finally gotten to know him you're faced with the reality that the two of you are actually quite similar… and even more hilarious than that, you don't like him."

"You're right, I don't like him. Nothing to like from where I'm sitting."

"Because he teased you a little bit? You love that, give it a rest. You're going to be thinking about that interaction for weeks to come. It's going to nestle inside of your brain and keep you awake at night. You're going to be begging and pleading for a crumb of attention from that guy." Wooyoung shoots Hongjoong a knowing look and adds at the end, "Ask me how I know."

"You are going to disappear and they will never find the body."

"Right," Wooyoung says through an amused chuckle. "But you two aren't the same. Got it."

⋆⁺₊⋆

With a chilled drink in hand, Hongjoong stands somewhere between a corner and the exit and hopes that he somehow doesn't seem to be as much of a flight risk as he certainly feels to be.

The drink helps. Not in the typical, alcohol-infused way, but because it gives his hands something to keep busy with that isn't picking at the little flecks of skin around his nails. If he is further honest with himself, he feels his clothes a little too much for his liking too, but that is something he has made peace with in favor of potentially being the best dressed person in the room tonight.

And speaking of the room, the place that the guys from THE BOYZ have rented out for Eric's birthday is an especially impressive one. Some swanky, rooftop bar in Gangnam that Hongjoong wouldn't typically catch himself dead at, but now that he's forced to be here it isn't so bad, after all.

He looks around and does his best impression of someone who doesn't feel like they want to crawl out of their skin. One thing Hongjoong has become particularly adept at over his years in idoldom is pretending like he's got it all figured out, though he hasn't yet mastered his ability to call upon it when his brain is perfectly aware that Idol Mode is not of the utmost necessity.

Regardless of the strangeness, he takes in the ambiance and makes a quiet note of the warmth surrounding him. The lights are dim, washing the room with comforting orange and red tones, and the upholstery on the scattered seating is a similarly dark merlot. If he didn't know any better he might think this to be a sex club, but in all honesty, he doesn't know Eric that well so it very well might be.

How he ended up invited to this Hongjoong doesn't quite know, but assumes it to be a scattershot invitation issued to everyone in the same group as the most important invitee.

Which is Jongho. Not that it's any of his business.

"You're dressed awfully nice tonight," says someone, and it takes Hongjoong a second of flurried looks before landing on the culprit. Changbin saunters up to stand beside Hongjoong and stares out into the sea of people.

"Isn't everyone?" Hongjoong says, though the comment does raise a flag in his mind. He looks at Changbin—nice black slacks and a plain, white button down that Hongjoong is reluctant to say fits—and then looks over himself. He's wearing a blazer. What's the big deal? "Am I really overdressed?"

"No, I'm just fuckin' with ya. You look good though, nice seeing you out."

Relief in relation to that particular topic comes, though it is quickly replaced with a separate, semi-anticipated flavor of it. Hongjoong takes a measured sip from his glass, still feigning normalcy, and says, "The rest of your members here?"

"Yeah, everyone's here. Chan's over by the bar talking Jaehyun's ear off… or getting his talked off. I can never quite tell when those two yappers get together."

Hongjoong turns to Changbin and squints. "Jaehyun…?"

"Hyunjae. Jaehyun. Too many of those damn guys, right?" Slapping Hongjoong's back and nearly sending him stumbling forward, Changbin laughs at his own joke and says, "Anyway, it was nice seeing you, man. Seriously. I gotta go make sure Jisung doesn't get himself stuck between a couch cushion or something, but you take care of yourself tonight, all right?"

"Yeah, all right… nice seeing you…"

Left with his own thoughts, Hongjoong takes a few steps towards the large windows overlooking Seoul and hones in on his own reflection. What's so bad about being moderately overdressed, anyway?

He looks down into his nearly empty glass and frowns, but his short stint in feeling sorry for himself for having the audacity to care is remarkably short-lived as another person coming to stand next to him floats up into the reflection.

Hongjoong's head turns, and all of that effort he has put into controlling his face falls to the wayside in an instant. Jerking back, he curls into himself ever so slightly and says, "Christ, you scared me! How do you just… appear like that?"

"Spooky spectre of the night," Minho says with a grin.

Blinking away the absurdity of that response, Hongjoong looks him over because in the moment, that feels like a perfectly normal thing to do. His roots have grown out quite a bit by now but it does nothing to circumvent the gravitational pull Minho has when his hair is bleached blonde, pushed back off his forehead mostly and perfectly melded into place. His pants are black to match with his button down, but the sleeves are rolled halfway up his forearms to maintain a sense of informality.

A little dizzy, Hongjoong decides to chalk it up to the champagne.

"Okay," he says, mostly because he has no idea what else could be said to that. The empty glass in his hand is no longer doing the heavy lifting of keeping his awkwardness occupied, so with little to go by he taps his index finger against it and goes on to ask, "So… Do you know Eric?"

"Sure, I know him like you know him."

"Know a guy who knows a guy…"

"Exactly." Turning towards him, Minho slips into that familiarly sly expression that puts Hongjoong on high alert and says, "We're the same."

Eyes rolling nearly out of his skull, Hongjoong's shoulders slump with the kind of evident defeat that might suggest something has actually happened to him within the exchange.

"We're not the same."

Bracing himself for the impact of a hostile reply, Hongjoong stands in wait. His shirt is too tight in the armpits and the tag has been pricking at the back of his neck ever since he arrived but now more than ever these are things he is finding difficult to ignore. That is, of course, until the realization of silence dawns upon him.

Looking at Minho again, Hongjoong finds him staring into his glass, swirling around the large, spherical ice cube. A continuous rotation that appears to have him mesmerized. Hongjoong wonders if he remembers that he's even still standing there.

"Are you okay?"

No reply.

"Do you want another drink?"

"I have a drink."

"You have an ice cube," Hongjoong retorts, "Though you do seem rather appeased by that alone."

"Do you want another drink?"

Not having considered this dialogue option, Hongjoong stands there stunlocked for a moment before eventually replying, "Uh, yeah. That'd be great."

"Okay, gimmie." Snatching the empty glass from Hongjoong's hand with a bit more vigor than expected, Minho spins and rushes through the crowd of people at an almost comically fast pace.

The true comedy in the action doesn't find him until far later into the evening, however, when Hongjoong comes to realize that Minho never had any intention of bringing him another drink—merely stealing his glass and staging the perfect getaway, instead.

⋆⁺₊⋆

Much to Hongjoong's chagrin, the thought of what kissing Minho might be like begins to creep into the most self-destructive, horrifyingly loud crevices of his mind.

In an effort to distract himself, he gazes around the incredibly boring, sterile surroundings of their green room. Aside from the other members and the constant stream of staff making their way in and out, there isn't a whole hell of a lot for him to settle on. Hongjoong looks to his left to find San and Yunho sharing a couch, watching a video from Yunho's phone at a volume that Hongjoong can only describe as offensive, and to his right is Wooyoung and Yeosang—plowing through two bowls of noodles that have been supplied to them.

The rest are either in make-up, or some state of sleepy disarray.

Unamused, Hongjoong grabs his phone from the front pocket of his hoodie and does a few cursory, unimpressed scrolls through his social media. There's a knock at the door that he hears but does not bother giving his attention to given the amount of people shuffling through, but once he hears a voice he thinks he recognizes, he has no other choice than to look up.

He keeps his head low, chin tucked down but his eyes carefully shifting up towards the location of the noise. There isn't a lot he can see from where he is; bodies of staff already huddling around the intruders and creating an impenetrable wall that only allows him brief glances of black fabric and blue, glittering decorative gems.

Unfortunately for him, he is easily able to deduce who has entered the safe haven of his space. There aren't a lot of groups that would bother to breach containment for visitation, and worse than that, even fewer of them short enough that a hoard of mostly small women could obscure the majority of his view.

Right on time, a head of bleached blonde hair pops up over the crowd. He takes in his surroundings quickly, lands on Hongjoong in particular, and then waves excitedly before gently weaving his way out of the mess.

Plopping down beside Hongjoong, Chan nudges him with a friendly shoulder and says, "Ended up last in line, eh?"

It takes a second for Hongjoong to understand what he's referring to, and he supposes that it's obvious on his face when Chan reaches down and tugs at the evident unkemptness of his attire. Mouthing a silent ah, Hongjoong nods and says, "Second to last, Mingi ended up with a slightly worse fate."

"Luck of the draw, a fickle mistress." Standing abruptly, Chan acknowledges another member in the room but places a kind hand on Hongjoong's shoulder before issuing his departing statement. "We won't bother you guys for long, just wanted to say hi and good luck tonight."

"Appreciate it, the same to you. You're gonna kill it, for sure."

"Hope so."

Though Hongjoong anticipates him taking his immediate leave, he watches Chan look up towards the door and give a minute yet evident kind of pause. Their eyes meet again for just a short moment, and then Chan gives him only the tiniest, knowing grin before finally being on his way.

Squinting at Chan's back, Hongjoong takes a second to try and decipher that before ultimately coming to the most obvious conclusion: he has no idea what the hell that was about. So, he looks up into the same direction, only to be met with a wall of black and blue.

"Hi."

His line of vision travels upwards slowly, though he sort of already knows what's waiting for him at the top. Hongjoong is right in the sense that it's Minho, though his hair is quite disheveled for his level of dress and his make-up appears to be only partially done.

"Hey…" Hongjoong says, slow and drawn out, dripping with trepidation. All of his previous, personal interactions with Minho over the past several weeks have been bizarre to say the least, now he has no other option than to traverse the future with care. "How are… things?"

"Can I sit?"

Thinking back to only a moment ago when Chan had mentioned their intention of not bothering him and his members, Hongjoong can't help but feel some sort of disconnect between them and their plans when walking through that door. Still, he chooses not to say anything about it and merely scoots himself further to one side, carving out a space that is swiftly filled with an aggressive plop.

Minho digs his phone out of his pocket and silently begins scrolling.

Hindsight is always such a fascinating thing to Hongjoong, because more times than not he recognizes that he should have anticipated the outcome that he has found himself in. What did he expect, really? All of their interactions have been strange and difficult to parse through on any logical level, did he truly believe that Minho was seeking him out for thrilling conversation? Get real. Idiot.

Slowly closing his eyes, Hongjoong allows himself to bask in the feeling of being kind of stupid and hopeful, even if it's a mortifying ordeal. A sigh follows, one that's full and breathy and he is hoping to expel all of the negative, self-deprecating feelings along with it. He'll have to get up for hair and make-up soon, anyway.

When he opens his eyes, he inexplicably feels someone's gaze on him. Carefully, he turns his head in the direction of where he knows Wooyoung is seated—because he knows Wooyoung is being nosy, in typical fashion for him.

Worse than that, however, is the fact that Minho's head is directly in his line of sight, and he'll have to maneuver around that to get a good look at Wooyoung being annoying. Hongjoong doesn't want to make a big deal about this in either direction, and certainly can't take the chance of disturbing whatever kind of equilibrium currently exists between him and the guy sitting next to him. He makes a good effort to look past Minho's face, but ultimately just ends up distracted by the breathtaking shape of his charmingly pointed nose and gives up.

Hongjoong has spent enough time living life as himself to know that he's something of a chronic overthinker. He sits in his feelings and stews, usually resulting in him wading around in the worst bits and discarding anything that could be a little too hopeful, a little too positive. It's not that he doesn't like himself, or considers himself unworthy of good things; rather, good things often come, but it's not easy. There's always a caveat.

Maybe he's just unlucky. Maybe he didn't draw the short stick, but the one with oddly frayed edges. It's not that nothing good ever happens, but be ready to work for it.

A crush is a terrifying, pathetic ordeal already for a man in his late twenties. It's certainly not made any easier by their choice of profession, the inherent, baked-in sense of competition between their groups, or the fact that of all people, the evil demon in his brain has picked Lee Minho.

Just talk to him, he thinks to himself.

And rather than taking time to talk himself out of that, Hongjoong sits back against the couch, crosses his arms and without a glance towards Minho he says, "Do you have any plans for the weekend?" It's kind of a stupid question because Hongjoong knows that neither of them are in any position to have a meaningful amount of free time for making plans with. Whatever. "Maybe a movie," he corrects unnecessarily, because Minho hasn't said anything yet, but he usually has something to say. Maybe it's worth getting ahead of, and a movie is less of a time sink than most things. A completely reasonable bit of enjoyment for them to seek out.

Though he isn't looking at Minho directly, he can see him out of the corner of his eye enough to notice that the endless scrolling motion has paused. He can't help himself then, can't help turning his head slightly to get a fuller sense of how much Minho's demeanor has changed as a result of his light prying. What he finds is a single raised eyebrow—inquisitive, curious—and then Minho's eyes move to find him.

Hongjoong isn't anticipating that, and his first instinct is to quickly look away. He has the presence of mind enough not to do that, because what an absolutely awkward reaction that would be, but it doesn't change his desire to do so.

He just freezes in place, instead. Which of course, is far more normal.

Minho's eyes narrow and he says, "Are you asking me out?"

Just about jumping out of his skin, Hongjoong leans away from him and with wide eyes begins to sputter something to the effect of insisting otherwise. There are no complete sentences within it, only fragments of words and stuttered responses that he is fairly sure don't make much sense, but under the weight of Minho's scrutiny, he doesn't really know what else he is meant to do.

Bomb yet another bizarre interaction between the two of them, he supposes.

When his word vomit comes to an end, the two of them sit in silence until finally, Minho looks back down at his phone and starts scrolling again.

"There's a restaurant I want to go to on Sunday, you can come with me if you want to."

Blinking through the fact that the outcome to all of this seems utterly incomprehensible to Hongjoong, he sits and watches Minho for a few, long moments as if awaiting some sort of spin to this offer that he knows must be coming. A haha, just kidding that certainly waits on the other side.

That never comes, and eventually, Hongjoong has to put an end to the quiet before it mounts into something unbearable.

"I…" he starts, because now he doesn't know if this is meant to be a date. Is Minho asking him out under the pretense that that's what Hongjoong had been intending? Or is it just a different thing entirely, and Minho has no one else to share his company with? "Yeah… okay." Not wanting to sound too eager, nor too disinterested, he wades through his potential answers with extreme caution. "That sounds nice. I haven't been out with anyone who isn't my family or my members in a long time."

That's true, maybe too honest for what Minho is looking for. Hongjoong doesn't know and is fumbling through this interaction much like he usually does.

"Yeah, pretty much the same for me."

Hongjoong can hear in Minho's voice that he has every intention of speaking to that more, but across the room they hear Chan call for him, and so he has no other choice than to cut the interaction short and stand to make his exit.

"It's a nice place," Minho says, shoving his phone back in his pocket. "So dress nice. Guess the good thing about being guys meeting for dinner is that it doesn't really matter who follows us and sees us together, huh?"

Despite knowing exactly what he means by that, Hongjoong is kind of at a loss for words about the whole thing. All he can do is nod, accepting the terms, but still not entirely sure about what the implications of that mean for them and this excursion they are soon to embark on together.

"I'll send you the address."

"I don't think you have my contact—"

"I'll get it from Chan. Good luck tonight! Don't hurt your ankle, it's really annoying. Ask me how I know."

Hongjoong doesn't have to ask, he is well aware of Minho's plight, but more than that, he is already too far away for continuing the conversation, anyway.

⋆⁺₊⋆

In the late hours of the night, Hongjoong rolls up the sleeves to his hoodie and begins putting himself together a cup of instant noodles.

The apartment is quiet despite everyone being home, and he knows Wooyoung at the very least is still awake from the muted sounds of his keyboard through his door. If all goes according to plan, Hongjoong will be able to sneak himself some food without being bombarded by questions from his nosy roommates, though he wouldn't be particularly opposed to talking to Jongho about the whole thing… for reasons.

He shakes that thought out of his head just as quickly as it comes to him. Hongjoong tells himself he's jumping ahead; assuming a lot from very basic, small interactions. An invite to dinner isn't necessarily a date, he knows this perfectly well. But why did Minho bring up being seen? Why did he invite Hongjoong out after asking if he was the one being asked out for something?

Despite knowing there is very little to gain from thinking himself sick about it, that's easier said than done.

Filling the cup to the line, he does his best to quietly set it in the microwave and prays to anyone willing to listen that Wooyoung has his headset on.

And as it would turn out, the number of anyone willing to listen appears to be zero, because he hears a door crack open down the hall. Hongjoong closes his eyes, shakes his head, and braces himself for impact as footsteps inch closer and closer towards the kitchen space.

"Well, well, well…" Wooyoung starts, a big, shit-eating grin on his face that Hongjoong can hear in his words. "You can't hide from me forever."

"So it would seem. A consequence of circumstances, I suppose."

Leaning himself against the counter just beside Hongjoong, Wooyoung looks up at him with beady eyes that are hungry for information. His hair is a mess, and there is an indent where his headset has been resting not long ago. Poor timing, Hongjoong supposes, to choose now to become hungry for a snack.

"So? What happened? I saw you two love birds sitting together awkwardly earlier, what a sight! I'm sure the conversation was riveting."

Reaching for the closest thing to throw in Wooyoung's face, all Hongjoong can manage is the empty, silver seasoning packet. It flutters uselessly to the floor, instead.

"Hey! Don't take it out on me!" Wooyoung bemoans, affronted by even just the attempt at perceived violence. "I'll have you know, I'm rooting for you two. You should know this by now!"

"Yes, but there's nothing to say! We can barely get through a conversation in any reasonable capacity! Every time I say something to him it's like it's some kind of obstacle course; a choose your own adventure type of thing except all of the options are bad and I somehow pick the worst one."

Over the dull, mechanical sound of the microwave, Hongjoong sets his elbows on the counter top and shoves his face into the palm of his hands.

A pitying hand finds his back, and Wooyoung says, "There, there. I don't think it's half as bad as you're making it out to be. Look, I do my best to stay out of your business as far as this is concerned, but obviously word travels fast. People talk. My best friend is his group mate, you know? Don't you think if Minho hated you, or thought you were a weird freak—in a bad way, of course—that I would know about it? And if I did know about it, I would tell you! I'd tell you to back off, at the very least."

Hongjoong knows this much is true, and it's a very logical way to view the situation. Unfortunately, it does little to assuage his feelings about the situation. For someone like him, logic infrequently does.

"So," Wooyoung continues, "why don't you tell me what happened?"

With his face still in his hands, Hongjoong mumbles, "He asked me to go to dinner with him Sunday. I don't know what that means."

"What the hell!" The hand lightly placed on Hongjoong's back is removed for only a second before slamming back down much more firmly. It is unexpected, and nearly sends Hongjoong down to the floor. "What are you all doom and gloom about then, man? He asked you out on a date!"

Glaring at Wooyoung and rediscovering his footing, Hongjoong says, "I don't know if it's a date. I don't know what it is. He doesn't say anything that can ever be interpreted clearly."

"Yeah, I know. Neither do you, by the way. You're both your own worst enemy, except now there's two of you and you want to fuck. That's crazy."

"Please shut up."

"I'm just saying." The microwave chimes and rather than leaving Hongjoong to deal with it, Wooyoung reaches up to do the rest of the prep himself. "Why don't you just ask him? Ask him a clear, exact question about it that can't be misinterpreted."

"He ignores half the questions I ask."

Stirring a chopstick through the noodles, Wooyoung's eyes narrow pointedly at Hongjoong. "I really doubt he's going to ignore that."

⋆⁺₊⋆

As the car pulls up to the curb, Hongjoong's manager asks him if there's a better, safer place for him to do the drop-off. It's no mystery why the question comes into play, because it's easy to see that several women are stationed outside of the restaurant in anticipation of seeing someone. Large cameras are strapped to them and their phones are in their hands, but Hongjoong can tell that none of them are interested in the fact that his car has just arrived. The conclusion to draw is two fold: Minho is already inside, and none of these people pose any particular risk to himself.

So, he tells his manager it's fine, and carefully drags himself from the stuffy backseat. Despite being dressed in the usual idol-in-hiding uniform of a boring jacket, a hat and a facemask, Hongjoong knows well enough that the sort of people willing to wait outside of a restaurant don't need much to make sense of what has been placed in front of them. This hypothesis is driven home mere seconds later when he hears a sharp gasp and quiet, gossipy murmurs flooding through the small crowd.

Unsure of what to do in a situation such as this one, Hongjoong clumsily hovers in the tiny sliver of space reserved for both ignoring them and slightly acknowledging them with a bow, simultaneously.

Probably best to remain in the good graces of people such as this.

"What's he doing here?" Hongjoong hears one girl whisper to another. "Is he here to see Minho? Are they friends?"

"Not that I've ever heard about. No, they couldn't be. How unlikely!"

"Yeah, super unlikely!"

Ignoring the way those comments make him feel, Hongjoong pushes through his discomfort and heads inside. His stride just a bit quicker than it might have been before.

Though a small, black cloud has formed overhead as a result of his journey here, Hongjoong manages to dissipate his self-loathing ever so slightly in favor of being proud of himself for how well he cleans up.

The restaurant is, in fact, incredibly fancy, and just about every surface is perfectly polished and reflective black. He wouldn't be able to avoid his appearance if he tried, but thankfully, he doesn't really want to.

He is, unfortunately, made to reconsider that when he arrives at the table Minho is seated at and finds that they are both dressed in nearly the exact same thing.

With a big frown carved into Hongjoong's face, he stands there with slumped shoulders and a completely unearned sense of failure.

"Good taste," Minho says about the obvious, then he motions with a hand towards the chair placed across the way. "Sit now."

Doing as he is told, Hongjoong plops himself down dramatically so that there are no misconceptions about how he is feeling about all of this. "Maybe I wasn't finished pouting. Did you think of that?"

"Oh, sorry. Is the nice dinner I invited you to encroaching on something important you've got going on?" Minho asks, though his tone is clearly sarcastic. He stiffens the paper menu in his hand and goes back to mulling it over, saying, "We've only got this table for an hour and a half, so I do implore you to make it quick."

"You can't invite me out and then make demands."

"Look, your members might let this whole emotionally volatile evil baby thing play back at home, but it's not going to with me. You knew exactly what you were signing up for when you accepted, you knew all of the fine print. You don't get to complain now."

Squinting, Hongjoong stares at him as the service staff come to fill their water glasses and offer complimentary, luxury cocktails from the owners. Minho continues reading over the menu, only slipping his attention away long enough to ask the woman a question about one of the vegetables on it, but Hongjoong's gaze does not falter for a second.

In fact, he reconsiders all of this entirely.

He wonders for a moment, why it is that he ever wanted to be here in the first place. Minho is hot, and talented, and interesting in a sort of strange and mysterious way, but there is no particular shortage of guys like that in the idol industry—in the arts, in general—so he doesn't have to suffer through the sharp tongue of a guy who he can't even be sure enjoys his company much, at all.

Thinking back to his late night conversation with Wooyoung a few days back, how Wooyoung seemed so sure that he would have heard something if there was something to hear, is the only thing that keeps Hongjoong seated in his chair.

But maybe Wooyoung had been correct about another thing, and that leads Hongjoong into his next order of business. Taking his drink in hand, he gulps down a large sip to steel his nerves and then says, "Why can't you just have a normal, human interaction with me? Just once."

A part of him feels nervous because he doesn't quite know what to expect in the aftermath of this. More harsh words, another flippant, avoidant retort that doesn't mean anything or get them anywhere, perhaps. That, Hongjoong can take. That, Hongjoong is prepared for.

What he isn't prepared for, however, is the slow crawl of Minho's eyesight from the menu and up towards him.

Neither of them say anything for a few, excruciatingly dragged out moments, but eventually, Minho blinks a couple of times and says, "I have. We have." His eyes drop back down to the menu, as if unable to bear watching himself be seen. "When you said that thing about how you don't really see anyone besides the members and your family, and I said the same goes for me… I meant that. That was true."

Hongjoong knows an opening when he sees one, and hastily deems it a waste of time to continue dwelling on the minutiae of prior discussions.

"Why is that?" Another sip, just as strong as the one before. Hongjoong is ill prepared for this level of intimacy but can't pass up the opportunity for it, either. "You have friends. I've seen your blogs and stuff."

"You saw what it's like out there. Anywhere I go I'm followed, and if I want to spend time with my friends then I have to subject them to that. These people aren't famous, they're just regular people. They haven't been battle-hardened by it and don't have the ability to tune it out and pretend it's not there… and as for idol friends…"

But Hongjoong already knows where he's going with that, because the truth of Minho's matter is not dissimilar to that of his own.

"Don't have a lot."

"Yeah…"

Their eyes meet briefly again, and Hongjoong fights the desire to finish off his drink in only a third swig.

"Guess it's easy when you're Changbin."

"Or Wooyoung," Hongjoong adds.

"I don't care about what those people think or say about me," Minho starts again, "But I don't want to subject the people in my life to it. Which I guess sounds a little insensitive now, given the ocean you had to wade through to get here, but at least you—"

"Get it, yeah." Sighing, Hongjoong pushes the drink away and out of his hand, remembering that they have an early schedule in the morning that he shouldn't be grumpy and headachey for. "It's fine for me. I've heard it all before, especially when it comes to mixing."

That seems to pique Minho's interest, with the way a single eyebrow pops up and a corner of his mouth turns upwards as if delighted by some potential scheme. "What's that mean?"

"It's what we say to refer to when one of us hangs out with someone from another group. Wooyoung is obviously the biggest perpetrator. It's tongue in cheek, of course, because you know how people feel about it. This, for example, is mixing. We're mixing right now."

"The more you say it the more it sounds kind of dirty."

God, I wish. Hongjoong drop kicks that thought straight out of his head and instead says, "Suppose sometimes it is. Look at Jongho and Eric."

"Or Hyunjin and Sunwoo."

With no chance of fighting back the absolute spectacle of an expression that rises out of him from hearing that, Hongjoong simply rolls with it and says, "Wait… is that real?"

"Sometimes, but you didn't hear it from me."

The two of them share a brief, lighthearted smile, and Hongjoong leans back a little lazily against his chair.

"The girls outside didn't sound too fond of the potential mixing that might be happening tonight."

Minho nods. "Unsurprising, they try to keep me on a short leash. The good thing is they seem to appreciate how weird and kind of standoffish I am so I don't have to do a whole hell of a lot to keep them happy. You know, keep them from posting my whole entire life online. Log on Bubble, send a recording of me yelling into the phone. I don't know. They like that. I like doing it. Match made in heaven."

Narrowing his eyes in contemplation, Hongjoong stares at Minho for a few seconds as if waiting for him to clarify what he has just said, but when that never comes, he pushes ahead and says, "You… yell into the phone. On Bubble."

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Why not?" Minho retorts. "You post pictures on Instagram that may as well have a banner across them that says HOT SINGLE BOTTOMS IN YOUR AREA. CALL NOW. We all have our things."

Stunned into silence, Hongjoong hates the way that Minho appears to revel in the shock plastered across his face. The evil in his smile grows, and a moment later Minho is talking to the staff so that the food ordering can finally commence.

His phone burns a hole in his pocket, impartial memory serving him no good in relation to just which pictures Minho could possibly be alluding to.

Regardless, Hongjoong proverbially waves that away in favor of the most pressing matter at hand: "You look at my Insta?" And the longer he sits in the thought of it, the longer he stares across the table and takes in the sight of Minho's eyes slowly casting upwards, the slow, pensive squint; Hongjoong realizes that somehow—someway—he has stumbled himself into a win.

"Ooohhh…" he continues on, followed by another, more devilish follow-up of the same. A corner of Hongjoong's lip quirks upwards ever so slightly, and with a barely there nod he says, "Uh-oh, looks like somebody didn't mean to say that."

Abruptly, Minho sits back against his chair and crosses his arms, petulant. "Of course I do, we all do. Look at each other's things, I mean. We're all friends."

"We are not." Leaning forward as if to close some of the space Minho has created, Hongjoong presses further. "We might be getting there, but we've always just been guys who know each other as colleagues, friends-of-friends who greet each other in the halls. It's only recently that we've started—"

"You're a good performer, what do you want me to say? I pay attention to people like that, like you. I don't have to talk about it, make a big show of it so everybody knows; like some people."

Affronted by the implication, Hongjoong reels back and loudly gasps, "Me!?"

"No, you idiot. Seonghwa."

"Oh, right. He did do that." The stiffness drops from Hongjoong's shoulders as he shrugs it out. "He just wants more friends. He can lay it on pretty thick sometimes, but he means well."

"I'm sure he does."

In the moment that the topic naturally comes to a close, a woman that they have not seen before comes to their table to deliver another set of drinks from the owner. These are new; darker and more foreboding, likely with a higher alcohol content than what Hongjoong is really looking to partake in tonight. Unfortunately, he knows that leaving it to sit is bad manners, and thus he has no other option than to look at the glass hopelessly and then return to something much more enticing to him.

"So," he begins, "What do you like about me?"

Minho looks up from glaring at the drink not unlike Hongjoong had been before, and at the very least, there's camaraderie in that. A feeling that is short-lived, however, because Minho's expression deadpans and the only word he says in response is, "What?"

"You said you watch me—pay attention to me—so naturally I'm going to want to know the details."

A roll of his eyes follows, and Hongjoong anticipates some annoying, half-honest bite of a retort.

"I like your expressiveness," Minho says, and Hongjoong can't help but be taken aback by the earnestness levied in the sound of his voice. "You have really impressive body control and manage to stand out on a stage even when you're not front and center, and especially considering you're on the shorter end of your members…" He shrugs ever so slightly, and finishes it off with a careful, "No offense."

"None taken, not exactly breaking news to me." Trying to play it cool. Hongjoong does his best to push down the feelings that this onslaught of honesty has regrettably unearthed within him and nervously tries to figure out what to do with his hands. He decides on the beverage he does not want to drink and does exactly that. "Thank you, though. Seriously, that means a lot to me. I… That's…"

"You don't have to say anything. Just take the compliment."

"Okay." Hongjoong takes another sip and winces at the unpleasant taste. His heart is lodged somewhere between his chest and the bottom of this glass and desperately hopes Minho can't tell as much. "I like your vocal tone. You should sing more."

That appears to amuse Minho, and with a somewhat crooked grin he peers at Hongjoong, nestling his elbow into the table and placing his chin onto the heel of his palm.

"Is that so? Wow, we're being so honest with each other tonight. Must be the alcohol."

"I'm serious. It's really unique, hearing a line from you and everyone knows exactly who it is in a really pleasant way. I'm glad it's been coming out more. I really liked Youth."

Minho gives him a look that can only be described as disbelieving and says, "You liked Youth?"

Reminding himself that Minho knows very little about him beneath the costume, Hongjoong emphatically nods. "I like songs like that. I like whimsy. Is that a crime?"

"No, I guess I just didn't expect it. I'll tell Chan he has to write more songs for me because you like them. Honestly, he might do it. He likes you a lot."

"He's a good guy, he weathers the storm better than a lot of us do."

Watching Minho like this, with so many of the walls having come down and with the opportunity to have such honest and open discussions, reminds Hongjoong of exactly how he ended up in this mess to begin with. For a brief moment, he thinks back to that day they bumped into each other at the cafe, how uncomfortable yet intriguing being amongst his company had been then, and mentally compares it to right here, right now.

It is almost inconceivable to him how multifaceted Minho is, and he wonders if his feeling that way is a result of having spent too much time in and amongst idoldom. A perfectly curated microcosm of only the most widely accepted, easily palpable personality traits; minutely molded and crafted to feel just dissimilar enough from the last. Hongjoong wonders if he has fallen for it too—he wonders if he has forgotten the humanity that undeniably lies underneath.

Hongjoong wonders if it might serve him better to be a little bit more honest, too.

And just as his lips part to speak, a waitress returns to the table with a platter full of small, colorful dishes that are immaculately decorated with food. He looks at Minho to see if perhaps he can locate some semblance of understanding, a shared interpretation of the events that have just transpired.

But all he is expressing is a thankfulness for their meal.

⋆⁺₊⋆

"I don't smoke, but sometimes socially with a drink I'll still indulge."

Leading Hongjoong through the back of house and into the kitchen, Minho continues finding his way to the best of his recollection from being told where to go. He fiddles with an old, crinkled pack of cigarettes that lead Hongjoong to believe he is very much telling the truth about his previous statement, and eventually gasps a loud "ah!" when they discover the door leading outside.

When their shoes find the gravel, both of them are taken aback by the fact that there are already two other staff members standing against the building, lit cigarettes in hand. Hongjoong can feel the apprehensiveness hanging in the air—it's not a great choice by any means to light up in front of strangers—but after a short survey of the scene, Minho seems to deem it a risk worth taking.

Standing in the middle of the small, dingy parking lot, Hongjoong watches Minho light his cigarette and tries not to think it's sexy while he does it.

"Do you smoke?" Minho asks, lightly pressing it in his direction

"No," Hongjoong says first, but almost immediately retracts the answer and says, "Yes." He reaches for it, but halfway through the motion pulls his hand away and once again says, "No."

Minho laughs and takes another drag. "Which is it?"

"No, I've given up. Mostly." But the scent is hanging in the air and worst of all, Hongjoong wants nothing more than to indulge in yet another thing with the man he has come here to see. "Fuck it, yes," he finally decides, and all but snatches it from Minho's hand.

The inhale is rough, and Hongjoong isn't expecting it to go in so harshly. It hasn't been so long since the last time he did this, though his unease might imply otherwise.

A little more intoxicated than he had planned on being tonight, Hongjoong feels brave on the exhale and seemingly out of nowhere says, "Those girls outside said 'are they friends? they couldn't be,' like it was the most ridiculous thing they've ever thought about."

With Minho right beside him, it's easy to tell when his head turns to acknowledge him. Hongjoong might be feeling brave, but not brave enough to meet his eye after saying something so pathetically vulnerable.

"You're still thinking about that?" Taking his cigarette back, Minho draws from it again and stares out towards the starless sky. "I mean, you know how it is with us… our fans. It's baked in, I think it was always going to be. An unavoidable byproduct of how we started, our journey, where we all ended up… Some people just can't fathom that at the end of the day, behind the numbers and the accolades; we're just people who are friends."

"I know, but when you see it so much it's hard to not let it get into your own head, even just a bit." The warmth of the alcohol begins wearing off quickly in favor of the biting chill of the cold, nighttime breeze, and Hongjoong draws into himself in an effort to maintain some warmth. "You don't feel that way?"

To Hongjoong's surprise, Minho shakes his head with relative ease.

"Nope, but this is why I'm so private, too. We're required to give up so much of ourselves for this job, and that's something I'm willing to do, but they can't have everything," Minho says. "They can't have all of me."

Slowly, Hongjoong turns his attention towards Minho, and when their eyes meet, Minho finishes the thought by saying, "Don't let them have everything."

Perhaps it is the chill in the air, or the alcohol coursing through Hongjoong's veins, but he swears for a second that between them, something shifts. Minho's eyes are softer than they ever have been when placed on him, his demeanor gentler, less playfully combative than what Hongjoong is used to navigating through the brevity of their meetings. This whole evening has been honest; their thoughts, their feelings in regards to each other and their work, and barriers of entry have meticulously been navigated through. He is proud of what he has managed to accomplish in all of this—almost in spite of Minho, himself—yet Hongjoong can't ignore the feeling that there is something still left unacknowledged.

Inhaling sharply, Hongjoong ignores the frigid burn in favor of basking in the sight before him. Minho's eyes glitter with the luminescence of the dingy, crooked light hanging just above the door that they walked out of. The warmth of his breath visibly lingering in the air. The distance between them slowly begins to close with such miniscule motions that Hongjoong can hardly be sure that it is happening at all.

He wonders if he's the one moving, on account of the alternative being so remarkably unlikely.

As Minho's face inches closer, so much so that Hongjoong can begin to feel the warmth of his breath against his face, an unwelcome distraction begins to flutter from the sky. Though Minho does not pull away, both of their attention is diverted as small, barely there snowflakes begin to flutter down from the sky.

"Pretty…" Hongjoong says in an attempt to alleviate the mounting discomfort of proximity.

And though Minho is too close for him to get a good look at his face, Hongjoong can still see the cunning grin curled into his lips.

"Yeah, it is."

To avoid a larger mess of problems, the two of them decide to leave separately. Hongjoong knows well enough that by now, word has spread in regards to where he is to the people that most wish to discover his whereabouts, and Minho's fans will undoubtedly still be perched up outside for a glimpse of him.

Hongjoong wades through the small ocean of people with the help of some of the larger, stronger staff members from the restaurant. He can no longer hear the disapproving mutters from people that do not care for him, and instead is flooded with wild interest from those that do to a somewhat bothersome extent. He wonders what they're thinking; if they know why he was here, if they know who he was here with…

If they know how utterly soul crushing it is to have their feelings reciprocated, only to come to the realization that it can never, ever be allowed to blossom into something more.

Crawling into the backseat of the car, Hongjoong fastens his seatbelt and makes a promise to himself. To be less honest with himself and instead, more realistic about his circumstances.

And most of all, to never think about Minho or that kiss ever, ever again.

⋆⁺₊⋆

Several weeks later⚬ ⚬ ⚬

Hongjoong's phone vibrates against the desk he is seated at, and he knows nothing waiting there for him is going to be good news.

With his head cradled in his hands, he ignores the buzzing sound and tries to focus on the beat coming through the headphones dangling around his neck. Truthfully, he can't focus on anything—hasn't been able to for weeks—and now the overstimulation of sounds is beginning to birth the prickling of a headache that he doesn't have the means of dealing with right now.

Taking a mental inventory of the contents of his bag, he accepts his fate. No painkillers, he hasn't needed any in a while so little reason to think of topping up. His back hurts too, tension in his shoulders and neck that he hasn't dealt with for as long as he has been suffering over this particular creative endeavor. Nothing is coming to him; not anything worthwhile, at least, and the misery of a block has fully set itself inside his bones.

The messages and calls are coming more frequently to ask where the project is. There's a comeback around the corner and Hongjoong hasn't been pulling his weight. He knows this better than anyone and is far more irritated about the fact than anyone else waiting for him possibly could be, but he doesn't particularly know what to do about it, either.

He hasn't been home in four days.

His phone vibrates again and finally he gives an annoyed huff and flips over the device. Notifications upon notifications stack on his home screen and the worst part of him thinks to simply clear them all without giving them the time of day, but he knows better—he knows doing that will result in a knock on his studio door. A result that he doesn't think he has the ability to stomach right now.

So, he opens KakaoTalk and reads through what has been left for him. They're all from Eden, unsurprisingly asking about his progress thus far and the estimated time of arrival for his portion of the work. Hongjoong sends a thoughtless message about how he's working on it, soon, and then quickly navigates out of the box before another response can come through.

Then, he looks at another conversation he has been staunchly ignoring.

Opening the message thread, Hongjoong stares down at those four, unanswered texts. He shakes his head at himself and wonders why he's like this—why this is how he has decided to handle this situation. After all of the effort he has put forward, all of the navigating murky waters he has done in an effort to break through and construct closeness with this person… Only to then ghost him the very next day.

And it's not as though they haven't seen each other since then, either. Minho's message about how unreasonable it is isn't far off from the reality of the situation, and Hongjoong's brain swiftly takes him on a trip down recent memory lane of them exchanging awkward greetings in the halls, pretending that everything is fine; pretending that he isn't the one manufacturing this demise.

He thinks of Jongho and Eric… Hyunjin and Sunwoo, and wonders how they're able to do it, at all.

The irony of this outcome isn't lost on him, because ultimately what Hongjoong hopes to avoid in all of this is the disaster of an untimely break-up. A scenario where the two of them can't stand to be in the same room together, a scenario where things become so rotten that it permeates outward and potentially sours friendships and relationships kept between the rest.

But the way he is going about this isn't doing him any favors, either.

Shoving his phone away from his face, he tries to put the thought of Minho out of his head and gets back to work. Hongjoong clicks around the monitor but his attention to detail isn't there—the creative essence required isn't with him. It never is, lately. His head drops back down into his hands once again.

Hongjoong finally goes home early that next morning.

The clock in the kitchen reads 4:07 by the time he kicks his shoes off, sets his coat on the hook and puts his bag down. He wants to groan, but food needs to be made and he doesn't care to make more noise than he's already going to have to. There's still an hour and a half or so until the others have to be up, and there's no reason to drag Jongho and Wooyoung along for his misery.

Dragging himself to the refrigerator, he opens it carefully and assesses the contents. Nothing inside looks particularly appetizing but he has reached a point of self-imposed malnourishment that he doesn't really care and pulls out a messy takeout box of what he hopes to be more meat than veggies.

By the time he pries his head out, Jongho is standing right beside him… also, he is not alone.

Hongjoong jumps nearly out of his skin, almost drops the box in hand and whispers, "Christ! What the hell? Why aren't you asleep?" Then, his eyes draw to the man standing next to him, dressed in nothing more than grey sweatpants and an open, unbuttoned cardigan. "Nevermind, forget I asked."

"Nice to see you too," Eric says with an amused smile.

"Glad you finally decided to come home," Jongho says, and no matter how much Hongjoong tries to ignore the fact that he is being looked over, he very much feels the eyes on his level of disarray. "You smell atrocious."

"I know."

"I think that's been in there for like, three days," Jongho adds, clearly referencing the food, but it does little to deter Hongjoong's intent. "Just so you know."

"That's fine."

"Are you all right, man?" Eric finally says, and Hongjoong supposes it's nice that someone cares to ask the obvious question. "You look like you've seen better days."

"I have," Hongjoong admits with ease, and having no more fight left in his weary body, he digs out a pair of chopsticks from the cabinet and sits himself down on the kitchen floor. "Why? What gives you that impression, anyway?"

Amused with himself, he shovels a bite of cold noodles into his mouth.

It's obvious that Eric feels wholly out of his depth as far as this is concerned—not his circus, not his monkeys in more than one way—so he bows out of the discussion and makes room for Jongho to step in.

"Eden's been calling, which I'm sure you know, but it's bad when he starts asking us questions. I know you have a lot going on but we're running out of time."

"I know."

"Is something wrong? Has something happened? This isn't like you."

Looking up at them, Hongjoong pauses midway through a bite and says, "Can't work. Can't think. Can't make anything. Not new, it's happened before. I'll be fine."

"Sure but…" Wary, Jongho glances over at Eric, likely because he knows this isn't a conversation meant for an audience, and especially not for one that involves people not within their own group. Still, Hongjoong knows that Jongho is smart enough to assess the circumstances correctly, and if he wants answers, he's going to have to pry them out now. "Not like this."

Tactical, Hongjoong thinks to himself. Delicate but thorough enough that the both of them know precisely what he means by that. He finishes chewing and looks back up at the two of them standing there; maybe it's the sleepless nights, the creative block, his lack of taking care of himself in just about every conceivable way, but when Hongjoong looks at the two of them standing there together as a unit, as a together thing that are working to traverse this gracefully… the feelings all come crashing back down around him.

Setting the carton down next to him, Hongjoong pulls his knees up and rests his arms atop them. He stares ahead at nothing in particular; crumbs and dust on the floor, a splotch of something that was once wet that must have been missed during clean-up. His mind everywhere and nowhere all at once.

"Aren't you guys scared?" he asks quietly.

Jongho and Eric exchange a glance, and after a few moments Jongho just says, "Of…?"

"This," Hongjoong says, waving a lazy hand in their general direction. "Being together, dating. Of it all going wrong and then having to figure out how to deal with that. How it would impact the others, how if it does go badly it will permeate outward and infect every other relationship in the vicinity. It has to, right? We're all too close, too intertwined as friends for it not to. There's going to be collateral damage, fallout that neither of you can fix."

Looking up at them, Hongjoong watches Eric give another, nervous glance in Jongho's direction, but it is not met. Instead, Jongho's attention remains fixed on Hongjoong.

Eventually he says, "Ah, that's what this is about."

"What… is it about…?" Eric asks sheepishly.

"Minho. This is about Minho."

Hongjoong rolls his eyes and slumps his back against the refrigerator.

Settling onto the floor beside him, Jongho crosses his legs and says, "You want to talk about it, sweetheart?"

"Don't talk to me like a child! I'm so much older than you."

"Not right now, you're not." Motioning for Eric to get comfortable on the floor as well, Jongho settles a hand on Hongjoong's knee and says, "Tell us what happened."

"Nothing happened, I didn't let anything happen."

"You ended up not liking him?"

"No! I liked him a lot, actually! We got on really well once I was able to get through the landmine of his strange but intriguing personality quirks! And we… we…"

Gasping, Eric catches the hint long before Jongho seems to and leans forward excitedly to nearly shout, "You kissed!?"

"Shut up! Can you keep your voice down?" Grimacing, Hongjoong swats at the air between himself and his unintended audience member. "The last thing I need is Wooyoung coming in here to add onto this."

"Okay, so things were going great, Minho liked you," Jongho says, carefully putting the pieces together. "So, what happened? Didn't you want this?"

"Yes!" Shoving his face into his hands, Hongjoong groans and throws his head back, only for it to slam into the appliance behind him unpleasantly. Another groan follows, because of course, things aren't unfortunate enough for him, and he says, "I got scared. I started thinking about all of the bad outcomes. Like, how to manage the fallout, you know? Changbin and Wooyoung, Chan and myself… it's not like Chan will pick me if it comes down to it, who could expect him to? So now I lose two people, and who knows how it might go with Wooyoung and Changbin… they're best friends. It could be disastrous. And that's not even mentioning the fans…"

"The fans are not going to know that you're dating him…"

"No, but they're going to see us together sometimes, interacting more, and you know as well as I do that that can get ugly fast…"

Scooting forward a bit, Eric cuts in and says, "If I may…"

"I guess you may! You're here!" Hongjoong whines.

"I didn't know I was coming over to circumvent an emotional breakdown from my boyfriend's leader, either. Don't take it out on me!" Eric rolls his eyes, but quickly locks in and with the utmost earnestness says, "Some fans are going to be mad about pretty much anything, they're always going to be able to find something. You can't live your life around that. And the rest of the guys… they're all adults, ya know? They can handle their business without you trying to micromanage everything. I mean, who's to say that it not working out means it has to be a catastrophic event, anyway? Most relationships end just because everybody is too damn busy."

"Well, I've already been ghosting him for weeks so it doesn't matter anyway."

"Pause." Narrowing his eyes, Eric mulls that over for a few seconds and then says, "You're ghosting him? And you're worried about it ending badly? Dude, you are the reason it's ending badly and it hasn't even begun!"

Nudging Eric with an elbow, Jongho motions to cut into the conversation with a very gentle, "Youngjae…"

"Just saying…"

It's just his luck that Hongjoong doesn't have the strength to rail into him as much as he should for the way he is being spoken to, but in addition to that, he has to accept that the guy does have a point. Things were fine—hell, even good—before Hongjoong had decided to go all scorched earth with the situation. He certainly could have handled it better, had an adult conversation and voiced his concerns about it, but instead… he did this.

A lifeless shrug is all he can manage at first, but he pushes his ego aside long enough to at least say, "He's right."

"You need to message him," Jongho says. "Soon. Very soon. It doesn't necessarily have to be to rekindle this if that isn't what you want to do, but he doesn't deserve this. Not after how much effort you put in to get this far. Talk about mixed signals…"

"And a kiss…" Eric adds.

"That's enough out of you," Hongjoong says, throwing a chopstick in his direction.

Unfortunately, the drama of the action falls flat when Eric catches it with one hand. Sporty guys are so annoying, Hongjoong concludes.

⋆⁺₊⋆

⋆⁺₊⋆

There is no sleep waiting for Hongjoong despite returning home, but it is a fact of life he had already made peace with long before walking through that door. Home, discussions he hates, a much needed shower, and then back out the door for the day; his life for the foreseeable future with a comeback looming just around the corner.

Surviving on caffeine and the occasional light snack, he and his members are shuffled from place to place at such a breakneck pace that Hongjoong doesn't even realize it has reached the late afternoon. The temperature drops significantly with the disappearance of the sun, and a light dusting of snow begins to cascade elegantly from the sky.

It's beautiful, and as everyone begins to shuffle into vans, he makes an effort to stop and take it all in.

Still, his eyelids are heavy, and the weight of the past few weeks sinks down into his joints.

Before Hongjoong has the opportunity to disassociate from sleep deprivation, Wooyoung pops half of his body out from the van nearest to him and yells, "Your phone is making noise!"

"What does that mean?" Hongjoong replies, shooting him a suspicious glare. "Call? Message? If it's Eden, don't answer."

"It's not Eden—not him calling, at least—but it's a KakaoTalk message, so I don't know."

"Well, who's it from?"

Issuing him a much more pointed glare of annoyance, Wooyoung says, "I don't know! I can't see who it's from because I'm not you!"

Right, FaceID, Hongjoong realizes only after making an utter fool of himself for what must be the fifth time today. Next in line to crawl inside the van, he makes a quick detour towards Wooyoung who has since retrieved the device from the backseat, and snatching it away, Hongjoong hopes to make a quick escape without further commentary.

Wishful thinking when Wooyoung is involved, unfortunately.

"I will be revisiting this in the future," he warns.

"I know."

Tossing himself into the open door of the vehicle, Hongjoong winces at how rough he feels despite how little effort he is exerting. Everything left in the tank has gone into being cognizant during photoshoots, pleasant with the staff, and practicing choreography for recordings that he doesn't know as well as he typically would by now. It seems to be catching up with him, but at the very least, the next schedule is one to be dealt with at the company building and that affords him a certain level of comfort that he otherwise wouldn't have.

Buckling his seatbelt, he accidentally nudges against San a little too roughly, apologizes, and then nestles himself into the corner in hope of a power nap. Then, his phone vibrates.

It reminds him of the previous message he had received, already forgotten. His phone keeps vibrating as he digs it out of his jacket pocket and the rhythm alerts him that it's an incoming call long before he has the misfortune of looking at the screen. It's Eden, of course it's Eden, and though he should just let it go to voicemail, he promptly declines and instead looks at his notifications.

Hongjoong scrolls through and ignores them all… until, that is, he gets to KakaoTalk.

There's a message from Minho, and for a moment he considers himself fairly lucky for being so busy that he hasn't had the time to stew over waiting for a reply that may never come. It has, however, come, and now he has no other option than to acknowledge it.

The message is short, nothing more than a date, location, and a question mark. Hongjoong tries not to think too much about how succinct it is and what that might imply, and instead warily turns his attention to San.

But he isn't paying any attention. His nose is stuck in his phone and couldn't care less about what Hongjoong might have going on.

"San," Hongjoong whispers, thankful that it quickly draws him. "Are we busy on the 21st?"

San's eyes dart upward, as if he is searching around the empty space above him for the answer to that question. It takes him a moment to figure a response, and when he finally does all he gives back is a useless, "I don't know. Check the calendar."

"Not helpful."

"How am I supposed to know off the top of my head?"

"Forget it. Go back to your phone."

"You're on your phone, too!"

Shaking his head, Hongjoong does the same and navigates to their shared calendar. Everyday is marked with something, most of them with numerous something's, and when he sorts through the 21st, it appears incredibly grim for him and his hopes of mending something he has broken.

There is little more than a small cut out of time between 21:00 and 22:00, and all he can do is hope for the best in regards to that. He shoots a quick message back to Minho about how they're really busy with comeback prep—something that the person on the other end undoubtedly can understand—and sends his availability in hopes that Minho doesn't simply tell him to forget it.

He isn't anticipating a response any time soon, and moves to tuck his phone back into his pocket until he feels the vibration of yet another incoming call.

Fucking Eden, Hongjoong thinks. Pulling his phone back up to look at it, and nearly going through with ignoring it without so much as a look, he sees the name sitting on the display.

Another glance in San's direction follows, but he doesn't have a whole lot of options at his disposal right about now.

"Hey."

"Aren't you a busy guy," Minho says, but at the very least, there's some playfulness to his tone. "Where could we possibly meet in only an hour?"

"I don't know, I didn't really get that far in the planning process, I have a lot going on right now." Hongjoong feels the curious eyes of San on him now and tries to ignore it. "We can try another day, if you want."

"I don't think so. You're not the only one around here with limited time, and I don't think you're in a place to be afforded the luxury of options right about now, either." Silence follows, Hongjoong doesn't really know what to say to that, but eventually, Minho continues on to say, "I'll come to yours. Where are you going to be around then?"

"I…" Looking at San again, their eyes meet this time and San cocks his head inquisitively at the conversation he has no other option than listening in on. Hongjoong sighs, steels his nerves, and says, "I'll be at the company building. You're going to go… there?"

"Sure, why not?"

"Won't it be…"

"Weird? Yeah. Obviously it will be. The posts online are going to be crazy but what can you do?"

Chuckling under his breath, Hongjoong says, "People are going to think we're poaching you from JYP."

That raises an eyebrow from San. Hongjoong waves him away.

"Well that would never happen, I don't think you and I would play well together."

"I am going to choose to take that as little more than a basic commentary on the fact that Chan and I have very different ways of running our ships."

"Probably for the best. Hanging up now, I'll send you my thoughts in chat in a minute."

The phone call disconnects before Hongjoong has a chance to respond.

Reeling a little from the conversation, he inhales a slow, deep breath and does his best to center himself. That seems to have gone… well. As well as it could have gone, all things considered, though it does leave the rest to consider: like how they're going to get Minho in with as few people knowing about it as possible.

However, the feeling of being seen begins to prickle at Hongjoong's skin. Right, he isn't alone. Turning his head to regard San, he narrows his eyes and says, "Don't tell anyone about this."

"I don't even know who you were talking to."

"You know enough."

Just then, the message that has been promised to him arrives. Without much of a thought about it and still distracted by his bandmate, Hongjoong navigates to the chat and opens the voice message he has been sent.

Exactly seven seconds straight of loud, incomprehensible sounds. Yelling, gargling, and noises that he can't even begin to put a word to.

His eyes close slowly as he once again tries to center himself—make sense of anything that has transpired in the last twenty-four hours—but he's a little too exhausted to manage that, either.

"Oh, Minho," San says.

All Hongjoong can do is sigh.

⋆⁺₊⋆

Sleep improves marginally in the days leading up to Hongjoong's fate. The nights are still long and stuffed with work that he hasn't yet been able to fully crack, but the pieces are coming together a little bit better than they had been before. The list of what is required of him is dwindling slowly, enough so that it doesn't feel as utterly overbearing as it had, but there is still a lot to do, and the incoming, foreboding phone calls from Eden are not slowing nearly as much as Hongjoong might want them to.

They're not going to slow down, much less stop, until he has completed his section of the work. The comeback date is closing in. He isn't so sure he feels up to the task.

When Wednesday rolls around, Hongjoong tries to be cool about it. He is particularly cool about the way he avoids San in every conceivable way as to circumvent any potential questions, but no one else has asked about anything that might be going on, so at the very least, he appreciates San's inclination towards discretion.

The same cannot be said about Jongho, however.

Perched like a gargoyle onto a flimsy folding chair, Hongjoong scrolls through his phone idly as he waits to be called for his photos. His hair is molded to a crisp in a way that he hates, but every now and then he catches a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the screen and feels a little proud about how well his make-up has turned out for the day. He might even pass for someone who wasn't just on the brink of emotional and mental collapse only a few days ago. A passing, hopeful thought.

A tag in his pants is stabbing him incessantly in his lower back, so he shifts in an attempt to alleviate the problem. Twisting himself around to fidget with it, Hongjoong can't quite manage to deal with the issue while seated, but by the time he turns back, Jongho has appeared like a nosy, evil spectre in front of him.

Neither of them speak for a moment, and then finally, Hongjoong says, "You want something from me."

"What makes you think that?"

"Because you only ever approach me when you want something from me."

Jongho makes a face that suggests he accepts the line of reasoning, and with a small nod he says, "Fair enough. Did you do as you were instructed?"

"As I was instructed…"

"Yes. That's what I said."

A loud exhale escapes Hongjoong, and he drops his feet to the floor in order to sit properly.

"Well, after your valiant effort to reason with me and your boyfriend berating me—which I haven't forgotten, by the way—I managed to put my self-loathing aside long enough to message him, yes."

"Minho, you mean."

Hongjoong immediately shushes him, reaches forward, and roughly snatches Jongho's arm to drag them closer together. "Yes, what the hell! You know exactly who I'm talking about."

"You don't have to do this, man. Everybody is going to figure it out eventually if this all goes the way you want it to."

"Maybe I don't know how I want it to go yet!"

Jongho's eyes go wide for a split second, a kind of disbelieving, unamused expression catching his features. He says, "Okay, sure. Then… what are you going to do now?"

"Well… if you must know, I'm seeing him tonight. We're going to talk."

"Tonight? We're booked full for the rest of the day."

"There's an hour in the evening. Dinner time, if I had to guess."

"Ah," Jongho sighs, finally ripping himself from Hongjoong's grip and standing up once again. "Forgoing the small amount of time you are afforded for yourself and food so that you can spend it talking to the guy that you totally don't want to be intimately involved with. Sounds good. Very believable."

Twisting his mouth in disgust, Hongjoong says, "You can't talk to me like that, I'm older than you!"

But Jongho has already turned to walk away. "You won't do anything about it," he says. Confident and correct.

⋆⁺₊⋆

Meeting, meeting, vocal coaching, meeting; then finally, Hongjoong is released into the wilderness of KQ Entertainment.

The clock reads a few minutes past 21:00, and Hongjoong rushes down the hallway towards the small conference room he has booked for them. He wonders if Minho has already arrived and subsequently left due to time management that is wholly out of his control. Something he couldn't blame him for, given Hongjoong's disastrous history of following through on things as far as Minho is concerned.

Thankfully, it's a fairly short journey and no one is standing outside the door. Quickly raising his arm into the air, he sneaks a sniff of himself to make sure he doesn't smell too terribly, and upon reaching the entrance, he quickly goes inside.

It is empty.

Maybe that's good, he doesn't know yet.

Pulling his phone from his back jeans pocket, he looks at the screen and shuffles through several notifications. There are some from KKT waiting, but nothing from Minho, so Hongjoong takes a deep breath and works on quelling his nerves.

Making his way to the large window, he looks out towards Hongdae.

Beyond the bright lights and overall liveliness of the city, what ends up catching his attention isn't a colorful sign, but a small congregation of women down below. They could be fans of theirs, waiting in hope for a glimpse of ATEEZ, or they could be fans of the man soon to arrive.

His brain drags him back to that night at the restaurant, the comments that followed as a result of his being there, and his nerves pick back up all over again.

Maybe he should just put an end to this ridiculous thing altogether. As hopeful as Hongjoong had been going into this, as curious and wanting for something that had seemed utterly impossible at first, only to be proven otherwise… Maybe he had been right all along. Maybe a relationship just isn't in the cards for him as long as he is so present within the limelight of fame.

Two knocks rap against the door, and before Hongjoong has the chance to fully turn to look, it's already prying open. He can hear a quiet exchange of words just beyond, and immediately following that is Minho making his way inside.

Hongjoong's face blanks, somehow stunned into silence. This is a meeting that the two of them orchestrated, and yet his mind can't wrap itself around the fact that Minho is actually here.

His hair is a mess, probably from a hat he had been wearing upon arrival, and baggy clothes drape over his body. Minho hasn't made an effort to dress up for the occasion and Hongjoong is a little thankful for that given his equal state of disarray.

The two of them remain on opposite sides of the room for a while, and then finally, Minho says, "Go on, talk."

Swallowing hard, Hongjoong is ripped back to reality and fumbles through his thoughts in an effort to find something worth saying. "I… Thanks for coming…"

"We don't have a lot of time, you know. Let's not waste it with the formalities."

"Yeah." Anxiously picking at the skin around his pinky fingernail, Hongjoong steals one last glance out of the window before beginning his trek to close the space between them. His jacket sleeves are too long and drape over his hands to the point that only his fingers are poking out. He hopes Minho doesn't treat him like as much of a child as he knows he appears to be. "I'm sorry," he says quietly. Child-like. "For not responding to you, for kind of disappearing."

"Kind of," Minho repeats pointedly. "You tracked me down for weeks, stalked my whole entire life, and then disappeared without a word. It's a miracle I'm even here at all, you know."

Hongjoong makes a disgusted face at that. "I wouldn't say I stalked you. The other stuff is kind of true, though."

Waving off the correction, Minho asks, "So, what's your deal then?"

"My deal is that I got scared, okay? Is that such a crime? Maybe the way I dealt with it is, but I don't think I'm so wrong for getting cold feet… for thinking about it for a little bit and realizing all of the things that could go poorly, how badly it could impact not only us, but our members. I'm the leader, it's my job to try and mitigate these sorts of problems."

That appears to amuse Minho, a small smirk twisting into a single corner of his mouth.

"I think you kind of like being in situations, you like the drama. A little bit."

"What on earth would give you that impression?"

Casually stepping towards Hongjoong, Minho makes the rest of the effort to close the distance between them and standing firmly in front of him he says, "It's what you like, it intrigues you. People that are easy and simple don't pique your interest. If they did, you wouldn't have been stalking me…"

"You've got to stop saying that!"

"Regardless," Minho continues, "You're a creative by nature, so obviously you gravitate towards things and people that challenge you, right? The chaos, the sleepless nights, the drive of an endeavor… it's where you shine. That's why you thrive in this business. It's what makes you who you are."

Frowning, Hongjoong doesn't appreciate how transparent he feels beneath Minho's gaze and wants nothing more than to argue the fact. Lying seems as inopportune as it does pointless though, so instead he merely shrugs it off with the shiver that has simultaneously crept up his spine.

"It can't be as simple as just thinking you're good-looking?"

Minho scoffs. "No. Everyone around here is good-looking." He glances around after that, at the empty, sterile white walls boxing them in and regards them far more thoughtfully than what they demand. "Nice building," he adds.

"Thanks…"

"I'm guessing you're wondering now what? Right? Because you blew it but I'm here, so that has to mean something. But I'll have you know I don't take this sort of thing lightly, you know? I kissed you in front of strangers in a dark parking lot." Minho's attention falls back to Hongjoong. "Now I'm the one doing all of the talking!"

"I guess I just don't really know what to say. If I'm honest, I still don't know what to do, even now. I look out the window and there's fans there… could be ours, could be yours… but all I think about is the comments. The things people might start to say. Then how hard it will be; on us, on the members. I think, maybe I'm just not cut out for this, maybe it's better to just not even try, at all."

Cocking his head to the side, Minho asks, "So, what's the plan then? Single forever? Or at least until all of this goes to shit?"

"Yeah, I'm starting to think I might have to. Isn't that sort of what the leader signs up for? Everyone else can laugh, but the leader can only chuckle."

Minho squints at him. "You guys don't even have a dating ban."

"Sure, not imposed by the company…"

"But you know better," Minho finishes. "The company doesn't have to impose one if you know what's good for you."

Sighing, Hongjoong's shoulders slump in defeat and all he says is, "Yeah."

"Well, you're in luck!" Turning away from Hongjoong in one swift motion, Minho begins making his way towards the door, a lackadaisical wave of his hand in the air as he goes. "I have no interest or intention of dating you, so problem solved."

Oh.

Perched in the middle of the room, Hongjoong stands there stunlocked by the words. The conversation had been going rather smoothly to the best of his understanding, and sure, he admitted to his worries and concerns—was honest about the fact that he still didn't know what he wanted even up until this moment—but that reasoning does little to subdue the immediate rush of disappointment that threatens to swallow him whole as a result of Minho's effortless announcement.

Is this what he wanted? Is this the outcome Hongjoong has been aiming for?

And if it is, then why the hell does it feel so bad?

The seconds speed by as Hongjoong watches Minho reach for the door handle, and he knows perfectly well that if he allows him to walk out of that door, then it is, without a shadow of a doubt, the absolute nail in the coffin of anything this ever could have been. If he lets him leave, then all of his stress and worries in regards to the future leave right along with him, and that is a decision that Hongjoong has to make now. Right now.

He can move on with his life accepting that the onus was never really on him. Minho has communicated clearly, and all Hongjoong has to do is quietly watch him leave.

It really couldn't be any easier than this.

"Ah, wait!"

There's a wide enough sliver where the door has been opened that Minho seems able to make eye contact with who Hongjoong can only assume to be his manager. They exchange a glance before Minho looks back in Hongjoong's direction, but he doesn't yet close the door again.

Mildly distressed and a little all over the place as far as his thoughts and feelings are concerned, Hongjoong shoves his palms into his face and rubs roughly, groaning loudly at himself—at the situation in general—before dragging his fingers through his messy hair and dropping his arms down lifelessly to his side.

Defeat, or something kind of like it.

He stomps towards the door, towards Minho, and shoves it shut with a bang.

"Why'd you come here then? Just to tell me to my face you're not interested anymore? That could have been a message."

A lopsided grin slowly creeps onto Minho's face and he says, "Maybe that isn't why I came here then."

"Then why?"

"You're so close, you can get there."

Hongjoong groans out loud again, frustrated not only by Minho but by the fact that he is in this situation by his own making. "I don't know! You like watching me squirm?"

"I do, but that's not why."

"Are you having fun right now?"

"Aren't you?" Minho counters. "You like this, might I remind you."

"I really don't." Glaring at Minho, Hongjoong's brain immediately switches gears. "What's your MBTI?"

With a nonchalant shrug, Minho says, "I don't have one."

"You don't… have… you know what? Nevermind. Why did you come here?"

"Guess."

Frustrated and in utter disbelief at the circumstances that have befallen him, Hongjoong relinquishes all hope of maintaining his dignity, shakes his head wildly in exasperation and says, "Because you do like me and you do want to date me! Obviously!"

And with another bored shrug, Minho just says, "See? I knew you could get there."

Hongjoong's expression falls, a little unsure if he's truly heard what he thinks he has heard. He glances around himself as if waiting for the cameras to pop out to inform him that all of this has been some big, elaborate scheme to trick him. Naturally, that never comes.

"Wait… you…?"

Leaning himself against the door, Minho drops his head to the side and merely looks at Hongjoong in silence for a bit. There's still something wild in his eyes—suppose there always is—but there's a softness behind it that Hongjoong realizes is the thing he has always been seeking to discover below the prickly surface that he has grown so accustomed to. Truthfully, it's a mirror of himself in a lot of ways; sharp to the touch, unwilling to let the walls down until somebody comes around that's willing to fight their way through them with a sledgehammer.

Ah, Hongjoong thinks. We're the same.

"Everything I said is true, I'm not going to chase you down and beg. Alternatively, once I start something I stick with it, so dealing with you is kind of an exercise in learning to let go."

"I'm sort of the same way," Hongjoong says. "Hard time letting go."

"I know. We're the same."

Though Hongjoong has made peace with this internally, he is not yet ready to give it to Minho and instead, merely hums in some vague essence of a confirmation.

"You're high-strung," Minho says, "we're not the same as far as that's concerned, but I get it. I understand where it's coming from." He inches closer to Hongjoong then, dragging himself against the door like some kind of strange, undead thing; Hongjoong frowns at the sight. "If none of this mattered or existed, what would you want to do?"

"But it does all exist, it does matter," Hongjoong reasons, a pointless endeavor, he knows.

"Answer the question or I'll leave."

"You can't just threaten—" Huffing and puffing his way through the warning, Hongjoong gives in and says, "Obviously I'd want to see you! I don't think you know how hard it is dealing with you on a personal level… it's not for the weak! I haven't had a normal heart rate since we've started meeting. I never know what you're going to say or do!"

"And you like that."

"What I'm trying to say is that I've put a lot of effort into this and I wouldn't want to just throw it all away because things got a little uncomfortable for me. Things are always a little uncomfortable for me, what's one more thing added to the list…"

"Right," Minho says, "you revel in the chaos. You like it. I said this."

"Sure…"

"So we're dating then."

"Wait… Wha—"

Pressing forward, Minho shoves his face into Hongjoong's space, merely a few inches of empty space remaining between the two of them. The close proximity is enough to steal Hongjoong's breath away… not a good sign for any hope of protest he might have had in the chamber.

"You said it."

And any further hope Hongjoong may have had is further taken from him with the swiftness of Minho's lips capturing his own.

Though he closes in fast, the kiss is light, so much more so than Hongjoong could have anticipated. Minho's lips are soft, the scent of him fresh with a hint of smoky vanilla from the fragrance he is wearing. It's intoxicatingly dizzying for Hongjoong's poor, delicate sensibilities, but a welcomed and unexpected comfort to the raw, fraying wires of his nerves.

Hongjoong doesn't remember a time that he and Minho have exchanged touch that hasn't been a kiss. Probably another similarity between them where physicality is something that has never really come naturally as a form of self-expression. He can easily second guess himself to death about it, but instead of doing that, Hongjoong reaches up to grasp the front of Minho's hoodie; a silent request to not let him go.

Minho smiles against his mouth. Hongjoong takes that as the first romance option he has correctly chosen thus far.

Basking in this moment, Hongjoong neglects to hear the sound of footsteps coming towards the room from down the hall. It does not dawn on him that their time together has come to an end until there's a quick knock at the door, and it subsequently flying open to bash him right in the side of the head.

By the time his vision straightens out, Hongjoong looks at Minho to assess the situation, only to find that he hasn't been on the receiving end of a concussive blow. Ever perceptive, indeed.

Hongjoong's manager pokes his head in and says, "Time's up." He looks at Minho, a little confused about his being there, but offers a gentle "hello" anyway.

"Back to work," Minho says with far more delight in his voice than Hongjoong is expecting. There's plenty of reasons to be joyful at the outcome of all of this, but Hongjoong can't help but believe that a good portion of it can be deduced down to Minho winning another one of his silly little games. The door swings open wide and both of their managers are standing there in wait, Hongjoong still rubbing the side of his head where it throbs, and with what must be all of the satisfaction he can muster in his voice, Minho announces to them, "We're dating."

Hongjoong's manager's eyes go wide with surprise. Minho's manager's eyes simply roll.

A man who has seen some shit, evidently. Hongjoong can't help but smile, because now it's his turn.