Chapter Text
The dorm has this unspoken rule about Friday nights: nobody goes to bed before midnight.
It started somewhere in their second year living together, this gravitational pull toward the kitchen after schedules ended, after the van dropped them off and they shed their stage versions of themselves at the door. Dowoon would sit on the counter eating whatever was left in the fridge. Sungjin would lean against the wall and talk, because Sungjin always had something to say. Wonpil would laugh at all of it.
Younghyun stands at the edge of it tonight, shoulder against the doorframe, a can of beer going warm in his hand.
He'd come in late. He'd meant to join them — had even changed into comfortable clothes with that intention, had walked down the hall toward the sound of Wonpil's voice — and then he'd stopped in the doorway and something in his chest had just. Rearranged itself.
Sungjin is in the middle of a story. Something about the sound engineer from today's session, something that's probably not even that funny, but he's doing the voice and the face, and across from him Wonpil is losing it. Actually losing it, one hand pressed flat against the refrigerator door to keep himself upright, head tipped back, that laugh coming out of him like he can't contain it.
The refrigerator light spills out around Wonpil's hand. It catches the line of his jaw, the curve of his smile. It makes him look like something from a different kind of story than the one Younghyun is apparently living in.
Younghyun watches him and thinks, with the tired clarity of someone who has thought this too many times:
At what angle do I stand under the refrigerator light so that when you look at me from across the room, I become something you can love?
He shifts his weight. Tries to imagine it — stepping into the kitchen, finding the right spot, the right light, the right version of his face. Saying something funnier than whatever Sungjin just said. Getting Wonpil to turn that laugh toward him.
At what distance do I become loveable?
He's tried different distances. He's tried being right next to Wonpil, close enough to feel the warmth of him during van rides, during late rehearsals when they'd end up side by side at the piano. He's tried giving him space, pulling back, telling himself that absence might clarify something. He's tried being funny, being serious, being the one who remembers how Wonpil takes his coffee and makes it without being asked.
None of it has landed the way he wanted it to.
Meanwhile Sungjin doesn't seem to be trying at all, and Wonpil is still braced against the refrigerator, still laughing, reaching out to shove at Sungjin's shoulder and leaving his hand there a beat too long.
Dowoon glances up from his phone and catches Younghyun standing in the doorway. He doesn't say anything. He just looks at Younghyun with those quiet eyes of his, the kind of look that says I see you and I'm sorry and I won't make it weird all at once. Younghyun gives him the smallest shake of his head.
Don't.
Dowoon looks back down at his phone.
"Bra-hyung," Wonpil says suddenly, turning, and the laugh is still on his face, still warm, still bright. "How long have you been standing there? Come in, Sungjin hyung is telling the one about the monitor—"
"I heard," Younghyun says. He makes himself push off the doorframe. He makes himself walk into the kitchen and lean against the counter and take a sip of his warm beer. "It's not that funny."
"It's extremely funny," Wonpil says, with great offense.
"Objectively," Sungjin agrees.
And Younghyun looks at Wonpil, right there in front of him now, lit up and loose-shouldered and easy in the way he always is when the day is over and the walls are down. He looks at him and tries to find the right angle, the right light, the right distance.
He's standing two feet away and he has never felt further.
"Yeah," he says, and manages something that probably looks like a smile. "Okay. Maybe a little funny."
Wonpil beams at him, satisfied, and turns back to Sungjin to prompt the next part of the story.
Younghyun wraps both hands around his beer can and stares at a fixed point on the wall and breathes. The refrigerator hums beside them. The light is still on.
He's still trying to find the angle.