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The first time people started talking about it, it was only because Nick had answered too quickly.
It had been one of those lives that were supposed to be simple, the sort where the questions drifted in one after another with smiles and laughter, where the comments moved so fast they blurred together at the bottom of the screen. Pung had joined for a few minutes between schedules, sitting a little to the side in a pale shirt that made him look softer than the noise around him. He had been quiet as usual, listening more than speaking, nodding whenever someone addressed him, his hands folded neatly in his lap as though he were trying not to take up too much space in a room that was always eager to notice him anyway.
Then one of the fans asked Nick, with all the innocence of someone who had no idea what kind of wildfire they were about to set off, "Who are you closest with in DMD?"
Nick had turned toward the camera with that easy, almost lazy grin of his, the one that made him look far more certain than he probably felt, and he had answered without even pausing to think, "Pung."
There had been a beat of silence after that, the kind that meant everyone in the room had heard it, even if they were trying to pretend they had not. Pung had looked up, visibly startled, the tiniest red creeping into his ears while the staff member off-camera made a sound that was halfway between a cough and a laugh. Nick, entirely unbothered, had leaned back in his seat and added, "Why else would I be here?"
The comments had exploded.
Pung had not looked at them. He never did when things got too noisy. He had only smiled in that shy, almost apologetic way of his, the one that made people feel as though they ought to be gentler just by looking at him. Nick, on the other hand, had stretched one arm casually along the back of the sofa like he belonged there, like he had already decided the whole live was going to turn into a small disaster and was prepared to enjoy every second of it.
By the next morning, edits had already appeared.
Then compilations.
Then fan captions with heart emojis and lines like "they are doing this on purpose" and "ghostship behavior" and "tell me I am delusional, tell me right now, because I am seeing things." Pung saw them because fans sent them to him with a mixture of horror and delight, as if they were all collectively standing on the edge of something thrilling and ridiculous. He would never admit how many of them he saved before he could stop himself, or how often he found his thumb hovering over the screen when a new clip surfaced, replaying the moment Nick had said his name with so much ease it had sounded almost intimate.
It was not the sort of thing Pung knew how to handle well.
He knew how to act.
He knew how to smile at the right time, bow at the right angle, say thank you in a voice that rarely rose above the level of a soft breeze. He knew how to arrive, perform, disappear, and leave people feeling as though they had been given something precious, even when all he had really done was stand under bright lights and keep his expression open. Acting was easier, somehow, because there was a script and a rhythm and a shape to every feeling. Real life was messier. Real life involved people looking at him as though they expected him to be more confident than he felt, more sparkling than he was, more capable of carrying attention than he usually believed himself to be.
And lately, Nick had been adding his own particular kind of chaos to that mess.
It began with the shirt.
Pung had lent it to him after a late filming day when the air conditioning had been too cold and Nick had complained dramatically, rubbing his arms and looking offended on principle. Pung had taken off the overshirt he had been wearing and held it out before he could think too hard about it, because refusing was easier than noticing that Nick had already been watching him. Nick had taken it with an expression of theatrical gratitude, pulling it over his head in one fluid motion that made the whole thing feel far less ordinary than it ought to have been.
"Do you want it back tomorrow?" Pung had asked, careful and polite.
Nick had glanced down at himself, then up again with a smile that had no business looking that pleased. "Maybe not tomorrow."
Pung had given him a look that was meant to be serious and failed because Nick had laughed, and after that the shirt became a recurring problem.
Not because he refused to return it, exactly, but because he kept wearing it in the most maddeningly casual way possible, as though there were nothing unusual about showing up to work in Pung's clothes. It happened once, then twice, then enough times that people began to notice. At first they noticed in the way fans always noticed things, with a kind of collective instinct for details that nobody else seemed to catch. A sleeve pushed up to the elbow. A familiar pattern. The looseness of a shirt that looked slightly too large in the shoulders until Nick moved and it settled just right.
Then someone posted a side-by-side.
Then someone zoomed in.
Then everyone noticed.
Pung did not mean to look at the comments, but of course he looked. He always looked, just long enough to regret it. The fandom had decided overnight that Nick was, in fact, living inside Pung’s wardrobe now, and had already built a whole imaginary narrative around it. Some of them joked that Nick had never once bought a shirt of his own since joining the company. Others insisted this was a sign of fate, chemistry, affection, destiny, or all three at once. Pung, seeing the word "ghostship" attached to his name for the first time, had stared at it for a long second before dropping his phone face-down on the table as though that could somehow stop his heartbeat from becoming a problem.
He knew better than to overthink it.
He did not know how not to overthink it.
When Nick started liking his Instagram posts, it was somehow worse.
Not every post. Every post.
Pung would upload something simple, a still from a photoshoot or a behind-the-scenes image or a quiet picture of the sky from the backseat of a car, and within minutes Nick would have liked it. Sometimes within seconds. Pung could tell because he would check once out of habit, then again out of disbelief, and there the little heart would be, sitting beneath the post like it had always belonged there. The first time, he had thought it was a coincidence. The second time, maybe Nick had just seen it at the right moment. By the fifth or sixth time, the possibility of coincidence had begun to look flimsy.
So Pung did the only thing he could think to do, which was absolutely nothing at all.
He did not ask.
He did not mention it.
He did not send the screenshots he had taken to anyone, though he did almost send them once to his closest friend before erasing the message and locking his phone.
Nick, apparently satisfied with keeping him in a state of mild inner collapse, continued to behave as if all of this were perfectly normal. He called Pung often, and not always for reasons that made sense. Sometimes it was about schedules. Sometimes it was because he had forgotten the name of a brand rep. Sometimes he had a question about a script, or a location, or whether Pung had eaten yet, which was not a question Pung ever knew how to answer without feeling oddly seen.
"Have you had lunch?" Nick would ask, voice bright and careless as though he were asking about the weather.
"I ate earlier," Pung would say.
"That means no, probably," Nick would reply, and Pung could hear the grin in it every single time.
The calls were never long, but they never ended quickly either. There was always a pause after the question had been answered, a little stretch of silence that felt too comfortable to be accidental. Pung had started recognizing the shape of Nick's breathing over the phone, the way he would hum under his breath when he was thinking, the way his voice lowered when the room around him got too loud. It was the sort of familiarity that arrived quietly, then all at once made itself impossible to ignore.
One afternoon, after a rehearsal that had left Pung feeling drained and too aware of his own hands, he received a message from Nick that simply said, "Where are you?"
Pung stared at it for a moment before replying with the building name and floor.
Nick arrived ten minutes later holding iced coffee in one hand and a paper bag in the other, his expression entirely too pleased with himself. "You sounded tired on the phone."
"I did not sound tired," Pung said, though even he could hear the lack of force in it.
Nick looked at him, then lifted the bag slightly. "I brought food anyway."
Pung should have said thank you more elegantly than he did. Instead he just stepped aside to let him in, and the two of them ended up sitting in a quiet corner of the waiting room while the rest of the building moved around them in a blur of closing doors and distant voices. Nick talked more than usual when he was with Pung alone, not in a loud way, but in the loose, meandering manner of someone who had decided there was no need to perform for the room. He asked about the rehearsal, then about the scene, then about whether Pung had been resting properly, and every question felt like something gentle laid down between them.
"You always ask me that," Pung murmured at one point, opening the food container Nick had bought him.
Nick shrugged, leaning back in the chair beside him. "Because you always forget to take care of yourself when you are busy."
Pung glanced at him. "That sounds like an accusation."
"It is one," Nick said, then softened immediately when Pung gave him a look. "A loving one."
That made Pung laugh, which seemed to amuse Nick more than it should have. He watched him the way people did when they had already made a private decision about someone and were just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. Pung looked down at his food, suddenly feeling the shape of that attention settle around him.
Nick's phone buzzed on the table. He ignored it.
A few seconds later it buzzed again.
He ignored that too.
Pung, who had no business being curious, still asked, "Aren't you going to check it?"
Nick glanced at the screen without touching it, then made a face. "If it is the group chat, I already know they are being dramatic."
"About what?"
Nick's smile turned strange and small. "About me wearing your shirt again."
Pung nearly choked on his drink.
Nick, unfair as ever, reached over and patted his back with a straight face that lasted precisely two seconds before cracking into a grin. "You should see your face."
Pung took a long breath and set the cup down. "You did not have to tell me that."
"I thought you knew."
"I know now."
Nick's eyes lingered on him in a way that made the room feel warmer than it had any right to be. "You do not sound very upset."
Pung looked away first, because he always did. "You are the one turning it into a situation."
"Because it is a situation."
"Nick."
"What?" he asked, entirely innocent, which only made it worse.
Pung folded the lid of the food container back into place, trying not to smile.
That one landed more quietly than it should have. Pung froze for half a second, then resumed the motion of setting his lunch aside as though his heart had not just tripped over itself in his chest. Nick seemed to realize he had hit something tender, because his expression shifted, the teasing easing into something softer at the edges.
"I mean," he said, a little more carefully, "if you do not want me to call, I can stop."
Pung should have said yes. He should have made a joke, should have covered the moment with something neat and harmless. Instead he heard himself say, "I did not say that."
Nick smiled, but this time it was not the easy grin from the live or the performative sort he wore in front of cameras. It was quieter, somehow more personal. "Then I will keep calling."
People said Pung was good with emotions because he could act them. That was not the same thing as handling them. He could not do much with the way Nick looked at him then, with the way his voice had turned low and steady, with the way a single sentence could make his whole evening feel rearranged. He lowered his eyes and pretended to be focused on the food, and Nick, mercifully, let the silence grow without crowding it.
The ghostship jokes only multiplied after that.
The fans had far too much material, and the internet, as always, was cruel in the sweetest possible way. A shirt. A call. A like. A glance. That was all it ever took for a narrative to begin, and once it began it spread faster than either of them could reasonably keep up with. People made edits of them with soft music in the background. People wrote captions about accidental intimacy and obvious devotion. People clipped every instance of Nick looking in Pung's direction for longer than necessary and every time Pung smiled at something Nick said as though he had forgotten there were cameras at all.
Pung did his best not to look flustered.
Nick, meanwhile, looked delighted.
The first time he saw an edit someone had sent him, he watched it on mute with his elbow on the edge of a table and a grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. When he finished, he turned to Pung, who was sitting across from him with a drink in hand and a carefully neutral expression.
"They are obsessed," Nick said.
Pung kept his gaze on the screen of his phone. "You sound proud."
"I am proud."
"Of what exactly?"
Nick tipped his head as though the answer were obvious. "Of our fans being observant."
Pung finally looked up. "Our fans?"
Nick did not even blink. "Yes, ours."
That should have been too much. It should have felt like a line that needed to be laughed off, deflected, hidden somewhere behind professional politeness and the usual careful distance between people who worked together. Instead it sat there between them, warm and unguarded, and Pung found himself unable to decide whether he wanted to scold him or smile.
Before he could choose, Nick reached over and took the plastic cup from his hand. "You have not finished your drink."
Pung watched him take a sip from the straw, the whole thing so casual it nearly made him laugh again. "That was mine."
"You were too slow."
"I was holding it."
Nick set it back down and leaned closer as though about to share a secret. "Then now it is our drink."
Pung's face went hot so quickly it was embarrassing.
Nick noticed, because he noticed everything. His expression shifted into open satisfaction, and he sat back with the air of someone who had just won a contest no one else realized was being held. "There it is."
Pung covered his mouth with the back of his hand, helpless against the smile threatening to break through. "You are very pleased with yourself."
"I should be," Nick said. "I am good at making you react."
Pung's reply came too softly to be anything but honest. "You are good at too many things."
Nick went still.
The moment stretched just long enough for Pung to realize what he had said, and by then it was already too late to call it back. Nick looked at him as if he had not expected to hear that, as if some part of him had not quite believed Pung would ever say something like that out loud. The noise around them seemed to go a little distant. Someone passed behind the door. A chair scraped somewhere else in the room. None of it mattered.
Nick lowered his voice. "You think so?"
Pung should have stood up. He should have escaped to the bathroom, pretended he had received a call, found any excuse at all to get out of the line he could feel forming under his feet. Instead he met Nick's gaze and gave the smallest nod.
Nick's mouth parted, then closed again. For once he did not have an immediate answer.
That alone made Pung's chest tighten.
The private moment came a few days later, in the most ordinary place imaginable. There was no dramatic weather, no crowded event, no flashing lights or loud music to shield them from themselves. It was just a dressing room, half-lit and cluttered with jackets, makeup, and two half-finished bottles of water on the table. Pung had come in late after another schedule, tired enough that his shoulders felt heavy, and found Nick already there, sitting on the edge of the couch with his phone in hand and Pung's shirt folded neatly beside him.
Pung stopped in the doorway. "You brought it back."
Nick looked up. "Should I not have?"
"I did not think you would."
"Why not?"
Pung stepped inside slowly, closing the door behind him. "Because you enjoy causing trouble."
Nick laughed under his breath. "That is not why."
There was something odd in his tone, gentle but unreadable, so Pung set his bag down and moved closer. The shirt lay between them on the couch like a small, soft surrender. It looked washed, folded, and somehow even more familiar than before. Pung reached for it, then hesitated when Nick's hand landed lightly on the fabric first.
"You can keep it," Nick said.
Pung blinked. "What?"
Nick looked at him, and this time there was no teasing in his face. "You heard me."
"I do not need you to return my shirt only to give it back to me."
"I know." He paused, thumb still resting on the edge of the cloth. "I just thought you might want it."
Pung tried to find the joke in the room, but Nick was looking too serious for one to exist. "Why would I want it?"
Nick met his eyes without hesitation. "Because you look at me differently when I wear it."
The words were soft enough to be almost swallowed by the quiet, but Pung felt them anyway, all at once. He stared at him, startled into silence. Nick leaned back a little, perhaps realizing too late how direct that sounded, and rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand.
"I did not mean that badly," he said, though his voice had gone faintly rough. "I just noticed."
Pung's fingers tightened around the strap of his bag. "What exactly did you notice?"
Nick looked away first this time, which somehow made everything worse. "That you get shy."
Pung nearly laughed from the force of how unfair that was. "I am always shy."
"Not with everyone."
The answer came out before he could stop it. "With you, apparently."
Nick went quiet.
Pung should have looked away. Instead he kept standing there, feeling the room narrow around them until there was only the shirt between them and the fact of what they were not saying. Nick's expression had changed, not by much, but enough. Something in him had gone gentle and careful, as if he had stepped too close to the edge of a conversation he had been trying to pretend was only playful.
"I like that," he said eventually.
Pung's breath caught. "Like what?"
"That you are like this with me."
Pung's pulse was doing something inconvenient. "You make it sound as though I have a choice."
Nick smiled, but not fully. "Maybe you do."
The answer sat there between them, quiet and dangerous in the way only honest things could be. Pung looked down at the shirt in Nick's hand, then back at him. "You have been doing all of this on purpose."
"I have been doing some of it on purpose."
That earned him a narrowed look, though Pung could not quite make it convincing. Nick's smile widened by a fraction, and there it was again, that reckless softness he carried so easily when he forgot to hide it. "Fine," he admitted. "Most of it."
"Why?"
Nick's shoulders rose and fell with a breath that seemed to steady him. When he answered, his voice was quiet enough that Pung had to lean in to hear it properly. "Because it is easier to be honest when I am pretending to joke."
Pung did not speak. He did not trust himself to.
Nick continued, eyes fixed on the shirt now rather than on him. "I like calling you. I like when you answer. I like when you get embarrassed because of something I said and try not to show it. I like seeing whether you notice the comments, even though I know you do. I like wearing your shirt because it makes people talk, and because..." He stopped, swallowed once, then looked back up. "Because it makes me feel close to you."
The room had gone perfectly still.
Pung stared at him, his throat suddenly tight in a way that had nothing to do with tiredness or the air conditioning. Nick did not look smug now. He looked a little vulnerable, actually, which was almost unfair on top of everything else. His fingers had gone still on the fabric. His expression held steady, but only just.
Pung had spent so much time thinking about whether he was imagining things that he had not considered the possibility of being correctly seen. It was one thing to be admired from a distance, to be handled carefully by a public that loved softness when it belonged to someone else. It was another to have someone stand in front of him and say, plainly, without ornament, that they liked being close.
His voice came out quieter than he intended. "You make it hard not to think about you."
Nick did not move.
Pung wished, suddenly, that he had said something polished. Something safe. Something that could be laughed off. But the words were already there, and Nick was looking at him as though he had just been given permission to breathe.
"Good," Nick said, very softly.
Pung let out a small, helpless laugh at that, because the alternative was probably blushing all the way to his ears. "You are very bold when you want to be."
Nick's mouth curved again, this time with unmistakable relief. "Only with you."
That was enough. It should have been more than enough. Pung reached forward, took the shirt from Nick's hand, and held it against himself for one ridiculous second before folding it carefully over his arm. Nick watched the motion with a kind of focused attention that made Pung feel exposed and treasured at once.
"You can keep it," Nick said again, quieter now.
Pung looked at him for a long moment. "You know I will wear it back at some point."
Nick's grin returned, slow and bright. "I am counting on that."
The ending, when it came, was not a confession in the dramatic sense. There was no single thunderclap moment, no grand declaration that solved everything. It was only a series of small mercies, the kind that meant more because they were not forced. Pung found himself answering Nick's calls more quickly than before. Nick kept liking his posts, though now he sometimes left a comment too, usually something absurd and affectionate enough to make the fandom lose its mind all over again. Pung kept pretending not to notice the comments, and Nick kept pretending not to know he was reading every single one. The shirt remained in circulation, somehow always between them, and every time Nick wore it Pung became just a little more aware of how easy it was to feel unsteady around him.
Then one evening, after a long schedule and a roomful of people and far too much noise, Pung slipped into the quiet kitchen area backstage to find Nick already there, leaning against the counter with two cups in hand.
"You look tired," Nick said.
Pung accepted the cup automatically. "You say that every time you see me."
"Because it is usually true."
Pung took a sip, and the tea was exactly the right temperature, exactly the sort of thing that should not have made his chest feel warm in a way that had nothing to do with the drink. He glanced up to find Nick watching him with that open, patient expression that had become impossible to mistake.
"This is my shirt again, by the way," Nick said after a pause, touching the sleeve with one finger.
Pung lowered his eyes to it, then back to him. "It suits you."
Nick smiled, and this time there was no need to ask what it meant. "It suits us better."
Pung's breath caught, but he did not look away.
Outside the kitchen, someone called for them. Footsteps passed. A door opened and shut. The world continued, loud and ordinary and entirely unaware of what had just quietly changed in the space between two cups of tea and a borrowed shirt.
Pung tilted his head a little, his lips curving before he could stop them. "You are going to make people talk again."
Nick's answer came with the easiest smile in the world. "They already do."
"And you enjoy that."
"I enjoy you," Nick said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
For a moment, Pung forgot to be shy. For a moment, he just stood there with the warmth of the cup in his hands and the sound of Nick's voice lingering in the air, and he let himself believe that some things could begin this softly and still be real. He looked down at his tea, then back up, and when he smiled this time it was no longer the careful smile he gave the camera, nor the polite one he offered strangers. It was something smaller and sweeter, meant for exactly one person standing in front of him.
Nick saw it and went quiet.
Pung finally said, almost in a whisper, "Then stay."
Nick's expression softened in a way that made him look younger and more certain at once. He set his cup down, closed the last small distance between them, and bumped his shoulder lightly against Pung's.
"I was never going anywhere," he said.
And because it was Nick and Pung, because the whole world had somehow ended up watching them before either of them had decided what to call this, the moment felt less like an ending and more like a beginning that had been hiding in plain sight all along.
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