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“Go. I’ll walk with Donghae,” Hyukjae sends his manager off with a wave. “We’ll be fine.”
They’re in the unfinished office at an ungodly hour of the morning, the only free time they had between filming and recording and what feels like endless trips to the airport for the tour. Donghae had sent his own manager home once he’d dropped him off, but he hadn’t expected Hyukjae to do the same.
There’s only a token protest before Jehyuk goes, leaving them alone in the place that will become their practice room. In theory, they’re there to see the mocked-up space, make sure they both like the dimensions and how it feels before the final drywall goes up. Donghae has spent more time at the building than Hyukjae has; he likes to see the physical evidence of this place that will be theirs. Hyukjae is better at thinking conceptually, at imagining a space, he always has been. But the practice room is his domain. Donghae has given very little input into what this room will be because he trusts Hyukjae’s choices.
Just like the unspoken agreement that Donghae can be as particular as he wants about the recording studio, the practice room is Hyukjae’s.
There’s still a thrill in standing in it together. Even if the walls aren’t up yet.
Hyukjae has some notes, mostly about the flooring and the plans for the lights, but he’s happy with the space itself. They take notes on Hyukjae’s phone, even as he laments the flagging battery percentage. Donghae feels like a giddy child as they poke their heads around the rest of the floor. Where Yongsun’s office will be, the recording studio, the outfit storage, the filming studio. All the things they could ever need, under one roof and just for them.
“I’m beat,” Hyukjae admits, as they make their way back towards the stairs. “Let’s take the elevator.” He holds up a hand before Donghae can even start to protest. “We took the stairs up here and we’re going to walk all the way home after, just give me this.”
Donghae does frown at him. He wouldn’t normally bother taking the elevator such a short distance down but Hyukjae looks exhausted, so it’s not a hill worth dying on.
The elevator itself is functional, if not very pretty. Donghae vaguely remembers an email about it as they step inside. Hyukjae presses the button and the doors close. There’s very little light in the small space, just the glow from the button panel, but it hums to life and there’s the familiar feeling of descending, then a beep to tell them they’ve arrived on the ground floor.
And then nothing.
The doors don’t open.
There’s a long moment of confused silence before Hyukjae reaches over and presses the open door button.
Nothing happens.
“What the…”
He continues jabbing at the button as Donghae feels dread coil in his stomach. The email he vaguely remembered as they got into the elevator suddenly comes back to him, clear as day.
The elevator is functional, but for some reason the doors won’t open unless someone presses the button from the outside. Make sure there’s someone around, if you need to use it. The technician comes next Thursday.
“Um,” Donghae grimaces, pulling up the email on his phone and holding out the screen for Hyukjae to read.
He can tell, by the movement of his eyes, that Hyukjae reads it twice before letting out a sigh of such bone-deep weariness that Donghae has to wince. He’s not angry, he doesn’t get angry with Donghae, not about things like this. It wasn’t carelessness that made him forget about the email, merely the fact they’ve both been running themselves ragged for days and something was always going to fall through the cracks.
“Fuck.” Is all Hyukjae says.
“It’s already five, Yongsun-hyung should be getting up soon.” Donghae takes his phone back and navigates to his messaging app. “He’ll come and rescue us.” He texts his brother too, for good measure. “I texted hyung too, in case he’s going to come by the cafe space.”
Hyukjae sighs again, then slides down the wall until he’s seated on the dusty elevator floor, his head leaning into the corner. “We’ve slept in stranger places.”
It’s true. They didn’t get through twenty years of being idols, with the schedules they’ve kept, without knowing how to grab sleep where they can. Hyukjae has always been better at dropping off than Donghae, but he joins him on the floor, resting against the opposite corner.
He tries to sleep, but there’s something unsettled in his chest and he can tell from the way Hyukjae breathes that he’s still awake as well. He briefly considers watching videos on his phone, but his battery is just as low as Hyukjae’s, and he doesn’t have his earbuds on him.
Donghae fiddles with the bracelet on his wrist. It’s nothing big, just a thin chain, but it gives him something to do. He owns several expensive watches, lots of bracelets and fitness trackers; there’s no shortage of adornments he can choose from when he’s getting dressed. Yet every morning he finds himself tempted to put on the watch. He considers it a small victory when anything else winds up on his wrist.
Across the small space of the elevator, Hyukjae’s wrist is empty.
It doesn’t mean anything, it’s stupid to think it does when they’re literally trapped inside of the building they’re turning into the offices of their company that they share, and co-CEO, which is based off of their unit and stage partnership. Hyukjae doesn’t tend to wear anything on his wrist most of the time. Technically, on paper, that’s why he had asked Donghae to go shopping with him for the watch in the first place.
The matching watches hadn’t been planned, but they hadn’t exactly been impulsive, either.
Sometimes, Donghae lays awake and wonders if Hyukjae had been trying to tell him something. They have plenty of couples items, from fans or for the fans or just out of coincidence and the fact they have similar taste in some things. The watches are the first time they’ve explicitly chosen something matching like this. Not for wearing on stage, not because neither of them cares enough about placemats to pick different ones. The watches are an expensive, luxury purchase that means something.
Most of the time Donghae thinks he knows what that is.
Other times, when Hyukjae is just a little colder than usual, or a little less performative about how much he hates it when Donghae lets himself into his apartment unannounced…
He tries not to doubt the things they both know, but never speak about.
It’s hard not to worry that it’s all too much. That one day, Hyukjae will wake up and realize that he’s tied his career and his life to Donghae in too many ways and maybe he wants his heart for himself. Maybe the building is too much.
Maybe Donghae is too much.
“Do you like it?” The words sort of bubble up out of Donghae’s thoughts and into the elevator without any context, and Hyukjae blinks at him in confusion. But, after all these years, he knows Donghae, understands that the explanation is coming. Hyukjae never asks what Donghae is talking about, not seriously, because he knows Donghae already knows he doesn’t understand
So Donghae clears his throat and tries to elaborate. “The office. The practice room. The building. Everything.”
“It’s everything we said we wanted,” Hyukjae closes his eyes and leans his head back against the elevator wall. “It’s very real.”
Their company has been real for over two years, they’ve released albums and Hyukjae’s solo and have been handling their own appearances and events and endorsements. But Donghae still understands what he means. Everything under one roof. No more renting practice rooms or booking studio time. No more switching the filming location for Youtube, no more running around town and making sure he has time to stop in and see his brother at Haru.
Donghae has always liked collecting the things that matter to him, bringing them together in one place. D&E. ODE. Donghwa. Haru. A place for the fans to visit. And of course, Hyukjae. All here, all together. It’s never been quite as literal as this, but it warms his heart in ways he never expected.
He used to worry about smothering Hyukjae, about not giving him space to breathe because that’s not something Donghae ever craves. He wants to be around his loved ones as much as possible, as much as they can handle. But he’s not a teenager with boundary issues anymore, he understands that just because he never wants to be alone doesn’t make it true for everyone else.
Especially Hyukjae.
It used to sting, when Hyukjae needed space to himself. Donghae didn’t understand why that had to mean without him. It’s been years, decades really, but he finally gets that when Hyukjae needs space to himself it doesn’t have anything to do with Donghae. It’s not about being somewhere Donghae isn’t, it’s just about being alone to recharge.
More than anything else, starting this company together has just cemented that they’re equally invested in this partnership.
It’s always been real, the brick and mortar surrounding them don’t change that.
“I do,” Hyukjae says after a beat. “Like it. Of course I do.” His eyes are still closed. “As if I would let you do something I didn’t like.” He sounds fond, the way he thinks Donghae doesn’t notice.
A supercut flashes through Donghae’s mind, of Hyukjae complaining about everything from how often he disappears to brush his teeth to how often he goes to the gym. Every little, inconsequential habit Donghae has that Hyukjae plays at being irritated by.
It makes him feel warm, makes him want to poke at this pantomime of annoyance and see what he can get away with even though he already knows the answer is: everything.
“Everything we said we wanted,” Donghae repeats, and Hyukjae opens his eyes to look at him. There’s something heavy about it, in the relatively small space of the elevator, trapped away from the rest of their lives. “And,” he swallows thickly, but doesn’t look away. “The things we don’t say. But we want.”
Like always, Hyukjae understands him. There’s always fondness in his eyes when he looks at Donghae, but sometimes there’s the weight of something else. “We want,” Hyukjae agrees with him, reaching over to lace their fingers together. “You know that. It’s true even if we don’t talk about it. It’s always true.”
Donghae knows this. Sometimes he worries himself into knots about it, but he knows it. It only ever takes a simple affirming touch from Hyukjae, and all of those worries melt off of him.
He starts to say as much, to demur and apologize for being weird about things, but Hyukjae uses the grip on his fingers to tug Donghae across to the other corner of the elevator and press their lips together.
They’ve kissed before; desperate moments when Donghae’s feelings have gotten too big to contain in his chest. When the weight of the love they both feel has boiled over and they need something to sate it. But those kisses were never like this.
This time, Hyukjae kisses him slowly. Gently. Like this is something they can have and not a tightrope between their hearts and their jobs and everything they’ve built. There’s nothing urgent, nothing desperate, just the truth of how they love each other, what their partnership has always been based on.
Donghae almost doesn’t know what to do with a kiss like this. He can feel tears threatening, as he hadn’t realized how badly he wanted Hyukjae to kiss him like this.
Hyukjae can tell, of course he can tell. He thumbs away the wetness at the corner of Donghae’s eye and then slides his hand into his hair, tilting just slightly and deepening the kiss.
Here, in the safety of the place they’re building together and with the press of Hyukjae’s tongue against his lips, Donghae lets himself love.
Dragging himself out to Seongsu as soon as he was awake enough to glance at his phone is not Yongsun’s idea of a good time. Rescuing the grown men who employ him, even considering how much he does like them, is even less so. He’s not even sure how they managed to get trapped in an elevator in the middle of the night, and both of their phones had gone straight to voicemail when he had tried to call them.
So, here he is, letting himself into the under-construction building that will be the ODE Entertainment office and Donghwa-ssi’s cafe before he’s even had breakfast.
The emergency release for the elevator is on the ground floor, and Yongsun hears a rumbling from inside when he presses it. There’s a slight groaning and then the elevator doors slide open.
His wayward CEOs are inside, sitting with their shoulders together and Hyukjae’s head on Donghae’s shoulder.
They’re both sound asleep.
Carefully, Yongsun extracts his phone from his jacket pocket and snaps a picture. Not for blackmail, that’s always been Donghae’s arena. This picture he will hold on to for a D&E unit anniversary photo dump or a company party or something.
Or to send to them as a reminder of the things he does for them when it’s time for Christmas presents.
Either way, picture secured, Yongsun pockets his phone and clears his throat as loudly as he can.
“Hurry up before the elevator door closes and I leave you both in here even longer.”
They’re too practiced at getting what little sleep they can to not be able to wake up immediately, but there’s something delicate in the way they startle awake together.
Yongsun just scowls at them for show, and pretends he doesn’t see the way their hands are entwined between them. He knows better than to ask questions about things he already knows.
One day he hopes they’ll be able to be honest with those around them, about how deeply they love each other. The ones who matter, a group Yongsun considers himself to be part of, already know. Someday, though, he hopes he can put words to his support for everything Hyukjae and Donghae have built.
Until then, they’ve got a flight to catch in less than seven hours.