Archive of Our Own

Woonhak has a track on his laptop that he adds a new layer of sound to, every time that Han Dongmin pisses him off.

Unsurprisingly, by now, it sounds horrid. It’s still passable as music, somehow—Woonhak does put some care into it, and it’s admittedly good practice for producing—but it’s still a too-busy cacophony of too many experimental sounds, and the fact that it sounds even remotely harmonious is probably just a trick of Woonhak’s own ears at this point, so used to the sound of it now that it’s made a home for itself playing on loop in the back of his mind.

At the end of the day, it’s really all in good fun—Woonhak gets that—but he’s never been particularly good at hiding how he reacts.

And Han Dongmin loves that. He gets his dopamine rushes from the dramatic way that Woonhak always responds to his teasing, and so it’s no surprise that Dongmin milks whatever he can out of that seemingly endless, golden opportunity—because Woonhak keeps presenting it to him on a silver platter.

Frankly, Woonhak does think it’s a little bit insufferable, don’t get him wrong. Of course, he’s no longer a stranger to being the default target of five, mischievous, older guys, and he’s learned how to take it in stride, not let it bother him too much. It took some getting used to, given that he’d grown up as the eldest in his own house—but he thinks he’s settled into the maknae role well enough over the years, with all its perks and pitfalls alike. The older guys begin to measure out their teasing and jokes more carefully as time goes by, as they all get to know each other’s limits better and also watch Woonhak grow older, more mature, more into himself. 

But when it comes to Dongmin—Woonhak notices—the size of that guy’s desire to piss him off only seems to grow exponentially. Woonhak can’t tell if it’s a power thing, some way to assert his control now that Woonhak’s catching up to him in height and the length of his limbs, taking up more and more space than any of them can really keep up with; Woonhak’s also considered that maybe it’s just the result of Dongmin growing more comfortable, adjusting his tune as Woonhak turns into a full-blown adult, the two years between them feeling smaller than it did when they first met at fifteen and seventeen.

Or maybe it’s his problem. Woonhak’s considered that, too. Oftentimes the lines are blurred between if Dongmin’s always teasing him more than the others, or if Woonhak just notices it more, because it’s Dongmin—because Woonhak, since the first time he’d gotten close to him, has always liked having Dongmin’s attention, too. Things just naturally happened that way; Dongmin was just the easiest person for Woonhak to get close to back then, the kind of perfect, cool-looking hyung who had the same passion for music that Woonhak knew he wanted to flesh out in himself. They’d hang out a lot, talk about their favorite artists, and Dongmin was always happy to let Woonhak touch his precious laptop—even with his clumsy hands—just to show him the ropes when Woonhak showed even the tiniest spark of interest in producing. 

For Woonhak, Dongmin has always been there. He was the person that Woonhak looked up to, wanted to impress, wanted to be respected by—but Dongmin was always the one who also made sure to bring himself off of that pedestal, always insisting that at the end of the day, the best part of knowing each other was being by each other’s sides. Friends—at least as much as a reliable hyung and a starry-eyed kid could be.

And even with how much things have changed up to this point, some part of that dynamic persists even until now, two years since they debuted, still by each other’s sides. Dongmin definitely seems to have settled more into treating Woonhak like a friend now—at least just as much as he’s learned to acknowledge him as a group member, a producer, an undeniable pillar of their team—hence the freakishly excessive increase in his targeted attempts at joking around, as evidenced by the mish-mash Midi file that Woonhak’s currently working on now. It sounds just about as infuriating as all the times that Dongmin has poked him, barged into his room, distracted him when he was trying to say something serious during a shoot—the list goes on. Woonhak very rarely lets it actually get to him—but the infuriating part is how Dongmin always seems to take that patience as encouragement, how Woonhak can’t bring himself to tell him off because he doesn’t actually hate it.

Woonhak sighs. Han Dongmin drives him insane.

And of course, like the devil himself, Dongmin barges into Woonhak’s room without knocking, right at the tail-end of Woonhak’s spiral of thought. Dongmin’s on his phone, not even watching where he’s going, not even looking back to make sure the door’s closed behind him. (It’s not.) He’s wearing an old, black band tee that’s definitely Woonhak’s, his red hair freshly damp from a shower—and Woonhak’s brain malfunctions for a few seconds, buffering long enough for Dongmin to plop down on his stomach onto Woonhak’s bed, with a stupid little announcement of, “Hyung’s here, Hak-ah~”, as if him just swinging the door open without warning wasn’t already enough to startle Woonhak to his core.

When Woonhak’s brain catches up to the situation, he immediately scowls down at him, annoyed, a hand leaving his laptop to pinch at his brow. “Ah, why are you here again, Dongmin-hyung? Ever heard of knocking?”

Dongmin just giggles, a little shrug on his shoulders as he looks over at Woonhak’s screen. “What are you working on?”

Woonhak takes a deep breath, immediately getting ticked-off by Dongmin’s smug little non-answer. He’s always coming into Woonhak’s room after their schedules lately, interrupting Woonhak’s alone time. Woonhak can’t fathom any logical reason that he’d want to spend his time here, why he’d choose bothering Woonhak over living peacefully with Sungho and Sanghyeok upstairs. It just doesn’t make sense. “Why are you wearing my shirt?”

Dongmin pouts, looks innocently into Woonhak’s eyes for a second, then looks down at what he’s wearing with an amused laugh. “This? This is mine.”

“No, it’s not! You took that from my laundry, I know that I put it there!”

“I lent it to you when we were trainees, remember?” Dongmin says, all coy. “I’m just taking it back.”

Woonhak opens his mouth to speak—and then he closes it when he realizes that Dongmin’s right. He didn’t even remember that, until now. It does make enough sense. “I— Still! You shouldn’t take things from someone else’s laundry without asking!”

That shirt had been so huge on Woonhak when Dongmin had given it to him years ago. Woonhak feels some unnameable feeling as he realizes how well it had started to fit around his body as the years went by, so much so that he’d forgotten that there was ever a time that it wasn’t his. Now, Dongmin’s wearing it again, his red hair dye probably leaving invisible stains on the neckline, and Dongmin must smell Woonhak’s scent mixing with the fabric softener; Woonhak definitely remembers now how much it had smelled like Dongmin, the first time he’d worn it before. Dongmin’s acting as nonchalant as ever, smiling at Woonhak’s predicament, and a part of Woonhak kind of wants to push him off the bed, see how he likes it.

Another part of him thinks it’s a little unfair how good Dongmin looks right now, even with that bright red hair and pitch black shirt washing out the naturally pale tone of his bare skin.

It’s not a new feeling. Woonhak doesn’t scoff at any attempts Dongmin has made of stepping down from the pedestal that fifteen year-old Woonhak had put him on—but at the end of the day, Woonhak thinks there’s always just going to be a part of him that looks at Dongmin with saucer-eyes and a dropped jaw. Woonhak’s hair was dyed black before the soft brown that it is now, and it’s only when the fans had pointed it out that he’d realized how much he’s starting to resemble Dongmin, in more ways than one—and it’s almost jarring to look in the mirror every day and realize that it’s true. It’s even more damning that it leaves him with this strange, cloying sense of pride, deep behind his ribs.

Woonhak is taken out of his wandering thoughts when Dongmin pokes his knee, tries to ask again, “Are you gonna tell me what you’re working on, Woonhak-ah?”

“...No,” Woonhak scoffs at him, taking one look at what he’s working on and knowing he’s not about to open this can of worms right now, “you can just stay there. Just don’t stain my bed with your rooster hair.”

“Tch,” Dongmin scrunches his nose, the frown quickly breaking into a small smile. “Fine.”

Woonhak huffs in return. Dongmin goes back to looking at his phone. 

When he looks back at his laptop, Woonhak quickly realizes that he doesn’t actually know what to do in the first place, that he’s been stuck staring at the screen since long before Dongmin had walked in. He’d only opened up the file in the first place because of the incident on the van ride home from their schedule, where Dongmin had decided that his mission was to sit beside Woonhak and poke him relentlessly in the spots he knows he’s ticklish—just for the hell of it, and maybe, to a lesser extent, everyone else’s enjoyment. Woonhak had mostly forgotten about it after a hot shower and a good gaming session on his phone, and he’d only opened up the music file on his laptop when he realized he had some more time to kill.

Woonhak’s been trying to channel his mild frustration into this mess of a track as he always does—but lately, for some reason, thinking about Dongmin hasn’t gotten him into his flow state as well as it usually would. All he’s been able to manage is adding on little things to the music track after every five or ten minutes of staring blankly at the screen, and even then, he’s not actually convinced that any of it actually fits together. Every instance of inspiration starts to muddle into the next, and while Dongmin had always taught him to be organized with his producing, it’s ironically also Dongmin that makes him start to lose track. Dongmin always makes Woonhak feel so many things in rapid succession, and Woonhak has learned to just accept all of those emotions as they are; he’s not used to trying to pick them apart one by one, dissecting where one meets all of the others, where they all end and begin.

Dongmin shifts. Wonohak’s eyes dart subtly over to see him rolling onto his side, the blue light of his phone illuminating his face. His head hangs in the air, head almost touching the bedding beneath him, and Woonhak clicks his tongue. The sight makes him feel, just… bothered. 

So, naturally, he complains. 

“I said, don’t get your hair dye on my bedsheets, hyung,” Woonhak says, a slight whine in his tone, “and don’t roll your eyes at me! You’re the one who keeps wanting to stay on my bed!”

“Fine, fine,” Dongmin finally relents, laughing, shifting to sit up on the bed instead—and then he starts burrowing into Woonhak’s side. “Let me lie on you, then.”

Woonhak immediately protests, trying to push him away, “Dongmin-hyung, I swear—”

“Oh, you’re really comfortable,” Dongmin muses anyway, humming softly as he settles himself in his new position, still-damp hair now radiating warmth onto Woonhak’s stomach, through the fabric of his shirt. “Can I listen to your track?”

“I said no,” Woonhak grits out, accepting his fate. Dongmin’s lying on his back, head on Woonhak’s tummy and his feet hanging off the side of the bed. There’s no way it’s comfortable. There’s also no way that Woonhak can even type on his laptop like this, but Dongmin doesn’t care. He’s clearly vying for all of Woonhak’s attention, tonight. Woonhak can feel his heart in his throat. “You aren’t leaving anytime soon, are you?”

In lieu of an answer, Dongmin puts his phone down, reaches up to poke Woonhak’s nose, and then sticks his tongue out like a playful little cat.

Woonhak finds it so ridiculous. He can’t even be mad.

“Fine,” Woonhak concedes. He slams his laptop shut, sets it down on the bed beside Dongmin’s now-forgotten phone. “What did you wanna do, Dongmin-hyung?”

Dongmin just shrugs, another non-answer—but Woonhak doesn’t miss the way his eyes light up behind his shy, satisfied little smile.

So… yeah. Maybe Woonhak would go so far as to call it a crush—but it’s not like he ever intends for Dongmin to find out.

Frankly, Dongmin would just use it against him. He’s already got enough ammunition in the fact that he knows how much Woonhak looks up to him at all. Woonhak’s not sure when exactly he’d realized the daunting extent of those feelings, but he’d also decided not long after that he wasn’t going to treat it like a big deal—because it wasn’t. It isn’t, and it hasn’t been, and at the rate that they’re going, he doubts it’s going to have to be in the future.

Frankly, the little crush had been fairly easy to dismiss, the moment that Woonhak had actually thought it through for a second and concluded that it just wasn’t a possibility, that there was no way that Dongmin would ever think of him as anything other than a little kid, a dongsaeng he could mess with whenever he pleased. Woonhak thinks that maybe there was that one moment, the first time they did a stage rehearsal for But Sometimes, when Dongmin had completely immersed himself in the rock concept and all of Woonhak’s complicated feelings came hurtling at him like a tidal wave through his whole body—but even back then, Woonhak had dismissed it as nothing more than the ruinous combination of teenage hormones and constant proximity.

And, of course, Dongmin himself has unknowingly helped in breaking that spell, in every moment of weakness that Woonhak has felt creeping up on him again—purely by virtue of reminding him that he’s a mischievous fucking menace, when his intimidating, cool-guy persona falls away.

Now that they’re well into promotions, Woonhak has resigned himself to experiencing it at full-force, every single day. He’s got no escape from Dongmin’s clinginess, his incessant poking, his embarrassing remarks about how Woonhak is still such a baby, we still brush his teeth for him every morning, he’s like a big puppy, do some tricks for us, Woonhak-ah!—and it doesn’t help that the other four hyungs are all too happy to play into it. Fanservice, Dongmin always whispers into his ear, whenever he can tell that Woonhak’s starting to get frustrated, Onedoors love it, Hak-ah. Woonhak can’t complain because he knows that it’s true, and it’s not like he doesn’t like soaking up all of the attention, either.

So he lets Dongmin poke him. Woonhak lets Dongmin tickle his neck, whisper too breathily into his ear, grab his face from the side with his freakishly huge hands to get him to look at whatever sign a fan’s holding in the crowd. He plays his reaction up for the cameras even if he knows it makes him look like a whiny little kid. Whenever Woonhak’s anger bubbles up and he can’t help but yell back, Taesan-hyung, I told you to stop!, Dongmin will get all serious and deliberately turn to the crowd when he says, Yah, are you in your rebellious phase now? Talking back to your hyung? And Woonhak, of course, will grumble about how he can never win with them—and then he’ll run for refuge into the arms of whoever is being nicest to him on that particular day, usually Donghyun, who’ll scoop him up into his arms even if he’s also laughing along at his misery. At the end of the day, Woonhak knows that it’s all just fun, and sometimes he even finds amusement in the fact that their hairstylist knows to scold Dongmin now, whenever Woonhak’s hair is ruffled and messed up in between the end of one schedule and the beginning of the next. It’s always been Woonhak and Dongmin’s dynamic: the gentler, more genuine moments always wrapped up in that safety blanket of bickering and getting on each other’s nerves.

Woonhak likes it enough this way, he thinks. Dongmin keeps coming into Woonhak’s bedroom after their schedules are done lately, and Woonhak has put a temporary hold on working on the track that contains the muddling of everything that this boy makes him feel. On some nights more than others, it feels surreal to look down at Dongmin laying on his tummy and almost see himself mirrored back, even in Dongmin’s sharper features and more measured composure. Woonhak always wonders if Dongmin can hear how his stomach lurches underneath him, full of all the swallowed-down sentiments that Woonhak’s decided aren’t worth the effort or complication of turning into real words.

The way that the incident happens is… well, it makes enough sense—although Woonhak would never have expected it in a million years.

Today, they had another fansign event—one of the last before the promotion period is over—and right from the get-go, the day had started off… not so great. They’ve all been a little more tired than they were at the start of it all, which is par for the course, but they adjust to each other well enough in the ways they’ve learned to, over the years. Each of them has their own bad days, but they all try not to let it affect the rest of the group as much as possible, and in return, everyone else fills in the gaps.

Today was just one of those days that Woonhak had woken up more drained than usual, his too-short night’s sleep not enough to have him feeling fully refreshed and ready to take on a new, daunting day as Woonhak of BOYNEXTDOOR. It’s not like he acts mean or snippy to the hyungs anymore when he gets like this; he’s past the characteristic angst of his actual rebellious phase. Woonhak’s just quieter than usual, stuck in his own world instead of entertaining what any of the other guys want to rope him into—and so far, everyone seems to have gotten good enough at taking the hint and backing off. Even Dongmin.

But this time—this time, Woonhak could tell that something with Dongmin was different. He’d been acting a lot more mellowed out, never starting anything but laughing when anyone else does, and Woonhak has known him long enough to know that this is Dongmin’s version of being all moody and sensitive, switching seemingly arbitrarily between hot and cold. On the van ride to the venue, Woonhak had claimed the first spot in the front where he could listen to his music in peace—and he hadn’t thought much of it when Dongmin had sidled up next to him, leaving the back of the van for Donghyun, Sanghyeok, and the overly-energetic pair of Sungho and Jaehyun. It made enough sense; the fansign venue was an hour away from their dorm, and both Woonhak and Dongmin had the unspoken agreement to protect their collective peace during the ride, while the other four were being loud in the back. Woonhak had his headphones on, and he didn’t say anything when Dongmin crossed his arms, sinking down into the seat just enough to lay his head on Woonhak’s shoulder, and close his eyes.

Woonhak didn’t say anything, because he’s known Dongmin for a long time. Woonhak knows that Dongmin gets sensitive when he’s sleepy, and also that he gets clingy when he’s sensitive, though he’d never acknowledge that out loud. Woonhak knows that no one really knows how to figure out what Dongmin’s thinking on the mornings that he broods and crosses his arms and doesn’t talk to anybody, so Woonhak does his best at just keeping quiet, letting Dongmin take what he needs. And right then, Woonhak thought that he was doing a pretty decent job of being Dongmin’s human pillow, accepting the weight of his sleepy head in the same way he always accepts everything Dongmin does to rile him up.

All of that took a turn when Dongmin poked Woonhak in the arm, his brow pinched when Woonhak slid off one of the cups of his headphones, asking, “What?”

And Dongmin had responded, all annoyed, “Stop humming, I can’t sleep.”

Woonhak didn’t even have the energy to respond to that—nor did he have a chance. Dongmin had simply closed his eyes again after saying what he needed to say, and Woonhak had just let his mouth hang open in disbelief, before turning away to look out the window and not make a single sound for the rest of the ride.

He didn’t shake Dongmin off of his shoulder or anything—but it was enough to turn Woonhak’s so-so day into a bad one, his mood turning sour just from five, simple words. It pisses him off that he can’t even say anything, because he knows all too well that Dongmin is like this: the perfectly infuriating combination of never being the best at expressing his needs or emotions, but always saying exactly what’s on his mind. On a normal day, Woonhak would have made space for him—but today, Woonhak couldn’t stop himself from taking Dongmin’s words as more than they were, even if he knows that that probably wasn’t how Dongmin had meant them. Today, Woonhak doesn’t appreciate Dongmin being cold and robotic one second, and then laying his head back down on Woonhak’s shoulder the next.

Woonhak hated it even more when, during the fansign, Dongmin seemed to have pulled an entire 180, joking around with Woonhak as he normally does, as if nothing had happened. It was almost like he’d sucked up what was left of Woonhak’s energy and taken it all for himself, only to turn around and rub it in his face.

It was all of the usual things. The poking. Squeezing random parts of him from behind. Putting him in outlandish costumes and baiting him into doing aegyo for a bunch of cameras. All the things Woonhak is used to—but today, he wasn’t having it.

After about the fifth time that Dongmin sneaks up behind him—trying to poke when he thinks Woonhak’s not looking—Woonhak catches his hands, grabs them both a little more harshly than usual, his camera-smile still plastered on his face even as he leans over behind Dongmin to whisper, “Stop it, hyung. I’m not in the mood.”

And then he’d made a point to cling to all the other members for the rest of the event, playing along with the skits they’d want to do and the pranks they wanted to play and the costumes they wanted to wear. Dongmin had looked a little dejected afterward, admittedly—but it was the kind of subtle pout that Woonhak somehow knows was only meant for him to see, another signal that—just for today—Woonhak just couldn’t be bothered to try and decode.

On the van ride home, Dongmin acts like nothing happened. Again. They sit in the same spots that they did in the morning, except this time, Woonhak and Dongmin are awake enough to join in with the other four, every now and then. This time, it’s Sanghyeok who’s dead asleep and leaned against the window, and the chit-chat is a bit more controlled as Jaehyun and Sungho start a conversation about if they should all order food tonight, and where from. Woonhak has to turn his head to look back every time he wants to interject with his opinion, and Dongmin is always in his line of sight, but he skillfully ignores it every time he thinks Dongmin’s trying to catch his eyes. Woonhak knows he’s being petty, but he also thinks that Dongmin should realize some at some point that he’s being insufferable; there’s only so much that Woonhak can do when Dongmin refuses to acknowledge that anything’s wrong, too.

So, now, Woonhak is here. Alone in his bedroom, peaceful, but also seething. 

He’s finally working on his rage track again, after months of putting it on hold in favor of putting up with Dongmin’s antics, even playing into all of it himself; he doubts that Dongmin will follow their usual routine tonight of waltzing into Woonhak’s bedroom like he owns the place, and so he smashes away at his keyboard, layering and rearranging sounds as he sees fit, channeling all of the frustrated energy that’s been building up within him this whole day.

When Dongmin does swing his door open, against all odds—Woonhak doesn’t waste a second to glare at him, saying as firmly as he can, “Get out.”

Of course, Dongmin doesn’t listen. He proceeds as usual, only a slight pout on his face as he makes a beeline for Woonhak’s bed, and Woonhak should be used to this already—but he is not having it. Not today.

“I said, get out, Dongmin-hyung.”

Dongmin just raises an eyebrow at him, wordlessly shifting to actually sit properly on the bed. Woonhak can only really see him out of the corner of his eye, stubbornly committed to staring only at the screen of his laptop, the way Dongmin always does with his phone. He’s wearing that old band tee he’d taken back from Woonhak, and Woonhak scoffs internally at the audacity of this guy, sometimes.

After a beat of silence—long enough that Dongmin probably thinks he can just disregard Woonhak’s attempt at kicking him out—he asks, “What are you working on?”

“Tsk,” Woonhak clicks his tongue in annoyance, catching both of Dongmin’s hands before he can turn the laptop toward him and take a look. “Didn’t I tell you to stop?”

When Woonhak turns his head to look at him again, Dongmin has this wet-cat expression on his face, pouted lips and a crumpled brow. It lasts for a second before it shifts into a barely hidden roll of his eyes, after which he asks Woonhak, all serious, “What is up with you today?”

Woonhak takes a deep breath, clenches his jaw. He thinks it should be pretty obvious, what’s up with him today. It’s just one of those days when Woonhak is a bit sensitive and less amenable to being his five hyungs’ human stress ball. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before, and today in particular, everyone seems to have noticed it well enough to adjust the way they act—except, of course, for Dongmin, who still continues to pester him non-stop.

“I already told you, I’m just not in the mood.”

Dongmin just blinks, his face giving away how all the gears are spinning in his head. He shrinks a little under the noise of his own thoughts, and god, Woonhak wishes he’d just say what he needs to say out loud. 

“Hyung, can you just—”

“Yah, if I did something wrong, just talk to me like a grown-up.”

Woonhak’s eyes widen in barely contained rage, and he slams his laptop shut, faces him head-on.

“Do you expect me to take that seriously right now?” Woonhak snaps, defiant. “Han Dongmin, you can’t keep acting like a child and expect me to be okay with you always treating me like one.”

“Hak-ah, I don’t mess with you ‘cause you’re younger than me—I do it ‘cause you’re fun to mess with. That’s it. And it’s not like I’d care if you gave it right back.”

Woonhak exhales through his nose, anger bubbling up inside of him. “Hyung, I don’t care if you think it’s fun! Sometimes I’m not in the mood to be your on-call clown!”

Dongmin, again, doesn’t answer—and Woonhak is about to chew him out fully when he sees the beginnings of a laugh on his face—but after a few seconds, it’s Dongmin who concedes, surprisingly easily, “Okay, okay. Hyung’s sorry, Hak-ah.”

Woonhak, in an attempt to stand his ground, simply sighs and looks away. “Seriously, hyung—what do you even get out of making me angry all the time?”

“Angry?” Dongmin pouts up at him, shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t— It’s not… I thought you liked me paying attention to you.”

Woonhak gulps, caught off-guard. Dongmin crawls over closer to him on the bed, legs crossed underneath him and slumped forward so he’s looking right into Woonhak’s eyes—and Woonhak doesn’t know how to respond to that because it’s true, but it’s also an ego boost that would give Dongmin the upper hand again—as if that band tee and his round eyes and his stupidly handsome face weren’t already enough. 

So, in a split-second of boldness, Woonhak decides to turn it back on him, read between the lines of everything Dongmin hasn’t said. “There are other ways for you to get my attention, you know.”

Han Dongmin doesn’t mince words. Woonhak knows that well enough—but at the end of the day, he sees right through it, too. All that it means is that whenever Dongmin has something he can’t say directly, he translates it into an action instead. Like poking at Woonhak’s ribs. ‘Accidentally’ closing one of Woonhak’s laptop tabs. Burrowing into Woonhak’s already too-small bed. Stealing his clothes.

And not long after he’d said what he said, Woonhak finds out—maybe even stealing a kiss.

He barely has time to regain his bearings by the time he realizes what’s happening. One second, Dongmin was cozying up to his side, and the next, he’s looking into Woonhak’s eyes, leaning over to press a shy kiss onto the corner of his mouth. Woonhak’s brain malfunctions, as anyone would expect—and then by the time that he realizes what had happened, he must be making a face that Dongmin chooses to interpret as, Kiss me again.

Because Dongmin kisses him again. This time, he reaches up to grab Woonhak’s face and turns his head right to where their lips can actually reach each other, and there’s a split-second instance in which Woonhak bites his own tongue to see if he’ll wake up from some sort of weird dream. Strangely enough, he stays right where he is, long enough to register that Dongmin tastes like toothpaste and he responds with small sighs when Woonhak squeezes at his waist over his shirt. Woonhak doesn’t even remember when he’d put his hand there.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t actually take all that long for Woonhak to remember his own pride. The moment that Dongmin starts crawling even closer—swinging one leg over Woonhak’s legs to sit in his lap—is the same moment that Woonhak pushes him off with both hands, chest heaving as he watches Dongmin sit back, confused, lips all swollen and wet with spit. It starts to register in Woonhak’s head what all of this could mean—and, more frighteningly, what it might not. 

Dongmin had just kissed him. Woonhak had kissed him back.

Woonhak realizes pretty quickly: he can’t just let this be another thing that Dongmin gets away with, too.

“Wh— What are you doing?” Woonhak is the first to ask, looking at him as if Dongmin had just made another one of his usual, silly jokes.

Dongmin just blinks, tries to reach out for Woonhak’s hand with a nervous laugh. “...Isn’t it clear?”

Woonhak rolls his eyes in disbelief. He tells him plainly, “No, it’s not.”

“Come on, don’t be like that…” Dongmin huffs, still sitting in his lap. Even in this situation, Woonhak thinks it’s a little bit cute. “It’s embarrassing…”

The first thing that Woonhak feels is frustration—but then, not long after, it bubbles over into something more like fascination. 

And then Woonhak gets the bright idea that it’s about time he started standing his ground with Dongmin, too.

“If it’s so embarrassing, then you shouldn’t have done it.”

Dongmin chuckles nervously, reaching up to scratch the back of his head. “Yah, stop being so serious—”

“I told you,” Woonhak says firmly, “I’m not doing this with you today.”

Woonhak knows that he’s being a little mean. He also knows that all of this started because he’s always had no real way of knowing what Dongmin actually wants—and he might have been fine with letting him test the limits of what he could get away with before—but now, Woonhak’s real feelings are involved. He’d been doing perfectly fine keeping them at bay when he thought that fantasies were all they could ever be—and now that they’re dancing on the edge of them actually coming into reality, things are different. It’s not just all fun anymore. If Woonhak has ever wondered before to what extent he’d allow himself to be Dongmin’s little plaything, then apparently, this is how he discovers where he draws the line.

“Why did you do that?” Woonhak asks, as if it was just another gag for the cameras, and Dongmin starts chewing on his lip: thinking everything, saying nothing. Woonhak sighs.

“Did you not like it?”

“I asked you a question, hyung.”

Woonhak stands his ground, and Dongmin’s clearly not used to it. It makes Woonhak a little bit sick to think that Dongmin might have kissed him thinking it would be enough to break through Woonhak’s unusual sternness today—that it was a mere moment of panic wherein he’d simply played his cards too fast.

Woonhak asks again, “Are you not gonna say anything?”

Dongmin pouts, and then asks as if he’s the one being completely reasonable, “What’s there to say?”

What’s there to say is that Woonhak can’t act on his feelings if Dongmin’s not ready or willing to say his own out loud, too. Woonhak holds back on saying those exact words, though, keen on getting Dongmin to reflect on the fact that he can’t always just go taking what he wants, stringing Woonhak along like he’s easy, some kind of pushover. He’s not.

“Figure it out, hyung,” Woonhak says with a smug smirk, leaning forward into Dongmin’s space. “When you’ve got a better attitude, maybe I’ll let you try that again.”

Dongmin shifts in place, a dramatically scorned look on his face. “...What?”

“You heard me,” Woonhak says, and then taps gently at Dongmin’s knee. “And, hyung?”

Dongmin looks into his eyes, confused and still a little bit hopeful, “Yeah?”

Woonhak smiles politely, and whispers lowly right into Dongmin’s ear, “Get out of my room, please.”

Dongmin pulls away, frowning—though Woonhak doesn’t miss the red blush creeping up his neck, all the way up to his ears. Interesting. 

Dongmin doesn’t say anything, only huffs and puffs as he crawls off of Woonhak’s bed, does a sad little shuffle toward the door, and closes it behind him with an uncharacteristically soft click.

Donghyun convinces Dongmin to get a fish.

Woonhak eventually realizes that Dongmin’s dejection on the day of the kissing incident was more than just a one-day thing.

It starts becoming more noticeable once their promotion period ends, and Dongmin stops coming to Woonhak’s room altogether. One night, Woonhak had started to pick up on Dongmin’s new pattern—constantly holed up in his studio at the company, saying he’s working on music, but never inviting Woonhak or Jaehyun to come work with him anymore—and it’s stayed that way ever since, with no clear reason why. Dongmin stops sending ideas for new tracks in their group chat, doesn’t respond to their invitations to eat dinner at the same table, and no longer comes downstairs to be a menace to the people who are most likely to give him a big reaction. Now that he has started coming downstairs again gradually, he’s always in Donghyun’s room—and Woonhak really shouldn’t feel some type of way about that. Dongmin and Donghyun have always been close, after all. Anyone else would have never been able to somehow coax Dongmin—in the midst of all of brooding and moping—into taking care of a fish.

When it comes to whatever happened between him and Woonhak—Dongmin, of course, stubbornly resorts to pretending like nothing’s happened at all. And Woonhak doesn’t let his ego get so big as to think that that was the reason that Dongmin had fallen into this pattern, but he’s also not shameless enough to not at least consider that it’s partially his fault. Kissing aside, Woonhak had been so smug and ticked off the last time that he told Dongmin to get out of his room, and he doesn’t know what to do about the fact that all of a sudden, Dongmin took it seriously. Probably too seriously, because he’s dramatic like that—but whatever. It’s not like Woonhak hasn’t been dealing with the extremes of Dongmin’s emotions since he was young enough that he barely even understood his own.

The conclusion that eventually gets Woonhak to bend instead of break, is that if Dongmin isn’t bothering him—he probably isn’t bothering anyone. He’s pouring all of his energy into taking care of his new betta fish, and while Yongyongie is very cute, Dongmin holing himself up in his bedroom doesn’t help any of them understand what’s going on in his head. 

So—despite Woonhak’s resolution to wait for Dongmin to puff up his chest and own up to his feelings, this time around—Woonhak gives in to the whims of his own, bleeding heart. Again.

He starts out small, at first; Woonhak initiates conversations with Dongmin little by little whenever he’s around at their dorm, knocks on Dongmin’s studio door whenever they’re in the company building at the same time. Dongmin barely responds, but Woonhak doesn’t let it faze him. He figures it’s enough to at least remind Dongmin that he’s still there.

Woonhak’s patience pays off, eventually—even if it means that when Dongmin starts acknowledging him again, he’s annoying and petty as fuck. When Woonhak asks questions like, Do you wanna hang out in my room, Dongmin-hyung? or more specific things like, Jaehyun-hyung and I are stuck on this track, can you give it a listen?, Dongmin shrugs him off—and, on one occasion, he goes as far as to pout and tell Woonhak, I don’t know, I don’t think I have a great attitude today—what if I make you angry again?

And Dongmin’s off-the-wall, unpredictable signals make Woonhak want to simply perish, especially in times like this. Dongmin has spent about a month ignoring Woonhak, pretending like that thing between them didn’t happen; Woonhak decides to run with it, coax him back into their normal without pushing Dongmin too far—only for Dongmin to make it very clear with a single remark that he remembers what Woonhak had said to him that day, word for word, and he’s been sharpening the memory in his head like a knife ever since.

It’s so fucking frustrating, no matter how patient Woonhak is still trying to be. Lately, on the nights that Woonhak’s alone because Dongmin refuses to bother him like he used to, Woonhak’s been opening his laptop and getting a bunch of work done on that thrown-together track of all his anger—and surprisingly, it’s starting to actually get pretty good. Woonhak’s channeling all the things he can’t bring himself to say to anyone else’s face: Who does Han Dongmin think he is? He’s not even all that, whatever, why should I keep reaching out if he doesn’t want my help? Fuck this, he can fuck off. He can keep hanging out in Donghyun’s room, everyone else treats me so much better anyway—

Then Woonhak realizes he’s a goddamn hypocrite, a walking contradiction. The only reason that he’d be this annoyed by Dongmin ignoring him is because he cares about him. Woonhak’s working on a track that gets opened every time Dongmin gets his attention, as if his first instinct is to give him even more—even when Dongmin isn’t looking. It doesn’t matter if Woonhak says he hates that he has a crush on him; he still has a fucking crush on him. He remembers Dongmin’s words—I thought you liked me paying attention to you—because that day’s also been on a loop in Woonhak’s head, ever since.

And no matter how mad Dongmin makes him, seeing Dongmin have a hard time always breaks Woonhak’s heart more.

It feels inevitable when Woonhak is the one who ends up biting the bullet first—but pride has always been something he pushed aside when it came to Han Dongmin.

It’s simple enough. Really, all that Woonhak has to do is the same thing that Dongmin always does to him: he takes the elevator upstairs, waltzes into the other dorm, and barges into Dongmin’s room to take up space without warning on his bed.

Dongmin’s first reaction is surprise—and then he’s speechless, for some reason. He stares like Woonhak’s grown two heads. Woonhak just opens up the laptop he’d brought with him, and then turns it to face toward Dongmin, showing him a song he’d hit a wall on after working on it for the past few days.

“Hey, Yongyongie,” is what Woonhak decides to say first, his voice awkward and a little stiff as he waves at the little fish tank in the corner of Dongmin’s room. Only then does he look Dongmin in the eye properly, gesturing at his laptop as if to say, “Hyung, I had an idea for an effect on this bridge, but I don’t know how to do it.”

Dongmin continues to stare. The first sound that comes out of his mouth is a surprised, slightly awkward, “...So?”

“Help me,” Woonhak says with a shrug, spelling it out. “Or do you not want to?”

Dongmin sighs—a long, subtle breath out of his nose.

Woonhak gives him all the time he needs to brew on the answer. He’s exerted his patience for too long to let it run thin now.

“...I’ll try,” Dongmin answers, patting the space beside him on the bed as he scoots over. “Show it to me first.”

For all of the guts that it took for Woonhak to suck it up and come over here at all—Dongmin’s answer is surprisingly subdued. Woonhak would have thought that there’d be more snark, more bite to Dongmin’s responses as they tried to recalibrate whatever had gotten messed up in the interim between them, but instead, there’s this. Woonhak crawls up to be at Dongmin’s side, sitting against the pillows of his bed, and Dongmin is so uncharacteristically mellow as he grabs Woonhak’s laptop, pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

As Dongmin clicks around on the keyboard, it becomes increasingly likely to Woonhak that despite all of this tension between them—Dongmin definitely knows what he’s trying to do. The thing that he’s asking Dongmin to do for him isn’t some impossible, grand idea, after all; Woonhak could have gone and asked literally anyone, like Jaehyun or some of the other, more experienced producers at the company, or he could have played around for as long as he needed to figure it out on his own. It’s not like Woonhak’s even trying to hide his flimsy excuse to make a bid for Dongmin’s attention again—but the fact that Dongmin’s actually just going along with it is kind of messing with his head.

God, anything that Dongmin does messes with Woonhak’s head, these days. Woonhak needs to stop letting him get away with not taking responsibility for any of it.

And yet—here they are. Woonhak is a goddamn hypocrite, after all, as he explains the track on his computer for Dongmin to tweak however he likes. Woonhak doesn’t end up really caring about how it sounds after a while, focusing instead on watching the way that Dongmin’s bony hands move across the keyboard, the way his eyelashes flutter behind his glasses, lenses glowing with the screen’s blue light. Woonhak’s eyes go glossy and he feels like he’s fifteen again, waiting for a lift at the corner of Dongmin’s lips or a glance of Dongmin’s eyes his way—except this time, Woonhak’s twenty, and this is probably the thousandth time they’re working on music together, but the first time they’re alone in a room with a closed door after they’d kissed. Fuck, Woonhak has to wonder when they’re both going to stop glossing over that little detail.

“Dongmin-hyung,” Woonhak says after a beat of silence, only the sounds on the laptop filling up the room, “are you okay?”

Dongmin looks him in the eye for the first time since Woonhak had climbed onto the bed, like he’s trying to parse out what’s at the heart of what Woonhak’s asking. Woonhak lets him decide that for himself. “Do you mean the… slump?”

Woonhak blinks. There’s an immediate, sinking feeling in his chest when he realizes that Dongmin calls it The Slump like it’s something that everybody else knows—but no one’s ever told him. Certainly not Dongmin, until now. “Is that what it is?”

Dongmin sighs. HIs fingers stop moving on Woonhak’s keyboard, and he shrugs like it’s not a big deal. “I’m fine. It’s normal. It happens to everyone.”

“It’s not fine,” Woonhak clicks his tongue. “You don’t seem fine.”

“Mm,” Dongmin hums, incredulous. “I just haven’t been… I haven’t been having ideas. You know me—I don’t really know what else to do when I’m not creating something. I’m just… purposeless. And bored.”

Woonhak nods, understanding. He’d known that in the back of his head, somehow, but it’s nice that Dongmin is still willing to share it with him on his own. “Yeah?”

Dongmin just nods in response. “There’s also not really enough time to try and start anything new, so… just have to go through it, I guess.”

“That’s why you got the fish, though, right?” Woonhak gestures over at the fish tank, chuckling, “Yongyongie sees you more than any of us do, these days.”

“Donghyun set everything up for me, so it was easy to start.” Dongmin scoffs lightly, stealing a split-second glance into Woonhak’s eyes, before saying— “Besides… it’s not like I could go and bother you.”

Woonhak stiffens up instantly, and thinks, ah, there it is.

He’d been going back and forth in his head about if he should even ask anymore, after Woonhak had already coaxed so much out of him—so he’s glad that Dongmin finally, finally brings something up on his own, even as indirectly as this.

“Why wouldn’t you be able to come to me?” Woonhak asks, softening Dongmin’s choice of words. “You do it all the time.”

Dongmin clicks his tongue, clearly getting riled up, a break in earlier’s mellowed-out façade. “You’re playing dumb.”

“Oh, do you mean, that last time? When I snapped at you and told you to get out?” Woonhak says, getting a bit more bold. “Yah, when did that ever stop you before? I always let you back in anyway.”

Dongmin just stares at him again for a good, few seconds, genuinely puzzled. Sizing him up. There seems to be a moment when it dawns on him that Woonhak’s toying with him a little—just like that on that same, exact day they’re talking about—giving Dongmin a chance at what he wants, but not without a challenge. When Dongmin catches on, he seems to test the waters by asking, “...So you forgive me?”

“Sure,” Woonhak shrugs, amused. He gives Dongmin some grace while he figures out the rules of the game they’re both now playing, as of today. “We were both just sensitive that day.”

Dongmin glares, mildly irritated. He clicks his tongue. “I didn’t do that because I was being sensitive.”

“So you snapped at me in the morning because you genuinely found my humming annoying?” Woonhak pushes some more, refusing to let Dongmin get away with dancing around the real issue until someone else does it for him. “Then you spent the whole day pissing me off in front of our fans, just to get back at me for it?”

“What?”

“What?” Woonhak asks, smug, doing his best to maintain his steely composure. Something has got to give eventually—and just this once, Woonhak has to stand by the fact that he’s more than done his part. He can’t be the only one putting down his pride.

And Dongmin relents, just the slightest bit— “Tsk. You know that’s not what I mean?”

“What did you mean, then?”

Woonhak looks at him, hopeful. They might be able to address this once and for all, instead of engaging in this needless battle of willpower and wits.

But then, unfortunately enough, Dongmin just backs down. “Nevermind.”

Woonhak rolls his eyes. Dongmin is choosing to be stubborn again, just huffing indignantly as he turns his attention back to the track on Woonhak’s laptop—but at least they’re on bickering terms again, from the looks of it. “Fine, Dongmin-hyung. Whatever you say.”

“You’re so annoying, Kim Woonhak.”

Well—that’s fine for now. All in all, Woonhak thinks he’s given Dongmin a fair amount of chances to own up to his messy, spur-of-the-moment actions; and even if he doesn’t, Woonhak has at least established that there’s no need for Dongmin to avoid him like the plague, regardless.

“You can come to me if you wanna play around with some tracks or something, you know,” Woonhak tells him directly for good measure, swinging an arm loosely around Dongmin’s shoulders, trying to push some boundaries of his own. “It’s not like I ever stay mad at you for long. You don’t have to sulk around alone.”

Surprisingly, Dongmin doesn’t move. His fingers fidget uselessly with the arrow keys on Woonhak’s keyboard, and he sinks ever so slightly into a burrow he moulds into Woonhak’s side. “It’s not like I’m alone. Donghyun got me a fish and everything. You’re not the only person who wants to hang out with me, you know.”

Woonhak rolls his eyes, scoffs at the way that Dongmin says those words at the exact same time that his shoulders relax, leaning into Woonhak’s side. “Tch. Well, sorry I couldn’t set up a whole fish habitat for you like Donghyun-hyung, then. All I said was you could come to me for anything else.”

“Mmm, I got it, Hak-ah,” Dongmin chuckles lightly, some more of his usual affection starting to bleed back in. “Now shut up so I can listen to the track, mm?”

Woonhak shakes his head, endeared. It’s nice to fall back into their usual rhythm, after a while.

It’s also nice to have Dongmin here, halfway in his arms, thinking he’s doing a good job at hiding how he drinks up Woonhak’s affection after going so long without it. Woonhak brings his hand up gently after a while—focusing on Dongmin while Dongmin focuses on the laptop screen—and Woonhak tries not to disturb the delicate balance they’ve created as he very, very lightly pats Dongmin’s hair, a mirror of the the way that Dongmin always messily ruffles his. Dongmin doesn’t swat him away, surprisingly, and it finally calms Woonhak’s heart down a bit, after worrying over Dongmin’s mood swings for what feels like so long.

Woonhak and Dongmin bicker like usual after that, just with softer voices and sweeter tones as they continue trying to find the flow of the track. Dongmin doesn’t bring up the kiss, and Woonhak doesn’t force it, focusing on just being present for now, helping Dongmin through the ups and downs of a hard time. Woonhak rubs soothingly at Dongmin’s hair, secretly messages the group chat to order some food so Dongmin can eat something other than instant noodles, and listens to all of Dongmin’s suggestions until they can make music out of a track that Woonhak had brought to him just for the hell of it. 

At the end of the day, Woonhak is glad that Dongmin doesn’t deny him the opportunity to care for him in all these little ways—even if Woonhak knows it’s only a fraction of all that Dongmin has done for him, over all these years. It’s no use pretending that Dongmin hasn’t always meant this much to him, after all. Woonhak’s happy to keep playing this game of back-and-forth until the day that Dongmin realizes that Woonhak had already lost—and he’s known it—from the very start.

It becomes apparent soon enough that Woonhak choosing to hold his ground hasn’t been entirely fruitless, after all—because sooner than later, even if it’s in the most roundabout, tongue-in-cheek ways, Dongmin seems to start itching to find reasons to bring up that incident again.

Dongmin is still as determined as ever to skirt around having to say it directly—but his own coyness, mixed with Woonhak’s feigned indifference, is wearing him down, bit by bit. Woonhak can tell. He wouldn’t be able to explain how he can tell—but he can. He knows Dongmin well; he always has. 

Part of it is definitely in the way that Dongmin’s gotten more touchy with him, somehow. Just a few months ago, Woonhak wouldn’t have even thought that was possible with how much Dongmin enjoys poking and prodding him and just endlessly pushing his buttons. It’s an entirely different kind of touchy-feely, however, that Dongmin’s been ever since getting hit by the worst throes of his creative slump; with Woonhak specifically, Dongmin is just a lot more clingy, without the excessive need to be over-the-top and annoying. They still bicker a lot—par for the course—but Dongmin isn’t always so egregious about picking a fight just to watch Woonhak squirm for his own personal entertainment, and Woonhak thinks it feels… unfamiliar, for sure. But also—strangely rewarding. It seems that Dongmin had taken Woonhak’s words seriously, when he’d assured him there was no need to isolate himself when he wasn’t feeling his best.

And so these days, Dongmin’s back in Woonhak’s bedroom a lot—half the time uninvited—and Woonhak always welcomes him, pretending he’s annoyed even if he always goes along with whatever the hell Dongmin wants.

“Is this what people mean about domesticating a hissy, feral cat…?”

It’s a beat too late when Woonhak realizes he’d said it out loud, and Dongmin looks up at him, puzzled. “...What did you just say?”

Today, they’re watching a movie on Woonhak’s laptop, one of the old Spiderman ones that Dongmin says he doesn’t remember anymore since he’d seen it such a long time ago. Dongmin’s head is on the pillow next to Woonhak’s thigh, eyes darting around despite Woonhak’s insistence that it’s an exercise in sitting still, because they can’t drag Dongmin out of his slump by forcing him to work on music all the time, especially when it’s frustrating more than fulfilling. Woonhak had told Dongmin, in simple words, Hyung, you need to learn to be okay with being bored sometimes, too.

“Uh…” Woonhak gulps, hoping that Dongmin will just drop it if he says, “...nothing.”

Dongmin looks at him for a good, two seconds—and then, like he’s been doing a lot lately—he backs down. “Sure.”

He turns his eyes back to the screen as silence falls over them—and no matter how many movies they’ve watched together over these past few days, it seems like neither of them are even capable of taking Woonhak’s advice.

Neither of them have been sitting still, clearly. They’re both a little restless around each other, still—darting eyes and deep breaths that go nowhere—though it’s Dongmin who’s suddenly not very good at hiding it, the longer the tension between them stays heavy and thick. Dongmin’s always trying, and then backing out at the last second, the way he did just now. He’ll glance up at Woonhak repeatedly. He’ll put his hand on Woonhak’s knee, snake it up his thigh. He’ll clear his throat, click his tongue. Woonhak notices, of course. It takes everything in him not to put Dongmin out of his misery every time.

Today, too, Dongmin does all of these things. His hand is rubbing mindless patterns over Woonhak’s knee, and Woonhak keeps catching him stealing glances out of the corner of his eye—like Woonhak is supposed to do something about it—but Woonhak is still keen on not being the one to break first.

On the other hand, though—they’ve been at this for so long. Too long.

If Woonhak’s going to finally throw Dongmin a bone today, he’s not going to waste the opportunity to mess with him a little, too.

“You know, hyung,” Woonhak speaks up, all casual, like he isn’t being a little mean by dangling this right in Dongmin’s face, “you’re not gonna get anything out of me if you just keep staring like that, all the time.”

And Dongmin exhales through his nose, his instinctual retort likely dying on his tongue, frustration bleeding through as he narrows his eyes. “I can’t figure you out, Kim Woonhak.”

Woonhak huffs. He feels a little bit crazy about the fact that that does something to him. It’s rare that he gets to see Dongmin all scatterbrained and messy and desperate—and it’s all because of Woonhak, instead of the other way around. “I’m not sure what you mean, hyung. I’m an open book.”

“Tsk,” Dongmin clicks his tongue, reaching over to pause the movie. He moves to sit up straighter on the bed, until their eyes are a bit more level—and then he runs a hand roughly through his messed-up hair. “Just tell me what it is, Woonhak-ah. Am I not attractive to you? Did I do something wrong, back then? Did you just forget that it happened?”

Woonhak stares at him with wide eyes, surprised at how suddenly it’s all tumbling out of his mouth. He’d been prepared to give it at least another week until Dongmin would break, so he’s quite a bit shocked—but once that wears off, he’s left with that same, crazed amusement from earlier. He can’t believe Dongmin’s asking if Woonhak doesn’t think he’s attractive or forgot that it happened, as if those could be the only possible reasons for Woonhak kicking him out instead of kissing him senseless, back then. It’s kind of cute how frustrated Dongmin is when he realizes that his usual tricks aren’t going to work this time around—and that even if Woonhak thinks he’s insanely attractive, has always thought highly of him—Woonhak is also the one who’s earned the right to take Dongmin’s ego down a notch, hold this kind of power over him until Dongmin admits that he wants to give in.

“Woonhak.” Dongmin speaks up again when Woonhak goes too long without an answer, the grimace deepening on his face as he starts to feel more and more exposed. “Do you just not like me?”

“No one here doesn’t like you, hyung. Of course I like you.” Woonhak chuckles fondly, cupping a hand over the back of Dongmin’s palm to placate him. Dongmin’s fingers twitch, but he doesn’t pull them away. “Come on. We both know you wouldn’t even be asking me that if you thought that I disliked you—”

“Stop playing dumb,” Dongmin clicks his tongue again, takes his hand away to run through his hair. He stays that way, eyes closed and palm pressed to his forehead, when he sighs heavily and asks, “I meant— Do you not like me back?”

Now, that—that makes Woonhak’s eyes turn into saucers on his face. “What?”

“I kissed you, because I thought you liked me back,” Dongmin says with another click of his tongue, another heavy sigh. Then he finally opens his eyes, and stares deep into Woonhak’s soul, a bright red flush creeping up his cheeks and the tips of his ears, “I kissed you, and then you kissed me back—and then you rejected me, two seconds later. I want to know why, Woonhak-ah.”

Woonhak meets Dongmin’s deadly stare for a second—then two, then three—before he breaks into a single, disbelieving laugh. “Dongmin-hyung—oh my god. Oh my god! That’s all I was waiting for you to say, all this time!”

Dongmin’s eye twitches, and his lips part in exasperation. “Sorry, what?”

“I’m glad you admit that it was you who kissed me,” Woonhak laughs, shaking his head, “and you’re the one who has to take responsibility.”

“Are you serious?”

“Am I wrong?!”

“So, all this time—” Dongmin pinches his brow, “—all these mind games, and that’s all you wanted to hear?”

“Well, were you ever gonna say it, if I didn’t?”

“That’s— I—”

“Hyung. You know better than anyone that I can never actually win against you, right?” Woonhak explains, finally softening his tone. It’s about time he started being honest, too; they’ve messed with each other enough, and this is all that Woonhak wanted, anyway: for Dongmin to take a risk on his true feelings for once, instead of hiding behind humor and ambiguity and closing off his own heart in the process. “But, you know, it doesn’t actually matter to me. I’d let you win all you want—but when you kissed me, it was still a game to you. I didn’t want it to be a game, hyung. I wanted it to be real.”

Dongmin huffs. He darts his eyes away, mutters under his breath, “Your lips touched my lips. Was that not real enough for you?”

Woonhak rolls his eyes. “The point is—we were arguing, and you still wanted to win.” Woonhak pouts as he looks Dongmin right in the eye, driving the point home— “I just wanted to kiss.”

Another silence falls over them after Woonhak’s humble admission. He observes with downturned eyes how Dongmin’s eyelashes flutter as he blinks, how his throat bobs with every nervous swallow.

Then, Dongmin answers, “Who ever said I didn’t just want to kiss, too?” He rolls his eyes at Woonhak for the hell of it, makes a point of inching forward, ever so slightly, into the bubble of Woonhak’s personal space. Dongmin clicks his tongue one more time, his voice smaller now, “Yah, I just confessed that I like you, you know. Aren’t you going to at least answer me, you brat?”

Woonhak takes a deep breath, bites the inside of his cheek as that cloying, familiar feeling creeps like a million, ticking time bombs over his skin. He’s kind of missed it, honestly. Dongmin hasn’t riled him up like this in what feels like forever.

“Of course I like you, too, Dongmin-hyung,” Woonhak tells him with a deep sigh, resigned to his fate. “Who’s playing dumb now? You act like that because you know that I like you.”

Dongmin huffs. “Like what?”

“Like this,” Woonhak answers, closing more and more of the empty space between them, “like a demon sent to torment me, every single day of my life.”

“Are you sure I don’t just make your heart flutter?” Dongmin scoffs—and just like that, they’re just as close as they were on that day from months ago. Just as close as Woonhak has been imagining, replaying in his head, over and over, wondering if he’ll ever see the day that he won’t have to just imagine any longer. “Do you want me to torment you less, then?”

Woonhak shakes his head. He doesn’t have to wonder anymore.

“You can do what you want,” he answers, the words a mere puff of air against Dongmin’s lips.

Dongmin is kissing him right after, somehow more desperate than the last time. Woonhak’s hands catch his waist when Dongmin leans into him, knees chafing against the mattress, exhaling in short sighs as his heartbeat adjusts to Woonhak’s pace.

Woonhak feels like his entire body goes lax when Dongmin finally goes to sit in his lap, eager and a little shy, and Woonhak can finally pick up where they’d left off. He’s almost sick with the rush of power that it gives him—now that all his resolve is crumbling and his inhibitions are put down, all at once—to finally see how Dongmin wants him, how he really wants him, when all the mind games and petty aggressions are pushed to the side. Woonhak can’t help the harsh way that he grips at Dongmin’s jaw to angle his chin up further, can’t help the rush of pride that fills him when he’s able to catch Dongmin’s wandering hands and tell him to, “Behave, Han Dongmin. You know better than to make me mad again.”

And instead of obeying, of course, Dongmin scoffs into Woonhak’s mouth. He struggles against the hand looped around his wrists, then he captures Woonhak’s lips again. And again. Then he trails his lips downward, experimental, and noses at the pulse point where Woonhak’s ear meets his jaw. Dongmin is taunting and coy when he looks right into Woonhak’s eyes, and says, “Bite me, you brat.”

Woonhak grabs his chin with a bit more force, eyes sparkling at the way that Dongmin just grins against the rougher touch. “You’ll make me go crazy, one of these da—”

Dongmin doesn’t let him finish, breaking free from Woonhak’s hold to kiss him again. Woonhak bites lightly at his bottom lip, just like he’d asked. Dongmin keens, forces Woonhak to swallow the sound. Woonhak can’t help but paw greedily at the curves of Dongmin’s body under his clothes—the dip of his waist, the juts of his hips, the small of his back. Even that pisses him off to no end. Dongmin is so fucking hot.

“Hyung.”

“Yeah.”

“I—”

“Hey, did you guys want anything for— Oh my fucking god!”

Woonhak and Dongmin pull away in an instant, just briefly—but the door of Woonhak’s bedroom is slammed shut before either of them could even notice that it had swung open, leaving only a mortifying silence and the echo of what’s unmistakably Myung Jaehyun’s voice, outside the door.

“…lock the door next time, Kim Woonhak! No one here needs to see that, you two are unbeliev…”

Woonhak looks up at Dongmin, waits until Dongmin turns his attention back toward him, and away from the door. There’s a bright red flush that tinges Dongmin’s skin—from his cheeks to his ears down to his neck—and Woonhak’s mind is going in spirals imagining the way it must creep down under his clothes.

He should probably save that thought for later. He really, really should.

“Hak-ah…”

But Woonhak looks up, and Dongmin is still eyeing his lips with his pupils blown wide—and that little interruption should probably have been as sobering as it was mortifying—but it isn’t. Dongmin still fucking wants him. Luckily, Woonhak has the exact same thought.

Woonhak pulls Dongmin down by the frayed collar of his shirt, smiles against his lips when they crash into each other again. The messy mish-mash of feelings that’s built up between them over the years—the rivalry and the  admiration, the tension and the care and the desire alike—spills out and blends into one patchwork of everything that they are to each other, every reason that they make each other’s hearts race. They can deal with the rest later; right now, Dongmin wants him. Woonhak will meet him where he is. He always does.

“Do you wanna get up and lock the door, Dongmin-hyung?”

Dongmin answers by kissing him. And after weeks of pretending that Dongmin didn’t always have the upper hand, Woonhak is happy to let Dongmin shut him up.

epilogue.

Dongmin is laying with his head half in Woonhak’s lap—happy to watch mindlessly while his boyfriend makes little tweaks here and there on a track he wants to propose for their next album—when he sees something on the corner of Woonhak’s screen, and remembers that he’s been meaning to ask him about it for a while now.

“What’s that?” Dongmin looks up at him with a curious pout, pointing at the tab that always seems to be passively open on Woonhak’s computer, labeled with some incomprehensible string of numbers and letters. “Why do you always have that open?”

“Ah,” Woonhak chuckles, surprisingly nonchalant. “You wanna listen to it?”

“What even is it?” Dongmin huffs, trying not to soften up so much when Woonhak starts to run his fingers soothingly through the fluff of his hair. He opens up the tab in the same motion, and presses play. “Some big project you’ve been working on in your spare time, or something?”

Woonhak doesn’t answer; instead, he lets Dongmin follow along to the waveforms with his eyes and ears as the track plays from his laptop, layers of sound coming together into something… chaotic, definitely—but overall, not actually half bad. Maybe even good, as it goes on longer. There’s the usual instruments that Woonhak builds with, and some rough layers of his voice humming along to a topline. Dongmin’s actually starting to get into the groove of it, nodding his head along to the beat, when Woonhak looks down at him with a smirk and says, “That’s what my brain sounds like when you make me angry.”

The track keeps playing, even as Dongmin glares at him, floored. “Yah, it was a serious question! Stop messing around.”

“I’m not messing around!” Woonhak laughs, the corners of his mouth rounding out with his smile. “It’s always open because I work on it every time you make it your mission to piss me off. Why do you think it has so many layers by now?”

Dongmin just glares at him with wide eyes for a second—he’s going back and forth in his own head about whether he should believe that, or if Woonhak’s just really committing to his stupid joke—but after a good while of staring at Woonhak’s face, judging the expressions that Dongmin knows so well, he realizes that Woonhak’s being serious. 

Dongmin can feel the heat rising up to his cheeks as it starts to sink in more, and he’s not really sure how to feel. It’s kind of funny, but also kind of maddening, that the track itself doesn’t sound like some ugly, garbled mess of rage. “It’s pretty good. You should put it on the album.”

“Too bad,” Woonhak chuckles, “I haven’t been making much progress on it lately.”

Dongmin lifts his head, moves to sit up properly beside him. He’s being as earnest, as sincere as he can when he asks, “Why not?”

Woonhak just shrugs, and then scrunches his nose in that adorable, disarming way that works on Dongmin every time. “You’ve still been moping around a lot, you know? It’s hard to stay mad at you, hyung.”

Dongmin huffs. He doesn’t understand sometimes how Woonhak manages to say things like that right to his face, while somehow still looking at Dongmin like he hung the moon and the stars. Admittedly, Dongmin still has a hard time accepting that Woonhak really is just like that—that he’s patient and caring and he likes Dongmin, actually likes him, and doesn’t just put up with him because he has no other choice. It didn’t really help his downward spiral when he’d kissed Woonhak for the first time and Woonhak—instead of backing down like usual—had chosen that exact moment to call him out on his bluff, forcing Dongmin to confront that their feelings for each other might run deeper than just teasing and mind games and jokes. Dongmin remembers breaking down to Donghyun about it in a restless wave of too many emotions after the fact, when Donghyun was setting up the fish tank in his bedroom and absorbing the sharpest edges of his worries; back then, Donghyun had said something about how everyone pushes the most boundaries with the people who they know love them the most—but everyone has a limit. Even Woonhak. And Dongmin should have been prepared to navigate how to step back from that line once he’d crossed it.

Donghyun, regrettably, ended up being completely right. Dongmin’s still fumbling around with the task of feeling out Woonhak’s boundaries now; he doesn’t want to be too selfish, too mean, or too passive, or too insecure. Dongmin wants to stop being so scared of the fact that Woonhak does have such a strong hold on his feelings, that oftentimes he can see so clearly through Dongmin’s soul that he feels the need to throw up so much smoke and mirrors to throw him off the scent. 

“Am I really too much?” Dongmin asks him after a moment of silence, the track on Woonhak’s computer starting to fade more and more into the background hum. “Do I really make you that mad? Should I dial it back?”

Woonhak chuckles at him. Dongmin knows that there’s fondness there, but it doesn’t stop the uncomfortable twinge in his gut. Woonhak seems to see right through that, too. He scoots over closer into Dongmin’s space, looks up into his eyes, places a grounding hand atop Dongmin’s knee.

“No,” Woonhak answers, plain and simple. “You said it yourself—you annoy me to get my attention—but what really annoys me is that I’ll always let you get away with it.” He moves closer into Dongmin’s space, teases him with a scrunch of his nose, “Tch. You really think you’re all that, don’t you? Who do you think you are to do all of this to me, Dongmin-hyung?”

Dongmin turns his cheek away, all flustered, when it becomes clear that Woonhak’s being coy on purpose. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to Woonhak saying things like that so openly. Dongmin always gets dizzy under the weight of what he does to Woonhak—even if he’s felt the proof of it in his hands, on his skin, so many times now. 

“You should finish the track, Hak-ah,” Dongmin tells him with a hard swallow, instead of spilling all of his guts out onto the bed between them. “It’s good. I wanna hear more.”

Woonhak looks up at him, puffs a breath out of his nose, head cocked knowingly to the side. He catches on fast. “Inspire me, then.”

Dongmin crawls into Woonhak’s lap without another word before he kisses him, passionate and slow, their hands flying toward their newly-memorized places. Dongmin risks a nibble of Woonhak’s bottom lip, and melts at the pinched-off sound it pulls past his lips, followed by a bolder squeeze of Woonhak’s fingers around his waist.

“Did you lock the door this time?” Woonhak asks, pulling Dongmin in roughly by the back of his neck. He’s got the same look in his eyes that he’s always gotten every time that Dongmin’s bothered him before—and fuck, Dongmin knows that that means he’s just going to have to bother him even more. 

“Yeah,” Dongmin laughs absently. He’s already thinking of more ways to push Woonhak’s buttons when, all of a sudden, Dongmin’s back hits the bed, and Woonhak is kissing him again. Slower. Deeper. “Oh. Okay.”

Dongmin relaxes into it. Woonhak looks at him with those same eyes whether Dongmin taunts or bites or resists what he wants. It might take a while for Dongmin to let go completely, to snuff out the tiny voice in his head that asks if he deserves this at all.

But it doesn’t matter if he deserves it; Dongmin has it, now. Dongmin has Woonhak, and Dongmin wants him. It’s more than enough, because Woonhak wants him just as much—and no matter what the voice in Dongmin’s head tells him—Woonhak likes him just like this, just as he is. Neither of them would have it any other way.