“You’re kidding me right?!” A loud screech came from the doorway. “You have got to be kidding me!”

“Depends what you think we’re kidding you about.” Onew commented, standing up to address Key directly , ruffling his hair as he did so. Jonghyun – who had stood up prior to Onew and moved to stand behind the other man – noticed that it looked delightfully unkempt right now. Add that to his creased clothes and the deep pink of his lips and it was obvious what they had been doing in the time the other SHINee members had been gone. In fact, Jonghyun was sure he looked much the same as the idol.

Taemin’s facial expression was amusing to observe, it had gone through about five different emotions in the past minute and he looked like he couldn’t decide if he was happy for the pair or annoyed at them. Minho was still staring at the floor, a blank expression on his face.

“How long?” Key asked, gesturing between the two of them.

“Hmm?” Onew made a questioning noise. Jonghyun rolled his eyes. The singer was being deliberately obtuse and Jonghyun knew Key wouldn’t appreciate that in the slightest.

“Since China.” The composer commented, not wanting to see how much more the angry rapper’s eyebrow could twitch.

Taemin finally seemed to decide he was happy for the pair and practically launched himself across the room and tackled them into a hug; one arm was around each male’s neck and both staggered under the sudden weight. “Oh my god, you guys! Congrats. Now you can stop moping and being sad.” He pulled away, his grin suddenly fading to a stern expression. Loosening his arm from around Onew’s neck – though the one holding Jonghyun in place remained – he wagged his finger in their faces and admonished, “I’m still mad you for hiding this for so long. You guys .” Then he grinned once more, “But I’m so happy for you.”

Jonghyun grinned back at his friend and extricated himself from the younger man’s grip. “Thanks Minnie.” Leaning in close, seeing Taemin’s expression perk up as he realised he was about to be let in on a secret, he whispered, “It was actually Jinki’s idea to hide it. Revenge, you know?”

Apparently he wasn’t quiet enough to go unheard by the others in the room as a hand suddenly slapped him on the back of the head, causing him and Taemin to knock their foreheads together with an audible thunk. Turning in unison, the two males pouted at Onew and whined pitifully.

Onew shuddered, “Don’t do that, you weirdos. It’s really creepy.”

“You’re creepy,” Taemin muttered, scowling.

Suddenly scuttling back over to where Key and Minho were stood, the youngest group member backed up against the entrance way wall and shot a worried look to the other men in the room. Jonghyun was confused as to why at first and then quickly came to understand. Key’s face was thunderous and being anywhere near Onew when the explosion happened was guaranteed to be a bad idea.

“Lee Jinki, is that true?”

Jinki seemed to lose everything that made him the strong dependable leader of SHINee in that moment. His confidence all evaporated at once under his group mate’s glare and he cowered back.

“It only seemed fair.” Onew explained, quietly. Seeing that that didn’t mollify Key one iota, he quickly tried to explain himself in better terms. “You were trying to get us together when we weren’t ready, so I thought, and Jonghyun agreed,” Jonghyun shot him a look of fear as his boyfriend dragged him under the bus with him, “that it would be amusing to hide it from you so you could see what it was like to have secret plots against you.”

“I thought it would be good practice for hiding it from the public.” Jonghyun was quick to input. He was making this up as he went along, but, considering how badly Onew was defending himself, anything he said had to be better than what Key was already thinking. “I thought that, if we could manage to hide it from you guys and the people closest to us that we could hide it from anyone.” Key didn’t seem convinced, although he hadn’t become any angrier since Jonghyun started talking. So, taking heart from that, he added the icing to the cake. Sniffing slightly, he said softly, channeling all the hurt he had felt from their break up into his acting, “Breaking up because we were almost discovered was one of the hardest things in my life. I love Jinki and I didn’t want to live without him, so... So I wanted to know that we had the ability to stay together even if it was a secret. I almost didn’t start dating him again because I was so scared. He was so imploring and so sincere but I just, I couldn’t do it if I was going to ruin his life, all your lives for my own selfish desires. So this was like a test,” He sniffed once more, ignoring the strange look Onew was sending him, “If we weren’t caught by you, then we wouldn’t be caught by the world.”

Taemin let out a loud sniffle and moved away from the wall once more, “That was beautiful. Come here?”

Jonghyun approached, bemused, as he was dragged into a large hug by a teary Taemin. Patting the younger male awkwardly on the back, Jonghyun finally looked at Key.

The rapper sighed and rolled his eyes, “I know you pulled that out of your , but it’s actually pretty good reasoning. Plus, I know full well it wasn’t your idea. You may be an idiot,” Jonghyun huffed in annoyance at that, “but you aren’t that stupid. You’re off the hook I guess.” He finished. Jonghyun grinned and bowed in thanks as best he could from Taemin’s grasp, “Our all-powerful leader on the other hand...” Key said, trailing off ominously.

Onew gulped and backed away slowly as the younger man walked towards him. Jonghyun smirked as he realised what was going to happen before his boyfriend did. Taemin hearing his snicker, looked up at what was going on. Onew had backed up so far his knees had impacted with the couch and he had fallen back onto the cushions. Key however, had not stopped advancing. He was now pointing harshly at his group leader and muttering insults as he did so. He stopped approaching as he came within half a meter of the sofa and started lecturing from there, leaning in close.

Taemin, Jonghyun and Minho watched from the doorway as Onew slowly sank further and further into the couch cushions and Key’s lecture became more and more absurd as he became angrier.

Finally, Taemin grew bored of watching the spectacle and turned to ask Jonghyun, “Who else knows?”

Jonghyun paused to think for a second, “You guys, obviously. Manager knows-“

“He does!” Taemin gasped.

“Yeah,” Jonghyun said, “He was totally cool with it too.”

“Woah, I should be on my best behaviour for a while or something,” Taemin commented, “I didn’t know Manager was that chill.”

Jonghyun smiled at him and shrugged, “Me either.”

“So that’s it?”

Jonghyun thought for a second longer, the sounds of lecturing and continual apologies still sounding in the background, “Sodam and Jiwoong might suspect, but I never confirmed it. So yeah, guess so.”

“So we were the first people you actually told. Rad.” Taemin grinned, punching the air as if that was an achievement.

Jonghyun chuckled and rolled his eyes. The lecture appeared to be over, with Onew swearing to be at Key’s beck and call for the foreseeable future. Jonghyun sighed at that. He could finally be with Onew in the open – semi-open, kind of – and his idiot of a boyfriend managed to put his foot into his mouth so hard that he would never be available to hang out. Typical.

Key stalked past the three men in the doorway and headed to his room, huffing in annoyance. Onew slunk past them to the kitchen, apparently to do the dishes. That job was meant to be Key’s for the day but Onew appeared to have been forced to take over.

“Well that was dramatic.” Taemin commented.

Minho, who had been silently observing up until that point, finally commented, “There’s milk all over the floor.”

-

Everyone else in Jonghyun’s life had taken the news of him and Onew dating again well. Sodam and Eunji had squealed and gone full-on interrogation mode on him. After which, Sodam had lectured him on how she ‘knew it was going to happen anyway’ and Eunji had commented that they were ‘absolutely, positively perfect for each other’. Youngchul, who was in the room when Jonghyun informed his female companions, said nothing but he patted the blue-haired man on the back as he walked out. Jonghyun took that as a sign of solidarity. It was hard to tell with that man sometimes. Honestly, Jonghyun mused, he and Minho would probably get along well. They could have lots of monosyllabic conversations and profound silences.

Jiwoong hadn’t said much either. He merely gave Jonghyun a high five and asked him if there was a spare set of dishes in the apartment. Jonghyun wasn’t sure he wanted to know what they were to be used for. He had given up going into the artist’s bedroom at this point. He had entered once to find the man fully and painting a canvas using his ... entire body and acrylic paint. It was not something he wanted to see again and hence, he often had no idea what his roommate was working on; except when it left the boundaries of the bedroom and began to overtake the hallway of course.

His parents were a little more difficult to tell. His mother still hadn’t quite come to terms with her son’s uality. She was supportive and was trying really hard but Jonghyun knew it was difficult for her to accept. His father was more comfortable but the man was never good at showing emotion so, even with his acceptance, it was still a little awkward. However, both accepted their son’s lifestyle and both wanted what was best for him. It also helped that his mother adored Onew, having researched him and his personality in depth upon being told he was dating her son. That definitely helped stream-line the process of telling them.

He had also gone to see Sungkyu, which was nice. He hadn’t seen his mentor in weeks and he kind of missed the man’s steady support in his life. They kept in touch via email (both professional and casual) and the older composer often suggested things for Jonghyun to research, learn or incorporate into his work but it wasn’t the same as when they had weekly meetings.

The man’s office was exactly the same as he remembered. Piles of work sat, ever present, in the man’s inbox, a smaller pile gracing his outbox, his obnoxious paperweight (a gift from his wife) sat front and centre, an apple was placed on one corner, waiting to be eaten. Even the chair felt exactly the same and, as Jonghyun sat down, he felt a rush of familiarity wash over him.

“Long time no see, old man.”

Sungkyu sighed as if put upon and turned to look at his protégé, “Why always the comments on my age?”

“I can’t help it if I’m young and sprightly and you’re not,” Jonghyun winked, laughing when he saw the corner of the older man’s lips twitch. He was always terrible at disguising his amusement, Jonghyun could always tell when he was faking annoyance. It was very useful as it allowed the younger man to know when he was straying too far into dangerous territory and allowed him to get away with a lot more than many other people could.

“Yeah, yeah.” The man muttered, “So, why are you here? I thought I’d finally got rid of you.”

Jonghyun chuckled, “You wish. I just came to say hi, can I not do that?”

“Sure you can, but you usually have another motive.”

“Aww,” Jonghyun complained, “That’s not true. I just wanted to catch up, see how you were doing.” Kicking back in his chair, he crossed his legs, grinning.

“I’m glad you and that Onew kid finally got your act together,” Sungkyu commented. Jonghyun cocked his head in confusion, not sure what the man meant. “It’s nice to see you happy again. Dating this kid is clearly good for you.”

“Wait, what?” Jonghyun asked, doing a double-take. “Who said we were dating?”

“It’s obvious isn’t it?” The man said to a stupefied Jonghyun. “So congratulations to the both of you. Now, how’s your song writing going? Do you want to go over what you have?”

Jonghyun nodded absently, still not sure how his mentor had worked it out, “Yeah. Let’s do that.”