Donghae comes off the stage breathless and hanging off the shoulder of Hyoyeon. Her joy is big and radiate off of her as she congratulates her fellow bandmates for their great performance and they laugh elatedly in response.

They crowd around Donghae, Jessica's arm wraps around her waist and Yuri pressing herself into Donghae's side, and the rest bumping and touching each other in happiness and a job well done. 

On stage, the girls of SNSD are goddesses, untouched by the mundane and colorless world beneath them but even when the shine of the stage rub off of them, they are still dazzling but Hyukjae's eyes are train only on one person in particular.

Even among the show stopping brightness of SNSD, Donghae is incandescent.

She is light and radiant, and she takes up all the space in his head with just a stretch of her lips, looking so impossibly beautiful and far away but so close to him that he might incinerate into ashes if he dare to touch her.

Hyukjae is content to just watch from the sideline, and feels the enormity of the distance between them because even when they are breathing in the same air they never been more further apart.

He accepts it because that the path they both willingly chose, and if sometimes he thinks of the past and of the love that died upon the stage that they threw themselves on, he never speak of it.

Donghae's eyes eventually find him in the dark twisted corner of the backstage as if she could find him just about anywhere. It's a talent that she lay claimed to since their trainee years and even when there's nothing that tied them together now anymore, she was still able to find him. 

Her eyes light up and Hyukjae feels the tug of his lips in response to her, his body is never his own around her. All instincts and heart and so, so pathetically weak for her.

Donghae breaks from her group and they barely notice her departure in their excitement as the next act takes the stage. She walks toward him with steady and determine steps, and Hyukjae should leave because just being this close to her tug at his restrains and control but his feet is planted to the ground and an earthquake, a tornado, a damn volcano could not get him to move from his spot because Donghae is right in front of him now.

The world stops completely for the both of them as she stands before him and the short space that separate them feels incredibly heated and charge with underlying surge of the very thing they both dare not lay to name.

"Hi," Donghae says, giving him a small wave. Her top is damp, sweat cling to her brows, and her hair is mess, but she leaves him breathless.

"You were amazing," he tells her instead. She always is to him, even in the first few years of their trainee years when she had stumbled and fumbled her way onto the dance floor but she never give up in the end, even when it took her twice as long to learn the routine than the rest of the class.

She is so incredibly strong even at her weakest and he is not surprise how quick and easy the entire world fell for her too, but he was the one to notice her first and he'll carry that like a badge of honor.

Cheeks flushing and smiling shyly, she says, "You really think so?"

He could do nothing but nod because his tongue had failed him, twisted and heavy in his mouth, he couldn't get any words out.

At his nod, her small smile blooms, proud and delighted. "Thank you," she says softly.

She is SNSD's Donghae, beautiful and fierce and completely untouchable but just a few words from him turned her back to the girl he used to know, or really the girl she always been.

He remembers Donghae, the first time he saw in the practice room, awkward and nervous in her own skin and an insecure mess but as she grew older, he watched her blossom into a beautiful confident young woman, who strut on stage like she own it and smile like she knows how she wreck them, utterly and completely, but take all that from her and she--she is just Donghae.

Just a simple girl carrying the weight of her father's dream on her small shoulders and he is the only one to witness it.

This is privilege that he'll carry to his grave.

Hyukjae shakes his head. "Don't thank me, you earned it."

Donghae looks at him like she might explode in her happiness and he could see all the stars in her eyes and the world is in neon colors, because she is here and she exist.

She may not be his anymore, and he isn't hers either, but just for this brief moment in time between their performances, a break from their often times hectic and chaotic life as idols, standing before each other in only flesh and bones and not with the full weight of the respective group behind them, they are just Donghae and Hyukjae.

Nothing more and nothing less.

He thinks of the girl he let go and the woman she came to be, he thinks of the promise they made as teenagers to one day eclipsed all the stars in the sky, and, mostly, he thinks of a boy and a girl barely sixteen and the world seemingly too big for them and the stage casting an enormous shadow over them but with their hands clinging tightly to each other they walk their path they made.

In the end as they get closer to their destination, they had to let go of each other hand because in this new place they had arrived in there was no room for the both of them to stand together and their love died with a whispered on the stage.

Now they stand in front of each other and there's quiet peace share between them without any outside obligation and the stress of their job beckoning them and in this makeshift haven they created between them, they let themselves drown in each other presence.

How he had miss her, her carefree smiles, her boisterous laughter and the twinkle in her eyes that sparkle when she's delighted and can't contain her joy and how he used to be sole reason behind all of them.

If only they could turn back them and he could relive those days, when her smiles were for him and she was his and he was hers and the world wasn't theirs yet but--but they both know they wouldn't ever give what they currently have for the past.

It's the painful true, but for now they can pretend and let go for restraint of the present and just be Donghae and Hyukjae in front of each other.

"Three minutes till Super Junior perform," one of the stage hands say.

And their moment is shatters and the world shifts into focus once again.

"I got to go," he says, almost regretfully. Their time together are always too short and fleeting, slipping through his fingers and beyond his grasp.

"Good luck out there," Donghae tells him, her smile sad and understanding.

He nods his thanks and as he turns toward the stage and about to head his way there, he feels a tug and someone is grabbing onto his wrist, dragging back into the darkness.

He spins to face the offender but it is Donghae staring at him wide eyes and heart break written all over her face. "Donghae," he lets out unconsciously, her name falling out of his lips like a confession.

She shakes her head and puts a hand over his lips to keep him from saying anything anymore.

"Hyukjae, I just want you to know," she says, and it's soft and hesitant and none of the bravado that she always walk on stage with, "I was performing for an audience of one out there."

Hyukjae freezes, his heart goes stuttered still because she had just bared her soul to him and he doesn't--can't respond to it but before he could even think of saying anything Donghae takes her hand away and quickly runs away.

He stands stiff and awkward in his spot, remembering the feel of her soft and cold skin brushing against his lips and how she was so close he could smell her favorite perfume and how once again she disturbed his carefully ordered life with just a few words.

Hyukjae hurried toward the stage and tried not think to about it because he simply can't.

He gets in his position and Hyukjae waits in the darkness, because as soon as the lights go on, the crowd will scream and the world will move once again, it'll drown out Donghae's voice, her smile, and the memories of her that he carried in his heart like lead weighing him down.

It is there on the stage where their fans sing their names that he can forget, about what they could have, about what they could be, about her, her, and always her.

He shuts his eyes and hears the crowd, their fans, simmering in the distant. Their cry of adoration is what he lives on, and he in turn had given away his heart and every pieces of himself, that he has nothing left for Donghae.

Lee Hyukjae may have love Donghae once upon a time and still do but to Lee Eunhyuk it is another thing entirely because even though he aches at the memory of Donghae's words (I was performing for an audience of one out there) burning brightly in recess his mind, he shuts it down. He can't, he just can't think of it.

It's too much to think, to hope, to cling for because Lee Eunhyuk belongs to no one but the stage and his fans, and Donghae is a label-mate, a friend, and hoobae and nothing more.

And so the show must go on.

When the lights finally turn on, Hyukjae open his eyes and all he sees is a sea of pearl blue and Donghae is but a fleeting afterthought.

a/n: snsd!donghae and hyukjae has the most tragic love. they are so close yet so far :((( b/c in my head i think they would choose their duty to their band and bandmates over their love and as their respective group got more famous, they had to let each other go b/c of their obligation to their group and fans but the love of thousands is incomparable to the love they have for each other. -sigh- this pretty much read like a love letter to girl!donghae b/c it sort of is?? hilariously if i were to write this from donghae's pov it totally reads differently!! b/c i think hyukjae is the type to keep his feeling tightly under wrapped and god his love for donghae is terrifying in its enormity so he just learn to shut it down as mention above b/c otherwise he doesn't know how to function!! :((( i plan to do a donghae's pov one day >:]]].