first off, short chapter. second, you'll probably curse. third, i'm sorry, i always am, if you don't like the fic.

“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”

Night was a deadly thing, especially if you slept with the air-conditioning on. Mingyu often slept like a log, stiff and still, but that evening was a bed’s nightmare. The sheets crumpled underneath his weight, twisting and wringing under irked, restless movements. He listened to the shuffling from upstairs, the movement of liquid and gas in pipes and drains, and eventually the words that sifted through the halls of the diner.

It was strange, Mingyu thought, the feeling of safety and worry clashing at the same time.

It was strange to suddenly feel things tower over you when your physical body looms over others in actuality, to feel the shelves and the notes pile higher than a rubbish dump. To outweigh you, to pen in on you, and sometime past one he found himself desperate to kick the covers off of him, almost as if something physical sat on him.

He’d ignored Wonwoo’s calls since after Jisoo and Jihoon’s visit. He wasn’t sure what to say: hey, Wonwoo, thanks for backing me up, love you.

No, he’d yell at himself, he’d rather die.

Dead of the night, as always, at an old building with owners who couldn’t care to demolish it. Kim Mingyu sat as limply as in the morning, when he opened his computer, staring at words he didn’t remember uttering. For the first time, Mingyu was earlier than the other two, and he sat next to bags of to-go dinner sets and bottles of tea or water. He hoped that Seungcheol would’ve brought alcohol, or at least something that could knock him out as quickly as the words sunk into his stomach.

“Not cool.”

“Not smart? I think it’s just because you’re stupid.”

The pros of arriving early at a meeting like this was that the hyungs were at least sober, because they were clever enough not to take public transport intoxicated. They’d seen the article; everyone had.

“But I didn’t say any of it! I sat there and told Seokmin to remedy the headlines, say it was a joke. Sure, he told me he was going to say Wonwoo forced himself on me, but I tried to change it, and-”

“Stop rambling, Minwoo, why’d you do it in the first place? Now your darling’s left to defend himself.”

Seungcheol opened cans of beer he bought, eyeing Mingyu with a ‘can you get dumber?’ look.

Soonyoung sipped slowly. “This Seokmin guy seems like a weird guy. I don’t like him.”

“Well, what can we say, Minwoo? You were swept away like an idiot, and now you caught Wonwoo in it, too.”

“Isn’t Minwoo technically their ship name, if they had one?”
“Shush, Soonyoung, we’re talking about serious stuff.”

Mingyu tucked in his knees. “So what do I do now?”

Seungcheol glugged the beer. “By what you’ve been saying about this Seokmin and Seungkwan, they don’t seem like they’ll release an article again to reinstate your relationship or say it was a huge joke, so you’re pretty much ed.”

“I second that.”

Mingyu glared at Soonyoung. “Shut up, hyung.”

“Wonwoo’s ed, too, and much worse off than you, so you either take it on your pride to be there for him as often until the whole jeering dies down, or you could leave him to die on his own.”

Mingyu sighed. Of course, it wasn’t the solution he was looking for. It’s not like he meant to plug them deeper in the mess, he just wanted some reassurance.
“C’mon, Minwoo, you just gotta reverse the situation. Wonwoo won’t stick to you as how you’ve been complaining about so often, so you just have to stick to him instead.”

He laughed. Right. “Of course, I supposedly tell a school reporter that Wonwoo’s been threatening me and now I’ll just casually go back to being friends with him, no big deal.”

Seungcheol glared. “Are you stupid, or what? I meant secretly, idiot. I meant like an affair.”
Mingyu looked at him funnily, like he wasn’t understanding the concept. Seungcheol tossed him another bottle. “Oh, I’m sorry, did you not learn the word ‘affair’ in middle school?”

Mingyu could sense it; his hyung was getting irked, like he’d done something seriously wrong (or, duh?). “I did, but how am I supposed to do that without getting caught?”
 

The hyung sighed. “That’s why I said you had to choose: to abandon him all over again and stick to your prince or do some good, for once.”
Mingyu glowered a little, until he just looked down at his own fingers.

“Or why can’t you just meet him here?”

Seungcheol and Mingyu look up at Soonyoung, grinning softly at a bright phone screen, probably texting the girl he’d been chasing after relentlessly. Seungcheol gave a sound of acknowledgment and patted Soonyoung’s back. “Or, yeah, you could do that too.”

“He’d never willingly come out at night, hyung.”
 

“But if he needs you, he’ll come, right?”
Mingyu scrunched up his nose. “And what about you?”

Seungcheol snorted. “You say it like you’re depriving us of our houses. Just meet on days we aren’t here, or you could totally make out in the corner while Soonyoung and I go about drinking.”

“Gross, no.”

Seungcheol shrugged. “Whatever. It’s up to you, kid.”

It’s the next morning that Wonwoo decides to stop hiding and learn what people are saying.

He checked his phone, just in case, but he doesn’t see returned calls from Mingyu or messages. He struggled trying to convince himself it wasn’t intentional for the next two minutes, but even conventional debating skills fail him at ten in the morning.

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