Warning: strong langauge

Ryeowook was standing over a bowl of cake batter in the kitchen at two thirty in the morning. He had been guilted (by Heechul) into making cupcakes to keep around the dorms; he would have waited until later, but his schedule for that day was packed, so he found himself forgoing sleep to bake. He ran a hand through his recently-dyed dark brown hair and sighed; it was going to be a long night.

He let himself indulge in the silence of the dorms for a moment. It was nice, this silence. It seemed like he was surrounded by music and laughter and yelling and noise all day and sometimes there was nothing nicer than a bout of silence.

The silence gave him time to think, however, and his mind seemed to inevitably wander back to the secret he’d kept locked deep within himself for years. He tried not to dwell on this secret, these feelings for Jongwoon, so, sometimes, he hated the silence too.

Barely five minutes later, Jongwoon appeared in the doorway; his anxious face relaxed immediately when he was who was in the kitchen.

“Oh good, it’s you, Wook.” He stepped toward the counter, leaning against it.

Ryeowook’s eyes flickered over to his hyung and he raised an eyebrow at the keys in the older man’s hand.

“Where are you going, hyung? We have a meeting at five thirty.” Breathe, Wook, breathe.

“Yeah, I was going to talk to you about that. I wanted to go out and I was hoping you could cover for me at the meeting in case I don’t make it back in time.”

Ryeowook’s gaze slid back to the batter and his grip on the wooden spoon in his hand tightened; he bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from blurting out what was running through his mind.

“Going to a bar? Again?” he finally muttered after an uncomfortably long and empty silence had stretched between them.

“Yeah. With Jongjin, though,” Jongwoon qualified. “So? Will you?” He watched his dongsaeng hopefully.

“You’re going to a bar. And you’re going to get exceedingly drunk and you want me to come up with a cover story and lie as to why you’re not in our mandatory meeting,” Ryeowook said slowly, his hand start to shake slightly.

“Well, when you put it like that—”

And suddenly, years of pent-up feelings and frustrations and dashed hopes erupted inside of him and he threw the spoon down, not noticing the way Jongwoon jumped at the noise.

“I’m tired of only being visible to you when you need something.” His voice was low but full of fury and disappointment. His eyes – darker now than Jongwoon ever remembered them being – bored into his hyung’s. And then, surprisingly calmly, he let two words slip through his lips: “ you.”

He turned his back on the kitchen, grabbing a pair of shoes from the foyer and letting the door slam behind him on his way out.

---

Jongwoon knew where Ryeowook was going. There was a little park a couple blocks down the street where he always went to blow off steam when he was angry, but it wasn’t usually raining and three in the morning when he went. He hesitated for maybe half a minute before grabbing an umbrella and dashing out of the door.

---

He caught up with Ryeowook half-way to the park and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back toward the dorms.

“Come on, Wook, I won’t go, so let’s—”

He was cut off as Ryeowook whirled around and out a fist, punching him square in the jaw.

“No, Jongwoon,” he snapped, dropping all honorifics. “I’m sick of this .”

Jongwoon gaped at him, dropping the umbrella that wasn’t much of a help anyway and staring at his dongsaeng with wide eyes. Even when Ryeowook got mad, he never hit people.

“What—I didn’t—”

“Dammit, shut up!” Ryeowook punched him in the shoulder this time, not at all in the playful way they usually did. “I’m sick and tired of pretending nothing’s wrong, like it doesn’t kill me inside to see you off flirting with anything that moves. I’m tired of trying to drop hints and get you to see how much I care about you. I’m tired of you getting drink and just expecting me to cover for you, of you taking me for granted!” He felt hot, angry tears prickling at the corners of his eyes and he was furious at himself for that display of weakness and vulnerability. “I’m really ing tired of loving you and not being loved back,” he whispered, the wind seeping out of his sails as he collapsed on a bench underneath a street light, letting the rain beat down on his back and press his hair against his skull. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Jongwoon.

The older man stared down at Ryeowook, surprise and confusion and regret mixing and clouding his dark eyes.

“I’m an idiot,” he said softly after a few minutes. “But that’s nothing new.” He tried cracking a smile, but Ryeowook didn’t move; the revealing of his biggest secret seemed to have deflated him. He felt empty, as if that secret had been the thing that kept him going, and now he was left to revel in the realization that, for better or for worse, nothing would ever be the same again.

Jongwoon dropped down next to him on the bench with a heavy sigh.

“How long?”

“How long what?”

“Have you been in love with me?”

“Really in love with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Five years.”

Jongwoon let out a low whistle and Ryeowook almost punched him in the face again.

“I’ve got you beat by about a year.”

Ryeowook froze.

“What?”

“That’s why I started going out in the first place. I never thought you’d every love me back and, when the pain of that reality got to be too much, bars seemed like better places to be than the dorms. But I never could ask anyone else to cover for me; it always had to be you, always. I suppose I’m something of a masochist in that respect. Seeing you one last time before I went gave me another memory to drink away.” He smiled softly. “I can remember the exact moment I fell in love with you. We were in the studio recording It’s Just That. You were so obviously sick that day but you refused to give up and go home. Then you broke out into a coughing fit and I caught you when you stumbled; your forehead hit my chest and I could feel you burning up. You looked up at me with those big brown eyes, so full of sorrow and confusion and a desperate plea for me to do something that I can still see them when I close my eyes sometimes. I knew, in that moment, that I wanted to protect you for the rest of my life and I let you climb on my back while I apologized to the producers and promised we’d come back to finish as soon as you were healthy.”

“You took care of me the rest of the day. You even tried to make me soup,” Ryeowook mumbled, staring down at his hands.

“Yeah.” Jongwoon, eyes closed, turned his face upwards, letting the rain drops fall on his skin. A moment of silence passed.

“Hyung?”

“Huh?”

“You mean it?”

Jongwoon’s eyes slipped open and he glanced over at the younger.

“Yeah, I do. I love you, Kim Ryeowook.”

Ryeowook didn’t speak; instead, he slid onto Jongwoon’s lap, straddling his thighs, and fisted his hands in the older man’s hair, leaning down to move his lips against the ones he’d longed for for years.

He felt Jongwoon smile and his heart fluttered.

---

Heechul stumbled back into the dorm after the group meeting (neither Ryeowook nor Jongwoon had been present, much to the disappointment of the management), only to find two pairs of soaking wet shoes just inside the door. He blinked, his eyes following the trail of wet footprints from the door down the hall to Jongwoon’s room; as he passed the kitchen, he saw a bowl of unfinished cake batter on the counter and groaned as the pieces slid into place.

He was never going to get his cupcakes.