a/n: this oneshot was heavily inspired by this lovely piece of music (no relation to the actual Paperman video, but more so the overall feeling and flow of the song). it was literally the only thing i listened to whilst writing this ^^ hope you enjoy!

-also this is a christmas present for a good friend of mine who gave me the idea/prompt for a chasang back hug a while back. so thank you Gina, this one is for you ^^ <3

Sanghyuk wakes to someone prodding at his cheek with a finger. Squinting his eyes open just a fraction, he can’t help but giggle softly at Hakyeon’s blurry face merely inches from his own. This wouldn’t be the first time his eldest hyung woke him up in such a fashion. The only difference this time being that it was still dark in the room; his bedside clock, he now notices, reading just past four-thirty in the morning.

“Hyung…” He groans out and moves to swat away the finger only to have his wrist caught in Hakyeon’s grip mid-air. The elder pulls at him until Sanghyuk is sitting up in his bed and wiping the sleep out of his eyes with his free hand, knowing he’d already lost this battle. “What could you possibly wa-.” He’s cut off by the same finger that had been poking his cheek not even two minutes prior, only now it rests against his lips in attempt to silence him.

“Come on,” Hakyeon whispers as he tugs once again on his wrist to signal the younger to follow him. “I want to show you something.”

Sanghyuk’s curiosity piques at that.

He follows obediently then, letting Hakyeon lead him to one of the armoires and watches as he goes through Sanghyuk’s messy piles of clothes. It wasn’t until then that Sanghyuk took notice in his hyung’s attire; at least two layers of sweatpants and what looked like a thick hoodie layered over a sweater and a t-shirt. Whatever Hakyeon was so intent on showing him at half past four in the morning must be outside and Sanghyuk began to wonder if even as many layers as that was going to be enough against the harsh chill of late November.

Once Hakyeon seemed satisfied with the various clothing items that now filled his arms he motions for Sanghyuk to follow him out of the room, not wanting to risk the possibility of disturbing Wonshik’s slumber any further. Sanghyuk nods silently and makes his way out into the living area where a single lamp is illuminating the room in a soft orange-like glow and he notes the two disposable coffee cups sitting on the dining table, the steam emitting from the mouthpiece on the lids just barely visible.

“Taekwoon-hyung is going to murder you if he finds out that you used his cups.” Sanghyuk mumbles as Hakyeon pulls a thick yellow knit sweater over his head. Sanghyuk makes a face at him once his head is through the collar of the sweater and pushes away his hyung’s hands to finish pulling on the sweater by himself.

“He won’t know if you don’t tell him.” Hakyeon replies simply before shoving a thick pair of socks into Sanghyuk’s hands. The maknae rolls his eyes but eagerly sits down to put on the socks, thankful to have something warm between his bare feet and the freezing hardwood flooring. He grabs another pair of sweatpants and his worn hoodie from where Hakyeon set them on the table and dresses himself the rest of the way as the elder quietly wanders back into the room that most of his hyungs shared. He emerges less than a minute later and gently closes the bedroom door behind him as he stuffs some sort of red material into the front pocket of his hoodie.

“We’ll go once we put on some shoes.” Hakyeon whispers as he sits down to shove his feet into an old pair of his leather combat boots. Sanghyuk grabs a pair of his beige Timberland boots and makes quick work of getting them on and laced up. The dorm was peacefully silent as they finished up, the only sounds being Wonshik’s faint snoring and the low hum of the heater when it kicked on.

“Where exactly are we going?” Sanghyuk breaks the silence first as Hakyeon hands him one of the disposable coffee cups.

Hakyeon was known to slip out of the dorm by himself at all sorts of weird hours in the night to just get away from it all for a short while and clear his head, or at least that was the excuse he gave Sanghyuk one night when he caught the leader getting ready to leave.

“I’m coming with you” Sanghyuk had said after Hakyeon’s vague explanation.

“The others will have my head if they find out I let the baby sneak out.” Hakyeon had tried to reason, only earning a scoff and an eyeroll from the youngest member.

“They won’t know if you don’t tell them.”

Looking back on it now, Sanghyuk supposes that’s when it all began. All of the weird feelings that were shoved to the back of his heart forced their way to the surface when Hakyeon had only sighed and grabbed his hand in response to his silly answer and tugged him out the front door of the dorm. Sanghyuk never fully acted on the feelings, but things definitely changed after that night. Hakyeon still remained quite secretive about his occasional moonlight adventures, but he would share stories of them with the maknae more often than not.

“You’ll see.” Hakyeon answers with a small smile, slipping his free hand into Sanghyuk’s and pulling him out of the dorm before Sanghyuk could question him any further.

Sanghyuk half expects Hakyeon to let go of his hand once they’re standing in the elevator and tries to mask his disappointment when he feels Hakyeon begin to loosen his hold on him, only to be quickly reassured when small warm fingers thread through his own. Sanghyuk stares down excitedly at their joined hands in the reflection of the elevator’s mirror, his face turning a deep scarlet when he notices Hakyeon watching his face in the same reflection. The younger looked away quickly and took a sip from his neglected cup, slightly caught off guard when the warm sweet liquid touched his tongue.

“Hot chocolate?”

“Well I wasn’t about to use any of Taekwoon’s coffee. I don’t have a death wish, believe it or not.” Hakyeon teases before taking a sip from his own cup, his mouth forming into a wide grin around the rim of it.

The elevator came to a stop on the ground floor then, a small ping announcing their arrival. They walk hand-in-hand down the hallway and into the lobby before Sanghyuk abruptly pulles out of Hakyeon’s grasp and rushes toward the exit.

“Whoooa! It finally snowed!” He exclaims, his warm breath beginning to fog up the glass where his face is all but pressed against it in amazement.

“Come on, nerd.” Hakyeon begins, tugging on the sleeve of Sanghyuk’s sweater as he nudges the door open with his shoulder. “We’ve got quite the walk ahead of us.”

It had finally snowed, indeed. A fresh blanket of white glittered under the street lamps as the two set off down the covered path. Sanghyuk occasionally stepped out from under the covering to make tracks in the near ankle-deep snow. He’s in the middle of his third set of tracks and trying to catch a few of the silent falling flakes with his tongue when Hakyeon’s hand drags him back under the covering and into a familiar cafe. Hakyeon orders a bag of warm doughnut-holes for the both of them to share as they resume their walk.

They walk in silence for a while, neither one of them feeling the need for words when there was food to be eaten. Sanghyuk was the one to dive his hand into the bag and pull out the last remaining doughnut-hole and split it in half for the both of them to share. The drinks were finished soon after the sweet treat and they dump the empty bag and cups into a trash can along the sidewalk.

“Is it much further?” Sanghyuk asks after a few more moments of silence and brings his hands up to his mouth to blow hot air through them. Sanghyuk finds his hands unbearably cold without the warmth of the coffee cups and doughnuts and hopes that whatever Hakyeon is leading him to will include a space heater of sorts.

“Not too far off now, are you cold?”

“J-just my hands.” Sanghyuk curses his teeth for chattering.

Hakyeon smiles knowingly and reaches his hand into the pocket of his hoodie. Sanghyuk spied the same red material from earlier and recognizes it to be a pair of mittens that Hakyeon had bought not too long ago.

Hakyeon stops walking and grabs Sanghyuk’s right hand to slip one of the mittens on it and slips the remaining one onto his own left hand. “Sorry,” Hakyeon says through the same knowing smile as he intertwines their mitten-less fingers. “I only brought the one pair, so this will have to do for now.”

Sanghyuk blinks rapidly, a habit of his that Hakyeon has always found adorable, as he comes to the conclusion that Hakyeon had been planning for this all along. “I highly doubt that you’re sorry.” He mumbles, looking away when he feels the heat rise in his cheeks.

They resume walking once more and Hakyeon claims this one to be the last stretch and that they would arrive at the destination soon.

-

It doesn’t take long after that for Sanghyuk to recognize the route they had been taking, and he feels a bit foolish for not having figured it out sooner when a park comes into view as they turn the last corner.

“Wait, I know this place…” Sanghyuk runs over to the familiar swing set and brushes snow off the seat of one of the swings. Memories of sneaking out in the middle of the night during their rookie days play through Sanghyuk's mind like a movie.

The group as a whole used to frequent the small playground to play around after a long day’s worth of rehearsals and various schedules, and there had been times when they were filming a mini reality series that they all would come here and bring along the camera to film their shenanigans. Memories like those were the ones Sanghyuk liked to hold close now that the group was a lot busier and thus never having time to do things like that anymore.

“Do you come back here often, Hyung?” Sanghyuk asks, drawing shapes in the snow with the toe of his shoe from where he’s sat on the swing.

“Every once in awhile.” Hakyeon answers as he twists around in his swing to wind up the chain before lifting his feet up off of the ground, smiling as the swing spins him around. “It holds a lot of memories that I’m rather fond of, so I come here when I feel like reminiscing a bit.”

“Mmm.” Sanghyuk hums in response and makes a mental note to take a trip back to the old playground with the rest of the group the next time they’re all free. “So, what is it that you want to show me that’s so important you had to wake me up at such an ungodly hour and walk through the freezing snow for ages?”

Hakyeon gets up from his swing and pulls on Sanghyuk’s sleeve once more, the younger now following without question. They walk to a railing that’s positioned at a spot where people can stand and look out and see the whole city.

The elder boy points at the horizon where the sun is just beginning to rise along the tops of Seoul’s many skyscrapers, “This is what I wanted to show you, Hyukie. I saw the sunrise from here once a few weeks back and I’ve been wanting to bring you to see it since then.”

“Wow.” Sanghyuk gasps as really takes in the sight. The sun glinting off the sides of the buildings and hitting the glittering blankets of snow really makes for a beautiful setting and Sanghyuk’s mouth is set into an ‘o’ shape in fascination.

“So beautiful.” Hakyeon muses to himself.

Sanghyuk glances over to his hyung for a moment and does a doubletake. Hakyeon is practically glowing as the first rays of the sun illuminate his caramel skin and Sanghyuk finds it hard to focus on anything else around him with something so beautiful stands less than a foot away from him.

“Yeah, you are.” Sanghyuk’s voice is barely a whisper but Hakyeon heard him well enough.

The older boy turns so that his whole body faces Sanghyuk’s and Hakyeon lets Sanghyuk’s gentle hand tilt his chin upwards as the maknae leans down, stopping just before their noses touch, their eyes never leaving one another’s.

“I’m going to kiss you, now.” The younger states, eyes traveling down to Hakyeon’s lips and back to his eyes a couple times, giving the older boy a chance to reject him.

“Okay.” Hakyeon responds, his own eyes flit down to Sanghyuk’s lips and back up. He closes them as Sanghyuk tilts his head down just a little further and their lips brush for a brief moment before Sanghyuk is pressing his lips fully against the other’s. Sanghyuk feels Hakyeon’s mitten-clad hand rest on his cheek right before the elder begins to kiss him back.

Their first kiss is slow and chaste, neither of them wanting to rush things and just enjoy the moment. The air was around them is still and silent, save for the occasional early birds chirping merrily in a nearby tree, and light snowflakes begin to fall all around them, sticking and melting on the tops of their heads.

Hakyeon is the first to pull away when the snow begins to settle on their cheeks before melting and leaving wet streaks on their faces. Hakyeon bites back a smile and turns back to watch what was left of the sunrise with his head laying on Sanghyuk’s shoulder. He knows that they should head back to the dorm soon, mainly because the others would be waking up soon, but also because he doesn’t want himself nor Sanghyuk to catch a cold from being out in the snow for too long.

“Hyung, are you crying?” Hakyeon looks up to see Sanghyuk staring down at him and self consciously lifts his mitten-less hand up to feel his face.

“No,” Hakyeon chuckles through his, now chattering, teeth. “The cold wind makes my eyes water like crazy is all.” He sniffles and deems it time to head back, knowing that they’d already stayed out for far too long.

“Wow, your nose is so red!” Sanghyuk exclaims as he wipes Hakyeon’s tears away with his thumbs, the mitten tickles one side of his cheeks whereas Sanghyuk’s bare thumb feels nice and warm against his other cheek. Hakyeon feels his heart tug at the sweet gesture but glares at the maknae’s teasing words.

“Yah! You should see your nose, Rudolph!” Hakyeon steps away from Sanghyuk and turns to act as if he was leaving and makes a point to dramatically stomp his feet. He only gets a couple feet away before a pair of arms wrap around his waist from behind and hold onto him tightly.

“Sorry I don’t have a huge warm coat to wrap around your shoulders or anything. I know this isn’t exactly the most romantic-”

“This is nice.” Hakyeon whispers and leans all his weight back into Sanghyuk’s chest to take in all of the warmth he could get.

“Mmm,” Sanghyuk hums in agreeance and tightens his hold around Hakyeon’s waist ever so slightly before ducking his head down to plant a soft kiss on the elder’s cheek.

Hakyeon’s smile is brilliant as he feels himself falling more and more for the younger man who was now hiding his face in the space between Hakyeon’s neck and shoulder blades. It was nice.

More than nice.

It was perfect.

❄    ❄    ❄

“Hyuk-ah,” Wonshik is hunched over the maknae with a worried expression as he gently shakes him awake. “Hyuk-ah, wake up.”

“What’s wro-” Sanghyuk tries to begin, but is unable to finish when he’s abruptly cut off by a nasty coughing fit.

“You’ve been coughing like that in your sleep ever since I woke up. Drink this, it’ll help your throat.” Wonshik places a mug of hot tea into the younger’s hands once he’s sitting up well enough to drink it.

Wonshik leaves the room, claiming to be in search of a thermometer, as soon as Sanghyuk finishes the last of his tea. Sanghyuk looks to the clock beside his bed and his eyes widen at the displayed time. He began to wonder if everything from before had just been some amazing dream when a frantic-looking Taekwoon rushes into his room with a thermometer in hand.

“Not you, too, Sanghyuk…” Taekwoon sounds distressed and looks as if he had just woke up as well. He sits on the edge of Sanghyuk’s bed and motions for the younger to open his mouth to slip in the thermometer. Taekwoon lifts his hand to the maknae’s forehead and frowns deeply at how warm it had already become.

“...too?” Sanghyuk curiously mumbles around the thermometer.

“Yes, too. Hakyeon woke up with the same bloody fever and cough. I swear, the two of you are the worst when sick, and now you’re both sick at the same time. This is going to be absolutely unbearable” Taekwoon sighs hard and Sanghyuk tries to fight the smile that threatened to stretch around the thermometer.

“WHO THE HELL PUT FREEZING WET CLOTHES IN THIS LAUNDRY BASKET I SWEAR TO GOD EVERYTHING UNDER THEM WAS CLEAN ALREADY!” Jaehwan’s annoyed voice rings throughout the dorm and Sanghyuk nearly spits out the thermometer when he is overcome with laughter.

a/n: terribly sorry of this is crappy, it's currently 4am christmas morning. yaaaaaaaay. thank you for reading! ^^