From the kitchen Hongbin hears Hakyeon kicking off his shoes in the entryway – too late, he tries to grab his plate of food and run for his room the same moment Hakyeon steps into the living room and stops short, staring.

“Lee Hongbin?” Hakyeon says, eyes not moving from the wide expanse of floor that should be holding a sofa. Hongbin halts and cringes. Taekwoon can’t blame him for selling him out, not when Hakyeon’s using that tone.

“Where. Is. My. Sofa?”

*

Taekwoon unwraps his scarf from around his neck tiredly, hoping no one is using either of the two showers – he’s cold and he’s worn out and all he wants to do is have a really nice, long hot bath before changing into something warm and soft and then sleeping for the next ten hours.

“You’re back,” Hakyeon hums pleasantly from where he’s snuggled comfortably in a little mound of cushions on his sofa with his laptop. “Had a good show today?”

Taekwoon almost – almost – just answers him and keeps walking. He stops, and takes in the sight of Hakyeon sitting on the sofa he had smuggled into his studio the night before with the coerced help of Hongbin, whose silence he thought he had bought.

Hakyeon smiles at him, the very face of an angel.

*

When Hakyeon comes home the next day with Wonsik already half-asleep and hanging on to one of his arms he nearly lets Wonsik drop onto the floor the moment he sees once more his sofa gone and their dumbbells and other exercise equipment neatly stacked against the wall in its place.

“The sofa is gone again,” Wonsik mumbles, blinking. “Where did it go?”

Hakyeon growls – Wonsik peers at him, wondering if he should be alarmed.

“Hyung-”

“Go on, Wonsik,” Hakyeon gives him a push further into the house. “I’ve got to go out again for a little while.”

Hakyeon pivots on the spot and lets the door close none-so-gently behind him, propelled by righteous energy all the way down and out of their apartment block and into a taxi. Taekwoon thinks he can just take his sofa whenever he wants – Kkomae needs to be permanently swayed to Hakyeon’s side so Taekwoon can no longer borrow his brother’s truck to blatantly and shamelessly steal Hakyeon’s property in broad daylight –

His phone buzzes as the taxi nears the company. The new dorms are not only bigger but closer to Jellyfish than their old ones, making everything more convenient; apparently also the theft of sofas. Hakyeon pulls out his phone as he pays the driver, intent on calling Kkomae the very moment he gets to Taekwoon’s studio and can make sure his sofa is there. Taekwoon could buy his own sofa; but no, he wants Hakyeon’s. How much of it is because Hakyeon’s sofa really is extraordinarily comfortable and how much is Taekwoon loving to with Hakyeon, Hakyeon has no idea –

Got you

is the only thing in the message, sent by Taekwoon – Hakyeon narrows his eyes with a sinking feeling and leaps up the steps to the private studio floors two by two. He doesn’t have the key to Taekwoon’s studio but there’s a little window in the door that he can peep through and –

It’s not there.

His phone buzzes again and this time it’s a photo of Taekwoon and Jaehwan innocently sitting on Hakyeon’s sofa, Taekwoon’s bed clearly in the background. Taekwoon’s bed, in Taekwoon’s room, back at the dorm.

 Hakyeon lets out a yell, bringing trainees pouring out of the dance studio next door.

*

Taekwoon is punished well. He had started laughing when Hakyeon burst into his room, back from the studio, but his glee in his prank was cut short once Hakyeon started letting loose with his fists. Hakyeon isn’t fooled – his quick exhale of breath when Hakyeon appeared said he’d been expecting this outcome and welcomed it – and Hakyeon adds it to the long list of things he understands about Taekwoon, filed carefully under ‘Possibilities’. Jaehwan doesn’t escape the punishment either – Taekwoon had to have help moving the sofa into his room and Jaehwan’s always up for mischief.

The sofa now resides permanently in Hakyeon’s room, and he takes extra pleasure in the younger ones’ grumbling about how now they have to watch television while sitting on the floor because of Taekwoon hyung’s thieving tendencies.

“It’s been a week. Can’t you-” he begins on their way to work in the morning days later.

“No,” Hakyeon replies, and that’s that, no matter how much Taekwoon whines at him.

So if the mountain will not come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain – Hakyeon starts coming home to find a different member stretched out or curled up on his sofa each night; playing with their phone, reading, sleeping, and Hakyeon thinks ‘nest’ has never been more apt a name for the sofa before this. It’s Taekwoon’s turn tonight, plugged into his earphones and quietly tapping messages out on his phone. You could almost copy and paste this image onto the Taekwoon of five years ago, Hakyeon thinks, looking at him. It’s comforting and also surreal how some things just do not change.

“It’ll be Christmas soon,” Taekwoon murmurs after a while, pulling out one earbud and looking up.

“What?” Hakyeon is distracted, looking over his musical script, kept warm by Taekwoon’s solid presence at the edge of his awareness.

“Christmas soon. What should we do for the kids?”

“What do you think they will like?”

And it’s always been like this – maybe it was wrong that the two of them had been given responsibility of four painfully young boys to look after and manage and guide, but they had scraped through together somehow. Together for better or for worse, sometimes Hakyeon pulling Taekwoon along and sometimes Taekwoon pushing Hakyeon; Hakyeon thinks he can fill books upon books with all the things the world still doesn’t know about Jung Taekwoon.

“I think we’ll just end up doing what we always do every year,” Taekwoon quirks his mouth.

“Chicken?” Hakyeon beams.

“If you would just move your sofa back outside we could-”

“No.”

Taekwoon falls asleep on Hakyeon’s sofa eventually, and Hakyeon doesn’t have the heart to kick him out. Hakyeon looks at the outline of him in the dark, a dim lump like the elephant in the snake in The Little Prince; his thoughts are getting blurry with sleep. Taekwoon – elephant – Little Prince – rose – it is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.

*

Hakyeon wakes up to see Taekwoon has been exchanged for Sanghyuk on the sofa – sometime during the night Taekwoon must have woken up cramping because of the small space and gone to sleep in his own bed; and sometime during the night Sanghyuk woke up and migrated here. He looks so, so young when he sleeps; hardly older than the baby he was – is, Hakyeon thinks stubbornly – when he’d first joined. He’s just – expanded, Hakyeon decides. Hakyeon his hair out of his face gently until Sanghyuk blinks sleepily, tries to stretch, and almost falls off the sofa.

“Why are you here?” Hakyeon asks, amused.

“Bad dream,” Sanghyuk mutters, and Hakyeon wants to grab and hug him for three days straight but he settles for another of his hair.

“Better now?”

“Yeah,” Sanghyuk yawns, and gets up and shuffles out without another word. Hakyeon contemplates his sofa.

There’s no way he’s putting it back in the living room.

*

Christmas comes and goes – chicken is ordered and wolfed down – more chicken is ordered – Jaehwan makes Taekwoon snort cider agonisingly out of his nose with laughter – Wonsik calls his sister and Hongbin watches him with an eagle eye for soft tears he can use as gentle blackmail – Sanghyuk opens everyone’s presents and switches them. Everybody’s a little drunk. Hakyeon loves them all so, so much.

Hakyeon looks up, hours later, when the door to his room cracks open – in the pitch dark he still can make out who it is.

“Taek?”

“-I’m sorry, did I wake you? I can go.”

“It’s okay, I couldn’t sleep anyway,” Hakyeon says, sitting up in bed. It’s not really true, and Hakyeon bites his tongue. “What is it?”

Taekwoon folds his long legs underneath him and leans into the sofa’s soft cushions, the light coming in from Hakyeon’s window just softly touching the top of his head making it glow dark red. He doesn’t speak straight away, but Hakyeon is used to this.

“Your tree is pretty.”

Hakyeon glances over at the little tree on his desk that he’d decorated with tiny origami cranes and fairy lights – it’s important to get into the spirit of things, Hakyeon believes. If not the days just pass you by with nothing special to break the blur.

“Thanks.” Hakyeon smiles with a little fireburst of satisfaction, whether or not Taekwoon can actually see it – the lack of honorifics is also something that warms him; characterises their time as uniquely theirs like the taking off a heavy jacket. Late nights and blunt speak fit Taekwoon so well.

“I want your sofa. I’ll buy you another one.”

“Buy your own!” Hakyeon gets out of bed and yanks at Taekwoon’s arm, succeeding in getting Taekwoon halfway to his feet before Taekwoon digs his heels in and sits back down, toppling Hakyeon sideways onto the sofa too. “You are not taking my nest away from me again. I will sue.”

“But I want it,” Taekwoon answers, as if it’s the most reasonable thing in the world. “Why can’t you give it to me?”

“Out!” Hakyeon tries to lever Taekwoon off the sofa, but Taekwoon has a lot of Limb and it’s not that easy to herd someone as tall as Taekwoon when he’s determined to stay put. “Goodbye!”

It’s probably Taekwoon beginning to giggle breathlessly that does it – Taekwoon has such an endearingly strange laugh when he’s trying to keep it in that Hakyeon knows the younger ones sometimes provoke him on purpose when being filmed to try to bring this laugh out. It’s so – Hakyeon struggles for a moment for the words – it’s so absolutely Taekwoon. He’s a walking contradiction in so many ways, so hard to understand, and yet – oh.

Hakyeon sits back with the realisation, abruptly more awake; Taekwoon blinks at the sudden yield and when Hakyeon leans forward again he braces himself for another attempt to throw him out, smile on his face. Hakyeon thinks – doesn’t think – and kisses his smile.

Taekwoon inhales soft, quick, and lets himself be kissed, hands coming to cup Hakyeon’s face gently and carefully like he will bruise this blooming newness between them; like the skin on a ripe peach, ready to be eaten whole – ready, after all this time.

Taekwoon lays his head on Hakyeon’s shoulder and they’re quiet together for a long time, adjusting to the silently monumental shifts in breathing and mine and yours and ours and together and how the touch of someone you’ve known for years can be more electric than you’ve ever dreamed, now that the – switch has been flipped, so to speak and for want of a better metaphor, Hakyeon thinks.

“Are you really not going to give me your sofa?” comes the soft question eventually, and Hakyeon nearly succeeds in launching Taekwoon off onto the floor but for the quick excited gasp he hears when he grabs Taekwoon by the wrists – and then electric is hardly enough for the way he feels Taekwoon give control over to him. Hakyeon slowly presses Taekwoon’s hands above his head, moving so Taekwoon is almost lying flat, and experimentally lays his full weight on top of Taekwoon, holding him down.

Hakyeon can feel Taekwoon’s heart nearly beating right out of his chest, and never knew a whispered ‘please’ could make his own blood feel so hectic in his veins. This has been waiting here for him all this time all these years, but they’ve been too tired, too busy, too scared; this, this gorgeously terrifying thing that makes Hakyeon feel like his heart is going to burst and that he needs to shout about is everything he’s ever felt about Taekwoon rolled into a brightly burning flame at the very core of his self – anger and protectiveness and intense love and pride and fondness – this push and pull, this lifetime constant, this past and present and future. Hakyeon tries to press it into Taekwoon’s skin with his lips. I am your anchor, you are my compass -

They don’t really talk about it; it doesn’t really need to be said.

“Merry Christmas,” Taekwoon murmurs against Hakyeon’s neck, later – sleepy and slurring.

“Happy new year,” Hakyeon replies. To all things new and beautiful.