There was nothing at all remarkable about the way Heechul asked Kyunghoon to come sing with him at SS7S. It had been so unremarkable, in fact, that he’d half expected to receive no response at all; part of him thought that maybe Kyunghoon would pretend he hadn’t heard his request, maybe he’d busy himself with getting his belongings together and be out the door post-filming before giving it a thought. And normally, he wouldn’t have been far off—but Kyunghoon had agreed immediately, the question barely dead on Heechul’s lips before he’d had his answer. Heechul had been pleasantly shocked; Kyunghoon had been confused as to why he’d said yes so quickly but he’d known it had felt important somehow, even if he couldn’t pinpoint the reason.

“Yes,” he’d said, “of course, hyung,” like he’d never turned Heechul down for performing together before, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Just let me know when, okay?” and he’d been promptly reminded of how very fond he is of Heechul’s full, unrestrained smile, all gums and teeth and happiness and the warmth that settles in his chest every time he’s privileged enough to bear witness, let alone be the reason.

He hadn’t known why it felt important to say yes then, but when the time comes, its importance is so clear it almost takes his breath away, emphasized by the loud, hummed vibration of music in the backstage area. It’s important because this isn’t something that belongs to the both of them—this isn’t Knowing Brothers; they aren’t costars here. This is something that is purely Heechul’s and nothing is shared here the way it would’ve been at SM Town; this is his show. These are his members. These are his fans watching him. Those are his parents in the audience. And when Heechul had asked Kyunghoon to come sing with him, he wasn’t only asking Kyunghoon to come sing with him: he was asking if he could share Kyunghoon with them, if he could show him to them and give them the opportunity to see him in the way Heechul sees him. It isn’t about singing, even if they both do love singing together. This time, it’s about the fact that Heechul wants all of these people that are so very important to him to love Kyunghoon, too, and that rings louder in his heart than anything he could imagine.

‘Look at him,’ Heechul is saying. ‘Look at him: my reason, my happiness, my partner. Look at how much and how long it took for us to be here, together. Look at him and love him, too,’ and Kyunghoon finds he wants that acceptance just as much when, before, it had never mattered.

It comes so easily that, in moments, Kyunghoon is lured into a comfort that tells him there’s no reason to be anxious while simultaneously being so anxious about the entire thing that he feels like his skin might melt off his bones—he can’t this up, can’t it up, cannot, cannot, cannot. He feels the acceptance in the way Donghae, paying Kyunghoon no more mind than he would anyone else, excitedly barrels into him mid-skip backstage after Pajama Party, throwing a quick “Sorry, Kyunghoonie hyung!” and blinding smile over his shoulder as he continues on his way; it’s there in Siwon’s insistence that Kyunghoon come to dinner with them after the show ends, because “you’re family now, too”; it’s in the way Leeteuk treats him not only as an old friend but also includes him in his checks to make sure the members have everything they need between sets, as if Kyunghoon has always been there, as if any moment someone will ask him if he remembers something that happened in the dorms ten years ago. Hyukjae mimics his head voice alongside Heechul, right to his face; Yesung asks him to use his phone to take a picture for him. No one treats him any differently than they would their own members, and that fact sits warm in his chest, tucked between forever ago memories of Sukira and the way Heechul looked at him during rehearsal earlier today: like Kyunghoon was the world and everything in it, like Heechul was so filled with a great, shining happiness that he could burst at the seams with it any second. Leeteuk pulled Kyunghoon to the side once his rehearsal with Heechul had finally wrapped and thanked him with the warmest smile Kyunghoon thought he’d ever seen from the other man.

“You’re doing something really great for him,” he’d told Kyunghoon, and initially he’d assumed it meant agreeing to the performance. Now, though, sitting in the backstage area and waiting for their stage, Kyunghoon realizes it’s so much more than that, really. They’re both doing something really great for each other. To be cliché, they’ve both changed each other. Kyunghoon leaves his house now. Heechul is... happy now.

(“When he left,” he remembers Heechul telling him in the late-night-early-morning hours, pressed side to side so tightly on his couch that the seams of their bodies meld and there is no start or end for the two of them, “I thought I’d never be happy again. I thought every smile from then on would be faked. I’ve never faked anything with you.”)

Everyone changes costumes together while a VCR plays as soon as Pajama Party ends. Wigs and skirts and onesies are ditched and Kyunghoon has a weird moment of feeling as if maybe his choice of pants today had been ill-advised, no one told him there’d be such a significant amount of crossdressing and, as if reading his mind, Shindong’s hand comes down heavily on his back with a laugh. “Kyunghoon hyung,” he says, “you should get used to it. You’re Super Junior too, aren’t you?”

He can’t hide his smile, so instead he laughs, looking first at Shindong’s face and then across the room to the set of eyes he’s felt watching him since Shindong first spoke. There’s something hidden behind the way Heechul is smiling at him this time that he thinks he’s never noticed before; it catches in his throat, and the whole moment lasts for about two seconds, but that smile is swiftly filed away with all of his most important things. More and more and more, all of those things are Heechul-related.

Hyukjae smiles at him as they pass in the hallway and in that smile, too, there is something—a knowing, an ‘I told you so,’ but also a ‘take care of him’ that surrounds them both. “You’ll be fine,” the younger says to him, “they’ll love you, too.”

Too.

The moment they’re onstage together Kyunghoon wonders why it took him so long to say yes to being there with Heechul—but the question fades as quickly as it enters, drowned alongside any anxiety he felt at the thought of performing for this sized crowd by the cheers of what feels like every single person in the audience, because he knows why. ‘Because this is it,’ his inner monologue chimes in, soft and warm and familiar yet new. ‘This is where it was supposed to happen. This is where the world ends and we begin.’

He’s three words into a song that took fifteen years to bloom and he thinks of how often his and Heechul’s worlds brushed but never collided, how he was always just within the other’s orbit, and the more he thinks of it the more it makes sense: if Heechul is the universe’s big star, then does that not make the older man the sun? How very overwhelming this gravity is, the pull Heechul has on him, what gives him the right to be everything the way he is, to unknowingly reduce Kyunghoon to nothing and then lift him up to a place where all that exists is two—the sun and his “I would be so lost without you” whispered into the crook of Kyunghoon’s neck while the younger kisses white hot fire across pale skin. Kyunghoon wonders how he made it through his winter, cold and lonely, before he came to Heechul’s spring, bright and warm and wonderful.

‘How could you have ever not been happy? It’s the only thing I ever feel coming from you.’

Kyunghoon finally looks over to Heechul when the first chorus finishes and the older man begins to sing on his own, and they’re so far apart on the stage that he knows it shouldn’t matter, he should be able to contain the way he smiles every time he looks in the other’s direction but god, he really can’t. It’s far from the first time Kyunghoon is seeing Heechul as he is right now; they’d seen each other backstage only minutes prior, after all, but somehow the frame has shifted ever so slightly and he is in awe of this man standing downstage from him, and how could he be here with Kim Heechul? What did he do to deserve this right?

They miss each other’s gazes—always thrown when the other isn’t looking—until the time comes for them to walk toward each other, and the closer they get the more his awe grows, the more he is humbled, the less he’s aware of the fact that the entire arena is singing alongside them, and there is only Heechul. It still isn’t the first time Kyunghoon’s seen him as he is now, but all of it together—the pounding in his chest and the way Heechul’s hair falls around his shoulders, the shimmer of the eye makeup he’s wearing, the way the stage lights make Heechul’s eyes shine star-filled and his skin glow, the way the older man radiates joyfulness at being in his element together with Kyunghoon while his group’s fans cheer for the both of them—makes heat crawl across the tips of his ears and spread down his neck. Heechul is so beautiful and happy, and for once, Kyunghoon accepts the truth of it: it’s because he’s here, because they’re here, together.

Kyunghoon doesn’t ever want to be anywhere but together with Heechul ever again, because they’ve wasted so much time, haven’t they? ‘I could’ve been with you then,’ he wants to say as their song comes to a close and Heechul’s hand, cool as ever, reaches out for his and squeezes tighter than Kyunghoon can remember him ever doing before. ‘We could’ve always been. I think we always have been, we just didn’t know it yet,’ and Kyunghoon almost, almost, gives in to the urge to introduce himself as Girls’ Generation’s Min Kyunghoon, because ‘Remember, Heechul, don’t you remember? It was so long ago.’

Kyunghoon can’t even see the fans anymore. There is no arena. Heechul’s parents aren’t watching them from the audience and the other Super Junior members aren’t watching them from monitors backstage. All he sees is Heechul, and he’s seen Kim Heechul hundreds of thousands of times and in every way imaginable, but this is the very first time he’s seen him.

Backstage they are noisily, predictably, congratulated on an amazing performance. Everyone takes pictures together, and they chug bottles of water to soothe their stretched vocal chords; Heechul has his makeup and hair fixed by the Kims, and they change clothes alone together in a separate dressing room, with Kyunghoon going back to his street clothes and Heechul wiggling his way into his next stage costume. Somehow, everything is different, and it hangs thick in the air between them as comfortable silence (save for the loud, hard thumping of whatever it is Siwon is doing onstage) settles around them, and neither of them have to say a word before they come together with Kyunghoon’s arms wrapped around Heechul’s waist, the latter following suit with his own arms around the younger man’s neck as he presses their foreheads together.

“Thank you,” Heechul tells him, and Kyunghoon laughs softly, briefly, only for them. The smile lingers on his face even once the laughter has faded, and it’s mirrored on Heechul’s as they squeeze closer together.

“It took us long enough.”