Been thinking a lot about how I want this story to end. Then again, there's always the epilogue if I want to change my mind.

But anyway, here's the third (and last) chapter! 

A loud crash from outside the bedroom wakes them up sometime after 6 in the morning.

“Should you check that out?” Donghae asks sleepily, his voice muffled against Hyukjae’s skin.

Hyukjae rolls his eyes and presses his head into the pillow. “Whatever, Yesung will settle this.”

Hyukjae’s guessing someone broke the chandelier, though he has no idea how that is even possible in the first place. The music continues to play, though, and Hyukjae knows it’s only a matter of time before the guests wake to their senses and leave. No one would want to shoulder the bill of some broken expensive thing from Lee Hyukjae’s party.

Donghae probably knows it too, because Hyukjae feels him waking up and untangling their legs.

Even though Donghae still has one arm across his chest, Hyukjae thinks he misses the warmth already. Stupid, sentimental Hyukjae, he chastises himself. Always missing what you never had in the first place.

Donghae raises the hand sprawled across his chest and doesn’t know whether to run it across his neck, his jaw or his cheekbone. Hyukjae’s so pretty everywhere. Somehow he settles on pinching his earlobes gently. Hyukjae has cute ears.

“I think I should go,” he says softly.

They make eye contact and in that split second it feels so real, like this is an everyday scenario where Donghae has to get out of bed early to go to work and stupid, sentimental Hyukjae just wouldn’t let go, even though he knows he will see him again. Hyukjae grabs onto Donghae’s wrist but continues to let him play with his ear even though it’s ticklish. Hyukjae never realised how thin his wrists were.

“I think you should, too,” Hyukjae says.

Donghae leans up and presses a soft kiss to his jaw, and the weight on his chest is gone as Donghae moves to get out of the bed. It feels like someone dislodged a knife from where it is embedded in his chest, and now the blood is flowing rapidly, unrestrained.

Hyukjae plays with the knot on his bathrobe as Donghae collects his clothes from the heaped mess by the bed. Donghae picks up his for him too, and leaves them on the empty side of the bed he’d just resided in.

So this is how it feels when you wake up from a dream, Hyukjae thinks. It’s disorienting and heart-breaking.

He watches Donghae strip himself off the bathrobe and realises he wants to see him again. Clothed or , he just wants to know what it’s like to be by his side again.

Hyukjae reaches into the bedside table and pulls out something.

He fiddles with the ribbon on it for a while before he can summon up the courage to ask the question. He takes in a deep breath and hates himself for being stupid. This isn’t even a big deal.

Donghae looks at him, curious, as he pulls up the zipper of his pants and starts to put on his shirt.

Hyukjae meets his eyes and sighs. “Will you come to my wedding?” he asks, extending the invitation card in his hand.

Donghae doesn’t take it immediately, and Hyukjae lets his arm stay in the air like a childish taunt, willing him into taking it. He continues holding out the card and Donghae continues to stare at it, and a soft voice in his head begs Donghae to please just take it, because how else will Hyukjae see him again?

Donghae’s screaming in his head you, how dare you do this to me? And he wants to say no, but Hyukjae’s looking at him in a way he’s started to learn he will never be able to resist. The realisation has come belated, and he knows it will never mean anything again.

Still, he reaches out for it and pockets it, and Hyukjae feels himself let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.

“If I have time. No promises, though,” Donghae says, styling his hair with his fingers idly as he looks at the mirror.

“The cake is good,” Hyukjae offers, and chastises himself for being stupid and thinking that a cake would really be that one thing to finally move Donghae into showing up.

Donghae makes a non-committal hum and continues dressing, slowly making his way up the buttons on his shirt.

Hyukjae watches from the bed and the view is great – Donghae’s got a good body, but he still feels a pang of sadness in his heart because this is it, the last time he’ll ever get to see him in this manner. What does he have to do to have him by his side again?

Donghae is fully-dressed in his dress slacks and white dress shirt, and Hyukjae’s fingers are suddenly so terrible at buttoning up his own shirt. Maybe he’s buying time, maybe he isn’t.

He pulls on his pants and sits back down on the bed. He realises he’d dressed himself first by putting on his shirt, and Donghae the other way around by first wearing his pants. Does this make them more different or more compatible? Hyukjae doesn’t know, but he knows he’s grasping at straws, over-analysing every little detail as if it matters.

Donghae bends down and picks up his suit jacket, fiddles with it for a while and walks towards Hyukjae.

He’s standing by the bed looking down at Hyukjae, and Hyukjae swallows down a “Can you smuggle me out of my own party? Can you take me with you? Can we run away to a place where no one knows my name?” forcefully.

“Give me your palm,” Donghae says.

Hyukjae does so obediently though he doesn’t know what Donghae’s after. Usually the other person’s the one with their palms wide open, begging for Hyukjae to please spare them some cash so they can buy that watch they’ve been dreaming of.

Donghae places something into his palm, and Hyukjae flinches unwittingly from the sudden contact with cold metal.

Donghae keeps his hand on Hyukjae, a gentle grip on his wrist, and Hyukjae looks.

A pair of cufflinks.

He looks up at Donghae, who offers a small smile though his eyes look a little wet with tears.

“I bought them for this party. A stupid attempt at assimilating,” he explains. It’s true: it’s Montblanc and cost 500 dollars; usually Donghae would have settled for something less than 50.

“I know it’s nothing. You probably have way more expensive ones anyway, but still, you look more the part of the rightful owner than I do,” he adds, curling Hyukjae’s palm into a fist.

Then Hyukjae pulls away and the brusqueness scares Donghae, and his brain is screaming this is the part I warned you about; Lee Hyukjae is just like the rest, why would you even think otherwise? But Hyukjae’s pocketing one of the cufflinks Donghae has placed in his palm and taking out the cufflinks from his left suit jacket sleeve.

He pushes the two cufflinks, a new, mismatched pair, into Donghae’s hand. “You keep one of mine too. That way we’re even.”

Donghae leaves his hand in the air stupidly, because the truth is no one ha