Who knows what month it is now? The only remarkable thing that happens in weeks of monotony, just barely broken up by the weekends, is when Donghae’s overshirt rips while they’re practicing the choreography for the tenth time that day. A big rip right at his bicep that rips more when he turns to look at it. His look of dismay is so comically overblown, and then Ryeowook reaches into the hole and tugs, and Hyukjae does the same. Within seconds, the sleeve is ripped from shoulder to wrist, Donghae is yelling incomprehensibly, and it’s not that funny but they all laugh and laugh and laugh until they’re sprawled out on the floor or folded over in half. Uselessly, the music plays on around them.

Henry leans back against the wall, not knowing how he got there. But he looks down to find that somehow, Ryeowook’s head is pillowed on his stomach, two tired faces meeting to share a secret affectionate smile of their own. Of course, they immediately start making funny faces at each other, almost as if they weren’t tired at all.

From the middle of the floor, a Sungmin-shaped starfish calls for a break even though they’re obviously already taking one.

-

Whatever it is, the heat, or the humidity, or how badly he needs to be alone for a little longer, Henry purposely finds the most out-of-the-way bathroom at this venue. It’s the only way to get away from the fresh bout of tension, not to mention the staff who don’t seem to know that he is with the band and talk to him like he’s a lost kid.

Literally! They think he’s someone’s kid wandering around! What the hell.

So he finds the emptiest hallway, the farthest walk from where any of the action happens. He expects a sense of relief when he walks through the door, but. Well. What he gets instead is the feeling that someone else is here.

Nothing concrete to point to that until, against his better judgment, he peeks at the short strip visible under the low bottoms of the stall doors with no small amount of trepidation.

Staring back at him is, unmistakably, one of the bright red pair of sneakers that Donghae decided to wear to rehearsal today, in addition to some of the uneven marker stripes that Donghae had drawn onto the white bottom layer of cushioning on Kyuhyun’s shoes, each facing the opposite way, heels touching one another.

In that instant, he fully, irrevocably knew what it is they were doing, though the why of it all remained a mystery. Everything he had gone through, from the periodic frantic google searches whose results had only left him sick to his stomach, to the confused but determined experimenting with and a facade of normalcy, to the fortunate offhand mention of a forum site in some internet advice column on the third page of the search results too many months later, the breadcrumb trail he needed that brought him to peace and despair and joy and hopelessness and regularly clearing his browser history, mixed with a dash of learning from the man he loves that it's never worth it to lie to yourself: it all led to this moment, when he thought, for the first time, with no uncertainty or shame, Why me? I'm too aual for this.

“Hyungs, please come out of there already,” he pleads. “We only have fifteen minutes left on our break. Or twenty,” he amended reluctantly, grimacing, “since you’ll both be late.”

“It’s only me,” Donghae says, not at all convincing.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Henry points out, “I can see Kyuhyun’s shoes.”

“Ya, show your hyung some respect!” Kyuhyun yells, somehow utterly lacking any sense of irony. Then, after a pause, “Forget it. Just go away.”

“Can’t you wait until you get home?” Henry whines, but leaves anyway because damn, he does not want to be here right now. Maybe he can find an empty dressing room or supply closet or something. And with any luck, forget this ever happened. He thinks, uncharitably, I hate you all.

-

It’s not late by any standard - except, maybe, if you just had a performance, with a whole lot of foreign languages flying past you in between the half-dozen songs that were rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed. Then maybe eleven PM was a little bit late, especially if you planned on doing anything more adventurous than, say, watching a movie in your PJs.

Yeah, actually, it’s pretty late - when everyone got back to the hotel, they all immediately retired to their rooms for what little sleep and personal time they would get before the flight in the morning. Eleven PM at any other time not spent on idol schedules and Henry is certain they would have all gone out for at least a drink.

Still, he hesitates at the door for a moment, thinking that he really should be here. He wanted to check on everyone, but he knows where he should go first.

Yeah, it’s late, but whatever. He knocks twice, lightly enough to be polite but by no means quiet. Room 450 is quiet, just like the rest of the hallway that Henry’s waiting in, though he was certain that the door several doors down was making noise a few moments ago. When he walked past it, there were murmurs, a hum that could be mistaken for idle chatter in the hallways if you strained hard enough.

Now, while he waits, he hears nothing...

Henry isn’t waiting long before Sungmin opens the door and he’s prematurely brought out of his deep-listening.

“Oh!”

Henry smiles, the look of pleasant surprise on Sungmin’s face a cute sight. He was right, at least, because Sungmin stands there in red sweats and a grey tank top and looks still very awake.

“Hey hyung, I was just wonde--”

“Henry-ya, come in!”

Henry could honestly say he was surprised - he was thinking that at most he’d get a moment to talk but then, as it often goes in the past, Sungmin or whichever member he was visiting would insist on sleeping or asking him to leave, just for personal space. However, Henry thinks with a soft smile on his face, it’s not an unpleasant one. He shuts the door behind him, returning to a slightly scattered Sungmin.

“Isn’t it a little late to...” Henry starts, not really certain where he’s going with his sentence (after all, isn’t it a little late to be sneak-visiting members?), but he interrupts himself when he sees Sungmin putting away his guitar.

“Wait, why are you putting that up?” Henry asks, taking a few steps to the chair in the nearest corner of the room. He puts his hand on it, but hesitates, feeling out of place and uncertain of where exactly he should be.

Sungmin looks over his shoulder, hand around the neck of his acoustic as he holds it, suspended, above his bed. “Um... to clean up?”

Henry chuckles, looking around - the room was already clean. “Ah, it seems clean enough, doesn’t it? Were you playing it?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to be rude...”

Henry rolls his eyes, finally feeling a bit more in-place in Sungmin’s space. He takes a seat, stretching his legs a little.

He knows this visit is for Sungmin (maybe, selfishly, he can admit that it’s for him too; it’s nice to always have a warm and welcoming friend, especially in the midst of the drawn out almost-drama he’s always involved in with Ryeowook). It’s for Sungmin, and the last thing he would want to do is make him feel unwelcome in his own room.  “It’s not rude. Um... Were you working on something new?”

Sungmin smiles, a radiant smile with his perfectly-shaped lips that Henry sort of never has the willpower to look away from quickly enough. “Yeah,” he nods his head. It’s nice. This is nice, Henry thought. Sungmin hasn’t had a lot of real smiles lately - all of them were for stages and interviews and they were genuine for the fans, but not true to himself. “If you had time, would you maybe want to hear?”

Henry feels a pang in his heart from the way Sungmin looks at him just then. So thankful, so happy to not be alone - or not with so many people that he doesn’t have the option to be his reserved self. Henry replies with a bashful smile, “Yeah, I would.”

That Sungmin’s making something new, not just noodling around or working on covers, is a really good sign. Henry’s chest swells with affection and pride.

Sungmin sits down and somewhere in the room next door they hear a soft thud, catching both their attention enough to look to the east wall at the same time. The thud didn’t happen again, in the next half minute they looked at it.

“Between you and me,” Sungmin starts, chuckling as he shakes his head to himself, “I’m pretty sure Kyuhyun and Donghae have something going on.”

Henry almost starts laughing at that - of course they do. He needed no further confirmation of that.

He wasn't quite sure what tipped him off that what Sungmin meant was that they're ing, though. Maybe the way his mouth pulled to the side in something like a smirk, lingering for a second or two after he finished his sentence, and the way he didn't say dating or anything like that. Another foreign language he's learned passably, though not one he'll ever speak fluently.

Whatever it is that he sees in Henry’s face, it makes Sungmin raise an eyebrow, settling back against the headboard in a comfortable way. He looks so soft, so gentle and beautiful there that Henry doesn’t have the words for it. Doesn’t know how someone in sweats and no makeup and with wild hair could look so stunning.

“Have they told you anything?” Sungmin says with a hint of undertone that Henry couldn’t place.

Henry shakes his head - he wasn’t lying because, technically, neither of them told him anything. “Nah. Just a, a suspicion. I’m always seeing them holding hands and giggling.”

“I actually asked them about it because there’s only so much curiosity I can handle. They both clammed up.” Sungmin laughed, stretching out his feet. ”Donghae mostly, but I let it go.”

“It’s not really our business though, so,” Henry says, and it’s a little silly when he thinks about it - how easily others want to ask about , about your life. It’s a strange curiosity that often leaves him sweating - not a real answer to be found, nothing but sly jokes and no choice but to deflect and misdirect.

“Ah, yeah, you’re right,” Sungmin says, stopping short of saying anything more. He sort of looks regretful, eyes wandering a past that only recently came to pass. Maybe he was a little envious, too, Henry decides. His friends can find that sort of balance, and his went off the scale too many times to count. “I just care and need to ask. Just to know, you know?”

Henry, undoubtedly, knows what it’s like. Friends come with investment, after all, no matter how much you have to lie through your teeth to talk to them about it like you know what it’s like. “Yeah, I do.”

He purses his lips, and when he looks down to the unused guitar in Sungmin’s grasp, he’s just deflecting. He ignores that train of thought, because it’s too close when it drives home what he can’t give Ryeowook. He doesn’t think about it, like it vanishes before he has the time to dwell and comb over the pain.

“Oh!” Sungmin exclaims, realizing that there was a guitar in his lap. His fingers look like they flex a little on instinct, warming up to the fretboard underneath them with a quick stretch. “That’s right,” he giggles. Henry likes that, his shy nature - he can never quite take himself seriously. Not one on one, at least.

“You sure you wanna hear?”

Henry half-heartedly rolls his eyes. “Of course I do.” He leaves out the part where he would listen to him recite numbers from the phonebook if that’s what he wanted.

Sungmin gives him a wide, true smile, and Henry doesn’t know what happens. He can’t pinpoint it, how the difference before the smile and after the smile was so... shocking.

Sungmin looks so beautiful and delicate and, no, he didn’t look happy. Not exactly, not in the sense that he was content down to his soul. He still had a heart that was mending and it was almost visible, day by day, the way it was slowly being put back together. Less frowns at first, more energy, more glow to his eyes and his lips when he smiled and then now.

Henry doesn’t know how someone couldn’t want to spend their life with him - even if it’s just a subtle feeling. Even if in passing, a stranger could see a life with him.

That left little hope for the people who know him, doesn’t it?

Sungmin is walking, talking art. It’s amazing to know him at all, and has he always been this overwhelming?

Henry purses his lips because, yes. Sungmin has always been a little overwhelming, and he nervously rolls his thumbs over his fingers, like he’s trying to quell sudden nerves.

Belatedly, like a reflex, he remembers that not everyone can feel that kind of love. (The forums did manage to hammer that home eventually, it seems.) Barring that, though, the mystery lies in anyone who can and yet manages, somehow, to evade the gravitational pull of Sungmin’s charms. A warm flush steals over Henry's cheeks, surprising him.

Sungmin giggles again, and Henry’s eyes (when did they go out of focus?) come back to his face. Notice his pinned-up hair and his eyes with their imperfect smears of left-over eyeliner. His soft skin, the way it glows in the lamplight, makes him seem almost unreal.

Like Henry could lift his hand and reach out and only grab a handful of dust...

He just shakes his head a little, unsure what to do or what to say because he wasn’t exactly listening when he heard Sungmin say... something. He knew he said something because he saw his lips move, heard a hum, but he couldn’t call them to mind.

“I was saying, you’re staring,” Sungmin said, but he doesn’t sound bothered. “I can’t play if you’re drilling holes into me,” he adds with a slight smile.

Henry comes out of it, pretty quickly, a spell lifted. “Oh, wow, sorry. Sort of, ah... dazed?”

“Dazed?” A raised eyebrow.

What the , brain? “I mean, just, sort of tired. Sleepy.”

Sungmin smiles, pulling his fingers over an open chord. Henry feels a bit better about his word choice once Sungmin begins, two strums over simple chords. Must have chalked it up to Henry’s imperfect Korean, the way he doesn’t always say the thing he means.

But then he sits back and lets himself melt, lets the music wash over him in its simple way of taking over a room. It’s delicate, a slow start that builds, that lets Sungmin’s hands drift from mid-fretboard to high to low. He’s just as mesmerizing to watch as he is to hear and god if it doesn’t sound like he’s putting as much emotion into each note as he would when he’s singing.

Henry’s eyes somehow slipped closed, nowhere near tired - electrified, in some ways, because he could just barely sit still - but overcome in messy feelings that demanded he not watch.

He opens them - peels them back, really - and Sungmin is there, in his own world, staring at his own hands as they create something that did not exist beforehand. Before each melody that was resolved, then replaced, and then revived yet again.

But that only went on for a few moments before his voice came to mix with the sounds. It was just a selection of varying pitches of “ah”, a few beautiful breaths, and his shy smile before, “Oh baby, you couldn't find me. It was steady, like the earth. But then you left me, so alone, I just don't know where to search to, find you. Find you. Find you...”

The song was short and it ended in a fade that Henry all but noticed. He couldn't quite pull himself from the song or the way the lyrics left him feeling bitter.

But then a nervous chuckle pulls him from himself and Henry realizes that his eyes remained closed, up until now when he had to blink back to the present moment.

Sungmin didn't look confident as he was now. He looked like he was waiting for something to go wrong, and Henry didn't know what until he remembered the lyrics...

“That was... so. So beautiful.” Henry's lack of words was more or less from being stunned, but he knows that, even without it feeling so intense, he still couldn't put it into the right words.

Sungmin didn't seem to mind, if his smile meant anything. “Thank you...”

“It's um...” Henry starts, and it feels wrong immediately to ask what it's about. They know who it's about.

Sungmin raises his eyebrow, moving his guitar to lean against the wall in his side of the bed. “It's...?”

“It’s sad. Even without the lyrics, it was sad.”

The glint in Sungmin’s eyes looks like it fractures a bit - not wholly, because he’s smiling in a somber way that suggests that he does indeed know that it was sad. Just enough in that way people get when they’re a bit shocked from something they knew was coming. “I know...”

“That’s good, though, isn’t it?”

“Me being sad?”

Henry jumped forward quickly - instincts setting an immediate blaze under him. “No! No!” He reached out, and he was standing halfway between the chair and bed before he saw how Sungmin was smiling.

“No, it’s okay!” Sungmin started, bubbling laughter coming out from under his hand as it quickly came up to modestly cover his smiling. “I’m just messing with you.”

Henry’s smile turns bright and big as he settles back into the armchair. He can feel his own gaze soften in a happy resolve - he liked the way Sungmin joked. It was cute, if it hadn’t given him a heart attack. He likes that Sungmin’s joking at all. “Ahh, don’t do that. It’s not good for my heart.”

Sungmin snorts. “I think laughter is good for the heart, isn’t it?”

“No, you’re thinking of the soul. And laughter is only good to the heart that isn’t being abused for cheap laughs.”

They’re both smiling. Sungmin, somewhere in there, found the time to stealthily recline on his bed. He looks sunken in, like the bed wants to take him for itself. If beds were self-aware, Henry had no doubt that this bed would indeed want to keep the person on top for itself. It only makes sense.

Henry decides to follow that example - by getting up and taking his spot a few feet away from Sungmin on his bed.

Sungmin just hums happily.

“But no, really, I think it’s a good thing.”

“What, the song?”

“Well, yes, that too. It’s a good song. But it’s good that it’s sad, too - sad things need to be felt.”

Sungmin hummed, and in Henry’s periphery, he could see him nodding in agreement. “I guess that’s true.”

Henry wasn’t sure what the exact right words were in Korean - he knows the gist of it, knows how to say it in English, so he just settles on the compromise of “How else would it stop feeling sad if you didn’t let it feel sad?”

“I think you would have to bury it and never let it come out.”

Henry chuckles, recognizing a joking tone when he hears it. “But then we wouldn’t get beautiful music.”

When Henry looks over, Sungmin is blushing and very decidedly not looking toward him. He just smiles a small thank you and crosses his hands in front of him to lay on his stomach.

The room is quiet. Not even the neighboring rooms are making sounds - even the one shared by Kyuhyun and Donghae.

If that isn’t a sign to get to bed, Henry doesn’t know what is. With a heavy sigh and a lot more work than he thought it would take, he hauls himself into a sitting position and runs his fingers through his hair. He takes a moment, looks around the room lit by the single corner lamp, and then sighs again.

“Gotta go?” Sungmin said, voice lathered in a sluggish haze that was familiar to anyone who’s seen him about to pass out.

“Unfortunately.”

“Like me to walk you to your room?”

Henry snorts. The funny part is, Sungmin probably meant it. Still, he shakes his head. “No, no, it’s okay. It’s just at the end of the hall...”

“If you insist...”

Henry looks at him - his eyes are closed. He almost wants to make the older take him to his room just to wake him up. “I do.”

Henry stands up and to his surprise, so does Sungmin. He watches him do so, and he can plainly see how weighed down and tired he is. Almost as though he could see the lead weights hanging from each limb.

“Uh, no, really, it’s o-”

Sungmin yawns, trying to be polite with a hand to obscure it. “I’m not walking you, I’m just, um...”

Sungmin pulls him into a hug, refusing to say any more. Henry is surprised - but only from the fact that Sungmin hasn’t hugged him like this in so long. Possibly not since he was leaving for SJM’s first long stay. It’s really nice, and Henry takes only a moment before he wraps his arms back around Sungmin’s waist.

It lasts for a while, too - maybe both of them were so tired that they were falling asleep on each other. Henry, still, doesn’t mind, even if that’s all it was.

But then, “Thank you,” Sungmin mumbles, emphasizing with a strong squeeze.

Henry feels it again - that staccato beat of his heart that’s definitely something other than friendly. He hugs back with everything he has. “I missed this.”

Sungmin’s the one to pull away, yet Henry could tell there’s hesitation behind it. “Me too. I’ll write more songs and you should come by to hear them.”

Henry nods, ignoring the faint urge to kiss Sungmin goodbye. He’s left staring at the door, the phantom feeling lingering even as he made his way into his own hotel room.

-

One evening, instead of staying out while Sungmin’s over, Donghae trudges in from the entranceway, all the lines of his body forming a downtrodden figure.

“What’s wrong?” Sungmin is the first to ask. Donghae envelops him in a hug.

“Why do you look so sad?” Mi adds, getting awkwardly pulled into the hug for his troubles.

“Let’s go out to eat ramen,” is all Donghae says.

Accidentally, at the same time, Henry and Ryeowook both say, “Sure, but why?”

“Not again,” Donghae mutters. He shakes his head, then adds less quietly, “Maybe... it’ll help me miss Heechul-hyung less.”

Not a single one of them can resist cooing and fawning over Donghae a bit for that; he soaks it up with a big, closed-eyed smile.

“Ah, I also miss him a lot,” Mi agrees with a sigh while he Donghae’s hair.

Henry’s rumbling stomach interrupts the moment all too soon. They all laugh, because they’re giant dorks. Sheepish, he asks very politely, “Is it alright if we leave now?”

“Come on, let’s go to the closest one, it’s too cold out,” Ryeowook says. He has a special indulging Donghae tone to his voice, one hand the back of Donghae’s head, down to his neck and back up, while the other pops open his phone case to look over his messages. “I don’t want to be out late.”

Sungmin interjects with, “Wait, Mimi, are you coming with us too?”

“Sorry, I already have plans,” Mi replies breezily, winking at Sungmin. “I need to have some fun too,” he says in a playful tone with some mysterious undercurrent.

“Hmph! It doesn’t seem possible that you’re so popular when you’re so cheesy,” Ryeowook says. Mi places a loud, obnoxious smack of a kiss onto the top of Ryeowook’s head, which has Ryeowook batting him away and Donghae laughing loudly as he wriggles his way under Mi’s long arm.

“Lighten up a little,” Mi teasingly advises Ryeowook, who only groans and sticks his cold hands under the back of poor Mi’s shirt. The older man yelps.

Meanwhile, Donghae’s asking him, “How do you have so much stamina? Do you take a special vitamin? Come on, tell me your secret!” while Sungmin says, “I bet it’s easy for you because everyone’s shorter than you! No, seriously, stay safe, okay?” because no one in this group knows how to take turns.

“I will, don’t worry,” Mi says. “Sorry, Donghae, what did you say?”

“Tell me your secret vitamin!” Donghae insists. None of it quite makes sense, as if there’s a source Henry can’t trace the line back to, all of it swirling in a flurry around and around a snowglobe he’s stuck outside of.

Mi is visibly confused. He rubs Donghae’s arm and says, “If I had one, you would steal it. Donghae, stop that!”

Once no one's poking his ribs or tugging on his hands or sleeves (or earlobe!), Mi sweeps Sungmin up in a hug, then steps back and holds Sungmin’s chin in his hand. “But, hyung, I can have tea with this handsome face tomorrow, right?”

Through a cheeky grin, Sungmin says, “Aish, if you’re going to flatter me, do I even have a choice?”

“Nope!” Mi tells him with a big, cheery smile, all teeth and sunshine. He squeezes Sungmin’s hands in his own for a few seconds. “Have a good time!” He gives brief hugs to the rest of the ramen group, then waves on his way out, back turned to them, and says, “See you later!”

Ryeowook waves back and puffs out his cheeks and then winds his arm around Sungmin’s, while Donghae stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets, staring off into the distance with an expression bordering on sorrow. Feeling left out, Henry copies Ryeowook by grabbing Donghae’s arm, tugging hard to get the show on the road.

At the restaurant, Sungmin gets all their orders put in ‘cause he’s nice like that, and comes back with drinks. Henry sips at his not-cider (it’s weird that they call it cider when it’s really more of a light citrus pop) and Donghae, uncharacteristically, got a ramune, whereas Ryeowook and Sungmin are starting in on their beers right away. They clink them together, so Henry does the same with the soft drinks on his half of the bar they’re sitting at.

Perhaps it’s better that he’s seated on the farthest side from Ryeowook, or maybe it’s a good thing that he’s next to Donghae, who’s much more forgiving when Henry doesn’t understand what he’s trying to say than he is with just about anyone else. The two of them talk shop for a while. Henry only occasionally glances past Donghae to see how Ryeowook and Sungmin are doing.

Almost heedless of the food, the two at the far end get closer and closer. Their intimacy is a jump cut as he keeps looking. With every drink, they’re more and more in their own little world, trading inaudible jokes, laughing too loud, leaning on each other. Sungmin has an arm hanging over Ryeowook’s shoulder, and it looks so warm. At one point, their chatter in their little bubble is punctuated by Ryeowook complaining, “You kicked me!” and Sungmin says, with the confidence of the inebriated, “Nooo, you kicked me!”

By comparison, Henry and Donghae’s idle chit-chat seems strangely gloomy.

Perhaps they are. They agree how weird it is to not have Heechul around for so long, how things are just a little too quiet without him. The heart of the matter is reached when the bowls are halfway empty.

“Heechul-hyung did send me this mysterious message that just said, ‘good things can happen again’,” Donghae says, a small furrow between his brows.

“I don’t know what it means for him, but... he’s right, isn’t he?” Henry asks, seeking unknown comfort.

In response, Donghae smiles wide and claps his shoulder and punches his arm and says, “Of course!”

“Ow!” Henry pouts, but Donghae’s already stopped paying attention to anything but his food. Honestly... That’s his idea of reassurance?

There’s a lull in the near-continuous giggling that’s been coming from Ryeowook and Sungmin. Suddenly, Sungmin says imperiously and kind of too loud, “Kids, listen up!” But he can’t keep it up and devolves into snorting laughter, greeted by a chorus of groans and “Hyung, what are you doing? Why are you like this?”

At length, Sungmin calms down enough to say, “Someone had to do it!”

Through gasping laughter, Ryeowook tells him, “Hyung, you’re being ridiculous!”

Sungmin objects over him to say, more quietly, “No, but, I have something to say.” The three of them look at him attentively, a hush of worry falling over them, though Donghae keeps eating at the same time as he stares. All Sungmin says, though, is, “I’m still sad, but I can see the day I won’t be.”

What a relief that is! After a bit of maneuvering, Ryeowook sets his head down on Sungmin’s shoulder, all the remaining tension visibly draining from his body.

“You understand what I mean, right?” Sungmin’s bittersweet smile speaks volumes.

“You’ll be okay,” Donghae says, and Sungmin doesn’t scold him for being too informal, just ruffles his hair. Taking sides didn’t last very long, not with a heart as big as his.

For the brief moment they’re outside waiting to be picked up, Henry looks up at the snow slowly falling to the ground. It fills him with a confused homesickness; he doesn’t quite know what or where he misses. He glances to the side, sees Ryeowook huddling closer to Sungmin once more, and immediately looks up again because he can’t take that right now.

On the ride back, Donghae takes his hand, but it doesn’t help any.

Coming back, he revels in the warmth that slowly returns to his limbs, especially once they’re safely ensconced in the twelfth floor quarters. Donghae wraps his arm around Sungmin’s shoulders; Sungmin’s still drunk enough that he’s babbling all cutely. “That was nice. You’re so nice. I wanna stay here. I don’t have to go, do I?” So Donghae gets him seated on the couch and then gets up to fetch him a glass of water.

Along the way back, Ryeowook accosts Donghae, the water sloshing dangerously, to hug him. Ryeowook giggles and tells him, “I love you!”

Donghae pats his head and tells him to go to sleep. Ryeowook acquiesces easily. “’Kay.”

“Whu?” Unexpectedly, he pulls Henry with him to his room, the sounds of Donghae turning on the TV popping up behind them. “Am I staying over now? No one told me.” Despite that, he goes willingly enough, his heartrate spiking at Ryeowook’s hand wrapped possessive-tight around his wrist.

“Okay, I’m telling you now.”

“Hyung, that’s not how that works...” But, god, he’s still weak-willed when it comes to this man.

Somehow, in the next blink, they’re on their backs in Ryeowook’s narrow bed, every part of them tooclose except they’re not touching anywhere anymore. The spell of tension is broken when Henry laughs and says, “Hyung, your breath smells weird. I can smell it from here.”

Whining in response, Ryeowook tells him like it’s a secret, “I think- I drank a little more than I thought.”

“Is that right?” Henry teases him. Too easy.

Ryeowook groans. “Don’t laugh at me,” he says. “It’s only okay because you’re so cute.” He first turns his head towards Henry, then the rest of his body distinctly later.

Like a reflex, Henry mirrors him, so they’re lying on their sides, close enough to keep each other warm. He doesn’t know what makes him touch the tip of his nose to Ryeowook’s, or to also tilt so that their foreheads touch, but he’s feeling bold, contact-drunk, forging ahead into what they could have. What he wants so badly for them to have. Ryeowook’s hand comes to rest on his hip. His eyes fall closed and his hand travels up Henry’s side. Across his shoulder.

Uncaring of the cloying tang, Henry closes his eyes as well. One fingertip trails up his neck, almost too much. Could he-

“Pop!” Ryeowook says, giggling loudly and poking Henry’s cheek. Then again. And again.

Frustration is so familiar that it hardly registers. Henry huffs out a resigned laugh and gently pushes Ryeowook’s chest until the other man is lying on his back again. Ryeowook lets his head roll back to align with the rest of him. His eyes are barely open now, two narrow slits with the glitter of the night sky in between. He blinks a lot and yawns and mumbles a bit, though Henry can’t understand what he’s trying to say.

Feeling strangely bereft, he pulls the blanket up over them both. Ryeowook turns away from him with a clumsy “Goot night”, taking just a little too much of the blanket with him, but not complaining when Henry pulls some of it back.

He tries to hide the light of his phone while he sends a message so that his roommate doesn’t worry, wanting to keep it from waking Ryeowook. He chances a peek at Ryeowook’s sleeping face, listening to his slow, even breathing. He’s even more beautiful like this, Henry thinks helplessly, drawn in the longer he looks at his beloved lying next to him, drinking in his devastating profile, his gut clenching from what didn’t happen. I don’t ever wanna leave.

Though he’s not sure he can fall asleep, he maneuvers himself so that his back is pressed to Ryeowook’s, feeling the slow, comforting rhythm of the other’s heartbeat, and he’s out like a light.