Hyukjae wakes up early.

Well, earlier than he needs to on the weekend, anyway.

It’s actually nearly 10am.

Hyukjae can already hear his roommate clattering around washing dishes or something productive. He’s probably already cooked a three course breakfast, eaten it all, and is now clearing up. Lately Kyuhyun’s been into what he calls ‘meal prep’ and this means at random times of the day he cooks enough for several meals and then eats most of it. He'd decided a year ago that he spent too much time gaming and his new hobby was going to be cooking, and despite his original amusement, Hyukjae now can grudgingly admit the other man is good at it.

Kyuhyun’s a nag though. He expects Hyukjae to do things to help like wash up and cut vegetables. He also micromanages the chopping of each carrot and the drying of each dish. Hyukjae's efforts seldom meet his standards. Therefore, if it looks like it will be a cooking weekend, Hyukjae usually shuts himself in his room with snacks, watches movies, scrolls on his phone and naps.

That’s more his idea of a good time.

Lately though- since that weekend- Kyuhyun has been more insistent that Hyukjae get out of bed and join him. He has been bossy about packing leftovers for Hyukjae to take for his lunch. He has given him little tasks that don't really need doing.

And on the worst days, he has come into Hyukjae’s room, silently gotten under the covers with him and hugged him until he stops crying.

Kyuhyun has always hated skinship.

So Hyukjae really appreciates it.

They don’t talk about it though. Hyukjae just does his best the next day to get up, to eat what’s put in front of him, and to ineffectively cut up vegetables while Kyuhyun sighs and redoes almost everything himself.

It had also been Kyuhyun’s idea that Hyukjae start accepting the unwanted frappuccinos that are given to him each weekday.

Hyukjae had protested, stressed and tearful, but Kyuhyun had glared at him.

‘ him,’ he’d said. ‘All those ing bastards, Hyukjae. If that guy thinks it’s a joke, wants to waste his money on a hundred frappuccinos, let him!’

‘I don’t want to see him,’ Hyukjae had told him. ‘He’s ruining my favourite café for me, I can’t go there if he is going to keep turning up!’

‘You turn up too,’ Kyuhyun says. ‘Ask for the most expensive things. Throw them in the trash in front of him!’

Hyukjae wonders what the other man would do. Maybe he’d look at him with those dark, serious eyes, pretending to feel wounded. Maybe he’d laugh and buy ten extras to make up for it. Money probably meant nothing to him, just like it didn’t to-

To any of those people.

‘You should make him fall for you,’ Kyuhyun says, and his eyes glitter with malice. ‘Make him fall for you and then destroy him.’

‘No,’ Hyukjae says. ‘I’m better than that. I just- I just don’t want anything to do with him.’

Not Donghae. Not any of those people.

He just wants to- wants to move on. Try to gather up the pieces of his life.

Forget all about that night.

Perhaps that’s why it stings so much that the dark-haired man in the leather jacket says he can’t remember.

It’s not fair.

Hyukjae can’t forget even a minute.

He remembers being introduced to people, he remembers meeting Donghae.

A little shorter than him, and drunk from the start. Big doe eyes dazed, tuxedo disheveled, lips parted in a big confused smile. A girl – probably hired – had been sitting in his lap, playing with his bowtie. Hyukjae had squeezed onto the sofa with them for a while, blinking shyly and holding a glass of wine. Donghae had slung an arm around his shoulder for a photo, and on the other side-

Hyukjae presses his palms to his eyes and takes an unsteady breath.

This is why he has been staying at home.

He can’t handle seeing Donghae, or anyone else. Even the café, which has always been his safe place, feels foreign and somehow invaded now. Hyukjae hasn’t risked going there for the last week, and that makes him angry too because he needs his morning sugar hit, and now the only frappuccinos he is getting are from that bastard in the leather jacket!

He looks different, somehow, outside of the hotel.

Obviously he’s sober now, but it’s not just that. He looks rougher, clad in jeans and jacket instead of dress shirt and bowtie. He wears workboots. His eyes are still dark and doe-like, but not dazed. His smile is a bit mischievous. He’s- and this is what pisses Hyukjae off the most- he’s the sort of person Hyukjae probably would have found attractive, if they’d met any other way.

If Hyukjae hadn’t known who he was friends with.

, they were all the same.

‘Hyukjae?’ Kyu