Archive of Our Own

It's a nightgown. 

Long enough to almost brush the knees of a woman, little lace decal decorating the hem and the deep heart neckline; thin straps, a low back, cheap once-white satin that's been washed too many times and slips delicately through Seonghwa's careful fingers. 

It feels evil of him just to look at it, thrifted for three dollars seventy under the pretense of an illusory sister, lying spread out and formless in liquid ripples across the foot of his bed. It feels as though he is cheapening the cheap fabric when his fingers trace feather-light and barely there, breaths caught in silent, measured gasps in his chest, along the thin straps. 

Would they emphasise the broadness of his shoulders?

He traces his fingertip over smooth satin, takes in the contrast as it turns into the coarse softness of overwashed lace. 

He shrugs the bathrobe from his shoulders, nudges his fingertips beneath the hem. It feels so perverse a touch in the dim yellow glow of his bedside lamp. 

Yunho is visiting his family. 

San is staying with Wooyoung. 

Hongjoong is…

His mind refuses to wrap itself around verbalising that thought. 

Hongjoong is Seonghwa's partner, who he loves. That is a fact.

Hongjoong has never given more response to any form of startling news than a slow blink, a patient silence while he waits for Seonghwa to tell him what he needs. 

Hongjoong has never hesitated in caring for anyone he cares about, and has been advocating for Yeosang’s sense of self since before Seonghwa even knew them. 

But Yeosang does not make Seonghwa's stomach shift with the certain, nauseous vertigo of knowing that he's doing something wrong as it does when he slips his arms into the length of the nightgown, anxiety clawing pale fingers up the inside of his throat, and pulls it over his head. 

The satin is cool and slippery against his bare skin, and the bodice sits tighter around the band of his ribs than he feels like it should. 

The fragility of it constricts him, and he revels in it. Enough, almost, to make guilty, relieved, ashamed tears sit hot and tight beneath his tongue. 

He smooths his palms down his stomach, watches the way the cheap satin, gold-threaded in the yellow lamp, clings to him. 

The edge of the lace brushes his mid-thigh. He's taller than a woman should be. 

But in the right angles, from the right light – when he twists and contorts himself in front of the mirror hanging on the back of his locked bedroom door so that his hips seem wider and his shoulders seem narrower, and when he bends at the waist to make it seem curved, and when he tucks one leg coquettishly in front of the other – with his long fringe shading his eyes, making them heavy-lidded and sultry…

Like this, he almost looks like he could be womanly. 

Like this, he could almost believe that he's looking at a woman, pin-up pretty, glancing shy over her shoulder for the camera. 

It falls apart in the release of his bated breath, all these carefully held curves, and he stands looking at himself in the mirror. 

He traces a fingertip along the sharp, careful line of his collarbone; it might look pretty with a necklace. He traces his finger down, over warm skin bared by cool satin and lace. His sternum is slightly sunken, his ribs concave in a slight asymmetry beneath the shape of his pectorals; he's known this since he was eight years old and every muscle and bone in his body had been appraised by the Sydney Ballet School. 

It's not severe enough to interfere with his breathing or his heart, and not enough to appear distasteful. They care about these things, ballet companies. Things like form. Appearance. Aesthetics. 

The precursor to performance, before they even care what you can do; will you look good doing it?

At best, the dip in his sternum makes his pectorals seem more defined than they are. 

At worst, it almost gives the illusion of emphasising the idea of breasts.

He turns away from the mirror, pulls the blankets back and slides into bed. Pulls them back up over his chin and mouth. The satin sits soft against his skin between the bedsheets, even clearer the moment he closes his eyes, and quite suddenly he is too aware of the front door to their shared apartment. 

What if Yunho comes home early.

What if San decides to sleep here tonight. 

What if one of them knocks on Seonghwa's door. What if they open it without waiting for an answer. It's locked, but what if they have a key. What if they force it open. 

What if they see him?

He is out of bed, the satin nightgown pulled carelessly off his body and shoved back into the bag he carried it in. His robe is already pulled back over his shoulders, belted firm around his waist. 

What if he stows it in the hidden boxes under his bed, and they come in while he's asleep, and he doesn’t wake up while they peer quietly through his room, peeling the curtains of dignity aside, and find exactly where it is hidden. Under his bed, in his bedside, beneath his pillow, under his mattress.

No, it's too obvious. Those are obvious places to look, and Seonghwa is already slipping out of the apartment into the carpeted hall outside, wide-eyed and silent, the bag clutched in a white-knuckled fist, into the waste room by the fire exit stairs, and the sound of him opening the chute is too loud, and so is the sound the bag makes when it falls down, weighted with weightless satin, into the dark. 

He swallows thickly, tears building beneath his tongue for another reason altogether, and carefully presses the hinged chute closed. 

He swallows, folds his arms over his chest so that he can pretend to himself that he can't feel his fingers shaking. 

He swallows. 

The door to the waste room pushes open and he flinches, jolts away from where he'd slumped against the wall beside the disposal, and the person who opened the door flinches and jolts too. 

It's Mrs Lim, from the apartment next door. Her sons' bedroom shares a wall with Seonghwa's. They're young; six and seven years old each. Sometimes he hears them argue. Sometimes he hears them cry. Mostly he hears them laughing and messing around, giddy before bed. They're happy children.

"Oh," she says, startled, one hand pressed to her chest. Seonghwa finds himself mimicking the gesture, and drops his hand to his side. "Seonghwa-ssi," she says, and utters a quiet, breathy laugh. "You startled me."

"I'm sorry," he says, his words a feather-soft almost-whisper spoken only by his lips. "I was just," he gestures at the trash chute, notices the garbage bag hanging from her other hand. "Sorry."

"No, it's fine," she promises, a relieved breath dropping from her lungs. Seonghwa finds himself mimicking her again. "What are you doing up so late?" she half-scolds, motherly despite being only less than ten years older than him. He's young enough that she sees him only as a son, and a quiet part of him feels eager and pleased when that means she doesn't hesitate to step into the narrow room alongside him when he backs himself into the corner, holding the chute open for her. 

"Couldn't sleep," he says, quiet, a close-lipped smile sitting soft on his lips. 

"Do you still have some of that chamomile I gave you? Drink that," she commands. "And I have some valerian root too, if that's not enough."

He can't help the way his smile settles warm into the corners of his lips. "Thank you, Mrs Lim," he says. He's already had a cup of it. "I'll try that."

"Good boy," she says, brusque and firm, holding the door for him. "Get some sleep."

"Thank you, Mrs Lim," he whispers, slipping past her to the hall. She folds her fluffy bathrobe over her pyjamas, and he finds himself mimicking her again. She's barely taller than his shoulder. "Sleep well," he bids, gives her a small wave, and slips back into his apartment. 

He shuts the door carefully, palms pressed to the enamel-painted wood where it meets the frame. Wavers out a silent, unsteady breath and closes his eyes. Swallows. His fingers are trembling again. These walls are too thin. Doors are made to be walked through. He folds his bathrobe over his chest again, the same way Mrs Lim had done, with shaking hands. He can feel his heart pounding beneath his sunken chest, a desperate bid for escape. 

He washes his hands in the kitchen sink, runs cold water over his wrists until his fingers stop shaking, and locks his bedroom door behind him even though there is no one else in the house. 

It doesn't feel like enough. 

The hospital corner sheets pin him down, the comforter a weight over his whole body. 

It doesn't feel like enough, but he isn't doing anything wrong. He hasn't done anything wrong, that anyone can see. They can kick his door down, tear his bedroom apart, and they won't find any evidence of degeneracy. 

If they dig through the trash, they won't link the satin nightgown at the bottom of the deep bins back to him. 

The door might not keep them out, but at the very least they won't find anything. 

Hongjoong’s hands are cool against his skin, slipping up his waist beneath his shirt, messy and pulled loose from where it had been tucked into Seonghwa's pants. His hands are almost always a little bit cold, but they'll warm up soon. 

Soon eagerness and friction and his lips against the side of Seonghwa's neck will warm him even to his sharpest edges, but for now his soft, cold hands remind Seonghwa of soft, cold satin on his skin and he can’t help the quiet gasp that tears past his lips when one of Hongjoong’s sure, quick thumbs finds the bud of his nipple and his neat teeth nip against Seonghwa's throat.

"Shit," he gasps, his fingers curling tight into Hongjoong’s hair, his back arching to press his chest further into Hongjoong’s hands. 

"Now," Hongjoong murmurs, his voice a low, breathy pitch as he kisses up to Seonghwa's jaw, thumbs rolling against Seonghwa's chest, until he can whisper, "is that any way for a lady to speak?" against the shell of Seonghwa's ear.

He can't control the choked, startled sound that wrenches from his throat, but it comes out lower than he likes. A weak, guttural sound, his knees almost dropping, head leaned back against the door to Hongjoong’s bedroom.

He finds himself hoping, desperately, that Hongjoong will not take the pitch of his voice to be any indication to stop. 

He knows Hongjoong though, and Hongjoong knows him. They know how to listen to each other, and Hongjoong knows how to drive his knee into the door between Seonghwa's legs, catching him on his thigh when he traces his tongue against the shell of Seonghwa's ear and they give out beneath him.

"What do you say?" Hongjoong prompts, fire and steel in his soft, quiet voice. 

"Sorry," Seonghwa whispers, trembling, his eyes squeezed closed and his crotch pressed to Hongjoong’s thigh. A quiet tut, Hongjoong’s tongue clicking against his teeth a bare breath from Seonghwa's ear, and his breathless mouth fumbles to rush, "Sir! I'm sorry, Sir. I'm sorry."

"Mm," Hongjoong noses behind his overwarm ear, hides a kiss behind his lobe that sends a shudder all the way down Seonghwa's spine. "So you do have some manners," he hums, his hands easing to flick lightly over Seonghwa's nipples, his leg pressing up between his thighs. "If you keep this up, I might be nice."

He can feel tears building up, but they're not buried beneath his tongue this time. They're dry and sharp in his eyes, stinging and hot, a sob rising in his chest, and he doesn’t know what's wrong with him. He doesn't know what's wrong with him lately. It usually takes a lot more to make him like this, but he's still mourning the satin nightgown, and he still feels hideous deep in his bones as though his marrow has rotted into something evil, and he wants to be Hongjoong’s lady. He wants to be his good girl. He wants to show Hongjoong the nightgown, flushed with eager embarrassment, and be praised for how pretty it will look on him.

It was three dollars seventy from a second hand store, and the cheap satin was off-white and pilled, but it had looked golden in the dim light of his bedside lamp, and he'd felt beautiful for the twenty seconds he had worn it.

"Ah," Hongjoong offers, so gentle, so sweet, the moment he hears a ragged, unsteady gasp of held-back tears tear past Seonghwa's lips, "is my pretty lady crying already? Is something wrong?" he suggests, nearly croons, one arm winding around Seonghwa's waist, holding him upright while Hongjoong finds the handle of his bedroom door behind Seonghwa's back, pushing it open and ushering him carefully back. 

"No," he shakes his head, tears blurring his vision, hands cradling Hongjoong’s neck with a delicacy that doesn't match the size of them, "no, it's good, I–"

Hongjoong nudges the door closed with his heel, embalming them in the privacy of dim light where Seonghwa can say what he wants, is free to safely say whatever he wants. 

He breathes deep through his open mouth, trembling lips. "It's good," he whispers, his fingers brushing Hongjoong’s hair from his face, blinking to clear his eyes so that Seonghwa can see him. A tear falls like a fat, heavy pearl onto his cheek, and he watches the expression of Hongjoong’s clever, nearly ambivalent curiosity as he catches it on his thumb and wipes it off, eyes meeting Seonghwa's when he lifts his hand to his sweet mouth and licks the tear from his own skin. 

"Pretty when you cry," Hongjoong tells him. "Princess."

A shudder drags up from his bones, trembles past his lips like a quiet sob knocked loose from his chest and Hongjoong urges him to lie back on the bed – messy, unmade blankets. Clean sheets. The smell of laundry detergent and Hongjoong’s skin. One thousand thread count, because he likes the satin-soft feel of luxury wherever he can be bothered to waste his money. Hongjoong’s bed has to feel a certain way, smell a certain way, have these certain familiar dips worn into the mattress so he knows, even when he's asleep, exactly where he is and that he's safe. 

He climbs between Seonghwa's legs, bent at the knee and spread to welcome his body, and undoes one button of Seonghwa's shirt. Fingertips tracing down his bare skin from his clavicle, he undoes another. Tracing down the sharp dip of his sternum. His eyes on Seonghwa's face. Breath caught in the soft part of his lips, he frames the word on a whisper and offers it like a question for Seonghwa to confirm or deny.

"Noona."

A shudder wreaks through her, trembling, and her thighs press instinctively against Hongjoong’s waist. Eyes flutter closed, a quiet breath catching on a whine in her throat. Hands reaching up to twine in Hongjoong’s hair, bringing him down into a deep, slack-mouthed kiss where Seonghwa surrenders her tongue into his mouth along with all the words she doesn't know how to say. 

Hongjoong grinds his hips forward against her, and she can feel him hard against the back of her thigh through his loose pants – feels him twitch against her when a quiet groan knocks from his throat, his hands caressing down her chest, cupping her pecs in his hands. Hands small enough to make them seem big, if only big enough to almost be real. 

"Babygirl," Hongjoong mumbles into Seonghwa's mouth, and he knows it's not something Hongjoong would say; knows it's something he's saying because he knows how badly she wants it, "let me eat you out, hm? Wanna tonguefuck your pussy til you squirt," he gasps, pressing a hand between their hips and digging his fingers into Seonghwa's ass, pressing right against her hole through her clothes. "Want you to ride my face til I can't breathe," he groans, the thumb of his other hand swirling over the raised bud of her nipple, chest arching into his touch. "Want you crying while you fuck yourself on my tongue. Should we try that, baby?"

"H– Hongjoongie–" she gasps, breathless, pleading, her fingers clutching at his back, bunching his shirt and completely unsure of her intentions until he kneels up in the cage of her legs hooked around his thighs and pulls it over his head. Bare golden skin only interrupted by two pale scars underlining his chest, a narrow string of dark hair trailing down his soft navel. 

He's so fucking beautiful, Seonghwa can't help but put her hands on him. Running her palms flat up the broad curve of his chest, over his shoulders, cupping his neck and bringing him down for another open-mouthed kiss. 

"Please," breathed into his mouth, gasping. "Please, please," if he asked what she was begging for, she doesn't even know if she'd be able to answer. "Please."

Hongjoong’s hands move fast at the fly of her pants, daintiness forgotten in an eager rush as he tugs her slacks down, knees curled to her chest to let him pull them down her legs. 

Long, slim. Sometimes lovely. Sometimes unsightly with thick bands of lean, corded muscle, a body twisted and so subtly, grotesquely deformed by a lifetime of dance which started changing bones before they had even settled in their joints. 

His feet are twisted and strange, ugly under callouses and scars. His knees sit at odd angles, his legs invariably twisted into a subtle turnout. All of his muscles are formed long and lean in a way that, when examined closely, seems strangely inhumane. 

Hongjoong has only ever looked at him as lovely. 

Careful, as shy as a long-legged foal, Seonghwa places one foot on Hongjoong’s thigh and extends his other leg slowly and with care to rest over the soft, broad slope of his shoulder. 

He raises a hand, strokes down over Seonghwa's shaved shin from his knee, and turns his head to press a lingering kiss to his jutting ankle.

"So lovely, noona," he breathes against her skin, his shadowed, mesmerising eyes drifting across her body to her face, and it feels like something is bursting in waves in her chest as Hongjoong’s hands follow the path of his eyes slowly, particular with his touch, until he is leaning over her with her leg braced on his shoulder, the backs of his fingers tracing lightly across her cheek. "I think," he whispers, holding her as though she's something fragile and precious, "you're the most beautiful woman in the world."

A trembling little sound hiccups in her chest and she reaches for him, brings him in to kiss her deeply while he lifts her other knee over his shoulder, raises her hips off the bed and pulls her underwear down just far enough for him to press a spit-slick fingertip to her entrance, and then his mouth, and then his tongue, and she has her ankles crossed behind his back, thighs squeezing around his head, fingers tangled deep in his hair pushing and pulling and tugging shile she whines and cries and moans, hips jolting in a desperate, erratic plea for more more more, and when she squints her eyes open to look at his head buried between her legs, the catch of her underwear almost hides the expectation of a cock from her sight, and she can pretend she doesn't see it at all when Hongjoong turns them over and around so that he's sitting propped against the pillows of his bed with her ass in his face, spreading her cheeks apart to eat her out as though his dying wish is to make her fall apart on his tongue, and Seonghwa is whining and panting and mouthing over his pants, suckling the bulge of his small erection through his boxers before she can pull them down and take him twitching into her mouth, fingers digging into his thighs while her own tremble and shake, letting Hongjoong fuck her mouth to muffle the sobs and full-throated moans his tongue tears out her until, Hongjoong’s fingers sliding into her underwear, he presses a fingertip into the dripping slit of her arousal and curses and moans, his hips kicking against Seonghwa's mouth, and hisses, "Your pussy's dripping for me, baby."

She comes so hard and sudden that it feels as though it tears through her, a red-throated sob ripping past her lips when she spills and squirts on Hongjoong’s fingers, making a dripping mess of her soaked underwear, hips twitching and jolting as waves of aftershock trip through her body, thighs trembling, and she can't do anything but watch, her cheek cushioned on Hongjoong’s braced thigh, as he brings a hand down slick with her spend and jerks himself off between his fingers, his little cock straining and twitching as an orgasm surges through him, but nothing comes out. 

He breathes as heavily as Seonghwa does, his fingers absentmindedly tracing her spend across his growth as it softens, pearly white, and Seonghwa only watches his pretty fingers, dazed, and thinks that probably both of them are pretending that the cum on his cock is his. 

She pushes up to her elbows, shakey, her chest flat to Hongjoong’s stomach, and serves careful licks down his cock and labia, soothing laps not mean to overstimulate, and cleans all of his cum off his skin, and off his fingers when he offers them to her, soothing her with murmured praise, a hand stroking up and down the deep curve at the small of her back, still held by her knees braced at either side of his chest. 

Hongjoong wipes her down, kisses her lips soft and chaste, and guides her to the shower. 

Seonghwa locks the door behind him even though he doesn't need to and he knows he doesn't need to, he knows he and Hongjoong just did much more private things than walk in on each other showering, but he can't convince himself that that means it's okay.

He checks three times that the door is locked – then a fourth, darting dripping out of the shower to make sure before slinking back under the stream of hot water.

Hongjoong is sitting on the couch with his knees folded up to his chest painting his fingernails when Seonghwa comes out. Four nails on one hand, one on the other. 

He glances up when Seonghwa emerges, a soft smile curling his pretty lips, flushed and kiss-bitten and still so innocent of the things they had done to Seonghwa's body. "Hey," he says, soft and sweet, and waves Seonghwa onto the couch beside him with an airy gesture of his hand, fingers carefully spread to keep from smudging the drying polish. "I can't dry your hair," he apologises.

"It's okay," Seonghwa says, his voice a whisper, and sits cross-legged on the couch, picking at his fingernails. 

Hongjoong slips a hand loosely around one of his wrists, guides him to rest it on his knee, and Seonghwa flinches and makes to pull away when he realises what Hongjoong means. 

"No," he insists, something scared crawling up his throat. Spiders and a scream in his windpipe, tugging his hand out of Hongjoong’s relenting hold and cradling it to his chest. "I don't want to paint my nails," he says.

"You don't need to paint them all," Hongjoong says, flashing the ring finger of his right hand painted a pretty bright blue to match his hair. "Do you hate women and children?" he asks, rhetorical and teasing, and arches a brow at Seonghwa. 

"No," he mumbles, surly, but doesn't quite relent his hand. He stares away from Hongjoong, towards the kitchenette. There's nothing interesting over there. Three coffee cups by the sink. Someone left the sugar out. He swallows, thick and tight. He doesn't want Hongjoong to misunderstand. "It's just a sex thing," he mumbles, and somewhere deep inside it feels like a desperate, screaming question. It's just a sex thing, right? It isn't real. It doesn't matter. I'm just a filthy fucking pervert, I'm just disturbing and sick in the head, pathological miscreant, and it's okay because you know that and you forgive me and you don't really care. It isn't real, right?

Tell me it doesn't mean anything. 

"What does that have to do with painting your nails," Hongjoong mumbles, a small crumb of amusement hidden deep in the sardonic plains of his flat tone. "It's an awareness thing."

Seonghwa sighs, and offers his hand out to Hongjoong without looking. 

He only glances over when he feels soft lips pressed to his fingertips, and feels the subtle quirk of Hongjoong’s smile beneath them. 

"You don't have to," he says, his words spoken through the prison bars of Seonghwa's fingers. "I'm teasing."

"I know," Seonghwa admits, keeping his hand soft in Hongjoong’s hold. "I don't mind. I'm being silly."

Hongjoong tilts his knees down onto the couch, holds Seonghwa's hand to his chest and leans in, his own hand balanced on Seonghwa's thigh, and presses a soft-lipped kiss to the corner of his mouth. "We can talk if you want." His hands still carry the warmth he borrows when he touches Seonghwa's skin.

"Not really," Seonghwa admits. 

"That's fine," Hongjoong allows, rocking back into his little crouch and bringing Seonghwa's hand with him, resting it palm-down on his knee and bowing his head close enough that Seonghwa can feel the small, warm feather of his breath against the back of his hand while Hongjoong carefully paints one of his fingernails blue. 

It takes twenty seconds, and Hongjoong waves his hands over it and blows, as though that will do anything. Then he simply settles for mapping his fingertips over Seonghwa's hand, his wrist, stroking feather-light up his forearm, cheek resting on his own tucked-up knees. 

Seonghwa wants to talk, he realises in the gentle ease of Hongjoong’s patient silence. He just doesn't have any idea of the first thing to say. 

"If I bought a skirt," Hongjoong asks at last, ten minutes into their silence, "would you wear it?"

Something sticks in Seonghwa's throat. He swallows to dislodge it, glances around to see if anyone is here to overhear it. Wooyoung and San are both out. It's just the two of them. "Maybe," he says, stiff. "I don't know."

"I can keep it here," Hongjoong says, and shrugs. "I don't really care if anyone finds out I own a skirt."

"Hongjoong," he says, and it comes out pleading. 

"Yeah," he says, and nods, "sorry. I won't. Only if you want," he assures, and kisses the back of Seonghwa's hand. 

Another ten minutes of placid silence, settling into their comfort and ease, Hongjoong sorting through the sparse dark hairs on Seonghwa's forearm. 

He wants to talk about it, but he doesn't know how. 

He parts his lips.

"Do you want dinner?"

It isn't what he'd meant to say, but it comes out easier. 

"Yeah," Hongjoong says even though Seonghwa knows he doesn't really mean it, because Hongjoong never really thinks about things like wanting dinner. "What do you wanna order?" Because Hongjoong doesn't cook, and Seonghwa cooks too much. 

"That Thai place," he says, because it's what Hongjoong always orders when Seonghwa stays the night. 

He doesn't know if he wants to stay the night, but he doesn't want to leave just yet. He wants to talk, but he doesn't know how. He doesn't even know what he wants to say.

"I don't really want to talk about it just yet," is the decision he's come to an hour later, after they ordered their dinner and Hongjoong showed him some of the songs he's been working on, and Seonghwa had explained the plot of one of the lesser-known ballets he will be performing next season, when they are standing shoulder-to-shoulder washing dishes. 

"That's fine," Hongjoong says, drying the cutlery as Seonghwa hands it to him and putting it all away. 

"I don't…" he pauses, frowning, scrubbing at some sauce crusted onto a fork. "Don't psychoanalyse me about it," he mutters. 

Hongjoong snorts. "That's Wooyoung’s job," he says. "Some people just like sex stuff," he suggests, light in such a way as to offer a get out of jail free card to Seonghwa's pathologies. 

Seonghwa sighs, inspects the fork, places it in Hongjoong’s waiting hand. "Would it be bad," he mumbles, dipping his hands back under the suds of the water, "if it was just a sex thing, and not…?"

"Who're you asking," Hongjoong counters, wry. "It's no-ones business but yours."

"It's your business," Seonghwa tells him. "I'm asking you."

Hongjoong folds his arms over his chest, the dishtowel still held in one hand, and turns to press his lower back against the edge of the bench. "Do you want to talk about it or not," he says. 

"This isn't talking about it," Seonghwa insists, placing the last spoon on the draining rack and pulling the plug. "I'm just asking if you think it'd be bad if I…just had some gender fetish without actually caring about my gender."

"See," Hongjoong says, lolling a finger out to point at the words hanging in the air, "that’s called talking about it. And that," he singles out one particular word amongst them, "is called feminisation, and it's a thing that people do and like and it doesn’t have to be a big issue."

"I'm just asking if it makes you uncomfortable," Seonghwa mutters, taking a damp cloth and the surface spray from under the sink to begin wiping down the bench. 

"At what point did I seem uncomfortable," Hongjoong nudges out of his way. 

"I'm uncomfortable!" Seonghwa snaps, the fragility in him fracturing, wiping down the benches with his bones made of glass. 

"I don't see any way that any of this could possibly be a bad thing," Hongjoong says, straight and honest. 

"What is it, then," Seonghwa asks, numb. 

"Just a neutral thing," Hongjoong says. "A thing thing. Something that just is, and it's not hurting anyone, so who the fuck cares, and it's no-one else's business but if you want to share it with me then I'll respect that, but I'm not a brick that you can beat yourself over the head with just to make yourself feel bad. So don't," he says.

Seonghwa looks down at the floor between their feet. He should sweep. "Sorry," he says. 

Hongjoong blows out a long, frustrated breath. He does this whenever he's trying to choose between three different things to say, and ultimately always settles for muttering – "Whatever. Sure, just. Yeah."

"I just," Seonghwa breathes deeply through his nose, "want some time to think things over myself, instead of running to say something that might be wrong."

"Sure," Hongjoong repeats, clipped and short, tossing that last spoon into the drawer and snapping it closed firm and sharp. 

Seonghwa breathes deeply around his instinctive insistence that Hongjoong shouldn't get mad. He isn't one to say what Hongjoong should or shouldn't do with his emotions, so Seonghwa simply lets him stride off and go sit on the balcony, his back turned, his knees tucked up to his chest. 

He's back by the time Seonghwa has wiped down all of the benches and put the sugar away. Maybe five minutes. 

"Sorry," he says, sounding plain and firm and stiff in his sincerity, recited as though this is something he knows he needs to say even if he doesn't particularly want to, his eyes locked on the plant on the bench. "I kind of made that about me."

"Wash your hands," Seonghwa tells him. "Do you want ice cream?"

Hongjoong washes his hands, and Seonghwa takes the same spoon back out of the drawer and they share it to eat half a pint of Haagen-Dazs out of the tub, and they don't talk about it, and at ten o'clock Seonghwa calls a cab and kisses Hongjoong’s mango-and-raspberry mouth, and notes that his hands have become cool like untouched satin all over again. 

It's okay. 

Next time, he'll try to make the warmth stick for longer. 

He only realises once he's climbing in the back of the car that he was meant to sweep the floor of Hongjoong’s apartment, and has to force himself to close the car door behind him, and has to force himself to sit through the entire ride back home, and has to force himself to go home, and has to force himself to greet Wooyoung and Yunho and San all somehow bundled up together on the one couch watching a movie, and has to force himself to let sweeping the kitchen of his own apartment be enough, and has to force himself not to message Hongjoong falling over himself with apologies for not doing it.

He has to force himself to remember that Hongjoong is busy and is probably trying to give Seonghwa the time that he said he needed, and that's why Hongjoong doesn't message him for a few days, and it's not because Seonghwa didn't sweep the floor. 

He has to force himself back from his instinct to run to Hongjoong’s house just to take up a broom and clean every crumb and speck of dirt from the floor just to make it okay and repent for all of his failures and shortcomings, so that Hongjoong will forgive him and understand that he didn't mean it. 

He knows he should think about it. He knows he’s meant to, that he promised Hongjoong he would, but he doesn't want to. He wants to do anything but think about it. He wants to scrub himself under the streaming water of the shower until his skin is raw and pink and he is clean of it. 

He wants to make it disappear, make himself someone respectable and moral; someone who doesn't stare at women's shoes during rush-hour transits; someone who doesn't linger at the mannequin displays outside Dior and Chanel when he walks through the city heart; someone who doesn't spend silent hours looking entirely too closely at the subtleties that define femininity only to mimic them without thought when they are performed to him. 

Normal people don't spend this much time thinking about these things, and he just wants to be normal. 

He just wants to go back seven years and take a box cutter to the pointe shoes stuffed under the cheap spring mattress in his Moscow dorm room before his roommate can find them and tell the residency.

He wants to go back twelve years and burn the tulle tutu hidden far in the back of his closet in Sydney before his friends can find it and, susceptible to the insecurity of a language barrier and a desperation to fit in, had convinced Seonghwa to put it on and dance for them. 

He'd thought it was pretty, and tried to find the humour in it when they laughed, and tried not to let the discomfort sink into his skin when he'd realised they were laughing at him, not because of him. 

He wants to take himself by the shoulders and say what his father had said, before any of this could have happened. He wants to crouch down at eye-level with that naive version of himself and explain that he's a boy, and boys don't wear dresses, and he's already Asian anyway, and he shouldn't give these White families more reasons to look down on them. 

They hadn't stayed long in Australia anyway; despite Seonghwa's best efforts to not be strange, the parents of the children who pulled their eyes at him in school hadn't offered his father the opportunities he'd been promised when they'd moved, and they'd ended up back in Seoul where being Korean was a good thing, but being strange was even worse. 

He wishes he could have learned, back then, what his family had tried to protect him from. 

He wishes he could have internalised those lessons in a way that made him change for the better, instead of changing only into someone who is afraid of the repercussions of being seen. 

Afraid that anyone will look too closely, and see the rot festering beneath his inhuman skin. 

He knows he's afraid, and sometimes it doesn't mean anything at all and he can go about his days without even thinking about it. Sometimes he goes months without thinking about it.

He's thinking about it now, though. It's burrowing through his brain, under his skin. 

He wonders if he's afraid of Hongjoong too, the way he is afraid of everyone when it comes to this – including himself. 

Especially himself. 

He wonders if Hongjoong is an exception to that, as he is for so many of Seonghwa's delicate, fragile parts – as he is for everything, in every way, boldly and unapologetically.

Hongjoong is exceptional, in every sense of the word. His every breath is an example of unfaltering determination, and he's the strongest person Seonghwa knows. 

He knows every rule, and bends them around himself wherever he pleases; turns systems that were made to keep him out and pin him down into new paths for him to walk. 

Seonghwa has always looked up to him, wide-eyed and adoring, envious of the ways he never stopped when someone told him to stop. 

He is wholly and irrefutably himself and he allows nothing to stand in the way of that, and Seonghwa doesn't think about it because he can't, and because he doesn’t know how, and because everyone all his life has always told him that he shouldn't. 

Silk ropes pin Seonghwa's arms to his back, lacing them from his biceps to his wrists tight enough that he can feel the pull in his shoulders. Tight enough that he can't flex or wriggle loose, tight enough to leave red marks on his skin, and tight enough that he probably won't be here much longer. 

The half-thought pangs like disappointment, the idea of losing the fuzzed-out blur that has become of the feeling in his limbs to the sharp-static jab of pins and needles when his pleasantly dozing nerves are forcibly awoken. 

Something satin-soft brushes his lower lip, parted, and he pulls in an intentional breath, brings himself back to this; to kneeling on a plush blanket folded up like the world's softest cushion beneath his knees, to the ropes pinning him down, to the lace blindfold he can barely see shadows through if he squints. 

"Where are you going?" 

Hongjoong’s voice is soft, smooth, cool silk on his anxious skin. He traces the rose petal along the line of Seonghwa’s jaw, down the side of his neck, all the way to the tip of his shoulder before mapping across his clavicles and mirroring the path in reverse all the way back to his lower lip. He knows it's the rose petal from the weight, the texture, the way it slips across his skin. 

An exhale wavers from Seonghwa's lips and Hongjoong lifts the petal away. 

A fingertip beneath Seonghwa's chin tilting his head back until Hongjoong is satisfied, and through the haze of the blindfold he sees the warm flicker of the candle being lifted over him. 

He closes his eyes, lips parted, and lets the first high drops of wax fall, almost only warm by the time they hit his collarbones and harden on his skin. 

"Does it hurt?"

Hongjoong’s voice is so soft, only murmured intrigue. He doesn't care if he hurts Seonghwa; he might want to. Seonghwa might want him to. 

Hongjoong brings the candle lower, the wax hotter this time when it falls onto his chest. It drips a little here before it hardens. A comfortable burn. 

He brings the candle lower. 

"Does it hurt, Seonghwa-ssi?"

The wax meets his skin as a liquid, scalding, and he jolts. He would have jolted if the ropes allowed him to move. Melted wax spills from his chest to his stomach, his thighs, a sharp exhale puffed from his lips. 

Arms tied together, wrists tied to his ankles, ropes bound around his legs to keep him folded and kneeling. He is wrapped up in silk strands; hot wax slipping across his skin, it burns right through him to his core – to the places where pain is something welcome and familiar and he doesn't have to be afraid of his own fragility. A silkworm's cocoon, boiled and strung up and unraveled, he feels as though he is being so thoroughly untangled, tempered, smoothed; a clean thread. 

Strung tight by this single raw fiber, he feels as though he can become anything he wants. 

Hongjoong pours the candle over his skin and then peels it off when it dries, picking his fingernail beneath scales of hard wax, silk-cool hands soothing the quiet burns in a way that makes him tremble and ache, nothing left in Seonghwa's head but sensation and this feeling of wholeness, of more, thinking that finally, at last, he can rest. In knowing he is loved, he might one day learn to leave himself alone. 

Ropes loosen, and his skin feels bloated and full when blood rushes eagerly into his extremities, then too light and too empty when it rushes out again desperate to find a balance. Hongjoong guides him stumbling like a fawn onto the bed, clean bedsheets and lace still tied over his eyes. 

All he has to do is lie there, absent, eyes closed, while Hongjoong wipes down every inch of his naked, floating body with the softest cloth dunked and wrung in warm water scented with rose oil. He massages Seonghwa's prickling arms, from his shoulders to his hands, and washes all the way down his shaved legs to his feet. Mostly silent, only humming vague melodies here and there. Only the sound of his thorough attentiveness in caring for Seonghwa's body. 

Seonghwa breathes past soft lips and listens. 

Feels. 

Hongjoong is soft when he pats Seonghwa's chest dry, unbearably gentle when he dabs aloe onto the pink burns on Seonghwa's skin; they will be gone in two days. 

He keeps his eyes closed as Hongjoong lifts the blindfold off and sets it aside, feels the dip when Hongjoong sits on the edge of the bed. Humming softly under his breath as he walks himself through Seonghwa's entire night routine; cleanser, toner, hyaluronic, eye cream, moisturiser, face oil, lip balm. Each step made careful and patient by his careful, patient hands. He is always so particular about showing his care with these small acts of service. 

Drying Seonghwa's hair, painting Seonghwa's nails, paying for a cab if Seonghwa doesn't want to walk, walking if Seonghwa wants to, tying him up and touching him touching him touching him so that he doesn't have to think about a thing, and following every step of every instruction so faultlessly that Seonghwa, for once, knows he doesn't need to worry, because he trusts Hongjoong to worry for him. 

Hongjoong is much better at worrying, in fact. He's very good at it. He doesn't bother with becoming flustered or rushed, and he never confuses the order of things. 

He cares for Seonghwa so well, and if he had any bones in his body he'd lift a hand to Hongjoong’s wrist and hold it to his lips right against the beat of Hongjoong’s pulse to show that Seonghwa loves him. 

He doesn't, though. He knows that Hongjoong knows. 

"I love you," Seonghwa breathes deeply, steadily, his loose lips barely moving. 

Hongjoong’s fingers comb softly through his hair; a silent I know. I love you. 

It always stands out to Seonghwa when Hongjoong says those words, even though all of his actions mean the same thing. 

The first time, he thinks, is when Hongjoong had really fallen in love with him for real – or at the very least realised. A year of dating, after seeing Seonghwa perform Swan Lake, Hongjoong had met him backstage with the first bouquet Seonghwa had ever been gifted and hidden himself into Seonghwa's shoulder with his embrace, clinging tight to him for over a minute before he managed to choke out the words I love you as though they were too big to fit in his throat. 

The second time, beyond various me too's and of course I do's was, after three years and a two-month break at Seonghwa's request and Hongjoong’s unshaken patience in giving him anything that he asks for, Seonghwa had come back and told Hongjoong that he'd thought about it, he'd thought everything over, all the options and avenues and paths he could walk, and decided that no matter what, no matter what, no matter that it's hard, no matter that neither of them are fully sure of what they want or how to be together, no matter that it's been three years and they still don't know what is standing in the way of their commitment to each other, there is no one who Seonghwa wants to try with more than Hongjoong. 

There is no one else he wants to work towards something special with. 

There is no one he wants to discuss these things with, experience these things with, share these things with if it isn't Hongjoong – even if it might be easier, he thinks is what he'd said, it wouldn't be half as sincere. 

And Hongjoong had nodded and said he understood, and that he appreciated that Seonghwa took the time to be sure and know exactly what he wants, and he feels very thankful that Seonghwa told him how he felt. 

And when Seonghwa, quietly, had apologised for his uncertainty and asked for Hongjoong to accept him once more, Hongjoong’s expression had wavered and crumpled and he'd tucked his legs up onto the seat and pressed his face to his knees and nodded into them, and forced his way through another I really love you with his voice spilling out of cadence and tune, and Seonghwa's sunken chest had fallen in on itself to this reminder that just because Hongjoong makes every effort to put his own feelings last, it does not and has never meant that he doesn't have them. 

He'd been reminded all over again, on the cusp of a mistake that Hongjoong would have allowed him to make as an act of free will, that these emotions are simply too big for him to put into words and that's why he doesn't say them. 

The third time hasn't happened yet, but something is changing in him. In both of them. He knows that, and he thinks it will come soon. 

"You keep coming here," Hongjoong says, suspicious eyes leveled at Seonghwa from the kitchen where Hongjoong is topping his second coffee up with milk. "Why."

"I want to see you," Seonghwa tells him, wide-eyed and innocent. 

"Bullshit," Hongjoong says and brings the cup to his lips, blowing at the steam. "Just when I'm starting to get rid of Wooyoung," he states. "I've lived here for seven years, and this house has never actually been mine."

Seonghwa rolls his eyes, looks down at his lap and twists a ring around his finger, legs neatly crossed. "You must be looking forward to being alone."

"And you must be terrified of change," Hongjoong retorts, walking around the bench to sit himself on the coffee table in front of Seonghwa, the cup placed neatly beside him. "Coming to me for company, of all people."

An ancient house shirt that reaches halfway down his thighs, stretched and moth-eaten with some tacky teenage graphic; underwear; fluffy slippers. He has a pimple coming up on his left cheek, angry and red, and his bare legs are stubbly and unshaven. He's perfect, and Seonghwa adores him. 

"You're my friend," Seonghwa reminds him. "Is there a reason I shouldn't?"

Hongjoong breathes deeply, shoulders rising, and turns his head to look out the heavy glass doors at the dusk-dark view. "I'm not that good at," he flashes a hand, drops it between his lazily spread thighs, "company."

"I enjoy your company," Seonghwa tells him, plain and truthful. He glances at the coffee, follows Hongjoong’s stubborn gaze to the window. "Are you leaving for work soon?"

He shrugs, looks down. "Few hours," he says. The bags beneath his eyes are starker with his head at this angle, warm lights overhead. Dark and purple and heavy. "I told my manager the situation and we shuffled things around a bit. He's taking over training the juniors and I'll just focus on presenting, so there goes half my hours."

Seonghwa blinks, startled, and sits up a little. "Will you be alright for money?" he asks, but Hongjoong is already waving him off. 

"It's fine, this is easier for them," he admits. "I was getting paid two different rates, and they owed me a raise for this one anyway. They wanna keep me," he shrugs. "I exaggerated some numbers."

Seonghwa tuts and leans back into the couch, a relieved smile tugging at his lips. "Clever," he approves. "Have you told your parents yet?"

Hongjoong keeps his eyes low, sips his coffee, looks out the door at the darkening night. 

"Do you want to?" Seonghwa asks. 

His nose scrunches in an awkward sniff, slim fingers steepled around the lip of his mug. "Don't really know how to tell them I got my dream job without getting a disappointing response."

Seonghwa sighs, delicate and soft. "They'll be happy for you," he says. 

"I know," Hongjoong says. "I don't need them to be happy for me."

"Hong-joong-ah," Seonghwa beats out, firm, leaning over his legs to peer at Hongjoong’s face. 

"Don't," Hongjoong bites, leaning away from Seonghwa's stare. "Don't convince me, I know already, I'm gonna tell them. I'm just tired," he glares at their reflection in the glass door, the night hidden now behind it. "I don't want to think about it right now."

Seonghwa sighs, goes back to twisting the ring around his finger. 

It's rare to have a chance to look at Hongjoong; he's always so busy, darting around, avoiding people's eyes. A half-glance that makes people do a double take, and then avert their gaze as though afraid of being caught staring. 

He's fascinating, and Seonghwa loves the still moment to look at him. 

It took a long time, he thinks, and a lot of work, for Hongjoong to craft himself into the person that Seonghwa is looking at right now. Lazy clothes, overworked, too busy to shave his legs or sleep, sitting here with his coffee pretending that he doesn't care if his parents are proud of him. 

Of course he cares; that's what scares him. Caring for people despite his best efforts, and the chance that they might not return those efforts. 

Hongjoong breathes out a steady, tempered exhale, his shoulders and the tension around his mouth turning soft. "Tide's turning," he murmurs, too quiet almost for Seonghwa to hear. Still staring out the window at the night-dark reflection of his home. "We should probably figure this out soon," he says, glancing at Seonghwa. 

Seonghwa blinks, quietly surprised. "Should we?" he asks. "You're busy."

"I'm not that busy," he lies. "And…" He falters, trails off, turns his cup in his hands. "It's San, right? And Wooyoung."

Seonghwa feels himself become shy and still, feels himself being made to admit to things he doesn't want to admit to – made bearable only by Hongjoong saying that he's done the same thing too. 

"Now that our excuses are moving on…" Hongjoong leans back on one hand, gestures loosely with the other. 

"Don't say it like that," Seonghwa scolds, lightly. "It isn't like that."

"What?" Hongjoong defends. "Your best friend got a boyfriend, so now we're actually going to the effort of seeing each other when we're bored."

"You're being unnecessarily mean," Seonghwa tells him, twisting the ring around his finger. "It's not just about San. I'm just…more ready, I think, to talk about things."

"And why's that," Hongjoong prompts, arching a brow at Seonghwa past the edge of his cup as he dips his head to take a sip. 

Seonghwa thinks for a moment, presses his lips. "Because," he reluctantly admits, "San has needed less of my attention, and I've found myself with more time to think."

Hongjoong smacks his lips, satisfied, and sets the mug on the table beside him. "Same," he plainly states. "Not that Wooyoung’s needed much help lately, but he's very," he flaps a hand near his ear, "distracting, when he's around."

"Well," Seonghwa suggests, inviting Hongjoong with an open hand, "if you'd like to go first?"

"Is this your way of saying that you haven't thought it out yet?" Hongjoong prompts, folding his legs and nudging Seonghwa's shin with a toe poking out of his absurdly fluffy slipper. 

Seonghwa shrugs, gives him a close-lipped smile that says everything, hands folded neatly in his lap. 

"I can tell you," Hongjoong admits. "You don't have to go today. Do you want to hear it?"

"I'll take some time to think about my side," Seonghwa admits, lifting one finger from his clasped hands in a gesture for Hongjoong to speak. "You can say it."

Hongjoong looks at him. Looks right at him. Compelling eyes that always seem to see right through him, analytical in their warmth. Seonghwa lets it fill him comfortably; Hongjoong will never cause him harm. 

"I don't feel like I know you," Hongjoong says, firm and unmistakable of the five years between them. 

Seonghwa blinks, breathes the words in, breathes his reactions out. "Can you explain?" he asks. He already knows, though. 

"You always come to this point," Hongjoong draws a slow line through the air, then cuts it short with the blade of his palm landing solid and heavy on his own thigh. "Things you're allowed to be," he gestures to that side of the line, "what you're allowed to do, what you're allowed to say. I think you're still scared of me," he says, and Seonghwa has to lower his eyes from the critical analysis of Hongjoong’s stare, swallow each of these words down harder. "I want you to be able to trust me. I think I've proved that by now."

"I don't think," Seonghwa speaks through his stuck tongue, "that you want to hear my intrusive thoughts."

"That isn't what I mean," Hongjoong says. Seonghwa knows that. "You can tell me them, if you want. You can tell me anything. So why do I only know half of you?"

Seonghwa stares at his hand, fist clenched in his lap. "I'm scared of that half," he whispers. 

"I know," Hongjoong tells him, firm. Unwavering. "I'm not."

Seonghwa stares at his hands, clenched together. 

"I'm not telling you to change," Hongjoong tells him. "I'm just telling you why I'm still not there yet."

"It's silly," Seonghwa admits, sighs. "It's been five years, and neither of us are there yet. That was San too," he admits, glancing up at Hongjoong. "The, uh. Break."

"I know," Hongjoong says, endlessly calm, his fingers clasped around his knee. "I remember."

"You know," Seonghwa muses, "I don't think he would have cared about not knowing me. He only accepts what people give him anyway. I don't think he even would have noticed."

It takes Hongjoong a moment to determine that Seonghwa means, "That's a bad thing."

Seonghwa tilts his head, twists the ring around his finger. "It would be an easy thing," he says. A wry smile. "If the person closest to me believes that this is all I am, then it must be true."

A balance of cautious consideration, before Hongjoong says, "Seonghwa-ya…"

"I don't want to talk about it yet," he says without lifting his eyes, and Hongjoong closes his mouth, nods. "It's not that bad," he says. "I trust you," he says. "It's hard for me to figure out what's real," he says, and hears Hongjoong’s deep, careful inhale. Accepts the cool hand which Hongjoong worms into the spaces between his own, accepts the tepid squeeze of comfort. 

"Whenever you want," Hongjoong promises him. "Anything." 

Seonghwa smiles, feels it tremble a little at the corners and puffs a sharp, breathy laugh. "Yeah," he says, squeezing Hongjoong’s fingers back. "Thank you. I'll think about it," he promises. 

Hongjoong sets his mug down on the coffee table and clambers across the space between them to join Seonghwa on the lounge, his head tucked and nuzzled into the side of Seonghwa's neck, one hand still held between Seonghwa's, his other arm draped loosely around Seonghwa's stomach. Curled all the way up and tucked against his side, sharp knees and their little bruises poking up at odd angles, he is so much a deep forest creature that wants to be friends even if it doesn't entirely know how. 

Seonghwa breathes a steady exhale, comforted, and lifts one hand to curl into Hongjoong’s hair, petting him slow and soft in a way that won't startle him. 

Hongjoong squeezes tighter, burrows deeper, this rare type of affection. This time a silent I love you which is a reassurance and an apology which shouldn't be said aloud because he has nothing to apologise for but he feels sorry all the same. Sorry that he makes Seonghwa think about things he knows he should think about but doesn't want to; sorry that his company is rarely something that is easy or pleasant to keep. 

Seonghwa finds it easy, though, to have Hongjoong’s company. He finds it unutterably pleasant to be here with him, knowing that Hongjoong knows him well enough to know that there is so much more to what he is beneath what he says. 

Comforted to Hongjoong’s assurance that no matter what it is, Hongjoong will only love him more for understanding him better. Comforted in Hongjoong giving him five years and more to build a feeling of safety and trust which will give him a place to figure out who he is. 

When Seonghwa buzzes into his apartment from the studio he thinks that he should probably clean the keypad by the door on the weekend; the building management is meant to and say that they do, but that doesn’t explain the way tacky fingerprints build up on the buttons over the course of a month, and he’s seen enough heist movies to know how someone would use that to break in.

There’s music playing from the TV in the lounge room, Yunho’s bright laughter and the sharp bursts of Wooyoung’s focused, unchecked excitement, and when Seonghwa pokes his head around the corner he sees them elbowing each other for space in between the television and the coffee table, a competitive rush to the way they’re both fumbling through the choreography of whatever song is playing and stumbling over their own laughter about it. 

San isn’t home yet, which is good because that is the order of things and Seonghwa will almost always arrive home before him no matter how much he wishes San would look after the limits of his body and know when to rest. 

Usually it’s Wooyoung and Yunho who arrive latest though; they must have finished early, or taken a day off.

Wooyoung bursts into the killing part of the song with a yell, a smile split across his face all teeth, and Seonghwa peers at the coffee table behind them as he steps through to see if there are any soju bottles lying around, but there’s nothing; he’s just like this.

The stage performance playing on the TV ends and Wooyoung has three seconds to plant his hands on his knees, choking through his laughter and uneven breaths beside Yunho’s collected, competitive amusement, glance over and offer a brief, “Hi, hyung!” before Youtube automatically loads the next stage from Yunho’s algorithm and Wooyoung shoots upright, eyes wide, the both of them standing absolutely still for the first few beats of the song before they pick up the choreography nearly simultaneously and Wooyoung screeches again, shoves Yunho’s shoulder without missing a beat and insists, “I had it first, I got it first!” to Yunho’s unfaltering grin.

Seonghwa huffs at them fondly and goes to shower.

When he comes back he moves to the kitchen with every intention of heating some pre-prepped meals for their dinner, only to find a pan of bulgogi tossed through fried vegetables warm and covered on the turned-off stove and rice sitting fresh in the cooker.

He steals a single piece of meat; it’s Wooyoung’s style, as though he even needed to check. 

Fresh dinner, and he didn’t even have to cook it for them all. 

There are some perks to having Wooyoung so constantly around, it seems, besides his infallible company. 

Seonghwa slips behind them to take a seat on the lounge and watch and eventually Wooyoung, having exhausted himself like a dog which forced itself to play fetch for too long, collapses with a messy groan into the seat beside Seonghwa. 

"I'm done," he whines, "I'm finished. I can't go on. Hyung," he pleads, "you have to defeat Yunho for me. You need to," he insists, peering up at Seonghwa with wide, begging eyes. "It's my dying wish."

"I only know three choreographies," Seonghwa tells him. 

"Not true," Yunho counters, eyes unwavering from the screen while he faultlessly mimics the stage performance playing there, his breathing steady and his words even. "You watch ten hours of girl group choreo a week."

"That doesn't mean I know how to do it," Seonghwa insists, vexed. "Also I'm tired," he says, an arm draped across Wooyoung’s heaving side and patting his overwarm arm. "I don't know what you two did all day, but I was dancing."

"I was dancing!" Wooyoung insists, shooting upright with an affectation of offended hurt across his face. "Like three classes cancelled on me so I went to Jaemin's to help him with Bibi's choreo!"

"It's exam season, Woo," Seonghwa rolls his eyes. "Give the kids a break."

"Oh, I'll give the kids a break," Wooyoung threatens, scowling. "I'll break their legs if they come back two weeks unpracticed."

"I'd believe you if only I believed you," Seonghwa appeases, gently ruffling his hair. "Unfortunately those kids mean the world to you."

"That's not even true," Wooyoung lies. "I don't even care actually. As soon as class is over I don't even think about them. I can separate my job from my life, and I do it all the time. I have a great work-life balance, in fact."

"I believe you," Seonghwa lies. 

"He told them to cancel," Yunho informs him, still following the choreography without missing a beat. "He practically paused the semester so they can finish their exams."

"Who asked you," Wooyoung scowls at him, sour. 

“Did you make dinner?” Seonghwa asks, guiding him away from having to lie about how much he cares about the kids under his supervision any more than he already has. 

“Yeah!” Wooyoung immediately perks up, sitting straight. “Bibimbap! You can dish up if you want,” he says. “Sannie should be here soon.”

“Before eight?” Seonghwa arches his brows.

“I’ve tamed the beast,” Wooyoung informs him, smug. “I told him I was cooking, and I think he thinks if he doesn’t appreciate every single thing I do then he’ll die.”

“That’s true,” Yunho admits, still busily marking choreo, “he does think that.”

Wooyoung sighs, slumps sideways into the space that Seonghwa leaves when he stands up to organise the kitchen for dinner and stares blank-eyed past Yunho at the TV, his cheek pressed to the couch cushions. “He should just like me a normal amount,” he mumbles to the middle distance, and Seonghwa glances over the island counter at him, careful of whatever is on Wooyoung’s mind. “No,” Wooyoung decides a moment later, “I think he should just like himself more than a nothing amount. I like him enough for both of us,” he admits, a furrow between his brows, a pout pushing at his lips, “but it still makes me sad.”

Seonghwa breathes out a silent exhale, places four bowls and sets of utensils on the bench and dishes the bibimbap. 

“Say something!” Wooyoung screeches sharp and piercing when twenty seconds have passed and no one has acknowledged his woes. “I’m being so sentimental and you’re all ignoring me.”

“Nothing to say,” Yunho shrugs. “We all wish he liked himself more.”

“You’ve done a lot of good for him, Woo,” Seonghwa indulges him. “He’s changed a lot since meeting you. It’s not something that will happen overnight, but he’s making a lot of efforts to be kinder to himself.”

Wooyoung sighs, melts himself deeper into the couch and mumbles, surly and petulant, “I like him so much.”

Seonghwa balances the bowls and brings them over to the lounge, sitting down by Wooyoung’s head. “Is something on your mind?” he asks, placing their dinner on the table and holding some cutlery out for Wooyoung to take. 

“No,” he mumbles, not taking it. “Just tired and stressed, and I miss him, and I want him to come home soon.”

“D’you want a cuddle?” Yunho asks, at last giving up on copy-learning the dance of the fresh-faced newly debuted group performing on the TV and coming around to pick a single piece of meat out of his bowl with his fingers and pop it in his mouth. 

Wooyoung looks like he’s about to argue for a moment, but then deepens his pout with almost comical severity and nods and wriggles around to put his head on Seonghwa’s lap and open his arms for Yunho to lay his big long body over Wooyoung’s and squish all of the tired stress out of him, Seonghwa carding his fingers softly through Wooyoung’s hair.

“I’m fine,” Wooyoung mumbles some minutes later, muffled under Yunho’s embrace. “Just unmedicated.”

“Again?” Seonghwa vexes, a gentle scold.

“I keep forgetting,” he drags out a pitiful whine. “Not like it’s gonna do me any good to take it now.”

It’s around then that the front door opens anyway, San’s mellow-warm voice calling, “Hellooooo?” from the entryway as though he doesn’t know what to expect in coming home, even though he knows exactly what to expect.

Seonghwa hears a real, genuine whine catch in Wooyoung’s throat a moment before he is struggling to fight his way out from underneath Yunho, wriggling onto the floor and running immediately towards San’s voice like a puppy which has been waiting for its owner all day.

“Wooyoungie!” San eagerly chimes out of sight, his voice pitched sweet and high, followed shortly by a thump and a brief statement of, “Ow.”

A sharp grumble-whine from Wooyoung, just slightly too muffled to catch his words, before San gives a soft laugh and indulges, "Well, I'm home now. Let me put my stuff down?" he invites, and Wooyoung grumble-mumbles again, and Seonghwa only lifts his eyes to their moment when San calls out, "Hello hyung, hello Yun!" when he walks in, his gym bag over his shoulder and his steps waddled by Wooyoung’s arms wrapped around his waist shadowing his steps. 

"How did the audition go?" Seonghwa calls after him.

"Good!" San responds from his bedroom, leaving his bag and changing his sweaty clothes. 

It takes a moment for Seonghwa to realise that, six months ago, there would be no way in no world that San ever would have described any of his performances as good. 

"I'm not competing against you," San teases as he comes back, poking his tongue at Seonghwa through his cheeky grin, "so I'll probably get Siegfried this time." He turns his head a little, pats Wooyoung’s arms still trapped around his waist and tells him, "I gotta go shower."

Seonghwa is about to agree before he sees the crumple of Wooyoung’s face over San’s shoulder and breathes a quiet sigh and says, "Come have dinner first. It can wait."

San hesitates, torn, glancing between the warm bowls on the coffee table and the hallway towards the bathroom, then concedes with a defeated insistence of, "Remind me before we go to bed though," before he relents to crawl down onto the floor between the table and the couch in front of Seonghwa and Yunho, followed closely by Wooyoung. 

He passes a bowl back to Yunho, then pauses in pulling one closer towards himself, a perplexed furrow between his brows. "Did you wait for me…?" he asks, staring at the bulgogi. "You could have eaten without me."

"We wanted to wait," Seonghwa fills in for Wooyoung’s odd silence, knowing well how he gets when he gets like this; tangled up and upset for no definable reason, and very much in need of a nap. "We wanted to eat with you."

San keeps his pout even as Wooyoung leans in to press a bright, smacking kiss to his cheek, only softening when he takes the first bite of beef; eyes rolling closed as he chews and slumping boneless into Wooyoung’s side with a deep-throated groan. 

"Yummy," he mumbles, cheek mushed against Wooyoung’s shoulder. San presses a kiss over his shirt, and then another to his cheek and Wooyoung nudges him a little, gestures for him to keep eating, unable to keep the settling of ease from his expression. 

"What do we wanna watch?" Yunho invites, digging the remote out from underneath his butt and pausing the endless loop of stage performances and dance practices which feed through his youtube algorithm. 

"Oh," Wooyoung perks up, reaching a hand out for the remote, "we started a new documentary!"

"Mm!" San eagerly mumbles through his food, "The textiles?"

"Hongjoong told me," Wooyoung agrees, clicking through with determined focus, "and I watched some with San. It's, like, how fabrics are made and sustainability and stuff."

Yunho gives a heavy blink, his chopsticks buried in the bibimbap. "That's how you spend your time?" he asks the both of them, baffled. 

"I like learning things," Wooyoung grumbles, slumping back until he's resting against Seonghwa's legs, his knees tucked up and his bowl cradled in his lap. 

"When are you ever gonna need to know about poly-cotton blends?" Seonghwa asks, squinting at the title cards of the episodes that pop up. 

"When are you ever gonna need to know every lore-fact about Star Wars?" Wooyoung challenges, nudging him with his elbow, and Seonghwa huffs, not really in a position to argue. 

"What one are we doing?" Yunho asks, piling a spoonful of rice and vegetables high and fitting the whole thing in his mouth. 

"Silk!" San announces, pointing it out on the screen for Wooyoung to select. 

"Last night was wool and rugs and stuff," Wooyoung tells them, selecting the episode and settling in against Seonghwa's knees to watch and eat. "It was very cool, I learned a lot."

"What did you learn?" Seonghwa indulges him. 

Wooyoung shrugs, digging into his food. "I dunno."

Seonghwa sighs, nothing to do but accept Wooyoung’s flippancy for reason and lean forward over his bowl to eat and, ostensibly, to learn about silk. 

It might have made for a good dinner show, if only it didn’t lend so much emphasis upon the bulbous, fat white worms squirming over each other, the sound of thousands of them chewing their pointless, meandering way through mulberry leaves rising like a hushed wave of white noise through the speakers of the television. 

Neither Wooyoung nor San seem to realise or care, and a surreptitious glance confirms that Yunho has given up on watching in lieu of tapping away at a mobile game on his phone between bites, and Seonghwa looks back at the documentary - currently narrating a vivid close-up on the sickly worms clambering ungainly over each other in a blind search for more leaves. 

“Euh…” Seonghwa mutters, averting his eyes down to the suddenly unappetising bowl of rice in his hands. 

“What, ‘euh’?” Wooyoung demands without tearing his eyes away from the screen - and without bothering to stop eating, either. 

“They’re gross…” Seonghwa reluctantly mumbles, chancing another glance up at the TV and wrinkling his nose. 

"You're gross,” Wooyoung effortlessly retorts. “They're cute. I love them. Look at them chomping at their little mulberry leaves,” he demands. “They're not hurting anyone. They're working so hard to make your silly stage clothes and you're saying euh,” he says, scathing. “You should show them more respect, hyung."

“Jeez,” he mumbles, scraping his spoon through the rice, “sorry.”

Their dinner show amounts to watching twelve thousand ugly worms getting boiled in their restful sleep to make four kilograms of silk.

Only a few are left to survive, to mate and propagate the farm.

“Don’t they need to be kept in something?” Seonghwa asks of the heavy, white moths which have emerged from the cocoons, slowly fanning their velvet wings over the open workshop.

“Nah,” Wooyoung tells him, blithe, before the documentary even gets around to explaining. Because of course he knows this niche and pointless fact, because he is Wooyoung, and he wouldn’t have even remembered that he’d known if Seonghwa hadn’t asked, and the odds of him knowing where he learned it are nil to none. “They can’t fly. Look,” he instructs, pointing needlessly at the screen.

“Thousands of years of domesticity and selective breeding have left the fully grown silkmoths with large bodies too heavy for their vestigial wings to carry; they don’t eat, and only live a few days to reproduce and lay eggs before dying.”

“See?” Wooyoung needlessly remarks.

It’s a really miserable, pathetic life, Seonghwa thinks, and yet…one they cannot change. They’re fragile and used and most of them die before they know what they can become. 

Most of them die to become something else. 

There is a beauty in their ugly, useless bodies, the mindless and directionless lives. Each of them, dead or alive, becomes something beautiful. 

The credits for the episode roll on that morose, dissatisfying note.

It's a pitiful, pathetic life for an ugly, sorry creature. 

San sits plain and intrigued; Wooyoung sits perplexed and perhaps a little upset.

Seonghwa finds himself mumbling, "Do you really watch this stuff for fun…?”

"It's good to know things," Wooyoung reasons, scooping bibimbap onto his spoon. "It’s weird. You want to free them, right? But it’s not like they'd live well in the wild. And you can’t ask them,” he adds. “I think even a life like this is worth keeping. I don’t get to make that choice for them,” he reasons. “Maybe they’re happy. I should let them live well and eat well, and thank them for their hard work."

Seonghwa parses a dissatisfied sigh from his nose, but now that the worms are gone he feels less reserved in finishing his dinner.

They really are pitiful, miserable creatures. They don't know any better. They don’t know the wind, or how it feels to fly. But maybe they don’t need to, to have meaningful lives. Maybe they're happy. 

Maybe they shouldn't be pitied. 

Seonghwa wakes in the night to a disturbance he can’t quite place, and he isn’t entirely upset for it. He’d been dreaming about silkmoths, a desperation for them to thrive and fly and be allowed to enjoy the life that they’ve been lucky enough to see to the end, and it had been a frustrating and upsetting sort of dream.

There’s a dim light coming in under his door, and he’s thankful for an excuse to climb out of bed and wrap a soft bathrobe around himself, slinking quietly out of his room under the pretense of a glass of water in case the light turns out to be nothing. 

The bathroom door is ajar, cold white light spilling from the cracks, and Seonghwa gives a mental shrug and goes to the kitchen instead. Pours a glass of water from the fridge, waits for the sound of the toilet flushing. 

He doesn’t hear that, though; he hears a quiet, subtle retch, the tremble of a loose, unsteady exhale doing a poor job of keeping quiet.

Well, he already has a glass of water in his hands. 

Seonghwa takes it to the bathroom, knocks softly on the door in the midnight dark and creaks it just far enough ajar to see Wooyoung rumpled from sleep and running his hands through his hair slumped on the floor in front of the toilet, pale face buried in his hands and a cold sweat stark on the back of his neck.

He looks drawn and unwell in a way he hadn’t just a few hours ago, and Seonghwa’s first thought is to wonder if his difficult relationship with food has crept back into his bile-burned throat.

He pushes the thought aside though, kneels softly by Wooyoung’s side and lays a gentle hand between his shoulders, places the cup on the floor, gives a soft, “Wooyoung-ah…”

He shudders a tender exhale, sways with exhausted lethargy against Seonghwa’s shoulder, a fragile, “Seonghwa hyung,” whispered from slack lips.

He seems okay, apart from being here. Just tired. Just away from San’s side, for whatever reason. 

“Sorry,” Wooyoung mumbles, quiet, his cheek on Seonghwa’s careful shoulder. “Had a dream.”

Seonghwa releases his concerns for Wooyoung’s health with a silent sigh, pulls a few squares of toilet paper from the roll and wipes carefully at the corners of Wooyoung’s slack mouth. “Do you want to tell me?” he invites. It must have been quite the dream, after all, to lead him here. 

“Yeah,” Wooyoung breathes against him, which is almost a surprise. He thinks most people don’t tend to want to talk about their nightmares, but then…Wooyoung is hardly anything to be expected of most people. 

His face is still pale, sweat drying on his cheeks, and Seonghwa folds the toilet paper again to dab at the cold perspiration on his temples, his arm curling more securely around Wooyoung’s slack, fragile shoulders. 

“I used to have this, like. Like, a recurring dream? When I was a kid?” Wooyoung mumbles against his shoulder, eyes still closed, his whole body boneless and weak, “that was like, I’d get up in the morning to go to school but mom and dad weren’t there,” his voice trembles, thin and brittle. “It was just me and hyung, and I went to the kitchen to get, like, breakfast,” he narrates, “or pick up my lunch or something, but there was just this note,” his hands are trembling slightly, Seonghwa notices. His shoulders are trembling. He’s shaking like a rabbit left out in the snow. “It pretty much just said ‘sorry’, and there was twenty thousand won. And that’s it,” he says. “Like, it just got too hard or whatever and they left.”

Seonghwa swallows, cards his fingers into Wooyoung’s hair and holds him softly to his chest, something desperately sad unfolding in him. 

Wooyoung brings a hand up to rub at his eye, twisting further into Seonghwa’s embrace, settling with a shaky exhale. 

“I only had it a couple of times,” he quietly admits, “and then it was like, whatever, but.” Seonghwa feels the force of his thick, uncomfortable swallow. “I was at home again, and it was San?” he says like it’s a question, his voice pitched thin and uncertain, his words cracking on San’s name. “And he wasn’t there, and it was just twenty thousand won and that sorry. And I just,” he draws in a deep, unsteady inhale. “Felt really sick.”

“Oh, Wooyoung-ah,” Seonghwa mourns, rubbing his hand slowly over Wooyoung’s back and laying his cheek against the rumpled crown of Wooyoung’s head.

A damp, sharp inhale, weak fingers curling into the bathrobe at Seonghwa’s thigh. “Don’t, like. Don’t tell me it’s not real or whatever, I know that,” he insists. “I know, I just need a minute. I just…” Another sharp, unsteady gasp to fill his lungs, holding back tears, forcibly keeping his breathing almost even. “I just. Really love him. A lot. I’m really scared of losing him,” he rambles. “I know I won’t, I’m just. That’s all,” he says. “I just need a minute.”

“It’s okay,” Seonghwa reassures, still brushing his hand up and down over Wooyoung’s back, up and down, for long minutes until he relaxes - either finished crying, or having successfully fought back his tears, it’s never very easy to tell when Wooyoung hides his face like this. “Do you want to go back to bed?” he asks, trusting that Wooyoung will know the truth.

He shakes his head against Seonghwa’s chest, hands still curled weakly in his bathrobe. “I don’t wanna see him like this,” he mumbles. “I will,” he assures before Seonghwa can question him. “I’ll tell him in the morning. I’m just feeling weird, and I don’t want to do good therapy right now. I’m too tired.” 

It tugs a single huff of an unwilling laugh from Seonghwa’s lungs and he nods, rubs at Wooyoung’s back. “Want to cuddle on the couch?” he suggests instead, and Wooyoung nods against him.

“Yeah,” he says, and sounds surprisingly grounded, like he really means it. “Yeah, I really want to,” he says.

“Come on,” Seonghwa guides him to his unsteady feet, places the glass of water in his hands and guides him with a hand soft on his back towards the lounge. 

Wooyoung switches on the TV and turns it down to three, too quiet to hear more than the faintest mumble of sound, and Seonghwa lets him because he’s Wooyoung and because he’s exhausted and upset and severely unmedicated and he’s not in the mood to do good therapy right now, and after some shuffling around of cushions and limbs they are lying cuddled together on the couch with the flickering blue light of the nearly-silent TV colouring the room, and Wooyoung already feels lax and warm and like he’s feeling a lot better with his back cuddled to Seonghwa’s chest. 

“Thanks, noona,” he whispers, and Seonghwa can hear the half-teasing smile in his voice, too tender and fond for the joke to have any jab, so that Seonghwa can cautiously allow it to mean something it doesn’t.

Seonghwa holds Wooyoung until he settles and calms and begins to drift off cuddled to Seonghwa’s chest, cheek smushed against the steady thrum of Seonghwa’s heart.

"What does having a penis feel like?"

A sigh. "Hongjoong…"

"Please."

"I've already told you,” Seonghwa reminds him.

"Tell me again."

Wry, he asks, "What part, exactly?"

"Any part,” Hongjoong says. “All of it. What does it feel like right now?"

Seonghwa blows out a careful sigh, makes himself sink into his body and feel. "Right now," he considers, and looks at the way Hongjoong’s long deer eyelashes brush delicate and fine against the tops of his cheeks where he's closed his eyes on Seonghwa's chest, listening. 

“It’s soft, so…there isn’t anything, really. It’s kinda sitting to the left,” he considers, “against the crotch of my pants. It’s, um,” he thinks, searching for sincerity, “I don’t know. It’s like the inside of your elbow,” he says. “It doesn’t really feel like anything, but it’s there and you know it’s there, and it isn’t really doing much, but you know that if you touch it it’ll probably feel nice, even if you don’t really think about it.”

Hongjoong gives a little questioning hum in his throat, and Seonghwa brings a hand down to trace the backs of his fingertips lightly against the inside of Hongjoong’s elbow where his arm is draped nicely over Seonghwa’s chest. 

He abides it for nearly three whole seconds before he squirms with a miserable whine, twisting around to bat Seonghwa’s hand away and scratch the ticklish sensation away firmly with his short fingernails until the delicate skin is scored with red marks.

Seonghwa breathes a soft laugh, letting Hongjoong reassert his comfort.

“Yeah,” he indulges, “it feels like that.”

Sometimes they want to live vicariously through each other. That's okay. Seonghwa will be as honest as he knows how, and he knows Hongjoong will be too.

"Hongjoong-ah," he starts, and then hesitates, his question retreating from his tongue. 

Hongjoong taps his fingers against Seonghwa's chest, a silent indication that he's listening; that Seonghwa is allowed to ask. 

He blinks at the ceiling, palm resting soft on Hongjoong’s back, the stretch cotton of his t-shirt warm between the flat planes of his shoulder blades. Tries to find a way to articulate the absence of understanding that is steadily rising like anxiety in his chest. "What is masculinity, to you?" he says at last, the words slipping from him. "Or manhood," he says. "What does that mean?"

Hongjoong taps his fingers against Seonghwa’s skin. 

"I know, kind of, what it isn't," Seonghwa admits, letting Hongjoong’s silence sink over him. "Kind of. But I think that's…"

He trails off, an invitation for Hongjoong to speak, to answer him, but he doesn't. He just taps again, softly, against Seonghwa's chest. Half listening, half thinking. 

Seonghwa pulls in a deep breath, steadies it, exhales. "I think…you can't just define everything by things that it isn't. It needs to have characteristics, right? Or it's just…nothing. And that's same for all those things, like – like femininity, or womanhood, or– Like, if this is the opposite of that, then what's that? It's just the opposite of this, right? So…" he falters. "I don't know what it is. I don't know what it's actually meant to be, and even – you can't even really call them opposites, if you think about it like that. I don't know," he sheepishly relents to his own ignorance. "The more I think about it, the less sense it makes."

He forces himself to fall silent, forces himself to give Hongjoong space to speak or think. 

Hongjoong doesn't say anything, though. He just keeps tapping a slow abstraction without any pattern or beat lightly into Seonghwa's skin; the world's slowest and most careful Morse Code. 

"How did you know?" Seonghwa asks at last, painful with reluctance because he knows how Hongjoong hates to be asked this. 

Hongjoong hums, a sound that sticks in his throat a little as though he's waking his voice up, reminding it that it exists. "I knew what I wasn't," Hongjoong says, his words tacky in a way that tells Seonghwa he hasn't been drinking enough water. They're shaped like a smile though; Seonghwa peeks into Hongjoong’s odd amusement and finds irony. 

Seonghwa scritches his fingers lightly across Hongjoong’s back in a little gesture of appreciation for his joke, and Hongjoong rolls his fingertips across Seonghwa's collarbone in such a way and with such a particular firmness to make him realise that all of Hongjoong’s previous taps have been him composing a song, note by disjointed note, as though Seonghwa's skin is his piano. 

"I'm thinking," he remembers to say out loud for Seonghwa's benefit some long seconds later, even though Seonghwa knows. He has to remind himself about these absurd minutiae of pleasantry and companionship sometimes – saying things like thank you and I'm tired and can you help me with this because he forgets sometimes that people need a response, an indication that he'd been listening. 

"That's okay," Seonghwa says, but only because it's part of the script, because Hongjoong hadn't been asking for permission. "I've been thinking about it for a while," he admits. "I still don't have an answer."

Hongjoong taps his thumb over and over against Seonghwa's skin; a steady train of Concert G's. 

"You know what my brother said to me?" he says at last, and there's another smile in his voice. It's wry, this time. "Finally," he repeats, echoes of a teasing joviality, "I can talk to you about girls."

It rips a laugh like a scoff from Seonghwa's nose. "How long did that last?" he indulges Hongjoong’s wryness. 

"We don't have the same taste in women," Hongjoong asserts. 

"What's your taste?" Seonghwa finds himself asking. The question feels scarier after having been asked. He only realises in hindsight that he thinks there's a chance he might not like the answer. 

"I don't have one," is what he says, though. "I don't have a taste in men either," he admits. "It's just you."

A longer pause, words caught like hummingbirds in Hongjoong’s throat. This old, lingering habit of always keeping his thoughts to himself. No one else ever wanted them anyway. 

Seonghwa lifts his shoulder, just enough for Hongjoong to feel it beneath his cheek, and he huffs and hums and presses his surprisingly firm fingers into Seonghwa's trapezius.

"I don't care who people are until I know them," he mumbles, surly but only because he's still getting used to talking about himself. It's been five years. He's still getting used to it. "I don't care…" A sharp huff. "I don't care. What people look like, or… None of that," he says. "I can't make attraction up out of thin air. I don't like you because you're…tall, or pretty, or athletic, or…I don't know, you have a gentle voice or nice hands or whatever. It's cool," he admits, "that you have all those things, but I really wouldn't think twice about it if you weren't Park Seonghwa."

Seonghwa’s lips curl into a smile towards the ceiling, heart warm; all these roundabout things Hongjoong says to get out of saying something like I love you. 

"I don't care if you're a man," Hongjoong says. "I wouldn't care if you're not. It doesn't matter what you look like either, because I'd always find things to like about it. My brother likes round eyes and natural hair and small breasts and long legs, and I like you," he states, and for a moment it seems like he's done. After that moment, though, he adds, "Maybe we do have the same type."

Seonghwa's laughter rolls through his stomach and slips through his lips, startled peals of it shaking past the hand he places over his mouth. "No," he gasps between cascades of startled amusement, "no way."

"Look," Hongjoong teases, his hand slipping from Seonghwa's shoulder to his chest, his small hand gripping into Seonghwa's pec, "barely a handful."

"Stop," Seonghwa shrieks, battling Hongjoong away and twisting him onto his back so that he lies defenseless in his grinning victory to Seonghwa's unabating laughter, head pressed to Hongjoong’s chest to hide the warmth in his smiling cheeks. 

"Some things are more real than other things," is what Hongjoong says nearly three hours later, after distracting Seonghwa's anxieties and lapsing into a long silence neither of them had felt any need to break. 

"What sorts of things," Seonghwa asks. 

"Darkness," Hongjoong says. "Silence. Emptiness. It's just ways to describe things that aren't there, but those things – darkness and silence were there first, before things like light and vibrations could fill it. They exist, but their existence is still defined by the measure of something else. Maybe it can only be defined like that."

Seonghwa readjusts where his chin is resting on a pillow, looking blankly past the phone in his hands. "Hmm," he says. 

"Things like masculinity or femininity," Hongjoong says. "I think they're less real. It doesn't mean they don't exist," he reasons, "and it doesn’t mean they don’t have any meaning. People are still afraid of the dark,” he points out. “People still enjoy silence. They go to a lot of lengths for it, sometimes,” he breathes a huff of a laugh. “I went to a lot of lengths for manhood, but masculinity doesn’t mean much to me. I guess it depends,” he decides. “Are you scared of the dark?”

“No,” Seonghwa says, his phone folded down, fingers interlaced, his chin mushed into the pillow. “Darkness is nice. It hides things from the light. Monsters are only real if you can see them,” he says.

“Are you afraid of femininity?” Hongjoong asks next, after a longer stretch of silent consideration.

“Only when I’m the monster,” Seonghwa mumbles, his words muffled and soft.

“When is a monster not a monster?” Hongjoong asks him, and Seonghwa has to tuck his mouth into the pillow to cease the tender wavering of his own smile.

“When you love it,” he whispers, all of his careful darkness awash with the warmth of this subtle touch of dawn.

From: Kim Hongjoong
oh…hidden memory unlocked…i completely forgot about this lol…

From: Kim Hongjoong
so we were talking about masculinity

From: Kim Hongjoong
i only just remembered when i was like…thirteen and Going Through Changes™…oh my god i didnt even know i was trans then i had no idea what that even was yet…but id wake up at 430am before school so i could wear 2 sports bras and Boy Clothes and walk around outside as a guy for an hour while the streets were empty…and once i came home late around 6 and my dad was awake…and he asked what i was doing outside at 6am and i told him i was jogging and he was like…dont do that at 6am…

From: Kim Hongjoong
i have never jogged for fun in my life

From: Kim Hongjoong
Local 13 year old thinks it’s normal to sneak out of the house to spend some fun little hours pretending to be a boy for the 4am crowd

From: Kim Hongjoong
Oh also are you more free on Friday night or Saturday night next week? I’ll take time off and we can get fingered

From: Kim Hongjoong
DINNER******** sorry

From: Kim Hongjoong
Do you ever just swipe text gone wrong any way I’m peach texting now it should be fine.

From: Kim Hongjoong
Peach.

From: Kim Hongjoong
Peach.

From: Kim Hongjoong
S P E E C H
diction is bad lol
thumbs it is

From: Kim Hongjoong
anyway what day do you wanna go so i can book ??

Masculinity, Seonghwa decides, is a safe place; something he has drawn around himself like armour. Something he at once both hides within and from, familiarity which he knows will keep him safe no matter how its sharp and rigid edges cut him from where he has curled himself up inside it.

He’s thinking about it - finally.

He’s thinking about it when he wanders through the racks of a second hand store, fingertips alighting on clothes like dragonflies before flitting away. 

He's thinking about it when he finds himself wondering what Hongjoong would like; a certain style, a certain drape, a certain texture to the fabric. 

He's thinking about it when he pauses at a full-length silk skirt, coal-black with a muted sheen, liquid folds of fabric. 

He's thinking about it when his fingers linger, stroking over the smooth silk, or when he takes it from the rack, or when he flicks through crisp, starched cotton for the new dress shirt he came here for so that it won't seem too strange – so that it's the skirt more so which seems like an afterthought. 

"This is beautiful," the aunty at the counter tells him when she scoops the liquid silk into her arms. 

He tightens the corners of his lips in a smile for her, looking at nothing in particular on the cluttered counter. "For my younger sister," he says, his voice the same raw-soft texture and tone as the silk brushing over itself. "I saw it, and thought…"

"She'll love it," the aunty tells him, jabbing the register to pin the price into the till. "Here," she says, setting the skirt aside and opening the glass display cabinet beside her, pulling out a cushion of various rings and necklaces. "I think these would suit it quite well," she tells him, picking out two long, delicate earrings and holding them against the wrinkled palm of her hand, black gems cut into the shapes of petals and leaves set into bright gold-plated steel. "Don't you think?" she suggests. 

He swallows, but his tongue doesn't unstick from the back of his throat so instead he simply nods, entranced by their muted elegance. 

"I'll add these," she tells him, quiet in a conspiring whisper, "half price," and pins them into a small jewelry box before he can free his tongue to say there's no need. 

She rings it up, and altogether it's still less than twenty dollars so he swallows his insistence, tells himself it wasn't his fault, and accepts the neat brown bag she folds it all into with another tight-lipped smile and a quiet, "Thank you."

He's thinking about it as he makes directly for Hongjoong’s apartment, instinctive and automated because he knew that's where he'd been going next. 

He is thinking about it until he walks inside and Hongjoong trills an eager, "Ooh!" at the sight of the bag, because he loves new things even if they're not his and pours over shopping bags with an excitement befitting a magpie.

"No," Seonghwa tugs it up over his shoulder and out of Hongjoong’s reach before his quick little hands can grab it. 

Hongjoong’s lips turn down in a dramatic display of displeasure. "For me?" he asks. 

"For me," Seonghwa corrects, still holding it out of reach. 

Hongjoong makes a face, his lip curled up and his nose scrunched, and derides, "Eeeee."

"No pouting," Seonghwa lightly scolds him, placing the bag carefully under the edge of the bench. "I needed a new dress shirt."

"You can't just walk into my house with interesting bags and not let me look inside them," Hongjoong complains, collapsing himself onto the lounge in a loose-boned huddle of dramatised disappointment. 

Seonghwa rolls his eyes, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips, his heart still echoing in his throat and his hands light and jittery. 

"What colour is it?" Hongjoong demands, his magpie eyes on the plain brown bag. 

"Red," Seonghwa tells him, pulling open the fridge for some cool water. 

Hongjoong makes another eee sound, but this time mixes it with a hrmm.

Seonghwa huffs, incurably found. "Burgundy," he relents. 

This time, the sound he makes is a satisfied little mmf! "Burgundy looks good on you," he says. "With the black Politix?"

"That's the one," Seonghwa lightly hums, pouring two glasses and putting the bottle back in the fridge, bringing one to Hongjoong even though he knows he won't drink it. 

"Wear gold," Hongjoong tells him. "A necklace, or earrings or something. Gold will look nice. Or–" he pauses, accepting the cup that Seonghwa hands him and immediately putting it on the edge of the piano without taking a sip, "is it cool tone? Or warm? Because maybe silver will be better. But your suit is a warm black, and you look better in gold." He huffs, frustrated, and then falls sideways into the arm of the couch, making grabby hands towards the bag under the bench. "Just let me see it," he whines, drawn-out. "Pleaseeee."

Seonghwa breathes deeply, settles into the lounge beside Hongjoong’s forlorn slump with a feathered sigh, his eyes dusting closed in a subtle blink that is designed to close himself away from his plentiful anxieties when his lips say, "Well look, then, but don't tell me anything about what you find."

He keeps his eyes closed almost all the way when he feels Hongjoong slump and then glance over his shoulder at him; he keeps the world and its reality shadowed behind his eyelashes, made up and make believe, as a means to keep his heartbeat steady and his thoughts from catching on to what he's done – what he's invited Hongjoong to see. 

This isn't the first time but it's the first time he's sharing it with someone, of his own volition at least. 

He breathes. Sips his water. None of this is real, and even if it was, it will all be okay. Hongjoong loves him. Hongjoong has the inherent and deep-rooted compassion of the Buddha himself. Hongjoong will always think well of him. Hongjoong offered to buy him a skirt first. 

He feels Hongjoong curl three fingers around the loose hand sitting intentionally slack against Seonghwa’s lap, remembers belatedly to give a gentle squeeze back only moments before Hongjoong slips away, dripping in that liquid-silent way of his towards the bench. 

"I'll have a look at the shirt," Hongjoong tells him, the shadow-slip voice that is designed to be simple and nonchalant enough so as not to raise any alarm at all. He's very good at not raising undue alarm, and Seonghwa allows himself to sink into it. Breathe it in. Eyelids fluttering, cool water on his lips, his heartbeat stays slow and steady and he presses his hand steadily along his thigh, smoothing just slightly too hard over warm black slacks. They're going to dinner tonight; some too-fancy reservation Hongjoong booked because he felt as though he'd been neglecting Seonghwa too much for too long.

"Oh," Hongjoong says from the bench, "it is a warm burgundy. Are you wearing this tonight?" he asks. 

"Yes," Seonghwa says, measured and calm, keeping his heart in check, keeping that veil of unreality between him and his anxiety. "If you think it goes well."

"It will," Hongjoong tells him, and then a moment of silence. The soft clip of a velvet box opening. Seonghwa’s heart drops, and he commands it to come back and keep beating. "These are beautiful," Hongjoong says. "Will you wear them?"

He swallows, breathes carefully through his nose. "If you think I should," he says, his throat closing a little tighter with each word.

A considering hum, pleasant and fond. "I was just saying gold earrings would suit it," he says, that calm water reassurance in his words running gently over Seonghwa’s skin, washing him clean, carrying him softly and kindly away beneath the hush of silk being lifted out of the bag, Hongjoong’s softest and most appreciative oh that he saves only for his most favourite pieces of new clothing. 

Seonghwa breathes deeply, opens his eyes. Sips his water, glances over, and lets Hongjoong’s wide eyed sincerity be the reassurance he needs for this to be normal and allowed and okay. 

"Do you want to wear this?" Hongjoong asks, his eyes pinned on the coal-black silk spilling gently through his hands like something liquid and lovely. 

"Not to dinner," Seonghwa tells him, a firm line of sincere honesty. 

"No," Hongjoong easily agrees, sways like a reed in the currents of Seonghwa’s anxieties. Impossible to uproot. "Can I see it?" he asks, and glances over at Seonghwa. Wide eyes, kind inquisition in the quiet tilt of his head. 

Seonghwa swallows. Nods. The subtlest tuck of his chin. 

"Do you need to shower?" Hongjoong asks, puddling the silk neatly back into the paper bag. "Dinner's at seven, so we should leave at six-thirty," he says, always too ready with this sort of information when it comes to Seonghwa. "It's five now, so you have plenty of time."

"I'll shower," Seonghwa dips his head as he unfolds his legs and stands, another careful sip from his cup before he takes it to the sink, empties it, washes it, sets it aside. 

"Seonghwa-ssi," Hongjoong says as he steps past towards the bathroom, Hongjoong’s small fingers slipping easily into the belt loops at his hip, and Seonghwa turns to him with a patient, steady expectation that is still cut off from the real world by his reluctance to acknowledge it. 

Hongjoong’s eyes are dark and warm, an intensity that is softly framed by long, fine lashes. He's wearing contacts already; Seonghwa can see the subtle line of them limning his dark irises the same way that he can see where Hongjoong has trimmed and shaped his eyebrows, not yet filled in with subtle makeup, and the balm he put on to soften his lips while he waited for Seonghwa to arrive so that they could get ready together. So that Seonghwa will know he isn't under or overdressed, because he will see nearly every step of Hongjoong getting ready. 

There's an intensity to him, soft-hard and cool-warm, the kind that draws Seonghwa out from his quiet facade of okayness and tells him, forces him to see that there's no need for it; it really is okay. This trust me like it's a command that Seonghwa is always too weak to. 

Hongjoong guides Seonghwa towards him with only a look and a single finger on his chin, brings him down to meet Hongjoong in a kiss. The softest lips in the world; almost painfully so. 

So much that Seonghwa feels as though he will become nothing but a barely-cognizant liquid on the floor every time Hongjoong kisses him like this – chaste and gentle without any rush or intention for anything but to kiss Seonghwa and for Seonghwa to be kissed. 

The kind of touch that reminds Seonghwa, over and again, with such a vitriol of subdued adoration, that Hongjoong loves him more than he will ever be able to put into words or act upon. 

Hongjoong could book them a hundred fancy dinners for a hundred nights together, give him flowers and gifts and anything Seonghwa could want, and not a dime of it would say as much as even one of these soft, lingering kisses does.

Hongjoong is silk under his lips, gentle and smooth and so beloved. Almost fragile in his delicacy, but made to be cherished and shown off and adored. He makes Seonghwa feel delicate and cherished and adored; he makes Seonghwa feel, with each of these precious and particular dates, that he is something beautiful that Hongjoong wants to show off. 

Maybe he should hate it, but he doesn't. He's always wanted to be pearl earrings on a velvet bed, and Hongjoong makes him feel as though he is every bit that expensive. 

"You're so beautiful, my star," Hongjoong breathes only for Seonghwa to hear, silken lips whispering at the shell of Seonghwa’s ear. 

His eyes are closed for a different reason now, taking in every detail that rolls through his body and trickles down his spine. 

"Did I wish for you?" Hongjoong asks, rhetorical, a lingering kiss pressed just beneath the lobe of Seonghwa’s ear. 

His scalp prickles, and he feels just about ready to tear out of his skin just to have Hongjoong’s hands on him – properly, not these feather-light touches that make his every hair stand on end, kisses that leave him falling apart with nowhere to go, whispers that make Seonghwa feel like he needs to fall on his knees and take Hongjoong’s cock into his mouth right here at the kitchen bench. 

"Did you?" Seonghwa asks, his words barely finding his mouth. They could have gotten lost anywhere. He can feel them in his fingertips. 

"Mm," a low hum, a quiet catch of amusement to it, Hongjoong’s smile brushing achingly light across the line of Seonghwa’s jaw. "I must have," he reasons, his lips barely brushing across Seonghwa's when he says, "How else would I get so lucky?"

Seonghwa breathes, air trembling past her parted lips, and all she can feel is every part of her that Hongjoong isn't touching. 

His lips press soft and lingering to the corner of her mouth, a permissive depth to his tone when he murmurs, "Go shower, and show me how you look in silk," with just the slightest push of his hand still at her hip.

She barely feels cognisant until she's standing in front of the bathroom mirror, the door locked behind her, and she sees her own face staring dazed back at her as she undoes the buttons of the casual dress shirt she wore out, fingers moving automatically. 

She stops when it's halfway open, blinks at the shadow cast by the hollow of her chest, pulls and flares the open shirt a little so that it sits just slightly more like a blouse. 

Seonghwa swallows, glances at the door. Hongjoong wants to see how he wears the skirt. 

It's not a sex thing, he thinks. It's not an erotic perversion – not the way Hongjoong sees it, at least. Not any more or less than he finds Seonghwa, already and without effort, inherently erotic. He'd asked Seonghwa if he was going to wear it out; he wouldn't have even suggested it if he thought this was just a sex thing. 

Seonghwa breathes, eyelids fluttering, and presses her fingertips to the base of her throat. The reassurance is…pleasantly overwhelming, is perhaps a way to say it. It's pleasant to be reassured, but more than pleasant it's shakingly too close to too much. 

Will he laugh at me?

As if he would. Seonghwa knows that. As if Hongjoong, of all people, would mock him for – for side-stepping the gender he's been told to perform. 

But what if he does?

What if it's funny, to him? Watching a grown man dress up and play pretend as though he didn't grow out of it at the age of five. 

Seonghwa showers, particular and plain, these sorts of thoughts turning his skin numb beneath the soap and hot water. He unlocks the door, underwear on and the towel around his shoulders, and finds Hongjoong sitting hunched over and cross-legged in front of his wardrobe mirror-doors, dabbing makeup across his face with practiced focus. 

As if Hongjoong, of all people, would laugh at him. 

"Here," Hongjoong says, dabbing a few smoothing details into his neat, flawless foundation before he sets the sponge aside and crawls up onto his bed, pointing for Seonghwa to take the floor between his knees. Hongjoong’s hands readily reach for the towel around Seonghwa's neck when he folds himself to sit, tucks his sharp knees up to his naked chest and lets Hongjoong ruffle the towel gently and carefully through his hair until it's only mostly damp. 

Slight hands on Seonghwa’s shoulders, draping down over his bare chest so that Hongjoong can lean on his elbows over Seonghwa's form, he watches the charmingly possessive way that Hongjoong curls around him in the mirror, his head dipping to kiss Seonghwa's jaw. 

"So pretty," he whispers again, a thumb tracing softly from the line of Seonghwa's throat to the hollow between his pecs. "Sometimes I forget I'm allowed to want you," Hongjoong tells him, lips trailing softly down his bared neck, "even though I always want you."

"Do you know what day it is?" Seonghwa asks, tilting his head back on Hongjoong’s shoulder, eyes heavy-lidded on their reflection in the mirror, a sated smile pulling sweetly at his lips over Hongjoong’s attention. 

"Of course I know," Hongjoong murmurs, lips lingering at the edge of Seonghwa’s jaw. "It's Swan Lake day," he says, "which means it's the day you joined a company again," a kiss to his cheek, "which was thirteen months after we met," lips pressed softly to his temple, "which means it's practically our kind-of anniversary," he finishes, and Seonghwa stifles a quiet laugh against his own shoulder. 

"Good," he approves, folding his fingers over one of Hongjoong’s hands, earning him a dramatically incredulous gasp.

"You don't think I would forget our kind-of-almost anniversary give or take a few weeks from a month after my top surgery?" Hongjoong demands, falsely scandalised.

"No," Seonghwa indulges him, lifting Hongjoong’s hand to press his smile in a kiss to the backs of his fingers. "Never. Do you remember the actual date?" he pushes.

"No," Hongjoong readily admits, combing soft fingers through Seonghwa's damp hair. "Did you take a role this year?" he asks.

"The twenty-third," Seonghwa tells him, still smiling. "No," he answers Hongjoong’s question. "They'll give the younger soloists the stage. I'll advise," he says, "and take Nutcracker instead."

Hongjoong presses a soft kiss to his lips before pulling himself away, climbing carefully over Seonghwa back to his makeup spot on the floor. "How is your hip feeling?" he asks, collapsing himself back into his cross-legged slouch to start pressing powder into the concealer beneath his eyes and at the corners of his nose and lips. 

"It's not bad," Seonghwa admits, rising from the floor to uncoil Hongjoong’s hair-dryer and start fixing his damp hair into some gentle, easy waves. "I want to rest it as much as I can, though."

"Should we get a cab to Libertine?" Hongjoong asks over the sound of the dryer. 

"Let's," Seonghwa agrees. "We can walk home, after eating," he suggests.

Hongjoong squeaks a little nod, rocking forward on his knees to peer closer at his eyelids as he blends careful brown shadows into the creases, buffed out with a subtle red that will match Seonghwa's shirt and, by any guess, whatever Hongjoong wears to suit him. 

He sets the dryer down, resounding silence lingering in his ears. "Will you do my makeup?" Seonghwa asks. He has to remind himself that this isn't the first time he's asked; that Hongjoong has eagerly and gently done it for him before. 

He glances down, checks the time from his phone on the carpet beside him. "Yeah," he says, returning his attention to the mirror. "What do you want?"

"Just eyes and brows," Seonghwa tells him, slipping out of the room for his brown paper bag. "Nothing serious."

Hongjoong pipes a sweet, "Okaaaay," after him, and Seonghwa carries his bag to the bathroom where he'd left his slacks hung neatly over a towel rack, pulling the crisp wine-red dress shirt out of the bag, pulling it over his bare shoulders and buttoning it halfway. 

He adds another button. Another. Leans out of the bathroom door and calls, "How formal is it?" across the narrow apartment towards Hongjoong, only to get a vocal shrug in reply. Seonghwa rolls his eyes. "Do I need a tie?" he clarifies. 

A long, nearly painfully drawn-out hum drags between them – the sound of Hongjoong finishing whatever he's doing rather than thinking that hard about an answer. "Uhhhhhhh, no," he decides, the sound of a mascara being capped and tossed aside with a lazy clatter. "No tie."

"Good," Seonghwa agrees, undoing the last button again and setting the collar to fit neatly at his throat, a slip of chest only visible when he stretches or moves. He reaches for the pants, hesitates. Carefully brings his hand back and reaches instead into the bag for the fragile hush of silk. He lets it pool in his fingers, liquid and cool. "Can I borrow your necklace?" Seonghwa asks. "The really thin gold chain."

"Yeah," Hongjoong distractedly agrees, "if you can find it."

Bare, shaved legs slipping into the coal silk, an elastic waistband stretched over his hips and gathering at his slim waist. He lifts the shirt out a little, lets it billow and sit loose against his chest. 

He swallows, a subtle dizziness creeping up the back of his skull like numbing pins and needles, and he leans forward over the vanity to take the small plain loops from his ears, eyes low from his reflection as he presses them into the velvet box and takes out the long, elegant flowers, one by one, fitting them carefully into his ears and only looking at the slender line of neck, the coquettish stretch of collar, the gentle curve of lips. 

It's easier, through that degree of separation, to steady careful breaths. To focus less on the way the loose skirt pools liquid and light around bare legs, the strange nudity of not wearing anything but underwear beneath it – not even tights and a dance belt. 

This is part of why it feels so egregious, after all. This feeling of bareness, nearly illicit nudity. But that isn't why she likes it. She likes it because–

Because…

Seonghwa folds the slacks neatly over his arm, moves in silk-hushed steps across the apartment, lingering at the edge of Hongjoong’s bedroom. Half-hidden behind the doorway. 

He waits for Hongjoong to meet his eye in the mirror, waits for a calm understanding to fall into place in his mostly unchanged expression, waits for him to twist around on the floor and gesture for Seonghwa to come in with both hands, a lipgloss still caught between his fingers. 

She moves around the doorframe, takes two steps into the room and stands, awkward and unsure, bare toes curling into the soft carpet. The prickling, numb feeling is spreading down the backs of her arms, in the very tips of her fingers like the sharp, dreadful touch of nerve strain. 

Hongjoong stares, unreadable eyes tracking up and down her clothes, then breathes out a steady, careful exhale. He rolls up out of his cross-legged slouch to his feet, pauses and stares with a vague irritation at the lipgloss in his hand as though he doesn’t care for it at all and can't comprehend what it's still doing in his hand before he drops it carelessly into the clutter of his other makeup bits, turning his attention wholly onto Seonghwa. 

A hand reaches up to her face first, the pad of his thumb lain softly against her lower lip, his pretty, unreadable eyes turned up to her, pinned on her, looking at her. 

His fingers curl against her cheek, always so slightly colder than she is, and he moves his thumb only to lean up on his toes and press a soft, chaste kiss to her lips. It's smooth and cool from the gloss, and she can feel it lingering on her skin as he settles back onto his heels. 

"You're so pretty," he whispers, one hand gracing softly down her shoulder to her elbow, settling for a moment before he moves cautiously to her waist as though it's a question, as though he's asking permission to touch her with adoring, feather-light hands. "You're so beautiful, Seonghwa," he breathes, and then pauses for a moment, his head tilting with a question that he chooses not to speak right then. 

She's glad he doesn't ask whatever it is that came to mind; she doesn't think she could make herself say anything right now, every inch of skin alight wherever his gentle hands have touched her, burning bright underneath her clothes. 

He doesn't laugh. 

He doesn't tell her that she shouldn't – that she isn't meant to. 

He just holds her as though she's something precious, looks at her as though she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, and it's then that Seonghwa realises something she's never thought to realise before; that whenever Hongjoong calls her beautiful or pretty, she believes him. 

She feels beautiful when he looks at her. 

"Can I…" he trails off in invitation, a gentle request, his fingers curling loosely around her wrists in a subtle question for if she might be willing to spread them from where she has tucked her arms in front of her in a nervous effort to hide her form. 

She breathes deeply, has to force a conscious loosening of tension to let him gently guide her hands away, black slacks still folded over one of her arms. 

Hongjoong’s eyes grace down her body, take her in. A determined focus pinching between his soft brows, he brushes light fingers down the collar of her shirt, adjusts the fall of it just a little, so careful that his hands don't even press against her skin through the clothes. 

He lifts one of her hands with the softest touch, balletic, and guides her to turn, his eyes still running up and down her clothes. 

Hongjoong steadies her when her back is to him, and she glances over at the mirror to see him looking at her – and sees her own form, draped softly in black silk and crisp, wine-red cotton standing tall and willowy beside Hongjoong’s careful sturdiness. 

His feather-light fingers brush over her shoulders, down her back, settle at the simple elastic waistband, and she sees in the mirror when he steps closer, feels him close against her back, feels the press of his soft lips against the nape of her neck before Hongjoong winds his arms around her waist and lets her breathe all of the anxious tension from her lungs and ease so subtly into him. 

He can't press his cheek or his chin to her shoulder, his makeup still fresh and not yet set it would absolutely leave an off-white smudge on her shirt, but he presses another chaste kiss behind her ear all the same. "I'd love if you could wear it," he murmurs, his nose nudging against the corner of her jaw. "You look so good like this."

Seonghwa closes his eyes, breathes, tries to find himself again – tries to find his heart beating firm in his chest, tries to find the way the shirt clings to the breadth of his shoulders. "What time is it?" he murmurs, tilting his head towards Hongjoong.

He hums, loosens himself from around her and nudges Seonghwa towards the bed, sits her on the edge and rummages for a small handful of select items from his clutter of makeup things, tapping a finger under her chin to make her lift her face towards the light while Hongjoong braces one knee on the bed beside her, leaning over her pliant willingness to bend into his gentle touches. 

She closes her eyes; a cool cream primer over her eyelids smoothed patiently by the side of Hongjoong’s pinky. 

She keeps her eyes closed as he sketches out her eyebrows, full and sharp, and then subtly fills them in. 

Eyeshadow drawn from her lashline out, blended softly over her eyelids before Hongjoong takes a finer brush and details a darker liner, murmurs a soft-voiced request for her to look up so that he can join her waterline, and finishes it by patting something lightly beneath the arch of her brows. 

"Perfect," he praises her, pressing a kiss to her brow as he collects all his things. "Do your mascara," he places it into her hand, "and put on some of that, uh," he clicks his fingers vaguely towards the pile, "the super glossy transparent one, for your lips. In the tube."

"Is that too much?" Seonghwa asks, slipping off the bed to kneel on the floor and look for the gloss he means. 

"No," Hongjoong tells her, flippant and without a moment of doubt. "I'm opening my cupboard," he warns, the large mirror wavering a little as it slides beneath Seonghwa's reflection. "Don't look."

She gives a beleaguered blink in lieu of rolling her eyes, then leans over her knee to the mirror to carefully brush her eyelashes with mascara, distractedly mumbling, "You could just, you know, clean it."

"It is clean," Hongjoong insists, muffled and leaning most of his body into the narrow opening he's made. "It's just not tidy."

"So tidy it," Seonghwa prompts, capping the mascara and picking up the gloss, pumping the stick a few times to fully coat the pad at the end. 

"I have a system," Hongjoong mumbles. 

"Uh-huh," Seonghwa drawls, unconvinced, dragging the gloss over her lower lip. 

"Where's my…" Hongjoong mumbles, grumbles, wedges the wardrobe open a little more and clatters through some coathangers. 

"You tell me," she says, smart. "It's your system." 

"Which works," Hongjoong announces, victorious, emerging from the depths of the wardrobe with a cropped blazer, half black and half a deep red which almost perfectly matches Seonghwa's shirt. "As if you'd choose red," he half-scolds, tossing it onto the bed and delving back in to find pants and a shirt to wear beneath it. "At a time like this. When I am burdened with blue hair."

"You like it," Seonghwa teases him. "Sannie chose it for you."

"I like it," Hongjoong grumbles. "I haven't tried to wear red in weeks."

"You love a challenge," Seonghwa comments, rolling her lips together to smooth out the gloss, leaning back to see how she looks. 

Black-brown eyeshadow subtly smoked out, gold glitter dusted lightly above her lids, hair falling in gentle waves parted in the middle. Burgundy dress shirt open at the collar, delicate earrings framing the length of her neck. The black skirt spreads out in a silken puddle around her. 

She looks every bit as beautiful as Hongjoong says she does. 

She doesn't want to change, but she knows that she won't leave Hongjoong’s bedroom for as long as she's wearing the skirt. 

"Okay," Hongjoong tells her, dropping his loose house shorts without worry or concern for what is beneath them, hopping to fit his legs into his dark slacks nearly identical to Seonghwa's, "do you wanna call an uber from my phone? You know where we're going?"

"Yeah," Seonghwa agrees, tidying and organising Hongjoong’s makeup bag and setting it on the small desk beside his wardrobe before picking up his phone and keying in the address, stealing a glance when she sees him lifting his shirt over his head to exchange it for a loose black scoop neck tee. 

"What," he demands, catching the way she presses her lips together to smother a smile as she glances back to his phone to confirm the pickup. 

"Nothing," she says. "You're handsome," she shrugs. "Sexy. I like watching you get dressed," she admits, dropping to sit on the edge of the bed, legs crossed, palms pressed to the blankets. 

He arches a brow. "More or less than you like watching me get undressed?" he challenges, lifting the black shirt over his head and folding it neatly over his chest – well-formed pecs undercut by his surgical scars, his straight waist, a solid build that doesn't fixate on unnecessary tone or definition.

She rolls her glossed lips together, drags her gaze up to the way the open cut of the shirt emphasises the round curve of his shoulders. "I like both," she admits, eyes flickering up to catch Hongjoong’s.

He's flustered, busily reaching for his jacket to avoid her gaze, all of his nerves told only in the jolt of his hands and not at all in his plain, unmoved expression when he tells her, "If you're going to keep looking at me like that, you might as well cancel that uber," while he threads his arms through the sleeves and fixes it to sit nicely.

"Can we?" She's almost tempted. He looks wonderful, and she wants to be touched by him. Pinned down by nothing but the heat of his gaze when he looks at her, a possessive hunger that wants to be the only one to undress her. 

"No," he says, not even bothering to entertain the idea while he moves around the bed to the jewellery stand on the bedside, picking out rings and lifting a thin, delicate golden chain that clings to his fingers. "I put down a three hundred thousand won deposit, and I'm not getting it back if we cancel," he scolds, coming back to latch the chain carefully around her bowed neck, the gold links fine enough and light enough to cling to every subtle dip of her clavicle. "We're going to dinner, and you're going to enjoy it," he says, a teasing threat as he lifts her chin and presses a soft kiss to her smiling lips, "and then we can do whatever you want. But I won't hear another word about canceling."

She scoffs a laugh, shades her mouth with her hand and gives an incredulous shake of her head. "Tyrant," Seonghwa teases him, her hand falling to touch the necklace that she'd asked to borrow. 

Hongjoong dips in and out of the bedroom a few times, rummaging around for his keys and his wallet and deciding which perfume he wants to wear, telling Seonghwa to use his phone and message Wooyoung to stay at San’s tonight, and Seonghwa knows better than to question why his last message to Wooyoung had been deep sea goopy guy, to which Wooyoung had responded omw.

"How long have we got?" Hongjoong asks, hopping from foot to foot to pull on his socks. 

Seonghwa hits send on the message, then switches apps. "Six minutes," she tells him, standing up to spare one last glance at her reflection in the mirror. She looks good. She looks lovely. She looks so fucking beautiful standing next to Hongjoong, the both of them all but ready to go. She looks like she fits beside him. 

Seonghwa averts his eyes, works his thumbs beneath the waist of the skirt and slips it down his legs. 

"Here," Hongjoong says as Seonghwa picks up his pants, handing him a short waist-fitted belt with a round gold buckle from his wardrobe, the fake black leather peeling a little from use around the second hole. 

He measures the short length between his hands, gives Hongjoong a look and says, "This won't fit my hips."

Hongjoong rolls his eyes. "Yeah," he says, "pull your pants up more."

Seonghwa gives him a different look, more stern this time. "They don't go up more," he says, pointing at his crotch. "There's stuff."

"There isn't that much stuff," Hongjoong mocks back at him, digging polished loafers with little gold buckles out of his wardrobe and pocketing his phone. 

"Oh my god," Seonghwa says, scowling at him. "I'm not – I don't have a small dick!" he snaps.

"Oh, look at you," Hongjoong rolls his eyes, a tone that Seonghwa knows as his lighthearted teasing for which anyone else might take as derision, "telling me about small dicks. No, baby," he reprimands, just gently enough to carry a teasing note of condescension, "I meant that you're a grower, not a shower, and as long as you don't get hard for some inexplicable reason then no one is going to be staring at your crotch close enough to notice a dickprint. Except me, maybe," he adds, passing Seonghwa the small Black Opium sample Hongjoong’s mother had bought for herself and then re-gifted to him, which he has never worn even once. 

“You’re horrible,” Seonghwa tells him. “You’re abhorrent. My balls will get stuck inside my body,” Seonghwa warns him, dutifully pulling his pants uncomfortably higher to fit the belt comfortably into its first hole.

"I've done worse things to you than lose your balls," Hongjoong promises, which Seonghwa reluctantly finds to be true. 

"I'm taking this to court," Seonghwa tells him, pinching and adjusting so that everything sits as comfortably as it possibly can given the circumstances. "All for a belt," he sobs, pitiful and victimised. 

"Terrible, isn't it?" Hongjoong mourns. "The things these people are teaching our youth."

"Okay," Seonghwa rolls his eyes, “you win the oppression olympics. Again.”

Hongjoong grins at him, sharp and narrow-eyed and smug, fussing with Seonghwa's shirt and untucking it just enough to sit flared out and billowy. "But you look lovely," he defends himself, turning Seonghwa to face the mirror before immediately dipping out of the room to find his wallet and keys. "Can you bring my shoes, also!" he calls back to the bedroom. 

Seonghwa blinks at his reflection, blinks away, half-stumbles to pick up Hongjoong’s abandoned shoes with a stilted, "Uh, yeah," in answer. 

He walks out of the bedroom, casting rushed glances at the mirror behind him all the way until it's out of sight. 

"Thanks," Hongjoong approves, fitting everything haphazardly into his sparse pockets to accept the shoes from Seonghwa's extended hand. 

"Good?" Hongjoong proposes, holding the door open while he fits on his shoes. "Ready?"

Seonghwa nods, stepping through as Hongjoong answers the call that begins buzzing his phone, not bothering to lock the apartment behind him before he follows Seonghwa down the hall. "Hello? Yes, we're on our way down. Thirty seconds. Thanks." He hangs up, pockets his phone. "Sorry I made us late," he says, stretching forward to press the elevator call before Seonghwa has a chance to, doors sliding open two shafts to their right. 

"It's fine," Seonghwa reassures him, still startled in a quiet shock – and not even from anything Hongjoong’s done. "You're right," he admits, slipping into the elevator beside Hongjoong and turning to face the doors, warped stainless steel doing a lot less to show him how he looks. "It looks good."

Hongjoong interlaces their fingers, squeezes Seonghwa's hand, leans up to press a kiss to his cheek. "Sorry I assaulted you," he adds. "I'll get your balls back," he promises. 

It breaks a smile onto Seonghwa’s lips and he ducks his head to stifle his quiet laugh, letting Hongjoong move his hand to the small of his back as the elevator steadies to a halt, gently guiding Seonghwa out of the building. "Later, maybe," Seonghwa teases him. "I'll send you fishing."

"Are you saying if I give you head you'll forgive me?" Hongjoong asks, less incredulous and more crafty as he peers around, then waves to hail a car idling by the pavement, ushering Seonghwa safely towards it.

"I'm saying that might be your best shot," he sniffs, sliding into the door that Hongjoong holds open for him, and giving a smile to the driver as they wait for Hongjoong to circle around the car into his own seat.

He's the most rakishly terrible gentleman Seonghwa has ever been lucky enough to meet, and he has the grossly unfair advantage of knowing that Seonghwa knows that he means well by every single thing he does, and therefore must be forgiven. 

Hongjoong slides into the car and fixes his seatbelt, the driver setting the gps and distractedly asking, "What are your plans tonight?" off a script before pulling out into the light traffic. 

"Date," Hongjoong answers, blunt and straightforward, and then twists a little in his seat to face Seonghwa, brushing the backs of his fingers lightly over Seonghwa's cheek. "Okay?" he asks, quieter and more private. 

"Yes," Seonghwa says, clearing his throat and adjusting his posture. "Yes, I just. Feel like I might get mistaken for a woman," he quietly admits, a breathless laugh. The belt, the high-waisted pants and the way Hongjoong had styled his shirt had made him look so carefully effeminate, had given the subtle illusion of a smaller waist and a softer form. He looks beautiful – he knows that. But he doesn't know how he looks to anyone else. 

"In a bad way?" Hongjoong asks, brushing his cool fingers down Seonghwa's forearm and slipping them into his hand.

Of course, Seonghwa realises, all of Hongjoong’s experiences with being mistaken for a woman have been…bad. To put it lightly. To put it a certain way that does nothing to elaborate on necessary context; on the way Hongjoong has spent his entire life doing everything he could to be seen as a man.

Seonghwa shakes his head and the long earrings brush against his neck, phrases a silent, "No," with glossed lips. "Not bad," he whispers. "Just, um." 

Just nervous. 

Just thrilling. 

Just a feeling that's sinking claws deep into his organs and not letting go, and it's fine even though he can't quite feel his legs because Hongjoong is with him, and Seonghwa knows Hongjoong will always stand between him and undue harm. He knows that Hongjoong won't let him be hurt, and it's knowing that which allows him to feel as though he might not entirely mind being mistaken, even just at a glance, for someone he has never been allowed to be.

There’s a small florist tucked amidst the old barracks which make up the string of fine restaurants Hongjoong has brought them to, and Seonghwa should probably know what to expect when he darts across the warm-lit cobblestone courtyard with a brief wait here, I’ll be back in a second.

Seonghwa is always too patient to him though, always too forgiving and trusting of his intentions, and when he sits on a bench built around a large tree in the center of the small square, legs crossed and his hands resting patiently in his lap he finds he doesn’t mind the wait, because the warm-lit ambience and almost-cold night makes him feel beautiful in a regal, esoteric sort of way.

There are only a few people around - couples and families which don’t pay him much mind - and when Hongjoong comes back with an arm tucked behind his back and a mischievous smile curling in the corners of his lips Seonghwa can only arch a skeptical brow and stand when Hongjoong beckons him to, hands gently entwined, and feels his lips part and his eyes widen and his cheeks flush when Hongjoong reveals a bouquet of a dozen roses, wine red and interspersed with sprigs of gypsophila, and the worst part is that he almost feels like he is going to cry. 

“Happy anniversary,” Hongjoong tells him, quietly, holding the bouquet steady for Seonghwa’s unsteady hands to accept.  

“Hongjoong-ah…” he threatens, or warns, only his voice is a wavering whisper which doesn’t hold much weight. Instead he sucks air between his teeth, swats the back of one hand against Hongjoong’s chest to knock his breathy, quiet laughter from his lips.

He brings a hand to Seonghwa’s waist, leans up onto his toes to press a chaste kiss to the corner of his startled mouth; brief, a flitting gesture which might not have really happened. “You’ve been my closest friend for five years,” Hongjoong tells him, his hand still on his waist, warm eyes and a smile on his lips. For a moment it’s like he never changed out of that silk skirt. “I treasure every moment you’ve been in my life. And if you’d rather read it at your leisure,” Hongjoong says, taking a wine-red envelope from the inner pocket of his jacket, the hanja for Seonghwa’s name calligraphed beautifully onto the heavy paper, “then it might save us both the humiliation of me saying it all out loud. But I can,” Hongjoong tells him, shaking fingers accepting the heavy envelope. “I can tell you every word that’s written in there.”

“Don’t,” he whines, bringing the edge of the envelope to his brow to hide the way his face crumples in adoration. “Don’t say anything else. Stop talking in fact,” he commands, levelling the envelope at Hongjoong’s sly, pleased face, the roses cradled tepidly in one arm. “Not another word.”

“Thank god,” he approves, taking his elbow and guiding him beneath the soft lights towards the restaurant. “If you made me say it out loud I would have died.”

“And I’d burn it over your grave,” Seonghwa threatens, waving the envelope at him, “so that it would haunt you even after death.”

His head tilts back, his round, sharp laugh spilling past his teeth, and he settles his small hand instead at the small of Seonghwa’s back, guiding him towards the restaurant.

He’s thinking about it. 

Roses laid on the table as they ate and talked softly, Hongjoong’s ankle slotted against Seonghwa’s between their chairs, an envelope that he won’t open until he’s at home, alone, his bedroom door closed, and knows he’ll feel okay about crying. 

He’s thinking about it; a high-waisted belt and the effeminate flare of his shirt, the delicate gold chain that sits across his collarbones. Black Opium perfume, too ladylike for Hongjoong to abide no matter how many times he says he loves the scent. 

He’s thinking about it; a small hand settled on his lower back, this gentle ushering of Hongjoong taking the tightly-clutched pressure of masculinity from his hands and making it something firm but not unyielding; something reliable, not something to rely on. 

He’s thinking about it; Hongjoong pouring every glass of Seonghwa’s wine, asking what Seonghwa wants and then relaying his requests to the waiter so that Seonghwa won’t have to gather his shame to speak for himself. The bill already settled before they arrived. The way Seonghwa, despite having done nothing for this night, doesn’t feel as though he needs to make up for it. 

There is a certainty and composure in everything that Hongjoong has done. Dignified masculinity, as absurd as it is to draw such transparent and mutable lines. It’s less the things he does and more the way he does them - and not even that, when Seonghwa peers closer. There is no correct way to perform, but that’s the thing. That’s what makes it.

It isn’t a performance, for Hongjoong.

He doesn’t perform the masculine; he just…is.

In a way that Seonghwa has never been. 

It feels crass, the implication that Seonghwa might expect less from Hongjoong for whatever reason, but that isn’t the point when he realises that Hongjoong wears masculinity and manhood in a way that Seonghwa never has; less emphasis on Hongjoong’s capability rather than Seonghwa’s lack. 

It’s a feeling of surprise that doesn’t startle him so much as fill him steadily, this sort of realisation. He doesn’t need this hard shell that cuts him, this cold armour that cocoons him. 

Hongjoong has masculinity enough for the both of them; Seonghwa doesn’t need to be afraid. 

He knew that, of course. He’s always known that. But something about the way Hongjoong places himself between Seonghwa and the road as they walk slowly, calmly down the footpath in an unhurried course towards Hongjoong’s home makes him believe it.

"When you're acting like my boyfriend,” Seonghwa speaks his gentle realisation aloud, hushed and quiet, “you treat me like I'm your girlfriend." His words bear the same sound of silk swirling around shaved legs. 

"Do I?" Hongjoong says, a distracted tone to his voice. Not distracted because he's thinking about something else; Seonghwa knows how that sounds. 

This is the tone of distraction he pulls around himself when he's avoiding the conversation – when he doesn't exactly want to face it front-on, because it's something that he knows something about but isn't entirely ready to confront. 

"Yeah," Hongjoong agrees a moment later, before Seonghwa can say something else to ease him from the pressure of talking about the topic. "I know," he admits. "I figured it was just…my own thing," he shrugs, his shoulder jostling hers a little. "Like, to be a man," she glances aside to see the way he rolls his eyes at himself, if only because she expects to see it and is always so endeared by the little frown that pinches between Hongjoong’s soft brows whenever he's asked to speak about himself. "But," he relents, "after a while it seemed like you liked that too."

"I don't mind," she says, sucks her lower lip between her teeth and glances down at their shoes as they walk. "I like it," she admits, even quieter. "I like…I'd like to be your girlfriend, sometimes," she whispers. "Is that bad?"

They walk several meters in silence, only the sound of their footsteps and the hush of sparse traffic passing by. Her teeth taste like red wine, and she can feel it warm in her fingertips and fuzzy in her head. Hongjoong has forgotten to say no, it isn’t bad, but he’s thinking, and she knows that if he’d remembered that he ought to then he wouldn’t have hesitated to say it.

“Sometimes I forget I’m meant to be a man,” is what Hongjoong says when he’s decided he’s ready to say it.

“But you’re a man anyway,” Seonghwa tells him, her voice pitched subtly like a question. “Like, all the time. Even when you’re not thinking about it, you’re still a man.”

“Yeah,” Hongjoong agrees, a startled laugh tugging at his wine-marked lips. “That’s the weird part. I used to have to think about it all the time, really hard, constantly. Now it’s like…oh, it’s fine if I don’t think about it for a while,” he muses. “It’s not going anywhere.”

She often feels a few steps behind when it comes to finding Hongjoong’s points, but he never patronises her by explaining himself and nor does he rush off before she’s caught up. He waits at his point for her to get there, and when she does she realises what he’s saying.

"I don't really feel that way," Seonghwa admits to the pavement slipping away beneath their steps. "I feel like I'm constantly reminding myself."

"What happens when you don't?" Hongjoong asks, patient and nonchalant. "What do you become?"

Seonghwa blows out a feathered sigh. "I don't know." A shy, quiet admission. "I never really think about it. I try not to think about it."

"You can think about it," Hongjoong promises her, his shoulder brushing hers where their arms are linked. "I'll wait."

From: Park Seonghwa
Did you talk to Wooyoung?

From: Kim Hongjoong
about what?

From: Park Seonghwa
He keeps calling me Noona

From: Kim Hongjoong
oh

From: Kim Hongjoong
no

From: Kim Hongjoong
he probably just activated his xray brain eyes and doesnt understand what hes looking at
seeing things he can not or will not explain
he wont stop even if u ask him btw

From: Kim Hongjoong
sorry

From: Park Seonghwa
Haha I know, it's okay

From: Park Seonghwa
I didn't think you said anything but he started really suddenly, so I was confused.

From: Park Seonghwa
It's nice. 

From: Park Seonghwa
Also I read your letter

From: Kim Hongjoong
dont mention it

From: Kim Hongjoong
wait that sounded polite i meant literally dont speak about it or acknowledge to me that it exists

From: Park Seonghwa
Haha I won’t I won’t

From: Park Seonghwa
I just wanted to tell you I love you

It’s late February, the cusp of spring, and Hongjoong’s allergies have finally released him from their torment long enough for him to bear being outside.

They missed Valentine’s Day, but that’s okay; this has happened nearly every year, and the rare instances that it hasn’t they’d been expecting it to and so have never made plans.

This does not, Hongjoong had emphasised over text, under any circumstances imply that they should tempt fate and his reckless immune system by going to see the cherry blossoms. They had compromised with an art museum showcasing floral seasonal displays.

Hongjoong brings his film camera and a bag for Seonghwa’s sneakers, in case her feet get sore. She doesn’t offer to carry it, because she knows he’d let her and then sulk about it. 

He takes photos of the displays; he takes photos of her admiring the displays. 

She feels pretty; high-waisted white slacks, one of Hongjoong’s oversized t-shirts tucked into the narrow waist and falling delicately from her frame. Short nude heels almost hidden beneath the hem of her pants is the only thing that steps this away from androgyny; subtle enough that if she becomes anxious she can exchange them for the sneakers in Hongjoong’s bag. 

She’s always been taller than him, but she towers over him like this. She’d tried to use it as an excuse to back out, and he’d looked at her with so much exasperation when he’d said are you crazy? It’s really hot, that she hadn’t had much mind to find a suitable retort. 

He’d been right, of course - less about the words he’d said, and more about why he said them. She’s happy she came out like this today. She would have felt regretful if she hadn’t. 

Seonghwa, over the steady months, has discovered that he doesn’t always want to be Hongjoong’s girlfriend. Not always. Not all the time. 

Sometimes he wants to be Hongjoong’s friend - his best friend. His closest friend, who he trusts and loves and feels safe with and enjoys his company. Sometimes Seonghwa is him, he, my same-age friend (always uttered with a wryness and affectations of reluctance as though to imply that they could be anything so close as that makes Hongjoong want to dig his fingers into drywall - all for the sake of preserving his own reluctance for sincerity, of course) and sometimes Seonghwa is she, her, my girlfriend (always spoken with a note of tenderness so profound that it blooms in Seonghwa’s throat and she wants to take Hongjoong by the shoulders and scream, if only that wouldn’t just make him smile as though he’s won). 

She’s still afraid, of course, because at all times in everything she is deeply and unchangeably Seonghwa, and anxiety disorders don’t disappear simply because you’ve started to accept that within yourself which you are afraid of. But it helps that Hongjoong never laughs at her, and that he has organised (organised!) a section of his wardrobe in which to keep the articles of clothing which she would rather burn than have anyone find, and that he always - always - looks at her with such a magnitude of quiet wonder and admiration that she never has to wonder if he loves her.

“I love you,” he tells her for the third time on that early spring day as they’re sitting under the eaves of a cafe waiting for the sweets she had asked for him to order.

She stops where she’d been exchanging her heels for the sneakers, more an admission of defeat to the strain it is bringing to her feet and ankles and hip than it is rooted in the odd looks that she realised no-one really has given her. She blinks at him. It hardly seems the time. 

“What makes you say that?” she asks, because she wants to know and she’d like to hear it.

Hongjoong doesn’t respond until their cakes arrive, until he scrunches his nose around the overwhelming sweetness of a strawberry macaroon and ushers the rest of it onto her side of the plate.

“You’re happy,” he says at last, after cleansing his palate with a sip of iced coffee. “I really love when you’re happy,” he says, his eyes on the plate as he pokes around for something that might be better suited to his taste. 

“If I’m happy,” she says, knowing what it will do to him, “it’s because you made me this way.”

He hisses between his teeth, a scowl furrowing his brows as he impales a blueberry macaroon on his fork.

He likes it, Seonghwa knows. She sees it in the way he hunkers into his shoulders, shifts his legs as though he wants to draw them up onto his chair before remembering they’re in public and he can’t. She sees it in the way he refuses to lift his eyes, butterfly fingertips flitting from his fork to his camera to his phone and picking up none of them before curling and hiding away in the flower of his palms. 

She feels unbearably, unutterably lucky; the sort of luck that chances a silkmoth to survive. 

She might never know the wind, or how it feels to fly, but here she is. These useless, velvet wings are more than enough for her to be happy.