Archive of Our Own

[Text exchanges between CHA JUNHWAN and PARK SUNGHOON, February to March 2026.]

hey hyung
i’ll be in Milan until the short program, if you have time to meet up
it’d be nice to get a meal together or something

does sunghoonie like desserts, or just protein?

—

92.72 is bullshit.
i’m sorry, hyung. how do you even deal with this?!

ah, did sunghoonie like the program?

—

i just watched the replay. are you alright?

—

i saw the news. are you okay?

you first, Junhwan-hyung.

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Sunghoon and Junhwan don’t talk very often.

They have no reason to: they were never particularly close, despite the story the media has woven about them training together or whatever. Junhwan was always in a different league than Sunghoon entirely when it came to figure skating, and so despite having the same coach and only a year’s age difference between them, they were more friendly acquaintances than real friends. Strangely enough, they’re closer now than they ever were when they were both figure skaters, and though they still don’t speak too often, they keep each other’s numbers saved.

The problem with Junhwan, in Sunghoon’s opinion anyway, is that he’s too nice. He’s charitable under every circumstance and his optimism seemingly knows no bounds. Sunghoon is the type of person who needs results to thrive. Junhwan is the kind of person who puts his head down and gets the job done.

So yes, it’s easy for Sunghoon to fall into a self-deprecating, denigrated place when he interacts with Junhwan, because it feels a little bit like he’s interacting with a saint. But Sunghoon is not a self-deprecating person by nature, and he knows that it isn’t true: Junhwan is as human as he is, as human as anyone. Around the fifth time in a row Junhwan acts the indulgent hyung, Sunghoon snaps. He’s as human as anyone else is, too.

“Sunghoonie?” Junhwan sounds baffled to hear from him. Sunghoon is surprised he picked up.

“Junhwan-hyung.” Hearing Junhwan’s voice makes Sunghoon feel suddenly very silly again, like he should have just texted and been done with it. Still, he forges onward, decisively covering his momentary embarrassment. “How are you? How has your ankle been?”

“Huh? All of a sudden?” Junhwan laughs — Junhwan is always laughing, and it makes Sunghoon’s teeth grind against each other uncomfortably. Junhwan laughs, and he doesn’t answer the question.

“Not really. I asked you a month ago and you never replied.”

There’s a brief pause. “You didn’t ask about my ankle.”

“I asked about you.”

“That’s not the same thing at all,” Junhwan says, and for some reason, his voice still sounds light, as though he could burst into laughter at any minute now. Sunghoon gets the distinct feeling that it’s no use trying to argue with him about this, so he sighs and moves on.

“Okay, well, I’m asking now. How’s your ankle?”

Junhwan laughs, a brief exhale. “Why are you asking me about my ankle, Sunghoon-ah? Don’t you have bigger things to worry about?” He says it so kindly that Sunghoon isn’t even sure if it’s supposed to be a jab, or if Sunghoon is just hardwired to take it that way. Everything regarding Heeseung hurts like a phantom limb lately. Junhwan isn’t responsible for Sunghoon’s ghosts, but then again, he’s the one who reached out in the first place. Junhwan isn’t stupid, Sunghoon decides, and even if he didn’t mean it like that, Sunghoon is allowed to feel hurt.

“Yes,” he answers honestly. “I don’t care. You asked about me, why can’t I ask about you?”

“I — Sunghoon-ah, you don’t need to worry about me,” Junhwan says, a bit incredulously. He is insufferable.

“Then why are you always worrying about me?” Sunghoon demands.

“What?” Sunghoon glares at his phone and puts Junhwan on speaker, clicking to his messages.

“February ninth: I suggested we meet up in Milan and you asked if I liked desserts. After the short program, I reached out and all you did was ask if I liked it. On the fourteenth, I asked if you were okay, and you never answered. And now you’re asking me how I am because you saw the news about Heeseung.” Sunghoon rattles these items off like a list of charges, but when Junhwan replies, he just sounds confused.

“Is that not… normal? Did I do something wrong?”

“You’re always trying to take care of me.”

“Not… not really,” Junhwan says, and Sunghoon has no doubt that there are a million instances flying through his memory of times where he didn’t take care of Sunghoon, because that’s the kind of person Junhwan is.

“You always ask about me. You never let me ask about you.”

“Does this matter?” There’s a tinge of discomfort in Junhwan’s tone of voice now, which Sunghoon takes to mean he’s doing something right. “If you’re going through a hard time, I’d like to be there for you.”

“Okay, but I want to do the same.”

“Huh?”

“I want to be there for you too, Junhwan-hyung.”

Silence extends down the line. Sunghoon’s clenched his jaw so hard now that his ears are ringing. This was stupid, and he shouldn’t have called.

Sunghoon is wondering how embarrassing it would be to hang up before Junhwan can even say anything when he finally gets his answer. “Okay,” says Junhwan, with a sort of quiet acceptance Sunghoon isn’t sure how to feel about. “Okay, Sunghoonie. Would you like to meet up, then? To talk about things?”

Sunghoon breathes his anxiety out on his next exhale. “Sure, hyung. Where should we meet?”

“Do you want to come to the rink?”

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Junhwan is exactly as handsome as he was the last time Sunghoon saw him, puffy-cheeked and a little under the weather in Milan. His foot is bandaged up and he swallows three painkillers on the spot after forcing his swollen ankle into his boots. He is somehow still exactly as good a skater as he was in Milan, too.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Sunghoon says as soon as he sees the injury. “Hyung, why did you suggest this?! We could have met somewhere else.”

Junhwan shrugs, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his KSU-issued sports jacket. He’s smiling, which is ludicrous, even though Sunghoon knows that’s his resting face. “I would have been here anyway. My training is slower than it usually is, but it still happens. I thought it would be nice for you to join me.”

Coach Chi greets Sunghoon kindly when she sees him, then speaks to Junhwan for a moment or two before releasing them onto the ice. It is strangely reminiscent of Sunghoon’s figure skating days, even though they never quite looked like this.

Junhwan zips around the rink twice with only four crossovers, then does three separate warm-up spins. Sunghoon tries a Waltz jump and is pleased to discover that his body still remembers how to land it.

“Do laps with me?” Junhwan is still smiling when Sunghoon turns to look at him again. He’s balancing on one foot — his good ankle — and he seems perfectly content to slow his pace so that Sunghoon, who isn’t slow but can’t compete with Junhwan’s speed, can match him. He guesses that what he said about a more forgiving training schedule was true.

“So,” Junhwan says, looking at Sunghoon out of the corner of his eye, “you’ve seen my ankle. Now you owe me one.” Sunghoon laughs, caught off-guard. “How’s Enhypen holding up?”

“It’s — fine,” Sunghoon answers haltingly, because he supposes that Junhwan is right; he does owe him one. “We’re fine. It sucks having to relearn all the choreography formations and stuff, and everyone has new lines to memorize, but we’re gonna be fine. Everyone’s even more dedicated, I think, since it happened.”

Junhwan hums, the sound low and pleasing from his voice. “And you? How are you, Sunghoonie?”

“I —” Sunghoon turns away from Junhwan’s kind, smiling face. “I’m mad, I think. I don’t know.”

“That’s understandable. He was the mat-hyung, wasn’t he?” Junhwan asks, as if he doesn’t already know. Sunghoon isn’t sure how closely Junhwan keeps up with Enhypen, but he knows Junhwan knows that much — he’s met Heeseung, after all, back when they did their MNET Black Swan stage. Sunghoon nods in confirmation anyway, and Junhwan hums again. “I obviously don’t know what happened, or any of the details. But I’m sorry he let you down like that. You’re a good dongsaeng, Sunghoonie, and a good person, too. He should have been a better hyung for you.”

Sunghoon inhales sharply. “It’s not — it wasn’t like that.” In his peripheral vision, he can see Junhwan tilting his head to look curiously at Sunghoon, his overgrown bangs falling over his eyes just so.

“How was it, then?” he asks, not a trace of judgment in his voice.

“Heeseung wasn’t– he wasn’t my hyung. That’s not… our relationship wasn’t like that.” Sunghoon skids the edge of his blade against the ice and changes the subject. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s talk about you again. Are you mad at them too, hyung?” Sunghoon finally looks at Junhwan again, just in time to see him tilt back his head and laugh. He tastes blood and realizes that he bit his tongue.

“Who is there to be mad at?”

“The ISU, the judges, the tech panel. Your competitors, even. Come on, hyung — you don’t have to be a good person all the time. There’s no way you aren’t at least a little bit angry.”

Junhwan pauses, a contemplative look passing over his face. “I guess so,” he admits. “The judges… the system is designed so that certain skaters have a disadvantage. It’s not just me. It’s hard not to feel angry about that sometimes.”

Somehow even in ire Junhwan is respectful. “You deserved a medal,” Sunghoon says, itching to push the envelope. Junhwan looks at him and smiles like they’re in together on a joke.

“I know.”

“Hyung, you —”

“Junhwan-ssi!” Coach Chi calls for their attention and Junhwan gives Sunghoon an apologetic look.

“Duty calls.”

“I don’t mind,” Sunghoon blurts, a bit uselessly. “I’ll, uh– I’ll be here.”

Junhwan smiles at him again and skates over to Coach Chi, leaving Sunghoon alone with his thoughts. A moment later, Junhwan is drilling his jumps. Every time he lands on his bad ankle, Sunghoon winces, but Junhwan’s expression never changes. Just as Sunghoon is contemplating putting some real effort into an improv choreo to Rain, in Your Black Eyes so he can’t watch Junhwan from the corner of his eye anymore, his phone buzzes from his pocket.

[DELETED CONTACT]
Hey.
I came by to get my stuff from the dorm but the guys said you were out.
I was hoping we could talk?

Heeseung’s contact is not actually deleted. Jay renamed it that after Heeseung started spam texting him when they were hanging out the other day because Sunghoon wouldn’t let him actually delete or block Heeseung’s number. Not seeing his name attached somehow makes it easier to both read and reply, though, so maybe it was good for something other than a quick laugh.

Park Sunghoon
i am actually out. i’m not avoiding you.

[DELETED CONTACT]
Gym?

Park Sunghoon
no

[DELETED CONTACT]
Your parents’?

Park Sunghoon
no

[DELETED CONTACT]
The studio?

Park Sunghoon
no

[DELETED CONTACT]
Where the hell are you then??
I didn’t know you even knew about other places ᄏᄏ
You work too much, Sunghoon-ah.

For some reason, the text reminds Sunghoon of Junhwan and what he said — he should have been a better hyung for you. But the problem has never been that Heeseung doesn’t care for Sunghoon; it’s always been much more complicated than that.

Park Sunghoon
i’m at the rink. Junhwan-hyung invited me

[DELETED CONTACT]
Oh
Will you be back within the next hour? I can take my time moving this stuff but the guys will kill me if I hang out too long

Sunghoon takes a deep, grounding breath and looks up, only to find Junhwan skating towards him, still smiling. Sunghoon guesses they must have finished a run-through or two of the short program — he wasn’t really paying attention. He quickly types out and sends a message to Heeseung, then stuffs his phone back in his pocket.

Park Sunghoon
probably not. sorry

“Who was that?” Junhwan asks. A lie is at the tip of his tongue before Sunghoon changes his mind and answers, “Heeseung.”

A brief second of pause is all the indication Sunghoon gets that Junhwan might be surprised. “You still talk.”

“Yeah. Sometimes.” Sunghoon shrugs, the back of his neck burning. “I mean, we never texted much anyway. So it’s just… I mean, we don’t see each other as often now.”

“Right. Things didn’t end on bad terms, then?”

From anyone else, Sunghoon would think that they were fishing for gossip, the insider info about Lee Heeseung’s sudden departure from Enhypen. But Junhwan asks in a very matter-of-fact way, like he doesn’t really care about the details so much as how they’ve affected Sunghoon, and more than that, how he can help fix it — always playing the part of the diligent hyung.

“No, it was pretty bad,” he replies flatly, which earns him a shocked laugh before Junhwan claps his hand over his mouth, but the offensive sound makes Sunghoon smile. “Yeah. You can laugh, it’s fine. It’s… I don’t know. I’m not really sure where I stand with him right now, to be honest.” The members are split: Sunoo, Jay, and Jungwon currently lean more towards resentful, whereas Ni-ki and Jake land further on the side of sad. Sunghoon isn’t sure where he falls in either of those groups, because neither of them feel quite right. He’s cycled through rage and grief and sadness more times than he can count over the past few weeks, and now all those feelings have spat him out and all he is is tired. Regardless, everyone is trying to muscle through their feelings to present their best to the public.

“Where do you want to stand with him?”

The question stops Sunghoon short. It’s a stupid question, but Junhwan doesn’t know that. “That doesn’t matter,” he answers honestly, and Junhwan’s brow furrows but Sunghoon brushes him off before he can even ask. “Teach me to Loco, hyung? I want to see if I still have a long program in me.” And Junhwan laughs, and Junhwan does.

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[DELETED CONTACT]
Can we meet up another time then? When you’re done?
Sunghoon?
Please. I really think we should talk about this.

[DELETED CONTACT]
Sunghoon-ah, come on. You said you weren’t avoiding me.

Park Sunghoon
i was out with Junhwan-hyung and had my phone turned off

[DELETED CONTACT]
The whole day??

Park Sunghoon
yeah. when do you want to meet? im busy for the next three days, we’re flying to Melbourne

Meeting with Heeseung is a decidedly different experience than meeting with Junhwan. For one, Heeseung isn’t smiling. Sunghoon thought he hated Junhwan’s cheerfulness, but this is bad too. Maybe he just hates them both. Maybe Sunghoon is just a bitter, hateful human being.

“Sunghoon-ah,” Heeseung says, like a sigh of relief, and Sunghoon’s heart leaps in his chest the same way it does every time.

“Hi, hyung.” Before he can think better of it, Sunghoon lets Heeseung pull him into a hug. He’s warm, like he always is, and sort of gangly, like he always is, in a way that’s always been endlessly endearing to Sunghoon. I missed you sits at the tip of his tongue and Sunghoon grits his teeth to bite it down.

“The guys were so pissed at me for stalling last week,” Heeseung says, gently teasing. “Jay almost started to lay into me about you before Jungwon pulled him away.”

Sunghoon sighs, then slumps down onto the depressing beige couch in Heeseung’s otherwise barren living room and tilts back his head. Jay has a short fuse and always has, so while no one had told him that particular piece of information when he came back to the dorm yesterday, he’s not exactly surprised. “Sorry,” he mumbles, and Heeseung shakes his head, bemused.

“You know that’s just how he is. But, man — they’re all still angry at me, aren’t they?”

It’s not a question even though it’s phrased that way, so Sunghoon doesn’t answer.

“I know I could have handled things better, but it’s…” Heeseung trails off, then seems to refocus, zeroing in on Sunghoon, silent in his seat. “That’s why I wanted to meet. To, like, clear the air between us, and make sure we’re on the same page, you know?”

“Right,” Sunghoon agrees weakly.

“Yeah. So, I thought — anything you want to say to me, or yell at me, or whatever… lay it on me. Get it out. We’ll go from there.” Heeseung spreads his arms out like he’s physically welcoming the insults, and Sunghoon’s heart thuds, too heavy, in his chest. He’s not going to complain. If Heeseung was waiting for him to politely disagree, he’ll have to deal with the disappointment.

Sunghoon keeps his expression neutral, though, as he replies, “I’m mad that you’re leaving us.” I’m mad that you left altogether instead of ‘working things out with the company’ like you said you would. “And that you didn’t communicate what you wanted with the group.” That it’s been a month of fighting and you still haven’t changed your mind. “I’m mad that you moved on from us so quickly.” I’m mad that you moved on at all. “I don’t understand how you’re okay with this outcome, or how you didn’t fight harder.” I don’t think I trust that you ever fought for us how we did for you. “I think that you were selfish, and you betrayed our trust.” Maybe Junhwan was right, and you weren’t acting like a hyung in those days. “I’m mad that you get to leave the group just like that, like we never even mattered.” That you come and go as you please. “I don’t know why you’re doing this.” I don’t know what you want. “Any of this.” I don’t know why I came just because you called. “I don’t even know what you want from me being here right now.” I thought I knew what you wanted from me all this time, and now I’m not so sure anymore. “I thought — fuck.” The careful, neutral mask to his voice cracks, but he doesn’t bother covering it up anymore. “I don’t know, hyung. I’m pretty fucking mad at you, honestly.”

Sunghoon looks up and Heeseung’s expression sits somewhere between surprise and anger, some sort of righteous incredulity. That makes the anger flare up in Sunghoon’s chest all over again, and before Heeseung can reply, he’s continuing — “Fuck, while we’re at it — why do I get special treatment? Why am I here, and not anyone else? Why not Jungwon? Why not Riki or Sunoo or, hell, even Jake? The only one who wouldn’t talk to you right now is Jay and you know that; I know that they’ve been reaching out to you too. So why me, hyung?”

“Wh– what do you mean why you? It’s always been different with us, Sunghoon, come on. Jay isn’t icing me out over anyone else’s honour.”

“Don’t say it like that,” Sunghoon snaps, and Heeseung looks appropriately chided for a second before he fixes his face again. “And it was different between us. Not anymore. It hasn’t been different between us since you told me you were leaving at the same time you told everyone else. Fuck, it hasn’t been different between us since you decided you could leave in the first place.”

“What do you mean ‘decided I could’? Sunghoon —”

“That’s what you’re taking from this? The way I phrased your fucking departure?”

“No, of course not,” Heeseung backtracks. “I don’t — I’m shocked, is all. You haven’t been… you’ve been normal with me, mostly. I thought we were on the same page.”

“Didn’t you say this meeting was to get us on the same page?!”

“To verbalize it.” Sunghoon resists the urge to punch Heeseung and his stupid, handsome face. “For the most part I thought we were already there.”

“Why on earth would you think that?!”

“Wh– why wouldn’t I? Sunghoon-ah, you’ve always understood me. Why would that change now?”

“Because you left us, obviously.” Sunghoon’s voice breaks halfway through his sentence and he looks away so he doesn’t have to see Heeseung’s awful Bambi eyes anymore.

“Hoon-ah… come on, Sunghoon. You know me, you know it isn’t like that.” Heeseung’s fingertips dance feather-light across his jaw and Sunghoon squeezes his eyes closed tight.

“Fuck you,” he chokes out, and Heeseung laughs, a soft, quiet chuckle.

“Cute,” he breathes, sweet and gentle. Then, louder: “You know me, Sunghoon-ah. Can’t you trust me?”

Sunghoon answers Heeseung’s question with one of his own, finally peeling his eyes open to squint at his too-close face. “Can’t you answer to any of it? To any of the things I just told you?”

Heeseung frowns and drops his fingers from Sunghoon’s face. “It’s a matter of perspective. There’s nothing to say — I mean, the answer’s already in the question.” He smiles, a little sheepishly, a little proud, the way Sunghoon is used to seeing him smile after he’s made a dirty joke on camera that he wants to be cut or left a recording session with all his ad-libs fixed and final while the rest of them are still working on their verses.

“Right,” Sunghoon says dully. Heeseung leans in further, their foreheads nearly touching, drawing Sunghoon’s eyes up.

“Hey,” he says. “This is good. I’m glad you told me, Hoon-ah. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you.”

Heeseung doesn’t kiss him, even though Sunghoon wants him to. He never does, in moments like these.

“Do you want to eat? Or we could hang out in my room, play games or something…”

Sunghoon reaches for his phone to check the time, even though he already knows what his answer will be. “I should go,” he says, rising to his feet. “I told the guys I’d be back by seven.”

“Okay,” Heeseung agrees easily. “I’ll see you, Sunghoon. I’m glad we were able to talk.”

“Yeah.” Sunghoon feigns his way through their goodbyes, then has to take three whole minutes just to breathe the fresh air once he’s out of Heeseung’s apartment and outside. He wants to scream, but screaming at Heeseung isn’t an option. He wants to cry, but he can’t very well do that in his apartment.

The merits of counting his losses and wallowing at the dorm, where everyone will immediately be in his business, are that he gets to mope and he doesn’t have to explain how complicated everything is, because they already know. The cons are that he doesn’t need his members worrying about him any more than they already are, and he doesn’t want to give any of them another reason to be weird to Heeseung the next time they meet.

His parents are out of the question, because he still isn’t out to them. His idol friends are likely to be busy, and his non-idol friends don’t know about him and Heeseung, even if they do know about Sunghoon. There’s Yeji, but Sunghoon doesn’t like to worry her, and —

[image attached]
i saw this and thought of you ᄏᄏᄏᄏ

hyung are you free?

?
i just left the rink, but i’m off for the rest of the night

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Junhwan lives with his parents and a smooth-furred grey cat named Thor, whom he introduces Sunghoon to with him hoisted up in his arms. Fresh out of the shower, Junhwan looks similarly fluffy, though he’s pale from some mixture of pain and exhaustion.

“He’s very docile,” Junhwan explains, letting Sunghoon pet carefully over Thor’s head and down his back. Thor blinks his ridiculously wide eyes and meows. “Thor, this is Sunghoonie. Treat him well.” His deep voice gets lighter, slightly higher, when he speaks to the cat, nearly saccharine with affection. It’s cute. Junhwan’s eyes crinkle up with a smile and he drops Thor to the ground as he laughs. “Come on, we can hang out in my room.”

For the first five minutes, Junhwan doesn’t push, which Sunghoon has the sense to appreciate even though a part of him is dying to just roll over and complain already. But it only takes those five minutes for Junhwan to apparently pick up on Sunghoon’s horrendous vibes, because he taps Sunghoon’s knee to get his attention when he’d been zoned out and asks, “Sunghoonie, is everything okay?”

Tears well in Sunghoon’s eyes immediately. He grits his teeth and blinks three times to stop them. “Uh. I met up with Heeseung today.”

“Oh.” Junhwan sits up straighter and shuffles, turning his whole body towards Sunghoon. “With the band?”

“Just me,” Sunghoon mumbles, and he can feel his ears and the back of his neck warming again, the way it always does when he talks about him and Heeseung. “He wanted to talk. To, like, get on the same page, which I guess he thinks we are now, but we really aren’t.”

“How so?” Junhwan prompts, voice gentle, and Sunghoon recalls Heeseung saying, it’s a matter of perspective. He exhales shakily and continues.

“We’ve always been — this was supposed to be it for him. It’s — have you watched I-Land?”

“Uh — no,” Junhwan says, laughing a little like he’s embarrassed. Sunghoon snorts and waves his hand dismissively.

“Good; don’t. It’s a complete waste of time. But it’s — he was the guy, you know? Everyone either wanted to beat him or be him, but he was always… just so nice to me. To everyone, I mean, but we’ve always understood each other.” Sunghoon realizes it sounds almost like an echo of what Heeseung said to him not even two hours ago, but he can’t even deny it. It’s not a narrative, it’s just true. “And I was this awkward, try-hard kid who could hardly sing to save his life, and all anyone knew me as was the guy who used to be a figure skater. They were always asking me to do a triple Axel,” he recalls, laughing again without humour. “And I was fucking terrified, because I didn’t know what I’d fucking do if I didn’t make it. Like — I couldn’t go back to figure skating and expect a serious competitive career there. I couldn’t go back to HYBE after flunking out of their reality show. I-Land was my only shot, and I fucking acted like it. I was insufferable, I wanted it so bad.

“And then there was Heeseung, who was — I mean, he was always going to make it. It was never really a question if Heeseung was going to make it. The show was practically built around him, for fuck’s sake, but then I would go into the practice rooms in the middle of the night and he’d be in there, still dancing, because it was his one shot too. He — we were always on the same page, that this was the end for us.”

“Ah,” Junhwan says quietly, because he’s smart, and so Sunghoon is sure he can already tell where this is going. Sunghoon decides that this makes it a good time to throw the wrench in.

“But we never talked about it. After I-Land, I mean. It didn’t seem like we had to.” Sunghoon takes a deep breath, and reminds himself as he stares at the ceiling that Junhwan trained in Canada, with Brian Orser, and is friends with Jason Brown and Amber Glenn, and he also just seems like a very loving person in general, so Sunghoon really doesn’t have to worry about this, on top of everything else. “We didn’t talk about it when he started kissing me after shows and then blaming it on adrenaline, or calling me when he was — you know, at night, either. And now he wants to talk about this, about him leaving, to get on the same page. But I think maybe he skipped a few pages, or the whole fucking book, even, because we were on the same page, we knew– we understood each other, and what we were doing, and what all of it meant, and now it’s — he —” It’s humiliating when Sunghoon’s voice breaks and he can’t finish his sentence, instead pulling his knees to his chest to release an ugly, awful sob. How stupid, how juvenile. Maybe he should have gone to the dorm and let Jongseong fuss over him after all.

“Ah,” Junhwan breathes, but with a different weight to it this time. Sunghoon feels him shuffle slightly, and then he’s pulling Sunghoon rather bodily into a hug. It surprises a laugh out of him, which is an ugly noise given that he’s crying at the same time, and then he buries his head in Junhwan’s shoulder and lets him pat the small of his back to a soothing rhythm, trying as his tears subside to match his breathing to the steady rise and fall of Junhwan’s chest.

“I’m sorry he’s hurting you, Sunghoon-ah,” Junhwan says, quiet and sincere, when Sunghoon isn’t crying anymore.

“It’s stupid,” Sunghoon mutters, still into Junhwan’s shoulder, because he can’t quite bear the idea of having to face himself in the emptiness of the room just yet. This is where having seven members — six, he has to remind himself — works in his favour. Usually there’s enough happening at any given moment that Sunghoon can fade somewhat reliably into the background, at least for a moment.

“No,” he disagrees, “it’s not. You’re not, Sunghoonie.”

“I’m sorry I’m dumping this on you,” Sunghoon tells Junhwan’s damp sweatshirt, and Junhwan’s shoulders shake with a soft, breathy laugh.

“Aigoo, Sunghoonie.” Junhwan’s fingers thread oh so gently through Sunghoon’s hair, a split-second touch, and then he’s pulling away altogether, forcing Sunghoon to lay eyes on his devastatingly kind smile. “It’s okay, don’t apologize. That’s what I’m here for.”

Sunghoon sighs, and Junhwan gets up to find him a box of tissues, and Thor meows outside the door, which Junhwan creaks open for him to slip through.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Junhwan asks once they’re both sitting again. Thor has curled up in Junhwan’s lap, and he’s idly petting him, but his focus is on Sunghoon.

“Um.” Sunghoon scooches forward slightly to try his hand at petting Thor, who peers up at Sunghoon’s approaching hand with curiosity. Yes. “I don’t know. It won’t change anything.”

“It won’t, but it might help you feel better.” Junhwan offers wordlessly to transfer Thor to Sunghoon’s lap, and Sunghoon holds his hand up, politely declining. He’s already stealing Junhwan’s time; he wouldn’t want to steal his cat, too.

“I guess.” Sunghoon moves back again and stares at his hands. “I don’t know. It’s — what is there to even say? We never talked about it. How can I be mad at him for something we never even talked about?”

“Easily,” Junhwan jokes, before quickly sobering. “I don’t think you have to justify it, Sunghoonie. Your feelings are yours to deal with, so you don’t have to make it harder by trying to change them altogether.”

“Right,” Sunghoon agrees, a bit caught off guard. That makes sense. “Is that how you think about competitions?”

Junhwan laughs at the sudden change of subject. “A lot of the times, yes.”

“I don’t know how you do it, hyung.”

Junhwan smiles, a little sly. “With difficulty,” he says, exactly as much of a joke as before, and it makes Sunghoon laugh this time, though the sound quickly fades.

“Do you ever think about doing something else? When it gets as hard as it is?” He means the question on its face, but Sunghoon is sure that they can both see the uncomfortable parallels to Heeseung’s leaving. It’s an awkward comparison, though; it doesn’t quite fit. Besides, Junhwan isn’t Heeseung: Sunghoon doesn’t have to use coded language to say what he’d like to say here, and Junhwan wouldn’t answer how Heeseung would anyway.

How rude of him, Sunghoon realizes as Junhwan begins to speak, to be wishing still for Heeseung’s company when he purposefully sought out someone else. It would be incorrect to call Junhwan a placeholder, but he’s not exactly an autonomous agent here either. Sunghoon has started playing puppets with him, trying to figure out Heeseung when Heeseung isn’t here, reenacting their conversation with a more willing participant, someone without such complicated intentions.

Maybe Sunghoon is an awful person after all.

“ — Sunghoonie? Are you okay?” Junhwan laughs, gentle and quiet, reaching over to place his hand over Sunghoon’s shoulder. His eyes crinkle up at the corners like he isn’t bothered in the slightest.

“Sorry, hyung,” Sunghoon says, voice dry, chagrined. “I zoned out.”

“Aigoo,” Junhwan sighs, and then he’s scooping Thor off of his lap to pull Sunghoon into a hug again, bigger than his frame is in warmth alone. “You must be tired. Have you eaten? Is it far to your dorms? I can walk you back, maybe; you need to get some rest.”

Sunghoon has half a mind to ask if Junhwan is kicking him out, some paltry effort towards humour, but Junhwan sounds so genuinely worried that he doubts the joke would land. He’s smart — he’s probably thought it through already, come to the conclusion that Sunghoon can’t stay too long, has already lingered longer than he probably should. The last Sunghoon’s manager heard, he was at Heeseung’s; and the last his members heard, he was simply going out, too guilty to think of a real excuse. His phone is probably blowing up by now, but Sunghoon left it in his bag, which is sitting on the couch in Junhwan’s living room. He should care more than he does, he’s sure.

“I’m okay,” Sunghoon lies, patting him on the back in return before they get to their feet. “I’ll call the company to send a car.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help more.” Junhwan’s brow is furrowed, and he looks genuinely upset. Sunghoon turns around to the door so he doesn’t have to see it.

“It’s not your responsibility, hyung.”

“You’re my friend,” Junhwan responds. “I care about you. So I’m sorry I don’t know what to say to make it better. But thank you for trusting me enough to tell me anyway.”

It’s funny, Sunghoon thinks — Junhwan is apologizing so perfectly for being imperfect, the same way that Heeseung does — or did — sometimes. They aren’t looking for forgiveness so much as expressing awareness. Normally Sunghoon doesn’t mind, understands the drive for perfectionism too well himself, but residual bitterness makes the gesture unbearable. Sunghoon doesn’t hate Junhwan, not by any means, but the longer he’s here the more he thinks that he does hate Heeseung, a little bit, and everything that reminds him of him is infuriating by proxy. “Don’t apologize,” Sunghoon says, a harder edge in his voice that makes Junhwan visibly pause when they stop in the living room. “You did help. Everything’s a mess right now and that’s not your fault, so don’t apologize for it.”

The corner of Junhwan’s mouth tugs up, though the rest of it quickly follows — he can hardly cover a smile for the life of him. “I know. I’m just sorry to see you hurting. But I won’t apologize for it if you don’t want me to.”

“Thank you.” Sunghoon nods at him, awkward, and Junhwan nods back, still grinning.

“Take care of yourself, okay, Hoonie? Sleep well. Eat lots. You can always contact me if you need to. Fighting!” Junhwan raises his fist in solidarity, and Sunghoon bids him and Thor goodbye, preparing himself to face a too-full, too-empty dorm again.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

“Where the fuck were you?!” Jaeyun is incredulous when he throws the door open before Sunghoon can even finish punching in the code, like he’d been literally sitting by the door waiting for him. Honestly, Sunghoon wouldn’t put it past Jake — he’d probably prop some pillows up and waste the hours away playing some stupid game on his phone.

“Junhwan-hyung’s.” The half-truth can’t hurt.

“Really? ‘Cause Heeseung-hyung said he talked to you today,” pipes up Riki from the living room couch. Sunghoon sighs. Well, it was good while it lasted.

“Heeseung’s, and then Junhwan’s,” he amends, and Riki’s face does something a bit complicated before he nods, typing something out on his phone with fast thumbs. Heeseung, presumably, even though Sunghoon knows that he and Riki aren’t on the best terms right now either.

“What did hyung want?” Jake asks, still frowning. Sunghoon frowns back, finally unlacing his boots and placing them onto the show rack.

“How do you know I didn’t want something?” he sniffs, and Jake gives him a look so pitying that it is genuinely offensive.

“Don’t make me channel Jongseong,” he says, and Sunghoon groans, shucking his bag into his room and then slouching onto the couch with a good twenty centimetres between himself and Riki, because even a judgy Jake is better than a well-intended Jay.

“Fine, whatever. He wanted to clear the air.”

“The air is not clear,” Riki intones, his voice bland. “Cloudy skies for kilometres and no signs of respite.” Sunghoon ignores him.

“Come on, man,” Jake says, nudging Riki and hanging himself over the back of the couch. “If anyone could get Heeseung-hyung to see the light, it’d be Sunghoonie.”

“Heeseung is not coming back.” Everyone looks up at the sudden sound of Jungwon’s voice, which is almost detached in its finality. He emerges from Sunoo’s new room — Heeseung’s old one — and Sunghoon realizes that they must have been helping him move the last of his stuff in. That would explain why five-sixths of Enhypen are all in the same apartment. “Trust me.”

Well, that’s good, Sunghoon thinks faintly, even though he doesn’t mean it — because if the decision is already made then at least he doesn’t have to let anyone down. Sunghoon has less influence over Heeseung than the others think he does, and it’s not like he was trying to change his mind in their discussion today anyway. Besides, they’ve all known this since BeLift went public with it, even if some of the members like to pretend otherwise. If Heeseung was ever going to come back, he nipped that opportunity in the bud six days ago. They’d been planning to wait until after Melbourne, but, well — apparently he just couldn’t wait to leave.

“Oh.” There’s so much disappointment in the single syllable that it comes out Australian. “You’re really sure?”

“Cataclysmically sure,” Jungwon says, which makes Sunghoon frown, because he’s not sure that’s how you use that word, but — “In fact, I was about to text the group chat. Management wants us in a meeting tomorrow. All seven of us. We’re going over the new contract amendments.”

“Fuck,” mutters Jake, still Australian. Ni-ki remains silent, staring at his phone screen, but his thumbs aren’t moving anymore.

“Okay,” Sunghoon replies when it becomes clear that no one else is going to step up. “Jay and Sunoo —”

“I just told Sunoo, and I’ll tell Jay-hyung now.” Jungwon sighs, rubbing a hand down his face so hard it leaves a blotch of pink, and then sighs again. “Hopefully he won’t go on a fucking tirade again.”

“It’s because he cares,” Riki snaps, voice tense. “He’s not trying to start trouble, hyung.”

Jungwon sighs for a third time, but when he speaks again, his tone is a little softer. “I know, Ni-ki-yah. I don’t blame him for it. But we’re all on edge right now and I’d like to keep the screaming to a minimum.”

“Yeah,” Ni-ki agrees, sagging into the couch, “okay.”

“I’ll go, then,” Jungwon announces, and heads immediately for the door, going to confront Jay in the adjacent dorm.

“Good luck,” Jake says miserably, before poking Sunghoon aggressively in the shoulder once the door closes. “Hey, Hoon-ah. Was he sorry about it, at least?”

Sunghoon thinks of Heeseung; thinks of him matter-of-factly calling this whole debacle a matter of perspective; thinks of his surprised, hurt expression when Sunghoon told him that he was mad; thinks of Junhwan with an open and genuine face saying that he was sorry he couldn’t do more.

“Yes,” he lies, because Jake looks desperate, and Sunghoon feels guilty, and he never specified who he was asking about, technically.

Jake doesn’t quite smile, but it’s a close thing. Sunghoon smiles back, his gums hurting, and then locks himself in his room to cry.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

Meetings with management are always hellish, but Sunghoon soon finds that they’re especially bad with Heeseung sitting on the other side of the table. The six of them get there early, but so does Heeseung, and so they end up in the awkward position of waiting in silence for the lawyers and label execs to arrive. Sunghoon trains his eyes resolutely on his phone screen. He asked Eunsoo to send him a YouTube playlist of all of Junhwan’s programs earlier, and he’s been systematically working through them with interest, but now his eyes glaze over as he watches Romeo & Juliet. Still, he doesn’t look up. He doesn’t have to, really — he already knows that Heeseung is frowning like a kicked puppy, sad and a little pensive; and that some of the members are probably trying to ignore him the same way that Sunghoon is; and that Jongseong, Jungwon, and Sunoo are the near-certain exceptions, because lately Jay never passes up an opportunity to shoot Heeseung diabolical death glares, and Sunoo and Jungwon are likely trying to engage in some kind of psychological warfare through extended eye contact and expressionless eyebrow movements.

Like Sunghoon said: hellish. He rarely feels more disconnected from his members than when he’s in a sterile white boardroom like this, reminded forthright that what connects them at the end of the day is a contract, seven strokes of luck on a survival show. For obvious reasons, that feeling is worse now, but it’s also better, in a way — he knows there’s no way in hell the rest of his members are leaving, at least. That roiling anxiety in his chest has been replaced with a deep discomfort, and more than anything, it makes Sunghoon wonder just how many of his Enhypen-related anxieties pertain to Heeseung. He thought that, prior to Heeseung leaving and fucking everything up, he was okay with their mutual lack of communication. The complicated concoction of emotions in his chest tells him otherwise.

The video on Sunghoon’s screen switches over to the next — Golden Hour, which means Sunghoon accidentally left Eunsoo’s playlist on shuffle. Whatever. Junhwan’s costume for this one was sort of goofy, but he managed to pull it off. It’s a good song, and it suits him. Sunghoon still isn’t paying that much attention, but the first Ina Bauer still catches his eye. The program is very well-constructed, and it’s a stunning gala. Sunghoon should show it to Jake and Jay; they’d like it.

The last record executive finally walks in and Sunghoon is quick to pocket his phone and take out his AirPods, clicking them into their case and then sliding them in his pocket. He folds his hands on the table in front of him and still doesn’t meet Heeseung’s eye.

“Thank you all for being here today.” A lawyer he recognizes but whose name Sunghoon does not know pulls a stack of papers from a briefcase and passes them down the table like they’re in school. They’re thick, stapled documents, at least ten pages long, double sided. Couldn’t they have just done this digitally? “We are meeting to discuss the contract amendments necessary following Lee Heeseung-ssi’s resignation from Enhypen. I know we expected to do this under different circumstances — before Heeseung-ssi’s departure, and before Melbourne — but it is all the more imperative that you now understand your new situation from a legal standpoint.

“Since Heeseung-ssi reached an agreement for the individual termination of his contract with BeLift Labs, your contractual obligations will mostly remain the same. However, there are semantic issues which need to be discussed. To start: henceforth, as of March 10th, 2026, Enhypen is a six-member group and Lee Heeseung is a solo artist. No statements or insinuations should be made to the contrary.”

In the silence that comes immediately after, you could probably hear a pin drop. Instead, Sunghoon hears Jake whisper, “Shit,” and then nothing else.

The lawyer clears her throat. “Yes. Assertions about Enhypen as a seven-member group on the date of or after March 10th, 2026, will be strictly monitored and must be immediately corrected. I know that on February 13th, you were all advised by the company to remain silent regarding Enhypen’s status as a group following the announcement of Heeseung-ssi’s departure.” There are nods across the room — February 13th was the day they found out that Heeseung was leaving. “You are not legally obligated to stay silent. However, I would advise that you use discretion so as not to inflame media attention or fandom discourse. BeLift, and I’m sure all of you as individuals, would like this transition to be as easy as possible for all parties.” Jay coughs. “Relatedly: in the case of increased public outcry, you are to remain silent.”

“What do you mean in the case of?” Jungwon blurts, frowning so deeply his dimple shows. “There are already fan movements. Every single one of our social medias is flooded with ‘Enhypen is seven’ hashtags. We’ve all seen the trucks and the gathering outside the company.”

“Gathering,” Sunoo scoffs under his breath, but honestly, Sunghoon isn’t sure what else to call it. It’s a protest, sure, but those people outside don’t even know what they’re protesting for. They don’t know about sleepless nights after hours-long fights, about Heeseung dropping a bomb in their laps and running, about being taken aside in the middle of preparations for Melbourne to be informed that Heeseung’s resignation had officially hit the news, about frantically scheduled meetings with management so any of the members had a single clue what to do between March 10th and now, when they really had time to discuss it.

As always, Jungwon is careful with his words.

“They were harassing Yijeong-hyung on Instagram and raising money for a Times Square billboard and calling the National Pension Service customer help line. I think we’ve gotten past that point.”

There’s a split-second pause after Jungwon finishes, and then Jay pipes up, voice heavy with sarcasm: “At least they dropped the National Assembly petition.” The expression Jungwon makes can really only be described as deeply pained. Meanwhile, Heeseung groans and drops his forehead against the table, and the action makes Sunghoon finally look over at him.

“Yes,” one of the management executives says, awkwardly taking over for the lawyer. “We are, uh, looking into those. The National Pension Service especially. But it is not your job to manage the fandom’s reactions to this. Any large statement on the matter will extend the discourse further, so we need you to keep your comments on the issue brief.”

“Can we mention Heeseung-hyung?” Ni-ki asks, his brow furrowed slightly. The executive’s lips purse like he’s just eaten something very sour.

“We would caution against it.”

“But we are allowed,” Jungwon presses.

“...Yes,” the exec answers, though he sounds reluctant to do so. “However, mentioning Heeseung-ssi in any capacity is likely to spawn some… fervent responses, and their consequences likely will not be enjoyable.” Oh, Sunghoon is sure — they’ve all been watching the reactions of their fans online, albeit to varying degrees, and none of them have been happy about it.

“What about the fans’ behaviour?” Jungwon queries. “The hashtag spamming, the mass calls. Can we talk about that?”

“Unless it directly concerns you, no.” Sunghoon would argue that all of it directly concerns them, since it’s about them, but he keeps his mouth shut. “If any of your numbers leak, or you go live and the comments are all about Heeseung-ssi, or there are invasive questions during fancalls — you are allowed to respond thoughtfully and with discretion. For anything else, it is not your business and it is not your responsibility.”

“Okay,” Jungwon says, leaning back in his chair again, his questions exhausted for now. “What about Heeseung-hyung?”

The management exec nods to the lawyer and she picks up her papers again. “We were about to get to that. Heeseung-ssi, from the period of March 10th to the beginning of promotional events for your solo career, as agreed upon between yourself and the company, you are expected to remain completely silent about Enhypen, your career, and the Enhypen members, unless explicitly directed otherwise by BeLift entertainment. Furthermore, you are not to make your personal life public in any capacity. Absolutely no social media — no Instagram posts, no appearances in other idols’ lives, no public hang outs with friends. Essentially, you are to remain on lockdown until your solo career is slated to begin.”

“Holy shit,” Jongseong says, almost gleeful, eyes wide. Even he seems shocked by the harshness of the sentence, but Heeseung just looks quietly resigned, his mouth pressed into a thin line. “Guess there are some consequences to ditching your team after all.”

“Hyung.” Jungwon sounds pissed, so Jay wisely shuts up, and Heeseung’s expression shifts into something akin to a grimace.

“While this situation is delicate for Enhypen, it is even more so for Heeseung-ssi,” a different label exec attempts to explain, even though Sunghoon doubts any of them need it. “Any public appearances could sway the fans’ opinions, and we want the emotions to die down before we start cultivating any narratives.” Someone scoffs — Sunoo or Jake, probably.

“Okay,” Heeseung says, speaking for the first time. Sunghoon moves his gaze to his members instead and finds Riki glaring. “I understand.”

“All of you — Enhypen and Heeseung-ssi — are expected not to discuss, allude to, or comment on the circumstances through which Heeseung-ssi departed from the group. There are no exceptions to this rule.” The lawyer sounds stern, like she’s expecting the same pushback as her earlier stipulations, but this time everyone is silent. They can hardly talk about the reasons Heeseung left among themselves without it devolving into a screaming match; none of them are stupid enough to think of bringing it up in front of fans.

“Furthermore, the Enhypen members are discouraged from saying or doing anything that might result in animosity or lessened support for Heeseung-ssi in his ventures as a solo artist.”

“Oh, come the fuck on,” Jay blurts. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Heeseung-ssi is your former group member and your labelmate,” the first exec from earlier cuts in. “Given our previous requisites, this can’t come as much of a surprise to you.”

“He left us. Half the fucking fandom doesn’t know what to do; some of them are leaving, some of them want to boycott us and our tour, some of them think we’re evil unappreciative brats for not rolling out the fucking red carpet for him to walk out.” Jungwon doesn’t stop Jay on his rant, which is a very bad sign. “He’s ‘lessened the support’ for Enhypen, fucked us over personally and creatively, and potentially ruined our whole reputation for this. And we have to play nice with his shiny new career?” Shiny, Sunghoon thinks, as though theirs as Enhypen had rusted. He thinks of their daesang, sitting on a shelf in the living room, still as spotless as the day it was awarded.

“Yes.” The executive is unforgiving and shameless. “This whole situation has already cost us greatly, and you all will have to work your asses off to make up for that lost revenue.”

“Not the fucking revenue,” Jake groans at the same time Sunoo muses, “Maybe they should boycott the company.” Sunoo gets a little slap on the wrist from Jungwon for that one.

“So let me get this straight.” Jongseong lays out his hands on the table, palms open, staring down the table at the executives with a clenched jaw. “Our fans are rioting because this idiot left the group and they want him back. We can’t say anything to the fans to make them stop acting like hooligans, we can’t tell them outright that he fucked us over and he isn’t coming back, and we can’t explain what happened because it might hurt his prospects or the fucking revenue or whatever. Essentially, we’re down a member, left to foot all the same responsibilities as before and more, dealing with a crazy fandom we can’t call crazy, and if we don’t have anything nice to say, we shouldn’t say it at all. Did I get that right?”

The executive meets his glare head-on, to give credit where it’s due. “Yes.”

“Fuck this.”

“I think we should take a break,” the lawyer interjects, standing and smoothing over the lapels of her blazer. “Let’s take a ten minute breather and come back.”

Jay storms out of the room, with Jake chasing after him and Riki and Sunoo quickly following. Jungwon takes a moment, the staff beginning to file out as well, glancing with a furrowed brow between Heeseung and the door, before he seems to decide it isn’t worth it. He leaves after the staff do and the lawyer zips up her briefcase and her heels click on the way out of the door and then it’s just Sunghoon and Heeseung, alone in this sterile white boardroom.

“Hey, Sunghoon-ah,” Heeseung greets quietly, like this is just any other day. Sunghoon wants to laugh through the jack-rabbiting of his heart in his chest, but he doesn’t.

“Hey.”

“I’m sorry for… all of this,” Heeseung says, and Sunghoon can’t help frowning.

“What do you mean?” He knows he isn’t sorry about leaving.

“The bureaucracy, you know. It sucks hearing it all laid out like this.” It sucks no matter how you phrase it. It sucks even if you don’t talk about it at all.

“Did you know about it beforehand? The conditions?”

“Yeah.” Heeseung shifts in his chair, his ugly grey windbreaker crinkling. “They made it pretty clear what the consequences would be if I went solo. It wasn’t an easy choice.”

Sunghoon doesn’t know what to say. It wasn’t an easy decision, but he still made it. He still looked at their group and thought, no thanks.

“I guess the others are still pretty mad, huh?” It’s the same thing he asked yesterday, the same thin-lipped acceptance. Heeseung leans back and Sunghoon exhales heavily, turning away out of frustration.

“Yeah, hyung, they’re pretty mad,” Sunghoon says shortly, letting it show in his tone how much he thinks it’s a stupid question.

“And you?”

“What?”

“Are you still mad? I know we talked about it, but those feelings can take a while to disperse.” Like it’s inevitable that they will, like Sunghoon owes him his forgiveness. Yes, he’s mad, of course he’s mad, but it’s much more nebulous than that. Sunghoon would hardly describe the primary emotion in his ribcage right now as anger.

“Yes,” Sunghoon answers, deciding to be honest, and once again Heeseung looks surprised and Sunghoon hates him, he wants to kiss that moronic look off his face.

“Oh. Well, um, thanks for not blowing up at me.” Thanks for not showing it.

“Don’t mention it,” Sunghoon says, then has to laugh to himself at the irony. Sunghoon’s phone buzzes and he expects it to be a member, asking where he is or telling him to join them outside, but instead he sees Junhwan’s name lighting up the screen.

hi, sunghoonie. i wanted to check in and make sure you were doing okay today?

????
where do you keep your medals?

?
my parents keep a cabinet in the living room, you might have seen it yesterday
i keep the most valuable one in a sock in my drawer, though
i don’t actually know if it helps keep it shinier, but yuzuru hanyu does it, so…

Sunghoon laughs and Heeseung tries to peer over at his phone. “Who’s that?”

“Junhwan-hyung.” Sunghoon is used to the members staring at his phone screen, but Heeseung isn’t a member anymore, so Sunghoon pettily tilts it away.

“Again?” Heeseung’s brow is furrowed when Sunghoon glances up at him. “I didn’t know you guys were that close.”

which one is the most valuable?

awg gold, for sure. 2023 worlds silver and 4cc silver are close, though
but back to my original question. last night was a lot. are you feeling any better now?

“Yeah,” Sunghoon replies vaguely to Heeseung, his thumb hovering over the keyboard. He’s not sure how to answer Junhwan’s question, all things considered. He decides to avoid his feelings and stick to facts instead.

we had a legal meeting today.
“had”
it’s happening right now. we’re on a ten minute break because Jay got mad

my condolences. i can’t imagine that’s very fun
even without everything that’s going on.

ᄏ you’re right, legal meetings are never good
anything to do with the company, really

do you think you’ll re-sign with them? or should i not ask that?

With them. It’s a small thing, but Sunghoon notices it all the same. Not ‘will you re-sign,’ but ‘will you re-sign with BeLift,’ because Junhwan already knows better than to question Sunghoon’s loyalty to the team. He’s a good listener, Sunghoon thinks.

no, you can ask
i don’t know yet. it depends what the members want.

i’m signing with fantagio. we could be labelmates!

Sunghoon laughs outright, a bit disappointed that Junhwan can’t see his reaction, because he’s sure that it was what he was going for. Across the table, Heeseung hums a bit too loudly, but Sunghoon ignores him.

hyung.

😊

ᄏᄏᄏ
you’re signing with fantagio?

yes, for acting. i’m planning to do a bit more than figure skating over the next few years.

you aren’t retiring, are you???

Sunghoon doesn’t realize that the ten minutes are over until Jake’s hands are on his shoulders. “What’s up,” he says in English, looking down, no doubt, at Sunghoon’s screen. He doesn’t bother trying to hide it. Jake still has that privilege. “Is that Junhwan?”

“Yes.” Sunghoon puts his phone away and finds Heeseung staring at him, which is disconcerting. He turns his attention fully away.

“Wait, Junhwan can’t retire! He’s so cool!” Jake anguishes, looking genuinely pained. Sunghoon grins — he really will have to show him that Golden Hour program later.

“Junhwan? Cha Junhwan the figure skater?” Sunoo clarifies. The lawyer walks back in the room and Sunghoon figures they’ll have to wrap up the conversation soon anyway, so he just shrugs and nods, and sure enough, the lawyer is commencing with her outline after only a second. He’ll get his answers from Junhwan later.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

Heeseung corners him when Sunghoon is leaning against a wall, waiting for Jongseong to finish using the bathroom so they can head back to the dorms. “Sunghoon-ah,” he says, a familiar lilt to his voice. Sunghoon freezes.

“What?”

Heeseung doesn’t say anything — he just looks around, checking for witnesses, pushes Sunghoon closer to the wall, and kisses him.

Sunghoon had been wondering — selfishly, foolishly — if, with the excuse of post-concert highs and living in the same dorms gone, this would ever happen again. It’s humiliating how reassured he feels by what’s really just a heady, angry kiss. Heeseung nips at his bottom lip and Sunghoon’s mouth drops open, willing. Heeseung kisses him again, harder, and then pulls back too soon. Sunghoon chases after him before he can stop it. He always ends up acting a little dumb when Heeseung kisses him, he can’t help it; but Heeseung seems to like it.

“Jongseong is coming,” Heeseung announces, a slight rasp to his voice. His fingers brush against Sunghoon’s jaw and then he’s gone.

The way Jay looks at him as soon as he comes around the corner tells Sunghoon that he saw Heeseung leave, and he probably knows what they were doing. Sunghoon can’t imagine it’s that hard to guess. He’s always been easily affected, so his lips are likely red and his hair is surely mussed right now. And Sunghoon knows that Jongseong is mad, knows that Jongseong probably has all manner of thoughts about it that he wants to let loose, but Jongseong is Sunghoon’s friend before anything, and he’s a good one at that. He purses his lips and carefully ignores the elephant in the room.

That night, Sunghoon has just finished washing up and is finally curling into bed when he gets a text from Heeseung.

[DELETED CONTACT]
Sunghoon-ah.

Park Sunghoon
yes?

The picture loads and Sunghoon drops his phone on his face. “What the fuck,” he hisses, despite the fact that no one can hear him. Then, louder, because no one can hear him: “What the fuck.” He can hear the panic in his own voice, which is humiliating, and beneath it, the want, which is worse.

Park Sunghoon
Heeseung-hyung.

[DELETED CONTACT]
ᄏᄏ What?
You’re cute when you’re flustered.

Park Sunghoon
you can’t even see me right now

[DELETED CONTACT]
Yeah, but I know you.

What can Sunghoon even say to that? His breath hitches and he turns on his side, ignoring the half-hardness pressing against his thigh.

[DELETED CONTACT]
Sorry, Hoon-ah. I know you don’t like when I’m flippant about this.

It’s true. Sex has never been simple for Sunghoon the way it is for some of the other members, and he doesn’t care how many times they call him a traditionalist prude for it. He’ll take anything from Heeseung, but that doesn’t mean it’s how he wants it. That doesn’t mean he’s satisfied.

[DELETED CONTACT]
I just thought you should know.

Park Sunghoon
know what?

[DELETED CONTACT]
I wanted to kiss you more today, too.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

Junhwan isn’t retiring. “That’s good,” Sunghoon tells him over the phone. “You still have a chance for the Alps.”

“Sunghoon…”

“What? It’s true.”

“It’s not,” Junhwan counters, and he sounds so gentle Sunghoon is almost lulled into agreeing. “And it’s okay that it’s not.”

“No,” Sunghoon decides for him, which makes Junhwan laugh, surprised. “I believe in the Cha Junhwan 2030 Olympic gold medalist agenda.”

“You and no one else,” Junhwan says. He’s still laughing, but Sunghoon doesn’t think he imagines the little bit of bitterness that seeps into it.

“Come on, hyung. You have lots of fans, I’m sure a bunch of them are still rooting for you.”

“Maybe,” he relents, “but they’re rooting for me in spite of reality, not because of it. No one really thinks that I’ll win. Certainly not after these Olympics.”

“What do you mean?” Sunghoon is sitting in his room while the other members argue in the kitchen. They had a team meeting and it devolved into talking about Heeseung again. Sunghoon snuck out before anyone could involve him and called Junhwan instead.

“This was my chance, and I blew it.”

“Well…” Sunghoon hesitates. “What I’m about to say is going to sound mean.”

Junhwan laughs. “Okay. You don’t have to use disclaimers around me, Sunghoon-ah.”

“How many people really thought that these Olympics were your chance either? Did you? The podium was… I mean, it was always Kagiyama and Malinin. Third was in contention, but usually people said Siao or Shaidorov or Sato. No one anticipated the way the men’s event turned out. You can’t say what will happen in four years either.”

Junhwan pauses, taking in his words. “You have a point.”

“Besides,” Sunghoon adds, staring up at the ceiling, “don’t you have dreams anymore, hyung?”

“Ah, Sunghoonie,” Junhwan starts, but Sunghoon doesn’t get to hear the rest of his sentence, because Jay is barging into his room a second later.

“I can’t stand him,” Jay announces, slamming the door behind him and immediately pacing around like a caged animal. “He fucked the group, he fucked each of us individually, and he probably fucked his solo career too! We never used to fight like this, and now no one can ever stop fucking yelling in this house.” Sunghoon, still awkwardly on the phone with Junhwan, does not point out that Jay is often one of the people doing the yelling. “He’s a lying, backstabbing son of a bitch. He’s — oh.” Jay finally notices the phone in Sunghoon’s hand and stops very abruptly. “Are you doing something?”

“I was talking to Junhwan,” Sunghoon says uselessly. Junhwan is silent, but Sunghoon can hear him breathing on the other end. “Want to say hi?”

“I — sure, I guess.” Sunghoon puts the phone on speaker and sets it delicately on the bed between them. “Hi, Junhwan-ssi. Sorry about that, I didn’t know Sunghoon was on the phone.”

“Uh — that’s alright,” Junhwan replies.

“Sunghoon put on your Golden Hour thing the other day. It was really good,” Jay adds.

“Oh? Thank you.”

“Yeah. I — dude, I’m so sorry, but this is, like, super awkward? Sorry, I’ll go.”

“No, please don’t,” Junhwan quickly objects. “Sunghoon and I were almost done talking anyway, I should go. It was nice to talk to you, though, Jay-ssi.” And then, before either Jay or Sunghoon can say anything, Junhwan hangs up, the ended call screen flashing in front of them.

“Oh. That was weird, right?” Jay looks at Sunghoon for confirmation, and Sunghoon shrugs.

“Not really. Junhwan-hyung is just nice.”

“Huh,” Jay articulates, then lets whatever else he was going to say hang in the air unspoken. “Well, anyway, Heeseung is a fucking bitch.” Sunghoon sighs, then returns to staring at the ceiling. He can’t hear the members talking outside anymore — Jongseong must have left towards the tail end of the argument. “I hope his solo career flops. I hope he gets another plastic surgery scandal and loses a bunch of fans.”

“Jongseong,” Sunghoon reprimands half-heartedly, and then falls quiet again, because he doesn’t really know what to say. He can feel Jay’s eyes on him, though, and when he finally looks they don’t flinch away. Jay’s mouth is twisted into something a bit wry, almost sour.

“I hope he never hears from you again, honestly, but I know that’s too much to ask.”

It’s true. There’s a lot that Sunghoon would do for Jongseong. He wouldn’t do this. “I’m not wrong for talking to him,” Sunghoon points out, and Jay shakes his head, shoulders slumping.

“No,” he agrees, because Jay has strong opinions, but that doesn’t mean he’s blind to the truth. “But I wish you didn’t.”

Sunghoon doesn’t ask why, because they’ve had this conversation before. He already knows, just like Jay already knows why he won’t stop talking to Heeseung even when he’s mad at him. “Anyway, I hope you get over him someday. Hit him where it really hurts.” Sunghoon’s heart pangs — get over him. Like that’s the obstacle here. Like it’s as simple as moving on from a crush or a bad breakup, like it isn’t a million times more complicated than that.

“That’s not even the worst thing you just listed. His solo career doing poorly would hurt him way more than — that.” Sunghoon barely stops himself from saying, than I ever could, because it isn’t strictly true. Heeseung cares about him, Heeseung has always cared about him. Just not always in the same way that Sunghoon did, or in the way that he wanted.

“No, it wouldn’t,” Jongseong scoffs, with such confidence and derision that Sunghoon does a double take. “Come on, Hoon-ah. He cares about you way more than any of this shit.”

Then why did he leave?

“Okay, Jongseong,” Sunghoon says, though he makes it clear through his tone that he doesn’t believe him.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

i saw the news about worlds. is everything ok?

is sunghoonie worried about me? 😊

i know you wanted to go, so yeah, a little bit

ah
you’re a good dongsaeng, sunghoon-ah. hyung is fine. in the end i had to withdraw because of my ankle, but with some time to rest i’ll be back to normal soon.

real rest?

ㅋㅋㅋ sure. as well as i can, anyway

hyung.

yes, sunghoonie?

you need to take care of yourself. tell me that you will

bossy ㅋㅋ
i will. i know it doesn’t seem like it, but i’m resting as well as i can.

you’re fucking insane, hyung, seriously

ㅋㅋㅋㅋ and how are you? are the tour preparations going well? i know you were worried about all the new parts.

that’s not really an issue
learning the new choreo isn’t difficult, it’s just that we had to do it so quickly for Melbourne

that’s good to hear
things are going well, then?

—

honestly, hyung? i miss him.

—

i’m sure he misses you too.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

Sunghoon is used to wanting Heeseung, to the point that he thought he’d exhausted all its possible forms. When they first met, they were BigHit trainees and Heeseung was the golden boy and Sunghoon wanted to be him, wanted to shrink himself down and settle inside his skin. Then he saw Heeseung in I-Land, the big-eyed boy who stayed in the practice rooms all night, who hungered the same way Sunghoon did, and his want changed shape, furled into something tight and fraught. A desire to be together, to stay together, to debut in the same group so that Sunghoon would never have to let this feeling of sameness go.

They debuted. Sunghoon’s want changed drastically, suddenly, like it had been dormant and waiting for permission all that time. Sunghoon never gave it that permission, but it seemed to decide that it no longer cared, and suddenly Sunghoon wanted Heeseung as something more than a friend. Still, his longing remained abstract, ridiculous and unattainable as it was. Sunghoon got into the habit of looking at Heeseung and gritting his teeth, biting his tongue: there was no reason to make any of his follies worse.

And then Heeseung kissed him in a supply closet at the back of a concert venue in Chicago, and just like that, Sunghoon wanted to be under his skin again. It comes and goes in stages, but it’s never truly left. There is always a part of Sunghoon that wants to be closer than close, to touch Heeseung somewhere deeper than his skin.

Now, Sunghoon finds himself faced with a new type of longing — or maybe it’s the same feeling that he had at the very start, just turned upside down. He wants to shrink himself down and crawl under Heeseung’s door. And for the first time in seven years, Heeseung lives fifteen minutes away.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

“I don’t get it,” Jake says, frowning. “You want to talk to him?”

“No.”

“You want to sleep with him?” Jay posits.

“No, that’s not it.”

“You want to sleep with him, literally? Like, in the same bed?” Jake’s nose is now wrinkled up in distaste, which is rich considering he’s the one who said it.

“No.”

“You want to hang out with him?”

“Didn’t you already say that? No.”

“You want to know his doorcode,” Jay suggests, lying on his bed and staring blankly at the ceiling, looking by all means like he has tapped out of this conversation.

“I already know his doorcode. He gave it to me the day he moved in.”

Jay sighs so heavily Sunghoon’s surprised he doesn’t hurt himself. “Of course he did.”

“So, like, what is this, then?” Jaeyun flops onto his back to join Jay on his bed, which really is quite rude, because Sunghoon doesn’t have a bed to lay in and Jay’s isn’t big enough for three. This means that he is not only emotionally uncomfortable because he is being forced to discuss his feelings, but also physically uncomfortable, because he is in a swivel chair while Jongseong and Jaeyun peer at him from Jongseong’s dreary grey sheets like they’re corpses rising from their fucking tombs. “Is it not about Heeseung? Do you want to be an ant? Or have shapeshifting powers? Or be, like… smaller?”

“That can’t be it, he likes being tall,” Jay dismisses out of hand. He’s not wrong, but like Sunghoon said: tapped out of the conversation.

“Why am I talking about this with you again?” Sunghoon asks instead of answering Jake’s question, because he really doesn’t know a better way to phrase it. He wants. Putting it in words beyond that is already hard enough.

“Because we saw Heeseung at the company today and you got sad so Jake got worried about you.”

“We were worried about you,” Jake forcefully corrects, only to get a shrug and a “Meh” from Jay. “Are worried about you, really. Have you guys even talked about it?”

Sunghoon decides to pretend that he is also a corpse despite not having a bed to lay in prostrate, so he leans back his head against the headrest and closes his eyes. “About which part?”

“That’s a no, then,” Jongseong snorts from the darkness. Sunghoon flips him off with his eyes still closed.

“Like, your… thing. You know. Your… feelings for each other.”

Having his eyes closed makes Sunghoon hyperaware that he is frowning, and quite deeply at that. He always tries to keep his face neutral so he won’t get wrinkles, which Jay says is a stupid thing to worry about, but Sunghoon thinks it’s reasonable. It also gives him an excuse to hide all his facial expressions and thus his feelings at any given moment, so — win!

“There are no feelings to discuss.”

Someone groans. Sunghoon thinks it’s Jay, because it didn’t sound Australian, but the accent is an unreliable indicator sometimes.

“Come the fuck on.” Jake, then. “It’s been five years and you’ve literally fucked the guy. It’s a bit too late to have a denial phase, Sunghoon-ah.”

“I didn’t say that there weren’t feelings,” Sunghoon says, noticing his expression slipping into a frown again before he smooths his it over again, “just that there aren’t ones we need to talk about.”

“There is something deeply and fundamentally wrong with you.”

“Don’t fucking say that to him, you fuck, Heeseung is clearly the problem here.” Jay’s rebuttal is accompanied by a swoosh, as though he’s hitting Jake over the head with a pillow, or something equally childish.

“It’s not a problem.” Sunghoon finally opens his eyes again with the confirmation of movement informing him that they are no longer playing dead. “It’s just… a thing. A situation. It is what it is.”

“And what is that, exactly?” Jay is squinting at him with the focus of someone who wishes they had Terminator vision.

“Well.” Sunghoon blinks. He really doesn’t know how to answer that. “I told you already. Heeseung is Heeseung, and I want to shrink myself down and sneak under his door.”

Jongseong takes the pillow he’d been using to hit Jake and smashes it into his face to scream. Sunghoon relates.

Sunghoon can’t stop thinking about it, though, even after a few days, which means that Jay and Jake were probably onto something, as loathe as he is to admit it. Sunghoon has trouble articulating his emotions, but he’s generally pretty aware of them, if often in a detached sense. He likes to imagine himself standing outside his body, sketching the anatomy of it onto a chalkboard as he narrates to an empty lecture hall. He mentioned this once to Sunoo, who said that he thought Sunghoon was a theatre kid who forced himself to be a jock but ended up being weirdly good at it, which was such a specific description that Sunghoon still thinks of it regularly. Regardless: he is aware of himself at all times, and that includes being aware of his feelings, even when he hates them, even if his careful consideration of them can’t quite be summed up in words.

Heeseung is Heeseung, he told Jongseong and Jake, and that was true, but he supposes he should think about it a little more deeply if he intends to get to the bottom of this. Thinking of Heeseung outside of the abstract gives Sunghoon goosebumps, though, so generally he tries to avoid it. To make this easier for himself he has resorted to kindergarten-level tactics of description, with three-word sentences like Heeseung is smart making up the majority of his analysis. He’s taking baby steps.

Sunghoon hasn’t really gotten anywhere in trying to quantify Heeseung, but he has come to one minor revelation, which is that as uncommunicative as Sunghoon can be, he has never even tried to be unknowable. What he wants doesn’t matter, but what he wants has never exactly been a secret, and certainly not to anyone who was looking for it. Sunghoon immediately reports back to Jay and Jake like he’s a graduate student in the University of Complex Relationships and they’re his thesis advisors.

“That’s what I said,” Jongseong points out, looking extremely pleased with himself despite the circumstances. “Heeseung is the problem here, not you.”

“I never said problem.” Sunghoon thinks this is a very important sticking point. Jaeyun makes a fart sound with his mouth.

“That’s okay, I’ll say it for you. He is the problem! He’s always been holding you back, and you just let him because you have your unspoken special connection or whatever the fuck.”

“What?”

“Look, I’m just saying — the difference between a super special unspoken bond that’s super and special —”

“How are you our lyricist?” Jake wonders out loud.

“— and a shitty friends with benefits who gains from your commitment without committing to anything themself is, like, one playlist and a few drinks.”

Sunghoon’s face is doing something weird in its confusion. “What?” he repeats, this time turning to Jake for answers.

“You know,” Jake says, sitting up straight, “he actually has a point. Like, what do you know about what Heeseung feels for you? Have you ever even tried to define the relationship?”

“I know that he’s my friend, and that he cares for me,” Sunghoon replies, feeling a bit miffed by the two of them ganging up on him.

“No, not that, I mean — romantically, you know. Or non-platonically, or whatever weird euphemism you freaks use to avoid talking about it.”

Sunghoon ignores the jab in favor of proving Jaeyun wrong with his words. “I know that he’s attracted to me,” he starts, only to be immediately interrupted.

“Boo, that doesn’t count,” Jay disagrees. “You’re objectively hot. Eighty percent of gay guys are gonna be into you at some point, that barely means anything.”

“I know that he’s attracted to me because he acts on it,” Sunghoon specifies, glaring extra hard at the still-nonplussed Jay. “And I know that he wants things between us to go back to how they used to be.”

“Wh– dude, what the fuck does that even mean?!” Jongseong asks incredulously.

“When we were on the same page and stuff.” Sunghoon frowns, because honestly, it still irks him.

“That really doesn’t clear things up,” Jake says regretfully. “What page were you on?”

Sunghoon opens his mouth to answer, then realizes that he’s not so sure he can. Prior to Heeseung leaving, he would have said that their unspoken agreement was one of quiet commitment. They had time — there was no reason they had to lay everything out piece by piece when they both knew where they were going. The problem, of course, is that Heeseung leaving means he wasn’t committed to the same thing that Sunghoon was, and that dissonance means that maybe they weren’t on the same page to begin with.

Fuck. So much for proving Jaeyun wrong with his words.

“Just — forget it.” What else does he know about Heeseung’s feelings for him? Not that he wants to be with him; not that he will always come back; not that he trusts Sunghoon enough to be honest with him about who he is and what he wants. Though, then again —

“I know that he thinks we’re different, and that I’ll always understand him.”

“Bullshit,” Jay announces, but he has the chagrin to at least look a little regretful about it. “You don’t, and you never will if he doesn’t fucking talk to you, so he shouldn’t expect that from you. Besides, the fuck does he even know about you? Does he hold himself to the same standard, to always understand you?”

“He thinks that he does,” Sunghoon protests weakly.

“Yeah, well. It isn’t true, clearly. So what now?”

“I don’t know. You two give terrible advice,” he informs them. “I’ll just go to Junhwan.”

Jay and Jake exchange a look, which is never a good thing, then turn twin expressions of scrutiny towards Sunghoon.

“Since when do you even talk to Junhwan so much?” Jake asks incredulously.

“Since — you know. Heeseung left and he reached out to me.”

“A week?” Jay sounds positively baffled. “It’s only been a week?”

“It’s been nearly two weeks now, and why are you acting like this is strange? He’s my friend!”

“I mean, yeah, but usually it takes you, like, a month to start warming up to people at least.”

That’s a fair point, but Sunghoon finds that here, it doesn’t really apply. “Junhwan-hyung is different though, because we knew each other before.”

“I thought you weren’t close?” Jay asks, his brow furrowed.

“We weren’t. But we’re… familiar with each other, I guess.” Sunghoon doesn’t know how else to put it. He and Junhwan have operated in the same sphere for so many years, adjacent but never close, that what’s normally a leap to closeness seems like hardly more than a step.

Jay and Jake exchange another look. “So, like, how often do you talk?”

Sunghoon shrugs, a bit uncomfortable. He doesn’t like this interrogation-style conversation. It makes him feel like he’s done something wrong; but he hasn’t, so he answers. “We text on and off throughout the day, we’re both pretty busy. Sometimes we call, probably like every three days.”

“What? And you just go to him for life advice?” Jake questions.

“What? No, we talk about normal stuff, what the fuck? I can have a friend, guys, he’s not my therapist. We talk about our lives and music and stuff.” Although now that Sunghoon thinks of it, his conversations with Junhwan usually have very little idle time. They won’t spend hours talking mindlessly about some game they both like — every word matters. That makes it sound more intense than it is, though, when Sunghoon spends most of his time with Junhwan feeling uncharacteristically carefree.

“And you do this every day?” Jay confirms.

“Yes! Why is this so hard to believe?! It’s not like you’ve never had friends before.”

“No, but, like —” Jake gesticulates incomprehensibly and then continues. “It’s you. You don’t talk about your life or your feelings or whatever unless you have to, but you’re doing it every day now with Junhwan? That’s, like, craziness.”

Sunghoon frowns. When he puts it that way, it sounds like Jake actually has a point. “Well, it’s not like it’s — I’m not pouring my heart out to him or whatever,” he grumbles, so viscerally disturbed by the idea that he actually shudders. “We just… talk. That’s all.”

Jake’s expression softens, and he reaches out to pat Sunghoon very awkwardly on the shoulder. “It’s not a bad thing. It’s good, actually. Like, this will probably be good for you.”

“Please stop,” Sunghoon says, shaking Jake’s hand off his shoulder.

“It’s just weird coming from you. But yeah, like Jake said, it’s not a bad thing,” Jay adds. Sunghoon’s head hurts from frowning too much.

“What are you even saying? Please shut up forever.”

“See, this is what we’re talking about,” Jake says, sounding almost excited about it. “You’re all clammy most of the time.”

“I am not clammy, you two are just acting like my parents and that is making me deeply uncomfortable.”

“Nah, you’re definitely clammy.” Sunghoon sighs. He has terrible friends.

“Whatever. Thanks for nothing, I guess,” he says, heading for the door.

“You’re welcome,” Jay calls back, though Sunghoon can hear Jake start to defend them (to be fair, they were making some good points before they made it weird about Junhwan) just before he closes the door again.

The dorm is empty apart from the three of them, though Sunghoon knows that Riki is hanging out in the adjacent dorm. He’s not sure where Jungwon or Sunoo are, but he pulls out his phone on the way down the hallway and sees that Jungwon is currently doing a Weverse live, which is perfect. That means he won’t be bothered on this lovely night off when he closes his bedroom door behind him.

“Are Jay and Jake actually bad at giving advice, or did you just not want to talk to them about it?” Junhwan picked up the phone fairly quickly — his schedule has cleared up a lot since he dropped out of Worlds, and he hates it.

“Both.” Junhwan laughs. “No, I don’t know. They’re just… too close to it.”

“That makes sense,” Junhwan says, and Sunghoon can picture him nodding. “But, ah — I’m afraid I don’t think I can help you much either.”

“Huh?”

“Well,” Junhwan says carefully, “I’m not very good at this stuff to begin with. I’ve never been in a relationship before, you know.”

This makes Sunghoon blink in surprise. Did he mishear? “What? You’ve never dated anyone?”

“Ah, no,” Junhwan admits, and although he’s laughing about it, he still sounds a little awkward. “I’ve been so focused on skating and everything, and I’ve never been, you know, really interested in someone, so…”

“What the fuck?” Sunghoon is probably more baffled by this than he should be. Junhwan’s explanation makes sense, after all. It’s just that — “Hyung, you’re hot. How have you possibly never dated before?”

“Wh —” Junhwan sputters for a moment before he gives up and just laughs instead. “I told you! It’s never been a priority for me.”

“You’ve hooked up, though, right?”

“Uh…”

“What the fuck.” Sunghoon’s eyes must be bulging out of his head now, cartoon-style. “Never?!”

“I mean, I’ve kissed someone before,” Junhwan protests, though he continues to sound a bit awkward. “But no, I’ve never…”

Sunghoon is, he realizes, probably overreacting. It’s not that big of a deal. Junhwan is busy, and dedicated to his job, and if he hasn’t met someone then he hasn’t met someone. But he’s also twenty-four and undeniably attractive, with a charming personality to boot. “Sorry,” he apologizes, forcing himself out of his head. “I didn’t mean to be weird about it. I was just surprised.”

Junhwan laughs again. “It’s okay. All I meant to say is that I don’t think I’ll be very helpful with this.” Right — Heeseung, where this conversation started.

“It’s not as if Heeseung and I were dating.”

“Well, you are… more than friends.” Sunghoon used the past tense without realizing it, but Junhwan’s careful insertion of the present makes him wonder why.

“Yeah,” he relents, letting out a long sigh. “I guess so.”

“What do you want from this?” Junhwan asks. Sunghoon transfers his phone to his other hand, leans back in his swivel chair. “If the goal is to understand Heeseung, I would just ask him.”

“It’s really not that simple.” Sunghoon doesn’t want to mess things up more than they already are.

“I know,” Junhwan laughs, “but it’s not simple now, either. You’ve been agonizing over this for days.”

That’s true, Sunghoon supposes. But he feels like he should have some conclusion ready before he goes to Heeseung about it. He doesn’t think he can count on open-ended conversation to get them there.

“I know I’ve asked you before, but — really, Sunghoon-ah,” Junhwan continues. “What do you want from him?”

And, well, Sunghoon already knows the answer to that. He’s more ready to admit it now than he was a week ago. “Didn’t I already tell you? I want to shrink myself down and —”

“Crawl under his door,” Junhwan finishes, sounding amused. Sunghoon was a bit embarrassed to verbalize his nonsense to Junhwan, who is less familiar with it than any of his members are, but as always, he was only met with warm acceptance. He laughed, of course, but Sunghoon has never heard Junhwan laugh in a way that sounded mean. “I know, but that’s not really something you want from him. He’s barely even in it.”

Sunghoon disagrees — Heeseung is the very centre of it, as he so often is; but he can see what Junhwan is saying. He’s not active in that desire, he’s just… there. He’s there for Sunghoon to rely on.

“Honestly?” Sunghoon squeezes his eyes shut, like that will make it easier to say. It doesn’t, but Junhwan prompts him forward with a low hum, which does. “I want him to come back. Which,” he rushes to add, “is why what I want doesn’t matter.”

Junhwan is quiet for a moment, mulling over the words. “That makes sense,” he finally says, gentle as always. “You want a home in him.”

“What?”

“I mean — I’m not the most articulate, but… is that not what it is? Both this, and the breaking and entering thing?”

“Yah,” Sunghoon complains, but the joke succeeds in making him crack a smile, breathing out a small puff of laughter as he opens his eyes again.

“What?!” Junhwan laughs. “Is that not what it is?” He paints his voice with teasing indignation, but Sunghoon isn’t actually sure which part he’s referring to. It doesn’t matter, really.

“It is,” he confesses. “See, you’re really smart, Junhwan-hyung. You’re good at this.”

“I’m really not,” he protests, laughing awkwardly. “I — oh, hello.” His voice gets lighter and softer, but also more distant, directed somewhere other than the phone. “Do you want to say hi to Sunghoonie?” There’s some rustling, and then Junhwan’s voice is closer again, back to normal. “Thor says hi.”

“Wah,” Sunghoon pouts, though he’s grinning to himself, “let me see!”

“Okay.” Sunghoon was expecting Junhwan to laugh and dismiss the request, but instead, within a second Junhwan has turned on his front-facing camera, shifting it down so the focus is on Thor instead of his face.

“Ah,” Sunghoon says, scrambling to turn on his own camera because it feels awkward if he doesn’t, “cute. Do you think he remembers me?”

“Probably. He has a good memory.” Junhwan’s disembodied torso shifts, hoisting Thor slightly higher in his arms. He waves a paw at the camera, then giggles, a sound which Sunghoon has not heard before despite the fact that Junhwan is always fucking laughing. “See? He does.”

“You’re ridiculous.” Sunghoon catches a glimpse of himself grinning too wide in the corner of his screen and quickly smooths his expression down again. “Hi, Thor-ah. Have you been being good to Junhwanie?”

Junhwan presses his nose against Thor’s fluffy head, the first glimpse Sunghoon has seen of his face. He’s wearing glasses, thick-rimmed black ones, and he’s smiling. “He’s been very good, don’t worry. What about you? Have you seen Gaeul recently?”

“No.” Sunghoon sighs, though he smiles thinking fondly of his dog. “I’ll visit my parents when we next have a break, but it might be a while.”

“It sucks that your schedule is so tight.”

“It’s fine.” It does suck, a little bit, but Sunghoon has weighed the pros and cons before and come to the conclusion that he’s perfectly happy where he is. “I like it. I mean, not that I don’t see them, but —”

“I get it,” Junhwan laughs. With one last pet down Thor’s back, he lets him jump out of his arms and to the ground. The camera is adjusted a second later, and Sunghoon sees Junhwan in a loose black T-shirt and his glasses, his hair a little overgrown, his face just slightly puffy. Still handsome, because of course he is, but real and raw and unapologetic. Sunghoon wonders distantly if he ever thinks about that at all — people must tell him all the time how attractive he is, but he seems to brush all those comments off the same way he did Sunghoon’s shock at his relationship status. “I know plenty about being invested in a career that gives you the short end of the stick sometimes.”

“Yeah. It’s — you really are, like, crazy dedicated to skating.” More times than he can count, Sunghoon has texted Junhwan only for him to be at the rink, his phone forgotten somewhere in the stands. Even now, having withdrawn from Worlds, he’s still keeping up with a pretty intense training regimen. When Sunghoon asked why, Junhwan said he doesn’t know what else he would be doing. Nothing interests him, captivates him, pushes him like figure skating does. Nothing else makes him feel more alive.

“True.”

“You’re really good at it, though.”

“Ah,” Junhwan mumbles, shaking his head, almost shy.

“You are. You always were, but, like — seriously, hyung, you’re so good now it’s ridiculous. And you just keep getting better.”

“I — hopefully,” Junhwan settles on saying, though he’s still a little pink-cheeked from the praise. “I don’t know. My body doesn’t work the way it used to.”

“But it still works.”

“It does,” he says softly, more like he’s speaking to himself than anything. Off-camera, Thor meows loud enough for Sunghoon to hear it, and Junhwan shushes him with a little tsk at the top of his mouth. “We’ll see.”

Junhwan’s non-answers are infinitely frustrating, so Sunghoon pushes it further. “You really should have won an Olympic medal.”

Somehow his face is still impassive, as neutral and gentle as always, when he replies, “I know.”

“I can’t believe you aren’t mad about it. I’m mad about it.”

“It’s… frustrating,” Junhwan acknowledges, “but there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t want to waste my energy being mad. I’ve spoken about it, and I will continue to, but… is there really a point to holding onto something like that?”

“Your goals, Junhwan-hyung,” Sunghoon presses. “Doesn’t it hurt to be cheated out of one of your dreams?”

Junhwan falls silent for long enough that Sunghoon starts to worry he might have offended him. “It wasn’t cheated,” is what he finally says. “No one cheated to end up on that podium.”

“Okay, sure, but the scoring was inaccurate.”

Junhwan grimaces. “It… yes. It often is, in various ways.”

“And you still don’t care? I don’t understand how you’re so nonchalant about — any of this, actually.”

There’s another pause, but this time it’s a little more brief. Junhwan smiles, albeit in a somewhat pained way. “You’re a better person than me, Sunghoonie. I’m too tired now to have dreams like that anymore.”

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

So, Sunghoon finds, Junhwan is a person with flaws after all. Or — he always knew that, objectively, but now he actually knows what some of those flaws are. It’s oddly vindicating. It is this thought, compounded with everything the fuck else that has been rattling around in his mind lately, that makes Sunghoon think he might be losing it. He ruminates over this for three days, accidentally ghosting Junhwan in the process, and ends up absolutely nowhere.

“Am I, like, weird?” he asks Sunoo, who can be trusted to tell him the truth with much more consistency than any of the other members. They’d been watching a movie together before they both lost interest and ended up scrolling on their respective phones side by side.

“Um, yes.” Sunoo doesn’t even look up from his phone to answer. “Very much so.”

“Is it a bad weird?” Sunghoon doesn’t mean to sound anxious, but he probably does, because Sunoo finally peels his eyes up to squint at him.

“No? Not most of the time, anyway. You’re a freak, but.” Sunoo shrugs and his sentence just — ends like that, which really is not helpful.

“Oh. Okay.” Sunghoon turns away from Sunoo, whose attention has been returned to his phone, and shuffles to the kitchen, where he spends the next three minutes staring blankly into a cabinet and pondering his existence.

“For fuck’s sake, hyung.” Sunoo’s voice comes from way too close, and Sunghoon yelps and jumps away, hitting his head on the cabinet door in the process.

“Fuck,” he yelps, rubbing at his head. Sunoo’s judgmental expression drops, and he stands on his tip-toes to worry over the red spot on his forehead himself.

“Are you okay? I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s fine,” Sunghoon says, because he can’t really be mad at Sunoo. It does hurt like a bitch, but not any more than he’d expect hitting your head on a cabinet door to hurt. It’ll probably be fine by the time he goes to bed.

“Good. What’s wrong?” Sunoo always gets straight to the point.

“Uh.” Sunghoon glances around, like Sunoo might be speaking to someone else, even though they’re the only two people in the kitchen right now. “I think there might be something wrong with me?”

“Physically?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.” Sunoo nods to himself, uncrosses his arms, and starts dragging Sunghoon back to the couch. “Tell me everything.”

“Well.” Sunghoon shuffles on his feet a little before sinking stiffly onto the cushions. It’s not that he doesn’t want Sunoo’s help — quite the opposite, honestly — but it’s still awkward, divulging everything like this. Besides, Sunoo is his dongsaeng, which makes it even more uncomfortable going to him instead of Jay, Jake, or Junhwan. But Sunoo is smart and honest and perceptive, and Sunghoon needs a little bit of his sharpness right now. “There’s — like. I’m not the best with people, right,” he starts, and Sunoo nods in affirmation, which is rude, but Sunghoon literally just said it himself so he can’t even pretend to be mad. “But lately I think it’s worse? Or maybe it was always bad and I just didn’t realize it.”

Sunoo blinks at him. “Okay,” he says, measured. “How so?”

“I mean, Heeseung– we– our thing or whatever,” he grumbles, staring at his hands. “I thought we were in on it together? Like, the whole time we… you know, I thought that it was because of all these reasons and we didn’t have to say it because it would be true regardless. That’s what we both thought, I’m pretty sure, since he still doesn’t really want to talk about it, and he seems to think we’re back on the same page now or something, so… but I don’t think I am? Like, I think I was in a different place than he was the entire time?” Sunghoon braves a look at Sunoo and then quickly back down at his hands. He knows that Sunoo isn’t judging him — not in any real way, anyway — but still. It’s humiliating. This is perhaps the lowest low that Sunghoon has ever hit.

“And then with Junhwan-hyung — he’s not perfect, obviously, because he’s a person, but I found out one of his flaws the other day and now I feel vindicated about it, which made me feel like I had to prove that he’s not? Which is insane because everyone knows that no one is perfect and so there’s no reason for me to be vindicated by a person having a flaw at all. So it kind of feels like I’m living in a different realm of existence from everyone else and I think I might be a terrible person or possibly losing my mind.”

Sunoo stares at him. Sunghoon stares back.

“What the fuck are you talking about?!” Sunoo screeches, and then immediately begins hitting Sunghoon with his fists.

“Wha– why?! What?!” Sunghoon holds up his palms in peace and Sunoo stops hitting him, though he’s still glaring as hard as Sunghoon has ever seen him.

“You’re so fucking weird,” Sunoo hisses, then slumps further into the couch on a long exhale. “Okay. First of all, there’s nothing wrong with you, you freak, and you aren’t living in some alternate reality or anything, you just have a consciousness. And yeah, you were or are probably in a different place emotionally, or mentally or whatever, from Heeseung-hyung, but that doesn’t make it wrong or bad. You’re treating him like the standard, but Heeseung-hyung is as stupid as everyone else. You being on a different page doesn’t mean that you were on the wrong one. Also, it’s normal to be happy when people aren’t perfect, because someone being perfect is an impossibility and also would fucking suck for the rest of us but we’re all in our heads about it so we forget sometimes. The only reason you feel guilty about it or whatever is probably because you’re so used to putting the people that you like up on a pedestal.”

Sunghoon processes this information piece by piece, nodding along slowly, until Sunoo finishes up and he freezes.

“Wait, what?”

“What? Which part are you confused about?” Sunoo is weird too, Sunghoon decides, for the way he can switch between profound judgment and genuine concern within seconds. His eyes are all wide and cute now. Maybe it was something in Sunghoon’s voice.

“What do you mean, that I put the people I like on a pedestal?”

“Oh.” Sunoo becomes uninterested again, apparently bored by this reply. “Well, you do it with Heeseung all the time, so. It makes sense that you’d try to do the same thing with Junhwan-hyung.”

“Wait,” Sunghoon says, the gears in his head squeaking obnoxiously as they shudder against each other. “Why are you — what? What do those two have to do with each other?”

Sunoo cuts him a deeply unimpressed look, only for it to morph into yet another iteration of the cute and earnest Sunoo when he catches a glimpse of Sunghoon’s face, which is probably malfunctioning. “Hyung. Sunghoon-hyung. Are you and Junhwan-hyung not dating?”

“What.”

“Fuck, okay,” Sunoo says, hastening to sit up fully. He pats Sunghoon’s knee a few times in reassurance. “You don’t have to look so stressed about it! I thought — you’re on the phone all the time now, and the way you said it was — it doesn’t matter. Um, I’m sorry?”

“Why would you think — I — Heeseung.” Sunghoon doesn’t know what else to say. No one else has ever crossed his mind, really. Why would he be interested in anyone if they weren’t Heeseung?

“A lot of things changed when he left! And he was being really awkward about you, so I thought maybe…” Sunoo trails off, then grimaces, seemingly at himself. “I thought maybe you had moved on.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?!” Really, it’s only Jay, Jake, and Sunoo, but that’s still more people than Sunghoon is used to bringing it up so directly. It makes him squeamish.

“Why not?” Sunoo finally succeeds in catching his eye. Sunghoon immediately grimaces away. “No, really, hyung. Why not? He abandoned all of us, and that includes you.” Sunoo’s voice is venomous, and Sunghoon realizes with a start that he perhaps hadn’t understood just how mad some of his members were. Jongseong’s anger so often feels dramatized, layered in a thick dose of sarcasm and irony, but Sunoo’s is not. There isn’t another way to construe his resentment. “You wouldn’t be doing anything he hasn’t already done.”

“I — it’s not like that,” Sunghoon protests. “It’s complicated.”

“Honestly, hyung? It sounds really simple. It sounds like he left and expected you would still follow him, even though I know he didn’t tell you anything either.” Sunoo turns away, crossing his arms almost protectively over his chest. “He’s a jackass. You can admit it.”

“He’s not.”

“Fine, whatever, he’s acting like a jackass,” Sunoo snarks, rolling his eyes. “Is that better for you? Or is that still too harsh?”

Sunghoon is quiet for a moment too long, because when Sunoo turns to him again, it’s with considerably more softness. “Look, hyung. I’m sorry I snapped at you. It’s not your fault, and you’re allowed to feel however you feel about him.” He takes a deep breath, as if having to stabilize himself after saying something so charitable about Heeseung. “But, seriously, there isn’t anything wrong with you. You’re thinking about it too much, and maybe that’s making you feel crazy, but — everything you’re feeling is normal and fine. And I bet Junhwan-hyung would just think that it’s funny.”

Junhwan probably would find it humorous, now that Sunghoon thinks of it, and that’s enough to make him crack a smile. “Okay,” he relents. “Thank you, Sunoo-yah. Sorry for being so weird all the time.”

“Whatever, you’re, like, a million times less weird than Riki,” Sunoo grumbles. “It’s fine. What are you gonna do now?”

“I don’t know.”

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

(That’s a lie. Sunghoon does know: he needs to talk to Heeseung, to figure this out once and for all.)

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

Park Sunghoon
hey

[DELETED CONTACT]
Hi?

Park Sunghoon
can we talk?

They haven’t been talking much, not since the day of the legal meeting when Heeseung kissed him, and the situation is awkward enough already, so Sunghoon rehearses his questions in the shower and then in the mirror as he gets dressed. He’s got a list of them, and he’s determined that they’ll get through it today — he won’t let Heeseung control the conversation.

Somehow, even with all this preparation, the first thing that comes out of his mouth when he’s sitting at Heeseung’s counter with a glass of water in front of him is, “Why did you do it?” Shit. That wasn’t the plan.

Heeseung pauses. “Do what?” he asks cautiously, and Sunghoon has to resist the urge to roll his eyes. He’s not totally sure it works, because his eye definitely twitches a little bit.

“Leave the group. Why’d you do it?”

“I — Sunghoon.” Heeseung sighs, tapping his knuckles on the countertop. “Come on, you know it’s complicated.”

“I can wait.”

It takes him a while to answer, but Sunghoon said that he’d wait, so he does.

“I want — I need to push myself. Creatively, artistically, in my skills and my work. It felt like I was just… stagnant, standing still, and you know I can’t stand that. I was restless and anxious and it just… it wasn’t right.”

Sunghoon does know, is the thing. This is exactly what made Heeseung a kindred soul to him to begin with: that they both chased after their dreams until the soles of their feet were cracked and bloody. “We made you restless and anxious,” he understands.

Heeseung flinches. “No —”

“You can’t have it both ways,” Sunghoon snaps. “You can’t leave and then pretend there was nothing you were leaving in the first place.”

“I’m not,” Heeseung protests feebly. “That’s what I’m saying, this is why it’s so complicated. It wasn’t you. It was never you guys. You know I love the team, and I love all of you, and I’m always going to love what we built together as Enhypen. You guys weren’t the problem, it was me.”

It’s funny, Sunghoon thinks distantly as a sort of roiling, wailing injustice flairs up inside him, that at the end of the day this is still Heeseung. Apologizing for being perfect, apologizing for himself being the problem, the one who wants too much, who needs to be pushed further than Enhypen would let him.

Though, then again, that’s not quite right, because Heeseung never said he was sorry at all.

“It was you,” Sunghoon repeats. “Right.” Heeseung’s expression lights up at the acceptance in Sunghoon’s tone, expecting that they’ll move on now, probably. But Sunghoon is angry, and tired, and he said he’d be in charge of this conversation so he will be, even if it isn’t in the way he planned. “It was you who left, and it was you who chose this without talking to us about it all, and it was you who decided on your own that Enhypen wasn’t enough and couldn’t be enough and that the only choice was for you to go solo. And it’s you who wants everyone to just get over it and move on. Because you’re the one who chose, and you’re the centre of the fucking action, right? You’ll take all the responsibility, we won’t be involved in it at all — well, guess what, hyung? We were always involved in it, because we were supposed to be your team. We were involved the moment you chose not to include us in the discussion, and we’re definitely involved now that we have to clean up your fucking mess.

“You want to talk about being the problem? You’re the reason our fandom’s a mess and we’re a laughingstock online. You’re the reason people are unsure about our future, and our numbers are dropping, and no one’s focusing on us or the music anymore because all they want to talk about is you and how you left. You’re the reason people are boycotting and protesting and buying ads on fucking trucks trying to get you back, wasting their time and their money, because you chose this, but you won’t admit it! You did this and we have to make something out of it, and you don’t get to act like you knowing it doesn’t change how fucking shitty it is. You won’t talk, you won’t change, you won’t take some of the heat for us, you couldn’t even stay another fucking week so Jaeyun could go back to Australia without all the fans talking about you the entire time.”

Heeseung’s eyes are wide and he’s clearly hurt, but Sunghoon’s started and now he can’t seem to stop. “You want to talk about being restless and anxious? Jungwon has been in and out of meetings for weeks trying to figure out how to deal with this mess, the way he’s been doing since he was a kid, since he was a teenager. Maybe you should have pushed yourself back then, hyung. Maybe you wouldn’t be so restless if you’d taken on your rightful burden from the beginning instead of offloading it onto a kid.”

It’s a sore spot and Sunghoon knows that, but he doesn’t say it to poke the bruise. He says it because, in this moment at least, it feels completely and utterly true: who is Heeseung to talk about wanting more now that it’s convenient for him? Everyone in Enhypen has been sacrificing things since the very beginning in the name of progress, in the name of growth for themselves and for the team, and never once has that looked like abandonment. But now, with Heeseung, that’s apparently the only form of improvement he can imagine.

“You can do all the different concepts and release all the self-written music you want, but don’t lie to us, hyung. This wasn’t about pushing, it wasn’t about growing, it’s about you trying to eat your cake and have it too. You want everything and you got impatient when Enhypen couldn’t give it to you.”

“You’re one to talk,” Heeseung shoots back, his hurt taking a sharper form. “You did the same thing as me, just on a different timeline. You quit one career and went chasing after the next like you’d die if you didn’t have it, and now you can’t handle when I do the same?”

Sunghoon scoffs. He doesn’t like talking about his figure skating career, doesn’t like how people reduce him to it even all these years later. He’s never really shared the extent of those feelings with his members, but he didn’t think he had to. It’s his past, after all, and Enhypen is his present. It’s funny that Heeseung would compare them, when his past and present are all tangled up in a knot of his own making. “It’s not the same and you know that.”

“How? How is it any different?” Heeseung demands.

“For one, I didn’t have a team behind me I had promised to stay with.”

“You had your coaches and your fans.”

“I had coaches I paid to train me who all had better skaters on their rosters, and anyone who was a fan of me and not just the sport is probably still following Enhypen today.”

“It was still your dream. You still left it for something else.”

“It had been my dream,” Sunghoon corrects sharply. “It wasn’t feasible anymore.”

Heeseung throws up his hands. “Exactly! Dreams can change, Hoon-ah, it’s not a fucking crime.”

“I stopped skating because I had no future in it. I did my best for as long as I could and then I chose another dream. I didn’t just up and leave one day because skating wasn’t enough for me. I wasn’t good enough at skating.”

“According to who?!” Sunghoon can’t tell if Heeseung’s indignation is at self-analysis, or the fact that that self-analysis sort of dismantles his entire argument. Either way, it’s exhausting.

“According to everyone, hyung. I was losing constantly. I didn’t even have a semi-reliable triple Axel and I’d been in seniors for years! It was over for me. Arguably, I held on longer than I should. You decided to end things.”

“I was stagnant. I couldn’t grow while staying in Enhypen anymore,” Heeseung insists.

“Did you even try?!”

“What could I possibly have done? The company manages our concepts, our comebacks, and most of our music. They wouldn’t let me release a solo record. What else was there for me to do?”

“Pick up a new instrument. Write more songs for the group, not just for yourself, ones that match the company’s concepts for us. Try your hand at choreographing. Take more vocal classes, or dance classes, or train more with the other members. Play the guitar with Jay or spend time in the practice room with Riki or go to vocal lessons with Sunoo, I don’t fucking know, hyung, anything! And if nothing else, the least you could’ve done was talk to us instead of dumping this on our laps with your mind already made up.”

“I was trying to make it easier for you.” Heeseung sounds frustrated, his brow pinched so tight a vein is bulging out of his forehead, and yet Sunghoon finds his reservoirs of sympathy all dried up.

“Well, you failed, Heeseung. You made it worse.”

The words — Sunghoon’s harshness, the lack of an honorific, all of it — hang heavily in the air. For a moment, Sunghoon thinks that he’s finally gotten through to him, that he might finally get an apology, that Heeseung might at least try to make things better. When he speaks, though, it is only to say in a resigned tone, “I know that you’re angry. But putting all of this on me isn’t fair, Sunghoon. It didn’t work out how I wanted it to either.”

Sunghoon groans, the sound in his throat borderline unhinged, and when he rolls his neck it cracks with a satisfying sound. It’s exhausting, going in circles like this. He is hit by a sudden surge of clarity that whatever this is, he can’t fucking do it anymore. It’s not good for him, and it’s tiring, and he doesn’t even know what he gets from it anymore when they don’t live in the same building or perform in the same venues where Heeseung can kiss him. It’s just… not worth it. Being with Heeseung isn’t worth it anymore.

Maybe that’s what he thought about Enhypen, Sunghoon wonders, and the thought almost makes him laugh despite all the circumstances surrounding it. He clears his throat and his expression and looks Heeseung in the eye instead. “We need to end this.”

“What?” Heeseung’s brow furrows, clearly taken aback by Sunghoon not responding to his argument, but also confused by the words themselves. It is awkward, Sunghoon admits — he’s never broken up with someone he wasn’t actually in a relationship with.

“Whatever this is, it ends here. You can’t kiss me anymore, you can’t call me when you’re drunk or horny or high on adrenaline, you can’t act like I’m a special confidante, you can’t give me your fucking doorcode on the day you move in. None of it.”

“Sunghoon —” Heeseung scrambles up, seeing Sunghoon start to gather his things. “Sunghoon. Calm down, this isn’t like you. You’ve always understood me, I don’t get why you’re being so stubborn. Where is this even coming from?!”

“You,” Sunghoon interrupts, whirling around like he’s in a damn drama, unable to hide the extent of his frustration. “It’s coming from you. It’s exactly like you said — it’s not me, it’s you. You fucked up the group and fucked up our friendship and fucked up everything I thought I knew about you. You were stagnant before, Heeseung-hyung? Great, now you’re free.” Sunghoon spreads his arms wide, though he can’t muster any feeling but a yawning and acerbic emptiness at the look on Heeseung’s face. “You’re welcome.”

“Wh — Sunghoon, come on.” Heeseung blocks Sunghoon on his way to the door, but Sunghoon side-steps him and whisks past anyway.

“You’re not the only one who can make hard choices, hyung,” Sunghoon says blithely, his smile plastered on and bitter. “Goodbye.”

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

That was not how Sunghoon had planned for it to go.

He gets to the company and has three missed calls from Heeseung, who at least knew better than to try and follow him. Sunghoon is prickly about his personal space. He ignores them and, for the first time since Jongseong made that stupid change to his contact profile, really considers deleting Heeseung’s number.

He doesn’t, of course, because that would be stupid, both personally and professionally. Instead, he just files into the practice room and starts working, the same way he always does, the same way he has for over six years now. His body dances, and his mind, admittedly, wanders.

He doesn’t regret it. There are too many feelings swirling around right now in Sunghoon’s chest for him to categorize them all, but he doesn’t feel even the slightest twinge of regret. Maybe he will in twenty-four hours, but at the moment…

Jongseong knocks his shoulder when they’re taking a five minute break with a strong crease between his brows. “Yo,” he says, sounding a bit worried. “Are you okay? You seem kinda checked out.”

A part of Sunghoon wants to detail everything from the morning, but a bigger part of him just wants to be left alone. Sunghoon is aware of himself, Sunghoon is aware of his feelings. He needs some time now to figure out exactly what they are.

“I’m fine,” he lies, “just tired. It’s one of those days, you know.”

“Okay.” Jongseong doesn’t sound like he believes him, but he’s a good friend, so he lets it be. So: Sunghoon snaps back to work, the same way that he always does. So: Sunghoon thinks.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

i broke up with heeseung-hyung yesterday.
i mean, we were never together. but
ah you know what i mean

woah
how are you feeling?

honestly, hyung?
i think i love him more than i miss him. i feel really free.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

There is, of course, still the matter of the past, that tricky thing. Sunghoon never got what he came for in the first place at Heeseung’s apartment, and it’s a bit awkward now for him to bring it up. Hey, hyung, I know I pretty harshly ended our ambiguous non-platonic relationship a few days ago, but I was actually looking for some clarity — what were we, exactly? And why?

Yeah, he isn’t doing that. Instead, Sunghoon pours himself into his work twofold, channeling all the time and energy Heeseung had taken up into their tour preparations and other schedules. This, after all, is what it was all for: he loved Heeseung because of this shared passion of theirs, the sameness breaching a seemingly insurmountable distance, and now Heeseung is gone, but this is not. Enhypen isn’t. Sunghoon reassures himself with this as well as he can.

“Have you been getting enough sleep?” Junhwan worries over the phone. It’s funny, Sunghoon thinks, for Junhwan of all people to worry about Sunghoon overworking himself.

“Yeah, I pass out pretty much immediately lately.” Then, because he feels like this alone probably won’t satiate Junhwan’s concerns, he adds, “I am having trouble shitting, though.”

Junhwan laughs out of surprise, which is a slightly different laugh of his, shorter and sharper than usual. “You should eat more fiber. A man cannot subsist on protein alone.”

He’s probably right, but Sunghoon still pouts about it regardless. “Fine. What about you, hyung? Enjoying your time off?”

Sunghoon is teasing, and Junhwan knows it, his exaggerated groan tapering off into laughter at the end. “I hate it, Hoonie. I need to put my skates back on or I’ll die.”

“Is your ankle doing any better?”

Junhwan makes a vague noise that isn’t reassuring in the slightest. “It’s healing, yes.”

“...Did you go running again?”

“I can’t help it!” Junhwan doesn’t even try to deny the accusation. “I can’t just sit here.”

“You can and you should.” As much as Sunghoon works, he has found that he has a much more straightforward approach to injuries and illnesses than Junhwan does. The sooner and the more you rest, he figures, the sooner you can get back to work. He might hate it, but it’s what needs to be done. “Once you heal, you can come back to skating better than ever.”

“I know,” Junhwan mumbles, sounding for all intents and purposes like he’s sulking. It is strikingly cute, and Sunghoon squashes down a smile in response. “But it sucks. I feel like I’m wasting my time.”

“Don’t you have any hobbies that aren’t figure skating?”

“Not really,” Junhwan answers bluntly, and Sunghoon can’t help but laugh at that.

“Hyung…”

“I know! I’ve tried, but nothing else ever interests me the same way!”

“Okay, fine,” Sunghoon says, still laughing. “What about friends?”

Junhwan hums. “All of my friends are in their mid twenties with jobs. No one is coming over at the drop of a hat to keep me entertained, Sunghoonie.” He says it matter-of-factly, without a hint of self deprecation, and maybe that’s what makes Sunghoon reply: “I would.”

“Huh?”

“I would,” Sunghoon repeats, clearing his throat, because he can’t very well go back on it now. “If it weren’t so late, I’d come over right now.” He realizes as he’s saying it, of course, that it’s incredibly silly: that’s exactly what Junhwan was saying in the first place; that even if his friends would like to spend time with him, other circumstances prevent it.

There’s a brief pause from Junhwan during which Sunghoon internally crashes out over his stupidity, but when he responds, all he says is, “Thank you, Sunghoonie. That’s very sweet.”

For some reason, the compliment makes Sunghoon blush, the tips of his ears turning crimson. How embarrassing. “Whatever,” he grumbles, and Junhwan laughs, his slightly amused filler laugh this time. Sunghoon is making a catalogue; it’s very serious business. “Maybe you should get a girlfriend.”

Junhwan laughs — that’s laugh number three, something short and incredulous, but also genuinely amused. “Right,” he drawls, sarcastic.

“No, seriously — this would be a great time to go on a date for the first time!”

“It’s really not,” Junhwan disagrees, though his tone still dances with humor.

“Why not?! It doesn’t have to be serious, it could just be a casual thing. Getting a feel for it or whatever.”

“Sunghoonie,” Junhwan protests.

“Come on, hyung, why not? You can’t be that adverse to dating.”

“I’d rather not lead anyone on.”

“You don’t have to. Just be clear about what you want from the beginning.”

“I suppose,” Junhwan says, although he clearly still has some reservations. “I guess I don’t have much interest in casual stuff. I’d rather… ah, I don’t know. I’m not sentimental about first times or anything like that,” he hastens to say, as if Sunghoon would judge him if he were. “But I want anything I do with anyone to be genuine. It doesn’t really matter about the order of things.”

Sunghoon sighs far louder than is strictly necessary, and it makes Junhwan laugh again, warm amusement breaking the ice. “Of course you’d be perfect about this as well.”

“What are you talking about?! Don’t say things like that,” Junhwan protests, clearly uncomfortable with the compliment. This only makes Sunghoon want to push it more — call it payback for Junhwan making him blush earlier.

“But it’s so true! Prince Junhwanie, dedicated in life and in love,” Sunghoon cajoles, and Junhwan groans.

“Oh my god,” he says in English.

“You’re so honest about things, hyung. I really admire that about you.” It slips out without Sunghoon meaning it to, his lighthearted teasing slipping into sincerity entirely on accident. Sunghoon supposes that being around Junhwan simply makes him want to be honest about things, too. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing.

“I’m not,” Junhwan protests immediately. “But thank you.”

“Come on, can’t you take a single compliment?”

“I take compliments all the time! And you’re one to talk, anyway.”

“My members call me a narcissist all the time, your argument holds no water.”

“You have confidence,” Junhwan relents, laughing in the same warm tone as before. “But every time I compliment you, you just change the subject.”

Well, Sunghoon thinks, that’s not really because he’s uncomfortable with compliments, it’s more that he’s uncomfortable with them coming from Junhwan. “Because you’re you!”

“What does that even mean?!”

“You’re — you know, you’re you! You’re perfect all the time. You’re literally the hardest worker I know, and you’re talented, and disciplined, and you’re smart and funny and kind. And you’re attractive. So, like — yeah, I’m going to be awkward getting complimented by you,” Sunghoon finishes, feeling extremely childish as soon as the words leave his mouth.

“That isn’t true.” Junhwan sounds confused, which is one of the better possible reactions to Sunghoon’s word salad, now that he thinks of it. “Weren’t we just talking about how shitty I am at taking care of myself?”

“Because you’re a hard worker! Which is also a virtue!” Sunghoon yelps. This conversation is silly and somewhat humiliating, but it feels imperative that he not back down. He knows by now that Junhwan isn’t perfect, of course, but — Junhwan is perfect in all the ways that matter. The white lie isn’t much of a lie at all when he looks at it that way; and besides, it’s true that he is uniquely flustered by Junhwan complimenting him for all of the reasons he detailed before.

“You’re ridiculous,” Junhwan decides, but Sunghoon can tell even through his voice that he’s smiling. “There’s no point in arguing with you. Whatever you say, Sunghoonie…”

“Shut up,” Sunghoon hisses, his entire face beet red, his revenge plot horribly backfired. Junhwan starts cackling down the other line, a loud, genuine laugh that sounds like it bursts from his chest.

“Okay, okay. So you’re sleeping well and shitting poorly,” he says, returning to their previous topic of conversation, “and you’re feeling…?” He approaches the question delicately, a bit awkwardly, like he isn’t quite sure what to say. Junhwan often gets this way about feelings, Sunghoon has noticed, which is funny because he really is quite good with them. The questions he asks are often the most obvious ones, but Sunghoon can tell that he means them, even if he doesn’t really know what to do with the answers. He likes solutions, Sunghoon thinks, likes seeing tangible results; and if he can’t, then he doesn’t know what to do with a feeling. Sunghoon once texted Junhwan complaining that his arms were sore from lifting, to which Junhwan replied with a short ‘oh’ and then nothing else. Sunghoon laughed about it for longer than he’d care to admit.

“I’m fine.” It feels awkward to talk about his emotions like this now that he’s crossed the bridge, so to speak, like he’s dipping his toes back in the water. He ended things, which means that they’re over, and his lingering feelings are fairly easy to ignore so long as he doesn’t think about them. “Seriously, hyung. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m a little worried about it,” Junhwan admits, seeming regretful. “You were in love with him for a long time. That doesn’t just go away overnight.”

Sunghoon sputters. “Who said anything about love?”

“I mean, you did?” Junhwan sounds confused, and his voice gets slightly distant, putting Sunghoon on speakerphone. “Yes, a week ago. You told me that you love him more than you miss him.”

“That’s — it’s a turn of phrase, hyung, don’t take it so literally.”

“Really?” Although he has more context now, Junhwan is still invested now in the same way that he was when Sunghoon first came to him with all of this, bereft and crying: he’s interested in how Sunghoon feels, and he’s interested finding out from Sunghoon himself. The rest goes from there.

“I– well– it’s complicated,” he finally lands on saying. Junhwan’s nonchalance makes his adamant denial seem silly now.

“It doesn’t have to be. I mean, I don’t know, I can’t tell you how you feel. But…” Junhwan trails off, almost chagrined. “Ah, I’m overstepping. Ignore me, Sunghoon-ah.”

“You’re not overstepping. You’re trying to help.”

“They aren’t mutually exclusive,” he responds wryly. “Sorry, I’m not very good at this. I really don’t know how to help with something like this.”

“You already do, and it would be fine if you didn’t.” Sunghoon is admittedly exasperated by this conversation. “We’re friends, hyung. You don’t have to help me every time we talk or hang out.”

Junhwan pauses, though only for a second. “Yes, well, you’re still my dongsaeng.”

“Junhwan,” Sunghoon complains, purposefully leaving out the honorific, but it feels so wrong in his mouth that he belatedly tacks it on to the end anyway. “— hyung.” He doesn’t know why he did that. It’s disrespectful. The only person he was ever comfortable sometimes dropping honorifics with was Heeseung, and even that was only on occasion.

Junhwan laughs, though, quiet but amused. “You really are a brat, you know that?” Sunghoon doesn’t know how to reply, so it’s good that Junhwan continues without waiting for one. “I can stop asking questions if you want me to.”

“You can ask questions.”

“Should I, then?”

Sunghoon is the one who laughs this time, caught off-guard with the pedantic response. A taste of his own medicine, maybe. “What the hell,” he decides, “why not?”

“Well, if it’s too personal —”

“Hyung, come on. Just ask your questions already.”

“Okay,” Junhwan relents, a bit petulantly. It’s funny — they’re both getting what they want out of this conversation, but they’re also a little peeved about it. It’s lighthearted enough that the conflict just makes Sunghoon smile. “Were you in love with him?”

The humor leaves Sunghoon’s body on his next exhale, though at least some of the lightness remains. If he’s honest, then — “Probably. I don’t know. What does it even mean to be in love with someone?”

“I’ve been told that you know it when you feel it.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that too.” Sunghoon puffs out his cheeks, then sucks them in, chewing on the thought. “I guess it’s just — like, there were so many feelings I had about him, or have, I guess, and they’re all intense enough that it’s hard to tell where one stops and another starts. So I don’t really know. Does it matter?”

“I don’t know.” Junhwan laughs softly, as puzzled as Sunghoon is. “I’ve also heard that sometimes something feels like love but it isn’t, though, so maybe you can just never really tell.”

“Yeah. If you had asked me three months ago or three years ago, even — I mean, I probably would have lied — but if I were honest about it, I probably would have said that I loved him. But now I just… I don’t know. I guess it’s like — I loved something, but if he’s a different person than I thought he was that entire time, then did I really love him?” Sunghoon shakes his head even though Junhwan can’t see him. “I’m making no sense.”

“No,” Junhwan disagrees, “I think I understand. Causation and correlation and stuff. Perception versus reality. I get it.”

“Yeah,” Sunghoon breathes, “something like that. Either way it’s… I don’t know. It’s stupid how much I think about him.”

“How do you mean?”

Sunghoon falls silent. He’s not sure how to say to Junhwan, I think about him kissing me when I’m alone in my room and I think about his body and the way it moves during dance practices and I think about his infernal habit of always singing in the mornings and the dark circles under his eyes at night. Even with everything that he’s shared, this still feels too intimate. So instead, he says, “I mean, I don’t think about him. He just… crosses my mind. Except he never really leaves, so…”

“He’s a loiterer,” Junhwan surmises, and Sunghoon exhales his laughter. “That makes sense. I guess that’s what I was talking about — the lingering feelings and stuff. But the thoughts might be even harder to deal with when you put it that way.”

And as always, Junhwan seems to hit the nail on the head without even knowing it. “Exactly. I can ignore my feelings, I’m good at that, I can make them go away or not matter or just… not think about them at all until they change. But I can’t get him out of my fucking head.”

“You repress your feelings until they disappear?” Junhwan sounds more amused than judgmental.

“You don’t?”

Junhwan laughs, a bit more mischievous than usual. “Kind of the opposite. I accept my feelings until they disappear. I find that it works better that way.”

“Huh.” Sunghoon had never thought of that — though, then again, he tries not to think about his emotions in general, which kind of messes with his ability to come up with coping strategies, too. Junhwan is a better person than Sunghoon is though, as evidenced by this radical acceptance thing that’s probably been approved by a legion of sports psychologists already. So, to tease instead of dwelling on that any longer, Sunghoon coyly comments, “You’re so smart, Junhwan-hyung.”

Junhwan sighs, and Sunghoon can still hear his smile. He doesn’t know how that’s even possible, but he’d bet money right now on Junhwan’s grin. “And you are insufferable, Sunghoon-ah,” he quips, and Sunghoon outright cackles, delighted by the bite back.

“Thank you, hyung,” he smizes.

“Are you going to do anything, though? To… move on, or something?” Junhwan refocuses their conversation, and Sunghoon’s lips thin out again.

“No. I think that’ll happen on its own. What’s harder is moving on from the thing I thought we had together. Not — the group, I mean, not our relationship. The music.”

“How will you do that, then?”

“I don’t know. Shit talk him with Jongseong?”

Junhwan laughs, quietly amused. “Have you told him yet?”

“No. I’m hoping I can avoid it. Maybe he’ll just pick up on it at some point and then we never have to acknowledge it explicitly.”

“Sunghoon-ah,” Junhwan chides, but he’s laughing through it.

“It’s a reasonable coping strategy! This is awkward, Junhwan-hyung. I hate it.”

“Aigoo, poor Sunghoonie,” Junhwan coos, his voice dripping with fake sympathy. “You’re already so busy.” The humor fades away from his tone, sincerity replacing it. “Don’t worry about it if it isn’t already bothering you. You’re doing well, I think. Fighting!”

“Fighting,” Sunghoon echoes, smiling again.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

Half of Sunghoon’s ideal scenario ends up coming true, in the end. Jongseong does figure it out on his own, but he’s still forced to talk about it explicitly.

“You’re acting different.” Jongseong confronts him after a week, which is both longer and shorter than Sunghoon expected it would take. “You’re… lighter.” Sunghoon stays silent, chugging the rest of his protein shake, and lets Jongseong breach the subject instead. “Something happened with hyung, didn’t it?”

Hyung. It’s been a while since Sunghoon has heard Jay call Heeseung that. It almost makes him smile, even though he probably shouldn’t care anymore.

“We talked,” he answers vaguely, but Jongseong’s penetrating stare prompts him to elaborate a few seconds later: “I ended things.”

“Holy shit.” Jongseong is immediately forcing Sunghoon to meet his eyes by putting both hands on his shoulders, his grip freakishly strong and digging into Sunghoon’s shoulderblades. Sunghoon doesn’t even know what Jay is here for — he just accosted him as soon as he entered the kitchen. “You’re serious? You broke up with him?”

“There was nothing to break up,” Sunghoon says, wiggling out of Jongseong’s hold. “We were never together.”

“You weren’t?” Riki’s voice suddenly captures both of their attention, and they turn to see him standing awkwardly by the counter, the hood of his sweater pulled over his messy hair. He shuffles a little at their incredulous stares. “Uh, sorry. I was just coming out for a snack, but I guess you didn’t notice me…?”

Jongseong shakes himself out of his shock first. “It’s fine,” he says, as though he has any authority on whether or not it’s okay for Riki to possess this information. It is, but Jongseong doesn’t know that. Besides, this is Riki’s dorm! Jongseong is technically their very nosy and intrusive neighbour! “You thought Sunghoon and Heeseung were together? Like, dating together?”

“Yes?” Riki shuffles again, the way he used to when he was afraid of getting caught for something. He’s usually much more shameless about things now, but Heeseung is a sticky subject. “I mean, you were always… like…” He gestures sort of empathetically with his hands. “Close, I guess? Like, scheming. Or confidantes or something, I dunno. And you fucked and stuff. And Heeseung-hyung talks about you like you’re together,” he throws in at the end. Sunghoon’s face twitches, and he blinks hard, three times, just to make sure he’s still in reality.

“He. What?”

“He talks about you like you’re together?” Riki repeats, blinking back at Sunghoon. “You know. He’s always like, Sunghoonie this and Sunghoonie that and I think Sunghoonie’s mad at me and do you think Sunghoonie would like this and shit. It’s actually really annoying.”

“You’re using the present tense,” Jay notices, frowning aggressively. “Why are you using the present tense?”

“Uh, ‘cause he’s still doing that? Like, I’m pretty sure he texted me at least two of those things in the past four days.” Riki pulls out his phone, which he really didn’t need to do, because Sunghoon already believes him and is standing listlessly in the kitchen with his empty protein shake glass in front of him. Jongseong, however, marches forward to peer at Riki’s phone screen like it’s personally wronged him.

“Oh my god,” Jongseong says in English. Then: “What the fuck.”

“Yeah, so.” Riki slides his phone back in his pocket and shrugs. “I guess I thought you were official? Um. Sorry about that. And about… everything else,” he says to Sunghoon, making extremely awkward eye contact. Then, when Sunghoon doesn’t reply, he turns back to Jay at record speed, apparently eager to move along. “Hyung, can you make me a snack?”

“Wh — can’t you make yourself a snack?!”

“Of course I can.”

“Then do!”

“But hyung,” Riki says, making his eyes all big and wide to really appeal to Jongseong’s affections, “I don’t want to.”

Jongseong groans really loudly and scrubs his hand down his face, but Sunghoon already knows that he’s going to make Riki a snack anyway. Taking the opportunity to escape, he places his dirty glass in the sink and slinks past the two of them. He doesn’t have time for this. He’s going to the studio.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

Jungwon is practicing when Sunghoon enters the dance room outside of their scheduled hours, working through the kinks of a dance break choreography for their upcoming tour. His focus doesn’t break when Sunghoon slides the door open, but he knows he notices the interruption, so he stays quiet against the back wall until Jungwon is done before breaking the silence.

“Meow,” he greets, as is customary between them. Jungwon nyangs in response. “Mind if I join you?”

Jungwon shakes his head, gesturing Sunghoon forward. “Are you having trouble with the new parts too?”

“I just need more practice. I don’t feel comfortable with it all yet.”

They work on the dance break choreography together for a while until both Sunghoon and Jungwon feel confident with the footwork. When they’re resting for a moment by the water cooler, Jungwon breaks the silence to say, “You’re working really hard lately, hyung.”

“You are too. I don’t know how you aren’t exhausted, what with all the meetings and stuff on top of everything else.”

Jungwon sighs, scuffing the toe of his sneaker against the polished wood floor. “Yeah. It does suck sometimes, but it’s my job, so…”

Sunghoon looks at Jungwon sidelong; their strong leader who had to grow up so fast. A pang of guilt runs through him and he feels compelled to say, “I’m sorry.” Jungwon looks at him questioningly. “That you have to do all that. If one of us had just taken the leader position instead…”

Jungwon laughs, shaking his head. “It was me or it was Heeseung-hyung. No one else could have done it. The company wouldn’t have let you.”

“Jongseong and I aren’t that bad,” Sunghoon laments, and it’s true. Jungwon is still right though, because at the end of the day, neither of them are well suited for that kind of work. They’re both too abrasive in their own ways, not subtle or strong-willed enough for dealing with the company the way Jungwon does. “But it could have been Heeseung. It should have been Heeseung.”

To Sunghoon’s surprise, Jungwon scoffs at the suggestion. “Definitely not. It’s bad enough for our centre and main vocal to leave all of a sudden. If he had been the leader too? We would be in chaos. We might not be able to recover from that.”

Sunghoon frowns, his mind flashing back to his conversation with Heeseung a week ago. “You still think he would have left?”

“Yes.” Jungwon’s lips are pressed into a thin line, and when he looks at Sunghoon again, he sighs. “I — hyung. It’s not… I don’t know all of it, but I know some things from the management, and… it would have happened anyway. He would have left anyway.” Jungwon says it with complete confidence and a level of finality Sunghoon is almost shocked by.

“What do you know?” he finds himself asking. It’s Jungwon’s turn to scrutinize him then, squinting as if to discern whether Sunghoon is ready to hear it. Sunghoon stays silent and lets him, and eventually, Jungwon nods, making up his mind.

“He’d been talking with management about leaving for longer than we realized. Since last year, actually, and maybe earlier. He’d pretty much decided that if he couldn’t release his solo music in Enhypen, then he couldn’t be in Enhypen at all.” Jungwon swallows, the corners of his lips turning down, his expression becoming dour. “The company thought it was empty threats at first. By the time they started taking him seriously I guess he’d just made up his mind about leaving.”

“You’re saying they gave him the option to release his album in Enhypen,” Sunghoon surmises. Jungwon nods.

“There were conditions,” he admits. “He could do a full album with promotions, but the focus had to be Enhypen. And they wanted some creative control over it, too — they didn’t want the image to clash with ours. I don’t know, maybe he wasn’t willing to give some of that up? Or maybe they were treating it like a fad or a one-time thing. Either way he decided it wasn’t good enough.”

“That doesn’t mean…”

“On its own? It doesn’t,” Jungwon agrees. “The fact that the company wasn’t taking him as seriously as he wanted them too doesn’t mean much. But the fact that he kept all of this from us? That he lied about the timeline and pursued all of this alone despite knowing that group negotiations would be better, just so that he could make up his mind on his own? That means something.”

Sunghoon winces, knowing that Jungwon is right. Heeseung kept them in the dark for longer than they even realized, then. Like Jungwon said, negotiations would even have been easier for him with all the members in on it. Excluding them means that he wanted to be on his own — that he wanted the rest of them out.

“Well, fuck,” Sunghoon finally breathes, his shoulders slumping from something other than exhaustion.

“I concur.”

They don’t talk about it further. Jungwon gets up to dance and Sunghoon joins him, and they go like that until the footwork comes as easily as a two-step, and then they go home, where Heeseung is not.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

It’s sort of a devastating thing to realize that Heeseung thinks more of him as a partner or a romantic interest than as an artist, and for about half a day, Sunghoon can’t figure out why. This is what he wanted, after all: for Heeseung to want him the way that Sunghoon did. Somehow, the confirmation through Riki that whatever was between them was real and reciprocal after all only makes his heart thump, deadened, in his chest.

The answer comes to him in the form of Junhwan sharing his experience filming Nothing Much Prepared with Lee Youngji, which Sunghoon was curious about, having never been himself. Jungwon is slated to appear on it too, with the filming occurring in about a week, and so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to pick up some tips and tricks about the show from someone who’s already gone.

Junhwan and Youngji really get along (Junhwan tells him very seriously that he collects INFPs, leading Sunghoon to wonder for a split second whether he should retake the MBTI test before he dismisses the ridiculous idea unspoken), but Junhwan is playfully exasperated as he laments having to explain his relationship status for the umpteenth time on a variety show.

“I swear it’s all anyone wants to know. Am I not more than this, Sunghoon-ah?!”

“It’s natural,” Sunghoon points out, though a smile tugs at the corners of his mouth at the pure petulance in Junhwan’s tone. “You’re twenty-four and really attractive, of course people want to know.”

Junhwan sighs heavily. “You’d think after the fifth time saying it that they’d stop asking though.”

“You never know when something changes. Besides, maybe Youngji-ssi is interested in you.”

“No.”

“Wh– what? Why not?” Sunghoon laughs, surprised by the outright rejection.

“Just — no,” Junhwan groans, but he’s laughing too. “Even if I were interested in her, she doesn’t know anything about figure skating. She got the name for the Salchow wrong after we spent four hours filming!” Junhwan laughs again, his annoyance purely performative. “My career is so demanding already, I could never date someone who didn’t understand it and why I care so much.”

“People can learn.”

“That’s true,” he relents, “but I don’t think I could date someone unless they already knew. It’s just… too much otherwise.”

Sunghoon frowns, trying to parse this information. “So you’d only date a figure skater?”

“No, not necessarily. There are plenty of other people who understand it. Fans of the sport, other athletes, former skaters…”

“Why does it matter so much?” Sunghoon questions honestly. “I get that they would have to understand how demanding your career is and stuff, but I don’t see why knowing so much about figure skating is important.”

Junhwan hesitates, mulling over his words before he responds. “Honestly, it’s probably not the workaholic tendencies,” he admits. “If it were just that, I could date… anyone who was super busy, really.” He laughs again, but there’s a little bit of sadness creeping in that makes the noise wry rather than amused. “But there’s a reason why I care so much about what I do, and the reason is that it’s figure skating. It’s kind of everything to me. So how much could a person ever really know me if they don’t also know the thing that’s everything to me?”

Oh, Sunghoon thinks, and then just — nothing. He understands now.

“You’re really smart, Junhwan-hyung.”

“All of a sudden?!”

“You made me realize some stuff, is all.”

“Ah,” Junhwan says before falling silent, letting Sunghoon decide if he wants to elaborate or not.

“Yeah. But, hyung, it’s been so long since I’ve seen your face! It’s officially off season now, we should get a meal together. You should come to the dorm!”

Junhwan doesn’t laugh, but his smile is palpable even through the telephone. “Of course, Sunghoon-ah. Just let hyung know when you’re free.”

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

Junhwan comes over on a Saturday evening when Enhypen doesn’t have any remaining schedules. They order fried chicken and beer on Coupang and sit down to eat at the table, with the rest of the members scattered to their rooms or the other dorm or otherwise out altogether. Throughout the day, Sunghoon catches a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth in anticipation of seeing Junhwan again. When he finally does, the sight of Junhwan’s polite resting face for some reason spurs Sunghoon to half pull him into a hug before he thinks better of it — but by then, Junhwan is already reciprocating, laughing breathily as he pats Sunghoon on the back. “It’s good to see you, Hoonie,” he greets. Sunghoon ducks his head, embarrassed by his own eagerness.

“You too, Junhwan-hyung.”

Once they get settled in, Sunghoon thankfully regains the ability to be normal, and they have a good time chatting and laughing together until the door clicks and Sunoo comes home.

He pauses almost comically in the doorway, shoes halfway off, and blurts out with wide eyes, “Junhwan-ssi?” Sunghoon facepalms.

“Oh — hello, Sunoo-ssi.” Junhwan gets up out of his chair to bow properly, infuriatingly polite as always.

Sunoo greets him once he finishes kicking his shoes off, and then immediately stalks over to flick Sunghoon on the forehead, ignoring Sunghoon’s explicit complaint. “Sunghoon-hyung didn’t tell me he was having someone over. I would have cleaned!”

“I cleaned up, though,” Sunghoon points out, a fact which goes unheeded by Sunoo, though it does get him a cute little smile from Junhwan.

“I’m sorry it’s such a mess… and that I’m bothering you! I could have stayed out if Sunghoon-hyung had told me…”

“You live here,” Sunghoon says, profoundly confused. “Why would you need to stay out?”

“I’m interrupting!”

“Interrupting what? Fried chicken in the common area? This isn’t exactly a private event, Sunoo-yah,” Sunghoon laughs. “Besides, you’re still here talking to us, so clearly you aren’t that worried about intruding.”

“Yah!” Sunoo pouts, and Junhwan covers his mouth so as not to laugh too loudly, though his eyes still crinkle up into crescent moons above his hand. “Fine, I’ll leave you alone. But tell me next time!”

“You’re welcome to stay,” Junhwan says charitably.

“Why would I tell you? I don’t tell you when anyone else comes over.”

“Yeah, but…” Sunoo trails off, glancing between the two of them meaningfully, and his meaning clicks in Sunghoon’s mind at the same time as he finally starts backing out of the dining room, waving his hand daintily behind him. “It was nice to see you, Junhwan-ssi. Sorry again for interrupting!”

“That’s alright,” Junhwan says, laughing puzzledly, waving back at Sunoo. “It was nice to see you too.”

Sunoo slips off into his room and Sunghoon groans as soon as the door clicks shut, slumping over in his seat.

“What?” Junhwan asks, turning to him with an amused expression.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Sunoo is… a lot sometimes.”

“Nah,” Junhwan dismisses easily, picking up his chopsticks again to reach for some of the banchan. “He’s fine. Your dynamic is cute.”

“Yeah, but he’s…” Realizing that he doesn’t exactly want to clue Junhwan into Sunoo’s ridiculous meddling if he hasn’t picked up on it, Sunghoon shakes his head to push the thought away and changes the subject. “Ah, it doesn’t matter. What were we talking about? The script Fantagio sent you?”

Before Junhwan can answer, though, there’s a loud thud from Riki’s room, followed by the distinct sound of him swearing in Japanese. Both Sunghoon and Junhwan’s heads turn towards the sound, so they’re looking when Ni-ki hops out of his room on one foot, rubbing his other shin with a slightly pained look on his face. “Holy shit,” he says as soon as his eyes land on Junhwan and Sunghoon, and then he just — stands there in front of his open door, peering at them with his hand still on his leg.

“Uh, hi?” Sunghoon tries. Junhwan waves.

“Sunoo said you were on a date, but I didn’t believe him. This was so worth waking up for! I’m gonna tell Jay-hyung.” Riki looks extremely pleased with himself for this idea, already reaching for his phone as Sunghoon sputters for a response, his ears and cheeks speckled red.

“I’m not on a date.”

“You sure?” Riki doesn’t even look up from his phone.

“Wh — yes? Don’t you think I would know that?”

Ni-ki shrugs and slides his phone back in his pocket. “I dunno. You thought you weren’t dating Heeseung-hyung even though you definitely were, so I kinda don’t think you can be trusted with this stuff.”

“And Sunoo can?!”

“More than you, anyway. Uh, hi, Junhwan-ssi.” Riki scuffs his socked foot against the floor and bows, finally looking at least a little sheepish. “Sorry to barge in on your date, I just had to see for myself. Sunghoon-hyung’s really repressed, you know?” Then, not waiting for a response, he bows again and turns back to his room. “I’m going back to sleep now. Use protection! I’m so glad Jay-hyung insisted the walls be soundproof,” he adds, a little grumble on the tail end of his audacious statements, and then he shuts the door behind him. Sunghoon stares at the space where Ni-ki used to be for about two seconds before pressing his burning face into his hands.

“Um,” he squeaks, his voice cracking on the single syllable. His phone buzzes on the table but he ignores it. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know why they… I never said anything, they don’t — they’re just nosy, and presumptuous, and Sunoo really wants me to move on so he’s projecting a little, and —”

“Sunghoon-ah, relax.” Junhwan’s voice is gentle and kind, sweetened further by a lingering twinge of humor. “It’s fine. It’s kind of funny, actually.”

Sunghoon peeks out between his fingers to gauge Junhwan’s expression. It’s exactly how his tone of voice would imply — kind and open, with a familiar, soft smile. His phone buzzes again, which is annoying. “Still,” he insists, deeming it safe to move his hands from his face. “It must be uncomfortable for you since you’re straight. I’ll talk to them so it doesn’t happen again.”

Junhwan’s expression shifts ever so slightly to something Sunghoon can’t quite place. “I mean, sure, if you’d like,” he agrees, “but Sunghoon-ah, I’m not straight.”

Sunghoon freezes. His phone buzzes for a third time. “What.”

“I thought you knew?” Junhwan laughs at whatever he sees on Sunghoon’s face. “Clearly not, sorry. But that’s really not… you don’t have to worry about making me uncomfortable like that.”

“Oh,” Sunghoon says faintly, and then does a mental recap of every conversation they’ve ever had about Junhwan’s relationship status. Now that he thinks of it, he had always used gender neutral language, even when Sunghoon defaulted to feminine terms. “I’m sorry. I just assumed…”

Junhwan shrugs, still smiling. “It’s alright. I thought you knew already.”

“How would I — you said your ideal type was Rosé or Song Jihyo!”

“Because people keep asking! I had to choose someone,” he laughs. “I like Rosé’s music. And I did have a crush on Jihyo for a while when I was younger.”

“Oh.” Sunghoon swallows harshly and his phone buzzes again, which is just fucking ridiculous at this point, so he puts off responding normally to instead mumble a curse at the device and swipe the notifications away.

Jjongsaengie
riki said you’re on a date with junhwan???????

Jjongsaengie
sunghoon.
SUNGHOON-AH THIS IS IMPORTANT. IF YOU’RE ON A DATE WITH CHA JUNHWAN I NEED TO KNOW.

Jjongsaengie
if you don’t answer in 5 minutes im walking over there myself.

Sunghoon groans and hastily types out a response — ‘im not on a fucking date when has Riki ever been a reliable source of information???’ — before putting his phone on silent, face-down again on the table. “Sorry. Jongseong. I, um — sorry again for assuming. I guess I just thought… I mean, you seem so…”

“It’s not ice princely of me, right?” Junhwan asks, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “I know, I just can’t help it. Men are hot.”

Sunghoon chokes on his own saliva and spends at least a few seconds sputtering for air while Junhwan laughs at him. “Oh,” he finally replies, sure that his cheeks are burning.

“You’re cute,” Junhwan observes, grinning far wider than Sunghoon thinks is strictly warranted.

“It’s — you caught me off guard. I’ve never heard you… talk like that.”

“You’re fun to tease.” Sunghoon finds that this is not actually a helpful contribution to the conversation, because it sort of implies that Junhwan was saying that purely to get a rise out of Sunghoon, which would imply that he doesn’t really think men are hot, or at least not enough for it to be worth commenting on, which —

Wait. Why is he thinking about this, again?

“Whatever, hyung.”

Junhwan giggles but lets it go. “Are the walls really soundproof?”

“Yeah, but not because of — that. Jongseong thought it would be a good idea ‘cause he plays guitar kinda late sometimes and didn’t want to bother anyone, and Heeseung used to sing at, like, fucking three in the morning, so…”

“Hm.” Junhwan nods and for a moment Sunghoon thinks he’s going to move on. “It must be useful, though. You don’t have to worry about —”

“Hyung.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Junhwan laughs, smiling far too wide. “I just didn’t know you got so flustered.”

“I’m not — good at talking about those things.”

“Clearly,” Junhwan says wryly, a crooked little smile on his face before it smooths into something more genuine. “It’s okay, me neither. Fake it ‘til you make it, you know?”

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“Good! That means it worked.”

“You’re so ridiculous.” Sunghoon tries to sound exasperated, but he thinks it comes out mostly just sounding fond.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

[DELETED CONTACT]
Hi, Sunghoon-ah. I know it’s been a while and that last time we talked it didn’t end so well, but I’ve been thinking about you a lot and I really want to try to make things right. Do you think we could meet again? Whenever you’re free, I’ll make myself available. I miss you a lot. Riki stopped giving me updates when I asked and I don’t know why, but it really sucks, not knowing how you’re doing. Please get back to me when you can. I’m sorry for how things turned out. I want to try and fix this.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

Sunghoon can’t leave Heeseung on read forever, but he can do his best to try.

It’s a shitty move and he knows it, especially when Heeseung is finally trying to communicate and is taking initiative in fixing things between them, but he just doesn’t think he can do it. The thought of facing Heeseung again, after everything — facing a Heeseung who wants him and misses him — makes Sunghoon want to cry. He’d say that he doesn’t know what he would do if Heeseung put him in that position, but the truth is that he does. Regardless of how Heeseung feels, of all the history between them — or maybe because of that history between them — Sunghoon doesn’t want him back. Not in the way he had him before, and maybe not in a way similar to that ever again.

It’s a heartbreaking thing to realize, actually, and when he puts two and two together after spending a whole hour tossing in turning in bed trying to figure out what about Heeseung’s text is getting to him so badly, he really does cry, alone in his room for longer than he’d like to admit. He has wanted Heeseung for so long, in so many different ways, and that wanting has never really gone away. But he’s spent the past three weeks moving on, and it is exactly as easy as he always feared it would be. Getting over his feelings was never the issue; it was always so much more complicated than that.

The distance between them is yawning and treacherous, and it widens every time Sunghoon decides to chase another dream. It doesn’t matter how fast Heeseung chases after him, not when they are travelling in different directions, in pursuit of different destinations. Heeseung wants to fix it and Sunghoon doesn’t think that he can. Heeseung wants to fix it, but Sunghoon isn’t sure he would let him.

He must be an awful person after all.

Heeseung is hard to remember and hard to forget. Sunghoon doesn’t know what to do with any of these emotions, not really, besides pushing through and past them until they’re out of sight and out of mind. Every day it gets a little bit easier. A new text from Heeseung in his phone makes it that much worse. Still, Sunghoon is more determined than ever not to sink into old habits or to chase after something that isn’t real. Even when it makes him a liar and a hypocrite and a terrible, selfish person, Sunghoon won’t give in, and right now that means that he won’t respond. Heeseung made his choice. Sunghoon made his, too. Now they both have to live with it.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

[DELETED CONTACT]
I guess that you’re still mad at me. That’s fair. I’m not going to stop trying, though, Sunghoon-ah. I’m going to keep reaching out, and when you’re ready, I’ll be here. I miss you too much to give up on you like that.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

Things are busy, which makes it easier than ever not to think of Heeseung, save for all the times he runs aimlessly through his mind. Sunghoon finds that nowadays, though, Heeseung isn’t even the only one who lingers in his subconscious. Jongseong is there, nagging him about something or another; Jake makes stupid jokes Sunghoon would never dare to say out loud; Sunoo is always judging him in that all-knowing way of his; and Junhwan is always laughing, bringing an inexorable ray of light into every moment. Sunghoon doesn’t feel like such a terrible person when he hears Junhwan laughing in his ear.

Of course, when a person is that bright, you want to keep them close. Sunghoon admits that it’s a little excessive, the way he seeks out Junhwan’s company, but Junhwan never seems to mind. He reaches out as much as Sunghoon does, and whatever feeling he once had of not being good enough around Junhwan has petered down to a whisper in only his worst moments. It’s hard to latch onto feelings like that when Junhwan simply makes him feel safe.

All of this in mind, he probably should have seen it coming. It’s just — why would he? Junhwan isn’t Heeseung, and Heeseung still resides in every corner of Sunghoon’s mind.

Sunghoon had come to visit Junhwan at the rink after practice (which he still attends even though it’s the off-season), eager to spend as much time with him as possible before Junhwan’s responsibilities started lining up again, the first and foremost being appearances in Japan. They talk about what to do as they linger outside the ice rink, and Sunghoon says something stupid, and Junhwan throws his head back and laughs, his smile as bright as the early-afternoon sunlight, and Sunghoon is suddenly struck that Junhwan is far more an ice prince than he ever could be — beautiful, stoic, kind, untouchable. He’s a fantasy of a man, and there is a part of Sunghoon that wants to reach out and touch, to press their lips together and find out how to make that serenity crack into something much more raw.

Woah, he thinks, and then, fuck, followed by, what?, concluding with, oh no. He can’t believe the maknaes were right.

“It’s such a nice day out,” Junhwan says, turning that devastating smile onto Sunghoon, a beam of light straight to the heart. “It would be a shame to waste it. Would you like to walk around for a while?”

“Sure,” Sunghoon agrees faintly, and then he follows Junhwan down the sidewalk, into the sun.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

[DELETED CONTACT]
Sunghoon, I would really like to speak with you. I know things are busy, but can’t you make some time? Even 15 minutes would be great. There’s so much I want to say to you.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

So. That’s a thing that’s happening now.

Sunghoon spends about half an evening quietly spiralling about it in his room before he realizes that he can just ignore it until it goes away, as he does with everything — as he did with Heeseung, up until Heeseung kissed him in Chicago, but honestly, it had been working pretty well back then. He sees no reason why it wouldn’t work again now. And, most importantly, the maknaes never have to know that their projections and jokes ever had even the slightest hinge in reality.

Assured by this course of action, Sunghoon proceeds as per usual. Junhwan wants to know what the inside of the HYBE building looks like, but their schedules never seem to line up right for a visit. He’s checking his phone after dance practice, fanning his shirt out as he presses his back against the wall near the water cooler, when he sees that Junhwan is finally free for the night, and he quickly composes a text.

i’m at hybe right now if you want to come by
just finished dance practice

the company?

yeah

is that allowed????

yeah sure, you’re my guest. i can get you cleared by security in like 15 minutes

…i’m on my way.

It takes Sunghoon approximately three minutes to find his manager and request that security clear Junhwan, and another twenty to get a text confirming the go-ahead — a bit longer than he anticipated, but it’s in the right ballpark, anyway. Besides, Junhwan doesn’t arrive in the meantime, so it’s not like it matters.

When he does arrive, he texts Sunghoon to say so, and Sunghoon traipses down to the elevators to retrieve him. Junhwan is dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, wearing his glasses, and he looks unfairly handsome. Sunghoon, meanwhile, is still slightly gross from dancing despite having rinsed off and changed into something slightly more presentable than his usual practice clothes. As he said: unfair.

Junhwan pulls him into a hug, which is the customary greeting between them despite the fact that Sunghoon never has any idea what to do with it. He can never find it in him to push Junhwan away regardless. “Thanks for coming, hyung.”

“Are you kidding? Thanks for inviting me. It’s so cool seeing a bit into the idol life.”

“It’s really not that glamorous.” Still, Sunghoon starts their impromptu tour, happily showing Junhwan around the common areas — the cafeteria, the lounges, the gym, the empty practice rooms. Junhwan nods like Sunghoon is sharing important information at every turn, even though none of it matters at all.

“What about Enhypen? Where do you guys practice?” Junhwan asks, so Sunghoon takes him to the elevator and punches their floor.

“I dunno if any of the others are still hanging around,” he explains as the doors slide open. “Jongseong said something about going to the studio to work on some music? and Jungwon might be doing a live… but nothing’s scheduled, so we should be — fine.” Sunghoon stops in his tracks as they enter the lounge area the elevators open towards, barely finishing his sentence.

“Oh,” Junhwan says softly from behind him, but it’s drowned out by Heeseung saying, “Sunghoon-ah, you came.”

“What?” Sunghoon doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Technically Heeseung still works on this floor, but they’ve managed to rarely run into each other so far. Just his luck that it would happen now.

“My texts? That’s why you’re here, right?” Heeseung’s brow furrows like he’s confused too, so Sunghoon pulls out his phone, which he’d been neglecting since Junhwan arrived. Sure enough, he has several notifications from Heeseung that he hadn’t seen at all.

[DELETED CONTACT]
Jake said you guys just finished practice but you might be hanging around the company. I’m done recording in twenty minutes or so? I’d really appreciate if you would talk to me, Sunghoon-ah.
I’ll be in the lounge once I finish, if you want to talk.
Please.

“Oh.” Sunghoon awkwardly puts his phone back in his pocket. Heeseung looks so hopeful, Sunghoon actually feels pretty bad letting him down. “Um. I didn’t see those, actually. I was just showing Junhwan-hyung around.”

“Hello,” Junhwan says, taking the opportunity to bow and introduce himself. Heeseung somewhat reluctantly bows back, but it’s pretty clearly half-assed.

“Seriously? You didn’t see my texts at all?”

“No.”

“And since when do you bring people to the company? Normally you’re super private about work.”

Sunghoon frowns. “Since now, I guess.”

Heeseung sighs as if this whole interaction has been laborious for him. “Do you want to talk? Since you’re here and all. Or I could wait, I guess…” he tacks on at the end, his eyes darting over to the Junhwan in the room.

“Uh.” Sunghoon stuffs his hands in his pockets because it seems less awkward, then takes them out again because it ends up feeling more awkward than letting them hang limply at his sides. “I’m… kinda busy right now, hyung.”

“After, then,” Heeseung presses, and Sunghoon’s eyes dart over to Junhwan, making quick eye contact.

“We were actually…”

“I was going to bring Sunghoonie to see my medals. A trade off, you know.” Junhwan cuts in with an easy smile, and Sunghoon is so grateful he could kiss him.

“Oh.” Sunghoon won’t kiss him, obviously, because that’s a terrible idea in every conceivable way. “Can’t it wait?”

Sunghoon shrugs, trying to borrow some of Junhwan’s nonchalance. “Can’t this? You kind of ambushed me, hyung.” He’s pretty sure he just ends up sounding crass, but — oh, well. He tried.

“I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me for a week.”

Yeah? And how’s that going? is what Sunghoon wants to say, but he swallows down his snark and tries to be a little kinder. “Now isn’t a good time.”

“When is a good time?” Heeseung throws his hands up, exasperated. “You haven’t even tried, Sunghoon-ah. I just want to talk.”

“I tried for months,” Sunghoon disagrees, slightly on edge now. He’s annoyed by what Heeseung is saying, yes, but also that they’re apparently having this conversation — any conversation, really — now, in front of Junhwan, of all people. “It’s a bit late to act like I’m the dead weight here, hyung.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sunghoon snaps. “I’m not talking about this with you right now. I’m here with Junhwan-hyung, in case you haven’t noticed, so if you could stop being a dick in front of my friend that would be great.”

Heeseung has the audacity to laugh, dry and sarcastic. “Sure. I’m the one being a dick right now.”

“Don’t say that to him,” Junhwan interrupts, sounding ticked off, for once nowhere even close to laughter. Heeseung looks at him again, for the first time since Junhwan greeted him, and his face does something complicated that Sunghoon can’t read at all.

“So you’re my replacement,” he mutters, so quietly Sunghoon isn’t sure they’re even meant to hear it — but they do.

“I’m sorry?” Junhwan asks at the same time Sunghoon says, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Heeseung frowns, clearly regretting the words already. “You’re — look. Junhwan-ssi. I don’t mean any disrespect, but you’re… I mean, I’m sure you see the similarities. You’re someone he looks up to. You two got close after I left. It’s safe to look up to you ‘cause with figure skating, Sunghoon was the one who left. It’s more complicated with me.” More important, is the unspoken implication. “You’re… you know.” He glances between them, gaze almost soft, somehow, as if what he’s saying is a compliment. “You’re kind of like me.”

Sunghoon doesn’t even know what to say. You’re out of your mind is one of the options that runs through his head, along with you have no idea what you’re talking about and is that what you think of me? Of us? None of them seem adequate. Sunghoon is still standing there like a fool when Junhwan answers for him.

“Sunghoon doesn’t look up to me, Heeseung-ssi. He has never treated me as anything other than an equal.”

“I mean, sure, but — he thinks you’re perfect, right? And he wants to be like you, and to be with you all the time.”

“Sunghoon knows damn well that I’m nowhere close to perfect. And he doesn’t need to be like me, because he’s doing very well as he is right now.”

Heeseung sighs again, holding up his hands as though he’s surrendering. “I’m not trying to offend you.”

Junhwan pulls a face, his brows furrowing together. “You aren’t offending me. You’re bothering me. Because I think you’re making a lot of assumptions about myself and about Sunghoon, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that you shouldn’t be.”

“What?” Heeseung both sounds and looks shocked. Junhwan, after all, is pretty chill, and it takes a lot to set him off. He is exactly as combative as he appears, which is to say, not at all. Sunghoon is sure he looks much the same as Heeseung right now.

“I don’t mean to offend, but I am nothing like you, Heeseung-ssi. I don’t run away from the people I care about, and I don’t make them chase after me. I don’t let people down when they’re counting on me without giving it my very best shot. I don’t assume I have people’s affection or devotion when I’ve fucked up or everything’s changing, and I would never talk so callously about a man I loved.”

“Well, good for you, I guess.” Heeseung looks sort of like he has no idea what’s even happening anymore, which is rich since he started it. “Congratulations on being a better person than me or Sunghoon.”

“You’re wrong again, Heeseung-ssi,” Junhwan says immediately. “Sunghoon is a better person than I could ever be, and he is nothing like you are, either. Now, if you’ll excuse me —” And here, Junhwan ducks his head slightly, and Sunghoon notices for the first time that his ears are burning red. “— I will leave you two alone before I say something else I regret.”

Junhwan dashes down the hall towards where the washrooms are. “Sunghoon —” Heeseung starts, but Sunghoon is already turning away, following after Junhwan, ignoring Heeseung calling his name.

Junhwan was wrong. Sunghoon is horrible and selfish and cruel just like Heeseung is. It’s just — Heeseung isn’t that awful or selfish or cruel in the grand scheme of things, either. Even when he’s being an asshole.

Junhwan is chewing on his lip with a contemplative look on his face when Sunghoon joins him in the washroom. He looks surprised to see him for a split second before he forgoes that to say, “I’m so sorry, Sunghoon-ah.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know why I — well, that’s not true, I know why I said that. I shouldn’t have, though. It wasn’t my place and it wasn’t my business and I’m sorry.”

“You– you don’t have to be sorry, hyung. I don’t know why you’re… I wanted to say thank you.”

Junhwan blinks. “For what? For humiliating myself?”

“What?! No. You didn’t humiliate yourself. You defended me. I didn’t know what to say, and you…” Sunghoon gestures forward, hands splayed, then realizes that that makes no sense. “You did it for me. Thank you, hyung.”

“I didn’t do anything for you,” Junhwan disagrees, baffled. “I probably just made things a million times worse. Now you and Heeseung have more to argue about.”

“Heeseung made things worse. You helped.”

“Sunghoon, I insulted him to his face.”

“He deserved it.”

Junhwan pulls a face like he’s eating something sour. “Yeah,” he mumbles, “he kinda did.” Sunghoon laughs, bright and surprised, and Junhwan finally cracks a smile again, though it quickly fades. “I’m still sorry, though. I guess I didn’t realize how much I hated him until he was right there. I don’t usually… think about him, I guess. But he’s hurt you so much, and he was hurting you again, and I couldn’t handle it.” He grimaces. “Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.” Sunghoon laughs incredulously. He feels kind of crazy. That impulse to kiss Junhwan has multiplied about a hundred fold. This is probably a bad thing, but he doesn’t really have the presence of mind to worry about it right now. “Seriously, Junhwan-hyung. I’m… grateful. You’re way kinder to me than I deserve.”

“What are you talking about?” Junhwan still looks vaguely pissed, and it’s honestly a pretty cute look on him. The thickness of his lips makes everything frown-adjacent look kind of like a pout, and it’s really not helping with Sunghoon’s problems. “No, I’m not. You’re too harsh on yourself, Sunghoonie. I don’t know why you compare yourself to him. I know he’s — your friend, though. Before everything.”

“Yeah,” Sunghoon agrees faintly, and as if summoned, Sunghoon’s phone screen lights up with text messages from the man himself.

[DELETED CONTACT]
I’m sorry, Sunghoon. I’m stressed right now with work and I’ve really been wanting to talk to you and it sucked to see you with him instead, but that’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have said any of that stuff. I didn’t mean it.
I’m going to wait in the lobby downstairs. If you want to come talk to me after, you can, even just to yell at me. I’d deserve it. If you don’t respond in an hour I guess I’ll just go home.
But Sunghoon, please think about it. I miss you so much. The only reason I’m being a dick right now is because I miss you.

Sunghoon sighs. He’s been putting it off for long enough, and today proved that he can’t keep doing that forever.

Park Sunghoon
okay. i’ll find you later

‘Thank you, Sunghoon-ah,’ comes the immediate reply, but Sunghoon clicks off his phone barely having glanced at it. He looks back up at Junhwan and smiles sheepishly. “Let’s get out of the bathroom.”

“Great idea.”

Sunghoon shows him the floor, the same way he’d planned to, and they end up sprawled in chairs in an empty room at the end of it. Junhwan spins in his and whispers “Wheeee” at the ceiling and Sunghoon laughs for longer than is probably necessary.

“You don’t think — sorry.” Junhwan stops spinning to look at Sunghoon as he speaks. “You don’t think what Heeseung-hyung said was true, right? About you being a replacement?”

Junhwan scoffs and spins halfway, then back. “Definitely not. Like I said, I think he was making a lot of self-centred assumptions.”

“Oh, good.” Sunghoon hesitates. “Because you’re not, obviously. But, uh — just so you know for sure. I don’t… think of you like that.”

“I know,” Junhwan says softly.

“I know it might seem like it, ‘cause we only started getting close after he left, and I did — I mean, I guess I did come to you with a lot of stuff about him, but I don’t… that wasn’t because you were a replacement for him, it’s because you’re you. And I really… trust you, and I think you’re smart, and you definitely give better advice than my members, but I also just… like you and I like spending time with you.” Sunghoon is aware, consciously, that he should really stop talking now. It was embarrassing to start, and every second it only gets worse with the terribly earnest things coming out of his mouth. He should really shut up and hope Junhwan doesn’t think about any of it too deeply. “So please don’t, um, waste your time thinking about what Heeseung was saying. You’re nothing like him. This is… nothing like that was.” It’s already on the precipice of too much, really, so Sunghoon finally snaps his mouth shut, ears and neck burning, trying not to think too hard about Junhwan’s prospective reaction. This is why Sunghoon never talks about his feelings.

Junhwan is silent for a moment before he hums, low and rich. “I know that, Sunghoon-ah,” he replies, voice light, like they’re in together on a joke, like he could burst into laughter any second now. Sunghoon still isn’t looking at him, but he feels Junhwan’s hand brush over his, a gentle pressure. “I know you, don’t I?”

“Yes,” Sunghoon agrees, exhaling his worries and taking a leap of faith. He can’t kiss Junhwan, can’t even dream of it, but he turns his hand and laces their fingers together and only sees Junhwan’s surprised expression from the corner of his eye. “You do. And I know you, Junhwan-hyung.”

Junhwan smiles, big and bright and beautiful. “Exactly.”

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

Heeseung looks pathetic, sitting alone on a couch in the second floor lounge, scrolling on his phone while he waits for Sunghoon. His leg is jiggling. It’s a nice change of pace.

“Hi,” Sunghoon greets, drawing Heeseung’s attention up immediately.

“Sunghoon-ah,” Heeseung breathes out, relieved, the same way he always does. Despite everything, he reaches out to pull Sunghoon into a hug, and despite everything, hearing his name said in that voice still sends a pang of longing through Sunghoon’s heart. It’s muted, though, a barely-there thing. It passes within seconds. “Thank you for coming.”

“Yeah.” Sunghoon carefully separates their bodies. “You’re right, it’s time we talked about this.”

“I’m sorry for earlier. I really didn’t mean any of it. I was just on edge, and —”

“What did you want to talk about, hyung?”

“Right.” Heeseung clears his throat, and it’s more than a little awkward. Neither of them have ever been very good at talking about their feelings like this. “We should — go somewhere more private, right?”

It’s a good idea, so Sunghoon follows Heeseung to an unoccupied room before looking at him expectantly again.

“I wanted to say that I’m sorry for leaving Enhypen. And I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you earlier, or talk to you guys about any of it. I was… I wanted to tell you all the time, Sunghoon-ah, really. I just thought it would be easier for you if you didn’t know.”

Sunghoon frowns. “How could that possibly be easier for me?”

“I don’t know! It was supposed to be me and you, you know? I didn’t want you to think I was abandoning you.”

“You didn’t want me to think you were abandoning me, so you didn’t talk to me?”

Heeseung winces. “Well, when you put it that way…”

“I’m not trying to put it any way. I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Oh.” Heeseung frowns down at his hands, his knobbly fingers. “I guess I didn’t want you to think that anything was changing. Because it wasn’t, for me. Or… with you, I guess.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Heeseung flinches, but Sunghoon’s frustration wins over anyway. “I told you this already, hyung. Things changed the minute you decided not to tell me things. Things changed when I found out at the same time everyone else did.”

“Right,” Heeseung rushes to agree. “You’re right. But that’s what I was thinking at the time. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

“And then what? You decided to keep me in the dark forever when I was clearly upset about it?”

Heeseung hesitates, and he sounds apologetic when he says, “I didn’t… it wasn’t obvious at all, Sunghoon-ah. Up until I asked you that day in my apartment, I had no idea you were mad at me at all. I thought it had all worked out and we were on the same page about things.”

Sunghoon’s immediate reaction is incredulity, but he forces himself to look past that and try to see things from Heeseung’s perspective. He thinks back to how hard he tried in those first few months to bridge the suddenly insurmountable distance between them, how desperate he was to breach that cavern on his own if he had to. He wanted, so badly, for things to go back to normal. But if Heeseung thought that they already were normal, if he didn’t realize anything was wrong at all…

“Okay,” he finally says, “fine. I guess I can see why you could think that. But, hyung — what was the same page to you, anyway?”

Heeseung blinks, caught off guard. “I — what do you mean? It’s… it’s us. I don’t know. That we were… there for each other, I guess,” he elaborates when Sunghoon doesn’t take back the question, though he’s clearly uncomfortable saying it out loud. “In a different way than with all the others. I thought we were… partners, I guess. In some sense of the word.”

Sunghoon inhales slowly, trying not to feel like he’s losing his mind, trying not to cry. “Did you love me?”

“Wh– what? Sunghoon. Sunghoon-ah. What do you mean, did I love you?” Heeseung looks distraught, truly shocked for the first time. “Of course I love you. I was — everyone knew it. Everyone knows I’m crazy about you.”

Oh.

“Not everyone,” he says quietly, and lets Heeseung draw the conclusion from there.

“You didn’t —”

“I thought I did.” Sunghoon finally meets Heeseung’s eyes — wide, afraid, sad, a reflection of everything Sunghoon has felt over the past months finally shining back at him. Finally on the same page about things. “Before you left. And then I didn’t anymore.”

“Oh.” Heeseung seems to curl in on himself, almost deflated, mostly scared. “I really did fuck everything up, didn’t I?”

Sunghoon shrugs. “Yeah.”

“Fuck.” Heeseung tugs both hands through his bleached hair, blond down to the roots. “I never would have —”

“Yes, you would.” Sunghoon cuts him off harshly, more so than he’d intended. “Don’t say that. You would have done it regardless.”

“I– I would have done it differently, at least.”

“I would hope so, hyung.”

“Fuck,” Heeseung whispers again, sliding his hands down his face.

“Yeah.” It feels inappropriate to just move on, but Sunghoon doesn’t think he can stand to stew in the silence for much longer. He awkwardly gets to his feet. “Was there something else you wanted to say?”

“Well, there was.” Heeseung laughs humourlessly. “I don’t know, Sunghoon. You’re not — fuck. You and Junhwan. You aren’t…?”

Sunghoon stares at him. “Seriously? That’s what you want to know?”

Heeseung winces, like he knows exactly how stupid the question is but he doesn’t regret asking it. “The thought of you with someone else makes me want to throw up.”

Once upon a time, hearing something like that from Heeseung would have made Sunghoon feel like he was flying. Now, he just feels sad. He realizes, very suddenly, that he doesn’t quite know what to do with Heeseung so openly wanting him. Despite everything that they’ve done together, it was never quite this explicit before.

“No,” Sunghoon answers, looking away. “We’re not. Me and Junhwan.”

“Good.”

“You don’t get to say that.”

“Sorry, just —” Heeseung heaves out a sigh, then looks up at Sunghoon with pleading eyes. “Do you think we could ever go back? To how things used to be?”

He wishes that they could. His lack of an answer is answer enough.

“Okay,” Heeseung says. “Maybe we can go somewhere better, then.”

Sunghoon doubts it. But even if they could — “I don’t want that right now, hyung. Maybe someday, but… not now.”

“So what are we, then?” Heeseung looks lost. Sunghoon doesn’t know what to tell him. They’re going in different directions, they’re swimming to different shores. He can’t very well reach out his hand.

“Former bandmates,” he ends up saying, half a joke, half not. It’s cruel either way, he knows, but he doesn’t stick around to hear the response. “Bye, Heeseung-hyung. I’ll see you around,” he says, and he closes the door behind him.

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

With things with Heeseung well and truly and definitively over, Sunghoon is now faced with a different problem which haunts his subconscious: he still hasn’t gotten over his feelings for Junhwan. In fact, they only seem to be getting worse.

He thought that being normal and quietly ignoring his feelings would make them go away, or at least make it manageable. He is displeased to learn that this is absolutely not the case, because now thoughts of kissing Junhwan haunt him peripherally nearly every time they talk. It’s awful. Sunghoon thinks he’s going to die.

“You’re so fucking dramatic, you’re not going to die.” Sunghoon made Jongseong swear on his life that he wouldn’t tell the maknaes about his situation and threatened him with multiple forms of bodily violence on top of that. It remains to be seen whether he will actually keep that promise, but the truth is out there now, so Sunghoon can’t take it back. “If Heeseung didn’t kill you, this definitely won’t.”

That’s… true, probably, but this somehow feels worse in unforeseen ways. Sunghoon knows now that there are certain mistakes he refuses to make. It leaves him with fewer options, and ignoring either Junhwan or his feelings are no longer among them.

“I think he was looking at me the other day,” Sunghoon says miserably. Jongseong looks like he wants to hit him.

“We’ve had this conversation before. You’re hot, he’s gay, gay people think you’re hot. Why the fuck do you sound so sad about it?!”

“He doesn’t want me,” Sunghoon bemoans, squishing his face into Jongseong’s pillow (he has co-opted Jongseong’s bed. Apparently his despair is evident enough that Jay hasn’t felt the need to kick him out yet).

“Literally what are you talking about.”

“Even if he thinks I’m attractive, he doesn’t want me, Jjay-ah.”

“How could you possibly know that?” Jay is squinting in a very disgruntled way at his monitor. It’s pretty cute.

“I just do.” Sunghoon is aware that he sounds obstinate and dumb, but it’s the truth. He does know that Junhwan doesn’t want him. Why would he? Junhwan knows him, after all, and knows in granular and grimy detail how intensely and unhealthily he fell for Heeseung. Junhwan is smart, and emotionally intelligent, and there’s no way he wants anything to do with Sunghoon’s mess.

“That’s so fucking stupid. You’re fucking stupid. Just talk to him, for fuck’s sake, you know it wouldn’t make it weird. The guy probably gets, like, three confessions a day.”

This is all true. It feels different, though. Besides, Sunghoon is fragile.

“You are not fragile.” Jongseong is sounding more and more pissed off as Sunghoon goes on.

“I’ll cry.”

“That’s normal. Crying is healthy. It doesn’t make you fragile.”

“But it’ll be disgusting and humiliating,” Sunghoon counters, and Jongseong groans, clearly fed up with his bullshit.

“Get off my fucking bed, oh my god. Look. I’m not gonna pretend I know he likes you back or whatever, but there’s a reason Sunoo and Riki are so convinced about it. There’s a chance, Sunghoon-ah. And I know you get in your head about this stuff, but you’re gonna be stuck up there either way, so you might as well make it a little easier for yourself and get it off your chest. Junhwan’s a nice guy, and he clearly likes you a lot for some fucking reason, so I don’t see why you should keep beating yourself up over it when you could just get this over with. Besides, isn’t he going to Japan soon?”

“Yes,” Sunghoon says contemplatively. “That’s a good idea.”

“Wh — really?!”

“Yeah. Distance should help, right? Maybe I’ll be normal again when he comes back from Fantasy on Ice and then I won’t have to deal with any of this.”

“That cannot be what you took away from that.”

“Thanks, Jjongsaeng!”

“Fuck you.”

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

[Select text exchanges between CHA JUNHWAN and PARK SUNGHOON, May to June 2026.]

i had to dance to overdrive today. i don’t know how you do this.

ᄏᄏᄏ videos or it didn’t happen

[video attached]
i’m not built for this. i can’t do concepts like you do…

you did well though
no one in enhypen can do cute concepts either

untrue

well yeah i guess the maknaes are cute.
and Jongseong is cute

right
sunghoonie, too

no

😊
don’t argue with your hyung, sunghoon-ah. i know best.

fukc you
*fuck

ᄒᄒ cute

—

hyunggggggg my arms hurt

ok

ᄏᄏᄏᄏᄏᄏ

—

how’s Japan?

いいですね。練習の調子はどうですか？

stop bragging
i had to ask Riki to translate that

ᄏᄏᄏ ask him to translate this too
会いたいよ。戻ったら一緒に食事に行こう！

are you trying to make the dating allegations worse???
fine. you’re buying though

of course

—

are you busy?

just finished recording

[CHA JUNHWAN started a call that lasted 3 hours, 27 minutes]

—

[picture attached]
I DID NOT SEND THAT
THAT WAS RIKI
IM SO SORRY

?
ᄒᄒᄒᄒ
sunghoonie is very handsome

just handsome?
THWAS RIKI AGAIN
FUKC]
IGNORE ATHIS
IM TRYIGN TP
GET MY
PHEOFNA SBACK

ᄏᄏᄏ sunghoonie is very attractive
is that better?

no try again

you’re very sexy, sunghoon-ah.

THAT WAS NOT ME FUCK
im so sorry. please ignore all of that.
Riki is too tall. i need to get taller

i think it might be a bit late for that

don’t say that
have hope
if i get taller he’ll never be able to hold my phone hostage again

hm
but then how will i get photos like that?

STOP
???????????

sorry!

—

[photo attached]

hyung. what the fuck is this.

you sent me a photo so i thought i’d send one too!

what the hell are you wearing

ᄏᄏᄏ it’s one of the faoi costumes

why would they do that
not even you can pull those pants off.

no one else got the pants, the costume varies a little per person
everyone else has sheer shirts but i guess they wanted to preserve my dignity?

no it’s because of the pants

what?

they’re tight
i mean they’re ugly as fuck
but

oh
i didn’t realize that was considered on par with shirtlessness.

probably not for most people idk

?

Junhwan-hyung.

what

you have
good legs. i guess

oh
i did not know that
thank you

yeah
are the other costumes better than this, at least?

—

sunghoonahhhh

?
Junhwan-hyung?

i am.d rukn
they have good alcohol in japna
i miss you

i miss you too

—

i see i was more wasted than i thought last night…
i’m sorry i bothered you!!

you didn’t bother me
you never bother me

well. even still.
i do miss you, though.
when does your tour start again?

not until July

oh

don’t you get back in early June?

yes, but i have to do my enlistment training.

oh fuck
i forgot about that
how long is it for again??

one month
we’ll make something work, anyway.

maybe i’ll get to see you with a buzzcut

hey
that’ll be you in a few years, you know…

i didn’t say anything!!!

—

[image attached]
Thor misses you

??????????
sunghoon-ah. why do you have my cat.
have you taken him hostage???

hostage for what??
relax. i visited your parents.

since when do you visit my parents?????
since when do you even KNOW my parents?????

ah, you know
you introduced us that one time i came over

yes, for about two seconds.

[image attached]

sunghoon, you cannot just distract me with photos of you and my cat.

[image attached]
[image attached]
i gave him wings. you know like batman

sunghoon. that makes no sense. batman does not have wings.

[image attached]

what the fuck

[CHA JUNHWAN started a call that lasted six minutes]

—

you should bring back the batman program. it’s pretty hot

i will take this into consideration.

—

i’m in your walls

ok
oh you mean you’re here. yeah i’ll let you in

₊˚｡⋆❆⋆｡˚₊

Junhwan is as pretty as he was the last time Sunghoon saw him, and it wreaks havoc on every part of his nervous system. It shouldn’t be allowed, he thinks, to be so stunning or so bright.

“Sunghoonie.” Junhwan’s eyes crinkle up with his smile as he hugs him like he always does. “I missed you.”

“Yeah.” Sunghoon melts a little more than he should, he’s sure, but Junhwan doesn’t say anything. “I missed you too.”

“It’s been, like, two weeks,” Sunoo says from the dining table, sounding profoundly annoyed. “You two are so dramatic.”

“Fuck off,” Sunghoon says, cheeks burning, and then he pulls a laughing Junhwan by the hand into his room, where prying eyes and ears can’t reach them.

So — Sunghoon has prepared for this moment. He had to, because otherwise he would chicken out. And Junhwan isn’t stupid, and they’ve been low-key flirting for weeks, and Sunghoon is stupid, and he knows it’s a terrible idea in every possible way, but he still looks at Junhwan and just — wants and wants and wants. It’s ill-advised and potentially ruinous and all kinds of idiotic, but Sunghoon has already decided that he’s selfish. And after everything — after everything — if he can have, after all that wanting, then he will.

He will, if Junhwan will let him.

“So, uh, I went to see your parents.” Sunghoon is sweating. That feels like a terrible non-sequitor, but Jongseong said there was no way to do this that wasn’t awkward. Generally, Sunghoon trusts Jongseong about these things, even when he pretends not to.

“Yeah,” Junhwan agrees, crooking an eyebrow. “What was that about? They wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“Uh.” Sunghoon blinks twice, just to get his bearings. “I wanted to ask them about — I wanted to ask them how they would feel if I —” He’s doing this all wrong. He closes his eyes briefly and tries to remember his script, then opens them again, because he can feel Junhwan peering at him, curious and amused and endlessly soft. “I wanted to ask them for permission to date their son.”

Junhwan blinks. His mouth falls open just the slightest bit, a small o of surprise, and a ruddy shade of pink overtakes his ears and cheeks immediately. It’s almost devastatingly charming. Sunghoon is going to die here, he thinks.

“You asked my parents for permission to date me?”

“Um. Yes.” Junhwan isn’t saying anything, so Sunghoon decides to continue. He can’t possibly make it worse than it already is. “I always wanted to — do it right, I guess. To whatever extent I could. My parents aren’t… I mean, I’m not quite there with them yet, but you said yours… you said they knew, and were fine with it, so I thought… I wanted to do it right,” he reiterates, because that’s the main thing. “I always thought if I was in a serious relationship I would do it right. That’s probably part of why I didn’t feel like Heeseung and I were really — together, because we never… yeah. Anyway. Sorry. I’ve never done this before.” Sunghoon hasn’t felt this much like his fifteen-year-old self since he was, well, fifteen. “I’m — would you like to go on a date with me, Junhwan-hyung?”

The first thing Sunghoon registers when he looks at Junhwan’s expression again is that he’s smiling. Oh, he thinks faintly, feeling a little dizzy. That’s probably good. “Hm.” Junhwan presses his pointer finger against his bottom lip, like he’s really thinking about it. It’s probably supposed to be a bit, but all Sunghoon can think about is how he would really like to kiss those lips. “That depends. Would you like to be my boyfriend, Sunghoonie?”

Sunghoon is going to die here. He is going to explode from all the light bursting inside of him, from an excess of entropy. He’s going to spontaneously combust. “Yes,” he says, and he sounds embarrassingly breathless, but he doesn’t have time to even feel that embarrassment, really, because then Junhwan leans forward and kisses him.

Sunghoon’s heart stops. Just for a second, but he feels it. “Sorry,” Junhwan says, still smiling, as Sunghoon wheezes beside him like an absolute loser. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.”

“Me — too,” he chokes out, finally regaining control of his breathing. “Sorry. I’m not usually this — um. Awkward?”

“Yes, you are. But I like when you’re awkward. It’s cute.”

“I wasn’t like this with your parents,” Sunghoon insists, because it feels important. Junhwan starts laughing, his head tilted back, unfairly pretty.

“I would hope not. If you were, they probably wouldn’t have given their permission. You must have given a good impression if they agreed after only meeting you once.”

“Oh.” Sunghoon smiles down at his hands. “Really?”

“Don’t let it get to your head,” Junhwan admonishes, knowing damn well that it’s too late. “And come back here. I’m going to hold your hand.”

“Awesome,” Sunghoon croaks out, which does not help with the loser allegations. Junhwan laughs at him, which makes Sunghoon pout slightly, but then Junhwan kisses him again, so Sunghoon decides he doesn’t care. He likes when Junhwan laughs, and of all the versions of that sound he’s heard, not a single one has ever been mean.

Junhwan’s lips can’t get much plumper than they already are, but they do turn a darker shade of red, raw and well kissed, within a few minutes. Sunghoon itches to take a picture of the terribly pretty sight. Instead, he holds Junhwan’s hand again and breathes all the safety and the warmth that Junhwan holds inside of him in, in, in.