Chapter Text
Hongjoong wakes up to the sound of his third alarm, the one that means Get up now or you’re in serious trouble. His back aches in about four different places, and his glasses are squashed between his face and the cushion of his couch, where he’d fallen asleep last night. Again. He knows that working late until he can’t help but pass out where he’s sitting isn’t ideal, but sleeping early doesn’t pay the bills.
He hoists himself upright and checks his watch. He has time for either breakfast or a shower, and Hongjoong would rather die than turn up unwashed to work, so shower it is. As a concession to energy levels, he eats a chocolate bar, which makes him feel disgusting. He compensates with a banana and then hustles to the bathroom.
Fifteen minutes later, he’s grabbing a black jean jacket with one hand and his bag of camera equipment with the other. He glances in the hallway mirror—he didn’t have time to do much makeup beyond some concealer and his eyebrows, and he looks tired but not dreadful. Hongjoong will take it. His outfit looks good at least: big baggy jeans, a tight sleeveless turtleneck, silver chain laid over the neckline.
In the parking lot of his apartment, Yunho is already waiting. Hongjoong jogs over, feeling bad for holding them up. He opens the door of the minivan to a chorus of “Hi, hyung”s: from Mingi in the front seat as usual, Wooyoung with one armful of an obscenely large flask of coffee and another armful of San in the back, and Jongho in the middle.
“Sorry I’m late,” he says, sliding in beside Jongho. San liberates Wooyoung’s flask of coffee and passes it to Hongjoong; he takes a grateful sip.
“No worries,” Yunho replies easily. He checks their shared Google calendar on his phone. “It’s Yeosang’s day off today so we’ve only got to pick up Seonghwa-hyung.”
As Yunho pulls out of the parking lot, Wooyoung leans over the back of the seat in a way that means trouble and says, “You look good today, hyung. What are you all dressed up for, huh?”
Before Hongjoong can answer, Yunho says slyly, “He’s doing an idol photoshoot this morning,” and the van erupts with Wooyoung’s shrieking laughter.
“That’ll do it,” Jongho says drily.
“Yah, someone should teach you lot some respect,” Hongjoong says, but there’s no bite to it, because he doesn’t actually mind that they think he’s been paying more attention to his outfits lately in order to impress the latest batch of underfed wide-eyed teenagers that the K-pop industry has churned out. No, Hongjoong has his own reasons for wanting to look good at work, none of which he wishes to disclose to his friends in the van at eight o’clock in the morning—or ever, to be honest.
With that, Yunho pulls up outside Seonghwa’s apartment building, where Seonghwa is of course already waiting on the front steps. He’s dressed down, as he usually is before work, but he still manages to look untouchably beautiful in a soft grey sweater and slim-fitting jeans, long coat draping over his shoulders.
“Morning!” Seonghwa says brightly, followed by, “Thanks for stopping by, Yuyu,” as though Yunho hasn’t picked him up for work every day for the last two years.
Hongjoong moves up to sit in the middle seat, shifting a little so Seonghwa can find the seatbelt. He can smell Seonghwa’s perfume: delicate florals, with a hint of something Hongjoong’s never quite been able to place.
“Thanks,” Seonghwa says, and Hongjoong says, “Don’t mention it.” Their eyes meet, and then Hongjoong looks away. He’s about to ask Seonghwa a question—about their shoot today, naturally—but Mingi twists round in his seat and starts talking enthusiastically at Seonghwa about some anime they’re both watching, and the moment’s gone.
Hongjoong has to get out first, requiring slightly awkward contortions of his body to avoid touching Seonghwa. Before he closes the door, Seonghwa says, a little anxiously, “You’re doing my shoot for Münn later, right?”
Annoyed at the implication that he might have forgotten, Hongjoong says shortly, “Yes. I’ll be there at two o’clock.”
Seonghwa nods. “See you then.”
—
The idol photoshoot is fine, as idol photoshoots go, although it takes forever. There are nine members and about four outfit changes for each of them. Half of the group know their angles, half of them do not, which makes Hongjoong’s job fifty percent harder than usual. They’re chatty and funny and loud, but they follow directions politely and obediently. A couple of them try flirting with Hongjoong, which would be flattering if they weren’t about seventeen years old. One of them slips Hongjoong his number afterwards, the shy one that their stylists put in a corset for the first time and who spent the whole shoot looking down at it with an expression of wonder. Hongjoong wishes him the best, sincerely—he’s been there—but it is a relief when they all troop off to their next schedule, miraculously leaving Hongjoong with half an hour of free time before Seonghwa’s shoot.
He heads up to the next floor and lets himself into the space. After greeting the handful of crew who are finishing setup, he finds an area out of the way where he can have a few moments to himself. The set is quieter today than Hongjoong's editorial shoots often are; the crew who are setting up are serious, but they're relaxed. They seem to have managed to stave off the frenetic energy that overwhelms a lot of sessions when they're half an hour off shooting time.
Hongjoong breathes out a long sigh and settles into his seat to begin adjusting his camera settings for the shoot. He loves his professional work. A lot, in fact—it boggles and frustrates him that many photographers outside the industry treat fashion photography as a lesser artform, something beneath them. Hongjoong was drawn to this line of work because it encompasses what he finds most interesting about both photography and fashion: how clothing can transform and change, how it can bring out hidden parts of people, and how that experience can be witnessed and captured by the camera. It's fulfilling work. But, even still, it's his day job.
What truly brings him the greatest pleasure is the photography he does outside of work. When he's not in studios, or in his office editing, Hongjoong still wants to shoot. But what he endeavours to capture is the quiet, human moments of life. Photograph the ordinary and frame it as something intimate, the plain as something profound.
He has—and it still shocks him a little to think about—a solo exhibition next month. The first he's ever done. He’s had photos on display before as part of collaborative exhibitions, usually for contests he’s entered, but he feels a certain level of nervous anticipation at the prospect of curating one of solely his own work. For the first time, he’ll be showing the world who he, Kim Hongjoong, is as an artist; what preoccupies him, what he cares about. It has to be perfect.
Hongjoong finishes his camera setup and scrolls through the folder on his phone of the exhibition plans with his remaining free time before the shoot starts, until he notices someone hovering at the corner of his peripheral vision. Seonghwa, early for his shoot. A little dazed after being snapped out of his Work Focus Mode, Hongjoong pushes up his glasses and looks at him. He’s already camera-ready, with his hair styled into crimped waves that fall into his eyes a little. The makeup artist has gone for subtlety today—hints of highlighter to bring out the arch of Seonghwa’s brows, light bronze eyeshadow dusted lightly around his eyes, a touch of gloss on his full mouth. No contacts. Good. Hongjoong generally thinks models look better without, but particularly Seonghwa. His dark-eyed gaze is one of his best features—captivating, hypnotic. Magnetic, even. The camera can’t keep away from him.
A second too late, he realises he’s staring. Seonghwa says, laughing shyly, “Something on my face?”
“No,” Hongjoong says, blinking rapidly. “Um.” He collects his thoughts. “No, you look—the makeup looks good. Appropriate. Is the stylist here yet? Give me a second to finish getting the rest of my equipment together.”
“It’s okay, I’m early,” Seonghwa says. “I can wait. I was wondering, though, have you eaten?” It’s then that Hongjoong notices that he’s holding a lunchbox. “I didn’t have time to finish mine before I had to get my makeup done, and I don’t want it to go to waste!” He’s looking eagerly at Hongjoong, eyes wide and imploring.
Hongjoong thinks back to his chocolate bar and banana, hours ago now, and realises that he is in fact starving. “Please, thank you,” he says gratefully, and takes the box from Seonghwa. How Seonghwa has the time to make himself lunch every day, Hongjoong has no idea.
“Hey, this is delicious,” he says to Seonghwa, attacking the noodles with gusto.
“It’s just japchae,” Seonghwa says, but he looks pleased. As though he’s read Hongjoong’s mind, he says, “Japchae’s really easy to meal prep! One batch and then you have lunch for the whole week. I could… show you sometime, if you’d like?”
“I’m a horrible cook,” Hongjoong says through a mouthful. Then, over Seonghwa’s polite protests, “No, seriously, I suck. Why do you think I always defer my group dinner night to Wooyoung?”
This is also because Hongjoong’s apartment is always a mess, frequently a horror and occasionally a biohazard and can never be seen by—by people he wants to respect him. But Seonghwa doesn’t need to know that.
“You could do anything you put your mind to,” Seonghwa says quietly. “I know you could.”
And that’s—
Hongjoong drops his eyes to his lap. His heart is pounding. It’s so stupid. He’s so stupid. This is how Seonghwa is; needlessly kind and sincere. He’s like this with everyone. He’d say the same sort of thing to Mingi or San. Hongjoong isn’t special. There’s no reason to think otherwise.
“Let’s go,” he says after swallowing. “We don’t want to keep the stylist waiting. Thank you again for the—” He breaks off at the amused look on Seonghwa’s face. “What?”
“You’ve got something on your face now,” Seonghwa says, smiling.
Oh. Well. That’s humiliating. Hongjoong wipes at his face with both palms. “Is it gone?”
“No—here, I’ll—” Seonghwa licks the pad of his thumb and leans in to press it gently to Hongjoong’s cheek. “Gone.”
Good God. You are at work, Hongjoong reminds himself firmly, before his thoughts can get any more scattered. He’s on the clock right now. He needs to focus.
So they go, they meet the stylist, and they set up for the shoot. The set is simple today, white backdrop and a few steps for levels. There’s a clothing rack with a selection of sample pieces for a new catalogue; solid heavy colours and shapes, combined with shimmery pretty fabrics. Seonghwa changes into the first outfit: a white vest, big iridescent trousers and a chunky belt, and an opalescent vinyl jacket. The stylist checks him over, adjusts the chunky necklace so it hangs over the vest, and then he’s all Hongjoong’s.
This is Hongjoong’s favourite part of his job. He gestures Seonghwa onto the top step and watches Seonghwa transform. Gone are the shy, big eyes, the demure expression, the tentative gestures. This Seonghwa is fiercely alive, blazing with confidence. Intense gaze seeking out the camera, staring it down like he’s ready to consume it.
A good model is beautiful and makes their outfit look beautiful; a great model is striking, draws your eye, makes you think, huh. Seonghwa is better than that. He makes you want him. The clothes are merely an accessory to that desire. Hongjoong doesn’t even have to direct him sometimes—he just knows the perfect way to move his body, exactly how to craft the ideal posture to present the clothing on him.
Like now, when he shrugs that jacket down off his shoulders, exposing the toned honey-brown muscles of his biceps, angling his body to catch the light just so.
“Good, perfect,” Hongjoong says, almost before he can stop himself. Seonghwa doesn’t look away. Hongjoong presses the shutter.
He circles Seonghwa, getting a couple of different angles and poses; Seonghwa moving his arms above his head, hand touching his chin. Hongjoong already knows, though, that the first photo will be the one.
The next outfit is even simpler: a silky, multicoloured shirt that clings to Seonghwa in loose, undulating folds, and a long black A-line skirt underneath. The stylist switches out his necklace for strings of pearls, and has him put on a single dangling earring with a pearl drop at its end. He looks ethereal.
“Sit down,” Hongjoong says, “on the bottom step there. Legs out. Good.”
He raises the camera, evaluates the shot. He’s about to take a photo when he thinks, Not quite. There’s something—
“Wait, let me—” The fabric is covering too much there, by Seonghwa’s collarbone. “Just—” Hongjoong stands up and walks over to him, camera in hand. As soon as he’d spoken, Seonghwa had immediately dropped his heady, piercing expression into something gentle and searching. Hongjoong only looks him in the eyes for a moment before crouching down in front of him and reaching forward to shift the open neckline of Seonghwa’s blouse open further. The fabric is soft under his fingertips, and warm from the proximity of Seonghwa’s skin. Hongjoong ensures he does not misplace his touch.
Standing back up, Hongjoong takes a few steps backwards and assesses the adjustment. Better.
“Okay,” he tells Seonghwa, who, after a moment, gives him a quick nod.
Hongjoong raises his camera again as Seonghwa’s expression slides back into practice, eyes heavy, throat bared. His pretty mouth parts ever so slightly. Hongjoong’s breath stutters. His eyes slide to Seonghwa's bare collarbones, where Hongjoong had just adjusted the delicate fabric of his blouse. But—this is work. They're at work, they're working. Seonghwa's gaze is hot on the lens of the camera—he's working with the theme of the shoot, and he's a professional. And Kim Hongjoong is a professional. And whatever feelings he might have for Park Seonghwa are irrelevant—they have a job to do.
—
Hongjoong always feels a little… strange after his shoots with Seonghwa. There’s the satisfaction of a job well done, of course. But beneath that, he has this keyed-up tension thrumming beneath his skin. It’s not a bad feeling, necessarily, but it’s dangerous. One spark to the flint of him and he’ll start burning.
For this reason, he usually tries to wrap things up with as much distance between himself and Seonghwa as possible, until the heat in him dies down. Keep things cool, calm, collected. Normal. Discussing the shoot with the stylist is a good way to achieve this, Hongjoong has found, but today’s stylist has to rush off, apparently late for another shoot, even though they’ve finished exactly on time. (Seonghwa and Hongjoong always finish on time.)
“Someone will come and collect the clothes tomorrow,” she says, texting frantically with one hand as she hoists her bag onto her shoulder. “Sorry about this!”
Hongjoong thinks this is pretty unprofessional—the studio is not a warehouse—but he doesn’t get paid enough to get into arguments. He gets paid to take his photos and be polite, so he says, “No problem,” and waves the stylist off.
“Hongjoong?” Seonghwa’s voice. Hongjoong turns to see him helplessly gesturing to his back. “Could you, um. Unzip me? I can’t—”
Hongjoong feels the blood rise to his cheeks. “Um. Yeah. Yes. Sure.”
He approaches Seonghwa’s back, lifting his hands to the neck of the blouse. It takes Hongjoong a moment to find the zipper amidst the layers of silk. He swallows and draws it down slowly, so as not to tear or stretch the fabric. Slowly, over each delicate ridge of Seonghwa’s spine. It feels shockingly intimate, exposing him like this. Laying bare his shoulder blades, the soft strong planes of his back. Seonghwa, usually so still, shifts a little, and Hongjoong watches as the muscles move beneath his fingers.
When the blouse has been unzipped, Hongjoong doesn’t know what to do next. All he can see is skin, so much of it—and yet not enough. He could put his hands under the open folds of the blouse, draw the silky fabric of it down Seonghwa’s shoulders. “Do you, uh—should I—” Undress you?
“Oh,” Seonghwa says. “No, no. I can take it from here.”
He reaches around and fumbles with the clasp of his necklace. Hongjoong, before he can think, catches Seonghwa’s hand and stills it. Seonghwa makes a small noise, barely more than an exhale.
“I’ve got it,” Hongjoong says, and undoes the clasp, lifting the chain from around Seonghwa’s neck. His pulse is hammering in his ears. He can’t think. Seonghwa turns, and then Hongjoong is looking up at him, necklace dangling from his fingers. Seonghwa’s gaze tracks down Hongjoong’s face. Hongjoong feels wild with an emotion he doesn’t dare to name—not with Seonghwa’s eyes on him. If he leaned up a little—if Seonghwa leaned down—
“Hyungs!” A voice—Wooyoung’s—calls from across the room, and all at once, Hongjoong remembers where they are. He springs back from Seonghwa like he’s been burned. The necklace slips from his grasp and hits the floor. He swears under his breath, and Seonghwa immediately stoops to pick it up.
Hongjoong looks over to see Wooyoung slinking towards them, clearly fresh from a shoot somewhere else in the building; his hair is slicked back and he’s wearing a cropped leather jacket, open at the front to display a quite frankly obscene amount of skin.
“How’s it going? Are you guys done?” Wooyoung says, oblivious to having interrupted anything. Did he interrupt anything? Had Hongjoong just imagined—
“Yeah, just finished now,” Hongjoong says. He looks Wooyoung up and down. “You know you’re supposed to give the clothes back after a shoot, right?”
Wooyoung drops a sleeve of the jacket down and blows Hongjoong a kiss over his bare shoulder. “But I look sooo good in this! I’m going to try and convince the stylist to let me keep it.”
“Why? You won’t be able to wear it without being arrested for public indecency.”
“You’re so cruel,” Wooyoung says. He plasters himself to Hongjoong’s side. Usually Hongjoong would make a huge performance of shoving him off, but he’s so relieved to have any kind of distraction from Seonghwa that he slings an arm around Wooyoung’s shoulders. Wooyoung giggles and worms his way closer. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. “Want to come get ice cream? Yunho’s going to take us after Mingi’s finished.”
Hongjoong risks a glance at Seonghwa, who is staring at the floor, expression unreadable. Everything suddenly feels out of Hongjoong’s control in a way that he doesn’t like at all. He says, “I think I’ll pass. Got a lot of work to do. I should get going, actually.”
Wooyoung pouts. “Aw, hyung. Won’t you even stay to let Yunho drive you home?”
“No,” Hongjoong says. He doesn’t look at Seonghwa again. “No, I really can’t.”
On the way to the bus stop, Hongjoong berates himself. He shouldn’t have done that, with the necklace. He’s normally so careful to respect Seonghwa’s boundaries. He knows where the line is and he knows why the line is there. Because they work together, and they’re friends, and they are professionals.
Hongjoong gets home a little after nine. He orders takeout and eats it on his couch with one hand while scrolling through his exhibition scans with the other. He takes out the trash. He showers, changes into sleep clothes, and sets his alarms for tomorrow. And he doesn’t think about the way Seonghwa had shivered, lightly, under Hongjoong’s touch as he’d unclasped his necklace earlier. He doesn’t think about that at all.
The next time they see each other for work is the following week, and it’s a shoot their whole group has been anticipating for weeks. Yeosang has managed to finagle everyone’s schedules just so, and they’re all booked for a Vogue Korea shoot—a cover shoot, no less—with an up-and-coming designer.
A Vogue shoot is, obviously, a big deal. It’s a full day of shooting, so Yunho picks Hongjoong up at the crack of dawn, before the sun has even crept over the horizon. The sky is a smudgy mess of pink and orange; Hongjoong takes a couple of photos on his phone idly. He gets in the back of the van beside Wooyoung, sound asleep on San’s shoulder.
Seonghwa is next to be picked up, as usual. When he gets in, he smiles at Hongjoong, who returns it on instinct. Even in the faint dawn light, he can tell that Seonghwa is excited for the shoot. Hongjoong is too. It’s just—well.
Since Hongjoong last photographed Seonghwa, he’s spent a not inconsiderable amount of time going over their interactions from that day. Right afterwards, he couldn’t stop thinking about how—inappropriately he’d behaved. But as time had gone by, he’d convinced himself that he was being ridiculous. Nothing had really happened. Seonghwa probably hadn’t thought much of it. They’re a friendship group of models and photographers and Yunho; they’re all used to seeing each other in various states of undress. It’s not weird at all. In fact, the only thing that’s weird is that Hongjoong is having so many feelings about it. To get himself back under control, he’s kept his distance from Seonghwa over the last week. Not avoiding him—that would be impractical—but… keeping things polite, and collegial. It’s probably a good thing that it’s a group shoot today; less opportunity for any unprofessional thoughts to sneak in.
Yeosang already has his headset on when they pick him up, and he spends the entire van ride there giving rapid fire, vaguely incomprehensible instructions to it: Jieun, the variegated ferns need to go to floor two; the gecko handler is arriving at ten, someone should to be on call to meet him; no, I said no firearms, I don’t care what Haobin told you, it’s not happening. As soon as they arrive at the studio, he’s immediately engulfed by a crowd of harried assistants clutching iPads. Hongjoong watches him go, not envying him one bit. Once, he’d asked Yeosang how he dealt with having such a high-pressure job without losing his mind. Yeosang had paused and said thoughtfully, “Pretending that life is a simulation and nothing is real helps,” which was both disturbing and made a lot of sense.
While the others are at hair and makeup, Jongho and Hongjoong head over to check the sets and get their cameras ready. The sets have been assembled over the past few days on instruction from the designer, with the final details being fine-tuned today. Vintage chaise-longues are arranged here and there, draped with sheer, gauzy fabrics. The backdrop is a velvet curtain, and the floor has been covered with a beautiful, ornate woven rug.
But the real key is the lighting. Everything is backlit with a warm, deep orange; cutting through it are shafts of golden light. It’s all very decadent and inviting. There’s an air of debauchery to the set, but a sophisticated, expensive kind of debauchery. It says, This will cost you, but you want it so much that you won’t even care.
“It looks good,” Jongho says, surveying everything with a critical eye. Hongjoong agrees; unprompted praise from Jongho is possibly the highest endorsement of a set imaginable.
“Oh, watch out!” Hongjoong says, as one of the interns almost over balances on her step ladder, adjusting one of the yellow spotlights. Yunho, passing by, reaches out to steady her, and then carries on.
“Who is that guy?” asks another intern, bewildered, to which the first says, “That’s Yunho,” which seems to be answer enough.
Hongjoong finishes setting up his camera on his tripod and wanders around the perimeter of the set, careful not to walk on the rug. He wonders what the clothing will be like. As he drifts his fingertips lightly down the soft curtain, he thinks about potential arrangements of the models, what angles for the shots he’ll try. There’s only two levels, the chaise-longue or the floor. But the rug would be comfortable to sit… or lie on—
“Hi,” Seonghwa says softly, interrupting his train of thought.
Hongjoong’s palms feel a little sweaty as he turns. As much as he’s told himself that he’s been overthinking, he’s still a little worried about his ability to keep things professional today. But when he sees Seonghwa, hair styled and made-up for the photoshoot, it’s actually a relief. He’s already thinking about how the shafts of light will play over Seonghwa’s face so the camera can bring out the full curve of his mouth, the rounded apple of his cheek. What posture he should sit in to accentuate his long legs, or the graceful line of his throat. And he knows Seonghwa will have thought of everything too, all the fine details. This is what they do; this is what they’re good at. Things may have been weird last time, for him at least, but Hongjoong feels—he’s certain—that this shoot is going to go well.
“Hi,” he says to Seonghwa, relaxing his shoulders. “Come here, stand in the light, let’s check if the brightness is right.”
Seonghwa toes his shoes off and steps onto the set with socked feet. He’s still in his casual clothes, but the warm spotlighting washes him soft and lovely regardless. Hongjoong watches him as he goes to the centre of the set and strikes a pose, making bunny ears and crouching a little. He tilts his head quizzically at Hongjoong, who rolls his eyes but calls out obligingly, “Rabbit.”
It’s not something they do often, goofing around like this, but on days where Seonghwa’s in a particular mood, lighting check turns into Animal Kingdom. Seonghwa goes through elephant, anteater, shark, and gorilla while Hongjoong checks the lighting from different angles through his viewfinder. Then Seonghwa makes little claw hands, tosses his head back and goes, Nyaaa!
Hongjoong can’t help it; he cracks up laughing. “What the hell is that?”
Seonghwa looks incredibly pleased with himself. “A dinosaur!”
“That’s the most ridiculous dinosaur imaginable,” Hongjoong says, still laughing. He steps out from behind the tripod and takes out his phone. “Do it again.”
Seonghwa pouts at him. “No. That was private!”
At that, Hongjoong abruptly remembers they’re in the middle of a crowded studio. He glances around, but nobody seems to be paying them any attention. He turns back to Seonghwa and says, as persuasively as he can, “Come on. Please?”
Seonghwa’s still pouting, but his eyes gleam and then, quick as a flash, he does it again, sound effect and all. It’s too fast for Hongjoong to capture, but he doesn’t care. It’s so endearing. It’s stupid how charming it is to see someone so beautiful be so unselfconsciously silly. Seonghwa straightens and smiles at Hongjoong, radiant and golden and gorgeous against the backdrop of the set. He fits right in.
—
The shoot begins with a flurry of activity as everyone emerges from hair and makeup and clusters around the set, eager to get to work. All except Yunho, who peacefully pulls a folding chair up, settles down beside Hongjoong’s tripod, and starts playing League of Legends on his phone.
Hongjoong has yet to meet the designer in person, so he goes to find her and introduce himself as she oversees the stylists, who have begun attentively fussing over the models. She’s got blue hair with a shaved undercut, which endears her to him immediately; they exchange recommendations for hairstylists who are good with colour before they even begin discussing the shoot. After sharing an amicable laugh about getting easily sidetracked, they run through the specs of the shoot, confirming the setup and schedule for the day—group shoots first, followed by individual shoots with each model.
“Sounds great,” Hongjoong says with a smile. “I’m really looking forward to this shoot. I hope we’ll be able to execute your vision to your liking.”
She laughs, pleased. “I’m sure you will, both you and Jongho-ssi. It’s an honour to work with you, Hongjoong-ssi,” she says with an answering smile. “I’ve heard a lot about you and your work.”
Hongjoong barely has time to thank her before San, Seonghwa, Mingi and Wooyoung emerge, and he heads over to begin wrangling them into position. They’re styled perfectly to the set: rich, softly textured fabrics under delicate sheer layers of silk and chiffon; billowing sleeves with intricate lace edges; and, most strikingly, glittering swathes of delicate jewellery, shimmering brilliantly as they refract the light. They’re exquisite to look at. After the usual round of compliments and affirmations—the latter makes the newer interns stare in surprise, but Seonghwa always insists—it’s showtime.
It’s been a while since Hongjoong has shot more than one model at once. That’s usually Jongho’s specialty, so Hongjoong gladly lets him take the lead on positioning.
“Wooyoung-hyung on the floor,” Jongho instructs. Ouch, Wooyoung mouths, miming being stabbed in the chest—but they’re at work, so he complies without further comment. “San-hyung on that chaise-longue, yeah, laid out like that, perfect. Mingi-hyung stood. Seonghwa-hyung too. Ah…”
“What is it?” Hongjoong says.
Jongho taps his chin. “I think… we need less contrast between them. Seonghwa-hyung isn’t tall enough.”
“Get Wooyoung to stand up,” Hongjoong suggests. “Go full contrast. Seonghwa can be on the floor.”
“No, I want them both to stand,” Jongho says decisively. He beckons one of the stylists over. They have a whispered conversation and then the stylist says, “Seonghwa-ssi, can you come here? We’re going to swap out your shoes, let’s try these heels—”
Hongjoong sneezes.
“Hyung, are you sick?” San asks with concern, as Seonghwa trots over obediently to the stylist.
“No, just allergies, thanks,” Hongjoong says. Discreetly, he touches his fingertips to his nose to check for blood. How embarrassing, having a physical response to something like that. It’s ludicrous—but then again, Seonghwa has never worn heels in one of their shoots before. It’s not something Hongjoong would be likely to forget. Although, humiliatingly, it’s a concept he has thought about before. Imagined what it would do to Seonghwa’s long legs, the rounded muscle of his calves. How it would accentuate the sway of his hips when he moves. He sneezes again.
Good lord. Get it together, Hongjoong thinks to himself. Just as he’s bringing his thoughts back down to earth, Wooyoung lets out a shriek of delight, and Hongjoong turns to see Seonghwa making his way back to the set wearing—Hongjoong abruptly turns back around. That probably wasn’t particularly subtle of him, but he has more important things to maintain right now, like his well-being, and his composure.
San wolf whistles as Seonghwa rejoins them and then immediately shrinks under Jongho’s wrathful gaze.
“Enough objectifying Seonghwa-hyung,” Jongho says. “Let’s get to work.”
Once Hongjoong refocuses and settles back into work-mode, the group shoot goes by smoothly under Jongho’s brisk direction. Hongjoong is used to photographing Seonghwa, of course, but it’s enjoyable to see the others in action too: the way Wooyoung can transition from bratty to sultry in an instant; San’s sharp eyed gaze and the intention with which he moves his body; Mingi’s precise posing, the complete understanding of his own angles and how to accentuate them—it’s fun, shooting them all together like this, it’s something they rarely get to do. Especially with this particular set and styling; how the skills of each model are captured and emphasised by the long, flowing lines of fabric draped over their elegantly posed frames, the lavish jewellery glinting against their smooth skin. The heady glow of the angled lighting draws you in, makes you want to stare. Hongjoong finds himself stepping back for a moment as Jongho rearranges the models once more, just to look at them all, brilliant in the light.
As they finish up with the group shots, Yeosang turns up, a hunted look in his eyes. He crouches down feebly beside Yunho in his chair, and Yunho lifts his legs to let Yeosang crawl under them; he places a clipboard over his face and says, “If I can’t see them they can’t see me.”
“We’ll protect you,” Yunho says solemnly, resting a protective hand on Yeosang’s thigh.
After the full group photos are done, they take a quick break for a late lunch, and following that the models do a brief outfit change and reconvene for a series of duo shots: Seonghwa and Mingi first, newly the same height, and then Wooyoung and San. Hongjoong hates to admit it, annoying as they are, but their chemistry is really unlike anything else. It’s electric; there are sparks between them even when they’re not touching. And when they are—it’s almost potent. They set up a shot where San is standing with his back to the camera to show off the tailored backless shirt he’s wearing, with Wooyoung next to him, angled towards the camera with a hand elegantly placed on San’s shoulder. Their bodies are close, centimetres from being pressed against each other. San, with his arm wrapped protectively around Wooyoung’s waist, turns his face to gaze at Wooyoung’s side profile.
Wooyoung tilts his head up, eyes fixed on San. There’s so much fire in his gaze that Hongjoong has to look away. Luckily, he doesn’t have to take the photo; Jongho has it covered.
“Eyes down and away from Wooyoung, San.” There’s a click and a flash as he takes a cluster of photos. “Okay, got it,” Jongho says, setting down his camera. “You two are done.”
San twists back to look at Wooyoung. “Was I good?” he asks quietly.
Wooyoung puts one hand on San’s throat, and pushes back his hair with the other.“Baby, you were perfect.”
San envelops him in a fervent hug, one that quickly goes from chaste collegial contact between coworkers to borderline indecent activity between two people who are definitely fucking.
“Okay, I think it’s time for individual shoots?” says an intern, looking vaguely harrowed by the scene unfolding in front of her. She looks down at Yeosang for confirmation, who says, “I’m not here.”
Jongho gestures with exasperation towards Wooyoung and San, still entangled and blissfully unaware that anyone is watching them, and says, “I am not taking those two.”
“Understood.” The intern glances pleadingly at Hongjoong. “Um, Hongjoong-ssi, could you—uh—”
Hongjoong steps in and wrangles Wooyoung and San away from each other like they’re feral cats. “Alright, alright, enough of this. We’re splitting you up.” Wooyoung whines and Hongjoong slaps his shoulder lightly. “Stop that, you two had your moment. Let’s not traumatise any more staff members than we need to. San, Seonghwa, you come with me. Mingi and Wooyoung, Jongho will take you two. Come on, we don’t have all day. Go get changed and then join us at the set.”
“Thanks, hyung,” Jongho says. “I’ll take the other set, you can stay here.”
Yunho jumps to his feet to follow Jongho, leaving Yeosang prone on the floor. Hongjoong stoops down to pat his shoulder.
“You good?” he asks. Yeosang gives him a thumbs up. Hongjoong decides it’s best not to push it.
Hongjoong shoots San first, while Seonghwa takes a break. It’s always a pleasure to photograph San. He’s malleable, easy to direct. He loves to take on a character; today Hongjoong tells him, Imagine you’re a K-pop idol about to release an album where you finally get to be provocative after years of cute, preppy concepts and he embodies the theme perfectly. It’s very restful after the chaos of a group shoot.
He gets all the shots he needs and tells San, “All done, thank you, San. You’re free to go.” San grins and bounds over to Yeosang, coaxing him to his feet, saying, “Come on, Yeosangie, let’s get some snacks, I’m starving.” Hongjoong breathes out. Now for Seonghwa, who is still with the stylist. Hongjoong takes the opportunity to adjust the furniture, straighten out the rug, tweak the curtains.
He turns around right as Seonghwa returns after styling. His eyes are immediately drawn to the jut of Seonghwa’s bare collarbones, exposed by the deep vee of his shirt, and laden with tiny glittering necklaces. They’ve put him in a lace collar, accentuating the long line of his throat. Hongjoong swallows, throat dry. Seonghwa’s trousers are high-waisted, loose and silky, tapering at the ankle to highlight his—his heeled boots. He looks flawless.
“You’re all ready?” Hongjoong asks, looking slightly to the left of Seonghwa’s head, at his long earring of pearls, swaying lightly against his neck like a cascade of droplets.
Seonghwa smiles and nods, features softening, and God, he glows like this. The group shoot was busy and distracting enough for Hongjoong to relegate Seonghwa to a small corner of his mind. Not gone, never gone—just… not as prominent. But here, now, just the two of them—he’s impossible to ignore.
“Okay, let's get started then,” Hongjoong says to the room, and the assistants snap to attention.
“Where do you want me?” Seonghwa asks. He moves onto set and his necklaces catch the light, reflecting it in pearlescent sparkles. It’s as if he’s clothed in stars.
“Stand in the centre first,” Hongjoong instructs.
He wants to start with close-up shots, really play with the lighting. Seonghwa gazes at the camera, a heady look in his eyes. He opens his mouth a little, moves a hand up to rest on his bottom lip. It’s… sensuous. Hongjoong moves to the side and takes a profile shot: Seonghwa’s fingers touching his chin, his eyes cast down. The light lingers on his nose and lips, making him glow warm and gentle.
Hongjoong doesn’t understand how Seonghwa does it. With a face like his, he should look untouchable. But he doesn’t. There’s nothing remote about his beauty. It’s substantial, real. He is very, very touchable.
“Okay, let’s move to the chaise-longue,” Hongjoong says. Seonghwa obliges, draping himself out, one arm above his head, the other dangling to the floor. “Good. Oh, we need to adjust the lighting—angle down—a little bit to the left—perfect.”
He lifts the camera, and pauses. What he wants is to be taking the shot from above, looking down at Seonghwa. Visualising the shot in his mind’s eye, he thinks, Yes. That’s it.
“I need a stepladder,” he says. His mouth is dry with anticipation. Someone brings him one. Hongjoong climbs the rungs, steadies himself and turns.
He was right. This is the shot, the one. From this height, the full length of Seonghwa’s body is on display; from his raised arm, hand poised deliberately, to his feet, crossed at the ankle. His hair curls softly over his forehead. The distance gives the setup a seductive feel. It’s voyeuristic, almost. As if you’ve stumbled across a goddess in repose: you shouldn’t be here, and yet you can’t look away.
Seonghwa exhales and tilts his chin down. The angled lighting casts a strip of golden amber light across half of his face, highlighting the angle of his nose and the smooth plane of his cheek. He’s gorgeous. His eyes drift closed, long eyelashes fluttering down to brush against his cheekbone. Hongjoong takes a photo. Everything fades away around him—Vogue, the studio, the interns and assistants. It’s just him and Seonghwa and the glowing golden light sweeping across his upturned face. Hongjoong breathes in deeply, feeling as if time has stopped. The world that exists outside of this is nothing. All that matters is this moment.
The pearls dangling from his ear glitter as Seonghwa tilts his head to the side slightly, and he opens his eyes. Hongjoong feels himself still, breath catching in his throat. Seonghwa gazes up at the camera lens through his eyelashes, and Hongjoong presses the shutter, barely breathing. He watches Seonghwa blink, slowly, and he lowers his camera without thinking.
They make eye contact for one brief moment; Hongjoong up on the ladder, back pressed against the rungs, Seonghwa splayed on the chaise-longue, posture loose and open. They inhale at the same time, the moment draws out, and there are no thoughts in Hongjoong’s head whatsoever.
And then he blinks. The moment ends abruptly. Hongjoong blinks rapidly, now, and stares at the floor, heart pounding. He catches his breath.
Hongjoong opens his mouth and says, “Okay.” It comes out a whisper. He clears his throat, decidedly not thinking about how affected he sounds.
“Okay!” he repeats, loudly, and with more enthusiasm than is probably necessary. He climbs down the ladder, nodding politely and thanking the assistants as they begin to scurry around. Inhaling and exhaling deeply, Hongjoong runs a hand through his hair and then shakes his hand out. He’s fine. That was—he hears Seonghwa come up behind him, jewellery clinking softly as he moves. Hongjoong stops, and lifts his camera suddenly to look at the back screen, fiddling with it. He tries desperately to control his breathing in such a way that Seonghwa will not be able to tell that he is trying to control his breathing.
“Can I see?” Seonghwa asks quietly. The tone of his voice is light, and pleasant. As if he had not just made eyes at Hongjoong’s camera lens for ten minutes straight until Hongjoong had put his camera down and they’d—Right. This is just work, for him. Making eyes is what he does for a living.
“Yeah,” Hongjoong replies. This is just work for him, too. Of course.
Seonghwa stands slightly behind Hongjoong as they begin to look through the pictures together. He’s tall enough in his heels to look right over Hongjoong’s shoulder easily. Hongjoong can feel the closeness of their bodies, pretends desperately that he can’t. He clears his throat and finds that he’s accidentally paused for a single second too long on the final shot he’d taken right before he’d lowered his camera. He hears Seonghwa inhale softly from beside him.
“Ah, that one’s—” Seonghwa says.
Erotic, Hongjoong’s brain supplies.
“It’s good,” he says quickly, shuttering the thought.
Seonghwa laughs softly.
“It’s a bit…” He hums. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Seonghwa continues, “You know.”
Hongjoong chokes out a laugh. “Yeah,” he says.
He swipes through the next few photos, ensuring with military precision that he spends the exact same amount of time on each photo, before he finally arrives back to shots from the earlier group shoot.
“Okay, that’s all of them. They…” His mind is a mess, but Seonghwa is clearly unaffected in the way that Hongjoong is. Of course. He needs to be normal, professional. “They turned out really great, Seonghwa.”
Seonghwa steps out from behind Hongjoong to stand in front of him, and he smiles warmly. “They did, I agree. Thank you, Hongjoong, as always,” he says.
Hongjoong swallows, and nods. “Of course. Let’s head back, Jongho is probably done with the other two.”
Over at the other set, the three remaining models, and Yunho, are lounging on various furniture items. Wooyoung’s head is pressed to Yunho’s, giving him loud advice on his game. A little further off, behind the laptop monitor, Jongho stands with his arms crossed casually, speaking with the designer. Yeosang is nowhere to be seen; probably someone has ferreted out his hiding place and forced him back to work.
Wooyoung looks up from Yunho’s phone as Hongjoong and Seonghwa approach. His eyes widen and then narrow, shifting between the two of them mischievously. Hongjoong feels panicked. He’d thought that his face was devoid of emotion, perfectly professional, but apparently not. He schools his expression into something even more decidedly neutral.
“So how’d that go! How are we feeling?” Wooyoung asks blithely.
“—Hyungs,” Mingi adds, politely, bless him.
In the two seconds that neither Hongjoong or Seonghwa provide an instantaneous response, Wooyoung rises from his spot beside Yunho and approaches them both.
“Wow, Seonghwa-hyung, you look really good,” Wooyoung continues. He reaches out to touch Seonghwa’s collar, delicately brushing his fingers against the edge of it for a moment. Hongjoong looks away.
“You look dreamy,” San chimes in.
“Yah, you flatterers.” Seonghwa smiles indulgently. “The shoot went well. We got some really good shots. And some that are a bit, uh—” He hums and then laughs shyly. “I don’t know how to describe them, really…”
“Hongjoong?” Wooyoung prompts. “How would you describe them?”
“No comment,” Hongjoong says immediately. Huge mistake. Wooyoung’s eyes light up. Hongjoong has basically held up a flaming sign that says I Sure Have Something Going On Right Now. He can’t address it. He will not be addressing it under any circumstance. “Please excuse me, I have to speak with Jongho.”
“Boo,” Wooyoung says. “Boring. Seonghwa-hyung, give us more details. I bet the shots were sexy. Were they sexy?”
Their silly chatter melts into the background as Hongjoong joins the conversation between the designer and Jongho; a safe conversation where nobody’s emotional state is alluded to. They go over the individual shoots briefly. The designer requests trying out a couple of extra pieces on San, particularly, which makes San go pink with pleasure. Hongjoong volunteers to do them, and the others disappear off to change and get snacks.
By the time he’s done, and San’s back in his regular clothes, and Yeosang has been dragged out from somewhere in the depths of the building, dusk has set in. Hongjoong stifles a yawn as they head out of the studio; tired, but pleased with the day's work, even the moment with Seonghwa fading to the back of his mind as they gather up before heading out.
—
In the van on the way home, next to a sleeping Jongho, Hongjoong feels himself drifting off too, lulled by the hum of the engine and the gentle orange light from the street-lamps flashing by. His phone buzzes in his lap, once, twice, three times.
[6:13pm]
Jung Wooyoung
hey
hyung
hyunggggg
Why are you texting me. You’re sitting right in front of me
Jung Wooyoung
😜
so
when are you and seonghwa-hyung gonna
u know
Hongjoong almost bites through his tongue. He automatically angles his phone away, even though he’s in the backseat and Jongho is dead to the world. Why the fuck is he asking me that? His mind races back through the day. Had he said anything inappropriate? Done anything?
What do you mean?
Jung Wooyoung
well you guys are OBVIOUSLY
Obviously what.
Jung Wooyoung
you know what i mean
want me to spell it out
or use emojis?
NO EMOJIS
[Jung Wooyoung is typing…]
Hongjoong breathes out through his nose. He does know what Wooyoung is talking about and he wishes he didn’t. He feels a little sick that his feelings have been so obvious. In fact, he’d rather throw his phone out of the window than continue this conversation; but he knows how persistent Wooyoung can be, especially when he senses that Hongjoong is being purposefully obtuse. He has to shut this down now. So before Wooyoung can finish whatever horror he’s typing out, Hongjoong texts back:
Listen
However I might feel about Seonghwa is irrelevant in
maintaining our working relationship.
Thanks for your concern though
Jung Wooyoung
WHAAAATT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUTTTT
“Hey, Yunho-yah?” Wooyoung says, leaning forward to the driver’s seat. “Can you let me and Hongjoong-hyung out at the next set of lights? We’re going to grab a drink.”
Despite the fact that they are nowhere near any kind of drinking establishment, Yunho complies without comment, and soon Hongjoong finds himself out on the street while Wooyoung fends off a pouty San who had automatically tried to join them: “Not now, honey, I need to talk to Hongjoong-hyung. I won’t be home late, okay?”
The van pulls away, leaving Wooyoung and Hongjoong on the curb in silence. Wooyoung is staring at him, but Hongjoong, feeling embarrassed and annoyed at the disruption to his restful journey home, refuses to look up.
“Talk to me,” Wooyoung says eventually.
This is too much.
“You talk to me,” Hongjoong says indignantly. “You’re the one who dragged me out here!”
“Okay,” Wooyoung says. Hongjoong realises his mistake 0.5 seconds before Wooyoung continues, eyes gleaming, “So why are you and Seonghwa-hyung not sucking face every night after work?”
Hongjoong turns and starts walking down the street. After a moment Wooyoung catches up with him and says, “Okay okay okay. Sorry. Sorry! Too crass. But like… there is obviously something going on there. Right? You can tell me! I’m your oldest friend.”
Hongjoong knows the expression Wooyoung is making at him, and he staunchly avoids looking at it. He says, “Yunho is my oldest friend.”
“Second oldest.”
“That’s Mingi.”
“Yah! Whatever! I’m still your favourite,” Wooyoung says. He tucks his arm into Hongjoong’s and guides him down a side-street. “I’m genuinely asking here, hyung. What’s going on?”
“There’s nothing going on between me and Seonghwa,” Hongjoong says flatly. “I can’t believe you made us get out of the car for this. Is there even a metro station nearby here? If I have to Uber home, you’re paying for it.”
“Stop trying to change the subject,” Wooyoung says pleasantly. He slaps Hongjoong’s forearm lightly. “Let’s return to our agenda! Seonghwa-hyung.”
Hongjoong feels himself tense. “It’s actually none of your business,” he says, with as much authority as he can muster.
“Um, it is my business when you two spend an entire shoot looking like you want to—” Wooyoung breaks off and makes an unmentionably awful gesture with his hand. Hongjoong chops him on the back of the neck and Wooyoung shrieks.
“Never do that again,” Hongjoong says. “And that was work. We were working. You couldn’t be more off base with this.”
Somewhere in the back of his mind, though, a thought dislodges itself. What if Wooyoung isn’t wrong? What if Seonghwa was… looking back at Hongjoong the way Hongjoong clearly looks at him? Immediately, Hongjoong crushes the idea. It’s not like that. He knows it’s not like that. Seonghwa is looking at the camera, not him. Anything else is wishful thinking.
Wooyoung hums in the back of his throat. He says, more seriously, “Are you sure about that?”
Hongjoong opens his mouth, then closes it again. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Wooyoung’s gaze on him, intent in a way that Hongjoong can’t face.
For one shameful, indulgent moment, Hongjoong lets himself imagine. What if… what if he could have it? Have—something, with Seonghwa. Have him in the morning, in bed, sunlight falling sweetly on his face. Have him cook for Hongjoong, not out of plain kindness, but out of habit—domestic routine. Have him laid out on Hongjoong’s sofa, after they’ve eaten; expression comfortable and inviting. Hongjoong feels his heartbeat pick up, humiliatingly. He can’t do this. There’s a reason he never allows himself to fall into these trains of thought. It only makes it more painful when he has to let them go.
“I’m sure,” he says, eventually.
He expects Wooyoung to push him further, to make another obscene joke, but he doesn’t. Instead, he leans his head against Hongjoong’s shoulder and they walk in silence for one block, two. Then, Wooyoung lifts his head and announces brightly, “Here’s a bar! Are we gonna get drunk or what?”
Hongjoong is relieved and, perversely, a little disappointed that Wooyoung doesn’t bring up Seonghwa again for the rest of the evening. But before Hongjoong gets out of their Uber at the end of the night, Wooyoung sways over the middle seat tipsily. He kisses Hongjoong on the forehead and says, with more sincerity than Wooyoung usually allows himself, “Don’t be scared of your heart, hyung. Everything’s gonna be okay.”
Hongjoong lets himself into his apartment. Its quiet emptiness is usually a balm after a long and busy day, but tonight, all it does is accentuate Wooyoung’s last words, ringing in his ears. He has no idea how to believe him. It feels—wrong, profane almost, when he thinks about it, and so, in the end, he gives up trying.
The weather is good today, Hongjoong notes. Mild, pleasant, for late November. He’s been in his office for hours, poring over exhibition photos. Right at this moment, however, he is looking out his window, and has been for many, many minutes. Exhaling heavily, he puts his face on his desk, cheek pressing into the cool surface. One arm of his glasses crushes up against his temple and he lifts his head just enough to remove them.
Not only had Hongjoong spent the whole week pulling long shifts to meticulously edit photos from the Vogue shoot, but he’s also currently contending with the aftermath of a Wooyoung birthday event—an overly ambitious and extremely messy Friday night out in Incheon that lasted far too long for eight working adults in their mid-twenties, as far as Hongjoong was concerned. He’s still feeling the consequences of it two days later. Which is why, instead of zealously focusing on his exhibition photos for four straight hours on a Sunday, as he originally planned to do with this day, he is resting his cheek on his desk and looking blearily out his window, contemplating the weather. It would be nice to get outside. It would be nice to move his limbs, probably. And it would be nice—to see Seonghwa.
Hongjoong closes his eyes shut at the thought. Damn. It was uninvited. But the more he lets it linger, the more he finds it not unwelcome. They haven’t seen each other since the Vogue shoot, with Hongjoong shut up in his apartment for the last week editing for the deadline, and he can’t remember the exact date of their next scheduled shoot together. He knows they have one coming up, but—he’s tired. His brain feels sort of gooey. And he wants to see Seonghwa before then.
Before Hongjoong can think better of it, or think anything else of it at all, he reaches over to his phone, facedown on his desk, flips it over, and calls Seonghwa.
Bringing the phone to his ear, without lifting his head from his desk, he closes his eyes as it rings. His mind is graciously blank.
“Hongjoong, hi!” Seonghwa’s voice acts as an immediate balm to Hongjoong’s exhaustion. He almost sighs with relief into the phone.
“Hey, Seonghwa. Are you free right now?”
Hongjoong hears Seonghwa breathe a laugh through his nose before answering. “I am. What’s up, do you need something?”
Hongjoong almost laughs back at the question. “I’m—I need a break from work. Would you come for a walk with me?”
“Oh! Sure, I would love to,” Seonghwa replies. He sounds pleased.
Hongjoong feels—silly, all of a sudden. Bashful, hearing Seonghwa’s voice like this and knowing he’s smiling just from the tone of it. In the back of his mind, he knows this is probably not a fantastic idea, but the sudden giddy anticipation he feels makes him want to do it anyway.
Lifting his head from the desk, Hongjoong hums, thinking for a moment. “How long do you have?” he asks Seonghwa.
“However long you need,” Seonghwa says. Hongjoong covers his face with a hand. Okay. Seonghwa is always so—he’s so—
Hongjoong tries not to think back to the night after the Vogue shoot, with Wooyoung. This isn’t—about Hongjoong. This is Seonghwa being himself. He’s always like this; accommodating and effortlessly kind to everyone.
They decide to meet at the bus stop closest to Hongjoong’s apartment. Hongjoong unsuccessfully attempts to convince Seonghwa to meet him halfway; Seonghwa refutes his efforts by insisting that he doesn’t mind travelling, he isn’t the one who has been ‘working all morning, after all’.
Taking his phone off silent, Hongjoong lays his head back down on his desk. Seonghwa will text him when he’s close by—until then, Hongjoong decides, he needs to spend the next however-long not thinking about the scenario he’s just arranged for them. After a moment, he exhales heavily through his nose and lifts his head. His glasses are—somewhere. On the desk, surely. He lifts some loose papers; old contracts that should certainly be filed away, a few test printouts of photos, and finds them. He rubs at his face with the heel of a palm and wonders what Seonghwa will be wearing for the walk. That is not—Hongjoong presses his mouth into a thin line, and puts his glasses on. Spreading the last of the exhibition photos out on his desk, careful not to touch the surfaces with his fingertips, he begins to focus on each photograph, looking at details, colours, light—trying to get his thoughts under control.
He gets the text fifteen-ish minutes later:
[2:04pm]
Park Seonghwa
Almost there! It’s quite nice out 🥰
Hongjoong sends a thumbs up emoji in response, and pushes his chair back from his desk. He throws on the jean jacket that had been hanging over a chair by the entryway and pauses. Thinking of the good weather and—of Seonghwa—Hongjoong doubles back, heading back to his office and grabbing his vintage film camera from its bag on one of the hooks on the wall.
He idly checks the weather as he walks down the stairs to the front entrance of the apartment complex, and then opens his transit app, looking for a specific route out of the city. Finding the one he’s looking for, he shoves the entrance’s door open with his shoulder and copies the route number and schedule over text to Seonghwa.
Hongjoong looks up from his phone and his breath catches. Seonghwa is—walking towards him—and he’s got this easy, gentle smile on his face, and—
“You’re pink,” Hongjoong breathes. Seonghwa is pink.
Seonghwa laughs, “I’m pink!” He makes this silly, coy expression at Hongjoong, and holds a hand demurely underneath his own chin.“What do you think?” Hongjoong looks at him helplessly. He knows he has some sort of pathetic look on his face but he can’t be bothered to school it. Seonghwa laughs again and drops his hand. “I wanted to try something new after the last shoot and one of the hairstylists suggested pink,” he says. He looks down, smiling shyly.
Hongjoong gets a handle on himself. “It looks good. It’s—” He’d almost said pretty, which was true, but— “It’s pretty bold. Makes you stand out, you know.”
“I know,” Seonghwa says. He looks back up at Hongjoong, curious smile on his face. God, he is pretty. “Where to, captain?”
“I was thinking we could take the 702 bus out towards Goyang, I want to get out of the city for a bit,” Hongjoong replies. He lifts the camera around his neck slightly. “And maybe take a few shots, too, the weather’s really good for it right now. Watch out!” Hongjoong raises his camera whip-quick and presses the shutter. Covering his face, Seonghwa shies away with a cute Ah! and Hongjoong grins, fond.
“Don’t waste your film on me!” Seonghwa laughs. Hongjoong thinks: It’s not a waste. It’s never a waste. He says, “The bus comes in five, let’s wait in the shelter.”
—
They don’t talk, mostly, on the bus. Hongjoong is tired and Seonghwa seems content to sit beside him, humming something Hongjoong can’t quite make out over the sound of the bus rumbling. At one point, the bus hits a pothole and jostles them against each other a little; the faded denim of Hongjoong’s jean jacket sleeve pressing up against the sleeve of Seonghwa’s soft blue coat. Neither of them pull away or readjust. They stay like that for the duration of the ride, leaning into each other slightly.
Hongjoong feels a hand press gently to his knee, and he opens his eyes. Ah. He’d dozed off. Sitting up properly, he clears his throat and straightens his glasses.
“Sorry.” Seonghwa is looking at him, an amused expression on his face. “It’s the next stop, right?”
The fact of it floats in Hongjoong’s head—that he’d just fallen asleep on the bus, leaning against Seonghwa—but he’s still too groggy to really register it properly. The quietness of the moment and Seonghwa’s expression on him make him feel loose and happy.
“Uh.” Hongjoong pulls his eyes away from Seonghwa and squints past him out the window. “Yes.”
“Okay,” Seonghwa says softly. He presses the stop signal and turns to look out the window alongside Hongjoong. “Are you sure we shouldn’t head back and you can go home and take a nap?” he asks. There’s humour in his voice, but Hongjoong can hear the genuine concern in it.
Hongjoong groans in response, scrubbing his face with both hands. “No, no. Walking around will wake me up. The bus just makes me sleepy.” As Hongjoong speaks, the bus slows and pulls to a stop at the side of the road. A single marked pole is all that indicates it as even a bus stop at all. They thank the driver and step out onto the flattened gravel of the roadside.
It really is the perfect day for this. The air is cool; sharp and fragrant the way that late fall is when you’re outside the city. Clouds blanket the skies, but the midday light is bright through them. Hongjoong has already spent hours working this morning, but the chance for this kind of photography, the opportunity-to-catch-something-special kind of photography, is always gratifying to him, even more so than his professional work. He stretches his arms above his head and breathes in, already feeling livelier.
Turning, Hongjoong almost fully pauses, looking at Seonghwa again. He’d forgotten about it—the pink. It’s styled only slightly, bangs parting a bit on one side of his forehead. It’s long enough to fall into his eyes, but Seonghwa brushes it back from his face when he looks at Hongjoong, meaning to make eye contact. Failing, mostly, because Hongjoong now keeps looking away.
Seonghwa really is gorgeous. It’s objective, there’s no harm in thinking it. Looking at him now, even just glancing, Hongjoong notices the dusting of pink on his cheeks from the temperature change from the bus to the fall air, the shade of his lips, the shape of them—
“Shall we?” Seonghwa says.
Hongjoong closes his eyes, and he breathes in deep and exhales slowly.
“Yeah, let’s go.”
They walk through the open fields of farmland Hongjoong has brought them out to. The hills rise in the distance; lines of trees, nearly barren from the impending winter, slope along the hills like uneven walls. But despite that, the sky is so huge out here. It feels endless. There are no skyscrapers here, no high-rise apartment blocks, no buildings in sight aside from the little farmhouses and barns dotted throughout the fields.
The bright light filtering through the clouds bathes everything in a sort of haze, a softening of edges, blurring of sharpness. Like the world is inside a flashback scene in a film. It seems nostalgic—comforting, somehow. Hongjoong grew up in the city, in Anyang, but he’s always found places like this—little pockets of quiet life outside of busy civilization—to be a solace for him. He spends so much time working, and he rarely travels for himself. The moments he remembers he even can sneak away like this are rare, and rarer still are the moments he chooses to follow through on the idea of doing so. It feels like a blessing, almost, to be out here now.
“It’s really lovely out here, Hongjoong. I always forget…” Seonghwa pauses.
“—that places like this exist, right?” Hongjoong supplies for him.
Seonghwa laughs. “Yeah. We’re so busy all the time, aren’t we? We forget—” He pauses again, humming as he thinks. “We forget that taking a break like this is easy.”
“Yeah,” Hongjoong says.
They walk in pleasant silence for a few minutes, enjoying the landscape and feel of the air on their faces. Hongjoong looks sideways at Seonghwa as they walk, and watches a stray breeze brush a sweep of hair back off his face, revealing his handsome profile.
“Do you—” He catches himself. Seonghwa looks over at him and raises his eyebrows inquiringly. “Uh.” Hongjoong laughs and looks at his feet. He doesn’t even know what he was going to say. Which might be a lie, but he doesn’t know what gall he thinks he has opening his mouth to ask Seonghwa if he knows—if he knows how gorgeous he is. God. He can’t be doing this now. Seonghwa came out with him as a kindness, to accompany him on his little break from work. Something a friend would do for another friend. Something Seonghwa would do for another friend at the drop of a hat. Hongjoong knows this.
He laughs again, mostly in self-deprecation. “Do you know there’s a strawberry farmer out here who’ll give you a whole pint of fresh strawberries if you sweet talk him just the right way?”
Seonghwa’s face lights up; eyes getting big and shiny in that way they do when he’s excited about something, mouth opening up in a little round o.
Hongjoong snorts at him, “Seonghwa, it’s November.”
“Ah… right.” Seonghwa’s expression crumples, but it’s so cute that Hongjoong can’t help but laugh. Leaning in, he pats the back of his hand against Seonghwa’s arm and says, “Later, later. We can come back later. In the summer.”
Seonghwa pouts at him. “Okay.” Their faces are so close together. Hongjoong feels his heartbeat quicken in an instant, and he steps back away, gripping his hands together behind his back.
“Do you have all your exhibition photos ready?” Seonghwa asks suddenly. He’d wanted the moment to end too, Hongjoong supposes. For different reasons than himself.
He clears his throat, “Yeah, but, if I’m lucky I might get one last one today—with the weather being so good.”
“Ooh,” Seonghwa says, clapping his hands together. “Lucky me, getting to watch a genius at work!” There’s not a hint of sarcasm in his voice, but the word genius still makes Hongjoong balk.
He makes a face. “Ha ha,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“Oh, stop that,” Seonghwa says. “Your work is really special, Hongjoong, you’re not a critically lauded photographer for no reason. What you do moves people. It… it moves me.”
“Ack, enough, enough! Think of my ego!” Hongjoong cringes away, the earnestness in Seonghwa’s voice making him shudder. He has no idea how Seonghwa can be so genuine all the time, so willing to give praise with such sincerity at any instant.
Seonghwa laughs once. “You could probably stand to have more of an ego, Kim Hongjoong.”
“No, no.” Hongjoong waves his hand in the air, dismissing the idea. “All those big-headed photographers who think everything they do is their life’s work are so annoying. They don’t get it—there’s always more; more to capture, more to learn. There’s always something new to photograph and something old that you can make feel new by capturing it differently, you know?”
Seonghwa hums in response.
A moment passes between them as they walk. Way up ahead, past a field and a few fences, there’s two farmers who seem to have stopped and gotten out of their respective trucks to chat. Hongjoong can make out the way they gesticulate to one another, and watches as one of them throws back their head to bellow out a laugh. They both hear it; Seonghwa lets out a quiet laugh through his nose at the sound. Hongjoong brings his camera up and finds them in the viewfinder. The distance makes their figures small, but he can make out the way one of the farmers brings one hand up to rest on the other’s shoulder for a moment. He presses the shutter and feels the rattle of the mechanism in his hands.
Seonghwa speaks up again once Hongjoong puts his camera back down.
“Is there an old photo that you took that you would do differently now, if you could?” he asks.
“Hm… I mean, technically, sure, from a professional perspective.” Hongjoong thinks for a moment, looking at the sky. The clouds look like they’re going to break soon. “Like, the stuff I took as a teenager, before I really knew what I was doing—they’re often pretty clumsy shots. But that’s always felt so sincere to me, when I look back on it. I had no idea how anything was going to look until I took the picture, but I was always so excited and eager that it almost didn’t matter. And that sincerity isn’t something I would be able to recreate in the same way, right?” He glances over at Seonghwa, who’s watching him with a thoughtful expression on his face. “So, no, I guess I wouldn’t redo anything, actually. The individuality of each photo, when and where it was taken, how I was feeling at the time—that matters to me as much as whether or not it’s technically good.” Hongjoong pauses, thinking. “And… when I’m doing professional work, sometimes there’s something sort of… procedural to me about being able to know exactly how a photo will turn out before you even take it, you know?”
“And that’s why you like film photography so much now, yeah?” Seonghwa says, gesturing to the camera around Hongjoong’s neck.
“I think so, yeah. You can predict, but you can’t really tell. It’s always kind of a thrill to develop and print a roll of film, you don’t know what surprises will be in there.”
Seonghwa murmurs an agreement. They walk a few more paces—coming closer to a corner of the field they’ve been wandering the edge of—before Seonghwa speaks up again.
“Could I… I mean—” Seonghwa is looking in his direction—not directly at Hongjoong but at the camera around his neck. He looks… hungry, almost. The sight tugs at something in Hongjoong, a fishhook in his heart.
“Do you wanna try?” Hongjoong offers.
“Ah.. I wouldn’t want to waste your film, not if you’re using it for exhibition photos…” Seonghwa says. He glances away, but only for a moment, before his eyes trail back to the camera.
Hongjoong looks at him, and he finds he doesn’t have it in him to just—let it go. Seonghwa wants to try, and Hongjoong wants him to. It’s not a waste. It’s never a waste.
“No, come here. Here.” Hongjoong lifts the camera strap up over his head and holds the camera out. “I’ll show you, come on.”
Seonghwa looks down and Hongjoong thinks he sees his ears getting red. Oh God, he thinks. Am I… embarrassing him?
“Hey, it’s fine,” he says, trying to be reassuring. “The film camera is very forgiving, and the lighting is perfect right now. You won’t fuck it up.”
“That’s not—” Seonghwa sighs. “Okay.” He holds his hands out and Hongjoong passes him the camera. Seonghwa takes it and holds it as if it’s a delicate songbird in his hands. He looks a bit lost, brows pinched together in worry.
“It’s just a machine, Seonghwa, don’t look at it like that.”
“I know, but it’s yours. It was a gift, right?” Seonghwa says, concern in his voice.
How does he remember that?
“Don’t be silly,” Hongjoong says briskly, ignoring the skitter his heart makes. “Here, let me—”
Hongjoong moves on instinct. He comes up to Seonghwa and goes to place a hand on—he stops.
Hongjoong swallows. “Can I?”
Seonghwa nods. They don’t look at each other.
Hongjoong has to—he has to turn his brain off. This is just him showing Seonghwa how to use the camera. This is technical. Mechanical. He stands close and places his hand over Seonghwa’s on the camera, and—he doesn’t think about anything. Seonghwa stiffens beside him, slightly. He doesn’t think about it.
He taps his right thumb against Seonghwa’s. “Pull this lever—” He drags his and Seonghwa’s thumbs against the lever on the top of the camera, pulling it back and then drawing it forward—“like this, to advance the film after taking a shot.” His heart is in his throat. He ignores it.
“The shutter button is here.” He taps it, beside the lever. Seonghwa can surely hear his thundering heart. He’s ignoring it, too.
Hongjoong lifts his left hand and places it against the lens. “The focusing ring is here, you twist it back and forth to focus the shot. There’s a little mechanism in the viewfinder—you’ll see it—that aligns itself when whatever you’re shooting is in focus.” He pulls his hands away slowly.
“Um. That’s it.” He steps away then, and looks at the sky. The clouds still haven’t broken.
“Everything else is set up properly for this weather. Whatever you shoot will look good, I promise.”
“Okay,” Seonghwa says, very quietly. “Thank you.”
“Yeah.”
They look at each other. Hongjoong blinks a few times, rapidly. His brain turns back on.
“Now, go! Go shoot something!” He looks at Seonghwa and nods his head earnestly, shooing him away with his hands. Seonghwa laughs, suddenly, and there’s something bright in his face, something lively, now. Hongjoong watches him turn away and run forward, and as soon as he sees Seonghwa’s back, Hongjoong turns around and crouches down onto his heels. Adrenaline pitches through him, all at once. He feels sort of hysterical. What on earth did he just do? Should he have just—told him verbally? How to use the camera? Surely that would have been sufficient. What was he thinking, putting his hands right on top of—
“Hongjoong!” Seonghwa calls out from behind, startling him into a yelp.
He whips his head around and scowls at Seonghwa, who has Hongjoong’s camera up to his eye. Seonghwa presses the shutter and laughs. He brings the camera down and Hongjoong forgets his anguish immediately—Seonghwa’s face is brilliant with delight. He’s beautiful.
Seonghwa practically skips up to him. “Here,” he says, holding the camera out to Hongjoong, who has not yet stood up.
“That’s it? You just wanted to take a picture of me crouching on the ground?” Hongjoong says, looking up at Seonghwa, bewildered.
“No, I took a different one before that!”
“Of me?” Hongjoong asks in horror.
“No! Of the scenery.” Seonghwa shakes the camera in front of Hongjoong. “Here.”
Hongjoong exhales and takes the camera, and once he does, Seonghwa holds a hand out. Hongjoong looks at it, and he thinks about how he just had his hands on Seonghwa’s, and then—he doesn’t think about that. He takes Seonghwa’s hand and lets him pull him to standing.
Seonghwa smiles at him, beaming and splendid, and Hongjoong makes a face in return. He drops Seonghwa’s hand and tries to control how blindly overwhelmed he feels. Heat rises in his face the moment he begins thinking about—anything—that just happened. But Seonghwa has already started walking forward, paces ahead by now, and he calls back to Hongjoong: “Oh! I think I saw a bunny!” Hongjoong exhales slowly, he laughs to himself, and he lets it go.
And then suddenly, the clouds start to break, and Hongjoong looks up, thinking, Ah, my iso is wrong for this, and then he looks back down at Seonghwa’s back, at the light washing his figure warm and radiant, and—
Hongjoong brings up his camera on instinct. Looking at Seonghwa through the viewfinder, hands in his pockets, looking out at the fields, Hongjoong feels—a stillness in him. It feels easy, to do this, under the guise of—he doesn’t know what. Normalcy. Seonghwa is out here with him in this empty field in the middle of a November day, because he’d asked. He doesn’t need to think about anything else.
Seonghwa turns his head to Hongjoong, and Hongjoong presses the shutter. Seonghwa laughs, and he’s lovely, he’s so lovely, and Hongjoong laughs too.
The following day, Hongjoong heads out to Chungmuro, where he rents out a darkroom every fortnight to develop and print his film. He hums softly to himself as he sets the equipment up; going through the routine, the methodical motions of measuring out the chemicals, pouring the developer, washing the film.
Once the negatives are dry, Hongjoong moves over to the enlarger. He usually prints in colour, which makes the developing process a little more involved, but it’s familiar to him after so many years. He tries several times to focus the impromptu photo he’d taken of Seonghwa before their bus had come, but in the end it has to be left a little blurry. Hongjoong pegs it up and shakes his head fondly at it.
Moving on to the next negative, Hongjoong watches the photo develop and actually laughs a little to himself. It’s the shot he’d taken of the two farmers, and it’s beautiful—but on the right edge of the photo, unnoticed by the photographer who was focused on his subject, is Park Seonghwa. He’d probably stepped to the side to avoid getting in the shot, but Hongjoong had managed it anyway: capturing him, out of focus, with his back to the camera, watching the two farmers chat. It adds an element to the photo that Hongjoong had not intended to capture—a level of context that presents the scene not only as a distant image of two people sharing a moment, but as a quiet moment of witnessing. Photographer and his companion, stopping amid their stroll, to watch an amiable moment between two people. Hongjoong holds it up for a few seconds longer and then hangs it to dry alongside the rest. Continuing onto the next negative, he smiles to himself, feeling content.
Thursday night is group dinner this week, which cannot be missed under pain of death, also known as Jung Wooyoung calling you up nineteen times in a row to demand an explanation. So after an exhausting and tedious workday, Hongjoong shoulders his way into the crowded subway carriage with the rest of the rush-hour surge, standing with somebody’s elbow in his back and someone else’s backpack in his face. Luckily it’s only a few stops before he can get off, hustled along with the crowd and disgorged out onto the dark street. The cold wind is a relief at first, and then quickly becomes bitter and biting. Hongjoong turns up his collar and hurries down the side-streets until he reaches Mingi and Yunho’s building.
“Hey hyung!” is Yunho’s cheery greeting. He lets Hongjoong in and relieves him of his coat. “Sorry I couldn’t pick you up from work today, Mingi needed me to go to the store.”
“Oh no, that’s okay,” Hongjoong says, already feeling better to be in Mingi and Yunho’s small, cosy apartment. Laughter and voices float into the hallway, over the sound of Mingi’s pop punk mix. Yunho is wearing an apron with some anime character on it, despite the fact that Hongjoong knows he won’t be allowed within a foot of the stove.
Almost everyone is here already. Yeosang is lying on the sofa with his feet in Jongho’s lap and holding a puzzle book. Wooyoung and San are at the table, playing Halli Galli, and Yunho settles down to join back in. Last is Mingi, coming out of the kitchen area in a matching anime apron to give Hongjoong a bone-crushing hug.
“What are you making, Mingi-yah? It smells great,” Hongjoong says.
“Dakbokkeumtang!” Mingi says proudly. “And jeon! Want a drink, hyung? Wooyoungie brought soju and Jongho brought beer.”
Before Hongjoong can answer, the doorbell rings again. “There’s Seonghwa-hyung!” San shouts from the table. “Also, Mingi, something is sizzling really loud over here!” Mingi mutters an ‘oops’ and trots back to rescue his meal.
“Ah, I’ll get the door. Yunho, don’t get up,” Hongjoong says, given that he’s still standing in the entryway. As he turns, he realises that he’s—nervous. He hasn’t seen Seonghwa outside of their van rides since their walk on Sunday, with Hongjoong spending all his free time working on the final round of prints for the exhibition. Are his palms getting sweaty? God.
Hongjoong checks the peephole to make sure it’s him, and then opens the door. Seonghwa beams at him, pink hair matched by cheeks flushed sweetly pink from the cold air, and says, “Hello!” and for a second Hongjoong can’t think of anything to say in response that isn’t I missed you. Which—
Which is ridiculous and completely out of line. Hongjoong doesn’t have the right to miss Seonghwa. What an inane thing to think to say. He’s lucky he caught himself before he could voice the thought. Recently, he’s been feeling a little too relaxed and comfortable. Recklessly so. It’s dangerous.
Seonghwa waves his hand in front of Hongjoong’s face, laughing a little. “Hongjoong? Are you going to let me in?”
“Um,” Hongjoong says, blinking back into focus. “Yeah. Yes. Of course.”
He steps to the side, only it’s the same way as Seonghwa is trying to step into the entryway and they do an awkward two-step shuffle, which ends with Hongjoong pressed against the wall, narrowly avoiding knocking over the coat stand.
Get it together, Hongjoong. Stop overthinking it and making this weird. Act normal! Hongjoong collects himself and says, “Here, give me your coat.” Seonghwa nods and begins removing his coat, and Hongjoong racks his brain for something to fill the silence.
“Um… how was your day?”
Perfect. A perfect, normal thing to ask one’s friend.
Hongjoong hangs up Seonghwa’s coat as Seonghwa chatters away about his day, getting coffee with the creative director of Tchai Kim and how he’d bought some new Animal Crossing pyjamas and he’d picked up dessert for tonight and now he’s here!
“Oh, I got something for dessert too,” Hongjoong remembers, and stoops to grab it out of the paper bag on the floor. “It should go in the fridge, probably.”
“Ooh, what did you bring?” Seonghwa says, taking out his own dessert. “I hope it goes with mine, it’s a…”
He trails off, looking at the strawberry tart Hongjoong is wordlessly holding, and then back to his own, nearly identical strawberry tart, and then up to meet Hongjoong’s eyes. Hongjoong’s heart is going a million miles per minute. Stop overthinking, stop overthinking stop—
“Strawberries are my favourite,” Seonghwa says softly.
Mingi bellows down the hallway, “Is Seonghwa-hyung here? Come get in the kitchen and help me!” A pause, then, “Please!”
The moment splits and breaks. Hongjoong looks away, stares at the tart in his hands and says, basically at random, “Yes. Looks good, delicious, wow. I hope they both taste good.” What the fuck is he even saying? “Let’s go, or Mingi will burst a blood vessel.”
He leads the way into the main room, determinedly not looking at Seonghwa. It’s fine. There’s a perfectly normal explanation. Seonghwa said it himself: he loves strawberries, they’re his favourite fruit. That must be why he’d picked it up. There’s no way he’d still be thinking about—stop overthinking!
Luckily, once they get into the main room there’s so much chaos that the tarts are practically forgotten—something is smoking on the stove, Wooyoung is standing on a chair waving a tea towel at the smoke alarm, and Seonghwa immediately divests Yunho of his apron and dives in to help. Hongjoong quietly slips around a freaking out Mingi and puts the tarts in the fridge.
It turns out that the smoke is mostly steam, and dinner is not in danger. Mingi instantly perks up and changes the music from Fall Out Boy to WINNER’s latest EP. Seonghwa, apron-clad, immediately sets to making a salad. He moves around the kitchen with practised efficiency and familiarity, opening cupboards and locating utensils like he’s the one who lives here. Hongjoong, watching from the table, smiles to himself as Seonghwa produces a salad spinner (Mingi: “I didn’t even know we had that!”) Then he glances up to see Wooyoung looking at him, and he immediately schools his expression into something less utterly humiliating.
Once the salads are done, Mingi calls everyone to the table and the scene becomes a flurry of movement; spoons scooping into bowls, hands passing banchan across the table, and chopsticks moving to mouths. There are multiple exclamations of enthusiastic approval, and Mingi beams, pleased.
As the initial commotion of an eight person group meal fades to a contented chatter, Seonghwa gestures to Wooyoung, getting his attention as he reaches for another piece of jeon. “Hey, Wooyoungie, have you booked flights for New York yet?”
Wooyoung, in the act of eating a piece of chicken off San’s chopsticks, shakes his head. Through a mouthful, he says, “Not yet. I’m waiting for—” He swallows and addresses San. “Baby, you wanna tell them?”
San takes a breath, glances briefly at the ceiling. Eyes still upraised, he says shyly, “I’ve been asked to walk runway at New York Fashion Week.”
There’s a chorus of approval and praise—a runway invite is a big deal, for NYFW no less—but, strangely, San doesn’t seem that pleased. He’s bowing his head and smiling but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Hongjoong glances at Wooyoung, who is watching San sharply. From Hongjoong’s position at the corner of the table, he can see Wooyoung’s hand move down to hold San’s thigh, just above the knee.
“Who for, San?” Mingi asks.
“Peter Do. They asked me right after the Vogue shoot was published, so I guess he saw that and thought I’d be a good fit.”
“Ah, that backless shirt you were wearing?” Hongjoong says, nodding in understanding. “Yeah, I can see that. That’s great, Sannie. Your first time doing runway, right?”
San nods. He opens his mouth, then closes it again. They all let him think it through; whatever San is ruminating on always comes out in the end. Eventually, he says, “I guess, um. I know it’s a big deal, but I can’t help wondering if I should turn it down, stay in Seoul, keep working on shoots and stuff.” He pauses. “I’m not handsome like Mingi and Wooyoungie and Seonghwa-hyung, you know?” San continues, all in a rush. “And I haven’t been doing this for nearly as long. I don’t want—I don’t want to be a disappointment.”
Everyone jumps on that immediately: Yah, Sannie, if you want us to tell you you’re handsome all you have to do is ask; They’ll be looking at your back, not your face anyway, and on and on. Hongjoong sits in silence; he never feels like it’s appropriate to join in this kind of teasing. San’s insecurities always awaken this fierce, protective instinct in him. Maybe it’s remembering what San was like when Wooyoung had introduced him to them—all tiny and skinny and big-eyed and so open with how he was feeling. Goodness practically radiated from him. Hongjoong remembers thinking: That kid’s got a heart too big for his chest. And then San had decided he wanted to try modelling, and he’d transformed; training his countenance and body, working harder than anyone, taking on extra shoots, constantly striving to do more, to be better. But he still thinks of himself as lesser, somehow. It’s a mystery to Hongjoong—as is how to comfort San when he expresses those feelings.
“Sannie, you don’t have to be handsome to walk runway,” he says. “You work so hard—that’s what’s important. And you excel at taking on characters in a shoot, really. You’ll blow everyone away.”
San nods and smiles, still unconvincingly. Hongjoong thinks of what else he could say—there must be something, some words he can find to make San understand. Before he can come up with anything, Seonghwa, who had stood to fill a few water glasses, comes up behind Hongjoong’s chair and rests a hand on the back of it, leaning over him towards the table. Hongjoong stiffens, rigid, careful not to slump backwards. If he did, Seonghwa’s fingers could touch his back, his neck.
“San, you are handsome,” Seonghwa says earnestly. “Your heart is handsome. I’ve seen it, we all have—how well you take care of us, how you’re always so polite and kind to everybody, from the makeup artists to the interns. Your parents raised a good son. If you don’t want to go to New York, that’s fine, but don’t miss out on the opportunity because you feel like you’re not good enough or that someone could do it better than you. That’s not true in the slightest. They want you, not me or Mingi or Wooyoungie.”
There it is. Of course Seonghwa would know the right thing to say to reassure San, and have the candour to actually say it out loud. Hongjoong thinks, He’s so good at this. Across the table, San looks genuinely touched, almost embarrassed. “Thanks, hyung,” he says, and smiles for real this time. “I think… I think I’ll say yes. It would be cool to go to New York! I’ve never been to America.”
“Good,” Wooyoung says, and leans in to bite San’s earlobe gently. “We’ll have a good time, baby.”
San holds Wooyoung’s neck and presses their temples together for a moment. “Yeah.”
Hongjoong averts his gaze from their open affection and turns to Seonghwa, hoping to catch his eye and nod approvingly at him, or something. But Seonghwa isn’t looking. He’s staring at Wooyoung and San, eyes fixed on them as Wooyoung murmurs something into San’s ear. He looks… he looks—Hongjoong doesn’t know how to describe it. Eyes soft and tender, mouth parted slightly. He looks like he’s yearning after something.
Hongjoong feels himself tense up again. Seeing that soft, aching look on Seonghwa's face makes something in his chest stutter, and it's not something he needs to be thinking about during group dinner, or ever. As if he can sense Hongjoong’s thoughts, Seonghwa glances over to meet his gaze—but Hongjoong is already looking away.
—
After the mess of the dinner table has been tidied away, the moment that Hongjoong has been avoiding thinking about all evening arrives: dessert.
“Guys, Mom and Dad brought dessert!” Mingi announces, bringing in the strawberry tarts, one in each hand. “And look, they both got the same thing! Coincidence or what?”
“That’s so funny!” San says with delight.
“I want the one Seonghwa-hyung brought,” Wooyoung says. “He has better taste.”
“Let’s do a taste test,” says Yeosang, seriously. “Guess who got which one.”
Hongjoong’s palms are sweating again. Because—as much as he’s tried to pretend otherwise, it doesn’t feel like a coincidence. The double strawberry tarts feel charged with some sort of… significance. He desperately wants to look at Seonghwa, wants to know what expression he’s making, but he doesn’t dare to. And there’s no way that he could say, Well, it’s because we went on a long walk near a strawberry farm last week and it was perfect and lovely and peaceful and it’s all I’ve been thinking of outside of work. That would be total lunacy, obviously. So he sits and looks at his hands and wonders if Seonghwa will say something.
Seonghwa, lightly, says, “Couple desserts, huh?” and everyone laughs, like it’s some big joke.
Hongjoong breathes out. Okay. It’s a coincidence. Seonghwa has probably forgotten all about their walk. There’s nothing to read into here. Just a funny coincidence.
“Couple desserts?” Hongjoong says, and he’s pleased with how his voice comes out: mock-horrified, amused, a little sardonic. He makes a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “In your dreams, Park Seonghwa.”
Everyone laughs again and the tarts are cut and served and everything is normal and fine. He and Seonghwa don’t really look at each other for the duration of dessert. When they do, it’s polite, the sort of normal, standard moment that two people beside each other would share during a big dinner.
At one point, after they finish eating, Jongho turns to Yeosang and says, “Strawberry,” the cue for one of Yeosang’s acrostic poems. It’s so familiar, so routine, that Hongjoong forgets himself, leans towards Seonghwa as they join in the laughter. The warmth of Seonghwa’s arm pressing against his startles Hongjoong, makes him realise suddenly what he’s doing, and he sits up straight, laughter dying off.
“Hey, Yunho, you’re still free this Saturday, right?” Hongjoong says, during the lull that follows the conclusion of Yeosang’s poem. “To help me take the frames over to the gallery space. Lee Jungsoo-nim—the man who owns it, you know, Sannie’s dad’s friend—he’s given me the keys so I can set everything up the way I want it curated.”
Yunho’s mouth drops open and his brows furrow in a picture-perfect demonstration of dismay. “Oh no. Hyung, I’m so sorry, I totally forgot. It’s my brother’s birthday and I’m going to be at my parents’ all weekend, so I can’t help.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Hongjoong says. Yunho looks so guilty that Hongjoong doesn’t dare to show disappointment, although he’s already dreading carting all the boxes of frames halfway across the city.
“I can help out,” Seonghwa says quietly, from beside Hongjoong. “I know I don’t have a van like Yunho but… if you need someone to carry things, I’m available.”
Hongjoong says quickly, “Oh, no, it’s honestly—”
“Yah, let Seonghwa help you, hyung,” says Wooyoung. His voice is devoid of any inflection, but Hongjoong knows meddling when he hears it. Knowing he can’t react in front of the group, he satisfies himself with narrowing his eyes at Wooyoung, who responds to his glare with a horrible, cheeky smile.
“Yeah, he needs weekend plans so he doesn’t crash one of our dates again,” San says, which makes Mingi snort with laughter.
“I don’t want to trouble you,” Hongjoong says to Seonghwa, but he’s already resigned to his fate. There’s no real reason he can give as to why Seonghwa shouldn’t help him.
“It’s not a problem,” Seonghwa insists. “Really. I’d love to see the gallery space! Saturday, right?” He’s already getting out his little pocket diary and noting it down. “I can come by your apartment in the morning!”
And that sends a chill down Hongjoong’s spine. Seonghwa seeing his apartment is a four word horror story. He makes an ardent plan in his head to spend tomorrow evening making his most valiant attempt to clean up whatever he has going on in his apartment, and prays to whatever god might listen that he doesn’t forget.
He forgets.
Of course, the problem with the plan of having Seonghwa drop in today to help bring things over to the gallery is that it’s a Saturday. The issue of it being a Saturday is that the night previous was a Friday. The complexity of the previous night being a Friday is that Hongjoong ended his particularly long work week with just enough drinking to cause him to be the precise amount of tipsy to have, yes, not only forget to spend any time cleaning, but also to have forgotten to set his alarms. Which is why he’s sitting on the edge of his bed in his sleep clothes staring at a text message from Seonghwa that says ‘Heading over now! ☀️’ which is a text Hongjoong had only heard the notification for because Seonghwa had sent it after Hongjoong’s do-not-disturb turned off automatically at 10am.
He’s looking stupidly at the little sun emoji. He’s entranced by it. Thinking about nothing at all, except for how endearing it is that Park Seonghwa uses emojis so frivolously.
Another text comes in while Hongjoong is staring at the endearingly frivolous emoji.
[10:23am]
Park Seonghwa
Should I stop for coffee?
Should he—
“Oh, fuck.”
Yes
Please
Park Seonghwa
Okay! I’ll get your usual ☕
Hongjoong furrows his brow at this message. What is Seonghwa talking about? Does he have a usual coffee? His general approach to caffeine is yes, and more of it. He blinks a few times, rubs his face, and then tosses his phone onto his bed and begins his attempt not to freak out. Seonghwa will arrive at his apartment in approximately twenty minutes. There’s not enough time in the world to make his apartment presentable to Seonghwa, but having twenty minutes to attempt the task makes it feel wholly insurmountable.
He needs to shower first, an activity Hongjoong usually chooses to relish in. The idea of a five minute shower is dreadful to him. He wants to cry. Instead, he groans loudly to himself with his head in between his knees, clutching the back of his head. It helps to ease his panic enough to compel him to move.
Standing up to head to the bathroom, Hongjoong grabs clothes from his clean laundry pile, and steels himself for the quickest shower he’ll ever have the misfortune of taking.
—
The polite rap of knuckles on Hongjoong’s door startles him out of his fervour of collecting jackets from the backs of chairs. He swears to himself, runs to throw them quickly onto his bed, and closes the bedroom door firmly behind him. Surveying his apartment feels miserable. He’s barely had the time to tidy anything; there are dirty dishes from two nights ago on the coffee table, loose mail, both opened and unopened, in a careless pile on the counter, three pairs of shoes in the entryway, all somehow bereft of their matching partner—it’s… not good.
Hongjoong presses his palms against his forehead, then shoves his fingers through his wet hair. It’s fine. It’s fine and it will be normal. He can be normal, and if he can just get Seonghwa in and out of his apartment as quickly as possible, they can both pretend that his living space is not in the state that it’s in. Kicking the pile of shoes underneath the chair in the entryway, he goes to open the door.
Seonghwa says, “Hey! Good morning, Hongjoong,” the moment he sees Hongjoong. He’s smiling, of course, and once again, seeing him is a relief, despite Hongjoong’s anxiety. He’s dressed casually, big loose coat thrown over a knitted sweater that’s tucked into a pair of wide, relaxed trousers. All dark colours, except for the conspicuous bubblegum pink of his hair, fluffy and unstyled today.
Hongjoong wants to lean against the doorframe and—ogle him, to be honest. The thought enters his mind and he smothers it. Normal. Normal.
“Hi,” he says.
Seonghwa’s eyes sparkle and he lifts a small cardboard carrier. “I got coffee! Well, a coffee for you and a raspberry frappuccino for me. Want it now?”
“Yes, please,” Hongjoong says. He takes the iced americano Seonghwa hands him, his usual, and takes a huge sip. It’s good, it’s exactly what he had wanted. How did he—
“I got them to add a few extra shots, I know you like it strong,” Seonghwa says.
Ha. “Yes, because I’m an adult,” Hongjoong says. He eyes Seonghwa’s monstrously-coloured drink. “And I care about my oral hygiene. How much sugar is in that thing?”
Seonghwa laughs and takes a coy sip from his straw. “Enough to make it taste good! Can I come in?”
Hongjoong steps back and lets Seonghwa in, watching as Seonghwa’s eyes rove around the kitchen area as he takes off his boots and places them neatly by the door. He knows Seonghwa is too polite to say anything about the state of it but his entire body still tenses up as Seonghwa starts speaking.
“Thanks for letting me help you out! It’s nice to finally visit your apartment.”
Looking to the floor, Hongjoong clears his throat and starts towards his office.
“The pictures are all in my office still. They’re all in their packing boxes, so they’re easy to carry, but there’s six of them, so we’ll have to make trips down to the entrance.”
Seonghwa doesn’t respond. Oh, no. Hongjoong turns around.
“Seonghwa.”
Seonghwa looks up from… Hongjoong blanches. Seonghwa may be too polite to say anything, but he’s not too polite to… be carrying a dirty plate and a drinking glass from Hongjoong’s coffee table over to the kitchen sink. No, no no. This is nightmarish. How disgusting must he think Hongjoong is, to be tidying up like this immediately. The state of Hongjoong’s apartment is so deplorable to him that he couldn’t take two steps into it without finding something offensive.
Hongjoong closes his eyes.
“Please don’t.”
There’s a pause. Hongjoong doesn’t open his eyes. It’s too much. He feels adrift, untethered from reality, totally unprepared for how it would feel to watch Seonghwa come into his space, among his things, his mess.
“I don’t mind, Hongjoong,” Seonghwa says, a bit like it’s a question.
He doesn’t mind what, cleaning up my shit? The spark of irritation the thought provokes in Hongjoong brings him back down. What was he thinking, letting this even happen? He should have known better. Park Seonghwa, the pristine poster boy of good housekeeping—even setting foot in Hongjoong’s dump of an apartment would put him off. And Hongjoong had slept in, like an idiot, not even giving himself the chance to pretend this isn’t how he lives on a regular basis. That this isn’t his standard, unspeakable life.
He opens his eyes and looks at the floor. He’s got this stupid, weird carpet that he got on Gmarket for cheap, and only at the insistence of his mother, who claimed that all nice apartments have a nice rug on the floor in the living area. He doesn’t even like it, nor can he remember the last time he vacuumed it properly. The one saving grace about the garish pattern is that it prevents dirt from being noticeable if you don’t look too closely.
There’s a clinking sound, as Seonghwa puts the dishes in Hongjoong’s sink. Hongjoong watches him wet a stray unused takeout napkin and wipe up a spot of sauce on the counter.
“Seonghwa, stop it.”
Seonghwa looks up, eyes wide. He lets out a tiny Ah. Hongjoong watches his face morph from alarm into confusion. His hands clench, reflexively, around the napkin.
“Can we just grab my stuff and go? You don’t need to do all of that,” Hongjoong says, irate at—at this whole situation, the appalling state of his apartment, how he’d overslept, at how Seonghwa’s need to help only emphasises all of the above.
Seonghwa blinks at him, crestfallen.
“Sure. Yeah, yes. Sorry.”
Hongjoong should say something back, he knows. Tell Seonghwa he doesn’t need to say sorry, that Hongjoong is the one who should be apologising for making Seonghwa tidy up after him. Instead, he turns and Seonghwa follows him quietly into the office, which is largely dominated by the packing boxes of frames.
“Wow, they’re huge,” Seonghwa says. Hongjoong can tell he’s trying to fill the silence, but all it does is irritate him further.
“Yeah, lucky the boxes are so big so you can’t see all my gross mess, huh,” he says, trying for levity, but the words come out critical, harsh even to his own ears. They hang in the air, unpleasant and heavy.
“Hongjoong, I’m sorry,” Seonghwa says. “I—overstepped. I was just…” He trails off. “I don’t know what I was trying to do—treat your house like it’s mine, I guess. I’m sorry, it wasn’t appropriate at all.”
At that, all the anger drains out of Hongjoong, sluices away from him like water. He glances sideways at Seonghwa’s side-profile, the sharp line of his nose. “No—I…” He sighs, taking his glasses off to rub at his eyes. “Seonghwa, you don’t have to apologise. I’m the asshole who started snapping at you for no reason, when you’re here to do me a favour. You didn’t overstep. We’re friends, right?”
Seonghwa pauses for so long that Hongjoong almost panics. Then he exhales and says, smiling, “Yeah. Yes, of course we are.”
“Good,” Hongjoong says, relieved, although he feels somehow like he’s missed something. He dismisses the thought. “Come on, let’s get these boxes out of here.”
—
After that, everything is more… normal. Seonghwa appears to overlook Hongjoong’s mess; Hongjoong pretends there isn’t one. They bring the boxes out to Hongjoong’s entryway in companionable quiet, with occasional grunts and laments over the weight of the frames. Hongjoong calls an Uber, and they cart the boxes downstairs in two trips each.
“Where did you get them all printed and framed?” Seonghwa asks, as they set the final boxes down. He’s sweating a little, a light sheen on his forehead.
“I got them framed by someone Jongho knows, but I develop and print them myself,” Hongjoong says.
“Really?” Seonghwa says, eyes widening. “That’s really cool, Hongjoong. Is it hard to do?”
Hongjoong hums as he thinks about it. “Not really? I mean, there are a lot of steps, and it can be kind of finicky, particularly colour printing, but it’s really worth the effort.”
“Is it?” Seonghwa asks curiously. “So it’s not the same as outsourcing it at a developing studio somewhere then?”
“No, not at all,” Hongjoong says. “You get to adjust the exposure, the contrast, the focus; even the type of paper and ink can have an effect on the final image. If you develop and print yourself, the process doesn’t end when the photo is taken, it continues right through. The creative control I get to have in that way is very freeing. And I actually think that seeing the images in the darkroom makes me a better photographer—more deliberate, more intentional when I’m out shooting.”
“Oh,” Seonghwa says thoughtfully. “That’s—I never would have thought of that.”
Hongjoong is about to say, I can show you sometime, if you want—but then the Uber pulls up and their conversation is forgotten as they try to pack all the boxes into the cab. There’s one that doesn’t quite fit, despite Seonghwa’s multiple attempts at packing and repacking the boot to maximise the use of space.
“Don’t worry about it,” Hongjoong says. “I can bring the last box later. I don’t think I’m going to set up everything today so I was planning on heading back tomorrow anyway.”
“One more try?” Seonghwa says, the set of his mouth mulishly stubborn. Hongjoong indulges him, but in the end they have to admit defeat.
“Yah, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Hongjoong says as they get into the cab, laughing a little at how downcast Seonghwa looks over a box not fitting in the boot. He’s ridiculous. “Don’t be upset. I told you, I’ll finish setting up tomorrow. We’ll probably only get as far as putting all the hooks in the walls today. I don’t want to rush things.”
Seonghwa pouts. “I’m not upset.” Then he brightens. “Oh, I’m free tomorrow too! I can come help again, if you want?”
“Sure, if hanging up photo frames for hours is your idea of a fun Sunday activity,” Hongjoong says, but secretly he’s relieved Seonghwa is offering, relieved that he’s been forgiven for the ugly things he’d said earlier.
“Of course it’ll be fun,” says Seonghwa sincerely. “I’ll be getting a sneak peek of your exhibition.”
Hongjoong looks at his lap. “Yeah. I guess you will.”
When they arrive at the gallery, it's started to rain, fat drops splattering against the windows of the car.
They unload the boxes quickly and cross the small parking lot to the entrance. Seonghwa holds his jacket over Hongjoong’s head as he unlocks the door, and then they dash back to pick up the final boxes. The door closes behind them right as the sky opens up and the downpour begins.
“Good timing,” Seonghwa says, looking out at the sheets of rain lashing the glass.
Hongjoong glances at his rain-speckled trousers and laughs a little. “Yeah, good timing.”
They leave the entryway, go past the unoccupied reception desk. The sliding doors to the gallery swish open, and Seonghwa walks through, into the first room.
“I’ve never been in an empty gallery like this before,” Seonghwa murmurs. He turns, arms outstretched, in the centre of the room. The heels of his boots click and echo.
“Me neither,” Hongjoong whispers back, hovering at the entrance, staring at the blank walls that will soon be full of his art. He can’t quite bring himself to take a step over the threshold. Seonghwa is already disappearing through the archway into the next room, his quick strides easily covering the distance.
Hongjoong takes a deep breath. He picks up one of the boxes, and he walks into the gallery.
There are four rooms: Hongjoong does a circuit of each of them, assessing the space, the lighting, comparing the physical space to his mental picture of the exhibition.
A little while later, Seonghwa finds him crouched in the centre of the main room, annotated floor plans spread on the tiled floor around him. He kneels down beside Hongjoong and touches his fingertips to one of the pieces of paper. “Are these your plans for where each photo is going to go?”
“Yeah,” Hongjoong says. “Lee Jungsoo-nim sent me the plans ahead of time, so I could decide on the layout. But…”
“But?” Seonghwa prompts.
Hongjoong makes a noise of frustration. “I think I’m second guessing myself now that I’m actually here. I had this idea when I was planning the exhibition… But it might be too ambitious. I’m not sure.”
“Oh?” Seonghwa’s eyebrows raise a little. He sits down properly, folding one leg under himself. “What was the idea?”
Hongjoong sits back on his heels. “Well… I know my photographs are good, on their own. I know people will like them. But an exhibition is something more. It’s not just an indiscriminate collection of photos, right? It has a theme. So… I wanted the curation itself to have its own significance.”
“How so?”
Hongjoong hasn’t told anyone else about it. If it were anyone else asking, he’s not sure he’d know what to say. But… this is Seonghwa, sitting here with him on the floor. Seonghwa, who has always been so genuinely interested in Hongjoong’s photography—all the aspects of it, not only the final product. He finds he wants to try to explain himself.
“In their most basic form, photographs are like memory, right? An image of something has been preserved. But they’re isolated, which memories never are. And here I’ve got the opportunity to show a group of photographs. So how I curate them is what gives the photographs context and meaning. Yeah?”
Seonghwa nods. A strand of hair falls into his eyes and he sweeps it away. “Go on.”
Hongjoong gestures to the room around them. “I thought about different ways of doing it. Some kind of narrative? Categorisation by theme? And in the end it all felt… wrong, somehow? I didn’t want to lead the viewers into any kind of assumption. And then I read this essay, that said something like, memory isn’t unilinear. And that resonated. Like, memories aren’t sequential. They feed into one another in a much messier way. So I—” Hongjoong pauses, thinking about what he’s about to say. “I chose a photograph that I thought was at the… I don’t know, at the core of what I wanted to show in the exhibition.” He swallows, trying not to let his mind dwell on what, exactly, is captured in that photograph. He can’t think about it right now. “And I looked at the other photos and thought about how, in my memory, they link to that photo. So it’s more like a… a spiral that converges on that one image.”
Seonghwa says softly, “Wow.”
Hongjoong looks at him, and the admiration in Seonghwa’s eyes makes something in his chest clench tightly. He says, “Thanks.”
Seonghwa’s gaze goes a little faraway, then—it’s strange, the look on his face. As though he’s remembering something sad. “I’ve never… I could never imagine thinking about art in that way. It’s so meaningful. It’s beautiful, the way you talk about what you do.”
Before Hongjoong can respond, Seonghwa’s eyes snap back to him, and he continues, quickly, “And I think the curation is an amazing idea, Hongjoong. What would make you want to change it?”
Hongjoong sighs. He looks at his floor plans, tries to articulate why the curation idea that had once been so exciting to him now feels terrifying. “I just thought—should I do something more standard instead, that will make more sense to people?”
“But it wouldn’t make sense to you,” Seonghwa points out.
“I know!” Hongjoong says. “I know. But it’s making me anxious. What if people don’t get it?”
“Is people ‘getting it’ important?”
“I think so,” Hongjoong says truthfully. “This exhibition means a lot to me. I want people to understand. Because it’s—it’s an expression of me, of who I am.”
There’s a beat of silence.
Then, very quietly, Seonghwa asks, “Well? Who are you?”
Hongjoong's breath catches in his throat. Who is he? It's such a simple question. It's a question he knows he can't answer, not here, not now. Maybe never. Opening his mouth, Hongjoong looks up to meet Seonghwa’s eyes, intent on him, and he falters. Whatever he says will be either the truth, or—or nothing.
His eyes flit around the room; the empty walls, the raindrops on the skylight, the papers on the floor. The boxes of frames and photos. The curve of Seonghwa’s wrist, dangling over his knee, fingers pointing loosely to the floor. He says, “I…”
His mouth is dry. He swallows. He has no idea what he’s going to say.
“...I’m not telling you yet! You’ll have to come to the exhibition and find out.”
When he looks back at Seonghwa, he’s surprised to see a flash of that previous look—the same remote sadness. But it’s only there momentarily, and then it’s gone. “Of course I’ll come,” he says, smiling a little. “Keep your secrets for now. But, Hongjoong—I think the people that you want to understand your work will understand. You should trust your judgement.”
“Yeah,” Hongjoong says. “Okay. You’re right. Let’s go with it.”
Seonghwa nods. “Sounds good. Tell me what to do.”
—
The gallery has left materials for hanging the frames: nails of various sizes, picture hooks, a hammer and a measuring tape, a step-ladder, wire and clips for the photos without frames. It’s all pretty straightforward, to be honest. Hongjoong doesn’t necessarily need another person here—but he can’t deny that it’s comforting to have Seonghwa to check whether things are straight, to hold the other end of the wire taut, to keep the step-ladder steady.
But as the afternoon wears on and Hongjoong becomes more at ease, he can’t help but notice that the opposite is happening to Seonghwa. At first, he just seems preoccupied; not paying attention to what Hongjoong is saying, almost dropping the hammer, forgetting his purse when he goes out to pick them up some snacks. As they sit cross-legged on the floor, sharing the snacks Seonghwa had bought between them, an uncomfortable silence descends. Hongjoong tries to fill it by talking about his development process, hoping to reignite some of the excitement Seonghwa had expressed when he’d taken the photos on their walk. Instead, it only seems to make Seonghwa feel worse. He looks less preoccupied and more actively miserable.
Hongjoong watches him. Seonghwa is never like this. Not the detached, melancholy way he is now. He’s sure he didn’t say anything that would upset him. There was no boundary crossing, no inappropriate contact. He almost can’t stand it, to see Seonghwa like this. He clenches and unclenches a fist, feeling useless. He doesn’t know if he should ask if Seonghwa is okay. What if something private happened? Seonghwa probably wouldn’t want to unburden himself to Hongjoong, anyway. But there has to be something else he could do. He wracks his brain.
“Seonghwa, hey, thank you for the snacks, but we should eat properly, don’t you think? Do you want to… get tteokbokki or something? My treat, to say thank you for all your help today.”
Seonghwa looks up, suddenly animated for the first time all afternoon. “Oh, back at your place?”
That was not the plan. Hongjoong makes a face. “I was thinking we could go out? I don’t know if you want to trek all the way back to my place.”
“What? No, that would be nice. I don’t really want to sit in a noisy restaurant right now.” Seonghwa shakes his head slightly, and runs a hand through his hair.
“But my apartment isn’t really…” Hongjoong says, bewildered. Seonghwa can’t be serious. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” Seonghwa says. He offers Hongjoong a small smile. “Tteokbokki sounds great. I’d love to eat with you, Hongjoong.”
—
Hongjoong orders food to his apartment, and then calls their ride back, silently praying that the timing works out so they arrive back at the same time as the food. The ride is mostly silent, which isn’t bizarre, but, like in the gallery, it’s stifling. He doesn’t know if it’s worth filling the silence this time, so he doesn’t try. Seonghwa stares out of the window as the streets roll by, lights reflecting off the slick wet pavement, and Hongjoong watches him for a moment. He wishes, childishly, that he could read Seonghwa’s thoughts.
One of Seongwa’s hands rests on the middle seat, palm upwards. He could easily—Hongjoong chews his cheek, letting the thought linger in his head. He has nothing else he can think to offer as a comfort, and so, tentatively, he places his palm on Seonghwa’s. For a heart-stopping moment that’s all that happens, and he thinks he must have miscalculated horribly, but then—but then Seonghwa curls his fingers around Hongjoong’s hand and holds it. His touch is so soft, so warm. Hongjoong exhales shakily. He doesn’t dare glance at Seonghwa. But they stay like that for the rest of the ride, fingers tangled together in the space between them.
When they arrive at his apartment, Hongjoong finally, regretfully detaches his hand from Seonghwa’s. He glances at Seonghwa, who is looking at him with an unreadable expression on his face. Hongjoong clears his throat—and then the Uber driver says, “Hey, are you guys getting out or what?”
As he climbs out of the cab, Hongjoong is gratified to see that his gamble earlier has paid off—there’s a guy on a delivery scooter loitering by the entryway. “This for you?” he calls. “Kim Hongjoong-ssi?”
“Yes, thank you,” Hongjoong says, taking the takeout bag, warm and heavy in his hands. He turns to Seonghwa, not quite meeting his eyes. “Come on, let’s go up.”
In Hongjoong’s apartment, they take off their shoes and coats, and both pause for a moment. Hongjoong tries to remember the last time he ate with anyone in his apartment. Mingi’s definitely come over before. Wooyoung too. But they’d probably just had drinks or snacks or something. Hongjoong doesn’t know how to entertain. He doesn’t even have a proper dining area. This was an awful idea, he thinks. Then he chastises himself. This isn’t about him. He’s trying to make Seonghwa feel better. The thought does nothing to calm his anxiety.
“I can…” Seonghwa says, interrupting Hongjoong’s thoughts. He gestures to the bag, which Hongjoong hands over wordlessly. Seonghwa looks into the apartment, visibly searching for the clearest surface to eat at.
“Oh, uh, we can eat at the coffee table, on the sofa. If that’s all right,” Hongjoong says hurriedly.
“Sure,” Seonghwa says, and pads over to the sofa in his socked feet with the tteokbokki.
“You can just shove stuff aside to make room, okay? I’m gonna grab some utensils and—do you want a glass of water? Or I have beer in the fridge?” Hongjoong calls to Seonghwa as he walks around the counter to enter the kitchen.
“Water is fine, thank you, Hongjoong.”
Hongjoong goes to get chopsticks from the utensil drawer, because by God they’re going to use real utensils and not the shitty snap-apart takeout chopsticks. They clack together loudly when he picks them up. He exhales, jittery, and hears Seonghwa speak up quietly from behind him, “...Hey.”
Hongjoong turns around and the expression on Seonghwa’s face makes him pause. It’s the same sort of look that had crossed his face briefly at the event space earlier, after he and Hongjoong had discussed the curation of the exhibition. Again, it’s… melancholic, an expression Hongjoong has rarely witnessed Seonghwa convey genuinely.
“Do you think…” Seonghwa trails off. He looks away. Hongjoong feels fixed in place. He sees Seonghwa lick his lips, in hesitation, nervousness, maybe. Hongjoong has no idea what he’s going to say. He thinks he doesn’t. This isn’t…
Seonghwa exhales slowly. “Do you think I should be doing something else? Is this even anything, modelling?” He raises his head, looking Hongjoong in the eyes again, imploring. Desperation creeps into his voice as he continues, “Like, what’s the point, right? Am I just a face and that’s it?”
Hongjoong exhales a long breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. What? “Do I think—” He lets out a quiet laugh of disbelief and moves towards the sofa, leaving the chopsticks abandoned on the counter. Seonghwa has his hands folded politely between his knees but his face is turned down again, looking at Hongjoong’s weird carpet. Even the crown of his head is elegant. “Seonghwa, I think you’re made for this.”
“Made for what, being pretty?” Seonghwa scoffs, but there’s no bite in it, as if voicing this tires him. How long has he been thinking this?
“No—” Hongjoong can barely fathom Seonghwa’s doubts. “You—” The decision is split-second. He doesn’t even realise he’s made it until he’s on his feet and he says, “One second. Wait there.”
Hongjoong goes and returns from his office without thinking. His hands are shaking when he sits back down beside a quiet Seonghwa, gripping a nondescript file folder. Something of his that he’s kept tucked away from everyone—prior to this moment, here, now. He can feel Seonghwa’s eyes searching his face, and a knot builds in his throat. He looks down at his lap, at his hands, holding the edges of the file folder. He swallows the knot.
“It’s more than—being pretty. You know that. You know that, Seonghwa, that’s why you’re so good at it. You’re a muse. I’ve never—Seonghwa, I’ve shot a lot of models in my career. There’s something you understand about this that a lot of them don’t get.” Seonghwa remains silent. Hongjoong risks a glance to find his gaze on him, intense and serious. It’s too much without the buffer of the camera lens between them. He looks away again.
“As a photographer, when a model can realise a vision the way you do, it’s not nothing. It’s everything. It’s a make or break for the whole shoot. I’ve done shoots where I’ve wanted to just scrap the whole thing because my model wasn’t—I don’t know. Doing it.” Hongjoong shakes his head slightly. He thinks of Seonghwa on set, the way he models. “It’s the artistry of being able to understand so many things at once; the director, the photographer, the lighting, the clothes you’re wearing, the setting, the intention of everyone and everything—and then being able to convey it, to embody it. You’re either an artist or you're not.”
Seonghwa hums. He’s still looking at Hongjoong, at the side of his face. This isn’t enough. I need to—
“But, Seonghwa, beyond that, I have—” His heart is pounding. Stop thinking, stop thinking, stop thinking. “—These photos I’ve taken of you.”
He opens the folder. They’re both still for a moment, seeing a jumble of photographs tucked loosely into pockets. It’s clear that they’re all photos of Seonghwa. Hongjoong feels himself pale, and he lashes down the shame that threatens to overwhelm his thoughts. He doesn’t know what Seonghwa is thinking. There’s a beat of silence, two. Then Seonghwa reaches forward so, so carefully to remove a photograph from one of the pockets. It’s a photo Hongjoong took during one of the after-parties at Seoul Fashion Week last year. In it, Seonghwa stands easily among a crowd, the only one in focus, with his head thrown back in a laugh. The photo is dark; dense colours enveloping the majority of the scene—except for a sweep in the middle, where warm light cast from lanterns just barely out of the shot make Seonghwa’s features glow golden and pretty. Hongjoong had thought he’d looked resplendent.
Hongjoong wills his voice not to shake. “That’s from the Cahiers after party.”
Seonghwa doesn’t look up from the photograph. “I remember,” he says. His voice is soft, something in it that Hongjoong doesn’t know how to name. He turns the photo over and looks at Hongjoong’s handwritten date, written neatly on the back in pencil.
Seonghwa gently places the photograph on the coffee table in front of him. He removes another one from the folder. This one is from Italy—a S/S Collection that Seonghwa had walked runway for. Wooyoung had been on contract for the same show, and San, Jongho and Hongjoong had gone along too—Jongho and himself for work and San for Wooyoung. They had stayed in an idyllic little village just south of the city they were working out of. It was desperately lovely, and Hongjoong always thinks back on it with fondness. The photograph Seonghwa is holding is a polaroid, one of the many that Hongjoong had taken during the trip. At Wooyoung’s insistence, he’d reluctantly—after a bit of whining—brought along an old polaroid camera he’d received as a gift from a relative years ago. He’d found it did truly have its uses, despite the touristy teenager it had initially made him feel like. One of which is this photo, a brightly saturated shot of Seonghwa from the side, a trench coat belted at the waist and skimming the ankles of his boots. He stands in front of an old stone archway, architecture of the village rising around him in the afternoon light. Long tendrils of vine spill over the edge of a staircase to his right, and Seonghwa is peering up into the mass of them. Hongjoong couldn’t see it, but he remembers hearing the bright, trilling whistle of a songbird from inside the greenery.
Hongjoong had crouched down to capture the moment, the perfect afternoon sun on Seonghwa’s curious face, a smile just barely present on his parted lips. Cobblestones had dug into Hongjoong’s knee, but he hadn’t noticed until he’d stood.
Seonghwa had heard the click of the shutter and turned around, Hongjoong remembers. He’d demanded to see the polaroid, begging cutely, but Hongjoong had tucked it away into the inner pocket of his jacket, lying to Seonghwa and telling him he would show them all every picture he’d taken on their last day.
It’s a beautifully earnest shot, and despite the details of the polaroid itself being a bit indistinct, Hongjoong could always recall the expression on Seonghwa’s face clearly.
Beside him, Seonghwa breathes out. “Hongjoong…”
The tone of his voice makes Hongjoong want to look up at him. But he can’t. He can’t, he knows he can’t face—Seonghwa’s reaction to this. But this isn’t about his feelings; his shame or his—other feelings. This is about Seonghwa understanding that his doubts are unfounded. That his uncertainty of his place here couldn’t be further from the truth.
Hongjoong takes a breath. “I can photograph you anywhere. Even when you’re not paying attention, it’s perfect. You’re—” His voice catches. “You’re meant to be photographed. Like this, or professionally. Can you not see it?”
Seonghwa let out a quiet laugh beside him. From the side, Hongjoong can see him bring a hand up and press his fingers against his mouth. He’s thinking.
“Hongjoong, you really—” Seonghwa says between his fingers. He sounds pensive. “No one photographs me the way you can. No one has.”
Hongjoong stares at his lap. At the photos. He says nothing, the anxiety in him—demanding he close the folder and send Seonghwa home so he can wallow privately in his shame—at war with his desire to prove Seonghwa wrong about this.
Seonghwa places the polaroid delicately atop the first photograph on the coffee table. He doesn’t pick up the next photograph in the folder, just looks at it in the folder on Hongjoong’s lap. It’s a photo from years ago, not long after they’d first met. Hongjoong had been playing around with his first vintage film camera, one his parents had given him as a congratulatory gift for landing a big job. He’d kept it on his person for weeks. This particular photo had been taken in Seonghwa’s apartment, the first time Hongjoong had been, after a very late night in which they’d all had gone out for drinks and come back on Seonghwa’s offer.
Hongjoong had fallen asleep on the couch, and had woken blearily at the sound of a quiet clattering from the kitchen. The open concept design of the apartment meant that the sight that greeted him upon waking was Seonghwa—standing at the kitchen counter, early morning light from the window washing his edges soft and mellow. His unstyled hair fell against his forehead, into his eyes a little. He was chopping—something. Hongjoong hadn’t paid attention to what, eyes captivated by the way the light fell on the soft curve of Seonghwa’s nose. He’d reached down slowly, gaze still on Seonghwa, fumbling his hand around for his camera. He knew he’d left it on top of his bag on the floor the night before. Finding it, and bringing it up to squint into the viewfinder, he’d quietly pressed the shutter.
When Hongjoong had taken the photo, it had felt like a spur of the moment kind of thing. Like he couldn’t resist the quietness of the scene—the ease of human life in the morning. He’d run with his instincts, knowing it would be a lovely sort of shot. It wasn’t about Seonghwa, not really. But when he’d had that roll of film developed the next week, and he’d seen the photograph among the selection of others he’d taken, it had made his breath catch. He hadn’t known Seonghwa particularly well at that point, staying professional when they’d worked together and remaining cordial outside of work, but seeing him captured, sweet in that early morning light, he’d felt the kernel of something new flicker in him.
It was the first candid Hongjoong had taken of Seonghwa, and one he didn’t go back to very often. The tender domesticity of it always made his chest ache with something he hadn’t been able to articulate for years. They look at it together in silence until Seonghwa gently takes the photograph into his hands. He holds it, hands resting on his own lap, and looks at it for a long moment.
Hongjoong speaks first, unable to stand Seonghwa’s non-reaction. “I know that—these are nothing like the editorials we’ve taken.”
“Well, no. They’re not,” Seonghwa says quietly. His voice is thick.
Hongjoong presses on, to get his point through.
“And—” He swallows. “I didn’t take them with your permission, obviously, but—”
“Hongjoong.”
Hongjoong looks up finally, pulled out of his thoughts by the sudden stern tone of Seonghwa’s voice. He’s startled to see noticeable tears in Seonghwa’s eyes. “Uh—” What? No. No no no. He’s—I’ve—
Seonghwa inhales a shaky breath. Hongjoong’s breath stops.
“Hongjoong, this is—” Seonghwa shakes his head a little. He puts the photo he’d been holding on the coffee table with the others. Hongjoong feels at once torrential and completely hollow. Seonghwa continues, “I need to tell you something… that I’ve been… thinking about for a while now—” I scare him. I’m scaring him. He wants me to stop all this, to stop—
“Sorry! Sorry. No. This is freaking you out.” Hongjoong interrupts him and laughs, panicked. His eyes dart around, avoiding eye contact, but a glance tells him that Seonghwa is—upset. Christ. He needs to—backpedal, redirect, something. He hastily collects the three photographs and slides them back into the folder with the others, closing it and putting it on the coffee table. His brain is running fifteen different strings of thought. “I just thought. I have these—because—” The only reason he isn’t hyperventilating is through sheer force of will. He needs to say the right thing. “I don’t think you should quit modelling. You’re a colleague that I respect greatly, and—working with you is always—it’s inspiring, for me, as a photographer. That’s why I have these. Please don’t take it the wrong way. I just think—you’re important. Here. To me. And everyone,” he finishes lamely.
Seonghwa blinks the tears back from his eyes. He says nothing, just looks at Hongjoong with an unreadable expression. Betrayal, maybe. Hongjoong feels ill.
“And that’s…” Seonghwa starts, hollowness in his voice washing Hongjoong’s mind blank. “That’s all? That’s all you have to say to me about these?”
Hongjoong is barely breathing. He’s scrambling for the right thing, the thing Seonghwa wants to hear him say. “Y—yes?”
Seonghwa looks at him for a beat. Something acrid and stinging threatens to rise in Hongjoong’s throat as they look at each other.
“Thank you, Hongjoong,” Seonghwa says, voice tight. He schools his expression into something tense in a way that Hongjoong has never seen, eyes wide like he’s holding in some ferocious emotion. “I guess I should probably go.”
Hongjoong watches Seonghwa stand up, grab his bag and walk towards the door, with none of the characteristic grace he usually carries. He pauses at the threshold, and Hongjoong looks at his back, stricken. He doesn’t know what to say. Every word has been the wrong thing. He watches Seonghwa’s back rise and fall in a deep exhale, feeling unmoored from his body. Seonghwa says nothing, opens the door, and leaves.
The door of the apartment closes quietly behind him. Hongjoong stares at it. His mind is completely, utterly blank. What did I just do? He stands up, feeling delirious, then sits back down on the couch, hard. Then, all at once, his shame crashes down on him like a monsoon. He’s washed cold, and then hot; burning, ravenous. It erupts from him in a shout.
“Fuck. Fuck!” Hongjoong collapses in on himself, head in his hands. He exhales harshly, digging his fingers into his scalp, willing the feeling to bring him back to himself. He won’t cry. He will not cry.
After an uncounted number of minutes of breathing, and an uncounted number of attempts to compartmentalise the situation, Hongjoong gets up off the couch. He takes the folder of candids back to his office, and gently slides it back in between his other photo albums. He puts the uneaten tteokbokki in the fridge, and falls asleep on the couch.
Hongjoong wakes up starving. He eats the tteokbokki cold, straight from the fridge, as some kind of masochistic punishment. Chewing mechanically, he stares at the final box of photographs.
He checks his phone. There’s no message from Seonghwa. He hadn’t expected there to be, but it still hurts. Hongjoong remembers his voice, sweetly excited, I’ll come back with you tomorrow! I want a sneak peek! There’s no chance of that now. Hongjoong had made sure of that, with his shameful file folder of shameful obsessive candids. Why did he have to show it to Seonghwa, scare him off like that—
No. Hongjoong can’t start thinking about it now, or he’ll never stop. He’s got to take the box to the gallery and hang up his damn photographs, as much as he wishes he could lie in bed and wallow in his feelings all day. He changes quickly, grabbing whatever clothes are closest from the pile of laundry on the floor—it doesn’t matter what he looks like, anyway.
He looks at his phone again. There’s nothing, of course. Why would there be? Why would Seonghwa—Hongjoong groans at himself in frustration. Stop. Stop it. This is so pathetic. He turns his phone off completely, grabs the box of photographs, and leaves his apartment.
—
Once at the gallery, Hongjoong feels better. He wanders through the space to re-familiarise himself with each room, checking through his plan for the placement of each photograph. He gets out all of the title cards, smiling a little as he remembers a night with Wooyoung and Mingi a couple of weeks ago, asking their advice on a couple of titles he wasn’t certain of. This is Hongjoong’s exhibition, but his friends have been part of it at every stage, leaving their mark on his art. That feels right. He thinks about texting Wooyoung to see if he wants to get a beer later, but he’s not sure he can face Wooyoung’s uncanny ability to ferret out Hongjoong’s sore spots and poke at them. Not today. Jongho would be a better bet, or Mingi. He’ll text them later, when he has the guts to turn his phone back on.
After careful consideration, Hongjoong hangs the first photograph on the wall. He steps back to look at it, and decides he wants to take a photo of it, which feels corny but he doesn’t care. He’s proud, and he’s happy. He’ll turn his phone on for a moment, for this and then he’ll—suddenly, there’s knocking at the door. Tentative at first, then louder, more confident. Strange. Lee Jungsoo-nim had said that nobody would disturb Hongjoong while he was setting up. Perhaps it’s a parcel or something. Hongjoong makes sure the photo frame is secure on the wall. Then he goes out to the main entrance hall and sees—
Oh, hell.
He sees Seonghwa, outside the glass doors, cupping his hands around his eyes to look inside the darkened entryway.
Hongjoong’s heart rate picks up. Could Seonghwa be coming to help after all? No. No, that can’t be why he’s here. Not after what Hongjoong had done last night. So… what, then? Part of him wants to turn and go straight back into the gallery. But that would be cowardly. Besides, Seonghwa has already seen him.
Hongjoong steadies himself, takes a deep breath. He wills the panic rising up in his chest to subside, and goes to unlock the door. Seonghwa steps into the entrance hall.
“Hey,” Hongjoong says, not quite a question.
“Hi,” Seonghwa says. “Sorry that I just… turned up. You weren’t answering your phone.” He looks pale, a little tired, but still as lovely as ever. His hair is tucked underneath a beret, a few pink strands escaping to sweep over his forehead. Hongjoong is suddenly deeply aware of his physical appearance, how he’d literally picked his clothes up off of the floor. Had he even combed his hair?
Hongjoong drops his eyes to the shiny, polished stone floor. He can feel Seonghwa’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t dare to look. A long moment stretches out between them, and then snaps all at once.
“Seonghwa—”
“Hongjoong—”
Hongjoong finally meets Seonghwa’s gaze, still steady on his face. He can feel his heartbeat in his throat. He looks at the ground again. “You first,” he says.
“No, you go,” Seonghwa says.
“No, no,” Hongjoong says. He doesn’t even know what he was going to say. He feels wretched. “Please.”
Seonghwa takes a deep breath. Hongjoong glances up at him, but Seonghwa’s no longer looking back. Instead, his eyes are fixed on a point just to the left of Hongjoong’s face. And that hurts, that hurts a lot. It hurts so much that abruptly Hongjoong isn’t sure that he can take hearing whatever Seonghwa has to say. But Seonghwa has already begun.
“Okay. First, I'm sorry for the way I left so abruptly yesterday. That was…” A pained expression passes Seonghwa’s face for a moment, before he continues, “I needed some time to think.” He takes another deep breath, tucks his hands behind his back. “I want to thank you, for listening to me, and for your... reassurances. I wasn’t... thinking about it in the same way that you were. And I realised that you’re right. Modelling is an artform, and it’s something that I want to continue doing. So… thank you.”
Seonghwa is always thoughtful about his words, but he’s never stilted like this. Like the words are sticking in his throat, like he’s choking them up.
He continues, “But. I think—” His eyes close. “I don't think... that we should work together anymore.”
What?
“What?” Hongjoong says involuntarily. He can’t have heard that right.
Seonghwa opens his eyes. He still doesn’t look at Hongjoong. He repeats, slowly, “I don’t think we should work together anymore. I don’t know if it’s good for either of us.”
It feels like a gut-punch. Hongjoong can’t think, he can’t breathe, he can’t—
He can’t believe how stupid he’s been. Months of lashing his feelings back, trying not to feed them, trying not to let them swarm into their professional creative partnership. And then one evening where he’d forgotten himself—overstepped the line between them so definitively he couldn’t take it back. And now—what, it’s over? Just like that. It’s all over. Hongjoong has lost the most outstanding model he’ll ever photograph. We were going to go to the strawberry farm, he thinks, inanely. But that’s not even—more than that, he’s fractured the balance of their friend group. He’s irreparably screwed it over. What’s he meant to do about their weekly dinners, and the van rides in the morning?
“We’ll still see each other, of course,” Seonghwa says, like he’s inside Hongjoong’s mind. “With the others. I know that, and it’s okay. But I’m going to ask Yeosang to reassign our Elle editorial shoot next week, and the Big Park one the week after.”
“Okay,” Hongjoong says blankly. What else can he say? What else is there to say? He’d already tried to say something to Seonghwa last night with his photographs, and he’d failed—
No, that’s not what had happened. He hadn’t failed, because the objective was to get Seonghwa not to quit modelling. To show him how brilliant and talented he is. It wasn’t about Hongjoong’s feelings. But Seonghwa knew anyway, of course he did. He’s always been so attentive to other people’s emotions. Of course he would see the photos and understand how Hongjoong feels about him. And—and now he needs space from Hongjoong. He wants to stop working together. Because it’s not good for either of us.
“Okay,” Hongjoong says again. Seonghwa finally makes eye contact with him, and he looks miserable. Not the way he’d looked last night, with fierce hurt and betrayal radiating from him, tears forming in his eyes. Glorious even in his upset. Now he just looks tired, and very sad. Hongjoong hates that he’s done this, put that expression on Seonghwa’s face. Forced this distance between them. All because he couldn’t tether down his stupid, pointless crush. He feels sick.
“Do you… still need help?” Seonghwa says. He gestures behind Hongjoong, towards the gallery. “I—I’m not doing anything today.”
This has been one of the most awful conversations of Hongjoong’s life, but the very worst part is how much he desperately wants to say Yes, stay, help me, please. Take whatever pity Seonghwa is willing to give him. Prolong what little time they have left together.
“No,” he makes himself say. “No, I’ve got it covered.”
—
Hours later, Hongjoong is sitting on the floor, a frame in his lap. He’s been doing a stellar job of rigidly compartmentalising his conversation with Seonghwa all this time, but—this frame—
There are two photographs in it, one above the other. They’re from the morning after they’d all gone out for drinks and spent the night at Seonghwa’s apartment for the first time, the same morning where Hongjoong had woken early and seen Seonghwa at the counter. Seonghwa had started making coffee, which drew everyone to the kitchen: Hongjoong and Yeosang from the couches, Jongho from the floor, Mingi and Yunho from Seonghwa’s room and, finally, Wooyoung and San from the spare bedroom, flushed and tangled up in each other. Hongjoong had had no idea where Seonghwa had slept—or if he’d slept at all. That had worried him, so he’d slid around the counter to where Seonghwa was dicing a block of tofu and touched his elbow lightly.
He’d said something like, “Hey, you don’t have to make breakfast for all of us. You already let us crash, let’s just go get food out somewhere.”
Seonghwa had turned to him, ducking his head a little and smiling sweetly. There was something so pure about him: a clear ocean breeze, the first rose of summer, birdsong at dawn. “Oh, I don’t mind! It’s really nice to have guests. And I actually have all the ingredients anyway.”
Hongjoong had narrowed his eyes and said, “We’ll help.” He’d raised his voice and clapped twice, bringing everyone to attention. “Come on, guys, let’s make breakfast with Seonghwa!”
It wasn’t one of his better ideas. Back then the only competent cooks among them were Wooyoung (too busy hanging off San’s shoulders to be of any use) and Seonghwa (powerless against the inexorable force of six kitchen disasters who were not only all under the delusion that they were being helpful but also convinced that everyone else was doing it all wrong). At one point, Seonghwa had looked over Yeosang’s head as he failed to cut up an onion, and said fondly to Hongjoong, “Kids, huh?”
Hongjoong, aware that he was exactly as useless as the so-called kids, wasn’t about to admit that in the face of Seonghwa’s affectionate, exasperated smile. It had felt conspiratorial, like the two of them were in cahoots for that brief moment. Hongjoong had looked out at the kitchen—at Yeosang staring at his onion in bewilderment, at Wooyoung screeching with laughter as San dared Yunho to eat a raw egg, at Yunho promptly cracking open and then swallowing a raw egg, at Mingi and Jongho watching with equal delight and disgust—and he’d found himself with a goofy smile on his face. He’d looked back at Seonghwa and pushed his glasses up a little, laughing softly, “Yeah.”
They had eventually managed to get an edible meal together, by which time half the morning had gone. Seonghwa had laid the table out with placemats and serviettes, and little dishes of banchan, and when Mingi had brought the finished kimchi jjigae to the table, the entire effect was—familial, really. Like they’d all gathered here for a family meal.
Hongjoong had taken several photos that morning. The two in the frame are both taken from the same vantage point—a chair, on which he’d stood to lean over the table while San held his legs steady. The first one is of the breakfast spread from before they’d eaten. Hongjoong never takes photos of food—it’s not really his thing—but that morning, he’d wanted to, seeing the effort Seonghwa had gone to in hosting them; the effort everyone had put in to make the meal they were about to share. He’d wanted to remember that. It wasn’t the kind of photo he thought he’d ever end up exhibiting. But at the moment he’d pressed the shutter, Seonghwa must have reached out to adjust something and San must have jostled him slightly, resulting in a slightly out of focus shot, with Seonghwa’s hands moving as a blur into the centre of the photograph. It adds the touch of humanity that Hongjoong is always searching to capture in his photography. An aliveness. The sense of anticipation they had all been feeling, waiting to eat.
The second photo is the mess left after their meal: a red stain where someone had dripped stew over the table, plates half-piled together, dishes scraped almost-clean, grains of rice scattered here and there. There are more hands in the shot this time: San collecting the plates; Wooyoung grabbing his wrist; Mingi drumming his fingers on the table; Yunho making finger hearts at the edge of the frame. And in the centre, Seonghwa’s hands again, at rest now.
It had been the first proper meal the eight of them had shared. Although they had all been hanging out together for a few months at that point, they hadn’t become a them yet, not quite. That morning had felt like the start of it; of their lives intertwining. So Hongjoong has a fondness for the shots, even though they probably aren’t his most interesting ones. And, privately, they always make him think of the other photo he’d taken that morning, the candid of Seonghwa.
That’s what has made him pause, here, on the floor, holding the frame in white-knuckled hands. He remembers Seonghwa’s face after he’d seen that candid, the way tears had started in his eyes. It was that that made him come here and say to Hongjoong, We should work with other people. The last thing Hongjoong wants to do is remind him of that moment. But what can he do? There’s a hook on the wall and a blank space for the frame.
For one wild moment, he thinks, What if I just cancelled the whole exhibition? and for a moment, he desperately wants to. His conversations with Seonghwa have left him so flayed open that he doesn’t know if he can take the vulnerability of a public exhibition—of displaying his art, his feelings to the world. But—no. This has been planned for months. Hongjoong has worked hard on it for months. He can’t cancel now.
He takes a deep breath, tries to rationalise. Everything will be fine. Seonghwa might not—he probably won’t even come to the exhibition. And if he does… hopefully he’ll… ignore the photo. That’s the best Hongjoong can hope for at this point. He hangs up the frame, and he moves onto the next hook.
Hongjoong gets to the gallery early the next morning. He’d slept poorly, had bitterly gotten an iced americano with an extra shot in it on his way to propel him through the day. Lee Jungsoo-nim meets him at the door, and they discuss the schedule for the opening event that day: the planned small press, the few student groups that were planning on attending, the industry friends and associates that Hongjoong had invited, the drinks reception that evening to mark the opening of the exhibition officially. It all feels… big. Significant—now that it’s truly real, really happening—in a way that it hadn’t before. Lee Jungsoo-nim heads to the adjoining offices, leaving Hongjoong alone in the entryway—alone in the whole gallery, because the administrative staff haven’t arrived yet. Before he can even take a walk around, though, there’s a sudden persistent knock on the glass doors.
Wooyoung, San, and Yeosang are waiting outside, Wooyoung and San waving impatiently, with Yeosang behind them holding his hands together and smiling pleasantly. Bastards.
Hongjoong rolls his eyes and walks to the locked door. “Yah! This exhibition doesn’t open for another hour! Wait your turn!” he tells them, through the glass.
“Oh please, Kim Hongjoong-sunbaenim! We are but lowly models and director-of-productions on our way to work, we need to witness your expertise and superb photography to inspire us to get through our treacherous work days!” Wooyoung pleads, blinking pitifully at Hongjoong through the glass of the door.
“You—” Hongjoong points accusingly at Wooyoung, “and San don’t work until the afternoon. Yeosang can come in.”
“Yay!” Yeosang claps his hands together and slides in between his two accomplices.
“Hey, traitor!”
Relenting, of course, Hongjoong unlocks the door and allows all three of them to enter the lobby of the gallery. Wooyoung thanks him impishly, San does so with more sincerity. Yeosang is already off, drifting towards the gallery space with his hands behind his back.
“Hyung, you look really tired,” San says to Hongjoong as Hongjoong leads them through the archway and into the gallery.
“I am, thanks,” Hongjoong replies.
“Were you nervous last night?”
“Um.” Hongjoong glances up toward the ceiling, looking into the artificial lights. “Something like that.”
“How did setting up with Seonghwa-hyung go on Saturday?” Wooyoung asks, unusually placid. He’s looking away, considering the first of the photographs on display.
Hongjoong swallows. He’s been doing an excellent job avoiding thinking of Seonghwa this morning thus far, given that he hasn’t had any opportunity to look at any of the huge printed photographs that include him yet.
“...Hyung?”
Hongjoong’s eyes feel tight. There’s a pressure in his sinuses, like he should be crying, but his eyes remain strangely dry. Thankfully. His life would probably be over if he started crying right now.
“Please enjoy the exhibition, take your time, and if you have any questions about the photos, please do not hesitate to ask me,” he says robotically.
Wooyoung and San share a long glance, which Hongjoong pretends not to see. He stares back up at the ceiling and blinks sharply. Fuck. This is stupid. Is this what’s going to happen today? He’s going to have to process this whole awful ruined relationship while he’s working? It would be laughable, honestly, if it weren’t so pathetic.
Wooyoung hums and says, “Okay!” with an ease that makes Hongjoong feel both relieved at the normalcy and nervous for any impending probing. While Wooyoung and San begin their walk around the gallery space, Hongjoong takes a quick look into the second room to check on Yeosang; he’s staring up at the series of 4x6 photographs tied and arranged together against the wall with thin wire. The photos in that series are all snapshots related somehow to their group, arranged in a vague timeline. It’s sentimental, but it’s one of his favourite installments in the exhibition. Watching Yeosang gaze up at it makes Hongjoong feel almost relaxed.
Hongjoong hears a “Hyung!” from behind him and he closes his eyes briefly. Inhaling and exhaling deeply, he heads over to Wooyoung and San.
“I don’t remember you showing me this one,” Wooyoung begins pleasantly. “Can you tell me about it?”
He gestures to the photo of the two distant farmers, the one from the walk Hongjoong and Seonghwa had taken the other week.
Hongjoong chews his lip. Surely this would be good practice, to figure out a way to speak about Seonghwa without working himself into a state.
“No,” he says instead.
“This is from recently, right?” San asks him, with a kind curiosity in his eyes. “That’s Seonghwa-hyung’s new pink hair?”
Hongjoong pauses, and then relents. “Yes.”
“It’s really nice, hyung! It’s romantic,” San tells him.
“Thank you, San.”
“It’s very romantic, isn’t it!” Wooyoung adds, voice pleased. He tilts his head and considers the photo. “Did you mean to get Seonghwa-hyung in the shot like that?”
Hongjoong studies the photo, looks at Seonghwa’s back. “No, I didn’t. I was so focused on the farmers that I didn’t realise he was in it until I developed the photo, actually.” It tugs at him sharply, the sudden ache in his chest, and it hurts. He looks to the floor and tries to focus on his breathing.
“Hm! Well, I like it like this, hyung,” Wooyoung says. San nods and hums in agreement.
“I… yeah. I do, too. Now go look at the others quickly, before I have to explain to Lee Jungsoo-nim why I’m sanctioning trespassers in his beautiful gallery.”
The exhibition pamphlets on the front table are in mild disarray, and Hongjoong begins mindlessly straightening them for something to do as his three interlopers trawl through the space. Mostly, they’re quiet, but he hears Wooyoung’s laughter a few times and the occasional, “I remember this!” It’s—nice. It feels normal, this is how the gallery opening is supposed to be. He’s grateful for them, truthfully. He taps the pamphlets into a neat pile, when he hears Yeosang calling him from somewhere inside.
“Hyung?”
“Yeah?” Hongjoong says, following the sound of Yeosang’s voice until he finds him standing in front of—Ah. Yeosang turns to look at Hongjoong and he says, “I like this one a lot.”
Hongjoong nods dully. He’d barely even looked at this photo when he’d hung it yesterday. He couldn’t really bear to. He stares up at it now, in lieu of looking Yeosang in the eye.
It’s a landscape, taken in the late evening at Yunho and Mingi’s apartment a few years back. It was winter, Hongjoong remembers, the dark of night coming early in the evening, and the shot is lit only by lamplight and the stove hood lights from the kitchen behind them. Hongjoong had set his tripod up as everyone settled in the living room post-dessert, happy and loose with the pleasure of a full stomach and each other's company. He’d planned a long exposure, and told everyone to sit as still as they could for two minutes, but the shot had progressively become a blur of movement anyway. Lines and colour had been washed across the final shot: Mingi’s outline at the edge where he had walked in front of the camera, said, “Oops,” and then retraced his steps backwards as if that would remove his presence from the film; Wooyoung’s shock of red hair as he’d immediately forgotten Hongjoong’s plea and whirled across the room; Yunho disobediently tossing a cushion at San in the final thirty seconds, turning the scene into an impromptu pillow fight, with Yeosang and Jongho as unwilling wiggling casualties. Only Seonghwa had not moved. In the final photo, he’s tucked into an armchair facing towards the centre of the shot, hands resting gently in his lap, and he’s watching the movement occurring in the rest of the photo with a sort of easy, serene expression. Hongjoong had entered the shot during the exposure, sitting on the rug with his back against the sofa opposite Seonghwa. His eyes are on his watch, counting the few minutes that he planned to have the shutter open, but—Hongjoong remembers every time he looks at this photograph—he’d been glancing up at Seonghwa every few seconds, marvelling at his elegance in the low light, at the angle of his cheekbones, the sweet expression on his face. You can just barely tell if you look closely, the blur in his eyes depicting the movement of them from his wrist and back up to Seonghwa over and over again. It’s the only photograph in the entire gallery that Hongjoong himself is present in.
“I think the way you’ve organised all the photos is really clever, hyung,” Yeosang says thoughtfully. He turns back to look at the photo alongside Hongjoong, tilting his head as he studies it. “This one… is kind of like the focal point, isn’t it? The centre of the whole exhibition.”
“Yes.” Hongjoong tries to keep his voice light, tries to stay pleasant. He can’t take his strangled grief out on Yeosang.
Yeosang continues, “And, um. Has Seonghwa-hyung seen it yet?”
Hongjoong risks a glance at Yeosang, who is still looking at the photo, hands clasped behind his back. Yeosang likes to pretend that he doesn’t know what’s going on, but he can be scarily perceptive.
“No,” he says.
“Right.”
Hongjoong thinks that’s it, but then Yeosang says, “This evening. The one in the photo. That was the night that Yunho dropped the bottle of soju that Jongho brought on the floor by accident, wasn’t it? And when Wooyoung made some tasteless joke over dinner and upset Mingi?”
“...Yeah, it was,” Hongjoong says. He’d almost forgotten that. All he really thinks about when he looks at the photograph is the contentment after the meal, when they were all laughing and fooling around.
“And then Seonghwa-hyung scrubbed the kitchen floor and made Wooyoung apologise and coaxed Mingi out of his room,” Yeosang says. He hums lightly to himself. “I don’t know much about art, hyung… but I think I get it. And I think Seonghwa-hyung will too. So. Um. Maybe you should… be with him when he sees this. And hold his hand or something. I think that would be nice.”
Hongjoong closes his eyes briefly. He knows what Yeosang is trying, tactfully, to imply, but he could not be plainly further from the mark. It makes Hongjoong want to throw up. It’s not Yeosang’s fault. He doesn’t know. He has no idea that… that Seonghwa is already acutely aware of every feeling Hongjoong could possibly convey to him through his photography. Hongjoong already gave him that. And rather than wanting Hongjoong to hold his hand, Seonghwa doesn’t want Hongjoong anywhere near him. Even professionally. Hongjoong feels bile rise in his throat. He can’t even open his mouth to form a response.
Wooyoung and San come up beside Yeosang, suddenly, which Hongjoong takes as an opportunity to completely avoid responding to Yeosang’s statement. Yeosang turns back to the photograph and the three of them look at it. San lets out a quiet: “Ah.” Wooyoung doesn’t say anything. Hongjoong blinks and turns around. He can’t look at this photograph any longer. He begins walking back toward the entrance, calling back to the three of them as he does, “Well if that’s everything, thank you for coming, I appreciate it, I hope you all have successful and productive work days, etcetera etcetera.”
They flock around him with a chorus of: “Thank you, hyung,” “It was really good hyung, you’re amazing!” “Everyone will love it,” to which Hongjoong replies by shooing them off and saying, “Okay, okay, yes, thank you.” The three of them head out, promising to return later for the official opening.
—
After the drinks reception that evening, Hongjoong is once again alone in the gallery. Technically it should have closed when the reception ended, but Hongjoong had wanted a little time to himself, to reflect on the day. It had gone well, all things considered. Yunho and Mingi had come on their lunch break, and Jongho with his parents after his studio work had ended. His brother brought him dinner, and he’d eaten it after a short interview for a local online arts magazine. Then the reception had begun. Hongjoong had been surprised, and pleased, by how many people had come.
He’d learned, after many excruciating exchanges, how to discuss the photographs with Seonghwa in them to strangers, and coworkers, and somehow, to his friends, without actually thinking about Seonghwa himself. It felt—fake, at first. Like he was lying to people, to himself. But—the day is almost over. Soon Hongjoong can go home and cry into his pillow about it, or eat a pint of ice cream, or whatever embarrassing breakup scenario he’ll find himself enacting. “Breakup”, he thinks to himself, what kind of melodramatic bullshit—He’ll cope, is the point. Tomorrow, he’ll come back, and he’ll be able to talk about the photographs how they’re meant to be discussed, and he’ll—be over it. Or something. Whatever.
He’s fucking lucky Seonghwa is too sick of him to come to his exhibition. Anxiety had roiled through him for most of the day, wondering with a fearful curiosity if he was going to show up and they would have to act like—nothing at all. Or worse, have Seonghwa tell him he needs to remove the photos that include him altogether. It’s too late for that now, streets darkened to a quiet grey outside the windows. Seonghwa is surely tucked into his apartment for the night.
Hongjoong hears the doors slide open from beside him, cool early winter air rushing into the space. He exhales deeply and slides off the table, opening his mouth to say, Sorry, we’re just about to close, and—stops.
“Hi,” says Seonghwa.
“Hi,” Hongjoong responds automatically, too stupefied by his own idiocy to think of saying anything else.
He stares at Seonghwa for a long second, before Seonghwa blinks and looks away.
The tension feels like a match held to a fuse; one wrong move, one misspoken word and scene will light into flames, burning them both. And hasn’t this hurt enough? Hongjoong clasps his hands together, and tries to say something mollifying.
“Hey, Seonghwa, you—didn’t have to…. force yourself to come to this.”
Seonghwa makes a soft noise of offence. Oh no. Hongjoong risks a glance back to him, and sees that he looks taken aback.
“I’m not—Hongjoong, I’m still your friend. I want to support your artistic endeavours. That’s important to me.”
Hongjoong opens his mouth and says nothing. He grips his hands together, squeezing his fingers like the pressure is some sort of lifeline. He doesn’t know how to feel, or what to say. It just aches, it all aches.
“Sorry, I—sorry. Thank you, then. Genuinely. For coming.”
Seonghwa looks at the floor. “Of course,” he says, to the tiles.
Hongjoong steps back to let Seonghwa into the gallery space.
He doesn’t want to watch him, he shouldn’t, but—Hongjoong has spent years watching Seonghwa, at this point. It’s a hard habit to break. Seonghwa walks through slowly, stopping in front of each frame to quietly study each photograph individually. It hurts. It hurts to think about what this moment might be like if Hongjoong hadn’t—fucked them up. He might hang back still, let Seonghwa call out to him if he wanted to tell Hongjoong something, or ask him a question. He might walk beside Seonghwa, quietly assess each photograph with him, explanations not needed.
Watching Seonghwa’s back, Hongjoong thinks momentarily of Yeosang’s words. Hold his hand or something. All at once, he wants to turn back around, take his coat and bag, walk out the sliding doors, and go home. But he doesn’t. His eyes stay on Seonghwa as he walks silently through the gallery, and they don’t stray from him for a moment.
Seonghwa pauses for a long time in front of the photograph of the two farmers; lingers even longer in front of the set of breakfast photos taken in his apartment. He looks at the other photographs with no less care: ones of Hongjoong’s parents’ dining table, their living room, a slippered foot in a shot. Photographs of the outdoors, of blurred silhouettes in the streets, of bodies pressed up against each other in joy, in stillness; in comfort, in exuberance. And photographs of himself—of Seonghwa. His hands, cupping water in the sink, arranging clothes on set; the edge of his back; a blur of motion, a flicker of laughter.
Hongjoong feels his breath catch in his throat, as he watches Seonghwa slowly walk up to the long exposure shot, the focal point, the core of the exhibition, and there’s a flutter in him—a tremble in his sore, weary heart. Something like hope. Like, maybe it was a foolish misunderstanding, maybe they were both mistaken. Maybe Seonghwa will look at this photograph, see the emotion in it, the tender way that Hongjoong has captured him, and just—change his mind. Maybe he’ll look at it and see that Hongjoong is not some lovesick freak with a childish obsession, but someone who values his company, values the care that Seonghwa puts into his relationships. Who sees that he’s the centre of all of them, and always has been. Maybe Hongjoong will look at Seonghwa, as he looks at this photograph, and he’ll see forgiveness in his face.
But—he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. Seonghwa simply looks politely at the photograph. He looks at it for a long time, and nothing in his face changes. Hongjoong looks away. How humiliating. He realises, belatedly, that his heart had been pounding, watching Seonghwa. He’s an idiot. What was he thinking, entertaining that train of thought? Seonghwa doesn’t need to forgive him. Hongjoong had overstepped Seonghwa’s boundaries, and he’d gotten what he deserved for it. This is it now.
He turns around then, lightly places his hands flat on the table and stares down at the pamphlets. They’re in disarray; he hadn’t bothered to straighten them after the reception. He doesn’t straighten them now.
It’s minutes, probably, until Hongjoong hears the click of heels approaching him from behind. The sound stops, and he doesn’t move. For a moment, there’s nothing. Neither of them say anything. Hongjoong can’t imagine what Seonghwa is thinking, after his reaction to being shown Hongjoong’s folder of candids of himself, looking now at this… public gallery of—Something in him seizes up, and he turns around quickly, looking Seonghwa in the face to escape the thoughts in his head.
Seonghwa blinks at him, his expression serious.
“Thank you, Hongjoong. This is… really lovely. It’s great work,” he tells Hongjoong.
“Thanks,” Hongjoong whispers back, unable to mask his blatant discomposure.
Seonghwa lifts his foot to step forward, and then seems to think better of it. “Take care, okay?” he says, voice deliberate.
Hongjoong inhales deeply, and nods, looking to the floor tiles. He wills himself to keep it together, if not for his own dignity, for Seonghwa, so the last thing he has of Hongjoong is more than him as some miserable mess of a man. “You too, Seonghwa.” He swallows. “See you.”
“See you.”
After Seonghwa leaves, Hongjoong goes home to his apartment, and he doesn’t feel like crying into his pillow, or tearfully eating a pint of ice cream. He showers, and he goes to bed, and he doesn’t feel anything at all.
On Monday, the morning after the exhibition closes, Hongjoong is lying in bed after a sleepless night. It’s early, pre-dawn. He hadn’t drawn his curtains the evening before, so he can see the dark street, the shuttered convenience store across the road, illuminated by the glow of the street-lamps. He closes his eyes and then opens them again. Slowly, inexorably, the sky lightens, from black to dark navy to pearly grey. It’s one of those mornings where there’s no discernable sunrise, just a slow change of illumination. Hongjoong has work today, shooting a model that isn’t Seonghwa, whoever Yeosang has reassigned him to. He swallows back the bitter laugh he wants to let out. He should get up.
He fumbles for his phone and sees an email from the person who had interviewed him for the arts magazine. It’s a link to the article, published this morning. He squints at the screen, not bothering to grope around for his glasses.
★★★★★ Kim Hongjoong’s “In Moments”: a subtle, intimate witnessing of the simple moments that make up a life, particularly one that is shared, reads the byline. Hongjoong sits up abruptly and finds his glasses, shoving them on. He reads on, heart in his throat.
The ordinary is brought into the realm of the sublime in Kim’s photographs. Quotidian occurrences: a train passing, a meal shared amongst friends, a walk in the fields, are all observed with such tenderness that they transcend the mundane entirely. Central to this uplifting is the fact that all the photographs allude to a collective experience. The photographer is the one to capture the image, but there is always evidence of somebody else bearing witness, be it in the form of a figure at the edge of a scene or a pair of hands moving across the image. Our everyday lives, Kim seems to be saying, are astonishing if we only have people to share this sense of wonder with.
I was impressed by the curation of the exhibition, done wholly by Kim himself. The layout of the photographs seems opaque at first, with no clear thematic groupings, but as you move through the works, the intent becomes clear. Like memory, the photographs tumble and collide in the viewer’s mind, each one linking to those around it. This connectivity is emphasised by a specific figure that features prominently in the photographs. Other than one notable exception, Kim chooses to never explicitly display this person’s face, obscuring them from direct recognisability. Yet he manages to consistently capture them with a delicate sense of yearning, denoting the kind of private warmth and mutual observation that is the real heart of this exhibition, in my view. They provide a through line guiding the viewer to an understanding; that quiet, quotidian intimacy can be a thing of true beauty.
This exhibition is a marvel: an honest, brave endeavour marking Kim Hongjoong as an artist to watch.
Hongjoong reads the words again and again until they blur in his mind. A specific figure that features prominently… private warmth… quiet, quotidian intimacy. Terrifying, hot shame floods through him. What has he done? Coughed up his heart, bloody and beating, and spat it onto the floor for everyone to see. “In Moments”? More like: Here’s all the most sacred and private feelings I’ve ever had! Come and see!
And people had come. Over the past week, so many people have seen the photos of Seonghwa, captured with a delicate sense of yearning, blown up and magnified and painfully, incredibly obvious in their intent. So obvious that a total stranger had come along and understood at once. Hongjoong feels as if his skin is being flensed from his body. There’s no way he can ever show his face to Seonghwa again.
His phone buzzes with a text.
[7:50am]
Jeong Yunho
how’s our favourite photographer hyung? picking you up in 10 <3
this is mingi btw
yunho wants u to know he would never txt and drive
Fuck. Absolutely not. Sitting next to Seonghwa in the back of the van is completely out of the question.
Hey
No need to pick me up this morning
I took the day off
Jeong Yunho
🤨
the calendar says u have a shoot at 9?
Damn their shared calendar. Hongjoong thinks fast.
Oh yeah
I forgot
Still no need to come by though
I need to pick up laundry detergent before work
So I’ll just take the bus
See you later!
Jeong Yunho
k!
love you 💋
Hongjoong exhales. So, it’s not as bad as he thought, losing Seonghwa. It’s actually worse. He’s made it clear to anyone who went to his exhibition how deep the feelings he has for Seonghwa go. But Seonghwa doesn’t want his feelings. Seonghwa doesn’t want him at all. And soon everyone is going to put two and two together and realise why.
He’s going to have to avoid everyone for… he doesn’t know how long. I guess my life is over, Hongjoong thinks dully, taking scant comfort from the sheer teenage drama of the statement. Mechanically, he swings his legs out of bed. He’s going to have to hurry if he wants to get the bus to be on time for work.
[Tuesday, 7:34am]
Hey, taking the bus to work this week
Got some errands to run again
Can you let Yunho know?
Song Mingi
ok, hyung!
let us know if there’s anything we can help with!!
[Read 7:36am]
[Wednesday, 8:09am]
Hi Jongho, would you mind taking over my shoot with Wooyoung today?
Sorry for the inconvenience
Choi Jongho
Sure, no worries.
[Wednesday, 12:31pm]
Jung Wooyoung
hyung what the fuck
??????
what is going on
hello??????
[Read 12:34pm]
[Thursday, 3:24pm]
Kang Yeosang
Hey hyung
Have rearranged a couple of your shoots on Seonghwa’s request and updated the calendar accordingly.
Hope you’re okay
👍
[Thursday, 5:42pm]
Jung Wooyoung
hyung pick up the phone
come out for drinks with me
whatever’s wrong we can just talk about it
Sorry, I’m busy tonight
Jung Wooyoung
doing what
if you give me some bullshit excuse i’ll kill u
It’s my mother’s birthday actually
Jung Wooyoung
no it isn’t her birthday is august 7th
Oh, I meant my mother’s sister’s birthday
My aunt
You don’t know her
But her birthday is today
So I’m not free
Jung Wooyoung
HONGJOONG
[Read 5:45pm]
Friday evening finds Hongjoong catatonic on his couch watching School 2013. He’s on his fourth?—fifth?—episode of the night. It’s not his fault that autoplay keeps queueing up the next one. Besides, he’s seen it all before. He doesn’t even need to really be paying attention; he can scroll on Instagram to his heart’s content while Namsoon and Heungsoo bicker in the background. He opens one of San’s stories, a picture of Wooyoung grilling meat for dinner with the caption he works so hard 😍 And Mingi’s posted a reel of him dancing to CUFF IT, which Hongjoong likes.
It feels like far longer than a week since he last saw everyone. He’d muted the group chat earlier that week, an action which had made him feel mature and in control; but one that is rendered functionally useless because he keeps going into KKT and opening the chat every five minutes to look at the messages. As Heungsoo shoves Namsoon into a tower of chairs in the storage shed, he checks it again, and pauses at seeing his name. Wooyoung has sent around the link to the article from the magazine, where it had referenced all of his “intimate” “yearning” photographs of Seonghwa. His grip tightens on his phone, and he exhales wearily as he watches everyone respond.
[7:24pm]
Jung Wooyoung
omg everyone look at this GLOWING review of Hongjoong-hyungs exhibition!!!!
an artist to watch!!!!!!!!!
Choi San
wow congratulations Hongjoong-hyung!
this is such an amazing article ❤️
my dad says congratulations too!
Kang Yeosang
Well done, hyung!
Jeong Yunho
so proud of you 😘
Song Mingi
💪😍
Choi Jongho
“I was impressed by the curation of the exhibition, done wholly by Kim himself.”
:)
Park Seonghwa
Congratulations~
Jung Wooyoung
obsessed with the photo they took of u btw
u look like u are ready to tell me off. very sexy 🥵🥵
Hongjoong heart reacts to all of them, except Wooyoung’s last messages, which he thumbs down. He’s about to lock his phone and return to Namsoon and Heungsoo, who are still very much trapped in the store cupboard, but Yeosang’s next message makes him pause.
Kang Yeosang
Oh, btw, Seonghwa-hyung’s editorial is out in Elle!
[link]
Song Mingi
damn
that was fast
hongjoong-hyung don’t u normally go right up to the deadline w edits ㅋㅋㅋ
Ah. Hongjoong has been wondering whether Seonghwa said anything to the others about their break from working together. He knows Wooyoung has guessed that something is wrong, as indicated by the way he’s been incessantly pestering Hongjoong with texts and calls (none of which Hongjoong has responded to), and that means San probably knows too. Yeosang obviously knows. But clearly the message hasn’t spread; Mingi might be a bit clueless sometimes, but he’s not insensitive. He wouldn’t have asked if he’d known.
Hongjoong should reply, so it doesn’t look like there are any hard feelings. But any message he mentally drafts seems bitter and envious—because he is bitter and envious. It’s painful, thinking of trying to explain what had happened in a mature, lighthearted way, as if he’s not being ripped apart from the inside.
Park Seonghwa
Oh no, Hongjoong didn’t shoot this one! ^^
Hongjoong watches the ‘seen by’ numbers tick up until everyone’s opened the message. He knows he shouldn’t be torturing himself like this but he can’t help it.
Song Mingi
oh! right
my bad
how come @Kim Hongjoong ???
Hongjoong barely has time to panic before other messages flood in.
Jeong Yunho
oh yeah it was shim seongwoo-ssi right?
you look good hyung 🤠
Jung Wooyoung
u always kill it hyung
Choi San
our star ⭐️
Park Seonghwa
Thank you! 🌸
This makes me less nervous for our shoot with Big Park on Monday 😅
Hongjoong then gets a private message from Mingi saying, sorry hyung :( i didn’t know, hope ur okay. He doesn’t know how to respond, so he doesn’t. He exits KKT and manages to focus on School 2013 for approximately thirty seconds before he opens the group chat again, ignores whatever topic the conversation has moved onto, and scrolls back up to the link Yeosang sent.
He shouldn’t click the link. Hongjoong does not want to see, know, or hear anything about shoots Seonghwa does with people who are not him. Again, he shouldn’t be torturing himself like this. It’s agonising, thinking of Seonghwa modelling for another photographer. Someone else getting to see what Hongjoong sees: Seonghwa’s grace and skill, his artistry. But more than that, this… this person now gets to have the other parts of working with Seonghwa too. Would Seonghwa bring lunch for him? Do they share a conspiratorial look when they know they’ve just taken the photo of the shoot, the focal image? Does he make Seonghwa laugh?
Thinking of everything he’s lost devastates him, the ache of it blooming hot and caustic in his chest. All the moments he didn’t even know to treat as precious, as gifts, slipping away like water through his fingers. He’ll never have any of it again. It’s only been a week but he misses Seonghwa so fiercely that it feels almost physical. Like his heart really has been bruised somehow; cut forcibly from his ribcage and then replaced in his chest to sit there, tender and hurting.
His thumb hovers over the link to the article. He desperately wants to click it, if only to see Seonhgwa’s face—No, Hongjoong tells himself tightly. It will make this so much worse and you know it. Hopelessly pining after photographs of Seonghwa is not the way to move on. So he exits the group chat and drops his phone face down on the couch. He is going to get over this, goddamn it. No matter how long it takes.
Sunday is the scheduled day for group dinner that week. Hongjoong wasn’t intending on going anyway, but his calendar alert reminds him that it’s at Seonghwa’s apartment, so it’s obviously right out. The idea of sitting in his own apartment alone while the rest of them are together is simply too depressing to contemplate, so he takes the metro out to his parents’ house for dinner. They’re both surprised to see him—and concerned, too, presumably as to why Hongjoong (normally too busy to even call them regularly) is suddenly turning up at their house. They conceal it well, despite his mother insisting she cook all of Hongjoong’s favourite dishes. It feels like pity, but he can’t be bothered to dissuade her. Spending the evening with his parents because he’s too heartbroken to face his friends is a depressing concept in a different way, but at least he’s not eating takeout.
After he gets home later that evening, he collapses once again onto his couch. He’s barely started the final episode of School 2013 when his phone starts ringing. Wooyoung, of course. Hongjoong is tempted not to answer, but he knows Wooyoung will just keep calling until he picks up, so he’ll only be delaying the inevitable.
“Hongjoong, why are you avoiding us?” is how Wooyoung greets him.
“I’m not avoiding you,” Hongjoong says. “I’m busy.”
“I know you’re not busy,” Wooyoung says. “I can hear you watching some drama right now—” Hongjoong immediately mutes his laptop— “and your mom just called me and told me you turned up to their house for dinner tonight out of the blue. She’s really worried about you, and so am I. Hyung. Please. What’s going on? What happened with you and Seonghwa-hyung?”
Hongjoong sighs. He’s too tired for this. He wants to get back to School 2013. Sometimes it’s relaxing to watch people battle through their communication problems and emotional issues and finally reach some kind of resolution. Even if it’s only fictional.
“Nothing, Wooyoung.” He pushes his glasses up onto his head and presses the palm of a hand against an eye. “Just like before, but this time it’s true.”
“I’m coming over,” Wooyoung says decisively.
“No!” Hongjoong says immediately. “No. Please don’t. I’m—I’m genuinely trying to get through this. I need to get through this. It’s just going to be different for a little while. I don’t know how long. Until I can… get over myself. Please stay home, okay? I can’t see anyone right now.”
Wooyoung is silent for a long time (which, for Wooyoung, is about ten seconds). Then he says, “Okay, hyung. San wants to talk to you too. I’m giving the phone to him.”
Hongjoong wants very badly to end the call, but then San’s saying, “Hyung? Hyung, can you hear me?” and you don’t hang up on Choi San.
“Yeah, I can hear you.”
“Hi,” San says. “I just wanted to say… Seonghwa really misses you, hyung.”
Hongjoong’s chest feels tight but hollow, skin stretched taut over a void. “Did he say that?”
“No-o,” San admits. “But! I can tell. I know he misses you. We miss you too, in the mornings.” He pauses. “Wooyoung is telling me to tell you to take your time, but I want you to come back, so I’m not going to say that. But, hyung, we’ll always be here.”
“Okay,” Hongjoong says. “Thank you. To Wooyoung too. I should—”
“Oh, no, wait, Jongho wants to talk to you as well,” San says. Before Hongjoong can argue, he hears San’s voice calling, “Jongho! Hongjoong-hyung’s on the phone! Jongho, I can see you on your phone, stop pretending to be asleep. Come say hi.”
“San, it’s fine—” Hongjoong begins, just as Jongho says, “Hey, hyung. How’s it going?”
Hongjoong makes a pained noise into the phone and Jongho chuckles. “Yeah, I figured. Well, come back when you’re ready. Work isn’t the same without you.” There’s a pause, and Hongjoong can hear Jongho breathe in through his nose deeply before continuing. “And—hyung. By the way. Not that it’s any of my business but. Did you look at Seonghwa’s editorials?”
“Yes,” Hongjoong lies. “They were good.”
“Okay, so no,” Jongho says immediately.
Hongjoong puts his glasses back on his face and thinks, What the hell does he mean by that?
“Again, I must stress that I am deeply aware—unlike some people in this room—that none of this has anything to do with me,” Jongho continues. “But… you should look at them.”
“Okay,” Hongjoong says, woodenly. “I’ll think about it. Thank you all for calling. Things will be back to normal soon, I promise.”
Thankfully, Jongho doesn’t call him out on this second, even more blatant lie. He says, kindly, “See you soon, hyung,” and hangs up the phone.
Finally, blessedly free from the clutches of his well-meaning friends, Hongjoong flops back on his couch and stares blankly at the wall. A thought nags at the back of his mind: why did Jongho want him to look at Seonghwa’s photos so badly? He reaches out for his laptop—but thinks better of it. It’s late, he should go to bed. His mother had said, over dinner earlier, Hongjoongie, you look tired, are you sleeping? You need to take better care of your health, you have to look after yourself. Hongjoong is going to have to try, he supposes. Nobody else will do it for him, after all.
Monday should be Hongjoong’s day at the developing studio, working in the darkroom, but the next morning, he wakes up and he doesn’t feel like going. A brief panic seizes him: normally, he loves being in the studio. Even if he doesn’t have new film to develop, he’ll usually dig out some old negatives, play around with developing techniques, different colour washes, exposure times. There’s always something he can do to stretch his creativity. It’s not something he’s ever had to… convince himself to want to do. It’s always been a joy. His sudden lack of enthusiasm scares him. Has this whole stupid situation shaken him so badly that he can’t create, can’t make art?
Don’t be melodramatic, he thinks. You’re probably just burned out after the exhibition. Give yourself some time.
But as the day wears on, he feels the same. In fact, he feels worse. He feels so disappointed in himself, for tying up his feelings for Seonghwa so closely to his art, such that the loss of one means the loss of the other. He should have known better, shouldn’t have been so foolish as to think it could last. You’ll find other sources of inspiration, he tells himself, dully, but all it feels like is a cruel lie.
Suddenly, he remembers Jongho’s questioning from last night. Have you seen Seonghwa’s editorials? Before he can think, he reaches for his laptop and flips it open. Then he does think. He thinks: This is not a good idea. He searches the name of the magazine, opens their website, and sees the link on the front page. He thinks, Fuck.
And it is a bad idea. It is a dreadful, terrible idea. Because what Hongjoong feels when he opens the link and sees Seonghwa in these new editorials is not grief, it’s not jealousy, it’s not a deep painful yearning—it’s anger.
Hongjoong understands at once why Jongho had told him to look at these editorials. Jongho would have seen exactly what Hongjoong is seeing. That Seonghwa’s gifts are being wasted. That he’d spent hours in the studio with a professional photographer who had no idea how to shoot him. Who had spent Seonghwa’s valuable time and talent squandering both of those things. Hongjoong could laugh; he would laugh, if the delusions this photographer had sustained were terrible enough to be funny. But they’re not funny.
Seonghwa is gorgeous, as always, but that’s easy for him. It doesn’t require skill for the camera to capture what Park Seonghwa does without trying. That’s not the problem here. The problem is that Seonghwa looks… empty. Blank. Hongjoong can barely look at Seonghwa’s eyes in these shots, so devoid are they of their usual magnetism. Any other model and Hongjoong wouldn’t give this shoot a second glance, would dismiss it as down to lack of talent or experience, but he knows Park Seonghwa. He’s never raised his camera and seen Seonghwa look into the lens with nothing in his eyes like this. He’s never once had Seonghwa give him anything less than perfection.
Hongjoong wouldn’t have thought it possible for Seonghwa to look like this: forgettable. A face you could look past in the street and not think twice about it. But somehow this useless excuse for a photographer has managed it. Who does this idiot think he is?
The look in Seonghwa’s eyes alone would be enraging enough—except—it’s not just that. Hongjoong scrolls through the images, knuckles of his right hand pressing hard against his face. His lip curls up in distaste the more he sees. The lighting of the shoot has washed Seonghwa’s skintone pale, a senseless trend, applied artlessly here. The point lighting doesn’t capture the angle of his nose correctly. There’s too much skin showing in this one, there’s not enough in another—
Hongjoong shuts his laptop abruptly and stands, opening their shared calendar, scrolling to this week. There it is: Seonghwa ⭐️, 3:30—7:30pm, Big Park. Seonghwa’s second shoot with this photographer, happening today. Right now. Hongjoong laughs once to himself. Good.
He calls an Uber and throws a jacket on.
—
Heavy, wet snow pelts the windshield. It’s the first of the season, and the car is unmoving amongst the traffic of other drivers who, surely, have also foolishly neglected to put on their winter tires this late into December. Hongjoong watches the wipers listlessly and focuses on keeping his breathing steady.
“You can just. Let me out here,” he says.
The driver looks back at Hongjoong doubtfully. “You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
The studio is a ten minute walk at least, but if Hongjoong sits in this unmoving vehicle for another minute he'll break whatever object he gets a hand around first. The driver unlocks the doors and wishes him luck.
Snow immediately beats against Hongjoong’s face as he steps out, wet and stinging. It’s fucking cold. He curses, shoves his hands in his pockets, and begins the trek against the weather and towards the studio.
—
He finds them in one of the second floor rooms, a label taped to the wall beside the door denoting the details of the shoot. Hongjoong glances at it as he tries the handle to find the door unlocked, barely registering the crew scattering as soon as he shoves the door open. Snowmelt whips off of his jacket as he enters, eyes immediately finding his target.
“Seonghwa-yah!”
“What—” Seonghwa looks up from the set, astonished. God, the set. It’s all wrong.
“H—Hongjoong?”
Hongjoong looks around in stark offence. The lighting is wrong, the colours are wrong, even the styling is wrong. They gave Seonghwa a stud earring. He laughs in cold disbelief. “Are you for real? You leave me to do this?”
Seonghwa’s expression hardens, face sliding into uncharacteristic iciness. He’s perfectly articulate as he says, “Hongjoong, what are you doing here?”
“I’m here—to—” Hongjoong stares at him wildly, momentarily at a loss for words. He gestures at the poor excuse of a set with both hands. “Park Seonghwa! At least respect yourself enough to work with a photographer who can recognise what a gift you are! Why are you wasting your time here?”
“What are you talking about?” Seonghwa says. He sounds a little angry now. Good. He should be angry. He’s worth so much more than this and he knows it.
Hongjoong opens his mouth to say as much, but the photographer—Hongjoong can’t even think of his name right now, he doesn’t care anyway—chooses that moment to start speaking.
“Uh—who…”
Hongjoong wheels around on him, fury flaring like a lit match. “You!” The photographer shrinks back, haughty expression freezing on his face. Hongjoong bares his teeth and takes a heavy step towards him.
“Do you think this is a joke? What is he to you, just a doll you’re dressing up?”
“N-no, I—”
Hongjoong doesn’t let him continue. “If you think you can photograph Park Seonghwa and forget that you’re working with one of best fucking models in this industry—” He breathes in and out once, hard. “You think you can capture the planes of his face correctly with this shitty lighting? The angle of his nose?”
“Hongjoong, stop!” Seonghwa exclaims from behind him.
“Don’t,” Hongjoong bites out. He doesn’t turn around. Water is dripping from his sleeves and onto his hands. He squeezes them into fists and then shakes them out, droplets smacking onto the floor around his feet.
The photographer looks between Hongjoong and Seonghwa, eyes wide and nervous. He’s gripping the camera in his hands like a lifeline. It’s pathetic, honestly.
“Should I leave? You guys seem—”
“No!” Seonghwa says, at the same time as Hongjoong growls, “Yes.”
The photographer glances at Hongjoong and mutters, “Yeah, I’m out.” He looks past Hongjoong and addresses Seonghwa meekly. “Seonghwa-ssi, um. Uh, I’ll send you an email, later. Um. Sorry.” Hongjoong stares at the ground as the photographer steps around him, his lips curling into a snarl. The photographer and Seonghwa exchange a few words quietly as he leaves, but Hongjoong can’t hear them over the roaring in his ears.
The door clicks as it closes, and then they’re alone.
“Hongjoong, what is wrong with you!”
Ha. Here we go. Hongjoong turns to face Seonghwa. He feels furious and reckless. He wants Seonghwa to shout at him, spitting mad, and he wants to bite back. He wants a fight.
“What's wrong with me? What did I tell you? Modelling is an art, you’re an artist. Do you seriously think that guy can capture you properly? You don’t even like working with him, it took me one second of looking at those editorials to tell.”
“That’s not—Hongjoong, I’m working! Right now! Or I was, until you barged in and terrorised every staff member into leaving! Do you have any idea how many problems this is going to cause for everyone?”
Hongjoong throws a hand up flippantly. “Probably solved a few, actually, by stopping this mess of a shoot!”
“Are you serious? So, what, did you just come here to ruin my shoot and insult the people I’m working with?” Seonghwa stares at him incredulously. Hongjoong laughs.
“You think the ‘people you’re working with’ know what they’re doing? They don’t know the first thing about you!”
“And you do?” Seonghwa says bluntly.
Hongjoong stares at him, a scoff caught in his throat. He shoves a hand through his wet hair, pushing it off his face, and swallows the shame that jerks in his chest.
“Yeah, well. I might have fucked us up,” Hongjoong jeers, feeling acidic. If his voice cracks as he speaks, they both ignore it. “But I am not letting you sabotage your own career.”
Seonghwa stops. Hongjoong can see his tongue working in his mouth, see him thinking furiously. His cheeks are flushed—they should have put blush on him, Hongjoong thinks wildly, it would have complemented his hair perfectly—
“Kim Hongjoong. Why are you here.” Seonghwa stares him down, gaze intense and livid, snapping Hongjoong back down to earth. “Tell me the truth for once.”
“Because—” Hongjoong pauses, breathing hard. The truth? His hands are shaking, and they should be cold, because they’re wet, and it’s winter, but they’re hot—his whole body feels hot. “You’re not—you need—”
“I need what, Hongjoong?”
“A… a photographer who—”
“Enough! This isn’t about photography anymore. This isn’t about work! You didn’t come into my shoot to yell at me because you’re disappointed that Seongwoo-ssi doesn’t light me like I’m some holy deity!”
“That’s exactly what I’m here to do, actually!” Hongjoong is nearly shouting now, but he doesn’t care. Why not let the whole studio hear him? What else does he have to lose?
Seonghwa lets out a frustrated groan and presses both hands to his face. He’s ruining his makeup, Hongjoong thinks stupidly, the thought irking him.
Seonghwa steps closer to him, dark eyes arresting in their anger. “Why? Tell me why. Don’t say that it’s because you think I’m too important to work with some inexperienced idiot photographer. That you respect me too much as a…” Seonghwa’s glare is mean, and he spits out, “a colleague to see me work below my status. Because that’s bullshit, Kim Hongjoong. You and I both know that. So tell me the truth.”
And—and suddenly, Hongjoong wants to back out; suddenly he can’t do this. Is this what Seonghwa wants from him? His feelings strewn out on the ground like detritus after an ugly storm? The whole moment feels volatile, and he feels irrevocably, irresponsibly stupid. He takes a step backward, away from Seonghwa, and glances to the door once and then back to Seonghwa helplessly. Seonghwa narrows his eyes—and Hongjoong feels pinned in place.
Seonghwa stares at him. “Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
Seonghwa shakes his head in irritation. “Give me some honesty, Hongjoong,” he says, voice hard.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Hongjoong says quietly. His whole body is thrumming.
“Try it anyway.”
Hongjoong says nothing.
“Hongjoong!”
“I can’t!” Hongjoong shouts back.
Seonghwa takes a step towards Hongjoong, manic look on his face. He presses a hand onto his own chest. “Look at me! I’m not made of glass! I’m not going to shatter if you manhandle me!”
Hongjoong shoves his hands into his hair, breathing hard. That’s not— “I don’t want to manhandle you!”
Seonghwa scoffs viciously. “Yeah! You act like you never want to touch me at all!”
“It’s not—of course I want to touch you, all I want to do is touch you! Seonghwa, I can barely keep it together when you fucking look at me! You drive me crazy!”
Seonghwa lets out a strangled laugh. Hongjoong feels torrid. Like all his innards have come loose from their seams and are sloshing around inside him. What did I just—He watches Seonghwa sink down to his haunches and clutch his head in his hands. There’s no sound in the room aside from the both of them heaving air into their lungs. He just—he just—Ah. Panic starts to overtake him as he stares at Seonghwa, hunched into himself on the ground.
Hongjoong has no idea what to do. Instinct screams at him to leave, but he’s not sure his legs are physically capable of walking him out of the room right now.
Seonghwa groans out a huge sigh, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. He lifts his head slightly, but doesn’t look up fully.
“Come here, Joong.”
“No!” Hongjoong says, stumbling back a step. He doesn’t—everything feels big and loud and heavy. Like there’s a weight on him, a yoke around his neck, that he’s placed on his own shoulders. What the hell is happening? His heart is pounding in every fingertip, and he wonders nonsensically if he’s about to experience some sort of medical emergency.
“Please come here, Hongjoong,” Seonghwa repeats. He raises his head and looks up at Hongjoong. “You’re allowed to touch me.”
“I—”
“I want you to.”
And Hongjoong looks at him, really looks at him, at the expression on his pretty face, tired and pleading. He sees Seonghwa, sees the want in his eyes, he just wants Hongjoong to—he just wants Hongjoong.
“Ah.” Tears well up in Hongjoong’s eyes. He blinks and feels them slide down his cheeks, huge and hot. Swearing softly, he swipes at them with his palms. “Seonghwa.”
Seonghwa rises to his feet at once and approaches Hongjoong. He opens his arms slightly, offering, and searches Hongjoong’s face, eyes huge and concerned. Hongjoong squeezes his eyes shut, tears tracking down his cheeks, and wraps his arms around himself. He hears Seonghwa quietly say, “Hongjoong, can I?” and he nods, too overwhelmed to trust his voice.
Hongjoong doesn’t move as Seonghwa pulls him into his arms and against his chest.
“To be as clear as possible, this is a hug with romantic intent,” Seonghwa says gently. “Also because you need one, and I want to be the one to give it to you.”
“Shut up,” Hongjoong says into Seonghwa’s shoulder. He sniffles. “I know.”
They’re both quiet as Hongjoong stands unmoving in Seonghwa’s arms, face pressed into his shoulder. Hongjoong can’t seem to run a thought straight in his head, like there’s a wash of haze in his brain that wipes the beginning of every thought blank before it can end.
“You can touch me, I meant it,” Seonghwa says softly.
“I know. Just give me a minute.”
“Okay.”
Hongjoong breathes; deep, long breaths against the warmth of Seonghwa’s shoulder. He stops trying to focus on anything, letting his forehead rest on the soft fabric of Seonghwa’s sweater, inhaling the familiar smell that’s part perfume, part studio-clothes, and part just Seonghwa. When he finally unwraps his arms from himself, he feels the weight of Seonghwa’s hold loosen, and he thinks, Ah. And before he can think anything else, his arms are around Seonghwa’s back, hands digging into his sweater, pulling Seonghwa against him with such force that he hears Seonghwa huff out a soft Oof.
And then Hongjoong thinks about what he just did, what he just said, what Seonghwa just said, and he barely gets a steady inhale in before he’s pushing his face into Seonghwa’s neck and crying, and crying, and crying.
Seonghwa makes a noise, some sort of sympathetic sound, and Hongjoong feels the press of a hand on the back of his head, carding through his damp hair gently. A renewed burst of tears wracks through him at the sensation, and Seonghwa holds him steady as Hongjoong shakes against him.
“Oh, Hongjoong,” Seonghwa breathes out.
Hongjoong can’t remember the last time he cried like this. Not for a long time, not for years. It feels like relief, letting everything flood out: the agony and grief and misery of the last few weeks; the torturous months and years that he’s loved Seonghwa silently and wretchedly. Finally, he can let it all go.
When his sobs subside, the neckline of Seonghwa's sweater now thoroughly dampened, he takes a shuddery breath, and says, “Ugh.”
Seonghwa hums in agreement. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Hongjoong says quietly. “I think so.” Part of Hongjoong wishes he could stay here, Seonghwa’s arms around him, letting Seonghwa soothe him until he falls asleep. Obviously this is an impossible desire, so he gives himself one more inhale and exhale, before lifting his head and stepping back. He looks at Seonghwa, now fifty percent more dishevelled than he was previously, and with one hundred percent more snot and tears on his designer sweater.
“Ah, I messed up your fancy Big Park sweater,” Hongjoong says, making an abortive gesture towards it.
“That’s fine, they’re gifting me this one,” Seonghwa says easily.
They pause, looking at each other, both contemplating the scenario that just occurred in which Hongjoong had burst onto the set—and subsequently frightened every Big Park staff member off of the set.
“I’ll figure it out,” Seonghwa says. He smiles gently at Hongjoong. “Don’t worry.”
“I’ll help, this is my fault anyway,” Hongjoong says, and he means it, too. He’s in a benevolent mood. He could even be nice to that talentless photographer, if he had to. “Maybe not right now though. Sometime later, when I’m less gross.”
“You’re not gross,” Seonghwa says reflexively. “Oh… wait, let me—”
He hurries across the set to his shoulder bag, and returns with a packet of wipes and of tissues. The tissue pack has little bears on it, which is unbearably cute. Hongjoong takes a tissue and turns around to blow his nose. He shoves the tissue into his jacket pocket, and turns back to see Seonghwa holding out a wipe. Hongjoong takes it and rubs at the mess of his face haphazardly. Seonghwa watches him for a few moments, before he grasps Hongjoong’s wrist and says, “Here, let me.”
Hongjoong freezes for a moment, all of his instincts telling him to writhe away, dodge the affection Seonghwa is offering. Then, with effort, he says, “Okay,” closes his eyes and tilts his face up to Seonghwa, who gently and diligently wipes down Hongjoong’s tear-swollen face.
“There you go,” Seonghwa says, and Hongjoong opens his eyes, facing Seonghwa. They look at each other for a few long seconds, until Hongjoong blinks and looks to the side.
“Sorry I’m such a mess,” he says.
“You’re not,” Seonghwa says. Hongjoong scoffs out a laugh, prompting another, “You’re not. Hongjoong. You’re—you’re perfect.”
Hongjoong opens his mouth, then closes it. “Oh,” he says at last.
“Hongjoong,” Seonghwa says again, eyes softer than Hongjoong has ever seen them. He hesitantly raises a hand by Hongjoong’s head and holds it in the air, almost as if he’s waiting for something. Hongjoong’s whole body feels fragile. Like he’d drift off with a gust.
“What.”
“I’m going to kiss you.”
Hongjoong feels his mouth fall open. Amidst his thundering heart, his shaking hands, his wet hair dripping melted snow onto his face, he looks Seonghwa in the eyes, and he nods.
“Okay,” he whispers. “Yes, please.”
Seonghwa squeezes his raised hand once before opening it and placing it on the back of Hongjoong’s neck. He threads his fingers through Hongjoong's hair, almost hesitantly. Hongjoong stares at him, blood roaring in his ears. He has a moment to think, Oh my God, oh my God, this is happening—and then Seonghwa’s mouth is on his and he can’t think at all.
Hongjoong is all sensation. He feels Seonghwa’s hand on his nape, steady, pulling him in. He feels his own heart, pounding in his chest. And he feels—Hongjoong closes his eyes, tilts his head, and opens his mouth to Seonghwa’s. He reaches out blindly, clutching at Seonghwa’s sleeves, rucking up the satin fabric, not thinking, just wanting to touch. Wanting more.
Hongjoong could never have imagined that Seonghwa would kiss him like this—like he’s hungry. Ravenous. Like he needs it. It makes Hongjoong feel delirious, his whole body a live wire sparking at Seonghwa’s touch. Seonghwa’s hands move underneath the collar of Hongjoong’s jacket as he licks into Hongjoong’s mouth, lightly at first, then more insistent after Hongjoong shivers and lets out a broken-off moan. Hongjoong lets his hands drop as Seonghwa pushes his jacket off fully, and it drops on the floor behind him. He hardly notices—their mouths have barely parted. They both breathe deeply through their noses and Hongjoong brings his hands up to Seonghwa’s head, burying them in his hair. Seonghwa makes a sound of pleasure, and Hongjoong tugs, spurred on by it, eliciting another soft, low noise.
Seonghwa pulls away and then ducks his head to kiss down Hongjoong’s throat, open-mouthed and wet. Hongjoong gasps and tilts his head back, winding his fingers through Seonghwa’s hair. He feels Seonghwa’s teeth graze against his skin and whines with the pleasure of it.
“Oh my God,” Hongjoong breathes out, barely restraining another moan.
Seonghwa draws his head back up and they stare at each other, breathing high and shallow in sync. Seonghwa blinks rapidly a few times, colour high on his cheeks. “Is that—was that okay? Are you okay?”
Hongjoong’s hands are still in Seonghwa’s hair. He laughs once, feeling wild, and untangles his fingers reluctantly. “Yes,” he exhales. “Yeah. Yes.” He brushes the tips of his fingers against Seonghwa’s cheek and watches in awe as Seonghwa’s eyes flutter closed and he leans into the touch.
Hongjoong laughs again, pulling his hands back to himself. They’re shaking a little bit, now, and he covers his face with them, realising how flushed and worked up he is. “Um,” he says from behind his hands. “Can we do that again?”
Seonghwa lets out a quiet laugh, and Hongjoong peeks at him through his fingers. Seonghwa reaches up to Hongjoong’s hands, pulling them down from his face gently. “Hongjoong. I want to. I really want to. But I was about thirty seconds from dropping to my knees just now, and we are not letting that happen yet, and definitely not letting that happen in our workplace.”
From—
Hongjoong gapes at him, fixed in place. His—?
Clapping his hands together once, Seonghwa says, “Right. Okay.” He looks around the empty room. “I need to make a phone call, and we need to get out of here.” Hongjoong watches him delicately strip off the Big Park sweater, leaving him in an oversized button-up, and stares at the sweater as it’s held out in front of him. Seonghwa looks at Hongjoong as he stands there dumbly, latently attempting to process what Seonghwa had just said about his knees.
“Hongjoong, put this on. We’re going outside and I don’t want you just wearing that wet jacket, okay?”
“Uh. Oh. Sure, okay,” Hongjoong says. Taking the sweater from Seonghwa, he tugs it on over his head, and then watches Seonghwa begin an extremely cordial and apologetic phone call while simultaneously removing all of the set jewellery and clothing he’d been wearing, fastidiously hanging everything back up, and then dressing into his street clothes.
The phone call ends with Seonghwa saying, “Absolutely. Yes, I’ll get that arranged as soon as possible. Again, thank you so much for your understanding. I’ll be in contact by the evening.” A pause. He shrugs his coat on elegantly. “You too, thank you! Take care. Bye!”
Hongjoong barely has time to think, Am I horny? Did watching him do that just make me horny? before Seonghwa is scooping Hongjoong’s damp jacket up from the floor, pressing it into Hongjoong’s arms, and guiding him out of the studio room and into the hallway.
—
Outside, the snow has begun to settle. They pause on the steps of the studio, looking at the streets, now blanketed in a light snowfall. It’s still snowing, but gently now; you can see the insubstantial, airy snowflakes drifting down to nestle on the ground.
Hongjoong wonders if that’s it, if they’re just going to go home. He’s completely lost track of time, and the fall of darkness outside doesn’t help him. It could be 5pm or 7pm or 9pm. Seonghwa might have his own things he needs to do.
“Come on,” Seonghwa says. He’s reached the bottom of the stairs, standing beside a streetlamp. The light turns his pink hair golden, captures the lazy fall of snowflakes around him. He raises a hand and gestures for Hongjoong to join him, and Hongjoong forgets what time it is, forgets going home. He hurries down the stairs to Seonghwa and they start walking.
They walk in silence at first. Coming outside was a good idea; the cold air is refreshing on Hongjoong’s face, and away from the bright studio lights he can actually think.
“Sorry for all the crying,” Hongjoong says eventually. He laughs once, self-deprecatingly. “I won’t start weeping again, I promise.”
“It’s okay if you do,” Seonghwa replies.
Hongjoong looks up into the delicately falling snow as they walk. He closes his eyes briefly and feels the snowflakes against his skin, faint and cool. Without looking, he takes a hand out of his pocket and lets it bump against the back of Seonghwa’s. The snow crunches softly under their footsteps, and Hongjoong glances sidelong to see Seonghwa gazing at him. He searches Seonghwa’s eyes for a second, and then he tucks his hand around Seonghwa’s and winds their fingers together. Seonghwa smiles warmly at him and squeezes his hand. Hongjoong laughs again, but in relief, in marvel at how simple it is, after everything: walking down the street like this, holding Seonghwa’s hand.
“I thought—” Hongjoong starts, and then pauses, realising how silly he feels now, after all of his shouting, all of those weeks of torment—
Seonghwa squeezes his hand again, strokes his thumb against Hongjoong’s. “I know,” he says quietly. There’s something sombre in his tone, and Hongjoong looks up to his face. Seeing Seonghwa’s eyes downcast, a pang of guilt swells in his chest.
“How long have you…?” Hongjoong asks hesitantly.
He gets a soft smile in response, but it’s kind, not disdainful, as Hongjoong feels suddenly certain he deserves. Seonghwa sighs. “A long time.”
“Fuck,” Hongjoong says, under his breath. How long is a long time? Months, surely. Maybe even years, like Hongjoong himself. All that time, and they both…
“Hongjoong,” Seonghwa says, interrupting Hongjoong’s train of thought. “It’s not… don’t think about it like that. Like there’s something to regret.” He swings their hands lightly between them and continues, “It happened when we were ready for it. I don’t want either of us to feel bad about the time it took to get here, to get to this.”
Hongjoong says, “Yeah.” Then, haltingly, stumbling over his words, “Are—are we… uh. What is it? This?”
“Hmm,” Seonghwa says. “Well, what do you think?” He looks at Hongjoong coyly, through his lashes, and strokes his thumb over the back of Hongjoong’s hand. There are snowflakes in his hair. “Should we hold hands in public, like this? Should we kiss again? Should we go on dates?”
Hongjoong blinks, all thoughts immediately stalling in his head.
One side of Seonghwa’s mouth lifts in a sly smile. “Should I take you home? To my apartment?”
At that, Hongjoong stops dead in the street, yanking Seonghwa to a halt. Everything is spinning a little bit. “Um,” he says dumbly. “Uh.”
Seonghwa laughs. “I’m teasing, I’m teasing!”
“No,” Hongjoong says, brain finally catching up. “No, wait. Don’t be teasing.”
“So that’s what you want?” Seonghwa says, tugging Hongjoong’s hand to keep him walking.
“I. Oh my God. Yes,” Hongjoong says. “Yes, that’s what I want. But—”
He breaks off, pushing his glasses onto the top of his head and rubbing at his face with his free hand. He doesn’t know how to say it without sounding like he’s rejecting Seonghwa, or like he’s cutting possibilities off before they’ve even got a chance to get started, or like he doesn’t want this—
“Hongjoong, hey, you’re okay,” Seonghwa says gently. “You’re okay, we’re good. Let’s take things slowly, okay? There’s no rush. We can take our time. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yeah,” Hongjoong says, exhaling. He replaces his glasses. “Okay. That sounds good. I want to take it slowly too—Um. You know… mostly.”
“Mostly,” Seonghwa says, rolling the word around in his mouth, like it tastes good. Hongjoong looks over at him; he’s staring ahead, but that sly smile is pulling at the corner of his mouth. It’s stupidly sexy. He almost says, Fuck it, take me to your apartment right now, but there’s a warmth spreading through him at the surety of Seonghwa’s words; he isn’t going anywhere. They have all the time in the world. A pleasant anticipation coils low in his belly.
Seonghwa says, “Do you want to come over on Thursday?”
“To—?” The anticipation curls tighter.
Seonghwa laughs, bright and clear. “To have dinner, Hongjoong. I really want to make you dinner. We can take it from there.”
“Oh my God,” Hongjoong says under his breath. He takes a deep breath, clears thoughts of what taking it from there might mean from his mind. “Yes,” he says, louder. “Yes, Seonghwa, I would love to have dinner with you.”
“Good!” Seonghwa says. “It’s a date.”
“It’s a date,” Hongjoong echoes, and shivers violently.
Seonghwa looks at him in alarm. “Are you okay?”
Hongjoong says, teeth chattering a little, “Yes, yeah, sorry, that wasn’t to the date suggestion, I’m just—I’m just really fucking cold.”
“Oh my God,” Seonghwa says, quickening his pace. “I’m so sorry, of course you are, you haven’t even got a proper jacket on—do you want my gloves? My coat?”
“No, no, it’s okay,” Hongjoong says. He’s about to point out that they’re near a bus stop, he can probably get home quickly from here—but then he notices a cafe across the street, warm light spilling out of the windows, slightly fogged up. “Hey. Do you want to go in there and get a hot drink? With me? And we can sit and get warm?”
“Oh! Yes, good idea,” Seonghwa says, squeezing Hongjoong’s hand.
When they open the door, the warmth that greets them soothes the chill in Hongjoong’s body immediately. He sighs in relief, and lets Seonghwa navigate them to a pair of open seats. They sit gazing at each other for a silent moment before breaking into shy smiles. Seonghwa hasn’t let go of his hand. He rubs his thumb against Hongjoong’s softly before saying, “Okay, let me go order drinks for us,” and pushing himself up to standing.
Hongjoong rests his chin in a hand and watches as Seonghwa heads to the counter and begins chatting with the barista. He can just barely hear Seonghwa’s voice above the pleasant din of chatter in the cafe, and he feels himself smile involuntarily as Seonghwa points to something on the menu, and nods emphatically to the barista’s response. He breathes in the smell of coffee and listens to the muted sounds of laughter and conversation around him, and he exhales slowly, feeling something inside him settle, finally.
On Thursday afternoon, Hongjoong leaves work early. He makes a stop at the florist nearby the studio, and then he hurries home. He showers, and changes his clothes. Applies a little makeup, a touch of cologne. Then he gets the bus to Seonghwa’s apartment.
Outside Seonghwa’s front door, Hongjoong rings the buzzer and shifts from foot to foot, hearing the crinkle of paper from the bouquet under his arm. There’s a chill in the winter air, but he can barely feel it—his stomach is tying itself in knots. He’s been to Seonghwa’s place countless times over the years, but… but this is different. This is the first time he’s coming as Seonghwa’s—
The door swings open and Seonghwa stands in front of him, lovely and handsome. He’s changed, too, from what he’d been wearing earlier that day at work: now wearing a soft striped T-shirt and long, full trousers, with an apron tied over everything. His hair, pink still, but faded to a mellow blush colour, curls in loose waves over his forehead. He smiles at Hongjoong, and they look at each other for a beat before he says a bright, “Hi!”
“Hi,” Hongjoong says, smiling back. He offers Seonghwa the flowers. “These are for you.”
Seonghwa’s mouth drops open and his eyes go wide and soft. It would be comical were it not so endearing. “Hongjoong. You didn’t have to.”
Hongjoong shrugs and shifts his feet again. “It’s nothing.”
“No it’s not,” Seonghwa says. He takes the flowers from Hongjoong and leans in to press a soft kiss on Hongjoong’s cheek. “Thank you.” Hongjoong feels his breath catch in his throat.
Seonghwa leans back slowly, not quite all the way, lingering in Hongjoong’s space: an invitation. If Hongjoong wants. And he does want. So he steadies his heart, tilts his head a little and kisses Seonghwa, steadying himself with fingers lightly touching Seonghwa’s cheek. Nothing intense, just a sweet hello. Seonghwa’s eyes flutter closed, and they stay that way when Hongjoong pulls back.
“Mm,” he says, blinking his eyes open again, eyelashes fluttering. “Hi.”
Hongjoong smiles, feeling giddy. “Hi,” he echoes. “Can I come in?”
“Oh! Sorry, of course.” Seonghwa grins sheepishly, and turns to lead Hongjoong into the apartment. It doesn’t feel like winter in here, not with the way Seonghwa has the apartment lit softly by lamplight, warm and inviting despite the darkness that looms outside. Seonghwa is pathologically neat and tidy, but his home has always felt as lived in as it is pristine. There are touches of him everywhere: the cabinet of figurines, a well-used knitted throw on the back of an armchair, the moss he’s growing on the windowsill, a framed Star Wars poster on the wall opposite the stove, where Hongjoong thinks he smells—
“Is that galbitang? Did you go out and buy short ribs for this?” Hongjoong asks Seonghwa, a bit incredulous.
Seonghwa laughs. “Well. Yeah,” he replies. They look at each again, mirrored goofy smiles on their faces. Something in Hongjoong’s heart clenches at how sweetly domestic it is.
Seonghwa laughs again and hurries to the stove to check the pot and then sets about arranging the flowers in a vase, while Hongjoong takes a seat at one of the countertop stools at the kitchen island. As the galbitang simmers, they tell each other about their weeks, idle chatter passing easily between them. Although Hongjoong had started taking the van to work again on Tuesday, he hasn’t seen much of Seonghwa, probably due to Yeosang’s diplomatic rearrangement of their work schedule. Surprisingly, none of their friends had commented on Hongjoong’s return to the van, beyond a fervent chorus of “Good to have you back, hyung”. Wooyoung hasn’t even texted him about it. And Hongjoong’s been wondering about it; are Wooyoung and the others showing hitherto unknown levels of tact and reserve, or do they think nothing has changed? Hongjoong certainly hasn’t said anything, but Seonghwa might have. He looks over at Seonghwa, now serenely chopping vegetables for banchan.
“So,” Hongjoong says. He swings his feet under the kitchen island, which makes him feel absurdly childlike and shy. “Um. Who… knows. About—about this.”
Seonghwa glances up. A slow, knowing smile spreads over his face. “About us?”
Us.
Hongjoong blushes, stares at the counter and stammers out, “Uh huh.”
“Well,” Seonghwa says. Hongjoong can hear the smile in his voice. He can’t resist: he looks up. Seonghwa has gone back to julienning carrots, but his eyes are soft as he says, “I haven’t said anything official yet, but I did talk to Yeosang this afternoon about how he can schedule us for shoots together again, so—”
Hongjoong winces. “So that means Wooyoung knows.”
“Yes. Which means—”
Hongjoong sighs. “Everyone knows.”
At precisely that moment, Seonghwa’s phone chimes and Hongjoong’s vibrates in his pocket. And speak of the devil: it’s Jung Wooyoung himself, in their group chat.
[7:32pm]
Jung Wooyoung
heyyyyy
friday night dinner is no longer at ours
we are going for BBQQQQQQQ
Choi San
🥩🔥
I’m busy tomorrow
“Hongjoong,” Seonghwa says reprovingly, but there’s an amused tilt to his mouth. Even Seonghwa can’t deny the fun of needling Wooyoung.
Jung Wooyoung
oh shut up
no ur not
@Park Seonghwa hongjoong is free tomorrow right
Correction: it’s fun to needle Wooyoung, except when you forget that he bites back. Hongjoong puts his head down on the counter. “Oh my God,” he says to the cool granite countertop. “Don’t answer that.”
There’s a moment of silence. Hongjoong’s phone buzzes again. He raises his head just enough to read the latest text.
Park Seonghwa
We’re free! We’ll be there 😍🥰
Hongjoong throws his hands in the air. “I give up,” he says.
“It’ll be fun!” Seonghwa says, smiling, like he doesn’t even care that they’re about to get pounced on by six gossip-hungry fiends in less than twenty-four hours.
“You just threw us to the sharks,” Hongjoong says, pointing an accusatory finger at Seonghwa. “I hope you’re happy.”
“I’m perfectly happy,” Seonghwa says, with just enough weight behind it that Hongjoong blushes. “I’d be happier if you came here and chopped some kimchi for me, though.”
“Alright, alright,” Hongjoong says, swinging down off his stool and moving to the other side of the island. Seonghwa’s left him the knife and cutting board and turned to check on the soup. For the last time, perhaps, because Hongjoong hears Seonghwa taste it with a sigh of delight. Hongjoong abandons the kimchi immediately and comes over to the stove. “Is it done?” he asks, peeking over Seonghwa’s shoulder. Steam rising from the pot immediately fogs his glasses up and he pushes them onto his head. “Let me try, I want to try.”
“No!” Seonghwa says, making shooing motions at Hongjoong. “Go finish with the kimchi. I’m going to dip our bowls up.”
Hongjoong stares at Seonghwa, making the dismay on his face as obvious as humanly possible, until Seonghwa sighs and relents. Which, Hongjoong notes to himself, happens fascinatingly quickly. Seonghwa dips a spoon into the simmering broth and brings it up to his own mouth, blowing on it to cool it down. Expecting to be handed the spoon, Hongjoong freezes when Seonghwa holds it out for him to be put directly into his mouth. Seonghwa raises his eyebrows and nods encouragingly at him. He stares at Seonghwa for a few more seconds before wordlessly opening up, looking up at the ceiling to avoid eye contact as Seonghwa moves the spoon into his mouth, hand under Hongjoong’s chin to catch any stray drips. Hongjoong closes his mouth around the spoon, and—
“Oh, fuck. That’s good.” And it is, it’s delicious. The broth is clear and hot and fragrant, and Hongjoong wants more, right now.
Seonghwa lets out a laugh of delight. “Thank you. Now, finish your task and we can get to it,” he says, gesturing emphatically to the kimchi behind them with the spoon.
“Fine, fine fine,” Hongjoong says, turning back to the counter, smiling to himself. He thinks back to his anxious hovering outside of the front door, how silly it seems now. There’s nothing to be scared of here; this is Seonghwa, and his warm kitchen, and the familiar back-and-forth of their conversation. It feels so easy. Maybe it shouldn’t, after everything they’ve been through, but—it really does.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Mingi calls above the clamour, “we have to do cheers!”
There’s boisterous agreement around the table and the eight of them raise various glasses and shout a cheers, laughing and clinking glasses. The restaurant is busy around them; a nearby table of what looks like tipsy arts-college students noisily join in on their exclamations.
One of them calls over boldly, “What are we celebrating tonight?”
“Seonghwa-hyung and Hongjoong-hyung finally getting together!” San replies, voice bright with delight. Hongjoong feels himself flush and he sinks down in his seat, covering his face. Beside him, Seonghwa lets out a pleased huff of laughter and takes another drink. The college students whoop and raise their glasses again.
“Personally, I’m celebrating the end of the atrocious pining we all had to witness for months on end,” Jongho says. Yunho hoots another cheer and leans across the table to knock his glass against Jongho’s, despite Seonghwa immediately fussing at him to be careful of the table grill.
“I truly am happy that you guys can now make eyes at each other all day,” Wooyoung begins, and then adds with emphasis, “mutually. But you cannot make out on set.” He eyes both of them mischievously, smirking.
Hongjoong balks, but before he can summon up a response, Jongho snorts. “As if you have any right to ask that.”
San grumbles a pouty dissent to that, which Hongjoong would find cute were he not listening to his friends openly discussing the idea that—that he and Seonghwa—
“We won’t be making out on set, Wooyoung,” Seonghwa assures him.
“I think they should be allowed to make out on set, if they want,” Yeosang says thoughtfully.
“Let’s vote on it!” Yunho says, bouncing in his seat. “All those in favour of the hyungs making out during work, raise your hands!”
“We won’t be doing that!" Hongjoong squawks, voice pitching embarrassingly high. It’s making him feel kind of hysterical, having the topic of himself and Seonghwa making out publicly be a discussion that's happening around him in real life. This is the sort of thing that he’d chastised himself for even brushing against the very thought of for years, and despite how he and Seonghwa have, now, he still feels his heart rate spike in anxiety. They shouldn’t be talking about this like it means nothing, like it’s a joke. It’s not—
“Ah, Yeosang, have you sorted out the paperwork for hiring those horses yet?” Seonghwa says. It’s an abrupt conversation shift but it has the desired effect—Mingi sits up, eyes lighting up, and says, “Horses?”
Yeosang closes his eyes briefly and makes a pained expression before launching into a diatribe about some designer who just has to have live horses as a prop to properly accentuate their clothes—
Hongjoong feels Seonghwa’s hand rub across his back soothingly, and he exhales slowly, letting the anxiety drain out of him under Seonghwa’s touch. He leans in towards Seonghwa, shoulder pressing reassuringly against him.
“Sorry,” he says quietly.
“Hm? Oh, don’t apologise, Hongjoong,” Seonghwa replies, angling his head in towards Hongjoong’s. Hongjoong glances up at him, and then looks down at his own hands, folded together in his lap.
“I’m just not… used to this being—” He pauses. “I don’t know. Allowed, I guess.”
Seonghwa hums. “You mean... us? Talking about us like we’re a couple?” he asks, voice pitched low and soft, keeping the conversation between the two of them. Nobody is paying attention—the rest of the group have moved topics again, and are noisily discussing something sports related—but Hongjoong still feels his breath stutter when Seonghwa says it. Couple.
“...Yeah.”
Seonghwa searches his eyes, expression soft and patient.
“It’s going to… take me a while to get used to it,” Hongjoong says. “I, uh. Repressed my feelings. For a very long time.”
“I know.” The edge of Seonghwa’s mouth curves up in a fond smile. “Just remember,” he begins, then he lifts his arm from Hongjoong’s back and offers his hand to him, resting it open against his own thigh. Hongjoong takes it, and he watches their fingers curl together as Seonghwa continues. “Remember, whenever you’re scared, or nervous about this: I spent a very long time having those same feelings. I want this just as much as you do, Hongjoong.”
Hongjoong groans, feeling himself blush. How is Seonghwa so good at this? How does he just… say things like that and keep smiling gently at Hongjoong rather than running for the nearest exit? He mumbles an acknowledgement and Seonghwa laughs quietly.
“Hongjoong, hey, can I... kiss you? Just once?” Seonghwa asks, voice hushed and lovely.
“Here?” Hongjoong whispers, feeling faint suddenly. Seonghwa’s sweet curious look gets replaced with a smirk, and he raises an eyebrow coyly.
“Yes, here. We don’t have to, of course. But…” He pouts a little, smirks again when he notices Hongjoong obviously glance down at his lips. Damn Park Seonghwa and his sexy mouth. Hongjoong squeezes his eyes closed for a moment, forcing himself not to look at the rest of the group. They’re still going on about some sort of action being done to a ball. Surely they won’t notice. When he opens his eyes again, Seonghwa’s lips are parted slightly, full and pretty in the dim light of the restaurant.
“Fine. Come here,” Hongjoong relents, masking his total helplessness when faced with Seonghwa’s mouth with practiced exasperation.
Seonghwa hums a laugh and leans in towards Hongjoong, bringing a hand up to rest gently against the expanse of skin where Hongjoong’s shoulder meets his neck. Hongjoong relaxes against his touch, and as their lips press together he finds that he can’t suppress the stupid smile that begins to form on his face. He lifts a hand to cup Seonghwa’s jaw, fingers stroking through the loose, silky strands of hair behind his ear.
Until—Wooyoung wolf-whistles, prompting cheers from San and Mingi. Hongjoong groans in dismay and buries his face against Seonghwa’s chest, frames of his glasses digging into his cheek. He feels more than hears Seonghwa’s delighted laughter, the pounding of his own heart drowning out their chorus of hecklers. Seonghwa pets his hair and shushes their traitorous friends.
“Ah, hyung, don’t hide, don’t hide,” San calls out. Hongjoong grunts in response.
Wooyoung makes a dramatic sound of exasperation. “Kim Hongjoong! Park Seonghwa, most exquisite model in all of Seoul, kisses you on the mouth whenever you want! Embrace it! You're the third luckiest man in the room right now!”
That makes Hongjoong look up, squinting dubiously at Wooyoung despite his own thorough embarrassment at being the centre of this whole scenario.
“After me and Sannie, obviously. Don't look at me like that.”
Seonghwa laughs at that, which is kind. Hongjoong scoffs and rolls his eyes. “I need a drink, where’s the soju, someone pass me the soju,” he says, eyes scouring the crowded table.
Jongho, closer to Seonghwa, passes him one of the bottles, and Seonghwa pours for him. “Wooyoungie’s right," he tells Hongjoong. Wooyoung hears him and repeats, “I’m right, I’m right!” like a parrot. Seonghwa doesn’t bother shushing him this time. “I can kiss you whenever you want me to.”
“On the mouth,” Yunho supplies.
“On the mouth,” Seonghwa agrees.
“Okay! Yes! Thank you everyone! Hand me that shot now, Seonghwa. Please."
Seonghwa laughs again, a lovely sound, and Hongjoong downs the glass he’s passed. It burns down his throat, and he feels himself flush more deeply—if that’s even possible after the embarrassment he’s been subjected to. He sighs as the warmth of the alcohol spreads through him, and leans back in the booth, resting his hand on Seonghwa’s thigh under the table edge. Yunho leans across the table to Seonghwa, holding a spoon up to him like a microphone and asking him how he’s “feeling about this situation” in an exaggerated reporter voice. Hongjoong turns his head to watch Seonghwa answer the inquiry with a playful seriousness.
“Thank you for asking, Jeong Yunho-nim. I have been thinking about kissing Kim Hongjoong publicly for a while now—”
Someone says, “Good lord,” at the same time that another few of them shout in unison, “We know!” Yunho turns and loudly shushes them, returning the spoon-microphone to Seonghwa.
“—so I’m feeling good, of course. Lucky—no, that’s not precisely the right word,” Seonghwa says thoughtfully. He glances over at Hongjoong for a moment, and they make eye contact. Hongjoong feels warm, and a little silly—and he likes it. Seonghwa gazes at him and smiles, just barely, before returning his attention to Yunho. Into the spoon, he says, “It feels right. Like a fairytale. A prince finding his princess.”
Hongjoong barks out a laugh while the rest of them fake gag and make sounds of disgust. “Hyung,” Jongho says, looking pained. Seonghwa turns back to Hongjoong and they share another look. Hongjoong strokes his fingertips up Seonghwa’s thigh, lightly. Seonghwa’s mouth parts a little, and Hongjoong almost glances away, but he holds eye contact and watches Seonghwa’s gaze go warm and soft. They only stop looking at each other when the wait staff begin to hustle banchan and meat to their table, and they have to join the rest of their friends in the joyous commotion of the start of the meal.
Hongjoong isn’t very good at this: not being afraid. But he’s getting better at it. The proof of that is right beside him.