AT THE HOUR BETWEEN DOG AND WOLF

As soon as Hyunjin is alone again he deflates, sinking into himself like a tangle of unspooled thread gathered in clumsy hands. Changbin had asked a few times if Hyunjin wanted him to stay, but Hyunjin doesn't want to be around anyone right now. His eyes are puffy, his face red and sore. There's a balloon in his chest and it's only been expanding, each new trial and tribulation pumping more air in and crowding out his lungs, his ribs, his heart. Even now it's difficult to get a full breath in around it.

While the breakdown has been building for a while now, he wasn't expecting it all to come out tonight. Once the words started spilling out he just couldn't stop them, each admission rawer and more humiliating than the last. Eventually Seungmin pulled him into a hug, eyes wide, posture stiff, and it was so uncertain Hyunjin almost wished it didn't help. But of course, it did. And through it the words kept coming:

I think I have a trauma around singing now and I can hardly make it through a show without wanting to cry.

I don't want to drag you all down.

I'm scared to disappoint you.

It's been too hard, I don't know if I can do this anymore.

Changbin tried to help in his own way, but Hyunjin hadn't wanted someone who already got it to mirror back what he already knew. Hyunjin wanted to go back in time. He wanted the Seungmin who didn't need to ask, the one he would have already confided in, the one who held his hand and asked soft questions and offered up suggestions like it didn't cost him to do so.

But that Seungmin is a glimmer in Hyunjin's memory. They're adults now, firmly in their mid-20s, working professionals who stopped fitting together like puzzle pieces, and the grief of that bowls Hyunjin over anew as he thinks about it. More tears slip down his cheeks. He's lost control of his emotions, and regret rises in him like a tide.

What has he done?

Hyunjin has already learned this lesson a dozen times over: people don't appreciate a mess when they can't just look at it from afar, even if it's pretty. Especially if it's pretty.

But Seungmin had hugged him. How tender and embarrassing, that Hyunjin is clinging to that for dear life. Seungmin hadn't rolled his eyes or walked out. He'd been surprised, sure, and perhaps even taken aback, but he hadn't left.

Hyunjin has had so many conversations with an imaginary Seungmin over the last couple of years. Asking him advice, going out for a walk or late night snacks, telling him how well he's doing and being told he's doing well in return. It's not that Hyunjin doesn't have people to go to, he just wants— he just thinks it would be nice if they could go back to—

Ultimately, it boils down to love. Hyunjin is embarrassed all over again that it's so simple, and so childish.

If it isn't Seungmin, it isn't the same.

Somewhere else in the hotel Seungmin is sitting at the edge of his bed staring at his hands, wondering how it's possible that he could look at the person who used to be his best friend and have no idea what's going on in his head. How long has it been since he really knew how Hyunjin felt about anything beneath the surface? Months, at least. Maybe years. Seungmin had gotten comfortable and Hyunjin, apparently, had gotten hurt.

They all know how Hyunjin is. It's been the topic of many a shared glance or fond joke between the members — and, sometimes, exasperation outside of fondness, an exhaustion about much Hyunjin needs, how personally he takes everything, a difficult-to-handle flightiness of emotion that Seungmin would commiserate with Minho about if Minho was ever willing to have those kinds of conversations with his human mouth. Tonight it's realer, though. Lit up in high definition. Hyunjin is sensitive. Hyunjin cares with everything he has and is. Hyunjin's no good with distance, with silence, with assumptions. He wants it all or nothing, and if he cares about someone then nothing is off the table. In hindsight, it's easy to see how they got here, though in the moment while Hyunjin was crying Seungmin had frozen like the uncaring asshole Hyunjin was too nice to outright accuse him of being. Changbin's low-toned chiding (Do better by him, the words echoing around his mind) is still a bit baffling, because Seungmin hadn't realized Hyunjin was still his to treat one way or another, but then again maybe it's stupid to think that way. They all belong to each other. The second they signed those contract extensions they'd reaffirmed their bond in what functionally amounted to a culmination of years of blood, sweat, and tears.

An hour passes before Seungmin remembers to look at his phone. No new messages, nothing pressing. He has most of his notifications turned off, but a cursory check doesn't reveal any answers. He thumbs through his social media, his email, his calls.

It's been over two years, he realizes, since the last time he and Hyunjin spoke on the phone.

Excuses come easily, but Seungmin isn't looking for a way out of this. The damage has been done, and it isn't unilateral — he's frustrated, a simmer that heats further the more he thinks about it, that Hyunjin never said anything. That he'd stew like this for so long, that he'd mourn something that isn't dead and keep those feelings for himself; it's classic Hyunjin, and it isn't fair.

But each tireless circle of rumination takes him back around to his own role in this. All the days Seungmin chose to keep his distance coalesce into an ugly, cowardly picture. Seungmin was surprised tonight, but he's not a fool. Things haven't been the same for a while. He'd just hoped something might change before the tension between them snapped, and now he recalls the way all of these silences have left them both skittish around each other, nothing like the way it used to be. He suddenly wants to tell Hyunjin everything.

The night passes in slow fits and starts. Seungmin doesn't sleep a wink, caught in memories like waking dreams and typing on his phone until his knuckles ache.

The next morning, Hyunjin approaches Seungmin with a wan smile. "Hey."

Seungmin glances up. There are dark circles under his eyes. Hyunjin isn't sure he slept. "Hi," he responds warily.

In Hyunjin's pocket, Seungmin's messages sit like stones, grounding but weighing him down. Hyunjin's feeling always do this. He's never been a light touch. "What are you eating?"

Seungmin angles his bowl to reveal yogurt and berries from the stadium's green room breakfast spread.

"Yum. I'm gonna grab some."

Seungmin grunts. He's looking down at his bowl again. The spine of his line is visibly stiff as Hyunjin walks away. He feels wrong-footed too, both of them further incriminated by this awkwardness, a painful mirror of what has already taken root between them. When he returns, Seungmin is almost done eating.

Hyunjin speaks before he can get up and walk away: "Sorry about last night. I saw what you sent me. I just wanted to say, um— I appreciate it. And I'm sorry. I really freaked out." Felix walks in, chatting with a staff member, and the two of them sit on a couch a few meters away. Hyunjin lowers his voice. "I haven't been doing well, and I realized you didn't even know, and that…"

He trails off. What is there to say? I miss you or I feel like you grew up and left me behind or I needed you and you didn't even know. Nothing that will help.

Seungmin doesn't make him scramble to finish the thought. "Yeah," he says simply. "I'm sorry, too. We should think about how to mend things. I'd really like to."

He said that in his messages, too. The phrasing is deliberate, sweet, every inch the dutiful friend Hyunjin has always known him to be. "It's not broken," Hyunjin tells him, "but I'd like that, too."

Seungmin's answering smile is the tender bud of a flower. "Cool. I've been wanting to ask your advice anyway. I need to decorate my room, and you know I'm hopeless with that stuff."

"Oh my god," Hyunjin says through a laugh, "yes, let me help, please." He scoots closer. "What are you thinking? Wait, let me look things up and you tell me yes or no."

Seungmin acquiesces to the onslaught with grace and enthusiasm. The two of them are nearly pressed side to side now as they lean over Hyunjin's phone, Seungmin pointing out things he likes and making silly snide comments about the things he doesn't.

Hyunjin pretends not to see Changbin shoot Seungmin an approving thumbs up. He has to hide his smile in the sleeve of his cardigan lest either of them notice.

I really care about you, Seungmin had written the night before, so late it had looped back around to morning. I'm sorry I haven't shown it. It's so easy to get used to things that are precious and forget to treat them well. I didn't realize what you were feeling. But I understand now. Please let me try again.

How romantic, Hyunjin tried not to tell himself. How perfectly, deeply, exactly what he most desperately wanted to hear.

Seungmin, 24 years old, trying, nudges his shoulder against Hyunjin's in the green room and admits that, yeah, Hyunjin was right, the mid-century look is cool and right for Seungmin's design sensibilities, and the Earth grinds on its rusty gears and continues turning.