Archive of Our Own

“You’re a star,” said Dongmyeong’s first teacher, her eyes wet with something he didn’t know how to define. Her face looked the way his mother’s did when she found her twin boys playing quietly together, or when she needed to buy new pajamas because the teddy bears that used to be embroidered on the ankles now sat closer to their knees.

“You’re a star,” repeated his teacher, scrunching her nose as though she had a cold.

Dongmyeong wasn’t really sure what had caused this reaction, or what she could mean. A star? He’d simply sung aloud the sweet, tinkling melody his teacher had demonstrated for the class. True, the song itself found some sort of kinship inside his heart, and as he sang, he found its echo harmonizing with his own heartbeats. When he sang, it was possible some of that heartbeat slipped back into the melody, drifting along his voice, through the still classroom air, clear through to his teacher.

But why should she now be… was she? She couldn’t be.

She was.

She was crying.

Perhaps she had accidentally forgotten to wash her hands after making kimchi, then touched a finger to her eye? Dongmyeong’s mother had done that once. Not even Dongju, his twin brother, had been able to calm her after that one. They ate delivery that night.

Yes, it must have been something like that.

A few years later, it happened again, with a different teacher.

Dongmyeong’s teacher had taught the class a song of a fox and a rabbit, and the lyrics were silly and juvenile, even to a classroom of children. All of Dongmyeong’s classmates gave each other leaded looks, regretting already that they would have to perform this inanity for the rest of the school. In front of their parents and siblings, too? It was unthinkable.

A small mutiny occurred. The children whispered among themselves, a fluttering undercurrent of rebellion; they would change the lyrics. Instead of the fox and the rabbit becoming friends, with a few small shifted syllables, the song would become one about a fox eating a rabbit.

Far juicier and more entertaining, and it made sense to them all in a sort of elementary school way.

But when the pianist played the opening chords, its simple harmony settled deep in Dongmyeong’s lungs, far away from any conscious control he might have wished to exert over his own decisions.

Dongmyeong’s voice sang the opening lines solo, exactly as written: a silly song, a childish song, a playground ditty of a fox and a rabbit making friends in the forest. But he sang them with feeling, as though they meant something, so in that moment… they did.

The children heard his soulful opening, his emotionally resonant, pitch-perfect delivery of what should have been a ridiculous song. They heard it the way the musical heart inside Dongmyeong had heard it – rich, lovely, beautiful. They heard it, and they felt it.

So when his classmates melted their own voices into his opening lines in a unified chorus, they all swayed back to the original lyrics. Their voices joined together to transform this silly tune into a heartfelt message of friendship, of overcoming obstacles and finding unity whenever possible.

And so another teacher cried.

“Did you know she wrote that song herself?” asked Dongmyeong’s mother afterward, leaning back against the passenger seat of their family car. “I had heard that the principal was a little skeptical of her talents, but… it was pretty good, right?”

“Pretty good,” agreed Dongmyeong’s father, turning the steering wheel to the right, driving them home, driving them away from the scene of Dongmyeong’s accidental toppling of a classroom insurrection.

By the time he made it to high school, Dongmyeong counted any musical performance as a loss unless at least one person in the audience cried.

On the rare occasion that such a thing happened, he whined for hours at the nearest person close to him, trying to decipher what had gone wrong, how he could possibly have failed at the one thing he was supposed to really own.

“Whatever, Myeong-ah,” complained Dongju, after one such unusual night. “Your head’s so big you’re gonna need special hats, and we’re not gonna be able to share shirts anymore, cause your gigantic skull is gonna stretch out all the collars as you try and squeeze them on.”

“Asshole,” grumbled Dongmyeong.

Dongju scoffed. “Do you seriously expect that you should be able to, like… tug on the heartstrings of every single random stranger, just through the power of your voice?”

“Yes.” He said it to be difficult, but as soon as the words left Dongmyeong’s mouth, he knew them to be true. And as soon as he knew it was true, he had a lightbulb moment, a distinct flicking of an inner power switch.

He would have to work for this kind of musical prowess. The ability to move people he didn’t know simply through the power of song couldn’t be simple, or else everyone would be doing it. But then… it’d be worth it. It’d be worth everything. This was his calling, always had been and always would be.

“You’re a star,” his teacher had said, countless moons ago.

He just needed to find his own galaxy, a place where his starlight could grow, expanding his celestial understanding of music alongside other glittering musicians.

When he found it in the form of a band, he wasn’t surprised so much as relieved; it was a homecoming, a settling of the cosmic order into its rightfully orchestrated spin, every star in place.

_____

Hwanwoong was one of the first people Dongmyeong befriended at RBW.

In truth, Dongmyeong had secretly been hoping to cozy up to Wheein or any of the other MAMAMOO girls. When he said as much to Dongju, his brother’s face turned even more skeptical than it usually did, face nearly lopsided with the force of his single raised eyebrow.

“You… are into Wheein?”

“Not like that, Dongju-yah. You know that’s not what I meant.” Dongmyeong felt his face grow red, even as his cheeks felt icy cold.

And of course Dongju did know. They understood this sort of thing without having to ask – daily, constantly, the way you might wake in the winter with the crystal-clear knowledge that the heating has gone out before even registering that your feet are cold. So neither of them needed to say that they weren’t into girl idols, not like that – and it was a comforting sort of knowledge, a patch of sun in a chilly room.

But Dongju wasn’t about to hold back from teasing his brother, making all sorts of snide jokes about Dongmyeong’s campaign to “woo an idol hottie.” Which of course would prove a touch ironic, given Dongju’s own – but no. Not yet. That all happened later.

At any rate, instead of any of the MAMAMOO members, it was Hwanwoong whom Dongmyeong befriended instantly.

They made up alternate versions of how they met, in case any fledgling fan or interviewer asked, because the truth was too ridiculous for words: they’d met when they got stuck in a bathroom together.

It was Dongmyeong’s first day at the agency. “Don’t worry,” his mother had told him in the morning. “They signed you for a reason. What is there even to worry about? What is the worst that could go wrong?”

Still, all day long his stomach quivered a little, his voice came out squeaky when he introduced himself, and by the time he decided he needed to run his hands under cool water, he ran away to the basement bathroom he’d spotted earlier in the morning.

It would be cool, quiet, empty, and peaceful. Here, he could take a deep breath and face the rest of the day.

But then no sooner had he taken his deep breath than the door swung open, pushed forcefully by a rather… well, more petite boy than Dongmyeong would have guessed, based on the way the door had sprung on its hinges.

The boy seemed startled as well and walked slowly into the bathroom, watching the door close behind him. As they both stared at the door, it suddenly snapped totally closed. The loud, metallic clonking sound it made was easily audible to Dongmyeong, even over the sounds of the tap water running over his hands.

They both looked at the door, then at each other. Dongmyeong turned off the tap as Hwanwoong gave the door a tentative shove. Nothing happened. He tried again, and the only thing that happened was that a different, even louder clanking sound thudded through the wooden door and its frame.

Hwanwoong’s gasp and almost comically alarmed eyes said it all, but still he turned to give Dongmyeong a quick bow and introduce himself.

“Hello, my name is Yeo Hwanwoong, and I promise I didn’t mean to break the door,” he said. “I’m a dancer, not a… not a kidnapper. I didn’t mean to entrap you.” He resumed trying to push and pull on the door at various angles, increasing his intensity over the sound of Dongmyeong’s startled laughter.

Dongmyeong watched him for a long moment, too stunned to speak properly, his still wet hands hovering in the air above the sink. “Son Dongmyeong. It’s lovely to meet you,” he finally managed. “I’m glad to hear that you’re not a kidnapper, though you’d certainly have the element of surprise on your side.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hwanwoong suddenly looked pouty, which startled Dongmyeong even more. A cute, pouting, mysterious dancer had just appeared in the bathroom and entrapped them both.

Dongmyeong couldn’t find it in himself to be upset, just amused. “Well, I’ve always been told I have expressive eyes, but the shock in your eyes when the door latch made that weird noise… that’d be an impressive bit of acting. Besides, who’d want to kidnap me?”

Hwanwoong gave him a strange, unreadable look, then turned to wrestle with the door again. “I’m sure plenty of people would,” he muttered against its unmoving form. He shook his head a little, as if trying to clear an image out of it, then said in a brighter voice, “Well, the good news is that we won’t die of dehydration!” He shoved his body weight against the door again with a huff, then said, “But the bad news is nobody gets cell phone reception down here in the basement, so we can’t even call for help.”

Dongmyeong made an embarrassingly high-pitched noise akin to laughter, unable to think of anything to say. It was strange; he’d always been one of the more comfortable talkers in the band, able to address any crowd. But this wasn’t a crowd, this was… Hwanwoong. Yeo Hwanwoong, dancer. Not a kidnapper. Neither, somehow, a stranger.

Now that Dongmyeong had finally dried his hands, he found he didn’t know what to do with them. He’d only been in here to wash the clamminess off his palms, to rinse away this physical sign of his first day nerves. He hadn’t actually needed to use the toilet. Though, now that he thought about it…

“Um, if you need to…” he hesitated.

“Need to what?” asked Hwanwoong. He didn’t look away from his task, now poking one rather short finger into the door hinge, checking for weaknesses.

“Need to go.”

“What?” Hwanwoong turned to Dongmyeong again.

“I guess you need to, um, use the toilet? Right? Please don’t feel awkward about it. I can try my luck with the door in the meantime, see if it’ll open for me.”

Hwanwoong laughed lightly, eyes still a little wide with distress. “I had actually only come in here to wash my hands,” he said. He lifted his hands towards his face, grimacing slightly at his palms. “I guess the sweat isn’t helping me fix this door.”

Before Dongmyeong could formulate a response, Hwanwoong flushed a deep raspberry and added, “Nothing weird, I just… had some nerves. From evaluations. Just… well, anyway. I guess I could do that anyway. Wash my hands.” He awkwardly joined Dongmyeong by the sink.

Dongmyeong couldn’t help the laugh that burbled out of him, and Hwanwoong looked caught off guard by its sudden intensity.

“Same!” said Dongmyeong.

“You have evaluations? Here?” Hwanwoong looked skeptical in the extreme – not the way Dongju so frequently did, with an exasperation natural to brothers, but rather with a confused scrunch of his eyebrows.

“No, no, no.” Dongmyeong giggled a little sadly. “I was just in here to wash my gross hands. It’s my first day here, and with the nerves…”

“It’s the worst, right?” Hwanwoong looked fully sympathetic, turning his gaze to scowl at his own, treacherous hands.

“The worst.”

Hwanwoong nodded, then walked over to Dongmyeong. He smelled a little of sweat and floor polish, like the newly refurbished dance rehearsal room Dongmyeong had just seen on his tour of the building.

They stood next to the sinks for a while, not talking as Hwanwoong washed and dried his hands, silence broken only by the sound of the water and their still-nervous breathing.

A wave of awkwardness crept over Dongmyeong, a cloak of disbelief that this was really happening. If only he had some way to help…

Wait – he had offered to try his hand at the door, then just stood there mutely watching this cute, doe-eyed dancer wash his hands.

Said dancer was going to think he was an idiot.

Dongmyeong sprang to the door, fumbling against its hinges, trying everything he’d just seen Hwanwoong try moments before, hoping against hope that somehow, something would work for him.

It didn’t.

Without even thinking about it, frustrated and nervous and exhausted by now, Dongmyeong yelled – a yodel, really, burbling and undulating and pitched like a wind instrument on a roller coaster. It was a wordless yell, not intended to communicate any specific message beyond: DISTRESS.

He turned his back to the door, slumped down into it, and sat on the floor with his back against its unmoving mass. His eyes closed, and he tried to control his breathing – tried to suppress the tears he could feel gathering in the back of his throat.

“So you’re a singer, huh?” asked Hwanwoong.

When Dongmyeong looked at him, eyelids carefully cracked open lest a tear slip its way down his reddened cheeks, he saw that Hwanwoong looked a little reddened himself.

He cleared his throat, looked away from Dongmyeong and at his shoes, instead, then said. “I can hear it in your voice.”

“Yeah?” said Dongmyeong, somewhat heartened.

“Yeah.” Hwanwoong looked back up at him. “And… not just your voice, honestly. I mean, you being here at this agency is a pretty good clue,” they both grinned, “but also, just something about your vibe. Your energy.”

Dongmyeong felt himself relax, back resting a little more gently against the door now. “I’m not the main singer for our band, though.”

Hwanwoong looked thoughtful. “Doesn’t matter, though.”

“What do you mean?”

Hwanwoong shrugged. “Just what I said. I can tell.” He rolled his shoulders back, stretching out muscles that must have tightened from today’s stress, on top of his countless hours of dance rehearsal.

“Tell what?”

He stopped rolling out his shoulders and looked Dongmyeong straight in the eyes. “You’re a star.”

Dongmyeong looked at him, really looked closely at the boy – man? – before him, and knew then that a star could safely find a home in more than one galaxy.

_____

It had worked, quietly, over the years. Their friendship was just that – a friendship. But something about it lay closer to Dongmyeong’s chest than he was really comfortable revealing to the public. He couldn’t have taken the teasing that Yonghoon and Youngjo endured, for example; those two had always been cut from a publicly affectionate cloth.

Hwanwoong seemed to feel the same way, never quite speaking of Dongmyeong the way he spoke to him.

It occurred to Dongmyeong one day, eating lunch with Dongju and Hwanwoong, that they were the two people he was closest to outside his band. Maybe even closer, depending on how he wanted to count it. Different matters called for different closeness. No one friend could do it all. For instance, if Dongmyeong wanted to gripe about his brother, the person to turn to was clearly Giwook, who’d grown up with the twins and seemed to grasp the full dimensions of their personalities, never leaping to conclusions about who was in the wrong.

When Dongmyeong needed to vent about the band, he went to Hwanwoong.

It wasn’t that Dongju wouldn’t understand, but that dynamic had been complicated by years of Dongju following the band around the country as they busked – years of watching Dongmyeong carve a space for himself as a singer, as a performer. It would have felt strange.

Hwanwoong, though… Hwanwoong was different. He would listen as Dongmyeong talked about anything and anybody, never once shutting him down or mocking him unnecessarily. Dongmyeong knew he could be quite snarky – he’d seen it in action with his group members – but for whatever reason that side of him never came out with Dongmyeong.

It was a full two years after Hwanwoong had debuted as an idol, more years since they’d met, that Dongmyeong asked him why.

“You don’t think you need to handle me with kid gloves, right, hyung?”

They sat on the sofa, heads tilted against each other, Hwanwoong’s freshly pink hair smelling faintly of chemical dye.

Hwanwoong took his time before responding. “I think you’re stronger than anyone knows. The members and I… we tease each other to toughen each other up, a bit. We keep each other on our toes to stay sharp. It’s like… you give someone a hard time, because then you know that you’re not coddling each other, that your friendship isn’t fake. That it can stand the punches.”

Dongmyeong frowned. “So you’re saying I need to be coddled? Our friendship couldn’t stand the punches?” He knew it didn’t sound right, didn’t feel right, but he didn’t understand what Hwanwoong meant.

Hwanwoong pressed his head more tightly against Dongmyeong’s shoulder. “I said that all wrong, didn’t I?”

“Maybe? I don’t know what you were trying to say, so…”

Hwanwoong sighed, a gentle puff of air Dongmyeong imagined to be pink, as luminescently, vibrantly pink as Hwanwoong’s hair.

He sat up, straightened his shoulders, and looked at Dongmyeong straight in the eyes – a strange expression on his face, something almost akin to what Dongmyeong had seen that day in the bathroom, so long ago.

“I don’t tease you the same way because we don’t need the reminders. We never have needed them. It’s always been clear, right? Right from the start. We can take the punches. Together.”

Dongmyeong had once installed an app on his phone that tracked his moods. It asked for him to report how he felt, several times a day, and then it correlated his answers to colorful dots. Some colors indicated happy, others excited, still others depressed or angry or tired (that last one came up a lot). The app compiled a monthly report for him, a sort of colorful mosaic to indicate in pictorial format what his soul already knew: how his month had gone, how his month had felt.

He looked back at Hwanwoong, heard the echo of his last word on this sofa, Together, and realized that he’d never before seen the color for this emotion: in love.

_____

The first day Dongmyeong knew that he was in love, he didn’t tell anybody. Just thinking it, knowing it was terrifying enough. He resolved to simply not tell a single soul, thereby preventing his love from becoming a reality to anybody except his own mind. It would be safer that way.

The second day he knew, he still didn’t tell anybody, but he whispered it carefully into his water bottle, watching the ripples of his voice’s soundwaves. It felt very satisfying, as though the water heard what he said and understood the importance of what he’d confessed.

On the third day, fingers curling gingerly and silently over the still keys of a keyboard, he heard Giwook threaten to strangle him.

“What the hell? What’d I do to you?” Dongmyeong asked in response, feeling his mouth turn to full, indignant pout mode. He removed his hands from the keyboard so he could fold his arms tightly across his body.

“The last time you were this spacey, you’d gone drinking with Wheein and fulfilled all your weird fanboy friendship fantasies.”

“So? I’m not allowed to be a little out of it?”

“I’ve been trying to talk to you about this song all afternoon, and you are not listening. You are wasting my time and yours, Myeong-ah.” Giwook sighed and shifted in his desk chair. “What’s up?”

Dongmyeong felt his resolve crumble. Three days. He couldn’t even make it three days?

“I couldn’t even make it three days,” he said, and then he started to cry. Maybe it was better this way – crying so hard he couldn’t speak. It’d be ironic if he continued crying so hard he couldn’t even tell Giwook what it was about. That would maybe push it to four days, right?

But Giwook leaned closer, rubbed soothing circles on Dongmyeong’s back, and eventually the deep, gut-heaving sobs gave way to still undignified but manageable sniffles.

“Have you ever been in love?”

Giwook’s hand froze. He slowly drew his hand back toward himself. “Myeong-ah… I know that we’re both queer, but…”

Dongmyeong laughed so suddenly, still mid-cry, that he feared he’d blown snot all over Giwook’s desk. “Oh, god!” he shrieked. “I’m so sorry. Giwookie…” He scrambled, now cry-laughing, to wipe down the desk as Giwook looked on in horror.

Once all surfaces were clean, Dongmyeong was no longer crying. The shuddering sniffles had finally smoothed into more regular breaths. He exhaled and addressed Giwook clearly. “It’s not you. That was extremely funny, but no.”

And something about the situation must have crystallized for Giwook, a boy Dongmyeong had known – and been known by – for so long it sometimes felt as if he was Dongmyeong’s twin, too.

He cocked his head and looked at Dongmyeong. “Did you really decide to go for the one dude who’s shorter than you, in this whole company?”

Dongmyeong shoved him in the shoulder. “Asshole.” He slouched his shoulders down into himself. “But no, I didn’t decide to go for anyone. I can’t go for it the way you’re suggesting. I just have to suffer.”

“Ugh. How are you the most melodramatic person ever?” Giwook scoffed, looking a little like Dongju. “What’s stopping you?”

“Um…” Dongmyeong looked at him incredulously. “Everything? Our jobs? The public? The agency? Him clearly being way out of my league? Everything?”

“Horseshit. You’re afraid.”

Dongmyeong’s jaw dropped. “I’m not afraid!”

“Sure. Whatever.”

“You little punk. You’re trying to manipulate me into confessing, as if I were a child and you could like… dare me to do something.”

“Is it working?”

“No.”

“Then you’re afraid.”

“Arrgghh!” Dongmyeong brought his hands to his face. “I cannot confess. He would never accept me, never in a million years.”

Giwook paused. “You don’t need a million. You need like… four at the most, and you’ve had those.”

Dongmyeong scrutinized Giwook. “What makes you think he would suddenly want to go beyond friendship when we’ve been… I dunno, besties? Kinda besties – but yes, different from our best friendship. Geeze. But anyway, we’ve been friends for so long. Why would he suddenly want to change that?”

Giwook pursed his lips for a second. “Well, why do you?”

But Dongmyeong couldn’t answer that. He couldn’t share the transformative moment he’d had, how he had suddenly looked into Hwanwoong’s eyes, heard his steady voice saying, Together, and simply known.

When Giwook saw that Dongmyeong wasn’t going to answer, he leaned back in to pat his back gently. “Get a shower, Myeong-ah. Try to get some sleep and your head will be straighter in the morning.”

“Ummm…” Dongmyeong looked at him pointedly.

“You know what I mean! Ugh, you’re so difficult. Get some rest. Think about what I said, okay? If something changed for you, maybe something could have changed for him, too.”

It was on the seventh day that Dongmyeong found himself back on the sofa with Hwanwoong. An even week, the timespan of human creation. Enough days for love to go from Not There to Very Much There. Enough time for Dongmyeong to feel his insides turn to goo, to concrete, to goo again, at the thought of confessing.

They didn’t speak for most of the Netflix movie, and Dongmyeong hoped Hwanwoong wouldn’t want to talk about the plot after. His mind was nowhere near focused on what was happening onscreen.

But Hwanwoong reached for the remote and turned the movie off. He angled his body toward Dongmyeong and looked him straight in the eyes, his own doe-eyed expression unusually focused.

“Do you want to keep watching this movie?” he asked.

“No,” admitted Dongmyeong.

“Me neither.”

For seconds that felt like minutes, they simply looked at each other, the quiet whirr of the building’s ventilation system no substitute for real noise.

“Dongmyeong.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember how… the day we met, when they let us out… Do you remember what the guy said?”

“The guy who removed the door? Our savior in coveralls?”

“Yeah.”

Dongmyeong tried to stretch his memory that far, but beyond the man’s cheerful expression, as though freeing two young musicians from bathrooms were a jolly and normal occurrence, he drew a blank. “I really don’t remember.”

“That’s okay. I do.” Hwanwoong licked his lip quickly, a small sign of nerves he didn’t frequently display. “He said that sometimes those latches just drop all at once. That there was nothing I could have done, no way to have known. I could have walked through that door a hundred times, a thousand times, ten thousand times, and on the ten thousand and first time through – for no sudden reason – bam! Down it fell.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Hwanwoong flicked his gaze up at the ceiling, as if trying to find strength.

What he’d said was almost as convoluted as what he’d told Dongmyeong a week ago, on this same sofa, but this time it made sense.

Dongmyeong’s heart sensed the stirring of its galaxy, tilted at an angle and spiraling at high speed.

He leaned forward, gently cupped Hwanwoong’s unbelievably beautiful jawline in one very slightly trembling hand, and kissed him gently on the lips.

_____

Hwanwoong got home late from filming a dance cover video, and the food Dongmyeong had ordered had long gone cold.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, rushing to embrace Dongmyeong. He turned away slightly, so Hwanwoong had to settle for a back hug. “Will you ever forgive me?”

“No.” Dongmyeong frowned into the takeout containers.

“Not even if I give you lots of kisses?”

Dongmyeong pretended to consider his offer. “What kind of kisses?”

Hwanwoong’s eyes twinkled. “Oh ho, you would like a demonstration before committing to the terms of the agreement, is that it?”

Dongmyeong decided to push his luck. “Yes. Exactly.”

Hwanwoong spun him around, leaned up, and pressed his lips against Dongmyeong’s. It wasn’t a teasing kiss, or a demanding kiss, or the kind of kiss that demanded certain consequences. It was a reassurance, a bow wrapped closely around their feelings for each other, delicate yet completely secure.

Dongmyeong broke the kiss long enough to rest his forehead gently against Hwanwoong’s. “Do you know why I’ll always forgive you?”

“Is it because I’m cute and have a great ass?”

“No.”

“Is it because I am a kind and understanding boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Alright. Tell me.”

Dongmyeong kissed the tip of his nose, wanting to remember forever how much more he cared about Hwanwoong’s skin under his mouth than about any dinner, fresh or long gone cold. He kissed his forehead, then each cheek, then the tip of his jaw, and then finally one more soft kiss on the bottom of his lip.

“You’re a star,” he told Hwanwoong, and another latch fell, locked immovably against the motion of the universe, two stars spinning against each other not in a trap but in perfect, musical harmony.