Work Text:
The first time Doyoung buys something for Taeyong in a way that stands out in his memory, it’s not even anything important.
They’re getting snacks, even though they’re two weeks out from comeback and everyone is supposed to be dieting. Taeyong has found over the past couple of years that keeping his members from being hangry helps way more with performance and overall group cohesion than having a jaw you can slice paper on ever did.
(Besides, he likes to see their faces light up when he throws a bag of jellies or something at them. All of his members are special to him, and the small moments when he can let them know that are the most precious).
Doyoung insists on coming with him when he says he’s going out for a walk - says it’s too cold to be wandering the streets alone or something, which Taeyong feels justified in pointing out that it hasn’t even dropped below freezing yet, and the addition of an extra person in this situation is not going to make the first person less cold.”
“Unless you’re going to give me a piggy-back ride the whole way there, Doie-yah?” Taeyong teases, pulling his down coat from the closet near the front door and dragging Doyoung’s out for him as well.
“I’m going to drag you there if you’re not careful.” There’s a little smile playing about Doyoung’s mouth when he shrugs into his coat. “Honestly, you have to make everything so difficult. Why not get someone to drive you?”
Taeyong tugs a beanie down until it covers his ears and snaps a mask on before he wraps a scarf around his neck. It’s big enough that he can tuck his chin down into it, and he crinkles his eyes happily at Doyoung over the top of the mask, half-pleased at how cosy it is, half-pleased at proving to Doyoung that he’s perfectly capable of taking care of himself.
He can hear Doyoung’s huff in his wake as they head out, and it only makes him hum back, a nonsense tune that doesn’t sound exactly like ‘neener neener’, but isn’t an answer to his question either. It used to get on his nerves, the way Doyoung seemed to think that he could do everything better than Taeyong - neater, more efficiently, with more desirable outcomes.
It had taken Taeyong a long time to figure out that good leadership was as much about knowing when to listen as it was about making yourself heard, but then, it had taken Doyoung a while to stop trying to metaphorically (and sometimes literally?) yell over the top of him.
Taeyong likes their dynamic these days. The cold wind snaps at their coats as they work, bites at exposed skin and tries to wriggle in deeper; he slings an arm companionably around Doyoung’s waist to pull him in closer. It’s not like he’s upset about having company on the walk, after all.
“Demanding,” Doyoung grumbles, because Doyoung is always grumbling.
But his arm is already curling around Taeyong’s shoulders, tucking him securely into his side. Doyoung isn’t that much bigger than Taeyong, but Taeyong is abruptly aware that, like, the difference exists. He’s perfectly capable of standing his ground if he needs to (pile-ons in the middle of filming something for work, usually), but Doyoung has this habit of simply manhandling Taeyong around to where he thinks he needs to be.
Taeyong has started to pick up this habit of letting him.
For all of Doyoung’s worries, it turns out that getting snacks from the nearby convenience store is the same relatively painless experience it’s always been (other than the price gouging, but then Taeyong had looked up the rent in this area of Seoul exactly once, and can’t blame them). He warns Doyoung what will happen if he tries to snipe the bill (Taeyong will be disappointed), so how Taeyong ends up only paying for half, he’s not really sure. He can’t even be disappointed about it for real; he’s kind of impressed.
That had been another thing that really got on his nerves when they were younger. It had felt like a weird power move on Doyoung’s part, and it wasn’t until Taeyong straight up asked what was up that he actually figured out why Doyoung was always pulling out his card, even when there were hyungs around to take care of things
(“I’m not very good at sharing how I feel outside of music,” Doyoung had admitted one night, the two of them out on a walk kind of like this one, because Johnny had all but kicked them out of the dorm telling them to get their shit sorted. “But if I can pay for things, then people will know that I care enough to look after them. Stop looking at me like that, oh my god. It can’t be that much of a surprise to see me having an emotion.”
“You have emotions all the time,” Taeyong had blurted, because he sees them all the time - the click of a throat catching words before they can spill over, the creak glass protesting fingers clenching tight around a phone, the too-loud bark of laughter that just sort of bursts out of a person when they’re relieved to find that they still can.
Taeyong had stopped bristling so much about purchasing politics after that).
Snack distribution takes a while, just because Taeyong hits up each of the dorms and gets stuck in conversation with members, listening patiently to them chatter and whine and generally catch him up with their days. The whole process takes about an hour, and he loses Doyoung somewhere along the way, and it’s time that he really should be spending on choreo, or music, or practising English, but--
This is important, too. Arguably, it’s the most important; as he’s pointed out to management before, they didn’t make him leader because he doesn’t care about what’s going on with his members. Still, he really is exhausted by the time he gets back to the room he shares with Johnny, who is in the lounge doing a lyric swap with Donghyuck, to predictably loud chaos. It technically counts as practice, though, so Taeyong doesn’t tell them to quiet down. Security will call them if it’s really that bad.
There’s a gentle knock at his door, a tapTAP that he’s already smiling into before he consciously processes that it’s Doyoung. He knocks the same every time, is the thing, and pretty much everyone else Taeyong knows who would bother to knock is either much louder or much more formal about it. Sure enough, Doyoung leans against the doorframe, silhouetted by the hall light, features barely visible.
“Head’s up,” is all he says, and it’s a good thing he does because Taeyong only barely manages to stop the object from smacking him right in the face.
“Wh--?” he gets halfway through asking, but he’s already turning the package over in his hands and the sweet potato chip branding isn’t exactly subtle. “Doie-yah. Doyoung.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice you didn’t get anything for yourself?”
“I forgot,” Taeyong replies honestly. “I wasn’t trying to sneakily self-flagellate or anything, I swear.”
Doyoung snorts. “You need to remember to put yourself first more often. Or at least on the list.”
There’s a lot Taeyong could say to that. Like how he’s put himself first before, and he doesn’t really love the kind of person he was then, even if he really has been working on the whole self-love thing overall. He could joke about how it’s just snacks, it doesn’t have to be that deep, but - it kind of is that deep. Isn’t that why he got them in the first place?
So he just opens the packet of chips, giving them a careful shake so he can observe the contents and pick out the best one to eat first. “Isn’t that what I have you for?” he asks blithely.
He only sees it because he’s looking - not for any particular expression, just to look. NCT is a big group. Taeyong doesn’t often have the space to simply let his eyes rest on any given space, let alone to take in the sight of his friend, beautiful and mussed from the wind and probably his own attempts to get his hair to sit right again. Doyoung looks, for a second, kind of like he just woke up in the middle of the ocean with now idea how he got there or if he knows how to swim.
Taeyong crunches down on his snack, holding the bag out towards Doyoung. “Chip?”
“N - no. You got me my own, remember?”
“But these ones are mine. I want to share with you.”
“Taeyong. Hyung.”
And Taeyong tips his head back and laughs, swinging around on his chair to face his computer. “Thanks for the treat, Doie-yah. I’ll set you free now.”
There’s a pause. A beat of silence, where he’d maybe expected a sigh or grumbling or other sign of fond irritation. He stills, unsure if he’s accidentally done something awkward, touched a sore spot he hadn’t been aware existed, but then Doyoung’s speaking again, soft words sweet enough to tuck a small smile into the corner of Taeyong’s mouth.
“You’re never keeping me prisoner, hyung.”
*
It’s not like there’s some seismic shift after that. They’re too busy for any world-shaking emotional realisations, especially as one year lurches from the next and their star starts to rise with it - not that they’d been unpopular before or anything, but things start to gather momentum with their tour in a way that starts to feel self-propelled. Like they’ve spent the last few years heaving at that first domino only for it to finally tip over and now everything’s falling into shape whether they’re in place or not.
There’s a terror to it, sure, but it comes hand in hand with an exhilaration like nothing Taeyong has experienced before. He bounces off stage every night and slams into his members with the kind of energy that only being on a stage with the people you love and the art that lives in your chest, drawing the white-hot wire of it out inch by inch until you’ve bound it all together, members and music and the crowd, the crowd, the seething, howling mass of humanity with their arms stretched out, reaching towards them and infinity.
The other parts are fun too, even if there’s no time to stop and breathe. Taeyong’ll breathe when he’s dead at this rate, and it should scare the shit out of him, but it’s not like he’s alone in this. He performs with his members, travels with them, cooks and drinks and crawls into too-few beds with too many bodies with them, and if he was a little braver than he is, he’d call it falling in love. These are the best - but fuck, that doesn’t matter, these are his people. He loves them. He loves--
“Yongie-hyung?”
The nickname makes him smile reflexively. Doyoung is serious by nature, and there’s something about the contrast between that nature and the affection implied by Yongie that makes Taeyong’s stomach clench in on itself. Like hunger, only it doesn’t hurt.
“Hmm?”
“I want to come on your vlog tomorrow, can I?”
Taeyong casts a mental eye over everyone’s schedules in his head. They’re doing a lot of filming packed in between concert stops, but everyone has rest days and low impact activities, and no one is spending any one whole day working. It’s something the company has gotten better at since they debuted, although Taeyong’s back occasionally likes to remind him that ‘better’ isn’t ‘good’.
“Are you sure?” he asks dubiously. Doyoung is supposed to be filming later that evening, too. “It’s just shopping and a bit of exploring, wouldn’t you rather rest?”
“No,” Doyoung says simply, and Taeyong can’t deny the pleased squirm in his gut at the simplicity of it. No, there isn’t something he’d rather be doing. He wants to spend time with Taeyong.
It’s a part of what he loves so much about Doyoung. Balancing a group of so many members, even just in the 127, can take a lot of mental energy. Doyoung likes to play caretaker, sure, but the best gift he’s been able to give Taeyong is certainty. Taeyong never has to wonder with him, where he stands or if there’s a problem. Doyoung will tell him if there is, in that serious, gentle voice he uses when he’s trying to make his words land softly.
Doyoung is good, he thinks, at making himself soft when Taeyong needs him to be.
“Ah, o-kay,” he says in English, levering himself out of the dining room chair he’d sprawled in. His lower back twinges, leg buckling before he can order his limbs into place to catch himself, but Doyoung is there already, gripping Taeyong’s upper arm tight enough to turn the skin white.
For a second, the whole weight of his body is Doyoung’s responsibility. Taeyong stares up at him, wide-eyed, and can’t help but admire the way Doyoung’s features come together like this, the clench of his jaw, the way his gaze darkens with displeasure. Neither of them breathe for a moment, before Doyoung sighs sharply through his nose and one broad hand tucks itself under Taeyong’s armpit, slotting into his ribs to haul him upright with the grip he already has on Taeyong’s arm.
“Thank you,” Taeyong says, when it becomes apparent that neither of them are quite sure how to move through the heaviness that the atmosphere of the room has abruptly taken on.
“Who needs rest?” Doyoung mutters, looking away from him.
The angle highlights the cut of his jaw, and Taeyong is reaching up to thumb over the hook of it, the sharp knob of bone solid against his touch. Doyoung doesn’t turn into him, but Taeyong doesn’t miss the hitch of his breath, the way light floods that lovely gaze as he startles.
“Walking will be good for me,” Taeyong decides. “Come on, wasn’t Mark saying something about making lunch in the group chat? We should put a stop to that before anything serious happens.”
That heavy air seems to drain away as they head for the kitchen and other members, but Taeyong can’t forget the way it had pressed into his skin alongside Doyoung’s grip, all-encompassing. More and more lately he’s felt on the verge of flying apart, like every molecule that makes up his physical form is going to disconnect from the others and scatter to the winds, propelled by the energy of this tour, the group, his own excitable heart beating too fast in his chest. It’s not a bad feeling, necessarily, but Taeyong has always considered himself a both feet on the ground sort of guy.
If Doyoung is good at making himself soft for Taeyong, he’s good at anchoring him too. There had been a time in Taeyong’s life when a feeling like this would have been the thing that drove him to explode, but he thinks it holds him together these days. He wouldn’t have been able to recognise the certainty, when he was younger. He would have been too scared of losing it.
*
He doesn’t lose his wallet when they’re shopping the next day. Taeyong doesn’t go places with the expectation that other people will pay for his things - but he does also know that unless the company thinks they can get content out of teaching him a lesson or whatever, there will always be money with some staff member to cover whatever he wants to do while filming, and he can settle with them later.
Unfortunately, this looks exactly like one of those times, especially after he’s already declared that this trip is going to be his treat. PD-nim looks at him from behind the camera stick with raised eyebrows, the sort of expression that says figure it out for the views, Lee Taeyong, and it’s hard to hold back the flush of humiliation surging in his veins when he reaches for Doyoung with a quiet hey--
Except Doyoung barely blinks, looking Taeyong up and down as though he has some sort of special wallet scanning power before tossing out an easy ‘I have my wallet, it’s okay’.
The heat he’d been holding back floods him anyway. It’s a sunny day, so god only knows how visible it is, but it’s not humiliation that swamps him. It’s not even that comforting weight from the day before, Doyoung’s certain assurance there to catch him and hold him together once again.
It’s the...ease of it. The confidence? Doyoung doesn’t even blink, turning back to his camera and striding ahead, leaving Taeyong to jog to catch up both literally, and in the conversation (he watches the edited version when it drops later, because he’s a masochist. They cut out the worst of his flustering, which means that it must have been pretty fucking bad). Doyoung says something about eating where he wants since he’s paying, and it takes all of Taeyong’s willpower to kick his brain back into gear and engage with the conversation when all he really wants to do is - is whatever Doyoung wants to do, honestly.
He overcorrects instead, playing the part of a brat demanding ice cream, trying to swipe the camera stick back from Doyoung. It’s the sort of behaviour that gets the others to give in to him easily, whether they think it’s cute or annoying, but Doyoung doesn’t even blink, and Taeyong is kind of breathless about it. By the time Doyoung insists that they eat a proper meal, anything resembling complaint has well and truly died in the back of his throat; he hovers close to Doyoung’s shoulder when he leads them into a restaurant, only resisting the urge to drape himself over him like a lazy cat because he wants it so bad.
(It’s not the wanting that bothers him so much as the doing it on camera for thousands - hundreds of thousands, lately - to pour over and read into and speculate on when he hasn’t fully speculated on the implications of it all for himself yet. They’re moving too fast for that sort of thing; Taeyong will take stock when they stop, and he doesn’t want to stop for a long time yet).
The day unspools like a dream, the two of them drifting around the Pier in their own little world. Maybe it’s selfish, but you get used to ignoring everyone around you when you’re filming things like this, two protagonists and their entourage moving through a world of extras. It’s not that Taeyong doesn’t know that everyone around them has their own interior world or whatever, but there’s something about the presence of the camera and that language barrier combined that allows him to be a little braver, a little more at ease.
Doyoung buys him chocolate instead of ice cream, gives him the camera stick when Taeyong isn’t even asking for it. There’s no explaining why that feels so intimate, so Taeyong resolves to simply enjoy the experience anyway, handing over a startled smile in exchange that only broadens when he catches the way Doyoung’s eyes dip to it.
Doyoung offers him the marshmallow. Taeyong could probably free one of his hands, but it’s easier to simply lean over and...bite. They eat each other’s food all the time - hell, Taeyong has fed and been fed directly Doyoung and his other members more than he can count - but there’s something about this that feels like its own private conversation. Like his face is a vessel for his shrieking heart, hammering against the cage of his ribs. Taeyong’s sure he says something inane about the marshmallow, and the two of them continue on autopilot, nattering about the shops and the sights like Doyoung isn’t tangling him up in this parallel universe. Like Taeyong isn’t perfectly happy to be tied to him.
The coin purse is - he just wants to see what it’s like. What happens, to him, to Doyoung, if he asks for something instead of being offered it. The thing is - Doyoung is so ready to provide for him that Taeyong thinks he misses the significance of the moment, and Taeyong doesn’t fucking care. He’s high on the experience of being catered to - not because Doyoung will do anything he wants, but because he’ll refuse without hesitation if he thinks it’s a bad idea. It’s the sort of thing that has always made him feel safe before, and it’s not that he’s in danger now. More like, they’re half a world away from home, and Taeyong is starting to realise the lengths Doyoung will go to in order to ensure he can keep feeling that way. He won’t even let Taeyong himself get in the way of it.
He asks Doyoung to buy him the coin purse. He doesn’t even have any coins. Doyoung nods to the cashier without even blinking, and it’s impossible for Taeyong to keep his delight from the camera, dangling the little thing in front of the lens in lieu of letting it get too close a look at his face. God only knows what he’d broadcast otherwise.
“You’re in a good mood,” Doyoung remarks once they get back to the place they’re staying.
“I had a good day,” Taeyong says, which is an understatement. But Doyoung has more things to film, and Taeyong promised he’d help with dinner tonight (which means that Taeyong is making dinner tonight), and it’s like he thought earlier. There’s simply no time to get into it. “Thanks for coming with me. I always have a good day when I’m with you.”
The thing about Doyoung is that he’s pretty reserved. It’s what makes him so much fun to poke at, easy to rile up. A part of the reason Taeyong has always enjoyed bickering with him is that he always just seems ready to go at the slightest provocation, an endless supply of camera-ready moments and - and attention, when he wants it.
So the look he receives, with the cameras gone and the two of them secluded in the doorway to the room they’re sharing together for this leg of the tour - this wide-eyed, lips parted look of vulnerability - Taeyong doesn’t quite know what to do with it. It’s there and then it’s gone, Doyoung turning away to start packing the things he bought into one of his suitcases.
“Then I want to spend as many days with you as I can,” Doyoung says, and Taeyong doesn’t miss that he tucks another paper bag of chocolates into Taeyong’s bag instead of his own.
Taeyong is breathless all over again, dizzy with it. It’s like stumbling off stage, buzzing with energy and nameless emotion with nowhere to put it. He wants to close the space between the two of them, wants to grab - wants Doyoung to grab him, wants to wrap himself up in the weight of him, wants to feel his heart settle down feeling secure instead of trapped.
But Doyoung has things to film, and Taeyong has to go make dinner, and they’re in the middle of their tour (their world tour) and it’s just not the moment.
“I can pay you back,” he blurts, instead of saying me too. “For today, I mean. I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
He’s still coasting off the residual high, frankly, and there’s a part of him that wonders if he’s not making use of ill-gotten gains. It’s not like Doyoung had been anything other than his usual Doyoung self at Taeyong, and here Taeyong is giddy and--
“Don’t be stupid,” Doyoung bites out, and Taeyong startles. It’s the first real sign of irritation he’s heard from him all day, on a day when Taeyong thinks he’s personally been very annoying. Sure enough, when he scrapes his gaze over Doyoung’s form, those broad hands have folded into fists. Not like he wants to hit Taeyong or anything (Doyoung would never), but like he’s holding something back. Like it’ll change the world if he lets it go. “You couldn’t ever take advantage of me, okay? Not ever.”
The swell of want that crests in Taeyong’s gut at Doyoung’s intensity is so sudden and so violent, he feels sure it can’t be allowed. His face floods with heat and he’s sure it has to be visible because Doyoung’s gaze lingers on him like a threat. Taeyong is, abruptly, not sure what he’ll do if he stays in the same room for much longer.
“I,” he says, a full sentence. “Okay. I should go - check on the others? Thanks for today. Okay. Love you, bye!”
Ten laughs himself sick when they manage to get their schedules and timezones to line up for long enough that Taeyong can recount his humiliation. If he’d been pink in front of Doyoung, he can see himself bright red in his phone’s little front-camera window, half resting his chin miserably on his palm, half hiding his face behind it).
“Look at it this way,” Ten says officiously, when he can say things properly without giggling again. “It could have been Johnny or Yuta or someone like, actually cool, right? At least you’re only embarrassing yourself in front of someone equally embarrassing.”
“He’s not embarrassing!” Taeyong protests, and is moderately horrified to find that it’s real defensiveness driving his words. That’s always the first mistake with Ten - you can’t respond to his teasing seriously, because then he knows he’s onto something.
Sure enough, he catches a flash of white teeth before Ten is tipping his head back with a cackle fit for classification as an instrument of torture. “Okayokay, whatever you say. Hey, do you think you start calling him Daddy now, or does it take two or more incidents?”
“I’m hanging up,” Taeyong announces, determinedly not thinking of the crunch of a sweet potato packet in his fist, or a dozen similar small incidents over the past few months that he’s let slide without comment. “Go call Mark, he misses you.”
“Yes sir, of course sir.” Ten flicks him a lazy salute and a wink that says it’s a good thing he doesn’t have to do military service anywhere, and the screen goes blank.
He’s not saying that he feels kind of like a fifteen year old girl when he lets his phone drop onto his chest with a happy sigh in spite of his embarrassment, but he is glad that no one else is in the room to witness it.
They perform the next night, and it takes everything in Taeyong not to just stare longingly after Doyoung every time he’s on stage, absolutely killing it. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt so close to their fans before.
*
Taeyong [02.24]
hey
what do you think of this
[link]
Doyoung [02.27]
it’d look good on you
do you want it?
Taeyong [02.27]
yah, shouldn’t you be sleeping?
do i have to come in there and take your phone off you?
Doyoung [02.28]
are you really sure that’s the tone you want to take
Doyoung [02.30]
i woke up late today
don’t worry about me
Taeyong [02.31]
i’ll do my best
i might still worry a little bit though
just to keep my hand in
Doyoung [02.31]
stupid
Taeyong [02.31]
😇
Doyoung [02.35]
do you want it?
Taeyong [02.36]
hmm?
Doyoung [02.36]
the coat
i’ll get it for you if you want
Taeyong [02.52]
ah, okay
i want
*
It’s not a surprise, exactly, to have all that stuff from his past dragged up.
Taeyong is aware that he was an asshole sort of kid. Too wrapped up in his own worries and anxieties to see how anyone else suffered, just pretty and cool enough to escape suffering at anyone else’s hands than his own. He’s not like most of his other members, people who had a dream and half killed themselves to achieve it. There was no drive to be a better kind of human, or at least discreet; someone from SM just thought his face was interesting enough to teach how to rap.
Everything had been gay back then, a word bad enough to feel thrilling but less likely to get you in trouble than calling something shitty. He’d barely connected the word to its actual meaning; the idea that it might apply to him and the seething anger in his gut any time someone asked him what girl he had a crush on.
The awful thing is, he doesn’t even really remember most of it. Management asks him what the scope of this situation is likely to be, a delicate way of saying ‘how many people did you make miserable and how miserable did you make them?’, and all Taeyong can do is assure them that there hadn’t been any physical violence. When he thinks back on that time, there’s no memory of feeling actively malevolent towards anyone, in engaging in intentional cruelty, and yet here the proof is smeared across the internet for anyone to see.
It’s the carelessness of it all that he’s most ashamed of. This capacity to leave someone’s life so scarred, with barely a mark on his own. He apologises, he meets with his - SM is going with the term ‘old friend’, but Taeyong doubts either of them will be sticking with it. He does what he can to make it right, to show his true remorse and changed behaviour, but absolution is ultimately out of his hands. It leaves him feeling - sort of at a loss. Like he’s betrayed everyone now with who he was in the past. He’s not sure how to go forward from that. He’s not sure he should be able to.
Taeyong talks to his members about it. Most of them are indifferent - a few defensive on his behalf, more than one thinks it’s kind of funny - but there are rumours he needs to cut off at the knees, things he needs to make certain are clarified, least they start to think he’s the world’s most obnoxious self-loathing twink. Or worse - that he could ever hate or judge them.
(Haechan solemnly absolves him of his middle school crimes before he’s stuttered through more than half of his explanation. Taeyong tries to protest that that’s not like, how forgiveness works, but Jungwoo has already seconded the motion and Johnny carries it with a slap of his hand on the table, which is not how anything works. “So long as everyone understands that they’re free to be...whoever they are in this group,” Taeyong sighs, only for Taeil to pipe up from off to the side with a bright “or do whoever!”, prompting a riot of laughter, which - well, is definitely how NCT works, so at least something’s going right.
Next to him, Doyoung is silent. It would terrify him, except for the broad palm burning its presence into the small of his back. Taeyong wonders what it would feel like pressed against bare skin, and can at least appreciate the irony.)
Taeyong floats back to his room on a cloud of mixed relief and unease. It would have been preferable, somehow, if one of them had expressed concern or worry, or even unhappiness. It’s not that he wants them to hate him or anything, but there’s a hamster wheel part of his brain that only ever stops running when the worst comes to pass. Like, okay, now it’s happening and he doesn’t have to keep waiting for it.
TapTAP.
Doyoung opens the door before Taeyong can even lift his head out of his arms, let alone agree to his very serious face-planting time being interrupted. But that’s pretty par for the course in these dorms, where an unlocked door is assumed to be an invitation, and Doyoung has the spare key to Taeyong’s anyway. He shuts and locks it quietly behind him.
“Ominous,” Taeyong mumbles into his mattress.
“I just wanted to spend some time with you,” Doyoung says simply. “I can - do you want me to go?”
“No--” Taeyong jerks up to stare at Doyoung, already stretching an arm out towards him. “No, no, come here.”
There’s no hesitation in his approach, no uncertainty. He nudges his toes under Taeyong’s ribs when he gets close enough, and Taeyong lets Doyoung carefully roll him only his back, body pliable and unresisting. There’s not really enough room for a whole extra human person in the space this creates, but Doyoung clambers into it anyway, all elbows and knees.
Before meeting Doyoung, Taeyong couldn’t have believed that a person so beautiful could move so awkwardly. He’s the sort of pretty that Taeyong had just always assumed imparted unreasonable physical confidence on a person, but with Doyoung it’s like he gained all of the awareness of his body and none of the surety. It’s only in those moments when he seems to be completely certain in his actions that Doyoung moves with any kind of elegance, and Taeyong has a desperate sort of fondness for figuring out the differences.
He’s noticed he tends to be the focal point of most of it; Doyoung will put his hands on Taeyong without second thought, move him around and drag him and drape himself over his body like Taeyong is merely an extension of himself. It makes the awkwardness of his movements now stand out even more obviously, and Taeyong thinks he’d be worried if it wasn’t for the little moue of determination creasing Doyoung’s mouth, the focused furrow between his eyebrows.
Neither of them say anything until he’s settled, and even then Taeyong hooks a wrist over the curve of his waist to anchor him, right in the little dip between ribs and hip. Doyoung takes this as an invitation (it is) to respond in kind, except Taeyong’s shirt has sort of rucked up from being rolled around in bed and when Doyoung’s hand spreads over the small of his back, it’s skin on skin.
Taeyong closes his eyes, breathes out slowly through his mouth to ride out the shiver that abruptly skates up his spine. For a moment, that’s all he can hear; the sound of his breath and Doyoung’s, intermingling in the tight space between them. The world could end right outside his locked door and Taeyong doesn’t think he’d notice. Not so long as he had this.
“I didn’t,” he says finally, but he doesn't know how the sentence is supposed to end. “I mean, I’m not--”
“I know,” Doyoung says quickly. “Taeyong. Obviously I know.”
Dyoung rarely bothers with honorifics these days when it comes to Taeyong, but there’s something so specifically vulnerable about his name stripped bare in this space, like Doyoung isn’t taking liberties but instead asking for them. Taeyong opens his eyes.
They’re so close. Doyoung’s head rests on his pillow and Taeyong can’t even focus on him properly. Can’t read his expression, can’t guess at what might be moving through that too-frantic mind at a million kilometres an hour. All he can see is the delicate fan of his eyelashes, the brush of them against his cheek every time he blinks. Such a small piece of him, and Taeyong can’t bear to lose it.
What happens to them if he shifts back, grants context to this slice of stolen intimacy? Fills in both their features, unlocks the door, lets the world back in? Taeyong has enough faith in them and their group to hold shit together, and almost none in anyone else.
If they’re like this outside of this room, it means that outside of this room can have an input on it. Taeyong can admit that he’s selfish. He wants to keep this for himself.
“I just wanted to make sure,” he tries again, voice barely brushing a whisper, “that you knew - that you really know - Doyoung, I’m gay. I didn’t realise that at the time, but it still wasn’t something - I didn’t do it because I meant it that. Because I thought it was bad.”
“I don’t care.”
There’s a low current of fury running through the words that almost burns him before he realises that it’s not directed at him. Doyoung must feel his flinch though, because his hand moves at Taeyong’s back, the broad span of his palm dragging tortuously up the length of Taeyong’s spine. Back down again, still again, except for his thumb brushing back and forth over some insignificant patch of skin, special only because it’s the place that Doyoung is touching him. Taeyong could cry. Taeyong could kiss him, probably.
“I don’t care,” Doyoung says again, the words nearly tripping over each other in his haste to spit them out. “You were a bully in - what, middle school? I don’t give a fuck. I know you felt like you had to meet with this person to make things right, but I could have strangled him without regret. He doesn’t know you, the media and the gossip sites and the internet don’t know you. I know you. I say you’re a good person. The rest of them can get fucked.”
That’s not - it’s not how any of this works. Taeyong knows that, Doyoung has to know that, but Taeyong can feel the truth in his words shuddering through both of them in the rise and fall of his chest, his too-fast breathing. I know you sidles up to Taeyong’s consciousness and sinks its teeth in, and Taeyong lets it make a home there. Doyoung knows him. Doyoung--
“Yah, so vicious,” Taeyong rasps, throat rough with the swell of emotion surging up from his gut. He hooks his leg over Doyoung’s thigh to hold him in place, so he can move his hand from his waist to his face. The webbing of his thumb and forefinger seem to frame Doyoung’s cheek perfectly; he brushes a loose eyelash away before it starts causing problems, and finally brings their foreheads in together. “Thank you.”
They breathe.
*
It’s not like Doyoung had hesitated to put his hands on Taeyong before, but after that it’s different. There’s no trembles of uncertainty, no second-guessing; he wraps an arm around Taeyong’s waist as easy as breathing, thumbs food off his face, fixes his hair when Taeyong is fussing at it. As for Taeyong, it takes more and more of his focus to not just bliss out every time it happens, let his body, let his body go loose and pliant, malleable for whatever Doyoung wants of him.
He’s never felt so safe, is the thing. He didn’t realise how badly he was craving the feeling until suddenly he had it.
As for the gifts…
It’s kind of cheeky of him, Taeyong knows that. He’s the hyung, and even though things have obviously shifted between them (the looks some of the other members have been giving them, which Doyoung has been content to ignore, but Taeyong obviously has to at least be aware of), it’s not like either of them have spoken anything out loud. For all intents and purposes, they’re good friends, and if any one of them should be spending money on the other, it’s Taeyong.
But Doyoung likes it. Taeyong can read it in the way he’s always ready with his card, see it in the quiet uptick of his mouth when he successfully snipes the bill. Taeyong pretends to swoon once, overcome by his gentlemanly ways; the arm around his shoulders when Doyoung catches him is tight enough to squeeze a gasp out of him. Taeyong imagines he can feel the press of his thumb digging into his upper arm for hours afterwards.
Okay, so Taeyong also likes it, and goes out of way to create opportunities for them both to enjoy themselves. If he texts a link of something he likes to Doyoung, he knows Doyoung is going to buy it for him, even if they both go through the motions of pretending like this isn’t an explicit request, or like Taeyong is playing a trick on his dongsaeng. If there had been a time where he felt guilty about the money Doyoung spent on him, it slips away somehow now, leaving only this strange frisson of pleasure in its wake.
He feels indulged. He feels - taken care of. It’s a heady thing, made that much more dizzying because Doyoung is younger than him, even if it’s only by a year. Sometimes the weight of Doyoung’s gaze will settle on him when he least expects it - from a distance, when they’re filming, when they’re in the middle of a practice even though their stages rarely contain any fanservice from the two of them - and it’s like the press of his thumb all over again, something tangible to hold Taeyong down.
“Package for you!” Johnny calls, throwing a plastic wrapped something directly at Taeyong’s head right when he’s in the middle of dissecting his Doyoung feelings out in the lounge.
Taeyong squawks, batting the package out of the air before it makes contact, and then scrambling to pick it up once he realises what it is. Johnny cackles at him, and if Taeyong was a more extroverted sort of person he’d have half a mind to tell him in lurid detail exactly what had been so distracting. But with the way things actually are - Johnny has no shame, and letting him know there’s something going on between Doyoung and Taeyong for real would be giving him too much power.
“I’ll set the Dreamies on you,” he threatens instead, clutching his package to his chest as he heads for the room Doyoung shares with one of their managers. Who, conveniently, is not here right now.
“I can’t be harmed by what I created!” Johnny shoots back after him. Taeyong lets him have the win, mostly because it’s hard to respond when he’s tearing into the package with his teeth.
Doyoung’s door opens easily under his touch, prompting Taeyong to lock it behind him. It’s not that he thinks - anything interruptible is going to happen. He’s just here to show Doyoung the clothes that Doyoung paid for. It’s a perfectly friendly, reasonable interaction that happens between members all the time and shouldn’t prompt any kind of suspicion. Not that there’s anything to even be suspicious about. Officially.
Doyoung sits at his desk, headphones on, back ramrod straight because he’s the only member who actually has good posture, even when he’s at rest. His music is loud enough that Taeyong can hear the tinny echo in the quiet of the room, but Doyoung must have an instinct for what Taeyong looks like out of the corner of his eye because he’s already turning in his chair as the door locks.
“Yongie?” he asks curiously, pausing midway through pulling his headphones off when he catches sight of what Taeyong has in his hands. “Ah. It came, then?”
Taeyong knows he’s blushing. He shouldn’t be, not when there’s a perfectly innocent explanation for all of this - but then, he doesn’t exactly feel innocent about any of it, does he? He pulls the shirt out of the bag, scrunches the bag up and tosses it into the wastebasket. Wonders if there was some sort of packaging recycling he was supposed to pay attention to, because that’s easier than lingering on the way Doyoung’s dark gaze tracks his hands.
“Mm,” he agrees. “It ties up at the back, can you help me?”
Taeyong, realistically, does not need the help. He’s a professional clothes wearer, has managed costume changes much faster and much more complicated than a wrap-around shirt that ties at the back. But reality doesn’t have any place in this room with the two of them. Taeyong reaches over his shoulder, grips the back of his t-shirt in one hand and hauls it up over his head.
“You’re such a boy sometimes,” Doyoung sighs, but there’s a faint dusting of pink over the perfect bridge of his nose when he stands, and the careful way he avoids looking below Taeyong’s neck is too sweet. “Give me the shirt, then.”
Taeyong holds it out obediently, biting back a smile. He can’t help but feel kind of coy about the whole situation, even though there’s no need to; Doyoung’s hand burns on his shoulder when he grips it, urging Taeyong to turn around so he can slip into the sleeves of the shirt. He does as he’s told, not that they need to exchange any words - a series of searing touches along his upper arms is enough to guide him where Doyoung wants him.
The shirt is this heavy, creamy cotton, picked out with navy blue pinstripes, the formal pattern a direct contrast to the casual fit. The V of the neckline dips absurdly over the narrow plane of his chest until Doyoung steps in close, his whole body pressed up against Taeyong’s back as he reaches for the ties dangling from the shirt’s hem. His breath puffs hot over the back of Taeyong’s neck, so close that it’s impossible to tell if his lips make contact with skin, or if it’s just a fevered wish from Taeyong’s overheating brain.
The ties draw tight. It pulls the shirt into a slightly more decent configuration, settles the bottom edge of it right in the narrow pinch of his waist as the neckline crosses properly over his sternum. The minute shifts of fabric scraping over his skin as Doyoung secures the knot are weirdly sensitising, like the suggestion of a touch is just as potent as the real thing.
He doesn’t say anything when he finishes. Just rests his hands at Taeyong’s hips, the edge of one thumbnail picking restlessly at one of the ties criss-crossing his waist. Taeyoung should like, look at his work, see what the shirt actually looks like on him, maybe say thank you to Doyoung for buying it. But Doyoung’s fingers are curling tightly into the jut of his hipbones, like they could hook through the skin and bone of him to make a home there, and all Taeyong can do right now is give Doyoung the weight of him, leaning back until his head rests on Doyoung’s shoulder and he can sink into the sensation.
He wonders if it’ll bruise. He wants it to, wants to wear this shirt days from now and still see the evidence of Doyoung smeared across his body, their filthy secret laid bare to the world. Like he can pluck the thought straight from Taeyong’s hazy brain, Doyoung’s fingers grip harder, carefully manicured nails tearing a sharper pain through the dull ache of it all. Taeyong hisses despite himself and it’s like all the heat inside of him abruptly vents itself, Doyoung steps away so quickly.
“Sorry,” he gasps, and when Taeyong cranes his neck he can catch the bitten-red blur of his mouth, the loose way he holds it as the words spill out. “Sorry, sorry, I - did I hurt you? I’m sorry.”
The genuine distress in his voice tugs Taeyong’s thoughts back into sensible order, and he’s slipping around to re-capture Doyoung in his arms before he skitters away completely. His stomach muscles jump a little, startled from the press of bare skin against fabric, but Taeyong has never felt steadier. He digs his fingers into tight muscle at the base of Doyoung’s neck before sliding a light touch down his arms.
“Yes,” Taeyong says simply. He doesn’t break eye contact, thinks he spots a flare of understanding in the dark pit of Doyoung’s worried gaze. He threads his fingers through the gaps in Doyoung’s to be sure, though, dragging his unresisting hands back to Taeyong’s waist. “It’s okay. I like it.”
They’re simple words for something that feels like it should be monumental. But really, is it? Haven’t they been dancing around each other for months? This is hardly the first time Doyoung has touched him like he owns him, and it’s definitely not the first time Taeyong has enjoyed it. So they’re saying certain things out loud this time. What does that change, in the end? Not what Taeyong feels. Not what he wants.
The sound that rips out of Doyoung’s throat is a raw, strangled thing. It makes Taeyong think in obscenities, of all the things they could do together that really shouldn’t be encouraged in professional singers. There’s no time to articulate that, though, or even think about what he wants to say, because Doyoung’s mouth is on his, tongue begging entrance, the scrape of his teeth on Taeyong’s lower lip making threats that he definitely hopes they follow up on.
“Shit,” Doyoung pants, pulling back to stare, wild-eyed, before they’re drawn back together by the crush of several months of unresolved tension. Taeyong can feel him mouth the word into the kiss, “Shit, fuck. Taeyong, what the fuck.”
It’s hard to kiss and smile at the same time, so Taeyong clenches his hands in Doyoung’s hair for better leverage. There’s an ache in his whole body, this pulsing desperation that begs him to press in closer, to have as much of Doyoung against and around and inside of him as possible. He wants it to hurt, wants it to leave reminders, proof, wants to walk around in the light of day feeling all the dark things scoured from the core of him by this thing that burns between them.
Doyoung’s hands drag from his hips to his ass, and Taeyong can’t help but laugh at the well-intentioned squeeze before he moves on. That too-tight grip works into his thighs, and Taeyong has learned well to heed instructions by now, hopping off the ground to give himself enough momentum to wrap his legs around Doyoung’s waist. He grunts, staggers for a second, and it’d almost be silly if Taeyong didn’t want this so fucking bad, if the aching need of it all hadn’t consumed his whole body. His back hits the door with a thump loud enough to be heard outside of the room, and Taeyong is half-hard in his jeans and working on getting the rest of the way there, and he doesn’t want to stop, he wants, he wants--
He breaks the kiss on a sigh, tipping his head back until it hits the door as well, looking down at Doyoung through hooded eyelids and the general disarray of his fringe. His chest heaves like they’ve just stepped off stage, and his body thrums with the same frenetic energy, and it’s a lot. It might be too much. Doyoung gazes up at him like - like he always does, all relentless intensity reserved just for Taeyong.
He loosens his hold in Doyoung’s hair. It’s a fucking mess, so of course he has to stroke it back, indulging himself in the slow sweep of Doyoung’s lashes as he blinks in something like comfort, some of that tense fervour draining out of the sharp written lines of his face.
“Johnny gave me the package,” Taeyong explains ruefully.
There’s a pause, before Doyoung laughs. It’s a shaky sound, rough around the edges and all Taeyong wants to do is kiss him again, like he can somehow smooth the sound down before it next escapes his mouth. Maybe he just wants to keep kissing Doyoung. Maybe he could kiss him forever.
“I don’t know when manager-nim is getting back either,” Doyoung admits. “Not that it wouldn’t be worth risking it.”
Taeyong giggles. All of the muscles in his neck feel like they unwind, enough that there’s a little thunk when he lets his head swing forward to meet Doyoung’s. God, this is stupid. It’s so stupid, and Doyoung is so cute and so stupidly sexy, Taeyong thinks he could explode about it. Words, so often his first ally, abandon him upon seeing the scope of this battle. He’s already a lost cause.
“Come on,” he says, wiggling a little in Doyoung’s hold - which flexes automatically, digging in deeper, which tugs a sharp little breath from him. His punishment for teasing, he supposes. He feels, more than sees, the way Doyoung’s gaze darkens. “Put - ah, put me down. We can at least go to my room and - talk? At some point we should have a real conversation.”
“I love you,” Doyoung says, like that doesn’t just rip the world out from under him, leave the two of them free-floating in space. “Whatever you want, I want. Whatever you’re comfortable with - Taeyong. You have to know.”
“Oh.” Nerveless, Taeyong’s hand slips away from Doyoung’s face. His mouth is hanging open, he probably looks so dumb, but he can’t - he hadn’t expected--
“I don’t expect--” Doyoung breaks off to sigh again, frustration painting each second of sound. He can’t seem to meet Taeyong’s gaze anymore, looking determinedly off at the corner of the room. “Obviously there’s something. I’m not blind, and you’re not cruel. But you have enough pressure as leader, the last thing I want is to be a burden.”
“You couldn’t. Be a burden. What the fuck, how could you ever be a burden?”
“Or a distraction! There are a thousand reasons this is a bad idea, I never thought - I never hoped--”
Taeyong kisses him. It seems like the quickest way to shut him up while making his own point at the same time, and it comes with the added bonus of more kissing. And well - they had been in the middle of having a semi-serious conversation, that they should really be continuing in Taeyong’s room, because Doyoung doesn’t know when their manager is coming back and Johnny is home right now. But Doyoung is very, overwhelmingly good at kissing, and he still hasn’t put Taeyong down yet, and Taeyong had known like, theoretically that Doyoung was pretty strong, but having empirical proof in front of him (under him) is kind of making him dizzy.
“It’s just you,” he murmurs softly, a thousand years later when some of his words hesitantly creep back to test the waters of this new landscape. “It’s been you for so long, I don’t remember it ever not being you, I want you - so much, Doyoung. Doie-yah. Oh my god. I want everything with you, you can’t just say ‘whatever I want’ to me, are you crazy? I love you. Of course I love you.”
Somewhere in the middle of this speech Doyoung headbutts his chest, tucks his face right into Taeyong’s collarbone with something that sounds suspiciously like a sniff, and Taeyong is already stroking his hair again before that last confession trips out of him.
“...Really though,” he says, after a long moment. “You can put me down, your arms must be killing you.”
“Not really,” Doyoung mumbles. “You need to eat more.”
“Uh huh.”
Taeyong lets one of his legs slip down, testing the ground to make sure it’s real under his foot first.
“Are you hungry?” Doyoung’s grip finally loosens, and Taeyong drops slowly down to the ground. His eyes are only rimmed a little red when he pulls his head back, but Taeyong doesn’t fight the urge to lean in and press a kiss to the delicate skin under his eyebrow, first on the left side and then on the right. It takes Doyoung a second or two to open his eyes again, like he needs to make sure he’s connected properly to reality as well. “I can - uh, I can make some food.”
“We can cook together,” Taeyong offers. He wants to grin, wants to shut, wants to loose the vaguely hysterical laughter bubbling in his chest, but the smile that escapes him feels startlingly shy, given how close they are. “Just um. Let me get changed again? And talk with me, please. Let me make sure we’re definitely both on the same page.”
Doyoung is already nodding, moving away to his closet. “I have a shirt you can wear.”
“Oh, I - wore one in here, though?”
A t-shirt flies across the room to Taeyong, not demonstrably different from the one he’d actually been planning to wear. Doyoung tends to wear his clothes a little more fitting than Taeyong does, but he’s also just a little bigger than Taeyong is.
“I have a shirt you can wear,” Doyoung repeats blandly, and the obvious clicks into place in Taeyong’s brain. He casts his mind back on the various times he’s borrowed something of Doyoung’s, thinks a quick prayer on his behalf before he runs his mental fingers over what he remembers of Doyoung’s wardrobe.
There’s a lot of use he can put this new information to.
“Okay,” he says, letting his smile melt a little wider. He gives Doyoung his back, keeping careful watch on the door in case the handle starts to jiggle. “Hey, can you untie me?”
*
“What’s your ring size?”
In Taeyong’s defence, he’s half asleep when he asks the question. They’re supposed to be watching a movie with the other members, but Doyoung had hooked an arm over his shoulder and hauled him back on the couch until Taeyong could settle between his thighs, back to chest. His hands had twitched like he wanted to stroke Taeyong’s hair or something, but Taeyong had captured one before it could escape, and had probably spent more of the past hour mindlessly toying with Doyoung’s fingers than actually paying attention.
(“Gross,” Haechan had announced when he saw them. Given that he had announced this from Mark Lee’s lap, Taeyong isn’t taking it too seriously).
“My…?” There’s a long pause. Something happens on the tv that has the rest of their members cracking up; Doyoung murmurs under the noise, “For which finger?”
Taeyong stills, caught in the middle of bending his ring finger sideways over his middle finger. He’s heard a couple of cracks so far in this game, but nothing that Doyoung seems to mind. That being said, Taeyong suspects he could straight up break one of Doyoung’s fingers and he’d pretend to be fine. Maybe he should go easy.
“...Your favourite?” Taeyong tries.
“Are you really expecting me to have a favourite finger.”
“We’re idols, you never know what random information the fans will want next.”
“Ah, so you want to know my ring size for NCTzens.”
Taeyong thinks about laughing it off, making it out to be a nonsense question or some kind of secret mission, but - it feels unfair. He’s been trying to be more open about his feelings lately; Doyoung deserves as much of him as he can bear to reveal, and he’s finding that he can bear more weight than anticipated these days, when Doyoung is next to him to help.
“For us,” he says finally. He straightens Doyoung’s fingers again, starts working his thumbs into the meat of his palm in tiny concentric circles. “We could have rings, maybe. Matching ones.”
“Like couple rings.”
“If that’s what you want to call it.”
“Is it what you want to call it?”
Taeyong huffs, smacking the back of Doyoung’s hand sharply enough to make him laugh, the sound vibrating against Taeyong’s spine. “I want a thing that connects us. I want to be able to put something on you that says you’re mine to everyone who sees it, even if we can’t actually ever say it. If that’s couple rings, then yes, I want to call it that.”
Doyoung’s hand shifts without warning. Captures Taeyong’s fingers with his, tangling them together. He squeezes tightly, once, enough to make Taeyong’s breath catch for a second before he remembers that they are, technically, in public. The cold tip of Doyoung’s nose tickles the space behind Taeyong’s ear, a soft kiss brushing into the delicate skin there.
“Okay,” Doyoung agrees simply. “Couple rings, then.”
It’s only after the movie is finished and everyone is groaningly heading for bed that Taeyong realises he never got an answer to his question.
*
The ring shows up on his pillowcase in the middle of Punch promotions. Taeyong is so tired that it takes several seconds of staring down at the expensive jewellery that has manifested in his hand before his brain starts to sloppily slide bits of information together.
“...DOYOUNG-AH,” he yells, throwing the door open, Cartier box clenched in one fist like it might disappear if he doesn’t grip it tight. He’s trying to sound annoyed, but it’s hard to keep the right tone in his voice when a smile keeps threatening to steal his face. “DO - oh.”
Doyoung is standing in the middle of the hallway, nervously snapping his own box open and shut again.
“I wanted to give you space,” Doyoung starts nervously. “To have, um, whatever feelings you wanted - like, if you didn’t like it, or it didn’t fit, or. Yes.”
“Oh my god,” Taeyoung states, frustrated, flustered, amazed. “Come here and put this thing on me you stupid, wonderful man.”
“Who are you calling stupid?” Doyoung grumbles, but he’s already moving. “You’re the one who couldn’t figure out my ring size. We’re famous.”
“‘We’re famous’,” Taeyong needles back, but he’s just talking shit for no reason now, gaze caught on the ring (beautiful) as Doyoung takes his hand like it’s something breakable. He slides it onto Taeyong’s left index finger (his favourite), and Taeyong wants desperately to return the gesture, but he’s overcome enough that kissing is required right now, the two of them entwined together in the middle of their apartment.
“Get a room!” Donghyuck complains, trying to sidle past to get to the bathroom. They break apart enough for Doyoung to breathlessly snap something that definitely wouldn’t be suitable for filming, which of course only prompts Donghyuck to dissolve into a series of giggles.
“I mean,” Taeyong murmurs into Doyoung’s ear, lips brushing the shell of it, “I guess he has a point.”
They retreat. Taeyong remembers to make grabby hands for Doyoung’s box before they get distracted again, trusting him to lock the door behind them. He hands it over with the softest, fondest smile on his face, the one Taeyong has video proof only really shows up for him. His hands are steady, when he slides the ring on, although that’s the last part of them that remains steady for quite a while afterwards.
(The rings both fit perfectly).