Min-woo took the phone from him and typed his number in slowly, deliberately, aware of Jae-min's presence somewhere behind him even if he was doing an admirable job pretending otherwise.
"There," he said, handing it back. "Try not to lose it this time."
Tae-hyun huffed a laugh, already backing away toward the sedan idling down the block. "No promises."
He turned and jogged the rest of the way, and just before he ducked into the car, he called back over his shoulder without looking, "I'll call you!"
Then the door shut, and the car pulled away, taillights fading around the corner.
Min-woo stood there for a second longer than necessary, a small, unguarded smile still sitting on his face.
Then he turned around and found Jae-min watching him with his arms crossed and one eyebrow raised in a way that promised absolutely no mercy.
"I thought you said there was nothing going on between you two."
"There isn't."
"Min-woo."
"There isn't," Min-woo repeated, walking past him toward the apartment door with far more confidence than the situation warranted. "He just wanted my number. People exchange numbers all the time. It's not a whole thing."
"You're smiling like it's a whole thing."
"I'm smiling because I survived a fever today. Excuse me for being in a good mood."
Jae-min followed him inside, unconvinced, but let it go for now—mostly because he was exhausted, and mostly because some small, honest part of him understood exactly what that particular smile meant, having caught himself wearing one just like it more than once over the past few weeks.
---
Two days passed faster than Jae-min expected, and by the time the morning of the date actually arrived, he woke before his alarm even went off, wide awake and strangely, embarrassingly eager.
He showered, picked through three different shirts before settling on one, and was halfway through fixing his hair in the bathroom mirror when Min-woo appeared in the doorway, arms crossed, grinning like he'd just won something.
"Look at you," Min-woo said. "Practically glowing."
"Shut up."
"I mean it. You've been up since six. You never wake up before six unless there's practice."
"I have a date."
"You have a *mission*," Min-woo corrected, following him back into the main room. "Remember? Trap. Ruin. Dispose. Ringing any bells?"
Jae-min paused at the mirror by the door, adjusting his collar one more time, and didn't answer right away.
"You've forgotten the plan," Min-woo said, quieter now, though there was still a teasing edge underneath it.
"I haven't forgotten anything."
"Then why do you look like a man about to propose instead of a man about to ruin someone's life?"
Jae-min shot him a look over his shoulder, something flickering across his face that he didn't quite manage to hide fast enough.
"You're one to talk," he shot back instead of answering. "You're supposed to be a spy in that house, and instead you're out here catching feelings for the little brother."
"I am not catching feelings."
"You have his number saved under a heart emoji."
"That was an accident."
"You typed it yourself."
"Shut up."
They were still trading half-hearted jabs, both grinning despite themselves, when the doorbell rang, cutting through the argument entirely.
Jae-min's stomach did something complicated and fast.
He crossed the room and opened the door, and there was Jihan—dressed down from his usual suits into something simpler, dark jeans and a plain button-up, a small bundle of flowers held loosely in one hand like he wasn't entirely sure what to do with them now that he'd actually made it to the door.
"I thought you might like these," he said, holding them out. "I wasn't sure what you'd prefer, so I went with something simple."
Jae-min stared at the flowers for a second, something warm and unguarded breaking across his face before he could stop it.
"...Thank you." He took them carefully. "You didn't have to."
"I wanted to."
Behind him, somewhere out of Jihan's line of sight, Min-woo was practically kicking his feet in the air with delight, mouthing something that looked suspiciously like *he brought you flowers* over and over with an expression of pure, gleeful chaos.
Jae-min shot him a look sharp enough to kill, then turned back to Jihan with his most composed smile firmly back in place.
"Ready?" Jihan asked.
"Yeah." Jae-min stepped out, pulling the door shut behind him before Min-woo could do anything else to embarrass him. "Let's go."
Jihan walked him to the car and opened the passenger door before Jae-min could reach for the handle himself, waiting until he was settled before closing it and rounding to the driver's side.
Min-woo watched the whole thing from the window, grin still firmly in place, until the sedan pulled away from the curb and disappeared around the corner.
---
The apartment felt strangely quiet after that.
Min-woo wandered back to the couch, scrolling idly through his phone, half-watching some drama rerun with the sound turned low. He'd made it through maybe twenty minutes of aimless scrolling when the doorbell rang again.
He frowned at the clock.
Barely thirty minutes since Jae-min had left.
*No way,* he thought, already pushing off the couch. *There's no way he ruined the date this fast.*
He crossed the room fast, already halfway into a lecture before the door had even fully opened.
"Jae-min! Don't tell me you—"
He stopped dead.
Standing on the other side of the door wasn't Jae-min at all.
Tae-hyun stood there instead, a small bouquet of flowers in one hand and a paper takeout bag in the other, hair slightly windblown like he'd walked the last stretch instead of driving, an easy, faintly nervous smile already spreading across his face.
"Hi," he said.
Min-woo blinked, mouth still half-open around the sentence he'd been about to finish, brain scrambling to catch up with the sudden, complete rearrangement of what he'd expected to find on the other side of that door.
"...Tae-hyun?"
"You said you needed rest for a couple of days." Tae-hyun held up the takeout bag slightly, like an offering. "So I figured I'd check on you. Bring food. Make sure you're actually resting and not just saying that so people leave you alone."
"...I am resting."
"You're standing at the door in your pajamas looking like you were about to yell at someone." Tae-hyun's mouth twitched, amused. "So, healthy amount of resting, I'm guessing."
Min-woo glanced down at himself—rumpled t-shirt, sweatpants, definitely not dressed for visitors—and felt heat crawl up the back of his neck despite himself.
"I wasn't expecting company."
"I can tell." Tae-hyun held the flowers out a little further, patient. "Can I come in, or are you going to make me stand here holding all this?"
Min-woo looked at the flowers. Then at the bag of takeout, still steaming faintly at the seams, clearly picked up somewhere close by and rushed straight over while it was still warm. Then, finally, at Tae-hyun's face—open, hopeful, a little nervous underneath the easy confidence he usually wore so effortlessly.
Something in Min-woo's chest did a slow, unhelpful flip that he refused, absolutely refused, to examine any closer than necessary.
"...Yeah," he said, stepping back to let him through. "Yeah, come in."
Tae-hyun's smile widened as he stepped past him into the apartment, glancing around with open curiosity at the space he'd clearly never actually seen before, and Min-woo shut the door behind him, standing there for a second with his hand still on the handle, trying very hard to remember what exactly he was supposed to be doing with his face right now.
*This wasn't part of the plan,* he thought.
Somewhere underneath the panic, a smaller, quieter voice pointed out that it didn't especially feel like a problem.