chanyeol lowers himself onto one knee before jongin, a royal blue, silky velvet box carefully held in both hands containing a simple but flawlessly pristine gold band that sets off a faint shimmer with the smallest of movements.

“aww,” luhan croons from the side, falling into minseok’s shoulder and squeezing the living daylights out of the older boy as sehun tries to push his hyungs away from toppling over onto his lap.

zitao buries his face into his thick, cable-knitted scarf, hiding the faint blush spreading across his cheeks as baekhyun jabs a finger into his side, making zitao jolt out of his hiding place, flailing his arms to ward off the elder from his personal space.

kris stares off into the corner of the ceiling with a bored expression, yixing already nodding off on kyungsoo’s shoulder in the back corner of the room. and jongdae is floundering on junmyeon’s lap, shoving his fists into his mouth to hold back the laughter threatening to explode from his chest.

for the most part, with the exception of ‘not my style’ kris, everyone seems to be enjoying the moment, shaking with silent laughter at the expense of the couple currently in the middle of their “wedding” photo shoot for “we got married.”

but a constant twitch in the back of junmyeon’s neck makes the leader frown, perplexed, and he can’t help but really look at chanyeol and jongin through critical eyes.

junmyeon really doesn’t know what it is, can’t pinpoint the source of his quavering uncertainty. but something makes him question the boundary between real and pretend, the fragile line of distinction that only seems to spread ever so much thinner, and thinner, with each and every passing day.

because yes, it’s all pre-planned and scripted by a team of professional staff writers set out on appealing to the starry-eyed general public with visions of romantic ideals and fanciful dreams.

and yes, it’s only for show, blinding lights and cameras constantly pointed towards the two boys from all directions, their every little action under perpetual scrutiny and revision.

but something in the way the corners of jongin’s eyes subtly sparkle with unshed tears, if you look close enough, and the way chanyeol carries his shoulders with his head held high as if to say ‘yes, here i am, and this is who i choose,’ makes junmyeon believe that there’s something so much more underneath the superficial layer of theatrics and pretend. something sincere, something very much real.

and junmyeon doesn’t know whether he should be worried, concerned, whether he needs to step in and put a stop to… whatever it is… before something drastic happens that could not only affect the working relationship between the two members, but exo as a whole.

junmyeon knows it’s his responsibilty, his duty as leader, to take control of the situation.

but whenever chanyeol smiles at jongin with his huge, happy grin that spreads across his entire face, all teeth and shining joy, or whenever jongin reaches out to grab the collar of chanyeol’s shirt, leaning into the taller boy as if to melt into his back and never resurface, whenever junmyeon catches these tiny little actions and gestures, the leader suddenly forgets the intelligent and valid arguments he’d thought out in the quiet of his room, claims that had seemed to make sense at the time.

then, in an isolated corner of the bustling dressing room, every other member running about, half a leg forced through the wrong pants, a single eye smudged with charcoal liner, nobody really paying any attention to anything other than themselves at the moment, jongin will lean into chanyeol’s ear, whispering a secret something that only the two of them can hear, and chanyeol’s prominent ears will burn scarlet red.

and junmyeon finds himself unable to help but think that this is the way it should be, the way it was meant to be. the two of them, together. 

because no matter how much junmyeon tries to convince himself that this is unacceptable, inappropriate, so many things could go wrong, in the end, he can’t help but see the beauty, the perfection, of just how much jongin and chanyeol belong to each other.