Thank you for reading! To explain a little:

Hongjoong is in an incredibly volatile place, especially after things have already escalated between him and Seonghwa, because he's at the point during his grieving for what they've lost where he is having to face and embrace acceptance- and he doesn't want to. It's why he's escalated because he feels the walls closing in. Desperate times call for desperate measures. He is beginning to understand and accept that he has no control, that he's losing hope and that there is no going back, as opposed to being in denial of those things.

Keep in mind that everything that has happened during the course of the fic thus far has happened within eight days. That's eight days that Hongjoong has not only been faced with the trauma of what Seonghwa's brought upon them, but eight days where he hasn't had any time to process or decompress from the trauma, stress, panic, confusion etc. And of course, despite how it may look he's been holding a lot of his less palatable feelings in, sheltering Seonghwa from the worst as he always does, which obviously didn't help him regulate either.

He's been taking one mental and emotional hit after another in such a short span of time while still trying to protect/take care of Seonghwa, so it was only a matter of time before he had an outburst that Seonghwa would naturally end up in the middle of considering his contributing role to Hongjoong's feelings.

Whether Seonghwa is wearing a ring on his finger or not is the least of Hongjoong's concerns. He's far too caught up in trying to make sense of what's happening to fuss over the small things that are easy to ignore in the grand scheme, especially because of how unstable Seonghwa himself is. And its a mess because despite Hongjoong's rationale, as a result of the high stress and complexity of their parent-child dynamic in a situation like this, he is feeding into the exact thing he's been trying to fight against just to cope.

All of Hongjoong's actions thus far, both active and passive, were building up to the point of mental break. There was never going to be a reality where Hongjoong was capable of pretending his hurt/frustrations towards Seonghwa's continued disregard for him as a person and not just someone to wring out wasn't as bad as it is.

Hongjoong loves Seonghwa deeply, he just doesn't want to love him like this and can't understand why what they had wasn't enough for him.

Obviously, MATZ is endgame, but I fear that their relationship and union isn't going to get any softer or easier to digest until the epilogue...