Readiness probe based on service - kubernetes

Question

I have 2 pods and my application is based on a cluster i.e. application synchronizes with another pod to bring it up. Let us say in my example I am using appod1 and appod2 and the synchronization port is 8080.
I want the service for DNS to be resolved for these pod hostnames but I want to block the traffic from outside the apppod1 and appod2.
I can use a readiness probe but then the service doesn't have endpoints and I can't resolve the IP of the 2nd pod. If I can't resolve the IP of the 2nd pod from pod1 then I can't complete the configuration of these pods.
E.g.
App Statefulset definition
app1_sts.yaml
===
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: StatefulSet
metadata:
labels:
cluster: appcluster
name: app1
namespace: app
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
cluster: appcluster
serviceName: app1cluster
template:
metadata:
labels:
cluster: appcluster
spec:
containers:
- name: app1-0
image: localhost/linux:8
imagePullPolicy: Always
securityContext:
privileged: false
command: [/usr/sbin/init]
ports:
- containerPort: 8080
name: appport
readinessProbe:
tcpSocket:
port: 8080
initialDelaySeconds: 120
periodSeconds: 30
failureThreshold: 20
env:
- name: container
value: "true"
- name: applist
value: "app2-0"
app2_sts.yaml
====
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: StatefulSet
metadata:
labels:
cluster: appcluster
name: app2
namespace: app
spec:
selector:
matchLabels:
cluster: appcluster
serviceName: app2cluster
template:
metadata:
labels:
cluster: appcluster
spec:
containers:
- name: app2-0
image: localhost/linux:8
imagePullPolicy: Always
securityContext:
privileged: false
command: [/usr/sbin/init]
ports:
- containerPort: 8080
name: appport
readinessProbe:
tcpSocket:
port: 8080
initialDelaySeconds: 120
periodSeconds: 30
failureThreshold: 20
env:
- name: container
value: "true"
- name: applist
value: "app1-0"
Create Statefulsets and check name resolution
[root#oper01 onprem]# kubectl get all -n app
NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGE
pod/app1-0 0/1 Running 0 8s
pod/app2-0 0/1 Running 0 22s
NAME READY AGE
statefulset.apps/app1 0/1 49s
statefulset.apps/app2 0/1 22s
kubectl exec -i -t app1-0 /bin/bash -n app
[root#app1-0 ~]# nslookup app2-0
Server: 10.96.0.10
Address: 10.96.0.10#53
** server can't find app2-0: NXDOMAIN
[root#app1-0 ~]# nslookup app1-0
Server: 10.96.0.10
Address: 10.96.0.10#53
** server can't find app1-0: NXDOMAIN
[root#app1-0 ~]#
I understand the behavior of the readiness probe and I am using it as it helps me to make sure service should not resolve to app pods if port 8080 is down. However, I am unable to make out how can I complete the configuration as app pods need to resolve each other and they need their hostname and IPs to configure. DNS resolution can only happen once the service has end points. Is there a better way to handle this situation?