Archive of Our Own

Pressure at the foot of the bed makes the mattress dip, and Jisung experiences what can only be described as waking up into a dream. His brain, foggy with short-lived and restless sleep, registers a number of things that might not make total sense but are received as facts, regardless: there’s a hand tugging at the waistband of his underwear, a pair of knees bracketing his own, and the distinct smell of fire in the air.

In the darkness of his room, ruby red eyes trail up Jisung’s body before locking on his own.

Time slows down. The city beyond the open window falls silent. Jisung, deafened by the rampant beating of his heart in his ears, takes several moments to process what’s going on.

Hovering over him is the most beautiful man Jisung has ever seen. Even in the low light, the outline of his full lips makes Jisung’s breath still in his lungs. He watches them pull into a slow, self-satisfied smile. It feels like it should be intimidating, like it should instil some sense of danger inside him, but Jisung is surprised to find it has the complete opposite effect. He neither wants to fight nor fly. No, Jisung merely wants him even closer.

Piercing, seemingly self-illuminating eyes study his face. Dark eyebrows imperceptibly tense behind tufts of dark, red-tinted hair. The fingers curled around his waistband twitch against the sensitive skin of his hip.

Jisung tries to reach for the hand on his abdomen, only to realise he cannot move, muscles frozen in place, bound to the mattress by restraints he somehow knows he wouldn’t be able to see, even if he did manage to look.

(In the back of his mind, he asks himself what he would have done, if he did have full control of his body. Not the logical thing, is the answer he finds. Unless, that is, the logical thing would be urging that hand on.)

The dream stretches. Time snaps back into place.

“You want me to?” the man asks. His tone is hard to decipher, his voice low.

When Jisung attempts to nod, he finds his muscles uncooperative. Against all odds, he feels his eyebrows draw together in frustration.

The man lets go and, before Jisung can even think of how he’d react, crawls further up the bed. A hand settles on the side of Jisung’s neck. Heat seeps in, spreads, warming up his vocal cords. “Use your words.”

Jisung clears his throat, feels it shake off hours of disuse. “Yes,” he manages to say, voice gravelly.

Up close, the man’s eyes are even more intense. Their gaze has a physical weight to it. Jisung feels exposed, captive to it, and he’s not sure he wishes to be set free. “Yes, what?” the man says, his tone teasing.

The truth spills out of him without hesitation. “Yes, I want you to touch me.”

The man smirks. It makes him look even more handsome, if that is even possible. He curls his index finger against the underside of Jisung’s jaw, presses his thumb right below his lower lip. Jisung yields to the gentle pressure, his mouth falling open. “I’m gonna do much more than that,” the man whispers.

Jisung’s spine tingles, back muscles seizing futilely as the man leans down and licks into Jisung’s open, willing mouth. Jisung moans into the kiss, presses his tongue against his, closes his lips around it, chases its warmth.

He wants it. Isn’t sure what he’s signing up for, exactly, but knows without a shadow of a doubt that he wants it. He wants it all.

The man draws back to look at him, a sparkle of something akin to danger in his eyes. “Okay,” he says.

Jisung doesn’t get the chance to ask what the man is agreeing to before the sight in front of him finally registers, punching the air out of his lungs. The man is naked, Jisung realises as he watches him sit up. He takes in every little bit of movement as the man shifts back, his weight settling on Jisung when he straddles his thighs.

He’s broad-shouldered, wider than Jisung, solid, strong-looking. The second-hand light that reaches them highlights the swells of his defined chest, the soft lines of his abs, the musculature of his thighs. The heavy cock between his legs.

Jisung feels himself grow hard.

He wants.

Thankfully, he doesn’t have to beg. Smart hands finally pull the elastic of his waistband down and behind his balls. Hungry eyes fall on newly-revealed skin, and his cock twitches in response.

The man curls his hand around him, tugging once, twice. He strokes his thumb across the head, gently digs into the slit, smiles at the wetness he finds there. And it's as easy as that. Dumbly, Jisung realises this is the most aroused he’s ever been, and he’s merely being toyed with.

Eyes meet his own, once again. Jisung finds himself unable to look away.

“Watch me,” the man says. Commands.

Jisung doesn’t even need to obey; that’s exactly what he was planning on doing, in the first place.

He watches as the man rises to his knees and shifts forwards. He hovers over Jisung’s lap and reaches behind himself, steadying Jisung against his hole. Whatever doubt or word of caution Jisung’s brain urges him to voice dies in his throat as, in what feels like slow-motion, the man takes him in. Languid, torturous, perfect.

By the time he’s fully seated in Jisung’s lap, Jisung is almost convinced he’s entirely forgotten how to breathe. Embarrassingly, it feels like the slightest move could take him apart. He doesn’t want this to end, just yet. Doesn’t want to lose this. The thought of waking up, sticky and alone, fills him with dread. He hates that it threatens to mar this moment for him.

Hands plant themselves on his upper body as the man leans in, the pressure inadvertently grounding. “I need you to breathe for me,” he says. “Can you do that?”

Jisung can. He manages to nod, when his voice betrays him. He wills his lungs to cooperate, drawing breath after breath, and every passing second brings him further into his own body, right here, right now, his focus sharpening on everything that matters; the beautiful man on top of him, the way he stretches around him, eager and hot, as if made for him.

“There you go,” the man almost coos, and the way it feels like praise has Jisung burning up inside. “I’m gonna make you feel good,” he says.

Before the man can even make good on his promise, the plea claws its way out of Jisung’s throat, unbidden. “Can I touch you?” he asks. “Please.”

He’s not sure what expression takes over the man’s face in response. It’s a complex thing, partly obscured by the darkness. What Jisung can make out is the way Minho's eyes flash, the ruby red somehow darker yet brighter at the same time. His heart thumps hard against his ribcage as hands cover his own, lifting them off the mattress and depositing them on top of the man’s thighs.

Jisung experimentally flexes his fingers, elated to find they are once again under his control. He takes advantage of it by tightening his grip, gently digging into tender flesh, the powerful muscles hidden underneath. He skates his hands higher, wanting to feel the whisper of skin on skin, map out where the man feels softer, what kind of touch makes him tense up in pleasure.

He wants to register as much of him as he can, in the limited time he has.

Perfect, he thinks to himself. He’s perfect.

The man sighs, and it devolves into a moan as he gently rolls his hips. “You’re sweet,” he says, and Jisung believes he would find something at least half-coherent to respond with, if it wasn’t for the fact that the man seems to decide they’ve done enough talking already.

When he lifts himself off of Jisung only to slide all the way back down in one smooth motion, Jisung sees stars.

He can only hold onto his hips as the man takes over, setting his own pace as he fucks himself on Jisung, determined, purposeful. Every move feels natural yet thought-out at the same time, at just the right speed to leave Jisung gasping, breathless as he chases after the mounting pleasure building inside him. It’s too good, too much, too fast. This is going to be over embarrassingly quickly.

He closes his eyes shut tight. His lips tremble. His nails bite into skin.

Too good. Too fast.

The man doesn’t let up. Even as Jisung feels him lean down, his pace is barely affected, preternaturally perfect.

“It’s okay,” he reassures Jisung, and sets a hand on his pec. He supposes it’s meant to be a comforting gesture, but all it ends up achieving is torture him further. Jisung wonders if the man can feel his heart, sense how erratically it’s beating as it tries to keep up. “I want you to.”

Jisung groans out something that starts off as a curse but comes out as a broken moan.

“Come on, sweet thing,” the man encourages him further, lips brushing against Jisung’s own with the movement. He kisses him, moans into it, and Jisung’s stomach burns with the knowledge that he’s making the man feel good in return, even in this half-helpless state. “Let go.”

Jisung is only a man. He cannot help but comply.

The orgasm that rips through his body takes even him by surprise, despite its entirely unavoidable nature; it lights him up from the inside out as he comes, harder than he ever has before, deep into the heat of the man's body.

His brain blanks, but not before he manages to register the man’s moan, starting from somewhere deep within his chest and spilling into Jisung’s mouth, hot and honey-sweet.

This is the best Jisung has ever felt.

And, on that thought, much to his dismay, he flicks out of consciousness.

Briefly blinks back into it just in time to feel the man withdraw.

When he tries to speak, a desperate hand reaching out for any part of the man it can get to, his voice sounds blown out even to his own ears. “What’s your name?” he finds himself asking.

Within the confines of Jisung’s tunnel vision, the man smiles. “You can call me Minho,” he says, and Jisung cannot figure out why it feels like he’s being humoured.

“Minho,” he repeats, his lips buzzing around the name. It’s a good one. It feels right.

Minho’s smile looks kind yet oddly sad around the edges. Jisung doesn’t like the look of it on his face. “You should sleep,” he says.

Before he can get the chance to tell him that that is what he’s been doing all along, Jisung falls right back into darkness.

Out like a light.

—

“You good, bro?”

Jisung shakes his head, snapping himself back down to earth. He lifts a headphone cup off his ear and turns to Chan, only to find him twisted around in his desk chair, body turned towards Jisung. The smile on his face looks equal parts playful and worried, in the way only Chan can ever manage to pull off.

“Sorry. I’m okay,” he says, and he tries to make it look as if he’s fully aware of what’s happening on his screen, the mess of tangled windows entirely unhelpful in cluing him into what he’s been trying to do.

Out of the corner of Jisung’s eye, Chan frowns. “You’ve been going dark on me all day, man. Is something wrong, or did you just not get any sleep?” he probes.

Jisung winces. He would figure the amount of hours he got was more than enough, especially compared to his usual sleep schedule, and yet he undeniably feels worse off than if he would’ve pulled an all-nighter. Maybe something really is wrong with him.

“Or,” Chan says after a beat, dragging the word out, and Jisung can already tell he’s going to hate what comes out of his mouth next. “Did you not get any sleep last night?” he says, tone regrettably familiar in how over-the-top suggestive it is.

Jisung barely suppresses a groan. As if. He opens his mouth to beg him to stop before Changbin’s voice cuts him off from all the way across the office.

“Please. Buddhist monks wish they could get on Jisung’s level of celibacy.”

Jisung’s head whips around at an alarming speed. Embarrassment burns its way through his chest, heats up his cheeks in record time. “Hey, you know I pull!” he nearly shouts, trying to defend himself even as he recognises it’s an uphill battle he’s fighting.

Changbin smirks at him. “Oh, we know you pull. It’s pushing you never do any of.”

Jisung digs his heels into the carpeted floor, rolls himself backwards in indignation. “Hyung!” He turns to Chan only to find him trying to stifle a smile. Can he really not find refuge anywhere?

Still, Chan commendably manages to soften his expression, hands up in an effort to calm the room down. “Hey now, nothing wrong with being a bit more selective,” he offers, and Jisung appreciates it, he does—

“Nothing wrong with being bitchless,” comes the deadpan murmur from off to the side, and Jisung jumps in his chair, palms smacking the handles.

“Hey!”

He looks back and forth between the two of them just to see Changbin’s mischievous grin and Chan’s cheeks dimpling with barely-concealed amusement. Whatever happened to brotherhood?

Jisung flattens his spine against the back of the chair, crosses his arms over his chest. He focuses betrayed eyes on Chan, who reaches out for his shoulder, squeezing comfortingly despite the ruthless round of bullying they’re subjecting him to. Plural. Chan included. The traitor.

“You know he’s only kidding around,” he tells Jisung, his smile relaxing into something more compassionate than teasing. “We support you in anything you choose to do,” he says. He throws a pointed look Changbin’s way, and Jisung turns to him just in time to see him tilt his head to the side, expression entertained but not unkind.

“Just pulling your pigtails,” Changbin says. “But only because we love you so much,” he squeaks out in that high-pitched tone of his that always carries more truth to it than he’d care to admit, despite its playfulness.

Jisung huffs, puts on a pout that he knows will telegraph this exchange will be water under the bridge within the next half hour, just as soon as this god-forsaken flush leaves his face. He loves them, too, after all. Pigtail-pulling and all.

—

When the soft creaking of wood alerts Jisung to a presence in his bedroom, he needs no more than a single look at ruby red eyes staring at him in surprise to remember the name that had been lodged between his front teeth, at the tip of his tongue.

“Minho,” he greets, lips sticky with sleep.

Minho freezes, caught mid-step in the space between the window and the bed. Jisung wishes he could see the expression on his face more clearly but, backlit as he is by the streetlights outside, his body is mostly reduced to a silhouette, his face unreadable save for those striking eyes of his, round with what feels like shock. “What did you say?” he asks.

Jisung frowns. “Your name,” he says, puzzled. He’s certain he’s not wrong. Minho had told him so, last time. There might not be all that much logic in the dream world, but surely things as fundamental as names don’t really change, do they? Or was it the lack of formality that did it? Should he rush to correct himself? What’s the proper etiquette with dream entities?

The lines of Minho’s shoulders relax. “Right,” he says, and thankfully wastes no more time before covering the rest of the distance, the chilly night air carrying his scent along with it, magnifying it the closer Minho comes. Crisp, lung-warming fire; exciting when it should be alarming.

A shiver runs through him when Minho pulls the sheets back, and Jisung holds his breath as he watches Minho watch him in return.

“Look at you,” Minho says, and Jisung wants to bottle this moment up, the awed tone of his voice and the way it feels to have those eyes on him, taking their time as they travel from his face to his naked chest, all the way down his body, to the erection filling out between his legs. Jisung wants to tell him it’s all for him, but fears pointing out the obvious.

Minho grunts something that sounds like a cross between a moan and a bitten-out fuck before finally climbing into bed.

Knees part Jisung’s legs as Minho makes a place for himself in between his thighs. Lips light little fires on his skin everywhere they touch — his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, the spot where his jaw meets his throat — as hands slide down his body before seemingly finding a home at the small of his waist.

Jisung pants. It feels so intimate, to be touched like this. To be kissed in a way that can only be described as reverent. It kills him to think that he’d almost forgotten about this, about Minho, even if for no longer than a day. How is that possible? How could he ever forget?

“Please,” he says, not entirely sure what he’s begging for, himself. More pleasure, perhaps. For Minho to stay longer, this time around. For lips to be more insistent as they trail kisses down his upper body. That way, maybe, they’ll leave behind marks that transcend the line between dream and reality. Marks that Jisung can dig his thumb into, in the morning. Souvenirs. Reminders. “Please.”

Eyes lock onto his own as Minho slides further down and, for a single moment, Jisung wonders if Minho can read his thoughts. If the look on his face, lust intertwined with something akin to pain, perfectly mirrors Jisung’s state of mind not by chance, but by design.

Regardless, all coherent thought leaves him the moment Minho’s lips part to take him in. Heat swallows him whole.

Jisung gives himself up to him.

—

Felix’s phone clatters onto the table. “Okay, fess up, who is it?”

“Huh?”

Felix folds his arms on top of each other as he leans in, eyes knowingly bright as they focus on Jisung’s face. Jisung has no idea what he’s looking for, what it is that he should be hiding in the first place, but is certain Felix will end up finding it, eventually. He always does.

“It’s like you’ve been on the lookout all morning. You jump every single time the café door opens,” he says. “Who are you waiting for?”

Under the table, Jisung digs a finger into the rip of his jeans. “No one,” he says, and instantly knows that’s not entirely true. “I don’t know,” he corrects himself, not failing to register the way Felix’s eyebrows twitch in response.

He really doesn’t, is the thing.

This vague sense of anticipation has been accompanying him since the very moment he opened his eyes. He went through his morning routine with the nagging feeling he’s on the verge of forgetting something prodding at the back of his mind. He looks down at his plate and realises he’s been eating on autopilot, so stuck inside his own head that he didn’t even get to taste his breakfast.

A soft hand covers his own, stilling fingers that he wasn’t even aware were nervously tapping against his half-empty glass.

“It’s okay,” Felix says, gentle as anything. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

Jisung smiles despite himself. There’s something special in the way Felix can make him feel this safe so effortlessly. It’s reliable, tried and true, and Jisung breathes a little easier knowing that Felix’s mood is eager to flip on a dime, depending on how Jisung wishes to proceed with this conversation.

He lets go of the glass and twists his wrist, catching Felix’s hand in his own. He squeezes his fingers playfully, and can’t help but grin at the sunny smile Felix offers him in return.

He basks in this little moment, even as his brain tells him that something doesn’t feel quite right, like a puzzle piece jammed into the wrong spot.

Like eyes fixed onto him that he knows won’t be there when he turns to look.

—

This time around, when Jisung opens his eyes to see Minho softly swing the window closed behind him, Minho readily makes eye contact, as if he’d been expecting it.

Jisung watches him get closer, and surprisingly feels his body spring to life in increments, tingling pools of energy, awareness, spreading from spot to spot; his fingertips, elbows, shoulders, spine. The sensation travels further and further down, seemingly faster with each and every step Minho takes towards him.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he tells him, and smiles in amusement at the way Minho pauses mid-crawl, the bed springs squeaking with the sudden stop. Eyes search his face while he mirrors the action, trying to figure out what the exact game they’ve been playing is.

It’s important work, he figures, it’s vital that he takes care of that now, to whatever extent possible, seeing as he can. Seeing as he remembers. Jisung refuses to take that for granted, any longer.

When Minho continues to do nothing but stare, eyebrows drawn together in what looks like frustration, Jisung decides to push further. “I couldn’t tell what it was that I was anticipating, exactly, but I could feel it,” he says.

Minho draws closer, at this, one hand in front of the other until Jisung can almost feel the heat of his body.

“I couldn’t wait until nighttime,” Jisung says, unable to suppress the shiver that runs down his back as Minho straddles him, hot, perfect pressure exactly where Jisung needs it, already hard, the response Pavlovian. Jisung licks his lips, satisfied with the way Minho’s eyes automatically track the movement. “Not just because it’d been a tiring day,” he continues, “but because I think part of me knew…” He leaves the sentence hanging, only half-pretending to be reaching for words that remain just out of reach.

Minho waits.

Jisung bides his time.

Seconds tick by in silence.

When Minho finally runs out of patience, body relaxing as he leans towards him, Jisung finds the opening he’s been waiting for.

He’s got Minho on his back, wrists caught in one hand and trapped between their chests, in fractions of a second. Minho’s eyes go incredibly round, his mouth falling half-open in shock, even as his legs wrap around Jisung’s hips, locking him in place.

“How did you do that?” Minho asks, and there is no mistaking the breathlessness in his tone for anything but awe. Surprise mixed with arousal.

Jisung grins, triumphant. He tightens his grip just so, and almost loses sight of his goal as he witnesses Minho’s lips tremble around a sigh. It’s surreal, a man this beautiful, this strong, pliant underneath Jisung. Hard for him, wanting, canting his hips upwards as he watches Jisung through heavy-lidded eyes. It seems too good to be true, and yet it is. In this very moment, Jisung knows it is.

“What?” Minho asks after several seconds filled with nothing except for heavy breathing, and Jisung realises this is the first time Minho has ever stumbled, come across as if out of the loop in their interactions so far. “What are you thinking about?” The question sounds out of place coming out of his mouth.

This is it, then. “Why can I never remember you during the day?”

Minho blinks, licks his lips. “Because that’s what dreams are like,” he says after a beat, wrists flexing within Jisung’s grip. “This is a dream.”

Jisung recognises it was meant as a statement, but the words end up hanging in the air between them lamely. There’s a silent question mark here, on the tip of Minho’s tongue. Jisung can hear it even over the sound of his blood whooshing in his ears.

He shakes his head. “No,” he says, eyes flitting between Minho’s own, “you’re real.”

And as the words slip out of his mouth, Jisung knows them to be true. Even as the implication of what he just said threatens to open the door to a long series of troubling questions and thoughts, Jisung basks in self-conviction. This, right here, Minho, the time they’ve spent together, every moment that has passed and every moment to come, it’s all real.

He watches Minho oscillate between reactions, aborting each and every response the very moment he seems to settle on one.

Jisung doesn’t need him to say anything.

He lifts his hand, carefully pulling Minho’s arms along with it. He brings it close to his face, and makes sure to maintain eye contact as he places a soft kiss right where Minho’s wrists meet. “I could never dream up something as perfect as you,” he whispers into his skin, and looks on in delight as Minho’s eyelids gently fall closed. The soft whine that comes out of him makes something in Jisung’s chest flutter with satisfaction.

He trails more kisses down Minho’s forearms, noses at the plains of his chest and travels further down his body as it yields to him, pliable, supine, muscular thighs falling open as Jisung’s greedy hands take everything there is to be taken.

Minho’s chest rises and falls with every soft moan, and ruby red eyes flash in the dark, never once leaving Jisung.

He hopes against hope that he will remember this. The way Minho sounds when Jisung crooks his fingers just right. The way his body trembles when Jisung kisses the bend where his thigh meets his hip. But above all, the way he looks at him: in disbelief at how right this feels, in fear of what he’s willing to do to get more of it.

Jisung sees it, clear as day, understands. He feels the exact same way.

—

“What have you done to me?” a heart-achingly familiar voice just barely manages to pierce through the heavy fog that Jisung distantly recognises as deep, all-encompassing sleep. He attempts to reach out, but its veil is too heavy to lift.

Silence stretches.

Jisung racks his brain for an answer to the question, tries to figure out who the one asking it is, and how Jisung has possibly faulted them. As time passes at an unidentifiable speed, he’s afraid he will not get the chance to work it all out before sleep manages to once again fully take him.

Warmth, tender and soft, trails the side of his face. “How am I going to leave you now, Jisung-ah?” the voice asks, delicately breaking around the sound of his name — no one has ever uttered it this way before, as if it hurts just as much as it relieves them to say, prayer-like.

He wants to tilt his face, nuzzle into the source of heat, convey his disagreement in any way he can — whatever he’s done, whatever the issue, they should stay; Jisung will fix things, he knows he can — but finds no success.

He’s only afforded a single moment to mourn the sudden loss of contact before the darkness finally becomes too much to fight against.

As he falls, he begs this moment doesn’t fade away. It feels too important for that.

—

Jisung wakes up. Goes to work. Returns home just to work some more. Goes to bed. Rinse. Repeat.

Days pass and blur together to the point where they’re practically indistinguishable from each other, by the end of each week. The only connecting thread between them, the sole constant, is that nagging feeling of something missing. Something vital being forgotten, just under the surface, barely out of sight each time Jisung tears his gaze away from the nearest available screen to take in his surroundings: the café, the studio, Chan’s apartment, his own bedroom, dimly lit and devastatingly empty in a way it never felt before.

Nothing goes wrong, but nothing seems quite right, either. The thought has him second-guessing every other action. It gets him frowning as he brushes his teeth each morning, and tossing and turning an extra half hour every night.

It’s unsettling. Exhausting in a sneaky, understated way.

“I’m glad you seem to be getting more sleep, though,” Felix says during a lull in conversation, and chuckles softly at the quizzical look Jisung gives him. “Those eye bags had gotten bad for a while, there,” he supplies, expression way too earnest for this early in the morning.

Jisung fishes his phone out of his pocket, and makes a bit of a show out of checking his face in the reflection, mostly to get to hear the exasperated huff it elicits out of Felix. He smiles. He’s not sure what it was that Felix had seen — Jisung hasn’t made any major changes in his lifestyle or sleep schedule and, if anything, he’s been feeling worse than he did a few weeks ago — but he’d rather play it off as a joke than seriously address it.

He knows Felix cares. He’d prefer not to have that sentiment devolve into worry. Especially since he himself is not entirely sure what’s going on with him.

“Anyway, thanks for the treat,” Felix says, briefly lifting the plastic cup, coffee already half-drunk, and gently squeezes Jisung’s bicep with his free hand. “Check in with the others and call me when you’re done? We’re overdue for a proper night out,” he says, already angling himself in the direction of the dance studio across the street.

Jisung nods. “Will do. Have a great day, Bokie!”

“You, too,” Felix says, and the kiss he blows in Jisung’s direction scrunches up his face in the cutest way before he finally turns away.

Jisung watches him cross the road and enter the building. He tightens his jacket around himself, but does not manage to prevent the shiver that runs down his spine, regardless.

The tree branches remain still. The spring morning sun warms his face.

Still, the chill persists.

Jisung’s eyes flit over the rows of windows overlooking the street below, searching for something he cannot identify. A feeling he’s regrettably well-acquainted with, nowadays.

He sighs.

Shoving his hands into his pockets, he gets moving again. His feet take him the rest of the way to the office.

—

Restless. He’s restless.

Jisung forcibly stops his leg from bouncing for what feels like the tenth time this evening alone. He puts his pen down and spins his chair around to face Changbin, who in turn takes his headphones off, letting them hang around his neck. He lifts an eyebrow and gives Jisung the chance to speak first.

“What was that dancer’s name?” Jisung asks. “The one you’d tried to set me up with.”

Changbin’s expression does a whole lot of talking for him, in the couple of seconds that pass in silence. Jisung doesn’t need to hear him say he’s surprised, and Changbin doesn’t have to risk Jisung clamming up in response to his ribbing. The exchange takes place wordlessly, bloodlessly, before Changbin can graciously skip to the next part of the conversation. “You mean Yejun?”

Jisung shrugs. Sure, that’s probably his name.

“What about him?”

“Is he still interested? Do you know?” Jisung asks, internally counting down to the inevitable regret over broaching the subject.

Changbin frowns a little, gives it some thought. “I don’t know, it’s been a while,” he says, eyes momentarily fleeting towards his phone. “I could ask,” he offers.

“Just, you’d said he’d be fine with something casual, so—” Jisung rushes to explain, annoyed with how awkward he’s feeling. This should be easy, low-stakes, which is precisely why he decided to bring it up with Changbin in the first place. So why does it feel like he’s doing something wrong? “I’m not looking for anything serious or whatever.”

Changbin gives him a small, kind smile. “It’s okay, I get it. For what it’s worth he was really into you, for whatever reason,” he rolls his eyes, the gentle teasing fairly transparent in its effort to calm Jisung down, “so I think he’d probably be down for whatever. I’ll ask and let you know.”

Jisung breathes, nods. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, man.”

“Of course,” Changbin says.

Jisung picks up his pen and turns to his notebook again, hoping the brief pause encouraged that word he’s been trying to pin down to bubble up to the surface. It’s the least of his worries these days, but he’ll take whatever victory he can.

—

Yejun, it turns out, is either still very much into Jisung or worryingly available.

Not even two days after his conversation with Changbin, Jisung finds himself downing his third rum and coke of the night as he tries to motivate himself to take the rest of this date back to his apartment.

Yejun eyes him with interest (and a frankly uncomfortable amount of eagerness), and yet all Jisung can focus on is the cresting regret burning through his insides, caustic. This decision, this date, this man perched on the barstool next to him, it’s all wrong. It’s a distorted imitation of what he really wants.

No, what he actually needs is for somebody to tell him that he’s not, in fact, going crazy. That the feeling of constantly expecting his phone to ring, somebody to call out his name in a crowded room, a hand to gently run through his hair when he slips into bed, is not a sign of onsetting insanity.

Jisung realises that he has been wanting, seeking, yearning for, not a forgotten thought or an inanimate object that has inconspicuously rolled under the couch, but a person.

Somebody he knows yet has never met.

Somebody who is definitely, undoubtedly, positively not Yejun.

And yet, for reasons he cannot bear to look into right now, when Yejun bats his eyelashes and asks Jisung if he wants to get out of here, Jisung agrees.

He takes him home, guides him through his apartment in the dark, kicks his bedroom door closed as he sloppily unbuttons his shirt and pulls him into bed, trying to convince himself he likes the way Yejun kisses.

He drags his hands down Yejun’s body and fights his own self out of mentally checking out as he prepares him, as he rolls a condom on and sinks into his body.

Yejun is blond. His shoulders are narrow, his waist thin. He makes exaggerated sounds of pleasure as Jisung thrusts into him, and Jisung focuses on the arc of his spine as he writhes in pleasure that Jisung cannot get himself to share in.

He tries, to his credit, he tries so hard, and yet he simply cannot seem to—

Wham.

The entire room rattles.

Jisung’s heart attempts to jump out of his chest. His hands abandon Yejun’s waist and he pulls out abruptly enough to have both of them groaning out in discomfort.

His vision swims when he turns, feeling his blood run cold as he watches the window slowly swing inwards in the aftermath of somehow having slammed itself shut.

Outside, the air is still.

No draft passes through the room.

His eyes remain frozen on the window.

“What’s wrong?” Yejun asks over his shoulder, a hand reaching out to nudge Jisung’s hip bone. “It was just the wind, come back here,” he encourages.

Jisung has no idea what just happened, but he’s damn sure it wasn’t the wind. On the most basic level, it was a sign.

He fully withdraws, takes the condom off and pulls his underwear up as he rises out of bed. “I’m sorry, I just—” Can’t even fully get hard. Didn’t really wanna do this in the first place. Am looking for somebody else entirely. None of it sounds anywhere near kind. And yet all of it is true.

Yejun sighs. Jisung gives him some space and privacy to collect himself by pretending to need way more time to put his pants back on than necessary.

“It’s okay,” Yejun says in the end, smoothing a hand through his own hair, “I guess it really was too good to be true, after all.” His tone is equal parts disappointed and chiding. Jisung lowers his gaze, unable to look him straight in the eye.

He mumbles out some sort of apology again, embarrassment heating his cheeks up.

Yejun waves the words away and makes his way through Jisung’s apartment. “Save it. You do owe me a drink, though, after you figure your shit out with whatever or whoever it is that’s got you all messed up,” he says after he’s slipped into his boots. He’s smiling, but his eyes are anything but playful.

Jisung figures that’s fair enough.

He numbly agrees and bids him goodnight.

He spends a good three minutes pacing around the hall, trying to process the past hour.

When he finally makes it back to his room, his head a mess, he simply leans against the door frame, unable to do anything but stare at the open window.

“What the fuck?” he asks, maybe himself, maybe the room at large.

No answer comes.

—

Jisung reaches for his phone before his eyes are even all the way open. He groans the moment his brain manages to process the time, and allows muscle memory to take over as he unlocks his phone and taps into his messages.

The group chat is easy to find, sitting on the very top of his conversations list. Working out exactly what to say proves to be a bit of a challenge, but he figures that anything that lets them know he’s alive but unavailable for the rest of the day will do the trick.

He turns Do Not Disturb on and lets the phone tumble off to the far side of the mattress. Flips his pillow over and turns the other way. Goes right back to sleep.

—

By the time the sun is well on its way to completing its journey across the sky for the day, Jisung has barely been awake long enough to shower and eat half of his toast. It’s only five bites before he’s done with it that he realises the mere idea of finishing his breakfast-turned-early-dinner disgusts him to the very core.

He makes a face at it before tossing it right into the trash.

His feet take him straight back to bed.

Minutes tick by as he simply lies there, taking in the way his bedroom softly glistens in the golden hour. The sound of passing traffic and unintelligible fragments of conversation from outside serve as unwanted reminders of the fact that, beyond his room, the world keeps going. People are out there, living their lives: going to work, seeing their loved ones, hopping into cars that take them to and fro, probably on their way back to their homes now.

Jisung simply couldn’t be one of them, today.

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not.

The only certainty, right now, is that he’s here. He sets his palm on top of his chest, holds his breath as he tries to feel for his heartbeat.

One, two, three.

It resonates within his ribcage.

Four, five, six.

It keeps him company, as he laments this unspeakable feeling of loneliness he himself cannot even comprehend.

Seven, eight, nine.

He closes his eyes and lets sleep take him all over again. Maybe that will fix everything. One can always hope.

—

The distinct sensation of being watched drags him back into consciousness an unknown amount of hours later.

This time, the instinct turns out to be right.

Across the room, a pair of ruby red eyes shine through the dark, unblinking. Memories, thoughts and emotions that had been kept behind lock and key against his will finally break the dam, flooding Jisung entirely.

Minho watches him, and though his expression is obfuscated by darkness, the sheer intensity of his stare speaks for itself — Jisung readily decodes it because he’s feeling it, too, roaring in the pit of his stomach, surging to the very tips of his fingers: anger.

He doesn’t know how long they spend just looking at each other, quietly simmering, until Minho finally takes the first step towards the bed.

“What, no greeting, this time?” he asks, sounding so familiar and yet nothing like himself at the same time. “Already forgot my name?”

Jisung’s lethargic, sleep-sticky muscles complain as he wills them to work, but they miraculously manage to cooperate in the end. He slowly moves, using his forearms for leverage as he pulls himself into a half-reclined position, rucking his pillow up against the headboard and propping himself up on it.

From this angle, as Minho approaches even closer, the sight in front of him gives Jisung pause. Minho looks weary, his face thinner than usual, the lines of his eyes deep and tired. Jisung almost feels animosity drain as worry starts to take its place.

Until Minho speaks again, that is.

“Makes sense, when you know this many people,” he bites out, lifting a knee to climb onto the mattress. “When you let this many people into your bed.”

Jisung frowns. It’s all so much clearer now, from the month-long unbearable sense of loneliness to the incident with the window last night.

His body wars his heart as his excitement to be in close proximity with Minho after all this time clashes against the stab of betrayal, like a white-hot knife stuck between his ribs. How dare Minho speak to him like this?

Minho gives him no chance to respond as he crawls up the mattress with all the decisiveness of a raging forest fire, purposeful, unavoidable, scorching hot everywhere he touches. It smells like the whole room is aflame.

“You have no idea what I’ve been through,” Minho says, practically hisses, as he transfers all his weight onto Jisung’s lap. Hands that reach for Jisung’s face and neck dig unexpectedly sharp nails into his skin. Jisung almost chokes on a gasp. “While you’ve been going around fucking—”

Jisung has heard enough. He circles his fingers around Minho’s wrists, holding but not pulling away. “You disappeared for a month,” he says. Simple, straight-forward.

Minho flinches back as if struck. It makes Jisung feel odd.

Still, he goes on. He has to. “For a month, it felt like I was missing a limb and I couldn’t even tell which one it was.” It hurts to say, but it’s the truth. Being able to pinpoint the source of his troubles, the exact reason why he spent all these weeks clutching this cluster of vague sadness and dull pain close to his chest, is simultaneously painful and freeing. “You did this to me,” he says.

Eyes that have adjusted to the absence of light easily register everything that happens on Minho’s face, now. The way his eyebrows crease, troubled. The downturn of his plush lips. The glimmer in his eyes, attributed not to the familiar way they always shine, but to the tears that seem to well up there, unshed. He looks so, so sad, now that the facade of anger has slipped away.

Jisung can’t help caressing the insides of Minho’s wrists, the pads of his thumbs ghosting over his heartbeat.

“There’s been no one else,” Jisung whispers, unable to stop the confession from tumbling out of his mouth. Even with how hurt he feels, the urge to comfort Minho overwhelms anything else. “And last night, I couldn’t— Right after you left…” he says, something fizzing in his chest in response to Minho momentarily avoiding his gaze, “I sent him home. It just didn’t feel right.”

Minho’s shoulders relax, and his touch turns soft where he’s resting his fingers against Jisung’s throat, the side of his face. He gives him an imperceptible nod before making his own little peace offering. “I didn’t disappear on purpose. There was a lot I had to deal with,” he says, and though his explanation remains vague, it does manage to soothe Jisung, just enough. “And I hurt both of us in the process.”

Jisung feels his eyes widen at the admission. It’s one thing to hope that Minho feels the same way he does, and another entirely to hear him actually confirm it.

They spend a moment in silent understanding, merely holding onto one another. A truce has been reached, it seems.

Jisung’s heart beats a little easier. It flutters, when the kiss he deposits on the plush part of Minho’s palm elicits a soft moan out of him, his eyes falling shut. Jisung does it again, just to hear it once more.

Minho gently tears his hand away only to wrap it around Jisung’s nape before he leans down, bringing their faces close enough to kiss but not quite.

“You missed me?” Minho asks against his lips, mouthing more than whispering. It’s a pointless question, one he already seems to know the answer to, but Jisung understands he needs to hear it all the same.

“I missed you all the time,” he responds, and they’re so close that he can physically feel the way Minho’s chest deflates, as if a weight has been lifted off of it. “Don’t do that again,” he says, half-plea, half-order.

Minho’s expression twists up. He gently shakes his head. “I’ll fix it,” he says, and Jisung doesn’t get to ask what he means before a soft kiss steals all words out of his mouth. He leans up into it, meeting Minho halfway every time he pulls back to kiss him all over again. “I promise I’ll fix it,” he whispers in the space between one peck and the next, and though no further explanation comes, Jisung accepts the promise all the same.

He might not fully understand who Minho is, what his nature might be, or how moments with him can feel so real one second and be so painfully fleeting the next, but Jisung trusts him. Somehow, he knows that he can.

The kisses turn hungrier, each of them longer-lasting than the one previous. Jisung holds Minho close, closer, rocking against him as their bodies set a rhythm of their own. When Jisung sinks into him, seconds or minutes or aeons later, Minho’s heat readily welcomes him in, tight and perfect and all-encompassing. It feels like the entire universe finally slots into place.

“Did…” Minho gasps, interrupting his own self, when Jisung sneaks a hand between them to tug at his cock. “Did he make you feel this good?” he asks, clenching around Jisung.

He groans. Leans up to catch Minho’s lower lip between his teeth as he buys himself time to process, to try to understand who he’s referring to. When it finally clicks, he has to fight against a scoff, not wanting Minho to misunderstand. Not when they’ve just found themselves on the same page. He thrusts up and into him, chasing after the way it makes both of them moan.

“No one has ever made me feel the way you do,” he says, means it.

Minho trembles in his hold, and Jisung wonders how the most powerful being he’s ever laid eyes on can feel like the single most delicate thing in the world.

“Again,” Minho keens, pushing his cheek against Jisung’s own while he pulls their bodies impossibly closer, as if trying to merge into him. “Say that again,” he pleads into Jisung’s ear.

Jisung can barely breathe.

He complies. As many times as he needs to.

—

Jisung pushes the button and steps backwards, until the small of his back meets the handle bar. The elevator creaks softly as it starts to ascend.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and taps into his conversation with Felix, just to make extra sure he knows what room he’s looking for.

Yongbok
hey
is there a chance you could swing by the dance studio on your way back?
I left my charger behind, plugged into the outlet and everything 🫠
no worries if you can’t!! I can always steal channie’s

Jisung
No problem Lixie, I got you

Yongbok
you’re the best 🤗💛
it’s in room 305!

Jisung swipes out of the app and pockets his phone just as the elevator comes to a stop. He steps out onto the hallway and peeks in both directions, trying to figure out which side of the floor 305 is on.

He’s more than halfway to his destination when the sound of conversation finally reaches him, creeping through the door to room 305, left ajar.

“But whatever,” says the voice that Jisung instantly recognises as Hyunjin’s, “I’m not the one who’s literally going to die if the guy I’m in love with rejects me,” he says, his tone a perfect blend of dismissive and exasperated, as if he’s spent way too long trying to get a point across. Jisung realises he’s about to intrude on a conversation he has no business overhearing several seconds too late.

“You know it’s not th—” comes the response, the speaker cutting himself short just as Jisung’s shoes squeak against the floor, protesting the abrupt stop right in front of the door.

Jisung grimaces, thankful for the frosted glass separating him and the inside of the room, and takes a moment to compose himself before pushing the door open.

He forgets how to breathe, he thinks.

On the hardwood floor, just a handful of metres away from him, sits the most beautiful man Jisung has ever seen.

He feels his jaw drop, and cannot find it in him to do anything about it as he stands there, stock-still and at least a little bit stupid-looking, he assumes, taking in the way the man’s perfect face contorts into an expression of surprise, presumably at having been so rudely interrupted.

Jisung’s heart thumps in his chest. The feeling of those eyes on him is doing a number on his brain chemistry, as he feels the weight of them transfer from one part of his face to the other: his left eye, his right eye, his mouth, back to his left eye.

He’s frozen, pinned into place like a butterfly in a display case, and he finds that that’d probably not be too bad a fate, if it meant being looked at with this much intensity, by someone like this man. No, scratch that, by this man, in particular.

Someone coughs, the sound of it audibly forced, and Jisung subconsciously shakes his head, snapping out of the trance he’d willingly put himself under.

Right.

Hyunjin is here, too. At the studio. Where Jisung has come to pick Felix’s charger up, on his way to Chan’s. Right.

“Hey, Han-ah,” Hyunjin says, drawing out his name with a tone pointed enough to leave Jisung flushing.

Jisung clears his throat, smiles sheepishly as he finally gets his eyes to focus on Hyunjin. “Hi,” he says lamely. “I, uh, I’m sorry to intrude. Just swung by to grab something, didn’t mean to…” He uselessly points to the plaque on the outside of the room reading 305, despite knowing the other two cannot see it, and takes a few embarrassingly weak-kneed steps in, as he scans the walls for any sign of Felix’s charger.

He feels the stranger’s eyes on him throughout the whole process, the sensation of it nerve-wracking and entirely too thrilling.

By the time he’s unplugged it from the outlet, he’s so overwhelmed he cannot even bear to continue acknowledging the man’s existence. He looks at Hyunjin instead.

“It’s Yongbok’s,” he explains as he wraps the cable around the adapter, fully aware of the fact that he’s on the verge of rambling and unable to stop himself. “I’m just picking it up for him on my way back.”

One corner of Hyunjin’s lips lifts, and his eyes turn to focus on the stranger with a look that is way too sly for Jisung to be able to process in the moment. When Jisung follows his gaze, it’s to see that the man not only hasn’t taken his eyes off of him, but is staring at him even more intensely than before. Jisung does not know how that is even possible.

Even more importantly, he cannot make heads or tails of what this whole exchange is supposed to mean; what significance Felix or his charger might have to garner such reactions.

“Okay,” Hyunjin says, and Jisung can hear the smirk in his voice even without looking at him. “Are you sticking around, or?”

Jisung almost physically flinches as he wills himself back into action. “No, no, I’ll leave you guys to it,” he says as he turns on his heel and does his absolute best not to run out of the room. “Sorry! Bye!”

He’s practically hyperventilating by the time the elevator doors slide shut, mercifully separating him from the occupants of room 305. From the complete stranger that has Jisung’s heart racing in a way that’s only ever been reserved for monumental, life-altering events; the release of their first ever demo, the night the label replied to their email, agreeing on a meeting, the day he heard a song he had written and produced play on the radio.

He places his palm on his chest and hopes his heart won’t actually follow through with the threat of jumping out of his chest.

Whoever it is that the stranger is in love with (a guy, it’s a guy, and Jisung is a guy, too, how funny is that) has got to be the universe’s favourite — and the single dumbest person alive, if he does, for whatever unfathomable reason, decide to reject him.

—

Jisung’s knee has been bouncing the entire time he’s been here.

He sneaks a glance at the clock on the far side of the living room and sighs. Twenty-three minutes. That’s long enough, right? He’s waited long enough. No one’s going to consider it weird if he finally brings it up—

“I saw Hyunjin at the studio,” he blurts out, and has to actively fight against holding his breath while waiting for the right cue to move onto the heart of the matter.

“Oh, yeah?” Chan graciously prompts, and Jisung doesn’t care at all that he doesn’t even do him the courtesy of lifting his eyes from his phone.

“Yeah,” he says. He steels himself as he prepares the most casual and nonchalant tone he can possibly muster. “He was with some guy I’d never seen before. Uh, auburn hair, kinda idol-looking, I guess.” Smooth, smooth.

He chews on the inside of his lower lip as he looks at Felix. Waits.

Felix opens his mouth to speak, and Jisung thinks he’s about to fall off the couch with how intently he’s following the action, only for Felix to giggle a breathy little tickles before the foot that had been resting in Chan’s lap kicks out in mock-protest.

Jisung watches in silent horror as Chan’s eyes twinkle in Felix’s direction, his cheek dimpling with a frankly nauseatingly satisfied grin. Instead of letting Felix go, Chan’s hold only cements itself further, fingers locking around his ankle, keeping it right on top of his lap. What’s worse is that Felix smiles back.

Jisung is not strong enough to bear witness to whatever’s going on between these two on a good day, let alone right now.

He pointedly clears his throat.

Felix rolls his eyes at Chan in a way that only seems to make Chan happier before mercifully redirecting his attention to Jisung. “You mean Lee Minho?” he asks, lifting an eyebrow.

Minho.

Jisung’s heart jumps in his chest. That could be right. It sounds right.

“Makes sense you don’t know him,” Felix adds. “He’s new — like, moved-here-last-week new — but I think he and Hyunjin go way back.”

Jisung nods, makes an attempt at a cursory hum, even as, internally, he’s scrambling to put the crumbs of information together.

Felix flips to the next page of whatever magazine he’s reading. “He’s really good,” he says, almost as an after-thought.

Silently, Jisung revisits the precious few minutes he got to commit the man to memory. He thinks about how imposing he looked, even while hunched over, seated on the floor. About the way his thighs filled out his sweatpants, legs bent under his body in the aftermath of what must have been a cool-down stretch. About the way his worn t-shirt, nearly see-through with sweat, clung to the subtle curves of his chest, the strength of his shoulders.

Jisung’s stomach burns.

Yeah, he supposes, he must be really good.

—

He wakes up to an underlying sense of excitement he hasn’t experienced in a good long while. It buzzes beneath his skin as he gets himself ready for the day.

Jisung doesn’t have to look into it. Doesn’t attempt, even for a second, to pretend he doesn’t know what’s going on. As a matter of fact, he starts unashamedly going through scenarios that would give him some excuse to hang around the dance studio as soon as possible. Ideally today.

He’s mentally on hypothetical number three as he pushes the door to his neighbourhood café open, like he’s done every workday for the past two years with almost no exception.

He freezes with one foot through the door.

Behind the counter, in an apron covered in the café’s familiar colour scheme, stands none other than the very guy that has been monopolising Jisung’s thoughts since he first saw him yesterday evening. And he’s looking right back at him.

Jisung has never had an out-of-body experience before, at least not based on the descriptions he’s read, but he wishes he could have one now; see just how goofy he must look with the stunned expression he feels frozen on his face, grab his own shoulders with phantom hands and shake himself until he snaps out of it.

“Excuse me?” someone says behind his back, and thankfully the realisation that he’s blocking the entrance is enough to will his muscles into action.

He hastily half-bows over his shoulder and utters a quick apology before finally covering the rest of the distance to the counter. He feels probably-Minho’s stare track the movement the entire way over. It has heat rushing to his cheeks in no time at all.

“Hi,” he says, thankful to have dropped by at a time with a miraculous absence of a queue. His eyes briefly drop to the spot on the apron where a name tag should be, but unfortunately find none. He’ll have to take Felix’s word for it, he guesses.

“Welcome,” Minho greets, just as a barista who Jisung recognises from most mornings steps over to stand behind him and to the side. Jisung understands she needs to supervise the new hire — he’s positive that’s what Minho is, anyway — and yet he still finds he’s bummed out to have somebody intrude on what was meant to be their first ever one-on-one interaction. “What can I get for you?” Minho asks, effectively reminding Jisung what he’s supposed to be here for.

“An iced Americano, please,” he says, the response entirely reflexive even though he hasn’t had to explicitly state his order for over a year now, considering he rarely ever strays from his usual.

They go through the formalities of the rest of the ordering process with no hiccups, despite the fact that Jisung feels breathless every time Minho takes his eyes off the register to look at him, and Minho’s performance seems to please his superior enough to leave him to his own devices once the payment has successfully gone through.

Jisung watches as Minho picks up an empty to-go cup and reaches for a marker. He touches it to the cup, looking like he’s about to start writing, before he stops himself. His eyes snap to Jisung’s, whose heart does a tiny little flip inside his chest at the sight of Minho’s cheeks flushing.

“Uh,” Minho hesitates, “sorry, your name, sir?”

“Oh! Right. It’s Jisung. Han Jisung,” he says, the words nervously rushing out of his mouth almost all at once.

Minho smiles, and Jisung is blown away to discover that it makes him look even more handsome. He didn’t even know that was possible. “All right, Han Jisung-nim,” he says, the tone of his voice leaning just a tiny bit towards teasing, and Jisung can’t even be mad about coming across as a dork when it gets him on the receiving end of Minho’s subtle yet playful smile. God, he’s beautiful. “Your order will be ready soon,” he says once he’s done writing his name on the cup.

Jisung eagerly nods and takes the hint as he steps to the side, making way for the pair of customers behind him.

He pretends to find interest in the endless folders of apps on his phone as he steals greedy glances at Minho every few seconds. His heart rate accelerates when he catches Minho looking back, only to notice him setting Jisung’s coffee down on the counter.

Jisung springs forward, only a little mournful when he proves to be too slow to get to it before Minho manages to withdraw his hand.

He smiles at him once more, exclusively in hope that it earns him another heart-stopping smile, and barely manages not to fistpump in celebration when he does find success.

“Have a great day, Han Jisung-nim.”

Hair-twirling tweens being noticed by their crushes have nothing on Jisung and the way adrenaline is pumping through his veins before even his first sip of coffee for the day. “You, too!”

His cheeks burn all the way to the studio.

—

Jisung goes to sleep daydreaming about the next time he gets to see Minho, and wakes up hoping he has fantasised about him hard enough to single-handedly manifest him into his day.

He walks into the café with his heart in his throat only to end up getting disappointed.

He keeps an ear cup off all day just to be absolutely sure he doesn't miss out on any potential mentions of Minho’s name.

It’s admittedly alarming, how hard and fast he’s let himself become this attached to the idea of a practical stranger, but he can’t help it. There’s something about Minho — something that goes further than skin-deep, despite what Jisung’s knee-jerk reactions to him would have one believe — that draws Jisung to him. A guttural instinct that’s as hard to qualify as it is undeniable. A promise, of sorts, that Jisung’s life will only be better with Minho in it.

Jisung can do nothing but take it at face value.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Changbin’s easy tone filters through Jisung’s reverie, and he has to take a moment to make sure he hasn’t been thinking out loud (or that Changbin cannot, in fact, read his mind).

He turns to him. Changbin’s posture remains relaxed, where he’s lying lengthwise on the couch, and when he takes his eyes off the laptop propped up on his bent knees to look at Jisung, his glances are casual and brief by design, purposefully giving Jisung time and space, careful so as to not spook him. Changbin knows him, but Jisung knows him right back. He appreciates him.

“Talk about what?” he asks.

“About the scolding text I got from Yejun. Or about your disappearing act the day after. About how you’ve been acting like everything’s fine ever since,” Changbin says. It’s a testament to how fine-tuned to handling Jisung he is, that he can manage calling him out on his behaviour without making it feel confrontational.

Jisung fidgets with the ring on his index finger long enough to work out his response. “I think I was looking for answers in the wrong places,” he says, eventually. It’s an honest answer, despite its vagueness. An admission he’s only now making, even to himself.

Changbin hums. He meets Jisung’s eyes only to give him a quick once-over before he nods, seemingly content with his response. Still, Jisung can feel there’s something else, a lingering follow-up question.

Sure enough, it comes not too many moments later. “Did you end up finding them? The answers you were looking for.”

He takes a deep breath at that, allowing himself to consider it. He thinks about how that looming, overbearing sense of loneliness that had been hanging off his shoulders for weeks on end has started giving way to excitement. About how, instead of futilely double-checking each corner of every room he walks into, he now knows exactly where to look and precisely what it is that’s going to make his day brighter.

“I think I’m on the right track,” he says.

Changbin gives him a small smile, as if he trusts his judgement but will still be there to support him if he turns out to be wrong. “Okay, Han-ah.”

—

The evening rainshower catches him by surprise, no more than five minutes away from home. He zips from awning to awning, catching stray raindrops that thankfully don’t make it through his beanie and jacket in the seconds he’s left unprotected from the rain.

He’s almost a block away from the café, ready to switch to the other side of the road and take a shortcut to his apartment, when the sight of an increasingly familiar figure standing by the side entrance to the building causes him to do a double-take.

Jisung’s feet take him to the side of the café without a second thought.

When he makes a show out of ducking underneath the awning, the exaggerated sound of relief he makes having less to do with getting out of the rain and everything to do with finally having found Minho, his stomach flutters at the way Minho directs a surprised but positively amused smile his way.

He takes his beanie off, and doesn’t even have to check his reflection to confirm that his hair has got to be magnificently ruffled in the aftermath. Still, he runs his free hand through it, pleased to find it’s mostly dry.

While Minho’s eyes follow the action, Jisung steals the chance to let his eyes wander. Minho’s lips, smile loosely clinging to them, are faintly stained pink. A tiny bit of frosting is stuck just a bit over his mouth. Jisung subconsciously licks along his own upper lip. His brain successfully tricks him into tasting artificial strawberry.

Unfortunately, Minho catches up before Jisung gets to snap himself out of it. He picks up the crumb with the pad of his thumb, and Jisung watches, transfixed, as he brings it to his mouth, a trace of his tongue peeking out in the process. Jisung takes a mental snapshot of the moment, realises he’s going to be thinking about it in the minutes before he falls asleep tonight.

Minho smiles almost bashfully, as if entirely unaware of Jisung’s inner struggle. Jisung sure hopes he is. “I don’t smoke, so, cake pop break it is,” he says, lifting his other hand a little, revealing the culprit.

Jisung laughs, and if it’s too kind and too loud a reaction, for how understated a joke it was, he’s thankful no one is there to call him out on it. The exact details of how effortlessly charming he finds Minho are only for him to know.

He gives himself a break by looking out to the clouds above, the raindrops catching on the rustling leaves and disturbing the puddles on the ground, only to inevitably return back to Minho. To the upper corner of his apron, still devoid of a name tag, presumably since he remains on probation.

Minho’s eyes follow Jisung’s gaze. “My name’s Minho,” he says, offering a response to Jisung’s unspoken question.

Jisung can’t help smiling. “I know,” he says without thinking, and rushes to explain when Minho’s eyebrows almost disappear behind his fringe. “Yongbok told me.”

Something flicks across Minho’s expression, there and gone before Jisung can process it. “How do you know Yongbok?” he asks.

Jisung is taken aback by the question.

Fair enough, he supposes, he’s not the best at navigating conversations either, but he wasn’t exactly expecting to go down a Felix-related branch of dialogue. Still, Minho is new around here, and is probably trying to get a feel for relations and dynamics, so. “Through a mutual friend, originally. Bang Chan, if you’ve heard of him.”

Minho gives a little nod. “But you two are close?”

Something scratches at the inside of his chest. Is Felix all they’re going to talk about? “Yeah, we’re very close.”

This time, the frown that takes over Minho’s face is anything but brief or hidden. He hums, eyebrows meeting together darkly, and Jisung can’t help averting his eyes. He doesn’t like this. Doesn’t understand, almost, until the discussion he’d unwittingly overheard comes rushing back to the forefront of his mind.

Ah.

What if the mystery of who Minho is in love with is not that big of a mystery, afterall? What if the person he couldn’t go longer than two sentences into a conversation without bringing up is the one he’s so interested in?

Envy, heavy and abrasive, settles in his gut. It’s a feeling he’s never had, especially directed towards Felix.

He hates it, as it takes root and splinters off inside him. Hates himself for being its host.

The rain persists. Jisung clears his throat, tries his best to keep himself from spiralling, at least while he’s in Minho’s presence.

“What about you?” he asks, hopes the tone of his voice doesn’t betray his feelings. “I heard you’re new to the city?”

When he turns to Minho once again, it’s to find that his face has thankfully smoothed out, for the most part. “Yes, I only moved in last week,” he says, looking at his cake pop with an oddly thoughtful expression before taking a small bite. “It turned out to be even more complex and expensive than I expected,” he says, waving the stick in the café’s direction, “but I had to.”

Jisung nods. He can relate, in a way. While he cannot be sure about Minho’s story, he assumes their experiences can’t be all that different. He remembers how scary and complicated a journey it had been for him, as well, to take on this challenge all alone, to sacrifice so much of his time and resources all to chase after his dream. He had to give up so much just to be here, the place where it’s all happening.

“I was actually here visiting Hyunjin a bit over a month ago,” Minho continues, “and it was just— When I got back home, I knew this was where I had to be.”

Jisung smiles, eyes running along the quiet street in front of them. “You fell in love with Seoul,” he says. Maybe with more than that, a treacherous little voice inside him says.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Minho stare at him as he contemplates the statement. He wishes he had the guts to return the look, but he’s afraid of what sort of confirmation he might find in his face if he does. “I suppose you could say that.”

He shoves his beanie into the pocket of his jacket and leaves his hand there, as the rain finally stops, leaving as suddenly as it had arrived. He braves another glance at Minho and feels his heart twist at the soft smile that’s on his lips. He’s thankful to witness it, but he can’t bear to imagine what or, worse yet, who has caused it.

“I should get going,” he says, pointing out to the sky. It’s unlikely that it’s going to rain again, but it’s never smart to take your chances with the weather, and Jisung direly needs some time to decompress and get his feelings in order.

Minho takes the last bite of his cake pop, and half a step towards the door. “Thanks for the company, Jisung-ssi.”

Jisung already misses him as he makes for the corner. “See you around, Minho-ssi.”

—

He’s pleased to never have to go too long without seeing Minho, in the days that follow.

He’s on the morning shift more often than not and, on the days he’s not, Jisung usually finds him there whenever he swings by for his newly-established ritual of grabbing a donut on his way home.

Minho earns his nametag, soon enough. He gives him a private smile when Jisung’s eyes widen upon making the discovery, and sneaks a chocolate cake pop into his hand while the other barista is too busy with the espresso machine to notice.

He also gets to catch glimpses of him around and outside of the dance studio, mostly on the days when his schedule aligns with Felix’s own. The weight of Minho’s stare falls heavy on him every single time Felix bids him goodbye, be it with a squeeze of Jisung’s bicep or a quick side-hug on the days he’s feeling particularly chipper. Jisung always gives Felix his warmest smile in response, exclusively to spite the waves of jealousy that surge within him. He refuses to let his ugly feelings taint their friendship.

But, the thing is, Minho continues to largely be a non-entity, as far as Jisung’s innermost circle of friends is concerned. No one mentions or even gossips about him. Not even Felix, who supposedly spends most of his week with or around him. Who should be the one Minho is actively pursuing. The one he moved here for, if the conspiracy theorist living inside Jisung’s skull is to be believed.

He scrolls through the group chat until he finds the block of text he’s been looking for. He taps to expand the total list of reactions and flicks through it, even as he knows for certain that he’s not going to find the name he’s searching for.

“Who else is gonna be there?” he asks the room at large, hoping it comes across as casual. Bored.

Chan makes a noise between a huff and a chuckle. “Everyone, pretty much?”

Jisung gives himself a whole two seconds to figure out how to steer the conversation. “Is Hyunjin coming?”

Off to his left, Changbin levels him with an incredulous stare out of the corner of his eye, which Jisung pointedly chooses to ignore.

“Nah, he’s gonna be out of the city for the long weekend,” Felix says.

Jisung swipes out of the app and fights off a sigh as he fires up his favourite idle game out of pure muscle memory. If Hyunjin isn’t coming to the party, chances are that neither is Minho. Seeing as he hasn’t joined even one of the group chats everyone and their mother is in, he highly doubts he’s networked enough to be invited to events by anyone other than the single friend he seems to have in Seoul.

Fine, he’ll do it himself.

—

“What are you doing on Sunday?” he asks, feeling his heartbeat in his tongue.

The question surprises Minho into nearly dropping Jisung’s loyalty card. He blinks at him, once, and then twice in quick succession. Jisung holds onto his courage tooth and nail, begging himself not to lose his nerve even in the face of how incredibly endearing Minho is. “What?”

“This Sunday,” Jisung says, “some friends of friends are throwing a house party. You should come.”

Minho’s expression does something funny, with what oddly reads a lot like disappointment flashing across his face.

Jisung doesn’t allow himself to ponder, afraid he’s going to run out of steam way sooner than he’d like. In the empty space of Minho’s silence, he drones on. “Everyone’s gonna be there, this will be a great opportunity for you to network. You should come,” he repeats, lying through his teeth, and bites his tongue to stop right there, before he blurts out anything incriminating.

“I’ll come,” Minho says, tone bordering on numb, and Jisung fights the urge to run a lap around the café in celebration.

What he does, instead, is gently nudge at the card Minho is still holding, trying his best to avoid direct contact. It won’t take much for him to fold, he fears. “You should give me your number, I’ll text you the details.”

Minho continues to stare at him. He nods, eventually, and grabs a marker.

By the time Jisung leaves, he’s certain his heart rate is high enough to be cause for alarm. He holds onto the card with utmost care, too afraid to slip it back into his wallet before the ink has fully dried.

He counts each and every minute, trying to calculate exactly how soon is too soon and how long is too long. He spends a total of roughly half an hour typing up trial sentences on his Notes app before he finally bites the bullet two minutes before he leaves the studio for the day.

Jisung
[sticker]
Hey, this is Han Jisung!

He locks and pockets his phone so fast it almost falls out of his hands.

He wills himself not to throw his entire stomach up and hightails it home, pausing every time he feels a vibration against his thigh only to be greeted by an unrelated notification. He’s fully going to go insane well before Sunday night rolls around, he thinks.

—

Jisung spends the hours and days leading up to the party in standby mode.

He texts Minho the details and helps him figure out how to get there, surprised to discover that the apartment he’s renting is far away enough to warrant catching a bus or calling a cab. Jisung privately wonders how Minho commutes every day. The dance studio and the café are within walkable distance from one another, sure, but still. He’d think Minho would be able to find a part-time job somewhere closer to home.

He changes his mind on what to wear a total of six times before returning to his original idea, and turns down all invitations to hang out, keen on reserving his energy and mentally preparing himself for Sunday night.

He types out awkward little messages that he deletes before his impulsiveness beats him to the punch. If Minho ever happens to see the pop-ups indicating that Jisung is typing without ever sending anything (he highly doubts Minho has nothing better to do than stare at an inactive conversation, but Jisung can always fantasise), he doesn’t call him out on it.

Jisung watches the hours tick by and waits.

—

The apartment is absolutely packed with people, the music ear-splittingly loud. Jisung is going to be extremely surprised if the party doesn’t get shut down within the next couple of hours at most.

Being in such close quarters, bodies pressing up against his own from all angles, combined with the inability to hold some sort of cohesive conversation to distract himself from the sensory overload, has him wigging out.

He would have escaped to the bathroom or the tiny balcony in the back a long time ago, if it weren’t for the fact that he needs to keep the main entrance in his line of sight.

Jisung accepts the drink Felix shoves in his direction — he’s making a face at it as he hands it over, like disgusted by it, but he’s still drunk half of it, Jisung can see — and desperately tries to follow along with the story Jeongin is sharing, when movement out of the corner of his eye steals his attention.

Minho is here.

Jisung immediately perks up, trying to stand as tall as physically possible in an attempt to make sure he’s visible amongst the crowd. His efforts bear fruit, as it miraculously doesn’t take too long at all for Minho’s roaming eyes to spot him.

He grins at him, doing his best to stop himself from physically waving him over, and joy blooms in his chest to see Minho smile back before weaving his way through the mass of partygoers in his direction.

It’s happening, it’s really happening.

The crowd seems to effortlessly part for him, heads and bodies turning to follow him as he moves across the apartment, and thrill zips up Jisung’s spine as he realises that, while everyone is looking at Minho, Minho is looking at nobody but him. He shivers.

Minho slips into the spot he easily carves out for himself in between Jisung and Felix, but no implication and no mean voice inside Jisung’s head is loud enough to overwhelm the way it feels to have Minho grin at him, this close up.

He realises any and all conversation within their tight little circle has entirely died down as everybody just stares at Minho, positively shocked.

Jisung clears his throat and takes it upon himself to break the ice.

He flies through introductions, wherever they are necessary, with frankly only half of his brain firing. Somewhere along the way, the near-constant motion of the crowd sweeps him up, and Jisung doesn’t second-guess allowing it to push him further into Minho’s direction.

By the time he realises his entire left side is flush against Minho’s back, the heat of his body is so intoxicating that he selfishly refuses to step back no matter how self-conscious it makes him feel.

“Did you get here okay?” he asks simply to have something to say, just to draw Minho’s attention back to him, and is rewarded with those eyes on him again, sparkling in the DJ lighting.

There’s something captivatingly familiar in the way Minho looks, with his face partially dipped into darkness. Something deep within Jisung stirs, aches with unspeakable yearning.

“It went fine,” he says, the corner of his lips lifting. “Just a few stops away from my usual.”

Jisung nods, perhaps a tad overly eager, and racks his brain for anything else to say. All these days of preparation, and his head goes empty the moment Minho is around. Figures.

As if on cue, commotion breaks out somewhere off to the side, and the domino effect it creates has everyone swaying. Jisung extends his free hand in an attempt to balance himself, but the only thing he can hold onto, considering where he’s standing, is Minho himself.

His hand curls around the small of Minho’s waist the exact same time as Minho’s fingers wrap around his wrist to stabilise it in place.

Jisung’s heart is beating so hard he numbly wonders if Minho can feel it against his shoulder blade.

The look Minho gives him, as he turns towards him in the aftermath, makes him think it’s entirely, terrifyingly possible.

He pulls away as if burnt. Downs the rest of Felix’s drink in one go and regrets it the instant it scorches its way down his throat. Turns out Felix was right about it, afterall.

“Do you want one?” he asks, the words rushing out of him as he lifts the glass in Minho’s direction, and he doesn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll get you one,” he says before doing his best to disappear as quickly as humanly possible.

A much-needed break to splash some water onto his face and a drink refill later, Jisung makes his way back to the living-space-turned-main-floor to discover that, not only does the entire place look and feel even more tightly packed, but that Minho is nowhere to be seen.

Or, rather, Minho is near-impossible to spot, what with all the people swarming him from every direction.

Jisung futilely tries to reach him, only to find himself unable to navigate the crowd separating them.

It makes sense, he figures. Minho’s perceived lonesomeness is definitely not attributed to anything that has to do with his demeanour or character. The only reason for a guy like him to not be constantly surrounded by an entire network of adoring friends and acquaintances is the fact that he’s not only new, but also spending the majority of his time working two separate jobs to support himself.

It’s no surprise that people flock to him, eager to get any bit of his attention, the moment he breaks away from his routine to socialise.

Jisung is anything but special in his need to get to know him.

He abandons both glasses onto the nearest available surface and makes his way towards the back of the apartment.

—

He’s nearing the end of the half-smoked joint he’d begged off of Chan earlier in the night when the glass door slides open.

Minho steps out onto the balcony, which is so tiny it barely has any right to exist, but Jisung doesn’t begrudge it for its size. If anything, it’s a blessing, considering no one else finds it an attractive enough spot to brave the night chill for.

He takes another long drag, lets it sit in his lungs as he watches Minho lean his hip against the railing. His chest burns for more than one reason, as he zeroes in on the way the zipper in Minho’s top has slipped further down since the last time he saw him, revealing skin Jisung desperately wants to get his mouth on.

He wordlessly extends the joint in Minho’s direction, only for him to shake his head. Jisung shrugs, exhales slowly even as his heart beats a mile a minute.

“Having fun talking to people?” he asks around the thin smoke lingering in his mouth and nose.

Minho gives him a tight-lipped smile. “To some more than others.”

Jisung nods. The need to be placed in the former category is so overwhelming it hurts, and it frustrates him to not know what he has to do to make that happen.

Minho crosses his arms over his chest, keeps his body facing towards Jisung. He looks at him as if expectant, and the feeling weighs heavy on him. This close, generously lit by the nearby streetlamps, Jisung can do nothing but just take him in; he’s beautiful, as he always is, but Jisung is startled to realise just how tired he looks, all of a sudden. The lines of his cheeks look deeper than he’s ever seen them, his eyes creased with exhaustion.

He wants to ask him if he’s doing all right. If he’s taking proper care of himself in the limited time he has to do so. If there’s anything Jisung can do to help.

Thankfully, his slowed-down brain manages to pump the brakes on his filter, come up with something hopefully bordering smooth.

“I’m glad you came,” he says, revealing part of the truth.

Minho cocks his head to the side, raises an eyebrow. “Yeah? Happy I get to network?” he responds, and the tone of his voice makes Jisung figuratively stumble. Is he being teased?

The joint’s cherry burns his fingers as he tries and fails to lie. “No. I’m happy I get to see more of you.” He’s not even mad with the way it comes out as more of a whisper. It’s astounding he was even able to utter it.

Turns out it was worth the risk, in the end.

Minho takes a step closer, virtually eliminating the distance between them altogether. Jisung can’t breathe while Minho’s eyes study his face, and he entirely loses contact with anything beyond Minho the moment he leans in. Arms cage him into place as Minho rests his hands on the railing behind Jisung’s back. His perfume is all Jisung can smell, dark, warm, no descriptor as fitting as pure heat.

Minho becomes the only thing he can sense.

“In that case, I’m glad I came, too.”

Jisung’s eyes drift towards Minho’s lips. They look soft, inviting. They curve attractively as he smiles. Jisung wants to kiss him.

When Minho sways even closer, Jisung looks into his eyes only to find them focused on Jisung’s own mouth.

Maybe, he thinks, there’s a chance Minho wants him to kiss him, too.

So he does.

He closes the distance to steal Minho’s lips in a kiss that is as brief as it is heart-stopping. He pulls back just enough to gauge Minho’s reaction, and is bowled over by the fiery look he finds in his eyes. He thoughtlessly flicks the joint off and meets Minho halfway into a second kiss that turns into a third and grows and grows, until his lips start burning and the grip he has on Minho’s top makes the seams snap.

Minho tastes like fire and honey. The bite of his front teeth sends lightning zipping from Jisung’s lower lip all the way to his groin. The hot line of his cock burns against Jisung’s hip.

Jisung slightly turns his face away to breathe, panting against Minho’s cheek.

“Come home with me,” he whispers.

Minho makes a small sound, halfway between a whine and a scandalised chuckle. “What kind of girl do you think I am, Jisung-ssi?”

Jisung doesn’t know how he’s able to joke at a time like this. “The kind I really want.”

He can wine and dine him anytime. He can spend as many days courting him as it takes to please Minho. He’ll do anything, be anything, as long as he gets to have him in this way and every way. As long as gets to find out what Minho sounds like when he’s coming apart (now, as soon as possible, before Jisung loses his mind entirely).

Minho sighs, his chest deflating against Jisung’s own.

Jisung grieves when Minho pulls back enough to establish proper eye contact. A warm palm comes to rest on Jisung’s pec.

“I’m not looking for a one-night stand,” he says, voice low, and Jisung’s hard-fought confidence comes tumbling down like a house of cards.

Of course that’s all Jisung would be able to offer.

No. Wrong.

That’s all Minho would be willing to take from him. Minho, who instantly becomes the most attractive person in every room he walks into, but is allegedly so deeply in love with F— some guy that he can barely live without him, let alone fuck some desperate rando he’s barely known for a month.

Jisung lowers his gaze, unable to handle whatever Minho’s eyes are trying to tell him, and attempts to string together enough words to let him know he understands, is thankful for being let down this gently, when a deafeningly loud bang from inside the apartment dispels any form of coherent thought in his brain.

His back straightens against the railing, and he withdraws his hands to himself.

Minho steps back abruptly, taking his heat along with him. Jisung instantly freezes all over.

Beyond the balcony door, loud jeering follows the distinct sound of glass breaking and shattering into an uncountable amount of pieces.

Jisung hides his attempt at a steadying inhalation into a turn towards the street below. He leans on his forearms and counts backwards from ten.

When he turns his head to take a look at Minho, as soon as he feels even a single step further away from bursting into overwhelmed tears, it’s to discover that he cannot for the life of him figure out what Minho’s thinking.

His expression is vacant, eyes fixed on a spot somewhere beyond Jisung’s slumped shoulders. It looks like he’s so deep inside his own skull that Jisung might as well not even exist.

“I mean it, by the way,” Jisung says, wondering if any of it is even registering with Minho. He gives it a shot, regardless. “I’m only a couple of blocks away from here. You can crash at my place, if you want.” No matter what, Jisung would hate to know Minho had to deal with the horrors or public transport at this hour, in this state, when what he really should be doing is giving himself every single minute of rest possible. “I’ll sleep on the couch, I promise,” he adds, injecting as much light-hearted humour into his tone as he can muster.

Minho finally looks at him with eyes that suddenly look so, so very tired. He offers him something that maybe resembles a smile. “You’re sweet.”

The words lodge themselves between Jisung’s ribs. The tone is all wrong. He has nothing to compare it to, not that he can pinpoint, but he can tell it’s not right. The tinge of sadness twists the statement into something painful.

Jisung smiles the best he can.

They share a couple more minutes of uneasy silence before somebody bursts out onto the balcony, yelling at them to come help with the clean-up.

—

The party vibe starts to recover roughly half an hour later, after most of the mess has been taken care of, at least to a degree that ensures no one gets seriously hurt, but Jisung’s social battery is already far too drained to be salvaged.

Following an unspoken agreement that he’s going to make good on his promise to Minho, which mostly consists of a bunch of eyebrow acrobatics and chin nods, he starts his rounds to announce his departure to the people that will care.

They stumble upon Chan and Felix last, which makes sense, considering they’re plastered flush against the wall of the hallway, making out in a manner that can only be described as violent.

Jisung freezes, and instinctively turns to catch Minho’s reaction.

He finds Minho looking straight back at him with a perplexing amount of intensity.

Jisung is unsure how he’s supposed to respond to that. After a little thought, he opts for rolling his eyes, hoping that does a good enough job at conveying just another day in the life, and chooses not to disturb the other two as he makes for the door.

It can’t be longer than two minutes later that Minho disrupts the relative silence of their late-night walk back home. “Do you have feelings for Yongbok?” he asks, tone perfectly neutral.

The question startles a laugh out of Jisung. What?! “That would be a gross violation of the bro code, don’t you think?”

Minho, meeting him stride for stride, frowns at him. “But if it wasn’t for Bang Chan…?”

Jisung honestly has no idea why they’re even having this conversation. Minho just witnessed Chan devouring Felix within an inch of his life, and his first course of action is to ask if Jisung is going to be an obstacle?

“Of course not! He’s like a brother to me!” (And not in the way Chan uses the word, in relation to Felix.) He shoves his hands into his jacket pockets, turns to Minho before he can get the chance to regret it. “Do you?”

Minho lifts an eyebrow.

He takes a deep breath, tries to disguise the shakiness behind it by feigning a shiver. “Have feelings for Yongbok?”

He has to come to a full stop and spin on his heel, when Minho abruptly freezes in the middle of the street. The look on his face would be straight up comical, if Jisung’s heart wasn’t too busy seizing in his chest.

Minho stares at him like he’s the dumbest person alive, eyebrows furrowed and dark above his exasperated eyes. For what it’s worth, Minho could very well be right.

“No.”

Jisung stupidly watches as Minho punctuates the word with a drag of his boot against asphalt and walks past him.

He manages to kickstart his muscles not too long after, to his credit, but still spends the rest of the walk back to his apartment trying to process what just transpired.

—

“Can I come in?” he asks, feeling silly as he cowers behind the corner. As if Minho is a 19th century maiden and Jisung might faint at the mere sight of his bare ankle.

Well, to be fair, while the ankle is, indeed, a stretch, perhaps a different body part—

“Yeah, I’m done,” Minho says around a chuckle, and Jisung feels himself blush at the idea that he might not have been the only one to interpret the scene in this way.

He walks into the room just as Minho finishes pulling his t-shirt on, and he takes advantage of the fact that he focuses on taming his ruffled hair to just look at him: Minho, beautiful and bone-tired, standing in the middle of Jisung’s bedroom like he belongs, filling out the borrowed sleep tee and sweatpants that Jisung himself practically swims in. If he returned home to this every night, he’d still need several moments to marvel at his luck every single day.

“What is it?” Minho asks, effectively startling him into realising he’s been caught staring.

Jisung shakes his head. “Just exhausted. Sorry.”

Minho gives him a puzzled little smile, halfway between amused and weirded out.

As he moves towards his desk to reach for his pillow and sheets, waiting there for him ever since he swapped them out for fresh ones while Minho was in the bathroom, fingers gently catch his forearm. He turns towards Minho.

“You don’t have to,” he says before pulling away, and Jisung instantly misses his touch. “Your bed is big enough.”

Jisung’s brain short-circuits. “No, I— The couch is— I can totally—”

“I’m not going to be held responsible for you waking up with a sore back tomorrow,” Minho says and doesn’t even wait for Jisung to try stuttering his way through a response before he turns his back to him and crawls into bed with all the confidence of an overly-spoiled house cat.

Stock-still, he watches Minho as he scoots over to the far side of the mattress, fluffs up Jisung’s second pillow and settles in.

“Turn the light off and get in before I lose my sleep.” He emphasises his orders by resolutely closing his eyes.

There’s nothing Jisung can say to that. He grabs his pillow and follows Minho’s directions without further protest, getting himself situated in the space Minho has left empty for him.

He attempts to calm his wild heart by focusing wide eyes on the ceiling above, the thin light filtering in from the outside catching onto every bump of the textured surface. He breathes in, out, wonders if embracing the fact that Minho’s presence in his bed feels like a dream will manage to actually pull him into a real one.

An indeterminate amount of minutes later, Minho’s soft voice breaks the silence.

“Thank you for inviting me today.”

Jisung turns his head to find eyes that seem to sparkle in the low light trained on him.

Even in the near-dark, the tempting lines of Minho’s lips make his heart stop as they curve into a smile. He kissed those lips, less than an hour ago. He got to know what they taste like. In one fell swoop, they ruined him for the kiss of any other, helped him establish that no one else will do, now that he’s had them. There’s very little, he thinks, that he wouldn’t do to keep them for himself.

Terrifyingly, telling the truth is not on that list.

“I had selfish motivations,” he whispers as his heart threatens to claw its way up his throat.

Minho doesn’t respond. Jisung spends a few agonising moments berating himself for having said too much, revealed too much, overstepped the line by allowing his mouth to give voice to thoughts that Minho doesn’t want to know.

He has nothing to offer that Minho is willing to take, he has to remind himself.

The whisper of skin on cotton pulls him back out of his head.

Minho’s hand rests on Jisung’s pillow, palm-up. Jisung considers the action, tries to understand, and seeks out Minho’s gaze when he fails, only for Minho to curl his hand the moment their eyes meet. The backs of his fingers gently graze Jisung’s cheek, the touch unbearably tender.

Jisung exhales, the sound of it traitorously shaky.

Minho pulls back.

“Good night, Jisung-ah.”

Jisung feels raw and discombobulated, lost at sea in an ocean of feelings and information that he can’t seem to be able to piece together into a coherent narrative. He grasps at half-finished sentences and ties them up with traces of words left unspoken, tries to blindly feel his way to the solution and prays his heart won’t sabotage him.

“Good night.”

He desperately hopes that the answers he seeks will maybe be easier to find in the light of day.

—

When he wakes, three facts make themselves known to him in increments.

He feels comfortable, well-rested in a way he hasn’t felt in a long while.

Atop his chest rests the combined weight of two hands, comfortingly rising and falling with every breath in and out. Only one of them belongs to him.

Across the bed, Minho’s eyes, adorably puffy with sleep, are looking right at him.

The instinctive smile that takes over Jisung’s face is quickly wiped out by surprise the instant he remembers himself. He forces his fingers to flex, only now realising just how securely he’d been holding onto Minho’s hand, how long he must have been doing it for, considering the way his muscles protest the action, and pulls back.

Minho’s eyes widen infinitesimally. The weight of his hand withdraws.

“Sorry,” Jisung croaks out, feeling heat rush to his cheeks, which he tries to hide behind his palms. He presses the flats of his fingers into his eyes, does what he can to rub the sleep out of them. “Sorry,” he repeats into his hands. He can’t trust himself to behave around Minho even in his sleep.

A tentative touch lands on his wrist. “It’s all right,” Minho says.

When Jisung dares peek out to look at him, it’s to be met with a small smile that only grows when Minho visibly registers his flushed face. He would obey the urge to hide himself away once again, if it weren’t for how sweet the view is right now.

Jisung offers him back a smile that he hopes isn’t anywhere near as dopey as it feels, for the sake of his dignity, and motivates himself to get up, even though there’s nowhere else he’d rather be, in the moment.

“Do you wanna—”

“I should get—”

They fall silent to stare at each other.

Jisung gathers up his courage. “I can walk you to the bus station,” he says, knowing full well that Minho needs to be on his way, but unable to let him go just yet. “I wanna grab a coffee, anyway.”

Minho studies his face for a few seconds and Jisung, in turn, watches the way his eyes go softer in real time. “I know a good place nearby.”

—

In the hours that follow, Jisung finds out that his hunch was right. The party was, essentially, Minho’s debut on the social scene.

A handful of group chats he’s in, all varying in size and userbase demographics, light up with inquiries on the mysterious, handsome guy that had everyone’s heads turning before disappearing way too early into the night for their liking. Others, who Jisung vaguely recognises as dancers, chime in to brag about having information they’re willing to share, while gleefully gatekeeping juicier details — Jisung chooses not to believe them; he highly doubts they have much on Minho outside of the bare essentials.

Much to his surprise, however, some seem to have been more observant. It doesn’t take more than one person pointing out that Minho had looked chummy with Jisung to have multiple people pinging him directly, asking about Minho’s presence at the party.

He scrolls to a particularly insistent string of questions and snaps a screenshot. Before he can second-guess himself, he hits share.

Jisung
[image]
They’re hounding me to rat you out

His phone notifies him of a response not even twenty seconds after switching apps. The preview alone has his thumb shaking as he taps on it.

Minho
Tell them I was busy making out with the hottest guy at the party.

Jisung tugs at the neck of his sweatshirt, hooks it over his nose to cover his burning cheeks. He burrows into the couch cushions and watches the screen as his thumbs type out a response that surely cannot be coming from any rational part of his brain. He fires it off without giving himself any time to contemplate.

Jisung
That can’t be
Were we kissing the same guy? 🤔

In disbelief of what he himself just wrote, he fights the urge to kick out his feet in excitement and wins, but just barely.

Jisung hadn’t been expecting Minho to acknowledge the kiss in the first place. But to send him such an overtly flirtatious message, on top of that? This was not a string of events he would ever let himself dream of.

“I see you,” comes Changbin’s teasing tone, and Jisung sneaks a glance at him to meet eyes that always read him too easily for comfort.

He turns back to his phone, unnecessarily angling the screen away from Changbin for safety. “You don’t know anything.”

“I know plenty.” Seconds tick by, accompanied by the soft clicking of a keyboard. Jisung almost dares to think he’s home free before Changbin speaks again. “Did you and Minho go to your place, after?”

Jisung, for the lack of a better word, squeaks.

“Balcony doors are usually made of glass, you realise. They’re transparent.”

Well. That’s an interesting fact, isn’t it. Jisung groans. “We did go back to mine,” he admits, and rushes to explain when Changbin’s expression turns to one of surprise. “Not like that. He just slept over. Left in the morning.”

Changbin’s eyebrows meet in the middle. “Why? Did you not want to?”

“Of course I wanted to!” he practically whines, the back of his head hitting the armrest as his entire body stretches out in frustration. He exhales slowly, attempts to calm himself down. “And I want way more than that, too,” he quietly confesses.

“So what’s the issue?”

Jisung shakes his head. “He’s not interested. I heard he’s got it real bad for somebody else.”

Changbin seems to take a second to think the statement over. “If that’s even a little true, I doubt he could even remember their name, the way he was on you.”

And the thing is, that is one of the multitude of question marks that have been troubling Jisung. The Minho that looks at him with eyes that feel impossibly soft, initiates physical contact and sneaks away from adoring masses to make out with him does not coincide with the Minho who is supposed to be vying for someone else’s love like his life depends on it.

Especially with the mystery of his alleged crush’s identity reignited, none of his actions or words seem to make sense. In light of the last twelve hours, every indication that seemed to clearly point in Felix’s direction now only puzzles Jisung even more.

Perhaps his own romantic sensibilities blind him to reality. Maybe the fact that he himself falls hard, fast and head-first — regardless of the fact that this marks the very first time he’s ever spiralled this uncontrollably into infatuation, that’s neither here nor there — makes it hard for him to understand how a person can love somebody and yet dance on the line between platonic and romantic with someone else.

He sighs.

Off to the side, Changbin shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t know. Just saying.”

In lieu of a response, Jisung gives him a tight-lipped smile. He doesn’t know what to say, either.

“Anyway. Tell me what you think about this beat, loverboy.”

—

Against his reservations, Jisung indulges himself.

He takes advantage of each and every opportunity to get more of Minho, any way he can. He asks him about the cupcake of the day just to squeeze a few more seconds of conversation out of his everyday order. He always slows his pace down in the vicinity of the dance studio, and he makes sure to check the bus stops he knows Minho uses the most whenever he’s within range of them.

Jisung realises he’s acting like a love-sick puppy, and yet he can't help chasing after the high of being on the receiving end of Minho's attention, to whatever extent.

Because it does feel great.

Any time Minho smiles at him, eager to share his opinion on artificially flavoured baked goods, Jisung's stomach flutters. Whenever he takes a moment out of his busy schedule to check in with Jisung, on the occasions where they do run into each other while out and about, Jisung's days become brighter no matter what might have happened.

It's even worse when it comes to texting, though.

When Jisung takes the first step towards messaging him just for the sake of it, with some playful complaint about how the rain caught him unprepared on the way to work, it's like a dam breaks.

Jisung starts sending him memes that made him laugh and unrelated observations about everything and nothing at all.

In return, Minho sends him pictures of his cats — he has three, apparently, and he's considering bringing them over to Seoul once he properly settles in — so often that Jisung learns how to tell them apart within days. He fawns over short clips of Bbama, grumbles about public transit and laughs at Jisung's stupid puns.

They discover their mutual love for anime and good food.

Jisung wants to date him so bad it hurts.

He wants to take him to all the nicest places in the city and share every single dish on the menu with him. He wants to stroll down Han River and watch his eyes sparkle in the night lights. He wants to hold him close, drink in his scent as they watch whatever anime or drama Minho thinks looks good.

He wants to kiss him, map out every little bit of his body, leaving behind unmistakable marks that allow no room for speculation.

He wants Minho to be his, and his alone, in every single way, undeniably, publicly.

More than anything, he wants Minho to want him.

The weight of inaction is unbearable.

Jisung
Hyung
Let me take you on a date

—

Time spent with Minho feels like no time at all.

Conversation comes naturally, topic changes taking place without any hitches, and Jisung doesn’t have to spare a second thought on its ebbs and flows; even the interspersed moments of silence feel comfortable, easy.

He revels in the luxury of enjoying Minho’s presence in a way he’s never had the chance to savour before. Private. All for him.

They overstay their welcome at a tiny family-owned restaurant and migrate to a patisserie mere minutes before it closes for the night. They take their dessert to-go, and make huge messes of themselves eating it at a neighbouring park. Minho gives up on watching Jisung trying and failing to wipe his cheek clean and commandeers the tissue, giggling the entire way through taking matters into his own hands.

It’s in this moment, with Minho’s eyes shining brightly enough to make the clearest night sky envious, that Jisung knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he’s in love with him.

The mirth in Minho’s expression smooths out into something softer, and the mood shifts. Jisung lets him search his face, prays he finds whatever it is that he’s looking for.

When Minho eventually smiles, Jisung decides to stop denying himself. He presses a soft thumb to the middle of Minho’s chin, feels him nod to perch on the edge of his curled index finger. Jisung kisses him, slowly, gently, with no expectations and everything to give. His heart swells at the sensation of Minho melting into his hold.

He misses this kiss before it’s even over. Wishes it could last forever. That he could forget it so that he would get a chance to relive it all over again.

“Don’t go,” he softly pleads against Minho’s lips. “Come back to mine. Just to sleep,” he tacks onto the end, unwilling to risk any of this over a misunderstanding.

Minho looks at him from underneath heavy-lidded eyes. He smiles, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. “Okay.”

—

Jisung wakes up to a dream incarnate.

There is no other way to describe the feeling of Minho in his arms, the weight of his head on Jisung’s shoulder and chest, the warmth of his breath in the crook of his neck.

Even as the part of him that remains apprehensive, cautious about Minho’s intentions and protective over Jisung’s feelings, urges him to disengage, his heart begs him to pull Minho closer.

After last night, Jisung can’t bear to deprive it of what it wants.

He tightens his hold around him, and relishes the content-sounding sigh the action elicits out of Minho. The body against his own flexes as Minho seems to slowly wake up, pulling himself into a languid stretch.

When he’s done, he settles back into Jisung’s side, safe and secure. Except, this time, he tilts his head towards him. The eyes that greet Jisung shine with the power of a good night’s rest. His skin glows, cheeks plump with sleep. Happiness tingles inside Jisung’s chest.

“Hey,” Minho says, smiling around the word, and Jisung is so, so weak to it.

He grins right back. “Hey.”

Outside, the sun is just now beginning to peek behind the skyline, tinging the world in hues of peach. Soon, too soon for Jisung’s liking, they’re going to have to leave the perfect little bubble of Jisung’s bedroom, crash-landing into real life.

Jisung is going to have to get ready, head into work, and go about his day as if there is anything that he can focus on other than how incredible it felt to wake up next to Minho. As if there’s anything he wants other than to get the chance to do it again, as soon as possible.

The hand on his upper body shifts, fingers spreading on his sternum. His heart thumps to meet the warm palm splayed on top of it. He turns back to Minho’s gorgeous face.

“I have an alarm set,” he tells Jisung. “A few more minutes?”

Jisung squeezes Minho in his hold, smiles widely when he feels him nestle into it further. “A few more minutes,” he agrees.

He falls back asleep with astounding ease.

—

Jisung can’t get enough.

He stands in the hallway as he drinks in the sight of Minho in his favourite oversized t-shirt and cargo pants. He looks so good Jisung thinks he could cry.

“What?” Minho asks, tilting his head to the side. He looks down at himself in question, then back at Jisung.

He gives a little shake of his head as he inches closer, unable to take his eyes off of him. “They just fit you really well,” he says, wondering if his tone betrays the enormity of what he’s feeling. The idea of Minho out in the world, dressed in clothes that belong to Jisung, smell like Jisung, makes his head spin. He wants to muss them up, take a marker to them and emblazon his name all over, leaving no room for anyone to question whose clothes these are, whose apartment Minho spent the night in.

Emboldened by his own fantasies, he runs his hand down the side of Minho’s body, and thrills at the way it subtly curves under his touch, like a cat arching into being petted.

“See, you don’t even need to go back home,” Jisung says, recognising even as he speaks that his tone has dipped into dangerous territory, the tinge of dark sincerity a far cry from the playfulness he was initially aiming for.

Minho’s eyes meet his dead-on. When he speaks, his inflection mirrors Jisung’s own, syllable for syllable. “Why would I want to?”

It’s all Jisung can do not to crowd him against the door and sabotage both their schedules. Keep Minho to himself for the day. Longer. As long as he can get away with.

—

He doesn’t quite get his wish, at least not right away, but the universe does throw him a bone.

Hyunjin
I’ve been watching Minho-hyung struggle to compose a text message for the past 10 minutes
He wants you to know we’re going to be done by 9
He’s also starving
Please confirm you’re going to be picking him up for dinner so we can finally get some work done

Jisung
How does he feel about sushi?

Hyunjin
I asked him and his stomach rumbled

They end up eating an almost worryingly large amount of seafood. Minho tells him about his day, and Jisung decides that he needs to invite the customer that ruined Minho’s morning by yelling at him to a fight to the death. Jisung tells him about the EP deadline they’re rushing towards, and they discover that the MV Minho is going to be dancing for is the title track Jisung himself wrote. When Minho compliments him on his work, the praise lights Jisung up from the inside out.

By the time they’re making their way through the busy streets of downtown Seoul, ducking into alleyways to avoid foot traffic, shoulders accidentally bumping together and easily maintaining contact long enough to have Jisung’s heart going haywire, the countdown hanging over their heads becomes a very real threat.

When the inevitable moment comes, Jisung slows down, coming to a stop in front of the figurative fork in the road. On their left, the street leading to Jisung’s apartment. Up ahead, the bus stop. He turns to Minho, not quite able to pose the question on the tip of his tongue, and watches him sway in place as his eyes flit between both directions.

They’re on the same page, Jisung thinks, facing the same dilemma, and maybe, just maybe, he’s going to get what he needs without having to utter a single word, except—

Except Minho takes a hesitant step forward.

And it’s fine. Jisung understands. Regrettably, Minho does have a life outside of the confines of Jisung’s apartment. He has a home of his own, and a schedule that’s his to command as he chooses.

He follows him, half a step behind, until they reach the stop. Until Minho turns around to give him a smile that manages to partially soothe the sting in his chest.

“Well, this is definitely the longest date I’ve ever been on,” Minho says, and it’s so far away from anything Jisung had been expecting to hear that it makes him laugh, undoubtedly harder than it should.

Minho’s not wrong, technically, Jisung figures. Minho left his apartment yesterday, to come see Jisung, and is only returning to it now, more than a full day later.

Jisung gives him an appreciative once-over, stealing one last look at the sight that makes his stomach twist. “You even had an outfit change halfway through.”

Minho laughs, smooths a hand down his borrowed shirt. “Definitely a first,” he nods.

The moment has Jisung light-headed, borderline reckless. “Maybe you should pack a duffle bag next time, see how far that will take us.”

The smile that earns him does nothing to calm him down and causes irreparable damage to his already-failing brain-to-mouth filter.

“Maybe I will,” Minho says.

The butterflies in his chest wreak havoc inside him the entire time they wait for Minho’s bus. They nestle in there as he walks back home alone, only settling down the moment he manages to finally fall asleep.

—

When Minho texts him, two days later, asking if he can drop by Jisung’s before his shift starts to return his clothes, Jisung doesn’t think twice about it.

What he had not been expecting, however, is the backpack Minho swings off his shoulders once there. As he rifles through it, the neatly packed sections reveal personal items. A toothbrush. A comb. Folded clothes bookending Jisung’s own. There’s at least three changes of clothes that Jisung can count, from the glimpse he gets.

Minho hands Jisung’s t-shirt and pants over, and Jisung has to force his muscles to unfreeze so he can accept them.

He watches Minho, registers the near-imperceptible hesitation in his movements as he zips his bag up before shouldering it again.

When Jisung speaks, it’s with his heart in his throat. “You can just leave that here, if you want. You don’t have to lug it around.” He meets Minho’s wide-eyed stare and prays he hasn’t misread the situation. One of them is being presumptuous here. He dearly hopes it’s not him.

Minho blinks, extending Jisung’s agony. “If you don’t mind,” he says, eventually.

“Of course not,” Jisung rushes to reassure as the relief that washes over him leaves him breathless. “If you have to change before dance practice or whatever,” he says, leaving room for either of them to still save face, if needed, “you can just— I have a spare key.”

Minho’s responding look of surprise, which gradually brightens into a bashful smile, ushers in a four-day period that’s made of Jisung’s deepest-held fantasies and wildest dreams.

Minho messages him rough estimates of his schedule, and Jisung sends him links to restaurants, food stalls and patisseries he’s bookmarked. Minho patiently waits for Jisung to snap perfect shots of the most impressive dishes, and Jisung looks up at the sound of the camera shutter going off only to come face-to-face with Minho’s camera lens.

“Like a hamster,” Minho says, his tone soft, as the corner of his smile peeks behind the edge of his phone.

Jisung feels himself blush, tries his best to chew without choking.

Minho takes even more pictures. “Cute.”

Any time Minho is not at work, he’s with Jisung.

Any time they’re not out to eat, their moods align perfectly, settling on what to do without even having to put much effort into it at all.

When the group chat proposes a soju night, Jisung has Minho tag along. He slides into the booth and drapes his arm over the back, unable to stop himself from preening when Minho tucks himself close with zero hesitation. If the dimpled smirk Chan directs at Changbin’s raised eyebrows is an indication of conversations Jisung has not been a part of, he finds it extremely hard to care about, with the warmth of Minho’s hand searing a brand into his upper thigh, underneath the table.

In the quiet moments they’re alone, Jisung risks greedy glances at Minho only to find him already staring right back at him with eyes that look equal parts reluctant and expectant. His heart shakes in his ribcage as he leans in to steal kisses that never evolve into anything more, despite the feverish hunger he tastes in the heat of Minho’s mouth.

Late at night, Jisung waits, breath stuck in his lungs, until fingers curl around the hem of his shirt, tugging at it with all the bravery that seems to evaporate out of him the moment the light of his bedroom goes off.

He lets himself be pulled into Minho’s hold, sometimes to end up with strong legs hooked around his own and a nose tucked into the hollow of his throat, and others to find himself with his heart beating like a drum against the lines of Minho’s back, arms looping around Minho’s midsection like he’s going to disappear if they don’t.

The entire time, Minho doesn’t make a single peep about having to be anywhere that does not revolve around Jisung or work. When retelling how each day went, over dinner, he mentions no one outside of his colleagues.

Even as Jisung selfishly allows himself to indulge in the waking dream that is Minho, hoarding him all to himself, the anxious part of his brain that needs to have every single thing make absolute sense does not let him rest.

It nags at him, the rare times he’s left alone with no company but his own self.

It asks him questions that he is in no position to answer. It comes up with scenarios that leave him jittery.

He can’t help but feel that whatever it is that Minho is undoubtedly withholding from him looms over them, threatening to unravel the fantasy Jisung has so painstakingly cocooned himself into.

He needs to know what — or who, Jisung shakily reminds himself — it is that stands in the space left between them. That causes Minho to look at him with any amount of uncertainty. To hold a distancing hand against Jisung’s chest, even as Minho’s mouth chases after his own.

Doubt weighs heavy on the back of his mind.

—

On the fourth night, with the knowledge that Minho is going to be packing his bag and catching the bus home come morning, Jisung finds himself unwilling to call it a day, just yet. He wants to squeeze every single second he can out of this, while he still has him here.

He begs him for just one more episode, please, we can’t leave it at this cliffhanger, knowing full well that they both have an early wakeup tomorrow, and wraps his arms around Minho’s waist when the latter gives in, tapping on the next episode. He holds him close, presses a kiss to the column of his throat and elates at the soft sigh it elicits out of him.

It can’t be more than three minutes in that the notification pops up on the top of the screen, alerting Minho of a text.

Jisung, shamefully, has never before tried to read anything this quickly in his entire life.

The message preview, sent by someone named Seungmin, reads: So is it safe to cancel the order on Accidental Bonding for Dum…

Minho rushes to dismiss the pop-up with so much haste that the phone almost gets launched, and Jisung reacts the fastest he ever has, snatching it up mid-air. When Minho reaches for it, Jisung only pulls it further away from him. He’s not sure what he’s trying to achieve even when he’s doing it; it’s not like he’s going to pull the notification bar down and force his way into Minho’s private conversations, but the outcome is the same.

He extends his arm up and to the side, reaching the upper corner of the bed. Minho, in an attempt to grab his phone, flips onto Jisung, landing square on his lap.

“What? What’s so secret?” Jisung pants, unexpectedly breathless as a result of the scuffle, and gasps when Minho’s strong fingers cuff his wrist. He grins up at him, feeling just how feral the expression must look, partly genuine, partly paranoid at the heels of his mounting uncertainty. “Bonding?” he asks, still actively trying to decode the message preview. “Are you into bondage?” He feels silly.

Minho’s hold on his wrist tightens. He drags it across the bed, stopping only when he brings it centimetres north of Jisung’s head, but does not do anything to get his phone back. Jisung futilely reaches over with his free hand, only for Minho to pin that one on the mattress, as well.

Jisung groans, and Minho’s eyes snap to his own.

The mood instantly shifts.

Jisung’s breath catches in his throat. “Hyung,” he chokes out.

Minho’s lips part, but all he does is hover over him, speechless.

The full weight of his body resting on Jisung’s lap, his wrists, renders him immobile. In the face of Minho’s silence, all he can do is talk. “What are we doing?” he whispers. “What about—”

Minho watches him, clearly having no idea what train of thought Jisung is following, and waits. Jisung isn’t sure why he chooses this moment of all moments, himself, but he finds himself fully committed to getting answers to the questions that have been agonising him for the past weeks. Months.

“The day we met, at the studio, I heard the conversation you were having.” Even in the relatively low light, the room illuminated by no more than the streetlights outside and the warm-toned mood lamp in the far corner of the room, Jisung can see Minho’s eyes widen. “What about him?” he asks.

Minho seems to take a moment to think. “What about who?”

Jisung takes as deep a breath as he can, around the stab of jealousy in his gut. “The guy you’re in love with,” he manages to say. It hurts to even get the words out, but once he starts he finds it hard to stop. “You haven’t mentioned anything ab—”

“Jis—”

“—out him, at least not to me. When I thought it was Yongbok, it made me hate myself to envy him, but at least I knew who to resent.” The admission tastes bitter, but it feels good to unlodge from his chest. “So, whoever it is, if you love him so much…”

“Jisung.”

“If you love him so much you could die, why are you here?”

Minho’s hands press bruises into the skin of his wrists as he considers the question, his chest heaving underneath his sleep tee.

Jisung steels himself to brave one last push; he’s come this far, he thinks. He might as well inject every ounce of hope available to him into just one more question. “Is this where you wanna be?”

Minho looks down at him so intensely it makes Jisung burn on the inside. “What do you want?” he asks.

The question catches Jisung by surprise. This far in, however, he might as well go for broke, answer truthfully. “I want you,” he says. “I’ve wanted you ever since.”

“Why?”

Several seconds pass in near-complete silence, broken only by the sound of their heavy breathing. Jisung tries to decipher Minho’s tone, unable to understand why this would be his response. Why anything Jisung could reply with would even matter.

Still, his mouth tries to catch up with his runaway brain, scrambling to put words in the right order. “Because you’re beautiful,” he says, heart beating hard against his chest, and chooses to press on despite the fact that Minho’s face inexplicably shutters. “And you’re funny, and weird, and everything with you feels so natural.”

He watches the way Minho’s eyes switch between his own, something in his expression shifting ever so slightly as he seems to process Jisung’s words.

“Whenever you’re not around, all I can think of is about the next time I get to be with you,” he confesses. “About how I can get to see you smile. That’s what I want.”

Minho’s grip on him relaxes. Jisung instantly misses the ache of it. When he speaks, his voice sounds entirely different yet incredibly familiar at the same time. “There is no other place I’d rather be.” Jisung, having finally run out of words, watches as Minho releases him to slowly sit up straight, transferring all of his weight onto Jisung’s lap. “There is no one else. It’s only ever been you.”

In an odd way, while Jisung intellectually knows it’s Minho that’s speaking, it feels like the words come out of the air around them, itself. The mattress, the furniture, the walls seem to reverberate with each and every syllable, absorbing them only to echo them back out.

Distantly, he wonders if he actually did go insane, somewhere along the way, and this is his first time really noticing.

The sensation is so uncanny he fails to even fully register what Minho has said.

He blinks.

When he opens his eyes again, it’s like the world has splintered.

There is no other explanation, no other words to describe the way darkness tears the very air apart, leaving open gashes in the fabric of reality. In the midst of it all, untouched, undisturbed by chaos, is Minho. His eyes, ruby red, shine brightly in contrast with the distorted remnants of Jisung’s bedroom.

A key turns a lock hidden in the depths of Jisung’s brain. Thoughts, feelings, rush to the forefront. The memory of the beautiful being that had stolen Jisung’s nights aligns with the image of the man that Jisung has helplessly fallen for. Everything slots into place all at once, at a dizzying speed.

“You,” Jisung whispers, awed.

Behind Minho’s back, thick shadows unfurl into what can only be defined as wings that stretch out, the very edges of their tips grazing the ceiling before lowering themselves, coming to rest by either side of Minho. Wisps of what appears to be the same material curl around the edges of his naked body, covering parts of it in shadows.

It’s a terrible, astonishing sight. A terrifyingly beautiful one.

His overwhelmed brain rushes to catch up.

Minho has never been a dream, he realises, a mere figment of his imagination. But he’s never been simply real, either. He’s something else, something other. (Something supernatural, supplies the part of his brain that’s always been tickled by lore, theories of the metaphysical. An entity that seeks to feed, just like any other. It just so happened that Jisung was more than eager to give him what he needed.)

“It’s you,” he uselessly repeats.

When he reaches out to touch him, something he’d failed to notice finally makes itself known, undeniable. His eyes zero in on Minho’s neck, drawn to the glimmer that hangs from it like a collar. Its centre rests heavy in the space between his collarbones, where it branches off to dangle down his body, chain-like. Its links jingle softly as Jisung moves, and it’s only now that he realises why that is.

In his left hand, shining in his palm, rests the very end of the chain. It glistens with an otherworldly glow.

What have you done to me? asks the memory of the voice that Jisung now clearly recognises as Minho’s, taking him back to the very night they’d spent together before Minho disappeared, leaving Jisung all but lost.

Something ugly coils up inside him. Regret. He doesn’t know how, but he did this to Minho, he realises, even if unwittingly. Shackled, collared him.

His hand flexes as if burnt. He means to let go, but stops himself the moment Minho takes a loud, sharp breath. He looks at him, terrified to see the way his entire body has gone tense, face twisted up like he’s hurting. Minho’s pained eyes, focused on Jisung’s hand, only soften when Jisung curls his fingers around the chain again.

Experimentally, Jisung tightens his grip. Watches as Minho’s body relaxes in response, his shoulders dropping with relief.

“What does it mean?” he asks, puzzled, concerned.

Minho looks at him, and speaks for the first time in what feels like forever. “It means I’m yours,” he says. He lowers his head and glances at Jisung from underneath his eyelashes, not coy, but rather hesitant. “I’m yours in more ways than would be smart to admit.”

The statement sets Jisung’s ribcage aflame. These are words he would have done atrocious acts to hear coming from Minho’s mouth, and yet the implication doesn’t allow him to revel in them as he would like. Not at the cost of Minho’s suffering. He frowns. “Does it hurt?”

Minho gives him a small smile, one that’s a little sad around the edges. “Not usually. Not unless you do…” he points at Jisung’s hand, the one that had tried to let go of Minho’s restraints, “that. In one manner or the other,” he says.

Jisung thinks back to the night Minho had appeared to him, sallow-looking and simmering with rage. To Hyunjin’s words at the studio. To all the times he’d looked so tired, worn thin, evidently for more reasons than merely being overworked. It had all been because of Jisung.

“Why did you let—” me do that to you? he doesn’t dare ask, realising at the last moment how that would sound. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Surely, there’s a lot of grief he could have spared Minho, if he had known. He would have done something about it. Anything.

Minho sets a warm, clawed hand on Jisung’s diaphragm, the gesture oddly comforting. “It couldn’t have happened if I hadn't wanted it to,” he says, readily soothing Jisung’s worries. “And it’s not that simple, is it? Imagine if I had sprung all this up on you after the party.” He swipes his free hand in the air, indicating himself and the room as a whole.

The corners of Minho’s lips lightly tilt with amusement and, fine, Jisung supposes he has to agree. He probably would have freaked out at the time, at least a little. He chuckles, and his heart swells when Minho echoes it.

When they settle down, Minho’s eyes turn a bit melancholy. “I couldn't have risked it. One wrong reaction, and…” he shakes his head. “I had to be sure.”

Jisung nods in understanding. He gets it, he thinks. The basics, at least.

“And even now, these days we’ve spent together have been some of the best of my life, but…” he hesitates, and Jisung can’t bear to watch as he visibly tries to find the right words, as if Jisung is going to take something the wrong way.

He reaches out, gently covers the hand that’s resting on his chest.

Minho smiles softly, appreciatively, but his shoulders slump all the same. “It’s not as straightforward, anymore. I can’t feed on anyone else, and even with you it’s gotta—” He closes his eyes, visibly struggling with words.

“What?” Jisung asks. He lets his hand travel all the way up Minho’s arm, his shoulder, past the collar on his neck, to cradle his jaw. “What do I have to do?” In this instant, he knows with absolute conviction there’s nothing he’ll stop at, if it’s for Minho.

Minho opens his eyes, slowly, and nuzzles into Jisung’s hand. When he speaks, it’s as if it hurts to say, as if the weight of it is too heavy to carry, as if he’s afraid to burden Jisung with it. “You have to love me,” he says, voice low.

Jisung lets out a breath, lungs burning with relief. He curls his fingers around Minho’s nape, gently pulling him down. “That’s easy,” he says, smiling at the way Minho’s eyes widen. “Baby, that’s so easy.”

He draws him in, close, and something inside his chest unwinds at the way Minho simply goes along with it, pliant, melting into him when Jisung catches those beautiful lips of his in a soft kiss.

“It’s the easiest thing in the world,” he whispers, elating when the words have Minho shivering against him.

Minho kisses him, again and again. Pulls back just enough to look at him, ruby red eyes searching, yearning. Above him, wings made out of darkness stretch out to cage them against the mattress. The scent of fire engulfs them both. “Show me,” he says against Jisung’s lips, as much a plea as it is an order.

Jisung smiles. His left wrist twists, hand following through with the movement. He loops the chain, once, twice, three times for good measure, wrapping it tighter and tighter around his hand.

Minho shakes. He slumps into Jisung’s embrace, panting into the crook of his neck.

Jisung holds him, kisses every bit of him that he can reach as Minho turns to him, eager, like a flower seeking out sunlight.

He’ll show him, Jisung vows. He’ll spend every minute of the rest of his life showing him.