Archive of Our Own

It’s past midnight when Minho peels himself out of his late night rehearsal. The air outside is thorny, whip-bright against his sweaty nape, but the cold is mostly a relief after so much exertion. The ice bath after the sauna. 

He walks home in the January dark, contemplating achey showers and early morning alarms with vague, resigned annoyance. Focusing on immediate sensations helps: the soupy, chafing skin beneath his thermal sleeves, the icing of his damp hair, the wet down-turned collar letting winter teeth at his jugular.

The burble of Friday night activity in the bar-choked Gangnam corridor near campus is anonymizing, comforting. His and Jisung’s shared apartment is triangulated between their two campuses, twenty minutes by transit in either direction. The rent is steep, there’s little to no closet space, and the pipes leak, but he finds himself looking forward to the journey home more than anything else in his day. 

Having a roommate suits him. He likes having someone to appreciate it when he fixes things, or puts effort into cooking a nice hot meal.

Jisung also happens to be his best friend. They met in high school, clicked gradually, and then all at once—with such finality that he doubts they can ever be pried apart. They operate in the same well-worn groove. It’s easy to share a home with him. 

He trudges up to the unassuming cut of their building against the street light-streaked evening, and fumbles his fob against the sensor. He wonders if night owl Jisung is already asleep. 

He’s not. There’s a band of yellow light spilling out onto their doormat as he jostles the key into the lock. The door swings inwards, and Minho sees him immediately, curled up in the far corner of the couch beyond the entryway.

“Han Jisung,” Minho says, shuffling his shoes off, pulling at his jacket.

Jisung responds by yawning and stretching his arms above his head, oversized hoodie sleeves pooling low around his forearms.

Minho crosses to the couch and drops like a stone into the mess of cushions and throw blankets. Jisung immediately tucks his socked feet under Minho’s thigh.

“You’re awake,” Minho says, pinching his calf just to watch him squirm away.

“Keen observation,” Jisung says around another yawn. “So are you.” 

He notes the dark circles ringing his half-lidded eyes, the unshaven scruff of his jaw.

“Insomnia twins?” 

It’s sort of an ongoing phenomenon: if one of them can’t rest, neither of them can. Sleep packs its bags and blusters out of the apartment altogether. They’ve spent countless late nights watching anime on 20% volume with a bag of sweets crinkled between them.

“Mmm, no,” Jisung replies, uncharacteristically serious. “Something weird happened, actually.”

“Weird is promising. Share with the class.”

Jisung pulls his hood down over his eyes, and his mouth twists with a strange little smile.

“Someone asked me out today.”

“That is weird,” Minho says, teasing on reflex. His hands are sort of clammy. He tucks them across his ribs.

“I’m glad you think you’re funny,” Jisung drawls. 

Minho ignores this. “So this someone,” he prompts. “Were they an extraterrestrial? Did they look sick? Brainwashed?”

“Hm, I don’t know. I mean he did have antennae and green skin, but that could mean anything.”

“Sounds perfect for you. Wait, he?”

Jisung’s smile starts to deflate, punctured. “Yeah, uh. That’s the thing. It was kind of—a guy.”

“Kind of.”

An eye-roll. “Fully. I guess.”

Minho starts to laugh, trying to picture it, the shock, the patented Han Jisung eyebrows, the stuttering let-down. “Oh no. What did you say?”

Jisung fidgets, looking even more uncomfortable for some reason. “I said sure,” he says lowly.

Minho stops laughing at once. “What?”

“He’s taking me out tomorrow. I don’t know. Why are you acting like it’s so crazy?” he asks, ever-defensive.

“Because it is.”

“What, no one could ever be interested in me like that, is that it?” He’s blustering. His eyes are wide and bright as planets, telescopic. He half-expects to see a meteor streaking across a pupil.

“You’re not gay, Jisungie.”

“I could be,” he snaps. Minho stares and waits. “I—I might be.” 

Everything starts to upend, slowly, tipping upside down until he feels like he’s dangling from the pinnacle of a rollercoaster.

Now? Really? After Minho struggled through high school as the only one glancing furtively at other boys, the only one joining team sports to feel close to them. It’s not fair to be upset with Jisung, but he still feels a strange dread hatching in his stomach.

“Who is this guy?”

Jisung starts to flush. He holds his own cheeks in his hands. “You don’t know him.”

“Okay, but I will. So. Tell me.” He’s getting angry. Why is he getting angry?

“I mean, his name is Wonpil.”

A twitch of confused recognition, then a throb of unease. “Kim Wonpil? Your teacher?” 

“My TA,” Jisung corrects quickly. “He’s only a few years older than me.”

“You can’t date your TA,” Minho says, with finality. 

Jisung frowns. It’s a whole production—pursed lips, hitching brow, squinting eyes. “Well too bad, because I’m going to.” He should have known. Jisung always doubles down when he faces a little bit of pushback. “He’s cool. Funny.”

“Oh well if he’s funny, by all means sleep with him.”

“Okay, prickly,” Jisung says, wincing. He draws his knees up to his chest, and Minho feels a belated pang of regret. “Why are you being so weird about this? I thought you’d be happy to have a gay friend.”

Truthfully, he doesn’t know why he’s being weird, but it feels wrong to have Jisung invade this particular territory. It’s messing with their long-standing dynamic. 

He was always supposed to be the one goggling at anime girls and stammering through flirtations. And now he’s being—what? Courted? Chosen out of a class-full of hopeful producers not for his talent but for something else. The power dynamic is off. His dongsaeng in the lap of some overreaching TA. But would he care if it wasn’t Jisung? 

“I have gay friends already,” he says coolly.

“A best friend, I mean,” he says, flapping his hand dismissively. Always so casually, shruggingly cocky when it comes to their relationship. He always accepts the role of ‘Minho-whisperer’ with badly concealed enjoyment. Always pokes his fingers into Minho’s soft spot for him.

“Do you want to go out with him, or are you saying yes because you’re awkward?”

Jisung’s flush lingers, delicate. “He’s…” he trails off. Minho waits, prickling with annoyance. “I had noticed him. Already.”

They sit in thick, cloying silence for a long moment. What had he noticed about him? Was it just a handsome face? Was he a good speaker? Jisung admires confidence almost as much as he covets it. Was it his body? His hands moving when he addressed the lecture hall?

“Okay,” Minho says at length.

“Okay?” Jisung laughs incredulously. “You’re on board now? You weirdo?”

Minho blinks fast. Shrugs.

“Phew,” Jisung says, lots of air, flopping dramatically back into the arm of the couch. “That’s enough of that. I’ve never come out to anyone before.”

He sort of can’t believe that that’s what's happening. But it’s just like Jisung to wait for an outside variable to force him into action. Otherwise he would’ve quietly stayed in the closet with the door open, waiting for Minho to find him.

“Not even Wonpil-ssi?”

Jisung’s head pops back up, and he glares across the couch. “We didn’t exactly talk about it.”

Minho raises his eyebrows. “What did you talk about, then? Music theory? Technique? Positions?”

Jisung eyes him suspiciously, dodging the double-entendre. “You’re awfully curious.”

“About the guy who turned you? Sure.”

Jisung reaches out to smack Minho in the chest, and Minho laughs all at once, grabbing at his fingers.

“Jealous you couldn’t turn me first, baby?” Jisung teases through his teeth.

Minho’s hand flexes, and Jisung makes an over-the-top ‘ah-ah-ah’ noise when his fingers are twisted. Something shifts confusedly in Minho’s gut, a half-formed idea turning in its sleep. What is happening to his insides right now? He feels almost feverish. Is he getting red? 

“Gross,” he announces loudly. “If I wanted to, I would’ve.”

“Ohhh,” Jisung says theatrically, cupping his hands around his mouth. “You don’t even know what you’re missing, Irino.”

Minho looks pointedly towards the mess Jisung has accumulated in their living room: balled up socks next to a sloppy stack of dishes on the coffee table. His eyes say, wow, what a catch.

“Shut up! Topic change or else. How was practice? Did anyone ask you out?”

“Mm. Lost track of how many.”

He snorts. “Oh yeah? Anyone catch your eye?”

Their gaze holds together for just a moment too long, sticky, like dipping your fingers in warm candle wax. Minho blinks.

“Nah. I’m a lone wolf.”

Jisung huffs. “You are a cat.”

“You’re a mouse on a string.”

“Ah, no wonder you were biting my head off earlier.”

“You shouldn’t be so biteable then.”

“But how else would I attract eligible TAs?”

Their banter rolls to a stop, and Minho gets off as quickly as he had climbed aboard. Something about this topic feels tenuous, still unsafe to joke about. Thin, thin ice.

He stands, leaving Jisung’s socked feet curling in the cold. “I’m showering.”

“No you’re not, you’re right here.” He tries to tease, but they both know there’s not much he can do when Minho’s decided a conversation is over. He trudges towards their dinky little bathroom. “Ha. Okay hyung. Sleep well.”

“Save your hyungs for Wonpil.”

“Oh—kay? Ah, really. Are you mad about something?”

“I’m showering,” Minho reiterates.

“Okay,” Jisung says again, but his voice is smaller this time, behind him. “Goodnight then.”

Minho closes the door behind him, and looks at his reflection. His ears are throbbing red, and his expression is all wrong.

You don’t even know what you’re missing.

He ducks under the cool spray of the shower, and thinks of other things.

That night, he has the first dream.

Jisung is in his bedroom doorway, backlit, dressed for bed. Big t-shirt, knock-kneed in his boxers, barefoot. It shouldn’t be a particularly sexy tableaux, but he can feel instinctively that something is about to happen. He can scarcely breathe. And Jisung is—well. Him being in his bedroom in the wee hours means something subtly different today than it did yesterday.

“Hyung,” he says. Unusually sweet and deferent. Fawn eyes blinking slow in the blue light from the kitchen.

“Still can’t sleep?” Is it today, still? Was it ever? Jisung’s confession had the same unreal quality as this.

Minho’s floating consciousness seems to nudge Jisung further into the room by will alone. He wanders inside, padding footsteps, freshly washed hair, real as anything. Minho’s too aware of his own skeleton, the way his bones bow when Jisung climbs into his bed and then—directly on top of him.

“What are you doing?” he gasps. His hands find Jisung’s hips in the dark.

In the choked closeness of the dream, he can feel him inhaling at his neck, moving his heated body to fill every gasping corner and crevice of Minho’s.

“Show me how,” Jisung murmurs.

“What?” he asks, half-urgent but consciously slowing down, gentling his hands, feeling the precariousness of the moment held slippery between them. Usually, such a clear prelude to intimacy would be cracked open in his hands by now. He would already have rolled on top and gotten to work. But it’s Jisung, and they don’t do this. Why don’t they do this, again?

Jisung pulls Minho’s hands manually up to his ribcage, his soft chest. He knows this chest. The fabric of the dream has a shockingly high percentage of pure sense memory: chapped lips, the the plush round of a cheek, the tart smell of his delicate, fuzzed skin.

“I want to practice.”

His mind races. Practice? Practice—what—for other men? For his future boyfriend? 

“With me?”

“I want to be good,” he continues. Jisung always seems unaware of when he’s being totally devastating. He has the biggest, roundest eyes in the world. There’s desire ringing his irises, changing the topography of his face so it’s relaxed, wanting. He tries to remember if he’s ever seen Jisung turned on before. 

His suppressed, wakeful mind nudges in and reminds him that he still hasn’t. This can’t be real, because they would have talked about it, set out rules, or stopped this sudden hot-blooded momentum in its tracks.

And Jisung wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t admit to the tender truth behind so much of his posturing: that he wants to be good. Minho can see it so clearly in his nature, but Jisung has never said it aloud.

And he wouldn’t lean in first, with a shiny open mouth, with his waist clutched in Minho’s fists, with his overgrown hair brushing, fragrant, against his burning cheek—

Minho wakes with his face pressed hot into the pillow, mouth gasping into wet cotton.

He rolls onto his back, feeling his sweaty shirt pull wrongly around his torso. He snakes a hand down beneath the humid duvet and finds himself throbbing, leaking into his shorts.

He lets out a disbelieving laugh at the ceiling.

Embarrassing. His best friend comes out to him and he immediately starts fantasizing about him, after eight years of perfectly chaste bed-sharing and awkward vulnerability. Even in the maelstrom of high school hormones he had thought of Jisung only as his favourite dongsaeng, fun to fluster, but ultimately off-limits. Cute and sexless, like a stuffed animal.

He knows immediately that the dream hadn’t meant anything. Dreams usually spout an awful lot without saying much. It’s easy for intimacy to become twisted in new and unexpected directions, warping and misrepresenting itself in the sleeping machinery of the brain.

He kicks the blankets to the foot of the bed, and lets the white morning air cool his body. It’s sort of a relief, that this is just a sex thing. He’d been stressed well into the night that Jisung’s confession had felt so off, that he had been so uncomfortable in a moment where he should have been poised and helpful.

Turns out he’s just jealous that Jisung’s getting some action. 

He jerks off then, perfunctory, and doesn’t think about anybody in particular. Just friction, a compact body, and a taut waist bracketed by Minho’s searching hands.

Weeks pass in a haze of midterm deadlines and deep blue morning wake-up calls.

He forgets all about the sudden equilibrium shift in his and Jisung’s vibe, the ear-ringing pop of reality displacing itself.

Mostly, Jisung skulks around the apartment in noise-cancelling headphones, flashing lazy peace signs at Minho when he notices him coming and going. Same as always. He’s a little more scarce than usual, maybe, but that’s normal. The workload increases and so does his introversion.

A full month after Jisung’s slapdash confession, Minho shoulders into the cafe nearest their apartment, a peaceful little refuge from the frost and jumble of afternoon-freed students in puffer coats. The signage is all blackboards and chalk, the display case is stacked with neat baked goods, and the whir of the coffee-grinder fights against the low, crooning ballad from the overhead speakers.

He’s waiting for his order, and mentally choreographing a stubborn eight-count, when he notices Jisung’s profile, tucked into a corner table with a stout latte cup held between both hands. He’s wearing his wire-framed glasses, and his hair is styled with unusual care, curling around his ears.

He feels himself brightening automatically. He’s going to scare him with an iced coffee to the neck. What a golden opportunity.

He collects his coffee, and has made his way halfway towards the table, when he notices another occupant pulled up at Jisung’s side. He stops in his tracks.

The guy is unfamiliar to Minho, but overly familiar with Jisung—hand kneading briefly at the back of his neck as he watches, exactly where Minho had planned to press his iced americano.

Jisung fidgets, and smiles with all his teeth. He’s clearly not used to his touch, but he’s tilting his neck for it anyway. Minho feels his hackles going up at the weirdness of the interaction, the shift in Jisung’s familiar body language.

“Jisung-ah,” he calls, savouring the moment where Jisung’s gaze snaps up and collides with his own. The guy next to him looks too, and Minho is annoyed to find that he’s sort of handsome.

“Oh, hyung.” Jisung smiles awkwardly. “Should’ve known you’d be around. This is my—Wonpil-hyung.”

My hyung, huh? How many dates has it been? Have they kissed? … More? Of course Jisung would mention a relationship out of necessity, and then keep it entirely in its own lane, where Minho couldn’t see.

“Oh yeah,” Minho says. He bows mechanically. “Wonpil-ssi.”

He bows sort of boyishly in his seat, and offers a disarming smile. “The roommate, right?”

“Among other things,” Minho says, smiling flatly. His eyes flicker down to note the place where their knees are touching under the table. There’s a plate angled between them, a discarded fork. Another. They’ve been sharing a slice of cake.

“Ah, friends too, of course. Good to meet you, Minho-ssi. You have a very talented dongsaeng.”

“Well, I’m sure you bring out the best in him. Being his teacher and all.”

Is he imagining it? Do Wonpil’s eyes narrow a fraction?

“Not a teacher yet, but thanks. Jisungie could practically teach the class though. They call him the ace of our department.” Jisungie. Gag.

Smoothly, artfully, Wonpil tosses a casual arm around Jisung’s shoulders.

“Hyung,” Jisung complains. They both turn to look at him, although Wonpil is close enough that his nose nearly brushes his temple. “You’re just giving him teasing fodder,” he says quietly, eyes darting up to Minho’s. “He’s going to start calling me ace.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Wonpil asks.

A derisive snort—very undignified and very Jisung. “You don’t know him.” Their eye contact takes on an urgent edge. Minho has the most peculiar sensation of wanting to keep Jisung’s eyes on him for as long as he can. He’s never had to worry about that before. He wants to win this interaction.

“I see,” Wonpil is saying. Minho peels his gaze away, but it’s sticky and difficult. “Well when I call you the ace, I mean it,” he murmurs into Jisung’s ear.

Jisung shivers. Minho frowns. He looks away, out the window, grappling for some mental distance. Something about this guy is just—rubbing him the wrong way.

“I should leave you to it.”

“Thank you, Minho-ssi.” Wonpil smiles warmly. “Forgive me, I’m sort of protective of our time together. We’ve both been so busy.”

Busy fawning over each other in the studio, no doubt.

“I understand,” he lies. “See you at home, jagi?” He says the endearment like a joke but, well. He still says it. It’s possible he’s laying it on thick.

“Sure,” Jisung says, distracted. “I might be back late.”

“Okay,” Minho says, throat tight. “Okay.”

“It was nice to meet you,” Wonpil says breezily. Polite. Unconcerned. Unthreatened. And why would he be?

“See you, hyung,” Jisung says, waving with his fork.

Minho walks away on wooden legs, holds the door for a gaggle of girls, and winds out onto the sidewalk without looking back even once.

The cold air washes enough good sense into him to provoke some embarrassment at his behaviour.

This might be harder to explain away than a harmless wet dream. He’s clearly suffering from some sort of irrational, coming-out induced mania. Like—the gay version of only child syndrome, complete with interpersonal growing pains and good old-fashioned sexual frustration.

Jisung has never dated seriously before. He’s had crushes and accidental situationships mostly, sweet little cotton candy things or disappointments to write lyrics about. He’s not sure if that’s what this is. He’s not sure why he feels so much more threatened this time around. He feels petty, and protective, and also sort of—nauseous—like some dime-a-dozen homophobe. It’s a harrowing cocktail.

And he’s always been a jealous person, but this is indefinably different. When he pulls at the roots of these feelings, he can’t find the end of them. He doesn’t know where they were planted, or how far they could possibly have spread in secret, underground.

All he knows for sure is that Jisung is his closest friend, and he doesn’t like giving up even small moments with him, deferring to some stranger. Wonpil doesn’t know Jisung like Minho does. He never could.

Minho is a ghost for his entire evening practice. Felix notices, and makes a whole production of kneading his shoulders and slapping him bracingly on the back.

“Dance it out,” he encourages. “Whatever’s messing with you right now.”

“I think there might be casualties if he does that,” Hyunjin drawls. 

Minho raises a fist and Hyunjin ducks, shrieking.

“Not the face, hyung!”

“So anywhere else is fine for punching?”

Felix laughs, throwing his arms out dramatically into the crossfire. “Spare him! Take me instead!”

Minho generously withholds his next attack, and settles back onto crossed legs instead. “I’ll take another massage to erase both your debts.”

Felix gets to work immediately. They’re all sprawled out between combinations, gulping from their respective water bottles, rolling out their ankles, leaning sweaty and wrung-out against the mirror.

“To whom do we owe your wrath today, hyung?” Hyunjin says, mopping wet dark hair back from his face, easing back onto the cool panelled floor. “Did Han Jisung leave the kitchen in ruins again?”

His face must sour at the mention of his name, because Hyunjin laughs immediately.

“You need a new roommate.”

“Possibly,” he says darkly.

Felix’s hands stop moving. “What, really? I thought you guys were like soulmates.” 

“Is this about his TA boyfriend?”

Minho does a double take. Hyunjin is smiling knowingly up through slitted eyes, hand feathered over his forehead to block out the overhead lights.

“Boyfriend?”

“Or whatever you want to call them. He mentioned it to Binnie.”

Felix hums, having moved on to carding his hand through Minho’s damp hair. “I thought Jisungie was straight.”

“Did you really?” Hyunjin asks incredulously. 

Of course he told them too. It wouldn’t have been a big deal to them, the gay thing. He would have told Chan and Changbin to get ahead of class rumours.

“He told me,” Minho says quickly. “But I thought they were casual.”

“For now,” he says, shrugging. “But you know Jisung. He’s all or nothing.”

A ghostly hand plunges through his chest, rooting through organs, upending feelings. He considers Jisung giving his all to a relationship while Minho watches it happen, and finds that he doesn’t like the thought much at all.

“Ahhh. Is that why you’re upset?” Felix asks earnestly.

Minho blinks. He doesn’t know how to answer that question. He doesn’t know what’s going on with him, let alone how to share it with his nosiest friends. Defensiveness has never hit him like a bus before, but he’s also never had to share Jisung before, not really.

Hyunjin clears his throat. “Since when does hyung care about what we do in our spare time?”

“Unless it’s choreography,” Felix mutters.

“Don’t you forget it.” He stands, trying to shake off this supremely unhelpful reminder of how abnormal his feelings have become in just a few weeks.

“It’s normal to feel weird about it, you know,” Hyunjin says. “It’s hard to give up the priority spot in someone’s life. It’s like being demoted when you didn’t even do anything wrong.”

“It’s his TA?” Felix asks, backtracking. “Is that… allowed?”

“Thank you,” Minho says, relieved. “It’s weird. I don’t like him.”

“Of course you don’t.”

Minho glares at Hyunjin. “Let’s run the routine a hundred more times.”

Collective groans.

“Sadist,” Hyunjin says. And then he mutters, “you better hope Jisungie likes that sort of thing,” under his breath, and Minho pretends not to hear him.

He’s already been home an hour when Jisung comes humming in through the front door. His expression falters when he sees Minho hovering like a storm cloud by the kettle, arms crossed.

“Oh, Min. Hey.” He drops his bag heavily to the floor, boots kicked off, and crosses smilingly to meet him.

“Walk of shame?”

Jisung rolls his eyes, hopping up lightly on the counter by the sink. “You’re a real gossip at heart, aren’t you?”

“Is it gossip if it’s just you? Or am I a concerned friend?”

“Concerned about my dick?”

“Yes. You might get gonorrhoea your first time out, and ruin your gay sex life forever.”

“Okay,” Jisung says slowly, vaguely amused. “So what is it about Wonpil that screamed gonorrhoea to you?”

Minho snorts. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

Jisung points at him accusingly. “Okay so you didn’t like him. I wasn’t imagining the hostility.”

He shrugs. “He was weird.”

“You’re weird,” Jisung counters. 

“He was all over you.”

“We were on a date.”

“In public.”

“So what?”

Minho is momentarily stunned to silence. So what? So what?

“No one was even looking at us. Just because you’re skittish about skinship doesn’t mean everyone else is.”

“I’m not skittish.”

“Well yeah, maybe not with me.”

Suddenly that fact seems incredibly damning. They stare at each other. The kettle starts to keen softly, steaming itself to a boil. Minho turns and takes it busily from its element.

“Did you sleep with him?” he asks, not looking up from where he’s sprinkling cheese into his cup ramen now, stirring the soupy softening noodles.

When he glances up, Jisung’s expression has soured again. “Why do you want to know so badly? Really? Tell me.”

“I’m concerned.” It’s not untrue. No matter what he feels about his friend pulling away, or his own somewhat unprecedented dry spell in comparison to Jisung’s suddenly flourishing love life—he also wants him to be safe and okay.

“Hmm.” He looks doubtful. “We didn’t.”

Unfurling relief, like healthy flower growth, like oxygen working its will on a forest. He has another day, at least, to figure out his hang-ups about this.

“Okay. Do you—“ Minho starts. Aborts. “Do you want to talk about—anything?”

Jisung’s mouth goes round with disbelief. “Are you trying to give me a sex talk right now? Like I’m your son?”

Minho laughs. “Do you need one?” he says, a little nasty on purpose.

“It’s not like I’m a virgin!” he says shrilly, and Minho laughs harder. It’s a relief to be teasing him like normal. Or it is until Jisung says, “and it’s not like Wonpil is a novice either. If anyone’s going to walk me through it, it’ll be my boyfriend.”

“Oh,” Minho says, thick. “So the boyfriend rumours are true.”

Jisung flushes, and turns his nose away to hide it.

“He just asked me tonight.”

So when he’d seen them earlier, they hadn’t been exclusive. If he’d just—if only he’d—

His thoughts stall and keep stalling. He can’t get in gear. He doesn’t even know where he’s trying to go.

“Congrats,” he says stiffly.

“Don’t pretend to be happy for me.” The corner of Jisung’s mouth is creeping up in a smile, like he’s endeared by Minho’s hostility. This is one of the great benefits to being Jisung’s best friend. They share a certain raw edge. They understand each other’s flat planes and deep dark valleys. They recognize each other’s natures.

“I am happy for you. I’m not happy for Wonpil-ssi.”

“We’ll work on it,” Jisung says condescendingly. He pats both of Minho’s cheeks. “You big baby. C’mere.”

Minho comes here.

He steps between Jisung’s thighs, leaving his ramen cooling beside them on the counter, and gathers him close. Jisung’s arms drape comfortably over his shoulders, and his face presses into Minho’s hair. It’s like breathing deeply after a fortnight of shallow gasping.

“I think,” Jisung whispers, “you miss hanging out with me.”

“We live together,” he murmurs into his collar. He smells good, like cedar and cold air, but there’s a bright, unfamiliar undertone there too. He’s been wrapped up in someone else. His hands fist in Jisung’s pullover.

“Sure, but we’re living different lives right now.” His voice is mild, serious like he gets sometimes, soft-spoken in a way that is ordinarily soothing. “Studio sessions, and rehearsals, and new relationships, and everything. Change comes for us all.”

“I don’t want to live different lives,” Minho says.

Jisung hum-laughs. “Okay, baby. Then you have to try to like my boyfriend. Thems the rules.”

“I like you.”

“That’s a relief,” he says sarcastically. And then he pulls back, and squeezes Minho’s face until he’s holding his pout in his hand. “You’re lucky your resentment is cute.”

Minho takes advantage of his fish-ed out lips, and makes kissy noises at him, which makes Jisung drop his face and duck off the counter, laughing.

“Can I have some ramyeon as payment for you being a dick today?”

“Make your own.”

“I like how you make it,” Jisung says, putting his face into the steam and closing his eyes.

Minho watches him for an erratic little one-two heartbeat, and when Jisung looks up from the sweating cup with his most earnest smile, Minho feels heat on his own face. He smiles back automatically, helplessly.

“Boil some more water,” he says, and when Jisung pumps his fists in triumph, Minho can’t think of a single solitary thing he wouldn’t do to earn that smile.

That night, in his dreams, his back is up against the stainless steel of the fridge, and Jisung is on his knees.

“I’ve never done this before,” Jisung says, which is maybe the hottest thing he could’ve said. Not even his boyfriend has had him this way. He’s clinging onto Minho’s waistband, and his nails are dimpling the fabric.

“Good,” Minho says softly. “I get to teach you.”

Jisung looks up at him, uncannily Jisung-like. It’s the expression he makes when Minho has said something he truly didn’t expect.

“You’re into that?”

“I’m into anything you could possibly do to me.” As soon as he’s said it he knows that it’s true.

Jisung must hear the truth in it too, because he makes a choked little sound, and rubs his face against the front of Minho’s sweatpants. He can’t help it—his cock jumps against Jisung’s cheek. He looks up, wide-eyed.

“I can’t believe you want me like this,” he says wonderingly.

“Really? I thought it was obvious.”

“Well it is now,” he says, moving one lovely hand down, fitting it around the shape of his erection and squeezing. He jerks, and Jisung looks owlishly up, seeming surprised by his own power.

“You’re going to kill me,” Minho informs him breathily.

“Oh yeah?” He gets this bratty smile on his face, and then Minho’s pants are tugged down around his knees, too fast to be real. 

He doesn’t remember how it starts, but Jisung is suddenly stroking him off, kissing generously over his thighs, holding him flat against the fridge. Or is it his bedroom wall? There’s a curtain clenched between his fingers. He’s—

Jisung’s mouth suctions around him. He’s making this face that he does when he’s eating good food: mournful eyebrows, humming little affirmative noises.

“So good,” Minho chokes. “How’re you so good? I missed you.” Missed his full attention, his clever mouth, his carefully cultivated talents. If Jisung applies himself, he can pull out any manner of skill from those hidden depths of his. He’s a magic trick waiting to happen.

The Jisung in his imagination likes to be praised. His tongue flexes, searching reflexively, and he makes a noise he’s never heard Jisung make before. 

And then somehow he’s talking, even though the pleasure doesn’t stop.

“I’ve always wanted you, hyung.”

“Really?” he pants. This is important. “Really, Jisungie? Tell me.”

“Love you hyung,” Jisung slurs, and friction seizes Minho’s body, dragging him to the edge of an impossibly steep precipice. No matter what, he can’t look down. “Love being with you. Wanna make you come, okay? I want to feel you.”

“Sung,” Minho tries, his voice disintegrating in his mouth, turning to sweetness. “Baby,” he tries. The details are starting to become obscured; the correlation between sight and sensation pull to pieces the more closely he tries to look. All he can make out is the visual of Jisung’s pink face, his spit-glossy lips. All he can feel is the tide rising in his gut.

“Don’t you want me?” His eyes are quivering mercury. God, does he want him. He kisses the tip of his cock reverently, and his fist slides down, and Minho is—Minho is—

Waking up.

He’s disoriented this time. He rips into consciousness with Jisung’s name dying in his mouth, and he doesn’t know—it takes him a minute to understand that none of it was real. He clutches his face, rolls halfway off the mattress and catches himself on one foot, fumbling for the bedside lamp.

In the watery light, he palms himself and finds that he actually—he came in his sleep, in his pants, like a teenager. He came all over imaginary Jisung’s face.

Two sex dreams. Two sex dreams and enough confused jealousy to choke on it, day in and day out.

God. God, this can’t be good.

But his feelings haven’t changed, have they? It’s not like he wants their dynamic to shift, or for fun, insignificant gestures to become loaded with meaning. He doesn’t want their relationship to be heavy like that. He doesn’t want to date Jisung; he’s not even sure what that would look like.

He still feels affection and annoyance and protectiveness and exasperation and—okay, maybe some attraction. Enough attraction to fuss with his subconscious, and make him imagine staking a… more literal claim over his friend. It’s the taboo, more than anything, isn’t it? A crossed wire, a little heat. What if these two worlds overlapped? What if your friendship slipped and fell into fantasy?

But it’s just Jisung. They’ve always been a little overly invested. He’s always kept him close to his chest. They’ve always been teased about following each other around, anywhere, everywhere, dancing on the same wavelength together.

He holds his eyes with the heels of his hands, remembering not-Jisung’s pillowy cheek pressed against his straining cock, his familiar sleepy, syrupy voice confessing, love you.

In his dreams, it had all felt so obvious. 

Here in the lamplight, recovering from an illusory confession and an unsanctioned orgasm, he’s not so sure.

An uneasy week passes, and Minho finds himself unplugging, gradually, wire by wire.

He pads his waking hours with distraction: breakfast and anime, lunch breaks and school work, extra workouts stuffed into any empty margins. He lingers at the studio until his muscles start to feel fall-off-the-bone tender, exhausting himself to a dreamless sleep.

But Saturday night rolls around, and he shows up to Felix and Chan’s place like always. No matter how good or bad his day has been, it’s always such a relief to be one of eight.

It’s like a controlled explosion when they’re together, or a mosh pit. There’s chaos, but in the chaos there are rules. All the noise and clutter of their day-to-day is condensed, and their far-flung lives—separate majors and universities, projects and venues, successes and failures—move briefly as one.

He likes the balance they’ve found over the years. The unrelenting extroversion of people like Changbin or Felix helps keep his attention outside of his body when he often defaults to falling quietly inwards.

They’re good at upholding little traditions and, by proxy, upholding each other. He has standing shabu-shabu dates with Hyunjin after class, odd hours karaoke with the maknaes, monthly check-ins with Chan that they generously call ‘catch-up drinks,’ but are barely a step down from parental interrogation. 

He’s grateful for Jisung too, in all the mayhem, for making their home a bridge between campuses, between worlds. Just when Minho’s starting to get too caught up in the ups and downs of rehearsal, he’ll come home late to find Chan and Changbin in their living room—headphones long since abandoned, someone’s raspy voice note melody being chewed on by some bootlegged editing software. The three of them producing manically, constantly, bringing music into Minho's life.

And then there are the weekly movie nights. There’s never enough seating for eight, so they sit in a mess of criss-crossing legs and jammed pillows, knees leveraged as back support for floor sitters, bodies sardined into the two-seater couch. It’s not mandatory to talk over whatever movie they manage to agree on, but seven days worth of backlogged anecdotes flying from eight different directions means things nearly always get derailed.

They’re in the middle of one such derailment—a restless ten minute break with the spectre of Ma Dong-Seok’s face paused mid-dialogue on screen, and Seungmin is explaining behind-the-scenes lore with suspicious earnestness. Jisung makes a show of stretching down to pick up the remote, to put them all out of their misery, when Minho sees the hickey on his throat.

He reaches out without thinking and presses two fingers to it, as if he’s smudging a stain away. Jisung sputters and yanks out of his reach.

“Jesus, Minho!” He claps a hand over the scuffed red mark.

“Very nice,” Changbin laughs, catching immediate wind of a scandal. His mouth tilts. “Did you do that?”

It takes him a moment to realize that he’s talking to Minho.

“What?” he scoffs. “No.”

“Why does everyone think that,” Jisung mutters.

Minho blinks. Interesting. “Who else—“

“Your firstborn is coming of age,” Hyunjin interrupts, patting Chan’s shoulder solemnly. “How does it feel?”

“Gross,” Chan says cheerfully, and Hyunjin barks a laugh.

“Let’s not talk about it anymore,” Seungmin says narrowly, glancing in Minho’s direction. “Movie night is supposed to be sacred.”

“And hickeys aren’t?” Jisung says. “Grow up.”

“What, so you want to talk about it?” Jeongin asks, through laughter.

“No, no, no,” Jisung says hastily. “I was just calling out our homophobe in residence.”

“Would I be here if I was homophobic? No.” Seungmin jams his finger in Jisung’s face pointedly, as if to say checkmate.

“You might be playing the long game,” Minho offers, taking a pull from his watered-down drink.

“Hah, yeah,” Jisung agrees. “Gathering intel to take to the dean or something.”

“What intel do you think I’m gathering?” he asks, exasperated.

“I don’t know, look around you. There’s a lot to choose from if you’re a homophobe.”

“Slander,” Seungmin deadpans, and Felix cracks up, reaching out for a high five.

“Hey, you’re the worst offender, hyung,” Jeongin says, still fighting his own smile as he catches Felix’s eye.

Felix gawks. “Wow, offender. Y’little cunt. I’m pretty sure that’s hate speech. Anyway, I’m not nearly as bad as Changbin-hyung.” On cue, Changbin curls his fists under his chin and bats his eyelashes at Felix. “Or whatever the hell those two have going on.” He prods two fingers in Minho and Jisung's direction, still hip to hip on the couch.

Jisung shoots Minho a wicked sideways grin, and lays a meaningful hand on his shoulder. “I’ve always wanted you, hyung,” he says faux-seriously.

Minho recoils. He doesn’t mean to, but his dream clatters through his head, and his senses flood with unreality. Jisung’s hair between his fingers, Jisung’s face lost in ecstasy, Jisung’s lapping tongue, Jisung waiting eagerly for him to come.

When he wades back to reality, he’s standing, and everyone is staring at him.

“Um?” Jisung says. He looks anxious, hurt. There are a few exchanged glances, and shame seizes Minho’s nervous system like a parasite.

He blinks a few times, waiting to feel normal. When that doesn’t happen, he extracts himself from the situation altogether, speed-walking to the sliding door and out onto the balcony. He jams the door shut behind him, thoughts racing.

What is going on with me?

It’s one thing for the lines to be blurred, or for feelings to get a little trampled when big changes happen, but fantasizing so vividly, so suddenly, that it gets in the way of their normal friendship?

He thinks of the hickey on Jisung’s neck and feels a wave of queasiness sloshing over him. Wonpil put his mouth on the tender skin between Jisung’s clavicles. He probably loomed over him, maybe even held him down, and felt the noises he was making buzzing under his lips, his tongue. Minho looks woozily at the ground below, and finds himself doubly paralyzed, shocked with fear and confused longing.

The door groans open behind him, and he startles into the wall, palms scraping rawly over the stucco.

“Hey, woah, it’s cool.” Chan stands at a healthy distance, his hands held up placatingly.

Minho shakes his head. It’s not cool. Something keeps fucking with one of his most important relationships, and he has a sinking feeling that it’s him.

“Wanna tell me what’s up with you?”

Another swift shake.

“Alright. Should I guess?”

He just waits, hunched, listening. 

Chan leans up against the wall next to him, a safe stretch back from the railing, the three-storey drop.

“Okay, so. I reckon this might be a Jisung-related problem, seeing as you don’t get this upset over much else.”

Minho squints in his direction. 

Chan laughs. “I’m taking that as a yes. Is it about Wonpil-hyung?”

“He’s even a hyung to you,” Minho mutters. “He’s old as dirt.”

Chan laughs even harder. “Geez, tell me how you really feel.”

“Okay,” Minho says evenly. “I think it’s crazy that you guys let Jisung date that guy.”

“Let him?” Chan says, wide-eyed. “Since when do I authorize Jisung’s decisions?”

“Okay, I didn’t mean let. But you should have—“ he breaks off, frustrated. “We should… protect him.” His voice trails off into a mumble. It’s embarrassing to be this guy.

“From what? Hickeys?”

They exchange another loaded look.

“Minho-yah. I think you’re pretty close to an important realization here, but you don’t want to deal with it.”

“You sound like a fortune-teller.”

“You sound like you’re being avoidant,” Chan accuses. When Minho just shrugs, he continues, “I think you’ve always known that there was something different about Jisung for you, mm? I think you like being special to him. I think seeing him branch out has forced you to confront your feelings. And I think you’re taking your confusion out on your friendship, and Jisung doesn’t know why you’re doing that.”

Each sentence is the pang of a mallet against a tightly-strung drum: a painful resonance.

“It’s not like I’m in love with him.”

Chan shrugs back at him. “Okay. Try getting to know his boyfriend, then.”

“I don’t really want to,” he says. He keeps his tone light. Unbothered. Chan sees through him.

“Do you want to keep Jisung as a friend?”

His eyes narrow. “Obviously.”

Chan gets this look on his face that’s bizarrely resigned. “Then get over this.”

“Hyung—“

“Minho,” Chan says. His eyes were glittering with mirth before, but now they’re still waters. His smile has become small and grim. “Get over it, mate. Alright?”

He claps him on the shoulder once, and leaves him to his thoughts, and the biting February wind.

Minho wakes to the sound of muffled laughter. He lifts his head from the pillow, listening. For a while there’s nothing but the ticking clock and the buzz of electricity. He’s halfway to wondering if he’d dreamed it.

His hand paws clumsily for his charging cord, reeling his phone in along its length. The screen comes to life, shockingly bright in the otherwise total darkness. 1:14 AM.

Ugh. He has studio space rented out at 8:30. He starts to shuffle upright, assuming that Jisung forgot to charge his headphones, or lost track of what time it was. He’ll go knock on his door.

Except he hears another noise at that exact moment, and this time it’s not laughter. It’s a gasp, badly muffled. And then, clear as day—

“You look so fucking hot,” a low voice says. Wonpil.

Suddenly Minho is extremely awake. His face floods with searing heat. He reaches for the bedside lamp—and hesitates. The darkness makes this unreal, somehow. Lamplight would chase away the lingering possibility that he’s still asleep. He can’t move. He can’t breathe.

“Hyung,” Jisung moans. Minho bites the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes blood. Christ, he’s never, ever heard him sound like that; Jisung’s low voice tempered with honey lightness, sweet and unfiltered.

A response filters in through the wall in fragments: “—you go,” he says, “—a natural.”

“Nghh, please.” 

Somehow Minho is on his feet. He has no recollection of standing, but the comforter is drooping from his body like a spent chrysalis, and he’s transformed, terrified. He floats towards their shared wall in a daze. 

He has to do something. The thought pounds in his head, irrational. 

His stomach is wobbly with pre-sickness. He has to do something.

There’s lucid heat spreading all over his skin, setting his hair on end. He feels nearly incandescent as he crouches, silent, beside his book shelf, and bows his head towards the place where Jisung is coming apart in someone else’s hands.

“Sungie,” Wonpil says, clearer. “Taking my fingers so well.”

“Y-yeah?” Jisung replies. His breath is coming in big, stuttering cycles, like waves pouring over rocks. It occurs to Minho that this might be the first time he’s ever been fingered. The thought is splitting his skull in half, furious iron jealousy and pulsing liquid desire.

“Yeah—fuck.” He cranes, trying to tune out Wonpil’s soft pleasured noises, the creaking of the bedsprings as one of them ruts after their release. “Made for it.”

“Can you—more, please?” Oh, he’s begging so soft, so pretty. Who knew he had this shy, submissive facet? Who knew it would impact Minho in much the same way as a sledgehammer?

“‘Course I can.” 

Jisung makes a wordless sound of pleasure, low and compressed, and Wonpil laughs in surprise.

“Easy,” he soothes. “How are you so wet.” Minho’s mouth falls open at the visual. His ears are ringing tinnily, overwhelmed with rushing blood. “Leaking so much, baby. You like how that feels?” 

“Unh—yeah, yeah, I like it.”

“Want my cock, jagi?” 

Minho lays his forehead flat against the wall, inexplicably near tears, and thinks, don’t fucking call him that. Don’t call him what I call him. If he hears Jisung getting fucked for the first time three feet away from him through this wall, he might be obligated to beat Wonpil to death.

“I—“ Jisung hesitates. It’s only a moment, but Minho hears it. “Yeah, yes, please, fuck me.”

Wonpil makes a muffled sound, followed by a silence where Minho’s sure they must be kissing, just a little bit too quiet to hear. 

“Come on, hyung,” Jisung says. There’s the coarse slide of a drawer opening, and then Jisung ventures, “need you inside me.” At which point Minho has to reach down and grip himself through his sweats, more of a preventative measure than a pleasure-seeking. His face is crushed into the wallpaper and his desire is flaring like a candle, feeding on Jisung’s pleasure but wavering at every reminder that it’s being given to someone else.

He’s fascinated to find that the fusion between Jisung’s whiny innocence and cool confidence makes for soft-spoken begging and no-nonsense dirty talk. He wonders if he would be bratty, if he was being teased properly. If he was being praised and edged and worshipped. He wonders if he could pull cocky dominance out of him too, if he egged him on just right. It all sounds good, perfect. Anything would be hot with Jisung, he’s pretty sure. 

Jisung makes a startled noise that opens up into a loud, keening cry.

A brief sound, skin-on-skin, and then Jisung goes, ‘w-wait—oh, oh fuck—we have to be quiet.”

“But you sound so pretty.”

“But Minho—ah!”

Minho’s name on Jisung’s lips—broken in half by a moan, lighter than air. His hand tightens around the base of his cock; lust looks back to find guilt chasing its tail. He’s a wreck. A mess of spit smeared against the wall, pre-come welling into his boxers.

He forces himself up, pushing hastily up off the wall and staggering to the centre of the room. He puts his arms around himself, protective. The surround sound has eased, at least, so he can think again.

The truth of the matter is, Minho knows he could do a better job than Wonpil. He knows Jisung better. He already spends his days dragging his mood around, teasing him into motion. This would be no different. He pictures it: pushing all the right buttons in sequence. Starting as they always do, tweaking a smile here, a scandalized gasp there. One of their conversations exchanged only in soft modulating hums, only this time they start to get wilder, hotter, as they go on.

He’s so used to the way they gently build each other up, block by block, but here, now—he wants to take him apart. 

Minho’s feelings race in twitchy, half-baked circles. He paces the rest of the way back to his bed on wobbly legs, feeling like he’s the one who just got fucked, somehow. He can vaguely hear the muffled peak, the come-down, a wide, swerving laugh, quiet footsteps to the garbage can and back.

Part of him is still on his knees, supplicant, Jisung’s sweet, torn voice in his ear, opened up by pleasure. 

Everything he knows about Jisung was just condensed and transformed in a lightning strike of secondhand desire. He’s floored. Scraped raw but not clean. He finds that he’s been holding onto an unanswered question for so long that it’s become warped in his sweaty fist.

Jisung injected into this context was both a devastation and an electric shock, and so—only one conclusion is possible, really: it should be Minho in there with him. It should always be Minho next to Jisung. 

Minho met Han Jisung when they were seventeen and fifteen, respectively. He had just freshly transferred schools, and promptly signed up for a spring showcase to try and feel out the arts programming on offer (and appease his watchful parents).

He didn’t anticipate how robust the theatre’s attendance was, or how high the stakes would be.

He vividly remembers pacing the wings of the auditorium stage, warming up physically but deteriorating mentally.

“Doesn’t all that pacing tire you out?” a voice had said. “You wouldn’t want to flub a jump because you were doing a marathon back here.”

At this point, he already knew of Jisung. They’d spoken a handful of times, and although Jisung had seemed icy at first, he’d been the one to welcome Minho at rehearsals. He was pretty sure he’d sussed Jisung out in the scant month he’d been there. He was cocky, talented, insecure, cute. Like a puppy who’d learned biting would get him attention.

But here he was, unexpectedly reaching out. Half-smiling. Clearly nervous.

Minho had shrugged. “Ever heard of warming up?”

“I usually warm down, myself.” Something about that small, strange joke had charmed Minho.

“Ah, so if your performances are lacklustre, you need to adjust your thermostat.”

Jisung grinned. “I wouldn’t know.” He was bragging, but there was a sly twinkle in his eye. He was enjoying the distraction as much as Minho was.

“You perform at room temperature, then? Around twenty-two degrees?”

Jisung framed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “Nah, I keep it cooler than that.” He was grinning, and it was this landslide of a smile. Totally disruptive. It transformed his face for the better, and Minho found himself smiling back at him.

“It’s a shame.”

“Hm?” Jisung had gravitated close enough to knock shoulders, though he was half obscured through the drape of backstage shadows. This close, he could tell that Jisung was even more nervous than he had first let on. He was fidgeting with his hands, eyes cast low to avoid looking at how close they had become.

“‘Twenty-two degrees’ isn’t a bad name for an album.”

Jisung smiled sideways. “Ahh, I’ll be sure to credit you, when it tops the music charts.”

A voice came down from the sound system heavens then, piercing their bubble with a five minute warning. Performers started to line up in neat rows, whispering to each other, clutching instruments and straightening dance costumes. 

Jisung gave him a reassuring smile, and then, to his surprise, he slipped his hand into Minho’s and squeezed.

“You’ve got this. You’re a real talent. It’s almost annoying, actually.” He said it with this boyish quality, and a side-swept smile, almost like dialogue from a rom-com.

Someone else might have made fun of Jisung’s earnestness, then. He knew many of his peers would have taken the cracked window of weakness and followed him inside, found where he lives. 

The idea of taking advantage of that total dorky sweetness had no appeal to Minho. It was the first he’d seen of Jisung’s real personality, and truthfully—maybe the first real personality he’d seen at this school so far. He could sense the beginnings of compatibility, already, and it was making him feel giddy.

“You too. But in your case it is annoying, to be clear.”

He laughed, one big, sharp ha! “Lee Minho-ssi. You flatter me.”

“You can speak casually with me,” Minho suggested. “I don’t keep much of a hierarchy with my friends.”

He watched Jisung’s face shift subtly around the realization that Minho considered him a friend. After a beat, he seemed to settle on scrappy determination. Really, he could pinpoint the precise moment that Jisung decided to make the effort to be his friend for real.

“Deal.” His grip tightened, which was how Minho found out that their hands were still clasped together.

In the dark, Jisung’s smile glowed.

After that they fell into lockstep, side by side. They had this balance, you see, where they wove in and out of each other’s attention precisely when they were needed, and left each other alone the rest of the time.

Increasingly, they were together at lunch, strolling in coordinated silence around the courtyard, and then after school, Jisung walking backwards in front of him, whipping the chain-link fence with a flexible stick and talking excitedly about My Hero Academia.

They shared a love for music, for what the mind can convert into sound and what sound can enact upon the body. He found that Jisung was never without his headphones, but when he was with Minho they stayed fixed around his neck like an afterthought. 

Soon, they were at each other’s houses for dinner every other week, and Minho’s mother was asking after ‘that Han boy.’ She listened to him ramble, and made him sweets on his birthday.

It had been a long time since he’d made a friend so instantaneously. Possibly he never had before. 

His childhood friends had watched his youthful idiosyncrasies developing, and teased him good-naturedly until it didn’t matter anymore that they were all so different. But they hadn’t faced the full brunt of his quirks at once. Jisung had, and he’d immediately understood how to play him like a many-voiced instrument. It’s possible only a prodigy like Jisung could manage it. He got his hands in the right place, and sought out his hidden pedals, and had him singing before he could remember he was usually quiet.

He enjoyed playing Jisung in turn, indulging his irreverence, his attention-coveting, navigating the nervousness that only ever melted away in private. He liked his overcompensatory energy bursts, sharp and bright as firecrackers, his niche interests, arms full of bushels of extremes—love and gore, beauty and terror. He was challenging and he liked to be challenged. He was shy and generous, loud and quiet, nerdy and edgy. He played electric guitar and fell down when he tried to play soccer.

Minho filled in his gaps. Often straight-faced, steadying, volatile, where Jisung was expressive, vibrating, soothing. Balance.

And when Minho came out, Jisung took it with shocking grace. He remembers the way he had squeezed his shoulder tightly, and said “ohhh. That explains a lot, actually.” He was half-laughing, trying to take things seriously.

And when Minho had looked quizzically at him, waiting, he’d simply said, “why else would you still be single? 

Bizarrely flattering. Sometimes Jisung would get that way, teasing and blustering over Minho’s handsomeness. Getting close enough to kiss and then dancing away, snickering. Or blushing, if Minho skirted too close to reciprocation.

He raised an eyebrow. “I could be dating a guy, and you wouldn’t even know it."

Jisung scoffed. “At our school? Yeah, if you want to contract something. Like stupidity.”

“Other places exist. I could be pulling some hot barista. Or an idol trainee. Or a CEO’s son.”

Jisung smirked. “Yeah, but you’re not.”

“And how are you so sure, Han Jisung?”

“Because you spend all your free time with me, man.”

“Hm. And how do you feel about me?”

Jisung had laughed, nervous at first, and then with renewed vigour as the absurdity of the conversation seemed to set in. “How exactly should I feel about you? Lustful?”

Minho laughed too, brushing it off, but he hadn’t been joking, exactly.

“I think this might classify as harassment, what you’re doing right now,” he complained.

But Jisung didn’t stop laughing. “Sorry, baby. I feel friend lust for you. Oodles of friend lust.”

He winced. “Gross.”

“Accept my friend feelings,” Jisung had said, rolling halfway on top of Minho on his living room couch, rubbing his grubby face against his chest and collar. Minho grappled with him, rolling on top, pinning his legs down. 

His parents were out, he was freshly out of the closet, and this could have gone a very different direction if it weren’t Jisung, and if Jisung weren’t an odd little romantic and a consummate straight boy.

Eventually, Minho threatened to choke him out, at which point Jisung made a lukewarm BDSM joke, and they wrestled themselves back to a regular, temperate Minho-and-Jisung banter. Friendly with a chance of flirtation.

It was always easy like that. Hard conversations turned to light and powder between them. Nothing ever fit tightly, pulled uncomfortably. There wasn’t tension, because there was no drama large enough to interest either of them, and because they both knew not to pry when the other was upset.

They became each other’s refuge instead. 

Minho goes to Jisung when he needs to rest. He never thought about what would happen if he climbed up into their little treehouse, turned on the light, and found someone else curled up there, with his best friend. Jisung. His—Jisung.

Turns out he was never going to take it all that well. 

Turns out it might tear the treehouse down, slat by slat.

They met when they were kids. He was so exhilarated to be understood, to have connected some loose circuitry and finally feel his energy flowing like it was supposed to. He never thought about what that might mean, if he let it. He never thought about that feeling, bright and alive with electricity, safe and complete, as something that could be romantic. 

He truly never thought about it. Jisung was one thing, and so he probably wasn’t another.

But he was wrong. Jisung has always been everything he could be, everything at once. A chameleon, a many-limbed cephalopod, a jack of all trades, a genius. Minho’s best friend, his longest companion, his greatest source of annoyance, of anxiety. His family, his dongsaeng. And now, the focal point of his desire. 

Of course. Of course if anyone could push and pull at Minho’s emotions, his subconscious, his sex drive, it would be clever, oblivious, determined Jisung.

By the time he gets up in the morning after overhearing Jisung and Wonpil, he’s out of his head. He can’t stop thinking about him. He keeps running the numbers, recategorizing his own memories, agog over how much he’s totally misread or simply ignored.

He’s scared he’s going to do something drastic and ruin their friendship, early in the morning when his new feelings are unchecked, ready to be fired like a bullet from a gun. 

Jisung’s bedroom door cracks, and then there’s muffled conversation spilling out into the hall. Minho, sitting at the kitchen table, tightens his hand around his coffee cup until his knuckles whiten.

Jisung’s soft, pattering voice, Wonpil’s too-bright laughter. The sound of kissing, a crinkling raincoat, and then the door opening and shutting.

Minho waits, both eager and horrified to see how his own body will react when he sees him. Now that he knows.

Jisung pads into the kitchen and finds Minho in the dimness, looking coolly up at the doorway, waiting for him. He lets out a gusty, uncertain little laugh. A flash of those cute teeth, the heart-like curve of his cupid’s bow. 

God. God, how did he not even suspect?

“Aish. You scared me.” 

And really, he looks the same. Loose band shirt, nice underwear peeking out—dark Calvin Klein boxer-briefs. Slender legs, hair a mess, sweet mole winking beside his mouth. He looks soft and warm, the most rumpled version of himself. He looks like he had sex last night.

Has Minho really wanted him all along? Is it possible to want someone like this and not know it?

“How was it?” Minho hears himself say. He presses his face against the tabletop in instant regret.

Jisung makes an uncertain sound, moving closer. “Oh, um. I guess you heard us? That’s really embarrassing.”

“Don’t worry.” Minho shrugs one shoulder, still hiding his face. “You’ve heard a lot worse from my room.”

He looks up to find Jisung trying to smile again, clearly tamping down his knee-jerk shame. “Your many escapades,” he jokes softly, dragging out the kitchen chair next to Minho’s and—gingerly—sitting. He puts his feet up on the crossbar of Minho’s chair, pulling himself closer.

Minho can—he can smell him. Dying aftershave from the night before, musk, sweat. He hasn’t showered yet. There’s a fresh, dark hickey turning his collarbone purple. He resists the urge to touch, this time. He doesn’t know if he would be able to resist tracing the shape of it down under his shirt. 

His desire looms like a second sun in the sky, closer and hotter and realer than anything else.

“Was he good to you?” Minho murmurs. His heart aches. He wants to drag him into his lap, card his hand through his tangled hair, hold his full cheek, and keep him close. Make him laugh. This is torture, already. How is he going to do this?

Instead of answering, Jisung asks, “what’s wrong?”

Minho shakes his head quickly. “Nothing’s wrong. Just curious.” He takes a long sip of coffee, feeling Jisung’s eyes tracing his profile. “If he hurt you, I can find a wood chipper to put him in.”

“Yowch,” Jisung snorts. “Vivid.”

“I’m a wordsmith.”

“Sure you are. No but, it was good. He was—well. Not gentle exactly, hah, but. Understanding, I guess.”

Minho looks at him properly, finding Jisung’s pink bottom lip snatched between his teeth. “Understanding?” he prompts.

He colours instantly, body language fluttering uncertainly. “Just! You know what I’m saying!”

“Do I?”

“Hyung,” Jisung scoffs. He thunks his face into Minho’s shoulder, hard enough to sting. “Let’s just say it was new territory for me.”

“Buttsex?”

“Minho.”

He laughs so he won’t think about the plush warmth of Jisung’s face, rolling in dramatic annoyance just under his chin. He’s so painfully cute. Sweet and tactile and over-the-top.

“You are so—uncouth. Find some couth.”

“I’m all couthed out. Someone kept me awake all night, and my couth dried up.” He sort of wants to press it. He wants Jisung to know he heard. He was there with them.

“Don’t,” Jisung moans, pulling back. “I’m vulnerable.”

“Yeah, sure sounded like it. Begging for it and everything.”

“Okay, actually? I think that’s enough,” Jisung says, standing abruptly, chair clattering to the side in his wake. He’s shaking a little. Minho knows immediately that he’s overstepped.

“Jisungie,” he starts, soft.

“Why are you being a dick about this?” he snaps. And then, quieter, realer, “you know I—you know I’m private.” He does that thing where he holds his own cheeks, hiding his blotchy face behind his hands. Minho’s throat burns sympathetically.

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“Seriously. I don’t know why my sexuality is such an issue for you.”

“What? It’s not.”

“Then why do you keep being really crass and weird about it? Like, you don’t talk to Lixie like this.”

The thought of Felix fucking someone else doesn’t fill him with abject despair. He can’t say it. He’s barely put a name on it. He can’t. Minho stares at him and tries to communicate this dilemma without using any words.

Jisung stares back. He crosses his arms. “Do you not believe me?”

“What?” Minho repeats. He’s distracted by Jisung’s posture. It’s his fending-off-bullies posture, anxiety twisting him into a small and tightly-strung shape. Did Minho make him feel like that? His stomach curdles with shame.

“Do you think I’m making it up? Like, I don’t belong in your community or something?” Jisung’s eyes are wet. His lip is caught in his teeth.

Minho stands, fizzy with desperation. What kind of hyung is he? He can’t possibly let Jisung think that that’s what Minho believes.

“No,” he says firmly, reaching out to pry Jisung’s arm from its tangle. He palms his hand between both of his own. “You belong.”

He can see that his sincerity is well-aimed, because Jisung’s face thaws immediately. His fingers curl in Minho’s.

“Then what, hyung?” he murmurs. “Why are you treating me differently?”

Minho’s heart pounds in his throat, and he swallows thickly around it. His clammy hands shift on Jisung’s, sliding up, feeling his delicate wrist bone. When he opens his mouth to speak, his teeth try to chatter with nerves.

Jisung looks down at where their hands are linked, and then slowly up into Minho’s face. Something moves, dark, in his eyes. A wild silhouette. 

“I…” he starts. Jisung’s thumb swipes over the tender inside of Minho’s forearm. Minho’s hand keeps sliding, up towards his elbow. His palm presses warm around the span of Jisung’s arm, squeezing. “I thought we were best friends.”

Jisung’s breathing changes. He can feel a frisson of energy, of blunted interest, as he tries to catch Minho’s eye. If only he could drag his gaze from the place where he’s holding Jisung.

“You’re… mad that I didn’t tell you sooner?” he guesses.

“I thought,” Minho swallows. “You… I thought we put each other first.”

A short silence. And then, horribly, Jisung says, “you know that won’t change just because I have a boyfriend now, right? When have I ever been that flaky?” 

He shakes his head, unable to muster a response that won’t sting like antiseptic.

“You’re still my soulmate,” Jisung says softly. And Minho really can’t take it. He huffs, and pulls back, and keeps pulling back. He needs to be gone. He needs time to bundle away all the longing that’s spooling out of him. He can’t be seen like this.

“Hey,” Jisung complains. “Don’t do that.” He pulls on Minho’s arm, his sleeve, the back of his neck, and then they’re hugging. 

His hand goes automatically to cradle Jisung’s skull, fingers slipping up into silky overgrown hair. He’s light and warm in Minho’s arms, firm and real. His free hand fists in the shirt at Jisung’s waist, clenched tightly, so he won’t feel the way its curve fits naturally into his palm and do something insane about it.

“I put you first,” Jisung says into his neck. “We live together. You’re my best friend. More than that, you’re—“

Minho pulls back just far enough to kiss Jisung on the lips.

It’s a quick press: soft, dry, inevitable. He makes a surprised noise into Minho’s mouth. Into his mouth. 

Ah, he thinks. Something insane.

Minho reels back—or—tries to, but Jisung catches at his hoodie, keeping them connected.

Their eyes meet, close.

Jisung’s are huge and warm. So expressive, his Jisung, all those deep, dark complicated feelings that he thinks are well-kept are always naked in his eyes.

Both of them are breathing hard, overlapping. He can taste Jisung’s spearmint toothpaste on every exhale. He can’t believe he really just kissed him. And—it was that same old feeling again: connecting a dead circuit, fulfillment surging through him like undiluted electricity. 

Except he just ruined their friendship, probably. The thought makes him squirm, flushed, trying to peel himself away. Which is the moment that Jisung kisses him back.

His mouth is a little open from shock, and so Jisung’s bottom lip catches, wet, between his. Minho sucks it inside instinctively, and Jisung gasps, hands spasming against Minho’s chest.

Suddenly, he’s possessed. 

It feels so obvious between them. Certainty eclipses all other thought and sensation. He’s vaguely conscious of moving, pressing into him, mouth hitching further open, hands finding Jisung’s waist and smoothing over his t-shirt, snaring the small of his waist between his flattened palms. He feels the judder when Jisung’s hips collide with the kitchen counter.

Minho leans him back into the cupboards, kissing him again and again, scrambling for an angle that will let him in deeper. He feels like he’s at his front door, and his key is shaky in his hand, and he wants in.

“Hyung,” Jisung whispers, and Minho gets his hands full of him, down around a thigh, the curve of his ass, and drags him up onto the countertop, bullying his way in between his legs.

He feels bare calves hitch up around his hips, and lets gravity drag him down into Jisung’s body, feeling every sleek plane of him through thin cotton. He’s—he’s barely dressed. His arms sling around Minho’s shoulders, and his tongue is hot in his mouth. He can’t get enough. He sucks, bites. Reaches up to hold Jisung’s mouth further open, feeling slender thighs clench around his waist.

“Jisungie,” he says, cotton-headed, furious with want. He puts his thumb to the gleaming centre of Jisung’s lip, and his own mouth glides down, over bone and tender skin, until he’s biting down on his neck, a proper mouthful. In a haze, he starts to overwrite the mark that's already there, laving with his tongue, sucking hard, tilting Jisung’s jaw back so he can work. 

He’s never felt like this before, outside of maybe dancing. No thought, only action. Only need.

He’s making these unthinkable Jisung-noises against his fingers, quiet gasps and loose, streaking whines. He can’t seem to get enough purchase around Minho’s hips, but he keeps grappling closer, feet slipping against the small of his back. He feels insane. Jisung’s body gives and takes underneath him like it was designed for it. He sounds entirely different with Minho too: warmer, needier.

He feels how hard he is against his hipbone, and exhilaration sings through his blood. He ruts their hips together, crushing his face into the damp collar of Jisung’s shirt. He can feel the way pleasure pierces them both on the same arrow. They hold each other in a sort of wild, bloody disbelief. And then he has to pull back just far enough to see the wet mess he’s made of his throat.

Satisfaction hits him and explodes like a firework. He feels his mouth curling, and his eyes dart up to meet Jisung’s, his coconspirator. Those big dark eyes, as familiar as his own, heavy-lidded in a way that’s brand new. And then his brain comes back online.

They stare at each other, panting, like they’ve both just woken up from the same crazy dream.

Minho’s hands drop, and Jisung’s legs go lax. Freed, he staggers away from his body.

He stares at the mess he’s left behind. Jisung is mottled red from his swollen lips to the cluster of bruises on his neck. His thighs are flushed from friction, his shirt pushed up. He can see the outline of his dick through his little underwear, the wet patch where he’s leaked through. From a distance, it feels indecent to even be looking at him this way.

Jisung. His dongsaeng. Ravished against the countertop in their apartment, like that was a fucking normal thing to do. And it felt so good, so natural, that he didn’t question it until it was indelibly done.

“Hyung, don’t—“ 

But Minho is already turning tail and running out the front door.

Staggering out into the bitter wind and whirling foot traffic, Minho catches himself on the outer door, the icy metal shocking his bare hands. His whole body is buzzing with static, with phantom sensation. Stubble-chapped lips, saliva still drying on his cheek, his neck, pins and needles in the aftermath of friction. 

He didn’t stop to put on proper shoes—he’s pacing out into the shining morning in slippers, sweatpants, and a hoodie already pierced through by the winter chill. He doesn’t even have his phone. What was he thinking? 

He feels overbalanced, top heavy, like he’s facing a long narrow staircase six beers deep. Over-confidence and trepidation fought it out in the heat of his intoxicated brain, and now he’s stumbling all the way down.

What was he thinking?

He’s splitting in two. 

There’s the Minho who’s burning up, whose instincts can’t be reasoned with when his stupid crush is in the room. And then there’s the Minho who found himself in possession of all these feelings he’d known nothing about, who looks at his closest friend and can only see his own desire for him like a bad omen, like the beginning of the end.

How could he drag Jisung into such unnecessary complication? No discussion, no adjustment period, no ground rules. No consideration for Jisung’s hair-trigger anxiety, or for the boyfriend who left their apartment not twenty minutes ago. 

He’s a bad fucking friend, he knows he is, and yet. And yet.

Even the winter chill can’t dissipate the heat in the apples of his cheeks, the peaks of his ears.

Minho ducks into their corner convenience store by the grace of muscle memory, half-blind. He picks up a packet of some mystery candy and squints at the label. Blindingly green. Apple? No—melon. Honeydew. The really sweet stuff, gets caught in your teeth.

Jisung. He’d—

He swallows hard, and puts the candy down. Stalks a few paces and snatches his next victim from an overburdened shelf: galbi doritos. Too spicy for Jisung, probably. He’s picky with his chips. 

He’d pulled on Minho’s hair. His hand had cradled his nape, those calloused fingers sliding warmly against the sensitive junction of scalp and ear, and then—tug.

Hyung, he’d whimpered. His skin had tasted like salt, like the Han household—some innate body chemistry/detergent combination, and also subtly of some new product. Floral the way tea is floral. Woodsy the way Jisung isn’t.

He’d been hard, hadn’t he? No, definitely. Minho had seen it—felt it. He’d been into it. He’d been squirming like he does when Felix finds a tender muscle, that involuntary hitch-back lean-in, the overdramatic little moans.

He drops the chips. His hands are slick with sweat. He finds himself wanting to relive every moment of Jisung against him, and also wanting to escape the force of his own greed, to wriggle out of its stranglehold altogether. He’s never felt so many opposite feelings at once; it’s disorienting.

He scoops the chips back onto their shelf, bows vaguely at the ahjussi shopkeep, and pushes back out into the cold. 

He walks until his slippers are sodden. He keeps his head down and his heated thoughts cooling on ice, walking at a clip along the winding alley shortcut to Chan and Lixie’s place. He wants nothing less than to get into the nitty gritty of his mislabeled emotions, but he needs somewhere non-judgemental to be. He needs stabilization.

He jams the buzzer and waits, rubbing warmth viciously into his own arms.

“Hello?” A voice so deep and transparent it can only be Felix’s.

“Yongbok-ah,” Minho says. “Let me up.”

“Oh, hyung? I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Me neither. Let me up,” he repeats.

“Okay, bossy. Sure, just a second.”

He bounces on his heels, waiting impatiently with his hand on the door, listening for the electronic unlatch. 

The foyer is a relief, warm, familiar, crowded with yellow light and age-cracked seating. He beelines for the elevator, clambers inside, and catches his reflection in the mirrored panel opposite the buttons. Definitively rumpled. Hair a mess, flushed with cold, a facade pulled out of shape. He can’t look at himself without remembering. 

Felix greets him at the door with a hand to the shoulder. Ever-welcoming, even when Minho has arrived unannounced and surly. He catches sight of his not-shoes and gasps.

“Did you walk all the way here like that? Hyung!” He tsks in shocked disapproval. “What happened to you?”

“Forgot my shoes.”

Felix rolls his eyes. “You did not. Let’s get you some proper socks, alright? De-slipper please. That’s nasty work.”

Minho shrugs. He’s still buzzing, but the adrenaline is starting to lag a little bit. He kicks off his useless slides, and peels his socks off for good measure, wadding them into an ugly white ball and chucking them into the nearby bin. Felix, who had disappeared into his room, now comes back with fuzzy socks in lemon yellow, and a big knit blanket.

He wanders to the living room and waves Minho in behind him. “Sit, sit.”

Minho waddles over and deposits himself on the couch. “Is Channie-hyung here?”

“Nope,” Felix says, settling next to him. “At work, still. Give me your feet.”

Minho wrinkles his nose. “It’s Saturday.”

“Feet,” Felix insists. Minho puts his feet up, annoyed, and Felix palpates them worriedly. “You could’ve lost a toe. And then how would you dance?”

“On my hands. Take up B-boying.”

Felix snorts, wriggling warm socks up to Minho’s ankles and stroking them down beneath his pant leg. “You’ve got an answer for everything, huh?”

“No,” he argues. “That’s why I need to talk to hyung.”

Felix looks up and catches his eye, and for the first time seems to register the extra strangeness of his demeanour. It never would've taken Jisung so long, a voice in his head hisses. It’s true. He would’ve known right away if Minho’s mood was off. 

“Are you okay?” Felix asks carefully.

Minho looks at him for a long moment, legs slung up in his narrow lap, feeling the gentleness of Felix’s touch, watching the furrowing of his kind face. He blinks at him. He doesn’t know how to say what needs to be said.

“Did something happen?” Felix rephrases. Minho nods. “At the studio?” A head-shake. “At home?” Nod. Felix pauses to think. “Did you fight with Jisung?” Minho blinks again. “At least tell me if I’m getting warm.”

“It depends.”

He grimaces. “C’mon. You either fought or you didn’t.”

“That’s how you do things. Is that how Jisung does things?”

Felix pats his ankle absently. One, two, three, four, like a drumbeat. “I guess not, you’re right. Jisung gets into at least half a fight most days. Usually with himself, honestly.”

Sweetly astute, almost accidental. Very Yongbok.

Minho weathers a wave of guilt so acute that he can feel his face fall. Back at their place, Jisung will likely still be panicking, left alone in an unfinished moment. He would have had to hop down from that counter and clean himself up in the cold aftermath, nursing the tenderness of Minho’s mark on his neck.

Minho takes his legs back, and puts his head between them.

“Hyung?” Felix asks, alarmed. At that moment, someone’s phone starts to ring.

Minho covers his ears with his hands. Felix fishes his cell out of his pocket in his peripheral vision. 

“Oh,” he says softly. Minho looks up sideways, and finds him staring at the caller ID. “It’s Jisung. Should I be mad at him?”

It’s the first easy answer of the morning. “No,” he says quickly.

“Okay,” Felix breathes, relieved. He picks up the phone, “hey, Sung.” His gaze darts to Minho as he listens to whatever Jisung is saying. Minho watches his micro-expressions, holding his breath. “Right now? Uh…” He covers the receiver. “He wants to come over. Should I tell him you’re here?” Minho shakes his head violently, but Felix’s face jitters, mouth falling open as he gets caught up in listening, and then his expression goes sheepish. “Yeah, sorry… he’s right here. Sorry,” he repeats, for Minho’s benefit. 

“What good are you,” Minho says, but there’s no bite in it.

“He wants to talk to you.”

Minho hesitates, but… he can’t do any more clumsy, half-baked harm. It’s not a non-action, ignoring Jisung. It says something he doesn’t want to say.

He plucks the phone from Felix’s grip, and puts it to his ear.

Jisung’s breath. The last time he heard it, it was right up against the shell of his ear, laced with heat. He closes his eyes and listens, pulse thudding in his throat.

“You ran away,” Jisung says flatly.

“Sorry.”

Across the couch, Felix looks pleased that apologies for their non-fight are being exchanged. Minho has to look away.

“I knew you were being weird. I knew it.”

“Jisung-ah.”

“Don’t Jisung-ah me. I knew. I know.”

“What do you know?” he asks quietly.

“You—“ he falters. “You’re weird.”

“Jisungie,” he says, even quieter.

“Don’t Jisungie me either,” he snaps. Minho smiles, helpless. He’s so helpless. “You kissed me,” Jisung accuses.

“I know.” He can see it, now, when he closes his eyes. Probably won’t ever stop seeing it.

“You don’t know anything!” Jisung exclaims. “You—I’m the one who—I have a boyfriend.”

“I know.”

Jisung makes an awful noise, tearful and frustrated. “Then why did you do it?”

“I don’t know.” He doesn’t. He knows why he wanted to do it, but he can’t for the life of him figure out why he had.

It’s the wrong thing to say. Jisung makes the noise that he makes when he doesn’t want to cry.

“Jagi,” Minho says, in a very small voice, and hopes that it conveys what he needs it to.

They breathe at each other for a while. Minho feels tremulous hope, just at the sound of him. To hold his voice close to his ear is almost to hold him for real. So much of Jisung is his voice.

“Are you going to do it again?”

A choked thrill—terrified desire banded across his ribs, squeezing his lungs. Hushed, he asks: “do you want me to?”

A heavy pause, an exponential silence that compounds and compounds until Minho’s eardrums pop with impatience. “I don’t know,” Jisung whispers. “You should have asked me before.”

“What does that mean?”

Jisung is silent for a moment. “I called your cellphone, but you left it here. I’m holding it.” There’s something strangely sweet about that unnecessary detail tacked on at the end, that piece of him left behind in Jisung’s hands.

“What do you mean by before?” he asks more pointedly.

“Hyung,” Jisung whines. And he’s right back in that kitchen. Between his thighs, chasing something, something that’s skipping, gorgeous, rippling, back along the silver surface of their life together so far. “I can’t think.”

“Yes you can. Yes you can. I asked if you want me to kiss you again and you said—“ Felix’s face does something ridiculous, childlike, jaw dropping. “You said I should have asked you before. Before what?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

“If I hadn’t left, would you have stopped me?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jisung says. His voice is such a raw little thing, not yet cooked in the patented Han Jisung bravado.

“It matters to me.”

“You did leave, Minho.”

“Jisung—“

“What exactly do you want from me? Do you just not like who I’m dating?”

His tongue feels caught. He’s backed into the corner of a mirror maze, exposed, lost. “I… I had a moment of weakness,” he tries.

Another long, uncomfortable silence. “So, what… do we just forget it?”

He shakes his head automatically. “Do you think you can?”

“I don’t know, can you?”

Another easy question. “No, Jisungie, I can’t.”

The line swishes, melancholy. “Then I guess we fake it ’til we make it. Because I’m not losing you over this, hyung.”

“Of course you’re not,” he chokes out. “Who said anything about losing anyone?”

“Come home soon,” Jisung urges. “Seriously. You scared the shit out of me, running away like that, without any of your stuff.”

“You still want to see me?” 

“Duh. It wasn’t just your mistake, you know. I kissed you back,” Jisung says frankly.

“Oh good, I didn’t hallucinate that.”

“Hallucinate me often, do you?”

“Only when my self-esteem is very low.”

“Yeah, the negging isn’t gonna work on me anymore. You put your tongue in my mouth.”

Minho sputters.

“Too soon?” Jisung asks.

“Hell, I don’t know. What are the rules for best friend kissing?”

“Don’t do it I think is the main one.”

“Well. We’ve never really been rule followers, have we?”

“Not if we can help it.” There he is. His favourite coconspirator. Minho’s shoulders droop with relief. They’ll be okay.

“I’ll be home tonight. I need—“

“Yeah,” Jisung interrupts. “I get it. Me too.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“I—bye, hyung. Tell Felix to close his mouth.”

Minho snorts, and looks up to see Felix’s wide eyes, his still-gaping expression. “Jisung says close your mouth.” Felix’s jaw snaps shut with an audible clack.

On the other end Jisung laughs his perfect laugh, and hangs up.

“Uh—hello? Hyung?” Felix prompts immediately, projecting unprecedented numbers of question marks. He steals his phone back and looks down at the screen, as if to make sure it really was Jisung on the other end. “Who’s kissing who exactly?”

Minho shrugs. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Felix lets out a disbelieving shout, scooting closer, grabbing onto Minho’s ankles. “You’re kidding. You have to tell me.”

Should he even be having this conversation right now? Felix is a well-meaning gossip. He lets things slip in the rush and clatter of conversation. He likes roping people in on the joke, since he’s used to being left out of it. 

He’s also a bit closer to Jisung than Minho. He would never say it, but Felix likes caring for people, and Jisung is an easier subject than Minho is. Chan, on the other hand, is relentlessly even-handed. Sure, he has a soft spot for Jisung (who wouldn’t), but he’s committed to fairness, sportsmanship, loyalty.

Minho looks at Felix’s hopeful, buzzing face, and sticks his tongue out at it. 

Another anguished shout, and Felix says, “you can’t just use my phone to flirt in front of me like that, and then not explain yourself!”

He feels a genuine ripple of confusion tingling up his spine. “Did that seem like flirting to you?”

Felix throws his hands up. “I dunno, there was kissing involved, so I’d say so.”

Minho toys idly with the edge of the blanket Felix has laid across his thighs. He finds a loose thread and wraps it twice around his pinky, cutting off circulation. He looks at the purpling bulb of his fingertip and tilts his head. 

“I've been experiencing some… new feelings.”

“Feelings,” Felix repeats. 

Minho looks up reluctantly into fluttering blond lashes. “Dreams,” he amends.

A grin starts to creep across Felix’s nasty little face. “The wet kind?”

“Aish, Yongbok,” Minho reprimands, teasing to distract himself. “That’s crude.”

“You’re crude.” Felix looks again at the dark screen of his phone like it might reveal the secrets of the universe unto him. “I always thought—maybe, but. You really kissed? Each other?”

“Is that hard to believe?”

“Kind of?” Felix says. “Not really. You two are very strange. You can make each other do things I never thought either of you would do.”

“I didn’t make him do anything.” The idea is not new, but it is horrible.

Felix looks up at his sharp tone. “No, of course not, hyung.”

“It was just a peck, but then he… I don’t know. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I was handling it.”

“Handling…?”

“The… urgh. Wanting something I shouldn’t. It was fine.” He exhales through his nose. “A small change on my end isn’t enough to make a difference. I like our relationship and I don’t want to change it. But then he—“ he flushes ecstatically. “He does something that makes me crazy.”

Felix looks scandalized, delighted. “You like him,” he says. Gremlin mode. “I shoulda known. Do you know UST?” He says that last part in English, looking very pleased with himself.

“Do you know STFU?” he retorts, also in stiff English, and Felix cackles with delight.

“What changed?” He snuggles closer, intimate, curious, and Minho sighs. Felix searches his face, and then his own cracks open with realization. “Oh right. The boyfriend. I forgot.”

Minho unwraps his finger, feeling the numbness subside at once as the blood flows back in. Something seems to flow warmly in his chest as well, some old forgotten feeling. He’s appalled to find that he wants to cry. He flicks Felix’s calf instead.

“I wish I could forget,” he murmurs. “But he’s around all the time. He treats Jisung like a chew toy.”

“Well, there’s no contest, hyung, you know that right? If he had to choose?”

“Why would he have to choose?”

“Uh—I don’t know. Because he’s kissing both of you?”

It’s not meant to be, but it lands as a low blow. Like he could be on par with this new guy. Like all of their formative years laced together pale in significance to a hook-up or two. Like kissing means more than loving someone all the way through the pangs of becoming a person.

“We’re not kissing.”

Felix looks confused. “Like, currently, no, I guess not.”

“We won’t, again. We just agreed.”

Felix looks skeptical. “What if he does something that ‘makes you crazy’ again?”

‘Not if, when,” Minho says grimly. 

“Right,” he says, with a ghost of a smile, “when he makes you crazy.”

He shrugs. “I’ll deal with it better. It’s enough to be—“ He almost doesn’t say it. It feels far too vulnerable and soppy and out of character, but he has a new character now, he guesses. He’s unlocked a new, embarrassing customization. “It’s enough to be close to him.”

Felix’s smile fades a little. “How do you feel about him, really?”

“How do I feel?” The mess in his head briefly clears. “It’s Han Jisung,” he says plainly.

Felix bows his head, and the smile returns. “So you’re in love with him,” he accuses.

Before he can respond, a key scrapes in the front door, which jostles open to reveal Chan and Changbin mid-conversation. Something silly and sensationalized, with lots of harrumphing and gesturing from Changbin, and pealing, full-body laughter from Chan. They both stop in their tracks when they catch sight of Felix and Minho curled up on the couch.

“Isn’t this cozy,” Changbin says, affecting a cutesy voice. He plops down behind Felix and hooks his chin over his shoulder to grin at Minho. “Girls’ night?”

“It’s like, noon,” Felix argues.

“That’s the only part you had a problem with?” Changbin laughs, staccato.

Chan takes the armchair, and examines them with a concern that is only barely draped in friendly nonchalance.

“Everything okay?” he asks, warm and safe and yet strangely exposing. Changbin reads the room, and instantly modulates his mood to match. He pushes Yongbok gently to the side so he can see everyone’s faces. 

“Minho’s in crisis,” Felix says sideways. Ah, already oversharing. Probably not even thinking about it.

The thought of going through the details all over again makes him feel vaguely ill. It always seems like a good idea to let Chan solve his problems, until he’s forced to reckon with doing the right thing. He’d rather keep doing what he’s doing, scattershot as it is. He’s rather pretend the ground isn’t approaching, and stay weightless, in the suspended moments before impact.

He shouldn’t have come here. Felix’s words have lodged like a dagger in his chest. He can feel his blood pumping and spitting around it: you’re in love with him.

“Still?” Chan tries to tease.

“Does this have anything to do with why Jisung called looking for you twenty minutes ago?” Changbin asks.

“What did he say?” Minho blurts. Changbin raises an eyebrow, and his mouth twitches to match.

“He hung up when he realized you weren’t with us. Rudely, I may add. You should teach your dongsaeng some manners.”

“He’s your dongsaeng too.”

“Oh, come on. He’s more yours than he is mine.”

Minho blinks, scoffs, and can’t summon a single thing to say in response to that. He finds that his chest is a lost gallery, full of all of this unexamined art: Jisung-and-Minho memories in golden frames, small things, slow rolled-back mornings together, Jisung ‘ahh’ing for a spoonful of something Minho just made, Minho answering his phone calls before the first ring had expired, both of them grocery shopping at a snail’s pace, looking at everything, everything, together.

“Did something happen with you guys?” Chan asks carefully. 

Did something happen? Only the overturning of every stone in their garden path, only the mulch and the dark soil, and no direction whatsoever.

“No,” He replies quickly. “We’re working it out. Don’t worry about us.” He goes to stand, and the blanket sags unceremoniously to the ground.

Felix reaches out to grab his wrist as he goes to leave. “Wait, didn’t you want Chan’s advice? You have all three of us here for support you know?”

“Unconditional,” Changbin says lightly, like it’s a joke, even though it’s not.

His skin is starting to feel itchy. He can sense his feelings mutating under their microscope, splitting and osmosing. 

“Ah, yeah.” He nods jerkily, breaking gently free from Felix’s grip. “I feel very supported.”

“Minho—”

“Thanks for everything, Lix-ah. I have to get home.” He pushes dizzily into the entryway, feeling six eyes skewering into his retreating back.

“Take my shoes,” Felix calls. 

“Call me,” Chan commands. “… Please.”

“Say hi to Jisung,” Changbin says, because he’s an asshole who knows things.

Minho makes a noise that could be sure. 

He jams his feet into the nearest set of running shoes, loops the laces into hasty knots, and pushes out into the hallway. For a moment, he slumps back against the door, feeling his heart galloping somewhere he can’t seem to follow. 

He doesn’t have time for this. Or he doesn’t have the—the skillset. Cheating? Heartache? Unrequited love? This isn’t his life, and it’s certainly not Jisung’s. He won’t do it to either of them. He just won’t feel it. He won’t.

He finds himself at the gym nearest the studio. It feels safe, crowded in broad daylight, animal and impersonal. He digs some proper shoes out of his locker, and makes a beeline for the free weights. No fuss, no set-up, no thinking.

He needs there to be nothing in his head except numbers, breaths, up, down, hold. He needs to take his aching heart for a walk like a pent-up dog; he needs to exhaust his body until his mind falls in line. Simplicity. Reality.

It sort of works. By the time he’s moved onto boxing, his frustration has transformed alchemically into sweat and battered knuckles, and his muscles burn. Cleansing fire. 

The truth is, Minho is ordinarily pretty unflappable. He’s stable in his own weirdness, comfortable in his body, unmoved by other people’s hang-ups. He cares about his people, and otherwise has little capacity for self-consciousness. If he wants something he will try his best to attain it, and if he fails, he’ll look elsewhere.

Now, it’s in his best interest to start looking elsewhere. 

He meets his own wild eyes in the gym mirror, then scans the room around him for the first time since he got here. He’s watching for the right kind of movement, the frisson of caught attention. He feels the nauseous anticipation of the last several days becoming displaced by a fresher, more immediate anticipation. 

Like water poured cleanly into oil, his desire separates.

Minho moves through the world with a baseline consciousness of eyes on him. He’s fit, he has a symmetrical face, he’s a good dancer. People mistake his self-contained nature for aloofness, and they’re intrigued.

You know what you look like, hyung, Jisung had scoffed once. Like Minho’s handsomeness was one of life’s facts, like something he’d learned from one of his historical podcasts or video essays.

He frowns. It doesn’t matter if Jisung thinks I’m handsome, he tells himself. Don’t read into it. Don’t read at all, don’t think. But like a flash of divine lightning, he imagines Jisung’s slender thighs closing around his own hand, pictures him picturing Minho, letting fantasy turn him inside out. It’s so immediate, the image, almost like a premonition. 

He swallows, and makes himself focus on unwrapping his hands, tapping instead into a consciousness of who and what is nearby, accessible, real.

It’s the unofficial dancers’ gym, so he sees a few familiar faces. More than that, he feels familiar eyes, proprietary, interested, even through the veil of respectability. 

He lets his own eyes linger here and there. He rolls his neck, and waits for eye contact to happen to him. As soon as he has it—one second, two second, hooked—he turns for the change rooms, pulling the tension taut behind him, and—there. He’s being followed. It really is that simple.

Jisung would say, how do you even know someone’s interested in you? And Minho would say, who wouldn’t be interested in me? And then, when he’d had a good laugh at his own expense, he would say, just open your eyes, Jisung.

People aren’t all that subtle about their want, actually. And Jisung, especially, brings out a certain quality in people—they crowd him, trying to get one of those easy, squirmy reactions. Trying to tend to that little moue he has on his face when he’s being shy; trying to make his smile bloom. It’s like a trophy, that smile.

Minho shakes his head, and tries to dial in. This isn’t like him, he thinks again. He doesn’t let his mind become occupied for so long by petty attractions. He doesn’t need to, generally—he can take it or leave it. Sex isn’t a challenge, so it’s not a reward.

The guy crowding up against him in the shower cubicle isn’t a challenge.

He’s lithe and tall, taller than Minho by at least a few inches, wiry with dancer’s muscle, long legs, arabesque-ready. Stylish haircut, mussed and sweaty on top. Chubby bottom lip.

“Hi,” he whispers, curling his hands around Minho’s hips.

“Hey,” Minho says, allowing the leg between his thighs. “Suck me off?”

He grins. “Gladly.” He drops, kneeling carefully on the tile.

Minho shrugs off his hoodie and folds it in half. “Here, kneel on this,” he offers.

The guy blinks up at him, still half-smiling. Curiously light eyes. His hands are burning into Minho’s hips now. “Wow, chivalrous.”

“Knight in shining gym clothes,” he deadpans.

He snorts, rubbing a hand over the bulge in Minho’s pants. “You’re kinda weird, aren’t you?”

He shrugs. “Is that a dealbreaker?”

“Not at all.” He peels Minho’s sweats and underwear down in one graceless tug, and spits in his own hand. “Not when you’re this hot,” he teases.

He lets his head thunk back against the wall, and puts his hand loosely in the stranger’s hair. It’s been a long time. The mouth that wraps around him is furnace-hot, slick, tight, and he starts to get hard pretty immediately. 

“Hyung,” Jisung whimpers in his head. Minho shakes him off, fighting memory, but Jisung’s voice presses in deeper. “Minho—ah!”

Oil and water, but the denser desire floats, trembling, on the surface.

The fantasy from before trickles back in, and this time he’s not strong enough to fight it. He imagines Jisung touching himself until he cries, overcome, wet, open. And Jisung ravaged up against their counter today, head thudding into the cabinets, holding Minho against him with such desperation.

Half a lifetime of suppressed observation starts to rain down on his head: Jisung fresh from the shower, naked, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, tatted. Soft tan skin, flushed ruddy from the heat. Dark permed hair, thick, silky, heavy between his fingers. The column of his neck, prominent adam’s apple, the shape of Minho’s teeth stamped into his jugular. The soft part of Jisung’s stomach heaving with breath, the subtle armature of his abdominal muscles, fit without really trying. 

And that mouth, like something out of a folk portrait. Two brushstrokes: pursed upper lip, full lower lip, a tidy little rosebud shape when closed, origami unfolding into this huge, impossible smile. His vivid eyes, weaponized. Those under-developed thigh muscles, turned-in knees, pretty ankles, the way he sits with his legs spread open, the waistband peeking out from pants that are perennially too big for him. And his plush little ass, god, he can’t even think about it.

Jisung from his dream, swallowing around him, begging, confessing.

Minho’s hand tightens, guiding, and the mouth around him tightens too. He thinks of Jisung’s desperate fist in his hair. “Fuck,” he says.

The stranger makes a small encouraging noise, and pulls off. “Yeah?” he says, his voice all wrong.

“Don’t talk,” Minho says hastily. He blinks down, and the illusion of Jisung turns to mist and air. “Sorry.”

“What happened to my knight?” he rasps, stroking him, keeping pace while Minho gets his bearings.

“Sorry, I—uh.” 

“Don’t worry about it. You wanna pretend I’m him?”

Minho buffers for another minute. His dick is throbbing distractingly, he’s drenched in a stranger’s spit, exposed in the middle of a public place. His eyes have been closed for the majority of this encounter so far, and still, this guy he just met can tell that he’s hung up on Jisung. 

“Can I?” he whispers. 

“Be my guest,” he says, and swallows him down again.

Minho looks at the ceiling, imagining Jisung’s throat, his tender gag reflex, his wide eyes. He lets himself be dragged hand over fist towards orgasm. He thinks of playful love confessions, of laughter, of the feeling when he and Jisung align on a joke, a plan, a mood, and absolutely anything could happen. 

He closes his eyes, and pretends.

His guilt is a stone wall he built himself, brick by brick, but he can’t seem to find the end of it. He’s starting to suspect he forgot to install a door. 

He gets home late and immediately ensconces himself in his bedroom, staring emptily at the ceiling and thinking about how he’s definitely in love with Jisung, and it’s crazy that he didn’t know that, considering how quickly it has consumed his every waking thought, and considering Hyunjin and Chan and Yongbok and probably Changbin and definitely gym blow job guy clocked it.

He thinks about the way he had tried to put his love in a box so that he could get off, but then he couldn’t get off without opening that box.

And then he thinks about Jisung being taken from him.

He thinks of him, goofy and unguarded, smiling because of something Wonpil said, smacking him on the shoulder, whispering hyung! in that half giggling, helpless way of his. He pictures him leaning back, affectionate Jisung, into someone else’s shoulder, being too loud right next to someone’s ear. And the pouting, always pouting, projecting his hurt at full blast, and then preening as soon as someone cares enough to notice. 

He thinks of Jisung’s nascent talent, at the very beginning of a beanstalk career that stretches off into the clouds. He thinks of that genius being parcelled into soundcloud links that go to someone else’s phone. Not tacked onto gravelly voice memos at 3:00 AM in the recording studio, where he says things to Minho like “should I give up on my dream? check yes or no,” and “are the lyrics too cheesy? how is the lactose?” and “hyung play this at the gym tomorrow and tell me if you can lift more. Science ‘speriment. Science spearmint. Yoooo.”

He has to close his eyes, to blot out the ceiling. He loves those memos. He loves him. 

“Knock knock.”

Minho looks blearily at the door, and there he is.

Jisung looks shy, uncertain. He’s wearing a worn hoodie with a smudged red gochujang stain on the chest, and holding a pillow and rolled up yoga mat in the crooks of both arms.

“Hmm?” Minho says.

“Hmm,” Jisung confirms. “Can I sleep here?”

His chest pulls tight, then relaxes, looser than before.

“Sure, Hannie.” It’s a rare nickname between them, leftover from their school days, and it’s always sweet going down.

Jisung slumps in relief. “Thanks. You stressed me out today,” he says, slouching the rest of the way into the room. The way he unfurls his yoga mat is impossible sloppy. He knocks Minho’s charger off his bedside table and goes sorry sorry sorry as he rights it.

He can’t believe it hasn’t even been a full day since their kitchen tryst. He feels like he’s relearned the alphabet since then, and now communication is proving impossible. Topsy turvy hangul, complicated characters, linguistic fusions. 

“I’m sorry,” he winces, “I needed to regroup.”

A comically heavy sigh. “Tell me about it, man. I was a real piece of shit today.”

“What? Why?”

Jisung curls up on the mat next to Minho’s bed, cross-legged. He squints up at him. Minho squints down. “The whole cheating on my boyfriend with my best friend thing. Are you familiar?” Charmingly mean and to-the-point.

“We just kissed,” Minho says, through numb lips.

Jisung’s face darkens. Full storm cloud. And there—the pout. “That’s what I’m saying.”

“It wasn’t like—cheating. We didn’t do anything.”

Jisung puts his face in his pillow, and says, “it felt like something. It really felt like something.” 

Minho’s heart starts to pound. “Are you going to tell him?”

Jisung sighs again. He turns his face, just the side of it, so Minho can see his profile. “That would be the right thing to do, probably.”

“So, no.”

An affronted scoff. “Hey! I do the right thing, usually. I’m capable.”

“Oh? Was I the right thing?” Careful, now. Dangerous.

“I didn’t do you,” Jisung says, mouth full of nettles. Minho smiles. He can’t help it.

“Right. Why are you sleeping on my floor by the way?”

Jisung flops back onto the mat dramatically. “Repentance.”

“Shouldn’t you be on your knees for that?”

“Jesus Christ, Minho,” he says, clearly scandalized. Minho watches him go pink, fascinated.

“That’s a good start. Now confess your sins.”

“You were my one and only sin,” Jisung says, throwing his arm over his eyes. “I’m good, and pious, I swear.”

“You probably shouldn’t talk that way if you don’t want me to kiss you again.”

Jisung pulls his arm back, and the eye contact that strikes up between them then is a full-on electrical storm.

“Hyung,” he warns.

“Sorry,” Minho says, trying to mean it. “I think maybe I don’t know how to act.”

“So what’s new?” Jisung teases shakily. 

“Ha,” Minho says.

A few moments pass in mild, easy quiet, and then Jisung says, “I don’t know how to act either.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“You should take responsibility.”

Jisung snorts. “What am I—the guy who knocked you up, or something?”

“Yep,” Minho sniffs. “It’s a girl, by the way.”

Jisung reaches over and squeezes a light handful of Minho’s belly, laughing when he jerks away and rolls onto his front. “Aw, stop, don’t be shy. You make a radiant mother.”

Minho flips him off without looking up, and Jisung laughs harder. “Am I supposed to pretend to ask for your hand in shotgun marriage, now?”

His stomach pangs, belatedly. He rolls his neck, and looks down at him. “I don’t know, am I supposed to pretend I don’t know what it’s like to kiss you, now?”

Jisung’s laughter dies. He swallows, visibly. “I think—I mean, is that gonna be difficult for you?”

Minho leans back into his pillows, and looks into the uneven paint at the seam where ceiling meets wall. “Yes,” he says testily.

“Why?”

“Jisung,” Minho warns, this time. 

“Why?” Jisung asks again.

“Because—it changes things. I told you on the phone, it’s not like I can just forget it.”

“Why?”

“Jisung-ah,” Minho groans. “It was a good kiss, okay? You felt good. But you’re not available, and I’m not that guy.”

They fall back into silence, but it’s strained this time. He can hear Jisung’s old analog clock ticking through the wall.

“If I was available would—I mean. What would that mean for—for us?”

“Last night,” Minho says tightly, “I laid right here, and listened to you have sex with someone else, so. There is no us.”

“‘Course there is,” Jisung mutters. “There was an us before Wonpil, and there’ll be an us afterwards. Just because we’re not fucking, it doesn’t mean there isn’t an us.”

Minho is taken aback. Afterwards. His high ground is immediately levelled. “Friendship ‘us' isn’t the same.”

“Why?” Jisung asks stubbornly. 

“Yah. You know why, Han Jisung.”

“But I love you,” Jisung says, tormented, watery.

Minho lies very still. He imagines the breath leaking out of his lungs and into his guts, emboli bursting up through his blood. Jisung is over-oxygenating his veins, killing him light and airy and slow. 

He wants to ask, in what way? Wants to demand, love me more than him, then. 

Instead he says, “go to sleep, Hannie.” 

By some miracle, he listens. He hears him sniff back tears, shifting and settling on the floor. He doesn’t make any move to leave, not even after their strained back-and-forth, their partial confessions. He wonders if two half-confessions make a whole.

Much later, when the seconds Minho is counting have wound up into the thousands, he peers over the side of the mattress.

Jisung has dragged Minho’s spare blanket from the foot of his bed and over his legs. Little thief; always cold, always pilfering Minho’s sweaters and hot packs. His heart cracks with fondness. He looks so small down here, knees pulled up to his chest, hands curled into the pillow beneath his face, puffing one cheek out. His dark hair is spilled richly over the pillowcase. There’s a temptation to put his hands in the tar of it. To wade out into the oil spill, to let the sickness have him.

Jisung hums in his sleep, a small, nearly musical sound. Composing even in his dreams.

Minho makes himself look away, turning onto his back, and ignores the way his shifting weight sends a dangling tear down his temple and into his hair.

Choosing to attend the party probably isn’t his finest call. 

He and Jisung are on a normal streak that’s lasted nearly a full week, and getting drunk under the same roof when Wonpil is also present is decidedly not normal.

Hyunjin’s apartment is already rightly packed, humid and liquor-pungent. There’s a slick, low-key playlist trickling between rooms, and the vibes are mostly good. Half the dance team is here, trying to inject undue athleticism into flip cup, showing off or else escaping into corners to make out in different combinations and permutations.

His closest friends are all here too: Felix is playing social butterfly, flitting from one group to another, making rousing introductions, raising his voice too loud over the music. Seungmin keeps playing harmless pranks on the drunkest people he can find, and trying to get giggly bad liar Jeongin in on the play. 

You can hear Hyunjin’s laugh from anywhere in the apartment, and very probably from halfway down the street, too. He’s the consummate host without putting in much effort at all, magnetic and easy to please. Changbin is making a name for himself amongst the dancers, letting them feel up his muscles when winning at beer pong proves impossible. Chan is posted up in the centre of the action, letting conversation push and pull at his attention. Every once in a while he looks consideringly around the room, and Minho knows he’s doing a headcount.

And Jisung and Wonpil are knotted close together on the loveseat. Jisung is on his second cider, which seems like a truly disastrous idea. Wonpil is—

Well. It’s clear to Minho that Wonpil is falling for Jisung, which is as devastating as it is unsurprising. They’re steepled together, and Wonpil is twirling Jisung’s hair around his fingers, besotted. Jisung is busy giggling like having fun is a game that he’s determined to win.

Minho focuses elsewhere. He drinks his beer, and listens to people chatter in his direction until they realize he’s not so good at small talk and move on.

“You’re pining so loudly.”

Minho turns to glare at the only person who would ignore his murky don’t-talk-to-me aura.

“You can’t mess with me, Kim Seungmin. I’m not nearly drunk enough for that.”

Seungmin goes wide-eyed, innocent. “Mess with you? My friend and elder?”

Minho blows a fat raspberry, and goes to swipe at Seungmin’s neck, which sends him chuckling out of reach.

“You’re so easy,” he says. 

“You’re such a worm.”

“Mean! I’m trying to distract you from your woes. It’s a public service I provide.”

“A public service no one asked for. One day someone’s going to hit you with their car.”

“I look forward to collecting the insurance money.”

“Worm,” Minho reiterates. “Parasite.”

“Speaking of sucking face—”

“Which we weren’t.”

“—when is Jisung going to dump the dead weight?”

Minho glances over at the loveseat and looks away just as quickly. They’re kissing. Intimate, talking in between. Heart-ruining stuff.

“Ugh. I thought you were supposed to be distracting me.”

“It’s a push and pull. Like chess. I’m trying to get you to make a move.”

“I made a move already.” He looks down at his own beer, betrayed.

“Ha! Ha!” Seungmin says, victorious. “What kind of move? No details please, I want to be able to sleep tonight.”

Fuck it. “We made out. And then I hooked up with a stranger. And then I came home, and he told me he loves me.”

It’s enough to rattle even Seungmin. His wide eyes aren’t for show this time. He takes a sip of his drink, and then exhales through his teeth. “This might be above my pay grade.” He says it like a line from a movie. Minho smiles faintly.

“Your nonexistent pay grade. Your pay grade of zero dollars.”

He ignores him, graciously. “Should I give Jisung a talking to?”

It’s kind of a sweet offer, actually. And also terrible, because he might actually do it. “And say what?”

“Dump the dead weight,” he reiterates. “Minho is slightly better dead weight. He cooks.”

“If you say anything to Jisung, I’ll cook you,” Minho says.

“Threats, threats,” he says, backing away, slippery. “No follow through.”

“Believe me,” Minho calls. “I’ll follow my fist through your face.”

Jisung’s head swivels around at the sound of Minho’s raised voice. Their gaze tangles. His lips are a little swollen. Minho looks away, some faraway sense of self-preservation kicking in, and then drains the rest of his beer. 

He looks for his other friends, and finds Felix challenging someone to an arm-wrestling match. As if he’s in it to win, and not ogle. When he ventures another glance back towards the living room, Jisung is staring steadily back at him.

“What?” he mouths.

“What?” Jisung mouths back. He rolls his eyes.

In another version of this night, they’re on the loveseat together, and Wonpil is at the bar with his age appropriate grad school friends. His arm isn’t around Jisung’s shoulders, and Minho’s arms aren’t prickling with some sort of fucked up phantom limb emptiness.

That’s his best friend, so why is he across the room getting woozy and beer drunk alone?

He decides to join the ranks of the dance group, extract himself from the miserable corner he’s put himself in, put away a few more drinks, maybe even find someone to share a regrettable hook-up with.

The night takes a turn for the better. Hyunjin helps clear a space to dance, switching the playlist to something more hard-hitting and bassy. They spend the better part of an hour belting along karaoke-style, grinding, free-styling, whatever the song calls for. It’s fun. Occasionally, he feels eyes on him, and takes it as his cue to have another swig.

He’s enjoying the warm elasticity of his muscles, the way music has the power to overwrite feelings, the way dance always comes naturally to him—his oldest, truest reflex. Eventually he finds himself wrangled into a cutesy exaggerated girl-group combination between Hyunjin, Mina, and Wooyoung, their studio friends. A friendly arm bands around his back, keeping him upright when he dissolves into laughter.

It’s nice to remember that his life is still there, beyond this rough patch. He has other friends, other romantic prospects, other avenues to travel. His stability is ineffable; he can be shaken but not truly thrown. It’s just how he is.

When he eventually goes to the kitchen for a refill, an absence catches at his peripheral vision.

Jisung isn’t on the loveseat. He’s tucked into the corner instead, on the floor near the entertainment system, charging his phone. He’s gnawing distractedly on his bottom lip, looking like he would rather be anywhere else. Even from across the room, Minho can see that his socializing metre is maxed out, shattered. And there’s something more to it, too—he’s upset, shut all the way down.

His heart zings urgently with worry.

Minho gently extracts himself from the borderland between the kitchen and makeshift dance floor, and makes his way over to Jisung’s corner. He crouches in front of him without hesitation, putting his hands on both bent knees. 

Jisung blinks up at him with wide, distrustful eyes. He’s used to people not looking for him, not knowing how to defuse him. People think Minho is the one whose moods need decoding, but they don’t even seem to realize the small ways that they let Jisung down. He needs stability, distraction. A soft place to hide. Minho is pretty good at being that place. He doesn’t need him to explain his behaviour, or put on an agreeable mask, or atone before he’s ready. It’s pointless to demand conflict resolution from a cornered animal. 

“What happened to your friends?” Jisung asks roughly.

Minho shrugs. “Wanted a change of pace. What happened to your boyfriend?”

Jisung sort of flinches. “He had to get home. Early lecture tomorrow morning.”

Minho makes a noise of understanding. “You’re on the floor.”

“It felt wrong to take up—space. On the couch,” he finishes lamely.

“You’re allowed to take up space, Jisungie.”

“Didn’t seem like it,” Jisung blurts. He looks contrite, staring down into his phone, but then his eyes lift and he says, “you don’t even want me here.”

“Who said that?”

“You wouldn’t look at me.”

“You seemed busy.”

Jisung scoffs humourlessly, and then his forehead pinches. “I don’t.” He shakes his head, swallowing. “I don’t like this. I don’t like choosing. It’s not—“ He’s starting to breathe too fast. Minho squeezes his kneecap. He hadn’t realized how upset he already was, how close to the edge.

“Hey,” he says softly.

“I don’t want to choose! I—I—“

“Jisung, look at me. You have to calm down or you’re going to have a panic attack.”

“Hyung—hyung,” he hiccups miserably. He scrubs at his ashen little face, fighting through another fast handful of breaths, off-rhythm, one-two-step. “This is—humiliating.”

Minho tickles under his quivering chin, shifting his weight to make sure his back is blocking them both from view. “Why? No one’s looking at you.”

“You are,” he gasps, between shallow inhales.

“Since when do I care? I’ve seen you twerk your way to a sprained ankle. I’ve seen you sneeze into your cereal and still finish it.”

He starts spluttering immediately. “It wasn’t in my cereal, you’re so weird about that.”

There he is. The indignation overrides his panic, and his breathing starts to slow. He rubs his eyes with his sleeves, crushing the heels of both hands into the sockets until his shoulders stop heaving.

“Are you normal?”

Jisung scoffs again, but this time it seems genuine. “Am I ever?”

“You’re normal to me,” Minho murmurs. Without thinking, the comforting hand on his knee slides warmly down his thigh. The muscle twitches beneath his palm, and he snatches it away, remembering himself. Jisung’s gaze is opaque, intense. There are tears glittering along his lash-line, and it makes Minho’s chest hurt. “Do you want to go hide in Hyunjin’s room?”

Jisung nods quickly, and Minho starts to hoist him up. “He’ll hate that,” he says lightly, like the thought is cheering him up.

They beeline for Hyunjin’s door, past the living room crowd and through the singular forking hallway, hand in hand. Minho thinks briefly about how this might look from the outside—him dragging someone gently from the thick of a party to be alone with them—but then he shakes the thought away. Jisung is crying for god’s sake.

He’s pleased to find the door unlocked. He cracks it, immediately feeling the coolness from an open window, and sensing the fresh, spicy smell of Hyunjin’s cologne baked into the walls, the sheets. Jisung is close behind him, warm.

They slip inside, and Minho carefully shuts the door, feeling for Hyunjin’s bedside lamp in the silvery darkness. A click punctures the muffled quiet, and rosy golden light spills out into the room. Hyunjin’s space is well-furnished, artsy, vaguely messy but not unclean. It makes a good haven.

“Thank you for doing this,” Jisung says quietly, curling up against the headboard.

Minho shrugs. “Doing what?”

Jisung’s gaze is excising, sharp and precise and cutting the truth from Minho’s wasted heart. “You know. Rescuing me from the floor.”

“I had nothing better to do,” he says airily, coming to sit awkwardly at Hyunjin’s desk.

“Not even Wooyoung?” Jisung blurts, and then he hides his face in his hands.

A long moment of confusion passes, and then Minho feels a potent thrill racing up his spine, like his body clues into the subtext before he does.

“What are you talking about?”

Jisung looks at him, unimpressed even through his embarrassment. “You were dancing with him.”

“Okay…?”

“Okay,” Jisung agrees. 

“I’m a dancer,” Minho says slowly.

“I know,” Jisung snaps. 

“So…?”

“Stop looking at me like I’m crazy. As if you’re not jealous of Wonpil-hyung.”

Minho blinks a few fluttering times. “Oh, are we saying that out loud?”

Jisung throws his hands up. “I guess so! Not talking about it is giving me hives. I just had half a panic attack on the floor at a party from trying to stay quiet, so yeah, I think I’m gonna try words and sentences, now.”

Minho stares. “Say your words and sentences.”

“The thought of losing you makes me sick to my stomach, hyung. Really sick. Panic sick.”

A gust of raw feeling blows through Minho’s body, and he stands without thinking, crossing to the bed. Jisung watches him approach warily. “Why are you losing me?”

“You tell me,” Jisung challenges, as Minho sits safely across from him at the foot of the bed. “You keep acting different. We don’t avoid each other like you did tonight. We never fight. I know it’s because of Wonpil but it’s like… I can’t tell if you just hate him for some reason, or if you’re not used to sharing my attention, or if it’s something—else.”

Minho stays silent, waiting to see if Jisung will piece this together in front of him.

“I just,” he continues. “Why are you—deciding what our relationship should look like without my input?”

“Huh?” Relationship.

“You’re changing things I don’t want changed.” Jisung frowns. “Or the opposite, I don’t know. You keep running away, or ending the conversation. And now you’re acting like Wonpil can’t even see us together, which is like… why? Because we kissed?”

“Obviously it’s because we kissed, Jisung.”

Jisung falls silent. He looks at Minho for a long moment, blinking in the pink half-light. He scoots a little closer, and Minho watches the head-on collision gliding towards him, the burning headlights.

“People kiss.”

“We—don’t,” he grits.

Jisung’s knee brushes against the outside of his thigh.  “I mean, we did, so.”

All he can think about is the heat from their touching legs, the transference of energy, the atoms they’re sharing.

He clears his throat. “Do you remember, when you were seventeen, you decided I was going to officiate your wedding?”

Jisung’s gaze is so heavy. Swollen pupils, slow, ticking eyes, bouncing between Minho’s. “I do.”

“Exactly.”

He snickers. “Okay, so, what? You don’t want to be the officiant anymore?”

“I can’t be,” Minho says, hushed and earnest. “Not with how I’m feeling right now. Do you understand? I wouldn’t even be able to attend.”

Jisung searches his face, lips pooched in concern, clearly trying his best to understand. 

“We’re friends. You need me to be your friend. So that’s what I’m trying to be. I wasn’t ignoring you, tonight. I just can’t... I can't look at you kissing him.”

Jisung’s fingers glide, just two of them, just lightly, along Minho’s outer leg. “Hyung,” he says thickly. They’re so close. Right at the doorway of something, one of them to each side, two hands on the doorknob.

He catches his roving fingers. “And you’re making it very hard, because you keep—needing me.”

“It’s not that I need you.” And there’s something about the way he says it—it’s not petulant, it’s wide and plaintive. Serious. Their hands are linked together now. He pulls Jisung’s fingers apart, and slots his own in between. “It's worse than that. I want you.”

His eyes flash up, striking for the millionth time against his dearest friend's. He imagines a shower of sparks in the air. He imagines mayhem, flames. Jisung’s face lined in red and gold.

“Not the same way I want you.”

And then Jisung inches over the threshold, letting go of Minho’s hand so he can crawl even closer. There’s a quick maneuver, pressure, legs bracketing legs, and then Jisung is in his lap. Easy as that.

“Wanna bet?” he murmurs. He ducks his head into the crook of Minho’s neck and inhales.

He’s not sure what’s happening right now.

They’re rocking a little, soothing one another, breathing in tandem. It’s a hug, sort of. He runs his hands down Jisung’s back, feeling the solidity of his muscles, the soft heat of his body.

“In what way do you… want me?” It’s uncharacteristically clumsy, but he’s lucky to even get words out right now. He can’t seem to catch his breath.

Jisung muffles some kind of noise in the juncture of Minho’s shoulder. “Right now?” he asks, pressing a gentle kiss to Minho’s throat like an afterthought. Goosebumps clamber urgently over his skin, all the way down below his neckline. He shivers.

“Yeah,” Minho gasps.

Jisung’s hands knot in the back of Minho’s shirt, and his nose glides along his collarbone, ticklish. He feels like gravity is upending, as Jisung eases them further together. He’s light, buoyant, and the bed beneath him seems faraway. If he wasn’t weighted down, he might fall up and hit the ceiling.

“Sexually, I guess.” It’s so matter-of-fact that Minho laughs, thrilled.

“Just as I suspected: you have no game."

Another kiss falls against his jawbone, the ghost of a smile against his skin, and one of Jisung’s hands moves to cradle the heat his lips leave behind. He holds Minho’s chin so carefully in his hand. He has to close his eyes, feeling Jisung’s breath against the corner of his mouth.

“Really? Kind of seems like it’s working on you.” He kisses Minhos cheek, just the tiniest bit wet from where his lips are parted. His hands slide over Jisung’s ass to stabilize them both, and Jisung laughs. He feels himself smiling in response.

“Only because it’s you,” Minho says simply. He opens his eyes, and Jisung is right there, propped slightly above him, cheeks flushed, hair in his eyes. He’s so in love with him. He feels his self-control ribboning away, shredded. How could it possibly matter what happens outside this room, when this is what’s inside, here and now? How could anything matter but his stupid best friend, with all his loose emotional wires, kissing him everywhere but his mouth, waiting on Minho to meet him halfway. “You don’t even have to try, Hannie.”

“So romantic, hyung,” Jisung says, too soft to really be a joke. Minho brushes his hair away from his face, smoothing it back behind his pink ears.

“Yes,” he says patiently. Jisung’s teasing expression falters.

“… Really?” he asks.

“Jisung-ah,” he whispers, and then he slots their mouths together. 

He feels like a pebble dropped into a well: the endless fall, the velvet water, the new perspective. Submerged in a new world, safe in the clinging algae, the looming circle of reality looks so far away.

Jisung makes a muffled sound against his lips, a sweet little mmph, and shifts in his lap.

It’s even better than the first time. Chemical. Natural, like everything they do together.

They’re kissing slow this time, Jisung strumming his fingers over his ribs through his shirt, Minho guiding his face through every push and pull. The window’s still open somewhere, but it’s hot between them. He feels his whole body starting to buzz, dormant cells pinging to life, blood heating, racing. He slips upwards, stroking his tongue over the flat of Jisung’s, pulling their hips together.

“Hah—Minho—“ Jisung gasps, and Minho’s blood catches fire.

“Yeah?” he asks softly, brushing wet kisses over the corner of his mouth, his soft round cheek.

“Yeah,” Jisung sighs. “Definitely.”

“You’re a hazard,” Minho murmurs, mouthing along Jisung’s neck, feeling him list backwards, head lolling, clutching Minho’s shoulders for balance. “Do you know that?”

“Hmm?” Jisung asks sweetly, clearly beyond distraction, lost in the dopamine rush. Like when he’s in another world philosophizing, writing music, watching his ghost stories, and no one can get his attention. Minho smiles secretly into his neck, and then bites down, hoping to catapult him even further out of his head. “You’re—“ he says sharply, hand fisting in Minho’s hair, “—crazy, hyung.”

He soothes the bite-mark with his tongue. “Whose fault is that?”

Jisung ripples against him, the line of his hard-on grinding into his thigh. Minho’s hands spasm, sliding from Jisung’s hips up beneath his shirt. He hasn’t even properly registered the expanse of skin, hot silk against his fingers, when Jisung is weighing them both down into the mattress.

Minho receives his weight easily, flattening his hand to the small of Jisung’s back, feeling him arch into him just a bit. 

He feels a pang of cognitive dissonance, synaptic misfiring: this is a hook-up—but no, it’s Jisung. A flash-bang of pride self-consciousness desire bursts every time he discovers a new facet: his preferences, his instincts, his weak spots.

“You’re good at this,” Jisung whispers. It occurs to Minho that he’s only the second man to ever touch Jisung this way. 

“It’s not always like this,” Minho confesses, kissing Jisung’s cheek again, his temple, his mouth, helpless to resist the gleam of his inner lip.

“Mmm,” Jisung says, slipping under again. Minho opens his eyes into the kiss, and sees the focused pinch of his eyebrows up close, the dark fan of his lashes. Surreal—it’s such a quintessential Jisung expression. He’s never felt this fond and this turned on at the same time. Is this what having sex with someone you love is like?

“Baby,” he tries, and finds that Jisung laughing against him is enough to make him say it again. “Baby,” he says again, really laying it on thick, and Jisung pulls back far enough to swat him on the arm.

“Be serious.”

“I’m always serious about you, baby.”

Jisung shivers. “Oh, I liked it that time.” He rubs against him to show him how much. Kissing wetly down his jaw, executing this tricky sucking maneuver to the shell of his ear that makes Minho jerk in his pants, and think, dizzy, where the hell did he learn that?

The dissonance starts to burn off like alcohol, leaving only its sweetness behind. This is the person he trusts with his most vulnerable self, who joins him in any stupid bit he could possibly devise, who spends time opening Minho’s chopsticks before he even touches his own food. And here he is, lovely and sexy and seamless in his arms. It’s an embarrassment of riches, having him close in every way.

“Can I?” Jisung asks into Minho’s shirt. Before he can reply, he’s dragging his face down, mouth catching against scrunched, damp cotton. His head rises and falls with Minho’s rapid breathing. He curls his fingers loosely in the waistband of his boxers, peeling them down far enough to lay a filthy kiss to the tender inside of his hipbone. He looks up through heavy lids, curled over his lap, warm and substantial. Minho is starting to drift now too, borne on the current flowing between them.

“Hmm?” Jisung prompts. The hum buzzes against his sensitive skin; he shivers through the aftershocks. His hands slip up to cup Jisung’s face, and from between his palms, Jisung says, “I’ve been dreaming about this.”

Minho blinks. 

The door swings open.

“—get away with escaping the party—oh.” Changbin’s bluster shrivels up on a dime, and he hangs back on the door handle, blotting out the sight of them. “Oh!” he screams through the door. “Oh my god,” he follows up in English.

Jisung scrambles back so quickly that he topples over, slumping into a marionette heap on the carpet. Minho looks down his own body to see Jisung on the floor, framed between his spread legs. He’s so thoroughly makeout-ruffled that he’s vaguely pissed at Changbin for looking at him.

“We’re not—doing anything,” Jisung calls hastily. “Anymore,” he tacks on, wincing.

Changbin takes this news as an invitation to duck inside and slam the door shut behind him. He surveys the scene. Minho looks back at him. He’s still back on his elbows, shirt shoved up above his ribs, fresh hickey shining just above his low, sloppy waistband.

“We’re doing something,” Minho deadpans.

“In Hyunjin’s bed?” Changbin asks, nearing a pitch that only dogs can hear.

“It wasn’t planned,” Jisung says flatly. 

Changbin squints between them. “Do you two know what you’re doing?”

“Not really,” Minho replies, sitting up.

“You sure seemed like you did,” Jisung says.

Changbin laughs both loudly and nervously. “I’m glad you can joke at a time like this.”

Jisung climbs sullenly into the desk chair. Minho’s sort of in disbelief of how much has happened since he was sitting in that chair fifteen minutes ago. “Why are you here right now?” Jisung asks testily. His hands drift over his own heated face, his wet, warped neckline, lingering over the marks it’s barely concealing. Warmth persists in Minho's blood, simmering.

“Don’t turn this around on me,” Changbin says. “I’m doing party control.”

“If you want to be a bouncer so badly you should ask Hyunjin-ah to pay you minimum wage at least,” Minho says, feigning concern. Jisung snickers.

“Plus twenty thousand won for every flex.”

“Nuh-uh,” Changbin says, coming to stand between them. “None of your little inside jokes, I’m taking a stand.” He can’t resist the bit though, and he stomps his foot, mouth twitching. 

“Why,” Jisung moans. “How is this even your business?”

“My friends,” he gestures between them. “My boyfriend’s apartment.” He swivels his finger in the air.

Jisung rolls his eyes. “He’s not even your boyfriend.”

“Yeah well, Minho isn’t yours, either, is he?”

The humour dissipates in an instant, like a spell has been cast. Jisung flinches and fastens his gaze on the floor.

“Changbin-ah,” Minho says, feeling something in his chest cinching closed like a drawstring. “Leave him alone.”

Changbin looks imploring as he sits next to Minho on the stretch of bed across from the desk. He leans his elbows on his knees, serious and empathetic, getting down on their level like a guidance counsellor. Jisung studiously avoids eye contact.

“I’m not judging you.“

“Yeah right,” Jisung snaps. “I’m even judging myself!” 

Minho frowns. He pictures their warm, beautiful bubble bursting into ordinary dish soap and vapour. He knew that Jisung would regret this. But somehow the reality of it, so soon after all of that shiny, lighter-than-air intimacy, is hitting him hard.

“Do you think I’m living it up, hurting people?” Jisung continues. “Do you think these are the circumstances I would’ve chosen? I know you all think I’m emotionally inept or whatever, but I’m not exactly cut out to be a cheater.”

“Hey,” Changbin says, hurt. “I don’t think any of that. I know this is hard for you.” His eyes flick to Minho. “Can we have a minute?”

“I’m not leaving him,” Minho says immediately.

Jisung looks up, finally, and it’s to give Minho the wettest, saddest eyes he’s ever seen. “Hyung,” he says, voice choked with an emotion that Minho can’t identify.

“Hyung,” Changbin echoes. “I’m serious. This isn’t your boyfriend. You have to ease up.”

He knows he does. Except pulling away means breaking off the pieces of himself that Jisung is holding onto, and leaving ugly splinters in their friendship. He can’t bear it.

“No, no,” Jisung says, stressed. “He’s been easing up. It’s not his fault.”

“Okay, then you ease up,” Changbin amends.

“I’m trying. But—god. It’s like—we were on this trip, right, and the scenery was so good, but I was getting impatient, and thinking like, maybe we’re not going where I thought we were, you know? So I switched lines. And now I know I’m going the wrong way, but I already paid for the ticket.”

Trust Jisung to throw a metaphor out behind him, like an oil slick from a moving car.

“You have to get off the train, Jisungie,” Changbin says. 

“Am I the scenery? Or the ticket? Or… wait,” Minho tries.

Jisung’s mouth twitches, impossibly, with genuine mirth. “You’re Minho,” Jisung says simply. “You make the trip beautiful. I don’t even care where we go.”

“And Wonpil?” Changbin prompts gently, playing moderator. 

Jisung shakes his head. “I really like him, but.”

“But?” Minho asks urgently.

“But you’re my best friend.”

“Okay.” He blinks at the wall, feeling disappointment starting to well up, abruptly unable to look anyone in the face. “So… you don’t want to hurt my feelings, is that it?”

“W-what? I mean, yes, but no, that’s not what I meant.“

Before he can process that pretzel of a reply, the door opens again, knock, knock, swing, to reveal Chan, a harried look on his face. He relaxes at the sight of them.

“Oh, hey. Everything okay in here? Couldn’t find any of ya.”

“I’m losing control of the situation,” Changbin says.

“What situation?” Chan asks, back on high alert. Minho can barely hear them. All he can think is best friend, best friend, best friend. That was Jisung’s opportunity to define what they were, and he had chosen friendship. It really shouldn’t hurt; he’s known all along what they are. He tries to wrack his brain, to think of any point during their near hook-up that Jisung had indicated that there were feelings involved for him. 

In what way do you want me? 

Sexually, I guess.

His stomach crumples. In his head, Changbin’s voice echoes, this isn’t your boyfriend. 

There’s too much going on right now. He feels painfully exposed. His new, stolen bruises are stinging. He stands, making brief, devastated eye contact with Chan, and says, “if you don’t want to lose me as a friend, Jisung, you don’t have to worry. You can tell Wonpil I’m not a threat.”

“What?” Chan says sharply. 

“Huh?” Jisung asks, in disbelief. 

“I’ll see you at the apartment,” Minho says shortly, making for the door. 

“Hyung, don’t,” Jisung calls, stumbling out of the desk chair. “Why are you running away again?” He can hear him working himself up to tears, but Minho is already gone. He has to be.

He can hear Chan interceding at his back, his low, steadying voice urging, “let him go,” and Jisung’s increasingly desperate cries.

His heart sinks, a stone at the bottom of a well.

It’s only when he reaches their apartment, collapses into the couch which smells like them both, and spies Jisung’s songbook laid out on the coffee table, spilling over with lovesick poetry, that he thinks he might have been really stupid this time. 

He cries for a while, frustrated with himself, and goes through the evening beat by beat: Jisung on the loveseat. Jisung miserable. Jisung in his arms. Jisung begging him to stay.

Why would he make a mess of his first real relationship for something casual with Minho? He wouldn’t.

He’s never been that careless, or cruel. He feels everything keenly, gives himself away with abandon, and struggles to see where the lines are until he’s crossed them. His lowest moments are ones where he’s deeply conflicted, torn between thinking and feeling, giving and taking, jealousy and desire. 

He’d been jealous of Wooyoung. He’d been flushed and upset all night. His body language couldn’t have been more obvious.

But Minho hadn’t really been listening, because the longer he was around Jisung, the more inevitable a confession became, and the more definitely tragedy would strike. He hasn’t been fully listening for weeks. 

Now he moves through their home like he’s haunting it. Hours pass, and Jisung still hasn’t come back. He makes a 3:00 AM pot of coffee, boiling the kettle and mechanically scrubbing the countertop while he waits, stewing in his worry.

He pictures Jisung’s over-the-top arm-flailing panic at the thought that he might have hurt Minho by mistake—clipped him with an opening door, or stepped on his foot. That’s not a guy who would wrench on Minho’s feelings like this. 

He knows Jisung. Better than anyone. So why is he treating him like any other guy? It’s like his brain had sorted him into a default romantic category, and prevented him from seeing Jisung as himself.

He drinks his unsugared coffee, wincing when the taste hits his beer-stale tongue. He goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth afterwards, and stares at Jisung’s messy line-up of skincare products, his floss trailing out of the bin.

Unbidden, he remembers him asking, If I was available… what would that mean for us?

Asking, why are you deciding what our relationship should look like without my input?

Confessing, but I love you, eyes gleaming with tears. Minho had just assumed it was sweetly platonic, like always. Or—he hadn’t known, and he’d been scared to find out.

Over and over in different ways, Jisung had said, I’m not losing you, which is exactly what Minho’s been thinking this whole time, too, to the point of blindness. But until tonight, all Jisung had heard from him was “it was a moment of weakness,” and “there is no us.” 

He stares at his reflection. His red-rimmed eyes, pinched lip caught in his teeth. All of this anguish, just because Minho has been afraid.

At 4:00 AM, he texts Jisung, 

I’m sorry I didn’t listen.

Please come home.

At 5:00 AM he falls asleep on the couch, clutching his phone close to his weary, stinging eyes.

At 6:00 AM, the key scrapes in the lock.

He bolts upright in an instant, bleary and soft-hearted. He’s been avoiding his feelings for so long that they’ve become an ocean, and he’s been wave-tossed and dashed against rocks all night.

Jisung stares at him, key shaking in his hand. His face is puffy from crying. Just the sight of him is a life preserver in the surf.

“Hannie,” Minho says, garbled. “Will you sit with me?”

Jisung eyes him warily, but crosses to the couch to join him all the same. They sit awkwardly, two feet apart, Minho’s gaze tracing every smushed curl and scrubbed tear-track with regret and affection. He wants every version of him so badly.

“I thought you were mad at me,” Jisung says hoarsely.

“I wasn’t mad at you,” Minho says quickly. “I think I was mad at the made up Jisung I invented in my brain.”

He laughs shortly, and it zaps a corner of Minho’s sadness away like a beam of concentrated light.

“That guy sucks,” Jisung says, and Minho laughs back at him. It’s such a relief to be laughing together that they do it for a bit longer than the joke requires. They’re already sitting closer than when they started, drifting magnets.

“I didn’t mean that you were just my best friend,” Jisung confesses. “Although I think you know… I don’t think there’s any just about it.” 

Minho nods jerkily. “I know. I know, and I agree.”

“Okay, good,” Jisung breathes. “Good. I don’t say best friend lightly. That means something—big to me. Cosmic. Ugh—I don’t know, maybe that’s too grand—“

“It’s not,” Minho says. He nudges his pinky into Jisung’s, and Jisung tangles them together gratefully.

The point of contact seems to fortify him somehow, because he takes another deep breath, and says, “I broke up with Wonpil.”

It’s not what he was expecting. His brain empties of everything except, “when?”

Jisung’s pinky tightens enough to cut off blood flow. “Just now. We already sort of fought, when he left the party. I was upset about…” he looks at Minho and shrugs. “And he wouldn’t stay with me.”

“Asshole,” Minho says fiercely, thinking of how near the precipice of a panic attack Jisung had been dangling.

“He’s really not. I’m the one who knocked on his door at 3 AM, full-on weeping about another guy. It was awful. I told him everything. He hates you, by the way.”

“That’s fine. It’s mutual.”

A secret smile; Jisung pulls their joined hands up to his face to hide his mouth. “I just couldn’t keep wondering about you—us. Because you were acting like—“

“A lunatic?”

Jisung shakes his head fast. “Like you had feelings for me, I don’t know.” He’s so sweetly embarrassed and unassuming, it’s sort of devastating. “But then I told you I love you, and you shut me down.”

“Only because…” He considers. “I thought I couldn’t have—all of you. And I didn’t want just a piece.”

Jisung flushes brilliantly. “So you—“

“I’m so in love with you.” He swallows the knot in his throat. “Han Jisung. I think I always have been.”

Jisung closes his eyes. All his muscles seem to tense, then relax. 

“… Sung?” 

“You’re in love with me,” Jisung repeats.

“Don’t make me say it again,” Minho pleads. “I can only be so vulnerable. I’ve hit my limit about twelve times today.”

“Love is vulnerable,” Jisung says. He can just see a sliver of teasing smile slitting his expression open. His nerves sing.

“But is it reciprocated?”

Jisung gapes. “I already told you!”

“Well say it again!”

“Oh, so I have to say it again, but you don’t have to—”

Minho hoists him close, and muffles the end of Jisung’s tirade with his mouth. He kisses him deep and rich, melt-in-your-mouth, wanting more than anything to be back in that perfect pink chromakey bubble together. He eases him back into the couch cushions, encouraging his legs up around his hips. Their couch, their apartment, their love. 

No extraneous boyfriends. No guilt plastered between them.

“It’s reciprocated,” Jisung gasps, nudging their foreheads together, clutching at Minho’s t-shirt.

“I know, baby.”

Jisung’s breath hitches, and Minho laughs, delighted.

“Hey, don’t use baby against me!”

“Okay,” Minho agrees instantly. “Don’t use those eyes against me, then.”

“What eyes?” Jisung asks, a little too precisely to be genuine. He doesn’t quite bat his eyelashes, but it’s a near thing.

Minho thumbs the centre of his wet little mouth. “You know. When you pout this lip out at me, and make your eyes big, and try to trick me.”

Jisung breaks out in an immediate, wicked smile. “It only works on weak men.”

“I’m weak,” Minho agrees, unable to resist kissing him again, briefly getting lost in the lush swipe of his tongue, his unthinking noises of enjoyment. “Have pity.”

“You like me,” Jisung laughs. He ducks in and scruffs his teeth in Minho’s neck, like he doesn’t know what else to do with his giddiness except bite.

“Yah,” Minho yelps, fisting Jisung’s hair. “I should’ve known you’d be a biter.”

“I’m not usually,” he says earnestly. “You bring it out of me.”

“Having sex with you is so embarrassing for both of us.”

“Oh, are we having sex?” Jisung teases, laughter breaking his voice into sparkling pieces. “So soon?”

“What about this is soon,” Minho says flatly. Jisung tweaks one of his flaming ears, smiling knowingly. “I’ve known you for almost a decade. A sexless decade.”

“Yes,” Jisung says, kissing him indulgently. It quickly devolves into quite a lot of tongue, and when he pulls away he looks sort of scandalized at his own lack of self-control. He runs fingers down Minho’s collar, distracted. “But I did break up with my boyfriend three hours ago.”

“Right,” Minho says, clearing his throat, trying his best to put a damper on his nearly nuclear desire. “Right, we should…”

“Are you kidding?” Jisung says, incredulous. “I was ready to suck you off when I was in the relationship. You think I’m waiting now?”

Minho laughs nervously. “I don’t know, I’m learning a lot about you right now.”

“You wanna learn more?” he says, all breath, into his ear.

Minho nods, stunned. All of his molecules are buzzing. He feels like he’s been around a carousel a few too many times: up and down, chasing after something, and every moment of closeness has been an optical illusion until now.

Jisung pitches forward to kiss him again, and together they find their equilibrium, pushing and pulling the tangle between them in a way that only draws the knot of arousal tighter and tighter.

Jisung’s hand sneaks between them and feels over the shape of Minho’s cock through his jeans for the first time, and he moans, cut-off, raw. He feels Jisung rub against his thigh in response, back and forth, both hands curling in Minho’s shirt, face falling to press in the hollow of his throat.

And then he’s—standing, abruptly, planting a hand in the centre of Minho’s chest to shove himself up and away.

“I have to—okay.” He bites his swollen bottom lip and palms himself through his pants. Minho hears himself make a desperate sound, reaching weakly for his hips. Jisung steps out of reach. “I have to shower, and—calm down.”

Minho’s mouth curls. “Oh. Were you gonna come?”

“You’re not that good, hyung,” Jisung laughs airily, running hands through his hair and over his own pink face. “But, I’d rather wash up before we get any further, because I really want you to fuck me.”

Minho stares. 

He feels like he’s been dunked head over heels into one of those hot, impossible dreams where Jisung comes to him in the dark and tells him everything he wants to hear. Any minute now he’s going to wake up with ruined sheets.

“Do you—want that?” Jisung asks nervously.

“Do I want that,” he repeats. 

“We can do it any way you prefer,” Jisung says, clearly worried and clearly annoyed about it. Adorable. Edible. “Ay, hyung,” he whines. “You’re making me self-conscious.”

“Don’t be self-conscious. I want to fuck you. If I start talking about how much I want to fuck you, you won’t make it out of this room.”

Jisung tries to look serious but can’t quite manage it through a wild bubble of laughter. “Trust Lee Minho to make a pick-up line sound like a threat.”

“I’ll show you a pick-up line—” he makes as if to scoop him off his feet, and Jisung laughs and screams and staggers back a few unbalanced steps. “Go. Shower.” Minho catches him by the hand. “Don’t change your mind about me,” he says quietly. 

Jisung smiles ruefully, and presses a kiss to his knuckles. “Not possible.”

“Be fast or I’ll start without you,” he says, smacking Jisung’s ass as he turns away. He squawks and stumbles another few steps, but still can’t hide how pleased he is.

“You can start without me if you want,” he says innocently. “Since I’ll be the one finishing the job.”

“I can’t believe you were mad at my lines—that was porno dialogue, Jisung,” he groans.

He cackles, making his way eagerly towards the bathroom, practically sprinting. Minho glows with affection. He’s so cute from behind. He has half a mind to chase him down the hall.

Instead he rolls his head against the back of the couch, feeling all the places on his body where Jisung has left heat behind. His system has been flooded with so much shock, pleasure, and adoration in such a short time period that he feels heavy with it, oversaturated.

He laughs at the ceiling. An hour ago he was passed out from sheer emotional exhaustion, and now he’s going to have sex with his best friend. The great collision of fear and fantasy happened, and the fantasy won.

Eventually he calms down enough to go to his bedroom, buzzing with good, clean nerves. He tidies his clothes away into the hamper and turns down the blankets. He hesitates, then spritzes the cologne he knows Jisung likes into the sheets. He laughs at himself again, scrubbing a hand over his feverish face.

He feels like a wind-up toy that hasn’t been released yet: pent up, raring to go.

He digs out his lube and leaves it on the bedside table. He can’t believe they’re going to be using it. He can’t believe the words “I really want you to fuck me” came out of Jisung’s mouth.

He sits on the foot of the bed and waits. Touches himself a little, because he can hear the shower running, and feel the ghost of Jisung’s hand squeezing his dick, and it’s all happening, isn’t it? 

Some moments in your life feel larger than time. He can cast his mind back to their youth, when all he wanted was to be closer to Jisung, closer, closer, and he couldn’t quite figure out how. Or he can skip forward into his future self, looking back on these twilit moments before their first time. He can imagine it with hyper-clarity, this pre-memory. How badly they both wanted it.

After a cool eternity, Jisung comes padding into his bedroom. His hair is scrunched dry, his skin is slightly heat-ruddy, and his end-of-the-day stubble is starting to shadow his jaw. His bare face is lovely. He’s wearing tiny grey boxers, and a loose pink shirt that used to be Minho’s. It says Extravaganzas New York 1998, with the “vag” inexplicably capitalized. 

He’s still hard. Minho swallows, and wonders what he did in the shower.

“You put clothes on,” he murmurs.

Jisung pulls self-consciously at his t-shirt, cracking a shy smile. “I almost blow-dried my hair, too.”

“Aw,” Minho says, almost involuntarily. He makes grabby hands in his direction. “Nervous?” Jisung slouches into the circle of his arms, standing at the edge of the bed, temptingly pink and damp.

He thinks of how Jisung always takes a while to warm to strangers, how he starts small and squared away, and the more he likes you the bigger he becomes, the wilder, the louder. He wonders if this is going to be like that—meeting a new, shy side of Jisung, and coaxing him to his truest, noisiest self. He hopes so. 

“It’s a big deal, you and me. Long time coming.”

His heart squirms with wild, unnamable joy. He overcompensates: “I’ll show you a long time coming.”

Jisung snorts and hits him lightly on the shoulder, right on time.

“Anyway,” he says pointedly. “I think it would be weirder if I wasn’t nervous.”

“But you were so confident before,” Minho says, smiling into his shirt, feeling his stomach contract beneath the point of his chin.

“That was before I went and thought about you in the shower,” Jisung whispers. Minho’s arms constrict around him.

“Oh?” His mind floods with colours and sounds: wet skin, blown pupils, Jisung’s perpetually parted mouth. “Fuck.” One hand flattens on Jisung’s spine, and slides down to his ass. “What did you think about?”

He scoffs above him. Minho looks up patiently, until Jisung seems to realize he’s serious.

His smile fades a little, something light and frothy layered over something intense, foam on coffee. “I dunno,” he breathes. “Kissing. Your hands on me. Your fingers—instead of mine.”

“We can do that,” Minho says breathlessly. His hands slide down Jisung’s thighs to the backs of his knees, and he presses in until those joints falter, and he folds up nice and compact into his lap. He fits so well here, all of his ambitious shapes and lines tucked safely against Minho’s body. He rolls their hips manually, just a spark of friction to set them back off again—lighter-meet-wick.

Jisung gasps a little moan, and Minho kisses it off his lips. 

“Starting to get used to you on top of me,” he says lowly.

“Good,” Jisung says, nipping Minho’s upper lip gently. “I like it up here. I like putting you in your place,” he adds, and catches Minho in a proper kiss.

Minho rubs circles into his waist under his shirt. He takes his time hiking up the hem, palming the tattoo along his ribcage. He traces featherlight fingertips over his spine and the wide spread of his shoulder blades until he shivers. He pulls back enough to feel up his chest, the muscle he packs on so easily, his taut brown nipples, the tricky gothic font sprawling up to the hinge of his shoulder. Blessed.

Eventually he gets annoyed with holding the shirt up out of his way—it’s like a stubborn curtain in front of a five-star view. He shoves impatiently at the bunching fabric until Jisung wrestles his wrists down, smirking. He tugs the shirt off easily over his own head, and moves a staying hand to Minho’s sternum.

“Calm down hyung. It’s off.”

“Shouldn’t have been on in the first place.”

He smothers Jisung’s laugh with his mouth, rocking into him with new zeal, hands full of newly-revealed muscle.

He lets Jisung explore for a while too, sucking his tongue, pressing clever fingers into the planes and curves of him, stroking over Minho’s shoulders, thumbing his nipples, trailing down to his waistband.

He can already tell that he’s eager to please and easy to rile up. Minho slides his hands back around to his ass, and when his fingers trace the seam of him through the cotton, Jisung pulls away keening.

“Ah—a warning, please!”

“Oh, sorry baby. I thought you were putting me in my place.”

“I didn’t mean that in a horny way, I just meant—you’re literally beneath me—like—“

“Pretty sure everything you say half-naked on top of me is in the horny way,” he interrupts. His fingers are still searching, gripping at a cheek and letting it bounce back, listening to every hitch and lilt in Jisung’s breathing.

“Not true,” Jisung says, thready. “I could read this morning’s headlines half-naked on top of you.”

“Ooh,” Minho fake-moans. Jisung’s so revved up, he reacts like it’s genuine, trembling, jerking. “What’s filthier than national politics. I’m so hard.”

“I think you’re bad at dirty talk,” Jisung says, stuttering when Minho skirts two fingers up into the leg-hole of his boxers, as inner as inner thigh can get.

“Oh no. How’s this: do you wanna ride my fingers?” He bites his earlobe tenderly. And then quieter, realer. “Do you, baby?”

Jisung pretends to gag, although his eyes give him away, as always. “I mean, I do. But not because you said that.”

“Good enough for me,” Minho says, and then he slides Jisung’s underwear down the curve of his hips.

“Oh,” Jisung says. 

Once his waistband is tucked down under his balls, Minho licks the length of his hand and wraps it around Jisung’s cock.

“Oh—my god,” Jisung moans, muffled. His leg spasms, but Minho gentles his ankle with his free hand.

He looks down between them to watch his fingers spreading around his length, the way he flushes darker than Minho does down here, the cute wet thread of pre-come shining at his tip. His mouth floods with saliva.

“Your dick is pretty,” he says sincerely, and smiles when he feels Jisung kicking in his fist. 

“Lee Minho,” he hisses, scandalized. He says it just like he has a million times, but this time he’s dripping, near-tears, and throbbing from one honest compliment.

He wants to taste him. He wants to bury his face between his legs. He wants to fuck his satiny thighs, his tits. “I want everything at once,” he admits softly. It’s overwhelming. He’s starting to overheat in a way that threatens total shut-down. His desire is enormous. But then—

“Me too,” Jisung sighs, shifting away from bravado, opening up into near-painful earnestness. “How can I—unh—choose just one thing to do with you?”

“C’mere,” Minho says gruffly, so he doesn’t start crying. He kisses him thoroughly, cradling the back of his neck, and stroking him through a few involuntary thrusts.

“Please,” he whimpers, finally, into Minho’s mouth.

“I’ve got you,” Minho murmurs. “I’ll take care of you.” He eases them deeper into the bed, rolling Jisung onto his back, dragging his underwear the rest of the way off of his coltish legs. “Stay there,” he says, reaching across to grab for the lube.

“Where would I go?” Jisung asks.

Where would he go! Who else would he need! Minho grins, cracking the lid. “Good point. Good job, jagi. Get back in my lap.”

“You’re pushy,” Jisung complains, obeying immediately. Minho warms a handful of lube in one hand, and rubs Jisung’s flank with the other.

“I think you mean dominant.”

“I’m pretty sure I meant—fuck,” he hisses, clenching around the first of Minho’s fingers, gliding unresistingly inside. “Hyung.”

“No back-talk when I’m inside you.” He softens the joke (and the stretch) by kissing both of Jisung’s cheeks.

Immediately, Jisung gentles. “You’re inside me,” he echoes wonderingly. 

He’s a little open from the shower, throbbing hot, wet. He adds a second finger and scissors them, searching, watching his expression for changes. He can tell when he brushes his prostate, because Jisung’s bones go soupy, and he rag-dolls, face melting against Minho’s shoulder. He has to hold him upright so he doesn’t ooze right off his thighs.

He massages that spot, and Jisung reaches up to trace Minho’s features, his sweaty bangs, the apex of his cheekbone. Minho curls his fingers inwards, and Jisung’s back arches, electrified. “Ah—please,“ he cries.

“Hannie,” Minho breathes. “Look at you.”

“Look at me,” Jisung says weakly, smiling. He ruts back against Minho’s hand, reaching down to encourage him all the way inside, down to the last knuckle. “Can you get—deeper?”

He hums, and starts fucking his fingers in properly, deep and precise, trying to give it to him so relentlessly that he can’t help but relax. Two, then three. “There you go,” he says, when Jisung starts following his rhythm, rolling his hips down instinctively. “Ride my fingers?” he tries.

Jisung half-moans, half-laughs. “Better, this time.”

“I thought you might like that.”

Jisung is still giggling, and their tempo has fallen out of sync, so Minho takes the opportunity to push him back into the sheets, following him down. Jisung beams up at him, then frowns.

“Why the face?” Minho asks, kissing his pout.

“You’re still wearing all your clothes.”

Minho shrugs. “I was busy. Here—“ he pulls off his pants, kicking them off the side of the bed. Before he can tug at his shirt, Jisung rushes to peel it up for him.

“You have to let me participate,” he laughs, tugging Minho free from the shirt collar and smoothing down the chaos of his hair.

“You’re participating,” Minho argues. “You took off two out of two shirts.”

“I just mean—slow down, hyung.” He traces his abdominal muscles, thumbs his scar lovingly. “Deep breaths. This is happening.”

"Right." He clutches Jisung’s waist. “I just don't want to leave any more room for doubt that I want you.” It’s supposed to be a joke, but he can feel the way his sincerity floats to the top.

Jisung’s brows pinch. His mouth drops open.

And then wordlessly, he gathers Minho close, skin on skin, cheek to cheek, chest to chest. He pokes Minho’s elbow until he stops trying to hold up his body weight, and they sink together, embracing. “Here,” he says softly, hearts and lungs expanding into each other, full and connected. Everything becomes very slow, very simple.

“You make a good weighted blanket,” Jisung murmurs. Minho hmms at him, feeling the soft coiling smoke of their intimacy filling his lungs, warming him down to his bones. He kisses the wet softness of his hair. He ducks down, and kisses the bruise he left, hours ago, at the base of his throat. 

Their hips sway a little, just getting comfortable at first. Their legs slot together. He bends his knee, and he can feel the wetness of Jisung’s pre-come seeping through his own boxers.

They keep moving together, wiggling into the grooves of each other’s bodies, hands petting, holding, trying to touch everything, everywhere they haven’t touched before, covering all the ground their friendship left unexplored.

The desire revs back to a fever pitch. He needs to bury himself in Jisung and never come out.

“So… you wanna fuck me? Baby?” Jisung tacks on, purposefully lecherous. He probably expects Minho to laugh, to jump back into the patter of their slippery jokey dirty talk, but instead he reaches between them and shoves his underwear down. And although it catches tight on the thickness of his thighs, it doesn’t stop him from sliding their wet cocks together, seeking that perfect frictionless glide.

Jisung throws his head back into the pillows, and Minho takes the open window, sucking on the soft skin beneath his ear. Like clockwork, Jisung clutches at his hair.

“Mm-hm,” Minho encourages. “Hold on.”

He holds his erection steady, nudging the swollen head along the apex of Jisung’s thighs, sliding slick and tantalizing over his hole.

Jisung’s fingers tighten against his scalp. His eyes are wide and shiny. 

“You ready?”

“Yes,” Jisung whispers. And then, for the second time tonight, “this is a big deal.”

“Thank you,” Minho replies, pressing in just the barest inch, just enough to feel Jisung flutter and clench down.

He doesn’t laugh. His gaze glitters, city lights on dark water. Minho falls right in. 

Inch by inch, the last space between them dwindles to nothing. Jisung starts holding his breath. Minho soothes him, stroking the back of his hand over his neck, sweeping his sweaty hair from his nape, caressing the side of his face. He can feel all of Jisung’s complicated inner mechanisms from the inside now. The disordered throbbing, the defensive squirming, the tight leash on his own surrender.

“I love you,” Minho breathes, almost by accident. He rocks back and forth to make the next inch easier. His confession works like magic—Jisung exhales, letting his legs fall open, accepting him deeper. Minho crushes his face to Jisung’s plush chest. His cock is slicking, pulse pounding in complement to Jisung’s, thudding fast down where they’re joining for real.

“I love you,” Jisung agrees. His fingers twirl in Minho’s hair. Now that he’s started breathing, he can’t stop: big gusting breaths, back arching, muscles softening. Always such a quick study. His pelvis tilts. His eyes bead with tears. 

“You’re taking it so well,” Minho says.

Jisung whines, pleased. He pushes down eagerly, and in one continuous slide, Minho is swallowed down to the hilt.

“Shit,” Minho hisses, grappling for control. He clenches, screwing his eyes shut, trying to keep himself from chasing his white rabbit orgasm. Every moment so far has been better than the one preceding it, more vivid and humid and impossible.

The first sunlight is starting to come in through the blinds now, tepid blue surrendering to ribbons of flaming sunrise. It’s fitting, that the sun should be rising on their first time.

“I’ve… never felt anything like this,” Jisung says, husky. His muscles spasm around Minho’s cock, so hard that he grinds into his heat involuntarily. They both moan, and Jisung’s thighs clap tight around Minho’s waist. “Nghh,” he says.

“Nghh,” Minho agrees. He pulls out halfway, and lays his first thrust, nice and deep. Immediately, Jisung is noisy. He’s trying not to be, chewing his lip, turning his face into the pillow, but it’s pointless. Minho is relentless.

And it’s all familiar, the clinging heat, the sticky lube, the slickness of flesh meeting, but it feels impossibly better than it ever has before. Familiar but foreign, a universe of pleasure so infinite but so tiny it only has room for the two of them. It’s so good it makes his teeth ache.

They’ve done so much together. Of course they’re doing this. They should’ve been here all along, tangled in first light.

He can’t stop praising Jisung, calling him good, and tight, and perfect, watching the ripple of each compliment over his pretty surface, feeling him roll down to meet him, swivelling, tightening just right at the height of each thrust. “It’s never been like this,” he says, mindless.

“I know,” Jisung sighs. He grabs Minho’s face, and steadies him, eyes catching hotly, bodies woven together. Over, under, a neat little stitch. Minho-Jisung. “Because you’re supposed to be mine.”

And then he’s screwing their hips together all the way, stoppered, and rolling them. Minho wheezes, grabbing for purchase as his perspective topples over. Blinking black spots out of his vision, Jisung comes into view above him: avenging angel, dark, curly halo, bitten red grin—heart in his mouth.

Minho moans just at the sight of him. He didn’t know Jisung could move him like that. Stubborn, hard-headed Jisung, setting his mind and heart to something. Possessive Jisung, coveting his relationships. Jisung on fire, Jisung on top. 

“You really do look good up there,” Minho says, breathless. The light slats over his naked chest from this angle, treating his tattoos in slabs of amber.

“You feel good down there,” Jisung replies. His voice has dropped so low, brandy and velvet. 

He tweaks a strand of Minho’s hair out of his eyes, pats his cheek so hard it’s almost a slap, and starts riding.

It’s all he can do to brace his hands on Jisung’s hips, and look wonderingly up into his face, like he’s an asteroid that’s about to strike Earth. 

Alternating between ragged bounces and slow rocking thrusts, he seems to prefer grinding Minho inside as far as he’ll go, moving his hips back and forth, just letting the girth of him stretch fat and deep. 

“You feel so—“ Jisung chokes. His head falls back, and he runs a clawing hand through his hair and down, over his own heart. “I’m going crazy.”

Minho helps slow his frantic hips. “Tell me about it,” he says, screwing in slower, revelling in every shivering, impossible moment. “Hmm?”

“Mmmm,” Jisung moans. Minho eases upright, nearly chest to chest, holding Jisung as tightly as he can while he’s still bouncing in his lap, sloppy but determined. Languidly, he winds a hand down to take Jisung’s cock in his fist and squeeze. He yelps, and the resulting clamping of muscles sends Minho teetering dangerously close to the edge.

His hand is soaked in an instant; pre-come drools over Minho’s fingers, and Jisung cries into his cheek at the added sensation. They kiss, intermittently, barely able to muster the coordination to get tongues involved. Jisung gives him this sweet little peck to his closed eyelid, and Minho nips the tip of his nose.

It’s like a bizarre continuation of earlier, in Hyunjin’s bedroom. Soft and sweet and hot. Jisung perched in his lap, Minho’s heart in his hands. But now there are no barriers, no deadlines, no second-guessing. It’s just them. Like always.

“So much better with you," Jisung slurs. "Why—oh fuck—why haven’t we done this before?”

“Human folly,” Minho pants.

“God, you’re so—weird,” he sobs, and then he’s coming on Minho’s cock, flowing over between them, wracked with tremors. His thighs shake, weak and overworked, and Minho rubs them with messy hands, fighting to hold himself steady where he’s anchored inside. “Come on,” Jisung breathes, still lost in the aftershocks, clinging to Minho’s body like he only does when he’s drunk. “You too. Come inside me, please, Min, I want you to.”

It’s over in an instant. He sees stars. He sees planets, rings of ice and whips of fire, astral mayhem. Beautiful, impossible things. He drives deeply, up into this person whom he loves more than he knew he could love, spilling hotly and inevitably inside him, feeling time slipping around them. He holds Jisung to his chest, safe and warm and his. 

“You’re—mine," he says aloud. "Jagiya, my—” he chokes, tight with pleasure. He thrusts up a few final times, buried as deep as he’ll go, filling him up. He feels Jisung laughing giddily, and he laughs too, ebullient, floating off into the sky.

“You got very primal at the end there.”

Minho bites into the meat of his shoulder in response, and Jisung shouts.

“Unhand me,” he giggles. “Unhand and untooth.”

Minho beams. “You said I was weird.”

Jisung smiles helplessly back at him.“We can both be weird.”

Minho shakes his head. “You said I was weird and then you came about it.”

Jisung’s face flames, and he thunks it against Minho’s shoulder, then yelps when it hits harder than expected. “Excuse me for loving you,” he mutters, rubbing his forehead.

“You’re not excused.” Before he can protest, Minho presses a mollifying kiss to the corner of his mouth. Jisung rolls his eyes, but gives him a sweet peck in return. 

Before they know it they're kissing lazily through the afterglow, watching each other’s reactions through slitted eyes, smiling too hard to do much more than nudge their faces together. It’s not long before Jisung is chasing his tongue though, so easy, winding both arms around Minho’s neck, and then hissing with overstimulation when Minho’s soft cock shifts, still buried inside him.

“You’re so sensitive,” Minho says, gingerly holding himself steady so he can move Jisung out of his lap. 

Jisung just throws out a sleepy peace sign in reply, and something about it is so absurd; the pearly trail of come and lube leaking down his inner thigh, the exhaustion of a sleepless night and enthusiastic morning all over them, and Jisung, naked and goofy and fucked-out. 

He rolls onto his front, sighing contentedly into the coolness of the pillow, wiggling his butt in Minho’s direction as he gets comfortable.

He takes the bait, spanking him lightly. 

Jisung doesn’t even respond, busy rubbing his face into the mussed linens. “I wanna live here.”

“Your name’s on the lease, I’m pretty sure.”

“Right here,” he corrects, reaching out blindly behind him, smacking his hand around looking for Minho, who grabs it out of the air before it can do any damage. “You and me.”

He squeezes his fingers and watches him, blinking slowly, taking him in. “You’re leaking all over my bed.”

One dark eye blinks over the curve of his shoulder. “You think it’s hot, don’t lie.”

“You mean you think it’s hot,” he says. Jisung hums noncommittally. “I’m going to eat you,” Minho warns.

“Maybe later,” Jisung snorts, and Minho feels a hot streak of interest race through his blood. He runs a rough hand over the asscheek closest to him, and pulls him apart, watching his come glistening at his entrance. “Gah!” Jisung wriggles and rolls onto his back. “Haven’t you had enough, pervert?”

“You should date me,” Minho blurts. He circles a hand around Jisung’s nearest ankle, swiping his thumb over the joint, and refuses to be embarrassed. He wants this more than anything.

The amusement in Jisung’s eyes goes cottony. “Okay,” he agrees.

Minho’s heart makes a running leap and goes airborne. “Good.” He leans down and kisses Jisung’s kneecap, and then his downy upper thigh.

“Man, I think this is a new record for me: least time I’ve ever been single.”

Minho chooses not to think about Wonpil while they’re in bed together. Their bed. Where they live now. He keeps wending his way up instead, leaving small, lingering kisses over Jisung’s waist and bicep and forehead. He settles down at his side and butts his face into the side of Jisung’s.

Jisung chuckles. “Cat boyfriend,” he says, pleased. He reaches up to press three fingers against each of Minho’s cheeks as whiskers, and Minho squints at him. “Say nyang,” he prompts, with the same cadence as a doctor with a tongue depressor. 

“Should we set a new record? Quickest break-up?”

“You would never break up with me,” he says confidently. Minho raises an eyebrow, and Jisung pushes it back down with his fingers. “We’re just getting started, hyung. This was a warm-up round.”

Such an easy promise. Like he’s not even thinking about it. 

“Hm. I like to warm down, myself.”

Recognition sparks in Jisung’s eyes, and for a minute Minho sees stage lights, chubby cheeks. “I hate it when you quote teen me.”

“He was funny.”

“He was trying too hard to impress you.”

Minho pulls back a little, to get the full scope of his expression, scouring for punchlines. “Really?”

“Ohhh yeah, baby,” Jisung laughs. “You know. I was obsessed.” Minho shakes his head fast, hungry for more information. Jisung starts to look a bit sheepish. “Well… yeah. You were new, and handsome, and interested in what I had to say even though I was younger. I felt like you had lived a whole life before me, and I wanted you to take me with you.”

“I don’t even remember life before you,” Minho says, and once his mind catches up with his mouth, his ears burn.

Jisung laughs merrily. “I’m glad we’re both equally embarrassing.”

“No one is as embarrassing as you,” Minho argues.

“If you say so," Jisung sings, leaning in to bite the blood-hot shell of Minho’s ear. “Whatever my jagi thinks.” It’s Jisung’s doting boyfriend character, the one he does when he thinks Minho’s being difficult, only now it has enough reality in it to make him feel crazy.

He needs to regain control of the situation. “… So you had a crush on me?”

Jisung considers. “I don’t think I knew it was a crush yet, but I mean. I was sniffing your hair, hyung. I was writing songs about you.”

Minho thrills, entirely. His heart grows two sizes. He tries to keep his voice steady when he says, “it’s amazing that anyone believed you were heterosexual. Especially you.”

“I think I just thought everyone was in love with their best friend,” Jisung says softly. 

“Well, if it helps…” Minho snares his hand in his own, and holds them loosely to his now cartoonishly full heart. “I am.”

Jisung’s smile blooms so slowly and so beautifully that Minho wants to confess again, even though he only just did, even though it had once seemed such a huge and impossible thing to do. Now he knows he’ll keep confessing for the rest of his life. 

For now he holds him close, loose-limbed in the sunshine.

“I think my data set is off, but you know,” Jisung says, letting himself be coddled, beaming through Minho’s gruff, hands-on affection. “I guess that’s all that really matters.”

Later, they send two photos in the group chat:

The first is a candid of Minho peering up from Jisung’s chest, clearly taken in the stolen moment before he saw the camera. His face is curled in a lazy, besotted smile.

The second is Yongbok’s borrowed running shoes on top of their garbage bin, with the caption:

no more running away.