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“And then she threw her iced americano at the vocal booth window.” The water level hovers near the pot’s edge, but Jisung gracefully maneuvers another block of ramen in without sacrificing a drop. “And, like. Obviously it exploded. Got on the recording equipment, too—not that I had time to worry about that when she was storming out of the booth to curse me out and, I kid you not, grab me by the collar of my shirt, which would’ve been marginally less terrifying if she didn’t have actual talons for fingernails—which, by the way, she has cut me with before. Like, accidentally, though, when I’ve handed her shit.
“But now that I think about it, I can’t be sure if anything she’s ever done to me has been accidental, because that was one hell of a diatribe, hyung. All against me. Like… color me both shocked and impressed that I could ever make anyone hate me that much. She used some… vivid language. Inventive metaphors. I wonder if the mic caught it? The booth door was open. I hope it did. I could sample it for a track. What do you think, hyung? A secret track, obviously. I’m on thin enough ice already. It didn’t even take her an hour to ask Kim manager-nim to kick me off the project—as if she has any real authority over me, ha. But it’s my fucking song anyway. Sure, it’s her fucking solo debut, but it’s my fucking song! My baby future-chart-topper! My baby future-record-breaker!
“I do think I’m kind of in trouble, though. It all went down close enough to the weekend that Chan-hyung didn’t get a chance to call me into his office today, and thank fuck for that, but I bet my balls he’ll stick something on my calendar first thing Monday, so… if you don’t hear from me Monday night, it won’t be because Chan-hyung killed me, but because he hit me right in the daddy issues with the ultimate your father is disappointed you eyes and guilted me into killing myself.”
He totes the pot of ramen to the kitchen table, sets it down on the waiting trivet. In one of two chairs is Yeonjun, elbow on the table and chin in hand, hair clean and tousled post-shower and blow-dry, scoop neck hanging low over the stark line of his clavicle. There’s exhaustion in the bruise-like shadows under his eyes and the slouch of his ever-postured shoulders, familiar warmth in his soft-lipped smile and big, receptive eyes, but Jisung can tell he’s not all there.
He tweaks the skin of Yeonjun’s chin, swivels on his heel to go fetch them bowls. “You’re somewhere else, hyung.”
Behind him, Yeonjun laughs, sheepish. Is rubbing at his eyes when Jisung sets a bowl before him. “I, uh. I was following until the iced americano ordeal.”
Jisung hums. He supposes he can’t blame Yeonjun. It takes a particular degree of attention span to follow Jisung’s rambles, a degree even Jisung himself can’t harness. “Right. Don’t worry about it.” He’s not upset. Not really. And if he is, he’ll get over it.
Yeonjun sighs, chin tipped upward, and wheedles, “Baby.” His fingers skim the side of Jisung’s leg, hook into the pocket of his sweats.
Meanwhile Jisung gives Yeonjun a heaping serving, knowing it’ll probably be the first solid meal he’s had all day.
“Jisung, baby,” Yeonjun tries again.
“You should eat while it’s warm, hyung.”
“Jisung.” Yeonjun’s hand cuffs him around the wrist, so Jisung surrenders that hand, transfers his chopsticks to the other. Minho’s ambidexterity lessons would be coming in handy right now, if Jisung weren’t unteachable. “Can we talk?”
“You can talk between mouthfuls, can’t you?”
“Not right now.”
Jisung frowns at his bowl. “I should’ve boiled eggs. Sorry.” The pot lid leaks condensation onto the table. And he wants to sit, but with the way Yeonjun’s holding on, he can’t without knocking down a candlestick or two and burning down Yeonjun’s apartment. When he tugs at his wrist and Yeonjun doesn’t give, he huffs, “What?” and then, “Can I have my arm back, please?”
“No. Not yet.” Yeonjun rises, deftly snatches the chopsticks from Jisung’s remaining hand. He then urges Jisung toward the living room.
“What—hyung,” Jisung squeaks. He already knew that Yeonjun was stronger than he looked to be, could be powerful if he only wanted to be. And at any other time, Jisung would’ve been appreciative of it. Right now he just feels pathetic and small, socked feet sliding on gray laminate. “Are you kidding right now? It’s gonna get cold—” His back fwumps against the couch cushions when Yeonjun shoves him down.
Yeonjun perches on the coffee table opposite, close enough that their knees touch to form a lopsided diamond. “I really need to talk to you.”
That doesn’t sound good. Jisung scowls up at him, slumps defiantly into the cushions. “You couldn’t wait ’til we’d eaten?”
“I don’t…” Yeonjun evades his eyes, so this really can’t be good. “I’m not that hungry. I feel a little… sick.”
Jisung kicks at his ankle. “But you need to eat, hyung. Does your stomach hurt? You should’ve told me. I could’ve made you juk instead. Not that I really know how, but Minho-hyung’s made it for me before. I’m sure I could’ve texted him for his recipe—”
“You didn’t give me a chance.” And, well. That’s true. It would be far from outlandish to claim that Jisung has been going a mile a minute since Yeonjun first opened the door for him and took his coat.
So Jisung quiets. “Okay.” Now it’s his stomach that’s turning… with a nauseating sense of déjà vu. Yeonjun catches Jisung’s wrist before he can gnaw off his nails. “Well.” Jisung’s brows twitch. “Talk.” And when his knee starts bouncing, Yeonjun gently presses the flat of his foot to Jisung’s. As if he didn’t already feel like a fidgeting child.
Then Yeonjun cradles his hands. Jisung really wishes he wouldn’t. He doesn’t want to remember this as the last time they hold hands; where it should be affectionate, it’s only condescending. Humiliating. “I really like you, Jisung,” murmurs Yeonjun. His eyes are cast downward, lashes like streaks of ink dashed over wan cheeks.
Ha. “Just not enough?” Jisung finishes for him. A corner of his mouth quirks sourly.
Yeonjun’s eyes flash to him, dour. They send a tremor down Jisung’s spine. “No,” he insists. “That’s not it. Not at all. Fuck, I really, really like you, Jisung, like… on the verge of too much.” He jaw clenches, nostrils flaring out. In. “For how much you like me back.”
Jisung swallows the sick back down to where it came. He snatches his hands back and sits up. “What the hell, hyung,” he demands.
“Aish, Jisung-ah.” There’s an irritated edge to Yeonjun’s pouted frown. “Come on.”
“You come on. You’re the one putting words in my mouth.”
“Sure, yeah. And I’m sorry about it.” He doesn’t sound it. “But if you can’t tell me I’m wrong, is it really so egregious?”
“Hyung,” Jisung exhales. Laughs humorlessly. “You are wrong.”
“Am I?”
“What? Of course you are.” Jisung’s head floods with heat that pulses behind his temples, in his neck, furious, burning him from the inside out. “And—and I’m sorry that I haven’t made it more… obvious to you? I didn’t even… I didn’t know you felt like this. And I feel—like shit, honestly. Knowing. I’m sorry, hyung. Please. I’ll do better. For you. I promise. I promise I’ll be better to you.”
Yeonjun’s hand smears stinging tear streaks across Jisung’s cheek before they can drip off his jaw. “You can’t,” Yeonjun says lightly. With a vapid smile, no less.
Jisung huffs, and it catches in the sticky rawness of his throat. “Because,” he swallows, “why? Because you’re ending this?”
“No,” chuckles Yeonjun. He finds Jisung’s hands again with his tear-damp fingers. Jisung feels numb from the eyes down, can’t even retract this time. “I’m ending this because you can’t.” Jisung watches Yeonjun massage at the fleshy bits of Jisung’s hands between his forefingers and thumbs. Yeonjun’s knuckles are pink and cracked, fingers calloused. “And you can’t because I can’t compete. I could be great at all the things I suck at, still great at all the things I’m great at, and I could fix all the things you don’t like about me—”
“Hyung.”
“Jisung, you can’t like everything about me. It’s impossible. Unrealistic. But even if you could and did, I couldn’t compete,” Yeonjun rationalizes, hushed like it’s a secret, unambiguous and patient like Jisung is a thick-skulled kid and not a mere year and day his junior. “Because you love someone else.”
Protests dry up in Jisung’s throat. Maybe he’s used up all he had left in him. Maybe he still disagrees, but he knows he can’t win this one, can’t see Yeonjun going belly-up and surrendering it to him.
He hangs his head. Claws with blunt nails at the hearts of Yeonjun’s palms as he whispers, “That’s not true.”
Yeonjun noses into his hair. His warm breath has Jisung’s muscles in tremors. “Baby, you know it is.”
Jisung is good friends with Changbin. And Yeonjun was close with Changbin long before Jisung ever came into the picture. It wasn’t necessarily that Changbin never brought Jisung along into Yeonjun’s world, it was just that Jisung never accepted. Because if there is anything Jisung is quite decent at, it is saying no. So Jisung and Yeonjun only ever crossed paths peripherally, casually.
Enter Minho. Jisung never accepted—never, until Minho began inviting Jisung to this and that with this and that industry friend, one of whom happened to be Yeonjun. Because if there is anything at which Jisung has been miserable from day one, it is saying no to Minho.
It’s funny, then, that Minho was once the one to bring them together, and is now the one to break them apart.
Jisung clutches onto Yeonjun’s hands. “Don’t tell hyung,” is his final plea.
The longer the night wears on, the more evident it becomes that, despite all initial promises, they won’t be going anywhere at all.
If Jisung had only known it’d be that kind of night, he wouldn’t have gotten this sauced just to bum around on his own couch. But the digital clock on the microwave seems to creep a minute closer to 1 a.m. every time he manages a sluggish blink, a few more with every shot of soju he pounds back. And Hyunjin and Minho look too cozy in the armchair for Minho—upon whom it typically falls to rally the group—to lead the way to the shitty noraebang a few blocks away where Jisung could belt out his woes… much less to a subway somewhere disreputable where Jisung could suck face with a passable guy who could give him passable dick until he blacked out.
Jisung kicks his feet out on the couch. He has plenty of freedom to do so, as it’s empty (Minho and Hyunjin crammed into an armchair while Jisung languishes alone on the couch—it makes quite the metaphor for his life). “I thought we were going out,” he groans, arching backward over the armrest. The ceiling swims in his vision, and he needs to pee, but not enough to piss his pants just yet. So here is where he’ll stay, sprawled across the cushions like a chalk outline straight from a crime scene. The crime? Too many to count. All Jisung knows is that it’s he who is responsible. “I thought we were gonna dance. It’s been hours.”
His protest goes glaringly ignored. Selectively unheard. “I’m hungry,” remarks Changbin grumpily at his phone.
Hyunjin springs to his feet. “Pizza!” he cheers, fists stretched toward the ceiling.
“Yeah?” Changbin grunts, hefts himself from the floor. “Where?”
“Not far. I’ll come with you.” Hyunjin whorls, plants his hands on Minho’s spread knees. “And I’ll bring hyung…” he ponders aloud, bows into Minho’s space. Punctuates his words with a nose kiss—talk about nauseating. If Jisung didn’t feel ill before, he sure does now. “The one with bacon?”
Minho’s eyes cross. Through a rabbity smile that’s both smug and shy, he mutters, “Please.”
Jisung swings his legs off the couch. Declares, “I’m coming with.”
“Oh no you’re not.” Hyunjin defies all laws of space and time, traverses the room from Minho to Jisung in the duration of one lazy blink. And now he’s very much here, very much hoisting up Jisung’s legs out from under him and tossing them back onto the couch like he is but a sack of bones. “Drunky is going to stay right here where hyung can see him. And he is not going to follow me to the pizza parlor, because the lady at the counter is in love with me and somehow thinks I’m an idol and gives me freebies, and he will be shattering neither that illusion nor my dignity tonight. So.” Hyunjin touches the back of his hand to Jisung’s cheek, then his forehead, as if he’s feverish. Crinkles his nose in what looks like disgust but Jisung knows, even in his sloppy condition, is just pity.
As Hyunjin turns his back, Jisung can only glare and stew in silence and channel his despair into hugging a throw pillow.
“Keep an eye on him,” Changbin orders halfheartedly, clapping Minho on the shoulder as he follows Hyunjin to the door. And Jisung likes being babied, but there’s something about the quality of today’s babying that makes him feel useless and pitiable and stupid. Like it’s not because he’s a cute, lovable dongsaeng but a pain in the ass.
And maybe he'd stopped at a convenience store on the way home from Yeonjun’s and sent a (largely ignored) ‘whos getting fucked up toniteeeeeeeeee’ message to the group chat and drunk himself silly, all before Hyunjin (and—just Jisung’s luck—Minho) could return from their dinner date at a very respectable eight-thirty in the evening.
So. Maybe he is all three. As well as a pain in the ass.
The front door chunking gets Jisung stirring. He lifts his head with all the effect of a marmot peeping from a hole in the ground, only to be met with Minho’s amused stare. Jisung drops his head heavily, struggles to wedge the throw pillow under his cheek. “Hyung-ah,” he mumbles into the fabric, “can you open the peach soju for me. Pretty please.”
Minho snorts. Jisung bounces as the cushions dip suddenly under Minho’s weight. It feels a bit like a recurring dream he has about sailing away over sky and sea on his mattress, where he can’t get off even if he wants to. “You just opened another grape, sweetheart.”
Jisung rolls onto his side, eyes obstinately shut. “I don’t want it anymore.”
“Figures you’d get sick of it after two bottles.”
So Minho has seen the carnage in the kitchen recycling. Lovely. Jisung grunts into the pillow. “That’s why it’s peach o’clock.”
Minho only chuckles. And Jisung feels warm, struggles to place why until the dig of Minho’s thumb into his waist breaches his mental fog. “You’re so tense,” chides Minho gently.
“Hyung always says that.” Goddamn you dancers.
“Sit up for hyung.” And while Jisung obeys with eyes rolling in sockets, clumsily twisting and joint-cracking until he’s cross-legged on the cushion with his slumped back to Minho, Minho asks, “Why were you drinking alone, Jisung.”
“Is this an intervention?”
“Do you think it should be?”
“I never drink alone!”
“Exactly.” Minho takes him gallantly by the shoulders, works his tiny Hulk thumbs into Jisung’s stiff traps. “So why tonight, Jisung?”
“Ah,” Jisung gasps, more from physical pain than any leakage from the metric tonnes of emotional anguish he’s toting around day in and day out. “Can you—take that violence down a notch, maybe?”
Minho hums. “How’s this?”
“Still violent.”
“You want to answer my question, Jisungie?”
“Ah, well. If you’re really asking, no, I don’t.”
Minho says nothing. Kneads at Jisung’s back like he’s making custard cream buns. And somehow the silence unnerves Jisung more than listening to himself yammer.
“I’m gonna get fired,” Jisung whispers to his lap.
Minho clicks his tongue. “You’re not gonna get fired, darling.”
“Yes I am.”
“Jisung, as long as Chan-hyung wants JYP artists to keep charting, which is presumably at least until he dies or retires, you’ve got indisputable job security.”
“What if I’m secretly dating a JYP idol?”
Minho’s hands freeze mid-ministrations. “Are you?”
“No! I have a boyfriend!” Had, oops. It’s like clockwork, though; Jisung will get the hang of the post-breakup soon enough, the same way it takes him a little while to adjust to a new age with every passing year. “And who do you think I am?!”
“Then why would you even say something like that?”
“I don’t know! Being on the company sweetheart’s hit list honestly seems a whole lot worse than a little sneaky-sneaky to date a consenting adult! Thus: fired!”
Minho sighs. His palm covers the back of Jisung’s neck, grounding. “You’re on no one’s hit list.”
Minho has worked with her before. Somehow that gives him credibility. Jisung tries to internalize this, tries to allow it to permeate the boozy coating over his frontal lobe.
No such luck. Instead, he blurts, “Yeonjun-hyung broke up with me.”
Minho goes silent. It doesn’t even sound like he breathes. Jisung counts the creases in the palms of his hands, mentally enumerates all the things Minho could and should say but would never. It’s only been two months. What was it this time? That’s how many breakups in a year and a half now, Jisung?
Minho’s palms skim over Jisung’s shoulders to the sides of his arms. He squeezes. “When?”
“A couple hours ago.”
Minho sighs. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Jisung shrugs, hiccups a little. “What’re you supposed to say to comfort me that you haven’t already? I don’t want you to feel like a broken record.”
“Jisung, this isn’t about me.”
“I guess you’re right. It’s about me.” And in English, “It’s me, hi! I’m the problem.”
Minho laughs, lifeless and forced. “Don’t.”
“Sorry.”
Minho paws at his arms through his hoodie. Pinches at muscle, lets it go. “You’re not a problem.”
“But I know for a fact that I am,” Jisung supplies faux-brightly. “And I make it an even bigger problem every time I decide to get into a relationship, knowing that I’m still the problem and I never stopped being the problem. And I let it happen anyway.” He shrugs out of Minho’s hold, swings out his legs to clamber to his feet. “Oh, fuck.” The floor tilts beneath him like a funhouse and he staggers the first few steps, but then he’s on his way.
Minho stays behind, thank god for that. At least, Jisung thinks he does, throwing a glance over his shoulder that nearly tips him off balance. Yep. Still on the couch, observing Jisung rather crossly, though it’s all a bit blurry around the edges.
“We should talk about this in the morning,” says Minho evenly. “But I think it could do you some good to try being single for a while, darling.”
Jisung squints at a bottle of grape soju that he had, in fact, cracked open already. Doesn’t remember that. Goes for the peach, locates a clean glass without knocking down Hyunjin’s prized collection of (three) crystal martini glasses that should really be on a higher shelf given prior incidents.
“Jisung.”
“Just one! Just a shot and I’ll put it away.” He’s pouring with the utmost concentration when Minho ruins everything by materializing on the other side of the island. “Scared me, hyung,” Jisung whines, unthinkingly paws at the spillage with his hoodie sleeve.
Minho wrests the bottle from him, screws the cap back on. “Did you hear what I said?”
“About staying single? Sure. Sounds miserable.”
Minho scoffs at the fridge. “Jisung—”
Jisung’s knees buckle as he groans, laces his fingers atop the counter’s edge in desperate pleading. “Can you please not therapize me right now? I know I know I know I know. I think about it every day. Being happy with myself is critical to starting any even remotely healthy relationship. I should feel complete without some guy around to loan me his clothes and buy me dinner and hold me. I should take bubble baths and take myself out for coffee and eat cake alone in public where everyone can see and—shit.” He laughs, hoarse. “Shit. I know.”
Minho is unamused. His fingers drum the countertop, and he doesn’t look to try very hard to conceal his judgment as Jisung tosses back the last shot, half of which is already on the counter and soaked into his sleeve. “We should talk about this in the morning,” Minho repeats solemnly.
“Okay.” Jisung stares at the kitchen backsplash until he starts to feel dizzy. Then his eyes rove in search of Minho’s. It takes him a moment to get there, to find them, but to his relief, they’re softer now.
Minho smiles faintly. “Do you want a cuddle?”
Jisung feels a bit like crying his eyes raw. He drops his chin toward his chest. “You know I do.”
Minho feels like he always does; warm and solid and all-encompassing. He smells like Jisung’s favorite ever laundry detergent and his muted cologne and beer and a bit like Hyunjin, too, which makes Jisung feel vile and evil. He sinks his nails into Minho’s back, hunches enough to burrow into Minho’s chest until his face aches.
Minho pets his hair. “You know I only want you to be happy, darling,” he whispers. “And I think… if you focus on doing the little things that you love when you can, you’ll be totally unsuspecting when the man of your dreams walks through that door.”
“Man of my dreams?” Jisung snorts. “Who are you?”
“Shut up.”
Jisung sniffs noisily. “You think I should wait for the man of my dreams to trespass into my apartment?”
Minho thumps him on the back. “You know what I mean. A door. The recording studio door. The club door. The figurative door to Olympic Park. The door at the cat café near work—”
“I only ever go to that cat café with you.”
“Then I’ll be on the lookout to make sure you don’t miss him.”
It’s a lie. He’ll be impatiently waiting for Jisung to finish his dessert, staring down the awaiting cats through the glass like he always does. Jisung exhales a wet laugh, clings harder. And he’s this close—this close, and the weight of it is so crushingly heavy. And now, he’s realizing, sleepy and loose-lipped, it’d be all too easy to just. Let it go. So why hasn’t he? “Silly hyung,” he drawls. “Don’t you know the man of my dreams has already walked through that door?”
Minho chuckles. “If you need my help confessing to Seo Changbin—”
“No. God, you’re gross.”
“Then who?”
“What?”
Minho withdraws, but holds Jisung close enough to scrutinize his face, eyes and lips all mirthful and wry. “The man of your dreams,” he reminds. “Who is it.”
Jisung blinks. Retraces the steps of their conversation. “I… was joking.”
Minho’s brow twitches. He hums dubiously. “It didn’t sound like you were.”
“But I was.” Jisung extricates himself from Minho’s grip. “Who could I possibly be talking about?” He reels a bit; the kitchen lights feel all too dazzling as he stumbles around for a barstool. “Ah, I need to… sit.” He wipes his sleeve across his upper lip, sags into the stool Minho pulls out for him. There’s consternation in the line between Minho’s eyebrows. And Jisung would smooth it out with his thumb, but he’d much rather do so with a little kiss.
Minho retreats to pour him a glass of water. And as Jisung’s eyes map out the strong planes of Minho’s back in his threadbare tee, he thinks: why hasn’t he let it go?
Well. There’s the small (monumental) matter of Hyunjin (Jisung’s dearest childhood friend and present roommate. Minho’s boyfriend of eight long months). The other small (also considerable) matter of Minho himself (whom Jisung has never exactly addressed as his best friend, not to his face. They’ve never agreed on that, being best friends, but Jisung hasn’t had many best friends, so he thinks it ought to go both ways before it’s official. Is it weird to have known Minho for less than two years, and feel he’s his best friend? Unofficially? Unrequitedly? Yeah. It’s probably weird).
Minho deposits the glass of water directly into Jisung’s hands, making hydration inescapable. “Jisung, you know I want you to feel like you can tell me things, yeah?”
Jisung slurps at the glass’s edge, deadpans, “I don’t think you want me to tell you who the man of my dreams is, hyung.”
“Is it Park Jinyoung PD-nim?”
Jisung gags on his water, spills heartily across his lap. “No!”
“Then of course I want to know.” Minho smiles, placid. “Anyhow, I figured he’d never paid you a personal visit, and thereby has never walked through that door.”
Jisung rolls his eyes. Squeezes woefully at the wet patch on his jeans. “You just want me to tell you so you can run and tell Hyunjin and you can gossip and scheme about it together behind closed doors and ruin everything.”
Through his impish, trademark Cheshire cat smile, Minho sneers, “That would imply there’s something to ruin.”
Jisung smiles ruefully. So much. Like you wouldn’t believe.
He feels sick. Like he’d swallowed a little too much water in one go, and now it’s all coming back up. And he must look truly wretched in that moment, because Minho is suddenly in his space, hands cupping Jisung’s shoulders, muttering, “You don’t have to, Jisung-ah, I’m just teasing. I shouldn’t be, though. You’re a bit fragile tonight, sweetheart, aren’t—”
“It’s you.”
Jisung stares down at his lap, sees nothing, and… no bombs detonate. The floor doesn’t open up and a fiery abyss doesn’t swallow him whole. Minho doesn’t knock him out cold, either. But spotty gray does ebb at the corners of his vision. Shapes blur, scintillate. His heart is like a caged hummingbird, and—ah, that can’t be good. Those aren’t good signs. But certainly enduring the silence is worse.
He exhales to fill it. “Yeonjun-hyung broke up with me, ‘cause he thought I… didn’t like him as much as he liked me.”
Minho is close, perfectly still. But Jisung keeps his hands to himself, shuts his eyes. “He was right,” he breathes, voice going weak and thin and small. He bites at his inner lip too hard, too fast, winces at the sharp pinch, as he tastes blood. “I… At first I thought… maybe he wasn’t. That I’d finally… I don’t know. Pretended hard enough to like someone I wanted to and was allowed to that I’d finally made it happen. Made it real. That I wasn’t leading him on. I really… really thought that. Really thought it’d worked.”
Finally, Minho moves. And Jisung is cold, trembling, freezing everywhere but where the heat of humiliation concentrates in his face, so Minho must no longer be touching him.
“It didn’t work,” Jisung whispers.
“Jisung,” says Minho. He sounds like he’s on a rowboat, floating off and away, further and further from Jisung.
“What?” utters Jisung. He’s distracted trying to contain the hammering of his heart, still fast but seemingly loud now within the aching walls of his head, turbulent but leaden like his blood has doubled in volume. “I’m not asking you to do anything about it,” he assures Minho, then cracks his eyes open to nothing but staticky chaos, ears ringing. Closes them again. No point. “I promise that’s… not what I’m asking. It was just killing me. Really killing me. And now I can’t…” He reaches for the water. Pins and needles prickle in his fingertips, and he doesn’t see it, doesn’t feel it, but he does hear the glass tip. Maybe shatter. “Oh, shit, did I do that? Sorry.”
The front door opens, also faraway. Floating; another little rowboat. The floor surges, crashes. Jisung’s on his mattress.
Through the static, Hyunjin trills, “Two Spice Girl pizzas! They even sent you their prettiest delivery boy, so there’ll be an extra charge for that. I accept payment in the form of scalp massages and surrendered souls—”
Minho grits, “Hyunjin, can you please get the vacuum. Changbin, get over—”
“Oh, boy,” Jisung laughs, airy. Because he can feel the stool beneath him, but he still feels like he’s plummeting. “Hyung, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
When he topples off the stool, it’s Changbin who catches him. He can tell.
And he understands. Understands why Minho wouldn’t dare touch him.
◀︎◀︎◀︎
From the moment the drink hits Hyunjin’s hand until Hyunjin subsequently abandons him, Jisung counts twenty-one seconds.
An approximation, sure. But all things (the abandonment) considered, Jisung figures he can be as unfair as he wants in his private corner at the bar, particularly since he’d taken Hyunjin by the hand in the cab and pleaded, “Please don’t ditch me,” just before they’d pulled up outside.
Upon further inspection, there’s a dried yellow kiwi floating on the surface of his cocktail. With a mild sense of horror, Jisung wonders just how much he’d paid for it. He’d comped Hyunjin’s, too.
“Hi.”
It’s murmured right into Jisung’s ear. He lifts his eyes, skeptical, but also totally unsuspecting because… holy attractive.
Jisung is pretty sure his ass clenches. “Hi?” he rasps. It’s still feasible that the greeting had come from Jisung’s other side, where some creep with bad, cologne-veiled body odor and worse dick game is still breathing down his neck and trying to smell his hair, absolutely not from the guy mere inches from him. But Jisung doesn’t really want to check, much less look away.
His company smiles, mostly with his eyes. And boy, are they eyes. Good ones; big, coy, feline. Jisung only compliments them mentally, because maybe, just maybe, he's been blessed tonight, and if he has, then the guy is not only extremely attractive but also humble-attractive, so he might just say something smooth like thanks, grew them myself, leaving Jisung to flounder.
As if he isn’t already.
“Hi,” the stranger says again, settles his elbows on the counter. “My friend dared me to come over and talk to you, so. Here I am.”
Jisung blinks, floundering—definitely already floundering, like a goldfish whose bowl just smashed into a million itty pieces on the grubby club floor, stiletto impalement impending. “Oh.” This has to be a practical joke. Jisung’s life is a practical joke. He blinks again, disoriented. “Uh. Who? Where’s your friend?”
The stranger casts a glance over his shoulder, seems to scan the line of people at the bar’s curved edge before settling on a suitable victim. “The one in the mesh top, with the huge ear cuff,” he tells Jisung, then raises his voice to belt, “Hey!” which gets the attention of just about everyone in their vicinity, including the blonde in the mesh. Stranger wriggles his fingers coyly. The blonde only stares, puzzled. Offers a hesitant wave once he’s checked that the stranger’s attention isn’t, in fact, on someone behind him.
Jisung chokes on his drink. “Dude,” he informs the stranger, “that guy’s never seen you in his life.”
Stranger grins. The bud of his upper lip pulls back just so over the rounded edges of his front teeth. “Well, I didn’t actually want to tell you this, but now you’re kind of forcing my hand. No one dared me. I just thought you looked… super lost. Like you just woke up. At the club.”
Maybe he did. Maybe he never woke up. “What?” laughs Jisung, just to buy himself time to drink in the stranger’s appearance; heart-shaped face, strong nose. Thick, corded forearms, tattooed knuckles—and by the looks of it, a full sleeve on his left arm, too, botanical and mythical and crawling up to his bicep, disappearing into his tee. It might even spread onto his chest, peek over the swooping collar of his top. And he’s talking to Jisung, no less. Why? He wasn’t particularly feeling himself tonight. Maybe he should be.
Stranger doesn’t repeat himself. He takes a half-step closer, which is notably worse. “Do I know you?” he then asks, squinting into Jisung’s face.
Jisung burns, hopes the magenta overhead lights conceal it well enough. Leans back onto his heels so he doesn’t hyperventilate on the same air this guy is breathing. “Are you playing that game again? We’re not friends, I think I’d remember—”
“No games this time, I swear I…” The stranger’s face splits into something of a maniacal smile. He snaps his fingers, pokes one into Jisung’s sternum. “Yeah. You’re Jiwon from 1-Up.”
Jisung claps a hand over his mouth to suppress an inhuman sound. “Oh my god,” he squeaks when he finds his voice. And around a bewildered laugh, “J.ONE, not Jiwon.”
Stranger’s self-satisfaction is unshakable, etched into the corners of his smile. “What’d you say?” he calls over the music.
“J—never mind.” Just about six years have passed since Jisung left 1-Up, five since they disbanded. And the last time he bumped into one of his ex-members (they don’t really keep in touch) it was at another club just like this in Seoul, which told Jisung everything he needed to know about their idolhood longevity.
No one talks about 1-Up these days. No one really even talked about them in their heyday. “How…” starts Jisung. He laughs again when the stranger bats his eyes. “Okay, you’re not wrong. But—how?”
Stranger shrugs a shoulder, takes a thoughtful sip from his beer. “I remember a lot from that particular year. Your debut single was strong. Everything else… not so much.”
Jisung wrote that song. Their debut single. And he’s so overcome by incredulity that it only hits him now that the stranger remembers him from 1-Up—by face, voice, mannerisms—which is either flattering or worrisome. “Whoa,” he chuckles, sways a little too close when his elbow slips on the bar. Stranger doesn’t budge, eyes glimmering. So Jisung downs half his cocktail in one go. “Okay. Damn. Who gave you the right to dig up my buried past and shit all over it?”
“That wasn’t an insult.” Stranger smiles lazily, tips his head. “I even remember your cute little snaggletooth.” He lifts a pointed brow, eyes flitting boldly to Jisung’s mouth. “Which I see you got fixed.”
“My tooth—” Jisung hesitates. A fuzzy supercut of 2018 promotions flickers behind his irises. Something in the stranger’s cocked eyebrow jogs his memory. “Wait, do that again.”
Stranger huffs. His arrogant eyebrow twitches. “Do what?”
“Holy shit.” Jisung fumbles for his phone, nearly drops it between fingers wet from cocktail condensation. He pulls up an image search, fingers flying viciously over the keyboard, scrolls until he deems a picture adequate. Holds his phone up beside Stranger’s face. “You’re BabyM. From Kiss&Cry.”
The stranger—BabyM—snatches Jisung’s phone from his grip. Turns it over to inspect a broody concept picture, circa 2018; thick eyeliner, electric teal hair, face rounded at its now-sharp edges. Upturned eyes, full upper lip… the unmistakable nostril freckle.
BabyM locks Jisung’s phone, pins it to the countertop under his hand, and veers on Jisung. “If you ever call me by that infernal stage name again,” he says gravely, smile taut, “I will not think twice about resorting to violence. Even with a pretty hoobae.”
Jisung can’t wipe the grin off his face. He’s impressed with himself for recalling it at all (after repressing so much from that year… and the next). And to ice the cake, he’s pretty. “Throw me a bone here, BabyM-sunbaenim,” he mutters into the rim of his glass. “I need to call you something, don’t I?”
BabyM snorts. “You’d made it this far just fine.”
“Oh. Did you want to end this here? No problem, I—” And before Jisung can turn even ninety degrees, BabyM sighs laboriously, grabs him by the arm.
Jisung tucks a smile into his drink. He would have never let this go so easy—probably would’ve just turned in a circle, if BabyM had only let him. But that iron grip does give his ego a considerable boost.
“Lee Minho.” The circle of his fingers relaxes incrementally on Jisung’s arm until it’s gone. Minho half-smiles. “What’re you drinking, Jiwon?”
Jisung chuckles, melts against the bar. He’s down to just ice in his glass, which jingles as he tips it. “Han Jisung.”
“That’s not what I asked, Jisung.” Minho taps his credit card against the counter.
Heat curls in Jisung’s chest, stomach. He plucks his phone up where Minho had left it, pockets it. “Pick for me?”
A booth in the darkest corner of the club, legs slung across a near-stranger’s lap, is the last place Jisung expects to get whiplashed back to his idol days.
After Kiss&Cry’s three-year post-survival show contract had expired—the very same year Jisung left his group—Lee Minho left his company and joined a dance crew.
Well. From the sound of it, first he’d moved back in with his parents, done a touch of spiraling, undergone some manner of existential crisis and questioned his choice of life path, not unlike Jisung. But then he joined a dance crew.
It looks good on him, Jisung thinks, holding his breath as Minho’s fingers trace the outer seam of Jisung’s leather pants near the crook of his knee. He’s been lightheaded ever since he sat down; since Minho joined him, told him, “You’ve got a big mouth, but I can’t hear you if you’re so far away,” since Minho hadn’t shied away when Jisung knocked their knees together (by clumsy accident, no less), since Minho scooped said knees up over his own and said, “Tell me if you don’t want this.”
And Jisung does. Too much. He’d broken up with his last boyfriend Seunghyub nearly a month ago which means he hasn’t felt the touch of a man—barring the irksome touches of Hyunjin fighting him for the good spot on the sofa at home and Changbin discovering him asleep in the studio after hours and pinching his cheek and calling him cute—in just as long. And Minho is warm and ridiculously sexy and Jisung is having abnormal amounts of trouble looking him in the eye without lurid fantasies superimposing themselves over his face.
Minho’s on his phone, responding to a text and giving Jisung’s mind free rein to wander and plummet into the gutter. His glass—only ice remaining—is cold where it sits propped on Jisung’s knee. When Minho lowers his phone, he smiles faintly at Jisung, transfers his glass so he can spread his palm out over the cold spot, drag it up toward mid-thigh. “Han Jisung,” he muses, like he’s tasting Jisung’s name in his mouth.
Jisung bites his lip. He can’t yet tell if Minho likes it when he plays cute. Tries not to go overboard. “BabyM-sunbaenim.”
Minho’s eyes roll back into his skull. He tightens his grip on Jisung’s knee. “I don’t want you calling me BabyM or your sunbae, Han Jisung.”
Jisung snickers, hooks his ankles together. Contracts his legs so they squeeze around Minho’s knee. “And why ever not, Bab—”
“Minho-hyung.” Minho blinks, impertinent.
“Han Jisung,” retorts Jisung. And the gleaming, sharp edge of Minho’s exasperated laugh shines in the heavy dark, cuts through the bass thrumming with Jisung’s pulse. Hyung. Okay. He can work with that.
Minho lolls his head back against the booth, resumes stroking Jisung’s leg like it’s a sleepy cat. “Mm, I don’t know if I like this. You’re giving me too much trouble for someone I met a half hour ago.”
Jisung hums. He thinks it’s been longer than thirty minutes, if the tightness of the knot in the pit of his stomach is anything to go by. “If hyung wants me to find someone else to bother—”
“He doesn’t.”
Jisung glances at Minho. Feels a thrill rattle his ribs at Minho’s eye-smile, the way he wets his lips.
Then Minho sits up, pats Jisung’s leg. “I need to piss.”
Jisung’s heart pops like a water balloon, gets his insides all soggy. He clears his throat. “Have fun waiting in line,” he warns, freeing Minho of the weight of his legs. They feel weak now, all the blood rushing back in. “There’s just one. In this whole place.” He wrinkles his nose. “And it’s gross.”
Minho’s standing, adjusting his jeans. They’re skin-tight, like he’d been poured in; strain around the flesh of his thighs, the hard sinew of his calves; dig into him where his belt is snug and his hips are soft. And Jisung watches, shameless, like it’s the last he’ll ever see of him. But then Minho turns a wry grin on Jisung. “Come keep me company?”
When they reach the front of the bathroom line, Jisung feels resentful of it. Of Minho’s bladder. It’s almost more intimate there, standing shoulder to shoulder with other clubgoers and Minho’s lips to his ear, patiently repeating his words when Jisung never catches them the first time amid the noise. His knees are still shaky from being propped in Minho’s lap, and probably also because he’s a bit drunk, but Minho’s hand at the small of his back every now and then reminds Jisung he won’t let him slip.
Minho catches the bathroom door before it can close. He then throws a glance over his shoulder at Jisung. “You coming?”
What? Instinctively, Jisung starts—tips backward, even. But when Minho grabs his hand, the guy in line behind them barks, “Hey, buddy, one at a time, there’s a fucking line. Unless you want me to get security—”
“Take it easy, buddy.” Minho glares, guides Jisung in with a hand on his waist. “We’re not gonna fuck, so kindly get that visual of us fucking out of your mind. It’s weird.” He slams the door, slides the lock into place. “What a prick,” he mutters, gets right to unbuckling his belt.
Jisung tries ardently to not find it hot. Tries alternatively not to worry that Minho is repulsed by him because they apparently won’t be fucking in this grimy bathroom. Tries to give Minho his space, too, and avert his eyes, but inside, the bathroom is cramped and humid and the top halves of all four walls are paneled with mirrors. It’s hard to breathe, disorienting like some nightmarish funhouse.
Jisung links his hands behind his back, skim-reads the myriad of marker-inscribed messages and lewd doodles vandalizing his reflection. His hairline sparkles with sweat, he notices, and he tries to dab at it and sort out his hair as Minho flushes the toilet.
Jisung spins on his toes in time to watch Minho do up his belt again. Minho catches him through the mirror, lips quirked. “You okay, Jisung?”
“I’m good.” Jisung nods earnestly.
“Are you?”
“I’m extremely good.”
At the sink, Minho laughs, pumps soap into his hands. Jisung drifts nearer. The singular overhead light bulb is green. So is Minho’s skin. Unabashed, Jisung surveys the elegant planes of his face, faint shadows in the divots on his cheeks and jaw where his skin is textured, which Jisung very much wouldn’t mind mapping with his tongue. Minho’s shirt isn’t tight, but it sticks to him enough to hug the contours of his strong shoulder blades.
Jisung swallows. Wrings his hands behind his back. “You’re so fucking attractive it makes me mad,” he mumbles. The thought leaves him reluctantly, like it’s stuck to his throat with honey.
Minho freezes, arches a brow. And in the ensuing silence, Jisung smiles like an idiot. Full-on cheeses.
Minho snorts, which only makes Jisung feel like a fool. “Mad?” He turns off the tap, waves his hands under the hand dryer. “You don’t look mad.”
That’s… not untrue. Jisung forces his lips into a cartoonish frown. Minho laughs, then, and turns his way. The reality of him is far more heartrending than his innocuous reflection, thinks Jisung, when his pulse leaps on command. “You’re cute,” Minho huffs. When he slips a few fingers into Jisung’s pocket, Jisung lets a careful palm roam over the ink on Minho’s forearm, reticent. Gentle. Peers down between them, swaying into Minho’s warmth when he swears he can feel goosebumps rise on Minho’s skin. Then Minho touches his neck, breathes, “Will you let hyung kiss you?”
Jisung exhales, shuts his eyes. Grounds himself on Minho’s arm and whispers, “Ah… please.”
Minho cradles his head, is surprisingly careful at first touch. Coaxes Jisung’s lips to part with his tongue. Jisung’s stomach swoops like he’s rounding the peak of a rollercoaster, and he clings fast to Minho’s shoulders lest the drop take him, too. Minho tilts his head, leaves Jisung in chills with the drag of nails over the nape of his neck.
But at a harsh rap on the door, Minho is both lucid and controlled in drawing back from Jisung’s boneless body, reaching around him to unlock the door.
His hand is on Jisung’s wrist, thankfully. Otherwise Jisung might never move at all.
“Didn’t even touch him,” Minho informs the waiting shithead in passing. And yet Jisung stumbles past in his wake, blatantly in his grip, feeling Minho’s singular touch ricochet across his every nerve ending.
Minho leads the way back toward the bar. But when the crowd starts to thicken, Jisung digs his heels in, wraps Minho’s hand in his palms. “Hyung.”
Minho whirls toward him, eyes alert. “What is it?”
“Take me home.” Jisung draws him closer, presses a hand to Minho’s stomach. “Please.”
Minho swallows thickly. And his eyes are pure black and distant, but his hand covers Jisung’s palm, holds it warmly in place. “Ah, I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Jisung-ah…”
“Why not?” Jisung’s body cries out for it. He tips his forehead into Minho’s shoulder, noses lightly into his neck. “Hyung doesn’t want me?”
“You know I do.” Minho’s arms circle his waist, then, so Jisung twines his around Minho’s neck. His head goes hot and muzzy when Minho lifts him an inch from the floor, nudges a kiss to the soft part of his cheek. “Fuck, you know I do. I just… aish, Jisung.”
“What?” pleads Jisung, face buried in Minho’s sweat-damp tee, arms still dangling from his neck.
“I don’t mess with nice guys. I shouldn’t have even… kissed you. But I wanted to.” Minho draws back, locates Jisung’s eyes.
And Jisung shuts his jaw, teeth clicking, when he realizes it’s dangling a little hopelessly. “I wanted you to.”
“I know you did.” Minho strokes his cheek. He leans in again, close enough to kiss, but falls just short of it to murmur, “But you’re the boyfriend type, Jisung.”
Jisung frowns. Blinks at the blur of Minho a hair’s breadth away.
Minho smiles crookedly, adds, “I can tell.”
“What do you mean?” Jisung demands. “Hyung, please—”
“From what you’ve told me,” Minho says slowly, “and you make me feel…” Then he shakes his head. “I just. I don’t want anything even remotely serious. Right now.”
The choppy, unsexy thoughts in contrast to Jisung’s sticky clinging make him feel on the side of too-desperate. He lowers himself off his toes. “We just met. I didn’t ask you to date me.”
“No,” agrees Minho. He rubs warmly at the base of Jisung’s spine. “But if I took you home… would it mean something to you, Jisung, that’s all I’m…”
Yes. Jisung blinks away, eases his hands onto Minho’s shoulders, biceps. Jumps when his fingertips catch on Minho’s bare forearms. Yes, of course it would. It always does. “Ah, hyung, that’s embarrassing,” he says. His laugh is sheepish, humorless. “How have you, like, read me for filth already, that’s… really embarrassing.”
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Minho insists softly, “I just—”
“Jisung!” Two figures—starkly distinct in Jisung’s periphery, even through the aftershocks of being kissed by Minho—emerge from the tangle of the crowd. “Jesus Christ, I swear came by here five seconds ago, where have you—anyway, we—oh, hi.” Felix stops short, belatedly registering Minho, which is bizarre considering he’s been (and continues to be) wrapped around Jisung like a fleshly lifejacket. Minho hardly loosens his hold, either. It should be weird, as Jisung is very much still embarrassed and Felix is very much staring, but in a sick way he kind of likes it.
“Hello,” greets Minho blankly.
“Right.” Felix clears his throat, turns on Jisung. “Hyunjin needs to go home.”
“I’m fine,” drawls Hyunjin. He’s draped over Felix, rather precarious given Felix’s stature and strength. Hyunjin then bats a hand at the air that nearly takes out Jisung’s eye. “I’m so fine, you guys. Prob’ly didn’t need to pregame but it wasn’t even that much, like—”
Jisung scoffs. His hands find Minho’s wrists, ease them off his body. In the back of his mind, he counts the beats of Minho’s pulse against his thumbs. “Um, my roommate,” he offers to Minho. Then, sulkily, he demands of Hyunjin, “When did you find time to pregame?” Jisung blinks. “Did you even eat dinner?”
Hyunjin squeezes his eyes shut, seems to think harder than he has ever before. “When I was getting ready,” he settles on, then hiccups, body lurching threateningly. He groans, faint and weak. “Bokkie, don’t let me puke on your nice jacket, know you’ve been waiting to wear it…”
“Puke?” squeaks Felix.
“Okay.” Jisung gives Minho’s wrists a squeeze of finality before unhanding him. “Let’s get him outside. The bathroom line’s long, he won’t make it in. Can you get a taxi, Yongbok? Um.” He wedges himself into Hyunjin’s other side, relieves Felix of his weight. It’s not much. Hyunjin is largely just hot air. Jisung meets Minho’s eyes. “I’ll, uh. See you, hyung.” Not.
Minho smiles, only with his mouth this time. “Can I help?”
“No,” Jisung says swiftly. He’s sweating profusely where Hyunjin is plastered to his side, clammy and wobbly like an oversized worm. Hyunjin would hate that comparison. “No, that’s okay.”
“Alright.” Minho lifts his brows, nods. Disappears into the crowd. Hyunjin heaves again, slaps a hand over his gob.
“Who the hell was that?” Felix hisses as they maneuver toward the doors as a clumsy unit. Propped against Jisung, Hyunjin oscillates between loose-limbed giggling and precarious waves of nausea that have him death-gripping Jisung right back.
“Just. Some guy.” Jisung huffs out his nose. He digs in his pocket for his coat check ticket, waves it before Felix’s nose. “Can you grab our coats? Sorry. I’m gonna get him outside.”
The frigid air further hardens Jisung’s stress-stiffened muscles. Meanwhile, Hyunjin grapples for a hold on the outer brick wall, moaning dramatically.
Felix appears, coats in hand, nose reddening in the cold. “Just some guy but hyung already, huh?” he says wryly as he sidesteps Jisung to help Hyunjin into his coat. “Car’s on its way, though.”
“It’s just ‘cause he didn’t want me calling him…” Jisung peters off. What does it matter, really? Why paint a backstory when there’s no narrative? Minho wanted casual. Jisung wouldn’t know casual if it shook his hand and greeted him with Hi, I’m Casual, and don’t you fucking forget it. “Never mind.”
“Mhm.” Felix turns a coy smile on him, reaches out to squeeze at his arm. “Didn’t mean to cockblock, Jisungie. I’m sorry. You should’ve gotten his number.”
Jisung huffs, slumps defeatedly against the wall. “I cockblocked myself before you even got there.” At Felix’s dubious eyebrow raise, he mutters, fists clenching, “I don’t—I don’t even remember what exactly I said to him, probably something about Seunghyub-hyung, like, of course I’d rope exes into our conversation, no wonder he didn’t want to—anyway, it was enough for him to judge that—oh, shit.”
It’s Hyunjin spitting up like a newborn against the wall that effectively closes the topic of Lee Minho. Hyunjin then slips against the rough brick, doubles over. Empties out his watery guts on the sidewalk.
“Oh, Hyunjinnie, no,” Felix pleads, and the bouncer hovering by the club’s door—menacing and thrice Jisung’s weight—barks at them to fuck off the premises.
“Hyunjinnie, no,” croaks Hyunjin at the ground, stray hairs glued to the bile on his chin.
Jisung enters the splash zone to resume his position under Hyunjin’s arm, put his weight into hauling him toward the street corner before not one but several twink asses get kicked. “Okay, okay, okay—it’s okay. Better out than in. But if there’s more coming please hold it in until we’re out of ass-kicking range but also please get it out before the cab can get here.”
Two months (and a handful of days and hours and minutes) later finds Jisung in line for katsudon in the JYP cafeteria with one Kim Seungmin.
Jisung grabs a tray from the pile. “You know Soonyoung-hyung?”
At his side, Seungmin frowns. “Do I… know your boyfriend? Is that what you’re asking me?”
“Well, you’re my work friend, aren’t you? You’ve never met him. And I wouldn’t expect you to know all the ins and outs of my life.”
“I see you every day.” Seungmin’s hand darts for the tongs before Jisung can serve himself dumplings. “I’ve seen you every single day for years. How could I possibly escape you regaling me with your day-to-day in gross detail.”
Jisung’s brow furrows. He snatches the tongs once Seungmin’s finished with them. “Okay, fine. You know of Soonyoung-hyung. Anyway, Mark-hyung asked—wait, do you know Mark-hyung?”
“Who?”
“Lee Minhyung, he works on the seventh floor—never mind. It’s not relevant. Right, so Mark-hyung asked Soonyoung-hyung if he thought, like, if we could walk on water, would we do it with shoes, or without? And I’m still undecided. What do you think?”
“What,” mutters Seungmin. Jisung is ahead of him in line, yet Seungmin manages to snag the bowl of katsudon with the fattest pork cutlet Jisung had eyes on.
“He asked—”
“Yeah, I heard you.” Seungmin nudges past him. “Does this question have intentional religious undertones?”
Jisung blinks. “Why would it—”
“Han Jisung?”
Seungmin turns before he does, so Jisung gets to see the blank confusion play out on Seungmin’s face before he ever follows his gaze…
…to Lee Minho. Steam from a bowl of sundubu-jjigae curls thickly between them, renders Minho akin to a hazy illusion. But there he is, hardly three feet away, barefaced in sweats and athletic sneakers with a mask tucked under his chin. In the JYP cafeteria.
Something in the faint cock of Minho’s head dares Jisung to greet him as BabyM-sunbaenim. But all he can manage without wetting his pants and dropping his tray is an airy, “Lee Minho-ssi.” So much for hyung. Not while Seungmin’s standing there, at least. “What are you… You’re here? Why?” Smooth.
Minho’s lips quirk. He shrugs. “Hired in-house. Recent development.” He takes his time in scanning Jisung up and down, and not in a sexy way. It’s less sexy, even, than the X-ray Jisung received when he twisted his ankle a month after debut. Then Minho jerks his chin toward the sprawl of tables. “Are you staying?”
“Yes?” Jisung peers back at Seungmin, who—is gone. No, who is ten feet away, getting coffee. “Yes,” he repeats decisively. He doesn’t need Seungmin to chaperone him (though, with how this is going, it couldn’t hurt).
Minho’s lips spread into a smile. “Shall we sit?”
Seungmin joins them shortly.
And Jisung learns that Minho is a dancer with 8COUNT dance academy’s crew. And like several other dancers under 8COUNT, he now works in-house, choreographing for JYP artists. Or JYP artist, singular—notably, the upcoming girl group debut. For the title track Jisung wrote and produced.
Which Jisung neglects to mention. He swallows that thought right back down like a thick glob of phlegm, only because Minho remarks, “The song sucks.”
Seungmin chokes on his coffee to stifle his laugh. He’s managed to squeeze a lot of that into the ten minutes they’ve been sitting together, discomfitingly attuned to the fluster in Jisung’s unnatural posture and fidgety feet under the table.
“Well, sucks might be a bit harsh,” amends Minho, slurping from his spoon. The wrist of his tattoo sleeve peeks tauntingly at Jisung from the gaping sleeve of his crewneck. “It’s a grower, I guess. Like the NMIXX debut, if you remember that.”
Jisung squares his shoulders. Puts up imaginary horse blinders to block out Seungmin’s abominable poker face. Jisung knows for a fact that he’s capable of more, so he must simply not be trying, which is so very charming. “Hard to forget.”
Minho checks his phone. “I have to get going, actually.” He fits a last spoonful of rice and another of stew in his mouth, rising from his seat before he’s ever finished chewing. “But I’ll look you up, Han Jisung. And I’ll be seeing you around, I suppose.” He winks at Jisung with a half-smile. Turns fully before decelerating and twisting his neck to nod curtly at Seungmin. “Kim Seungmin-ssi.”
Jisung watches him go, fist clenched around a clean spoon he’s yet to put to use. He shudders as he exhales, and it feels like exorcizing some sort of demon of longing that in exiting leaves his body soulless, deflated. His food has undoubtedly gone cold. He might as well be half-hard in his jeans. It’s a good thing his sweater is oversized.
He swallows down a sip of water, takes up his chopsticks. “I need to break up with Soonyoung-hyung,” he whispers to the table.
Seungmin, at last breaking his (dis)respectful silence, snorts. “Didn’t you just get together last week?”
“Yes.” Jisung stabs at a piece of pork. “But we’d been drinking and he had almost a whole bottle of wine to himself and he was barely awake and that’s when he asked if I wanted to be exclusive, but, like, I’ve seen him since and he’s said nothing about it, so… Does that mean he can’t remember, or just doesn’t care?” He abandons the chopsticks. They clink against the bowl as he puts his face in his hands. “Seungmin. Fuck.”
Seungmin hums around a mouthful. Sounds thoroughly unenthralled. “How did you meet him? Lee Minho.”
Jisung, into his hands: “At a club. Couple months ago.”
Seungmin tuts. “Lee Minho. Lee Minho. Was he in an idol group? Way back when? I remember that face.”
And Jisung, through clenched teeth: “Yes.”
“Huh. You’re both ex-idols.”
An astute observation that Jisung has only mulled over three hundred times since meeting Minho and getting vaguely friend-zoned and forgiving neither himself nor Hyunjin for it. “Mm.”
Seungmin slurps obnoxiously from his coffee. “You didn’t know he was with 8COUNT?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well, I think you should watch out for him.”
“What does that mean?” Jisung lowers his hands. “What do you know about Lee Minho?”
“Right. Because I’ve never met anyone in my life.” Seungmin rolls his eyes. “The dance trainer who works with my kids”—Seungmin’s vocal trainees—“is also from 8COUNT. I’ve heard of him—Minho. I just never put face and name together until now.” He swirls the coffee around in its soggy paper cup. “From what I’ve heard, he’s just kind of…” Seungmin seems to peer backward into his brain, then squints out at their view of the Jamsil Tower. “Whatever the kids call it. A fuckboy, I guess. He’s a fuckboy.”
“Kim Seungmin,” Jisung gasps, “since when are you a gossip? About people’s sex lives, no less?”
“You don’t need to gossip to know things.” Seungmin shoots him a side-eye. “All you really have to do is listen.”
Jisung sits up, fiddles with the hem of his sweater. “Well, that’s fine. I don’t care if he’s a fuckboy. So am I, in a way.”
Seungmin promptly snorts coffee out his nose. Slaps a hand over his face hard enough to bruise, gingerly sets his coffee down, and swipes a napkin from Jisung’s tray. “Oh my god,” he mutters. “That’s never happened to me before.” Jisung is too bewildered—borderline offended—to even point and laugh. “You’re a serial monogamist, Jisung,” continues Seungmin once he’s regained a modicum of his pride. He tosses his coffee-stained napkin onto his tray. “That is completely different.”
“Is it really, though?” Jisung grimaces, pitiful. He wonders if he’ll run into Minho in the elevator. In a bathroom. Wonders if he’ll stoop to skulking around the practice rooms as to guarantee running into him in the elevator or bathroom. Or maybe Minho doesn’t use the elevator at all—Jisung’s seen his legs. Maybe he takes the stairs. Would Jisung be willing to start taking stairs, too? Maybe for true love he would. Stairs, yeah… Minho’s athletic. Will he frequent the company gym? Or does he already? Changbin will have the gym intel Jisung needs. Better yet, he wouldn’t blink twice at Jisung asking to tag along; he’s used to Jisung’s yo-yoing gym obsession, and loves nothing more than an opportunity to correct Jisung’s form.
Ah, Seungmin is speaking. “Yes. Completely. Every time the seasons change, you claim you’re in love with someone new.” Correction: Seungmin is insulting him. “You haven’t been single for more than three consecutive months in the last five years.” His elbow stabs the fleshy part of Jisung's arm. “I can see it in your eyes that you’re already fantasizing about, like, doing laundry with him.”
“No.” Jisung pouts. He’d only been fantasizing about Minho at the squat rack. But then he does picture Minho’s tattooed forearm flexing as he hefts Jisung’s laundry basket. Kudos, Seungmin. “I just think that if science advances fast enough, we would have beautiful children.”
The eye-roll is audible in Seungmin’s voice. “Yeah. You should totally ask around the trainees, see what they think of him. Get a gauge on how he is with kids.”
Jisung blinks, eyes alight. The laundry daydream does not dissipate—it sharpens with startling clarity. “You think so?”
Seungmin glares. “No.”
“Then can you?” Jisung makes his eyes big. “Ask around the trainees? You see them all the time.”
Seungmin gathers his belongings, namely his tray and coffee-snotty napkin and the employee ID that he’s never stopped carrying around on a lanyard like a new hire. “Take it from your work friend,” quips Seungmin, stopping opposite the table from Jisung, “don’t chase Lee Minho.” He hesitates, evaluates Jisung’s dismal state. “And… break up with this Soonyoung guy.”
Jisung slips out of the studio, pulls headphones over his ears. And he makes it one step toward the elevator bank before stumbling over the hazardous toe of his own shoe—a size too big, but he’d been too lazy to return them—because he has company.
He lowers his headphones to his neck. Indeed, there is a very much human lump on one of the benches in the narrow hallway outside the studio door; hunched, head bowed, hood pulled over any possibly-distinguishing features. Dirty-socked feet in slides, too, but Jisung can’t be one to judge.
He glances warily down the hall, fists clenching around his sleeves. The floor is typically deserted at this time on Sundays. And Jisung shouldn’t feel territorial, but he likely spends more time here than he does in his own apartment, so he does anyway.
Then his company lifts their head, rubs at their eyes. Jisung is still rooted to his spot, too close for comfort but also now lingering too long for it to not be creepy. He should leave. Go about his day. But something stops him; he blinks, puts his hands on his knees. “Lee Minho-ssi?”
Minho’s eyes flutter in shock. He lets his feet down off the bench, plucks the earbuds from his ears. “Jisung.” He looks tired, wan under the overhead lights. His chin and cheeks are stubbled.
Jisung himself feels flayed open under the fluorescents; promptly wishes he were wearing even a single article of clothing he hadn’t already worn once (or more) this past week. There's nothing on his person right now that isn't musty.
Minho clears his throat. “Sorry. I thought… no one was up here.”
Jisung half-smiles, shrugs. “Close. It’s just me.” He gnaws on his bottom lip. “I like the, uh, quiet. This time of day. Week.”
Minho nods. He’s not looking at Jisung. A stormy cloud shadows his countenance.
Jisung counts to fifteen in his head, and because Minho has yet to speak again, “You okay?” he asks, tentative.
Minho blinks at him. It only makes Jisung’s knees quiver a bit. “No,” Minho decides distantly.
“Oh.” Jisung paws at the dangling sleeves of his hoodie. “Uh, well. I was heading out to get coffee.” He rolls out his shoulders. It’s only been a couple weeks since he and Seungmin ran into Minho in the cafeteria. Minho had never looked him up—that is, if he’d ever intended to. He certainly hasn’t seen Jisung around. So it feels desperate to add, “Do you want to come?” but by then it’s already out.
Minho’s brow crumples. Distaste, perhaps. His face appears otherwise unfeeling.
Jisung scratches at his nape. “If not, don’t worry about it. I can bring you something—”
“I don’t think I’d make very… pleasant company right now.” Minho’s lips press together tight enough to go pale.
Jisung laughs, brusque and breathy. “That’s okay. As long as you’re there with me I can get away with ordering twice as many desserts without the barista commenting on my sugar addiction.”
Minho huffs—maybe, just maybe, a crack in his stony facade. “Has that actually ever happened?”
“No.” Jisung smiles. “But I’ve been testing her boundaries for years.”
Minho arches a brow. Taps his foot against the floor, deliberating. Then he gets to his feet, grimacing and clutching his back as he cracks and pops in numerous places. “Lead the way.”
They spend the brisk, short walk to the café with shoulders brushing in a cutting breeze. Inside and in the register line, Jisung squints at the glass case of desserts. “What do you want? I’m buying.”
“I’m crashing,” says Minho. “So I’m buying.”
Jisung clicks his tongue, bumps his elbow into Minho’s side. “Minho-ssi, that won’t be necessary—”
“What happened to hyung?”
Jisung unsticks his eyes from the tiramisu to meet Minho’s. They’re a similar sort of bittersweet, chocolate-dusted brown. And there’s a patch of dry skin by the outer corner of Minho’s eye, where a rogue eyelash flicks up, follows the angle set by his lash line. Jisung swallows against a pit in his throat, face warming over, and looks ahead. “Uh,” he stammers, then laughs, crackly. “That was before I… didn’t end up sleeping with you.” Because you didn’t want to. Jisung shudders from embarrassment. He could vomit right here and now if he only thought about it long enough.
He can hear Minho’s biting smirk. “So you’ll only call me hyung if we sleep together?”
“No, that’s not it. No. Sorry. Just.” Jisung peers at him. Manages a half-second before the bittersweetness of Minho’s eyes overwhelms his senses and he buckles. “It’s just been a while. We haven’t had… much time to… talk. Oh, hi. Uh, a caffè latte, please, and…”
As he ponders, Minho’s warm shoulder nudges him. “Get them both,” Minho murmurs, somewhere behind Jisung’s ear.
Jisung balks at being mind-read. Still, he rushes to order, “A tiramisu and a chocolate cheesecake.”
“And an americano, thanks.” Minho proffers his card before Jisung can even recall which pocket he put his wallet in. He then touches Jisung’s hip. “Go find us a table.”
And so Jisung shuffles away obediently, neck prickling with heat. He picks a table near the windows but shielded enough from the cold gusts of wind from the door, where he sits diligently on his hands.
Minho brings the desserts, puts up a hand before Jisung can rise to fetch their drinks himself. He slides Jisung’s latte to him, takes the chair opposite. “And what do you say, Jisung-ah?” chirps Minho, almost mocking.
Jisung will eventually come to think of that moment as one of the first in which he truly felt his and Minho’s age gap, negligible as it is. Minho just… seems to like it that way. Unforgotten.
Jisung warms his fingers around the mug. “Thank you, hyung,” he breathes. It leaves him lightheaded.
Minho’s lips quirk. He tips his head. “That’s better.”
Jisung’s head fogs with the praise (that can hardly be called praise) and his heart hammers something ridiculous. He feels it—his pulse—only more acutely with his headphones suffocating him. So he takes those off, sets them on the table. Tries to ground himself, act like a fucking person. “So, um…” He gestures an aimless hand at Minho, only to snatch it from the air like he’d never meant to let it move of its own accord. “What’s up?” Terrible start. “Why were you sulking on the music factory floor on a Sunday afternoon?”
Minho rolls his eyes shut, heaves a long sigh. He pushes the tiramisu plate toward Jisung, rotates it until the fork points to Jisung’s side of the table. “Well, I didn’t think anyone would be there.” He chuckles, dry, and blows on his coffee. Jisung doesn’t press, can tell that behind Minho’s eyes, he’s weighing just how much to share, to withhold. “I, ah… I’m just kind of… running into a wall. With the choreo I’m working on.”
Jisung sticks a forkful of tiramisu into his mouth in time to mumble, “The Chix debut?”
Minho meets his eyes, drums his fingers against the table. He doesn’t question why Jisung remembers, or what he knows. He only says, “Yeah.”
Jisung hums sagely. “Bet it feels like a lot is riding on it. Like if the debut falls flat, if the girls aren’t a smash hit… if people talk shit, or worse, people don’t talk at all, it’ll be you who set up their careers for failure and blighted everything they spent years dreaming about and training for. And not just that, but you’ll never again get tapped for a project this big, not if you mess everything up on your first try.”
Minho’s eyes narrow. He takes a lengthy sip from his coffee, tapping the jagged nail of his ring finger against the ceramic. “Something like that.” His voice is hard.
“I feel like that, too.” Jisung dissolves into a smile, kicks his feet under the table. He doesn’t mean to nudge Minho’s ankle, but he does all the same. “Every day. It keeps me up at night, sometimes.” He gathers up a generous forkful of whipped cream, lowers his voice as he scopes out the tables adjacent for eavesdroppers. “Even now. But I used to be worse. This one’s special to me, too, though. This debut. They have—Chix has… a fucking boss rap line. Like nothing I’ve seen in ages. And they have a really strong, distinct sound. A sound I basically set for them with this title, a sound that’ll prime the rest of their music for… the foreseeable future.” Jisung shrugs, meeting Minho’s intense gaze. “A sound I really like, not just because I made it. So if it all goes to shit, yeah, it’ll really fucking suck ass.”
A hiccup-like laugh bubbles out of Minho. It delights Jisung, helps him sit a little taller.
“But when you run into a creative wall,” murmurs Jisung, “sometimes you just have to… leave the studio. Get coffee and-or dessert. Talk to someone who can commiserate.” He taps his fork against the plate, smiles pointedly. “And when you’re done with that, all you can do is… trust yourself. You’re not gonna have a breakthrough every time—you can’t always pull a Ring Ding Dong or a Next Level out of the bag. Nothing would ever feel sensational or special if you did. But even so, the success of the group doesn’t rest just on you. It’ll never only be your fault.” He licks the fork clean, points the prongs end at Minho. “It might be your fault… and the fault of the bitch of a songwriter who tanks Chix on the charts.”
Minho’s smile seems to come easier now. It quirks one side of his mouth charmingly. The apples of his cheeks catch the overcast daylight like the sun is trying to peek through the opaque gray, just for him.
Jisung feels his eyes go dangerously out of focus. He reins it in, picks up his latte. “And sleep,” he adds around a sip. “After coffee and-or dessert and all that: sleep. Turns out most people do need it.”
Minho shifts to lace his fingers together over the tabletop. It wobbles under the weight of his elbows, and Jisung actively thinks about—but does not look at—his knuckle tattoos. “That’s all quite wise of you.”
Jisung coughs around a sip of coffee, clears his throat. “I don’t always practice what I preach,” he tells Minho, setting the cup down in the saucer. “But I’m trying.”
Minho hums. His eyes are carefully neutral despite the amused tension in his pretty mouth. God, Han, snap the fuck out of it. Then, “I called your song shit,” comes out of said pretty mouth.
Jisung doesn’t spit-take—thankfully, he’s swallowed his gulp of latte—but he does drop a chunk of cheesecake off his fork. It splats on the table between them. With all the detachment of a robotic vacuum, Minho reaches out with a napkin, sets the lost bite on the plate’s edge.
Jisung swallows. “Actually, you said it sucked.” He scratches at his throat. “And then you called it a… grower.”
Minho bites the tip of his tongue, smile tentative. “Growers reach full potential when it matters,” he says airily. “Showers… well. They might have that initial wow-factor, but that fades as soon as the novelty does, don’t you think?”
Jisung wonders if it’s mutually understood that they’ve transitioned to communicating exclusively in penis metaphor. “I think I might prefer growers myself, honestly. Like, you know when you get a grower stuck in your head, or…” His eyes flash to Minho’s, which are impenetrable. “Wherever… it may… get stuck. It’s exciting, you know, like… that feeling that… the more attention you give it, the bigger it gets.”
Minho’s lower lip has gone white under the leporine teeth of his grin. Then he coughs into his fist. “You like that feeling, do you?”
Jisung snorts. “Probably too much.”
Minho’s laugh is shrill and beautiful. He claps his hands together once, leaves them clasped until he realizes Jisung still has half of each dessert left. He pushes them both toward Jisung’s end of the table.
“Not a sweets guy?”
“Not like you, I don’t think.” Minho rubs at his lips, as if to massage the smile away. “But I… I think the real reason I said your song sucked is that…” His lips purse. “It’s challenging me.” His eyes flit lazily to Jisung. Jisung’s subsequent self-defense mechanism is to fill his cheeks with cheesecake. “It’s a weird song, and you’re challenging me, Han Jisung.”
Jisung doesn’t wait to finish chewing to assert, “I don’t doubt you’re fully capable of wrangling it.”
Minho lifts a hand to shield himself from spewed crumbs. “That so?”
That time, Jisung does finish. He can humble himself in front of Minho, but there’s a line. “Well, I can’t say I’ve seen much of your stuff”—the night after the cafeteria encounter, he’d made it fifty-six seconds into one Lee Minho original choreography on 8COUNT’s YouTube channel before slamming his laptop shut and his forehead to the closed panel, then opening it to calmly erase his browser history—“nor do I have much of an eye for dance. Or body, for that matter. But I don’t think you’d be here or have this gig if the bigwigs didn’t see something… visionary in you.” Jisung smiles, faint, with wriggly jazz hands and all. “In total seriousness.”
“Jisung-ah, don’t be harsh. I think 1-Up’s Jiwon held his own just fine.”
Jisung turns a blank look on Minho. It crumbles the very second he registers Minho’s smile.
“Anyway.” Minho sighs, chin perched in hand. He pushes gently at the end of the tiramisu fork, sliding it around the plate’s perimeter. “Chix’s main dancer is an ex-rhythmic gymnast.”
Jisung’s eyebrows rise. “Cho Myeong? Huh. She is, isn’t she?”
Minho nods. “I want to lean into that. Not too much, but. Enough to shake things up.”
Jisung tongues the inside of his cheek. He’s slaked his sweets craving, but he thinks Minho would like to see him finish what he’d started, so he tucks into the tiramisu again. “I look forward to seeing what you do with my song.” He takes a bite, adds, “Hyung.”
There’s a smile in Minho’s eyes. “I’ll try to surprise you.”
JYP books out a ritzy lounge bar to celebrate all staff involved in the successful Chix debut.
Jisung goes for the open bar… and because Chan will be there. Chan doesn’t sign his paycheck, nor is he formally Jisung’s manager (though certainly his informal mentor). Still, Jisung would feel awkward sitting at home knowing Chan might peer into the crowd and notice his absence, that that absence might attach itself to Chan’s mind like a parasite. That whenever he next opens a door for collaborators on a track or passes on a high-profile project he simply hasn't the time for (but could be a great challenge for an up-and-comer like Jisung! At least… that’s what he wants Chan to think), he might forget Jisung, who is never there.
Jisung never did outperform in school, but he also didn't try. Maybe his inner teacher’s pet is just a late bloomer.
He’s already said his hellos to Chan to establish his presence, so he exercises his right to the open bar. Once there, he (at a safe distance) makes faces at Seungmin in talks with a C-suite exec whose back is turned. But even that grows boring when Seungmin stops not only taking the bait but also covertly flashing his middle finger at Jisung. So he slumps against the bar, squints at the shelved array of bottles illumined neon yellow and debates ordering a drink that will make him look classier than he is but will be thoroughly undrinkable for his tastes. That’s when he spots Lee Minho at the bar’s opposite end, nursing an empty glass with a clear ice ball in one hand and his phone in the other.
Jisung doesn’t think twice before plunging into the crowd, weaving his way to Minho. And there is barely room between Minho and a pair of chattering wardrobe stylists Jisung has spoken to… well, never, so he tries to be as gracious as he can with his apologies while still wedging himself crudely into the vacant spot.
Minho glances up from his phone only once the commotion has ceased and Jisung has settled.
Jisung grins before he can speak. “No one dared me to come bother you. I just thought you looked so bored and miserable over here that I… couldn’t stop myself. Had to try and see just how much more bored and miserable you could get.”
Minho smiles stolidly, pockets his phone. “Oh, darling, you don’t have to try to make me miserable.” He juts out his lower lip, and it makes for an unusual duality that only Minho has ever managed to pull off: cute but bitingly condescending. “That comes naturally to you.”
Jisung bellows a laugh so loud the stylists turn (and judge) at his back. “Oh. Oh, jeez. Okay. This is my cue, no? It’s got to be my cue.” He gathers himself and turns to leave, but when Minho’s fingers catch in the crook of his elbow, he sighs from relief. It’s not so big a deal (only within the delusional confines of Jisung’s head—a cozy, romantic little fool’s paradise). But still, a day might come when Minho lets him leave. It just hasn’t yet.
“You know,” says Jisung, twirling on his toe to face Minho’s smug smile, “what I actually came over here to do was congratulate our star choreographer.”
That wipes the smile from Minho’s face. His eyes roll back into his skull. His fingers, though, persist on Jisung’s inner elbow.
If there’s one thing Jisung has learned from having Minho as his (peripheral) colleague of several months, having Minho tentatively dangle from the ladder of his “work friends” (of which, unfortunately, Seungmin still occupies the top rung), it’s that he is far better at accepting critique than he is praise. It’s the self-critique that bogs him down the most, though. In that way, he and Jisung are the same.
“So you weren’t joking about making me miserable,” mutters Minho into the lip of his glass. Then he seems to remember it’s empty, sets it down on the bar.
Jisung tilts his head in hopes of catching the bartender’s eye. Doesn’t dare angle his body, lest Minho’s two-fingered grip slip. “You went TikTok viral. That’s pretty cool. Pretty hip, old man.”
Minho laughs dryly. “I did not go TikTok viral.”
“Well, your point dance did. Hey,” Jisung smiles at the bartender, points to Minho’s glass, “two more of whatever that is, please.” He meets Minho’s eyes, smiles contently.
Minho stares back flatly. “Anybody can go TikTok viral these days.”
“I’ve never gone TikTok viral.”
“You should try it. People go viral for all kinds of stupid things.”
Jisung hesitates. “Are you implying—”
“That you do stupid things?” Minho bats his eyes. Jisung notices he’s looking rather idol tonight, wonders if he’s done something special with his eye makeup. They don’t typically see each other like this—not during their elevator (turns out Minho doesn’t do stairs) or cafeteria run-ins. Their work dress codes are lax; Jisung spends much of his day in poor posture rooted to one seat (that is sometimes on a dubiously-clean floor—he flows where creativity takes him) and Minho spends much of his day, well. Sweating. Not like Jisung is a zero-effort guy—if anything, he’s been putting more thought into his outfits these past few months, trying to make sure if he’s swimming in athleisure he at least looks good doing it, on the off-chance he boards the elevator that day and…
Whatever. What Jisung means is: he isn’t used to seeing Minho like this, not since the night he met him. Like this, as in: long-sleeved silk shirt, patterned with buttons gaping at the chest, but still modest; tailored trousers; styled hair. And… whatever hypnotic thing he’s done to his eyes. All Jisung can really tell in the shadows is that it has his heart negligently skipping beats, like the complex system that is Jisung's body has deprioritized keeping him alive.
A corner of Minho’s mouth quirks to bare impish teeth, and he adds, “That’s… preposterous. I would never throw such grievous accusations around. Just like I’d never call you out for reply all-ing to the full company alias last week thinking you were just emailing your little friend Seo Changbin. The Jisung I know would never do that.”
Jisung sucks his lips into his mouth, bites down. Lets them smack apart as he sighs. Then he grins at Minho, sheepish. “Every breath I take is just another handful of dirt thrown on the burial plot of my career.”
Minho lays a dainty hand over his heart, eyes aglimmer with mischief. “That’s beautiful. Now explain this walrus business to me.”
Jisung laughs. “It’s an inside joke.” The bartender delivers their drinks. A warm touch slithers its way onto Jisung’s lower back and a shadow settles over half of Minho’s face.
“Babe, guess what, they have those cocktail weenies I’m fucking obsessed with.” Soonyoung crowds Jisung into the bar with a bit too much fervor. Jisung’s belt digs painfully into his stomach, caught against the counter’s edge, and… typically Soonyoung doesn’t struggle with depth perception—he’s a graceful guy—so perhaps he’s a few drinks in. He’d been on the list as Jisung’s plus-one (namely, as Jisung’s friend) but Jisung has already been here nearly an hour and he’d arrived alone, so when exactly—
“I took as many as I could but—holy shit,” mutters Soonyoung. He sets a weenie-loaded plastic plate on the bar, upsetting Jisung’s drink, not quite enough to spill. “Is that Lee Minho?”
When Jisung manages to turn around, Soonyoung is already wrapping Minho in a bear hug. Over Soonyoung’s shoulder, he watches Minho’s eyes bulge from his skull, a clear cry for help despite pointedly avoiding Jisung. Jisung sees the muscle in his jaw jerk as it clenches. Still, he gives Soonyoung a civil little pat to the upper back.
“Kwon Soonyoung-ssi,” greets Minho once released. He gropes for his drink feverishly, seems to relax a bit once he’s got it, like it’ll guarantee Soonyoung won’t impulsively grab him again. “What are you doing here.”
“What am I—what are you doing here!” Soonyoung’s hand resettles on Jisung’s back. To Soonyoung it’s probably affectionate, thoughtless, and at any other time, it would be to Jisung. But now, it seems to sear through his blazer, leaves his neck bristling and burning. “Do you work with JYP now? I had no idea.”
“Yes.” Minho traces the brim of his glass with his fingertip. There’s a forced set to his smile that Jisung doesn’t think Soonyoung would pick up on even if he weren’t busy shoving cocktail weenies in his mouth. Jisung himself is still slack-jawed, but he picks himself up when he realizes both pairs of eyes are on him.
Or he tries. “Minho-hyung choreographed the Chix single. I…” He fishmouths, falls flat. His eyes drift from Minho’s cold stare to Soonyoung. Out of nervous instinct, desperate for something to say, to do, he dabs a thumb at a bead of yellow sauce on Soonyoung’s lower lip. When he retracts his hand, pops his finger in his mouth, Minho smiles, restrained. Arches an eyebrow. It’s icy, almost… sanctimonious. Jisung feels sick. He rasps, “I didn’t know you knew each other.”
“Minho was my little dance mentee! Back when he was on Game For Fame.” Soonyoung grins, makes a gesture as if to tweak Minho’s cheek without actually ever touching him. Probably smart. “I have a few friends at 8COUNT, too, so I’ve heard stuff through the grapevine, but I didn’t…” Soonyoung shrugs, gestures to the bar grinningly. “This. I didn’t know about this. That’s awesome.”
Minho nods, curt. “Thank you.” He takes a measured breath, smooths a hand down the silk of his shirt, picks up his cocktail. “I actually see manager-nim over there so I should… go say hello,” he says, though he doesn’t make a point of perceiving anyone but Soonyoung, much less his manager. He micro-bows. “Good to see you, Soonyoung-ssi.” And nothing to Jisung, not even a glance. He slips away into the masses.
Jisung stares into the spot Minho had occupied. A prickling heat crawls up the sides of his neck, into his cheeks. His fingers drift to his mouth, but he remembers he’s at a nice bar. He’s at a nice bar for work and he can’t remember the last time he washed his hands. He drops his hand, curls his stubby nails into his palm.
“He seem a little preoccupied to you?” muses Soonyoung, peering after Minho and rubbing at Jisung’s back. “Maybe he’s stressed. Must be a lot of pressure. First big break, you know? Nice to see him, though. He grew up well. Handsome guy.” He turns smilingly to Jisung. “That’s a fancy-looking drink.”
Jisung swallows. Minho’s drink order. He’d forgotten about it. “Yeah, I don’t… even know what it is.”
“Can I try?”
“Go for it.” Jisung clears his throat. What he’d really like to do is sink into Soonyoung, be held by someone who can—as far as he can tell—still stand him. He casts a glance about the bar. That wouldn’t be very appropriate, would it.
Seungmin catches his eye. He’s standing some ways off, in a cluster with a few others, including Chan. Who knows how much of… that he’d witnessed.
He sends Jisung what might be a questioning thumbs up. Jisung huffs a laugh, returns it. Seungmin doesn’t look too reassured.
Soonyoung assumes Minho’s prior spot, worming his way into Jisung’s line of sight. “Can I interest you in a cocktail weenie?”
The bathroom is alarmingly elaborate. Gilded, mirrored, not a glimpse of so much as a sink or toilet when Jisung first walks in. Just chaises longue, ottomans, potted trees.
“The actual bathroom’s through there.”
Jisung snaps out of a staring contest with his wan, dazed reflection. Chan had asked him if he felt alright not ten minutes ago. Jisung now thinks he might get where he’s coming from.
Minho is perched on a chaise, finger outstretched toward the shadowed bend of a baroque-wallpapered hallway. There’s one more button open on his shirt, which Jisung only notices because he doesn’t even remotely have his shit together.
“Oh. Thanks.” Jisung nods briskly, tugs at the hem of his blazer. And he makes to stride right past Minho into the hall, but stops short in passing, backpedals a few feet. Pulls at his trouser legs and takes a careful seat on the same chaise without once looking Minho in the eye.
He feels Minho watch him. “You okay?” Minho asks, lazy.
Jisung smooths clammy palms over his knees. Examines his nails closely until he finds something to pick at. “Fine,” he decides. But he can’t shake the distinctly not fine feeling he’s been toting around all evening, like some invisible, lifeblood-sucking leech he has to make excuses for whenever anyone tells him he looks ill. “You?”
Minho’s elbow bumps him. He scoffs. “Tired,” he answers. “Think I drank too much.”
Jisung peers over at him. His throat closes up when Minho’s already looking and they lock eyes. And Minho smiles faintly, so Jisung does, too. He feels a little lighter, but it’s fleeting. “Might be time to turn in for the night, old man,” ribs Jisung.
Minho laughs, looks to his knees. “I don’t know when this old man thing started, but I don’t know if I like it.”
“On a scale of hyung to BabyM-sunbaenim, how much do you hate it?”
Minho runs his tongue over his teeth. It’s the subtlest of movements—covert, private—when his eyelids lift to let his eyes flit to Jisung. “I don’t hate it,” he says. Someone strolls into the bathroom, seemingly knowledgeable of its topography, and circumnavigates the chaises. Once he’s gone, Minho coughs into his fist. Corrects his posture, but only halfway, maybe. “I’m sorry I was so rude earlier. With Soonyoung.”
Jisung huffs out his nose. “I’m sorry he ambushed you with that hug.”
“You can’t be sorry. You’re not responsible for him.” Minho rubs at his eyes. “Anyway, I just… wasn’t expecting it. Seeing him.”
Jisung nods. Minho’s wrists rest on his knees. Between stark vines of ink, Jisung follows the rivers of his veins in the backs of his dangling hands.
“You’re together?” asks Minho.
Jisung is very still. Then he nods again. “Yeah.”
“Good. That’s nice.” Jisung feels a chill run up his spine. It’s how he imagines it’d feel were he an animal whose coat was stroked against the grain. “How long?”
Jisung peers toward the ceiling, at the ornate, decorative panels. He doesn’t really need to think, though. “Thirteen weeks.”
“That’s pretty exact.” Minho hums a little chuckle. “Like a baby’s age.”
Jisung flushes with warmth. “I know.” He digs a nail into a raw cuticle. “I get flamed for it all the time by my friends. For keeping track.”
“Bet you never forget an anniversary, though.”
“Never said I knew my times tables.”
Minho makes a charmed noise, a hum. The silence that settles makes him feel awfully far away, until he elbow-bumps Jisung again. “He’s better than me.”
Jisung… thinks he mishears. “What?” he croaks.
“Soonyoung is a brilliant dancer.” Minho swallows. “A real dancer. Better than me, better than I’ll ever be. I mean, you heard him. He was my mentor on the survival show. He mentored me pre-debut when he was barely a couple years older. Then I went off and pranced around on stages for a couple years.” He snorts. “Choreographing a debut is like child’s play to him.”
Jisung chokes. “What? No, he didn’t say that, hyung. He wouldn’t even think it. He was so impressed, genuinely. He told me after you left.”
“Of course he was impressed. If anyone knows what I’m capable of, it’s him. He’s impressed ‘cause it’s shocking I was able to reach this point to begin with.”
“Hyung.” Jisung laughs, bewildered. He makes a grab for the upholstery that time, if only to press his bleeding cuticle to it. “Do you hear yourself?”
A toilet flushes, distant. Minho lifts an eyebrow. “Loud and clear.”
“Where’s this coming from?” Jisung scoots the few inches that he can until he’s hip to hip with Minho. “Hyung.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t even know what I’m saying, I’m sorry.” Minho rubs at the inner corners of his eyes. “I should go home.” When he pulls his hand back, his fingertips are smudged copper. “Shit,” mutters Minho, registering them. He stands up, strolls with impressive stability to the mirrored wall.
Jisung follows, because he’s useless.
“I’m not used to makeup,” mutters Minho, when Jisung appears beside him in his reflection.
Jisung smiles. “Been a while for me, too.” He bites his lip. In the golden light, with silk shirt rumpled and eyeshadow smudged and forehead shiny, Minho’s beauty threatens to cave Jisung’s knees out from under him. And it knocks the wind out of him, too, so palpably Jisung sees his own chest heave in the mirror. Hears the scratch of his breath over the music wafting from the central bar. The bathroom patron exits behind them; once he’s out, Jisung exhales thinly, pockets his hands. “It looks good. On you.”
Minho meets his eyes through the mirror. His head cocks a couple degrees, and his mouth twitches. “Why is trying so embarrassing, Jisungie?”
Jisung blinks. He thinks he’s an amateur when it comes to Minho-isms. Wonders if Minho’s friends have a grasp on them, or have simply learned to catch the curveballs with grace. Wonders what Minho’s friends are like—if he’ll ever know. If Minho would ever want him to meet them. “What do you mean?”
“It’s silly,” murmurs Minho. He does up that lowest open button on his shirt. “That it feels embarrassing. To put an effort in. But it still feels it.”
“Do you mean…”
“I wanted to look nice tonight.” In the mirror, Minho looks at him again.
“You do,” Jisung blurts. Feels stupid about it.
“But I only feel…” Minho shrugs. Eyes his reflection, then swivels to face the real Jisung. “Sorry you had to hear all that.” He touches Jisung’s shoulder—an awkwardly companionable pat from an awkwardly companionable arm’s length away. But that’s all he and Minho are—colleagues. Acquaintances-pushing-friends… if that. “I’m overdue to go home, I think.” And Minho goes to reach for his pocket, but then he notices, with a line between his eyebrows, “Jisungie, you’re bleeding.”
“I’m—oh, shit.” Jisung brings his hand to the light. His fingers are smeared in shiny crimson from the most innocuous of hangnails. He only now registers its sting. “That’s… it’s nothing. But I should go wash up.”
“You should.”
Minho walks at his heels. And when they reach the sinks, he takes Jisung by the arm, rolls his sleeve up for him, nimble little hands running water and pumping soap.
And while Minho mummifies his finger in paper towel—and Jisung lets him, standing there like a mannequin—he feels a pang of guilt in his chest. He would do anything if it meant he could press his face to the golden, bared skin of Minho’s neck, and not feel that guilt tenfold. But there’s nothing he could do to make that happen. So he doesn’t. He just says, “You’re not Soonyoung-hyung.”
Minho tuts. “Jisung, you don’t have to—”
“And Soonyoung-hyung isn’t you. Hyung was never an idol. Never promoted. Sure, he’s had training, but it’s different. You know it is.” Jisung laughs, weak. “He doesn’t even remotely know what that’s like. So, yeah, you might think it was a waste of time. Maybe today things would be different if you’d stuck just with dancing from the start. Maybe you’d be his boss! Or maybe you wouldn’t know him at all, so you wouldn’t even think to compare yourself to him.” Jisung takes a breath. “But you can’t say he knows what you’re capable of. Even when he trained you—and that was years ago—how could he have known? How could he have possibly known what you’d be capable of doing now?”
Minho says nothing. Jisung internalizes the intricacies of every shadow the sconces cast on his face.
He licks his lips. “Anyway,” he continues. “You don’t know what would’ve happened. Maybe you wouldn’t be here tonight, at this party, celebrating this debut. But I’m happy you are. And I’m happy you did what you did—not just the Chix debut, but everything you’ve ever done that brought you here.” Then Jisung frowns. “Not that… that’s going to make you feel better. Obviously.” He huffs, abashed. “I just think you should be proud.” He’s looking at the floor, and the only thing that makes sense to do in that moment—recall the fool’s paradise—is to nudge the toe of his shoe into Minho’s. “And selfishly, I think… if you’d done everything differently, but I’d done everything the same… I could’ve been stuck with some random jerk choreographing my song.” He cracks a smile. “Alternate-timeline-Jisung would never have known.”
Minho’s still cradling his hand. If he let go, the paper towel would fall off. He hums. “It could’ve been a better dance. In the alternate timeline.”
“I like this one the best.”
“Of all the hypothetical other dances your little musician brain couldn’t possibly conceive?”
“No. Of all the hypothetical other jerks who could’ve choreographed my song.” Jisung doesn’t need to pick his gaze up off the floor to feel Minho’s playful glare. He grins. “Of all the hypothetical other everything.”
Minho is silent. He carefully unravels Jisung’s finger, checks to see if the bleeding has stopped. Tosses the paper towel, examines the raw tips of Jisung’s fingers, his touch feather-light. Jisung has been around Minho enough to piece together what is inked into his knuckles. But he will never have been around long enough to feel he deserves an explanation, a story, if there even is one. It’s just a want, unreasonably intimate. “You should wear gloves,” muses Minho.
Jisung laughs. “Funny you say that. I have tried. You’d have to sew them to my skin for them to work. But I’m not as bad as I used to be. You should’ve seen me at debut.” Jisung dares to look. Is rewarded by the faint, sweet twitch of Minho’s lips.
“I saw you. I just didn’t look close enough,” says Minho. He lets Jisung’s hand go, searches his eyes. “For having once been your sunbae, I give you way too much trouble, Han Jisung.”
“I like trouble,” utters Jisung. Then the rest of him catches up to his tongue. “You’re not trouble.”
Minho smiles, wry. “Well, which is it?”
Jisung burns from within. But on the outside, he smiles like an idiot. “Um. Please hold.”
Minho shakes his head. He turns Jisung around by the shoulders, sends him off toward the parlor with a gentle nudge. “I mean it. It’s too much.” It comes from behind, as Minho follows Jisung out of the bathroom. “But… thank you.”
Minho couldn’t be too much. Physically impossible, Jisung almost says. He’d take him in inordinate amounts; appreciate even the smallest of doses. He catches Minho’s eye through the mirrors. “It’s a good timeline, though, right? I think we got lucky.”
Minho’s eyes do a delightful half-roll. “It’s alright, I guess.”
Jisung has fashioned a perfectly-insulated caterpillar of himself and his duvet, too immaculate to be disturbed and also the only thing trapping his arms at his sides and keeping his fingers out of his mouth. But… before losing his every opposable limb to his cocoon, he’d forgotten the hallway light on and left the door negligently cracked, so he’s stewing under a layer of polyester when the text comes in.
His phone is screen-up on the pillow beside him. All he has to do is crane his neck a little to see:
before the screen goes black.
Jisung swallows. Drops his head to the pillow. His throat feels raw, dry, and he’s thirsty. His eyes sting, too. He might have considered all of this before tucking himself in for the night. Or the foreseeable future. He doesn’t plan on moving from his bed for the next twenty-four hours, at the least.
His phone chimes again.
Jisung snorts. He flounders, wiggling to loosen up his duvet enough to free his arms and reach for his phone. Another text from Minho appears—oppa please ㅠㅠ—before Jisung gets a chance to roll his eyes, put thumbs to screen.
Jisung locks his phone. Rolls onto his back, immaculate cocoon ruined. A shadow blocks out the glaring hallway light he’d left on as Hyunjin nudges his door open.
He’s all dolled up; freshly-bleached hair hanging loose and messy, a little sexed up; eyes lined heavily and smudged; some paltry excuse for a shirt (a hybrid of thin chains and fabric shreds) draped over his frame. Jisung can see one of his nipples, and he can barely see, period.
“Good evening,” greets Hyunjin genially, sprawling out on the duvet across Jisung’s legs. “Someone doesn’t look very ready to go out. So I’m here to rally.” He stretches like a cat, groaning with his arms unfurled above his head. “And I think you. Should get up. Put on non-sweatpants. And do a shot with me!”
“I’m not going out.”
Hyunjin is upright so fast it’s a wonder his head doesn’t rattle with it. His raccoon eyes stare Jisung down. “What do you mean?” It’s as he takes in Jisung’s state that he deflates. “Oh, Jisungie, you didn’t.”
Jisung hums, cups his hands over his eyes, tempted to crush his own skull until it splinters. “Oh, Hyunjinnie, but we did.”
Hyunjin rubs his leg through the duvet. “Why?” It’s quiet, reflexive. Like it slips out before Hyunjin thinks any better of it.
“Why does anyone ever leave me, Hyunjin. It’s always the same—”
“Shh,” Hyunjin hisses. He smushes his finger into Jisung’s lips violently. “Don’t. Don’t be mean to yourself. I know you’re already thinking about it, but don’t say it out loud. That never makes anyone feel better.” His glare is unusually stern through the aggressive eyeliner. He removes his hand only to squeeze at Jisung’s cheeks, then check his phone, squinting. “Do you want me to stay in with you? We can watch Princess Mononoke.”
“Is Changbin-hyung on his way?”
Hyunjin clutches his phone to his chest. “How’d you know?”
“Wild guess.” Jisung nudges his knee into Hyunjin’s bony ass. “You look like that sex robot with the Scottish accent.”
Hyunjin gasps a little, peacocking. “Thank you.”
“Don’t waste it on me.”
Hyunjin assesses him, skeptical. “I can ditch hyung.”
“Don’t ditch hyung.”
“We’ll hang out tomorrow.” Hyunjin hops off the bed. “You and I. You shan’t be rid of me this easy.”
“I’m dreading it.”
Hyunjin kicks at his bed, then looms over Jisung to tuck him in with vigor. “I’m going to make you tea and bring you melatonin,” he resolves, “so you don’t lay here staring at the ceiling and hating yourself.”
Jisung chuckles emptily. “I would never. That’s so Jisung of five years ago.”
Hyunjin’s shoving the duvet under Jisung’s shoulders when he meets his eyes. Cracks a smile. “Naw,” he coos, “and you’ve come so far, haven’t you, Jisungie.” And then he traps Jisung under a hug from which he can’t escape, plants a foul, gooey kiss to his cheek only to mutter, “Ah, shit, I got lip stain on you. It was supposed to be kiss-proof, too. That’s a ripoff. Except now it’s not… coming off…” Hyunjin’s thumb is unforgiving on his cheek, like an angry windshield wiper.
“Please leave,” Jisung cries out, thrashing, and Hyunjin cackles, flings himself off the bed.
“I’ll give your love to Changbin-hyung.”
“Don’t bother. I have no love to give. I’m loveless.”
“If I see Kwon Soonyoung, I’ll throw my drink at him.”
“Please do not.”
Hyunjin does make him tea. And Jisung sleeps through the whole night and then some, so miraculously he wonders if Hyunjin drugged him.
His phone is devoid of notifications and the apartment is dead-silent when he pads out of the bathroom. And he’s in the kitchen, rumpled, bed-headed, barefoot, and French press-ing, when the front door unlocks and gives way to a stumbling Hyunjin in last night’s clothes.
Jisung freezes. Hyunjin is so focused on unlacing his boots that when he finally stands, either latently drunk or with the cusp of a hangover just setting in, he yelps at the sight of Jisung.
Who has since assumed a slimy pose against the counter, chin propped in hand, smile devious. “Hwang Hyunjin,” he greets. “It is…” He checks his phone. “Ten-sixteen. In the morning.”
“I’m aware.” Hyunjin sniffs, sheds his jacket, and strolls into the kitchen. Pours the coffee into Jisung’s waiting mug and takes a hasty slurp. Whatever eyeliner he’d had on is mostly gone, its remains clinging in smudges and flakes at his temples and in his lashes.
Jisung scans him head to toe. “Are you limping?”
“No.” Then he stands up straight, twists his hips to feel out his lumbar. “Wait. Am I?”
Jisung prises his mug from Hyunjin’s greedy fingers, takes a seat behind the counter. “You owe one loveless roommate a lurid account of your night.”
Hyunjin fails to not smile that time. And like a good sport, he turns to fix his own coffee, which can only mean the fuck was better than the hangover is. “I dunno. There’s not… that much to tell. Went to a bar with Changbin-hyung, went to a different bar with Changbin-hyung on the invite of some purported ‘work friends’—his, not mine, obviously—and… I met this guy. Clearly.” He gestures about himself. “He works at JYP, actually, so maybe you know him? That’s all he really said, I don’t know if you run in the same circles. Didn’t seem like Changbin-hyung did.”
Jisung listens, attentive. Zones out on the relaxed slope of Hyunjin’s shoulders. Then his ears prick at the details. “Really?”
“Yeah. And he was, like, so hot. So hot, Jisung. And because I’m a respectful roommate, I asked if we could go to his place—please recall this factoid for future reference—so we did. Go to his place. And then we fucked, like, three times. I could barely breathe, let alone move. It was like a HIIT class. Probably? Maybe. I’ve never been and will never go.” Hyunjin shrugs. “Basically, I felt comparatively out-of-shape, but in a sexy way. A sexy HIIT class. I recommend! When I woke up he was getting dressed for the gym, ha, so I made myself scarce. And I needed to shit so bad but didn’t wanna blow up his bathroom so I stopped at Changbin-hyung’s on the way back. The end.”
Jisung laughs, airy. He bites down on the ceramic edge of his mug. “Do you remember his name?”
“Oh… I mean, I got his number. Let me check.” Hyunjin leans into the counter, opens his phone. “Lee Minho,” he reads, then tosses his phone down. “Anyway, I’m not even exaggerating, Jisung. He was so sexy I wanted to cry. I think I did cry at some point. And he asked for my number, so… I think an extremely overdue good dick season is on the horizon.” He turns away from the French press to smile at Jisung. “How did you sleep? Did you block Kwon Soonyoung on social media yet?”
Jisung stares into his mug.
Hyunjin materializes beside him to rub at his shoulder. “Jisung?”
Unfounded, sinking devastation is the only way Jisung can describe it—an endless free-falling. Starting at his scalp, it crawls over his skin, necrotic. “What?” Jisung laughs sharply, shies away from Hyunjin’s insistent touch. “I’m fine.”
“I… didn’t ask.” Hyunjin snorts. “Did you want to watch a movie? I was serious about that. I can paint your nails, too! I just need to shower. The nail-painting is for you but also for me so I don’t pass out during the first hour, but no promises for the second.” Silence. “Are you sure you’re fine, Jisung?”
When Hyunjin makes to press the back of his chilly, clawed hand to Jisung’s forehead, something snaps. What was seconds ago hollow becomes leaden and heavy, no less all-consuming but too big for Jisung to carry. His vision goes into negative, everything sinister and dark where it should be morning-bright. And he can’t escape Hyunjin’s hands fast enough, knowing where they’ve been. “Sorry,” he rushes, slipping off the barstool and making for the bathroom.
There is nothing in his stomach but half a coffee. And once that’s up and out, he’s left clutching at the toilet bowl, chest heaving painfully, soft palate burning acidic.
Hyunjin knocks urgently on the door. Tries at the locked door handle. “Jisung?”
He’ll imagine it, sooner or later—them, hyper-realistic, in lavish technicolor, pornographic but also horrifically romanticized, chemistry electric and conversation flowing easy and comfortable like they both know the lines to some beautifully implicit script. And everything Hyunjin has that he doesn’t will go unspoken, yet highlighted, appreciated—because Jisung is not the elephant in any room but his own.
Later, he’ll probably push Hyunjin for details on it, too, under the guise of perversion. Like pressing on a bruise he doesn’t want to heal. And he knows Hyunjin will gladly share—ha, Jisung, you’re so gross is only ever the preamble.
Maybe Jisung is overreacting. And the longer he smudges stinging tears out of his eyes, he comes to understand that he is, must be. Minho owes him nothing. Minho never made him any promises. Minho only ever told him the truth: that he didn’t want commitment. And casual is all Hyunjin has known for years.
Jisung can try to be as rational as he wants, but the feeling in the pit of his stomach is exigent, rancid. And he can’t rationalize that away.
So he curls up on the bathmat, knees pulled to his chest with his head against the bathtub’s edge, and lets himself picture it, picture them. Now, while it’s fresh; projected onto the white bathroom ceiling like newly splattered blood.
Hyunjin knocks again. Jisung’s not sure he ever left. It sounds like he has someone on the phone. “Jisung, please? You’re scaring me.”
Jisung coughs. He shifts onto his knees to spit into the toilet. “I’m okay.”
“No, he’s not—what?” Hyunjin seems to plaster himself to the door. Jisung pictures his earrings clunking against it. “Jisungie?”
“I’m okay.”
“Oh, thank god.” Hyunjin slides down the door (Jisung can hear the dragging scratch of the hardware on his shirt). “I’m sorry. I think I overshared—on-brand. But not the time. Can you unlock the door for me, babes? Do you need anything? A juice box? Changbin-hyung has also offered to kill Kwon Soonyoung.”
Jisung’s cheeks burn from ruthless tear scrubbing, so it hurts to smile, which is a little funny. “I just need a minute.”
“Okay.” A scratchy voice over the phone. Hyunjin informs him, “Changbin-hyung says he really wants to come watch Princess Mononoke.”
The air punches out of Jisung’s chest. “Changbin-hyung does not have to do that.”
“It’s too late. He’s coming,” Hyunjin declares. “On his way. Get washed up, okay? Ooh, wait, I’ve been telling you to get back into bath-taking! This is perfect! I’ll run you a bath!” He pounds weakly on the door. “Let me in! Please? You’ll feel better for it, I promise! I’ll let you use my special salts.”
Jisung hangs his head. He doesn’t deserve Hyunjin’s coddling when he’s this cold, this rotten. When Hyunjin is the last person he wants to see.
“Take your time,” says Hyunjin. “But also… when you get a chance, can you slip me aspirin? And my cleansing oil? If they fit under the door.”
Jisung should’ve been in the Dr. Dre studio seven minutes ago. He’d overslept, arrived stumbling down the stairs to the metro platform only to glimpse the last subway that could get him to his meeting on time closing its doors and taking off. He'd also meant to wash his hair that morning and clearly hadn’t, but had also forgotten a hat with which to cover it up. He has one stashed at work, he thinks, as he sprints through the JYP lobby for the closing elevator, messenger bag clutched to his chest. Fetching it, though, would add another minute and a half to his route to Dr. Dre, and he isn’t sure what would be worse, showing up late and looking a wreck or showing up later and looking a more considerately-composed wreck—
A hand jutting between the closing elevator doors saves Jisung from awaiting another. And he bumbles in, exhaling his thanks and jabbing the button for his floor, just to notice he’s landed himself alone in an elevator with Lee Minho.
“Hi.” Minho smiles at him. He’s heartbreakingly beautiful and barefaced, hood pulled over unstyled hair, with hands tucked into his sweatshirt’s kangaroo pocket.
Jisung feels windswept. Wants him so bad it sickens him to smile back, and he does. “Hey.”
Minho gives him an appraising once-over. “Missed you Friday night. Kim Jungwoo from Chix staff was fucking annoying, as expected. The scourge of JYP. A plague upon humanity. A vacuum for any joy in a room,” says Minho. His elbow bumps Jisung’s side amicably. “Everything okay?”
Buried inside his sleeve, Jisung’s thumb digs into the ingrown nail on his forefinger. He hasn’t looked away from Minho once since the doors shut. So it must be startling when he continues to stare, only to utter, “You slept with my roommate.”
Minho blinks. He shifts on his feet, angles himself toward Jisung. “What?”
They stop on the practice room floor. The doors slide open. Jisung clings to his bag, eyes darting between them and Minho. “You getting out?”
“No.” Minho presses the button for the top floor (which is only storage rooms and a roof outlet; where he couldn’t possibly have any business unless he’s going for a smoke) and jabs thrice at the door-close button. If anything, it feels like the doors linger to spite Jisung’s staring.
When they close, he swallows. Smiles, wobbly, because it’d be weird to bring this up at all if it were anything but a case of hey bro, funny coincidence, let me tell you all about it! So he tries, ardently, to make it one. “My roommate.” He pauses. “Do you remember… when we first met? You and I?”
Minho seems to stiffen. The corner of his mouth lifts, though. “Of course.”
Jisung burns alive. His floor is next. Maybe he’ll head to the roof, too. “My really drunk friend… who I left you to go help,” he murmurs, “that was Hyunjin. We live together—I live at his place, I mean. My roommate. Do you remember? I said it. And you—”
“I remember,” Minho confirms. The elevator opens on the music factory floor. Jisung is probably pushing ten minutes late now. He only slumps against the back railing, digs his phone out to shoot an apology text to Chan. Meanwhile, Minho continues, “But… I didn’t…?”
“His hair was dark,” Jisung says, wispy. He clears his throat. “Back then.”
Minho huffs out his nose, jaw faintly ajar. He deadpans, “Fuck,” and gawks at Jisung. “I had no idea. I didn’t recognize him.”
Jisung raises an eyebrow. Returns Minho’s elbow nudge. “Close to home, hyung,” he teases.
“No kidding.” Minho snorts. Then he frowns, slumps to dig his fingers into his eye sockets. “Jisungie,” he sighs. “I wouldn’t have, just, like, gone for him like that, if I’d known.”
Gone for him. That’s drastic. And it means there are details Jisung doesn’t know. He’d thought not knowing was worse. But reenacting infinite scenarios in his head sure beats diving headfirst into thick, hot envy at the vision of Minho, confident and purposeful, coming onto Hyunjin. “Well. I know hyung can’t be tamed—”
“Shut up,” Minho chuckles. He drops his arms, grabs for the elevator railing. Affixes Jisung with a shy smile. “I’m sorry. If this makes things… weird. Between us. If you feel weird.” Minho taps his foot against the floor, pensive. “Does he know we—?”
“No,” Jisung cuts him off. Kissed? Know each other? Neither.
Minho is very still. Then he nods.
“For what it’s worth,” Jisung drops his chin to his chest, lips pursing, “he was really into you.” Because: why not make himself feel worse, if it makes Minho feel better? It’s a small price to pay.
“I could’ve guessed that.”
Jisung scoffs. “He was even so bold as to forecast an upcoming good dick season.” And he peers at Minho from the corners of his eyes, just enough to catch his smug little smile, a thoughtful shrug that says: perchance. And Jisung hopes Hyunjin enjoys the weather. Sunny with a chance of (Minho’s) balls. “You’re insufferable,” Jisung informs him flatly. He rakes his fingers through his hair, recalls the state of it, the general just-rolled-out-of-bed, freshly-ex’d-up air about him. And it’s embarrassing, somehow, shameful, to show up for Minho like this, knowing Hyunjin… Well. Jisung will never be Hyunjin. And Hyunjin doesn’t leave the house looking unwashed. “I’m never buffering you from Kim Jungwoo again.”
Minho reaches for him. His grip on Jisung’s elbow is gentle, but it cleaves Jisung’s chest open anyhow. “But you’re the perfect buffer! Kim Jungwoo loves you!” Then he gasps theatrically. “Maybe you should date Kim Jungwoo!”
Ouch. “Very funny.” Jisung shakes him off as they reach the top floor. Minho doesn’t move when the doors open, so Jisung buttons in their floors of work again.
Minho hums. “Oh, yeah. I forgot about Kwon Soonyoung.”
Double ouch. “He’s not—that’s not a thing. Anymore.”
Jisung hears it when Minho’s lips smack apart. “Oh. Since when?”
“Since Friday.” Jisung lifts an open palm when he sense that Minho moves. “Don’t, hyung.”
Minho looks forlorn, even in his periphery. “You don’t want a hug from hyungie?”
Jisung squeezes his eyes shut. Cracks just enough to smile, tremulous. Even the smallest doses—he’ll take it all. “I guess I’ll… accept one.”
So Minho squeezes him tight. He cradles the back of Jisung’s head, tucks it in against his neck. He strokes Jisung’s hair with the flat of his palm, and it makes Jisung wonder how it’d feel were his fingers to card through, down to the scalp. Closer, more tender. But already, Minho’s arms feel like release, like home, like yearning. For that very reason, Jisung doesn’t allow himself to hug back. Then Minho whispers, into the shell of Jisung’s ear, “I hope Park Jinyoung PD-nim gets on at the next floor.”
Jisung smiles into the collar of Minho’s hood. “You think it violates the employee code of conduct to cuddle in the elevator?”
“Mm. Sounds a little indecent to me.”
“You wish.”
Minho only laughs. Slips his finger between the topmost knobs of Jisung’s spine.
Jisung has never begrudged Hyunjin how he was raised. What he was born into, how he still lives.
Maybe at the very start. Maybe when Hyunjin stood up in class, aged eight, and boasted that he wanted to become a painter. Jisung hadn’t thought he could draw all that well to back it. But at that age, Jisung was also telling anyone who’d listen that he was going to be an idol when he couldn’t dance for his life.
But again, Jisung doesn’t begrudge him any of it. In a way, it works in his favor today; he gets to live with his best friend, who could live where and with (or without) whom he pleases, but opened up the third bedroom in his (parents’ spare) apartment to Jisung. He gets to spend a wealth of his free time with Hyunjin, too, because Hyunjin is nearly always available. On paper, he’s a curator for his parents’ art gallery, but mostly he whiles his days in his bedroom painting and his nights out partying.
And Jisung has never begrudged him, because he’s never been envious. His goals have never overlapped with Hyunjin’s. Hyunjin has never posed a threat to Jisung’s career, and for a long time, that was Jisung’s life-defining metric: career success. There was never a chance they’d compete for the same dream, no matter how many scouts handed Hyunjin business cards at concerts or shopping malls. And Jisung never really felt insecure about his looks, his parents’ jobs, the clothes he wore—the many things for which most of their school peers openly envied Hyunjin.
Over a decade and a half later, Jisung is finally comfortable—in his identity, his career, his mental health. He doesn’t want for much of anything.
Except Minho. Minho is the exception. And now, Hyunjin has Minho.
Jisung leans against a column, untouched champagne flute bubbling in hand, as he regards Minho and Hyunjin across the gallery. Hyunjin paints quite the picture, head to toe in black sequined tweed, ice-blonde tresses falling breezily into his eyes. (Maybe Jisung should go blonde again.) His smile is dazzling as he charms a pair of beautiful women in jewel-toned satin and fur stoles. What monopolizes Jisung’s attention, though, is the cut of Minho’s profile at Hyunjin’s side; listening, rapt, but creased with fondness, like it wouldn’t matter what Hyunjin were spouting, he’d still cling to every word. His small hand is fitting for the small of Hyunjin’s back, where the tailored cut of Hyunjin’s suit nips him in. Jisung would know; Hyunjin had it altered just last week, had Jisung pick up the finished product on his way home from work.
Hyunjin’s boots are heeled, too, so Minho looks endearingly small. He’s also extraordinarily handsome, even in his understated outfit meant to lend Hyunjin the spotlight, all the way down to the sockless feet in his leather loafers, his tan, winking ankles. Jisung thinks, spitefully, that Hyunjin could’ve arrived at his opening reception shrouded in taffeta and balancing a fruit platter on his head and Minho would’ve still stolen his show in his plain slacks and fitted button-down.
Jisung regrets the time he’d wasted on his appearance that night. Minho won’t care, much less notice.
“You know, I’d always thought art exhibitions were for looking at, uh. Art.” Seungmin invades his column bubble. Jisung is tempted to piss on it to mark his territory. Honestly, were he a lot less sober, he’s not sure he’d be able to stop himself. Though… it wouldn’t be Hyunjin who’d end up cleaning his mess; probably someone the Hwangs pay to keep the place spotless, who certainly doesn’t deserve the ugly end of Jisung’s jealousy.
“I did look at the art. It was…” Jisung stops there. Locks eyes with Seungmin, who rolls his, smacks Jisung on the ass under the cover of the column. Jisung jumps a little. “The curator sure has interesting taste.”
“The art is fine,” says Seungmin. He sips at his champagne. Jisung thinks he looks quite dapper tonight. “You’re just a bitter little man.”
Jisung mentally retracts a compliment he never gave. Watches Minho laugh. Watches the curve of his spine, the angled lines of his body as they extend toward Hyunjin, drawn in by some unseeable chemical gravity. “I brought a date,” he then brightly informs Seungmin, who eyes him, dubious, and looks both ways as if crossing a street. Jisung glares, adds, “He’s not here yet.”
“This late?” Seungmin checks his wristwatch—fucking wristwatch-wearer—and clucks his tongue. “Red flag.”
“He’s a workaholic. And it’s fine, he gave me warning way in advance that he’d be—oh, shit, there he is.” Jisung rises onto his tiptoes, waves genially at Chan, who is getting relieved of his coat at the entrance.
He’s smiling, forced, when Seungmin steps into his line of sight and it promptly drops. “Your date is your boss?” demands Seungmin.
“He’s not my boss.”
“Bang Chan? He might as well be! You can’t date your superiors, Jisung! That’s the definition of a conflict of interest.”
Jisung snorts. “We’re not dating. I’m not even trying to date him. He’s just… my ‘date.’” He lifts air quotes. “For tonight. Well, he’s actually just my plus-one, he doesn’t know he’s my date.” He flushes hot, tugs at the high collar of his turtleneck. It sticks to him, tacky. “I don’t even think he’s… into men. I just told him I was going to this event and he expressed interest so I… made it happen. With neither malicious nor illegal intent. Anyway, even if I did date Chan-hyung, he’d never abuse his power—!”
“Something is severely wrong with you,” says Seungmin.
“Can you just—shut up, and make sure Minho-hyung sees us together?” Jisung pastes the sparkling smile on again. Chan is approaching.
“Literally no.”
“Hi!” Chan greets sunnily. He touches Jisung on the elbow, companionable. “Thanks for inviting me, Jisung, this looks awesome. I rarely get an opportunity to do stuff like—oh, hello.” Chan turns his sweet smile on Seungmin. “Kim Seungmin-ssi, right? I’ve definitely seen you around the office. With Jisung, mostly.”
Seungmin nods stiffly, frozen mid-escape. “That’s me.” He bows weakly. “I was actually just… gonna go over there.” Seungmin selects a remarkably empty corner to point at. “Nice to see you, Bang Chan-ssi. Enjoy your night.”
Against the stem of his champagne glass, Jisung flips him the bird. Nearly drops his glass in the effort.
And as Seungmin departs to go over there, Chan swivels toward Jisung, claps his hands to his thighs. “Shall we?”
Jisung stays late, after most of the guests have trickled out. It’s his best friend duty, so he doesn’t expect Chan to stick around, too, but there he is, chatting to Hyunjin and Minho by the Mondrian ripoff, probably revealing at this very moment that he is not, in fact, Jisung’s sexy date and coworker, but only the latter.
Jisung had surrendered to the bottomless champagne shortly after Chan arrived. He feels a little dizzy now, a little sick, sprawled out on the least ergonomic bench his ass has ever had the displeasure of meeting. It could be part of the exhibition, honestly, but no one’s yelled at him yet for violating the art.
Seungmin appears, as he is prone to at Jisung’s lowest points. He sits silently beside Jisung and, unexpectedly, pats him on the back.
“What do you want,” whines Jisung, squirming from his touch. He hiccups. “Can’t you see I’m languishing.”
“I can see it plain as day, actually,” says Seungmin, “which is what I came over here to tell you.”
“Good.”
Seungmin sighs. It’s a wonder he can tolerate Jisung anymore, because as it stands, he’s the only living being on the face of the planet privy to Jisung’s miserable infatuation with Lee Minho. And as head confidante, by default, he is also the only option to shoulder the burden of Jisung’s anguish; anguish that peaked when Hyunjin and Minho became official last month. Official, exclusive… boyfriends. Since they became boyfriends.
Since they became boyfriends after fucking insatiably (and, eventually, ostensibly, hanging out) for two months straight, strictly at Minho’s place. The apartment had never felt so devoid of Hyunjin. Jisung lived there with Hyunjin’s ghost, used Hyunjin’s fancy espresso machine and Hyunjin’s artisan serving bowls and Hyunjin’s streaming subscriptions and Hyunjin’s fluffy bath towels. And when he went to work, Hyunjin’s ghost only followed; it clung to Minho in the subtle hickeys on his throat, in Hyunjin’s tennis bracelet clasped around his tattooed wrist, in hoodies from Hyunjin’s favorite luxury design collective on his back.
(“I asked Minho-hyung out.”
The hammer narrowly misses Jisung’s finger.
He’s on the living room floor building one of three shoe racks Hyunjin had ordered, ignorant to the fact that they wouldn’t come assembled.
So Jisung stares, wide-eyed, at a new dent in the wood. He’d missed his finger, but he’d also missed the dowel peg. Hyunjin won’t notice. And if he does, he can only blame himself. Jisung is hardly a handyman. “Sorry?” he utters, slumping to sit on his heels.
Hyunjin smiles. He’s at the kitchen counter, portioning out pre-cubed watermelon. “I asked him on a date. Minho-hyung.”
They’ve been sleeping together for weeks. Jisung is… good about it, these days. Reasonable. He has to hear about it, but he doesn’t have to hear it, so things could be considerably worse. And he only hears about it from Hyunjin, anyway. Minho isn’t the type to overshare over lunch in the office cafeteria.
“Wow,” croaks Jisung, for lack of anything to say that isn’t what the fuck! He turns back to the half-baked shoe rack, finds himself disoriented by the mess of bits and bobs that’ll probably end up getting sucked in between tufts of the faux fur rug, never to be seen again (until Jisung has to fish them out when the rack inevitably collapses under nine pairs of designer penny loafers). He clears his throat. The instruction manual suddenly reads like it’s written in a foreign language. Then he puffs out a breath, puts it down. “And he said…?”
Hyunjin narrows his eyes playfully. Leaves the box of sliced fruit on the counter as he traipses toward Jisung with his little bowl, perches on the arm of the couch. “He said yes,” he mutters. “Obviously. You’d already know about it if I were freshly rejected.” He pops a watermelon cube into his mouth. “But you know our Minho-hyung. Or—well, I don’t know how much you two chat at work. He’s kind of a commitment-phobe.”
There are two sizes of dowel peg, certainly for a structural reason, but Jisung is now sticking them in holes indiscriminately. It temporarily satisfies the itch in his fingers, the urge to gnaw off a nail. “Right.”
“But I was telling Kyunghee-ajumma—the assistant at the gallery? You’ve met her, I think. Anyway, she was, you know, doing her thing, trying to set me up with her sister’s pretty daughter. But then I told her there’s already a girl I like,” he snorts, “and she obviously wanted to hear all about it. So I told her about Minho, basically. How he—she—doesn’t really date. That she’s focused on her career. But then Kyunghee-ajumma said something like: a beautiful, successful girl like her—someday somebody will ask her out, and she will say yes. And if I don’t, it’ll clearly never be me. So.” He fits another watermelon chunk into his mouth, chews thoughtfully. “It got me thinking. For real. And it worked! She was right! Not that everyone should take that advice. I am me, after all.”
“Don’t forget to invite her to your wedding,” Jisung mutters behind the manual.
Hyunjin chuckles. “She’d have a heart attack if she found out Minhee was a Minho.”
Jisung gives Hyunjin a blatant once-over, eyebrow arched, and picks up the hammer again. “You underestimate Kyunghee-ajumeoni’s powers of perception.”
Hyunjin squints at him. Snorts. “Maybe. Anyway, no wedding talk. I need to date the shit out of him first.”
It sounds like a gruesome experience. Jisung wishes them all the best.)
It’s officially the longest Jisung has been single in five years (all credits go to Kim Seungmin for the archival math). And yet Minho’s friendship is the closest Jisung has felt to anyone since he and Hyunjin became schoolyard enemies at eight and best friends at nine. It’s a relief, almost, that they put a label on it. That stopped them hiding out at Minho’s, started them spending more time around Jisung, just… as a unit now. Attached at the hip.
Hyunjin had been the one to bring up exclusivity eventually, too, which hadn’t surprised Jisung. What had, though, was Minho’s acceptance.
“They seem… good together,” Seungmin comments. “Happy.”
Jisung scoffs. “They’re in the honeymoon phase. Everyone seems happy in the honeymoon phase.”
“Don’t most of your relationships end in the honeymoon phase?”
His eyes cut to Seungmin. Not most, he’s tempted to argue, all. “If you came over here to lecture me, please do proceed. I will not be stopping you.” He hiccups again, and now Chan is hugging Hyunjin. Great. Weird. Maybe he’ll fire Jisung and bring Hyunjin onboard. “Mostly ‘cause I might throw up in my mouth if I stand up, so. I’m trapped here. With you.”
Seungmin nods, as if accepting the segue. “I think it could be good to… distance yourself, maybe.” He gazes at Jisung with a soft sort of sympathy that he wears like an old, ill-fitted jacket. “From them both. For a while.”
“I should just move out, huh.” Jisung tongues the inside of his cheek. Even from afar, Minho’s eyes squinching around a smile make Jisung’s heart stutter. Pride looks good on him, Jisung thinks, even given the circumstances. And Jisung would love to be able to do that—to make him proud. To be worth enough, noticed enough, to make him proud. “But… you’re right. Somewhat. I just need a boyfriend, really. That would be good.”
Seungmin grimaces in thought. “Well… sure. You could try just… dating around, maybe. Casually. And not jumping into—”
“I don’t want to date around. I want a boyfriend.”
Seungmin sighs. He taps Jisung on the protrusion of his spine like he’s a stupid dog.
Jisung’s nostrils flare obstinately. “I’ll be fine.” Vocalizing it doesn’t convince the squeeze of his heart. Nor does it convince Seungmin, he’s sure of that.
Still, Seungmin is known to be nice. On occasion. “I know.” Seungmin removes his hand. “Distance, though. Think about it, Jisung. Please.”
Jisung tilts his foot, notices a scuff on his shoe. It’s his nicest pair. “It’s weird when you act like you care about me.”
Seungmin snorts. Is silent a while, probably watching Chan gesture wildly with his hands as he talks. Jisung only watches Minho. Then, “One last request.”
Jisung drags his hands over his face, hunched over his lap, and groans. “What.”
“Please don’t date your boss.”
▶▶▶
Jisung wakes to sheets so tangled he has to resort to thrashing free. It hurts, too much; makes his ears ring and his stomach churn and his muscles ache.
He’s rolling over, scratching at his bare chest—when had he stripped?—to reach for his phone, eyes still closed like he’s freshly newborn, kicking and sticky and miserable, when his bedroom door opens. No knock, just Hyunjin.
“Thought I heard you fussing.” Hyunjin strides to Jisung’s windows, throws the curtains open. Jisung only hears it, that scratch of the metal rings on curtain rod, while face-planting into his pillow and grumbling. And Hyunjin is not a morning person, so Jisung must’ve slept into the deep afternoon. “Sorry. I’ve been waiting all day to check on you and make sure you were alive, so, like. First signs of life, I caved. Should I get a baby monitor? For times like these?”
If Jisung is alive, he’s only clinging to a precipice of aliveness. Fingers slipping. Then the mattress dips for a seated Hyunjin. And there he sits, silent, like he’s waiting for Jisung to do… what, exactly, Jisung isn’t sure.
Isn’t sure until he flops onto his back to face the glory of daylight, tears open his crusty eyes to see only Hyunjin—Hyunjin, glowing bright, damp hair drying from a shower, clad in the sweater he’d worn at home last night.
Last night.
Jisung swallows. The tail end of his stale breath tastes like soju. The rest of it tastes like shit. “Oh, shit,” he whispers.
Hyunjin smiles at him, brows crumpling, somewhere on the rainbow between pitying and amused. He pats Jisung’s knee through the sheets. “You wanna tell me what happened?”
Jisung sits up. Cringes at a wave of nausea that claws its way out of his stomach, into his throat. He also really needs to piss. But—he’s taken aback by Hyunjin’s guileless smile. “You don’t know?”
Hyunjin lifts a brow. “Did you black?”
“No.” Jisung blinks. Blinks again, then cranes his arms out to sort the tangle of sheets at his feet. He’s got underwear on, at least. Thank god. “I just. Hyung didn’t… tell you?”
Hyunjin pouts in thought. “No. Minho-hyung left right after we got you in bed.”
“Oh.” Jisung must’ve blacked that. Everything after the pizza delivery is a void, no matter how much he scrapes around in there for something to hold onto. Hyunjin doesn’t know, though. Hyunjin doesn’t know. “I… hah. Drunk panic attack, I guess. First time for everything.”
Hyunjin nibbles on his lip. He pulls his knee up onto the bed, getting comfortable. “Choi Yeonjun—”
Jisung’s throat clicks as he swallows. Hyunjin offers him this… gift, some material to mould into exoneration. And Jisung’s guilty conscience sinks its claws into it. It’s something he can run with, enough of an alibi. No, he didn’t crack because he told Minho what he did. He cracked because he’s the victim—as ever. It’s a narrative Hyunjin is familiar with, one that’ll go down smoothly. Unquestionably. So Jisung croaks, “I thought hyung didn’t tell you.”
“He didn’t.” Hyunjin shrugs. “Wild guess.”
Jisung snorts. “Not that wild.”
Hyunjin tips his head. The blonde ends of his hair are drying like straw, scratching against his sweater. “Sorry.” He says it quietly, tenderly, in a way that would truly, actually make Jisung feel better, had he not confessed to Hyunjin’s boyfriend the very night before.
So Jisung laughs, weak. “It’s… whatever. Think I just got overwhelmed.”
“You wanna tell me about that, too? About Yeonjun?” And he means it. Jisung can tell he means it. Hyunjin wants to take care of him. Hyunjin has always taken care of Jisung. But—ha! Jisung is a lying piece of shit!
“Eventually.” Jisung clears his throat. “I’m okay, though. Right now. It already feels like… old news.”
“I never liked him,” Hyunjin says flatly. “He always seemed fake. And not just his nose.”
Jisung laughs. And he wants to drag Hyunjin down onto the bed so they can lay side by side and stare at the ceiling and tear Yeonjun (undeserving) apart together. But he can’t even touch Hyunjin without feeling like his grip would sizzle and spark and brand Hyunjin’s skin. Like it would continue to until Jisung was finally honest.
And now is not the time. He sags back into the sheets and huffs, “What did his nose ever do to you.”
“Make me feel jealous and silly that I’m too scared to go under the knife and be swollen for months.” Hyunjin squares his shoulders, rises. “I’m never gonna see him again, anyway. I don’t really hang out with Minho-hyung’s crowd. He’ll never find out. Do you want coffee?”
Jisung is grateful for Hyunjin’s prattling, for his plastic surgery fantasies. He’s even grateful for the wretched feeling consuming his body. They’re all distractions from the very real and unavoidable heartsickness that’ll gorge him once all else is gone. His eyes are out of focus on the ceiling as he asks, “Have you talked to hyung? Since last night?”
“Nope. We have dinner plans tonight. But we’re only gonna gossip about your little panic attack for a very respectable ten minutes, max. Don’t worry.” Hyunjin smiles angelically over his shoulder. “I’m gonna make that coffee.”
Minho cancels on the dinner plans. Jisung gets to hear about it from a pouty Hyunjin, who hangs in his doorway, phone dangling from his hand and pouted lip from his mouth, as he begs him to go along as to not waste the reservation. So Jisung goes. Every time Hyunjin’s phone vibrates on the tablecloth, Jisung authors a text in his head; something impersonal yet ominous from Minho. Something like we need to talk. Something about some company you keep, Hyunjin. Something something about last night.
Hyunjin asks why he’s so twitchy and Jisung blames it on the hangover. On Yeonjun. On work, Lee Chaeyeon’s recording studio meltdown, and Chan possibly-probably firing him.
Pre-Minho, Hyunjin hadn’t really known what it meant to have a boyfriend. Post-Minho, Hyunjin doesn’t know how to function without one (much like Jisung. They have that in common).
He isn’t without, necessarily. Minho texts Hyunjin—sporadically, from what Jisung can tell. Less than usual, at any rate. And he can tell when it’s Minho, because they spend the weekend together on the couch, Jisung plugged into his laptop and Hyunjin “sketching,” though he gets nothing on paper because he leaps to attention whenever a reply comes through, spends the in-betweens waiting and ruminating.
Jisung doesn’t reach out to Minho. It’s mutual (Jisung is hypocritically miserable about this, though part of him thinks that the ball is in Minho’s court anyhow). Minho doesn’t speak a word to him the rest of the weekend, leaving Jisung to catastrophize. To be uncharacteristically generous in the name of repentance when he cleans his and Hyunjin’s bathroom and makes Hyunjin dinner and lets Hyunjin pick an obscure arthouse movie for their Sunday evening (Jisung loses the plot within ten minutes). He barely sleeps. Alcohol got him through the first night, but he’s not about to make a habit of that. Hyunjin would worry, and Jisung doesn’t want to be a burden. Not that he isn’t already. Hyunjin just doesn’t know it yet.
He weighs the risks of telling Hyunjin himself. But he isn’t sure what terrifies him more: the prospect of running into Minho at work, or sitting Hyunjin down to tell him he’s disturbingly into his boyfriend (and has told him so). So he avoids all of the above.
Monday, at least, brings regularity. Routine. Jisung spends all day at the office tentatively going about his regular schedule. And when he continues to, safely, without ever crossing paths with Minho, Jisung realizes Minho must have adjusted his own.
To avoid him.
Jisung isn’t sure that alleviates his anxiety. If it were him doing the avoiding, at least it’d be under his control. But Minho simply… wants nothing to do with him. So Jisung continues to spend his lunches with Seungmin. Seungmin, who was never much an active participant in the Jisung-and-Minho back-and-forths of their typical lunches, only ever interjecting if one of them made some factually erroneous claim. He doesn’t seem to miss (or notice) Minho’s absence. He’s even harried enough this week to have to finish his food in fifteen minutes and dart for his next lesson, and to also attribute Jisung’s disquietude to Yeonjun. It helps to not have Seungmin on his case—he would only stare a confession out of Jisung and give him some moral, sane advice on how to proceed. Instead, Jisung proceeds on tenterhooks, alternating between eyeing the door to the cafeteria and lamenting the few, drunken words it took to destroy his dearest friendship in years. Dreading the very real possibility that Minho could hate him. That Minho could be somewhere, several floors away, thinking about Jisung—and hating him.
Midweek, Chan tells him he ought to consider taking a sick day. Jisung bats him off (he’d only be worse off at home, where Hyunjin’s music would drift through his bedroom door, where that pair of Minho’s old gym shoes hasn’t left their foyer in months) and is vaguely offended (he stares at himself extra long in the bathroom mirror after that). Then Changbin tells him he looks like his toilet after a wild night out, which is deeply insulting. After work, Hyunjin slumps onto the couch beside Jisung, complains that Minho has been distant. That Minho keeps blaming it on work. And Jisung laughs, accidentally, because that’s really what he is, isn’t he? Has always been? Work. Hard work. Minho’s work friend. And nothing more.
Friday, the gloomy sky opens up and it pours. Jisung is twenty-four years old and doesn’t own an umbrella. On his way out the door, a very groggy Hyunjin shoves one into his hand to borrow, but like a masochistic ass, Jisung waits for him to shut the door to leave it propped on their doormat.
Fridays are always quiet at the office. Jisung had spent the majority of the week drifting through meetings like a ghost, internalizing everything and contributing nothing, sparing his energy for the studio when it’d be weird as fuck if he stayed shut up the entirety of a recording session. But today, he’s alone in the studio, and he doesn’t realize he’s dozed off on the couch until he awakens to his head slipping off the armrest and his headphones clattering to the floor.
It feels jarring, stepping out into the hall and seeing the sun has long set beyond the windows. As he paces to the elevator, head hung, he can make out the beat of the rain—percussive, persisting.
The elevator lets him out in the lobby. And just ahead, exiting an elevator nearer to the reception, is Minho. His hood is pulled up over a beanie, but he’s in basketball shorts, and Jisung would recognize his calves anywhere.
He stays put so long with his breath held that the elevator tries to shut on him. He then scrambles to hold the doors open, but Minho has already vanished. So he barrels through the turnstiles, through reception, through the revolving door and into the downpour. He slips on the sidewalk, messenger bag slapping his side. Cars rush past, spraying sheets from puddles, beaming their headlights through the rain and the dark. Jisung squints, turns in a frenzied, clumsy circle thinking he’s lost Minho until he catches sight of his silhouette, gray hood rain-darkened, as he trudges doggedly toward the parking lot.
Jisung darts after him. “Hyung!” he calls. He hasn’t spoken more than a few words all day, and his voice is frail. Not enough to overpower the rain, the traffic. “Hyung!”
Minho slows. Stops. He turns, and miraculously, he waits. It gives Jisung a chance to catch up. He skids to a stop just short of Minho by inches, breathing so heavily his chest hurts. His hands ache to touch, fingers stiff with tension like they need a good crack, but they only flex at his sides. “Hyung,” Jisung exhales. Minho is half-golden in the streetlamp light, half blue with the evening, and his skin is sparkling-damp. Eyes—inscrutable. Always. When Minho starts to frown, when his attention starts to drift, Jisung shakes his head urgently. He’s so close. “No, please. I—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wish I could take it back. I’ve thought about taking it back every day since. And if you’re… willing to forget about it, I will take it all back, or I’ll try my damnedest, if it just means you won’t take it out on Hyunjin. Please. Please don’t ice him out. It’s not his fault, it’s mine. All of this…” Jisung waves his arm out. Raindrops prick his skin, like they’re carrying razored edges. “It’s mine. And you can forget about me. I can take it back and you can move on and forget about me. But please don’t… push Hyunjin away.”
The rain soaks clean through Jisung’s hair. It’s plastered to his face the way his clothes are to his skin, chilling him to the bone. Minho only makes him wait until a crack of thunder shakes the air, the ground underfoot. Then he grabs Jisung above the elbow. “Come on.”
Minho walks him across the lot, heavy-footed. Leaves him at the passenger side door of his car. Jisung climbs in only once Minho’s inside and switching the heat onto full blast. And it feels okay, like it could be okay, while the indoor lights are on. But those fade fast, bathing them in cold darkness with the car rumbling beneath.
Minho stares at the wheel. Then he sighs, peels out of his hoodie, his beanie. “Take yours off, too,” mutters Minho. “You’ll catch something.”
Jisung is dripping onto Minho’s nice leather seat, but his palms are pressed together, trapped between his knees. He’d watched Minho strip halfway out of his hoodie, then guiltily sought out the distraction of the dashboard lights.
“Jisung,” Minho prompts, icy. Only then does Jisung listen. He slops his soaked sweatshirt into the legroom. It squelches when it hits the floor.
Minho drums his fingers against the wheel. His legs are spread as wide as the seat. He touches his forehead to his knuckles, takes a breath, then sits bolt upright. Clears his throat. “I’m not icing him out,” Minho murmurs. “Or… I’m trying not to. It’s not working, clearly, if you’re hearing about it. I just feel like… I need time.”
“Time… that I’m not giving you.” If they were on the road, Jisung would open the door, leap out into traffic. Or he’d think about it, at least. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.”
Jisung shuts his mouth.
“Sorry.” Minho exhales, touches gentle fingertips to Jisung’s shoulder. “No, you gave me time. I had time. I just want more of it. And that means… I need to end things. With Hyunjin.”
Jisung stares out the windshield, fingernail between his teeth. His teeth click together as they cut clean through. He shivers, drops his hand. Turns to Minho. He’s done it, for real, Jisung has. “What?”
“I have to.” Minho leans back, head against the headrest. “And I need to stay away from you both, I think. For a while.”
Jisung flushes with humiliating warmth. “Oh.”
Minho nods. He shifts the car into gear. “I need to tell him,” says Minho, low. “What you told me. Not in… detail, or anything. But… I want him to understand why. Why I can’t stay. Why it’s not him.” His eyes flicker in Jisung’s direction, then away. “That is…” He sighs, tense, out his nose. “If you meant it. I should have asked way before I shut either of you out. Did you mean it? What you said?” Silence. Then, scared, like Jisung’s never heard him: “Do you even remember?”
Jisung feels like his throat closes up. And he whispers, “Of course I meant it. Of course I remember.”
Minho takes a deep breath. Nods, like he really did need the confirmation. Jisung would say it again, again and again and again, if Minho only told him he wanted to hear it. If they were beautiful words, not ruinous. Minho cocks his head, rubs at his neck. “Right. I want him to understand why. Why we won’t… work. So I do have to tell him.” Again, his eyes flit to Jisung, but they’re cold, faraway. Unseeing. “But you should tell him first. Whatever it is you want to tell him. I think he’d want to hear that from you—sooner rather than later.”
Minho is right. Jisung aches all over. He slumps into the passenger side window, and it’s chilly. His head rattles as the car thrums, bumps on the road. He tangles his fingers together; the car itself is warm and his hands are drying, finally, but his fingertips and knuckles feel like they’re cracking, bleeding. “Why can’t you stay with him?”
Distantly, Minho utters, “Hm?”
“Why can’t you stay with him.” Jisung drags in a breath. It’s shaky and his nose is stuffy. He barely leeches any air out of it. “You should stay with him, hyung. I could tell him what I told you. How I feel… about you. I will tell him. And that could be that. He’d be upset with me—just me. It’s a me problem. You haven’t done anything wrong. But I could promise to stay away from you. Avoid you at work. Can’t be too hard, you managed all this week.” He swallows. “Not everything needs to change. You make him happy and he makes you happy. And I don’t want that to change. I can’t have… messed everything up, can I?” It sounds selfish even to his own ears. But he would take some comfort in martyrdom.
It’s a while before Minho replies. He’s making all the right turns to take Jisung home with clinical efficiency. But Jisung wouldn’t mind being driven about all night; maybe he’d get some sleep out of it. “I can’t stay with him,” murmurs Minho.
Jisung deflates, hopeless. “Why?”
Minho shakes his head. Again, he takes his time. “Because.” He breathes in, out. “Because it should be easier for me to move past this. It should be. And it would be…” The car slows at a red light. Minho readjusts his grip on the wheel. “Were I able to stop thinking about what you said. But I’m not. I haven’t been.”
Jisung squeezes his eyes shut. He feels detached from the neck down, like his body isn’t there. Just air, buzzing with phantom limbs, a phantom heart. Right. “‘Cause we can’t be friends if I—”
“I never wanted to be your friend.”
Jisung cracks his eyes open. Watches his nails sink into his damp jeans. Doesn’t feel them.
“Since I met you,” Minho speaks evenly, “I’ve never... never wanted to be just your friend, Jisung.”
Jisung’s pulse echoes in his head, discrete beats fusing into one incessant, droning rush. That rush fills the silence when his body can’t seem to remember how to move. Then he sits up—involuntary, like a twitch. “Hyung-ah.”
Minho chuckles, morose. It’s disheartening. “We can talk about it more,” he tells Jisung, “after… a while.”
Jisung’s eyes sting. They burn and they sting and his chest might collapse under the vacuum of pressure inside the car unless Minho opens a window. “How long is a while?”
“I don’t know.” Minho puts the car in park at the curb outside Jisung’s building. He nods toward the entrance. “You should tell Hyunjin your piece. I’m seeing him tomorrow, so… I’ll tell him mine.”
Jisung blinks. He feels the meandering path of it, the tear that squeezes from his eye. Drops off his jaw. “He’ll hate us both,” he whispers.
Minho grunts. “As I see it, there’s no other option.”
“I know.” Jisung glances at the front door. Puts his face in his hands, breathes out.
Minho’s hand rubs high on his spine, at the sore knots between his shoulder blades. Then it swipes at the wetness clinging to his jawbone, and disappears. “I’ll see you later.”
The rain has let up; it mists the back of Jisung’s burning neck. He’s out of the car, two feet on the curb, when Minho says, “Jisung.”
It’s the first time they’ve met eyes since standing out in the rain. Jisung’s muscles seize up. “Yes?”
“While I think,” Minho says. “While I figure out… what I want. While we do. I don’t expect you to wait.”
Jisung drapes his sopping sweatshirt over his arm. “You don’t expect me to wait.” His pulse lurches. “Wait… for you?”
Minho watches him closely. Nods, faint and quick.
Jisung holds onto the door. Onto the roof above the open door. He can feel it, the grit of pollution mixing with the rain, sticking cold and grimy to the creases in his palms. He manages, “You too,” and nearly drops his sweatshirt trying to grab his bag. And then he smiles, abashed, volatile, as the tries to sort out the tangle of his tongue. And once he does: “But I’ve… wanted you, hyung. So bad. For so long. That I don’t know how easy it’d be for me to just… stop.”
Minho looks at him, unreadable. Lolls his face toward the road. “Go inside, Han Jisung.”
“Have you ever thought about it?” Jisung’s breath catches his throat and doesn’t release. “The time you kissed me. Have you thought about it?”
Minho shuts his eyes, wrist draped over the wheel. “I’m driving away, Han Jisung. Right now.”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“We’ll talk.” He rolls his shadowed eyes to Jisung. “Later.”
“Later. Fine.”
Jisung doesn’t watch him go. It’s a short trip up, but his knees manage to give out in the elevator. And he sits on the floor, terrified, eyes stinging with tears as the elevator idles on his floor. Terrified—of hurting Hyunjin. Terrified of what it makes him, what it means about him, if under all the guilt, seven words from Minho can make him glow.
Jisung feels like a wet dog when he finally drags himself out of the elevator (it takes someone calling it back to the ground floor and getting trapped in a round trip to get him to budge). So he heads first for the shower. Only once he’s clean and in comfortable clothes does he knock on Hyunjin’s cracked bedroom door.
Hyunjin is inside, propped up by a legion of pillows, phone in hands with legs crossed at the ankles. Designer floor lamps—globes of colored light straight from the future, or just the home decor gallery down the street—paint the room in soothing sunset shades. At Jisung’s entry, his chin tips up but his eyes don’t leave his screen. “Hi,” he singsongs faintly. “Did you eat yet?”
Jisung slips through the door, tiptoes to the bed. He’s having trouble looking Hyunjin in the eyes but no trouble at all looking at Hyunjin himself; his dark roots, his new cartilage piercing, the worn socks he’s got on that he’d rather go barefoot in midwinter than let someone witness in public. Jisung sits and smooths his palms along the bedsheets, removes them when he sees just how blistered-pink his raw nail beds look against the crisp white. “I wanted to tell you something,” he says. The words seem to come from the very pits of his lungs, wispy by the time they reach the open air.
Hyunjin looks at him. “Is it about Minho-hyung?” He tosses his phone aside. “Did you see him at the office? He’s still, like, giving me the cold shoulder.” Hyunjin’s nose crinkles, and he tangles paint-stained but otherwise unscathed fingers into the gaps of his loose-knit sweater. “He’s been in moods before, I guess, but. Never this long. And even then he always told me what was wrong.”
Jisung’s head aches. He gazes at his socked feet sunken into the shag carpet. He asks the question five times in his head before he finally voices it. “Did you know we kissed?”
Hyunjin says nothing—immediately. Then, quietly, “You and hyung?”
Jisung rubs at his lower lip, feels the skin flake off. He nods.
Again, silence. “Yeah,” Hyunjin says lightly. “I did.” Another pause. “He told me when we started dating.”
Of course. Minho wouldn’t keep a secret like that. Jisung, alternatively… “Are you mad at me?”
Hyunjin huffs. His responses come slowly, slower than Jisung is used to with Hyunjin who, when it comes to Jisung, always has a rebuttal at the ready. It’s the lapsing into quiet, the waiting, that drives Jisung mad. “No,” Hyunjin answers. “No, I’m not… mad. Honestly, I forgot. About it. ‘Cause really I was just… waiting. To see if you’d ever tell me yourself.”
Jisung shuts his eyes, draws his lower lip under his teeth.
“So,” Hyunjin reconsiders, “I guess I am a little pissed. That it took you this long.”
“I didn’t know he told you.”
“I don’t know if that changes anything.”
Jisung swallows. “I know.”
“In fact, it… kind of makes it sound like… you thought it was your secret. You and hyung’s secret, that you were keeping together.”
That’s not true. Jisung has never once thought about it that way. But suddenly, it feels like he has to fight to believe that. Is it? Is it really so false? “You didn’t tell me you knew,” Jisung whispers.
Hyunjin laughs, on edge. “Am I the one in the wrong here?”
Jisung huffs. Shakes his head. He drops his elbows to his knees, weaves his fingers into his damp hair, head bowed.
“Am I?” demands Hyunjin. “Should I have told you? So you would’ve told me? How long would you have kept it from me, thinking I didn’t know? Thinking it was you and hyung’s little secret, and poor, stupid Hyunjin had no idea and would never, not even if—I don’t know.” Hyunjin scoffs. “Hyung and I lasted.” Jisung hears the tremble in his exhale. “I mean, that’s not… that’s not really the question I’m trying to ask, though, is it.”
Jisung peeks between his fingers at the rug, heart knocking in his chest, his stomach. If he could, he would curl in on himself, keep curling and curling until he disappeared completely. “You’ve been together… half a year. More than.” He knows when they started, down to the day. Knows how many months, omits it anyway, and swallows. “Have you hated me this whole time?”
“Jisungie.” Hyunjin says it hopelessly. Like Jisung couldn’t be further from the point. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Jisung feels very, very cold, skin prickling with goosebumps. He balls his hands up, sinks his teeth into his thumbnail. Eyes one of Hyunjin’s many easels, propped with an unfinished lakescape in delicate shades of blue. “Because I think I love him.” He breathes out in a ragged tremble, tips his forehead into his hands. “And I think I’ve wanted him… ever since I met him. Since we kissed. Since before you met—for real. But he turned me down, because he didn’t want to… commit. To me.” He’s humiliated when tears brim his eyes, burning. “But then he did commit.” He swallows, glances toward Hyunjin. “To you.”
Hyunjin’s face gives nothing away. He’s silent long after Jisung gives up, unable to keep on looking.
It’s unfair, Jisung wants to cry. But he’s thought about this a million and one times. Minho and Hyunjin were happy. He was the only one who’d ever felt wronged, hurt. And he wasn’t the one to change Minho’s mind. He wasn’t—isn’t—Hyunjin. So how could any of it be unfair? It’s just fucking life.
“Okay,” murmurs Hyunjin, like he wants an actual conclusion. A thesis statement, instead of the evasive, blubbering fluff Jisung has to offer. “So, can you tell me… does this have anything to do with why hyung is—”
“I told him.” Jisung sniffs, scrubs the tears from his eyes. “Last week. Last Friday night. When you and Changbin-hyung left, I told him.”
“Told him—”
“How I felt about him. How I still feel.” The tears sting Jisung’s raw fingertips. “It was an accident,” he whispers. “I swear.”
A beat. Then Hyunjin chuckles, barbed. Like a thorny stem catching on skin. “An accident?” He forces out an indignant breath. “What? Did you trip and fall into his arms in slow motion? Cherry blossom animations? OST in the back?”
Jisung closes his eyes tight. Fights, childlike, against the sob threatening to rack his chest. All he has to show for himself is a pathetic, “Just drank too much.”
Nothing. Then, an enduring sigh. Warily, Jisung watches Hyunjin sink into his pillows, tip his head toward the ceiling. “So what you’re saying,” Hyunjin says flatly, “is that tomorrow, when hyung and I go for coffee—we never just go for coffee, that should’ve been the first red flag—he’s gonna tell me we’re done. Because—what? Because you confessed your undying love, and now he’s dumping me for you?” He laughs acerbically. It sounds like nails on chalkboard. “Is this a fucking joke?”
“No,” Jisung scoffs wetly. “No, he just wanted me to have a chance to tell you—tell you myself. What happened.”
“Why do I get to hear about it from you, then?” Hyunjin asks archly, with no real cheer. “Why do you know before I do that my boyfriend is breaking up with me, huh? Why? Do others know? Who else knows? Am I the last to find out? Should I be really fucking embarrassed right now?”
“Hyunjin,” Jisung tries.
“No.” Hyunjin huffs, smiling bitterly. He won’t look Jisung in the eye. “No. I think I’ve heard enough, actually. And all I really want to do right now is… sit around, like a fucking fool, and wait out the next…” He checks his phone. “Ah, fourteen or so hours, until my scheduled breakup with my boyfriend. That’s all I want to do.” He licks his lips, smiles at the ceiling in a way that makes Jisung’s skin crawl. “And I’d also like it if you left me the fuck alone.”
Jisung reaches for Hyunjin’s ankle out of instinct. “Hyunjin—”
Hyunjin snatches his legs away. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
“It was an accident,” Jisung pleads. “I’d kept it to myself this long, I wasn’t planning on anyone finding—”
“One more fucking word about how you sabotaged my relationship and I’ll kick you to the fucking curb.” Hyunjin looks at him darkly. Finally in the eye, unmistakable. “Whose name is on the property deed, huh?”
Your parents’. Jisung doesn’t say it, though. He’s said enough, he thinks, to fill several lifetimes of regret. So he stands, traipses to the door, conscious of the bits of skin he’s left behind on Hyunjin’s rug.
“I really don’t know what the point is,” adds Hyunjin, just in time for Jisung to freeze with his hand on the doorknob. “Doesn’t hyung know you’re a self-fulfilling prophecy? You two’ll be done in three months' time. Guaranteed.”
Jisung nearly swallows his tongue. Instead he lets himself out, shuts the door carefully in his wake. Crawls into bed at eight in the evening, where he’ll stay until it sinks in that he won’t be seeing either of his best friends in a best-friendly capacity for a long while.
Or until Monday, when he has work. Whichever comes first.
It takes time, but reconciliation with Hyunjin comes to pass.
Hyunjin does try—passionately and extensively—to replace him with Changbin. Jisung is shocked it doesn’t work out for him.
“I tried to replace you with Changbin-hyung,” Hyunjin informs him one Sunday, perched carefully on the edge of Jisung’s unmade bed as Jisung hunches over his desk, squinting at his laptop. He kind of knows how to play League now, thanks to a surge in nights spent in. Hyunjin is and has always been his going out friend. So barring work functions, Jisung hasn’t done much of that in the interim. The worst nights, though, were those he didn’t want to spend alone, but had no choice when Hyunjin subsumed both Felix and Changbin into his self-proclaimed hoe-phase antics. Jisung had always thought that he’d get Hyunjin in any divorce, no matter what. But he’d never really considered what would happen were the divorce from Hyunjin himself.
Changbin must keep Hyunjin up to date on Jisung’s work ventures, too, because no way would he be here, sitting on Jisung’s bed and making this confession, if he’d continued to theorize that Jisung and Minho were fucking at the office.
(There would’ve been no other option. Off work hours, Jisung was home whenever Hyunjin was.
And the theory is moot, anyhow. Minho left the country a few weeks into his radio silence. He’s tagging along on Chix’s world tour helping them prepare for their comeback, due shortly after their return home.)
Jisung removes his headset, shuts the laptop. Felix will curse him out for it later, even if all Jisung ever does is slow him down. He glances at Hyunjin, who is readily inspecting Jisung’s face. Maybe he’ll tell him to shave, or comment on the zit on his chin.
It ends up being the former. Hyunjin grimaces. “Christ. How long since you last shaved?”
Jisung huffs. “You realized you couldn’t replace me with Changbin-hyung,” he murmurs, “because he can’t grow a goatee quite like me?”
“He should count his lucky stars he can’t.” Hyunjin shudders visibly. “Nobody can. Not like you.”
Jisung smiles. So does Hyunjin… stubbornly.
“No,” says Hyunjin eventually, balling up his sweater sleeves in his fists. “I can’t replace you. I’ve come to the unfortunate conclusion that… I need you. It’s like… having had you in my life for seventeen years was a grievous mistake. No one thought to tell me that along the way, while you were eating your way into my brain and I into yours, and now it’s near-impossible to take it back. It’d require surgery. Or exorcism. It’s like… I’m that gross black thing from the superhero movie. And I’ll die and wither away if I lose my host.” Hyunjin eyes him. “That’s you.”
Jisung is incredibly touched. “You’d liken yourself to Venom?” His smile widens. “For me?”
“Sure.” Hyunjin rolls his eyes. “I give you superpowers. We’re stronger together.” Then he rises. “If I have to be the gross black thing, I should be able to control you. Or… at least give you intrusive thoughts. So.” He grabs onto the back of Jisung’s chair, looms over him to whisper in his ear, “Lose the stache.”
Jisung giggles, shoulder twitching ticklishly.
Hyunjin only sighs, long-suffering, and pats him on the head. It feels… fond. Familiar. And he lingers, hand on the back of Jisung’s chair, as he peers out Jisung’s windows. “I have things I need to apologize for,” he states reluctantly. “And so do you, of course, but. I don’t feel like it right now. I just want to be normal.”
“I’ve been thinking about it for weeks. What I want to say.” Jisung peeks over his shoulder. “So if you’ll just let me, I’ll go ahead and—”
“No,” Hyunjin cuts him off. “No. You’ll guilt me into doing it too. And I really don’t feel like it.” He exhales deeply. “Nope. Tonight, you’re gonna shave, and then we’ll do face masks,” he eyes Jisung, like you need it, “and I’ll do our nails and we’ll order in. Something healthy, though.” He grimaces. “It feels like my whole bloodstream lately is just. Liquor. And then tomorrow, we’ll apologize.”
Jisung bites down on a smile. “Someone’s feeling decisive today.”
“Yeah,” muses Hyunjin, eyes reflecting the overcast skies beyond the window. “I got good rebound dick last night. It really cleared my head.”
Jisung chokes out a laugh. “Oh?”
“Life after Lee Minho. Who knew.” Hyunjin is silent. Then, “Okay, just kidding. We’re not talking about him. Too soon.”
“Tomorrow?” teases Jisung. Hyunjin glares. “Sorry.”
Hyunjin shakes his head. “You’re not forgiven. Not until you shave.” He turns to shuffle out, but stops in the door, hand on the frame. Taps out a beat with his knuckles, until he twirls abruptly on his heel. “I was never going to kick you out.” He clears his throat. “By the way.”
Jisung looks from the windowed sky to Hyunjin. Both are bright but overcast. “I know.”
Hyunjin nods. “Good.” He hesitates a half-step toward Jisung, but backs out of the room with finality. “I’m not gonna hug you ’til the goatee is gone.”
It’s at a company all-hands meeting that Jisung gets the text.
His phone buzzes, wedged between his thighs. And it’s difficult to pry out without jostling Changbin on his left or Chan on his right. They’re both pretty broad.
He still manages. They’re tuned in to the slideshow—Jisung hasn’t been. He can never digest shit like this anyway, upfront and long-winded lecture-style and all in corporate-speak. He’ll wait until Chan and Changbin chat about it later to understand it, pared-down into gossip.
For now, he lowers his screen brightness until his eyes have to strain to make out the text.
Jisung twitches bodily, blinks in a flutter. Chan glances his way, smiles back when Jisung meets his eyes with his best impression of squirrelly and innocent. And then he waits, waits until Chan redirects his attention to the speaker, to scan all the heads in the seats in front of them, in his periphery. No signs of Minho.
Jisung flushes. Maybe Minho can see that, too, in the bit of his neck exposed between his hair, the collar of his top. His toes curl inside his sneakers.
Jisung smiles, chin tucked into his chest, and locks his phone. Turns it facedown on his thigh. Waits a few incredibly brave minutes before he turns it over again, but there’s nothing. Goddammit.
Then:
Jisung snorts. Promptly disguises it in a cough that attracts too many sideways glances.
He types viciously:
Jisung feels a bit like he’ll explode if he doesn’t get to kick his feet. But it’s neither the time nor the place.
He reads it over. His heart rate rockets and his fingers shake, tapping all the wrong buttons.
Every second Jisung waits is more excruciating than the last. Like he’s planking at the gym and Changbin’s just stuck a ten kilo plate on his back.
His phone vibrates again.
Jisung is filing out of the auditorium at his hyungs’ heels when he spots Minho, hands in the pockets of his loose slacks. He’s against the wall beside a potted tree, chin tipped toward the ceiling. It paints such a picture—one part comedic, one part bizarre, but all Jisung feels is the physical rush, the blood through his veins, the goosebumps across his skin. There he is, right there. He’s been gone long, talked so little about, particularly in Jisung’s household. But Jisung never once forgot.
He rises onto his tiptoes, clamps one hand over Chan’s shoulder and another over Changbin’s. “I’ll catch up soon,” he tells them, all kinds of unnatural, and as he does, he catches Minho’s eye. On cue, Minho peels away from the wall, falls into a saunter, away from the elevators and post-meeting commotion.
Minho’s hair is dark, darker than Jisung’s ever seen it. A cool-toned black. His very being is cutting. “I like yours, too,” is the first thing Jisung says as he jogs to catch up, half-breathless. He nearly pokes out Minho’s eye to gesture at his head.
“Hi,” responds Minho, eyes glinting and blithe even as he dodges Jisung’s wayward nail. It fills Jisung with more butterflies than should physically fit in his diaphragm.
“Hi.” Jisung links his hands behind his back as he falls into step. “Where were you sitting?”
“Way in the back.” Minho side-eyes him. “Got there late.”
Naughty, Jisung almost blurts. Alas, boundaries. So he only hums. “Busy?”
“No.” Minho smiles, gradual and faint. And very suddenly, wry and incredibly charming. Jisung’s heart gets negligent. It’s a familiar feeling. “Just nervous. Figured you’d be in there.”
Jisung trips over his too-long jean hem, but not enough to fall flat on his face. “I make you nervous?”
Minho huffs, eyes forward. “Of course.”
Jisung feels lightheaded, like he could float away. And he longs to touch Minho—in any way. So he takes Minho’s wrist. And when Minho doesn’t retract, he peers backward down the hall—no one—and cradles it in both hands. He takes a deep breath. “How were the States?”
“Fine.”
“I’ve only been twice. And just to LA.”
“That’s nice. You should tell me all about it. Are you seeing anyone?”
Jisung stops mid-stroll. And since he refuses to release Minho’s arm… Minho does, too.
Minho watches him, mercurial. And, the longer Jisung looks, the more he sees it: nervous.
Jisung glances down the hall again. Drags Minho into an alcove, wedged between a supply closet door and a vending machine. “Why do you ask,” he utters. His curious, antsy fingers act of their own accord, seek out Minho’s other hand.
And Minho seems more comfortable now, even with the non-answer, because Jisung physically can’t not touch him. That speaks for itself. “Because I wanted to know…” He cocks his head. “If you’d want to go on a date,” he murmurs. “With me.”
Jisung watches Minho flex his palms, face up, exposed. So he follows his lead, covers Minho’s hands. He feels like he’s on fire. “What did you have in mind?”
“Just dinner. Friday night, maybe. I can cook for you… or we can go out, I don’t mind.” Minho blinks, unhurried but unequivocally focused, and Jisung’s insides are positively molten. Like something in an oven, hot and bubbling and just this side of underdone. “But I’ve heard drinks are a better first date, if you want an easy out.”
“That’s if you think the guy’ll be a creep. Or a bore.” Jisung’s lips quirk. “I’m… not concerned.”
“Oh, I’ll bore you yet.”
Jisung scoffs. And then he smiles, like the loser he is, at the floor between them.
“Do you want to?” Minho asks, soft. He tips into Jisung’s space by a hair.
“Hyung.” At an awkward median between urgent and careful, Jisung lays his palms against Minho’s shoulders. Stares into the center of Minho’s sternum like he’ll find something revelatory there. He just might. “Yeah. Yes. Obviously. Can I hug you?”
Minho snorts, eyes wandering the wall past Jisung. But he looks pleased as punch. And he wraps Jisung’s waist in his arms, draws him in. Lifts him an inch from the floor. And that’s all Jisung needs, really, to climb Minho, fling his legs around him, ensnare him like he’s tangled in seaweed.
Minho laughs, high and bright, stumbling to keep steady. He boosts Jisung by the backs of his thighs. And he smells so good, too, right where Jisung tucks his nose. Smells like himself—like his detergent, his faded, warm cologne. Like himself and no one else.
Jisung stretches his legs out under the dining table, worms his socked toes under Minho’s thighs, heavy and warm.
He’s food- and wine-sated. And he wouldn’t have been able to get comfortable quite like this had they gone out to a restaurant. Comfortable—as in shoeless, slouched. A bit too casual in appearance, too, but Minho had insisted on lowkey, low pressure. Insisted that Jisung not change out of the sweatpants he’d worn to the office that day. He hadn’t even done his hair.
It doesn’t feel all that different from the few—but still nonzero—times Jisung had visited Minho’s apartment, both pre- and post-Hyunjin. But he wants it to be. Wants it to be special, memorable for Minho. Different. Oh, what he’d have given to be different when they first met, to have changed Minho’s mind from the very start.
Across the table, Minho tips his chin, smiles into the rim of his glass. “What’re you thinking about?”
Jisung sighs decidedly. “We should talk about him.” He examines his nail beds. The passage of time healed them, mostly. Hyunjin’s insistence on biweekly nail-painting also helped. “Don’t you think?”
Minho cocks his head, considering. Strands of inky black scatter over his eye. “We should talk about whatever you want to talk about. So if that means him…” He shrugs. Nods with gravitas.
“Okay.” Jisung takes a breath. He stills his wiggling knee, because it’s rattling Minho’s chair, too. “Were you in love with him?”
Minho speaks nothing of his boldness. Instead, he’s quick to answer, “No.”
Jisung holds that answer in the palms of his hands. Turns it over, examining. “Why were you with him?”
Minho snorts, not unkindly—though not quite kindly, either. “You don’t have to be in love with someone to be in a relationship with them.”
Of course not. “Well.” Jisung feels ignorant. “Could you have been? Eventually, do you think?”
Minho jerks a shoulder, half-shrugging. “I don’t know.” He scrapes his teeth over his lip, scrutinizing Jisung across the table. “Do you think you could’ve fallen in love with every guy you were with?”
“Definitely not.” It rolls right off his tongue. Not because he’s unashamed, but because it’s fact.
Minho lifts a brow. “Then why were you with them?”
Jisung presses his lips together tight, lets them smack apart. His gaze falls to his empty bowl. “I see your point.”
Minho senses, though, that there’s more to his question. “Hyunjin… just kind of happened.” Jisung’s eyes flit to him. Minho returns the gaze, sheepish. “Well, you know that first time genuinely just kind of happened. And then there were second… and third, and tenth times.” He chuckles at Jisung’s dramatic grimace. “But when he asked me out, I… didn’t expect anything to come of it. Which is why, I think, I pushed myself to go along with it. For the first time since… I can’t even remember when. I just let it happen. I wanted to let it happen, because… I liked him, and we had fun. We didn’t even have that much in common, but we had chemistry. It was simple. Easy.”
In asking what was plaguing his mind, poor Minho had unwittingly opened the floodgates of Jisung’s insecurity. And, because he cannot physically resist throwing himself into the mix—in any sense—Jisung asks, “You don’t think we could’ve been easy?”
Minho laughs, hoarse. It burns Jisung from the inside out. “No.” He shakes his head, rapid. Amused. “No. I don’t think we… could’ve been.” A beat. “Nor will we ever be.”
The back of Jisung’s neck prickles cold, but his cheeks are hot. He pulls his hood over his head, evading the weight of Minho’s eyes.
“I knew it when I met you,” mumbles Minho.
Jisung withdraws his feet and pulls them up onto his seat to hug. “I’ve never felt like… such an open book,” he says, timid, “as when you read me that first night.”
“It wasn’t just that.” Minho frowns, only with his eyes. “It was hardly just that. You didn’t give me as much as you think, Jisung. You were… flirty, sure. But I didn’t feel like I knew you. I just… knew how I felt.”
Jisung tucks his forehead between his knees. Imagines them on a real first date. Maybe if Minho had been open to it, if Jisung hadn’t scared him off, he’d have asked for Jisung’s number that first night. Maybe they would’ve gone for drinks the next weekend, and maybe it would’ve been lighthearted, sexy, banter from start to finish. Jisung would’ve looked good, for fuck’s sake. But the Jisung of now wears sweats to a chat about his best friend and Minho’s ex—who are, remarkably, the same man—under glum post-sunset lights. “And how was that.” He’s not sure he wants to know.
“It was like… fantasy roulette.” There’s a smile in Minho’s voice.
Jisung lifts his head. He feels feverish against flashes of hot and cold.
“I’m not really a daydreamer,” says Minho. “But I kept catching myself doing it, looking at you. And at first I literally thought I was just… fucked up. But I’d had—what, a beer and half a cocktail?” He laughs. And he watches Jisung across the table, seemingly unguarded, ease in the set of his shoulders. Like he wants Jisung to earn the rest. Like he’s (rightfully) smug that Jisung is holding onto his every word.
Minho sets his glass on the table, fingers drumming. “So I wasn’t. Physically, I was… perfectly lucid. But like I said. It was like roulette. And I couldn’t decide where the ball would land. I couldn’t decide… what to think about.” His fingertip drags up the glass stem. “Whether it was… taking you home, fucking you all weekend.” He huffs, quiet. Jisung shivers. “Or you, asking me to help you make that shitty ex of yours jealous. I say yes, obviously. What a trope. Or us… meeting in 2019, after you leave your group. After my contract expires. I think we would’ve had a lot to say to each other. And I think we could’ve helped each other.” Jisung is perfectly still, noiseless, so he knows that it’s Minho whose throat clicks when he swallows. “I think we still can.”
Then Minho hums. Again, it’s a smiley noise, one that makes Jisung’s chest swell with affection. “Or then—” He stops short. Smiles behind his little hand, which doesn’t cover all that much of his face. “I can’t even say it. This is when I really thought I was drunk.”
But Jisung is riveted. “Please.”
“I can’t. It’s too… gross.”
Jisung drops his legs, scoots until his chest hits the table. “Hyung, please!”
Minho lifts an eyebrow. “Well, obviously I wanted to kiss you.”
Jisung bites his lip. Curls his fingers over the edge of his chair, between his legs. “And you did.”
“I did.” Minho snorts. “And it was stupid.”
“I like stupid.”
“You would, stupid.”
Jisung squints.
Minho snickers. His gaze drifts. “It was like… a montage. Of kissing you, holding your hand. Of pictures we’d take in photo booths. Pictures our friends would take of us, at… birthday parties. On a beach in the winter. Out in the forest, by a fire at night. On my couch… with my cats.” He shakes his head. “Like, I’d just met you. I didn’t even know if you had friends.”
“Hey.” Jisung pauses to think. “Okay, valid.”
“No,” Minho chuckles. “It was ridiculous. Why did I assume my cats would like you?”
“They don’t mind me,” Jisung argues. He peers around Minho’s shoulder at Soonie, who’s been watching him sinisterly all evening from the cat tree. “Soonie-yah, I’m tolerable, right?”
Minho’s mouth quirks. Under the table, his foot pins Jisung’s to the floor. “It was ridiculous,” he says evenly, “for me. Because I didn’t… fantasize. Not like that. And what I could tell about you, all I could tell about you from that first night, you… sweet little romantic,” he smiles, “was that you would enable me.” He watches Jisung a moment, sleepy, saccharine. “I would fantasize, and you’d make it real. And that was a lot. It felt like a lot, at the time.”
The flurry in Jisung’s stomach infects his bloodstream. He wilts, drops his forehead to the table. Just… breathes.
“Maybe too much,” says Minho. “Don’t get your hair in your bowl.”
“Don’t get your hair in your bowl.” Jisung pushes the chair out, meanders around to Minho’s side of the table, behind his chair. Warms his hands on Minho’s shoulders, slides them down his chest, links them. Nestles in so their cheeks touch.
Minho chuckles, and it vibrates in Jisung’s skull. He holds onto Jisung’s wrists, too. “After you left with Hyunjin, I just… went and stood in a corner. Debating if I should go after you.”
“But you’re not a romantic,” murmurs Jisung.
“I wasn’t, no.” Minho hums. “And the next day I woke up and… felt relieved. Safe. Because nothing had changed. I thought I’d dodged a bullet.”
Jisung tries to recoil. “Ouch.”
Minho laughs, doesn’t let him. “Just listen. I thought I’d dodged a bullet, yes. And I mean it. But then I started at JYP, and saw you in the cafeteria, and… I felt it all again. Every damn time I saw you. Sometimes you’d be single, sometimes you wouldn’t. And then we became friends, and then Hyunjin happened, obviously.” Minho’s nails bite into him, gentle, near his pulse. “It was always the right place. Wherever you were… was the right place. But it was also always the wrong time. Your boyfriends, or Hyunjin, or just… me. Scared. And I’d already told you no once. Why should you give me a second chance?”
Jisung’s lower back smarts. But he’d rather crack in half than dislodge Minho now.
He turns his nose toward Jisung’s cheek. “But when you told me what you did—”
“When I called you the man of my dreams?”
“—when you called me the man of your dreams,” Minho agrees, humored, “when you did that, I… realized how sad it was. To keep dodging the bullet. To keep trying to dodge it, when I hadn’t once wanted to leave the line of fire.”
Jisung draws his lower lip into his mouth. He squeezes Minho tight, because he can take it, but then Minho sighs, pulls his arms apart, leads him like a ballerina around the chair and sideways onto his lap.
His hands connect at Jisung’s waist. One trails up his side, testing the solidity of his ribcage.
Jisung’s hood falls from his hair as he tips his head toward Minho. Minho lags in looking back. And when he does, he’s visibly dazed. “I don’t think I’ve ever said so many words in one go,” he whispers, “in my entire life.”
Jisung grins, strokes Minho’s hair from his eyes. God, he can’t believe he can do that now. Not just think about it, but act on it, too. “Hope it was worth it.”
Minho heaves a sigh. Bounces Jisung on his knee, just once, like he’s a baby. “It is heavy.”
“It likes it here,” Jisung protests, clinging to Minho’s neck. “Don’t make it leave.”
“I need to clear the table.” Minho pats him on the ass, which turns Jisung on more than it should. Still, he vacates Minho’s lap, forlorn. “And then I’m taking a vow of silence.”
Jisung can work with that. “I can work with that.”
Jisung works with nothing, because Jisung arrives home at a very prudent half past ten on a Friday night.
He moves like an automaton, through the building and elevator and hall, shuffling to his apartment door. And he charges right in, like he does every day of his life, but there’s a sudden kink in his automation when he sets foot in the foyer and Hyunjin screams.
Jisung backpedals right out, hand still on the doorknob, door roughly cracked. At any other time, he would've screamed right along with Hyunjin, but post-hours-long flurry of emotions he’s only drained. So he hovers, staring at the doorknob, until the door is finally wrenched open by Hyunjin, who drags him inside and slams it closed.
“Why are you here?” Hyunjin demands. He’s fixing the bowtie in the sash of his hastily-knotted silk robe, and his face is all done up, lips tinted, eyes shadowed.
Jisung has clearly interrupted something—something he has yet to piece together. But he doesn’t need to ask, knows Hyunjin will tell. “I—”
“Didn’t you have a date?” Hyunjin frowns, more than a little distressed, transferring his weight between his legs. “With Minho-hyung?”
“Yes?” Jisung leaves his shoes beside Minho’s old trainers.
“Then why are you here?”
“He drove me home.” Jisung snorts. Then he meets Hyunjin’s eyes. “Did you think we’d—?”
“Well—” Hyunjin clutches his robe shut at his chest. His eyes are big and catty and dumbfounded. “Yes?!”
“That makes two of us.” Jisung nudges past him into the kitchen. He opens the cabinet, rises onto his toes to grab a cup. And once he’s settled, feet flat on the floor, he stares into the Bullicante pattern in the glass, troubled. “Should I be worried? We didn’t even… kiss. He kissed me on the cheek. And then gave me this look, like… this is where you get out of the car, dumbass.”
Hyunjin flutters over to him. “No,” he huffs. Jisung feels the comforting weight of Hyunjin’s palms drop onto his shoulders. “Or, maybe. Yes. Ugh, Lee Minho, you whore! What are you doing?!” He squeezes at Jisung’s deltoids, props his chin on his shoulder. “I mean… he likes you, clearly, no doubt about that.”
It’s weird to hear. From Hyunjin, in particular. Jisung sets the glass down, blinking. “Really?”
“I am inclined to think so. Well… more than. I can read people, you know this. You know when I went out to dinner, earlier this week? It was with hyung. He invited me. It was the first time I’d seen him in… like, over two months. Almost three, I guess, since that fateful coffee shop encounter. Anyway, I think he wanted my blessing. To pursue you. Though for what was essentially a business dinner, he was very cagey. He was all, like… so how are you? how is Jisung? how are things between you and Jisung? how would you feel about it if I started seeing other people? romantically? God, it was awful. So then I told him straight up he could do whatever the fuck he wanted. I even told him I’ve been fucking The Rebound, like, at least thrice a week this past month.”
Jisung peeks at Hyunjin from the corner of his eye. “Maybe don’t call him… The Rebound? It’s sort of… dehumanizing.”
“But that’s what he is.” Hyunjin pouts. “I’m using him. For his very hot body and his very giving nature. And he knows this.”
Jisung half-laughs. “Right.”
“Anyway—”
“Why didn’t you tell me you had dinner with hyung?”
Hyunjin freezes, fingers drumming Jisung’s shoulders. “I was going to. After you told me about your date. I didn’t want to put pressure on you, since, like… I meant it. Seems like he likes you.” He draws away. “Which makes me feel very stupid, of course, but that’s another story. Anyway, as I was saying, I think you’ll fuck once he gets over himself and his guilt and his trademark Lee Minho stubbornness.” He claps Jisung on the shoulder. “So, good luck to your blue balls. That’ll be like waiting for a glacier to melt.”
Jisung smiles to himself, reluctant. Wonders if Hyunjin understands the climate crisis. When he turns to Hyunjin, his fingers are flying frenziedly over his phone screen. “Another thing,” says Hyunjin, lowering his phone. “I kind of… really thought you would be gone all night. So I invited The Rebound over. And he’s already on his way, and he’s the sensible type, like, the type to not check his texts while driving, so I expect he’ll ring the intercom sometime in the next five minutes to be let up.”
Jisung is slow to process. Then he connects the dots. Dots being: the makeup. The silk robe. The desperation to have the apartment to himself for the night like any normal, young professional without a built-in Han Jisung would. Then Jisung gets expeditiously to pouring himself water, because he does not want to be present for this. “Right, okay. Totally fine. I was just gonna go to bed anyway. So I’ll put on my noise-canceling—”
“I’m not finished.” Hyunjin props a hand against the island, his other on his waist. Smiles woodenly. “I was going to—” The intercom rings shrilly. Hyunjin hurries to the door, doesn’t even glance at the screen as he jabs his thumb into the button. “So, I was going to tell you eventually.”
Jisung blinks. He sets his water down out of caution. “Tell me what?”
“Tell you that…” Hyunjin’s smile is more of a grimace that time. “The Rebound… is… you know him. He’s someone you know. And I swear, we barely talk about you, and it’s never in an incriminating way anyhow, only because you’re funny and I love you and I love to talk about you and sometimes I can’t help it, but we don’t even talk that much to begin with, you know, we’re. Kind of tied up in other stuff, usually. But he likes chitchat—it’s kind of annoying, actually, like, he’s not the type to fall right asleep after you make him come, like, what the fuck, do you have an ungracious bone in your body? But. Yeah. And as I understand it—he’s explained it to me—he’s not really your boss, so—”
An appalled laugh bubbles out of Jisung. “The Rebound is Bang Chan?”
Hyunjin says nothing, mouth agape. Then he shuts it, spreads his hands at his sides. “Yes?”
Jisung presses his fingers to his temples. “I—no, Hyunjin, he’s not technically my boss boss, but he decides what projects I work on, and—” He pauses, blinking wildly at the floor. “Oh, god. I introduced you, didn’t I?”
“Yeah. At… my gallery opening.”
“Huh.” Jisung pauses. “Just so I… have the full picture. The guy… you’ve been sleeping with… for over a month…” Seungmin’s gonna love this one. Nothing gets him going like schadenfreude. “Is Bang Chan?” He exhales thinly. “My Chan-hyung.”
“He’s our Chan-hyung now.” At a surly look from Jisung, Hyunjin clasps his hands together in pleading. “Sorry, but—okay, he’s gonna be even more embarrassed than me. I’m the one who’s been begging him not to tell you, but you know how he is, he’s a good person, but even more so he’s a people pleaser, a Hyunjin pleaser, so please don’t be mean to him about it—”
“Mean?!” Jisung squawks. “I’m not trying to get fired!”
“Oh, good. Good, good, good. Because he thinks you will somehow get him fired for this.”
“Good?” Jisung stares, brow creased. “Wait, what?”
“It cancels out,” Hyunjin offers. There’s a rap of knuckles on the door. “Never mind.” He turns, peers through the peephole with grace and on tiptoe (though he doesn’t need the height boost—it’s all about the romance). He squeaks, like he isn’t opening the door for someone called The Rebound, and then does exactly that.
Chan looks like he came directly from work. He probably did; Jisung saw him earlier that day in those same clothes. And it’s as Chan is leaning up to kiss Hyunjin’s cheek in hello that he locks eyes with Jisung.
Jisung is immobile. “Hi, hyung.”
Chan drops back to the flats of his feet. Clears his throat, shifty, tries for a smile. “Hi, Jisung.” He then says uncountable things to Hyunjin with his eyes—not that Hyunjin’s paying attention. He’s too busy taking Chan’s coat and feeling up his shoulders.
“We can just leave it at that,” Jisung proposes briskly into the silence. He grabs his glass. “I was going to bed anyway.”
“Okay,” breathes Chan. He looks to be barely holding it together. “Sleep well, Jisung.” See you Monday. He doesn’t say it, but Jisung knows it crosses his mind.
“Yeah, good night,” offers Hyunjin, absentminded.
Jisung nods, takes off for his room, and doesn’t look back. It’s oddly reminiscent of—many years ago—leaving his dad alone with a pretty babysitter.
Jisung’s hand is on the practice room door handle when it opens and the members of TWICE come pouring out.
He stumbles backwards to make way for them, repeatedly bowing so low and so fast he feels like a human drinking bird toy. Sana greets him by name and he inadvertently makes eye contact with Jeongyeon, so by the time they’ve cleared out and only Minho remains in the doorway, smug behind his mask, Jisung is winded and overstimulated.
“You could’ve warned me,” Jisung huffs, pushing away from the wall and peeking over Minho’s shoulder into the studio. “You hiding anyone else in there?” Though he’s recorded with and written for TWICE on several occasions throughout his career, Jisung has never been able to quite shake the intimidation that has roots in his trainee days. And Minho knows this.
“I thought you’d just miss them,” Minho lies, peeling off his mask and manhandling Jisung through the door with a hand wrapping his bicep. “Actually, yeah, I hid Zico under the floorboards, so watch where you step.”
Jisung spins on his heel when Minho unhands him. He watches Minho shut the door with eyes narrowed and lips pouted. “Don’t play with me.”
Minho chuckles, traipses over to the couch to grab a towel that he pats at his hairline, the back of his neck. His chest, where the shredded collar of his t-shirt dips low. “Not even you can come between me and my favorite pastime, sweetheart.” He then collapses to the couch, throws the towel down, and Jisung knows it’s all for the drama, but he looks disgustingly good doing it.
Jisung links his arms behind his back. Twirls around on his toes a few times, meeting Minho’s eyes through the mirrored wall. “Anybody due in here soon?”
“I should have it for the next hour.”
Jisung hums thoughtfully. The dam for filthy, despicable things bursts in his head and drowns his brain in the deluge.
There’s only one problem.
He wanders over to Minho, who, at Jisung’s hesitant idling, pats his thighs welcomingly. So Jisung peeks at the door once more, then climbs into Minho’s lap, plastering his hands to the sweat-damp fabric clinging to his chest… ignoring the frisson of thrill that zings up his spine when Minho’s hands settle high on the sides of his thighs, kneading mindlessly.
“So,” Jisung starts, quiet. Minho peers up at him, fluorescent lights catching in his big brown eyes, all-around angelic, and Jisung sighs, puts his thought on hold to lean in, peck Minho on the mouth. His upper lip is still sweaty. Jisung will, without a doubt, be leaving this studio with a boner. “Hyunjin wants to do something in a couple weeks. For his birthday.”
“Oh?” Minho’s eyes are lazily lidded, his lips lazily upturned. “What kind of something?” He looks at Jisung like maybe his dam has burst, too, but like he has the composure of a mature individual, so he can do fancy things like straddle the line between letting enough slip to rile up Jisung and maintaining a frustrating aloofness.
He’s evil. “Like… book a pension. For a weekend trip. To the countryside. With a few of us.”
Minho’s gaze dulls. “But Hyunjin hates the outdoors.”
“I know.” Jisung snorts. It’s one of those times that Jisung is forced to reckon with Minho knowing Hyunjin. Not quite like Jisung does, but more than most could claim to. “I think the assumption is we’ll do everything for him. Like… cook and clean and shit.”
Minho hums. His hands trail upward, to Jisung’s waist, mapping out its contours through his many layers. “You think Chan-hyung’s rubbing off on him?”
“Hardly. Chan-hyung doesn’t go outside, what do you mean?”
Minho cracks a smile. “So… we’re invited?” His eyes flit to Jisung’s. “You and I? Together?” His fingers dig in. “Like, we can share a room?”
Jisung tips his head to the side, hooks his feet around Minho’s calves. He doesn’t need to draw this out. He didn’t need to come down here, to the practice rooms. He could’ve just texted. But he revels too much in the novel excitement of sitting a few floors away knowing his—his person is somewhere close. And he wants to leave Minho thinking about him for the rest of the day. “Yeah.”
“You asked Hyunjin?”
“No.” Jisung pitches forward in Minho’s lap, bending at the elbows, delights in the way Minho’s eyes nearly cross to keep looking at him. “He came to me and told me I should invite you. That we’ll get a three-bedroom. And Changbin-hyung will share with Yongbok.”
“Does he have to?” Minho grimaces. “I was kind of hoping to get to know him more.”
“Yongbok?” Jisung blinks flatly. “By sleeping in his bed?”
Minho smiles, sneaky. Jisung pinches at his chin, wiggles his head left and right. “It’s a good way to get to know someone,” Minho protests.
“Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
That’s the one problem: they’ve yet to spend the night together. They’ve yet to go past second base. And the—albeit, very, very small—logical part of Jisung’s brain says: just bring it up. Just fucking ask. And yet he can’t help but find it embarrassing, the idea of questioning the one person he wants… whether he wants Jisung back.
So before Jisung can start to dwell on the ensuing silence—Minho seems unbothered, but Jisung can only stomach it so long—he sits up, pats Minho on his pecs. Cops a little feel, maybe. “Can hyung give me a sneak peek?” he wheedles, bouncing against Minho’s lap. “Of the new TWICE?”
Minho smiles slowly. He reaches down to loosen the tangle of his and Jisung’s legs, then picks Jisung up, just like that, and deposits him on the couch (Jisung will think about it for the next week). He wanders over to the stereo system to fiddle with his phone. “If you sit there like a good boy, I’ll show you the chorus.”
Jisung burns. He can be good—the best. “I want the whole song. Momo focus.”
Minho snorts, presses play. “You’re getting the chorus.”
“What the hell is all this?” heralds Minho’s arrival at Jisung’s doorstep.
They’ll be the latecomers to Hyunjin’s birthday weekend in Namwon. Everyone else left earlier that day; Minho had a binding work commitment in the afternoon, and Jisung didn’t mind hanging back to keep him company on the drive down.
Jisung blinks at his two bags, stacked by the door. “It’s not that much!” he argues, petulant.
Minho’s nose crinkles. He stares at Jisung’s luggage like they’re a pair of thirteen-gallon trash sacks. “I brought a backpack.”
“Well, we can’t all be so low-maintenance.” Jisung shoves his heels into his shoes. “Now you have all the more arms to carry my stuff with, my dear.”
“I’m only a mule to you,” says Minho, propped against the doorway. He looks sleepy, though he’s about to drive Jisung three hours in the dead of night. So Jisung claps his hands onto his cheeks, presses a firm kiss to his mouth. And just as Minho’s bending over to hoist both of Jisung’s bags up, Jisung squawks, “Wait—I need to pee!”
Minho looks at him like he's a heartbeat away from murder. “I was late,” he deadpans. “Why didn’t you pee before I got here?”
“I was late, too.”
Minho stares. Deadlifts Jisung’s bags. “I’m waiting in the hall.”
“No! Please.” Jisung grabs his wrists. “Wait in here. Wait inside.”
Minho hasn’t taken more than a few steps into Hyunjin and Jisung’s apartment since… well, since the night of Jisung’s catastrophic confession, months and months ago. It’s part of that immovable glacier, Jisung surmises, of his guilt.
So naturally, Minho resists, like he’s made of stone.
Jisung’s arms go limp, but his hands remain on Minho’s wrists like cuffs. “He’s not home,” he says quietly.
Minho eyes him, visibly puzzled. “What?”
Jisung unhands him, shifts his weight. “Hyunjin,” he reticently supplies, “isn’t home.”
“Of course he’s not.” Minho takes a tiny step in, sets Jisung’s bags gingerly to the floor. He even shuts the door, which makes Jisung’s heart leap. “Otherwise we’d be driving him. What are you talking about?”
Jisung hugs himself. It’s hard to balance, standing with his ankles crossed, but something about the stance feels protective. “I don’t… I don’t know if it’s because you’re trying to be respectful to Hyunjin, or if it’s because you still have feelings for him, or if—you just aren’t attracted to me. Or… all of the above. Or two of the above. It’s okay, of course it’s okay. But I’d… just like to know. I think. You can tell me.” He lapses into silence, teeth digging into his lip. “No, I definitely want to know,” he decides in a tone devoid of decision.
He can feel Minho watching him. He does that a lot. Typically Jisung enjoys it, even if he can’t look back. But now he’s only gearing up for the worst.
“You think I’m… not attracted to you,” says Minho. It’s not even a question, which makes Jisung feel shrunken.
“Among other things.”
“Do I seem like I’m not attracted to you?”
Oh, this is painful. “Can we just go?” Jisung slumps out of his stance, makes a lunge for his bags. “We can—”
Minho grabs him by the shoulders, though, and doesn’t let go. “I thought you needed the bathroom.”
Jisung grimaces at a pulled thread on Minho’s top. “It was a lie.”
“Why?”
“A stupid one.”
Minho snorts. “Jisung, why.”
“To get you to come in and wait and maybe you’d sit on the couch and get comfortable and feel at home here again like you once did before I so rudely entered the picture and then maybe we’d—” Jisung shrugs. As his shoulders drop, his palms slap the sides of his legs. “I told you it was stupid,” he mutters.
Minho’s hands relocate to his jaw. He tips Jisung’s chin up, which renders his bafflingly imposing kitten eyes near impossible to avoid. “We’re literally about to go spend a weekend in the city of love and you want us to fuck on your couch?”
Head achingly hot, Jisung shies out of his grip. Not enough to be successful, just enough to make his chin scrunch against Minho’s hands. “I’m not asking for much.” He aims his eyes at Minho’s chin. “Just a sign you’re not… repulsed by me. It could even be a literal sign that says ‘I’m not repulsed by you.’ Or that you are. I’d just like to know.” He pushes weakly at Minho’s chest, then leaves his hands there when Minho doesn’t budge. “I… always put out on the first date,” he adds, meek. “Nobody’s ever not… taken up the offer.” And I know you did, Jisung thinks, with Hyunjin.
Minho looks thoughtful. His thumbs stroke Jisung’s cheeks, and he shuffles in closer. And while every cell of Jisung’s being is flustered, he’s still Jisung. So he will cave, will drop his forehead to Minho’s shoulder.
Minho links his hands at Jisung’s back. “We’re not very good at this, are we, darling?”
“At what?”
“Telling each other how we feel?”
Jisung is silent. Then he snorts. “I think we started being shit at that from day one.”
Minho chuckles at this. “So… you think I’m not attracted to you, because… I’m, A, scared of Hyunjin, B, still into Hyunjin, and C, that I would’ve already tried to… initiate something with you. If I actually were.”
Jisung frowns. Instant-replays it in his head. Minho would equate respect with fear. “About sums it up.”
“Okay,” Minho says calmly. “Well, meanwhile, I’ve been putting off initiating anything with you, because… I’ve been trying to take it slow, and prove to myself that… by being with you, I’m not just… chasing after something shiny and new.”
Jisung digests this—not well. It gives him nausea. He draws back to seek out Minho’s eyes. “You think I’m shiny and new?” He only gives Minho the chance to rapidly blink. “Because I’m not. I’m not shiny. Or new. I’m… dull and old. And used, like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve been here the whole time, sitting on your shelf and gathering dust.”
Minho cracks a smile. “I think you're taking the metaphor too far.”
“Whatever.” Jisung dips his fingers into the collar of Minho’s top. Pulls it down enough to peek at his chest tattoo. “Do you still think that?”
Minho huffs, arms clenching around his waist. “I think it doesn’t matter. Because… I didn’t break up with Hyunjin to go after some hot piece of ass.”
“Clearly not. If you’d just wanted easy ass, you wouldn’t have up and left the country to get it.” Then Jisung ponders this. “Well, I suppose a stud like you could get international ass just as easily.”
“Stud…” Minho tuts. “I didn’t. I didn’t even try.”
Jisung traces the end of a thorny, inked vine with his fingernail. “‘Cause you had my ass on your mind?”
“And the rest of you.”
Jisung bites his lip, fails to stifle a giggle. Minho rolls his eyes, whirls him around to press him to the door, bracket his head between his arms. Jisung grabs him by the wrists again, heart astir.
“A,” hums Minho, so very close, “I’m not scared of Hyunjin. Of course I want to be respectful, but he’s… stressed to me that he’s moved on.” He tips his head to the side. “B, I’m not still into him. There’s only so much space in my head, and you’ve always had some of it. I just didn’t take you for an invasive species.”
“Aw,” Jisung coos offhandedly. “Hyunjin told me something very similar.”
Minho ignores him. “C… I am not repulsed by you.” He squints. “God, what a… truly only you would ever ask me to say something like that.”
Jisung offers a sheepish smile.
“I just wanted to take it slow. But… you want that validation. And I’m perfectly ready to give it to you. So.” He shrugs, touches his hand to the side of Jisung’s neck, traces his thumb up the column of Jisung’s throat. “I’d fuck you on the floor right here.”
Then he withdraws. “If we didn't have a three-hour drive ahead of us. And if we don’t leave now, we never will. So.” He relocates his hands to Jisung’s waist, lifts him out of the way, opens the door, and grabs Jisung’s bags. “We are.”
Jisung reels. Catches himself on a coatrack that was never meant to support a grown man's weight. By the time he can see straight, he's outside, and Minho has already packed the car, has it running.
Jisung awakens from an unplanned nap to see that they’ve already been on the road an hour. It's only a minor wrench in his freshly-hatched scheme. He kicks out his legs, whining.
Minho blinks dazed eyes at the road. “What.”
“Are we there yet?”
“I’ll throttle you.”
Jisung laughs.
There’s nothing to look at outside. The sky is deep, deep blue, midnight black where trees are silhouetted. Other cars on the road are far and few. A text on Jisung’s lockscreen from Hyunjin reads: where are you??????? and a second: bring alc plz.
Jisung goes to type a response, yawns obnoxiously. “We need to stop and buy alcohol.” He locks his phone, waves it at Minho. “At Hyunjin’s behest.”
Minho doesn’t even glance his way. “Noted.”
Jisung counts the following seconds he spends sitting still. Then he sits up, wrestles his hoodie over his head. “S’hot in here.”
“Is it?” Minho eyes the temperature on the dashboard. “It’s chilly out.”
“But it’s hot in here.” Jisung chucks his hoodie into the back. Grabs the back of his headrest to stretch out his chest, groaning.
“What are you doing over there.”
“I had a push day yesterday. Changbin-hyung upped my bench press weight.”
“Sure he did.”
“You can ask him!” Jisung yelps. “When we get there!”
Minho does not reply. Jisung stares at his profile, obstinate. Then he makes a statement of peeling his t-shirt off, too, to drop it indelicately into Minho’s lap.
Minho bites his lip. He has one lax hand on the wheel, and it remains so. The other, at least, flings Jisung’s shirt back into the passenger side. “Whatever it is you’re doing—”
Jisung swats his shirt to the floor. “I said it was hot!”
“Hot, hm? Is this any better?” Minho aggressively messes with the AC until freezing cold air blasts Jisung’s bare nipples.
He cups them, frantic. “No, hyung, please!”
Minho switches it off. And this is where Jisung would surrender, cowering in the passenger seat, if he didn’t catch the twitch of Minho’s lips under the dashboard light.
He doesn’t surrender, but he yields. Sits pretty, as Minho would call it. He reads the passing road signs, watches the headlight beams bounce on the highway whenever the car bumps. Then he shifts to the left edge of his seat and sneaks his hand into Minho’s lap.
Minho made it nice and easy for him. His sweats are thin, and underneath, his boxers are loose. Jisung sticks to the outside, but Minho exhales erratically all the same, clears his throat all business-like when Jisung gets a hand around him. Remains awfully alert for how Jisung can feel him filling up in his grip, hardening under the friction from the heel of his hand.
So Jisung retracts to unbuckle his seatbelt. “Careful,” Minho mumbles absently. Jisung sticks out his tongue, mocking, and lays out across the center console. It digs into him, right where he’s sore, and then below, pressing hard into the dip of his stomach under the shelf of his ribs. He then ducks under Minho’s arm to shove at his seatbelt, tug at the drawstring of his sweatpants, loosen them, pull out his cock. Part of Jisung wants to be leisurely, to bask in the moment, in the cock, finally, but a far bigger part of him wins out and moves on autopilot for what he wants and needs. So he pushes his mouth over the head of Minho’s cock. Gets him wet, slurps around him, tastes his precum on the back of his tongue, forces it deeper. He doesn’t notice Minho’s switched his wheel hand until he feels an open palm sweep laterally across his back, then down. Jisung’s legs twitch apart at the contact, and Minho huffs, humorous but layered thick and heavy, as he grabs at Jisung’s ass, greedy now.
“Doesn’t look very comfortable,” utters Minho.
Jisung lifts his head, feels the strings of spit split between Minho’s cock and his lips as he jacks him, frantic, wrist rolling. “It is,” he lies, “eyes on the road, hyung.” He sucks in a deep breath so he can shove Minho’s cock in his mouth again, moaning around its girth, arching his back toward that hand on his ass. He’ll find bruises in odd places tomorrow, no doubt—but no loss, only gain.
“You should’ve taken your pants off, baby.” Minho’s voice is airy.
Jisung spreads his legs so wide he almost tips off into his legroom. He whines, disgruntled, gives his jaw a break to turn his face in toward Minho’s clothed stomach. He wishes Minho were naked. His thumb works over the head of Minho’s cock, spreading his spit around, mixing it with Minho’s precum. Then he turns, feeds it to himself to suck it clean. “You should take your pants off, baby.”
Minho caresses Jisung's ass, his naked waist. “Kinda hard right now.”
“Only kinda?” He gives Minho’s shaft a pointed stroke. Minho smacks him on the ass for it, and he giggles into a keen, fits his lips again over Minho’s dick in thanks.
“You like that,” muses Minho. Jisung likes it, yeah. He also likes hearing Minho’s voice rumble from above. Minho snorts, derisive. “Of course you do.” Then his hand slides down the back of Jisung’s pants, into his underwear, and gropes hard at his bare ass cheek.
Jisung clenches tight, whimpers. He spits on the head of Minho’s cock, makes a mess when it only sticks to his lips, his chin, and spreads a big glob of it down his shaft. He can barely see a thing. And he seizes up when Minho decides to rub a finger over his hole, leg spasming, and pulls off Minho’s cock with a noisy swallow to brokenly plead, “Fuck, please fuck me, hyung, you’re gonna fuck me, right? Hyung, please, please—”
“Shh.” Jisung hears the turn signal, too. It clicks to match every other beat of his heart. “Shh.” Minho’s breath hisses between his teeth, and then his hand is on Jisung’s neck, in the back of his hair, holding his head low. So Jisung bobs his head diligently, working to be deserving of a reward. Light pours into the car—first white, then red, then nothing, only pitch. And then Minho’s putting the car into park, turning it off, whipping off his seatbelt, palming Jisung’s wet chin to lift his head. His thumb slips over Jisung’s raw mouth, and his pupils are black as the night. “I need you in the backseat, sweetheart.” Jisung sticks out his tongue to draw Minho’s thumb between his lips, bite at it, slick it up. “Fuck,” breathes Minho, and then the rest of Jisung is clambering over the console, tripping and bumping the wheel and the window until he’s in Minho’s lap, kissing him feverishly. Minho indulges him; he runs open palms over Jisung’s back, over his ass. Undoes his fly, presses a hand down the front of his pants and whispers, “You get worked up from sucking hyung’s dick, hm?” And Jisung gasps when Minho feels that he is, that he’s never needed anything more than—than this, this nebulous this, anything Minho is willing to give him.
Minho cups his chin and kisses him, firm and urgent. “In the back—no,” he laughs, breathless, pressing a finger to Jisung’s lips when he bows in again. “I’ll kiss you again in the back, I promise. I’ll fuck you in the back. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” And just as Jisung’s finally moving to crawl into the backseat, Minho locks an arm around his waist. “Get! In the fucking! Back!” he sings, and he punctuates the command with slaps to Jisung’s ass that are more playful than horny but make Jisung leak pitifully into his underwear. He feels like he’s wet his pants.
Through the windows, Jisung blearily notes that they’re in the darkest, furthest corner of a rest stop parking lot. And he’s there, he made it out of Minho’s lap and into the back, but Minho’s still devastatingly far away in the front seat, hastily pulling his pants up and opening the car door. So Jisung rasps, “Hyung-ah.”
“What is it,” says Minho. He shuts the door. “I’m letting the cold in.”
“Can you get my bag from the back?” Jisung flops onto his side on the seat, then his back, boneless in the effort to free himself from his pants. “The smaller one. Please.”
“Why,” Minho says, dubious.
Jisung flashes him a hazy grin. “It’ll make sense, I promise.”
He’s naked in the backseat, getting colder by the second but still determinedly touching himself, when Minho unzips his bag beside him. Half its contents are a singular, massive towel, which Minho pulls out, leaving the bag to deflate to the floor. He clenches it in his fist, looks blankly at Jisung.
And Jisung only grins, crawls over to wrap his arms around Minho’s neck and kiss him on the mouth, beside his mouth, on the mouth again. “So we don’t get cum all over your seats,” he says brightly.
Minho keeps looking at him, just—looking. Even when they kiss. Jisung only knows because he’s looking, too. “How considerate of you,” Minho deadpans. Then he grabs Jisung around the waist, hauls him into his lap.
“No!” Jisung squeaks, but he melts spinelessly into Minho, hugs him like he’s not going fucking anywhere. “Take your clothes off, fuck, please.”
Minho laughs. “You’re stressing me out, Han Jisung.”
“Yeah. I’m desperate.”
Minho nudges their noses. Palms Jisung’s ass, spreads him wide, circles his rim with his fingertip, presses it in just a hair, dry. “Couldn’t tell.”
“Your emotional glacier gave me blue balls.”
“What?” Minho giggles, shrill.
“I don’t know.” Jisung licks across Minho’s lower lip, fists the collar of his shirt. Puts all that sloppy desperation into kissing him, and he wins, feels like he rules the whole fucking world when Minho moans into it. “Please fuck me,” he whispers into his open mouth, “pleasepleaseplease.”
Jisung tries to tear Minho’s shirt off while Minho works on getting out of his sweats, which does not work. And there’s not much room; Jisung’s sprawled out on his back (on the towel), hands between his legs, jerking himself and massaging at his balls and also nearly kicking Minho in the head as the latter searches that bag of Jisung’s for lube, elbowing that rogue leg.
Minho smirks. He unearths something, something distinctly not lube. “I didn’t have time to do it before!” mewls Jisung. And Minho snickers, tucks the douche bulb back in the bag.
Minho kneads at his chest with one hand, stretches him on his fingers with the other. “I can’t believe,” he murmurs, eyes on Jisung’s cock while he plays with himself, idle and loose, he can’t get too close too fast, “you thought I wasn’t attracted to you.” His fingers skim down Jisung’s abdomen to his cock, bat his hand away to assume his spot. “When I’ve wanted to do this since I met you.” Jisung watches him, fixated, drags his toes up Minho’s calf and back down. “Would’ve done it the night I met you, if I’d been feeling more… self-destructive.”
“You thought I’d hurt you?” Jisung gasps, grabs at Minho’s wrist, squirms against the towel. It feels nice on his back. “Hyung, don’t wanna come yet.”
“I thought I’d hurt you.” Minho’s fingers stroke inside him, deep, and Jisung cries out, leg muscles going haywire. Jisung wishes he could see them, Minho's fingers—see his ass swallow up his tattooed knuckles.
“Well, you can hurt me now,” he tells Minho, breathy, pushing his thighs wide apart. “And I’d like it if you did.” Minho rolls his eyes. But Jisung takes pride, pride like hot, dripping honey, in the way Minho moves with jerky urgency to leave him empty, wipe his hands on the handy-dandy towel, roll on a condom (that is, notably, not from Jisung’s bag).
He pulls Jisung in by the hips, wrenches a frantic gasp from him, gets his heart to rocket. And as he sinks home, Jisung feels himself stretch, warm to him, welcome him, and Jisung wails, thankful, so thankful, and Minho kisses at and around his lips, light and sweet and arbitrary, maybe to get him to quiet down. Jisung just needs him to know how much he’s wanted it, how happy he is to be getting it.
His arms twine Minho’s neck like a bow on a present. And Minho hasn’t moved yet but he’s generous with his tongue, giving it all to Jisung, letting him suck on it while his fingers rake through Minho’s hair, while he clenches and relaxes around him.
Then he grabs at Minho’s ass, fingers sinking in, arms engaging to pull him deeper, as deep as he’ll go. He reaches until he can rub over Minho’s hole, his taint, and Minho pants into his mouth and it makes Jisung go a little crazy. Minho arches his back, pulls out, fucks in, and Jisung stifles a shocked yelp as his fingers slip to clutching at the flesh of Minho’s ass.
Jisung wraps Minho entirely, thighs spread wide and ankles linked high to open himself up for him. His face presses to Minho’s shoulder as long as he can hold it, until he reaches a point where he can only let his head loll back, mouth slack, hand pressed to the car door behind to keep his head from bumping. But Minho rewards him for it, for being lazy, incapacitated, and leaves wet kisses over Jisung’s throat, chest, panting wet-hot into his skin, scraping his teeth. He could do more, he could bite Jisung until he’s red and black and blue and Jisung would cry of joy for it, but he’d have to stop fucking Jisung the way he is to do that. And Jisung doesn’t want him to stop.
“You feel so good.” Minho licks at the skin by his ear. “Feel so good, baby.”
“You too.” Jisung pushes Minho’s hair from his eyes. Peers into them, dark pools he could step into and fall right through. “I like you so much,” he breathes. Smiles—stupid and so, so gone—while he still has agency over his body.
Minho bites his lip, thrusts so hard into Jisung he feels it in his chest, his heart, like a resounding bass beat. “I like you so much, too.”
Jisung strokes at his hair, makes a mess of it. Squeezes tight around Minho, like he’ll never let him go. “Did I make it cheesy?”
Minho moans, low, bites down on it. Looks wholly serious as he says, “Yeah.”
Jisung breathes, labored. “Oh no.”
That cracks Minho, who laughs. “Oh no.”
Jisung’s eyes have adjusted and still he can’t see all that much. But he knows, “You’re so fucking pretty.”
Minho looks pleased. His eyes shine, even in the dim. He kisses Jisung, through the sweat and dried spit and precum on his mouth. “You too, darling.”
Jisung melts. Grunts when Minho picks up the pace again. Reaches for his cock, tugs at it in time to the slap of Minho’s hips against his ass. He murmurs, “I love when you call me that.”
“I love…” Minho’s voice fades. Then he laughs, wicked. Repeats, “Oh no.”
Jisung is hot like he’s never been. “Oh no?”
Minho shakes his head. His sweaty hair falls into his eyes, obscuring them like blinds over a night sky. “Wrong place,” he murmurs, “wrong time.”
“It can’t be either.” Jisung jerks himself faster, arm burning, and laughs a little, like he’s losing his fucking mind. “‘Cause it’s turning me on.”
“It would, wouldn’t it.”
“So much.”
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Promise?”
Minho chuckles. He drops his forehead to Jisung’s collarbone, then bites him, hard enough to mark. “I promise.”
Jisung twitches, gasping, then hums, contented. His hand maps out the flexing muscles in Minho’s back. His other twists around his cock. “Make me come, please.”
Minho laves his tongue over the bite, so wet Jisung feels it run and drip. “My pleasure.”
Minho sits on his haunches, grips Jisung by the hips. Drills his cock into Jisung, who begins to fade, lose that agency. All he can feel is Minho filling him, fucking him until his legs spark and his toes go numb; his own cock, his weakening grip, the slick mess he’s made of himself. He feels everything acutely, then feels everything everywhere, arching from the towel and crying out and coming all over himself, skin buzzing, sparks behind his eyes. He grapples at the towel, that goddamn towel, useless, and he feels Minho slow, pet his hips, the sides of his ass, so sweet and gentle. So he channels everything into holding Minho tight as though he’s never been fucked loose in his life.
“Hyung, more,” Jisung breathes, insistent. He peels open his eyes, peers up at his Minho. His legs quiver, but he squeezes them snug around the softness at Minho’s waist, where it folds so pretty while he hunches against the car ceiling. He’s unreal, and Jisung has him, has him right now, feels him hot inside him, and he still wants him, cannot fucking stop wanting him. Could not. And he doesn’t want to know how it’d feel to try. “Hyung, don’t stop, please.”
Minho wets his lips. They’re swollen, stark against his skin. And he nods, wary, cradles Jisung’s hips, grinds into him. Jisung twitches, toes curling, and Minho exhales, “Fuck.”
Jisung likes this. He feels like he’s wading in the shallow end of euphoria, and he gets to indulge so intensely, to watch so Minho openly. “C’mere.” Jisung makes to wipe his cum on the towel, decides last-second to feed it to himself. Around his fingers, he breathes, “I’m getting cold.”
“I can turn the car on,” Minho offers. He looms over Jisung, hugs him under the small of his back so their stomachs meet. Kisses Jisung on the mouth, licks at him. Jisung wonders if he’d had his own cum on his face, now on Minho’s tongue. “Not so hot anymore, huh.”
Jisung chuckles, drops his head back. “I was just trying to provoke you.”
Minho smiles. He’s still grinding, breaths coming in hot little huffs. He teeth graze Jisung’s jaw. “I’m sorry about the AC.”
“It was cute.” Jisung grabs at his ass again, though his fingers feel drained and limp, too sated. “I want you to come.”
Minho nips at his lip, kisses him lazily. “Like being in you.”
“So bad you wanna drive with your dick in me?”
“Mm. Might get arrested.”
“We could leave JYP, you and I. Start a life of crime together.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
Minho fucks him like he means it, like a dream, like all of Jisung’s dirty dreams but better, better because it’s real and they’re in the back of his car in a remote rest stop parking lot in the dead of night and Jisung’s half hard again. When he fills the condom, both of Jisung’s hands are on his face to hold him in a kiss, to feel his groan reverberate where their lips and chests meet.
In Jisung’s bag of treats, Minho finds wet wipes, eyes Jisung snarkily even while he cleans him up. Jisung can only shrug—he’d wanted to get fucked on this trip, had hoped and aspired to get fucked on this trip, and had therefore taken every precautionary measure to make sure he could and would get fucked on this trip. And after their conversation at the apartment, he’d ridden the wave of confidence into expediting the plan from getting fucked on the trip to getting fucked in the car. Sue him.
Jisung thinks it’s real funny when he puts Minho’s sweats on and clambers into the front seat wearing nothing else. But they quickly realize that Minho can’t button Jisung’s pants, much less fit them around his hips. And he refuses to drive pantsless, so Jisung has to concede, surrender his prize.
“I think these are the only pair I packed,” says Minho, bow-tying the drawstring back in the driver’s seat. “But you can check in the back. I might have more.” He then cranks up the heat, cracks open the windows, staring with perplexity at the foggy windshield.
Jisung slumps down in the passenger seat. “It’s less fun wearing your stuff if I can’t steal it right off your back.”
Minho reaches out, squeezes at the back of Jisung’s neck. Leaves his hand there, tacky against dried sweat on skin. “Fair point.”
They arrive late with no alcohol to show for themselves. Hyunjin and Chan are still awake; as Jisung and Minho trudge up to the door, bags in arms, they spot them through the big, floor-to-ceiling windows. Warm light illuminates them cozied together on a couch, and Jisung snickers when they fly apart, scandalized, at the rap of Minho’s knuckles on the door. Jisung and Minho make promises to drive out into town early the next day to load up on the promised alcohol.
Which they do. They do a grocery run, too, return to the pension before anyone else wakes. Minho fixes everyone breakfast, and it’s… surprisingly comfortable. Some hours in, Jisung stops stiffening, shooting looks over his shoulder when Minho touches his face, his back, his ass, because he realizes most of the time… Hyunjin simply isn’t looking. And on the off chance he happens to be, he’ll grimace, lean over to whisper into Felix’s ear. And in turn, going by the smiles Felix shoots him, crinkly-eyed and salacious and somehow also sunny, delighted, Jisung knows it can’t be too bad. That… perhaps, he is not bad, will not be, now and forever, bad.
Hyunjin’s birthday is not officially until Sunday, and he is the only one in the house without a full-time job and therefore no concerns about a Monday hangover. But as not to drink alone, he elects to start drinking that day in the early afternoon (not less than an hour after he crawls out of bed).
Every last one of them is drunk by the early evening.
Scrounging for supplies in the kitchen drawers—not a whisk in sight—Felix bakes a birthday cake (accompanied by a continuous stream of tipsy distress). And by the time Minho rises from the couch and declares he’ll fire up the grill, the cake is already in the refrigerator, cooling in all its flat, lopsided, strawberry-dotted glory.
The gradient of the sunset streams through the windows. Felix passes out on the couch—on the lap of Changbin, who is now forbidden from moving. Chan is still working on acting like himself and not just his work self around both Jisung and Changbin, but Hyunjin doesn’t give him much opportunity to practice. All the bubbles have gone to his head, and with Changbin trapped under Felix and Jisung… effectively abandoned by Minho, he takes Chan’s hand, gallantly ignores his protests to help out with dinner, and guides him upstairs.
Changbin makes a face, pets furiously at Felix’s hair.
Jisung finds Minho’s coat thrown over the back of a dining chair. It’s colder out now, especially as dusk falls. He wraps himself in the nearest throw blanket he can locate, folds Minho’s coat over his elbow, and slips quietly into the yard. Shuffles in socked feet across the grass to the patio, where a feeble outdoor lamp casts a soft glow over a picnic table, over Minho kneeling at the grill in only his t-shirt. The same one Jisung had scrambled to get off him in the car the night before.
Jisung reaches Minho just as he’s standing. First, he flinches at the peripheral appearance of Jisung, then smiles, warm and open and honeyed-drunk. “Hi.”
“It’s cold.” Jisung holds out the jacket, ready for Minho to slip his arms into.
“I’m not cold.” Minho swipes the jacket from him, lays it over Jisung’s shoulders, tweaks his chin. “I’m going inside, anyway. Gotta start the rice.”
“Wait.” Jisung catches him by two fingers. So Minho stops, lifts an eyebrow. “Your fingers are cold,” Jisung complains, rubbing at their frigid tips.
Minho watches him. Smiles, a little hazy, and steps nearer. And, like he can read minds, Jisung’s in particular: “Jisung-ah.”
Given range, Jisung promptly sits on the picnic table, pulls his feet onto the bench. Tugs obstinately at Minho’s arm until he gives in and joins him on the rickety wood.
“Let me in,” mutters Minho. He spreads Jisung’s throw to wrap them both, lays his jacket across their laps. And once that’s settled, he turns to Jisung with eyes heavy-lidded. “You’re keeping me from the rice.”
“Sorry.”
“Shh.” Minho’s hand slides between Jisung’s legs, cups his inner thigh. He kisses Jisung, right beside his ear. “What is it, baby.”
Under the jacket, Jisung fits his fingers in the gaps between Minho’s. He kneads at the words in his head until he realizes, finally, that he can’t mold them into anything but what they already are. “Hyunjin said we wouldn’t last three months.”
Minho is quiet. When Jisung looks, he finds tension in his brow, in the slack shape of his wine-stained lips. “When did he say that?”
Jisung bites at his inner lip, hangs his head. “The night before you broke up.”
“Hm.” Minho hooks his fingers over Jisung’s to pin them to his thigh. “He was upset… understandably. When he said that to you.”
“Yeah,” Jisung says, hollow, “but I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.”
Minho nods, faint. “And you haven’t brought it up—”
“I don’t think he remembers.” Jisung swallows. “But what if he was right? I even knew it before he said it. It’s like I told you, that night that I… told you. I’m a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m the problem. What if I still haven’t stopped being the problem?” The trees rustle. Somewhere inside, music turns on, pulses faint through the walls. Thinly, he breathes, “I don’t want this to end yet.”
The wind threatens to take their throw with it. Minho grabs two corners, pinches them together. Presses his mouth to Jisung’s shoulder through his shirt. “How long have we been dating, Jisung?”
Jisung stares into the shapes their lamplit shadows cast over the grass. “How do you define—”
“Since our first date.”
Jisung wets his lips. “Sixteen weeks.”
Minho hums, affirmative. “That’s longer than three months.”
Jisung’s lips part. His hand clenches around Minho’s. “Oh.” He is very still. “But—”
“No,” Minho chuckles, shaking his head. “No, no. Do not proceed.” Minho's hands are both occupied, otherwise Jisung thinks he’d have a mouthful of muffling fingers. “Do you remember what I said to you in the car?”
Jisung shuts his eyes. His eyelids weigh tonnes. “That you’d throttle me?”
Minho lapses into silence. Then he groans so loud it seems to echo in the open-skied dusk, and pinches vengefully at Jisung’s thigh. “Han Jisung—”
“I’m kidding.” He tilts his head toward Minho, heavy eyes batting. “Hyung, you said many things in the car.”
Minho bites the tip of his tongue. When he looks at Jisung, he looks only at his lips. “It’s more about what I didn’t say.” He clears his throat. “But what I didn’t say, what that meant, was… I’m not going anywhere. I’m not… planning on going absolutely fucking anywhere. So, three months… sixteen weeks. It doesn’t matter. I don’t think we have a time limit.” His eyes flicker to Jisung’s, and he smiles, tentative. “So, Han Jisung, you who have dated every eligible queer bachelor in Seoul under the age of thirty”—Minho cackles when Jisung smacks at him, grumpy but gentle—“will you do me the honor of letting me be the next, and letting me in?” Minho’s front teeth peek out from his mouth, sink into his bottom lip. “Letting me stay?”
Jisung presses his lips together, exhales until he possibly can’t anymore. Then he tips his chin up, pecks the pout of Minho’s mouth. “When will you tell me what you didn’t? In the car?”
Something wry pulls at Minho’s smile. “Maybe tonight,” he answers, plucky. “I can tell it to your ass since I’ll already be down there, after you’ve used that special little implement you brought with you.” He lifts an eyebrow. “That is why you brought it, isn’t it?”
“Oh my god.”
“So what’s it gonna be?” Minho pulls the blanket around them tight, peppers kisses from Jisung’s ear down the column of his neck. “Can I stay?”
Minho’s eyelashes and teeth tickle Jisung’s skin, and it makes him giggle. The wind snakes through the gaps of the blanket, pricks goosebumps all over him, a cold whisper over their warmth together. Yes—yes, in every sense of the word.
“Please.”
◀︎◀︎◀︎◀︎
A harried crew member herds the members of 1-Up and fellow rookie group 4EVA onto the stage.
2018 KBS Song Festival. The first event of its kind that 1-Up has attended. The bright lights don’t get to Jisung the way they used to, nor does the crowd. It’s a relatively quiet one, anyhow, but it checks—no one really knows them.
Jisung files after his members in a trance, sweating bullets. The collar of his shirt is too tight and it chafes. An appliqué on his blazer is hanging by a thread after their stage earlier, but he only notices now, feels it scratch against his leg with every step he takes. So before the cameras can close in on them, he rips it off, stuffs it in his pant pocket.
He’ll be fine. He’ll do what he does best—which, thus far, he has determined to be: shutting up and letting their leader do the talking.
He meets the eyes of a girl from 4EVA, opposite him on stage. She has little pink ribbons scattered throughout her yellow-blonde hair, a deep, deep dimple in one cheek. She smiles at him, bows. But, instinctively, he looks at the floor; too slow to pretend to not have noticed, too fast for it to not be weird if he tried for a do-over.
He’s at the end of the line, at the far end of stage left, so it’s only natural that an MC fill the open spot beside him. Jisung just doesn’t realize it’s already happened until his member Dohyun elbows him sharply and drops into a deep bow.
Jisung’s head whips, bewildered. BabyM from Kiss&Cry—shock of teal hair and tailored suit with a black rosette in the lapel and Jisung’s personal vote for most handsome face to debut via survival show or simply in all of 2016 or possibly just ever—stands not a foot away, microphone in hand. So BabyM… looks into Jisung’s eyes. Like, really looks. He’s right fucking there. Jisung prays his eerie contact lenses haven’t gone rogue on his irises—that’d be some way for BabyM to remember him. But… maybe it doesn’t matter, if his eyeballs end up evacuating his skull on stage in front of BabyM anyway.
“Hi,” Jisung croaks. Bows abruptly enough to trigger that lower back pain his manager told him not to worry about. “BabyM-sunbaenim.”
BabyM’s lips quirk. He bows, too, just… not like a marionette operated by a raccoon. “Hi.” His eyes scan the group at Jisung’s back, return to Jisung. “1-Up?” he checks, like he doesn’t already know. He’ll have to interview them in a few short minutes.
Jisung nods so fast he gets dizzy. He’s had so much iced coffee today his veins must be surging with it.
“Your debut single,” murmurs BabyM. He peers around at the camera crew, but no one needs him yet. So he gifts Jisung with his attention again. “It was really good.” He tips his head, scanning Jisung’s visage. Suddenly the crimping in his hair feels stupid, if only because BabyM looks indifferent to it. “It’s in my workout playlist.”
Jisung dies. Well—almost. Very much almost dies thinking about this man exercising to his group’s music. “I wrote it,” he blurts.
BabyM lifts an eyebrow. It’s a charming move that weakens Jisung at the knees. He’s… too gay for this. Too gay to stand on this stage and, in a few minutes when the red lights on the cameras ignite, pretend to not moon over this beautiful older man. It’s what Hyunjin will text him about, probably, once this interview airs; something à la ㅋㅋㅋ did you pop a boner next to mr blue hair? Hyunjin doesn’t keep tabs on idols, never has, unless they’re forced down his throat (by Jisung) or, as a more recent development, are Jisung. But what he does know is a hot guy when he sees one.
BabyM’s lips part like has more to say. But orders are barked, BabyM readies his microphone, and he looks to the cameras with placid professionalism as they start rolling, Jisung’s existence long-forgotten.
And so it remains. Jisung joins his group in their greeting, smiles and waves does a silly little dance while their leader Minsoo plugs their semi-recent comeback, the second this year after a January debut. And then… he zones out. Counts how many seconds he can go without picking at his nail beds. This, at least, is preferable to zeroing in on the way BabyM’s cue cards flutter his bangs as he gestures, the endearing deeper pitch of his voice as he emcees, the way he volleys amicably with his MC counterpart—okay, yeah. Commence operation zone the fuck back out.
At last, Jisung thinks they’re approaching the end zone, that moment they can take cover in the green room, that moment he can breathe again, can stop counting because all he’ll get from putting his fingers near his mouth is a smack on the back of the head from Minsoo, and he can deal with that.
But then BabyM veers on Jisung. Or—correction, on Jisung’s group. “2.Hyun-ssi!” BabyM booms, “Do you also have a role model you can tell us about? Care to show us a bit of their performance?”
Dohyun spews a canned response about Monsta X’s Kihyun. Jisung’s ears start to ring, drowning out Dohyun’s tinny tenor before he can detect his song of choice. He senses through the pins and needles in his arm as Dohyun sways into him that it must be vaguely balladic, and his heart knocks, like it’s attempting escape.
“Wah,” BabyM remarks, “I sure wish I could sing like that. J.ONE-ssi, how about you?”
Dohyun shoves the microphone into Jisung’s clammy hand. Jisung gapes—he can’t be sure how long. Then he clears his throat. Remembers himself, his duty. And… runs with the first idea that knocks him upside the head. “Ah, yes, I’m… always working hard to improve my dancing. So I look up to Kiss&Cry’s BabyM-sunbaenim a lot.” He turns a cheesy smile on the cameras, trills in falsetto the refrain from Kiss&Cry’s most recent title. Mimes the finger gun from BabyM’s point move, winking as he blows at imaginary smoke.
Jisung clocks it the instant his members hesitate around him. Certainly they hadn't been expecting that—neither had Jisung, to be fair. But once the bubble of reticence pops, they make a show of applauding him, and he knows by their sneers they’ll end up ridiculing him backstage. It’s worth it, though. Jisung thinks it’s wholly worth it for the way BabyM’s smiling eyes seem to scintillate, the way he ducks his chin toward his chest. And Jisung can tell his bashfulness isn’t just for show; the tips of ears are adorably pink against the sea of his hair.
“That means a lot, J.ONE-ssi,” BabyM tells his chest more than the microphone. And to the cameras, warmly, “I think you should keep dancing. And with that…” BabyM then glances at Jisung, winks beyond the camera’s line of sight. Holds Jisung's riveted eyes, until he doesn’t, until he gestures grandly to his co-MC across the stage.
Jisung feels like flying—dangerously untethered. Dangerously unscripted.
Jisung babbles when he’s nervous, always has. When he’s nervous, when he's nauseous, when the inescapable thought of his raring heartbeat only makes it beat faster—there he always lands, in the very same spot, convinced that if he talks and talks and talks, he won’t ever have to face what anyone has to say about him next. That if he talks, he’ll eventually say something right, something funny. It’s hardly ever true. And it’s why his manager is always reminding him to shut up, leave it to the pros (their leader), and… to smile more. Smile more, he'll tell Jisung. That the fans like it, think it’s cute. That smiling—even if it feels wrong—will make him feel happier. That after enough practice, it’ll always look right, even when it feels wrong. Even if he feels wrong, incurably. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it, that all appears to be well?
On BabyM’s cue, everyone on stage comes together to chorus, “We’ll see you later!”
And Jisung smiles for the cameras—easily. He can feel the stinging call of his sore fingers and his heart won’t leave his throat, but it comes easily. And it’s neither practice nor pretend. It’s something else entirely.
Jisung peers from the corners of his eyes at BabyM. Beyond, to the lights, the live audience.
Whatever it is, it feels right.