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Hyunjin spends about five minutes staring at his laundry basket, which is somewhat impractical, given that there’s nothing in it, but that’s the point, because there’s nothing in it, when there should be, because today is laundry day, and he initially went from having three weeks of dirty clothes to clean in one go to no clothes, leaving him stuck between the outfit he wore last night and an extra shirt that doesn’t belong to him but is somehow still in his apartment until he can find where said missing clothes went.
He calls Jisung, whose first words the moment he picks up is, “Go away," which is more coherent than what Hyunjin personally expects.
“All my dirty clothes are missing,” he panics.
“How the fuck are you not hungover?”
Hyunjin ignores him, partially because he doesn’t really remember either. “Did you hear anything I just said? All my dirty clothes are missing, which means I don’t have any clothes to wear. I might as well be naked.”
“Thank god I’m in too much pain to imagine that right now. Just borrow Changbin-hyung's,” Jisung grumbles, like the answer is that simple and Hyunjin's dilemma is too inane for him to deal with. “I dunno, man. Go to your laundromat. Maybe you washed your clothes last night after you bailed on us and just forgot.”
“Okay,” Hyunjin considers. “That makes sense. That sounds like something I would do.” That is not, actually, something Hyunjin would do. He is not a responsible adult like that. Drunk him is inclined to do cartwheels on a skating rink, not finally stop procrastinating his laundry, for fucks sake. But at least it's something.
“Great,” Jisung says. “Now go away. Support my right to die.”
Hyunjin puts on the only shirt he still has here that isn’t from the night before—some tight-looking black tee that’s been pulled too much that it hangs loosely on Hyunjin’s frame—and goes to Levanter, the only laundromat that's within a reasonable walking distance from his apartment when one would be carrying about two bags worth of laundry by foot. It's miraculously 24/7 and disastrously self-service, but the lady there usually lets regulars leave their clothes there for a while if they really need it, which is the only explanation Hyunjin can think of if he did indeed wash his clothes yesterday but didn't take them with him home.
Walking to Levanter doesn't give him any recent deja vu though, like this is someplace he visited recently and simply forgot about it, but the lady there, Gaeun-noona, looks at him and brightens with familiarity. "Oh, Hyunjin-ah," she greets, somehow managing to single him out the moment he enters despite how crowded the small laundromat has become. Levanter is busiest on Sundays, from its opening to its closing time. Hyunjin isn't the only idiot who tends to cram laundry before the start of a new week. "I was expecting to see you here today."
"Because it's Sunday?" He says, making his way to the counter. "Noona, I have a problem. Was there any chance I came here last night, miraculously did my laundry, and then left everything inside the machine and went home?"
"No, you weren't here yesterday," she replies, but adds before Hyunjin can have a meltdown about it, because he apparently didn’t do that and his clothes are still gone,"But your clothes are here.” And she turns around to reach for one of the bottom cubby hole shelves to pull out an eco-bag, where all of Hyunjin’s clothes have been cleaned and neatly folded. Slowly, he takes the bags from her and stares at it, momentarily at a loss for what to say.
“I didn’t do this?” he asks, just to be sure. He picks up one of the shirts on top of the pile and sniffs it. It doesn’t smell like the laundry detergent he uses here, but it’s familiar and immediately soothes something in him.
“No. This friendly boy named Changbin did.”
“Oh,” is all Hyunjin can say, because that's apparently where Changbin had disappeared off to after taking Hyunjin home and randomly declaring he had something to do after peeling off Hyunjin's dirty socks, removing his belt so he could sleep comfortably, and gently settling him in the bed despite the fact that Hyunjin still remembers through his drunk haze telling Changbin to stay the night because his place with Chan was too far.
“He came late, asking if it was okay for him to do laundry even though he wasn’t completely sober,” Gaeun recalls fondly. “If he didn’t tell me, I wouldn’t have even known he’d been drinking, but he was so polite about it.” She taps her finger on the counter thoughtfully. “He’s someone you know well, I presume?”
“What makes you say that?”
She points to the right side of Hyunjin’s shirt. It’s only then does Hyunjin realize that Changbin’s name is printed in small letters right by the breast pocket. This is humiliating. “It's an old shirt of his. I borrowed it after I played football one time and it rained hard that my jersey got drenched, but I forgot I had this with me until now," he reasons, though recounting the story behind this shirt, he realizes that it's probably not as clean as it looks. "You know how it is with guys. We're not really responsible with things that aren't ours."
Gaeun smiles like the explanation isn’t necessary, but it's not as if Hyunjin is lying. “It had rained here right before the sun rose,” she only tells him, as if his anecdote reminds her of a detail she left out. “He didn’t want to ruin the clothes he had just cleaned and dried, so he asked if he could just leave them here and have you pick them up instead. When I asked about you, he said you were back home and fast asleep." That's one way of saying it, Hyunjin supposes. "He thought you'd be tired the next day, so he wanted to do something for you. He's very good to you. Boyfriend material."
Hyunjin flushes. "Noona, I think that’s a compliment you should give to him, not something you should tell me.”
"You know why I'm telling you this," she says, winking. In the end, Hyunjin can only laugh, because this isn't the first time he's expressed disinterest to the idea of a prospect whenever she’d mention something about it and not the first time she hasn't been deterred. But Hyunjin really isn't looking for a relationship right now. He's content with what he has.
Changbin is busy this Sunday, schedule too packed for Hyunjin to weasel himself into his time, and even though he can insist and Changbin would gladly accommodate him, Hyunjin isn't the type of person to push things. But Changbin still has the time to send Hyunjin a flurry of heart emojis when he texts him a thanks for doing the laundry and the typical savvy comments like, anything for the cutest guy I know B), and then caps it off with an attractive picture of himself in the gym, brushing off his sweaty bangs and showing off the thick biceps he needs to do the act. It's quite the boyfriend picture, as Gaeun would likely say. But Changbin likes to send Hyunjin so many of those anyway.
Jisung calls him back sometime in the afternoon, when Hyunjin has to pick through his gradually emptying fridge to look for the quickest frozen food he can make for dinner. He's more straightened out now, recovered from the hangover thanks to enough water, sleep, and panic about the fact that tomorrow is a new week. Hyunjin can't relate, even though he expected to when he woke up this morning. He had drank as much as Jisung, climbed onto the table with him in the karaoke room they rented and belted out a shitty duet rendition of a Big Bang song. But instead the day had risen and Hyunjin felt absolutely fine; on his bedside drawer was a half-finished glass of water and the plastic container of a painkiller he had apparently taken but didn't remember doing so. He normally didn't have that kind of foresight, especially when inebriated.
"So Changbin-hyung secretly did your laundry after he hauled your ass back home and took care of you," says Jisung, like he just wants to get the story straight, even though there’s nothing particularly exciting about anything that happened. “How do you feel about that? About him?”
“Hm? I feel good,” Hyunjin answers absentmindedly, hands cradled around the tupperware container of his dinner. His phone abruptly dings with notifications from Changbin, but they’re not text messages, just a series of voicenotes. He tends to only do this when he’s recounting his day to Hyunjin. Hyunjin replies with a thumbs up before turning back to his food. “Hyung is very nice to me.”
It’s not the kind of response Jisung is satisfied with, it seems, based on how Hyunjin can practically hear the eye roll in his voice from the other end. “Jesus Christ.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” he says. “You’re hopeless.”
Hyunjin doesn’t think much of it, the way he typically chooses to not think much about anything Jisung says by virtue of it being Jisung, who is always very opinionated about Hyunjin’s decisions by virtue of it being made by Hyunjin. But then it’s nearing three in the morning when Hyunjin wakes up in the middle of the dark and scrambles for his phone to call Jisung because he’s freaked out by the freight train of a realization that gobsmacked him while he was asleep.
“What the fuck do you want now?” Jisung demands the moment he picks up.
“I have feelings for hyung,” Hyunjin says.
For a few seconds, Jisung says nothing. Then, “Congrats,” he starts. “Now you’ve moved on from being hopeless to being basic.” Then he hangs up.
Hyunjin glances down at his phone screen. There’s a message from Changbin sent twenty minutes ago, asking, >> r u awake?
> no, Hyunjin texts back. Changbin sends a laughing emoji and Hyunjin finds himself smiling stupidly at his phone because he’s imagining the face Changbin actually makes when he laughs, and that’s when he decides he should just go back to sleep because he’s fucked.
The initial plan of Hyunjin to hole up in his apartment with zero human contact with anyone to wholeheartedly concentrate on his final project for his Human Anatomy class is thoroughly trashed when he gets a cryptic text that someone is “on the way” even though no one should be on their way to see him. But instead of a serial killer ringing his door buzzer, it turns out to be a guy around his age with a delivery of fresh cold coffee from his favorite cafe that Hyunjin is typically too broke to afford as a walk-in, what more delivered to his doorstep. Hyunjin’s first move, naturally, is to ask, “Is this poisoned? Is this a prank?”
He’s probably this delivery boy’s first customer and already he looks extraordinarily exasperated with Hyunjin’s existence. “No. It is free though.”
So Hyunjin accepts it because it’s free, and because it’s his favorite coffee, and because it looks like if he questions it further the delivery boy is going to chuck the drink at his face and leave. Hyunjin makes a move to tip, but the delivery boy waves him off, saying that it’s against policy, and also because someone gave him a large tip on the condition that the recipient doesn’t do it, so maybe it was more bribery than anything, but whatever.
“What’s your name again?” Hyunjin asks, right before the delivery boy goes for good.
“Jeongin,” he says. “But please don’t look for me if you ever go to Maxident.”
"Okay," Hyunjin agrees. "On the condition that you tell me who sent you this."
The fact that it was initially delivered anonymously makes Hyunjin think it'll be a challenge to get Jeongin to spill, but Jeongin only looks at him like he's a moron. "It's not Valentine's season," he says. "It came from someone named Seo Changbin."
“That makes sense,” Hyunjin says, in a way that so clearly indicates no, it does not make sense, or regardless of whether it makes sense or not, it doesn’t mean I actually expected this to happen. Hyunjin can tell that Jeongin can tell all this from the look on his face. Seungmin always accused Hyunjin of having an overly expressive face, but what was Hyunjin supposed to do? It was his face. And Changbin always said he liked it just fine, maybe a little too much, even. “Okay, it was nice getting to know you. Bye.”
Hyunjin doesn’t actually realize how wide he’s smiling until Jeongin leaves and he takes a deep inhale of the coffee. He didn’t even realize he was craving for this until it came to his doorstep. The coffee is the right kind of cold and with the right amount of sugar and Changbin had gotten it for him. Suddenly all he’s thinking about is how he can tell Changbin how touched he is by the gesture, how inexplicably happy it makes him.
He reaches for his phone, types a text message, and then hesitates.
> thank you, he writes, but it comes off as a little too simple. > how did you know i needed this seems a bit presumptuous. > you’re crazy for knowing me so well, do you like me or something?? is most on-brand, but doesn’t encapsulate what Hyunjin truly wants to say and how he wants to mean it.
He scrolls through their last conversation, which was just over an hour ago. They’d been talking about his project, Hyunjin breaking down his idea behind making a 3D model of the human body and discussing how certain body parts corresponded to notable kinds of injuries and disabilities that arose from sports activities, and Changbin giving him his honest input—impressed and insightful simultaneously. Nothing about what they were talking about indicated Changbin had this surprise coffee gift in store for him, and Hyunjin doesn’t know if it’s the right move to call him out on it.
> i think i’m in love with you, he considers. But it sounds like a confession more than a comment that makes his heart flutter in a way it hasn’t before, with a kind of nervous energy that can easily feel so addicting, and he’s scared to indulge in it. It’s not in his nature to be the sappy one.
“Eesh,” Seungmin later remarks, because he had come over on the pretense that Hyunjin was in dire need of assistance for his project due to the SOS text he received, and not to help Hyunjin deal with his internal anguish about Changbin that has his head lying on the marble counter, clutching his phone helplessly. Seungmin sighs. “Hyunjin,” he begins. “It’s okay to have feelings for Changbin-hyung. If anything, it makes perfect sense.”
“No, it isn’t,” Hyunjin complains, “And I don’t need this from you. I need you to comfort me through this trying time.”
Seungmin rolls his eyes. “I’m not here to indulge in your emotional constipation. I’m here to see if you’re done with your project.” But when his eyes land on the 3D model Hyunjin has constructed on the counter, whatever commentary he has loses itself in his surprise. “Huh,” he says. “So you did take hyung’s advice to color the affected areas. It looks a lot less lifeless this way.”
“Yeah,” Hyunjin agrees, lifting his head. After a beat, he sits back up and unlocks his phone, where his chat with Changbin waits.
> you never fail to surprise me, he decides to send, because in the end it’s the kind of thing he does say around Changbin, the way he always acts around him to the point of expectation. Even though he doesn’t feel like it’s the wrong thing to say, it also doesn’t feel like enough.
It doesn’t even take five minutes before Changbin texts back.
>> it’s the only way i can keep you on your toes ;)
Hyunjin can’t help himself; he smiles. It’s instinct.
“Like I said,” Seungmin interjects. “Eesh.”
Feelings aren't actually an impossibility to Hyunjin. He understands the complexity of emotion, the way it can translate and evolve into something more than whatever sits inside you. And he does feel things, most of all.
The first time he had ever fallen in love, he was fourteen and told that he wasn't very good at this—feelings. And it wasn't that anyone at fourteen particularly was, but Hyunjin seemed to be a different case, because he felt things strongly but didn't always know the right way to articulate it, because deep down he understood what he had to do but wasn't able to piece out how.
Things aren't so different almost a decade later. But time had waned this into something Hyunjin could live with. It's Changbin who has changed things. Changbin, with how easily affectionate he is with Hyunjin, that it makes Hyunjin look more like the hopeless one because he so easily adores it, even if everyone would see things differently—where it’s Changbin who chases because he’s whipped, and it’s Hyunjin who runs because he isn’t. It’s dizzying to wake up one day and realize you have feelings for a man like Seo Changbin, because Changbin is Changbin and he is so easy to love once you start loving him.
(Hyunjin pretends like these aren't borrowed lines, like that night right before Changbin had secretly done his laundry he hadn’t made that comment that made Hyunjin wonder if Changbin was talking about the meaning to a song they were trying to karaoke to or him in particular.)
Now it's an early Friday and Hyunjin is taking his time wandering around the campus, carrying a book in his arms with half-assed annotations he should be reading, only his eyes keep on straying to his phone that sits right at the middle, to his lock screen that shows Changbin's stupid face, beaming into the camera with his hair damp and cheeks obnoxiously puffed up. Hyunjin is baffled by how much he likes the picture when it's not even a selfie Changbin took for him, but had sent to their group chat in an attempt to mock Jisung's lousy attempt at having boyfriend pics of himself—which of course, Changbin pulled off so much better—because that says even more about how Hyunjin just likes Changbin. It's ridiculous.
"Hey there, hot stuff," someone familiar says, pulling him from his thoughts and walking alongside him. He gently bumps shoulders with Hyunjin before boldly brushing a stray hair from his forehead away. They're wearing the same white sneakers. It's like they're matchies. Hyunjin doesn't know if he can do this. He wants to drop to the ground and roll away.
"What now," he says flatly, tucking away his book and phone. He refuses to look up because then Changbin would see the furious blush on his cheeks, and the idea of them meeting eyes feels like too much for Hyunjin to currently handle. "What romantic gesture do you have planned this time?"
It’s either the tone or the accusation itself that has Changbin stopping in his tracks, clearly caught off guard. Hyunjin is forced to stop walking too. “Uh, none at the moment? I thought you just didn’t want to spend the afternoon by yourself,” he says, confused. “But I can always come back. On the way here I passed by this donut shop that just opened yesterday, and it looks like the kind of place you like.”
Hyunjin frowns, finally looking at him. “What’s it called?”
“DLC,” Changbin answers, which startles Hyunjin, because DLC isn’t just any donut shop—it’s a small one that is memorable to Hyunjin because it was his favorite place to go when he was a kid. The first time they had ever met, Hyunjin was a clumsy freshman who told sophomore Changbin, tasked to give Hyunjin’s class a campus tour, that it was a fun fact about himself. “I really can get you a donut if you want. Strawberry, right?”
For a split second, Hyunjin can’t comprehend what he’s hearing. Changbin is unbelievable. “Hyung, you’re unbelievable,” he whines. “Who do you think you are?”
“Your boyfriend?” Changbin says, like that explains everything.
And the reality is that—it does. Hyunjin sucks in a breath, the same way he does every time he hears the word. Something in him deflates, defeated. “Yeah,” he says. “Guess you are.”
Changbin glances at him. “What’s up with you?”
“Nothing,” Hyunjin replies, scrubbing his face. “It’s just that you’re really good at this.”
For all of the extravagant gestures of secret thoughtfulness extended, what’s truly romantic is the way Changbin’s expression softens right then and there, clarity coming to his eyes as he realizes exactly what this really is about. And what is this about, exactly? This is about Hyunjin’s swelling chest and burst of emotion. This is about Hyunjin’s feelings tangled in knots not because they’re hard to unravel, but because they’re just so much at all at once that Hyunjin can’t string each of them together but can explain what they mean to him. This is about Hyunjin realizing the depth to how much Changbin likes him, not because of things he’s done and he’s always been doing, but because of the depth to how much Hyunjin likes him back.
And it wasn’t as if Hyunjin never liked Changbin, but he’d always done so in a way that meant it was Changbin who understood his feelings even before Hyunjin could articulate them. Hyunjin was someone who felt things strongly, but he didn’t do them well. Between them, Changbin had always been the one so bold and open about how he felt; Hyunjin was always the slightly lackluster one, just there and content with it but never really remarkable in the way he expressed his affection.
But now something has shifted. One day Changbin had done his laundry and Hyunjin’s world has never been the same since. It’s mortifying, how something so simple can have such an effect, how something that should’ve been established long ago is only happening now. It makes Hyunjin bury his face in his hands in embarrassment, but Changbin immediately grabs his hands to lower them so he can press his mouth against Hyunjin’s, as if to comfort him. That only makes Hyunjin only more embarrassed. Changbin notices.
“What now?” he asks, though there’s nothing but mirth in his voice. He makes a move to kiss Hyunjin once more, but Hyunjin bats his hand away, nose wrinkling.
“We look like some lovey-dovey couple grossing everyone out,” he protests.
“We already gross everyone out,” points out Changbin, matter-of-fact. “And we do love each other.” But he does step back, interlocking their fingers instead. It’s such an easy, natural gesture for Changbin to initiate. And it’s always been just as easy for Hyunjin to reciprocate, even before all this.
Hyunjin glances at their conjoined hands. He swears he can smell the detergent Changbin uses to clean his clothes. He can smell the coffee. He’s in love with him. He has feelings for Changbin. And they do make sense. And they do make him hopeless.
“Yeah,” Hyunjin relents. It’s an admission. What this is about is Hyunjin trying to tell Changbin how much he likes him, that he’s actually just as crazy about his boyfriend as his own boyfriend has always been for him even though he never showed it before, and how Hyunjin still can’t really say it, and how it’s ultimately okay, because Changbin already knows. For all of Changbin’s tendencies to surprise Hyunjin, this is something they both know all too well. “We do.”