the honeymoon phase

by jinsuzakuro

Summary:

It is a stupidly terrifying thought to picture Seoul without Nicholas in it. Nicholas has been less of a friend and more of a fact, something Euijoo never considered removable. And now—maybe he is. Maybe tomorrow or February or some terrible soon, Nicholas will shift categories from person I know like a second self to person I used to know.

And if this goes horribly—if Euijoo does what he’s planning and it detonates right in his face—he can always claim ignorance in the morning. He can blame the beer. He can say he doesn’t remember. Because what he’s about to do is stupid. Not just stupid—borderline catastrophic. But there’s another voice, quieter, stubborn: better to look stupid now than to spend the rest of your life wondering what if.

Notes:

started writing this months ago and forgot about it. now that i'm preparing for an exam however my brain is like wow i need to finish this this is so much more fun. consider this the root of my academic downfall but also yay jinsuzakuro nichojoo comeback

Outside, Hongdae glows like a storefront window dressed up for December. Strings of LED reindeer, blinking Santas, and cheap plastic snowflakes hang over the streets, all flicker and glitter. Euijoo knows it’s supposed to feel festive, but mostly it feels staged, hollow in a way he’s come to recognize. He’s lived here long enough to belong and long enough to complain. Four years in Seoul, and he’s developed the habits of the local cynic: muttering at people who block escalators, scoffing at couples who pose for photos in the exact same alleyways, sighing at the endless novelty of a place that hasn’t been novel for him in years.

He moved here for college. He finished college. That should mean something, right? But instead it feels like standing in a train station at midnight, suitcase in hand, waiting for a train that may or may not exist. He’s twenty-something now, allegedly an adult, but the transition feels theoretical. Which, naturally, is why they’re all drinking.

Euijoo is four beers in, already floating, already half detached from the scene in front of him. Nicholas is nursing his second, leaning across the entire table to argue. Maki is losing to him—losing badly, Euijoo thinks, though Maki doesn’t seem to notice or care. Fuma and Kei are in their own private orbit on the other side of the booth, curled into each other. 

“So what? You just wasted four years on a degree you’re not even going to use?” Nicholas demands.

“Correction,” Maki shoots back. “I’ve calculated the odds, and in this political climate, the probability of me becoming a successful educator is significantly lower than me getting rich selling feet pics. And I’d prefer my labor to be appreciated, thank you very much.”

Nicholas snorts and leans back, arms crossed. “And what about you?” Maki presses. “You’ve been sitting there judging. What’s your master plan?”

Nicholas exhales a sigh so weighted it feels like it drops onto the table between them. Euijoo recognizes it—knows the heaviness, knows what’s coming even before Nicholas speaks. “My visa’s up in February. Guess I’m going back to Taipei.”

“Bro, don’t be dramatic,” Maki says immediately. “Nothing’s set in stone yet. You wanna stay, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but—” Nicholas starts, and then stops. “Yeah.”

That unfinished thought hangs there. Euijoo can hear the unsaid words more clearly than the music pounding out of the bar’s speakers. He’s heard them before, late-night confessions whispered in the dorm stairwell or while stumbling home drunk: the snail-paced visa process, the endless forms, the money that never stretches far enough, the small humiliations of being an outsider in a place that doesn’t bend to meet you. Nicholas doesn’t say any of that now. He just presses his lips together, like silence can stand in for resignation.

Kei cuts in gently. “Don’t worry about it. At least not tonight.”

Nicholas gives a smile, but Euijoo catches the crack in it. Too clean, too practiced, like a mask slipping just enough for the truth to bleed through. And Euijoo, reflexively, gives his own smile back, and his feels just as fake. 

The bar grows louder around them, as if the whole city has conspired to drown them out. Music rattles the floorboards. The waitress slams down another pitcher, froth spilling over the rim. The noise demands they rise to match it, so they do. They laugh too loud, argue too hard, let their voices climb to the ceiling until nothing underneath can be heard.

Euijoo forces himself into the chaos, leaning forward when he’d rather retreat, tossing out comments he barely believes in. Anything to keep the unease from tightening its grip, anything to stay afloat. He tells himself it’s the alcohol, that the anxiety scratching at his ribs is just a side effect of too much beer. And when that lie wobbles, when he feels the truth press against the back of his throat, he pours another glass and drowns it before it can surface.

It is a stupidly terrifying thought to picture Seoul without Nicholas in it. The city feels inseparable from him, stitched together with the thread of their shared routines—four years of library marathons, late-night convenience store runs, ramen inhaled at plastic tables, endless hours of video games sprawled across Nicholas’s beaten-up couch, and just as many nights sprawled across Euijoo’s bed, the two of them drinking until the ceiling blurred. They’ve danced until their legs gave out, whispered secrets over empty soju bottles, patched each other up through heartbreaks that felt like the end of the world but weren’t.

Nicholas has been less of a friend and more of a fact, something Euijoo never considered removable. And now—maybe he is. Maybe tomorrow or February or some terrible soon, Nicholas will shift categories from person I know like a second self to person I used to know.

Euijoo forces his eyes away from him, locking instead on the LED reindeer outside the bar window. Its face flickers with the kind of synthetic cheer that makes his skin crawl. Across the table, Nicholas’s phone buzzes. The screen lights up with a flash of color, and Euijoo doesn’t mean to notice, doesn’t mean to track the way Nicholas’s entire expression transforms. He grins, wide and wolfish, one hand raking through his hair like the world has suddenly remembered to entertain him. “Well,” Nicholas says, with that careless sparkle, “looks like I have to go.”

Fuma raises a brow, already smirking. “Who’s it this time?”

“Dunno,” Nicholas answers. “He’s DL. Just a picture. He’s hot, though.”

The table bursts into laughter. Maki stands, clapping him on the back as he passes. “Go get ’em, tiger.”

Nicholas laughs too, a sharp, bright sound that makes Euijoo’s chest ache, though he hides it behind his glass. And then Nicholas is moving, weaving through the narrow space of the bar, pausing just long enough to lean down over Euijoo. Both hands cup his face—warm, familiar, the press of his palms almost reverent despite the alcohol. Nicholas plants a kiss on his cheek, firm and unapologetic, his breath hot with beer. Euijoo squeals, a knee-jerk reaction, though it’s not like this is unfamiliar. Nicholas always gets too affectionate when drunk. He always blurts out things he’ll forget or pretend he forgot later.

“Love you,” Nicholas says, easy as breathing. And then he’s gone, swallowed by neon.

Euijoo doesn’t move. He can still feel the shape of Nicholas’s hands against his face, still smell the alcohol on his breath, still hear those words ricocheting around inside his skull. Nicholas loves everyone when he’s drunk. He’s said it to strangers in bathrooms, to taxi drivers, to random bartenders who poured his last shot heavy. It shouldn’t mean anything. But tonight, with the prospect of February looming like a deadline stamped in black ink, it feels different. It feels like Nicholas is already halfway out the door, and this careless declaration is all Euijoo gets to keep.

He watches through the window as Nicholas walks down the street, head tipped back, neon lights painting him in impossible colors. The reindeer still blinks behind him, stupid and smug, like it knows the punchline to a joke Euijoo can’t quite grasp. Euijoo stares until he disappears, until there’s nothing left but the crush of pedestrians and the pulse of music leaking from every doorway. And then he looks back at the table, at the half-empty glasses, at his friends still buzzing in their own conversations. He takes another drink, swallowing hard, as if beer can fill it. And when it doesn’t, when it only leaves more room for the hollow ache to settle in, Euijoo keeps drinking anyway.

 

—

 

The movie has been over for so long that neither of them remembers what it was. The TV, left to its own devices, has wandered into some late-night game show where contestants shriek at flashing lights. It’s background noise now, because the real centerpiece is the table in front of them, cluttered with half-eaten fried chicken, sticky bones, beer bottles sweating into cardboard coasters. Nicholas’s cheeks have taken on that faint pink glow Euijoo knows by heart, the exact shade that means he’s loose enough to start laughing at nothing, loose enough to lean across the couch and throw an arm around whoever’s closest.

They drink. They drink because Euijoo needs the excuse of alcohol the way some people need an oxygen tank. He knows his own patterns too well—a couple bottles in and he grows reckless, blurting out things sober-him would choke on. Nicholas, meanwhile, becomes soft-edged and affectionate, like all the sharp corners of him dissolve into touch and laughter. And if this goes horribly—if Euijoo does what he’s planning and it detonates right in his face—he can always claim ignorance in the morning. He can blame the beer. He can say he doesn’t remember. Nicholas will laugh it off, and maybe things will break, but at least there will be a script for how they’re supposed to break.

Because what he’s about to do is stupid. Not just stupid—borderline catastrophic. And he knows that. He knows it in the pit of his stomach, in the sweaty grip of his hands around the bottle, in the way every voice in his head is screaming to keep his mouth shut. But there’s another voice, quieter, stubborn: better to look stupid now than to spend the rest of your life wondering what if.

“Have you heard anything from the embassy?” Euijoo asks. The words fall out like they’re nothing, just another casual question, his thumb picking at the corner of the label.

Nicholas groans, dragging a hand through his hair. “No. That’s the thing. Radio silence. Which feels like an answer, honestly.”

“Are you sure you’ve tried everything?” Euijoo presses. 

Nicholas turns his head, gives him a look. “Juju. Come on. You’ve been with me through this entire mess. At this point you basically qualify as my immigration lawyer. I’ve done every form, every phone call, every humiliating little hoop they’ve made me jump through. But the system doesn’t care about that. I think…” he shrugs. “I think I’ve done everything I can.”

Euijoo bites down on the inside of his cheek. His heart is a fist punching against his ribs. Nicholas watches him a second longer, then grins suddenly, trying to cut the tension. “What? Are you sad?” He stretches out his leg and kicks Euijoo’s shin lightly. “It’s not like they’re banning me for life. Worst case, I’ll just go back to Taiwan, reapply for a work visa, and I’ll be back in a year. You’re not getting rid of me that easy.” 

Euijoo doesn’t laugh. Because even a year without Nicholas—without his noise, his reckless energy, his endless appetite for everything—feels unbearable in a way he can’t explain. Irrational, maybe. Childish. But it’s there, the weight of it pressing down on him. He stares harder at his beer bottle, like maybe the answer is written there in the condensation sliding down the glass. He inhales once, twice. The air feels thick. “Actually,” Euijoo says finally, his voice barely more than a breath. “There’s one thing we haven’t tried.”

Nicholas tilts his head, curious. “Yeah? What’s that?”

And that’s the moment. The edge of the cliff. The split second before he either jumps or pulls back, before his whole world either cracks open into something new or shatters completely. “So…” Euijoo draws the word out like it’s a rope he can cling to, stretching it thinner and thinner, as if maybe if he drags it long enough, the words waiting behind it will evaporate. They don’t. “You know, if you marry a South Korean citizen, you can get residency. Maybe even citizenship.”

Nicholas snorts. Not the real laugh, not the bright one that rolls out of him like a summer storm. This one is short, small, like he’s humoring something absurd. “Yeah? And how exactly am I supposed to find someone to marry in—what—two months?”

Euijoo finally looks up. Big mistake. Nicholas is staring at him, eyebrow raised, waiting. His throat tightens. He feels like he could laugh, or vomit, or dissolve into the floor. Instead, he forces the words out, thin and brittle: “You could marry… me.”

Nicholas tilts his head. It’s such a simple gesture, but Euijoo suddenly hates it, because he can’t read him. He can read Nicholas in every other context—his moods, his lies, the way his grin shifts depending on who it’s meant for. But this look is blank, impossible. “You?” Nicholas says, his voice soft, like he’s not sure if it’s a joke.

“Yes,” Euijoo blurts, too quickly. He scrambles, grasping for the scaffolding of logic. “No, really, I looked it up. If you marry a South Korean citizen, you get residency. It’s totally legal. People do it all the time.”

Nicholas laughs now, but it’s a startled kind of laugh, the kind that leaks out when you’ve been thrown off balance. “You looked it up?” His mouth twitches, halfway to a grin. “Jesus, Juju. You’re ridiculous.”

“I’m just saying!” Euijoo shoots back, heat crawling up his neck, spreading over his ears. “It’s not like it would be real—it’s just a technicality, a loophole, a stupid, bureaucratic cheat code. If you want to stay, it’s… it’s a way.”

Nicholas is grinning now, teeth sharp in the half-light. “This is the worst proposal I’ve ever heard.”

“Shut up,” Euijoo says, voice cracking just enough to betray him. He runs a hand through his hair, gripping the back of his neck. “Shut the fuck up. I’m trying to help you.”

There’s a silence, then—not long, but long enough for Euijoo to feel it stretch across the room like a taut wire. Nicholas leans back on the couch, still studying him with that unreadable look.  “You’d really marry me?” Nicholas asks, finally. His tone is light, but there’s something sharper under it, something Euijoo can’t name.

Euijoo swallows. His pulse is everywhere—in his ears, in his hands, even in his tongue. “If it keeps you here, yeah. Why not?” He tries to make it sound casual, like it’s just another one of their stupid schemes, like this is the same as ordering fried chicken at 3 a.m. or sneaking into a karaoke room with a bottle they weren’t supposed to bring. “I mean, it wouldn’t even be a real marriage,” Euijoo hears himself say, and every word feels like it’s cutting both ways, saving him and damning him in the same breath. “It’s just paperwork. Bureaucratic nonsense. You could still date, still sleep with whoever you want. I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t care. That’s not the point. The point is you’d get to stay. That’s all.”

Nicholas’s mouth twitches, the start of a smile he tries to swallow down. For once, he doesn’t immediately joke. He doesn’t throw out something sharp to deflect. He just looks at Euijoo, really looks, and Euijoo can tell from the silence that he’s considering it. Actually considering it. Which is terrifying in a different way.

Because of course it doesn’t come easily to Nicholas. Why would it? Nicholas dates, Nicholas laughs too loud in strangers’ apartments, Nicholas gets numbers pressed into his palm by bartenders. Nicholas has a whole rotation of maybes, a constellation of possibilities always orbiting him. Euijoo is not one of those. Euijoo is not in that category, not even close. Euijoo is the safe harbor, the roommate, the study buddy, the dumbass who always knows what brand of soju Nicholas hates. And Nicholas—well. Nicholas isn’t in love with him. 

And still, Nicholas says, after a pause that feels like a lifetime: “Okay.” Euijoo blinks. He almost asks him to repeat it, to prove he didn’t hallucinate it. “We can get married.” Nicholas’s tone is casual, like they’re deciding who’s doing the dishes tomorrow. “Fake-married,” he clarifies. “We’ll need conditions, obviously. Ground rules. But… if you’re really sure, Euijoo. If you actually want to do this for me.”

Euijoo doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t even think. The yes has lived in his chest for so long it spills out before he can restrain it. “I’d do it. For you.”

Nicholas smiles then, full and unguarded. The kind of smile that’s lethal, the kind that Euijoo wishes he could fold up and keep in his wallet, just to take out when he needs proof that moments like this ever existed. “Okay,” Nicholas says. “Husband.”

Euijoo’s face burns so hot it feels like he’s sitting in front of a bonfire. He can’t stand the look Nicholas is giving him—playful, almost smug, like he’s already rehearsing how he’s going to tease him about this tomorrow—so he grabs the nearest pillow and smashes it over his face. It doesn’t help. He can still hear Nicholas laughing. He can still feel the word hanging in the air, heavy and bright and terrifying. Husband. And under the pillow, in the dark space he’s made for himself, Euijoo grins like an idiot and hates himself for it.

 

—

 

Euijoo used to daydream about his wedding as a kid. He pictured a place drenched in light, an aisle lined with white flowers. There would be a bride, delicate and radiant in white. There would be music, laughter, and a weight to the moment that made the world itself pause. The reality: city hall.

The fluorescent lights above them flicker once, like even the building itself can’t be bothered to take their union seriously. The clerk never lifts her eyes higher than the paperwork. There’s no music, no vows, not even a pause long enough to breathe in. It’s just signatures. Lines on paper. A pen scratching across the surface of something supposedly monumental.

Fuma and Kei flank them as witnesses, and despite Euijoo and Nicholas repeating that this isn’t really a wedding, that it’s paperwork, a maneuver, a loophole with state recognition but none of the romance, Fuma tears up. Kei demands photos, corralling them outside the building. “You’ll regret it if you don’t take pictures,” he insists. 

“Kei,” Nicholas groans, “this isn’t a wedding, it’s marriage fraud.”

“Shut up and hold his hand,” Kei orders.

Afterward, they all take the subway together, jostled by strangers who couldn’t care less that Euijoo has just been legally bound to another human being. They talk about dinner plans, about the new bakery that opened down the street, about nothing at all. Normal chatter. Completely ordinary. Except for the one fact that is not ordinary at all: Euijoo and Nicholas are married now. Married in the ways that matter—Nicholas gets to stay. That’s the deal, the victory, the point. And not married in any of the ways Euijoo once thought mattered—no butterflies, no vows, no honeymoon booked for some beach far away. Just a couple signatures, a subway ride, and the sick ache of knowing that what he’s wanted for so long has finally happened and still manages to feel like nothing at all.

And then—home. He opens the door to his apartment and freezes. The lights are on, though he’s sure he left them off. Inside, voices burst into cheers. His friends are everywhere, pressed into his small living space, faces beaming. There are streamers tacked clumsily to the ceiling, plastic cups stacked in teetering towers, the scent of takeout mingling with the sharp sweetness of cake frosting. This, apparently, is their banquet.

For a moment, Euijoo doesn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or lock the door again and flee. Because it’s ridiculous and kind and embarrassing all at once. He swallows every jagged thought down with takeout and cheap soju, with laughter that comes easier than he expects, with the ritual motions of a banquet for a wedding that isn’t a wedding. His wedding. Not really. And yet, here he is, cutting cake, clinking cups, accepting congratulations as if this union were something other than a technicality. As if there’s something to congratulate. For a while, it almost feels normal. Until the night stretches too long, until the room grows thick with alcohol, until everyone’s tongues loosen and the comments slip out.

Yuma throws his head back, laughing too hard at something that wasn’t a joke, and then, between gulps of beer, says, “Honestly, we all wondered how long it would take you two to make it official. Didn’t think you’d get married before you started dating, though.” The table erupts in laughter, half at the line, half at Euijoo’s stunned face. He forces a smile, though the words wedge themselves under his skin.

Harua drifts close, shoulder brushing Euijoo’s arm in the cramped space. Nicholas leans forward with mock sternness, “Hey. Hands off. Don’t touch my husband.” Everyone laughs again, as if Nicholas’s claim is a bit, a performance. As if the word husband doesn’t echo in Euijoo’s chest, doesn’t rattle around there like it belongs and doesn’t belong all at once.

Then Maki, predictably, takes it further. “So, who’s making the first move tonight? Wedding night and all.” He smirks, and the table groans in unison, half scandalized, half egging him on. Euijoo ducks his head, hiding his face behind a paper cup. Nicholas just shakes his head, lips twitching like he almost wants to laugh.

By the time Euijoo is drunk enough, the edges blur. The noise softens into something warm, the room seems to glow, and for fleeting stretches of minutes, he lets himself believe. Pretend. He lets the laughter wrap around him like proof of something real. He looks at Nicholas, who sits a little straighter than the rest, and thinks: this could be normal. This could be marriage. This could be theirs. It’s easy in the moment to forget the paperwork, the clerk, the fluorescent lights. Easy to forget that tomorrow the world will right itself again, that this was never meant to be romantic, never meant to hold meaning beyond legality. But with soju blurring the boundaries, Euijoo almost convinces himself. He can almost hear music, almost feel the weight of a real vow hanging between them.

And then, of course, the night breaks in the way nights always do. The food runs out. Someone spills a drink that no one bothers to clean up. Kei announces that the last train is coming, and the party begins to unravel. Streamers peel off the ceiling. Cups collapse. Friends scatter into the night with too-loud goodbyes.

The apartment shrinks back to its normal size, to silence interrupted only by the hum of the refrigerator. Euijoo sits in the wreckage of it—half-eaten cake, greasy boxes, laughter still ringing faintly in his ears. Nicholas moves quietly in the background, collecting plates, stacking cups, rinsing dishes in the sink. Usually it’s Euijoo who cleans, who keeps order while Nicholas dissolves into his mess. Tonight, the roles have flipped, and Euijoo can’t decide whether it’s disorienting or comforting.

Nicholas passes behind him, shoulders brushing briefly, and sings out in a mock-lilting tone, “We’re married.”

Euijoo laughs, though it comes out strangled. “We’re married,” he repeats, the words tasting strange in his mouth. 

Nicholas rinses his hands in the sink, flicks water from his fingers, and says, more quietly now, “I never thought I’d get married. Not really. Not to anyone who’d want me in that way.”

The words slice through Euijoo before he can brace himself. He wants to say it—wants to push it out, heavy and sharp: I want you that way. I want you in every way you think no one ever could. But his throat closes around the truth, and he swallows it down. 

Nicholas keeps talking, oblivious. “But I’m happy it’s you,” he says, and there’s something in his tone that makes Euijoo’s chest tighten. “I mean, they say you’re supposed to marry your best friend.”

Euijoo forces his face neutral, even as the thought coils in his head like a knife: they don’t mean it literally. They don’t mean paperwork, witnesses, subway rides home. They mean someone you kiss, someone you want, someone you ache for.

The silence stretches between them until Nicholas breaks it again, half-smiling as he dries his hands on a dish towel. “Sucky wedding night though, right? You look like you’re about to throw up, and I’m over here scrubbing dishes. Not exactly the romantic kind of love-making I imagined.”

Euijoo laughs again, but it’s hollow. “Guess we missed the honeymoon suite.”

Nicholas grins at that, throws the towel on the counter, and drops onto the couch beside him. Too close. Not close enough. He wants to lean in, wants to collapse against him, wants to ask if this could ever be more than pretending. Instead, he picks at the corner of a paper plate, breaking it into tiny pieces.

Nicholas tilts his head back, eyes half-closed. “Still. If I had to fake a marriage with anyone, I’m glad it’s you.”

The words land heavier than they should. Nicholas says them casually, like he’s tossing them across the room with the same weight as a joke, but they hit Euijoo square in the chest. He doesn’t trust himself to answer. Doesn’t trust his voice not to betray him, not to unravel all the things he has bitten down on so hard for yearns now. So he nods, as though the acknowledgment is enough. It isn’t.

Nicholas doesn’t notice. Or pretends not to. His eyes are already closed, head tipped back against the couch, arms loose at his sides. Euijoo watches Nicholas for too long. The curve of his jaw. The way his hair falls into his eyes. The way his mouth stays half-open when he relaxes like this, like he doesn’t care how he looks in front of Euijoo. There is an intimacy in it that’s unbearable. Euijoo feels like an intruder, like a thief stealing moments Nicholas never meant to give. He should get up. He should clean. He should do anything other than sit here, drowning in the space between them.

Instead, he whispers, so softly he almost convinces himself Nicholas won’t hear, “I’m glad it’s you too.”

Nicholas doesn’t stir. Maybe that’s mercy. Minutes stretch. The weight of exhaustion pulls at Euijoo’s limbs, though his mind is sharp, restless. He leans forward, elbows braced on his knees, staring at his hands. He feels a phantom band of silver against his ring finger. Nicholas stands up. “I’m going to sleep,” he says, then extends his hand toward Euijoo. “You coming?”

Euijoo stares at the hand too long. No ring there, either. Of course there isn’t. It’s not like this is supposed to mean anything. Still, Euijoo takes it. His palm fits into Nicholas’s easily, embarrassingly easily, and he lets himself be pulled up. 

The bedroom feels smaller than usual when they step inside. Smaller, heavier, charged with a kind of silence Euijoo doesn’t know how to name. They’ve done this before—countless times. Sprawled side by side during all-night study sessions that dissolved into bleary mornings. Collapsed together after too much drinking, too many words. Curled against each other in winter when the radiator rattled uselessly, in summer when the nights stretched long and empty. They’ve shared beds, blankets, heat, and sleep. It has always been easy. Simple. Normal. But tonight it isn’t. Tonight it’s different. 

Nicholas strips down casually, unbothered, tugging off his shirt and pulling on the loose sleep one he keeps here, the one that still smells faintly like laundry powder and something theirs. Euijoo watches from the edge of the bed, fighting the pull in his chest, the sting in his throat. It’s ordinary. Nicholas has done this a hundred times, maybe more. But tonight, Euijoo feels like an intruder in his own room, like he’s watching something sacred he isn’t supposed to want.

They crawl under the covers. The bed is too small for two grown men, has always been too small, but they’ve never cared. Shoulders brush. Nicholas’s leg hooks lazily over Euijoo’s shin, the weight of it pressing in. Casual contact, careless, automatic. Euijoo shuts his eyes. The room spins. The alcohol should be to blame, but it isn’t.

“Good night,” Nicholas says into the dark, his voice thick with sleep already. Then, after a beat, soft and amused, he adds: “My husband.”

The word detonates quietly inside Euijoo, a clean wound splitting open. Nicholas says it like a joke, like a tease, like something harmless. But Euijoo feels it as anything but. He forces out a laugh, something strangled and weak, hoping Nicholas doesn’t notice. “Good night,” he whispers back. 

The dark presses in. Nicholas breathes evenly beside him, already drifting, his body warm and heavy against Euijoo’s. Euijoo lies there, wide awake, staring at the ceiling he can’t see, his chest pulled tight. 

He thinks of the word again. Husband. He rolls it around in his head until it starts to ache. He thinks of the papers signed, the clerk’s bored face, the photographs in front of city hall, the laughter from their friends, the cake smeared with frosting. He thinks of Nicholas calling him My husband so easily, so carelessly, and wonders if maybe it will kill him.

 

—

 

They move in together. Not out of romance, not because of some passionate rush toward a shared life, but because Nicholas’s lease expired and the immigration office requires a neat proof of domesticity. A shared address. Paperwork that confirms the illusion. They don’t live together because they are in love. They live together because bureaucracy demands it.

Still—life doesn’t twist into anything unrecognizable. Nicholas remains Nicholas: irritating in the ways he’s always been, clattering around the kitchen without purpose, singing tunelessly in the shower at volumes loud enough to rattle the pipes, ordering takeout like he’s never once heard of groceries. Euijoo rolls his eyes, bites his tongue, sighs dramatically. Comfort lives in these patterns. A routine that insists things are the same, that insists nothing monumental has shifted.

But of course it has. And it aches. Because there are toothbrushes side by side in the same chipped mug by the sink. Because sometimes Euijoo wakes up to the clatter of Nicholas making breakfast. Because they fight about dishes, about Nicholas leaving socks on the couch, about small things that disguise bigger ones. Because they watch movies shoulder to shoulder, Nicholas stealing the blanket, Euijoo pretending to be annoyed even though it’s easier to breathe with Nicholas pressed up against him.

And because Nicholas still disappears into nights Euijoo doesn’t belong to. Still fucks strangers with the same recklessness he always has, returning smelling like perfume that doesn’t belong to Euijoo, with laughter in his mouth from someone else’s jokes. And Euijoo stays home. Simmering, furious, heartsick, telling himself he has no right. Domesticity has never looked so much like a battlefield. It is normal. It is ordinary. It is beautiful. It hurts.

Tonight, Euijoo goes to bed early. February presses against the window, sharp with cold, and the room feels lonelier than usual. He lies awake staring at the ceiling, gnawed by the thought that if he hadn’t signed those papers, Nicholas wouldn’t be here at all. Nicholas would be gone, somewhere Euijoo couldn’t follow. Back in Taiwan. A whole ocean away. The thought frightens him, claws at him. And yet the comfort of Nicholas’s presence is barbed, twisted through with the reminder that it exists only because of this fragile, false arrangement.

The clock ticks. Euijoo drifts toward sleep, caught between comfort and terror, until the sound of the front door shatters it. Boots clatter against the floor. Nicholas moves through the apartment, brushes his teeth, and then stumbles into the bedroom. The mattress dips under his weight. Without hesitation, without ceremony, Nicholas presses himself into Euijoo’s arms. He smells like the night air clinging cold to his clothes, and underneath it, perfume—sweet, heady, not his. Recklessness trailing after him like a second skin. But he’s home. Early, for him. Early enough that Euijoo can pretend it matters.

Nicholas sighs into his chest, already halfway asleep. Euijoo lies stiff, awake, swallowing everything he can’t say. His arms circle Nicholas anyway, because they always do. Euijoo stares into the black ceiling, heart pounding, and thinks: this is marriage. This is not marriage. This is everything. This is nothing. “You’re back early,” he says. 

“He didn’t want me to stay the night,” Nicholas answers. “Douchebag.” But Nicholas doesn’t sound hurt—just mildly annoyed, already brushing it off. He presses his face into Euijoo’s shoulder, warm and heavy. Euijoo’s fingers slide through his hair. “It was kinda nice, though,” he continues.  “He was hot. Tattoos all over. Long black hair. Piercings everywhere. He even had one in his cock, like—” Nicholas lets out a laugh, half amused, half bewildered—“straight through the frenulum.”

The laugh cracks something in Euijoo’s stomach. He feels sick, but it isn’t the image itself—it’s the casualness, the way Nicholas offers these details like he always has, like Euijoo is still only his friend, still the guy chill enough to hear every story, every conquest. Years of this, endless nights of Nicholas spilling his escapades, and Euijoo swallowing down the bile with nods, with practiced indifference.

“Sounds weird,” Euijoo says, steady, clipped. 

Nicholas hums, quiet now. “I mean, it was. But kinda cool. Sorry—were you sleeping?”

“No.” Euijoo untangles himself from Nicholas’s arms, untangles himself from the weight pressing into him. “Actually, I just needed to—” he doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to. He’s already leaving.

The bathroom door clicks shut, the lock sliding into place. Euijoo leans against the sink, hands braced against porcelain. He stares down at the two toothbrushes in the mug—the quiet proof of their life together, small and stupid and enormous. His and Nicholas’s. Side by side. That’s what they are, all day, every day. Side by side. He doesn’t know how long he stands there. Long enough for the taste of anger to burn into bitterness, long enough for the ache to dull into a familiar hum. When he finally returns to the bedroom, Nicholas is already asleep.

He looks soft in sleep, untroubled. His face has none of the edges it carries in daylight, none of the sharpness of his laughter, none of the recklessness of his nights out. He lies there in their bed—their bed—peaceful, unknowing. And Euijoo stands in the doorway, throat tight, staring at someone who will never realize how completely he is loved.

 

—

 

They’ve got a board game spread out on the table, but the pieces are abandoned mid-battle. Half the bottles are empty, half the food untouched. The night was supposed to be louder than this, but the energy went out the door the second Nicholas’s phone buzzed and he disappeared with a mumbled excuse. Now Euijoo is left staring at the board, the sole commander of a team that no longer exists, trying very hard not to look like a sulky kid whose best friend ditched him at recess.

Fuma and Kei are sprawled across the couch, watching him with the patience of people who have already predicted exactly how this evening would end. “Come on, Euijoo,” Kei says, his voice gentle but edged with that too-knowing tone that makes Euijoo bristle. “What did you expect?”

Euijoo jerks his head up. “What?”

Kei leans forward. “With Nicholas. You play house with him—this fake marriage, moving in together, cooking meals—and then you watch him go out on actual dates with other people while you sit here pretending you’re fine. And you still refuse to tell him you’ve had a crush on him for—what, four years now?”

Euijoo’s mouth opens, then closes, then opens again, uselessly, as though words might suddenly arrange themselves if he waits long enough. “You—”

Fuma interrupts with a smile, soft, infuriatingly kind. “Relax. Kei didn’t tell me. I put it together on my own. It’s not rocket science.”

Euijoo groans, dragging both hands down his face until he’s hiding behind them completely. His voice comes out muffled through his palms. “I hate both of you.”

“Liar,” Kei says. 

Fuma tips his head toward the abandoned board game, eyes glinting. “You’re not upset Nicholas ditched the game. You’re upset Nicholas ditched you. There’s a difference.”

Euijoo peeks out from behind his fingers. “You make it sound pathetic.”

Kei’s smile is quick and sharp. “That’s because it is pathetic. You’re living in a rom-com, but the sad, drawn-out middle part—the one where the audience is screaming at the screen for the idiot protagonist to just confess already.”

Euijoo makes a strangled sound, somewhere between a protest and a laugh. He drops his hands onto the table with a dull thud, rattling a few stray dice. “I can’t just—just say it. That’s not how it works.”

“Sure it is,” Fuma says, shrugging. “You open your mouth, and then the words come out.”

“I don’t get why you won’t just come out and say it,” Kei says, almost bored. “I mean, you two are closer than close. You share a bed. You’ve made each other cry, made each other laugh. You’re practically soulmates—but in that weird, confusing way that makes the rest of us wonder if we’re hallucinating.”

Euijoo stares at the board, at the little wooden pawn beneath his fingertips, and tries to summon an answer. He can’t. Or rather, he has too many, and every single one of them is a knot he doesn’t want to untangle in front of an audience. Because what is he supposed to say? That Nicholas deserves better than him? That Nicholas likes people who shine brighter, smoother, easier, people who don’t carry stormclouds around in their ribcage the way Euijoo does? 

Or maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe it’s just that the idea of losing Nicholas—of stepping out onto the edge, confessing, and having Nicholas step back—feels like it would gut him in a way that silence never could. Silence is survivable. Silence is safe. Hypothetical heartbreak isn’t. So he says nothing. He just presses his thumb against the pawn until the little piece tilts sideways, toppling over.

Fuma watches him for a long moment, and his voice, when he finally speaks, has none of Kei’s bite. “For what it’s worth,” he says quietly, “he’s not blind. If you told him, I don’t think you’d be disappointed.”

Euijoo’s head snaps up, like maybe he wants to believe it—just for a second—but the hope that flickers there is brief, dangerous, too bright. He shuts it down immediately, dragging his eyes back to the board. And he does the only thing he knows how to do: he makes a move that doesn’t matter. Pushes the fallen pawn forward, like the game isn’t already unsalvageable, like it isn’t obvious he’s been playing with half a team from the start.

 

—

 

The words are there, right there, perched like birds on the edge of his tongue, restless and beating their wings. He can feel the shape of them pressing against the back of his teeth, more insistent than ever. Nicholas is across the table, hunched over his phone, strands of hair falling into his eyes as he alternates between scrolling and shoving noodles into his mouth. Euijoo stares at him and imagines it—the moment Nicholas looks up, caught off guard by the confession breaking the silence. I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you for four years. Loving you has been the best and worst thing to ever happen to me. It’s breaking me apart, and I want it to stop. I want to stop punishing myself with this quiet devotion. I want to be yours.

He pictures the scene: Nicholas pausing mid-bite, eyes wide, stunned. He imagines the weight of those words crashing into the space between them, a bomb detonating in their little rented kitchen. But he doesn’t say it. Instead, Euijoo shovels another mouthful of noodles down his throat, swallows it hard, and tells himself that a dim kitchen table on a random Thursday night is not the place to ruin his life. 

Nicholas doesn’t notice the silence swelling like a bruise. “Can I borrow some of your jewelry tomorrow?” he asks, still bent over his phone. 

“Yeah, sure. Why?” 

“Got a date.” Nicholas’s grin curves quick and thoughtless as he finally looks up, wiggling his eyebrows like this is some joke they’re both in on.

Euijoo sinks back into his chair, trying to look casual while every part of him feels splintered. “We had plans, remember? We were supposed to go to the cinema.” The hurt bleeds through his tone despite his best attempt to smother it.

“Oh, shit,” Nicholas groans, dragging a hand down his face. “I forgot about that. Fuck. I’ll make it up to you.”

Euijoo hums, a thin little sound that means nothing and everything. He hates how transparent it feels, how Nicholas will hear the disappointment he’s trying to disguise.

“I’m sorry, Juju, really. I’m stupid.” Nicholas leans forward, voice softening like he can patch the crack with apology. “But I’ve had this date planned for a week, and I’m really excited for it.” His grin flashes again, uncontainable. “Dude, you should go on a date, too.”

The suggestion burns. Euijoo lets out a scoff—sharp, bitter, humiliating in its obviousness. “No way.”

Nicholas sets his phone down, studying him now, confusion cutting into his grin. “Why not? Come on. It’d be fun. I can even help you set up a profile. I’ll write something hilarious—you’ll be drowning in matches.”

Euijoo feels something coil and twist inside him, ugly and heavy. His voice is quieter, steadier than it should be for the fire rising in his chest. “I’m not interested.”

Nicholas laughs, disbelieving, pushing. “Not interested? What, in anyone? Juju, how many dates have you even been on in the last four years? Two? Three? You’ve been celibate this whole time? That’s tragic. I couldn’t live like that.” 

And then it breaks. The cruel, aching thing in Euijoo finally claws its way out, too jagged to keep contained. It comes easier than the love ever could, easier than the truth that rots in his throat. His chest is tight, eyes burning, but his voice comes out flat, biting, unshaken. “Well, I couldn’t live like you,” Euijoo snaps. “Chasing validation from strangers. Needing random guys on apps to tell you you’re hot just so you remember how to breathe. Fucking around to drown out the rest of your life instead of facing it.”

Nicholas stares at him, noodles forgotten, phone screen still lit but ignored on the table. His jaw tightens, and when he finally speaks, his voice has lost that easy lightness Euijoo is used to. “Wow,” he says, flat. “That’s how you see me?”

Euijoo swallows hard, throat dry. He wants to take it back, but he also doesn’t—because it’s true, at least to him, at least in this moment when jealousy is burning a hole through his chest. “That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

Nicholas’s eyes flash. “So now you’re better than me? Just because you sit around at home, saintly and untouched, like some martyr? Forgive me for not withering away in celibacy while I wait for… I don’t even know what the hell you’re waiting for.”

Euijoo’s hand curls into a fist against his thigh, nails digging into his palm. “I’m not—” his voice cracks, and he hates that Nicholas will hear the weakness in it. “I’m not waiting for anything. I just don’t need to—”

“To what?” Nicholas cuts him off, voice rising. “To touch another person? To let yourself be seen? To risk anything?” He leans forward across the table, anger sparking hot and quick in his eyes. “You think what I do is pathetic, but at least I’m living. At least I’m not hiding behind excuses.”

“And what are you living for, Nicholas?” Euijoo shoots back, venom lacing every syllable. “Another faceless guy who won’t remember your name? Another body in your bed so you can pretend you’re not lonely for a night? You call that living?”

Nicholas jerks back. His laugh is humorless, sharp. “Better than wasting the rest of my life playing house with someone who doesn’t even—” he stops himself abruptly, biting down on the words like they’re dangerous.

Euijoo’s heart stutters. “Say it,” he demands. 

Nicholas shakes his head, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “Forget it.”

“No. Say it.” Euijoo’s voice cracks this time, but it doesn’t matter—he leans forward, desperate, angry, cornered. “You think I don’t even what? Don’t even want you? Don’t even care? Is that what you were going to say?”

Nicholas’s mouth opens, then closes. His chest heaves as he exhales through his nose. His voice, when it comes, is quieter, but still edged. “I think you don’t even know what the hell you want, Euijoo.”

Euijoo’s pulse pounds in his ears. “I know what I want,” he says finally, and the words feel like they’re being dragged out of him against his will. “I just know I can’t have it.”

Nicholas’s head snaps up at that. His eyes narrow, searching Euijoo’s face with an intensity that makes Euijoo want to shrink back into himself. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Euijoo doesn’t answer. Can’t. The truth is pressing up against his teeth again, clawing to get out, and if he says it now—if he says it in this room, in this light, with anger still hanging in the air—he isn’t sure either of them will survive it.

Nicholas leans back in his chair, shaking his head with a disbelieving laugh. “You drive me insane, you know that?” He snatches his phone off the table, jaw tight. “Forget the jewelry. I’ll figure something else out.” He stands abruptly, chair scraping loud against the tile, and for a heartbeat Euijoo thinks he’s going to storm out. But Nicholas hesitates in the doorway, back to him. His voice is rough, softer, but still taut with something Euijoo can’t name. “You talk about me distracting myself, but at least I don’t pretend. At least I don’t sit there acting like I’m fine when I’m fucking miserable.” And then he’s gone, footsteps retreating down the hall. Euijoo sits frozen at the table, the noodles in front of him going cold, the pawn of truth still untouched on his tongue.

 

—

 

Euijoo tries to avoid Nicholas, but avoidance is a weak strategy when you’re married on paper and trapped in the same lease. Their lives overlap too much—his toothbrush is next to Nicholas’s, his coat brushes Nicholas’s on the rack, his shoes sit in a neat row while Nicholas’s are scattered like they were dropped mid-flight. Still, Euijoo makes the attempt. He picks up overtime shifts, buries himself in work that isn’t strictly his responsibility, anything to keep him from coming home to the silence of Nicholas not being there.

Because Nicholas hasn’t been there. Not once in three nights. The bed feels too empty without him, the sheets cold and untouched on one side. Euijoo tells himself Nicholas is probably crashing at a friend’s, probably drinking too much and falling asleep on someone’s couch. It’s easier to picture Nicholas passed out under a stranger’s ceiling than to imagine him tangled up in someone else’s sheets. 

But the silence is a punishment. It stretches and tightens around him, days filled with nothing but the weight of Nicholas’s absence. Even in college, when they were just two kids awkwardly orbiting each other, they never went this long without speaking. This feels like exile. This feels like divorce, like the life they built together on the flimsiest excuse of legality is already fracturing. It feels like that hollow, terrifying ache Euijoo carried when he thought Nicholas might have to leave Korea for good.

So on Friday morning, Euijoo decides he’ll apologize. It doesn’t matter if he’s right, if Nicholas deserved every cruel word Euijoo threw at him. He’d rather crawl back, tail between his legs, than sit in this silence one more night. Better to be the dog begging forgiveness than the dog left abandoned.

That evening, the apartment is scrubbed into something resembling order, the fridge is stocked, the living room lights are warm, the TV hums low in the background. He texts Nicholas, a simple come by tonight. His thumb hovers over the screen for a long time after sending, pulse racing. When the knock finally comes, Euijoo’s chest tightens. He opens the door and Nicholas is there, stamping snow off his boots, shaking flakes from his coat. His hair is damp, melting snowflakes catching in the strands, glittering under the hallway light. “Crazy weather, dude,” Nicholas says, hanging up his coat like nothing has happened.

Euijoo swallows, his voice small. “Yeah.”

Nicholas toes off his shoes, moving easily through the space as if he hasn’t been gone, as if his absence didn’t hollow it out. He glances at the tidy living room, the flickering TV, the faint smell of food from the kitchen. His smile is quick, bright, unbothered. “Looks nice in here.”

Euijoo can only watch him. It’s almost unbearable, how Nicholas just slips back into the apartment, into Euijoo’s world, as if he owns it. As if he owns him. Nicholas flops down on the couch, legs spread, one arm draped over the backrest. “So, what’s up? This a peace offering? Are we good now?”

Euijoo sits at the other end of the couch. “I’m sorry,” he says, and the words feel jagged in his throat. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

Nicholas studies him for a moment, the grin softening, fading into something unreadable. “You meant it, though.”

Euijoo forces himself to meet Nicholas’s eyes. “I was angry.”

“That’s not the same thing,” Nicholas says quietly. “Being angry doesn’t make it a lie. So what are you really apologizing for?” 

Euijoo’s heart thuds. I’m apologizing for loving you so much it’s curdled into cruelty. I’m apologizing for wanting you in ways that make me vicious. I’m apologizing for every second I’ve kept my mouth shut while watching you walk away with other people. But he can’t say that. So he says, “I’m apologizing for hurting you.”

Nicholas sighs and leans forward, elbows on his knees, his voice sharper this time. “Do you even get how insane this is? We’re married. We live together. And somehow… somehow I’ve felt more alone these past few days than I did when I was crashing on strangers’ couches before my student visa came through. But I’m sorry for hurting you, too. I shouldn’t have pushed you like that.”

Euijoo swallows. “No. It’s—fine,” he murmurs.

Nicholas manages a faint smile. “It’s not. We need better communication. We need marriage counseling.”

Euijoo laughs, but it’s brittle, sharp, carrying the ache of everything unsaid, of years of small betrayals of his own heart. “Marriage counseling? You’re joking.”

“I’m not. Think about it. Two idiots who can’t talk about their feelings, trapped in one apartment, pretending to be a functional married couple? That screams counseling.”

“You make it sound like we’re hopeless,” Euijoo says, his voice quieter now, almost tentative, because hopelessness isn’t new to him, but hearing it come from Nicholas is a strange kind of betrayal.

“Aren’t we?” Nicholas says, his smirk wry, almost cutting, almost cruel. “Unless…” he lets the word dangle, unfinished, teasing.

Euijoo frowns. “Unless what?”

“Unless you finally just say it.”

The snowstorm outside presses against the windows like a drum, relentless and white. Euijoo’s pulse thrums in his ears, fast, relentless. “Say what?” 

Nicholas studies him, eyes narrowing, sharp and exacting, like he’s reading the fine print on Euijoo’s face, like he’s been doing it for years. “You know what. You’ve been dancing around it for years. I’ve let you. But I’m tired, Juju. I’m so fucking tired of pretending I don’t notice.”

The confession burns at Euijoo’s chest, each word a blade scraping across raw nerves. “Don’t—” he starts, voice faltering. “Don’t do this if you don’t mean it.”

Nicholas leans closer. “Then prove me wrong. Tell me I’m imagining it. Tell me you don’t—”

And just like that, the apartment plunges into darkness. A heavy thunk, the hum of the refrigerator dying, the TV snapping off. Silence stretches like a living thing, thick and suffocating. Snow scratches faintly against the windows, a ghostly accompaniment to their stillness.

Nicholas mutters under his breath, shoving back from the couch. “Great. Just perfect timing.”

But Euijoo can’t move. The darkness feels different here: it’s no longer oppressive. It’s protective. It’s permission. He exhales, shaky, and the words finally escape him, fragile, luminous, inevitable. “I’m in love with you.”

Nicholas freezes. Euijoo hears the stillness before he sees it. The silence stretches long enough for panic to claw up his throat, for him to consider taking it back, swallowing the words, pretending the blackout made him say something delirious. But then Nicholas exhales sharply, moving with sudden urgency. The sound of drawers opening, matches striking, candles being set down one by one. Tiny flames bloom in the dark, scattering soft light across Nicholas’s face. His hands shake just enough for Euijoo to notice.

The confession still vibrates in Euijoo’s chest, reckless, irreversible. He feels like he’s handed Nicholas the knife and stretched his own throat against it. When the room is aglow with trembling firelight, Nicholas finally sits back down. He doesn’t look triumphant, or even surprised. His eyes are lowered, his expression folded in on itself, and for a long, unbearable stretch he says nothing. “You couldn’t have picked a more dramatic moment?” he says at last.

Euijoo lets out a shaky laugh. “You asked me to say it.”

“I did.” Nicholas rubs both hands over his face, dragging them down slowly. “And now you have.”

“And?” Euijoo forces out. 

Nicholas lets out a sound that’s half laugh, half groan. “And now I don’t know if I’m more relieved or more fucked.” Euijoo’s grip tightens on the edge of the couch until his knuckles ache. His chest feels hollowed out, every heartbeat scraping along his ribs. “I’m in love with you, too,” Nicholas say. “I’m so in love with you I’ve had to file the feeling away in a hundred little boxes just to keep living next to you. I’ve gotten good at it. Too good. I never—ever—thought you’d want me back, so I made peace with that. Years ago. Freshman year, actually. And then we went and got married, and suddenly you’re hovering over me like a possessive husband, and I—” he cuts himself off, drags in a breath, his eyes glinting in the candlelight. “I realized I wasn’t as over this as I thought I was.”

Euijoo leans back against the couch. He tries to exhale steadily, tries to read Nicholas’s expression and fails miserably. Every little flicker of flame bends Nicholas’s features into something new: hurt, relief, disbelief, longing. “I didn’t think you… liked me back.”

Nicholas’s eyes are bright and wet at the edges. “Euijoo,” he says slowly, almost pitying, almost amused. “We share a bed.”

Euijoo swallows. “We’ve always shared beds.”

“Exactly.” Nicholas spreads his hands, like the absurdity of it explains itself. “Four years of climbing into the same sheets, shoulder to shoulder, pretending it’s nothing. You think people do that when they’re not—” he breaks off, shaking his head. “Fuck, Euijoo. You drive me insane.”

Euijoo sits there, feeling the shame rise hot in his chest. The silence stretches until it feels unbearable, and then Nicholas fills it again. “I thought you were straight.”

Euijoo’s mouth falls open, like he wants to argue, but no words come out. He finally manages a whisper. “I’ve never liked anyone…” His chest hurts, but he pushes the words through. “Not the way I like you.”

Nicholas looks at him for a long time, something fragile in his gaze, like he’s holding onto the words as if they might vanish. His smile is different this time—still pained, still disbelieving, but softer, less sharp. “You don’t know how fucking cruel it is,” he murmurs, “to hear you say that after all this time.”

“Cruel?”

“Yes, cruel,” Nicholas says, leaning forward now, elbows on his knees. “Do you have any idea how many nights I lay there beside you, knowing I wanted you, and telling myself to get over it? How many people I distracted myself with, trying to drown it out? And the whole time, you were right there. Wanting me back. Quiet. Silent. Like you’d rather suffocate than give me a single fucking hint.”

Euijoo closes his eyes for a moment, guilt washing over him in waves. “I thought if I said anything, I’d lose you. That you’d laugh, or—push me away. That we’d ruin what we had.”

Nicholas gives a sharp, humorless laugh, the sound cutting across the soft glow of the candles. “We ruined it anyway. Do you think we can fix it? Do you think we can actually do it?”

Euijoo tilts his head, lips twitching with a smile that feels both small and enormous all at once. “We’re already married.”

Nicholas huffs, tipping his face toward the ceiling, as though maybe the plaster above them has the answers. “I know that. But, like—” his voice falters, restless. “Do you know how many times I’ve walked into a party alone, and people ask me, ‘So where’s the boyfriend?’ And every single time, I’ve had to tell them you’re not. That you’re just—you. My best friend. My roommate. My fake husband.” His jaw tightens. “And now I’m supposed to switch that narrative? Just—casually say, Yeah, wait, Euijoo’s coming in a sec, instead of silently chanting to myself, he’s not my boyfriend, he’s not my boyfriend, he’s not my boyfriend.”

Euijoo watches him, the corners of his mouth curved in something soft, aching. “That sounds exhausting,” he says.

Nicholas drops his gaze back to him, something wry sparking in his expression. “It was exhausting. And you? What, you just got off scot-free? No one ever asked you?”

“They asked. I just said you didn’t want me.”

Nicholas stares at him, incredulous. “That’s what you said?”

“What else was I supposed to say?” Euijoo shrugs, though his chest feels hot under the scrutiny. “I couldn’t exactly admit I was hopelessly in love with my best friend-slash-roommate-slash-fake-husband-slash-tax-liability, could I?”

For a moment Nicholas just blinks at him, and then, to Euijoo’s surprise, he laughs. A real laugh this time, one that bursts out of him, sharp and sudden, like he can’t help it. He presses his hands to his face, shaking his head, shoulders trembling. “God, you’re—insane. Do you realize how deranged that sounds?”

Euijoo laughs too, the sound breaking through the tension like a crack of light, the knot in his stomach loosening just a fraction. Nicholas tilts his head, watching him with something sharper than amusement, softer than challenge. “You’re insane, Euijoo,” Nicholas says. “But brave. This is the bravest I think I’ve ever seen you since we met. Braver than marrying me in front of a courthouse clerk with that stupid pen you almost dropped three times.” His smile flickers, tender and edged. “Even then, you weren’t honest with your feelings. You were saving me, not confessing yourself. But now you are, finally. Can I hear you say it again?”

His ears heat up immediately, a flush burning down the side of his neck, but his mouth won’t let him stall.  “I’m in love with you,” Euijoo breathes, his chest shaking, throat aching. “I love you.”

The smallest smile curves Nicholas’s mouth, but it transforms his entire face. Candlelight turns it radiant. “I love you, too,” Nicholas answers simply. His hand flicks out, tapping Euijoo’s knee.

Euijoo laughs, too softly, not sure if it’s from nerves or relief or both. He can see Nicholas hesitate in the flickering shadows, caught in the limbo between thought and action. His body tilts forward then holds back, as though he’s running equations in his head—reading Euijoo’s shoulders, his breath, his eyes—calculating whether he’s allowed to cross this final line.

They’ve never kissed. Not once. Not drunk, not as a joke, not even in the surreal comedy of their courthouse wedding. Euijoo has never been kissed by a man, never been kissed by anyone he’s loved with this ferocity, with this unbearable tenderness that has carved him open for years. “You can kiss me,” he whispers.

Nicholas moves so fast across the couch it feels like flight, knees knocking into Euijoo’s legs, elbows bumping. A handful of candles topple to the floor, flames sputtering out as their wax smears across the rug, but Euijoo doesn’t care. Because suddenly Nicholas’s lips are on his—soft, warm, trembling. Nicholas presses closer, almost climbing into his lap, one hand gripping the back of the couch for balance, the other hovering uselessly, like he’s afraid to touch too much, too fast. Euijoo’s hands rise instinctively, one clutching Nicholas’s sleeve, the other finding his jaw, thumb brushing the skin beneath his ear. 

The kiss deepens slowly. Euijoo feels Nicholas breathe against his mouth, feels the tremor in his chest. Euijoo’s eyes slip shut, his world narrowing down to the heat of Nicholas’s mouth, the faint scrape of his teeth. Four years of silence, of longing, of swallowing every urge down to his bones, are undone in seconds, spilling out into the dark like the overturned wax pooling at their feet.

Euijoo’s fingers slip over the wool of Nicholas’s sweater, skimming the ridges of his ribs. When he slides his hands beneath the fabric, Nicholas’s skin is shockingly warm, alive, and Nicholas all but melts into his touch. Euijoo doesn’t know what he’s doing, not technically, but he knows what he wants. He knows what Nicholas has laughed about in late-night gossip sessions, what he’s confessed with a mischievous grin, what he’s offhandedly revealed without realizing Euijoo was filing it all away like evidence. And so, even fumbling, Euijoo has a roadmap. A good one.

His fingers slide higher, curl into Nicholas’s hair, tugging just enough to draw him closer. Nicholas lets out a sound that vibrates straight down Euijoo’s spine, then drops his forehead against Euijoo’s shoulder. Euijoo tilts his head, his lips brushing against Nicholas’s ear. His tongue drags up along the shell, and then he bites down softly on the lobe. Nicholas’s breath stutters, harsh and hot, spilling right against his neck, and Euijoo feels it like a live current.

His hands slip back inside Nicholas’s shirt, roaming across the planes of his stomach, taut and solid beneath his palms. His fingers trail upward, mapping every ridge and hollow of muscle, until they find the hardened peaks of Nicholas’s nipples. Euijoo rubs his thumbs over them carefully, then firmer when Nicholas shudders in his lap.

Nicholas grips him like he’s anchoring himself, arms tight around Euijoo’s shoulders, forehead pressed to his. Euijoo does it again, stroking, circling, watching in awe as Nicholas’s composure crumbles, each little sound he makes cutting straight through Euijoo’s chest and pooling hot in his gut. He likes it more than he knew he could, more than feels possible. He likes how Nicholas reacts to him, to his touch, to something that comes entirely from him. His arousal is sharp now, insistent, but threaded through with wonder. 

Nicholas pulls back at last, though only by inches, their foreheads pressed together. “Are you sure you want this?”

Euijoo smiles against his lips. “Yeah.”

Nicholas swallows hard. “You’ve never done this.”

“No,” Euijoo admits. “But I’ve wanted you for so long I don’t think it matters.”

Nicholas’s hand slides down, settling at the back of Euijoo’s neck, thumb stroking gently. “Then you have to tell me if it’s too much. If I’m too much. Don’t just grit your teeth and pretend for me.”

Euijoo huffs out something between a laugh and a sob, pressing closer, almost desperate. “You think I could fake this?” He shifts against Nicholas, letting him feel the hard, undeniable truth of it, and Nicholas groans, dropping his forehead back to Euijoo’s shoulder.

“Fuck, Juju.” His breath is hot against Euijoo’s collarbone. “You’re gonna kill me.”

“Not if you kill me first,” Euijoo whispers, his fingers tightening in Nicholas’s hair, tugging him back up to look at him. “You’ve thought about this before, haven’t you? How it would be.”

“More times than I’ll ever admit.” His hand slips under Euijoo’s shirt, fingers splaying over his chest, skimming over his racing heart. “But it’s a lot more intense in real life. I thought I’d be smooth, thought I’d be clever. But I’m not. You make me nervous. You always have. And right now—” his voice drops, shaky, “—you’re making me so fucking hard I can barely think. And you’re beautiful. Do you even know that? You’re so fucking beautiful.”

The words pierce straight through Euijoo, his throat tight with something dangerously close to tears. So he does the only thing he can manage before he breaks apart—he kisses Nicholas. His lips tremble as they press against Nicholas’s, but Nicholas kisses back with a hunger and his brushes his fingers over Euijoo’s nipple. “Show me,” Euijoo whispers, his mouth barely moving against Nicholas’s. “Show me how to do this. I don’t want to just imagine anymore. I want to know.”

Nicholas doesn’t answer right away, only kisses him again—deeper, slower, their tongues brushing—before tugging Euijoo’s shirt up and over his head. The air is cool against his bare skin, raising goosebumps, but Nicholas’s hands are quick to cover him again, warm palms dragging over his chest, his ribs, his stomach. Euijoo can barely see him in the dim glow of the few stubborn candles left burning, but he feels everything: Nicholas’s mouth tracing the edge of his collarbones, the scrape of teeth against the center of his sternum, the hot press of lips against each nipple in turn until Euijoo is gasping. 

His body feels foreign to him, hypersensitive in Nicholas’s hands, every brush and suck igniting something he didn’t know lived under his skin. When Nicholas’s mouth drags lower, teasing over the tense lines of his stomach, Euijoo’s hips jerk, a low groan spilling out of him. He squeezes his eyes shut, overwhelmed, clutching Nicholas’s hair. Nicholas pauses there, lips hovering over the sharp ridge of Euijoo’s hipbone. Then his hands are on Euijoo’s thighs, kneading firmly through the fabric, spreading him open, pressing him down into the cushions. His lips trail back up, slow and thorough, licking into Euijoo’s navel, kissing over every plane of his stomach.

When he finally comes back to Euijoo’s chest, he hovers, eyes locked on his. The candles flicker low, shadows darting across his face, but his expression is sharp and devastatingly earnest. “You tell me if I’m too much. If you want me slower. If you need me to stop. You don’t just take this to make me happy. You take it because you want me. Do you understand?”

Euijoo’s chest rises and falls. “I want you. I’ve never wanted anything like I want you.”

Nicholas groans, forehead pressing to Euijoo’s as his hands slide back up, thumbs grazing over his nipples again, harder this time. Euijoo shudders, biting back a sound that still manages to escape, and Nicholas smiles against his lips, triumphant and desperate all at once. “God, you’re addictive,” Nicholas breathes, kissing him again, wet and messy. “You don’t even know what you’re doing to me.”

Euijoo gasps into the kiss, tugging Nicholas closer by the hem of his sweater, dragging it up until their bare chests touch, heat against heat, every nerve ending sparking. By the time they shove their pants off, Euijoo’s body is taut with a need that feels nothing like the quiet, hollow yearning he’s lived with for years. This is sharp, scorching—real. When Nicholas’s cock brushes against his, the friction makes him groan helplessly into Nicholas’s mouth. His whole body shivers, nerves lighting up in places he never even thought about before. He wants to beg, to plead, but he doesn’t even know what for. He wants everything. So he doesn’t speak—he lets Nicholas take the lead.

Nicholas’s hand slides down, teasing fingers gliding over Euijoo’s stomach before curling around him briefly, just to hear the sound Euijoo makes when he’s touched there. Then, brushing against his cock, Nicholas pulls back enough to meet his eyes. “I think you should top me.”

Euijoo freezes for a beat, overwhelmed by the suggestion, and the words come out of him almost desperate, unthinking. “Yes. Anything. Whatever you want.”

Nicholas grins faintly at that, then, heartbreakingly, peels himself away from Euijoo’s body. But Nicholas returns quickly, sliding back into view with condoms and lube in his hand, holding it up with a wry arch of his brow. “Prepared,” he says simply, before dropping back onto the couch. He leans into the cushions, legs spread, and the sight makes Euijoo’s breath stutter. Nicholas tips his head toward him. “C’mere.”

Euijoo obeys, crawling into the space between Nicholas’s thighs. His knees press into the couch cushions, his hands braced awkwardly at Nicholas’s hips. “Do you want to finger me?” Nicholas asks, his hand brushing over Euijoo’s arm. “Or should I do it?”

Euijoo swallows hard, staring down at Nicholas. He wants to be good at this, to give Nicholas what he deserves. But the truth knots in his chest, and he forces it out. “You do it.”

“You sure?”

“I…” Euijoo’s voice falters. “I don’t know how to do it right. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Something flickers in Nicholas’s eyes then—something soft and devastatingly tender. He reaches up, cups Euijoo’s cheek with a slick hand, and smiles, gentle but unbearably fond. “You couldn’t,” His thumb drags across Euijoo’s cheekbone as if to underline it. “Just watch me do it, yeah? And then, if you want, you can try after.”

Euijoo nods quickly. “Okay.”

Nicholas leans back against the couch cushions, his legs spreading wider. He squeezes some lube onto his fingers, slick and gleaming in the candlelight, and Euijoo finds himself staring helplessly as Nicholas brings his hand lower.

And then Nicholas pushes a finger inside himself, slow and deliberate, and Euijoo can’t look away. He watches intently—the slide of it, the way Nicholas’s knuckles press against himself as he works his way in, the way his eyes pinch shut at first, how his lips press together until, gradually, the tension breaks, his jaw slackening with a sharp exhale.

“Fuck,” Nicholas whispers, his head tilting back against the couch.

Euijoo licks his lips, leaning in, his voice faint. “Does it hurt?”

Nicholas cracks one eye open, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth even as he breathes hard. “At first, yeah. But it’s a good kind of hurt…” He trails off, biting his lip, searching for the right words as his finger twists, pulls out slightly, then pushes back in. “It’s awkward at first. Then easier. Then—” his breath stutters as he adds another finger, “—then it feels fucking amazing.”

Euijoo swallows hard, eyes wide, his hands clenched against his thighs. Nicholas lets out a soft, broken laugh. “You’re staring so hard, Juju. Like you’re trying to memorize it.”

Euijoo flushes but doesn’t look away. “I am memorizing. I don’t want to forget a second of this.” 

That earns him a softer expression from Nicholas, even as he curls his fingers inside himself and gasps. “You’re ridiculous,” Nicholas murmurs. “But you’re also—fuck—you’re making this hotter.”

Euijoo’s breath comes shallow, uneven. “I don’t know what to do with my hands.”

Nicholas laughs again, sweat starting to bead along his hairline. “Put them on me. Anywhere you want. You’re allowed.”

Euijoo does. His palms slide up Nicholas’s thighs, trembling, squeezing muscle as he watches Nicholas’s hand move between his legs, fingers working himself open. The sight is devastating. Euijoo can feel the tremors running through Nicholas’s body, can hear every broken sound he makes, and it all tangles into a pressure in his chest so fierce it’s almost unbearable.

Nicholas’s eyes finally flick open again, glassy and burning. He finds Euijoo’s gaze and holds it, even as he pushes his fingers deeper. “You’re gonna be inside me, Juju,” he says. “You’re gonna feel this for yourself.”

Euijoo feels dizzy, like the floor has given out beneath him and the only thing holding him steady is the sight in front of him. Nicholas—legs spread, head tipped back, sweat beading at his temple, three fingers pumping steadily into himself—is almost too much to take in. “You’re so pretty,” Euijoo breathes. “God, I love you like this. I love you so much.”

Nicholas’s eyes fly open, glazed but sharp. His lips part, a shaky sound caught in his throat as he pushes his fingers deeper, faster, his cock straining hard against his stomach. Euijoo reaches out, tentative at first, his hand hovering before he closes it around Nicholas’s cock. The heat of him is startling, alive, pulsing against his palm. Euijoo swallows hard, his breath uneven, then begins to stroke, slow and steady, trying to match the rhythm of Nicholas’s fingers inside himself.

Nicholas’s back arches sharply, his hips bucking up into Euijoo’s grip. His eyes squeeze shut, his head tipping back against the cushions, tendons straining in his throat as he moans Euijoo’s name. He feels his cock throb in his hand, feels the slickness gathering at the head, dripping over his knuckles. Euijoo leans in, kissing along Nicholas’s jaw, whispering into his skin between strokes. “Tell me how you want it. Tell me what to do.”

Nicholas’s hand falters where it’s buried inside himself, but he doesn’t stop. “Don’t stop touching me. Fuck, just—don’t stop.”

His other hand slips to Nicholas’s chest, brushing across his nipple, pinching lightly until Nicholas cries out. “You’re so sensitive,” Euijoo mutters against his mouth, awed and half-dazed. “Everywhere. I didn’t know—it’s so much, I don’t know if I can keep up.”

Nicholas groans into the kiss, biting down on Euijoo’s lower lip before pulling back.  “You’re perfect. You’re doing perfect. Just—” his words break off as Euijoo’s thumb swipes across the leaking tip of his cock, and Nicholas chokes on a sound that borders on a sob.

Euijoo watches him with a pounding heart, every nerve wound tight, his hand still wrapped around Nicholas’s cock, learning him in real time. He learns quickly which movements pull a broken gasp from Nicholas’s throat, which rhythm makes him whine and arch. But eventually, Nicholas’s hand falters. With a shiver and a sharp exhale, he slips his fingers out of himself. Euijoo sits back on his heels, panting, watching Nicholas reach toward the low table beside the couch. When Nicholas’s hand returns, it’s holding a foil packet, shiny in the candlelight.

“You still want this?” Nicholas asks.

Euijoo leans down, kissing the inside of Nicholas’s knee. “Yes.” He reaches his hand out when Nicholas tears the foil open with his teeth, wanting to take it, to do this part himself.

But Nicholas doesn’t give it to him. Instead, he smiles—a small, devastating curve of his mouth—and shakes his head. “Let me,” he murmurs. “Let me do it for you.”

Before Euijoo can protest, Nicholas takes the condom between his fingers, placing it teasingly on the flushed head of Euijoo’s cock. The touch makes Euijoo groan, hips jerking forward. Nicholas just smiles, eyes dark, and rolls it down slowly. Excruciatingly slow. His slick fingers drag along Euijoo’s length as he works the latex into place.

Euijoo’s breath hitches. “Fuck,” he chokes out, tipping his head back.

Nicholas hums low in his throat, leaning in to kiss along Euijoo’s stomach, his chest, his jaw, as his hand finishes rolling the condom all the way down. When he pulls back just enough to look at him, his grin is small, cocky, but there’s something fragile at the edges of it, too. “God, you look good like this. Nervous. Wanting. I like it.”

He takes the lube again and slicks Euijoo’s cock, then drags the head of him down over his own entrance, slow circles, teasing pushes, slick heat brushing where Euijoo aches most. Euijoo’s vision blurs, his hands clenching into the cushions on either side of Nicholas’s thighs. “Inside,” Nicholas whispers.

Euijoo nods, and forces himself to move slowly, carefully, lining himself up. The blunt head presses against Nicholas’s rim, slick and straining. For a second Euijoo freezes, his chest heaving, terrified he’ll hurt him. Nicholas squeezes his hip, harder this time. “Don’t stop,” he breathes. “I can take it. I want it.”

Euijoo exhales shakily and begins to push forward. The resistance is there—tight, hot, overwhelming—but then Nicholas opens around him, inch by inch, and Euijoo feels himself sinking inside, swallowed by heat so consuming he almost forgets where he is. Nicholas hisses through his teeth, and pulls Euijoo closer, until they’re pressed skin to skin, chests heaving together. “Fuck,” Nicholas mutters. “You feel—better than I imagined. And I imagined this a lot.”

Euijoo lets out a broken laugh. “Don’t—don’t say that right now, I’ll lose it.”

Nicholas chuckles, but the sound turns into a groan as Euijoo sinks the rest of the way in, bottoming out. Euijoo dares to look up. Nicholas’s eyes are glassy in the candlelight, pupils blown wide, lips parted, sweat already beading at his temple. It’s devastating. It’s beautiful. “You okay?”

Nicholas nods, his grip shifting from Euijoo’s hip to the back of his neck, dragging him down into a kiss. It’s messy, needy, more teeth than lips at first, but then Nicholas softens against him, their tongues sliding together. When he finally pulls back, his forehead rests against Euijoo’s. “Move,” he says. “Please, baby. Move.”

Euijoo pulls out only an inch, then presses back in, the slick heat clutching around him so perfectly he can barely think. He sets a slow rhythm, testing, waiting for Nicholas to guide him. And Nicholas does, with every sound that slips from his throat, every tightening of his grip, every roll of his hips to meet him. Euijoo presses kisses along Nicholas’s jaw, his throat, murmuring against his skin, “You’re everything, you’re everything,” because it’s all he can manage.

Nicholas laughs breathlessly, wrapping his legs tighter around Euijoo’s waist, pulling him deeper. “God, you’re so fucking sentimental,” he gasps. “Don’t stop.”

Euijoo’s whole body feels strung tight, like every nerve is vibrating. Nicholas is molten heat wrapped around him, pulling him in. The way Nicholas moans—throaty, broken, desperate—is almost too much. His head tips back against the couch, exposing his throat, the long line of his neck shining with sweat, Adam’s apple bobbing each time another sound spills out of him. And it hits Euijoo, sharp and raw, that he’s the one wringing these sounds from him. No one else. Just him.

Something reckless blooms in Euijoo’s chest. He leans in, pressing his mouth to Nicholas’s throat, mouthing at his skin until his words spill out hot and trembling against him. “Can’t believe people have had you like this before,” Euijoo whispers. “Lucky bastards. Every single one of them. But you’re mine now. Only mine.”

Nicholas lets out a laugh that breaks halfway into a gasp. “You’re so possessive,” he manages, but his tone is ruined by the way his voice cracks, by the moan that tears out of him as Euijoo thrusts again.

“Yeah,” Euijoo answers, teeth dragging lightly along Nicholas’s pulse point. “What did you expect? Four years of wanting you, of pretending I didn’t… Did you think I wouldn’t lose my mind once I finally had you?”

Nicholas groans. “You’re—fuck—you’re insane,” he gasps, though the way his nails dig into Euijoo’s back betrays just how much he likes it. “You’re gonna ruin me.”

“Good,” Euijoo says. He rolls his hips, slow but deep, watching Nicholas’s mouth fall open. “I want to ruin you. I want to be the only one who gets you like this. I want—” his words break off, swallowed by the force of what he’s feeling. He kisses him instead, hard, then softer when Nicholas sighs against his lips.

“You already have me,” Nicholas whispers, eyes locked on his. “You’ve always had me. Even when you didn’t know it.”

Euijoo’s  heart pounds so violently it feels like it could tear free of his chest, right into Nicholas’s hands. He buries his face against Nicholas’s cheek, kissing, biting softly, words spilling out between breaths. “I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Euijoo leans back just enough to see him—Nicholas with his head thrown back, lips parted, sweat glistening at his temple, one hand braced against the couch and the other slipping down between them. When Nicholas wraps his fingers around himself and strokes, his body clenches around Euijoo, impossibly tighter, and the sensation nearly knocks the breath out of him. “You’re so—tight, God—” his voice fbreaks. “I think I’m gonna—” he cuts himself off with a helpless moan, forehead pressing to Nicholas’s chest.

Nicholas laughs, though it’s broken halfway into a whimper. “Already?” he teases, but his voice is wrecked, trembling, his hand stroking himself faster as his hips arch up into Euijoo’s. “Shit, Juju, don’t—don’t stop”

“I can’t—God, I can’t hold it,” Euijoo pants, every thrust shorter, deeper, rougher. His hands roam without thought, gripping Nicholas’s waist, sliding up his stomach, thumbing at his nipples until Nicholas cries out. “You’re—fuck—you’re perfect, you’re everything, and I can’t—”

Nicholas grabs his face suddenly, pulling him down into a kiss that swallows his next moan. Their mouths crash together, messy and desperate, teeth knocking before they soften, tongues tangling, both of them gasping into each other’s lungs. Nicholas strokes himself faster, moaning right into Euijoo’s mouth, and the sound makes Euijoo’s hips slam forward helplessly.

When Nicholas breaks the kiss, his head falls back again, throat bared. “Come in me,” he begs, and the words nearly undo Euijoo instantly. “Come with me. Please, Juju—”

Euijoo shudders, teeth sinking into Nicholas’s shoulder. “Fuck, Nichol—” his voice breaks, and then it’s happening, white-hot, all-consuming. He spills inside the condom, his whole body trembling, every nerve lit up, his vision going hazy around the edges. Nicholas cries out with him, stroking himself faster, his body tightening around Euijoo before he finally unravels too, hot release spilling over his hand, his stomach, his chest.

Euijoo kisses his way up Nicholas’s throat, across his jaw, until their mouths find each other again, slow now, trembling and tender. He’s still buried inside Nicholas, still wrapped in him, still trembling from the aftershocks that ripple through both their bodies. The faint pulse of Nicholas tightening around him, even in the lazy rhythm of come-down, makes Euijoo shiver. It’s too much, too good, too unreal. He doesn’t know how to hold this kind of happiness, like it doesn’t belong to him, like if he blinks it might dissolve into the air.

Nicholas’s fingers slip into his hair, combing slowly, nails grazing against his scalp. “Hey,” he murmurs, breath fanning over Euijoo’s temple. “You okay?”

Euijoo nods too fast, words breaking out on his breath. “Yeah. Yeah, I just—” he can’t finish. 

And then the universe, in its cruelty, chooses that moment to flood the room with light again. The power hums back to life, the lamps flicker on, the TV mutters soundlessly in the corner, the fairy lights strung across the window blink awake. Euijoo blinks against it, disoriented, and then looks down. Nicholas is spread beneath him, flushed and shining, his hair sticking to his forehead in damp strands. His lips are swollen, red from kissing, and his pupils are still blown wide. And he’s smiling—an exhausted, wrecked, utterly beautiful smile that makes Euijoo’s chest cave in. With the lights back on, Euijoo can see everything too clearly now: where their bodies are still joined, slick and messy and perfect, how real this is. Not a dream, not some fragile fantasy he’s going to wake from alone in the dark.

The tears come fast, sliding hot down his cheeks. Nicholas’s thumb comes up to brush the wetness away, gentle, so unbearably tender it makes Euijoo cry harder. “Oh,” he says, and there’s no teasing in it, no bite. “Juju.”

Euijoo laughs, shaky and broken, trying to turn his face away. “Sorry,” he whispers, though he doesn’t even know what he’s apologizing for. For crying? For loving too much? For not saying it sooner? “I don’t know why—”

“Yes, you do,” Nicholas interrupts softly, cupping his jaw, guiding his gaze back. “You know exactly why.”

Euijoo looks at him, really looks, and the truth breaks free anyway. “Because I didn’t think I’d ever get this,” he says, voice cracking on the words. “Not with you. Not in a million years. And now it’s here, and it’s real, and I just—” he laughs again, helpless, wiping at his own eyes. “I don’t know what to do with it.”

Nicholas’s smile softens, becomes something smaller. His hand slides from Euijoo’s face to his chest, resting over his racing heart. “You don’t have to do anything with it,” he says. “Just stay here with me. That’s enough.”

Euijoo breathes out, shuddering, and leans down to kiss him again, slow and lingering. Nicholas kisses back, warm and steady, thumb still brushing his damp cheek. When Euijoo finally pulls back, he whispers, half in wonder, half in disbelief, “I feel so lucky I could die.”

Nicholas chuckles softly, pulling him down until their foreheads touch again. “Don’t you dare,” he says, teasing threaded through the tenderness this time. “I just got you.”

 

—

 

The sun is hanging heavy over the city, pressing its weight into every inch of exposed skin. The concrete gleams, the air hums with heat, and still Nicholas looks like he belongs to it—like the light has chosen him in particular, gilding his skin until it glows. Euijoo has learned to love summer for this reason alone: short sleeves, bare forearms, the kind of casual skin he never used to notice on anyone else. Nicholas stretches, laughs, reaches up to push his hair back, and Euijoo’s stomach does something unreasonable every single time.

They’d left the apartment in retreat from the swampy heat that clung to their walls, the fan rattling like a dying insect in the corner. The plan had been simple: walk to the river, catch the breeze, buy something cold to drink, and maybe pretend for a few hours that their little shoebox apartment wasn’t trying to suffocate them alive.

But every two blocks, Nicholas finds another excuse to duck inside somewhere—an old record shop with vinyl sleeves curling at the edges, a thrift store that smells like dust and fabric softener, a convenience store where he insists on comparing three different brands of peach soda before buying none of them. The air is heavy, the city loud, but Nicholas keeps moving forward as though the whole day belongs to him, and Euijoo is caught somewhere between admiration and annoyance, desire and the faint suspicion that he’s being toyed with. Nicholas knows he’s being followed. He has to. Maybe that’s the point.

Euijoo doesn’t complain, not really. He keeps following, keeps letting Nicholas tug him along from doorway to doorway. Because the truth is, even in the unbearable heat, even with sweat trickling down his back and the soles of his shoes sticking to the pavement, there is no place he’d rather be than two steps behind Nicholas, watching the sunlight make him gold.

Nicholas disappears between racks, and Euijoo trails behind, pretending to glance at sweaters, but really he’s just looking at Nicholas—at how he pulls each hanger toward himself, at how his shoulders move beneath his T-shirt. Euijoo imagines him in each piece. Every version is beautiful. Every version is a kind of threat. 

He doesn’t even realize they’ve drifted toward the glass display until Nicholas is already standing there, leaning over trays of rings. Every shop, no matter how cramped or overpriced, Nicholas stops at the jewelry. He always has. His fascination with rings borders on obsessive, and Euijoo doesn’t mind one bit. He likes the excuse it gives him to watch Nicholas’s hands, long-fingered and careful, the same hands that anchor him on subway rides and press into his skin at night.

Nicholas lifts one now, a silver band, narrow but sharp with light. “I like this one,” Euijoo says before he can stop himself.

Nicholas doesn’t look up, but there’s a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

And then he takes Euijoo’s hand. The warmth of it is immediate, and before Euijoo can process, Nicholas is sliding the ring onto his finger. Fourth finger, left hand. He stares down at his hand as though it doesn’t quite belong to him, as though this sudden flare of heat beneath his ribs isn’t entirely under his control. “It’s nice,” Euijoo manages, his voice betraying none of the absurd rush of emotion that threatens to spill out.

Nicholas hums thoughtfully, then plucks up another ring—a twin, silver and just as unassuming—and slides it onto his own finger. “Then this is the one?” he asks.

Euijoo breathes out a laugh, the kind that betrays both affection and exasperation. “Yeah,” he says, because of course it is.

Nicholas threads their fingers together, holding their hands up as if presenting evidence. The rings catch the dim shop light, twin glimmers. He smirks, then delivers it like a line rehearsed and perfected: “I do.”

Euijoo rolls his eyes, but his throat feels tight. “You’ve already done,” he says, steadying himself with humor. “Back when you married me in that courthouse.”

Nicholas grins at that. They stand there a little too long, two grown men in a dusty shop window with rings that probably cost less than a cab ride, and yet Euijoo can feel the weight of it. He doesn’t want to admit it, but the weight suits him. It suits them both.

Notes:

my strawpage!