Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

part three

Love is a growing up.

2003

21 & 23

“Call me, okay?” Jisung said to Minho before he left. He could still feel Minho’s mouth on his, could still electrocute himself on the buzz. “I’ll talk to you soon.” 

Minho nodded, his smile barely there, and Jisung felt like crawling into a hole and dying. 

“Minho,” he murmurs. 

“Of course we’ll talk.” 

And then he didn’t come back. He stayed in Seoul. That was the plan, sure, he was gonna stay for a few more days, he was gonna stay to spend some time with his friends, but he was supposed to come back. To Jisung. Home. 

Maybe it’s naive to think he’s home, though. Minho is. Obviously Minho is. Or, maybe he isn’t. Maybe he’s skin, maybe he’s bone. Jisung thinks, sometimes, that the way he loves Minho is laced into his very fabric. Detailed embroidery spelling out his name 

He doesn’t come home. He doesn’t call. Jisung doesn’t call either. It’s a great big mess, it’s a mess of a situation, worse than it was four and a half years ago, surely, because that was youthful stupidity, this was real. Well, the kiss on the roof was real, too, but it was real in a different way. 

It was real the tooth fairy’s real when you’re a little kid and it was real the way God is when you’re desperate and it was real the way a tentative first kiss shared between best friends is when you’re in love and too young to know how to say it. 

Achingly so. Pathetically so. 

The kiss the other day. The kiss. Open and hot, wet mouthed and honest. There was truth in it, there were words spilled in the silence, in the sounds of mouths wet and slick against mouths. 

It’s dumb and they’re dumb and Jisung’s a goddamn idiot for ever falling in the first place. 

He wouldn’t be in this situation otherwise, wouldn’t be here — pining — if they were normal best friends. If on the day they moved in and Mrs. Lee brought over her awkward, introverted son to befriend him, they did just that. Became friends. 

 Not this muddled chaos. Not this. 

He’s sad. Bitter. He’s angry.

Maybe it’s not his place to be sad. He’s not reaching out, either, and that’s their problem. They’re not good at communicating when it’s not easy. 

Jisung talked over it with Felix after three days of dead silence, and Felix looked at him, really studied him, and asked: 

“I’ve said this before, Jisung. You don’t think maybe he’s just as scared as you are?” 

Jisung paused. 

He hadn’t actually considered that. Not in a real way, not this tangibly. It’s never been a possibility to him, the thought of Minho being afraid. Not of loving him, not even specifically that, just Minho being afraid of something. Anything.

Nothing’s ever scared him, not the way everything scares Jisung. 

“What do you mean? Minho’s comfortable with himself.” 

Felix shrugged. 

“Maybe he’s not comfortable with the thought of ruining things between you two.” 

We already ruined them. Three days ago, four years ago. 

“He knows how I feel about him.” 

“Have you ever told him?” 

“I’ve made it pretty clear.” 

“Jisung,” Felix said. “Would you risk it all for pretty clear?” 

And Jisung paused again. Because no, he wouldn’t. 

Jisung isn’t Minho, though. Minho’s a flirt that doesn’t react well to being flirted with, he’s a sweetheart and gorgeous and everything Jisung’s always wanted and everything he’s never known how to allow himself to have. 

Two more days pass. Slowly. Very slowly. It’s been a week since the kiss, a week of them not talking, and Jisung can’t figure out how the hell they did this for so long, this silence. In those two days, Jisung yearns and Jisung longs. In those two days, Jisung stares out the window and walks around the neighborhood and hopes Minho will appear out of nowhere. 

Always hoping for Minho around the corner. 

At one point, he goes to the restaurant. Mrs. Lee gives him free dumplings. He can’t imagine how miserable he looks.

“When he comes home, I’ll have a word with him,” she says with a wink, and Jisung gets that it should feel comforting, that she’s teasing, that she’s fine with whatever their dynamic is, but all it does is make his stomach twist violently and bile crawl up his throat. 

He doesn’t like feeling seen. 

His eyes hurt against his hands from how hard he presses the heels of his palms against them to stop the tears. 

The anxious, awful tears. 

“Are you okay?” his mom asks on the sixth day. 

Jisung nods. 

She doesn’t push. Jisung can tell she wants to. 

The seventh day, Jisung’s staring out the window that leads to the front lawn. He was reading, but he got bored of it rather quickly, and decided staring at the birds on the windowsill was more entertaining. 

Minho’s car drives down the road. Parks in front of the stretch of grass between their houses. 

Jisung doesn’t think. Gets up and pulls the door open, ignoring his parents’ questioning of what he’s doing and where he’s going and what’s going on. He slams the door shut without answering, and decides talking to Minho is worth the talk he’ll receive from his father for ignoring them. 

Minho’s back. 

And staring at him as he bites his lip. 

Jisung’s eyes well up, tears brimming. He looks up at Minho when he gets so close enough to him that he has to tilt his neck. Minho smells like vanilla and soap. Jisung wants to lean in and press his nose to his neck, inhale until he’s dizzy with the scent of him. 

“Why aren’t you talking to me?” Jisung asks. Demands. 

“Jisung,” Minho says, looking around. A car rolls by slowly. “Not out here.” 

He tries to grab Jisung by the arm to take him inside, but Jisung pulls his arm back. 

“I just want to know what I keep doing wrong.” The words come out staccato between hiccups. Jisung wraps his arms around himself, seeking out the comfort of being held. 

Minho sighs, hand coming up to cup Jisung’s cheek and ends up patting his shoulder. Jisung can tell what it was supposed to be. Sees it in Minho’s face that he wants to hold him just as much as Jisung wants to be held by him. 

“Jisung-ah, you’ve never done anything wrong. Not one thing.” There are hot tears spilling down Jisung’s cheeks at Minho’s words, salty when they land on his tongue. His lip trembles. Minho pulls him in for a hug, seems to not be able to help himself, and Jisung shakes against him. “Jisung, please, let’s talk about this inside, our houses are right there.” 

Jisung nods, pulling away from him. He looks back at his house through the window, and finds his parents are both busy doing other things, neither one of them looking at him. 

He exhales sharply. 

“Okay. Are your parents home?” 

Minho shakes his head. “They should be at the restaurant.” 

“Okay,” Jisung repeats, and follows him inside. 

The house is empty, all the lights are off, and Jisung sighs in relief. 

As much as he was ready to chew Minho out for his behavior on the lawn, he knows it’d be a terrible idea. People talk. There are ears everywhere in their little neighborhood, someone would hear and say something to someone and that someone would say something to somebody else and that someone would tell him mother. 

“Did you see? The Han boy’s bent, he’s in love with that Lee kid.” 

He’s not sure he ever wants his parents finding out, but if they do, that’s not how he wants it to go. 

It should come from him. He should be the one to find the courage to say these words. 

It’s quiet for a moment. 

“Why aren’t you talking to me?” Jisung repeats, calmer this time. 

Minho’s nostrils flare. “You aren’t talking to me, either.” 

Jisung bites his cheek. “I  know. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, I just…I thought this time it’d be different. We kissed again.” 

“Yeah.” 

Minho smiles at him like he can’t help it, like the mention of the kiss is enough to make him blush down at the ground, his grin a small little thing that makes Jisung’s heart flutter. 

“I wasn’t expecting us to go back to ignoring each other again, is all. I thought this time you’d want me back.” He shrugs a little pathetically and stares at Minho, waiting and waiting for his response. 

It seems like hours pass as Minho finds his words. 

“You don’t want this,” he mutters, soft words that shatter around their feet. 

Jisung stands very still. 

“What?” he says with a frown. “Of course I do.” 

Minho shakes his head, eyes finally meeting Jisung’s. He looks so small, so scared, so sad. Jisung hates that he’s the reason why he looks like this. Jisung hates it so fucking bad. 

“You don’t. Once you realize what this is you won’t want it. You’re lucky you like women, hold onto that.” 

Jisung’s ears feel hot with anger. 

“Fuck you,” he says, but the words don’t spit or bite or slice. They’re heavy with emotion, weighed down with unspilled tears. “God, I hate you.” 

He doesn’t. 

Not one bit. 

“What?” 

Jisung laughs wetly. “Fuck you, Lee Minho. I’m in love with you. Do you get that? I’ve been in love with you since I was thirteen, I’m gonna love you forever, why won’t you let me.”

“Because you think this is wrong. You think this is wrong and I’m afraid of how much I love you. Jisung, you’re all I want, but it scares the shit out of me, because if we give this a shot and you decide you don’t want this, it’ll kill me.” 

Jisung stares at him, mouth slack. 

His hands itch to reach out and hold him, all he wants is to touch him, but he has to be sure. He has to be so sure. 

“You love me.” It comes out as a baffled statement more than a question, and Minho nods, tiny but sure, running a hand through his hair. 

“Fuck, of course I do. Of course I do. I’ve never wanted anything so badly in my entire life.” Minho looks at him a little helplessly, head tilted to the side. “But I’m scared, too. That I’ll push you away with what I feel for you, that you’re gonna realize this isn’t what you’re really looking for and you’ll leave for some—for some pretty girl and—” 

Jisung can’t listen to him any longer, and cuts him off with a kiss. 

Minho responds to it instantly, hands coming up to hold Jisung’s waist. He exhales into the kiss, and Jisung smiles. It’s closed mouth and gentle, something simple, just confirmation that this is good. Real. That this is something they're going for this time, this is something they’re finally letting themselves have. 

“I’m never gonna want anybody else. Not ever. It might scare me. It does scare me, but it’s a fear I want to deal with, because you’re my best friend. And I—I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” he says, pulling back to look Minho in the eyes as he speaks. 

The tips of his ears go bright pink, and Jisung doesn’t stop himself from reaching up to touch them, to feel their heat under his fingers. 

“You do? You want to spend the rest of your life with me? That’s—” he swallows. “That’s a long time.” 

Jisung nods. “I know. I do anyway. Best friends forever, right?” 

Minho kisses him at that, and Jisung grins. There’s something particularly sweet about this being his best friend, something indulgent and saccharine about the feeling.  

Minho grins at him, cocky and self assured and beautiful. 

Jisung kisses his chin and Minho laughs softly, hands on his waist coming up to cup his jaw. 

“So you wanna be my boyfriend, Jisungie?” he asks teasingly, and it’s clearly a joke, but Jisung can tell he really does mean it. Jisung can tell there’s something very honest lying beneath his words. 

Jisung doesn’t play it off as a joke. He nods. 

“Yeah,” he says, leaning in and pressing the words against his mouth. “I do.” 

He remembers their first kiss. Vividly. Remembers the fear and the way his tummy twisted and the way his heart beat right out of his chest, the flimsy bones of his ribcage snapping easily. But there are things that get lost in time, get hazy with memory, get trapped between one thought and the next and never quite make it out. 

Point is, Jisung remembers the fear a lot stronger than he remembers the giddiness. Jisung remembers the heartbreak a lot more clearly than he remembers the love they tried to pour into the kiss and couldn’t. 

He doesn’t want to forget a single detail of this, though. Almost wants to pause to write it all down, everything he’s feeling, everything he’s always felt, really. 

It’d be a bit silly. They’re…they’re probably going to have sex. Jisung hopes so, at least, and a part of him wants to run away from it, because as much as it’s all he’s always wanted, it’s also his biggest fear. What it means for him, for them, whether they’ll still be JisungandMinho after it’s all over. 

Maybe they won’t be. Maybe they’ll be different. 

Maybe different can be good. 

Minho’s trembling fingers find the hem of Jisung’s shirt and Jisung chuckles. 

“You’re shaking.” 

Minho nods. He doesn’t bother hiding, and it makes Jisung want to do the same. “Yeah, this is a big deal to me.” 

Jisung’s equally shaky hands come up to cup his face. “But you want it? You want me?” 

Minho nods. 

“So much,” he breathes out, words coming with a huff of laughter.

Jisung kisses him again. 

They don’t talk, they don’t say anything. There’s not much else to say. They know now, the words have been spoken, I love yous traded, and now they get to just have. Jisung’s hands get to touch him and peel his layers off of him, Jisung’s mouth gets to press flutter-quick kisses to his jaw, to his cheek, to the corner of his eye. Minho’s fingers get to dig into his hip bone bruisingly, get to pull him close and push him back and toss him onto the bed. 

Minho’s grin is hungry and soft and awed in equal measure. Jisung’s lying shirtless on his bed and his gaze is starved as he takes him in, but there’s something in his eyes Jisung knows is quiet wonder. 

He can’t believe they got here. 

Jisung can’t either. 

The midday sunlight fills the room. It’s so bright. Minho and his room’s blue walls and the pictures of them scattered on them are lit up by the warm sunshine. It’s strange. Everything’s always existed in the shadows, in darkness, at night, that Jisung almost doesn’t know how to look at him like this. 

Warmed by the sun and not cooled by the moon, vivid and detailed and easy to make out instead of a grey tinged blur he only knows well because he knows him. 

It’s hard. Almost. It’s almost hard to stare up at him as Minho kneels above him, one leg on either side of his, Minho’s chest rising and falling with his breathing, and Jisung would rather die than look away. 

He’s so beautiful, he thinks, and then remembers he can say it out loud, so he does. 

Minho’s smile is small. Soft. Blinding. 

He falls on top of Jisung. Literally falls. Just collapses on top of him, and Jisung laughs. 

“Get off me!” 

“Never.” 

Jisung turns his head and kisses the shell of Minho’s ear. He’s got plenty of skin Jisung hasn’t mapped out yet, and they’ve got plenty of time for him to grow familiar with it all. With the mole on Minho’s inner thigh and the scar on his ankle. He’s beautiful and perfect and his. 

Jisung’s. 

The laughter quickly turns to whining. There’s something a little pathetic about it that he can tell Minho drinks up, the look in his eyes all predatory and life ruining as he takes Jisung in. 

He kisses Jisung’s neck and Jisung writhes on the bed. It’s not even a hickey, no bruise blooms, but it tickles and it feels good and Jisung can’t remember the last time kissing felt like this. New and exciting and giddy. 

(Or, he can. It was August, 1998. He was sixteen and in love with this very same boy.) 

Minho bites him right along the collarbone, and Jisung squirms beneath him. Minho’s hips grind down helplessly, on their own accord and Jisung loves it. Loves it. 

Loves that this is good for him, too. All Jisung’s ever wanted was to be good for him. 

“Can I? Please, baby, can I?” Minho pleads, rubbing off on Jisung’s thigh like he can’t help it, desperate in a way Jisung thinks only he could ever understand. 

Jisung nods frantically, brushing against Minho’s dark hair. 

“Please,” Jisung says. “Please.” 

Minho smiles against him. Jisung feels it more than he sees it. 

He presses that smile into every corner of Jisung’s body. Presses that smile against the mole on Jisung’s cheek and against the one under his nipple. Presses it against his nipple and the edge of his armpit. Makes Jisung shiver. Trails that smile along his skin until he’s sat between Jisung’s thighs and pulling his pants and boxers off in a quick move. 

Jisung’s hard. Minho looks down at him, at his hard cock, and his eyes dilate like it’s the prettiest, sexiest thing he’s ever seen. 

“You’re so beautiful,” Minho mutters, almost too quiet for Jisung to catch. He doesn’t feel so beautiful. He feels awkward and exposed and naked and a little cold, if he’s being honest, starfished on Minho’s bed over the sheets. His skin is goose bumpy.  

He shakes his head. 

Minho nods, and nips at the sensitive skin of his inner thigh. “You are. Pretty little thing.” 

Jisung whines. Writhes. Throws an arm over his face and tries to hide from the sunlight. 

The sunlight that exposes everything, that strips a man bare, that strips a bare man. 

“Hey,” Minho says softly. “Look at me.” 

Jisung mumbles, “no.” 

“Darling, come on. I’ve wanted this for years, let me see you. Seeing you like this makes me feel good.” 

Jisung leans on his forearms to better look at him. “Yeah?” 

Minho kisses him at the base of his cock and nods. “Yeah.” 

Jisung nods back. “Okay.” 

“You won’t hide?” 

“I’ll try not to.” 

He knows it won’t be easy, especially not this first time, because it’s a vulnerability Jisung’s not used to. He’s—he knows how to finger himself. He’s tried. Got as close as pressing his first finger in down to the knuckle before having a panic attack. Thinking he was betraying his parents and God and Minho, too, in a lot of ways. 

So this? 

Minho eyeing his hole hungrily, Minho between his legs kissing his thighs like he’d happily die tomorrow if he just got to do this once? 

This is new. 

Minho pauses, suddenly, and looks up at Jisung. “Do you want to top?” 

Jisung swallows, and then, slowly, shakes his head.”

Minho’s grin is wicked. “You’re perfect. I’m gonna make you feel so good. Grab the lube in the bedside drawer, please.” 

Jisung looks at him a little owlishly and reaches over to grab it, handing it over with shaky hands. Minho doesn’t comment on the shakiness of his touch, just smiles and kisses the palm of his hand gently. 

When his finger traces the rim of Jisung’s hole, he tenses. 

“Do you want to stop?” 

“No! No, definitely not. It’s just new. Minho,” he says, and waits for Minho to look at him. “I want this. I want you. I mean it.” 

“I know you do—” 

“There’s a part of you that doubts it. I know you, and I need…I need you to know I mean it.” 

Minho grins, all happy, happy, happy. A kind of easy joy that’s hard to come by. 

“I love you.” 

“I love you, too. My big baby.”

“I’m gonna take this slow, okay? But you have to relax. It’ll feel good, I promise.” 

Jisung nods, exhaling shakily through his mouth. It’s uncomfortable. It’s weird. It doesn’t feel good at first, but Jisung trusts that it will eventually. Trusts that Minho will make it good for him. 

He opens him up slowly, so, so slowly. This is Jisung’s first time, and he finds it sweet how careful Minho’s being. This is their first time, and he can tell Minho’s wearing that as a weight on his shoulders that he can’t shake, even when Jisung tries to comfort him. 

It feels good, though. God, it does. He likes the stretch of Minho’s fingers and likes the way they feel in him and likes it a hell of a lot when they brush against his prostate, making him sob as he fists the sheets. 

Minho’s clearly getting a kick out of it, too, grinning all predatory and sexy and making Jisung blush. He thought he knew everything about his best friend, thought he knew every version of him, but he’s never seen this. The dark, hungry look on his face is brand new. 

The love in it, though, Jisung can recognize. Has known it for as long as he can remember. 

His cock is leaking steadily, strings of precome pooling on his belly. 

He’s a mess. 

“You’re a dream,” Minho says softly, words coming out breathy. “So messy. My messy, whiny baby,” he teases. 

“Shut up.” 

“It’s cute. I like it.” 

Minho laughs. He likes that. He likes the laughter. Minho’s laughter has always been the bright warm yellow of spring but there’s something especially hot about it right then. Something that makes Jisung giggle back. 

Jisung’s never laughed during sex before. Sex has never been easy before. 

Minho licks up Jisung’s cock, kissing the tip of it,sucking on it lightly, and a high pitched hnng catches on the back of Jisung’s throat. 

“Fuck, don’t.” 

“Hm? Don’t?” Minho asks, pausing, pulling his fingers out of Jisung, who whines once more. 

“I’ll come too fast.” 

Minho laughs at that, and Jisung’s not sure what about it is funny, but then he goes—

“Jisung, I’m gonna come the second my dick is inside of you.” 

And Jisung gets the joke. 

This is fun. This is—they’re best friends and they’re having fun and they’re gonna have sex and Jisung is so fucking excited. He’s giddy. This boy who has been everything, this man who will always be everything, his very favorite person, his very best friend. 

There’s no next level for them to take their friendship to. He already loves Minho more than he’s ever loved anything else, but there’s something hot and thrilling about sex. 

Minho’s had casual sex, Jisung knows. Knows he isn’t Minho’s first time, and Minho isn’t his, either, but there’s something very new about this, anyway. 

Tender and sweet, loving. New because it’s never been that before. Not for him. 

Not for Minho, either, if the reverence in his touch is anything to go by. 

Jisung giggles. 

“Oh my god, your dick is gonna be inside of me,” he says. “We’re gonna have sex.” 

“Jisung, I’m fingering you. We’re already having sex.” 

Jisung’s grin widens, heart shaped in its sincerity.  

“That’s awesome.” 

Minho laughs. Head-tossed-back laughs, eyes-squeezed-shut laughs. Loud and silly and open. Jisung’s so in love with him. 

He wiggles his ass in front of Minho’s face where he’s still sat in between his legs. “C’mon, get in me.”

Minho places a quick kiss to his thigh and shoves his pants down unceremoniously, foot getting caught on the waistband of his boxershorts, and he stumbles forward, catching himself on his hands as he falls on top of Jisung. He takes the opportunity to kiss him once. Kiss him twice. Kiss him three times. 

“We’re gonna be fifty by the time you fuck me.” 

“You’ve been waiting for this moment for years, what’s with the hurry now?” 

“I’ve been this impatient the whole time.” 

Minho snorts. “I believe it.” 

He rolls on a condom, lines himself up, and slides in slowly, pushing his cock in by the goddamn centimeter until he’s flush against Jisung. It’s the most overwhelming thing he’s ever felt, and he decides right then that he would like to feel it forever. 

“Hey,” Minho says once he bottoms out. “I love you.” 

Jisung throws an arm over his face to hide how affected he is, too embarrassed by how pink he gets. He wonders if he’ll respond to Minho’s love declarations this way forever, or if it’s just because this is a new thing. Part of Jisung can’t imagine ever getting used to hearing those words from his mouth. 

Minho pulls his arm away and rolls his hips in. Jisung bites his lip to hold back a moan, and Minho frowns, kissing him until his mouth drops open and he’s moaning into their kisses. 

“Better. Wanna hear you.” 

Jisung nods, eyes squeezed shut as Minho fucks into him. It feels blindingly good. Minho’s hot. Against him, inside him. 

He feels driven mad in the best sort of way. 

“Fuck, baby, you’re so perfect. It’s like you were made for me,” Minho says. 

Jisung, pliant where he lies, hums in assent. “I was.” 

“Hmm?” 

“Made for you. I was.” 

Minho’s movements stutter and he pauses, thrusts halting as he takes deep breaths. Jisung chuckles softly. 

“Possessive much?” 

Minho doesn’t bother denying it, nodding with his eyes squeezed shut. “Don’t want this to end too soon.” 

“It’s okay,” Jisung says sweetly, bringing Minho down to kiss him with a hand on his cheek. “We’ve got time to try again.” 

Minho nods and doesn’t say anything, presses whatever it is he feels into his touches on Jisung’s skin, nosing along his cheek as he presses kisses into his flushed cheeks. Minho doesn’t say anything, but Jisung hears it, because he feels it just as much. It’s a lot. This is all a lot. He looks forward to the day it isn’t so overwhelming, where loving him isn’t so scary. 

It’ll always be a big thing, but he doesn’t want to fear it. 

He doesn’t fear it right now. Is far too damn happy to fear anything. 

Minho fucks him harder, fucks him like he means it, fucks him good, and Jisung’s slurring nonsensically, a litany of punched out little uh, uh, uhs of pleases of Minhos. They’re breathing into each other’s mouths, too distracted by the actual sex to worry about kissing, but their lips press and their tongues slide and their breaths mingle. It tastes a bit like spit, a bit like sex, and a bit like every last dream he’s ever had. 

The second Minho wraps his hand around Jisung’s cock, he’s coming. He doesn’t even get a chance to jerk him off once before Jisung’s moaning loudly, come staining their chests, coating Minho’s fingers. 

Minho comes shortly after with a low groan. Jisung’s left feeling weirdly empty when he pulls out, and Minho stares at him — hole shiny with lube— with an awed expression. Like that’s when the realization finally hit. Looking at Jisung’s fucked out, pliant body, staring at hole hungrily, like it’s finally clicking that’s he’s the one who did that.

“So?” Minho asks as he cleans him up with a washcloth. Jisung’s lying underneath him, letting Minho touch him wherever he wants, however he wants. Minho kisses his spent cock once, and it twitches in a valiant effort to get hard again. 

“So?” Jisung asks when Minho doesn’t continue. They crawl under the covers, Minho pulling Jisung in against his chest. He uses two fingers to tilt Jisung’s chin up and kisses him lazily, open mouthed and wet and satisfied. There’s no hunger to it, this desperation finally sated. “Minho?” 

Minho shrugs a little sheepishly. “Just, you know. How was it? Your first time with a man. With me.” 

Jisung pauses. Thinks about it for a second. “I’m really happy,” is how he answers. 

Minho visibly swallows. 

“Yeah?” 

Jisung nods. 

“Yeah, Minho. I’ve wanted you forever.” 

Minho doesn’t look any less nervous. If anything, the anxiety in his gaze seems to worsen, and Jisung turns his head to place a kiss to his heart where it beats erratically beneath his chest. 

“And now that you have me?” he asks, anxious and small. Jisung almost wants to laugh at the mere idea that Jisung won’t want him, but he can see Minho’s genuinely anxious over this, can tell his boyfriend is genuinely worried that now that’s got him he’ll have changed his mind. Realized this isn’t what he wanted, and move on to something else.

Jisung kisses him instead of laughing. Lets their tongues meet in a way that has his chest beating rapidly. 

“Forever, Lee Minho,” he whispers as he pulls away. 

The kitchen is washed out and pale from the overhead light. His parents aren’t home, and his brother’s long since stopped visiting, so Jisung’s got the house to himself, this empty shell of a home that feels considerably warmer right then with Minho’s arms wrapped around his waist. 

There’s a mix of eggs and vegetables in a frying pan that Jisung’s attempting to turn into an omelet, but he keeps getting distracted with the peppered kisses Minho is leaving on his neck, with the hands that dip curiously under the waistband of his joggers, with the teeth grazing his shoulder, nipping lightly. 

“Minho,” he grumbles, trying to flip the omelet. “This is the only thing I can cook and you’re gonna make me burn it.” 

“Mm, I’ll just eat you instead.” 

Jisung groans, it’s so cheesy. So stupid. So silly. 

He’s in love and it’s not killed him yet, and he’s not sure what to do with that. He almost always figured that if he ever got this, if things ever worked out for him the way he so desperately craved for them to, he’d die the next day. 

He’d open his eyes and find himself buried in the dirt. He’d open his eyes and find himself rotting, the way only something this wrong knows how to rot, but it doesn’t feel wrong when Minho laughs softly against him and kisses a freckle Jisung knows is on the back of his neck. 

It doesn’t feel wrong at all. 

It’s not—it doesn’t feel clean, either. There’s still something a little impure about it, some scuff marks Jisung doesn’t know how to wipe away, but he thinks that’s okay, maybe. That it’s not the end of the world if he’s a little bruised and battered, a little rough around the edges. Minho seems to love him anyway, as bruised and battered and rough around the edges as he may be. 

The eggs are burning, but Minho’s hands where they rest below his naval are hotter, Minho’s mouth against his when Jisung finally turns around pure heat. 

There’s something blinding about this. There’s something terrifying about this.

Minho kisses him in a way that’s familiar. Not because it’s grown familiar over the past three days of doing this, but because it’s always been familiar. 

In 1998 it felt familiar. 

He thinks he’s known him since forever. Thinks this is just the natural, inevitable course of things, Jisung and Minho. In this kitchen, washed out by the pale overhead light, trading the slowest, softest of evening kisses. 

The sun has well and truly set, and the darkness of winter is heavy where it hangs outside the window, but in here? In this kitchen? It’s sweet and warm and light. 

Jisung doesn’t know what he does with light. Isn’t sure his hands know how to hold it, doesn’t think his fingers could figure out how to dig into it, but he wants to try. Because he likes the weight that isn’t on his shoulders. 

Likes, too, that he can see it isn’t on Minho’s either. 

They’ve barely left their houses since they kissed. Minho’s been sneaking into his house in the late or early hours, when the sky is pitch black and the moon hangs bright and stark white against its backdrop. 

“Do you want to take this to your bedroom?” Minho asks against his mouth. It’s been an easy, slow building thing, this between them. They had sex the first day. Three days ago. Jisung still feels him sometimes, when Minho cuddles him from behind and his erection bumps against Jisung’s ass in the morning, there’s a phantom feeling inside of him, hot and good. 

Jisung nods. 

He really likes having sex with him. 

He really likes having sex.

He was worried he wouldn’t. Having Minho in him is so very different from being inside a girl, something hard over something soft and wet, but in a way it’s still all very similar. It’s pleasure, and Jisung likes to please. 

Minho seems to like it too, at any rate. He tries to play it cool sometimes, but he’s just as horny for it, just as needy as Jisung. He can tell. He knows him better than anybody else ever will. 

And knows his body now, too. Jisung’s trying to map out everywhere he’s most sensitive. So far he’s discovered Minho’s nipples aren’t too responsive, but his thighs — God, his thighs — make him moan so prettily, and he likes having his ear lobe nibbled on. 

“We should eat. I’m hungry,” Jisung says, pouting. 

“Jisung,” Minho whispers, lips ghosting along the shell of his ear. Jisung smiles. “Baby. We can eat later.” 

Jisung’s seconds from caving when there’s a click in the lock.

He panics. 

Feels like he’s going to vomit. 

A chill washes over him, makes him freeze. Minho’s hands don’t move from his waist, and Jisung’s too frozen to push him away, but when the doorknob twists and the door starts to creak he steps away from him like he’s been burned. 

Minho’s face falls, but Jisung knows he understands. He has to understand. Has to understand that whoever’s coming in through that door can’t know. Not yet, not now. Maybe not ever. 

Jisung wishes they lived in a world where he could tell his parents. Where he could scream it from every rooftop. Wishes he existed in the body of the version of him that doesn’t fear God. There are infinite universes and infinite possibilities, he’s heard. In one of those, he doesn’t jump away from him. 

“Jisung, I’m your best friend. We spend a lot of time together, whoever’s coming through the door knows that,” Minho tries to say, but Jisung can’t listen. 

It’s like someone’s stuffed cotton in his ears. 

When he opens his mouth to say something, it feels like someone’s stuffed cotton in there, too. 

“Minho,” he says, wide eyed. Minho nods and steps back, seems to get it, even if he looks a little devastated. Jisung wants to be better for him, wants to be a better best friend. A better boyfriend. The kind that isn’t ashamed of him. 

Or, he isn’t. Isn’t ashamed of Minho, could never be. Not of Minho, good, sweet, kind Minho. Silly, cunning, sexy Minho. The guy who’s been featuring in all of his fantasies since seventh year. 

He’s ashamed of himself more than anything. Ashamed of what loving Minho means for him. 

And he’s still scared down to the bone.  

“Oh, hello Minho,” his mom says when she rounds the corner into the kitchen. There’s a burnt omelet in a frying pan and Jisung feels like it judges them. 

“Hi, Mrs. Han,” he says. “You caught me leaving, I was just about to go.” 

It’s not true, and Jisung wants to tell him to stay, but he doesn’t. 

His mom smiles. “Well, it was nice to see you, Minho. Tell your mother I said hello.” 

Minho’s smile is charming. “I will. Bye, Mrs. Han. See you later, Jisungie. Are we still on for tomorrow?” 

“Tomorrow?” 

Minho nods, smiling a little shy. “Yeah.” 

“We have plans?” 

“Oh, I mean, we don’t have to.” 

Jisung wants to kiss the anxious look off his face, but he doesn’t. “No, yeah, we have that pile of DVDs in your room to watch.” 

Minho smiles and exhales. “Cool, yeah. We’ll do that.” 

He leaves with a wave, and Jisung follows him to let him out the door. 

When he turns around, his mother’s right behind him. 

She hums, and says something so softly Jisung almost doesn’t catch it. 

“It’s nice that you’ve been spending more time with him lately.” 

It’s said so casually, so gently, that Jisung pauses. 

“It is?” 

She nods. 

“I know your father…he has his opinions about him, but Minho is a sweet boy.” 

His mother smiles and heads to  her room, and Jisung is left standing in the entrance, staring at nothing, a little dumbfounded and so stupidly hopeful. 

It feels like maybe his mom wouldn’t hate him. Like maybe she knows already, knows and doesn’t mind, but Jisung doesn’t know how he would ever talk to her about it, because if he’s misreading this and it makes her hate him, he’d never recover. 

His family is complicated, but he loves them. His mother is his mother, will be forever, and it’s a fact that hurts as much as it comforts. She’s known him his whole life, she’s loved him his whole life, and he can’t have that end. Can’t go twenty one years with her love only to be stripped of it suddenly, just because he had to go and fall in love with a man. 

It’s an impossible conversation to start. Maybe a harder one to end. 

It could go so badly. Jisung doesn’t know what he’d do with himself if it did. 

Late January is cold. Biting. Felix’s house is warm, though, and Jisung’s happy where he is, laying on his back on the floor, staring up at the one lone glow in the dark star left on the ceiling that Felix missed and then got too lazy to take down. 

The guys are all talking about something. Jeongin’s girl, he’s pretty sure. They’ve gotten serious. They’re all really happy for him. 

He wonders if they’ll be just as happy for him and Minho, or if the reality that he’s queer will sink in and they’ll be disgusted. It’s part of the reason why he hasn’t said anything. It’s been forty eight hours short of two weeks, twelve days of them together, and it’s been so good. So good. It’s been every daydream and every fantasy. Jisung’s horribly in love with him, so much it’s become a physical ache over the years, a punch he himself threw low in his own gut. 

He’s happy. 

He’s so happy. 

He wants nothing more than to share this happiness with his friends, but what if they don’t want to partake in it? If it becomes too much? 

That’d break him. This fragile acceptance he’s cautious of, what if it’s not his to keep? 

Jisung’s trying not to think about it. There are good things, very good things, upcoming good things. Minho’s parents are gonna be out this weekend visiting Minho’s aunt in Incheon, and he’s invited Jisung to spend the weekend. 

They’re going to have sex again, probably. Jisung’s gonna get to be loud and unashamed about it. 

There’s something about writhing on Minho’s sheets that Jisung hopes he never gets used to. The way the fabric rustles beneath him and the way Minho’s body presses him into the mattress, the tender way in which he says Jisung’s name as he grinds into him, the vowels and consonants and syllables round and sweet and perfect on his tongue. 

Jisung thinks his name belongs there. On Minho’s tongue. 

Jisung thinks he belongs there, on Minho’s tongue, at his fingertips, against his biting teeth and his hungry mouth. 

“Jisung? Are you okay?” Felix asks. He’s not sure how long he’s been zoning out for, but the guys are all looking at him with varying levels of worry. 

He clears his throat. His words are squeaky when he speaks. 

“I’m fine!” 

It’s too bright and too cheery. They’re all suspicious immediately. 

“Are you…?” Felix asks, and Jisung’s brows scrunch in confusion. 

“What?” 

“Sorry, are you daydreaming about Minho? Again?” 

Jisung blushes. “No.” 

“You so are.” 

“I’m not,” he insists. 

“When are you guys gonna get together? You know he’s in love with you, right?” Seungmin asks. 

Jisung takes a second too long to reply. 

The guys start talking, one overlapping the other, voices mixing in ways that make it impossible to tell who’s speaking. “Oh my god” and “What the fuck” and “Why didn’t you say anything?” 

“Are you guys together?” 

“Did you guys do it?” 

Jisung’s cheeks must color. Furiously so, must color in a way that makes it obvious what he’s done, all the ways he’s sinned lately, all the ways he barely cares. 

(He cares, of course he does. He’ll always care, there’s a God out there he hopes is real, because he’s spent an awful lot of time praying to Him and worshipping Him and believing in Him. There’s a God out there he knows is real, because there are bruises lying just below the hem of his sweater, because there’s the ghost of fingertips against him, because what is religion if not the boy you love loving you back, anyway?) 

The guys all cheer. Felix claps him on the shoulder. 

They continue to not care in ways that continue to surprise him. There’s a lack of minding that makes him warm from the inside out, this easiness with which they love him.  

Tears sting, prick at the corners of his eyes. His throat feels tight. His fingers twist in his lap. 

“Why do you always cry when we talk about this? Is everything okay, does Minho not treat you right?” Jeongin asks. 

“We can kill him if you want,” Seungmin offers with a shrug. 

Jisung shakes his head. “Minho’s—” he chuckles wetly and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. “Minho’s perfect. It’s not that.” 

“Then what is it?” 

“I thought I’d never get to have this. If you were queer you’d understand, I’ve lived in fear my entire life. I’ve lived in fear of your reactions, I’ve lived in fear of my parents’. Of Minho’s. I prepared myself for the worst. I prepared myself for loneliness, you know, and here I am and it’s just…it’s strange, is all. It’s strange and it makes me cry.” 

They all visibly soften. 

“I’m sorry you feared our reaction,” Hyunjin says. “It’s gotta be hard.” 

Jisung shrugs. “It’s not easy.” 

“You’re still the same guy we’ve always known.” 

He nods, shrugging again and staring down at the floor. A smile grows, smug and cocky and deserving of its bragging, in his opinion. “I’m just the guy you’ve always known with a boyfriend.” 

They groan, but they’re smiling. Wider than they were for Jeongin and his girlfriend, actually, but Jeongin doesn’t seem to mind, smiling just as widely as everybody else. 

He almost feels too hot under his sweater, the January chill doing nothing to keep the warmth from spreading under the knit. 

“You’re going to be so annoying about this, aren’t you?” Seungmin asks, visibly already preparing for the worst. 

“Have you seen Minho? You guys, I hit the fucking jackpot.” 

His friends laugh, and Jisung—

Jisung feels lighter than he’s felt in a long time. 

Later, everyone’s left and it’s just him and Felix washing dishes at two in the morning, his best friend bumps their shoulders together. 

“Yeah?” Jisung questions. 

“You seem happy.” 

He swallows. 

“I am happy.” 

“He makes you happy, then?” 

Jisung nods, a tiny thing, like admitting to this happiness too boldly, too loudly will make it run away. 

“Yeah, he does.” He chuckles, staring down at soapy hands. “It’s weird though, to be honest.” 

“What’s weird?” Felix asks, concerned. 

“There are things you don’t do with your friends, you know? You don’t, like. Kiss or, like…” 

“Have sex?” 

Jisung blushes. “Yeah, exactly. And now we’re doing those things, and it’s so nice, it really is, but somethings it’s a little bit awkward, too.” 

“Like?” 

“You want details about my sex life?” he asks, voice laced with confusion, eyebrows drawn together. 

Felix shrugs. 

“I mean, not details, but yeah. C’mon, Jisung, nobody’s home, and I’m not going to judge you for it.” 

“That’s because you haven’t heard me talk about it. You’ll view me differently.” 

Felix hums. “I don’t think so. Maybe I will, but I don’t think it’ll be in a bad way. I already know you like him.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“I’m sure.” 

Jisung nods. “Sure, yes. Fine. The first time was really great. Like, really great. I didn’t know sex could feel that way, because every time I had ever done it, it’s been with somebody I wasn’t actually into. Sure the girls were all lovely and beautiful, but I wanted him.” He sighs, a dreamy thing, and chuckles. “I have him now.” 

“Ugh, that’s disgusting.” When Jisung’s head snaps to him, wide eyed, Felix stutters. “No, Jisung, it’s just sweet. You guys are cute together.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah. Love is love, or whatever.” 

“Right.” 

“It’s not a bad thing,” Felix says, voice suddenly soft. “It’s never been a bad thing. I know it’s hard for you and that it scares you, I know that. And I can imagine why. But it’s also just…not a bad thing? I was gonna say it’s not a big deal, but it is, but it’s a big deal and a good thing.” 

“Stop being sweet to me, I’ll cry.” 

Felix laughs. “Have you ever been attracted to me? Sorry, I’ve been wanting to ask since you came out.” 

Jisung shakes his head. “It’s only ever been Minho. Ever. Girls or guys, it’s only ever been him.” 

Felix pouts. 

“Sorry,” Jisung tacks on. 

“But I’m hot, right?” 

Jisung snorts. “Yeah, Felix, you’re hot.” 

“Even to gay guys?” 

“Are you suddenly interested?” 

Felix shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so. You coming out did make me question, though.” 

Jisung’s eyes just about bug out of his skull. 

“Really?” 

Felix hands him a plate for him to put in the drying rack. 

“Yeah, I mean. I had never considered it. I think I could, though.” 

“Could what?” 

“Do the whole gay thing.” 

“Who would you do it with?” he asks, feeling a little bit like a twelve year old girl at a sleepover, feeling a little bit like twelve year old Jisung at a sleepover, Felix in the other bed asking him who the prettiest girl in their school was. 

It’s fun. He’s having fun. Coming out to his friends didn’t make a single one of them run away screaming, finally, finally, finally confessing to Minho didn’t ruin their friendship (well, it did, in a way; their friendship isn’t what it used to be and it never will be, but it’s so good, it’s better), and it’s surprisingly light, all of it. 

That’s something religion doesn’t prepare you for: all the years you spend being loved for something you thought would kill you. 

“Honestly? Minho’s friend Chan. He’s an attractive guy.” 

Jisung hums. “Minho’s hotter.” 

Felix groans. 

Every year come summer Jisung forgets how cold winter is. Every year come winter, Jisung is reminded of the chill in his bones and the clack of his teeth. It’s not all bad, though. Jisung loves the snow. 

The sun has set. Not too long ago, the sky isn’t pitch black yet, there are still the last remnants of a blue sky holding on desperately to the edges of the horizon. Jisung’s back is to Minho’s chest and they’re lying on the couch when he notices the first snowflake land on the window. 

“Minho,” he says excitedly. “Let’s go outside.” 

Minho’s eyes are dark and bright all at once, and he nods, but brings Jisung down to kiss him once before getting up. As addicted as Jisung might be to his kisses, to his touch, he thinks Minho might actually be worse off. His lips and his hands and his fingers are constantly searching for his, constantly reaching out to touch him. 

“Minho,” Jisung whines when he won’t stop kissing him. “I want to see the snow.” 

“It snowed two weeks ago,” Minho says, not caring in the slightest as he trails kiss after kiss down his neck. Jisung told him no marks where people can see, but it’s winter and he’s been wearing turtlenecks and scarves and it’s not like his parents pay attention to him, anyway. 

“Come on,” he complains, words high and whiny, cold finger tips moving under the hem of Minho’s sweater to press against his chest. Minho yelps at the contact. 

“Asshole.” 

Jisung grins and pulls away from him, Minho pouting at the loss of contact. 

“I hate you.” 

“Liar.” 

“No, I do. I was cuddling with my boyfriend on the couch and you’ve disturbed that.” 

“Well, too bad,” he says, blushing the way he always does whenever Minho refers to him as his boyfriend. The other day he called him lover and the sound that came out of him was a high pitched, pathetically needy sob. 

Jisung pulls on his shoes and waits by the door for Minho to follow suit. 

The cold air hits his cheeks first, and he shivers. Minho laughs at him, fond and teasing, and pokes the red apple of one. 

Minho is beautiful always, but there’s something about his beauty like this that makes Jisung’s breath catch. The snowflakes on his eyelashes and the red tip of his nose, the smile he smiles soft and tilted at Jisung when he grabs a ball of snow and threatens to toss it at him, too far gone to care about getting hit in the chest with ice. 

“You’re really beautiful,” Jisung says. Whispers. Minho hears it and smiles, reaching out to cup Jisung’s cheeks for a brief, split second, before it travels to his shoulder and his upper arm, until he’s brushing gloved fingers against his.  “Can I tell you something?” Jisung asks. 

Minho nods. 

“Yeah, of course.”

“I realized I loved you on a night just like this one,” he admits carefully. “I remember it so well, I saw you under the streetlight and it was like I was seeing you for the first time.” 

“I don’t remember that.” 

“It was a regular day to you. But to me…” 

Minho looks at him. “Really?” 

Jisung nods. 

“Yeah. It was years ago, but yeah. The way you looked…God, Minho. I had no name for what I had been feeling for years — years, by the way — but something about you in that moment, just. I loved you. It was as simple as that.” 

Minho’s breath is visible when he exhales. He’s smiling so wide his cheeks must hurt. 

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. 

“I want to kiss you right now. So bad.” 

Jisung wants to tell him he can. Wants to tell him no one’s looking, that nobody would even notice if they shared a kiss, because everybody else is busy with their own worries and their own fears, and they wouldn’t care if he kissed him. 

He takes a second too long. Minho smiles at him anyway.

“You can kiss me inside.” 

“One day we’ll be allowed to kiss on the sidewalk,” Minho says, and grabs his hand. Jisung lets him, even though he feels a little bit like he’s about to buzz out of his skin. 

The second they get through the door, the second the lock clicks, they’re shedding their coats and shedding their skin, stepping into one another, taking up space in each other’s chests, in each other’s hands, in each other’s mouths. 

Minho kisses him like he’s been waiting his whole life to do it. Every time. Every kiss is as desperate and tender, as heartbreaking and raw as the first one. Every kiss. Jisung gets driven a little mad over it; never in any of his wildest dreams did he figure he’d get this from him. Every time he allowed himself to daydream, Minho was always smooth, confident, not this. 

 A mess just as needy and desperate as Jisung. 

It’s sexy. Desire is sexy. Feeling desired makes him feel sexy. 

Their lips meet, their tongues slide, and it’s wet and open mouthed, the kind of kiss that leaves you breathless. They’re still standing in the entryway, and Jisung needs to get Minho to his bedroom. 

Needs to get him naked, needs to get him in him. 

“Upstairs, come on,” he murmurs. Begs, really. Minho nods, breath coming out in short bursts, and Jisung grins a little wickedly. When Minho doesn’t move, Jisung laughs. “Minho.” 

“Yeah, baby?” and kisses his neck, the hinge of his jaw, the soft skin just beneath his ear. Jisung gasps at the contact, hands coming up to hold onto Minho like he’ll lose his footing if he lets go. 

“I really like it when you call me that.” 

“Baby?” 

Jisung nods. “Yeah. Makes me feel like I’m yours.” 

Minho pulls back to look at him and grins, all toothy and wide. “You are.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Obviously.” 

“You should fuck me then.” 

“Yeah. Yeah, okay, I—that’s a good idea,” he says, flustered and pink cheeked. 

It’s nice. Minho isn’t nearly as collected as Jisung always assumed he would be, there’s a desperation in the way he touches him. Jisung finds and loses his religion every time Minho’s mouth connects to his. There’s something so sinful and so holy in it. Jisung feels bad for not loving God this much, and then decides, in a reckless, reckless move, that it doesn’t matter. 

Heaven can’t be better than this, anyway. This is mortal, this is human. Good in every way. 

God made him this way, a vessel for loving. A vessel for loving his friends, a vessel for loving his parents despite it all, a vessel for loving the man pushing his sweater up and off. 

That’s got to be a positive thing, the fact that he’s made for love. Made of love. So full of it he feels almost consumed by it. 

They make it to Minho’s room without falling down the stairs, and he gets pushed back onto the bed, bouncing when he hits the mattress. 

Minho starts kissing down his neck, down his bare chest, teeth grazing his nipples. 

Jisung’s whining and he’s—

He’s having so much fun. 

He giggles when Minho kisses his stomach, just above his belly button, and giggles again when he sinks his teeth into the soft skin there. 

“What’s so funny?” he asks, crawling back up Jisung’s body to kiss him square on the mouth. “Hm?” 

Jisung grinds up experimentally, and says, “We have sex now.” 

Minho snorts. 

“Yeah, Jisung. We’re together. People who are in relationships typically tend to do that.” 

“It has to be weird for you, too.” 

Minho considers it, shooting him a shy smile. “A little.” 

“I don’t want it to stop, though. Even if it is a little weird. Now that we’ve crossed that line, I don’t want to go back.” 

“No, never,” Minho says with a shake of his head. His hair falls into his eyes. He got a haircut before New Years, and Jisung really likes it. He looks so hot it makes Jisung a little stupid. 

“Never?”

Minho grins, and he’s so happy. Jisung’s known him since he was eight years old, he knows what Minho’s happiness looks like, he knows how to spot it, and this? This is pure, disbelieving joy. The kind that you worry is fleeting, the kind you worry can’t possibly be real. 

Jisung wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he understands. 

“Never ever.” 

It’s so sweet. Silly, even. It reminds him of when they promised they’d be best friends forever and ever and ever, and it makes him so giddy, he kisses Minho again, feels he has to kiss him again, this need that bubbles over like a pot of boiling water, and it’s just smile against smile, teeth clacking more than it is a kiss. 

“Can I tell you a secret?” Minho asks. 

“If you say you love me, I’ll groan. That’s not a secret anymore.” 

Minho laughs. The hot puff of breath lands on Jisung’s cheek. 

“That’s good, right? That it isn’t a secret anymore?” he asks a little nervously. Jisung hates that his fear makes Minho this nervous. He wishes he could just tell everybody, but he can’t. He can’t because that’s scary, and can’t because he doesn’t know how to get the words out. 

All he can do is nod and kiss him softly. A quick peck that Minho chases. 

“It’s the best.” 

“Good. I do love you. And it is what I was going to say.” 

“Yeah, I know. I love you, too. Obviously.” 

Minho chuckles. “Obviously.” 

Jisung grins at him and Minho grins back and then kisses him so slowly his toes curl in his fuzzy socks. 

“Are we gonna…?” Jisung asks, letting the silent question hang loudly in the air. 

“Do you want to?” 

Jisung nods. 

The air turns heavy, it all turns achy. Jisung feels his attraction to him in the pads of his fingers, and he thinks Minho feels his attraction to him on his tongue. It licks into his mouth and laves over the bruises he leaves on his chest. 

“Up,” Minho says, and Jisung lifts his hips so he can pull his pants off. His cock isn’t fully hard, but it’s almost there, and it only takes Minho staring at it hungrily and suckling the head for it to harden. “You taste so sweet.” 

Jisung laughs breathlessly. “There’s no way that’s true.” 

“Everything about you is sweet.” 

“You’re such a dork.” 

Minho grins and takes Jisung’s cock back in his mouth. 

“Minho, Minho. C’mon, want you in me.” 

Minho’s eyes squeeze shut. “Yeah, okay.” 

“Suck me off another time.” 

He snorts. “Sure thing, sweetheart.” 

Jisung loves that he has no name when he’s with him. Loves that it’s always baby and darling and sweetheart when they’re alone. 

That’s what he wants. To be his baby, his darling, his sweetheart. 

He’ll tell him this one day, he’s sure. How he loves being his, how he loves belonging to Minho more than he’s ever belonged to himself, but those are truths that aren’t ready to be spilled, so, instead, he moans when Minho presses a finger into him, and sobs when he adds another, and cries when those fingers crook and brush against his prostate. 

“Please, please, please,” he begs. 

Minho nods, and rolls a condom onto himself before pressing his cock against Jisung’s hole. He slides in slowly, so slowly. He takes his time pressing his cock into him until he’s buried. Jisung lies there and lets him, lets the time pass at the speed it desires to. 

They’re not in any rush. They’ve got all night to do this, all of tomorrow, too. Minho’s got the house to himself until Monday morning, and Jisung’s parents stopped asking questions about where he was going and who he was with longer ago than Jisung wants to think about. 

There’s no reason to go fast right now. He’ll pick up his speed, will get frantic, Jisung’s sure, but until then, he’s content to be teased. 

“You’re so big, feel so full.” 

“You’re so tight. Perfect, you have no idea how good you feel, baby.” 

Jisung groans when Minho pulls his cock out and thrusts back in, setting an easy pace that has both of their breaths hitching. 

“I love you,” Jisung whispers, like it’s a big damn secret, like it can’t escape this moment. Maybe it can’t, maybe the love he feels right now is different, maybe every time he says it it’s a new love, a new moment. Minho changes the angle when he drops his head against Jisung’s shoulder, and it makes him see fucking stars. “Hnng.” 

“I love your noises. Love them. Sound so fucking pretty, whining on my cock.” 

“Harder, faster, come on.” 

Eventually, they’ll build up more stamina. As it is, he’s about to come. He used to last a considerable amount longer when he would fuck girls, but he wasn’t being fucked by the love of his whole entire life, and he thinks that probably makes a difference. 

“Bossy.” 

“Horny.” 

Minho chuckles a little cruelly. “Is my baby about to come? We’ve barely started and you’re already this desperate. You’re so good for me.” 

“It’s not hard.” 

“Huh?” Minho asks, fucking into him faster. Jisung bites his lip to keep the whorish moan that threatens to escape, but Minho tsks and thumbs at his lower lip until Jisung’s sobbing loudly. “What’s not hard?” 

“Being good for you. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.” 

Minho groans, low and guttural. “You are. So, so good.” Jisung smiles up at him, tilted and fucked out. Minho nods down at his cock, and Jisung wraps a hand around himself. “Don’t come too soon, though.” 

“Okay,” he says, and twists a hand around his cock, tugging it in time with Minho’s thrusts. 

Minho grins. “My good boy.” 

It’s no use. He does his best, really, he does. Swears he does. He tries holding it back but my good boy…how the hell else was he supposed to react to that if not shooting ropes of come between their chests? 

Minho doesn’t get upset, he just laughs lightly, eyes squeezing shut in pleasure. Jisung squeezes around him, and lets Minho use his body to get off even though he’s sensitive because he wants to feel the way Minho’s thrusts get erratic and lose their rhythm, the way Minho loses his cool, the way he stills, and hear the low groan that sounds ripped straight from the back of his throat when he comes. 

“You’re so easy,” Minho teases, collapsing on the bed beside him. He likes the way he tastes when Jisung kisses him, the hints of his own precome still on his tongue. He tastes like sex. It's heady. 

“Shut up.” 

“One good boy and you’re coming like a virgin with no self control.” 

Jisung groans. “Shut up.” 

Minho raises his brows. “Make me.” 

Jisung groans again, because his boyfriend is an idiot, but he kisses him anyway. Of course he kisses him. 

“You’re too cute,” Minho says, planting a kiss on Jisung’s mouth between every word. 

Snow continues falling outside, but it’s so hot here, between them, in this room, that Jisung barely notices. Minho’s bedroom is warmly lit by the street lights outside and the lamp on his bedside table. They’re facing each other on the same pillow, body heat hot, warm from each other. 

“Do you want to go on a date?” Jisung asks, biting his lip anxiously. He places his palm flat on Minho’s chest, lets his thumb brush over the scar there. He doesn’t make eye contact with Minho, too scared he’ll say no, too scared he’ll have changed his mind about all this, about him. 

Minho hooks two fingers under his chin and lifts it so their mouths connect. He pulls back and nods, and they’re so close it makes their noses brush. 

“You want to spend more time with me? Aren’t you sick of me by now?” Minho teases like he already knows the answer. 

“Not sick of you,” he answers plainly. 

Minho’s smile spreads slowly. Jisung’s so close to him he’s almost cross eyed. Minho’s still the most beautiful person he’s ever seen, even bug eyed like this. 

“No?” 

“Nope,” Jisung repeats, and kisses Minho feather light. He opens his mouth to say something, but gets cut off by a yawn. 

“We should sleep,” Minho says, manhandling Jisung until they’re spooning. “Do you want to know an actual secret?” he asks, voice small like he doesn’t really want Jisung to know. 

“Mm?” 

“This scares me, too. I’m afraid to tell my mom. And I’m afraid that you’ll decide this isn’t worth it. I wouldn’t even blame you.” 

Jisung doesn’t twist in his arms even though he wants to, because he can tell Minho needs to not look at him to say this. He laces their fingers together instead and places their joint hands over his heart in a truly cheesy display of affection. 

“I hope you want me forever,” Minho whispers. His voice is thick with emotion, and Jisung’s breath catches in his throat. “Even though we’re both scared, I hope we make it work. That’s the secret. I know you know I love you. I’ve said that. But I—I love you to the point of overcoming fear.” 

“Me, too.” 

“Yeah.” 

They’re quiet for a moment, and Minho’s breathing is nearly even by the time Jisung speaks up again, voice appropriately quiet for the darkness, the silence of the night. “I hope we make it work, too. I wish it wasn’t such a risky thing to want.” 

Minho hums, arms tightening around Jisung. His lips press against the nape of Jisung’s neck, a quick pressure that makes him smile. “You’re worth the risk, Jisung-ah.”

1997

16 & 17 

It’s late September, and Jisung’s no longer a virgin. 

It’s strange, part of him wonders if he’s supposed to feel different, or if this second skin of guilt clings vice-like to everybody. He imagines it doesn’t, otherwise people wouldn’t talk about it so much. There wouldn’t be half a billion songs about sex if it wasn’t good. 

Jisung doesn’t feel good. Jisung feels weird. Jisung feels like a bad person. 

He likes her. He does, he swears, but Seoyun isn’t— 

It doesn’t matter what she isn’t. Who she isn’t. It matters that he feels terrible, feels like he shouldn’t have done that. She’s a nice girl, she’s a good person, she’s the kind of girl you bring home to your parents and to your grandparents and to family dinners. She’s not the kind of person you have sex with once and then have a crisis over. 

The last thing he wants is to make her feel bad. Guilty. He doesn’t want to break up with her now and then have her worry if it was her body or her touch or the way she kissed him. 

Especially when it was. It was all of that. Her body and her touch and the way she kissed him. 

It’s not like it was horrible. He liked it. She was soft and sweet and nervous and he was desperately trying not to think of somebody else as he touched her. 

He wants somebody else’s soft and somebody else’s sweet and somebody else’s nervousness. 

He wants Minho. 

And he feels awful. 

He’s sitting on the swings at the park near his house. It’s appropriately dark for how moody he’s feeling, dark rain clouds hanging heavy in the night sky. He should definitely go home soon, it’s definitely going to rain, but he doesn’t want to. Thinks maybe the rain would be a good way to wash her away. 

God, she’s his girlfriend. He’s supposed to be happy. 

Not this mix of awful, awful dread that’s lodged pathetically in his chest. 

He’s digging the toe of his All Stars in the dirt, swinging lamely back and forth when Minho appears, waving at him and smiling, clearly relieved at having found him. 

“Jisung-ah! I’ve been looking for you.” 

And Jisung, fuck, Jisung needs him to go away because he just had sex and it was with somebody else and he’s very emotionally unstable right now, and Minho isn’t going to kiss him the way he really, really shouldn’t want him to. 

But he can’t tell him to leave. Minho would get upset and he would ask why and Jisung’s too fragile right now to lie. 

Minho looks at him with the widest smile, and Jisung's heart aches. It’s so painful. Looking at him hurts and being near him hurts and it just…it’s all awful. He’s so beautiful, and he’s not his. 

He sits on the swing beside him, folding his hands in his lap as he moves slowly. 

“What’s got you like this?” Minho asks. 

“I had sex.” 

Minho pauses. Jisung hates the silence. Hates it. It’s oppressive and it’s awful and it suffocates him, and Minho’s expression is so carefully neutral. Jisung wants to shake him, Jisung wants to grab him by the shoulders and yell. 

Don’t you feel it? Don’t you want me, too?

(Later, much later, it’ll be 2003 and he’ll be holding him, and Jisung will look back and know. Minho was already his, his easy grin and his loud laugh and his touch, it was all Jisung’s. Later, he’ll think about this moment, about the pause, about the tension between them and recognize it for what it was. For what it’s always been.) 

“Oh,” Minho says. “Did you not like it?” 

Jisung shrugs. 

“It was fine. Felt good, I guess.” 

Minho snorts. “You guess?” 

Jisung’s neck flushes. He hopes it isn’t visible in the still darkness of night; Minho doesn’t comment on it, at any rate, so he figures it’s fine. How does he explain that, yes, the sex was fine, and, yes, it was pleasurable, but it wasn’t what he desperately — so fucking desperately — wanted. 

But he can’t say that. 

Obviously he can’t say that. 

Minho isn’t gay and Minho isn’t in love with him and Minho’s his best friend and it’d ruin everything if he knew. 

“I said it was okay.” 

Minho reaches across the distance between the two swings, the miles and miles of distance, and pokes him in the shoulder. “You don’t look okay. What’s the problem? Is it God? Are you worried about saving yourself for marriage? You know He won’t actually care about any of that, right? Like, I’m sure as long as you’re a good person, heaven will wait for you anyway.” 

And Jisung knows he means well. Knows the words are meant to be comforting, but it does nothing but make guilt settle heavy, heavy, heavy in the low pit of his stomach. 

Minho’s the reason he’s not getting into heaven. Minho’s so fucking good and he’s his best friend and it’s not his fault, it isn’t, but he’s still the reason Jisung’s going to hell. 

Because he’ll dream of him, dream of having sex with him, and wake up with sticky sheets. Or worse yet, he’ll dream of him, of living together, of adopting the three cats Minho’s always wanted, maybe wear rings on their fingers just so people know they’re taken, even if they can’t legally be each other’s. 

Those hurt worse. Those hurt so badly Jisung wakes up crying. 

“I doubt it. I don’t think heaven’s waiting for me.” 

Minho frowns. “You’re the best person I know, Jisungie. Why would you doubt it?” 

Jisung just…

He almost says it. 

He’s vulnerable. Sue him. He’s stripped bare right now, feels as naked as he was when he had sex, feels more naked than that, even, somehow. He’s sitting beside Minho and Minho’s looking at him, looking at him with something so bright and sweet in his eyes that Jisung almost lets the words vomit out. 

All he wants is to say because of you. Because I like you, and that’s not right even though it feels like it should be, because it’s so, so easy to love you, I can’t understand why it’s wrong. 

He comes close to saying it. 

And Minho? 

Minho keeps looking at him. Something that looks traitorously and dangerously like hope in his eyes, a glint, a gleam, a glance that Jisung can’t decipher, can’t understand, but that he’s too scared to ask about. 

“Jisung,” Minho says softly. 

“Minho, I—” 

Thunder cracks. 

Rain pours. 

It feels thematically appropriate, Jisung thinks. 

Minho sighs, wet hair sticking to his forehead. He looks stupidly beautiful even like this, even with his hair flat and dripping and his clothes sticking to his body awkwardly because he’s stupidly beautiful all of the time. 

“We should go home,” Minho says, and whatever Jisung was about to say dies on his tongue, the moment lost forever. 

Jisung nods. “Okay.” 

They walk home together in silence, slightly charged but not uncomfortable, never uncomfortable, and he feels eyes on the side of his head, but never catches Minho’s gaze when he turns to look at him. The walk home is short, but they take their time, even though they’re soaking wet, even though the chill is gonna give them both a cold. There’s something unspoken about wanting to drag it out. 

Jisung looks down at the space between them, and prays. 

I’m sorry, he starts. I’m sorry I love him, but if you could, please let me. Let me love him. It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. And I’m sorry for being this way, but all I want is to hold his hand. All I want is to hold his hand. 

2003 

21 & 23

Jisung is ignoring the fact that the other shoe has to drop at some point. 

He’s just so fucking happy. 

There’s no way he gets to keep this joy forever, so he does his best to bottle it up, to put it in a jar and save it for later, save it for when Minho realizes he’s not worth the effort and decides to break up with him. For when his fears and worries and shame get too big and Minho decides it’s too much to deal with, and things inevitably end. 

That’s for later. That’s for future Jisung to worry about. Current Jisung is lying on his back staring at Minho’s ceiling. Minho’s nowhere he can see, but he can hear his quiet humming coming from the bathroom, and it makes him smile. 

For right now, he’s loved. 

The door opens and Minho smiles at him. That wide, eager smile that makes Jisung’s breath catch in his chest. 

For right now, he gets to love in return. 

“Hi,” Minho says, standing at the edge of his bed. Jisung reaches out until he’s closing his fist around Minho’s sweater and pulling him down to kiss him. He hopes he never takes this feeling for granted, this sugar sweetness in his chest. 

Minho’s lips are soft against his. Minho smiles, and tilts Jisung’s head so he can kiss his cheek, but all he does is bite it. 

“Ow,” Jisung complains. 

“That didn’t hurt.” 

“How can you know that? You’re not me.” 

“Because I barely bit you. Because I’d never hurt you.” 

Jisung doesn’t mention that he already has. 

Minho looks sheepish like he knows. 

“Fine,” Jisung says with a smile. “Bite me again.” 

Minho laughs, moving in to nip at his cheek and his jaw and his neck. “Love you,” he mumbles, pressing the word into Jisung’s skin. Minho chuckles. “I love how that always makes your heart beat so fast.” 

“My heart isn’t beating that fast.” 

“Mm, no?” 

“No, you’re imagining things. I barely like you.” 

“Oh, is that so?” Minho leans up to look at him and grins, all cocky and annoying. 

“Yes. This is just for fun.” 

“Loving you is fun, I agree. Fun I think we should have forever.” 

“We’re too young for you to propose to me.” 

Minho kisses him all slow and disarming, and all of Jisung’s jokes, all of his teasing go flying out the open bedroom door. “When I propose to you, you’ll know.” 

Jisung’s heart manages to go faster, somehow. “You’re gonna propose to me?” 

Minho smiles softly, tilting his head. “Someday, yeah. That’s the plan, at least. Maybe we won’t be legally allowed to do it, but we can throw a party. We can wear rings and tell our friends. 

He’s close to crying. His heart's beating hummingbird quick. Minho laughs and kisses the skin right above it. “So fast.” 

Jisung rolls his eyes, blushing. “Whatever.” 

“It’s cute. Makes me happy to know I affect you this much. You make me feel the same way.” 

“Yeah?” 

Minho nods. “Yeah, Jisung. You’re mine.” 

It’s too sweet to be real, too sweet to be his. Minho kisses him despite Jisung’s morning breath. He tastes like toothpaste and doesn’t protest when Jisung’s tongue, surely stale from just waking up, swipes against his lazily. 

“Endless sleepovers with my best friend, what more could I want?” Minho says against his lips. “And I get to have sex with him. Sounds kind of like I won at life,” he pulls back just enough to look down at Jisung, who’s surely red, red, red. 

“You’re a dork.” 

“Yeah,” Minho agrees easily.

“My dork,” Jisung says, blushing furiously as he gets the words out. 

Minho laughs at him sweetly. “Do you think we’ll reach a point where you stop blushing every time you flirt with me?” 

“God, I hope so. It’s embarrassing!” 

“I hope not. I love how red you get. Cutest guy in the world and he’s all mine.” He borderline growls the last word, and it does things to Jisung, makes his head spin and cock twitch in the pajama pants he stole from Minho last night. “Oh, you like that?” 

Jisung shakes his head no, smiling. Teasing.

“You like being mine, Jisung-ah?” 

He could tease him, but he doesn’t want to. It’s so nice, being loved by him, and it’s so nice to love him back. Minho leans down to kiss his cheek, and squeezes his eyes shut against the sting of tears. 

Minho’s too busy kissing his neck to notice the way Jisung’s got fistfulls of blanket in his white knuckled grip, too overwhelmed by the conversation, by the ease in which Minho says he’ll love him forever. It’s a big thing to promise somebody. Jisung shouldn’t get his hopes up, but they’re high. 

“I do. Likes being yours. I do.” 

The tension in his voice must be audible, because Minho sits back and looks at him, poking his cheek the way he did when they were kids. “Why are you upset?” 

“I’m not.” 

“Is it too much?” Minho asks, shrinking in on himself. 

“No. God, no.” He pauses. “Maybe a little. It’s not bad, though. It’s just a little overwhelming.” 

“Yeah?” 

Jisung nods, biting his cheek. “But it’s not bad. Just a lot sometimes. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.” 

“I have some idea.” 

Jisung nods, eyes searching Minho’s. “I was thirteen. I’ve loved you my whole life.”

Minho looks at him and grins, wide and perfect, eyes going half-mooned from the force of his smile. He leans in and kisses him, and Jisung melts against him. 

“Hey,” Minho says. 

“Hi.” 

“Do you want to have sex?” Minho asks bluntly. 

Jisung snorts. “Sure.” 

Minho pulls back, frowning. “Sure?” 

Jisung giggles. “I’d love to have sex with you, my beautiful, wonderful boyfriend. Is that better? Are you happy now.” 

Minho laughs with his head tossed back, and nods. 

“That’s perfect, baby, thank you.” 

They’re too wrapped up in each other. Too wrapped up to notice. Jisung should’ve been paying attention, shouldn’t have let Minho leave the door open. It was a stupid, rookie mistake. They’ve only been together for a month, it’s still new between them, even if Minho seems to be sure, but he’s gonna get tired of his fear, tired of his apprehension. Jisung knows it. 

Minho’s biting on his bottom lip when someone gasps. 

They pull apart quickly. Jisung’s heart beats faster than it ever has. It’s thunderous in his chest, beats like a bet-on race horse. Bile creeps up his throat. He’s paralyzed. He doesn’t move. Maybe if he stays very, very still, Mrs. Lee won’t realize he’s there. 

Because she just saw them kissing. There’s no denying what they were doing. Jisung’s hand was cold against the warmth of Minho’s back, Minho’s mouth was burning hot against his skin. They were kissing with the intention of doing more. 

God, he’s so fucking screwed. 

He hasn’t truly, properly prayed in a while, but he sends a quick one up in case someone is listening, that this isn’t the last day he’s allowed to love on Minho. It’s a silly thing to ask God for, because he doesn’t approve of this, but he still prays. 

Prays that they’ll make it out of this alive. 

“Oh,” Minho says. Jisung swallows around the vomit crawling up his throat. He doesn’t want to throw up all over Minho’s sheets. They’re the same plaid ones he’s had since he upgraded to a bigger bed when he was fifteen. They’ve had a lot of sleepovers on this bed, he’d hate to ruin them. 

Tears start rolling over, and Jisung pushes Minho out of the way with shaky hands, moving out from underneath him. Minho’s arms snake around his waist. 

“No, let me go.” 

“Jisung, I’m not letting you go home like this,” Minho murmurs. 

“Let me go.” 

“No. Breathe, baby.” 

Jisung sobs harder. Mrs. Lee watches them. Jisung can’t decipher the look on her face, but he knows it scares him just having her there. Watching them. Watching Minho hold him, watching him break down over it. 

“Jisung, it’s okay,” Minho says. He hesitates. Jisung feels him hesitate, but after a pause, a heavy pause, he kisses his shoulder through the sweater. Jisung’s cheeks are stained wet with tears that won’t stop falling. He rubs his runny nose with the back of his hand and gets snot on his sweater sleeve. It’s gross and uncomfortable and he just wants to be swallowed whole by the earth and never be allowed out ever again. 

“Please,” he says, and hiccups. “Please don’t tell my parents.” 

Mrs. Lee smiles at him sympathetically. Maybe even a little sadly. “I won’t, Jisung, it’s okay.” 

“You won’t?” 

She shakes her head. 

“I’ve known since you boys were teenagers. This doesn’t come as a surprise.” 

Minho rubs slow circles on his back, hand coming up beneath his clothes so the contact is skin on skin.

“You have?” he asks his mother. 

“It’s okay. I don’t understand it, but I came to terms with it a long time ago. As much as I want grandchildren, I want you boys to be happy,” she says with a gentle laugh. “I won’t say anything, I won’t tell your father, or your parents, Jisung, but I’m sure it’d be more fine than you’d expect.” 

Jisung shakes his head. “I don’t think so. My dad, he, um. He’s always made it pretty clear how he feels about people like me.” 

“Well, some people are stuck in their ways.” 

“Yeah.” 

“I’ll leave you boys alone. Be careful, okay? There are a lot of people who won’t accept you. I don’t want to hear about either of you getting hurt.” 

“We’ll be more careful,” Jisung says, looking down at the ground. 

“Oh, Jisung,” she says sadly. “I’m sorry, sweet boy.” 

“It’s okay. It’s just how it is, I guess.” 

She looks so much like Minho when she nods, eyes solemn and expression carefully pieced together, trying to hide as much as she can so she doesn’t scare him away. Minho’s arm, snaked around his waist, pulls him in close. 

“I’m glad you know, now,” Minho says softly, hooking his chin over Jisung’s shoulder. He wants to shove him off because Mrs. Lee is watching them with an unreadable expression, but he would rather die than lose his one anchor point. 

Minho grounds him, even like this, even when their love is the problem. 

“I’m sad you didn’t tell me,” she says, walking over to run a hand through Minho’s hair. It’s morning messy and unkempt and perfect. He’s perfect. He’s the most perfect thing Jisung’s ever seen. “You, too, Jisung.” 

His throat is tight when he swallows. She runs a hand through his hair, too, and Jisung can’t stop the tears from spilling. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for. “Thank you.” 

“You don’t have to thank me,” Mrs. Lee says. 

“I do. Thank you for not running over to tell my parents. That’s…they can’t know.” 

“I won’t say anything, though I doubt it’d come as a surprise to them.” 

“That wouldn’t help much. I think confirming their suspicions that I’m bent to hell would be worse than if it came as a surprise.” 

“You’re a good kid, Jisung. They won’t stop loving you, not for this.” 

He nods, but he doesn’t believe her.”

“I’m going to make breakfast downstairs, come down when you’re ready, okay?” 

When she leaves, Minho’s hand comes up to cup his cheek, and he brings Jisung’s mouth down to meet his. It’s a wet kiss. Mostly from the tears streaming down Jisung’s cheeks, but it’s open mouthed and tender. Jisung wants to crawl under Minho’s tongue. Jisung wants to crawl under the white part of Minho’s fingernails that dig into his cheek, just light enough to keep him present and not hurt. 

Jisung wants to crawl into Minho, period, really. 

“I’m so sorry, I should’ve closed the door, I should’ve locked it. Jisung, I’m so sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” he says, but his voice is thick with the tears he manages to hold back. “You didn’t know she’d come up here. You didn’t even realize she was home.” 

“Still, I should’ve been more careful. I know how your parents are with this, I know how you are with this and—” 

“How I am?” 

Minho shrugs. Nods. “Afraid.” 

“I’m sorry,” Jisung says, looking down at the ground sadly. “I don’t mean to be.” 

“It’s okay, Jisung. It’s scary.” 

“You don’t seem afraid.” 

“I’ve been out for years and my parents have never said the kind of things your parents have.” 

“My parents are good people,” he says, suddenly defensive. Minho just nods and kisses his cheek. Jisung’s still on his lap, sitting a little uncomfortably, so he does his best to fold him in on himself until Minho’s holding him like a little ball against his chest. 

“I know. I like your parents, they are good people.” 

Jisung exhales. Sighs. 

“But you don’t like that I’m afraid of them.” 

“Yeah, I really don’t.” 

Jisung nods, because he’d feel the same if he were Minho. He isn’t, though. He isn’t Minho and he is scared shitless of what his parents will think of him when they inevitably find out. When he never brings home any girlfriends and never gives them any grandchildren and moves out with Minho and spends the rest of his life with his best friend. 

“Hey,” Minho says, lifting his head so he can slot their mouths together softly. “Do you want to go on that date with me? Today? Like, right now?” 

“Can we have breakfast first?” Jisung asks, giving him a small smile. Minho laughs and nods. 

“Whatever you want. Whatever you want forever, my love.” 

Jisung blushes. “Your love?” 

“All mine,” Minho says, and kisses the tip of his nose. 

“I need to update the photobooth picture I have of you,” Minho says when they step into the arcade. “I like our recent one. From your birthday, but I want one of us now that we’re together.” 

Jisung nods, and resists the urge to pull his hand away when Minho bumps their knuckles together. 

“Okay,” he says, a tiny little thing. His toes touch and he looks up at Minho from under his lashes, and laughs when Minho blushes. 

“You can’t look at me like that when I can’t kiss you,” Minho whispers, leaning in so his lips graze the shell of Jisung’s ear. He shivers. 

They’re on a date. This is a date. They’re on a date because they’re together, because Minho loves him back, and it should be fun. Jisung doesn’t get why he isn’t having fun, but Mrs. Lee walking in on them feels too recent, and as much as he wants to believe she isn’t going to tell his parents, a part of him still wants to run home and stand guard by the front door. 

It’s painting their date a sad shade of blue. He wishes it wouldn’t, hates that it does, Jisung wants to hold Minho’s hand and kiss him in the photobooth and have that be okay.

Minho bumps their shoulders together. 

“C’mon, I wanna destroy you at DDR.” 

Jisung nods, but his smile is still pinched. 

Minho truly does destroy him at Dance Dance Revolution, and Jisung doesn’t care, because he’s laughing so brightly it makes something loosen in his chest. 

“You’re staring at me.”

“You’re nice to look at,” Jisung tells him. 

“You’re not playing the game.” 

He’s sweaty from taking the game way too seriously, hair sticking to his forehead, smiling at Jisung all loopy and too happy for a space so open. People could look at them and see, could see it written so plainly on Minho’s face everything he feels for him. 

Jisung doesn’t know how he spent so long denying it. It’s so clear, it’s so damn obvious. He’s so into him it hurts to look at, he loves him so much it makes his chest ache. 

Jisung’s never been loved like this. 

He’ll never be loved like this again. 

It’s terrible to put an expiration date on everything. It sucks that he never believes anything good will ever last, but he can’t help but think Minho deserves more. Someone who’s proud of the fact that they love him. 

Jisung loves him.

More than anything. 

He’s proud of that. He’s proud to love someone so good and kind. 

He's not proud of what it makes him. 

“Hey,” Minho says, looking down at his mouth. “We should take those photos.” 

Jisung lets a grin spread slowly. Shyly. It barely spreads, really, but it’s enough for Minho to notice. “Okay.” 

They climb in together, squeezing side by side on the bench. Jisung huffs and stands up before plopping himself down on Minho’s lap. He looks back to check if the curtain is closed, finds there are no gaps, and settles. 

Minho is grinning up at him, starry-eyed. 

Jisung presses the photo button before he can move, capturing the look in Minho’s eyes. 

Minho blinks against the unexpected flash of light, and Jisung laughs. The second photo is exactly that, a silly expression on Minho and laughter you can hear even through the photo. 

Strong fingers cup his cheek, a warm, slightly sweaty palm rests against his skin. Jisung exhales a little shakily, and nods. The camera captures them looking at each other, and they barely notice, too busy leaning in and meeting each other in the middle in a soft kiss. A kiss so tender it makes knots tie and untie and retie themselves in his belly. 

The light flashes. Jisung knows they should pull away, knows someone might see the developed photostrip outside, but he can’t seem to stop kissing him. 

He wonders if it’ll ever stop feeling this good. 

The kisses aren’t hurried or desperate, they’re just kisses. A gentle press of lips on lips that turns into a gentle press of smile on smile. 

“We should grab the photo,” Minho says. 

Jisung agrees. Obviously. The final picture of the photobooth strip is hot on his mind, but he doesn’t want to pull away from him. There’s a thrill about kissing him here. In public. This curtain is the only thing separating them from the people in the arcade. Jisung feels brave. 

So he kisses him one more time, doesn’t let the bravery go to waste, and laughs when Minho laughs. 

“You’re so cute.” 

“I’m manly,” Jisung argues jokingly. “Like the action heroes in American movies.” 

Minho has the audacity to toss his head back to laugh at that. 

“An American action hero and he falls apart if I just touch him a little…” Minho says, hand snaking just under the dip waistband of his jeans, nails grazing his skin lightly and making Jisung whine softly. Minho chuckles. 

“Rude. You can’t do that when you can’t do anything about it, asshole,” Jisung complains, and gets up off his lap to reach around the curtain and grab the photostrip. There’s no one in line, but Jisung doesn’t want to risk someone wanting to take a photo and pulling back the curtain, so he gets off Minho’s lap and drags him out of the photobooth before handing him the strip of pictures. 

“Oh,” Minho says, looking down at the photo of them kissing. They look…

Fuck, they look so good together. Minho’s expression reminds him of the way he looked on Jisung’s birthday. The awe and the wonder, the way he’s so quietly pleased about it. 

“Which one do you want?” 

“You can keep it.” 

Jisung frowns. “You don’t want to keep it?” 

“I do. But I want you to have it.” 

“Why?” 

“So you can look at it whenever you want.” He looks around before leaning in and whispering in Jisung’s ear. “And remember how much I like you.” 

“Like me?” 

“Love you.”

Jisung smiles, and tries to refrain from looking around. In his periphery, he can see a girl leaning her head on a guy’s shoulder, and it makes him hurt a little. He wants to be free, he wants to be open. It’s so shitty. 

“Me, too.” 

Minho grabs his hand. “C’mon, I have you all afternoon, right?” 

“Yeah.” 

“You don’t have any plans with Felix? Or the guys?” 

“We’re studying tomorrow, but I’m yours today.” 

“Just today?” 

Jisung bites his lip and nods jokingly. “And then never again.” 

Minho laughs. “Okay, let’s make the most out of today, then. There’s that new café near your college. Have you checked it out?” 

“Not yet. I’ve heard good things about it, though.” 

“We should go there.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“What?” 

“Won’t it be, y’know. Obvious that we’re on a date?” 

Minho frowns for a split second before his expression softens. “Jisung, no one’s looking at us and thinking that. Maybe they’re looking at me, I’m the one who left for the big city and never came back, who’s never had a proper girlfriend, who spent four years away at college and never brought anybody home. They’re not looking at you, Jisung. You’re too good.” 

“You’re good, too,” Jisung says, a little bitterly. “Just because you’re gay—” 

Minho chuckles softly. 

“Exactly. That applies to you, too.” 

Jisung deflates, the anger leaving his body. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” 

He wants to apologize for how he’s been all day. He was so fine when he woke up that morning, but then they had to get caught by Minho’s mom, and Mrs. Lee had to go and be perfectly nice about it, and it’s shaken something in him, it’s turned his chest into a can of soda ready to burst the second he flips the tab. 

It’s unfair to Minho. 

He doesn’t know if Minho knows that, but it’s unfair to him. 

At some point he’ll realize and he won’t want anything to do with Jisung, and Jisung won’t be able to blame him. He’ll go back to staring out his bedroom window in the hopes he’ll get a glance of him, of the boy who loved him once, who’ll close the curtains when he catches Jisung looking. 

And it’ll hurt. 

Worse than it ever has, and he won’t even get to be upset. 

Not at Minho. 

“Sweetheart,” Minho says when they enter the car. “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing. I’m just in my head about your mom. And about coming out, and how I’ll never be able to give that to you.” How I’ll always belong not only to you, but to my fear, too. 

Minho looks around the parking lot and finds it deserted, so he grabs Jisung’s face in his hands and pulls him in to kiss his forehead, his cheek, his nose. “I don’t care.” 

“You will.” 

“I won’t. I’ve wanted you since I was a teenager. You’re the only kiss that’s ever mattered, I don’t care. You’re out to your friends. That’s more than enough. That can be family, too.”

Jisung looks at him with wet eyes, his round cheeks squished. Minho’s smile is tiny when he looks at Jisung’s face, and he leans in to kiss his pinched lips, nothing more than a small peck. 

“Okay,” he says, and the words come out muffled. 

Minho laughs brightly, kindly, sweetly. 

Jisung loves him a painful, pathetic amount. 

“I don’t need you to come out to your parents. I don’t. I don’t need you to put yourself at risk like that if you don’t want to. Too many people think it’s not right, I don’t blame you for being afraid, but this? Between us? It’s safe.” 

Minho swallows, eyes getting red rimmed, and Jisung feels how much he’s loved in that moment. All the hurt he feels, Minho feels as well. 

Not because he’s going through the same thing, but because watching Jisung hurt hurts him, and hurting him is the last thing Jisung ever wants to do. 

“I mean it when I say I love you. I mean it, Jisung-ah. I don’t take that lightly.” 

“I know you don’t.” 

“I’ve never said it before.” 

Jisung’s eyes snap to his and he searches Minho’s face. Finds no trace of him lying. 

“Really?” 

“Who else would I say it to?” 

“You’ve had boyfriends.” 

“Yeah, why do you think they’d break up with me?” he says with a smile, eyes crinkled and amused. 

“Really?” 

“The first boyfriend I had was right after I moved to Seoul, we were together for six months. Stop looking at me like that, you have no reason to be jealous. He told me he loved me and I winced. I winced, Jisung,” he says with a soft laugh. “He got really offended, yelled at me for stringing him along for so long when I was in love with somebody else.”

“And were you?” 

“Hm?” 

“In love with somebody else?” 

“What do you think, silly?” 

“Just want to hear you say it again.” 

Minho seems so delighted when he giggles, leaning in to press kiss after kiss to Jisung’s face, mumbling love you, love you, love you after every one. 

Jisung laughs, bright and honest. 

“Okay, take me to the café now.” 

“You think you can boss me around?” 

“I think you’re whipped for me, yeah.” 

Minho grumbles something that sounds like maybe and twists the key, pulling out of the parking spot with a hand on the passenger seat. 

The café is a little ways out, and they drive in silence the whole way there, the radio turned off, the only sound being Jisung’s heart beating rapidly in his throat as Minho trails his blunt nails along the inner seam of Jisung’s pants. 

The touch tickles. Arouses him. Every touch from him makes desire burn so brightly in his belly. 

“Do you want to come back home with me later?” Minho asks, looking over at Jisung on a red light. “We don’t have to do anything.” 

“As if we won’t.” 

“You’re so horny.” 

“Like you’re not.” 

“Maybe, but have you seen you? So sexy.”

“I’m in a hoodie and jeans so baggy you can’t even tell I have legs.” 

“And you look sexy.” 

The light turns green and Minho squeezes his thigh. 

He’s attracted to him. Minho. Minho’s attracted to Jisung in a way Jisung doesn’t understand, and it’s not that he thinks he’s unattractive, he can appreciate the way he looks in the mirror, but he’s not Minho. 

Minho who dances, whose body moves fluidly, who has definition to his body from the workouts. Minho with his sharp features and his soft ones, with his fuller upper lip, with his slightly crooked teeth and the world’s most perfect smile. 

He can’t understand how someone like him could look at someone like Jisung and want him so carnally the way Minho seems to want him. 

“I’d be down to go back with you,” he says after a beat. “And I’d be down to have sex with the door locked if your mother isn’t home.” 

Minho laughs, turning into the parking lot. 

“Okay, yeah. That sounds good.” 

“I’d like to try sucking your dick. We’ve only ever done it.” 

“Done it,” Minho teases. “We’ve fucked.” 

“Yes. Done it. Fucked. Had sex, whatever. I want to try it.” 

“Cute. Your gag reflex is terrible, though.” 

“Like you’re not gonna find it hot when I gag on your cock.” 

Minho’s neck flushes, the tips of his ears going equally red. “God, that visual…are you sure you want to go to this café?” 

“You said you’d take me out on a date. I want a date,” he says with a pout. Minho looks down at his mouth and kisses him. Jisung’s realized over these past weeks that Minho really likes kissing. He’s always finding a moment to press their lips together, and Jisung can’t say he’s not just as addicted to it. 

“One day I’ll be able to do that whenever and wherever I want,” Minho says with a sure smile. Jisung doesn’t know how to tell him he’s not sure he’ll ever be ready for that, but he knows that he’d try. 

He’d try to unlearn it all. He will try to unlearn it all, because Minho is it for him. And he deserves to be it for someone who wants to love him openly. 

Jisung will figure out how to do that. 

Will figure out how to love him. 

If not for Minho, then for himself. 

“Fuck, fuck, Jisung,” Minho mutters. He’s quiet, careful, because his parents could come home any second, but there are still moans that spill out without his full permission a little too loudly. 

Jisung’s knees ache a little from the tile, but he’s found he rather likes the ache of his jaw being open and the weight of Minho’s cock on his tongue. It’s his first time ever doing it, three days after he promised Minho he would, because when they got Minho’s mom was sitting on the couch watching a romance drama on the TV. Minho smiled at him softly and awkwardly said it’s probably best if he goes home. 

He walked him to the door and made sure his mother wasn’t paying attention before kissing him on the corner of his mouth. He was aiming for his cheek, but Jisung turned his head last minute, trying to connect their mouths and missing by a hair. 

“I’ll see you later.” 

“Of course.” 

“Good,” Minho said with a smile. 

He ignored his father’s heavy gaze when he stepped inside, too happy to really give a shit about his opinion in that moment. 

It lasted about half a second before he was cowering, shrinking in on himself when his father asked about Minho. 

“You’ve been spending an awful lot of time with him.” 

“Yeah. He’s my best friend. Of course I’m going to spend time with him,” he shot back, a little snappier than he should’ve, a little more defensive than would be innocent. 

His father hummed. 

None of that matters now, though. Not his father’s casual homophobia and his worries, not when he’s going a little stupid from Minho’s precome on his tongue, the salt of it making his eyelashes flutter. 

“So good for me,” Minho whispers, and something about the silence of his words is so dizzying, so hot. There’s something illicit about this, something that makes it feel dirty in a good way. He doesn’t feel unclean, he feels marked. 

It feels like belonging the way he’s supposed to belong to religion. The way religion expects him to belong to it, to God, to society in a way he never, ever will. 

He likes women, he enjoyed eating pussy the few times he ever did it, but Minho’s cock on his tongue is headier than any of that. 

It’s slowly becoming his favorite thing. 

“God, shit,” Minho says when Jisung takes him in a bit further, doing his best to use his tongue. He’s not very good at it, but he’s eager, and he’s willing to learn. He moans when Minho’s fingers slide through his hair, guiding his head up and down his dick shallowly, because Jisung’s gag reflex really is sensitive. 

Minho doesn’t seem to mind, though. 

Jisung’s throat flutters around the head of his cock and he pulls all the way off, a string of spit connecting them, and it’s so erotic. So hungry. There’s sex in his touch in ways Jisung’s never felt. 

Something about it is so carnal. Jisung is using his mouth and his tongue and his hand where he can’t reach, and Minho is using Jisung’s mouth and Jisung’s touch and Jisung’s hand, using him to get off, and Jisung’s letting him. 

It’s so gentle, too, his touch. He doesn’t push his head down and doesn’t force him to take more than he can handle. Jisung knows some men like it rough, some men like to facefuck, but Minho seems content to use his mouth slowly, almost lazily, like they’ve got all the time in the world. 

Jisung is so hard it hurts. His arousal pools deep in his belly, and doesn’t let up. He doesn’t touch himself because he’s too focused on Minho’s pleasure. 

It’s so good. 

It’s so good. 

“Is it too much?” Minho asks, looking down at him. 

Jisung shakes his head with a cough. “It’s perfect.” He pauses and blushes, looking down at the ground. “I really like it.” 

“Yeah?” Minho grins, and it’s predatory in a way it hasn’t been before. He’s always fucked into him slowly, carefully. It’s been fast, too, but most of all it’s been tender. And, yeah, having Minho’s cock in his mouth is tender in its own right, but there’s an undercurrent of heat that he hasn’t felt yet. 

He’s on his knees. 

Maybe that’s it. 

His hips are hitching up uselessly, searching for friction he’s not finding, and it’s depraved. He’s submitting to Minho in a way that’s new. 

Jisung is his. 

Fully, fully his. 

Like this, it feels almost more obvious than when he’s being fucked, somehow. Like this, all the pleasure is Minho’s, he’s Minho’s to use, and it’s so hot it makes his head spin. 

“You like sucking cock, baby?” Minho asks, and Jisung whines, nodding. “You’re doing so good.” 

“It can’t be that good.” 

Minho shakes his head. “Stop it. It’s never been better. All of the men in the world, not one of them could ever compete with you.” 

Jisung smiles, visibly pleased, and takes the head of Minho’s cock back in his mouth. He sucks on it, swirling his tongue around, pulling back to lick up the underside, tongue wide and flat. His hand jerks him slowly, fist tight around him, because he’s a little afraid he’d be shaking if he pulled away. 

It’s just shy of too much. It’s the perfect amount of it. 

Just enough to make Jisung feel like he’s floating. 

Minho’s hand tightens in his hair, and he hums around his cock. Minho moans, hips hitching forward on their own accord, so Jisung moans again, wanton and whorish, trying to draw that reaction out of him again. 

His cock hits the back of his throat and he does his very best to breathe through his nose, because he wants this to be good for Minho. Wants to taste Minho’s come, wants to swallow it. 

“That’s so fucking hot,” Minho mutters when Jisung chokes again. “You’re so perfect, my perfect boy.” 

Jisung’s eyelids flutter shut, and he brings a hand down to press against his aching cock, trying to relieve some of the pressure. 

“Don’t touch yourself yet, I wanna get you off. I want you to come from my touch.” 

He exhales shakily from his nose, bobbing his head as far as he can go. He picks up the speed of his hands when Minho’s hips start hitching up erratically. Jisung can tell he’s about to come, so he tries to speed it up, eager to taste him. 

Eager to please him. 

“Jisung,” he moans. Jisung likes the way he says his name when he’s so blind with pleasure that he’s barely speaking, the word breathy and moaned. “I’m gonna come, baby, pull off.” 

Jisung does, but only to tell him he wants to swallow everything. 

“If you choke, that’s not my fault,” Minho warns, voice clipped and strained as he tosses his head back. “Gonna come, baby, gonna—” is the last warning he gets before Minho is shooting down his throat. He does choke, but he does his best to swallow everything down around his spluttering anyway. 

“Taste okay?” Minho asks with a lazy smile.

All Jisung can do is nod jerkily, eyes squeezing shut when he presses a hand against himself again, rutting up into his own touch. He’d like for Minho to get hard again so he can suck his dick again, but he also needs to come or he might explode. 

“You wanna come?” Minho asks, looking down at him. His softening cock is in front of Jisung’s face, and that’s hot, too. There’s sex there, he thinks, in the afterglow. In the postness of it all. He thinks seeing Minho like this is almost more intimate than being fucked by him, almost more intimate that sucking him off. 

There’s a vulnerability to it. Being naked and soft and sated. 

Not Jisung, though. Jisung needs to get off, Jisung needs his release. 

So he nods and tucks his head against Minho’s shoulder when he pulls him up, his knees buzzing from where he’d been kneeling on the hard floor. Next time, he’s grabbing a pillow. 

“Touch me?” he pleads, biting the juncture where Minho’s neck dips into his shoulder. “Please, please, baby, touch me.” 

“I’ve got you,” Minho says, shoving Jisung’s pants down until they’re around his mid thigh. He wraps a hand around Jisung, who sobs at the touch, and kisses him everywhere he can reach. 

He babbles nonsensically, pleases and thank yous and Minhos spilling out as he fucks into Minho’s tight fist. It isn’t long before he’s coming. It lands on Minho’s hips, gets his hand all messy. Jisung’s really into the sight, it feels like he’s marking him in return. 

“Thanks,” he says, his breathing heavy. 

Minho snorts. “You don’t have to thank me for getting you off.” 

“But it was good.” 

Minho smiles and hums, bringing his hand up to his mouth and licking his fingers clean. Jisung’s knees go weak “Next time I’ll return the favor. I like giving head.” 

“Yeah, okay,” Jisung says, grinning at him all heart shaped and loopy. “I’m game.” 

“Oh, you’re game?” 

“Mhm, I wouldn’t mind having that pretty mouth on me.” 

“You think my mouth is pretty?” 

“I think all of you is pretty.” 

Minho blushes. He gets so flustered whenever Jisung manages to flirt with him; Jisung thinks it’s the sweetest thing in the world. 

“We should clean up.” 

“Shower?” Minho suggests. “Innocent shower, I swear.” 

“Will you wash my hair?” 

Minho nods, pushing Jisung’s pants all the way down. He steps out of them, and when Minho stands back up, he kisses him. Minho smiles at him softly, and when he speaks, his words are just as gentle. “I’ll do whatever you want.” 

The campus library is empty this early in the morning, and Jisung is grateful for it. He hates studying when there are clicking pens and quiet chatter filling the space. He’s sitting across from Felix, who’s scribbling something into his notebook, reading from a book that’s going to fall on his Korean economic history midterm. 

It’s comfortably quiet between them. 

Jisung is staring at a textbook explaining teaching methods for different ages. It’s a general teaching course, one he shares with other education majors, and it’s his biggest headache of the semester. 

He enjoys learning about musical theory, about history, he enjoys learning about how music is important for child development, but this generalized information is so boring. 

“I hate this,” he groans, dropping his head against the table dramatically. “Can we switch classes?” 

Felix snorts. “You want to study economics?” 

Jisung scrunches his nose. “No. But I don’t want to study pedagogic methods, either.” 

“It can’t be that bad.” 

“It is. It is that bad.” 

“No way it’s worse than this,” Felix says, and flips the book around. Jisung stares at the hangul, eyes narrowing at the information like that’ll somehow make it make more sense. 

It doesn’t. 

“Fine, you win.” 

Felix grins. “Did you hear, actually, about that guy in my econ class?” 

“Mm?” 

“Min? Do you know him?” Jisung shakes his head. Economics and education much, so it’s not like he knows many people in Felix’s classes, and it’s not like Felix knows many people in his. 

“I don’t know most of the people in your classes, Felix.” 

“Right, well, this spread, I’m pretty sure. Min, he’s gay.” 

Jisung swallows. 

“Is he?” 

Felix shrugs, highlighting something in his book. “Apparently. That’s what people are saying, at least.” 

“He got outed?” Jisung’s stomach drops, his chest growing cold at the thought. 

“Not really? From what I understood, it was an open secret, basically. His mom caught him with his boyfriend. Nothing bad happened between them, as far as I know. And, anyway, he never had a girlfriend, spent nights away and never said with who…his mom wasn’t surprised.” 

Jisung swallows again, he feels like his throat is suddenly too dry to speak. It’s his biggest fear, that. Someone finding out and telling other people, the word spreading so far even random people in his classes know. Felix isn’t friends with him, has never mentioned him. 

Yet he knows. 

Fuck, how many people wonder about him? How many people know and have never said? 

Did Chaewon from Felix’s party know? Did she know when she kissed him that he was queer? 

People talk. The grandmothers talk. They get together over tea and gossip about the neighborhood. There’s no way they haven’t talked about the Han boy and how he never brings anybody home, about how he’s never had a proper girlfriend. 

There’s no way they haven’t said the same about Minho. And, fuck, there’s no way no one’s ever questioned the nature of their relationship. 

Felix sees the fear on his face. 

“It’s just rumors. It’s nothing bad.” 

Jisung hesitates to answer. The immediate response of of course it’s bad being bitten back by sharp teeth. 

He doesn’t want to believe that anymore. He wants to believe what he has with Minho is a good thing, but the thought comes immediately. Comes quicker than he can stop it. Felix sees it written plain as day on his face, and speaks again. 

“It’s nothing bad, Jisung. He just likes men.” 

Felix looks down at the text he’s been highlighting, and the words blur together. 

“It isn’t?” he asks quietly, like someone in the empty library will overhear their conversation. 

Felix shakes his head. “I don’t think so.” 

“Minho’s mom knows,” he says. “She caught us. We were, um. About to have sex. He was kissing me and we forgot his bedroom door open because we didn’t realize she was home. I guess we both figured she had already gone to the restaurant? I don’t know. I just know she saw us. I thought I was going to die,” he admits quietly. 

“Well? What’d she say?” Felix asks softly. 

Jisung swallows. It’s funny, is the thing, that all of his worst fears keep coming true, without any of the consequences. He came out to Felix and accidentally let his crush spill to the guys, and nothing bad happened. They don’t hate him, and they didn’t stop being his friend because of it. 

He told Minho. He told him how he feels, how he’s felt since forever, and he got an I love you back. 

Minho’s mom found out. She found them kissing, they were clearly about to fuck, it was obvious, and she didn’t kick him out. Didn’t tell his parents. 

He never prepared himself for anything other than the worst case scenario. Never. All he’s ever known to expect is hurt, because that’s the only thing he was ever told he’d feel. For being this way, for being different, for being wrong. 

God told him, religion told him, society told him. 

His parents told him. 

That’s the worst, that’s the real kicker. Mom and dad said so. His mother didn’t say it in the same words, his mother said it in a softer way, a gentler way. She wouldn’t kick him out, but she’d resent him for being the way he is. 

That’s a worst case scenario he can be sure of. 

Their disappointment. His father’s hard glare. His mother’s wide, wet eyes. She’d be so sad. He’d be so angry. He already dislikes Minho, already judges him, for his softness, for his laugh, for the way he slings an arm around Jisung’s waist, for the way he’s always touched him casually, wrongly. 

If his dad ever caught them, if he ever found out his queerness was tied to Minho’s, to Minho, he’d never speak to him again. It’d be a betrayal. 

“She said it was fine,” he says, thinking back to Minho’s mom. “She said she wouldn’t tell my parents. She didn’t kick me out or anything, so. That’s good, I guess.” 

Felix smiles, and Jisung can see the quiet see? It’s not all bad in his gaze that he doesn’t voice aloud. 

Jisung is grateful for it. 

“How is that, by the way?” 

“Hm?” 

“Minho,” Felix says. Jisung looks around the library. It continues empty, save for a girl a few tables over with headphones on. She wouldn’t be able to hear their conversation even without them, too far away, and Jisung exhales. “How are things?” 

He smiles down at his flashcards. 

“Good. It’s, um. It’s really good, actually.” 

“Is the sex good?” Felix asks with a grin and a raise of his eyebrows. 

“You want to know? It doesn’t, you know. Disgust you?” 

Felix shakes his head, smiling at him earnestly. “No. I mean it. You’ve never had a real relationship, I want to know.” 

“It’s really good, actually,” he says with a laugh. “You have no idea.” 

Felix scrunches his nose, and Jisung feels his heart tighten. “You asked,” he says defensively, walls raising. 

“I know, and I regret it. You’re like a brother to me. I’m realizing now I don’t think I want to hear about any sex you’re having.” 

Jisung laughs, and it’s not bad, even if there’s a sharpness to it. There’s a real fear of being discovered. A real fear. There’s something very dangerous in that that he doesn’t want to think about. 

He thinks of the guy. Of Min and how he got outed, and his stomach twists painfully. 

To Felix it’s a rumor. 

Jisung wishes it could be the same for him. 

It’s two days after Seollal and Jisung is fucking exhausted. It’s been nearly a week of being surrounded by family. The first day of being at his grandparents was tiring on its own, but the days that followed — actual Seollal, and the extra day before they drove back home — were somehow worse. 

He’s drained. 

He’s so drained. 

His brother went. Jisung hasn’t seen his brother in months. Doesn’t think he’s made an appearance since Chuseok in September. He’s been busy in Busan with his girlfriend. Jisung doesn’t get why he can’t come home; his parents talk about him. They miss him. 

Jisung thinks they forget they have a son at home sometimes, because they spend so much time mourning his brother’s absence. 

It was nice, in a way, to be forgotten for a week. No one really bothered him about a girlfriend, they asked about college a few times, but accepted his answer of “Good, it’s going fine” when given, all of them too busy fawning over his brother, over how he’s thinking of proposing and  how they’ve started talking about children. 

His mother got all teary eyed. 

“Oh, that’s such great news.” 

No one really bothered him about when it’d be his turn. To bring a girl home, to provide grandchildren. His grandmother asked on the first day about it, and his brother snorted. 

“When are we meeting your girl, Jisung-ah?” she asked with a smile, looking genuinely curious. 

“Oh, um, I’m focused on school right now. I’ll focus on a girlfriend when I graduate, I guess. I want to have a stable job, so I can—I can provide for her,” he said, cringing internally because it sounded fake even to his own ears. 

His grandmother accepted it, though. 

“That’s good. It’s important to be focused.” 

Jisung’s brother raised an eyebrow. “I had a girlfriend in college.” 

Jisung stuttered. “Well, I’m fine for now without one.” 

He nodded, but Jisung could tell he didn’t believe him. He’s sure his brother knows. Is sure he’s always known, in a way. He’s always made comments, comments that were too knowing, too cutting, that hit in a way his father’s never did. 

It wasn’t ever this is wrong. His words were never threats, they were warnings. 

“Be careful, Jisung.” 

“You’re too careless.” 

“Be sure.” 

All comments said quietly, under his breath so their parents couldn’t hear. Sure of his words in a way his father couldn’t be. Jisung never said anything to him, and he doesn’t know if  he ever will, but his brother always had a certainty to his words that his parents lacked. 

He spent the week away from home missing Minho. It’s silly, it’s dumb, it wasn’t even a full seven days, he can totally survive a week without him, but he missed him anyway. 

He’d write letters and fold them into paper airplanes and take them to the bin in the late hours of the night so no one would see them, shoving them under the trash and washing his hands. 

Queerness is difficult. Queerness is love coated shame. Maybe shame coated love. 

It’s something. Something piercing. 

Something, he’s learning, that’s maybe worth it anyway. 

He’s currently staring at his ceiling, searching for cracks in the paint since he can’t seem to sleep. His thoughts keep drifting back to Minho, as they’ve always done. He missed him. He missed his touch and missed his smile. He’s missed having sex with him, missed kissing him. 

So when he gets a call around one in the morning, he answers it, and doesn’t bother checking the caller ID. 

“Hi,” he says with a smile, word whispered. It’s much too late to speak at full volume, and his mom is too light a sleeper for him to get away with talking on the phone this late at night. 

“Hi, honey,” Minho says just as softly. “Go to your window. I miss you.” 

It’s dumb, he shouldn’t have missed him, but, God, did he. 

He says as much, and practically hears the slow spread of Minho’s grin. 

Jisung gets up and goes to the window, crossing his small bedroom and dragging his chair out from underneath his desk so he can sit in front of the now open window. 

“How was your Seollal?” Minho asks. He looks beautiful. His hair falls against his cheekbones, and his smile is lit up by the moonlight and the lamp on his desk. Butterflies fill his chest, and he wonders when that’ll stop happening. He wonders at what point he’ll be able to look at Minho and not feel like a kid with a crush. 

(He is, though. He always will be. That thirteen year old boy realizing he loved him, that eight year old boy who wanted to marry his best friend. He’ll always be that kid. He might be an adult now, and it might’ve worked out for him, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t carry that boy with him. 

Doesn’t mean he can’t be eager about loving. About being loved.) 

“It was fine,” he tells him. “I only god asked about a girlfriend one time.” 

Minho laughs softly. Jisung sees it across from him and hears it against his ear. He wishes it was truly pressed against the shell of it, Minho’s hot breath ghosting along his skin. 

“That’s good. I think my family’s given up on that.” 

Jisung laughs. “God, I wish I could tell them about you.” 

Minho smiles at him. It’s a small thing, one that Jisung has realized is for him and him only. It’s a smile he’s seen a million times. A smile that’s his. 

“One day,” Minho says softly, and Jisung’s heart squeezes in a good way. 

“Do you really believe that?” 

Minho nods. “Yeah. I do. You’re stuck with me, you know?” 

And Jisung nods, but a part of him splits open, goes oh, finally exhales, because it’s hard for him to believe that. In a way, he didn’t know. He’s going to love Minho forever, that he knows. He’s stuck with him in that way, no one will ever compare, but he couldn’t count on Minho feeling the same way. 

He doesn’t trust this. Jisung isn’t the kind of guy who gets things this good, this sweet. It’s ripe fruit, is what it is, and he’s sinking his teeth into the flesh too quick for it to last. He’s being too greedy with it, there will be nothing left soon. 

It’s so good, though. It’s so good. He’s been starving since the day he realized he was capable of loving, he’s been so fucking hungry, that now that he’s got it, he’s tearing into it with his teeth like a rabid dog. 

He’ll be put down soon, he’s sure. 

Right now, he feasts. 

“Yeah?” he asks, because he wants to hear Minho confirm it. 

Minho smiles at him and nods. 

Jisung’s heart splits open. 

It’s a dangerous thing to want, it’s a stupid thing to want, but this future they’re talking about where they get to live happily ever after is something he wants anyway. 

“Would you put a ring on it?” he asks, mostly as a joke, but he still wants to hear the answer. He means for it to come out teasingly, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to it. 

He means it. 

He’s asking seriously. 

Minho can tell. 

“Yes,” Minho says, all plain and simple like it isn’t a huge deal. 

Jisung swallows. He’s joked about it before, but this feels different for some reason. Real, maybe.

“Really?” 

Minho nods. He watches him across the lawn, in his bedroom, in the gray-moon washed out blue of his bedroom. He nods, smiling. 

“We can get an apartment. Three cats—”

Jisung laughs too loud for this late at night. 

“The three cats are for you.” 

“You would love them,” Minho says defensively. 

“I would,” Jisung agrees, and he’s smiling so wide his cheeks hurt. “Keep going.” 

“It’d be a small apartment. One bedroom. We wouldn’t need more than that anyway, our guests can sleep on the couch. It’d have plants that you would try to keep alive but that I’d end up watering—” 

“Hey!” 

Minho chuckles. “There’d be plenty of natural light. A guitar and a piano in the corner so you can make music. You’d work at a school nearby and one day we’d go to the park and I’d ask you—” 

“Keep that part a secret,” Jisung whispers into the phone, cutting him off. He’s smiling. He can guess where the sentence was going, can assume what Minho was going to ask him, and he doesn’t want to hear it, not yet. “Also, come here.” 

“Hm?” 

“Come here.” 

Minho grins and nods. “Yeah, okay.”  

He hangs up the phone before Minho can say anything else and gestures to his bed. Jisung can’t hear Minho’s laugh but he can see it, and it probably sounds beautiful. He knows it does. 

Jisung swings the front door open before Minho can knock on it, locking it behind him and taking his hand to pull him up the stairs. Minho pauses, pulling him towards him with the hand that’s in Jisung’s and kissing him slowly, Jisung’s chin pinched between his fingers to hold him in place. 

“Hi,” he says when he pulls back. 

Jisung giggles. He feels truly happy for the first time in days, surrounded by this love that Minho gives him so freely. It feels, in a way, unfair to everyone else. That they don’t get a love like this. 

They walk up the stairs to Jisung’s room quietly, tip-toeing up the steps, and laugh into each other’s mouths when they get up there. 

“I missed you,” Jisung says when they slip under his covers. Minho brings the back of Jisung’s hand up to his mouth and kisses it before biting the skin lightly. 

“I missed you, too.” 

“Tell me more about our life together,” he says, moving Minho’s arms until they’re wrapped around him. “You’ve thought about it a lot.” 

“I’ve had years to daydream about it, yeah.” 

“Tell me, then.” 

“Hm,” Minho starts, settling in Jisung’s bed. He kisses the top of Jisung’s head, and it makes Jisung smile. “We wouldn’t be rich, but we’d live a good life. Our friends would visit, Chan and Changbin would live nearby.” 

“We’d be in Seoul?” 

“Yeah,” he says, and clears his throat. “I would dream about you while I lived there, so all of my fantasies kind of just…featured you there.” 

“Really? You spent four years dreaming of me?” 

He feels Minho nod, and his voice is teeny tiny when he speaks. “Yeah,” he says, and clears his throat again. “I did. I’m sorry I never said anything.” 

Jisung shakes his head as much as he can while it’s resting on somebody else’s chest. “I wasn’t ready to hear it. This was the right time.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. Keep going.” 

“You’re going to fall asleep while I’m mid sentence.” 

“Mm, maybe,” Jisung agrees, eyes falling shut. “Tell me anyway.” 

Minho chuckles, and tilts Jisung’s face up so he can kiss him, all soft around the edges from exhaustion. “We’d be really in love. It’d be disgusting. We’d live in a queer neighborhood, maybe, and we’d have our neighbors over for dinner. People would…they would know. And it’d be okay.” 

It’d be okay. 

Jisung falls asleep to that thought. To this imaginary future they get to have, this world where they’re each other’s and it isn’t the end of everything he’s ever known. It’s too good to last. 

For once, Jisung decides he’s going to let himself have it anyway. 

Jisung’s rotting. 

It’s late winter, so close to being early spring, and he’s lying in bed, trying to read Felix’s annotated copy of The Lord of the Rings and finding his doodles in the margins are considerably more interesting than anything going on in the actual text. 

He’s bored. He’s so bored. He wants Minho, but he feels a little needy. He saw him yesterday, and he doesn’t want to be too much. He worries he is. Jisung’s convinced something about him is going to push him away. It did in 1998, what’s stopping it from pushing him away again? 

Still, though. 

He gets up, pushes himself off his bed and throws on seven different outfits before landing on the first one he put on. He looks in the mirror, satisfied enough with his reflection to smile at it and go downstairs. 

“Where are you going?” his mother once he reaches the bottom. She’s smiling kindly, but there’s a genuine question in her eyes that he doesn’t want to answer. 

Doesn’t think he can answer. 

“Um, nowhere.” 

“Answer your mother, Jisung,” his father says, not looking up from the newspaper he’s reading. 

“Minho’s,” he says, and hopes his cheeks don’t flush red. “I’m, um. We had plans today, that’s all.” 

His mother nods and goes back to the pot on the stove. “Okay. Don’t stay out too late.” 

He nods. It’s only noon, and he doesn’t plan on really leaving Minho’s house if he can help it. He’s kind of growing antsy with the need to feel him again. It’s been a few days since the last time they had sex, and Jisung’s a little needy and a lot horny, and he wants to get fucked. 

God, how he likes it, it’s so intimate it should terrify him. It does, a little, but not enough for him to shy away from how much he wants it. 

He’ll beg on his knees for it.

It’s a pleasure he’s never felt. Pleasure he’s never let himself feel. He remembers all the times he tried to finger himself but felt too dirty to fully go through with it. 

It’s still dirty when it’s with Minho, but it’s human, too. There’s nothing religious about the way he fucks into him and that makes it all the more holy. 

He knocks on the door to Minho’s house, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as he waits for it to be pulled open. His hands are shoved in his pockets, and he’s smiling a little to himself at the thought of being pulled in and kissed breathless. 

Instead, it’s his mother who opens the door. Mrs. Lee smiles at him brightly, looking so much like Minho it makes Jisung smile. 

“Jisung! Minho’s not home right now. He went on a last minute trip to Seoul,” she says with a kind smile, and Jisung’s stomach twists. 

Painfully. 

“He’s in Seoul?” 

“Yes, he left this morning. Do you want to come in? We’re in-laws now,” she says with a wink. 

Jisung shakes his head and worries. Worries something’s happened to Chan or Changbin, because he can’t imagine Minho would up and run without telling him if it wasn’t important. 

They tell each other things. They’re good at that now. 

“Thank you, but I should call him.” 

She nods. “Sure. Come by the restaurant later, if you want. I’ll have your favorite dumplings waiting for you.” 

Jisung nods and tries to give her a reassuring smile, but his stomach is in knots. He hopes everything’s fine. He notices Minho’s car isn’t in the driveway, and he wonders how he missed it when he walked over. 

He sits on the edge of the sidewalk and pulls his phone out. Calling Minho’s been eating away at his minutes, despite the fact that they live next door to each other, because Minho called him three nights ago to get him off with his voice, telling him to tease himself slowly until Jisung was shaking, alone in his room and twisting in his own sheets. 

Minho answers on the third ring. 

“Hi, baby,” Minho says, but he sounds different. There’s an edge to his voice that isn’t normal. Jisung’s heard it before, he’s pretty sure he’s heard all of Minho’s voices by now, anyway, and this one is clipped and tense. 

Nothing like the way he’s been speaking to him lately. 

Jisung’s walls skyrocket. Chan and Changbin are fine, then. Chan and Changbin aren’t hurt or dying or in the hospital or getting married, Minho’s there for a completely separate reason that he didn’t tell Jisung about. 

It’s well past noon, Minho knows he’s awake at this point. He could’ve called to let him know, and he didn’t. 

“Hi,” he says, and his voice sounds small even to his own ears. 

“Jisung-ah,” Minho sighs, and Jisung can hear the way his expression falls. 

“I didn’t even say anything.” 

“You sound sad.” 

Jisung huffs. “You’re not here. I went to your house and your mom said you went to Seoul and you didn’t even tell me. Also, she called us in-laws.” 

Minho has the audacity to laugh. “That’s nice.” 

Jisung’s brows crease in the mirror, a furrow he hopes Minho can visualize. He’s pouting, bottom lip fully jutted out, and it sucks that Minho isn’t here to look at him, because he knows he’d get kissed for the expression. 

“Minho.” 

“Right, yeah. Chan called with a good business opportunity and I had to come check it out before it went away. It was too good to let slip between my fingers, you know? I left this morning, and forgot to tell anybody. My mom called asking where I was, too.” 

Jisung shuts down a little. 

Every worst case scenario he’s ever imagined and that he’s pushed away these past two months come flooding back. 

Oh. 

He’s leaving. 

It was too much for him, he was too much for him. Minho’s leaving for Seoul, and he didn’t even call Jisung to say anything about it. 

If he were the kind of person who knew how to think with their head and not their heart, he’d realize Minho was probably just too busy to call. There’s something Minho’s not telling him, though. Something he’s omitting, and admission that would hurt more than this job opportunity. 

Jisung can tell. 

Jisung knows him, whether Minho wants him to or not. 

It’s just so cruel. 

“Oh.” 

“Jisung.” 

“Sorry, my mom’s calling me. I’m sitting outside, you know.” He wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand, his sweater sleeve getting stained with tears. “I should go.” 

“Jisung.” 

He hangs up before Minho can say anything else. 

Jisung drops his head against his knees, and doesn’t cry. His eyes are wet, but nothing rolls down his cheeks. He’s cried over Minho enough. 

He has to go back inside eventually. Has to. His parents can see him through the windows and Mrs. Lee can see him through the windows and the whole neighborhood can watch him cry over a boy. Over a boy who loves him. He believes it, believes he loves him, he doesn’t doubt that anymore, but they’re back to where they were in December, where Jisung is loved but not wanted. 

That sucks. 

It sucks. 

Jisung throws himself into his studies. He has a midterm to study for anyway, and his classes this semester are harder than he thought they would be. He picked up a heavier class load thinking he could manage it but he’s actually kind of, sort of, incredibly stressed. 

All Jisung wants is his boyfriend. He could really do with some good sex, but his boyfriend’s been going back and forth between here and Seoul, and he’s been so tight-lipped about it every time Jisung’s asked. 

“Why do you have to leave again?” he asked. He was lying on the bed, fucked out and just shy of happy, a little bittersweet and a little melancholic. “What are you doing in Seoul?” 

Minho smiled at him and pulled his shirt over his chest. He leaned down to kiss him, collapsing on the bed next to Jisung. 

“I’ll tell you later. Do you trust me?” 

Jisung pouts. 

(Minho does kiss him.) 

“I trust you.” 

“My love, my sweetheart,” Minho said, kissing the tip of his nose. “Please trust me.” 

Jisung sulked. “I do trust you.” 

“You don’t, you’re looking at me like I’m already breaking your heart.” 

“I’m fine, Minho.” 

“Trust me when I tell you that I’ll let you know what I’m doing when I’m ready. Or, when it's ready.”

Jisung nodded, but he didn’t have to like it. 

He got kissed and kissed and kissed until he was pliant and needy and a complete mess against Minho. 

“I love you, okay?” Minho asked, squishing his cheeks in between his palms. “Tell me you know that.” 

“I know that. I love you, too.” 

He was still sad, though. There’s something going on that Minho doesn’t want to share with him, and Jisung worries. Lets his fears get the best of him when he’s lying on his back at night, looking out the window and getting faced with an empty room. 

Minho’s going to want to move back to Seoul sooner or later. Jisung’s known this the whole time, but part of him hoped he’d be included in that conversation. 

He sighs, staring down at his coursework. He’s focusing on it. Really, he is, it’s just that his eyes keep glancing over to the book on his shelf where the photo booth strip is, and he can’t help but reach over and grab it. 

Jisung stares at the pictures. 

They look so happy. There’s so much unbridled joy in the way they’re looking at each other, in the way they’re kissing. 

He got home that night and slid the photobooth between the pages of an old copy of some book he had to read for class years ago, letting the words hold onto it tightly, keeping it safe. 

He looks down at the photos now and gets sadder. 

He’s only had him for a few months. It’s not fair that he’s losing him. 

Minho says he isn’t, swears he isn’t, but he still feels like he’s being left behind. 

His phone buzzes on his desk and he flips it open. 

“Hello?” 

“Hey, do you want to come over? We’re all studying together and then we’re gonna bother Felix about baking us some sweets.” 

In the quiet background of the call, he can hear Felix say he has no choice in the matter, that he’s invited and he’s coming. Jisung chuckles and nods before remembering they can’t see him. “Okay. Tell Felix I was going to say yes, anyway.” 

Jeongin laughs, and Jisung hears his dimpled smile over the phone. 

He bikes over, letting the cold wind nip at his nose. 

“Hey,” Jeongin says, opening the door. Jisung toes off his shoes and drops his backpack against the back of the couch. 

“Have you guys started on the brownies?” 

“Who said we were making brownies?” Felix asks. 

“Me. Obviously. Best friend privileges mean I get to decide.” 

“Okay, no, but I agree with him,” Seungmin says. “I disagree with the best friend privileges, though.” 

“You’re just jealous.” 

Seungmin shrugs and doesn’t deny it. It makes him laugh, his reaction, and he feels lighter than he has since Minho went to Seoul that first time just shy of two weeks ago. 

It’s fine. It’s all fine, it’s all almost good. Almost. There are moments that are great. Just five days ago, he was getting fucked into the mattress and then taken out to eat at Minho’s family’s restaurant. 

His mom greeted them with a wink which made Minho flush a lovely shade of red, the tips of his ears going pink. 

They sit around Felix’s large dinner table, each with their own set of notes and their own textbooks. Seungmin’s taking a music elective and Jisung lends him the sheet music they’re working on when Seungmin realizes he’s forgotten his. 

“This is impossible,” Hyunjin says at one point, staring down at his notes for a dance elective he’s taking. Jisung didn’t realize you had to take notes on dance in the first place, but Hyunjin looks incredibly stressed over it. 

“I feel like my brain is going to melt,” Jeongin complains, dropping his head against his textbook with a heavy thud. 

Felix looks around at all of them. “Do you guys want to take a break? 

“Yes,” they all say in unison.

“The brownie should take a while to cook, anyway. We can go back to studying while it’s in the oven.” 

He makes Jeongin get all the ingredients out of the pantry so they can bake. 

“Brownies?” Jeongin asks. 

Felix chuckles. “Yeah, okay. Fine. I don’t want anyone’s help.” 

“We know,” Jisung says. 

“I didn’t want to help anyway,” Seungmin offers. 

They’re all talking as Felix mixes the ingredients together, and Jisung stands there in the corner and watches them. He almost forgets that Minho’s being weird. 

And then Felix turns and asks if he’s okay. 

His eyebrows are pulled together in concern, and it makes the other guys send him equally concerned glances. 

“Is it obvious?” 

Hyunjin nods after a beat. “I didn’t want to ask if  you weren’t ready to talk about it, but…” he trails off. 

Jisung sighs. It’ll be good, probably, to get this off his chest. He doesn’t tell anyone much about his relationship. His friends know, but it’s still weird to talk about. His queerness is still something breakable and bubble wrapped, something he doesn’t know how to deal with. 

Not really. 

So he doesn’t talk about it and he doesn’t tell anyone and he lets the need to be open sit under his tongue like a blade, lets the need to be open cut him up from the inside out. 

“Minho’s being weird. I’m upset about it, I guess.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“What’s he doing?” 

Jisung sighs and bites the inside of his cheek. He cracks every single one of his knuckles, gathering the courage to answer. 

“He’s been splitting time between here and Seoul. And he hasn’t been explaining why, and I just—” he groans, dropping his head into his hands. “I just keep going to the worst case scenario. He says he’s got a really good business opportunity, but that’s all I know. He’s keeping it really private.” 

They all hum. 

“Honestly? That is kind of weird,” Jeongin says, and Jisung nods, twisting the strings of his hoodie. 

“We can kill him for you if you’d like,” Seungmin offers with a smile — not for the first time. Jisung laughs, but there’s an edge to it that makes Felix look at him a little sadly. 

“I don’t want him to die, but thanks.” 

“I’m sure it’ll be fine, Jisung. He loves you a disgusting amount,” Felix says. “He’s got to have an explanation for it, he’s just not ready to share it yet. Who knows, maybe it’ll be a good thing.” 

Jisung shrugs. 

“Maybe.” 

He’s saved by the batter being put in the oven, Felix wiping his dirty hands on his pants and nodding over to their mess of textbooks. They all groan. 

It’s near three in the morning, but Jisung’s phone is buzzing. He’s been trying and failing to sleep for about four hours, he’s got an exam on Monday that he needs to study for, and he’d like to get a good night’s rest so he can actually absorb any of the information he’s reading. 

He sighs, rolling over and picking it up. He doesn’t have to check who’s calling, there’s no shot it’s anybody but Minho. 

Jisung doesn’t have time to say hello before Minho’s speaking. 

“You’re mad at me.” 

Jisung swallows. It’s not like the world’s ending, but maybe his is a little bit. He’s dramatic and he’s down, he’s so down, he feels a little bit miserable about it all, and he doesn’t want to. He wishes this love didn’t affect him, but he would hate for it to stop. 

A world where this love isn’t overwhelming, isn’t world altering, isn’t universe shifting isn’t a world he wants to live in. He believes — truly, truly believes — this love is all consuming everywhere. 

Maybe there’s a place out there where all they are to each other is best friend. Still, Jisung loves him there. Loves him everywhere, anywhere. Always. 

He’s not mad. 

He says as much, telling Minho over the phone, “I’m not mad at you.” 

Minho hiccups on the other end of the line. “You’re sad. I’ve made you sad. I’ve made my Jisungie sad.” 

And Jisung feels bad for a moment because he never meant to make Minho sad with his blues, never meant to drag him down, too. Part of him sparks a little, wakes up a bit despite the late hour, not because Minho is sad, because that would be cruel, but because he affects him this much, and Minho shows it now. 

Jisung wonders if it’s always been this way for him, too. 

A selfish, desperate part of him hopes it has. He hopes the four years they were apart killed Minho as much as it killed him, carved him open in the same raw, visceral way it carved into Jisung’s sternum. 

He swallows again. Audibly. 

“A little,” he admits. “But it’s fine.” 

“I’ll tell you everything. I promise, I promise, Jisung-ah. It just has to be perfect. I just have to figure it out, you know? It’s—I just have to figure it out.” 

Minho’s clearly drunk, clearly plastered. Jisung would find it sweet. Amusing, almost, if it weren’t for the words coming out of his mouth. 

Figure out what? 

Minho keeps rambling that part. Over and over, he keeps rambling. I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you. I’ll say everything, please trust me. 

And Jisung does. Trust him. Of course he trusts him, Minho is his best friend, but there’s that insecurity that blooms and blossoms and flowers, a feeling that’s been shy of dormant for the past couple of months. 

Does he trust him not to break his heart? 

When he’s broken it before? 

Jisung isn’t sure, and he feels horrible for it. 

“What are you figuring out?” he asks him. 

“I just have to be sure,” Minho says, and hangs up. Jisung can’t tell if he hangs up on him on purpose or not, but it makes him stare down sadly at his phone anyway. 

What is he unsure of? 

Is it them? 

Jisung…Jisung’s sure. He’s so fucking sure. He’s never been more sure of anything in his entire life, never been so certain. He’s loved him and loves him and will love him. 

There are simple truths. Things that are unwavering. The sun will rise and the moon will follow in its path as it leaves darkness in its wake, the end will come whether it’s fought against or not, and Han Jisung loves Lee Minho. 

It’s easy. It’s the most familiar thing he’s ever known, this feeling. 

And Minho might not feel it back. He might not. Jisung always figured if they were on the same page, they’d be on the same page. 

If they aren’t…

He doesn’t know what he does with that. 

He’s gotten a taste of Minho now. Has kissed him, has been fucked by him, has held the weight of him hot and heavy in his mouth, and he can’t lose that. He can’t. 

It’d kill him. 

He tries to call Minho back. Calls him once. Calls him twice. 

On the third try, the call is answered. 

“Minho,” he says, voice cracking. It’s said too loudly for the silence of the night, but he thinks it’s an appropriate level of desperation in the face of losing the love of your life. “Please,” he begs. 

“Hey, Jisung,” Chan answers instead. “I know he’s being weird, but you have to trust him when he says it’s fine. I can tell how much it sucks for you, but he doesn’t seem to know. He’s—Jisung, he’s so excited about this. Please trust him that it’s okay.” 

“He’s excited to move to Seoul?” 

Chan sighs. He sounds tired, and Jisung can hear Minho slurring in the background. God, he must be so drunk. All he can hear is is it my Jisung-ah? to which Chan replies with yes, give me a second. 

“Yes. He is.” 

“Why isn’t he talking to me?” he asks, and tries not to cry. 

A tear rolls hotly down his cheek anyway. 

“I think he wants to surprise you. I don’t think he knows how much it’s killing you to not know. Minho would never hurt you on purpose. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone love someone so much.” 

Jisung smiles despite himself, a tiny, hopeful little thing that he doesn’t let spread. 

“Yeah?” 

“It’s embarrassing, Jisung.” 

Jisung bites his lip. 

“Okay. Okay. I trust him.” 

“You’re still worrying,” Chan says plainly, pointing out the obvious. 

Jisung nods before remembering he can’t see him. “Well. Yeah.” 

“I’ll talk some sense into him. Next time he’s down there he’ll explain it all.” 

“Thanks, Chan.” 

Chan hesitates. Minho says something in the background that Jisung can’t make out, but it sounds a bit like his name before it gets cut off by a giggle. 

Jisung is so fond of him it drives him a little mad. 

“Is he okay?” he asks before Chan can say whatever he wanted to say. “Why is he so drunk?” 

“He was sad about you and kept throwing back shots. I think a part of him feels that he’s hurt you, but he wanted this to work so bad. Talk to him. You know, he’s here for two more days. You can come visit him yourself if you’d like.” 

Jisung pauses and thinks about it. On the one hand, he’s terrified of going to Seoul to get his heart broken again. On the other, he’s waited. He’s waited for so long. When they kissed on New Years, he waited for Minho to come back. Didn’t chase. 

Maybe it’s time to. 

He wants this. Wants it so damn bad. He’s gotta fight for it. 

Maybe he’ll come out bruised. Beaten up and hurting everywhere, but he’ll have done his best. Fought his hardest. 

“Okay,” he says, decision made. He’ll wake up if he manages to sleep at all and take the first bus to Seoul. 

Chan snorts softly on the other end of the line. “I’ll keep you coming a surprise, too.” 

Jisung laughs softly. 

“Thanks, Chan.” 

“No problem, man.” 

He manages fitful sleep eventually, stomach in knots over the thought of going to Seoul and confronting him. Chan seemed confident that it’d be fine, and he tries to trust that. 

Jisung takes the first bus out. Wakes up so early the house is still quiet, his parents are still asleep. He leaves a note on the fridge in his messy handwriting: Gone to Seoul, Minho invited me for the weekend. Be back later. 

He wonders if his parents will care. His mom might. Probably will, actually. Sometimes he thinks she still sees her little boy in him, and it makes his eyes sting and his chest ache, but he wonders what his dad’s reaction would be. If he’d notice Jisung’s absence in the first place, if he’d read the note at all. 

His father truly only cares about his relationship with Minho when he remembers he hates it. 

Aside from that, it’s like he’s indifferent to Jisung’s entire life, entire existence. 

Jisung loves his father. 

Really, he does. 

But he loves him from a far distance, loves him from the other side of Korea, of this continent, of the world it feels sometimes. 

If he gets too close, it’ll burn. He’ll come out of it with scars he doesn’t want to carry, so he stays as far away from the fire as he can manage. 

It hurts, though. 

He was never his father’s favorite, not even when he was little and they’d make a mess of the living room with Jisung’s model trains. It was always his brother, but he was loved in his own right. 

He was. 

He’s not sure that’d continue if his dad’s suspicions were confirmed. 

He’s been fucked under his roof. He’s had sex in his own bedroom in his parents’ house, he’s been kissed in the kitchen. 

That wouldn’t sit well with him. That’d make him the worst kind of angry, the quiet kind. The kind that slips between the cracks of your being and hits you in between your ribs, right where it kills you the fastest. 

Jisung spends the ride to Seoul thinking about it. Thinking about his father, thinking about his family, thinking about Minho. 

Jisung hopes a part of Minho hopes back. That a part of him reaches towards him even in his absence. Even in the four years of dead silence, he wonders if Minho wanted him then. 

Did he ever say Jisung’s name in the middle of sex? Did he ever slip up and jerk off to the thought of him, something so wrong, a line Jisung never crossed, too afraid he’d get addicted to the mere thought of him? 

When he reaches Seoul, he gets lost. 

It feels like God is teasing him, taunting him. He has their address written down, but he doesn’t know this city nearly well enough to get around without someone holding his hand through the busy streets.

He finds his way after a little over twenty minutes of searching. 

(He checked, the hands on his watch laughing at him.) 

It feels like an appropriate metaphor. He’s searching, always searching for him. In everything, in all he does. 

In their hometown, in this city. 

In him, too. 

He knocks on the door with his heart in his throat. Raps his knuckles against the wood three times, three anxious beats. 

Changbin opens it and smiles when he sees Jisung on the other side. 

“Jisung! Come in,” he says brightly, side stepping to allow Jisung into the small apartment. 

Chan walks into the room, clearly dressed to leave the house. Changbin, too, now that he notices, and he smiles. Their level of subtlety is…low. 

“Oh, Jisung, hey,” he says with a stupidly wide grin. “Horrible timing, Changbin and I were just leaving.” 

Minho walks out from the bathroom, in sweatpants and a hoodie, clearly confused as to why his best friends are in jeans and pulling on their shoes. 

The two of them nod at him, smiling a little too sharply to be natural. 

“Yeah, we have a thing to get to. Sorry we forgot to tell you! But we’ll be back…later. Actually, you guys let us know when to come back, just—bye!” 

Minho stands there, staring at the two of them with a frown, rubbing at his temple, trying to force away the hangover he’s surely dealing with. 

“See you two later!” Chan says and walks through the door. They stand there, staring at each other, waiting for the lock to click and the footsteps to echo down the hall. 

He inhales. And exhales. And inhales again, trying to will his heart to stop beating so damn quickly. It doesn’t work, because of course it doesn’t, because this is horrifying. Jisung’s only ever sat there and waited. 

He’s never done this. 

Never done the chasing. 

But he deserves this. Minho deserves this, too, in a way. Deserves to see how much Jisung wants him, and maybe that’ll be enough to convince him not to run away and leave him behind. 

“Hi,” Jisung says. 

Minho clears his throat. “Hi.” 

Jisung looks everywhere but him, finds a scratch on the hardwood floor and speaks to it, too nervous to look Minho in the eye. “You’re avoiding me. You’re not talking to me. And I don’t—I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I thought we were good now. Y’know…past this.”

Minho’s closer when he looks up, standing right in front of him. He takes his hand slowly, hesitantly, and pulls him into the apartment. Minho doesn’t say anything until they’re sitting on the couch, no longer standing in the doorway. 

They’re facing each other. 

Jisung does his best to keep his gaze fixed on him. Unwavering. 

“I’m not trying to avoid you,” he says, and casts his glance up at the ceiling. He squeezes his eyes shut, and Jisung tries not to, but he feels a little better knowing Minho isn’t happy, either. 

“Three weeks ago you got a good business opportunity and now I’ve barely seen you. I wanted to go on more dates with and—and have sex and suck your dick again, but I’ve barely seen you. And I don’t know what happened, because you won’t talk to me, and you won’t explain what’s going on.” 

Jisung can tell Minho’s heart breaks just by looking at him. Jisung can imagine the mess he is. He rolled out of bed, pulled on the first outfit he could find and left for the bus stop. 

His hair’s in disarray and there are dark circles under his eyes and he looks and feels and sounds a little devastated. 

He wraps Jisung in his arms slowly, taking his time with the action like he’s worried Jisung’s going to pull away. Like he’s worried Jisung won’t want him anymore, that he’s fucked up too badly and now he can’t have this, the casual touch and the warmth of his body heat. 

Jisung sinks into him. Tries to crawl inside his chest. He lets a tear fall, watches as it stains Minho’s hoodie. 

“I wanted this to be a good surprise. I wanted it to make you happy. Remind me to not keep my proposal a secret when the time comes, okay?” he teases, but Jisung doesn’t laugh, biting his lip as he stares up at him wide-eyed. Minho hesitates and then kisses him. “Jisung, I’m really sorry.” 

Jisung accepts the apology immediately. “It’s okay.” 

Minho kisses his cheek. 

“I made my baby sad,” he says, looking genuinely distraught. “Can you forgive me?” 

Jisung nods immediately, and then pauses. 

“Only if you tell me what you’ve been hiding.” 

Minho clears his throat. 

“I got a job offer. Here, in Seoul. It’s a really good job offer, too, it’d allow me to expand my parents’ restaurant, bring a location here. It’s what I got my degree for. It’d be really good for them.” 

Jisung looks down at the ground. Squeezes his eyes shut against the sting, the promise of tears. “You’re moving, then.” It’s not a question. 

“Jisung,” Minho says. “Look at me.” 

Jisung doesn’t, so Minho lifts his gaze with two fingers hooked under his chin. He kisses him slowly, so slowly, takes down every single one of Jisung’s defenses. He sighs against his mouth, whining when Minho pulls away. His eyes stay shut, and Minho whispers, “Look at me, my love.” 

Jisung nods and opens his eyes. 

“Come with me,” Minho says. 

He pauses. 

His jaw drops. 

What. 

“What?” 

Minho’s smiling now, nodding shyly. “Yeah. That’s what I’ve been hiding, I’ve um. Been looking at apartments. And how to transfer universities, it’s all possible. If you want.” 

Jisung’s heart beats erratically in his chest. A good beating, a good thrumming, a spark that burns brightly but only serves to make him warm. 

“You’ve been looking at apartments?” 

“One bedroom, natural light. Plenty of space for cat trees.” 

Jisung’s eyes well up with tears, and he smacks Minho in the chest. “You asshole. You made me think you had gotten tired of this. Of me.” 

Minho’s mouth is warm when it presses against his, and Jisung feels all the fight seep out of his body at the heat of it. His tongue licks hotly into his mouth, and Jisung shivers. He kisses him softly once more before pulling away. “God, I’m so sorry.” 

“You don’t have to keep apologizing.” 

“I do. I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you, I just didn’t know how to talk about it. I had to be sure everything would work before I told you, I didn’t want to come  home to you without all the information, but I…I have that now. We can look at the apartments together and talk to your university. If you want.” 

Jisung nods frantically, his smile spreading. “I want that. Yes.” 

“You should think about it first—” 

“I want it, Minho.” 

Minho’s eyes flit across his face, searching his expression for any sign of doubt. 

He finds none. 

So he kisses him and kisses him and Jisung lets him, and kisses him back. 

“We can’t fuck in Chan and Changbin’s place,” Minho says, laughing against his mouth when he feels Jisung pout. “Baby, they’d kill me.” 

Jisung pouts harder, whining and looking up at Minho as pleadingly as he knows how to. 

He can see Minho’s resolve cracking, can tell by the way he inhales sharply. “Stop it, I can’t fuck you here.” 

“You hate me.” 

“I love you.” 

Jisung grins at that. 

“Can we go home, then? I’ll come back with you next weekend if you want me to. We can look at everything, but I just…” 

It’s still hard for him to talk about his desires. There’s a laundry list of things he wants to do to him, a laundry list of things he wants done to him. His wanting is neverending. His longing, too, and he can almost voice that. Gets close to talking about the love he feels, the yearning, but the carnality of it, the bone deep hunger for his flesh, his body…it’s hard to express. 

There are no words for it. 

Minho reads the craving on his face, and nods. 

“You think you can wait a few hours?” he asks, and kisses the corner of his mouth. He bites his chin and Jisung laughs. “I have to apologize, have to make you feel good. God, Jisung-ah, I’ll make you feel so good when we get home…” 

“Promise?” Jisung asks breathlessly. 

“Promise. Gonna split you open, gonna make you feel me for days.” 

“You could just fuck me every day,” he tells him with an innocent smile. 

“You are so horny,” Minho says with a laugh.

“For you, yeah.” 

“Nobody else?” 

“Never.” 

Minho looks unbelievably smug about it. 

They stumble through the front door of Minho’s house, laughing as they tease each other. It’s so giddy. They’re boyish in their joy, boyish in their movements. There’s a lack of fluidity, there’s something a little too eager to make it move the way they’ve moved before. Jisung likes it. 

Minho seems to like it, too. He’s staring at Jisung with dark eyes, the heat in them making Jisung’s skin flush. 

“You are so, so hot,” Minho mutters, surging forward to kiss him. Jisung feels his want reciprocated, feels it blindingly. Minho’s attraction to him is real and palpable, he feels it on his own tongue when Minho’s slides against it. 

He likes kissing him. 

There’s something about kissing Minho that’s nice because this is the guy he’s been in love with his whole life. There’s something about the fact that Minho is a man makes this so much nicer, so much headier. 

He guides the kiss, leads them. Bites and sucks and nips, it’s all more aggressive than when he kissed women, and more genuine, too. 

His girlfriends never cared much for kissing him, it seemed. 

Maybe because he never cared much right back. 

Minho seems to care. Minho seems to care a whole lot. 

They run up the stairs. Minho reaches the top first, and pulls Jisung in by the strings of his hoodie. 

“What do I get for winning?” 

“Hm?” 

“I beat you. Up the stairs.” 

Jisung laughs, his amusement going breathless when Minho connects his mouth to Jisung’s neck and bites. Hard enough that it’ll bruise and he will have to hide it from his parents. 

“You get me,” Jisung says, and whines when Minho sucks where he just bit and whines again when he licks where he just sucked. “I’m your prize.” 

“Yeah?” Minho murmurs against his skin. 

Jisung nods. “Do you like it?” 

Minho smiles, a sharp, teasing edge to it. 

“What do you think?” he asks, hands coming down to massage Jisung’s ass over his jeans. He teases him, pulls his hands up to scratch up and down his back under his clothes. He pulls Jisung flush against him, and Jisung feels how he’s already half hard in his pants.

“I think you hate it.” 

“Mm. Maybe,” Minho says, stumbling backwards onto his bed. Jisung yelps as he lands on top of him, Minho’s hands landing on his waist to steady him. “I think you should show me why I should like it.” 

Jisung nods, leaning down to kiss him. 

“Okay. Can I ride you?” 

He pulls back to watch his reaction, to watch the way Minho’s eyes go dark and heady before squeezing shut, his breathing stuttering. He nods jerkily. “That’s—yeah.” 

“Is that okay?” 

“More than okay.” 

Jisung grins. 

Minho’s house is empty aside from the two of them in Minho’s room, and Jisung takes advantage of it. He’s loud. He whines, the sound ripping straight from the back of his throat when Minho’s teeth graze a nipple as he kisses down his chest. 

They stripped quickly, desperate to touch each other, to get skin on skin. It’s been weeks of nearly nothing, of quick kisses on the days Minho was home, and, fuck, Jisung’s missed this. 

“Minho,” he moans, when Minho bites down on his thigh. He wants Minho to slide in, he needs to feel him everywhere, wants and wants and wants his cock. “Baby, please.” 

“What do you want, sweetheart?” he says, and then, like an asshole, sucks a bruise into his skin, rendering him speechless, making his words die in his throat when he lubes up a finger and pushes it in slowly. 

Jisung moans.

“I want you. So much, Minho, please. Let me have you.” 

“You have me.” 

“Let me have you now. I want to ride you, I—I want your cock,” he says, and then blushes furiously. Minho giggles at him softly. 

“Yeah? My baby wants to get fucked?” 

Jisung exhales hotly through his mouth. His cock twitches at Minho’s words. He nods. “Yes. Please.” 

“So polite,” Minho teases. 

He inserts another finger alongside the first and crooks them until they’re rubbing against his prostate. Jisung’s cock is dripping precome, and it pools on his skin. Minho’s looking at him hungrily, kissing him everywhere. Letting his tongue wander along his skin. 

“I’m ready.” 

“No, you’re not.” 

“Minho, c’mon, I’m ready.” 

“Jisung, I don’t want to hurt you.” 

“I’m not made of glass.” 

Minho presses the heel of his hand down against his cock to relieve some of the pressure clearly building in him. He gasps a little at the touch, and Jisung is suddenly jealous of Minho’s hands. It feels silly to be jealous of something like that, it’s Minho’s hands touching Minho’s body. 

But Jisung wants to be the one to make him feel that way. 

His sex drunk brain gets a little frowny. Minho chuckles like he knows what he’s thinking of. 

Minho lays down on the bed after stripping, stroking his hard cock. He smirks. “You gonna sit on it?” 

Jisung nods, breathing heavily. “Yes.” 

He does. Hovers over Minho’s cock and uses a hand to steady himself as he sinks down on it slowly, bit by bit, until Minho is fully inside of him. He whimpers the whole way down, and Minho moans when he sits, flush against him. 

“Are you gonna move?” Minho asks after a beat has passed. 

“Yeah, shit, yeah. Give me a second, you’re so big.” 

Minho smirks. 

Jisung rolls his eyes, and then raises up on his thighs and sinks back down. It feels so good. Jisung feels drunk on it. Minho is staring at him like he’s the single hottest thing in the world, and Jisung feels his skin flush everywhere. Minho’s hands come up to settle on his waist, holding onto him tightly. 

He feels his touch everywhere. 

Feels his heat. 

Eventually his thighs tire, and Minho notices, holding on tight and slamming his hips up to meet him. Jisung falls forward, and lets Minho fuck up into him, lets him chase his orgasm, lets him use Jisung’s body — it’s his to use, anyway. He shudders when he comes and bites Jisung everywhere he can reach, his canines digging in enough to hurt. 

“C’mere,” he says, and pulls Jisung forward until his cock is pressing right up against Minho’s mouth. “Fuck my face.” 

Jisung nods, mouth hanging open as he slides his cock past Minho’s lips. He fucks his face shallowly, too overwhelmed and a little achy in his thighs to really go hard. Minho sucks and licks, swirling his tongue around the head. 

He seems very into it, moaning as he sucks him off, eyes fluttering shut every time precome spurts onto his tongue. 

“Minho, Minho,” Jisung says, and it’s the only warning Minho gets before he’s shooting down his throat. Minho moves him back down until he’s biting his lower lip and licking into his mouth. Jisung can taste himself on his tongue. 

His thighs are sore, his ass is sore, and it’s so hot.

God, he loves having gay sex. 

It’s a revelation. There is religion in his touch, there is God in this room. 

For the first time, Jisung doesn’t feel like he’s hated. For the first time, the rightness has no undercurrent of wrong. 

He almost cries. 

“What’s wrong?” Minho asks, thumb rubbing against his cheek. His touch is tender. 

“I’m just really happy. We’re gonna live together. That’s so sick,” he says with a disbelieving laugh. 

Minho laughs with his head tossed back, and Jisung uses it as an opportunity to kiss the underside of his chin. 

“Oh, is it?” 

Jisung nods, and then inhales. He holds his breath, when he lets it out, words come spilling with it. 

“I think loving you is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.” 

Minho’s eyes get a little shiny at that. 

“Really? Even with all of it? I’ve hurt you.” 

Jisung shrugs. They’re lying naked on top of the covers but the room still feels too hot, the vulnerability heating him up. Minho’s hand trails from his jaw to his neck to the top of his arm. 

“You’ve made up for it.” 

“I haven’t done much.” 

“You love me back,” he says, like it’s simple. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s always been this simple, maybe they’re the ones that have been overcomplicating it. 

Minho kisses him softly, his hand gripping his shoulder, nails digging half moons into his skin. “I do. So much. You have no idea how much.” 

“Tell me,” Jisung says, and smiles, leaning over him and kissing his cheek. “Tell me, tell me, tell me.” 

He bites him lightly. 

Minho chuckles. He hesitates before he begins to speak. 

“How do I explain that? How do I explain that you’re the first thing I think of in the morning and the last thing on my mind before I go to sleep? Or, how do I explain that I think about you every time I listen to a love song or watch a romance drama? Do you want me to write you a poem, Jisungie? I’m a terrible poet.” 

Jisung laughs, swallowing around the heart beating in his throat. Beating brightly. “That was pretty good, actually.” 

Minho tucks his laughter into Jisung’s hair. “Your turn. Tell me. How you love me, c’mon, I can’t be the only sap. It’s embarrassing.” 

Jisung bites his lip. 

“I don’t know. I think you’re just everywhere. You’re in everything I do. I think about you all the time. I realized it all at once, you know? It was unexpected. I was thirteen and it—it caught me so off guard. I was a kid but I was so sure. I haven’t changed my mind about you. Not once.” 

“Not once?” 

“Nope.” 

Minho’s grin is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

“That’s so sick,” Minho echoes. 

“You feel like home to me. That’s it, I think. You feel like home.” 

Minho visibly swallows. He leans in and kisses him, bites his cheek until he’s laughing and the mood lightens enough for them to breathe again, but the words linger and the truths don’t go anywhere, they hang between them, honest and chest splitting and real. 

Jisung comes home from class to his mother watching her favorite drama on the TV. She turns it off when she sees him and smiles. He smiles back, toeing off his shoes and heading over to the stairs when she calls out to him. 

“Jisung. Sit down, will you? I feel like I’ve barely seen you lately.” 

He pauses, swallowing thickly. “Oh yeah. Well. Sorry.” 

She looks at him sadly, and he feels horrible. How does he tell her? How does he tell her it’s been Minho that’s been taking up his time? Those are words he can’t say, those are words he doesn’t have in his vocabulary yet. 

It’ll make her hate him. This, the look on her face? It’s soft, open. She misses him. He misses her. Misses the mom he had once. A mother he’ll never have again. 

It’s not entirely her fault, though. He’s not the son she had once. She’ll never have that little boy again. He thinks maybe they both grieve that. 

There used to be a boy who followed his mom everywhere. Who wrapped his little arms around her as far as they could go. His mother would hold him, held him until he was much too old and much too soft. It’s not her fault, he doesn’t think, he doesn’t blame her for the way he is. 

He’d fall in love with Minho no matter what. 

But he doesn’t want her to blame her softness, not when it was the best part of his childhood. Gentle. 

“What have you been up to?” she asks with a smile, her eyes crinkling. She’s looking at him with all the sweetness she’ll toss aside when she finds out. 

What have you been up to? she asks. 

I’ve been in Seoul. I’m in a relationship with a man. Mom, I really, really love him. 

He thinks she would listen. 

He thinks she would hate it. 

He doesn’t want her to hate him. Not ever. 

So he doesn’t say anything at all, shrugs and sinks into her touch, lets her pull him in closer, lets her card her fingers through his hair. 

“How’s school?” she asks, scratching his scalp. Jisung sighs happily. She speaks softly, has always spoken softly, and the gentleness of her voice makes his eyes sting. He misses her. God, he misses her so much. 

The one person in the whole world who knew him unlike anybody else before he started hiding from everybody. 

“It’s good,” he says, clearing his throat. It’s so tense, but he’s not sure she realizes. She hums quietly, smiling down at him. “This semester’s harder than I was expecting, to be honest. But I did well on my midterms.” 

“That’s good. You’ve always been such a smart boy.” 

He can’t afford to disappoint her in more than one area. He’s done his very best to be the perfect son everywhere else, and all it’s done is make him distant. Tears sting at the corner of his eyes, but he blinks them away before she notices. 

“Thanks,” he mumbles. 

“Are you excited?” 

“For what?” 

“Your future.” 

He smiles despite himself. “Yeah, I really am.” 

And he’s thinking of Seoul, of Minho. Of Chan and Changbin nearby, of Felix and the guys going up to visit. He’s thinking of a lot of things, thinking about the three cats they’ll have and the fights over whose turn it is to do the dishes. 

He shoves away thoughts of the kissing and the dates and the sex because he’s with his mom, but they flash, anyway, because he wants that, too. 

“You’re gonna be a great teacher,” she says, and Jisung’s breathing stutters, because he wasn’t thinking of that at all. 

“Thank you. I’ve been, um…thinking, I guess, about what it would be like if I moved to Seoul, you know? There are more job opportunities in the city.” 

His mom hums. “After you graduate?” she asks, and he hesitates. She moves on like she doesn’t notice his pause. “I think that’s a great idea. Just don’t grow distant like your brother.” 

Jisung chuckles. “I won’t.” 

But how will he not? Maybe he won’t grow distant on purpose, but he’ll be cast aside. There will be a distance shoved between them, a distance he won’t place. Jisung would like to keep his parents in his life. They’ve caused a lot of hurt, but they’re also the first people who ever held him, who ever loved him. 

That counts for so much. 

But he knows, he knows. 

They’re not gonna want anything to do with him once they realize he’s leaving for Seoul soon. Not post graduation, and not by himself. 

He doesn’t say any of this. How is he supposed to? He’ll have to tell her when the time comes. The night before he leaves forever, he’ll break her heart one more time. 

“How are your friends? Felix hasn’t been over in a while.” 

Jisung nods. “We’ve been spending more of our time in the library.” 

“And Minho?” 

Jisung smiles despite himself. “He’s good.” 

“I haven’t been to the restaurant in a while…maybe it’s time to go again.” 

He nods. “Yeah. Though I have to say, I have already been eating her cooking at Minho’s,” he teases. 

His mom laughs. “That’s good. It’s good food.” She smiles and kisses the top of his head. “You have work to do, yes?” 

Jisung nods. 

“Yeah, I have a couple assignments to work on. Finals are coming up already.” 

“Go do that,” she says, pushing him up and off her lap. “I’ll call you when dinner is ready, I just need to finish this episode.” She winks at him and settles into the couch, turning the TV back on. 

Jisung smiles at her even though she’s not looking at him, and gets a little sad. A little nostalgic, maybe. That’s a better word. He misses what he’ll never have again, and there is a sadness there, of course there is, but there’s bittersweetness, too. 

He’ll never fit into those shoes or that shirt or his mom’s arms again. 

He wishes it could’ve stayed that simple. 

1992

10 & 12

They’re making bungeoppang. 

Jisung is really bad at it. 

His mom’s good, though. Her touch is gentle, and she’s always been a good cook. Maybe not as good as Mrs. Lee, but Mrs. Lee has a restaurant, so it doesn’t really feel like something he can compare. 

“And then, Jeongin almost fell asleep, so Seungmin put an eraser up his nose and he sneezed it out,” he says, laughing wildly. His mom’s already tsk’d at about half of the points in the story, saying his teacher deserves their respect and that they should try to not make her job any harder, but Jisung keeps talking animatedly. 

“You should’ve seen it, mom, it was so funny.” 

“What else happened today?” she asks, and he thinks about, crossing his arms over his chest as he frowns. 

“I don’t know. Minho left school early to go to the dentist today,” he says, and feels a little silly, because that’s not interesting to anybody else. It’s only interesting to him, because Jisung thinks everything about Minho is the coolest thing ever, including his awkward bunny teeth that have grown in way too big for his twelve year old face. 

“That reminds me, I need to schedule an appointment for you.” 

Jisung groans. 

“Nooooooo,” he whines. “I hate the dentist.” 

She chuckles. 

“I know, sweetheart, but you have to.” 

Jisung pouts. “But I hate it.” 

“Sometimes we deal with things we don’t like. It’s part of life. Don’t you want to grow up and become an adult? There will be plenty of things you won’t like, and plenty of things you will.” 

“I don’t want to do things I don’t like.” 

She hums. “That’s not something we can avoid. But the hard parts aren’t always bad, you know.” 

“That doesn’t make any sense.” 

“No, I suppose not.” 

He blinks up at her. “Can you explain it?” 

“Hm,” she starts, pausing to think while she mixes the ingredients. “See, let me tell you a secret.” she leans in close and it makes him laugh, his vision going cross eyed the closer she gets. “Your brother was not an easy kid. It was hard sometimes, but we still loved him enough to have you. And you, Jisungie, are a very good kid.” 

He preens under her words, smiling up at her. 

“So it’s worth the bad?” 

“Not all hard things are, but some. With your father, I love him very much, but we fight sometimes, too.” 

“About what?” 

“Little things like where to go out for dinner or what movie to watch. Bigger things, sometimes, too, that you don’t need to worry about.” 

“Will I fight with my husband?” he asks, and his mother frowns, her mouth folding into a stern line. “I mean wife. Sorry. You were talking about dad, so I said it wrong.” 

She smiles kindly, and Jisung exhales. 

“Right, of course. You probably will. That’s just a part of relationships. You fight and then you make up, because you love each other.” 

“I don’t fight with Minho.” 

“Well, he’s your best friend.” 

Jisung wonders why he’s not allowed to be both. His mom always says he should marry the person he loves most, his mom always says he should be friends with the person he marries, because friendship is important, too, so he wonders why, why, why he can’t marry Minho. 

It’s grown up stuff, they’ve said. 

Jisung thinks that’s stupid. 

“Are you cooking?” his brother asks, coming in with a friend in tow. Jisung doesn’t like his brother’s friends, they always act like he doesn’t exist, and his brother — five years older and too cool for Jisung — never defends him. 

“Yeah?” Jisung says, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“That’s kind of gay, Jisung.” 

He doesn’t get why it hurts, but he just knows it does. Maybe it’s because his brother says it in a way that’s so clearly supposed to be an insult. Maybe that’s it. His friend snorts, too, like it’s funny, but it makes him upset. 

It’s a hard thing to explain. It’s a grown up feeling, he can tell, and grown ups don’t like to explain grown up feelings to kids, so he’s forced to walk around with this tangled ball of emotions in his hands without a name for any of it. 

That’s unfair. 

His mom probably feels this way, too. Sometimes. He can’t imagine he’s the first person in the world to ever feel weird and sad and wrong, it can’t be just him, but they all have the words for it. Every adult knows how to talk about it. 

If Jisung talked about it, he fears how the conversation would go. 

He’s ten, he’s not stupid. He’s almost eleven. 

He knows being gay is a bad thing because people use it as an insult all the time and he knows being gay is a bad thing because society says it’s not right and he knows being gay is a bad thing because God made man for woman and woman for man and Jisung knows this. 

Jisung isn’t gay. 

(But he can’t help but think back to being littler and telling his mom he wanted to marry Minho, and the way she shut down.) 

He feels himself get angry, little hands clenching into little fists at his side.  

“I’m not gay,” he yells. 

His mom smacks the counter top with the towel over her shoulder. 

“Jisung! Don’t yell at your brother.” 

And Jisung just gets angrier. Angrier because she’s siding with her brother who called him something mean. 

“UGH,” he groans, and storms off to his room, ignoring his mother’s attempts to get him to come back to the kitchen. 

Once in his room, Jisung goes to the window. Minho’s there just across the lawn in his room playing video games, and Jisung smiles, going over to his desk and picking up the walkie talkie they bought recently. They don’t really work, but Jisung’s willing to test his luck right now, because Minho wouldn’t hear a paper airplane thudding softly on his window. 

“Minho,” he says into the speaker. “I’m sad. Over.” 

Minho turns and looks over at him, a smile spreading, and opens his window, gesturing for Jisung to do the same. 

“Why? Over.” His voice comes out crackly and it makes Jisung smile just a little. 

“My brother called me gay,” he says with a shrug. And Minho nods, looking everywhere but at him, and Jisug worries he’s going to agree with his brother and stop talking to him. 

And then, “So?” 

Jisung shrugs again, sighing. He can’t explain that it feels weird and he can’t understand why it upsets him so much. Can’t explain any of it. 

No one’s ever given him the words. 

(One day, they will. That’s the kicker, and he knows it, even at ten-almost-eleven years old. One day, he’ll have the words, and he’ll put it all together and look back on this moment and feel like an idiot. Because the words will make it all make sense. 

Jisung waits for that day.) 

2003

21 & 23

Jisung loves spring. He loves the flowers, he loves the birds, he loves it all. 

And he’s happy. It’s spring and he’s walking through the woods with Felix, kicking a stray pebble around as they talk about Felix’s new girl, and he’s happy. Minho’s in Seoul again for the next two days, and Jisung misses him, but they called last night and Minho got him off with his words, and then whispered I love you right as Jisung was about to fall asleep, and he’s happy. 

God, he’s excited. 

“She’s just so sweet, you know?” Felix says, and Jisung grins at him. He hasn’t seen him like this…ever, he doesn’t think. Felix is one of the best people he knows, but he’s never had much luck in romance. 

He hopes this works out for him. 

Felix groans, dropping his head in his hands. “Ah, I like her so much.” 

Jisung laughs. “I’m really happy for you. It’s nice to see you this excited.” 

“Yeah? I really like her. I think I’m gonna ask her out for real.” He looks over at Jisung, a hopeful, careful expression on his face, and Jisung nods.  

“That sounds like a great idea, Felix. If she makes you this happy and you aren’t even together yet, I say go for it. And you’re a catch.” 

“Would you date me?” he asks, wiggling his brows. 

“No,” Jisung says flatly, and Felix pouts. “It’s always been Minho for me. You know that.” 

“Whatever. True love, I guess. How’s it going? You were really sad about him being in Seoul all the time, but you don’t seem upset about it anymore.” 

“Yeah, it’s. It’s good.” He smiles at the ground, and kicks the pebble over to Felix. “It’s so—” 

“Gay? Like, in a good way. Not as an insult! In the literal sense of the word.” 

Jisung laughs. “Yes. I really love him.” 

“We should go on a double date.” 

“Felix, we can’t.” Jisung looks down at the ground, and wishes they could. It’s so unfair. Felix and Jeongin can go on double dates and Chan and Changbin, too, but he and Minho will forever have to act like the single friends who can’t get girlfriends. 

Or, not forever. 

He really hopes it’s not forever. 

Felix frowns. “Why not?” 

“Because no one knows Minho and I are in a relationship?” 

Felix pouts. 

“That sucks.” 

“I know,” Jisung says. He snorts, but there’s nothing funny about it. Nothing funny. His grandmother made a comment during Seollal, said he’ll be lonely if he doesn’t find someone to spend the rest of his life with, and he didn’t know how to tell her he has that. With the best guy, the best. 

He just can’t tell her, because it’d break her heart. He hates that all he has to do to break his family’s heart is be himself. “I know.” 

“Doesn’t that bother you? All the hiding?” Felix is genuinely asking, and Jisung pauses. 

It does bother him. 

It didn’t used to. 

Before…before he had no reason to stop hiding. Before all it was was unbridled shame. There was nothing good about his queerness, nothing. Just hurt, just fear. His love for men, for masculinity, for Minho was something he hated. 

He doesn’t hate it now. 

There’s still shame. There’s still fear, but it’s manageable and isn’t the first thing on his mind when he thinks of the kind of love he’s built for. Queer love, love that would be queer even if he loved a woman, because that’s just who he is, that’s just how he is. 

And will be forever. 

There’s beauty in that, too. In something so certain. So unwavering. 

The tide will rise and fall and the earth will keep on spinning and someday none of them will be here anymore because the sun will have swallowed them all, and just as those truths are certain ones, Jisung’s queerness is as well. 

“I used to hide a lot more.” 

Felix looks really sad at that. 

“I’m sorry you felt like you had to hide that from me.” 

“I hid from everybody.” 

“You told Minho.” 

Jisung laughs softly. “Minho told me first. And then he kissed me.” 

He still blushes when he says it, and it makes Felix smile. “And now you’re basically married. It gives hope for the future of romance.” 

Jisung ducks his head. “We’re not married.” 

He kicks a pebble. 

“You’re gonna get married one day.” 

“It’s not legal.” 

Felix frowns. “Right.” And then lights up. “It’s totally legal in some place in Europe. I read about it somewhere. Go there and get married.” 

“I think we’ll just throw a party. Invite you guys, exchange rings. He once told me plenty of men have husbands and plenty of women have wives because it’s about the love over anything else. When you’re like us, you know. Gay. Queer. That’s all you can count on.” 

“That’s kind of really beautiful, Jisung, have you considered poetry?” 

Jisung snorts. “I songwrite?” 

“Same shit.” 

“Basically.” 

They’re quiet for a moment before Jisung blurts, “He asked me to move in with him. Speaking of love and milestones and shit, um. Minho asked me to move in with him and I’ve been holding in telling you since he asked me and it’s been driving me insane. I said yes. It’s—we’re moving to Seoul. Together.” 

He twists his fingers, plays with them anxiously, and bites his lip. 

Felix looks so sad. 

Jisung feels awful. 

“Can I visit?” 

Jisung looks at him like he’s lost his mind. “Of course, Felix. You’re my best friend. We’ll keep a toothbrush for you in the bathroom.” 

Felix grins at that. “I’m your best friend.” 

“You know this.” 

“It’s not Minho?” 

“Minho is the love of my life,” he says, skin turning bright red. “It’s different.” 

“Aw, dude, that’s so mushy.” 

“He is, though!” 

Felix laughs and then quiets, stopping against a tree and crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re going to Seoul, then?” 

Jisung nods. 

He thinks about all the ways it’ll be easier. It’s not perfect there, he knows that, he’ll still have to hide in many ways, but he’ll be anonymous. He’ll be just one more person in a sea of people, and no one will care that he’s living with a man. No one will whisper about him or tell his parents. That counts for a lot. 

“It’ll be good for me.” 

Felix’s eyes get watery. 

“Yeah, it will be.” 

They keep walking, the subject changing, kicking a rock back and forth as they laugh. 

They’re lying on Minho’s bed facing each other, and Minho is tracing lazy patterns on Jisung’s arm. Jisung keeps trying to make out with him, and Minho keeps dodging his mouth, even though he keeps staring at lips. 

“Let me kiss you,” he grumbled about five minutes into trying and failing to do so, and Minho just laughed, biting his cheek and going no. “You clearly want to.” 

“I always want to,” he confirmed. “But I also just want to look at you right now. And hold you.” He suddenly got a little self conscious, eyes searching Jisung’s face. “That’s okay, right?”

Jisung nodded and kissed his chin softly. “Yeah, it’s okay.” 

He hasn’t tried again even though he really wants to, because kissing Minho is his favorite thing in the world, maybe even more than the sex. He loves the sex. The sex is great, but there’s something so sweet about being kissed. About kissing. Something he really loves. 

When Minho speaks, his words are soft. Barely a whisper, like they’ve created a bubble around themselves that they can’t possibly pop. 

“Chan’s been asking if you and Felix don’t want to come with me to Seoul this weekend.” 

Jisung frowns. “Just me and Felix? Not the rest of the guys?” 

Minho laughs softly. “I think he’d have a crush on him if he wasn’t straight, to be honest. So yeah. He doesn’t want a full house, just some friends.” 

Jisung nods, smile spreading slowly. “Cool, yeah.” Minho’s eyes are trained on his lips, on his smile, and Jisung watches as his mouth opens slightly. “Can I kiss you now?” 

Minho answers by pulling him forward with a smirk and kissing him stupid. 

It’s two days later and they’re in Minho’s car. 

“Can you guys turn up the radio?” Felix asks, leaning forward from the backseat. Jisung’s been kind of zoned out for the past forty five minutes — since Minho’s hand landed on his thigh and didn't move away except to change gears, finding Jisung’s body again and again, a casual display of intimacy that’s got his head spinning. It’s not like Felix doesn’t know, but it’s one thing for Felix to know and another for him to be reminded of it. 

Jisung tries to tell himself that Felix isn’t going to be uncomfortable with a hand on a thigh, but it’s a hard thing to convince himself of when it’s all that’s ever been drilled into him. 

“Huh?” Jisung asks, twisting in his seat to look at him. 

“The radio. Can you turn it up? I can barely hear it from back here.” 

“Oh. Sure.” 

Minho and Felix hum along to a song Jisung’s never heard, and then gasp in shock when Jisung tells them as much, Minho turning the volume up some more so they can scream along to the lyrics. 

Jisung’s staring at the side of Minho’s face as he watches him laugh, and he feels his heartbeat everywhere. Like he’s one walking, talking, bleeding thing that beats and beats for Minho. 

He’s beautiful. Jisung’s known this since childhood, but it’s different now that he’s allowed to acknowledge it. It’s sharper and kind of wonderful. Minho looks over at him and grabs his hand, lacing their fingers together. 

It’s kind of inconvenient, seeing as he has to switch gears, but his hand finds Jisung every time it can. 

“So, Minho,” Felix says with a look Jisung doesn’t trust. “Tell me, what are your intentions with our Jisungie?” 

Jisung drops his head in his hands and groans in embarrassment. “Oh my God.” 

“Shush, I need to know. How do I know you won’t break his heart again?” 

Minho doesn’t miss a beat. “If I ever hurt him again you have full permission to kill me. And I’m being serious.” 

Felix stares at him. Minho catches his eye in the rearview mirror. 

“Seriously?” 

“Yes,” he says simply. 

“You’re that sure of him? Because, listen, he’s my best friend but he has some habits—” 

“Hey! Whose side are you on?” Jisung complains. 

“Yours, duh.” 

“I’m sure,” Minho says, cutting off their bickering. He squeezes Jisung’s hand and smiles at him. “I’m that sure of him. I’ve done the silence, I’m not doing it again. If he breaks my heart it’d probably be my fault, anyway.” 

“Okay, loverboy,” Jisung teases. 

“Well, yeah,” Minho says easily, shrugging, but Jisung can see that the tips of his ears are pink. 

“Good answer, Minho, you will live to see another day.” 

The drive goes by quickly after that. Minho and Felix get on surprisingly well, and Jisung feels very full of something very bright. They laugh the whole way there, the two of them trading stories about Jisung, Minho looking over at him guiltily when Felix says something from the four years they were apart. 

“Stop it,” Jisung says. “It worked out.” 

They get to Chan and Changbin’s late enough in the afternoon after hours of traffic that none of them feel like doing much of anything. Changbin pouts. 

“Not even to see a movie?” 

“Let’s just watch a movie here,” Chan suggests. “It’s fine, we’ll do something tomorrow. There’s this new restaurant we meant to take Minho to last time he was here but that we just didn’t end up having time for that I think you would all like.” 

“But for tonight, let’s just pile into the living room and watch something. Do you have Princess Mononoke?” Jisung asks, smiling at them innocently. Minho snorts, because he knows how much Jisung loves the Studio Ghibli movies, and nods along. 

“I’m game,” Chan says. 

The other three shrug. “Sure.”

“Yeah, we have it,” Chan confirms after a beat, flipping through their DVDs in search of the movie. 

The living room is small but not cramped, a little messy from use but not overly cluttered. They toss throw pillows onto the ground and squeeze onto the couch. Felix takes the couch corner, Chan and Changbin take up the rest of the couch next to him, leaving space on the floor for Jisung and Minho. 

“The floor?” Minho complains when he comes back from the bathroom and finds Jisung between Felix’s legs, his hands carding through his hair. “I hate you all.” 

“But it’s the floor with Jisung,” Changbin says, smiling up at him. Minho’s frown deepens. 

“Don’t use my boyfriend against me.” 

“But it’s so easy.” 

Jisung smiles up at Minho, and watches as the fight gets exhaled right out of him. The smiles reserved for Jisung are so terribly, horribly soft. So fond it makes his whole being feel like it’s being wrapped up in strong arms and squeezed real tight. 

“You can have the fluffier pillow,” he offers. 

“Fine.” 

“Whipped,” Chan says with a cough. 

“I know where you sleep.” Minho glares at him. 

Chan raises his hands in surrender. 

After the movie’s been set up but before they press play, Minho gets up to make them all popcorn. After about two minutes of staring at the open doorway to the kitchen, Jisung gets up and follows him, ignoring the teasing comments coming from the couch. 

“Hey,” he says, leaning against the countertop by the stove. 

Minho takes a peek around the edge of the door to make sure nobody’s paying attention to them, and finds all of them talking animatedly about JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. He smirks and pulls Jisung in by his t-shirt to kiss him gently. 

Jisung wonders if he will ever get used to this feeling. He doesn’t think so. He thinks it’ll make him this giddy forever. 

He buzzes. He buzzes like summertime cicadas, he buzzes like bees, he buzzes like a lightbulb seconds away from exploding. That’s how Minho makes him feel, like summertime, like honey, like he’s on the brink of something almost too bright to look at. 

“Been wanting to do that since we got in the car,” he whispers. 

Jisung nods and kisses him again, something quick, something easy. 

“Have you ever kissed a guy in front of them?” he wonders

Minho snorts. “Not on purpose, no.” 

“They’ve caught you, then?” 

“Sweetheart, do you really want to hear about Changbin walking in on me having sex with someone else?” 

He scrunches his whole face. Minho laughs. “No, I don’t.” 

“See?” 

“Can I say something? It’s so stupid.” 

“Of course, baby.” 

“I really like the pet names.” 

“Yeah, Jisung-ah. I know.” 

Jisung blushes. “No, you don’t.”

“Oh, don’t I? You don’t turn into the sweetest thing every time I call you honey? Sweetheart? That’s never happened? You don’t come the second I call you my baby, my good boy? That doesn’t sound familiar at all…?” 

Minho steps closer as he speaks, and Jisung pushes him away teasingly. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

He leans in real close, close enough that his breath ghosts the shell of Jisung’s ear. 

“I think it’s sweet.” He kisses the tip of Jisung’s ear and then lower on his jaw. “My love.” 

Jisung whines, high and needy, ripped straight from the back of his throat. 

“Guys,” Chan yells from the living room. “Come watch the movie, you’re taking too long.” 

“We’re coming,” Minho says, not taking his eyes off of Jisung. He kisses him again and takes the bowl of popcorn into the living room. 

Jisung stands there in the kitchen, a little dazed and a little horny, wishing they had gotten a hotel room so Minho could press my love, my love, my love into every single inch of Jisung’s skin. 

He follows him out a few beats later, and takes his place next to Minho on the floor. 

There’s a pause where Minho hesitates. Jisung feels the way he stills beside him, and turns to look at him to ask if everything’s okay when he feels lips press against his cheek. He looks at him, surprised, and Minho smiles bashfully. 

“Now I’ve kissed someone in front of them on purpose,” he says with a shrug. 

Jisung, in a display of true courage, surges up and kisses the corner of his mouth. Minho’s smile takes up his entire face, and it’s the single most joy filled thing Jisung’s ever seen. He looks over the damn moon. 

He is so in love with him. 

Felix throws popcorn at them. 

“Boo, we pressed play on the movie, lovebirds” 

“I think it’s sweet,” Chan says, looking down at them with something bittersweet in his expression. Jisung can’t believe he’s got the kind of love that makes people want the same thing. 

He spent so, so long thinking this would never, ever happen to him. 

He’s still not entirely sure what he does with the fact that it has. 

“You only think it’s sweet because you didn’t spend an entire traffic filled car ride with them making lovey dovey eyes at each other,” Felix complains, grinning the entire time. 

Minho looks up at him and raises an eyebrow like Felix’s words are a challenge, and launches himself at Jisung, peppering kisses all over his face. Everyone groans. All Jisung can do is laugh. 

He’s watching Minho sleep. 

Maybe it’s strange, but Minho’s just so beautiful like this. Soft in a way only Jisung gets to have him. They went to a gay club tonight — a different one from last time because Minho figured Jisung wouldn’t want to go there again — and it was fun. Jisung had a great time. 

The music was too loud and the drinks too strong but he felt alive in a way that was new. Jisung looked at Minho under the strobe lights, his bright white smile under the glow, and felt desire unfurl in him, thread unspooling. 

“You look so beautiful,” Jisung said to him. They were at the bar and Minho was dragging Jisung out to the middle of the dance floor, dancing too slowly for a song with that kind of beat, the bass fast and lively, and Minho with his arms around Jisung’s neck. 

“What are you gonna do about it?” Minho asked with a smirk, eyes fixed on Jisung’s mouth. 

Jisung didn’t answer. He looked around, saw dozens of men doing exactly what he wanted to do, and pulled Minho in by the back of his neck to kiss him until they were both dizzy. 

“You’re doing so good,” Minho whispered when Jisung pulled away, hands shaking against Minho’s sweaty skin. “So brave, I’m so proud of you.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah, baby.” 

Jisung preened, grinning up at him and whining until Minho laughed and kissed him again. 

Jisung smiles thinking about it. The way he was kissed was so unlike every other time, something so intimate about doing it so publicly. No one was looking at them, nobody cared that yet another set of gay men were kissing in a gay club, but Jisung cared. 

To Jisung, it mattered. Matters. 

There are things that have always felt impossible. Getting over his feelings for Minho, for one. 

Loving him out loud if he ever got him. 

He doesn’t have to get over his feelings for him and he can love him out loud, even if it's only whispered. Even if loving him out loud means loving him in front of just their friends or going out to a club every once in a while to kiss him in public or moving in together and letting their neighbors assume. 

That can be loud, too.

That can be deafening. 

Jisung’s still got guilt in him. He thinks he’ll carry that with him to his grave; there are some things you never truly shake, but those same things don’t have to weigh you down forever. 

He doesn’t feel weighed down. The hot guilt is lukewarm now. The burning shame doesn’t mark him when he gets too close. 

Jisung brushes Minho’s hair out of his face gently. 

“I can’t believe you want me,” Minho said in his ear back at the club, pulling him in. He twisted Jisung around so he could grind against him, and Jisung let his body move in time with the music. Minho’s teeth dug into the muscle of his shoulder. “Hottest guy I’ve ever seen, and he’s all mine,” he whispered in his ear. 

Jisung squeezed his eyes shut against the building want in his chest. “Minho.” 

“What is it?” Minho asked, and used a possessive hand to twist Jisung’s face back and kiss him, messy and wet. 

Jisung moaned into his mouth before pulling away, pouting as he looked up at him. “You can’t say this shit when you can’t do anything about it.” 

“I can’t?” Minho asked, something wild and bright in the dark brown of his eyes, pupils blown so wide from the lack of light and the presence of desire that it was all Jisung could see. 

“Minho—” 

“C’mon, it’s not the first time someone’s gotten off in this bathroom.” 

“Minho,” he said, a little anxious anyway, but, still, he followed him. “Are you sure?” 

“The worst thing that can happen is we get kicked out of this club.” Minho shrugged, pulling Jisung into the bathroom and locking the door behind him. His mouth found Jisung’s neck, found the hinge of his jaw, and Jisung gasped, needy little whines echoing against the tile. 

“The worst thing that can happen is we get arrested for public indecency.” 

“That’s not gonna happen,” Minho mumbled against his skin. 

And the thing is, Jisung was half hard in his pants. 

Okay, maybe like three quarters hard. 

(He was hard, hard at the thought of doing something so dirty somewhere so public. He never did anything like this with his exes, because he never figured he’d want to, but with Minho…

Fuck, he wants to. 

He really does. 

The thought of having to bite his lip to keep quiet so nobody outside the bathroom door hears their moans has arousal twisting hotly in his belly.) 

“Promise?” he asked, still anxious. 

Minho kissed him until he was melting against him, brought a hand down to palm him through his jeans, and pulled down his zipper. 

“Okay?” 

Jisung nodded. 

He stares at him now and grows progressively more affected by the memory. He’s not horny, far from it. He’s comfortably hot for his boyfriend, comfortably attracted to him in a way that’s still shiny, still new. 

Jisung isn’t going to wake him up to kiss him, and he’s definitely not going to wake him up to fuck him, not in Chan and Changbin’s apartment, not with Felix on the floor beside him, but he brushes a thumb across Minho’s cheekbone, and smiles when his breath hitches. 

He was sweating in the club before they ever entered the bathroom, sweaty and happy in ways he hadn’t been in a long time. 

So he was sweating before, but he was definitely sweating then. 

Minho licked the sweat off his neck. Jisung shivered. 

Minho pulled Jisung’s cock out and spit in his hand before wrapping his fist around Jisung loosely. Teasingly. 

“This alright?” 

Jisung nodded again, so desperate it’d be embarrassing if Minho wasn’t so clearly affected, too, his hard cock tenting his jeans and his eyes fixed on Jisung’s mouth. 

“Definitely,” Jisung said with a loose grin. 

The sun peeks carefully over the horizon, and Jisung stares out the window. There’s barely any light, but it still makes the room brighter. 

Jisung leans over and kisses Minho’s forehead, featherlight so he doesn’t stir. 

Minho shifts anyway. 

“Time is it?” he asks sleepily. 

There’s no clock anywhere, so Jisung shushes him gently. “Too early. Go back to sleep.” 

“You sleep, too,” Minho grumbles, pulling Jisung in against him and kissing his shoulder. “Whate are you thinking about?” 

Their tones are hushed, quiet enough to keep Felix from waking up where he lies on the floor beside them. 

“Tonight,” Jisung admits quietly. “I was thinking about it, I can’t stop thinking about it actually.” 

Jisung turns around to look at him and finds Minho chewing anxiously on his bottom lip. “Did you not enjoy it?” 

“I did. I had fun.” 

Minho’s smile spreads slowly, sleepily. “Okay. Good.” 

Jisung kisses the corner of his mouth. “You looked really beautiful.” 

“You think?” 

Jisung nods. He always looks beautiful. “You look prettier now, though.” 

No makeup, hair a tousled mess, wearing Jisung’s oversized t-shirt because he forgot something to sleep in. He doesn’t look like Minho, the hotshot. Minho, the guy who was grinding on him on the dance floor, smirking every time he could tell Jisung was getting more affected. 

He looks like Minho, Jisung’s boyfriend. 

“I don’t,” Minho argues. 

“I love this version of you.” 

“A mess?” 

“Mine.” 

There’s something private about the way Minho looks at him, something about the look in his eyes that makes Jisung fall apart. It’s so different to the way he fell apart in the club bathroom. He feels just as undressed, though. Just as naked as he did when Minho had his fist around him, when Jisung returned the favor and got him off just as quick, just as dirty. 

Minho looks at him like he’s got all the time in the world to look at him. Slowly, disarmingly. 

“We should go back to sleep,” Minho says, and maneuvers Jisung until they’re spooning. “Goodnight, Jisung-ah.” 

Jisung hums in response, eyes slipping shut. 

Felix called him about an hour ago saying he and the guys were going to a bar and Jisung wasn’t allowed to say no. 

So he’s at a bar. 

They’re celebrating the marks on their exams. They all did well, all of them passing with high scores. They’re talking animatedly about summer, about everything they should do. Jeongin says they should visit Busan where the rest of his family lives, Hyunjin says they should try drunk painting classes, Felix says they should go to Jeju and spend some time at the beach, Seungmin says he’s down to go to Seoul again. 

Jisung clears his throat. 

“You guys could help me move.” 

The table goes dead silent, nobody moves. Jisung looks down at his soju bottle, tracing the condensation of it with the pad of his finger. He waits for someone to say something. Waits some more. 

Eventually, Hyunjin speaks up. 

“What?” 

It’s said with disbelief, it’s said gently. He nods, and tries to unstick the words from the roof of his mouth. Tears form, sting at the corners of his eyes, and he nods again, laughing a little. “I’m moving to Seoul. With Minho. Minho and I are moving to Seoul. Together.” 

Everyone stares at him, aside from Felix who smiles encouragingly. Jisung tries not to cry, but a knot forms in his throat anyway. 

He’ll miss them. 

God, he’ll miss them. 

These are his best friends. The people he grew up with, they’ve known him since forever. 

When Jisung first moved to the neighborhood and got tossed next to Hyunjin in class, when Jisung, Seungmin, and Jeongin first started trying to beat each other’s high scores on every arcade game, when Felix tried and failed miserably at teaching him how to bake, when Jisung fell in love with a boy and felt like he couldn’t tell them, when he finally felt like he could, they knew him. 

Held him, loved him. 

He’s ready to go somewhere new. He’s ready to live a little freer, away from his parents, away from the religion that suffocates him. 

But this hurts. 

This sucks. 

This is more bitter than sweet, this is something he hadn’t thought about, not really, too wrapped up in the excitement of Minho, Minho, Minho to think about this. 

They’re his best friends, too. 

“Dude,” someone says. Jeongin, he thinks. He’s too in his head to notice. 

A tear slips down his cheek. 

“Jisung, are you okay?” Hyunjin asks, reaching across the sticky bar table to squeeze his arms. Jisung laughs humorlessly, laughs around the tension in his chest, and tries to laugh the longing away. 

“I’m gonna miss you guys so much.” 

They all pout and lean in, doing their best to hug him while they sit around a table. 

“We can visit, right?” Jeongin asks. 

“Of course you can.” 

“Then it’ll be fine.” 

“Haven’t you guys been together for like…five months?” Seungmin asks, tilting his head to the side like a curious puppy. 

“Hater,” Felix says. 

“I’m just thinking logically." 

“They’ve been in love for forever, Seungmin,” Hyunjin argues, and Jisung blushes. He wonders how obvious it is in retrospect, how clear his feelings for Minho always have been in hindsight. It’s silly, but he’s proud of the way it doesn’t scare him. Maybe people have always been able to see it written on his face. 

Would make sense, really. 

He’s always loved him. 

“Besides,” Hyunjin continues. “I think it’ll be…easier for you to be yourself there. Not perfect, there are definitely still going to be people who are cruel, but you won’t have the, like. Weight of this town on your shoulders. I think you deserve that.” 

Jisung’s eyes get watery at that. He doesn’t know what he did to deserve the friends he’s got, but he’s selfish enough — just selfish enough — to keep them. To hold them in his hands and press them to his heart. 

These are his people. 

It’ll be hell to adjust to life without them, he’ll have to figure out a way to convince Seungmin and Felix and Hyunjin and Jeongin to go up to Seoul every single weekend, because the missing will be too awful, and the ache in his chest will be too much. 

They’ll figure something out, though, he’s sure they will. His friendship with them didn’t end when they found out he’s in love with a man and it isn’t going to end because he’s moving to Seoul with him. 

God, Jisung’s moving in with him. With Minho. 

It’ll be sweet in ways he has never tasted sweetness before, it’ll be downright cloying and saccharine. He thinks about it, the music they’ll make. Two men off in their own home, laughter during sex and joy so unfiltered it sticks to every corner of their house. 

He can’t believe he gets this. 

Jisung spent a lot of time fearing his sexuality, maybe more than he’s ever feared anything before. He sank to shaky knees in the church and begged and pleaded for something to change. 

For him to change. 

He looks around the table and thinks of Minho and thinks of the cats they’ll have and he thinks of the God he once feared and then thinks of His kindness. He thinks he was born to be queer and made to love Minho, and he wonders if there isn’t religion in that, too. 

“Please don’t cry,” Hyunjin says, eyes getting watery. 

Jisung chuckles. “I won’t. Sorry. And thanks, Hyunjin. I hope it’s good for me, too.” 

“This New Years Eve party will be at your place, then?” Seungmin asks. “So you and Minho can disappear for ten minutes and have nobody question it?” 

Jisung groans and drops his face in his hands. When he speaks, his words are muffled by his palms. 

“You noticed?” 

“Yes,” they all say in unison. 

Jisung groans again. 

“Hey, it worked out,” Felix says with a grin. 

“Yeah, it did,” Jisung says, smiling like a lovesick fool. “Whatever, enough about my relationship, we fucking passed.” 

They all cheer and order another round of drinks. Jisung is comfortably tipsy and full of so much love for his friends it spills out of him in waves. 

Jisung’s been on the edge of throwing up for the past three days. He’s told Felix, he’s told the guys, but his parents still don’t know that he’s moving. Still have no idea that he’s transferring to a different university or that Minho’s already found them an apartment. 

The words are stuck. 

Jisung hasn’t found the courage to shove his hand down his throat and pull them out. 

But he has to. He has to, because his parents—they might hate him forever, but they deserve to know. He doesn’t want them to worry, he doesn’t want to disappear out of nowhere. They’re not bad people, mom and dad, they’re just not the best, either. 

Still, not the best doesn’t warrant Jisung disappearing and never explaining why, only finding out where he is and where he’s been if he’s in the hospital and they call. 

Hello, it’s Jisung’s doctor. He’s sick. He’s queer. You decide if those are synonyms. 

There’s the chance they’ll never speak to him again. 

There’s the chance they will. 

He’s not sure which is worse. Which is scarier. Jisung’s done a damn good job at preparing himself for his parents’ hatred. He’s done a damn good job. It started when he was eight years old and wanted to marry his best friend. 

And then when he was thirteen and wanted to marry his best friend, finally understanding what that meant. 

And now twenty-one, so sure that one day he will. 

He’s carried this fear in his chest for years. This pain in the shape of a man with his eyes and a woman with his smile, a pain that shoots through him, a bullet shaped like his father’s teeth, a blade shaped like his mother’s always gentle fingers. 

There’s always the chance God will decide he’s suffered enough. That he’s good, that he’s deserving of softness. Of a kindness from these people so foreign it is in a language he can’t speak. 

He thinks that’d hurt him, too. The knowledge that he’s spent his whole life fearing them for nothing. 

They’re sitting at the dinner table, his parents talking about his father’s job while Jisung pokes at the egg in his bowl with a chopstick. His mother said he shouldn’t play with his food, but he’s just not hungry. 

“Jisung-ah,” she snaps. “Eat your dinner.” 

“Not hungry,” he mutters. 

“You haven’t been eating enough at home. Is everything okay? Have you decided you don’t like my cooking?” she teases, smiling at him warmly. Jisung swallows thickly around nothing. He needs to tell them. 

He thinks of Minho and his laugh and the voicemail he left in the middle of the night. 

I found a place. You’ll like it, Jisungie. It’s close to your school, and all of our neighbors are our age, so it should be, you know. Good. Should be okay. It ended up having two bedrooms, which will be nice when people come visit. You can turn it into a music studio, too, and it makes it less suspicious. It’s a bachelor pad, except not because we’re not bachelors and I’m definitely really in love with you. I’m also a little bit drunk. 

We’re celebrating the apartment, Jisung heard Chan call out in the background. 

Yeah, we are. I’ll be home tomorrow, love you, bye— he said, words quick so he could get them all out before the beep. 

He thinks of him and takes a steadying breath. Minho deserves his honesty, he deserves his honesty. Jisung is deserving of kindness from himself, of forgiveness. That’s what this is: forgiveness. It’s Jisung saying goodbye forever to the scared little kid he used to be. 

“I have something to tell you guys,” he blurts. His parents look at him curiously. 

“Don’t tell us you actually failed one of your classes,” his father jokes, and Jisung seizes the opportunity. 

“Actually, it’s sort of related to that.” His parents look panicked. “Not that I failed! I did really well, I just…I’m transferring schools.” 

Their chopsticks drop. 

“To Seoul.” 

Their jaws drop. 

“You are?” his mother asks, and she looks at him sadly, so, so sadly, like she’s losing her little boy, like she’s already lost him, and something in Jisung shatters. The part of him that always wanted to be her shadow tries to keep the sun from setting, but the light goes down anyway. His eyes start to well up with tears and he nods, speaking. 

“With Minho. Minho and I are moving to Seoul.” 

He’s already shaking, doing his absolute best to hold back the tears. Jisung does his best to keep his gaze steady, but it’s hard when his whole body is trembling. His mother’s eyes are equally watery. 

“Are you and Minho…” she trails off. She can’t say it, can’t say together, boyfriends, in love even though he knows those are the words on the tip of her tongue, even though she’s always known. 

Jisung can only nod as he starts sobbing into his food. 

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” he cries. “I never meant to…to be this way. I promise.” 

He can’t stop crying. Can’t stop shaking. 

Can’t stop a lot of things, really. 

Couldn’t stop himself from falling for Minho, for one. No matter how hard he tried to force it down, force it away, force it out of his body and out of this house, Minho always came back holding his love in his hands and handing it right back to Jisung. 

His mother reaches across the table hesitantly and covers his hand with hers. 

No words are exchanged. 

She barely looks at him. 

But when he does catch her eye, she smiles. It’s small and tentative and very unlike the warm smiles he’s used to. He thinks she’s known for a while, anyway. It can’t be that surprising to her, not with the comments she’s made about Minho, but he’s sure a part of her prayed it wasn’t true. 

She isn’t disgusted with him. There is nothing cruel in her expression. 

Jisung cries harder, sobs wracking his body as his mom squeezes his hand. 

His father clears his throat. He isn’t looking at him.  

Jisung stares at the side of his face, stares at him pleadingly. 

“Please. Dad, please.” 

“Will you visit?” he asks. He doesn’t look at Jisung, can’t seem to. His father’s brows are drawn together angrily, a furious crease marking his skin, but he’s not yelling. Jisung doesn’t get disowned. 

The question throws him off guard. He stares at the side of his fathers face. 

“What?” 

His father clears his throat again. “Your brother moved to Busan and stopped visiting. We barely see him anymore.” He looks up and his eyes meet Jisung’s. “Will you visit?” 

All Jisung can do is nod. 

His father nods back. 

Jisung’s feet hit the grass before he can really process what he’s doing. Minho’s car just pulled onto the street, parking it in the space between their houses the way he always does, and Jisung, without really thinking about it, throws himself onto him. 

He’s been in Seoul for the weekend. 

The last weekend before they leave for it together. 

It’s exciting, he’s buzzing out of his skin with it. Minho catches him with an oof, arm wrapping around Jisung’s waist instinctually. He chuckles, and Jisung feels his amusement against his skin. 

“What’s all this for?” he asks, pulling back. He runs a hand through Jisung’s hair, and Jisung grins. It’s maybe too much too openly for their small hometown, but he thinks that’s maybe okay. 

“I told my parents,” he says breathlessly. “They don’t hate me.” 

Minho laughs happily, eyes on his mouth. Jisung can tell he wants to kiss him, and Jisung would really love to be kissed by him, but he can feel his father’s eyes on him from the front window, and he doesn’t want him to regret his acceptance. 

It’s a quiet little thing, the acceptance. He can’t poke or prod at it too much without risking the death of it, so he stares at Minho and doesn’t kiss him even though he really, really wants to. 

“I’m really proud of you,” Minho says. “And I really want to kiss you right now.” 

“Yeah, same. Let’s…?” He nods towards Minho’s house, and lets Minho drag him inside by the arm, his thick fingers wrapping around Jisung’s wrist. 

His pulse flutters under Minho’s touch. 

The second the door is shut behind them, Minho’s mouth finds his. It’s an I missed you kiss, an I’m proud of you kiss, and I love you kiss, and Jisung feels all of it through the swipe of Minho’s tongue against his. 

“How’d apartment hunting go?” Jisung asks when Minho pulls away to kiss down his jaw. The doorknob digs into Jisung’s back uncomfortably, but he’d kind of rather die than stop Minho from kissing him the way he’s being kissed right now. 

“Mm. Good,” he says between marking Jisung up. “The place I found I think you’re going to love,” Minho says excitedly, fully pulling away and moving towards his bedroom. Jisung grins at the back of his head, and Minho must feel it because he turns around to grin back. “It’s got tall walls, which I liked. And really big windows, and two bedrooms, which I told you about in the voicemail?” 

“You did.” 

“Right, yeah.” They reach Minho’s bedroom. Minho keeps rambling about the apartment. It’s cute, Jisung’s kind of in love with his excitement, the way he won’t quiet about the place even as Jisung tries to kiss him. “The second bedroom is smaller so that could be the guest bedroom, of course. Can you believe we’re gonna be the kind of adults who have guest bedrooms?” 

Jisung laughs gently, nipping Minho’s earlobe and eliciting a soft gasp out of him. “No, I can’t.” 

“You’re not excited enough about this,” Minho says with a pout. 

“I’m very excited,” Jisung says, because he is. He’s so excited, he’s never been more excited for anything in his whole entire life. This is Minho, this is his Minho, this is his boy, his boyfriend, his best friend. This is the guy he’s always, always wanted to spend the rest of his life with. 

Of course he’s excited. 

He’s also horny. 

“You just want me for my body,” Minho says dramatically. 

“No, baby, I want you for your body and your apartment hunting skills.” 

“You joke but my apartment hunting skills found us a really great place.” 

“And I really love that, but I’ve kind of missed you.” 

“You saw me three days ago.” 

“I don’t know, being away from you felt different this time.” And he can’t put his finger on why, exactly, but Minho softens. 

Maybe he knows, he’s always known Jisung better than Jisung knows himself. It’d make sense. He wonders what Minho sees written on his face in that moment; he’s sure he sees something, because the way he kisses him makes Jisung melt. It’s so warm. He feels naked. 

Unraveled. 

“I’m really, really proud of you.” 

And, oh. 

Yeah. 

There’s—there’s that. 

Everyone knows. Everyone who matters and who has ever mattered knows. His friends and Mrs. Lee and his parents. 

Minho. 

And he’s still here. Hell didn’t open up beneath his feet and swallow him whole, he’s so far from hated, he’s so loved it’s overwhelming. The love coming from his parents is dimmer now, but no less present. They still want him around, they still resent his brother's absence more than his queerness, and that’s more than he could’ve ever hoped for. 

It is the life of his dreams. He’ll never be fully comfortable with it all, he doesn’t think, but the discomfort is a distant buzz. Faulty telephone wires the next city over, it’ll always be there if he goes searching for it, but for once he’s walking in the other direction. 

Hand in hand with the guy who’s it for him, too. 

His throat tightens. “Thanks.” 

“So proud. My boy, you’re so good,” Minho mutters, kissing him and kissing him. Minho’s teeth keep digging into his bottom lip teasingly, and Jisung’s chest feels like it’s on fire. Alive in a way only Minho has ever been able to make it. 

“Thank you,” he says with a gasp when Minho trails his kisses down his cheek and sucks a bruise into the hinge of his jaw. 

They have so much time now. So much time to explore the way Minho’s touches get a little more intense every time Jisung thanks him and so much time to explore Jisung’s kneejerk reaction to praise and so much time. 

He’s hard in his jeans already from a little bit of light petting just at the thought of that. The clock seems to tick a little slower, and it makes him so giddy. 

“Can we have sex? Please?” Jisung asks nicely. Minho nods against his skin; his hair tickles Jisung’s neck. It makes him laugh. Minho pulls back and looks at him curiously. “Your hair tickled. I really like it like this.” 

He runs his fingers through the soft strands, blunt nails scratching at his scalp and Minho’s eyelashes flutter shut.  

“Mm, are you sure you don’t want to just lay down and play with my hair?” 

Jisung pauses. “Do you not want to do anything? Because we really don’t—”

Minho cuts his mouth off with a kiss and brings Jisung’s hand down from his hair and to the front of his pants where Minho’s hard cock is pressing against the zipper. “I want. I really want.” 

“Hard already? Do you like me or something?” he teases, despite being hard himself. He pushes Minho down onto the bed and crawls onto his lap, grinding down and making them both gasp. 

“I don’t like you at all.” 

“Oh, in that case…” Jisung starts to pull off his lap, but Minho’s grip tightens, arm wrapping around his waist and pulling him flush against him. 

“I love you,” he says, because Jisung fell for the cheesiest guy alive. 

“That was so lame,” Jisung tells him, but he’s visibly flustered, and Minho can tell. His grin is sharp and gut twisting, and Jisung can’t keep himself from kissing it. When he speaks, it’s unbelievably fond. “I love you, too, you dork.” 

“Yeah?” 

Jisung nods. “Yeah, Minho.” 

“Good. Can I?” he asks, fingers hovering over Jisung’s waistband. He nods, and Minho pushes his pants down. He’s achingly hard and desperate already, leaking precome at the mere sight of Minho underneath him, eyeing him hungrily. “So sexy.” 

“‘M not.” 

“You are.” 

“You’re just saying that.” 

“Yeah, ‘cause it’s true.”

Jisung laughs. “You gonna finger me?” he asks, choking on a moan when Minho spits on his palm and wraps a loose fist around him. He hisses, and Minho tightens his grip. 

He jerks him off slowly, clearly doing everything in his power to make Jisung lose his absolute mind. It’s just loose and slow enough that he’d never be able to come from this. 

“That’s the idea,” Minho says, hands playing with Jisung’s balls. They smile at each other, wide, honest grins, the kind that makes his whole body feel warm. “C’mon, baby. Move,” Minho says, tapping his hip until Jisung’s crawling off his lap. 

He fingers him teasingly, using an excessive amount of lube because Jisung’s learned Minho really enjoys it when he’s wet and messy. One of these days, Jisung will get him to fuck him without a condom, just so he can see the look on Minho’s face when he watches his come drip out of Jisung’s used up hole. 

Jisung really likes this part. He likes the feeling of Minho’s fingers slowly entering him, they’re not particularly long but they’re real good at finding the right angle, and that’s more than Jisung can ask for.

He makes him feel good. 

That’s the crux of it, really. 

Minho makes him feel good, makes his cock twitch and leak and his hole flutter, but he also makes his chest buzz and his hands ache to hold him and his cheeks hurt from how wide he’s smiling. 

He’s hit the jackpot with this. 

With this relationship, with this man. And, yeah, maybe it would’ve been easier if he had fallen for a woman, but maybe it wouldn’t have been this good. 

What could be better than this? 

Minho pushes in slowly and then pulls out slower, sets a teasing pace because he’s an asshole, turns Jisung into a whiny mess, and kisses him. Or, it’s not really a kiss, they’re just breathing into each other’s mouths as Minho rolls his hips into him. 

It’s too warm, hot enough that they’re already sweating, and it makes it all the sweeter. They’re sticky with come and sweat and sugar, and they’ll be sticky even as they shower together afterwards, the cool water beating down their skin as they soap each other up. 

“God, you feel so tight, baby. Always so good, I love this. I love you.” 

“Me, too,” Jisung says a little uselessly, crying out when Minho picks his hips up and fucks into  him harder. “Hnng, fuck, Minho.” 

“Yeah, baby?” he asks with a smirk. “Feels good?” 

“Yes,” Jisung says, not bothering with a smartass response. “Feels — fuck — feels so good. Can I?” 

Minho’s mouth goes slack, and he nods. “Touch yourself, sweetheart, I want to see you fall apart. But stop when I tell you to, okay?” 

Jisung nods. “Mhm.” 

“I want words, baby.” 

“Okay. I’ll stop when you tell me to.”

“So good, sweet thing. My good boy,” Minho says. Jisung whines, high and needy in the back of his throat, and lets go of his cock to breathe so he doesn’t come all over himself. “Yeah, that’s so hot.” 

“Shut up,” he gasps, tossing his head back when Minho’s thrust is aimed particularly well. God, he’s perfect. Everything about him from the mole by his nipple to the small, concentrated furrow between his brows as he does his best to make punched out, pathetic little noises come out of Jisung, all of it. It’s all perfect to him, and it’s all his. 

“You’re taking me so well,” Minho murmurs. 

“You’re so big. ‘M so full.” 

Minho smirks. Jisung rolls his eyes and brings him down to kiss him. 

“Touch yourself, baby, come on, wanna hear you.” 

“If I touch my dick I’ll come, Minho.” 

“Then come, sweetheart. Wanna hear your pretty noises, gets me so fucking hot.” 

Jisung whines, wrapping a hand around himself. He swipes his fingers over the head to collect precome, slicking up the slide as he jerks himself off. It doesn’t take much for him to come, moaning Minho’s name as he spills all over himself, come hitting Minho’s chest as well as his own. 

“C’mon, come in me.” 

Minho squeezes his eyes shut when he comes, his mouth going slack. Jisung brings messy, come stained fingers up to his mouth to trace the swell of Minho’s upper lip. Minho giggles, grins, and wraps his tongue around the fingers, licking them clean. 

Jisung would’ve come at the sight had his orgasm not already ruined him. 

Minho stills, coming inside of him before collapsing on top of Jisung’s chest. Jisung groans. 

“Get off me.” 

“No. Never.” 

“Get off,” he whines, dragging out the vowel. 

“Never.” 

Soft laughter fills the room, the kind that sits comfortably beneath your skin. Minho pulls out of him, and Jisung winces at the feeling. He’s heard of cockwarming. That sounds like it could be nice, he does like the feeling of being full. Likes it more than he was expecting to, even. 

Things to bring up later. 

When they’re living alone and have all the time to figure themselves out. 

Jisung’s stomach growls. Minho chuckles. 

“Are you hungry?” 

“I’m almost comfortable and don’t want to move,” he mumbles into Minho’s skin. 

“I don’t want an angry Jisungie. C’mon, I can make you something to eat. I think we have kimchi stew.” 

Jisung pauses. 

“Fine.” 

Minho kisses him at the top of the stairs and at the bottom of the stairs and against the fridge. He places him on the counter and kisses him there, too. Jisung feels thoroughly, thoroughly kissed. 

He’s kicking his feet, letting his heels bounce against the cabinet, as Minho feeds him grapes while he heats up the stew. Jisung kisses him after each other in thanks. 

“How do you feel about the conversation with your parents?” Minho asks, checking on their food. “I know you were really worried.” 

Jisung pauses. Shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s weird. I spent my entire life preparing for the worst. My entire life, Minho. I was ready to lose my parents, my friends. You. Just for being this. And then I didn’t. I never prepared myself for the okay or for the good.” 

“But you got that. And now that you’re here?” 

Jisung smiles. “It’s better than anything I could’ve ever imagined. So much better.” 

“Is it?” 

Jisung doesn’t nod. He doesn’t answer him, pulling him in to kiss him. Sitting on the counter, he’s taller than Minho and the change of angles makes him dizzy. 

“So much better.” 

1993

12 & 14 

Jisung thinks November is a rather forgettable month. Nothing really happens, there aren’t any holidays or birthdays, it's just cold. Jisung likes the cold just fine, that’s not even the issue, it’s  just boring and there are too many exams at school and he’d like for it to be winter break already. 

That’s all. 

The wind is whipping around them angrily, and Jisung’s got his hands shoved in the pockets of his puffy winter coat. Minho’s beside him, and he’s talking about one of his classmates who’s moving to Incheon because he’s going to live with his grandparents. 

Jisung’s never been to Incheon, but he nods along to Minho’s story, anyway, hm-ing in all the right places as his best friend continues to ramble about him. 

Minho’s swinging his lunchbox between them. Jisung doesn’t understand how his hands aren’t freezing. 

“I’ve only ever lived here,” he says, looking down at the ground. “I like it here, though. It’s a good place to live, and it’s got you.” 

Jisung blushes, which is weird, because it’s really cold, so there’s no reason for his skin to be heating up, but it does, anyway. 

He thinks about Minho’s words. His brother’s seventeen and will be off to college soon. He’s been talking about moving away, about living far from home since Jisung was ten. It makes his parents kind of sad but he doesn’t think his brother notices. 

His brother’s looking at universities anywhere but the one nearby. Jisung gets it. His brother never made a best friend here the way he did with Minho. He has friends, and he has a girlfriend, but Jisung’s pretty sure all of them want to leave just as badly. 

Maybe it’s because he’s still too young, but he’s fine where he is. 

He wonders, though, what it would be like to live away from home. He doesn’t want to do it if it’s far from his friends, though. He’s recently become close to this new kid from Australia, and he’s got Hyunjin and Seungmin and Jeongin, and, mostly, above everything else, he’s got Minho. 

Jisung doesn’t want to give that up. 

So he pauses and turns to him and asks, “Where would you go if you could live anywhere? In the whole entire world.” 

Minho hums, looking at Jisung. “Seoul,” he says. 

Jisung’s brows furrow and his hands come out from his pockets to gesticulate wildly. “Seoul? Anywhere in the whole entire world and you’d stay here?” 

Minho shrugs. “I like it here.” 

“Well, yeah, me, too, but I think it’d be cool to at least try something else. Like, I don’t know, Greece.” 

“You’d go to Greece?” 

“Probably not, but it’s more interesting than Seoul.” 

Minho chuckles. They’re walking slowly, slower than normal, and Jisung gets the feeling that they’re stalling the walk home. He’s happy to, always happy to spend more time with his best friend, even though he’s been feeling kind of weird around him lately. It’s probably nothing, he probably just ate something bad, but his chest feels funny and his palms are sweaty and his stomach’s in knots every time Minho smiles at him. 

He doesn’t get it. 

Just knows he’s happy to spend time with him. 

“Maybe I’d go to Australia, then. Your friend Felix seems to like it. What about you?” 

Jisung shrugs, trying to sound normal even though he knows he sort of isn’t because most people aren’t close the way they are and he doesn’t get why they can’t be. 

“Wherever you go.” 

Minho’s cheeks flush — probably from the cold — and he smiles down at the ground, all quietly pleased. 

“You’re just gonna follow me around everywhere? Forever?” 

Jisung shrugs again. “Well, yeah. That’s the plan, right? Best friends forever?” 

“I mean, sure, but won’t you want to live with, like. Your girlfriend, or whatever?” There’s something about the way Minho trips on the word girlfriend that makes Jisung feel a little queasy. 

He’s got…he’s got a hunch. A bad hunch. 

He ignores it. 

That’s for future Jisung to worry about. 

So he nods and looks at the side of Minho’s face and Minho turns and looks at him and they smile at each other and Jisung speaks, a little shyly. “I’ve never had a girlfriend, what if I like you more?” 

Minho’s answering smile is all pleased and satisfied. “I hope you do.” 

“Yeah?” 

Minho nods, biting his lip. He’s so pretty. For a guy, obviously, Jisung doesn’t just think he’s pretty, because if he did that would be really, really bad, so he doesn’t. But Minho is pretty, and he’s cool and fourteen and smart. 

The sun’s already set despite it not being that late, it’s just winter and it sets early, and Jisung likes the darkness that comes with nighttime. Makes things easier. He feels like he can breathe a little better when there’s no sun beating down on him and makes him choke on his words. 

“Otherwise who will I live with? Some stranger? I’d much rather live with you.” 

They fall into a comfortable silence before switching subjects to their homework, which Minho complains endlessly about, but Jisung only half listens, busy thinking about the concept of living with Minho, and how it wouldn’t ever work out long term because one of them — Minho, probably, for reasons Jisung won’t think about — would get a girlfriend and inevitably leave. 

“Bye,” Jisung says, and gives Minho a quick hug when they reach their houses.

Minho echoes his word and goes into his own house. 

He toes off his shoes once he gets inside, and hovers by the couch, watching something on MTV that his brother’s got on on. 

“Are you gonna sit down?” he asks. 

Jisung shakes his head and sighs. 

“I have a lot of homework to do.” 

“Sixth year, right? That’s when it picks up. It’s only downhill from there, bud.” 

Jisung frowns, because he doesn’t feel like this is a particularly helpful thing to say, but it makes sense coming from his brother. His brother doesn’t typically have anything particularly helpful to say, and his parents don’t seem to bother trying to fix that. 

He’s his father’s pride and joy and his mother’s first born so Jisung will always come second to that, in a way. He’s his mother’s baby boy and his father’s…something. He’s sure he’s something to his dad, he’s just not sure what that something is. 

“Can’t I just quit school?” 

“And be stupid forever?” 

“I’m not stupid.” 

“You’re not, but you’re twelve, and that means you aren’t that smart yet. Which is why you need to stay in school until you are. What are you gonna do with your life if you can’t study? Become Minho’s little housewife?” 

“Stop that,” his mother chides from the kitchen. “That’s rude.” 

Jisung’s face feels hot, because he doesn’t like it when his brother says stuff like that. He makes those kinds of jokes all the time, jokes about him and Minho, and Jisung hates them. 

It doesn’t matter, though. No matter how many times Jisung tells him to stop, his brother only smirks and doubles down on the joke. 

“Minho’s gonna do his own thing and I’m gonna do mine,” he says with an angry furrow of his brows and a pout that makes him feel a little bit like a petulant little kid. 

“We know that, sweet pea,” his mother says. “Your brother will stop being unkind.”

Jisung looks at brother. 

His brother snorts. 

Jisung’s skin feels uncomfortably tight over his bones. Stiff like he can barely move. 

“I, um. I have to do homework. I’ll be up in my room.” 

His mother nods. 

“Okay, I’ll call you when dinner is ready.” 

“Thank you.” 

He takes the stairs two at a time, and closes his bedroom with a quiet slam, and cringes, hoping his mother doesn’t complain about his attitude. 

He’s just annoyed. 

Annoyed at his brother’s comments and annoyed at himself for how much it affects him. 

He groans. 

“Whatever,” he mumbles under his breath, and walks over to his desk when he stops, looking down at the ground. 

He frowns, and looks up at his window. He hadn’t realized he’d left it open when he left for the house this morning, and now there’s a paper airplane on the floor. There’s no one in Minho’s room, so he must’ve tossed it over the second he got back from class. 

It makes Jisung smile. 

He grabs the paper and unfolds it. 

There’s a house drawn in black pen. It’s kind of terrible, but it makes Jisung smile so wide nonetheless. 

There’s a front yard and three cats and a garden, all labeled in Minho’s hard to read hangul. Jisung can read it, though, because he’s had years of practice. It’s basically calligraphy to him at this point, and the words written at the bottom make his chest burn. 

It shouldn’t, though. 

He can’t let it. 

But it does anyway, it does because at the bottom of the drawing there is a smiley face. And beside this smiley face are the words one day. 

Jisung swallows around nothing, folds the paper neatly, and tucks in the bottom of a drawer. 

One day. 

2003 

21 & 23

The drive to Seoul takes longer than usual. 

Jisung doesn’t mind. 

Minho’s hand stays on his thigh for the majority of the drive, blunt nails trailing along the inside seam of his shorts. Jisung’s almost used to his touch now. Almost. There’s something about it that’s still so exhilarating, and he thinks it may be forever. 

He’s a little sore from last night, a soreness he kind of loves. 

Or, that’s not true.

He does love it, he really loves it. It’s a tender reminder of the night before, of the way Minho had him pinned against the mattress and fucked him slowly, and then quickly, and then rough and bruising. 

Minho whispered sweet nothings into his ear as he used Jisung’s sensitive, post orgasm body to get himself off. 

He loves that, too. Being good for him, being something that brings him pleasure the way Minho does for him. There are so many things he loves, so many things that are so much better than anything he’s ever imagined. 

The touch, the sex, the soreness. This apartment they’re driving towards, this town they’re leaving behind, and Minho, always Minho, at the very center of it. Always has been. Will be forever. 

This is a life he never truly allowed himself to imagine. Not fully. It was a dream so untouchable it felt easier to not reach for it at all. A dream so impossible it felt, sometimes, like it’d be easier to just keep his eyes open and never fall asleep. 

He looks at Minho. 

Looks and looks at him. 

They’re in Seoul already, almost at the apartment, and they’re at the same red light they’ve been at for about five minutes because traffic has been terrible and they inch forward about five centimeters every half hour. 

There are people around and their windows are down, letting a cool breeze enter the car. 

Still, Jisung decides he doesn’t care. 

Not when Minho is so beautiful and his to touch. 

He reaches a hand over the gear shift and cups Minho’s cheek, turning his face towards him to kiss him soundly on the mouth. Softly on the mouth. Tenderly, lovingly. 

A quick kiss that means so much. A quick kiss with so much overcome in it. 

“What was that for?” Minho asks when they pull apart. 

Someone honks, but it’s not at them, and Jisung smiles. 

“I just like you a whole lot.” 

“Like?” 

“Yeah, I’ve got a crush on you, didn’t you know?” 

“I feel the same way,” Minho says with a wild grin like this is in any way news. Jisung feels like it will be for as long as they live and then longer, when they’re dead and buried and nothing but bones, it’ll still be exciting. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. I like you so bad,” Minho says on an exhale, giddy even though they’ve traded these words dozens and dozens of times over the past few months. 

“Best news ever.” 

“Is it now?” Minho raises a brow, shooting him a small grin. The light turns green and they drive about another half meter, and when they stop again Minho kisses him again and people probably see, but Jisung finds he doesn’t really care. 

The people who matter know. 

The people who matter love him anyway.

“You know, I hope you have good taste in real estate.” 

“I do.” 

“I call dibs on interior design, though, you have nothing on your room walls!” 

“No way, you have too much.” 

Jisung laughs. Minho laces their fingers together and brings the back of Jisung’s hand up to his mouth so he can kiss it. 

Hearts are a silly thing. They change their rhythm when you run and when you sleep and when a pretty boy kisses you. They change their rhythm when you have a panic attack and when you fall in love and when you tell your parents you’re gay. 

Right then, his heart beats wildly. 

“Are we christening the apartment when we get there?” Jisung asks with a wink. 

Minho laughs. “You’re insatiable.” 

“Like you can resist me.” 

“I totally can.” 

Jisung looks at him with pleading eyes, wide and dark and juts his lower lip out a little, and pleads. “C’mon, kiss me.” The tips of Minho’s ears go so pink it makes Jisung smile. “Please, baby? Please?” 

“Why should I?” Minho asks, but his resolve is cracking. Jisung can tell by the way the hand on his thigh squeezes just a little. 

“Because I love getting kissed by you.” He leans in close, whispering as he stares at Minho’s mouth. “Because I really love you.” 

It works. Of course it works, Minho was never going to be able to resist him, the same way Jisung has never been able to resist Minho. 

He kisses him until someone honks behind them and then drives forward and then kisses him some more. Jisung is addicted to this feeling, and hopes it’ll always be this way. 

They’re not allowed to have kids and he doesn’t know if they ever will be, and they’re not allowed to get married and he doesn’t know when that’ll change. He’ll have to keep Minho a secret when he does his military service and he’ll have to pretend Minho’s just his roommate when casual friends from university come over to study. 

But at the end of every day he’ll come home to him. There are things that will be harder than if he’d forced it all down, but forcing it down would’ve been hard in its own right. 

Harder, maybe. 

Because this is worth it all. 

The apartment truly is nice. He’s sure the water’s probably got bad pressure and the lights flicker and it’s haunted for them to be able to afford it, but the windows are south facing and big and there truly is just enough space for cat trees. 

He’s taking the boxes Minho’s bringing up and taking them to their respective rooms. They don’t have much, they’ll definitely have to go shopping tomorrow if they want to have even a throw pillow to sit on, but it’s still enough to warrant more than one trip to the car. 

Jisung’s standing by the doorway, waiting for Minho to come up with the final box, and he can’t help but think of their eight years of best friendship, of childlike wonder and sleepover secrets. 

Of first kisses and first loves and first heartbreaks. Of second kisses and love ever present even after all these years. 

Of first times, too. Of body heat and teeth and tongue. Jisung experienced masculinity in a way he never had before, on him, in him, between the palms of his hands. 

He spent so long fearing that. Fearing how masculine his desires were, how Minho shaped, how man shaped, but it’s so wonderful. He loves the sex they have, he loves how vulnerable he feels. 

Jisung thinks of all the times he woke up with sticky sheets after dreaming of exactly that, of being underneath Minho and getting split open on his cock, and the guilt that settled so thick and awful between his fingers. 

Thinks about how right that feels now. How the guilt has seeped away, left behind pleasure and an all consuming love. 

Thinks, too, about the four years in between. After the first few months, he stopped resenting Minho. He understood, in a way, that he needed the silence. Understood that he loved him back, and it was just as terrifying for him. 

It wasn’t ever going to be easy. He doesn’t think this kind of love ever is. 

Jisung looks around at everything. At this life he’s built. He can hear Minho’s footsteps echoing down the hallway as he comes up the stairs with the final box from his car. Jisung turns around in time to watch him place it right by the entrance to their apartment — God, their apartment. 

Minho walks over to him and places a hand on his waist. His smile is blinding, and Jisung’s knees turn to jelly. 

“I love you, you know?” Minho says softly. 

Jisung nods, a tiny smile on his face, private and fond. Reserved just for him. “I know. Where is that coming from?” 

Minho shrugs. 

“I’m just really excited to start this future with you,” he says, and then Jisung is getting thoroughly kissed right there in the open doorway, and he doesn’t pull away. He kisses him back, because life didn’t end when he fell in love with a man.