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Jonghyun falls asleep on Jinki – for the first time, when they’re young, before they debut, when Jinki’s hair is long and tangles with his eyelashes with every blink, when Jonghyun is soft and overworked and tired and has trouble sleeping at night. He never says it but Jinki notices the way his lips turn down at the corners in the morning, eyes just a little redder than everyone else’s.
They’re in the way back of the van, and the three younger kids are bickering at each other up front and Jinki is feeling protective and full of restraint and teenage adrenaline. Like a comet on fire.
He can’t see from this angle, but Jonghyun is content like this even over everyone else’s noise, with Jinki’s shoulder digging a hard point into his temple, because Jinki is warmer than anything and Jonghyun is calmed forever by him. And it’s evident on his face, so evident, that when Jinki growls at Taemin with as much tact as he can muster, one look at Jonghyun’s face gets him to quiet down.
Completely peaceful, relaxed, eyelashes casting shadows on his cheeks, little bit of a blush, there’s always a little bit of a blush. Jinki doesn’t see it for a long time.
Both of their hands are cold but neither of them moves, frozen solid in their little corner of space, unable to interrupt the moment, unwilling to even breathe too heavily. Jinki doesn’t want to wake him, wants him to rest, wants to do that for him as a friend, as a leader.
When they get back to their dorm, he extends a pinky out to rub against the back of Jonghyun’s hand, cold and bony and just as small as Jinki’s, whispers that it’s time to get up and go inside into his hair, would carry him there himself if he could.
Jonghyun falls asleep on Jinki – in the summertime, even when they’re sticking together on every bit of skin not covered by clothing. Even with Jonghyun’s hair is plastered flat to his forehead and Jinki is hyperaware of the sweat that drips down his neck like falling stars, but he still doesn’t move.
Feels him in the smile that sticks to his arm, tells him that Jonghyun’s not asleep, just resting his eyes. That’s enough as well.
Sometimes it’s just resting, and Jinki can tell, because Jonghyun hums against his skin and Jinki can feel it in his toes, sticks up every hair on the way there. It’s electric. It’s times like these when he can listen to the sound of his breaths when they’re measured as this and wants, more than anything, to memorize the noise and how it compares to when he’s actually fallen asleep. Jinki wants to know everything. Every single thing.
Jinki flexes his fingers slowly on his lap, imagines what it would be like to hold him like this until he’d for sure gotten enough rest, through the summer and all the winters, maybe forever, without stopping. Maybe that’s ambitious. His thumbs dig into the hem at the bottom of his shorts and he focuses on the steady pace of Jonghyun’s breathing to match it with his own.
The times where he’s not really sleeping are always like this, a little delicate, striking a balance between them. Jonghyun’s exhale into Jinki’s inhale. Calm enough, quiet enough, that Jinki can pretend for a moment that Jonghyun’s getting the sleep that Jinki wishes he could give to him.
Jonghyun falls asleep on Jinki – halfway through long movies that they all watch together. Jonghyun stretches himself all the way out, ankle socks pressed up against the arm rest on the other end of the couch, head on Jinki’s lap, when it’s way too dark to see much and the movie’s way too tense for him to be asleep. But he manages.
Jinki has a hand in Jonghyun’s hair, bleached and re-bleached, and re-bleached. And still soft. Jinki rakes his fingers on his scalp until Jonghyun’s nose puffs out gentle breaths onto Jinki’s legs and that’s all Jinki can hear. Even over the action of the movie. Even over Taemin shoveling popcorn into his mouth beside him. Even over the beating of his own heart.
They exist in their own little world, one where Jinki is Jonghyun’s willing pillow, always, without question.
He feels the shell of Jonghyun’s ear pressed up against his thigh, wonders if he can hear his heartbeat all the way down there, or the sounds of the rushing ocean in their corner of the universe. If it soothes him.
Sometimes, rarely, Jonghyun will reach up and hold Jinki’s hand still, bringing it down from his head to rest on his jaw, or in his hand. So Jinki can feel the plushness of his lips at the tip of his fingers, or his pulse at the base of his wrist. Jonghyun’s fingers are a little shaky but his eyes are closed, and he can pretend it was an unconscious decision to drag Jinki’s hand so it stills. But Jinki’s gotten used to the feeling of Jonghyun’s breaths when he does things in his sleep.
This isn’t that.
Jonghyun falls asleep on Jinki – one time when he’s had a lot to drink, when they’re old enough to drink together, when they’re young enough for it to have its novelty. When Jonghyun is wearing something nice, something that shows off his arms, something that gets Jinki dizzier than his champagne.
It’s late but not late enough for them to leave yet, stuck at some party with a dizzying amount of people, orbiting around each other at a frequency Jinki’s not accustomed to, or rather a frequency he’s growing out of. He’s in the quiet corner, sipping slowly, already having gotten it out of his system for the night.
And Jinki watches him all night, float around people with an ease he doesn’t even realize he has. One that only comes out when he’s really comfortable and content. And the back of Jinki’s head is against the cold wall while he looks off and loses track of time watching Jonghyun happy.
After a while even Jonghyun’s energy runs out and he finds his way to Jinki’s side, a pull inevitable and magnetic. And he drapes himself over his chest, lets his stale breath trail along Jinki’s collarbones, exposed for once. Jinki has his fingers, a little more sure than usual, running up and down his side, the exposed skin below his shirt, pressing into his goosebumps.
They sit like this until they’re shipped back to their dorm, Jonghyun pressing the ghost of a kiss into the base of Jinki’s neck while he pushes himself up so they can leave. Maybe Jinki’s imagining it.
Jonghyun falls asleep on Jinki – when they’re maybe too old to crawl into bed together, but with no hesitation at all. It happens, once, when they’re in a country they’ve never been, bright lights beaming in between the blinds, single beds four feet apart, and they’re not tired. There are things that are new and uncertain and there are no words shared but they both know what the other is thinking. They always do.
Jonghyun emits light from within himself, shines almost like the moon, watches Jinki watch him. Every blink reverberates throughout the room, their heartbeats fill the space and it gallops around them. Jonghyun’s eyes are big and shiny and he’s not going to sleep. And Jinki can’t just sit and watch.
They have an early morning tomorrow and the red light from the clock tells him they should have all gone to bed hours and hours ago, but they haven’t.
He scoots back to the far end of the bed and pulls his blanket open, motions for Jonghyun to crawl inside, and he does, drowning in his t-shirt and briefs and bright socks because Jinki knows his feet get cold at night.
Jonghyun is small and warm and sometimes does the things Jinki asks without asking why. The fact that Jinki wants him there in bed is enough to hold them together. And Jinki needs to be held but he pulls Jonghyun into his arms anyway, presses his lips into the top of his head until their heartbeats match up.
Until Jonghyun’s asleep and Jinki is too.
Jonghyun falls asleep on Jinki – after several hours of sitting out on the rooftop together. The full moon is out and Jonghyun likes to look at the stars and they tell each other about their greatest fears so it’s out in the open, just to be swallowed whole by the deep black of the sky. Swallowed by the far distant sound of cars passing, far later than anyone should be driving around. Swallowed by the buzz of the rooftop lights and the bugs that fly around them.
They’re afraid of the same things, of growing up, of not being good enough, of being known. Of not being known.
And then Jonghyun’s presses one last secret hesitantly against Jinki’s lips, and Jinki swallows that too. A secret so quiet that Jinki struggles to respond, struggles to know if he should push back, if that’s what Jonghyun wants, or if this was a lapse in the folds of the universe.
He notices first that Jonghyun’s lips are a little chapped. It’s like kissing constellations, rough against the edges of his mouth. Blinding behind his eyes. He notices second that Jonghyun’s fingers are curled around his wrist, holding him steady, pulling him in.
And then Jinki’s secret nearly gets caught in his own throat before he kisses back, and his heart is made of galaxies in his chest, ever-expanding, big enough for the both of them to live inside. Big enough to catch their tears like rainwater, to hold their nervous hands like earthquakes. The words he whispers into Jonghyun’s mouth are the first laws of that new universe.
And, of course, they go back to their dorm, and Jonghyun slides into his bed, and they fall asleep like that, with Jonghyun’s head on Jinki’s chest and his arm draped over his body, and no one is going to wake them up and tell them to go home, so they can rest.
And Jinki waits until Jonghyun’s eyes are closed and listens until his breathing is slow and steady, until he’s really asleep before he can fall asleep too.
Jinki falls asleep on Jonghyun, too. Jinki falls asleep on Jonghyun in cars and planes and on the rocket to their own little world. Jinki falls asleep on Jonghyun even when he’s not tired, when he feels like he has too much energy, when Jonghyun is the one that needs rest. Jinki falls asleep on Jonghyun when Jinki is the one that needs comfort, because sometimes the universe is hard to maintain, and his little hands can’t hold it all, and Jonghyun holds them so he doesn’t need to.
And they have their own corner of the galaxy where it’s gentle and quiet and they care for each other, and it’s what makes the sun and the moon rise and fall. And they build it together for years and years, wandering each other’s galaxies behind their eyelids, dreaming of forever.