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When Jihoon was eight years old, he got pneumonia.
It wasn't really a surprising thing. Pneumonia was common, as far as respiratory infections went, and school children were appallingly careless with germs; it was contracted by one of Jihoon's classmates first, then spread through the school like wildfire. As soon as it was noticed that Jihoon had a fever and a cough, he was pulled from class and sent home.
Jihoon's body had always been strange, when it came to illness. Some maladies simply passed through him; when he had a fever and a runny nose, his case was much milder than what he ended up passing on to his friends or his parents. But, despite not having any known preexisting conditions, any ailments that went after his lungs completely knocked him down. The pneumonia stuck with him for nearly three and a half weeks.
For some reason, to eight year old Jihoon, it felt the worst at night. He was exhausted, feverish and covered in a cold sweat, and his lungs ached too much when he took too deep a breath, the shallow inhales making it near impossible to relax. When he did sleep, the dreams would be bright, vivid flashes of red flowers or white hallways or green grass; nothing he could remember in the morning. Then, the night his fever was the highest, he dreamed and remembered every moment.
Jihoon was in bed. He was in a room—it was his room, his bedroom, and it was a fancy place, painted white with gold embellishments and black trim. A vase of yellow flowers sat on his bedside table. By the way the sun was coming through the window, it wasn’t morning; he must be waking from a nap. He tried to sit up, but quickly found that he couldn't; his body was weak and exhausted, his arms—though the arms of an adult—were thin under him. He had withered so much, so quickly. He would have to wait for help, but that was okay. It was help he knew would come.
The attempt to sit up had him inhaling, and again his chest ached, but it was worse; the longer and deeper he breathed, the worse it felt, the pain so deep in his lungs that it felt like a pit was opening inside him. He shuddered, beginning to cough, his lips opening as a copper taste filled his mouth and he spat blood onto the bed sheets below him.
After he'd coughed once he couldn't seem to stop, reaching for the handkerchief he knew was on the bedside table and coughing into it, the old tan stains on the white fabric lighting up again in red as thin flecks of blood left his mouth. He was sick. He was so sick. He was dying.
Jihoon coughed himself awake. His lungs didn't feel quite so bad, but they still hurt and he was still coughing, though all he rendered up was phlegm instead of blood. He couldn't convince himself it had just been a dream. It had felt so real, his body so infected, and he struggled from his bed and ran into his parents' room, waking them with his cries. He was able to calm down once he was lying in bed between them, and asked his mother the next morning when this pneumonia was going to make him start coughing up blood.
"What?" Her eyes were full of concern and confusion as she looked at him. "Are you? Did that happen?"
"No." But it was going to, he knew. In some strange way, it felt like it already had.
"Pneumonia doesn't do that to you, Jihoon. It doesn't get that bad. You're not that sick; your fever broke this morning."
"Is there something that gets that bad?" He asked. She had to think for a moment.
"Tuberculosis? Cancer, maybe. You don’t have either of those, you know. Don’t worry about it."
As she usually was, Jihoon's mother was right. He was on the mend, and by the end of the week Jihoon was clear of all symptoms and started back to school. His friends were happy to see him, and his teachers were lenient with him completing and turning in his late work. His dreams never returned to normal.
He didn't remember his dreams every night, but on nights that he did, they were vivid. None of the scenes themselves were scary things; most of them were soft, in that bed or in a garden on a picnic blanket. But he always woke with an aching chest and a feeling of dread in his stomach, because there was one more thing that was a constant too; he was always sick.
In the dreams, he was always lung-shatteringly sick, his body weak with fatigue, his chest sore with every inhale. He was self-aware, too; he knew he was going to die. He knew that this illness would kill him, and it always scared him when he woke up. While asleep though, while in the world with the big house and the garden, regardless of what he knew would happen, he was happy.
The dreams felt so real that the sensation of illness in real life got paler in comparison. He began to disregard when he felt ill, because he never felt as badly as he did when he was asleep, and as a result, his parents began getting mad at him. They only discovered he was sick when he was running a dangerously high fever, or when this was his third time throwing up and he'd simply forgot to tell them. His lungs didn't have the rattle of death in them when he breathed, so he didn't think it was something to get worked up about, and it made him feel like his mother and father were hovering. As much as he missed them, leaving that behavior behind was one small relief when he moved from Busan to Seoul.
He'd auditioned and been accepted as a trainee under Pledis Entertainment. It was difficult, the training, but the idea that he was honing his skills—skills that he genuinely cared about and wanted to improve—was incredibly rewarding. On top of that, he was making some friends. People came and went, but he liked Seungcheol and Doyoon a lot, a new boy named Soonyoung coming in about five months after he did. Soonyoung was loud, funny, and talented, and had somehow decided that Jihoon was going to be his new best friend.
The dreams never came up, but Jihoon knew that even if they did, he probably wouldn't talk about them. He knew that it was a bit silly, how affected he was by the dreams and how strongly they stuck in his memory, how real they felt; the sensations were so lifelike that they seemed less like a dream, and more like Jihoon was reliving a memory. But all of that would be embarrassing to talk about, and he didn't need someone else telling him that he was ridiculous.
The dreams had started changing, just a bit, as time passed. There was a little white dog in them now, a cute and fluffy thing that would sometimes curl up in Jihoon's lap. The dog wasn't his, Jihoon knew. Even though it lived there, it belonged to someone else. The house was his, the place a mansion, acquired either through inheritance or old money. He couldn't really remember. It didn't really matter.
"Have you heard?" Soonyoung asked, when Jihoon entered the practice room after school one afternoon.
"I might've done that once or twice, yeah." Jihoon responded. His dry tone didn't have any effect on Soonyoung's brightness; the words took a moment for Soonyoung to register, then he broke into giggles.
"We're having someone new join us tomorrow!" Soonyoung told him. "He passed his audition singing the national anthem in flip flops, so I'm like... Super excited to meet him."
Jihoon was interested to meet him too. Lots of trainees came though, some of them cool, while others of them truly sucked. But this guy sounded interesting, at least. Someone else for Soonyoung to bounce his weirdness off of.
That night, Jihoon had another dream, one that stuck with him so strongly that it was hard to pull himself out of bed in the morning. He was outside this time, the sun warm and pleasant on his skin. He was eating lunch, the food splayed out on the blanket around him. This time, unlike every single other dream he’d had, he wasn't alone.
There was a man with him. He had a masculine build; long legs, strong arms, tanned skin. He was dressed in all white, well-fitting pants and a shirt that had a small brown stain that wouldn't come out, despite how much it was scrubbed at, and Jihoon knew the spot was his fault, from coughing onto the man's shoulder. Jihoon was content to just watch him, to feel the sun on his face as the man threw little cubes of cheese out into the green grass beyond them, the both of them watching the little white dog run around to gobble them up.
It was fun, and the man was happy, and Jihoon was happy too, so distracted in watching the puppy that he never glanced at the man's face. The dream seemed to skip, seemed to fade and jump around, but in the world of sleep, it made sense; the picnic was being packed up, and the man was lifting Jihoon in his arms to help him to his feet. Jihoon took advantage of that closeness, kissing the man's cheek. He laughed, and Jihoon wanted him to laugh again, but he wasn't tall enough to press another kiss to his face so he kissed the left side of the man’s neck instead, right below his jaw.
It was an action that felt familiar, felt common, the man not laughing but bending a bit to hold him, his touch achingly gentle. Jihoon felt so loved by this man. Jihoon loved this man so, so much.
He woke with tears on his cheeks.
The new trainee’s name was Kim Mingyu. Meeting Mingyu was a mix of deja vu, nostalgia, and confusion all at once. By Korean standards, Mingyu was fifteen, just six months past his fourteenth birthday. In height though, Soonyoung had him placed anywhere between seventeen and twenty-one. Jihoon had agreed, because it had been a joke; he’d known Mingyu was younger than him. He didn’t like the sensation though, because he didn’t know how he had that information. He just knew.
Meeting Mingyu felt wrong in a way Jihoon couldn’t describe. It was like he’d known they were going to meet each other, but it felt rushed, felt false; felt like it wasn’t supposed to have happened yet. Because of this, Jihoon was wary of Mingyu at first. He wanted to keep his distance until he could figure it out, confused and concerned.
Many things about Mingyu happened like that. He recognized Mingyu’s laugh, knowing it was him before he looked up to see the smile on Mingyu’s face. Getting to know Mingyu was less like he was hearing new information, and more like he was being reminded of something he’d somehow forgotten. Jihoon didn’t... He didn’t dislike it, but it perplexed him, and he tried to keep his distance. It didn’t work very well.
He liked Mingyu. He just did; liked his confidence, his happiness, his willingness to help. He mixed well with the other boys, the collection of thirteen that came together into a group of trainees that would be called “SEVENTEEN”; he mixed well with Jihoon himself. He was too bright to be dampened by Jihoon’s acidity, too warm to be driven off by Jihoon’s prickly disposition. Mingyu liked Jihoon too, and regardless of the temperature or the season, something about Mingyu’s gaze made Jihoon feel warm.
He wanted to be close to Mingyu. Mingyu seemed to want to be close to him too, so... They were. Mingyu was very tactile; Jihoon realized quickly that it was a way he showed affection, something that soothed him and comforted him in return. Hands wandered between them, hugs and hand holding automatic. Usually touch bothered Jihoon, but every time Mingyu’s hands were on him, Jihoon always wanted more. It... It was like a tug. Jihoon didn’t know how else to explain it.
Mingyu liked to touch him. Sometimes it could be a bit much, but at the same time, Mingyu was so gentle and so good, and despite how clumsy he was—tripping or breaking things so often that he was borderline comedic—he never hurt Jihoon. Never dropped him, when carrying him around. Mingyu seemed to preen when he got Jihoon’s attention, when he managed to make Jihoon laugh, and Jihoon liked how happy that made him. It was almost incomprehensible to Jihoon at first, that his presence could so delight someone else; he would have thought it was some kind of joke, except for how unabashed and unapologetic Mingyu was about it. Somehow, without doing anything special, he had become one of Mingyu’s favorite people in the entire world.
The same was coming true for Jihoon about Mingyu, too. It was almost irritating how loveable he was, and Jihoon found himself seeking out Mingyu’s attention more and more. Being around Mingyu made him feel good, and at first chasing that felt a bit selfish, but seeing that Mingyu liked him just as much allowed Jihoon to carve out a space for himself next to Mingyu, and put himself there without hesitation. They grew up together, holding onto each other for comfort—something so noticeable that it was even written into a piece of choreography—and debuted together.
Mingyu’s appearance into his life must have flipped some switch in Jihoon’s subconscious as well, because he was never alone in dreams again. The man’s presence was constant. He was in Jihoon’s room with a tray of food, kissing him awake in the morning. He was a supportive arm when Jihoon took a walk through the garden of his estate, carrying him when he got too tired. When Jihoon was asleep, there wasn’t anything to question, the scenes making sense as they happened; in his waking hours was when he had to think back to what he’d dreamt and put the pieces together. Jihoon came to the conclusion that whoever this man was, he had been hired to act as Jihoon’s primary caretaker. The mansion had cooks and cleaning staff, but this man helped Jihoon with baths, and made him snacks if he was hungry, and leaned forward to rub his back and wipe the tears from his eyes when the coughing fits became too much.
The man was newer to the estate than most of the staff, but was someone that Jihoon had taken a shine to. The dreams didn’t tell Jihoon when they’d met, but he had the sense that they’d only known each other for a couple of years. Jihoon also knew that when he was asleep, he was so deeply and desperately in love with this man that it felt like their souls had been made for each other. Thankfully, unequivocally, the man was in love with him too.
Meanwhile, in Jihoon’s waking life, Kim Mingyu had become a problem. Despite being labeled “monster rookies”, despite now having the pointed nose of the Korean media turned towards them, Mingyu still let his eyes sparkle when he looked Jihoon’s way. In return, Jihoon found his walls falling down around Mingyu when it was just the two of them alone, comforting him when he needed it, indulging Mingyu’s clingy tendencies without pretending he hated it. He had a hard time pretending he hated much of anything when Mingyu was involved, though he still remembered to glare when Mingyu called him “cute”.
The whole group saw it, and no one talked about it. Jihoon didn’t even want to think about it, because thinking about it would be acknowledging it. He couldn’t acknowledge that his thoughts and feelings for Mingyu went past friendship, despite being fully aware that they did. If he acknowledged it, then he might be moved to act on it too, and as a group, they were just too busy for feelings right now. As long as Mingyu didn’t say anything, Jihoon wouldn’t either, even if he had a hard time looking Mingyu in the eye during Mansae promotions, all tall and lean and striking with his hair styled up off his forehead.
It was most dangerous because Jihoon couldn’t help but hang onto the passing hints that those feelings might be returned. Mingyu was one of the people Jihoon was most comfortable around, but some of their interactions held a tense, nervous edge; sometimes, Jihoon would catch Mingyu looking at him when they were in a room alone and simply sat there, tratorious anticipation curling in his stomach, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Mingyu never said anything either.
There were actions, though. Mingyu came into the dorm one day with a handful of picked flowers, brandishing them in Jihoon’s direction. Jihoon stared at the homemade bouquet, and instead of feeling flattered or bewildered, felt as though he’d been punched in the gut.
“Mingyu, what is this?” He asked, almost afraid to take them, and Mingyu looked almost confused as he thought of an answer.
“I... I don’t know.” Mingyu said, glancing down at the small yellow petals he had clutched in his palm. “I saw these while I was out and I just... I picked them for you. I felt like I had to. I don’t know why.”
While unexpected, Mingyu trying to give him flowers wasn’t the shocking part of the situation. It was that these yellow flowers were the same kind of flowers that were always kept fresh in the vase next to Jihoon’s bed in his dreams. They were petals that the man in the dream would sprinkle on him when they were out in the garden together, in an attempt to make him laugh. Jihoon had looked the flowers up once, having to use more and more descriptive keywords until an image search gave him the type of plant he was hunting for; they were Berberis flowers, from a Barberry bush. An extra second of digging had told Jihoon that in this life, they were his birth flower.
Jihoon stared at Mingyu’s hand, holding tight to the stems, and the sight was achingly familiar. He glanced up at Mingyu’s face. He couldn’t tell if it was relief or disappointment when he realized that, while he’d never seen the man’s whole face, he’d seen half of it, and the man from his dreams didn’t have a mole on his left cheek or the left side of his neck, like Mingyu did.
Mingyu was still holding the flowers out, so Jihoon took them, and it looked almost like a weight had been lifted from Mingyu’s shoulders.
“Thanks.” Jihoon told him.
Jihoon found himself unable to deny Mingyu much of anything in the following months. He just didn’t want to, and since there was nothing explicitly stating that he had to, he was too busy and too tired to keep himself in check. They were getting closer, with more than platonic compliments and more than platonic touches, because Mingyu was pushing in and Jihoon was letting him, and both of them knew it.
“I’m tired.” Mingyu mumbled, his feet dragging as he laid a heavy arm across Jihoon’s shoulders, leaning into him.
“You could’ve gone home.” Jihoon told him. They’d recorded their parts for a song today, trying to throw together an album, and Mingyu had been the last one in the recording room. It had already been late when he'd started, but then he’d stayed even longer after he was done, sitting in the background on his phone while Jihoon combed through the audio clips, not getting up until Jihoon declared that he was done too.
“I know.” Mingyu didn’t give more of an explanation than that, instead pushing a bit closer to nuzzle his face into Jihoon’s shoulder. His lips touched the skin of Jihoon’s neck, and Jihoon’s heart leapt. He kept himself from leaning into the contact, reaching up to push at Mingyu’s head, letting his fingers slip through Mingyu’s hair.
“Quit touching me.” He complained. He didn’t mean it, and Mingyu knew that, so when he lifted his arm from Jihoon's shoulders he let his hand slide down, and tangled his fingers with Jihoon's instead.
“You should sleep in bed with me.” He said. The words were casual, but Mingyu’s face held traces of nervousness when Jihoon glanced at him. Jihoon felt that he’d lost his tongue, unsure of how the answer managed to come out of him.
“Okay.”
Jihoon had cuddled with most of the members before. He’d even cuddled with Mingyu before, something that just happened when a bunch of lanky boys with little regard for personal space were habitually shoved into places not fit for as many bodies as they came with as a group. They’d slept together on the floor of music show rooms, in tents in the Pledis basement—even on blankets in a freezing house on an island. But in those environments, Jihoon had always had space to wriggle around, to get away just a bit and have his own area to breathe in. Here, now, he was curled up in the top bunk on a twin mattress with Mingyu, locked in by the rails on all four sides.
It wasn’t that being in bed with Mingyu wasn’t comfortable. It was, something perfect about the way their bodies fit together, even with Mingyu’s long legs and arms and torso. It was familiar too, and something inside of Jihoon seemed to click, seemed to slot itself into place when Mingyu curled an arm over him, Jihoon’s chest constricting so tightly and so suddenly that he couldn’t breathe, and had to bite hard on his bottom lip to hold in a sob.
“Are you okay?” Mingyu asked in the darkness. He’d heard Jihoon’s breath hitch, his voice heavy with concern. Jihoon just shook his head, too frightened to lie. He didn’t know what was happening to him, or why he knew that if he opened his mouth, he would start crying.
Mingyu tried to pull him in for a hug, but the tighter Mingyu’s arms were around him the stronger the feeling became, the lump in his throat growing to a point of being painful enough to make him cry all on its own. He extricated himself from Mingyu’s arms and slipped down the ladder, able to make it all the way out into the hallway before the first tears fell. He didn’t hear Mingyu follow after him but Mingyu was there, a hand on his shoulder, reaching towards Jihoon’s face to wipe his tears away. Jihoon didn’t know what was happening to him, why he was crying, but he knew that if he let Mingyu do that, it would break him completely.
“Stop.” The word was strangled, with barely any force behind it. Mingyu stopped.
“Are you okay?” He asked again instead. Jihoon took a step away, and Mingyu let him. “What happened?”
Jihoon couldn’t answer. He didn’t know. Mingyu’s voice was quiet when he spoke next.
“I’m sorry.”
Jihoon wanted to tell Mingyu that it wasn’t his fault, but the words stuck in his throat, feeling like a lie. He just shook his head again, angling his face down and wiping hastily at his eyes.
Mingyu reached for Jihoon’s hand, despite his fingertips now being wet with tears. Mingyu still wanted something, some reason, some assurance, and Jihoon glanced up at him.
Jihoon had never been at eye level with Mingyu. He didn’t think that he’d probably ever, at any point in both of their lives, been at eye level with Mingyu. But now, with the way the both of them had grown—and were still growing, in tiny amounts, at different rates—Jihoon realized with a jolt that he was the perfect height to press a kiss to the mole on Mingyu’s neck, if he wanted to. Right under his jaw.
Jihoon inhaled. His chest ached. He pulled his hand away.
A couple of months later, Jihoon got pneumonia again. It was a side effect from a cold that he’d tried to ignore into nonexistence rather than rest properly for, and instead it had worsened. It hit him overnight, waking up feverish and hacking up phlegm, his heart rate elevated as he wheezed. Seungcheol found him first, declaring him to be on bed rest for the next week. Jihoon protested at him, though he knew, with the way his body always suffered over respiratory infections, that recovering might take even longer than that.
Mingyu was a welcome sight, Jihoon calling out to him to ask him to maybe make him some instant ramen before he left for practice. Mingyu's name caught in his chest though, half a gasp that turned into a fit of coughing, Jihoon clutching at his chest as the pain from the forced exhales had his eyes screwing up. Mingyu was over to him in an instant, rubbing his back, pushing his sweaty bangs off his forehead. When Jihoon was able to get his wheezing steady again, he looked up and saw that there were tears in Mingyu's eyes.
"Why—" Jihoon swallowed a couple of times. His throat felt thick and clogged. "Why are you crying?"
"I..." Mingyu had always been acutely aware of him when he was sick, Jihoon had noticed. A cough or a sneeze would have Mingyu's head whipping towards him, even in their trainee days; Jihoon had faked coughs a few times just to get Mingyu's attention. He'd never been this level of sick in front of Mingyu before, though. "I'll take care of you, okay?"
"But—you have work—" Jihoon tried, half-rising from the bed in an attempt to show that really, he wasn't that badly off, that he could make the stupid ramen himself, but Mingyu grabbed him by the shoulder and practically forced him to lay back down.
Mingyu left to tell Seungcheol that he was staying home too, and Jihoon could hear their argument about it through the wall of his room. It escalated nearly to shouting, Seungcheol telling him that they couldn't have multiple people miss practice, regardless of Mingyu’s feelings for Jihoon. Mingyu didn’t try at all to debate that point, saying something else that Jihoon couldn’t make out, his voice near-indecipherable through tears. Jihoon still couldn't understand why Mingyu was crying. It was just pneumonia. He’d had it before. He wasn't going to die.
He wasn't.
Somehow—probably due to his hysterics—Mingyu won the argument, coming into Jihoon's room with a big bowl of the blandest ramen they had, laid out with water and a couple of decongestant pills on a tray. Jihoon simply thanked him and began to eat, despite the decrease in his appetite. He felt that he had to be careful with Mingyu, because Mingyu's expression was incredibly fragile, standing by the bedside and looking down at Jihoon.
It was nice to have Mingyu there though, instead of suffering through the fever in his room by himself. The rest of the members sent him messages, as well as silly photos and videos of themselves at practice. It was fun, Jihoon only feeling a little bad for not working, especially when he knew that he would have Mingyu with him during their remedial choreography practice.
When Jihoon was upright, sitting or talking to him, Mingyu seemed fine. It was whenever a coughing fit would grip him that he couldn't seem to stop, or when he was asleep—he'd wake from a nap to see Mingyu peering down at him with wide eyes, or with one of Mingyu's hands on his chest as though to check that it was still rising and falling—that Mingyu would get that fragile expression on his face again. And Jihoon didn't like it, didn’t like Mingyu this upset, looking at Jihoon almost like he was dying, when he wasn't. But it was like when Jihoon had sobbed after getting in Mingyu's bed; Mingyu didn't have an explanation. It just hurt. He was just sad, and afraid.
Under Mingyu's careful care, his fever was gone within a week. His lungs still felt tight when he breathed too deeply, he still coughed and got winded a bit too easily, but he wasn't contagious anymore, and that was a relief. Mingyu didn't seem to believe that he was better, citing the symptoms he still had, still getting nervous about him when he slept. In an attempt to ease his mind, Jihoon agreed to sleep in his bed again, so Mingyu could watch over him, and could feel him breathing all night.
Mingyu treated him with very delicate care when Jihoon got into his bed. Thankfully though, his week of fighting illness had him fatigued and he didn't cry this time, falling asleep easily in the comfort of Mingyu's arms.
"It's okay."
The voice was the first thing that surprised Jihoon. Usually, in his dreams, nobody spoke. Not in a way that was silent and awkward; the dreams simply cut around like a film, slicing out conversation in a way that made more sense while asleep than it did awake. The second surprise was that it was his own voice. He sounded awful, rasping and rattling. It had never hit him more than in that moment that he was dying. That he was going to die. That the blood in his lungs really was going to drown him.
Jihoon was looking at his hands. They were being held by the man, so gentle, so big around Jihoon's own. For the first time in a dream, Jihoon's eyes went up to the man's face, and Jihoon's heart ached along with his lungs. It was Mingyu.
This Mingyu wasn't quite the same, a little bit older, looking like he'd been worn down by the world in a different way, but it was Mingyu all the same. And he looked just as awful as Jihoon felt, a small, sad smile on his face.
"I know." Mingyu responded.
"It will be okay." Jihoon said again. He needed Mingyu to believe him. He couldn't let Mingyu be sad. "We'll have our next life. I'll find you. I promise."
Mingyu took one of Jihoon's hands, bringing it up so that Jihoon's palm cupped his cheek. Jihoon curled his fingers just a bit, just to feel Mingyu's skin under his fingertips.
"Jihoon, in your next life, you're going to do so much. So many people are going to know you, and every single one of them will love you."
He was smiling, just a little, and Jihoon let his fingers flatten, spreading them out, wanting to touch as much of Mingyu as he could.
"What about you?" He asked.
"Me?" Mingyu smiled, a full smile this time. Jihoon wanted to kiss him. He couldn't get out of bed. He could barely keep his eyes open. "I'm going to love you the most."
Jihoon believed him. He believed Mingyu wholeheartedly. Then he closed his eyes, and he slept for a long time.
Like he had the first time he'd dreamt of Mingyu, Jihoon woke up in tears. But this time he had Mingyu next to him, Mingyu around him, curling into that warmth and gripping tight to Mingyu's shirt, crying. It woke Mingyu up, understandably confused and concerned, and he just held Jihoon tighter, Jihoon fitting between his arms and in the crook of his neck like he was supposed to be there.
"I love you." Jihoon murmured to him, his voice rough and raspy. Because he did, he had then and he did now, and the feeling was so strong he was breathless with it. He heaved an inhale through his tears, trying not to cough. Hearing himself cough right now might break him.
"I love you too." Mingyu responded, the words instant, so immediate that Jihoon knew Mingyu didn't know what he meant. How he meant it.
"I love you." He said again, his lips brushing Mingyu's skin. He remembered, then, what he'd done so many times in his dreams; he tilted his chin and kissed Mingyu, first the mole on his neck, then the one on his cheek, pressing his nose into the side of Mingyu's face and trying to breathe.
Mingyu's sharp inhale was immediate. He nearly choked on it, tightening his hug around Jihoon so fiercely that it took Jihoon's breath away. Mingyu's face was in his neck, and they laid there for a moment, just holding each other in the near darkness.
"It's you." Mingyu murmured.
"It's me." Jihoon answered. He reached up, putting his hands in Mingyu's hair, wanting to see his face. Wanting to kiss him. He could kiss him now. "I promised that I would find you."
Then he did kiss Mingyu, despite his face still being wet with tears, and Mingyu kissed him back. He pulled away too soon, taking in Jihoon's face, wiping at the wetness with his thumbs, the smile on his lips and the look in his eyes making Jihoon's chest ache again, but this time with affection. Mingyu kissed Jihoon once more, soft and simple, before he spoke.
"And I promised that I would love you the most."