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The morning meeting starts at ten. Dunk sits down, opens his notebook, and uncaps his pen. His collar shifts against his neck and his whole body goes warm. Joong's mouth was there this morning. It was not a kiss, but rather something slower than a kiss. Joong had been reaching past him for his keys when his lips found the curve where Dunk's neck meets his shoulder and stopped, just stopped, and breathed in against his skin, one long deliberate breath, as though the scent of him was something Joong needed to carry into the day.
Dunk had stood in the doorway with his bag sliding off his shoulder, his eyes fluttering shut as the entire morning collapsed to that single point of warmth. He had not moved. He had not wanted to move, wanting instead to stand there being breathed in for the rest of his natural life. That was hours ago, yet the spot still holds the ghost of it. Every time the air shifts against his neck, his skin answers as if a mouth is still there.
The day moves around him, a blur of screens, voices, and the small ordinary business of hours. He is present enough. He writes things down and answers when spoken to. But underneath all of it, constant as a low note held beneath a melody, is Joong. It is not urgent or dramatic, but simply there, the way his own pulse is there, something he only notices when he thinks to look and then cannot stop noticing. Three days ago he woke and raised his own wrist to his face and found Joong there, faint but unmistakable, pressed into his pulse. His whole body softened with it, gone loose and quiet and wanting, because the scent of Joong on his own skin meant Joong had held him close enough to leave a trace that outlasted sleep. Their two scents together make a third thing, something their bodies have invented between them that belongs to neither of them alone.
His skin does it again now. Heat rises from deep in his chest and climbs to his collarbones, his neck, and the inside of his wrists. It is a flush that is not visible but is absolutely present, blooming through him simply because he thought about Joong. Just the thought, just the memory of scent on his own wrist, and he opens like something warmed through, producing his own fragrance in answer to a man who is twelve kilometers away and entirely inside him anyway. He writes a word on his page, but he does not know what it is, and his handwriting looks like someone else's.
His breathing has been wrong all morning. It is not fast or labored, but just thin, just not quite enough, as though the air without Joong in it is missing something he cannot name. He has been breathing in shallow sips since six in the morning, and his body holds the deficit like a quiet thirst. He sits through the rest of the day half-present and entirely elsewhere, every part of him oriented toward home, not by choice or by effort, but just by the quiet gravitational fact of Joong.
He leaves at four, standing on the BTS train with his hand on the rail, his pulse already quickening toward home. He opens the door and breathes in, and something in him opens with it. The air inside is warm, close, and layered with the scent of them, carrying their shared sleep and their shared meals. This is the particular alchemy of two people who have lived in each other’s skin for months. Dunk stands in the doorway and takes a breath so deep his ribs ache with it. For the first time all day, he feels whole, finally inside his own body again, as if his body has been a room with the windows sealed shut since morning and someone just opened all of them at once.
He slips off his shoes, changes, and goes to the kitchen to start cooking. With bare feet on cool tile, water set to boil, and vegetables under a knife, his hands move through the routine. He settles into the space the way a body sinks into a bath, slowly and gratefully. The apartment holds both of them in its air even now, Joong's scent folded into every breath Dunk takes, the way fragrance stays in cloth long after the warmth that pressed it there is gone. Steam from the pot touches his face and his eyes close. He thinks of Joong fresh from the shower, that particular warmth that rises off his skin before the cold air reaches him, and something in him opens softly in answer, sweet and patient. He stirs the pot and opens his eyes, smiling even though there is no one to see it. He does not care, standing barefoot in a kitchen making dinner for the man he loves, lit from the inside out like a room the sun has been filling for hours.
Every few minutes a thought of Joong surfaces, bringing a specific memory, such as the curve of his lower lip, the weight of his hand on Dunk's stomach in the dark, or the sound he makes when Dunk's mouth finds the place below his ear. Each one lands quietly somewhere and stays there, warm. He sets out two plates and leans against the counter, the waiting feeling like the last held note before a song resolves.
Keys on the counter and shoes by the door signal Joong's arrival. Dunk turns and Joong is in the doorway, his collar loosened, his hair shifted from the morning, and his eyes finding Dunk and staying. Every part of Dunk leans toward him, completely and without deciding to, the way a tide leans toward the moon. Joong crosses the kitchen, his hand finding the small of Dunk’s back. The touch spreads, radiating outward like heat from a stone dropped in water. Dunk tips his face up, and their kiss is slow and soft.
Joong’s mouth tastes like the end of the day and the beginning of the night. Dunk’s fingers find the front of Joong’s shirt, resting right over his heart where he can feel the steady, real beat. Within seconds, Dunk’s own heart matches the rhythm, falling into the shared pulse he has been reaching for since morning. Something inside him fills, and the relief is total. His fingers tighten in the fabric of Joong’s shirt without meaning to. They part, Joong's eyes on his, a look that moves through Dunk like warm water, settling into every hollow. The smallest curve appears at the corner of Joong's mouth, and his thumb gives a brief press on Dunk's hip before he goes to shower.
Dunk turns back to the stove. The air where Joong was standing still carries his scent and holds his heat. Dunk breathes it in and stirs the pot, his hands trembling very slightly. It is not from nervousness, but rather the way a string trembles after it has been struck, the vibration of contact still running through him. Water runs behind a closed door, and Dunk's mind follows the sound, finding Joong's body under the water, mapping all the terrain he knows by touch and by dark. Desire rises in him like something poured, dense and slow. He stands at the stove with a wooden spoon in his hand and his blood running so sweet he almost forgets to stir.
Joong comes back in a soft shirt, his hair damp. The scent of soap lingers, and underneath it, the deeper scent of his skin returns, the real one that Dunk is tuned to the way an instrument is tuned to a pitch. Dunk hands him a towel for his hair, their fingers overlapping on the fabric, and the touch goes through him like a struck chord. They eat side by side with Joong's knee against his thigh and Dunk's bare foot on Joong's ankle. Between bites their eyes meet and hold for a beat too long, and Dunk can feel each of those held glances on his skin like a fingertip drawn slowly across the inside of his wrist. Joong eats and Dunk watches the line of his jaw, the way his throat moves when he swallows, and feels a tenderness so specific it has a location in his body, right behind his sternum, soft and expanding. Joong looks up and catches him watching and does not look away, and that tenderness doubles. Dunk smiles, and Joong's mouth changes by a degree, and that single degree is everything.
After dinner they are on the floor with wrapping paper, ribbon, and tape, wrapping gifts for Joong's cousins. Dunk sits forward with scissors and Joong settles behind him, legs on either side, chest against Dunk's back, and chin on Dunk's shoulder. His arms close around Dunk's waist, loose and heavy, and Dunk receives the weight of him like a question he has been waiting all day to answer. He leans back into Joong, the heat of that chest soaking through his shirt, sinking into his skin and moving into his blood. His eyes want to close, his breath wants to slow, and all of him wants to stop. He wants to quit pretending to wrap gifts and simply exist here, inside this circle of heat, against this chest, breathing this scent.
He measures paper and folds it around a box. Joong’s thumb traces a slow arc on his hip, moving back and forth, and Dunk feels the motion spread across his chest, slow and wide, like something spilled. His skin produces heat and scent, which always happens when Joong is this close, quiet, involuntary, a hum beneath every ordinary motion. He ties a ribbon, and Joong’s lips press to the skin behind his ear. The kiss is lazy and unhurried. The ribbon goes crooked, but Dunk does not fix it. Joong’s fingers find the inside of his wrist, resting light against his pulse. Dunk feels his own heartbeat pushing against Joong’s fingertips, fast and insistent. Joong’s thumb moves once, traveling slowly across the vein, and Dunk’s whole body tightens with acute, almost unbearable pleasure, yet it is so gentle it is almost nothing at all.
They finish the gifts and stay on the floor, Dunk resting against Joong's chest. Joong buries his face in Dunk's hair, breathing him in, slow and deliberate, the same way he did this morning in the doorway. The room is golden, quiet, and full. Dunk feels Joong’s heartbeat thrumming against his shoulder blade, and his own heart answers until the two rhythms become one. They have been this close for so long that he cannot find the edge of himself, unable to tell where one ends and the other begins.
The bedroom is dark. The fan turns overhead, and pale light from outside falls across the sheets. Dunk's head rests on Joong's chest, Joong's hand moving along his arm, tracing shapes that are slow and aimless. Dunk can feel every one of them in the pit of his stomach, in the soles of his feet, in the low, heavy ache that has no intention of leaving. He turns his face into Joong's hair and breathes in deep and slow, filling himself with the scent of him, that irreducible thing that belongs only to this man. Joong’s arms gather him closer until they are pressed together along every line. The heat between them is a single, shared thing, a climate their bodies have made. Joong’s hand moves to his waist, pressing there with a touch that is firm and certain. His whole skin feels lit and alive, sensitive to every place Joong is touching him, and sensitive to every place Joong is not.
He presses his mouth to the curve of Joong's shoulder, then his neck, feeling Joong's pulse against his lips. Joong’s breathing deepens, and the heat rises off his skin in answer. Dunk knows it is mutual, watching Joong bloom for him the same way he blooms for Joong. Something swells in Dunk’s chest, building until he is on the edge of release. He lies in the dark against the body he loves. The night sits against his skin the way silk sits, smooth and weighted, and he knows without thinking it that nights like this are not owed to anyone. They arrive, they do not stay, and he breathes Joong in, slow and deep, staying awake inside the gift of it.