Archive of Our Own

Minho’s not sure when it started, exactly, but he knows himself enough to have realised a long time ago that he won’t be the one to end it. He watches Jisung tap the neck of his beer bottle against his lips before taking a sip, watches him laugh at something Chan says to him, and Minho knows this will never be over, not for him. He knows he’ll never be free of it either, of the need burning behind his ribs like a sickness.

Under the table, Jisung’s bare foot slides against his.

“That was insane, hyung,” Jisung says, gesturing with the bottle towards their empty dinner plates. “The best bulgogi I’ve ever had, hands down.”

“Not saying a lot since you survive on sugar and caffeine,” Minho huffs, nudging his toes against Jisung’s ankle. “Do you even remember to eat, locked up in that studio all day?”

Chan laughs, making a face at his best friend. “Hey, I feed him.”

“He tries,” Jisung confirms.

“You’re not much better than him, hyung,” Minho snorts. Chan and Jisung both work as music producers for a large entertainment agency and keep similar hours, after all.

He finishes his own beer, licks his lips and from across the table, Jisung’s gaze dips to his mouth with no subtlety whatsoever. To Minho at least, it’s so obvious that something a little like apprehension, a lot like sticky, syrupy-sweet want spills into the pit of his stomach and slithers through his veins.

Beside him Chan grins, dimples creasing his cheeks. “But I have you to look after me.” He bats his eyelashes at Minho, placing his hand on top of Minho’s on the table between them.

“You’ve spoiled him,” Jisung comments. “Hyung thinks he’s too good for ramyeon now.”

“Then he can starve,” Minho says blithely, but he turns his palm up to thread their fingers together.

Chan laughs, eyes dancing with happiness.

“Cute,” Jisung says flatly. He taps his foot against Minho’s.

Minho doesn’t look at him. “Go find us something to watch, hyung. Jisungie will help clear the table. He’s gotta earn his keep somehow.”

With a snicker, Chan nods and leans in to press his lips against Minho’s. Minho kisses back, breathes in Chan’s familiar scent of sandalwood cologne and the warm vanilla shower gel they share, of home. He’s been Minho’s home for nearly three years, and Minho loves him. He loves him, he does.

Minho presses another light kiss to the corner of Chan’s mouth and then unceremoniously pushes him away with a palm against Chan’s forehead. Chan just chuckles, pulling back easily. With an amused glance at Jisung who hasn’t moved, he stands up and walks out of the kitchen. Jisung’s eyes follow him, half-lidded and sullen behind the dark waves of hair that fall across his forehead before they flick back to Minho.

Wordlessly, Minho lifts an eyebrow and Jisung rolls his broad shoulders, as though tired of wearing a stiff, restrictive suit. When he leans back in his chair, the curve of his mouth turns unmistakably dirty. Minho stares, breathes through the sharp swooping of his belly, feeling like he’s leapt off a cliff under Jisung’s undivided attention, like he always does.

Once, Minho liked to think of himself as a good person and a decent boyfriend.

These days, he tries not to think about it at all.

“Are you going to throw a fit again?” Minho asks warily, voice barely above a murmur.

Jisung gives him a wide-eyed look of innocence, and Minho responds with an equally fake sigh. He knows he’ll have an obsessively needy, whiny Jisung on his hands, as if Minho should feel guilty for letting his own boyfriend touch him. Minho will mock Jisung for it and pretend to be annoyed, because these are the rules of this little game of theirs.

It’s not as fun if one of them is so in love he’s choking on it, sweating it out of his pores and wrestling back the words with every breath, and the other just likes to get his dick wet where he shouldn’t.

His chair screeches against the tiled floor when Minho stands, and Jisung grimaces. Minho ignores him, stacking Chan’s empty plate on top of his own far too forcefully. The plates clink together loudly.

After a beat, Jisung scoffs and bounds up to his feet to help. “Are we keeping these of breaking them and tossing them out?” he asks conversationally.

Their shoulders bump together, the muscles in Jisung’s forearm cording when he brushes it against Minho’s.

“I’m going to break you,” Minho says under his breath.

“Ooh, baby,” Jisung whispers, with a nasty glint in his eyes. “Right under Pops’ nose?”

A shiver crawls up Minho’s spine, equal parts disgust and heat. He grits his teeth and rides it out, hip-checking Jisung out of the way, and Jisung laughs at him and mutters a ‘yeah, thought so’.

They manoeuvre around each other in the kitchen, not the same well-oiled team that Chan and Minho are, but weighted down by unspoken words and unacted gestures, precariously balanced on the verge of a glance too many, one touch too far.

The polished wood of the kitchen cabinets gleams comfortingly, a familiar, safe haven. Minho feels most like himself here, surrounded by his jars of spices, the red gold of the copper pots and pans hanging above the stove, the ornate buffet in the corner that houses an antique tea set from Chan’s late grandmother.

He can hear Chan humming to himself in the living room, some melody that probably only exists in his head, and in the fraction of a second before he centres himself, Minho wants to sweep the plates off the table and smash the antique tea set and pull his hair out; wants to push Jisung up against the fridge and suck the taste of the poached pears they had for dessert off his tongue.

With a glance around the doorway, Jisung takes the dishes from Minho’s hands to set on the counter and backs him up against the sink. His hand finds the sliver of skin between the waistband of Minho’s jeans and the hem of his t-shirt, thumb brushing over Minho’s hip bone.

Minho exhales silently.

Dark head bent so it fits perfectly into the curve of Minho’s neck, the flutter of his eyelashes gentle against Minho’s skin, Jisung holds onto him. For one short, peaceful moment, Minho wraps an arm around him, closes his eyes and traces his fingertips down Jisung’s soft cheek.

He feels like himself like this too, is the thing. These days, Minho can’t even stand the person that lies awake at night next to Chan’s quietly snoring form, yet Jisung sees him, and Jisung wants him.

“I’ve missed you,” Jisung murmurs against the hinge of Minho’s jaw. “Haven’t seen you all week.”

“Minho-yah, what was that show I was telling you about yesterday?” Chan yells from the living room.

Minho chuckles, impossibly fond, and Jisung breathes out a laugh that sounds half-amused, half-frustrated, his fingers clenching on Minho’s waist.

They both love him, that’s what makes this even worse. It’s what makes it impossible for Minho to wrap his mind around even when they’re like this, heart pressed against heart, sin to sin. They both love Chan, in their own ways.

“Stranger Things?” Minho shouts back and Chan says ‘aha,’ then knocks something over, by the sound of it, and curses loudly.

Shaking his head, Jisung looks up to smile at Minho. It’s a sunrise of a smile, without any trace of slyness, and Minho sways into him helplessly and kisses him, a soft press of lips that makes Jisung sigh. He places both hands on Minho’s hips and leans in, opens his mouth to him to kiss back slowly. Their lips catch with a quiet, slick sound, the tips of their tongues brushing once, twice, before Minho turns his head to kiss Jisung’s cheek instead, feeling iridescent with love.

“Go help hyung,” he says, smacking Jisung’s ass.

Jisung giggles, tightens his hands on Minho for a beat, whispering ‘come see me tomorrow,’ before he straightens up.

Nodding, Minho turns around and braces his hands against the counter for a breath of a moment. Jisung walks out of the kitchen like it’s nothing, like his lips aren’t still damp with the taste of Minho.

“Is your memory beginning to slip, man?” Jisung is saying, and Chan protests loudly, their laughter inexplicably making Minho’s eyes sting.

When they met three years ago, Chan had just joined the same agency where he now is the main producer for their most successful idol group. Minho was fresh out of culinary school at the time and had been offered a job as a sous chef at La Casetta, one of the best western restaurants in town.

Minho’s previous relationship had ended a few months earlier because his boyfriend of a year had cheated on him, and with his ego all black-and-blue and his heart still licking its wounds, Minho hadn’t initially responded well to Chan’s determined attempts to flirt with him. Chan quickly won him over though, managed to pull Minho out of his shell and made him smile down at his phone with his stupid pick-up lines, even as Minho threatened to block his number. He also fucked him until Minho saw stars, then cuddled him despite Minho’s feeble attempts to push him away and asked about Minho’s day.

“He’s good for you,” his best friend Hyunjin had said, and Minho agreed.

To his consternation, Minho soon realised that he wanted to hold Chan’s hand and cook for him and listen to his painfully unfunny jokes. He’d never felt so loved, so cherished, so taken care of before. So when Chan asked him to move in with him a year into their relationship, Minho agreed and he was happy.

They were so happy.

Then about nine months ago, Chan’s childhood best friend moved back from LA where he’d been studying and working for the past several years. The two of them and Chan’s coworker, Changbin, had apparently known each other since primary school. Chan was so thrilled to have Jisung back that he helped him get a job at the agency, introduced him to all of their friends, and happily integrated him into his and Minho’s lives.

And Minho hadn’t seen it coming.

He had heard of Jisung, of course, long before he first saw him that day in the company lobby. Minho remembers their gazes catching and holding for too long a moment, in that grey marble hall with the drone of the faceless crowd around them; remembers the pride and affection in Chan’s voice when he said, “Jisung-ah, this is my boyfriend, Minho.”

And Jisung looked and looked, eyes dark and heavy, until Minho felt stripped down and raw, pink-tender like a bare nerve ending twitching in anticipation.

“Stop staring,” Minho said through gritted teeth while they waited in the bar next door for Chan to arrive with their friends.

Jisung grinned, teeth flashing white in the darkness of their booth. The faux leather seat squeaked as he slid closer to Minho, one bony knee visible through the rips in his jeans. Minho shoved his hands under his thighs and swallowed with a click.

Huffing a laugh, Jisung nudged his leg against Minho’s. “Right back at ya, baby.”

It was said as a taunt, as a jeer, and Jisung didn’t immediately move away even when the others arrived. At least until Felix jumped into his arms, and Jisung lifted him and stood up with Felix clinging to him, laughing as he spun him around. The two had apparently been roommates before Jisung left for LA, and also platonic lovers at first sight, whatever the hell that meant. Jisung then proceeded to charm the rest of Minho’s friends, and Minho watched in morbid fascination as he wrapped everyone around his finger, while Chan beamed like a proud dad.

Changbin caught Minho’s eye at one point and smiled his crooked little grin, indulgently like he was asking Can you believe this guy.

Jisung’s warm thigh stayed pressed against Minho’s under the table, and his restless little fingers hooked into Minho’s heartstrings that very first night and plucked at them thoughtlessly, like a careless child with a guitar. And Minho just hadn’t seen him coming.  

That was the spark.

Minho had never been one to go on and on about the ‘spark’, never thought love should be fucking and fighting and kisses in the rain for it to count. And he does love Chan. It seems almost profane to think this now, like Minho’s lost the right to it, but it’s the truth. It’s the kind of love that doesn’t hurt, comfortable like a warm blanket on a chilly Sunday morning.

But then Jisung came along, and they collided like two elemental forces, ones of chaos and destruction. Minho has no delusions about what this thing between them is, yet he feels undone by it, drunk on it – on being seen down to the ugliest cracks in his core, on saying the meanest shit around Jisung sometimes, and still wanting, still being wanted like this. Like he’ll go mad if he doesn’t give in.

And he had, Minho had given in and let Jisung take him apart and put him back together, so now only he knows which piece goes where.

It’s been half a year, and Minho still isn’t sure how he let this happen, but he knows it will never be over for him.

“Love you,” Chan calls out as he hops on one foot in the hallway to slip on his shoes. It’s 10:30 a.m. and he looks half-dead already, eyes puffy and his bleached hair dishevelled. He’d stayed at the studio until four last night, again, busting his ass for whatever comeback the agency’s gearing up for.

“Go away,” Minho replies, smiling to himself when Chan laughs brightly.

Untied shoelaces trailing behind him, Chan steps back into the kitchen and leans in to kiss Minho. Minho sets down his coffee on the kitchen island with a scoff but wraps his arms around him. He swallows down a gasp when Chan dips him like they’re dancing, a familiar twinge going through Minho’s lower back.

Fucking Jisung.

“Don’t forget your lunch,” he says gruffly, sliding the box along the counter to Chan. “I didn’t get up at dawn to make this so it can go to waste.” It’s lasagne because Chan said he’d been craving it.

“Ah, you didn’t have to. Thanks, babe!” Chan says, lighting up like a Christmas tree topper. He pats his pockets to make sure he has his keys, wallet, and phone on him, and clutches the box to his chest as he rushes out the door. Five minutes later, he returns to grab his phone that’s in fact sitting on the dining table, muttering a ‘yeah, yeah’ when Minho laughs at him.

Minho turns to put his cup in the sink and grabs his own phone from the counter.

I can barely walk this morning, he texts Jisung. Take responsibility.

The reply comes back instantly: Baby, just say the word and I’ll marry you right now.

With a snort, Minho leans back against the kitchen counter until the edge digs into his hip, rubs at the needlepoint of pain in his chest. He keeps saying stuff like this, Jisung does. Liar, Minho wants to accuse but really, they both are.

Hyung will be home late, he tells him instead, and Jisung replies I know :)

Minho deletes the messages and drags himself into the shower.

As the new head chef of La Casetta, Minho is usually the last to leave every night. By the time the kitchen closes, Minho’s sometimes spent ten, twelve hours on his feet and is barely keeping his eyes open, but he still needs to handle the paperwork and inventory. Once he’s done, everyone else has usually finished with the clean up and left. It can be brutal work some days, but Minho doesn’t mind. He likes the team, the atmosphere, the quaint one-story brick building with shutters on the windows and antique cement floor tiles brought in from Europe.

The owner, an eccentric old Italian guy with a soft spot for Minho that Minho exploits frequently and unapologetically, grants him near-full freedom to run the place and change the menu as Minho sees fit. He thrives on it, coming up with new recipes and discussing old, traditional ones with the owner, who tells Minho about all the different foods he's come across in his travels and flirts terribly like the 75-year-old rake that he is.

Most of all, though, Minho savours the moments of quiet and peace in his pristine, steel-grey kitchen after closing hours. The work stations and stoves shine with a comforting metallic lustre, and everything smells crisply of lemon cleaner. Beneath it lingers a faint trace of the ubiquitous combination of garlic, olive oil and basil that seems to permeate every nook and cranny of the kitchen.

Tonight has been a mess. One of the waiters didn’t show up for work so they were short-staffed. Then a group of eight people, smelling like a brewery, came without a reservation and asked for a table. They refused to leave when the maître d' informed them the restaurant was booked solid, making a huge scene so they had to be kicked out.

Not only that, but Minho’s favourite sous chef got violently sick for no apparent reason and couldn't finish his shift. The sous chef in training who had to take over was moving so slowly and gingerly around the kitchen that he grated on everyone’s already raw nerves, before bursting into tears and running out when Minho snapped at him to pull the cactus out of his rectum and get a move on.

When Minho’s finally ready to leave, it is after 1 a.m. He locks the back door that faces the empty car park, says good night to the fat orange cat that hangs around the restaurant and ransacks their rubbish bins, which his boss calls Arancini, and only then notices the car next to his own Hyundai.

Something flutters wildly in his stomach. Minho makes a face, disgusted with himself.

The window of the flashy, impractical red Jaguar rolls down and Jisung grins at him. The first few buttons of his dark shirt are undone, the sleeves rolled up over toned forearms. He’s not wearing any of his usual earrings and necklaces, so they probably had important meetings at work.

It must be why he hasn’t heard from Chan all day, again.

“Hey, Chef Lee,” Jisung drawls. He looks exhausted, eyes red and hair in complete disarray, and he’s the most beautiful person Minho’s seen. “I have a special request.” He pouts his lips and makes a smacking sound.

Snorting, Minho braces an arm against the car roof. “That was so greasy,” he chides, reaching out to stroke his thumb over Jisung’s cheekbone.

Jisung leans into his hand like a cat, chuckling warm and raspy. His lashes lift languidly for a second before dropping shut once again. “You love it.”

“You look half-asleep,” Minho says, instead of blurting out the ‘I love you’ burning on the tip of his tongue.

“Yeah.” Jisung drops his head back against the seat. “I gotta get back to the studio after. I just wanted to see you for, like, ten minutes. You said you were having a rough night?”

Minho’s heart is doing something insane in his chest. He had texted Jisung earlier just wanting to vent a little, not really expecting a reply.

Tsking in faux annoyance, he smooths over Jisung’s dishevelled hair. “You’re going to run yourself into the ground,” he says softly. “You and Channie both.”

“Don’t,” Jisung replies, without opening his eyes. His face is mostly a shadow, only the muddy yellow light of the lone streetlamp on the corner flickers faintly along the unhappy curve of his sweet mouth and the stubborn set of his chin. He grabs Minho’s wrist and presses a kiss to the inside of it, where his veins are twisting beneath the skin. “Don’t talk about him right now.”

You’ve ruined them both, Minho thinks, mind wrapping around itself and chasing its tail with sharp, dangerous teeth.

Wordlessly, he pushes away from the door and climbs into the backseat, raising his eyebrows at Jisung in the rear-view mirror.

“Oh, shit,” Jisung breathes, relocating with a speed that has Minho chuckling. It’s a tight fit, because the Jaguar’s backseat is practically non-existent, but they manage.

This, Minho can give him. Away from prying eyes, in small, recklessly splintered off shards, he’ll give away of himself until there’s nothing left.

The restaurant’s car park is mostly dark, with a single security camera above the door looking in the opposite direction. So Minho shuts the door and straddles Jisung’s thighs, and leans in to seal their lips together. Jisung pushes his hands down the back pockets of Minho’s jeans, squeezing his ass through the denim.

“Mm,” Jisung says, nipping at Minho’s bottom lip, “what’s this I hear about a raw asshole I need to take responsibility for?”

Minho cracks up, rests his forehead on Jisung’s shoulder and just laughs for a moment. Jisung exhales a tired chuckle into his hair.

“So fucking romantic, Jisung-ah.”

“You want romance?” He pulls out one hand to slap an ass cheek, hard, and Minho shudders with it, gasping into Jisung’s shirt. “I'm going to woo the shit out of you, bro,” Jisung threatens, massaging the stinging spot on Minho’s ass before he slaps it again.

Minho straightens up to glare at him. “Watch it,” he mutters, grips Jisung’s jaw and jerks his head back.

“What are you going to do, baby?” Jisung’s eyes sparkle up at him in the dim light. He bucks his hips up into Minho, and Minho feels stupid with want, grinding down into his lap with a breathy noise that makes Jisung laugh at him. “Gonna come in your pants about it?”

Winding his fingers in the back of Jisung’s hair, Minho pulls hard enough to make him grunt. Jisung drags him in tighter and presses the tip of his nose to the base of Minho’s neck, surprisingly affectionate. He sucks a line of kisses along Minho’s collarbones, then, fingers slipping down the back of Minho’s jeans to circle his hole.

With a wince, Minho tilts his head to the side to let Jisung press an open-mouthed kiss to the hollow of his throat. They’d fucked twice last night, and Jisung had gone to town on him with Minho’s own, rather sizable, vibrator in between rounds. Minho truly was limping slightly to one side this morning and loving every second of it.

“You wanna fuck me?” Jisung offers then bites down on his neck, making Minho’s breath whoosh out of him. Jisung works at the skin with his teeth, and there’s a faint red light going off in the back of Minho’s mind.

He can’t think beyond how good it feels, though, beyond the throb of shivery-hot pleasure at Jisung’s fingers sliding down the cleft of his ass and the scrape of his teeth at Minho’s neck.

“No,” Minho says peevishly, spreading his knees as much as possible to grind their cocks together through their clothes. “Want you inside.”

“’Course you do,” Jisung says, with utter fondness.

He kisses the bite on Minho’s neck as if to soothe it, breath hot against the dampness of Minho’s skin. The tip of one finger rubs at Minho’s hole again, dry and rough, and Minho tries to wiggle away, then pushes back against Jisung’s hand, unsure if he wants to complain or ask for more.

Jisung wraps an arm around his waist to hold him in place. He doesn’t try to push inside, but the promise of it, the threat of it makes Minho’s stomach flip-flop.

“Aw,” Jisung says against Minho’s jaw, infuriatingly condescending. He huffs a laugh when Minho swats blindly at his face. “You can take it, baby, can’t you?”

Minho has sworn never to compare, but the truth is he’s never admitted to Chan how he sometimes deliberately does a poor job of opening himself up before they fuck, because Minho likes when it hurts a little, when it gets a bit sore. It isn’t pain he's after, not exactly; just the feeling of being well-used and breathlessly sensitive.  

It’s not that he doesn’t trust Chan. Honestly, Minho suspects Chan wouldn’t bat an eye if he told him. He would certainly never make Minho feel weird about it even if he wasn’t into it. It’s just that, well. Minho hadn’t known, before. He’s discovered this about himself with Jisung, and the thought of sharing it with someone else makes him sort of queasy, like it’s a betrayal somehow. The irony of it isn’t lost on him.

He nods jerkily, says ‘Go on,’ and Jisung murmurs his agreement. He doesn’t ask Minho if he’s sure, trusts Minho to tell him what he wants and to stop him if he needs to, and the same holds true for Minho.

There’s no room for awkwardness between them, not even if one or both of them realise halfway-through that whatever it is they’re doing isn’t working for them, and they want to tap out. Like that time when Minho got in his own head, started getting antsy and asked to be released from the handcuffs securing his hands to Jisung’s bed. Jisung had been riding him like his life depended on it, sweaty and panting above him, and seconds away from coming on Minho’s cock by the look of it. Minho kinda felt bad for stopping him.

Jisung was completely unbothered, though, immediately pulling off and shifting his weight forward on shaky knees. Lube glistening along the insides of his thighs, he reached over to undo the Velcro cuffs around Minho’s wrists, while humming some anime theme song to himself, the absolute maniac.

He asked Minho if he wanted to cuddle, sweet as though his hard dick weren’t still bobbing heavily between his legs, and Minho wanted to rip his heart out and fling it at Jisung like a grenade.

Instead, Minho flipped him over and fucked him until Jisung spilled all over his own Egyptian cotton sheets. Face smushed into the mattress, Jisung asked Minho to come on him, and then laid there with it dripping down his ass cheeks, a dazed smile on his face as he held Minho’s hand and thanked him, obliterating the last vestiges of Minho’s sanity.

They work so well together that it sometimes makes Minho irrationally angry. There’s a joke in there somewhere, how Minho had to be broken first for all of his pieces to fit so perfectly against someone else’s.

Holding Minho against him, Jisung reaches between the seats to open the glove compartment. He fishes out a small bottle of lube and a box of condoms, and Minho feels bitterness scratch at the back of his throat. They haven’t fucked in Jisung’s car recently.

He keeps his mouth shut and spreads his thighs a little more, eyes closed as he tries not to think about it, not to imagine it while Jisung presses two slick fingers inside him. Minho doesn’t need much more, truthfully, takes them easily and tells Jisung sharply to hurry the hell up. With their pants hastily pushed down, Minho presses the head of Jisung’s cock against his hole. He breathes out raggedly when it slips in and Jisung’s mouth pops open, head lolling back against the seat. He watches with dark, lidded eyes as Minho sinks down onto him slowly.

The air in the car gets stuffy, too warm, and streaks of sweat trickle down the back of Minho’s neck. The back of the leather seat sticks to the damp skin on his arms where he’s holding himself up above Jisung.

Jisung’s palms rub at Minho’s hips and inner thighs. He leans up to kiss the corner of his mouth and says, voice all gravel, “Look at you, splitting yourself open just for me.”

“Move, you lazy fucker,” Minho replies crossly, hot and aching and uncomfortable in the cramped space, and wanting to get closer still, never wanting this to end.

His fingers clench on Jisung’s shoulders and Jisung lets out an indulgent laugh, kisses his mouth again before he grabs Minho’s hips and fucks into him. It does feel like Minho’s going to split open when Jisung bottoms out.

“Ow, fuck,” he hisses, pressing a hand to his quivering stomach as though trying to feel Jisung there, buried deep inside of him. The ache is so sweet, almost too much yet not nearly enough, and Minho lets it ground him, hopes he'll still feel it tomorrow to remind him of what he’s done.

“You’re okay,” Jisung says against his ear, velvety and soothing. His fingers stroke the tender skin where Minho’s stretched around him and Minho hates the sound he makes at that, a whimpery sort of moan that makes his face burn. “Shh, shh, all good, baby,” Jisung coos at him, and oh, Minho’s absolutely going to kick his ass the second they finish.

Minho rises up on his knees and then back down, hands scrabbling for purchase on Jisung’s chest. Tightening his hands on him, Jisung holds Minho’s hips and thrusts into him, again and again, and it feels so good that Minho’s whole body is humming like a live wire. He takes his cock in his hand and fists it, throwing his head back.

“Look at me,” Jisung says, and Minho does, head swimming as Jisung pulls out and thrusts back in until he’s fucking a string of wet gasps out of Minho. “See who’s gonna make you come,” Jisung pants, and Minho slams down hard and tightens around Jisung and comes, sudden and messy, all over Jisung’s designer shirt.

Hands shaking, Minho rubs his wet palm over the head of his cock until a panicked trickle of fuckfuckfuck too much starts to mix in with the pleasure. He’s spasming hard enough around Jisung to make him groan and crush Minho against his chest, hips jolting as he comes inside him. Inside the condom that Minho wishes weren’t there.

After a moment, Minho peels himself away and kneels above him. Jisung’s cock slips out of him and Minho clenches around nothing, shivering with a forlorn sort of emptiness. Then Jisung tucks what feels like at least three fingers back inside of him, lube squelching obscenely. Minho yelps and jerks backwards, but there’s nowhere to go in this stupid fucking car. 

“Stop it, you little shit,” he grits out, propping a hand against the ceiling to steady himself.

In the near-darkness, Jisung stares up at him with a smug little grin on his swollen lips as he twists his wrist, screwing his fingers in even deeper.

Breath getting stuck in his throat, Minho curls his fingers into the wrinkled, soiled front of Jisung’s shirt. “What am I gonna tell hyung if he wants to fuck?” he mutters irritably, rocking back against Jisung’s hand. “It’ll be like throwing a tennis ball down a hallway.”

Jisung barks out a laugh. “Oh my god, shut up.” He cups his free hand around Minho’s cheek and tugs him down for a bruising kiss.

“Bitey,” Minho hums, smiling. He sinks his teeth into Jisung’s bottom lip hard enough to make Jisung curse and giggles at him. It trails into a deep, throaty moan when Jisung crooks his fingers inside him.

There must be something wrong with him, with both of them, Minho thinks. He doesn’t know how he let it get this far, how it turned into this wicked, monstrous thing that eats at his heart and knocks him astray.

And yet, Minho collects every little moment, suspended like a pearl on a necklace, and somehow the guilt that marks him like a bloodstain that won’t come out doesn’t tarnish its shine.

“Hyung, what the hell,” Hyunjin says, reaching over the table to tug on Minho’s shirt collar.

“What’s with you?” Minho bats his hand away, narrowing his eyes. “Just woke up and felt like losing a couple of fingers today?”

Hyunjin snorts and tucks his long hair behind his ear, leaning back in his chair. He grabs his tall pink cocktail and sucks noisily on the straw. They’re having – to quote Hyunjin – a girls’ night out, because the guy Hyunjin’s been talking to is out of town, so Hyunjin had been bored and needy. Minho has the day off, and he’d been alone at home for the fifth night in a row anyway, so he agreed to take Hyunjin out for drinks.

The bar is a gaudy speakeasy-inspired eyesore with chesterfield leather couches and huge paintings in gilded frames that look so heavy, they would probably flatten someone into a sticker if they fell off. Their drinks are decent and reasonably priced, though.

“What did you do to Channie-hyung?” Hyunjin taunts, balancing on the hind legs of his chair. “Did you make him mad or something?”

The waitress shoots him a look as she passes by. Hyunjin doesn’t seem to notice.

Minho blinks at him, uncomprehending. “I haven't even seen him in like, two days.” He takes a sip of his Old Fashioned then twirls the tumbler between his fingers, running his thumb along the grooves in the crystal. He hadn’t heard Chan come home last night and he was already gone when Minho woke up this morning. “He’s always at the studio.”

With a clang, Hyunjin slams the front legs of his chair back on the floor, and that’s when it clicks.

Minho stops breathing.

He claps a hand against the side of his neck and feels the sharpness of Jisung’s teeth there, the warmth of his breath. A ghost of a whisper into Minho’s ear.

His lungs feel like they are caving in.

Hyunjin’s huge eyes are riveted on him, their edges creasing in anguish. “Hyung,” he says, stricken, and Minho closes his eyes and sucks in a desperate gulp of air. Hyunjin’s known him for ten years, though, there’s no lying, no hiding, no fighting his way out of this. “Minho-hyung.”

Minho’s drink splashes across the back of his hand as he sets it on the table. “Don’t ask,” he rasps out.

“Who?” Hyunjin demands, because of course he does. He’s Minho’s best friend and he loves him, and Minho wants to cry but won’t.

He’s not going to burden Hyunjin with the weight of a heart that doesn’t deserve to feel broken.

“Don’t,” Minho repeats, and Hyunjin’s hand locks around his wrist.

“Who the hell was it, hyung?” he asks in a harsh whisper, leaning over the table.

“Jisung,” Minho replies, shocking himself with the confession. The din of the bar suddenly seems to explode in pitch, reaching deafening levels. Minho want to press his palms over his ears. He lifts his eyes to meet Hyunjin’s instead. “It was Jisung.”

“Jesus Christ.” Hyunjin slumps back into his chair, expression caught somewhere between distress and absurd, hesitant hope. “Were you two drunk? Was it… a mistake, or?”

Jaw tightening, Minho shakes his head.

Hyunjin lets out a horrible hiccup of laughter. “A few months ago, Changbin-hyung, Binnie said–“ Hyunjin closes his mouth and turns away like he can’t bear to look at Minho. “I thought he was nuts,” he says, as though to himself.

Minho feels his blood ice up.

Changbin loves Chan with an intensity that Minho has often found slightly unsettling. He’d probably kill or maim for Chan, no questions asked. His smile makes him look soft like a teddy bear, but Changbin has the sort of eyes that can strip away layers of lies and flesh and bone, until they stare into your core. Minho hasn’t let his guard down around him in months.

“He said what?” Minho grabs Hyunjin’s hand with stiff fingers, and Hyunjin yanks it away so forcefully that the waitress pauses by their table.

Her eyes dart searchingly between them, and Minho plasters a smile on his face. He probably looks like one of those creepy mugshots of smiling criminals.

“Can we have another round, please?”

“Sure,” she says slowly, with a cautious glance at Hyunjin whose gaze remains fixed on the wood-panelled wall before she walks back to the bar.

“He told Channie-hyung that he should keep Jisung away from you,” Hyunjin says then. “Hyung got mad at him.”

“I knew Changbin had it out for me,” Minho mutters, scrunching up his face as he finishes his cocktail in one gulp.

“What, did you fuck him too?” Hyunjin glares at him.

“If I had, he wouldn’t be so damn crabby,” Minho says, with a snort of inappropriate laughter. He feels numb inside, as if his nerve endings have been singed by months of playing with fire, of holding it under his tongue like a secret. Under Hyunjin’s censorious stare, Minho presses the back of his hand to his lips and exhales harshly. “I’m going to break up with Chan,” he adds, voice shivering as he says it.

Hyunjin stares at Minho like he doesn’t know him. “Why?” he asks incredulously. “You can still fix this!”

Minho grabs his drink as soon as the waitress sets the glass in front of him and knocks back half of it in one long swallow. Eyes watering, he forces out, “I should’ve done it a long time ago.”

Across from him, Hyunjin starts to cry, big, heavy tears rolling down his pretty face. “Don’t lose the person you love over a stupid hook-up,” he says, wiping the tears away angrily.

He looks small and young, hunched over in the brown leather chair with his pale face and trembling lips, and all Minho can see is the kid in the playground who had asked a fifteen-year-old Minho to fix his bent bicycle wheel. ‘You’re the best, hyungie!’ he’d squealed with delight after Minho had managed to twist it back into shape, looking at Minho with stars in his eyes like he was Superman or something.

“That’s not what this is,” Minho says, and the words are jarring like shards of porcelain clattering to the floor. “Not to me.”

He lets Hyunjin stare at him, lets him see the truth in his face, and Hyunjin pauses, eyes widening.

“Oh,” he says, face softening almost imperceptibly. “Oh, no.”

In the garish bathroom with brass faucets and carved marble sinks, Hyunjin helps him cover up the bruise with makeup. Minho hops up on the counter, swings his legs and lets Hyunjin swipe his brushes down Minho’s neck.

“Would you date both of them? If that were an option,” Hyunjin mumbles.

Feet stilling, Minho blinks at him once, twice.

It’s a valid question. Hyunjin dated two guys last year, and they were all quite happy together until one of his boyfriends had to move away for work. Things kind of fell apart between Hyunjin and his other boyfriend then.

Minho doesn’t know how to explain what he feels, that it hurts to think about Jisung sometimes and Minho’s grateful for the pain, because he hadn’t known that he could feel so much. He doesn’t think there’s room for anyone other than Jisung in the centre of his heart, and Chan deserves better than being someone’s afterthought.

“No,” he says finally, poking at his neck. It stings more than he expected. Admitting the truth out loud, that is, not his neck, although that stings like fuckery too.

Hyunjin slaps his hand away and starts patting a powder puff against Minho’s skin. Thank god for Hyunjin and his travelling beauty parlour. “Did you fall out of love, then?” he asks quietly. “With hyung?”

“Hm.” Minho drums his fingers on his leather-clad knees. He’s bad with words even on the best of days, struggles with letting other people stick their fingers into the underbelly of his thoughts and feelings. “I don’t know how to– Channie-hyung’s my friend, and my boyfriend, and my flatmate, and I can’t, like. Compartmentalise. I’ll probably always love him in some sense. But Jisung–” He shakes his head, stares down at the shiny toes of his Chelsea boots, and says, voice small, “In my mind, I’m his.”

“Wow, you’re down bad.” Hyunjin is looking at him patiently, no judgement in his face, and Minho warms inside, reaches out to pinch Hyunjin’s cheek and Hyunjin jumps back and shrieks like a vengeful ghost.

A guy walks in the bathroom just then, and he screams too. Startled, he nearly trips over his own feet as he stumbles into the nearest stall and slams the door closed.

Minho laughs, way too loud. Snickering, Hyunjin shushes him.

“What I don’t get is,” he says, rubbing his abused cheek, “why didn’t you just end it with hyung then? It’s been months.”

“I thought about leaving him so many times.” With a snort, Minho looks up at the amber glass lanterns hanging from heavy chains. “’Leaving him’, that sounds so fucking stupid. What’s this, Love Island?”

“Seriously, you watch that?” Hyunjin makes a face, zipping up his makeup bag. “Of course you’d fall for Jisung.”

After a beat of surprised silence, Minho starts laughing. “Really, Hyunjin-ah, insulting me a mere three metres away from a perfectly fine toilet in which to waterboard you.” Hyunjin just rolls his eyes and Minho adds, quieter, “I just couldn’t go through with it, okay. Couldn’t hurt him like that.”

Hyunjin eyes him, unimpressed. “So you decided to spare his feelings and keep fucking his best friend behind his back instead.” Minho shrugs and Hyunjin shakes his head, leaning in to inspect Minho’s neck with a critical eye. “And Jisung?” he murmurs carefully. “Does he love you, too?”

“Oh, I doubt it,” Minho says with the cheerfulness of a killer clown. Hyunjin frowns and Minho shrugs again and kicks his legs. “He likes me well enough but mostly I think it’s the taboo of it, for him.” He squints up at Hyunjin. “You know, sticking his dick in the forbidden fruit.”

“Oh my gosh,” the guy says from the stall.

“Just take your shit and be quiet,” Minho calls out, and Hyunjin claps both hands over his mouth.

“Stop harassing people, you monster,” he chokes out, shoulders shaking.

Minho shoots him a half-assed smirk. “There goes my night.”

“Listen, I don’t know Jisung as well as you obviously do. But are you sure about the… fruit thing? Or are you assuming things again?” Hyunjin leans his hip against the countertop. “Because that wasn’t a very nice thing to say about someone you love.”

“I mean.” Minho opens his arms as if to say What did you expect. “Turns out I’m not a very nice person, sweetheart.”

Sighing, Hyunjin folds his long body down to hug Minho against his chest. Minho sighs too.

“Is this my punishment?” He pats his back, and Hyunjin sniffles against his shoulder.

“You don’t get a punishment for being an idiot, hyung,” he says with a soft, watery laugh. “Just get your head out of your ass and fix this mess.”

Minho can’t exactly argue with that.

“Hyunjin knows,” is the first thing he says when Jisung picks up.

There’s silence on the other end. Minho waits, wiggling his fingers goodbye to Hyunjin who’s hanging out the window of a taxi and waving tearfully at Minho, like they’re some tragic lovers separating at a train station. He’s not even drunk, which makes it funnier somehow.

Once the taxi’s pulled into traffic, Minho walks away from the entrance of the bar, weaving through the crowd of laughing and chatting people outside. The early June night is warm, heavy with the scent of tobacco and perfume. Minho’s starting to sweat through his silk shirt.

“Knows what, exactly?” Jisung asks finally. Minho can hear a door closing in the background and imagines him walking out of the studio he shares with Chan and Changbin.

“Everything,” he says, arching an eyebrow at some guy leaning against the side of the building who stares at Minho unabashedly. The guy doesn’t look embarrassed at getting caught, just blows out a cloud of cigarette smoke and grins at him; Minho pointedly moves his gaze past him.

“Does he know because you told him?” Jisung asks, with no inflection whatsoever.

“Get fucked,” Minho scoffs. “Meet me at yours?”

Jisung exhales into the phone. There’s a slick noise, like he’s tugging on his lip with his teeth. He does that when he’s nervous. “I’ll be there in thirty.”

The guy decides to try his luck, apparently, because he ambles over to Minho with his hands in his pockets.

“Don’t bite your lip off,” Minho instructs Jisung, watching the guy wryly. “It’s a good lip, I like that lip.”

Before he hangs up, he hears Jisung’s laughter.

“Damn, you’re pretty,” the guy says when he reaches him, gracing him with another blinding smile. Minho looks on, expressionless. “Want some company?”

Snorting, Minho slips the phone into his back pocket and flags down a taxi. “I have too much company as it is.”

Hyunjin got plastered, taking him home, Minho texts Chan. I’m going to sleep over at his. Don’t forget to eat.

Ok, Chan says, and doesn’t follow it up with anything else.

It’s after one when he makes it to Jisung’s place. He lives in a fancy old building, with high ceilings and a wide central staircase with iron railings. There are only two flats on each floor.

Jisung’s waiting at the door, watching him climb the stairs. He’s wearing an old band t-shirt with the sleeves cut out and jeans that are so torn up, it almost amounts to indecent exposure. With the violet shadows under his eyes, Jisung looks like he hasn’t slept a wink in days. He probably hasn’t, since he’s been at the studio with Chan non-stop. Aside from slipping away to fuck his boyfriend every now and then, that is.

He draws Minho into his arms, hands locked at the small of his back. “You look nice, baby,” Jisung mumbles, brushing his lips against the shell of Minho’s ear. “Sorry, I probably smell. I haven’t showered since this morning.”

Nose pressed to Jisung’s bare shoulder, Minho sniffs him. “You do,” he confirms.

He does, a little – like stale coffee, faintly of Jisung’s favourite dark, boozy perfume, and a bit like sweat, but Minho likes it. He kisses the jut of bone there, then up the line of his neck where Jisung’s pulse throbs against his lips, sweeping his tongue over sweat-salty skin.

“Are you licking me?” Jisung asks, voice a vibration against Minho’s tongue. It’s a weird sensation, like he can taste the sound of Jisung’s voice.

“Yeah.”

“Pervert,” Jisung says warmly, kicking the door shut. He pushes Minho against it and hugs him again, holding him tight. With a shuddering breath, Minho fists a hand into the back of Jisung’s t-shirt and presses another kiss to his skin, over the bulge of his bicep this time.

The flat is a mess, as always. It’s cluttered with notebooks and various pieces of musical equipment, a pair of headphones left on the plush, ridiculously expensive blue velvet sofa. The lights are all off, apart from the floor lamp with a stained-glass shade in the corner of the living room. It throws off dappled coloured light that makes the room look like the inside of a kaleidoscope.

“How?” Jisung asks, resting his forearm against the door.

“My neck.” Minho cards through Jisung’s hair with gentle fingers. It needs a wash, but Minho doesn’t mind, pushes it behind Jisung’s ear and presses his lips to Jisung’s temple as he shakes with unhinged laughter against Minho. “I hadn’t even noticed. Hyunjin helped me cover it up but I didn’t feel like facing hyung tonight.”

“You think Hyunjin will tell him?”

“Don't ask stupid shit.” Minho pulls back to look at him, hand on the back of Jisung’s neck, and chooses not to ask if Jisung had done it on purpose. “I’m breaking up with him,” he says instead, and Jisung presses his lips together and widens his eyes at Minho like he’s asking What the fuck.

“Why?” he scoffs, pulling away from him. “Just put makeup on it for a few days.”

“And then what, Jisung-ah?” Minho feels anger bubbling up through the cracks in his heart. “We keep lying and sneaking around? Aren’t you tired of this?”

Abruptly, Jisung’s features frost over. He crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re tired of me, is that what you’re saying, hyung?”

Minho slaps his chest. “That’s the opposite of what I’m saying!”

Face unreadable, Jisung keeps staring at him. “You’re gonna break his heart.”

“We already have.” Minho pats Jisung’s cheek once and adds, voice scratchy, “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Scoffing, Jisung turns his back to him and runs both hands through his hair. He seems to be having several conversations with himself simultaneously, so Minho stays quiet and gives him space to think. He slips his shoes off and goes to sit on the sofa, moving the headphones out of the way.

Jisung grabs the back of his own neck and starts to pace. With unwarranted wrath, he kicks a stray slipper and it skitters across the floorboards.

“I don’t need to mention you at all,” Minho says quietly. “There’s no reason to tell him about us.”

“Do you wanna end this?” Jisung asks, whirling around to look at him. He squeezes his elbows together under his chin, eyes a little wild. “Us?”

Minho studies him silently; his mouth is red and bitten, chest stretching out the fabric of his t-shirt as it heaves in short, shallow breaths. Want, and longing, and desperate, desperate hope roll around in Minho’s heart until it rattles like a maraca in his chest.

“When I break up with hyung–” he trails off then lets out a sigh and clasps his fingers together in his lap where Jisung can’t see them shake. “Will you still want me?”

The silence stretches taut.

Then Jisung lets out a quiet snort and pads over to the sofa, propping a knee on the armrest. His hand curls around the side of Minho’s face, fingers pressing below his ear. As he stares down at Minho, his eyes are huge and very dark, and angry, so fucking angry, yet his touch is gentle like it hasn’t always been.

“You think I get off on how wrong this is,” he states instead of asking, and throws a leg over Minho’s lap to straddle him. Minho’s hands automatically settle on his hips to steady him, and Jisung grabs his face, pressing his thumbs into Minho’s cheeks. “How little do you actually think of me?”

“What am I supposed to think, Jisungie?” Minho drops his head against the back of the sofa, strokes up and down Jisung’s thighs over the ripped denim. “Have you ever thought about it? About us?”

Jisung shakes his head. “I’ve never let myself. Come on now, everyone knew you and hyung were a forever thing.” Minho just watches him through half-lowered lashes and Jisung’s lips twist into a vicious little smile. “You think I liked watching you go home to him every time?” Jisung’s hands grip his face, angling his head before he leans in to kiss him.

It’s a sloppy, slightly off-centre kiss that catches the corner of Minho’s mouth. Minho tilts his head to align their lips and Jisung laughs and licks into his mouth and kisses him, dirty and deep.

Minho squeezes his eyes shut and sucks wetly on Jisung’s tongue until he groans and starts to fidget on top of Minho. Jisung’s ass is right over his dick, and Minho’s already half-hard in his leather pants and he wants him so much he feels dizzy with it.

Pulling back with a grin on his spit-slick lips, Jisung breathes, “You know I’m a selfish guy, hyung.” He flicks the tip of his tongue against Minho’s upper lip, and Minho’s fingers dig into the meat of his thighs. The stained-glass lampshade sprinkles tiny flecks of green and gold across the tips of Jisung’s eyelashes. Lips against Minho’s, he says, “I've always wanted you to be mine. Only mine.”

“Just that, huh?” Minho quips, reaching up to tug on Jisung’s hair. He feels like he's missed a step in the dark.

Are you assuming things again, Hyunjin had asked him.

“I’d be yours, too,” Jisung argues with a pout, as though it’s that easy, and leans down to feather kisses across Minho’s face and down his neck.

His hair is sticking straight up in the back, so Minho tries brushing it flat with his fingers while Jisung ungratefully bites his earlobe. Minho catches him around the waist and yanks him closer, and Jisung laughs.

“Ah, you liked that, didn’t you?” He shifts until Minho’s clothed dick slides right between his ass cheeks. “You want me to be all yours, baby?”

“Do you ever shut up?” Minho asks, laughing a little too.

Grabbing Jisung’s hips, he tugs him down roughly and then twists one hand into Jisung’s hair to keep him still. Jisung makes a strangled noise and goes lax against him. Minho kisses him, then, and Jisung sighs and kisses back, mouth warm and soft. His fingers clench into the collar of Minho’s shirt, balling up the silk in his fist.

They kiss like it’s the first time and it’s not gentle, but it’s gentler than before; careful, like they’ve yet to learn the taste of each other. Minho relaxes his hold on Jisung’s hair and Jisung pulls back to give him a small curl of a smile, thumb sweeping up Minho’s cheekbone before he kisses him again, long and sweet and deep.

The bottle of cherry flavoured lube that Jisung pulls out of the coffee table drawer is nearly full, just as it was when Minho put it there a couple of weeks ago.

The first few months after they’d met, Jisung purposely flaunted his hook-ups in Minho’s face, different girls and boys every week. Minho refused to give him a reaction, but Jisung kept it up for a while even after they started sleeping together, likely just to fuck with his head.

Lately, though, Jisung hasn’t volunteered any information about other people, and Minho would rather run buck naked through the restaurant during dinner rush than ask him. He doesn’t even have any right to be upset, seeing as he never stopped having sex with Chan. Yet Minho stares at the nearly full plastic bottle of lube, a flimsy reassurance at best, and feels it soothe something inside him which has been unravelling like an old cardigan.

He undresses Jisung and pushes him forward so that he’s on all fours on the sofa, ass in the air, and just watches him for a moment. Jisung is yammering, begging Minho to hurry up and attempting to bribe him with the promise of rimming.

Ignoring his dramatics, Minho leans down to kiss the centre of Jisung’s back. He’s beautiful, his naked body a smooth, uninterrupted line of golden skin and taut muscle. 

He begins to work his fingers into Jisung, slow enough to have him cursing in three different languages and rutting against the sofa cushions while Minho laughs at him.

Shifting them so Jisung’s sitting upright on his knees with his back pressed to Minho’s chest, he guides Jisung’s head back against his shoulder and wraps an arm securely around his waist to hold him up. He fucks Jisung with deep, languorous thrusts, and Jisung shakes apart and tightens sweetly around him, sniffling pitifully when Minho tells him he’s not allowed to come yet.

Rubbing his thumb over the head of Jisung’s cock, Minho kisses his cheek and then digs into the slit.

“Ooh, fuck. Oh, god,” Jisung babbles breathlessly. “Yeah, yeah. Do that again, please.”

Chuckling softly, Minho does, thumbs at the slit as he fucks into him harder, and Jisung moans so loud his neighbour probably hears him. He grabs Minho’s free hand and laces their fingers together, makes a blissful ‘mmm’ sound into Minho’s ear that has him smiling against Jisung’s damp neck.

Jisung comes all over the blue velvet the second Minho tells him he can. Minho bends him over the armrest and presses in deep, holding Jisung down with a hand between his shoulder blades, and comes so hard he sees white. Jisung clings to his hand and says Minho’s name, still twitching in his arms while Minho’s hips jerk out their aftershocks.

They stay tangled together for a while longer afterwards, with Jisung half on top of him, one leg over Minho’s thighs. He whines like a brat when Minho jostles him to pull off the condom, then makes a sound of protest when Minho shrugs and drops it on the floor. His head becomes heavier on Minho’s chest, and Minho knows he should probably carry him to the shower and then get some food in him. He will, Minho thinks, kissing Jisung’s sweaty brow; in a minute.

In the back pocket of his leather pants thrown over the back of the sofa, Minho can hear his phone vibrating. He ignores it, tightening his arms around Jisung.

With a drowsy laugh, Jisung kisses his chest and says, “Baby, I’m not going anywhere,” and Minho wants to believe it and can’t.

They shower together, exchanging sleepy kisses under the hot spray in Jisung’s glass-encased rainfall shower. Jisung gets shampoo suds in his eyes and flails wildly until Minho cracks up, laughing as he helps Jisung wash the shampoo out of his irritated eyes. Jisung pouts at him through the steam with kiss-pink lips and clumpy wet lashes, and Minho smiles, so desperately, wretchedly in love.

After, they order pizza and sit down on the sofa to wait for it, with a glass of wine they pass back and forth between them. Minho’s wearing one of Jisung’s huge sleeveless t-shirts that comes to mid-thigh, and Jisung’s snuggled up next to him in a pair of sweats, bare-chested and warm. He breathes against Minho’s neck, hands constantly straying to Minho’s legs, stroking from the back of his knees to the tops of his thighs. Minho rolls his eyes and snickers as Jisung tries to tell him about the song he’s working on and keeps losing his train of thought.

It isn’t the first time Minho’s spent the night, but it’s a rare enough occurrence to feel special. They haven’t decided what they’re going to do yet, but that’s for tomorrow.

“You’re so hot,” Jisung mumbles distractedly, walking two fingers along the inside of Minho’s thigh. “You could be a porn star or something.”

Minho stares. “I don’t understand how you get so much ass.”

“Listen, people see me and they want to fuck me. It’s a thing.” Laughing, Jisung peers up at him. “Besides, I haven’t been. Not recently.” He props himself up on his elbow and purses his lips. “Unlike you,” he says scathingly, and it takes Minho a second.

“Wait. You haven’t, with anyone?” he asks and hates how thin his voice sounds. “Except for–”

“You, yes.” Jisung lets out a harsh breath through his nose. Unstyled, his dark hair falls softly about his face, cheeks still flushed from the shower. He looks peeved, as though he’s revealed something he hadn’t meant to. Ears flaming red, Jisung mumbles, “Why would I? I don’t want anyone else.” He chuckles when Minho makes a choked sound. “Have I finally swept you off your feet, hyung?”

“I’m gonna sweep you off the planet,” Minho says nonsensically, pulling Jisung back into his arms to kiss the laughter off his lips.

They reluctantly break apart when they hear the knock on the front door. Jisung rolls off the sofa with a groan, pulling his plaid shirt off the back of it. He shrugs it on, leaving it unbuttoned.

While he goes to get the pizza, Minho finally reaches for his phone.

“Shit,” he hears Jisung say, and when Minho looks up, he sees Chan standing in the hallway outside, with one hand braced against the doorframe and devastation in his eyes.

“Channie,” Minho whispers, heart plummeting.

For a moment, Chan just looks at him; at Minho clad in nothing but Jisung’s shirt. Then his gaze flicks back to Jisung who has his hands on his hips, head bowed as he stares at the floor.

The silence crackles between them. Chan pushes a hand through his bleached hair and makes a horrible, hurt noise before he reels around and slams his fist into Jisung’s face.

Panic punches at his chest but Minho refuses to make a sound. Jisung doesn’t either, barely stumbling like he expected it. He shakes his head, as though to clear it, and touches his lips. His fingers come back bloody.

“Okay,” Jisung concedes, giving Chan a scarlet smile. “I deserved that.”

Minho unfolds from the sofa, keeping his chin high and his back straight while Chan’s furious gaze roams up and down his body. He comes to stand opposite Jisung, no part of them touching, yet Chan’s eyes on him are slitted and dangerous. His hand convulses, like he wants to throw another punch.

“Are you going to hit me, hyung? You can, if you want,” Minho tells him, voice brittle, and for a moment Chan looks shocked, his hands unclenching at his sides.

Subtly, Jisung shifts so that he’s standing in front of him, and Minho wants to slap him, wants to yell at him that he doesn’t need to be protected. He wants to kiss his bloody lips.

“Come in,” Jisung says. “We’ve ordered pizza.”

Chan gawks.

Minho does, too. He’s in love with a fucking lunatic.

Finally, Chan lets out a sharp snort of laughter and walks into the flat, slamming the door behind him. The loud bang seems to jolt him, and Chan covers his face with his hands, his laugh drawing out into a pained gasp.

Instinctively, Minho reaches for him and then stops, letting his arm drop to his side.

Jisung’s face crumples, like the noise hurts more than the punch. “Go get dressed,” he tells Minho in an undertone.

Minho hesitates. Chan’s staring down at Minho and Jisung’s shoes now, kicked off carelessly by the door. Minho looks back at Jisung, who flicks his eyes pointedly to the bedroom.

Nodding grudgingly, Minho goes to find something to wear. He rummages quickly through Jisung’s closet until he finds a pair of sweats. His hands are shaking so badly, he drops them twice before he manages to pull them on.

Through the open door, he catches a glimpse of Chan looking at him thoughtfully as Minho navigates Jisung’s bedroom with easy familiarity.

When he walks back out, Jisung’s leaning against the kitchen counter with a beer bottle dangling between his fingers. He swings it back and forth, bruised mouth settled into a hard line, and doesn’t look at Minho.

Chan is sitting at the island with his head in his hands and a beer by his elbow. The bottle is leaving a ring of condensation on the wood veneer.

Cautiously, Minho slides onto the barstool next to his. “Hyung,” he says, gripping the edge of the seat so hard his fingers pop. “Channie.”

Letting out a rush of air, like he’s steeling himself, Chan looks up into Minho’s eyes. His face is a mess, red and tear streaked. “This wasn’t the first time,” he croaks.

It’s not a question but Minho shakes his head anyway. He forces himself to hold Chan’s gaze. “No.”

“How long?” Chan asks finally and averts his eyes. He rubs a finger down the side of the sweating bottle.

Minho swallows dryly. “Technically–”

“Technically?” Chan scoffs, features twisting in resentment. “What’s that mean?” He plants an elbow on the island and suddenly leans forward into Minho’s space. Startled by the unexpected proximity, Minho recoils. “The first time you two kissed? The first time you fucked?” Minho feels Chan’s stuttered breaths on his face, his voice rising sharply as he demands, “What the fuck does ‘technically’ mean, Minho-yah?”

He smacks his hand on the countertop, and Minho closes his eyes but doesn’t flinch.

With a loud thunk, Jisung sets his beer bottle down on the counter and they both turn to look at him. He takes a step forward, folding his arms over his chest. His shirt only has one button fastened. “Don’t get up in his face like that,” Jisung says evenly.

There’s an instant of stunned silence before Chan lets out an incredulous laugh. “You think fucking him gives you the right to tell me how to talk to my own boyfriend?”

Minho digs his nails into his palms.

“I’m sorry. You’ve got every reason to be mad, and I'm so fucking sorry, man.” Jisung’s eyes dart to Minho for a second and return to Chan. “Just, it seems like Minho-hyung’s gonna let you treat him however right now, and that’s not okay either. That’s not the kinda man you are.”

Chan blanches, leaning back to put some distance between him and Minho so quickly, he nearly topples over. Without thinking, Minho grabs his arm to steady him. Chan shakes him off and Minho draws back as though burned.

Eyes on Jisung, Chan says mildly, “It seems the kind of man I am is a blind fool.”

“Stop helping,” Minho snaps, giving Jisung a nasty look, but he’s locked in some weird staring contest with Chan.

“How long?” Chan prompts.

“Six months!” Minho bursts out, nerves all but shredded. He swipes Chan’s beer and takes a long swig. “Almost.”

Chan stares at him, shock and betrayal melting into grief so heartrending, Minho feels the sting of it down to his bones, down to whatever tissue deep inside of him can still hurt and bleed.

“Almost,” Chan echoes, wiping a hand over his mouth. “Fuck.” He looks up at Jisung who hasn’t moved, and says haltingly, “My whole life. You were… like my own brother.”

Jisung’s face contorts. He opens his mouth, takes a quick breath, and Minho knows what he’s going to say.

“Don’t,” Chan grits out. He takes the beer back from Minho and chugs the rest of it, then sets the bottle on the island carefully, like it’s made of crystal. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Jisung hangs his head. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his sweats, where they ball into fists.

“Why?” Chan asks to no one in particular.

“I love him,” Jisung says, and everything stops.

Dazed, Minho thinks he must have fallen over and cracked his head open, surely, because there’s no way this is happening.

Setting his shoulders, Jisung lifts his red-rimmed eyes and meets Chan’s stunned gaze dead on. There’s a trickle of blood at one corner of his mouth and Jisung touches his split lip with his tongue, as though stalling to find the words. “You’re my best friend, hyung, have been since I was six. But he’s–” His looks at Minho, finally, and Minho’s heart drops at Jisung’s feet and bleeds itself dry. “I love him,” Jisung repeats quietly, and Chan makes a sound like the air’s been kicked out of him.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting that,” he says conversationally, voice crumbling like chalk.

Me neither, Minho thinks.

Jisung nods then walks around the island and says, “I’m gonna leave you two to talk.” When Chan looks ready to protest, Jisung shakes his head. “We’ll talk later, man. I’ll even let you sock me again, make the other side match.”

Absurdly, Chan almost looks like he feels guilty.

They both watch Jisung bend down to put on his sneakers, his chain necklace swinging. With his shirt gaping open and his bloody lips, Jisung looks like the boy all mothers warn their kids about; like someone who’d do exactly what the two of them have done.

Jisung slips out of the flat without looking at either of them, and then there’s just silence and the weight of Chan’s gaze on his face.

“I saw the bruise on your neck this morning,” Chan says. His lashes twitch like he’s fighting tears, and Minho bites the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes the metal tang of blood. “Honestly, my first thought was there must be an explanation. I've been agonising over it all day, what to do, what to say to you. Turning it over and over in my mind. When you told me you were with Hyunjin, I–” He looks sheepish, peeling the edge of the beer bottle label with his fingernails. “I practically kicked down his door a few hours ago, expecting to find… well, pretty much what I found here. Guess I owe him an apology.”

Minho rests his forehead in the palm of his hand. His head is heavy, and he feels like his spine is bent and his bones are creaking with the effort to remain in one piece. “What did Hyunjin tell you?”

“Nothing, he just cried on me for ten minutes.” Chan lets out a wet laugh and lifts a hand to swipe at the stray tear making its way down his cheek.

This time Minho reaches for his hand and threads his fingers through Chan’s, and Chan lets him, allows Minho to hold his hand and looks at him helplessly, lost and confused. He’s so used to turning to Minho for comfort that he doesn’t seem to know what to do now, when Minho’s the one hurting him.

“It was Changbin, actually,” Chan mutters, glancing down at their hands. “Months ago. He tried to tell me, said he didn’t like the way Jisung was looking at you, and I didn’t talk to him for a week. I never suspected a thing.” He chokes out a scoff. “God, you must have laughed yourselves sick.”

“Never. I wouldn’t–” Cursing under his breath, Minho rubs at one bone-dry eye with his knuckle. “I never meant to hurt you. I’m sorry, there’s nothing… I have nothing to say for myself.”

“Weren’t you happy?” Chan asks, softly, and Minho grips his hand until their fingers turn white.

“I was.” He lifts his eyes to Chan’s. “You always made me so happy. You were the best boyfriend, the best hyung, always.”

The edges of Chan’s laughter are sharp and jagged. “Yes,” he says, “obviously.” He doesn’t even bother wiping away his tears anymore. “Just, why? I don’t– Minho-yah, I don’t understand.”

“I’m in love with him,” Minho says, and the words ease out of him like a sigh. He’s ashamed of everything else, of himself, of what he’s done, but not this. Never this.

Despondently, Chan nods like he was expecting as much. He sniffs. “And me?”

“I love you,” Minho answers without hesitation, and it’s not the same but it doesn’t matter, not right now. “I meant it every time I said it.”

Extricating his hand from Minho’s, Chan swivels in his stool and leans his elbows on the island behind him. “You know, this morning I was thinking, if it was a one-time thing, a mistake... I could forgive him, couldn't I? We can figure it out together.” He gives Minho a look that grabs at the centre of him and twists.

Minho drags his hands down his face. “I was going to talk to you,” he admits, muffled behind his fingers, and Chan makes a humming sound of vague interest. “Tomorrow, probably.”

“Is that right?” Chan says. He just sounds resigned now, and that’s almost worse than the anger and the crying. “You were gonna leave me for him?”

“Not for him.” Minho stares down at his bare feet on the rungs of the stool. “I just knew I couldn’t keep lying to you.”

“And it only took half a year. Good going, Minho-yah.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” Minho mutters again, uselessly.

“You look like a kicked stray. I can’t stand it.” Chan snatches Jisung’s beer from the counter and thrusts it into Minho’s hand.

Minho takes a sip, smothering an involuntary laugh. Chan can be fucking ruthless when he wants to be, it’s one of the things Minho loves about him.

“I don’t care that you two fell in love,” Chan says. “It’s not an excuse. You should’ve told me the moment you knew you were falling for someone else. We could have discussed our options or ended our relationship then and there. Losing you then would’ve broken my heart, sure, but this–“ He shakes his head, eyes downcast. “Lying and sneaking behind my back. For what, Minho-yah?”

“Because I’m a shitty person, hyung. That’s all there is to it.” Minho’s voice cracks down the middle, and he gives Chan a faint tremor of a smile that he doesn’t see, gaze fixed on the industrial-style kitchen lights with clear bulbs instead.

Minho feels like someone has scraped out his insides with an ice cream scoop. He knows nothing he can say will make any difference, remembers the first horrible weeks after his cheating ex had dumped him, remembers wondering why he wasn't enough and if there was anything he could have done differently.

Chan clears his throat and presses his palms flat against his knees, smoothing them over the denim of his jeans. “I didn’t just lose my boyfriend tonight,” he says with quiet dignity that makes Minho’s heart throb. “I lost two of my best friends as well.”

Minho nods, doesn’t say that he’s sorry again.

Sighing, Chan slides off the stool and pats his pockets: wallet, phone, keys, and Minho breathes through a sudden stab of futile affection.

“Call me tomorrow, to figure out the living situation,” Chan mumbles while putting his shoes on.

“Okay.” Minho watches him pause with his hand on the handle of the door, and thinks he’ll miss him like a limb. Not his boyfriend, necessarily, just. His hyung who sends him pictures of random stuff, and gets him cold medicine when Minho’s sick, and always lets Minho steal the last bite of his dessert. “Are you good to drive?” Minho asks around his thickened tongue, and Chan nods absently.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be–“ He scratches at his neck, glancing back at Minho. “You staying here, then?”

Minho shrugs, nods, and Chan says ‘right’ and opens the door, blinking down at the pizza boxes on the doormat. He turns to look at Minho once more, intently as if seeing him for the last time. Minho looks back at him.

“You’re not, by the way.” Chan lifts a shoulder. “You did a really shitty thing, and I hadn’t thought it possible that I could hate the sight of you, but you’re not a shitty person.”

“You don’t need to comfort me, hyung, what the fuck,” Minho says, and Chan breathes out a laugh.

“Habit, I guess.” He stares at Minho for a beat longer, eyes red and swollen, then sidesteps the pizza boxes and leaves.

Minho takes the pizza inside and goes to sit on the sofa. When he grabs his phone, his hands are shaking.

He texts Jisung to say Chan’s left then thumbs through his notifications. There are six missed calls from Hyunjin and a string of increasingly hysterical messages. Minho tells him what happened and promises to call in the morning.

There’s also a text from Chan, sent just now, that says Put some ice on it, he bruises like a peach.

Minho stares down at it, laughter bubbling in his throat. His eyes get a little blurry.

Jisung comes back fifteen minutes later, toes his sneakers off as he goes and leans over the sofa hurriedly. Catching Minho’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, he tips his face up. Minho amuses himself by swatting aimlessly at Jisung’s necklace.

“I’m fine.”

“Oh, good.” Jisung smiles. There’s a sizeable bruise on the left side of his mouth, skin puffy and tender looking. At least the bleeding’s stopped. “For a moment there I thought he was gonna put his hands on you, and I was ready to throw fists.”

“He’d have wiped the floor with you,” Minho scoffs, batting at the necklace again.

“Hey, I’m scrappy.” Jisung sits down next to him, hand on Minho’s thigh. His fingers curl around the inside, and the possessiveness of the gesture both annoys Minho and makes something in his stomach fizz like a firework.

Minho shows him Chan’s message, and Jisung groans.

“Fuck, why is he like that?” His eyes look less sparkly than usual, somehow.

Did you mean it, Minho wants to ask, but he doesn’t know if he wants to hear the answer. “We broke up,” he says instead, leaning his head against Jisung’s shoulder.

Jisung takes his hand and laces their fingers together. “Wanna tell me tomorrow? Let’s just get some sleep for now.”

“Ice that bruise first, peach,” Minho mutters, rubbing his cheek against the soft material of Jisung’s shirt. Jisung’s heartbeat hammers against his ear, loud and quick.

Snorting, Jisung presses a kiss to the top of his head.

That night Minho dozes fitfully, drifting in and out of sleep, and Jisung’s awake every time he is. The streetlights filtering through the blinds make his face look sharper, his tense body next to Minho’s striped with shadows. Their hands are clasped together on the mattress between them, Jisung’s thumb stroking back and forth, back and forth over Minho’s knuckles.

In the morning they make coffee together and drink it at the kitchen island while Minho gives him the gist of his conversation with Chan. Minho calls off work and then gets started on breakfast without asking, making himself at home in Jisung’s mostly unused kitchen. Silently, Jisung watches him make kimchi scrambled eggs, eyes huge and round like Minho’s pulled a rabbit out of the cutlery drawer.

Sleepy and soft in his wrinkled hoodie, Jisung walks him to the door afterwards, shoulders slumped forward in something like defeat. He presses his bruised, swollen lips to Minho’s cheekbone, then kisses his mouth, gently. Minho wraps his arms around his waist and carefully kisses back. Jisung pets the back of his neck with fluttery hands and kisses him until Minho’s eyes become heavy with unspilled tears.

“Why does this feel like a goodbye?” Jisung buries his face in Minho’s hair, and Minho closes his eyes and holds him.

“Don’t whine.”  

“You’ve gotta promise that it’s not.”

“It isn’t.”

“Promise,” Jisung insists, with a puff of breath in Minho’s ear, just to be a shit.

Cringing, Minho slaps his palm against Jisung’s chest then pulls back to thumb at the purple and red blotch across his mouth and cheek. “Promise,” he says, helplessly.

On the staircase landing, he looks over his shoulder and Jisung’s still standing at the door, watching him leave.

Hyunjin steps aside from the door to let Minho in without a word. The flat he shares with Seungmin is bright and full of colour, yellow curtains, vintage rugs, and flowerpots on the windowsill, and Hyunjin’s own paintings all over the walls and on the shelves over the books, and in one case, propped against the dining table. It’s cosy in a tasteful way, thanks to Hyunjin’s art major and Seungmin’s old money. The two of them had met two and a half years ago, in their first year of uni, and against all odds became friends.

(“What do you mean, against all odds?” Hyunjin had asked, affronted.

“Means you are the two most annoying individuals I know,” Minho had explained readily, “but together you make one almost tolerable person.”

“Oh,” Hyunjin had gasped, “was that a compliment, hyung?”)

As soon as the door closes, Hyunjin latches onto Minho and refuses to let go.

Minho sighs. “You’re getting too comfortable,” he says and pats the back of Hyunjin’s head, once. “I can still break you in half and throw away the pieces.”

“Shut up, I’m sensitive,” Hyunjin says. He pulls back, grimacing. “You look like shit, no offence.”

“Like a kicked stray, Channie-hyung said.” Minho manages a wobbly smile. “Can I sleep on your sofa for a few days?”

“Sure, but why don’t you stay at Jisung’s place?” Hyunjin asks, flicking an eyebrow at him. “I thought you'd be dating him by now.”

“No. What?” Minho throws himself face first onto Hyunjin’s floral sofa. “No,” he says again. “I haven’t even moved out yet, what’re you talking about.”

“Ah, so having a six-month affair is fine.” Hyunjin sits down next to him, primly crossing his legs. “But how dare I suggest dating so soon after your breakup.”

“Yes,” Minho confirms, head beneath Hyunjin’s knitted blanket. He shakes in a silent convulsion of laughter. Something inside his skull chitters and pings like a broken music box, the jarring dissonance making him sort of dizzy. “You have got to draw the line somewhere, Hyunjin-ah.”

Hyunjin makes a scandalised sound, then shrieks out a giggle.

He has to leave for his class at eleven, so Minho’s left to his own devices for most of the day. Around one, he calls Chan, and they have a very polite, very courteous conversation that makes Minho want to cry more than the shitshow last night. Yes, Minho will move out since it was Chan’s flat first. No, he doesn’t need Chan’s help, thanks. He’ll be there tomorrow to get his things.

For an hour afterwards, Minho just sits woodenly on the sofa, listens to the neighbour’s vacuum, and then gets sentimental while watching The Fast and the Furious, which is a new personal low.

He makes cookies with Hyunjin’s cereal and Seungmin’s ten-year-old bourbon, and, for whatever godforsaken reason, cries while he shapes the cookies. They turn out so delicious, though, that Minho writes down the recipe on his phone, still leaking from his eyes and nose like a broken faucet.

Jisung texts him a few times throughout the day. Hyunjin does too, as well as several of their other friends. Minho doesn’t open any of the messages.

Around five, Seungmin comes home from his mind-numbingly boring investment job at his parents' company, drops his bag by the door and stares at Minho, who’s currently spread-eagled on the rug under their coffee table. Seungmin’s wearing a three-piece suit that looks like it costs more than their flat’s monthly rent.

From what Hyunjin’s told him, Seungmin doesn’t get along with his parents. They hate the fact that he shares a little two bedroom flat with a broke artist rather than living wherever the hell rich people live, which is apparently why Seungmin shares a little two bedroom flat with a broke artist.

“Ah,” Seungmin says, by way of greeting.

“Ah, what?” Minho asks belligerently, without moving.

“Cookies!” Seungmin exclaims instead of answering, grabbing two from the table before he comes to sit beside Minho on the floor, back against the sofa.

“Help yourself,” Minho says. “I used half of your Michter's single barrel.”

“Okay.” Seungmin bites into a cookie, crumbs scattering over his Hermès tie, and says with his mouth full, “Wow, these are good.”

Minho stares at him, upside down. “I snivelled all over them.”

“Okay,” Seungmin repeats, chewing with bovine tranquillity. “So, you banged Jisungie, huh?” He smirks at Minho’s groan. “Hyunjin told me, and Channie-hyung told Binnie, who told Felix, who told Jeongin.” He pops the rest of the cookie into his mouth. “I didn’t see it coming, but honestly? I feel like I should have. Looking back, you know.”

“I don’t,” Minho says balefully.

“Don’t get stroppy with me.” Seungmin draws a knee up to his chest. “I don’t care whom you’re doing the devil’s dance with, you can retract your claws.”

“The devil’s… dance.” Minho’s eye twitches.

Seungmin shrugs, stuffing the second cookie, whole, into his mouth. His face distorts comically before the cookie breaks in two. Seungmin chokes, coughing up more crumbs.

“Oh no, want me to slap you on the back?” Minho offers solicitously, cracking his knuckles.

Looking vaguely panicked, Seungmin swallows quickly and dusts his hands off on his trousers. “No, no. All good, see?” He sputters a laugh. “Speaking of homicidal maniacs, you might want to stay away from Changbin. Apparently, Jisung went to see Channie-hyung this morning, and Changbin and Felix were there. Felix said that Binnie took one look at Jisung and punched him in the face, and Jisung swore at him so bad, Felix didn’t even know half of the words. And then he broke Changbin’s nose.”

What the fuck, Minho thinks, rolling onto his side. “What the fuck,” he says.

“Yeah.” Seungmin’s lips pinch thin with disapproval. Whether it’s directed at Jisung, Changbin, or humankind in general, it’s hard to say. “Channie-hyung and Jisung talked for like, an hour, and they both cried, and Jisung quit his job.”

Minho pushes himself up onto his elbow. “Wait, what?”

“I mean.” Seungmin gives him a look. “It’s possibly the only half-decent thing he’s done. Would you want to work with your ex-best friend who fucked your ex-boyfriend behind your back for half a year?” He shrugs. “Besides, it’s not like he can’t handle it financially. Their songs are doing really well.”

The words ‘ex-best friend’ and ‘ex-boyfriend’ are almost drowned out by the loud whistling sound in Minho’s ears. He closes his eyes and rubs his temple.

“He loved working there,” Minho mutters, and Seungmin hums in agreement.

“Felix said that Jisung’s agreed to give them two months’ notice so they can find a replacement for him.” He looks at Minho impassively. “Are you going to stay with him?”

“No, I’m haunting your sofa forever.” Minho flops back down, adding listlessly, “Boo.”

His head falls onto Seungmin’s thigh and Minho doesn’t have the energy to move. He must be broken, surely.

Seungmin doesn’t push him off either. “You know, Felix is looking for a flatmate,” he tells him, voice carefully blank.

“Felix?” Minho tilts his head to look up at him. “Lee worships-the-ground-Chan-walks-on Yongbok? Doesn’t he hate my guts right now?”

“Everyone hated your guts already,” Seungmin says seriously and pats his head, and Minho scrambles away until he hits the edge of the sofa. Seungmin watches him placidly. “Stop looking for assurances, hyung. Own up to what you did and deal with the consequences, or you’ll never move past it.” His voice is so uncharacteristically soft that Minho’s brows furrow. Seungmin rolls up to his feet. “I’m eating all of your cookies now.”

Minho opens his mouth then closes it. “When the fuck did you get so wise?” he asks gruffly.

“While you were busy screwing fuckboys,” Seungmin says from the kitchen.

Minho chucks a throw pillow at him and Seungmin catches it with his chocolate-sticky hands and laughs.

Felix and Jeongin’s flatmate had apparently moved out without notice, so they need a new one urgently. That’s probably why Felix allows Minho to move into the third bedroom, even though he barely speaks to him and is, at best, icily polite.

Minho doesn’t really blame him.

Hyunjin helps him pack up his things and cries the entire time. He empties Minho’s side of the closet into two suitcases, somehow managing to be efficient while also weeping like an ancient Greek mourner.

Sighing loud enough for Hyunjin to hear, Minho walks around the bathroom and dumps his toiletries into a gym bag without really looking. He hopes he doesn’t accidentally steal something Chan’s attached to.

“You can cry if you need to, hyung,” Hyunjin says for the third time today, poking his head inside the bathroom. “Don't try to act strong in front of me.”

“I won't be the one crying if you keep this up, sweetheart,” Minho promises, picking up a big wooden-handled hairbrush from the vanity with deliberate slowness.

Hyunjin glances at it warily and disappears back into the bedroom.

In the past two days, Minho has done enough crying. He’s also barely slept and hasn’t had a proper meal since the night before last, but that’s neither here nor there.

Two years, Minho thinks, looking around himself. This flat had been his home for two years, and it’s odd that now, all of a sudden, it isn’t. If he’s honest with himself, there’s a horrible, shameful sense of relief nestled among the folds of sadness and guilt. And yet.

In the cabinet under the sink, crammed full, his sheet masks are still stacked behind Chan’s purple shampoo. On the kitchen counter, Minho’s ground coffee in a glass jar sits next to a box filled with Chan’s favourite tea blends. In the bedroom, his slippers still peek out from under his side of the bed.

He sits back on his heels and clutches his quivering fingers around the bottle of purple shampoo which has somehow ended up in his hand.

It seems he’s not as cried out as he thought. Minho swipes a hand under his eyes, and then he’s being tackled in an aggressive hug against Hyunjin’s chest. Minho sighs but lets himself be rocked back and forth.

Felix and Hyunjin have been staring each other down in Felix’s tiny kitchen for four and a half minutes now. They are circling each other, eyes narrowing, nostrils flaring and chests puffing out.

“What’s happening,” Jeongin mutters, with only half of his mouth. “Are they gonna fuck, or what?”

“They’re asserting dominance,” Minho says, leaning on the wall by the fridge which is covered in notes held by weird little magnets. Minho sees a fox wearing red high heels and a flying dick with wings.

Jeongin snorts loudly, and Hyunjin shoots him a wounded look over his shoulder.

“Are we done here?” Felix’s brow creases, voice gravely. “As I said, I’m not going to do anything to your precious hyung.”

“Good.” Hyunjin tries to hug Minho who kicks him in the shin. Hyunjin squawks, reaching down to rub at his leg and says, gentle like he’s talking to a difficult child, “Call me if he gives you trouble, hyungie.”

“It’ll be the first thing I do,” Minho assures him with his fakest smile.

Hyunjin leaves then, and Minho blows the hair out of his face and lets Felix and Jeongin stare at him. It’s not awkward, exactly, they’ve known each other too long for that, but it’s certainly… something.

“So,” Jeongin says finally, breaking into a grin, “whose dick is bigger?”

The next day Minho returns to work, and in the following weeks he’s the first to arrive and the last to leave the restaurant. He also takes over cooking at home, which makes Felix reluctantly start talking to him instead of just walking past him with a distinct air of disapproval, like Minho’s a particularly ugly shoe rack. Admittedly, it’s just to say ‘thanks’ and ‘I’ll get the dishes’ but it’s progress.

Minho understands. Felix was Chan’s friend first, and he isn’t even mean to him or anything. Unfortunately, Hyunjin has a protective streak that’s a mile wide and while it’s cute, it doesn’t really make Minho’s life any easier.

He comes over for dinner one evening with Seungmin, followed by a game of cards that nearly devolves into a slap fight between Felix and Hyunjin. While Minho’s nursing a beer and a migraine in the corner, Seungmin and Jeongin deescalate the situation by ridiculing Hyunjin and Felix’s incompetence in the game until they redirect their aggression towards them instead.

His new bed is too narrow and there’s a lump in the mattress pressing against Minho’s hip. Garlands of fairy lights hang above the bed, left behind by a previous tenant, and it’s meant to be used as a night light but Minho would rather seethe in total darkness than lounge under the goddamn twinkle of fairy lights like a Pinterest-obsessed mom.

Once, he dreams of his bed at home then startles awake to the realisation that he doesn’t really have a home anymore. Minho spends the rest of the night watching the shadows on the ceiling chase each other.

Ashamed yet defiant in his sullen, childish discontent, Minho misses his spacious, well-equipped kitchen, and his set of copper pots and pans. They were Minho’s, technically, but he doesn’t have much use for them now so he hadn’t bothered taking them. Felix and Jeongin’s kitchen is emptier than a display model Ikea kitchen, and so small that when Minho leans over the oven, the edge of the counter pokes him in the ass. Minho giggled to himself the first time it happened, wishing that Jisung, always quick with an inappropriate joke, were there with him.

And then Minho remembered that he hadn’t replied to any of Jisung’s texts other than to say ‘I’m okay’ twice and a smiling emoji sent in response to a cat gif from Jisung. The thought sobered him up real fast.

He talks to Chan a few more times. It turns out there’s no such thing as a clean break when you shit all over someone’s love and devotion for you. Who knew.

Minho has to go back and pick up another box of his stuff, because apparently more and more things kept popping up around the flat. This time Chan’s there.

There’s an untouched cup of tea on the coffee table, which must be stone cold. Chan’s face looks drawn and tense, with deep lines etched around his mouth. Minho wants to ask if he’s eating properly but doesn’t think he’s owed an answer.

They have to cancel a trip they had booked together several months ago, Chan reminds him. Minho had forgotten.

“Or you could change the name on the tickets and take Jisung instead,” Chan suggests, leaning back in his favourite armchair by the window. He peers up at Minho, lips twisting into a bitter smile. “It shouldn’t be too hard to switch.”

Minho sighs.

Over the past week, Chan’s cold politeness has given way to such masterful displays of petty passive-aggressiveness that Minho would find it beautiful if it weren’t aimed at him. Chan has been dealing shallow, stinging cuts anywhere he can land them, and Minho takes it lying down which seems to frustrate Chan even more. Minho knows this means that Chan’s processing his anger and allowing himself to feel, he gets it. It’s just that it hurts. It hurts like hell, and as much as Minho knows he deserves it, it doesn’t make it easier to bear.

He sinks down on the sofa opposite Chan, and Chan raises his eyebrows at him.

“I get the feeling you want to ask me something.” Minho tries for a smile. “So, ask.”

“Are you two together?” Chan blurts immediately, then flushes at the outburst. He still meets Minho’s gaze unwaveringly. “You and Jisung. We’re not exactly… talking, at work.”

“No.”

The tense line of Chan’s shoulders seems to relax, almost imperceptibly. “Why? I thought you loved him,” he says acerbically.

“I do.” Minho digs his socked toes into the soft blue carpet that he bought online last year. “But I don't like him very much right now. Or myself. I kinda want to kick my own ass, honestly.”

The corners of Chan’s mouth deepen, like he’s been surprised into an almost-smile. “That doesn’t sound healthy, Minho-yah.”

Minho snorts. “You think?”

It’s the truth. Sometimes, Minho thinks about the life he and Chan had built together, about their easy banter over breakfast and Chan’s smile whenever Minho did something he found cute, his balance to Minho’s chaos, and he wonders if he could’ve spent the rest of his life loving Chan in this gentle, quiet way; just making Chan happy.

Some nights, Minho sits awake in bed in someone else’s home, and almost wishes he’d never met Jisung. And even then, he misses him like a drowning man misses air, misses Jisung with each angry, spiteful thought and knows that given the choice, he’d do it all over again.

Looking pensive, Chan taps his fingers on the armrest. “Our sex life was good, wasn’t it?” When Minho blinks dumbly at him, Chan starts to inspect his fingernails. “I’ve been talking to my therapist,” he admits, pursing his lips. “She says unfaithfulness doesn’t always occur due to lack of satisfaction in the relationship.”

“It was good.” Minho’s throat feels like sandpaper. “Hyung, I didn’t go looking for something that I wasn’t getting from you.”

“I know the last few months have not been easy for you, with your promotion, and I was always at the studio–”

“Don’t.” Minho shakes his head, heart aching like a deep bruise. “This is on me, you don’t get to share the blame, you pudding-head.”

Chan huffs a small, watery laugh then says, subdued, “I just don’t get it, Minho-yah.” His eyes look a little glazed. “I can’t imagine doing this to you, even if I’d fallen out of love. I don’t understand how you could.”

“It wasn’t–“ Minho bites his lip, hard. “I know some people get off on the lying and the sneaking around,” he says quietly, carefully, “but it wasn’t like that for me. I was just selfish. I wanted something so I took it, without thinking about anything else. About you.” He looks up at Chan who seems to be entranced by the hardwood floor. “I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.”

“I’m not sure either,” Chan says. He reaches for his stone-cold tea then puts the cup back down.

“I want to say that I’m sorry again, but who the fuck cares if I am.” Minho drags his fingers through his hair, and Chan’s eyes follow the movement indifferently. “Would it sound patronising if I told you it gets better?” Minho asks instead.

“Yes.” Chan drops his head back against the armchair, his throat jumping when he swallows thickly. He snorts. “The thing is, it helps anyway ‘cause I want to believe you.”

“It does get better.” Minho presses the heels of his palms to his eyes until he sees bright squiggles behind his eyelids, then drops his hands and stands up. “I’m gonna go, hyung. Call me if you need anything, or. I don’t know. I'll answer, no matter what.”

Chan nods and doesn’t look at him as Minho walks out of the flat.

Week three passes in a blur. Minho adds a new dish to the menu that he’s spent ages working on, developing the recipe and arranging ingredients. The guests love it, and the owner of La Casetta gathers the staff after closing time and breaks out a champagne, proposing a toast to Minho. Minho surprises himself by hating it even more than he thought he would. Here he is, a complete dumpster fire, but at least he makes a great salmon piccata.

That night he snaps at Jeongin for leaving his damp towel on the sofa, and Jeongin just stares at him with his dark, intelligent eyes and asks Minho if he’s okay. To his horror, Minho feels his lips tremble, just once. Then Felix is there with shot glasses, which he wordlessly slams on the table between them.

Somewhere between that and going to sleep on the carpet in the living room, Minho remembers Felix calling him an asshole and then crying all over him and asking Minho if he hated him for being a dick to him. Jeongin was sick in the bin under the desk, claiming it was all the emotions getting to him. Minho laughed so hard he nearly dislodged Felix’s sobbing weight from his chest.

In the morning, he discovers a string of incoherent messages sent to Jisung at 4 a.m. It’s a mess of crying emojis, swearing, broken hearts, and a dozen or so peaches and eggplants.

Drink some water before you go to sleep, baby, Jisung has replied, and Minho wants to fall through the floor and disappear forever.

Seemingly unswayed by Minho’s reticence, Jisung has continued to text him almost daily. It’s mostly mundane stuff, ramblings about the drama he’s watching and how the convenience store was out of his favourite cereal. How Jisung got drenched the night before because he’d decided to walk to work and forgot to bring an umbrella. He asked to borrow Changbin’s because Changbin had driven there, and was told to go drown in a ditch. Jisung tells it like it’s funny, but he also adds that he can’t wait until his two months’ notice is up, so.

Minho has to close his eyes and breathe through the violent urge to find Changbin and stick his umbrella so far up his ass it tickles his tonsils.

He wonders if Jisung has anyone left to talk to, and the thought gets stuck in his mind like a splinter. Minho texts Hyunjin thirty-seven times about it, and adds eight partial selfies to illustrate his aggravation, until Hyunjin sends a ‘fuck off’ and a kiss emoji. Minho wonders whether it was the photo up his nostril that did it.

When Jisung tells him two days later that he’s grabbing coffee with Hyunjin and Seungmin, Minho’s knees go rubbery with relief and he nearly runs into the sauté station at La Casetta.

Apparently, Hyunjin yelled at Jisung and then bought him cheesecake.

On his day off, Minho goes shopping and drops a small fortune on a set of oil paints in a fancy wooden box. Hyunjin had shown it to him online a few months ago, claiming that it had given him a boner. Minho throws the box at Hyunjin and tells him to refrain from coming in his pants. Astonished, Hyunjin begs Minho to let him kiss his feet but then chickens out when Minho agrees.

Jisung often tells Minho how much he misses him. Once, he describes in rather graphic detail which parts of him he misses most, then follows it up with a little poem about the tiny mole on the side of Minho’s nose.

Late at night, Minho rereads his messages again and again until he knows them by heart. Sometimes he replies, a couple of words or a sticker, and Jisung always thanks Minho for responding, as though it means something to him that he has.

One night about six weeks after the breakup, once the dinner rush is over, Minho goes out back for a break. Arancini rustles through the rubbish in the alley beside the restaurant, so Minho asks if she’s found anything good to eat. She doesn’t acknowledge him, even though two nights ago he had bought her a can of cat food and she let Minho scratch behind her ears.

Leaning against the wall, he massages the pressure points in his tired hands, watching the light of the lone streetlamp on the corner flicker on and off, on and off. The memory of it casting shadows across Jisung’s face while Minho rose and fell above him in his stupid, stupid Jaguar returns unbidden.

I’m a tiny beauty mark, on Minho’s nose of all places, Jisung’s poem went, and I’m prettier than most people’s whole entire faces.

You really get paid for this shit? Minho had replied, and Jisung sent back a middle finger.

Exhaling a laugh, Minho pulls out his phone and scrolls through their conversation again. Arancini observes with a judgy look on her spotted little face. Minho promises to bring her leftovers later, and she yells at him which he takes to mean ‘hurry up, you useless two-legged bag of bones’.

Jisung calls him around 1:30 a.m. that night, right after Minho’s got home and taken a shower. He’s just curled up on the sofa to watch Felix get his ass handed to him in poker, wondering when he’ll notice that Jeongin is cheating, when his phone vibrates from somewhere under the pile of cards on the coffee table.

Felix digs it out and mutters an ‘oh’ that makes Minho’s stomach turn to water.

“Huh,” Jeongin says, leaning over to peek at his phone. “Jisungie-hyung hasn’t called before, has he? I mean… since.”

“Nope,” Minho says, and continues to stare at his phone from a distance.

“Aren’t you gonna answer it?” Felix asks, voice neutral. He’s finally stopped trying to glower at Minho, but things still feel on the fragile side.

Resting his elbows on his bent knees, Minho says, “Why wouldn’t I,” and doesn’t move.

The phone goes silent and dark, and Jeongin shuffles across the floor until his back is against the bottom of the sofa. He taps Minho’s leg to get his attention and Minho cuffs him upside the head in response.

“It’s none of my business–” Jeongin starts.

“You’re right, it isn’t,” Felix interrupts, and Minho snorts.

“–but you love him, don’t you?” Jeongin continues, as though he hasn’t heard him. “It wasn’t just clapping cheeks?”

“Oh, Christ.” Felix looks skyward, presumably for guidance.

“I like it better than ‘the devil’s dance’, personally,” Minho muses.

Jeongin giggles. “The devil’s what now?”

“Ask Seungmin, preferably at three in the morning. And keep ringing until he picks up.”

“Right.” Jeongin dimples up at him. “What I mean is, you and Jisungie-hyung did something bad, true, but people spend their whole lives looking for love. Isn’t it stupid to throw it away when you find it?” he says, and Felix and Minho both stare at him speechlessly. Wrinkling his nose, Jeongin nods. “Yeah, okay. This is the grossest thing I’ve ever said.”

“Yes,” Minho confirms, fascinated.

Without a word, Felix grabs Minho’s phone from the coffee table and hands it to him. Sighing, Minho takes it and bounds up to his feet. As soon as the door to his room’s closed behind him and he’s sprawled out in his bed, he calls Jisung and holds his breath.

Cool night air whistles in through the cracked-open window, a relief after the heat of the day. The only light in the room comes from the fairy lights. Minho had finally caved after two weeks of skulking around in the dark like an anime villain, and honestly, it’s kind of nice. The soft yellow glow settles his leaping mind and slows down his pulse.

Minho turns his finger around a loose thread on his pillowcase and waits.

Jisung answers on the fourth ring. “Hyung?” he says, and Minho closes his eyes and exhales.

“Hey, Jisungie.”

“Fuck.” Jisung lets out a shaky breath. “I’ve missed your voice.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“No, alright, okay. No more maudlin talk.” Jisung huffs a laugh. “Wait, just one more thing. Do you miss me, too?”

Unblinkingly, Minho watches the fairy lights until they blur into a mess of golden bubbles. “Yeah.”

Jisung is silent for so long that Minho pulls the phone from his ear to check if he’s still there.

“Shit,” Jisung says finally, “sorry, give me a moment. I kinda expected you to tell me to lose your number and let you move on with your life.”

Frowning, Minho asks, “How’re you holding up?”

“Been better.” Jisung lets out a mirthless snort. “I’m not complaining, though, because I see Channie-hyung every day and let me tell you, we fucking wrecked that man. So it feels a little, mm. It feels like I don’t deserve to feel sorry for myself, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“’Course you do.” Jisung sighs then unexpectedly switches gears and says, “Forget that. Tell me about your day.”

“Really?” Minho laughs a little, rolling onto his back. “My day?”

“Shut the fuck up and tell me about your goddamn day, hyung.”

Minho smiles to himself. “It was alright. I talked to Arancini.”

“The cat?”

“She talked to me first.”

A low, warm laugh. “Well, you look very approachable. It’s the resting bitch face.” The rasp of Jisung’s voice in his ear is familiar, comforting, and Minho feels something inside his chest unclench for the first time in weeks. “Are you okay?” Jisung asks. “How’s it been, living with Lixie?”

“It’s fine. He’s cute even when he’s actively trying not to be.” Minho pauses before adding wistfully, “I miss my pots and pans, though.”

“Uh-huh,” Jisung says, sounding vaguely amused. “You know, he said hi to me yesterday, when he stopped by to bring the guys lunch.” Jisung makes a noise halfway between a laugh and a scoff. “Binnie still pretends he doesn’t know me.”

Minho tugs at the loose thread so hard it breaks. “Want me to cook him for you?”

“Oh, I love it when you talk dirty to me,” Jisung purrs. “Nah, I get it. The three of us were supposed to be ride or die. Bros before hoes, and all that.”

“Am I the hoe in this scenario?”

“You can be anything you set your mind to, baby,” Jisung says supportively, and Minho snorts out a laugh.

There’s a quiet shuffling on the other end of the line.

“Where are you?” Minho asks.

“In bed. Wait,” Jisung drawls, “what are you wearing?”

“A sexy cat costume,” Minho says, giggling when Jisung replies without missing a beat, “What are the odds? Me too.”

There’s a lull in the conversation, but the silence is comfortable. Minho listens to Jisung’s breathing and counts the breaths. It’s something he used to do before, when they were fucked out and tangled between the sheets, just existing together. Secretly, as though he was breaking some kind of unwritten rule, Minho would try to synchronise his own breathing with Jisung’s, and in those few peaceful moments before they had to separate, he’d think of Jisung as his.

Jisung hums thoughtfully. “It’s kinda weird, isn’t it? We don’t need to sneak out to talk, don’t have to delete the call history.”

“What, missing the thrill already?” Minho asks dryly.

“I don’t care about that.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Fine,” Jisung concedes. “The thrill was part of it, at first. Flirting with you, trying to fluster you because I knew I shouldn’t. I never actually planned on taking things further, though. I didn’t set out to fuck my best friend’s boyfriend, it just… It happened. You know, you were there,” he adds, a little snappish.

Hand fisting into the pillow, Minho thinks about that night in January; the pleasant conversation after dinner, evening stretching into the night. Chan had invited Jisung to stay and sleep on their sofa.

Minho remembers standing over Chan for a moment, looking at him as he slept soundly in their bed, before going back to the living room to bring Jisung an extra blanket against the cold. Jisung’s star-filled eyes glittered at him in the darkness while Minho draped the blanket over him. Minho remembers glancing down at Jisung’s fingers as they circled around his wrist then back up to his face, the ticking of the old clock on the wall, loud like gunshots in the loaded silence. Remembers Jisung’s breath ghosting over his face before their lips found each other for the first time, and his own desperate gasp as he sank into Jisung and kissed him; kissed him with three months' worth of pent-up longing, and misery, and live coals weighing in the pit of his stomach. And the relief, the sheer relief of Jisung’s hands on him when they slipped under the back of Minho’s t-shirt, searching for bare skin.

“You think I lied to Chan-hyung, don’t you?” Jisung murmurs. “You don’t believe that I love you.”

“Jisung-ah…” Minho stares up at the ceiling. The reflections of the fairy lights dot it like sunrays. “I want to,” he admits, helplessly.

“I want you to, too.” Jisung sighs, and Minho can hear his sheets rustling through the phone. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately. Mostly about you.”

Minho imagines him stretched out in his big bed with wooden posts, one arm tucked under his head like he always sleeps, and he misses him so much it nearly knocks the wind out of him.

“Don’t give up on me yet, please,” Jisung says, hoarse and harried, and Minho turns his face into the pillow and chokes back a sound.

“I won’t,” he says, promises, and in the fragile understanding that stretches between them like a newly spun thread, Minho thinks he can almost hear Jisung’s smile.

Changbin celebrates his birthday at some club downtown, and he doesn’t invite Minho and Jisung. It’s not exactly a shock, but Felix and Jeongin keep stealing glances at Minho while they get ready to leave, guilty looks on their faces. Minho knows that Hyunjin is going too, because he’s been sending Minho YouTube links to various versions of Total Eclipse of the Heart all day.

Minho has the night off and is spending it on the sofa in his pyjamas, watching funny animal videos. Occasionally, he yells out helpful suggestions that are rejected (boxers do, in fact, count as shorts, and Minho’s ready to die on that hill) and mocks Jeongin’s makeup skills until he looks like he wants to stab Minho in the eye with his eyeliner. Then Minho helps Felix wrap the present, because Felix apparently has two left feet instead of hands.

This one stings a bit. He can’t help but be reminded of Changbin’s birthday party last year, when they’d all chipped in for a gift and Minho was the one who drove Felix and Jeongin to Changbin’s place, but it’s fine. It is what it is.

After they leave, he calls Jisung who answers the phone with an exuberant ‘and fuck that guy in particular, am I right’ which makes Minho giggle.

They talk for three hours until Minho’s eyes droop and he begins to nod off on the sofa. He can’t recall anything Jisung’s said in the past fifteen minutes, but he likes hearing his voice anyway. That’s probably how Minho ends up agreeing to pick him up from the agency on Tuesday, because it’s Jisung’s last day of work there and his car is at the repair shop.

“Told you that car is shit,” Minho mumbles, and Jisung laughs.

“Night, baby,” he says, voice sweet and soft in Minho’s ear, and Minho’s last coherent thought as he drifts off to sleep is that he wants to hear this every night.

He waits for Jisung a street away, leaning against his Hyundai. The brutal August sun sizzles against the pavement, the deserted street almost shimmering in the air like a heat haze.

Five minutes, Jisung texted him fifteen minutes ago.

Sweating buckets in his sleeveless white shirt, Minho heaves a sigh and twirls the car keys around his finger.

If you’re not here by 5, you can lug your shit home on foot, princess, he tells Jisung.

When he looks up from his phone, Minho finds himself staring straight into Changbin’s wide eyes. Steps faltering, Changbin stops a few metres from him. His expression flickers between shock and sorrow. He clearly decides to compromise and settles on anger as he strides over to Minho, scowling.

“What are you doing here?” Changbin spits, and it hurts more than Minho expected.

Peeved, he takes his sunglasses off so Changbin can see him roll his eyes. “Waiting for Jisung,” he says curtly.

He feels like rubbish, has been feeling this way for weeks, and while Minho’s glad that Chan has people who care and, honestly, he can understand Changbin’s resentment, he’s also done putting up with this kind of attitude from anyone he hasn’t personally cheated on.

“That’s still going on then?” Changbin scoffs, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “I thought Jisung would lose interest in the toy and break it as soon as he gets it. He’s never been serious about anything in his life.”

Folding his sunglasses, Minho tosses them on the driver’s seat through the window. His hand is shaking. “On the bright side,” he says, sticky-sweet, and straightens up to look at Changbin, “now that the… toy is out of the way, you can finally have hyung all to yourself.”

Changbin’s face turns a frankly alarming shade of red. “What the fuck are you implying?”

Minho had gone with him to buy Changbin’s car two years ago, his brain reminds him rather unhelpfully. Changbin had laughed as he rolled down the window, shouting, ‘Hop in, hyung! We’re taking it for a spin.’

The impressive muscles in Changbin’s arms bulge threateningly, barely contained by his tight t-shirt. His fists clench, and Minho feels the grief and anger in his core come to a boil, painting the tail end of his thoughts a violent blood red.

Crossing his ankles with deliberate nonchalance, Minho leans back against his car and meets Changbin’s furious eyes. “Get your fists out of my face, Changbin-ah, or I’ll rip your hands off and feed them to you,” he says, mildly.

“You unhinged bastard,” Changbin splutters, stumbling back a step. Cowing him into submission isn’t as satisfying as Minho remembers it. “Stay the hell away from hyung!” Changbin says, pointing an accusing finger at Minho from a safe distance. “Haven’t you hurt him enough?”

A mother with a stroller passes by, shooting them a disapproving look. Minho gives her a smile that has her walking faster.

“I am,” Minho says, once she rounds the corner. He looks at Changbin without blinking. “Staying the hell away from him.”

They spot them at the same time: Chan and Jisung, both carrying large boxes in their arms. Chan also has a studio monitor tucked under one arm. They’re both staring at Minho and Changbin with identical expressions of cautious curiosity. It would be endearing, how similar they are in some ways, if it weren't breaking Minho’s heart.

Of course they are similar, they’ve grown up together as brothers.

Changbin finds his voice first. “What the fuck!” he explodes, stalking up to them. “Why’re you helping him?”

“Hello,” Chan says calmly, ignoring Changbin. Taken aback, Minho just nods. “I offered to give Jisung a ride, but he said someone’s picking him up. I thought it might be you.”

“And you came down,” Minho says intelligently, “to see me.”

“Yep.” Chan shifts from foot to foot.

Looking slightly bewildered, Jisung catches Minho’s eye and lifts a shoulder as if to say that he has no idea what’s going on either. He adjusts the weight of the box with his knee and Minho wakes up, popping open the boot for them to stow Jisung’s things.

“You're too nice for your own good, hyung,” Changbin sighs when they’re done, hand coming to rest on Chan’s back.

“There’s no such thing as being too nice,” Chan argues, with a ghost of his usual smile.

The knowledge that he’ll never have this again, the easy familiarity, the shared laughter, Chan’s affection that feels like the sun’s shining directly on you, makes a tendril of sadness wind itself around Minho’s ribs.

Jisung comes to stand beside him, keeping a measured distance between them as if careful not to accidentally touch Minho. Something about it strikes Minho as hilarious in a hysterical way, because there isn’t a part of him Jisung hasn’t already touched.

“Well, good luck to both of you,” Chan says then because he’s batshit, clearly. He slings an arm around Changbin’s shoulders, smile slipping slightly.

Minho wants to echo Changbin’s sentiment about him being too nice, but of course Chan’s always been the best of them all.

Jisung gives a single huff of chagrined laughter, as though he’s thinking the same thing. “You too, man. Both of you. You know where to find me, if you…” His voice trails off like a song fading out. He looks at Chan, then at Changbin, drops his head and scuffs his sneaker along the pavement, mumbling, “If you ever want to talk to me again.”

Slowly, Chan nods. Minho sees Changbin’s arm wrap around his waist when Chan turns his red-rimmed eyes to Minho.

“Be well, Channie,” Minho says, and doesn’t recognise his own voice.

Chan nods again, sagging against Changbin until it looks like he’s clinging to him for support.

“We should get back to work, hyung,” Changbin says, leading Chan back towards the company building. He seems to be talking to him in hushed tones, leaning up to his ear. His hand is rubbing gentle circles between Chan’s shoulder blades.

Minho and Jisung stare after them in silence for a moment longer. Finally, Minho turns to look at him, taking Jisung in for the first time in two months. In the stark, bright white sunlight, Jisung’s face looks more angular than before, cheekbones sharper. The violet bruises under his eyes are darker than Minho remembers, and his hair’s got long, curling over his shirt collar. Minho reaches out, fingers brushing the ends of it, and when Jisung turns to him, his smile spills over his face and glimmers in his tired eyes.

“Hey, hyung,” he says, and Minho looks and looks at him.

Leaning against the car next to him, Jisung tilts his head and bats his lashes at Minho. He starts singing something under his breath, and it takes Minho a second.

He snorts a laugh. “Are you singing Kiss the Girl to me?”

“Sha-la-la,” Jisung deadpans.

“Get in the damn car,” Minho tells him, pressing his lips together to conceal a smile.

Jisung takes his hand and tangles their fingers together, and laughs.

Minho carries the studio monitor and both boxes up the stairs to Jisung’s flat, while Jisung leads the way cheerfully empty-handed.

Unsurprisingly, the place is a study in chaos. Jisung laughs faintly, a sheepish little ‘heh’, and starts picking up around the living room. There’s a stack of papers on the coffee table, half of Jisung’s closet is thrown over the back of the sofa, and the flat is littered with takeout containers and pizza boxes.

“You haven’t been taking care of yourself at all,” Minho states, hands on his hips.

Jisung fiddles with his overgrown hair. “Have you?” he asks, not looking at him.

Biting back a snappy retort, Minho starts to clean up around the kitchen. After surveying the meagre contents of Jisung’s fridge, he announces, “I’m making stir-fry.”

From the doorway, Jisung watches him move around his kitchen like he owns it, his face open and soft. Minho doesn’t think he’s ever seen him look so young.

He sits at the island and talks Minho’s ear off, talks about anything and nothing. Minho turns his back to him, chops carrots while he listens to Jisung yammer about the entertainment company he’s signed with, and smiles. He hasn’t given much thought to how adrift he’s felt lately, hasn’t really let himself. He lost his home, his boyfriend, his lover, and several of his closest friends all on the same day. And yeah, sure, it had been his own doing so Minho’s told himself over and over that it’s only fair. But being here, sharing a familiar space with someone he loves, it shakes him so much his legs almost buckle.

The knife in his hand stills and Jisung stops talking.

“You okay?” he asks in the sudden quiet.

“It’s just the onion,” Minho says, blinking back tears.

“That’s a carrot, hyung,” Jisung points out because he’s a pest. “Really, do you need to lie down or something?”

Minho slants him a look. “Are you trying to get me into your bed?”

“Absolutely,” Jisung says, with a roguish grin that makes Minho snort. “I missed having you here,” he adds, terribly earnest, and Minho grits his teeth and slashes at the vegetables as if wielding a machete until Jisung peeks over his shoulder. “You should come over more often.”

“What, you want me to come and cook for you?”

Hoisting himself up to sit on the counter, Jisung mutters, “Among other things.” His delicate pink mouth curves in a smile, and Minho’s gaze darts to it. It looks calligraphed with a brush. “You know...”

“Hm?”

“I’ve never had a serious relationship, so I’ll probably make a mess of it.” Jisung’s fidgety fingers reach for him, and Minho lets him clasp his hand. “But hey,” Jisung continues, smile stretching wider, “at least I’ve never cheated on anyone in my life.”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this, but you’re not starting off well.” Minho tightens his grip, clamping down on Jisung’s hand like a vice until he yelps.

“Shit.” He snatches his hand back and shakes it out, then abruptly, inexplicably, beams at Minho. “Let me take you out. On a real date.”

Minho slams the knife down onto the chopping board with a thud. “What.”

“I know we’ve gotta be smart about this. Take it slow, or whatever.” Jisung picks at the seam of his jeans. He’s chewing on his lip. “I want us to give this a shot for real.”

“Do you, really?” Minho flinches when Jisung’s mouth pops open at his volume. He pushes the chopping board aside, sending julienned carrots skittering across the counter. “Do you actually, genuinely want me?” He jabs a finger into his own chest and Jisung gives a guarded look. His back has gone rigid, body coiled up with tension, and Minho averts his burning eyes. “Or are you just trying to prove to yourself that you haven’t ruined your life for nothing?” He flicks a carrot matchstick off the edge of the counter and it goes flying to the floor. Minho frowns down at it.

“Oh, ouch,” Jisung says, and exhales like it hurts. “Is that what you think of me? Still?”

“Don’t–” Minho shakes his head; there’s a clutch of pain in his chest. He puts both hands against the counter and taps his forehead on the upper kitchen cabinet. “Don’t look at me like that, Jisung-ah.”

Jisung sighs and from the corner of his eye, Minho can see him deflate with it.

“I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you,” Jisung says, sounding heavy with resignation. “I want you more now. I know I’m not exactly husband material, hyung, but honestly...” Jisung runs a hand through his hair and then drops it back to his knee, and Minho notices that it’s trembling. “I told you that I love you and you didn’t believe me. I just asked you out and you threw it back in my face. I kept–“ He draws in a wheezing breath, like he’s trying to laugh through tears, and Minho squeezes his eyes shut. “I kept trying to reach out for weeks, even when you barely responded to my texts, but if you’d rather I left you alone...”

Minho rolls his head to face him, and Jisung’s eyes go bright with pain, like a wound bubbling up with blood.

“Do you want me to leave you alone?” he croaks.

“No,” Minho whispers, catching a tear from the corner of his eye with his knuckle. He doesn’t know how to say that Jisung is no longer the one Minho’s scared of; that Minho is terrified of how good he’s become at hurting the ones he loves.

When Jisung realises that nothing else is coming, he gives a wilted nod and hops off the counter. With his back to Minho, he busies himself with stacking the dishwasher.

That’s when Minho spots the brand-new set of copper pots and pans on the far end of the kitchen counter, still in their boxes. He stares at them until they blur and swim out of focus.

Jisung starts his new job a week later, and he’s so busy that they don’t see each other much for a while. They keep talking, though Jisung seems a bit standoffish. He doesn’t bring up their last conversation; instead, his texts are a rather unpredictable mixture of random trivia, cute animal pictures, and new songs he’s been listening to. Minho makes it a point to reply to each and every message, and he also stops by Jisung’s place a few times just to drop off dinner.

The third time, he shouts for Jisung under his window to embarrass him in front of his rich, stuffy neighbours, and Jisung comes down in his pyjama pants, laughing, and he hugs him and kisses Minho’s cheek. Minho drives home in a daze, a frantic yearning rattling his ribs like a beast in a cage and roaring at Minho to turn around and go back and kiss the living daylights out of Jisung.

The thing between them is alive, and awake, and Minho’s beginning to realise that it doesn’t matter whether giving in to it will destroy them in the end. Trying to stay away and keep his heart to himself might very well do the same.

Jisung has to leave for a business trip to Tokyo two days before his birthday. Minho spends the day with Hyunjin, who wisely chooses not to comment on Minho’s foul mood. Instead, he shows up with a gel manicure kit and the two of them make an absolute pigsty out of Minho’s room, with Jeongin as their captivated audience.

“I think Jisung’s still mad at me,” Minho says, smearing a layer of bright blue glittery nail polish on his nail, and all over his cuticles. He stares daggers at it, but the nail polish refuses to fix itself.

Next to him on the bed, Jeongin snorts at the mess. Hyunjin doesn’t look up from where he’s trying to remove nail polish from the carpet with a tissue.

“Are you saying I fucked up?” Minho snaps, voice rising.

After an unnecessarily long moment, Hyunjin sighs aggressively and lifts his head to look at him. “Well, implying that you’ve exaggerated your feelings for him to make your affair less sordid might’ve been a bit harsh, yes.”

Jeongin gasps and Hyunjin widens his eyes as if to say Right?

“Of course he’d take it that way.“ Gloomily, Minho turns his hand this way and that to make his nails sparkle. “Did he tell you?”

“He told Seungminnie.” Hyunjin has that grin on his face, the one he always gets when he thinks he’s being particularly funny. “And he offered to fuck Jisung to make you jealous.”

Flopping over onto his stomach, Minho gives Hyunjin a narrow-eyed, tight-lipped smile that makes his grin drop from his face immediately. “He what?” Minho asks, voice saccharine.

“It was a joke. I think.” Hyunjin balls up the tissue. He darts a nervous glance to Jeongin, who offers a shrug that says Hyunjin’s on his own. “And anyway,” Hyunjin adds quickly, “Jisung wasn’t interested.”

“Ha!” Minho says, viciously.

The skin between Hyunjin’s eyebrows pinches. “Listen, I’ll be the first to admit that Jisungie’s not a saint, but you could’ve found a less cruel way to let the guy down, if that’s what you were trying to do.”

“Yeah, like, push him off a building,” Jeongin says.

“What do you even know about that, you’re eight.” Minho presses his burning face against the crinkled sheets. They smell like acetone and laundry detergent. “Jisung’s probably getting his dick sucked by some cute Japanese idol while I’m out here, slathering myself in glitter.”

Jeongin laughs, boisterous and unsympathetic.

“Oh, hyung,” Hyunjin sighs.

“No, listen, why does everyone keep trying to fuck him? Like, what is up with that?” Minho seethes, lifting his head to glare at Hyunjin who just shrugs.

“I dunno, does he have a big dick or something? Because that would explain a lot.”

Incensed, Minho nods and Hyunjin pulls an intrigued face which Minho very much dislikes. He wants to wrap around Jisung like a boa constrictor and never let go. Good luck getting into his pants then.

He says so, thumping his head against the mattress.

“Ugh,” Jeongin mutters.

“Okay, hyung,” Hyunjin says placatingly. “You should tell him that. Maybe not the boa constrictor part, but then again, it’s Jisungie. He might find it romantic.”

They video call late in the evening, after Jisung’s meetings for the day are over. He chuckles throughout Minho’s deliberately off-key rendition of the happy birthday song and then squeals when he notices the glitter nails.

He’s in bed, head up against a pile of pillows, and the first few buttons of his white shirt are undone. Despite the exhausted lines of Jisung’s face, made worse by the poor hotel room lighting, the sight of him makes Minho’s stomach tighten and contract sweetly.

“He texted me for my birthday,” Jisung says sluggishly. His lashes droop lower, casting shadow onto his cheeks. “Channie-hyung.”

There’s a flicker of a smile at the edges of his mouth, and Minho instinctively smiles back, warming inside. “I’m glad, baby.”

“Mm,” Jisung says without opening his eyes. “Baby.”

“Yeah?”

“No,” he huffs a laugh, squinting up at Minho blearily. “You called me ‘baby’. Say it again.”

“When you get back,” Minho says and Jisung humphs and burrows deeper into his pillows.

Curling up on his side, Minho props his phone up on a pillow and for a while just watches Jisung’s chest rise and fall. He wants to press his hand over it and feel his heart beating against Minho’s palm; all his.

“Have you fucked any cute Japanese idols yet?” he blurts, and Jisung scoffs, eyes slitting open.

“Like, seven of them. My dick’s chafed,” he says, with a nasty little smile.

I’m so in love with you, Minho thinks.

“I love you,” he says, before his brain can intervene.

Head jerking up, Jisung gives a shocked blink. “This is what got you to say it?” He sits up a bit and rubs his eyes, as if not quite sure he’s awake. “All I had to do was lie about fucking other people?”

Minho’s ears grow hot. “I thought we didn't kink-shame,” he grumbles, and Jisung hiccups a laugh.

“Hyung,” he says, voice sticky with sleep and cheeks rounding in a huge smile. “I love you, too.”

Minho lets go of a breath he didn’t realise he was holding onto.

“Are you looking at flats?” Felix asks, peeking over Minho’s shoulder. He sits on the armrest of the sofa, gaze trained on the screen of the laptop balanced on Minho’s knees.

Minho hums, clicking open another image. “Yeah. I’m just getting a feel for things, for now. Don’t worry, I'll give you guys plenty of notice before I move out.”

“You’re not–” Felix makes a face, as though the words don’t taste right in his mouth, so Minho glances up at him curiously. “It’s not because of me, is it?” Felix forces out finally, his pretty, freckled face scrunched up.

Cracking a smile, Minho reaches out to pat his knee. “You’re fine, Yongbok-ah. Hyung doesn’t even sleep with a knife under the pillow anymore.”

“Reckless, hyung, letting your guard down like that.” Felix’s mouth twitches like he’s fighting a laugh. “Really, though. I know I haven't exactly made you feel at home here.”

“I think you overestimate how intimidating you are.” Minho smirks at Felix’s eye roll then shrugs and turns back to his laptop. “Nah, I think I need to be on my own for a while. Get that character growth or whatever.”

Felix tsks. “You don’t need a redemption arc, hyung.” He props his elbow on Minho’s shoulder. It’s probably the first time he’s voluntarily touched him while sober since Minho’s moved in, so Minho stills. “You just have to do better next time.”

“’Do better’ doesn’t really cut it, though.” Minho scratches at the worn fibreboard of the coffee table with his fingernail. Some of the glitter polish has chipped off, leaving dull spots here and there. “I really messed up.”

“You did, but there’s nothing you can do about that now.” Felix shrugs. He’s a vicious little thing sometimes, Minho thinks fondly. “Everything doesn’t need to be about character growth and forgiveness.”

Minho frowns. “It can be a little bit about forgiveness.”

“You’re going to stay away from Channie-hyung,” Felix says sternly, waving a finger at him. Minho bats it away and rolls his eyes, and Felix glares. “I mean it. If you happen to reconnect down the road, and hyung wants to try to be your friend, then that’s fine. His choice. You’re gonna leave him alone now, and just focus on sorting yourself out.” Felix sighs, swaying his legs in the air like a child on a swing. “I hope someone has told Jisungie the same thing.”

“He’s been spending a lot of time with Seungmin,” Minho says as he scrolls through depressing photos of dilapidated kitchens, “so I doubt it. Kim Seungmin’s version of a pep talk is to push your buttons until you either cry or start looking for places to hide a body.”

Snickering, Felix says, “Seungminnie’s the best.”

“Right,” Minho says, dubiously. He swipes his finger across the touchpad, then adds faux casually, “You know, you could always talk to Jisung yourself. He misses you.”

Felix gives him a deer-in-headlights look, then reaches out a hand to pat Minho’s head. “We’ll see.”

His eyes soften for a second and it emboldens Minho to ask, feeling like a fool for having to brace himself before he opens his mouth.

“I’ve been meaning to–“ He swallows, throat feeling tight. “How’s hyung doing?”

Felix withdraws his hand and something in Minho’s chest pinches painfully. “He’s the strongest person I know,” Felix says, pushing up to his feet. “And he has a good support system.”

He leaves it at that, turning away from Minho, and Minho stares after him and wonders if this is another thing he’ll never get back.

Jisung returns on Saturday night, and Minho leaves work an hour early to pick him up from the airport.

Minho smiles when he sees him, says ‘Hey, baby,’ and Jisung wordlessly grabs onto him and curls himself smaller so he can tuck his head under Minho’s chin. Minho holds him, breathes in his familiar perfume and pretends not to notice the shivery exhale against his neck.

With the crowd about them thickening as the passengers from another flight spill out, amid a cacophony of noise, Minho thinks of Jisung’s dark eyes on him in that grey marble lobby over a year ago, and he holds onto him tighter.

They need to stop at the convenience store on the way back, because Jisung admits that he only has alcohol and coffee at home. While they wander through the aisles, shoulder to shoulder, Jisung tells him about his trip. It feels comfortable, oddly domestic as they both pick items off the shelves and drop them in the cart.

Chuckling, Jisung inclines his head towards a girl, probably in her late teens, who’s standing in the middle of the candy aisle with a bouquet of miniature roses in one hand and two bags of jellies in the other. She’s looking between them with a torn expression on her face.

“Get the jellies,” Jisung mutters, resting his elbows on the shopping cart handle, and Minho laughs.

As they leave the store it begins to rain, big, heavy drops splattering against the windshield. Flashes of lightning tear across the dark sky, the rumble of thunder echoing in the distance.

Minho turns on the engine while he waits for Jisung to put his seatbelt on, and the wipers start to swish back and forth.

The girl from the store runs across the car park, stopping at the traffic lights on the corner. There’s another girl with a red umbrella there, and she shoves the bouquet of miniature roses at her. Even from a distance, Minho can see the second girl’s radiant smile.

“Oh, well,“ he murmurs. “We all make sacrifices.”

“Was it worth it, to you?” Jisung asks suddenly. Minho turns to look at him, but Jisung is staring straight ahead. The headlights from the passing cars cast shadows across the hard lines of his face. “Ruining your life,’ was that how you put it? For this.” Jisung pushes his hands under his denim-clad thighs. “For me.”

With a twinge behind his breastbone, Minho chokes out a laugh. “What a fucking question, Jisung-ah.”

For a while, the rain drumming against the roof and the slap of the wipers are the only sounds in the car.

“Would I go about it differently, if I could do it all over again,” Minho says heavily. “I mean, I’ve thought about it. I'd rather not have broken hyung’s heart and lost people I considered family, that’s for sure.”

Jisung nods and reaches forward to fiddle with the car radio. Minho stares at his shaking hand as Jisung messes up all of his sound settings, and he imagines holding it, holding his hand out in the open. Minho imagines it, and suddenly he wants it so much he can barely think of anything else, like a sugar craving.

“But if that meant losing you?” he muses, quieter, and Jisung finally looks at him.

Minho thinks about Jisung late at night, sleep-rumpled and warm, the flutter of eyelashes on his cheeks when he’s about to doze off and his cotton-soft smile as he asks Minho to stay a moment longer. He thinks about the first time Jisung fucked him, arms hooked under Minho’s knees and eyes boring into Minho’s, relentless. ‘Don’t close your eyes,’ he’d said, so Minho hadn’t, held Jisung’s gaze while he fell apart and the intense intimacy of it felt like a fist around his heart.

When they were wrapped around each other afterwards, heavy-lidded and loose-limbed in Jisung’s bed, Jisung pressed a kiss to Minho’s forehead, and Minho remembers finally shutting his eyes and thinking, ‘oh no’.

He knew then as he knows now.

Minho lifts his lashes to meet Jisung’s eyes. “This is the worst thing I've ever said, but.” He breathes out a faint laugh, giddy with the truth of what he’s about to admit. “It doesn’t matter what I lose, as long as I get to keep you.”

The silence seems to reverberate, like the echo of a blast. Minho watches the raindrops roll down the windshield. Illuminated by the brake lights of the cars further down the street, they look like rivulets of blood.

“Oh.” Jisung lets out a little thrill of laughter. “Shit, hyung, that’s bad.”

“Are you judging me?” Minho snorts, letting his head fall back against the headrest as he glances at him.

“I’m agreeing with you,” Jisung says, with a slow-blooming smile, and something tiny, fragile and reckless tries to take root in Minho’s heart.

He sighs, reaches into the glove compartment and then tosses a bag of jellies into Jisung’s hands. Jisung catches it, clumsy with surprise.

“I'm going to woo the shit out of you,” Minho declares, adding after a moment of internal struggle, “bro.”

Still looking befuddled, Jisung barks out a laugh. “Are you serious right now?”

Humming, Minho taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “Honestly, Jisung-ah, I think we’re both a little fucked up, so we’ll most likely make a mess of this.” Jisung snorts, makes a fair enough face and Minho offers him a tremulous smile. “But I promise to keep trying. I’ll never give up on you.” He grips the steering wheel until his knuckles turn white. “This has to count for something, right?”

“It does,” Jisung agrees, voice breaking. He presses his fingertips to his lips, eyes shining wetly in the harsh yellow glare of the car park lights. “You know, Changbin was right. I haven’t been serious about much, but I’ve never wanted anything, anyone, like I want you.” Jisung reaches over and peels one of Minho’s hands from the steering wheel and clasps both of his around it. “I promise, too. I fucking swear it, baby, I’ll never give up on you.”

Minho’s heart goes stock-still, as though weighted by the knowledge that everything will be different with its next beat. And it is; it wraps itself around the certainty that whatever happens, this will never be over for him, and then settles in Minho’s chest, pacified.

He unbuckles Jisung’s seatbelt and Jisung clambers over the gearbox and plops down into Minho’s lap. Briskly, like he has a thousand ungiven kisses to make up for, Jisung fists his hands in Minho’s hair, leans in and presses his lips to Minho’s cheekbone, to the corner of his eye, to the edge of his mouth.

Minho sighs into it, shakes apart at the gentleness, at the nearness of him. With a hand on his jaw, he tilts Jisung’s face up and their lips finally catch. Jisung hums, his blissful little ‘mmm’ that Minho’s been dreaming about for weeks, so he leans in again and licks Jisung’s mouth open and kisses him until neither of them has any breath left.

“Fuck,” Jisung says, gasping a little. He laughs, an almost delirious giggle that flutters warmly against Minho’s face. Tipping their foreheads together, he whispers, “We’re really doing this?”

“Yeah,” Minho says, smiling when Jisung’s eyes light up like paper lanterns. “We’re doing this.”