Archive of Our Own

It became apparent to Jisung quickly and all at once, that Minho was a constant; moving beyond, shooting through space, lighting up the night sky and he was to simply stay grounded on earth, planted, unmoving… observing. 

The very extent of their friendship… relationship… whatever… started and ended upon a mutual understanding. They had a job to do. A very beautiful, unbelievable, sometimes shitty, gift of a job that began on the tails of a long-thought dream none of them imagined they'd fulfil. 

Hands would wrap around his waist on stage, whisper teasing retorts while the cameras were clicking, fond eyes stealing glances in interviews. There was the posing on red carpets, together, unplanned but undoubtedly synchronised. The laughter, and the inside jokes. The stolen smiles that Jisung never quite noticed until he got home after a long day, crawled into bed, and saw it trending online. 

It was all based upon a mutual understanding. 

The fans, the agency, even the other kids loved it. 

Loved the chemistry, the longing stares, the tsundere dancer and the hilarious rapper. A strange mix but a perfect pair.

Of course, it would be an overt lie to say they weren't the definition of close friends. That is, outside of the prying eyes of cameras, that spread something as baseless as a wink recorded on a grainy phone lens across the internet like wildfire. They had similar interests… anime, comfortable clothes, the same exhausted sigh and retreat to the bedrooms when one of the others turned on a baseball or football game. It was easy to go for meals when hunger arose in synchronism. A hankering for sashimi after dance practice deep into the night, a craving for galbi first thing in the morning, or wanting to try the local cuisine from street vendors while on tour. They'd split the bill, or if they were feeling too lazy or too exhausted from the guise of day-old makeup still painted to their skin, one would just mutter 'I've got this,' and it would be no big deal.

It was easy with Minho. He didn't argue like the others. At least, not to Jisung. And Jisung didn't argue with him.

It helped that they had very distinct roles in the group. Jisung worked on music in the studio on the third floor, and Minho went over choreography on the fourth. There was no need to step on each other's toes, and both would be respectively out of their depths if they attempted to do so. Notes were passed when Jisung manned the production of new music: 'Try that one again,' ‘a little higher hyung,' or 'come on, I know you can do better.' And Minho would do the same: 'It's three steps, not two,' 'your arms need to be raised lower,' or 'you can do that with more energy.'

He was professional to a fault… they all were.

They were no longer simply two members of the band thrust into the spotlight five years ago, with little guidance besides the support of one another and hardly any expectation they'd ever grow as big as they had. They were Han and Lee Know. Their own people, their own brands, their own namesake. There were expectations, there were precedents in place, and there was a routine they had to follow, an irrefutable one.

It was easy, the first few times. 

"You guys should just get married," Hyunjin would always tease with a longing drawl on the car ride home, some reference to the way the crowd erupted into blaring noise when Minho put his arm around Jisung's shoulder. 

"It makes me sick," Seungmin would hum monotonously from behind his phone. "Gross at home and gross on main." 

"I think it's sweet," Chan would sing, carrying the adrenaline from the schedule all the way home, only for it to plummet into silence and grumpiness once the exhaustion of his hour-and-a-half sleep and packed morning inevitably caught up to him. "My Minho is so cute sometimes." 

Jisung would always laugh when Minho would swat his hand away, cursing under his breath, elbow leant on the door as he played that same game on his phone he had been consistently levelling up forever. 

But like most things, the ease subsided into an arduous pain when the years stretched on. 

Comments were still dropped after every schedule. 

"I saw about five signs asking for you guys to kiss," Felix would snort, scrolling through the endless messages from his endless friends that he collected like Pokémon. "Maybe you should just give them what they want." 

"I think we should kiss instead," Changbin snickers in that high-pitched voice he had been preening over the past few weeks, lolling his head on Hyunjin's shoulder from the seats in front of Jisung, enjoying the raucous laughter it earned from the others who were either paying attention or simply hadn't succumbed to passing out yet.

"I think someone needs to neuter you." Jeongin drops the comment in Changbin's wake, pestering him and his dormmate, who ardently agreed, into some spirited argument that was sure to serve as background noise all the way home.

Jisung would always stay as silent as Minho did.

It was true, he saw the signs too. His sight lingered on them longer than needed, tempting the small voice in the head that mirrored Felix's logic in just giving them what they wanted. At that performance, a music show, the worst, Minho had stroked his chin like he would one of his cats, sweetly hummed into the microphone a honeyed 'Jagi…' and slapped his ass when he was in a convenient position in the middle point of the choreography.

There was nothing out of the ordinary there.

Well… Aside from the fact that Jisung spent the entire performance in his head, imagining what it would be like if he just honoured that little voice. If Minho's fingers danced along his skin for longer than a three-second iteration, if he whispered that nickname into his ear, and if the warmth from his breath in the cusp of it would send shivers down his spine. He wanted the same hand to linger far beyond a playful slap. He wanted to know what it felt like to be held by Minho… to really… be held by Minho.

It worsened every single time.

And yet, he was a willing accomplice. Teasing, licking his lips, putting on an act that truly wasn't an act.

While the others exaggerated quirks from their personalities while on stage -- Chan dropping the stress that plagued him every time he stepped into the studio, Seungmin really putting in the work of being more menacing than he'd be allowed to get away with in his personal life, and Changbin torturing the others with his aegyo at any given opportunity, Jisung used the stage to act out everything he wished he could when the cameras weren't around… When he ironically had nothing to hide behind.

Minho was a constant. A leaf from a sycamore tree floating downstream. Jisung would never be able to catch him, he was too weak to even try.

It was easier to instil thoughts in his own head that it was all fan service, but it added fuel to the whole ‘I'm desperately in love with the man’ fire that burned in Jisung's chest every time he felt his hands upon any inch of skin that was bleeding out of his stage costumes.

It was a bittersweet announcement when they were told they were splitting into two dorms. On the one hand, he would miss his late-night, embarrassingly deep, conversations with Felix they'd whisper beneath the fridge light. He would miss having Jeongin always so ready and keen to get online with a simple ask, and the mornings they'd spend before a schedule cursing one another out in front of the gaming console. He would miss Seungmin's singing when he showered of a night. It was bothersome to others, but to Jisung, it was just what he needed to soothe his mind which often ran at about a million miles per hour.

But on the other hand, he could hardly fucking wait to be away from Minho.

It was all so hopeful at first. They only saw one another at schedules and practice, or when Jisung would drop in to return a sweater he borrowed from Jeongin, or to whisk a new Nintendo game from Felix's very colourful room. It wasn't like how it used to be when they all lived together, when Jisung would catch sight of him etching back to his room with nothing more than a towel draped lazily on his hips, or to see him in the kitchen with his reading glasses on, cooking some dish Hyunjin begged for him to.

These days, Minho was always dressed appropriately, either sitting on the couch in the living room with earphones in, or he was tucked away in his bedroom -- an afterthought, but the one presence in the dorm that sucked the very soul from Jisung the second he entered.

He'd disappear back to Gimpo to visit his parents and not tell anyone from the other dorm, because why the hell would he need to tell Jisung, who he didn't even live with, that he was taking time off? He'd drop in unannounced, probably to see Chan or to lazily grunt that none of the others wanted to go out for dessert and coffee, to which Jisung raised his hand every single time.

While the days ticked on to some non-existent parcel of time that Jisung was longing for… He had very little to combat the pain that was loving Lee Minho.

Maybe it was staying up until the early hours of the morning imagining impossible scenarios that would never happen. Maybe it was the half-hour showers he would take, thinking of his lips or the way he brushed his hand on his neck during an interview.

But most productively (for a man who had to consider his career in everything), he put it all into music.

It was easier. It was therapeutic. It made the agency money. It made the kids happy.

And he was just about ready to wrap up for the day when he noticed a small tuft of hair poking out from a black hoodie and a woollen blanket outside of the recording space. It was a freshly dyed ashy blonde and Jisung would recognise it anywhere.

"Hyung," Jisung echoed through the microphone in the deserted recording booth, having spent the last hour (in what he thought to be solitude) recording the guide for the upcoming album. "You're still here?"

The others had frequented in and out, even Minho at some point to test out a couple of lines for Chan when he was leading the production, but he just assumed they all filtered away. Seungmin and Jeongin were going to vocal training, and he just surmised the others were heading to that new restaurant Hyunjin wouldn't shut up about all morning.

It didn't even rouse the slightest movement from the body at rest on the couch by the control table, and Jisung just about rolled his eyes. He was sure he could scream through the microphone and Minho wouldn't even notice. When he relaxed, it was like a switch turned off in his mind, and he could do nothing but focus on his phone.

Collecting the demo guidelines, his empty coffee cup, and syphoning off his headphones, Jisung switched off the lights in the booth and sauntered out.

"Hyung," he repeats, nudging his knee raised and covered by the blanket, earning a contemptuous stare of those blackened eyes -- tired, as though Jisung had greatly disturbed him. "Oh god… you’re dead, aren’t you?” 

Minho turns off his phone, discards it quickly to the coffee table and stretches his arms above his head with an overtly loud grunt. He had been wearing that same black hoodie for the past four days of preparations, but it still had that same sting of the cologne he wore day to day. His hair was soft, freshly washed from the stylist the previous night, and once he was finished yawning, he glared up at the younger man with glassy eyes. 

"I couldn't be bothered walking to the elevator," he sighs, melding his head into the cushion, "guess I ended up here." 

"I swear you need to get your energy levels checked," Jisung mutters, nudging his leg once more so it retracts toward his chest, allowing him space on the couch. "It's not normal to feel tired walking for ten seconds."

Minho grunts as Jisung sits by his feet, pulls his phone out from his pocket and opens up his delivery app to organise dinner to arrive at the studio – knowing he has more work to do. 

"The guide sounded good." The older man murmured, and Jisung could just see his eyes from beneath his phone. "When is Chan gonna' do the distribution?"

"Not a clue," Jisung hums, fidgeting about with his throat, almost massaging his exerted vocal cords. "But he did say something about you getting that high note from the fifth track."

"Mm… Not if I kill him first." He sighs, folding an arm behind his head to perch his focus, and stretching his legs out until they are rested on Jisung's thighs.

The younger man tenses, because he always did when Minho would touch him. With the others, touch was second nature and unless they were getting way too close like when he and Felix practically kissed from swiping their cheeks alongside one another, it never bothered Jisung. But with Minho, it always, no matter the context, felt like a tender stroke of sunlight. Warm at first, but it eventually would leave a burn that lingered for the days to follow. 

"Which one is yours?" Minho muses after a bout of silence, and Jisung barely glances up from his phone. Just shrugs. 

"Third and fourth track. But we're probably only going to go with track three." He is quiet, careful to discard the discourse surrounding his music. He was always proud of the few songs he was able to put forth in every drafting process -- even when he would give the company ten to choose from and they only selected one, it was always the best feeling to have something so inherently his on the album. But talking about them was odd… almost awkward, especially with Minho. "Changbin has a few more to put forward. They'll probably pick one of his in place of track four."

"Okay," he hums, most likely disinterested already. "Oh, I forgot to ask you -- I was wondering when you were recording."

"You were listening to the recording?" Jisung snorts, playfully nudging Minho's knee as he adds a few dishes to his cart on the delivery app, still refusing to look up at him.

"I have ears, asshole." Minho chuckles back, and Jisung can still feel his eyes upon him.

"What is it?" Jisung sighs, responding to his glare by lowering his phone, giving him his full undivided attention.

Minho sits up a little straighter against the pillow, coaxes his head to the side and raises an expectant eyebrow.

"Who are you writing all of these love songs about?"

The question is asked in the recording booth before every comeback. Sometimes it's the sound engineer with a laugh. Once it was an intern who had to forward the lyrics to the higher-ups. It's very often Changbin who drops it like a passing joke, just happy enough to have some lyrics on paper before a deadline. And it's almost always Chan, whose eyes light up and dim just as quickly when Jisung shrugs his shoulders, mutters about it being about a friend they all hadn't met or about the leads from a drama he was watching.

But it was never Minho, because why would it be?

Jisung can only blink at the question. His mouth opens to answer… but all that comes out is a small and overtly pathetic squeak.

"Oh… Jisungie has a girlfriend I don't know about," Minho muses with a fettered smile, his heavy eyes blinking at a gradual pace. His foot flattens on Jisung's lap, applying an apt amount of pressure to almost lull the younger man back into the realm of consciousness… almost. "Do I know her? It's not that new makeup artist, is it? I could swear one of our managers already has an eye on her--"

"No," Jisung quickly snaps, shaking his head far more than a sane person would. "I-I didn't write it about anyone. Chan wanted a love song… I gave him a love song."

If there was one thing Jisung hated about Minho, it was his ability to deadpan a stare into his soul. He would never tell Jisung he didn't believe him, he would never be so explicit to call him on his bullshit, he would never loll his head to the side and snort like the others would when Jisung would skim over details of his personal life. But all he needed was those two black eyes, shiny and just… perfect… staring back at him that said everything words couldn’t.

"If Chan wants a love song, he writes a love song." Minho raised an eyebrow again, and Jisung felt his gaze narrow toward the actual attention Minho paid to this topic. He, like most of the others, didn't talk about performances, or songs, or choreography when they had free time. 

Jisung didn't think it was possible to hold a phone tighter.

“Well,” he almost coughs, “I can’t even remember. It was so long ago when I wrote them.” He is quick to scramble his gaze back to the cart that was slowly filling with more food than he needed. “I’m about to order dinner, do you want anything? A coffee? Tell me now cos’ I’m about to pay–” 

“A coffee.” Minho hums, still not stifling that gaze that held the power to end Jisung’s life. 

“Okay… Okay… good.” Jisung almost grunts, adding one to the order, hardly paying any mind to just how expensive this delivery was. He’d pay everything he had in his bank account if it meant they could change the topic. “It’ll be here in twenty.” 

“Okay.” Minho is smiling again. No teeth. Just his pink lips thinned and those blinking fucking eyes. He wasn’t going to drop it… Jisung knew it, Minho knew it, if there was a god somewhere out there, then they surely knew it too. 

“You’re so annoying,” Jisung mutters under his breath, feeling Minho’s foot digging into his lap once more. “If you must know…” 

Minho is snorting before Jisung can even answer, as though he had won some proverbial game that was driving the younger man up the wall. 

“The lyrics are subjective. You might think it’s a love song, but I think it’s a song about self-awareness. Independence. Coming out on the other side.” He presses a shoulder forward, phone down, glaring at the man opposite to him. 

“The way you look under the light… I just wanna kiss you– Ow! What the fuck?!” 

“And I’ll do it again if you keep talking.” Jisung flashes that darkened stare following the pinch of Minho’s cotton-clad calf. “It’s embarrassing, hyung.” 

Minho softens his teasing rhetoric with a huff. 

“I liked it, if you must know,” he mutters with a shake of his head, exhausting the topic with a perspired grunt. “I’ve always liked your love songs.” 

“Mm-hm,” the younger man rolls his eyes, flattening a hand on his calf, feeling the softness of his skin yield beneath the tracksuit. “That’s ironic of you.” 

A heartbeat pulsates in the deft silence to follow and Jisung addresses Minho’s stillness with a glare. He was staring and for a second, Jisung wondered if he had a coffee stain on his chest or some dried sleep in his eye he had most likely forgotten about since the onset of his afternoon nap. 

Minho was looking at him as he often did when he didn’t understand something or if he didn’t want to understand something. Chan received such a look when he decided on the production of the album and gave Minho sections of the song he knew would be outside of his comfort zone. Management received it when they would give an impromptu announcement of their schedules for the upcoming week and mention the mere hour breaks they would get per day. The poor barista would receive it from across the cafe if they forgot to add sweetener or the extra coffee shot he asked for. It was disbelief and confusion. 

“What’s ironic?” He asks and Jisung feels the walls beginning to peel. 

“Ironic?” Jisung tilts his head to the side. “Is that what I said?” 

He blinks those shiny fucking eyes that looked like two black pearls. 

“Yes, you said ironic,” he repeated. “How is it ironic that I like your love songs?” 

Jisung’s brain whizzes a million miles per hour. There were plenty of thoughts built to perpetuate something of damage control. 

He was preened on how to answer uncomfortable interview questions, or if a fan said something a little too against the impression the company were intending to purport. But his idea of deflection in those instances was to ‘um’ and ‘ah’until one of the older members spoke up or by feigning that he couldn’t properly hear over the music at the venue. 

But Minho was half on Jisung’s lap, silence was painting the acoustically treated walls, with about nineteen minutes until their dinner arrived and plenty of time in solitude to hear him out. 

“Ah, well… you know,” Jisung begins, knowing that he couldn’t just beat around the bush to one of the only people in the world who knew the real him. “It’s ironic because you… because you’re… you…” 

“Jisung,” he glares at him. “Are you okay?” 

“More than okay,” he scoffs, shuffling around so much that the rigid leather squeaks and the coolness of the room met its match in the sweat beading on the back of his neck. “You never show an interest in this stuff… s’weird to talk about with you, I don’t know– I don’t know, okay?” 

He didn’t know what he was doing with Minho’s legs when he pushed them off his lap, running a fidgeting hand through his hair and scrambling to open his phone that he justly wished was a cloak of invisibility instead. All he could do was punctuate the conversation by unlocking it– internally cursing himself out for having no friends who thought to call or message in his time of need. He would drop everything to entertain one of Hyunjin’s phone calls that he made when he was trying to think of a word or actor that consisted of two minutes of muttering ‘what was his name,’ or ‘I’m gonna peel my skin off if I don’t remember.’ 

His thumb could only scroll and scroll, mind doing its darndest in ignoring the searing hot elephant in the room sitting on the couch beside him; achingly silent, ever-present, and undoubtedly befuddled by the strange behaviour of the younger man. 

Jisung was honestly happy enough to look insane if it meant the truth… the reason he wrote anything… stayed a secret locked up in the deepest caverns of his mind. 

But when the leather of the couch shifted and he inhaled that familiar sting of cologne, he suddenly felt his mouth dry. 

“I can still see you, Jisungie,” the voice fetters with a welcome softness. “You’re not very good at hiding.” 

Jisung’s eyes were almost dry, forgetful of blinking, hellbent on hoping it all just went away and became a funny story the older man would tell the others at dinner. 

Yet, Minho continues to etch closer and Jisung just about jolts to a freeze when fingers curl around his wrist and lower the phone. 

He had little choice in staring back at Minho. He stared at Minho when they were two teenagers with hopes, dreams, and attitudes to match them. He stared at Minho when he beat himself up, danced until his knees and elbows were bruised and limped to practice the next day. He stared at Minho when they would win an award, just to see his reluctant smile that bloomed in every step toward the stage. He stared at Minho when he was buried in a hoodie, with headphones wrapped around his head and laying flat in the middle of a dressing room floor to get some sleep during a schedule. He imagined he would stare at Minho forever– because that was all he could do. 

Stare. Watch. Observe. 

Even if they were so close he could see his lashes kiss his brows in every blink, or that he had the shadows of dark circles around his eyes from how busy they had been lately. He could smell the citrus of his shampoo and the buttery crisp of the croissant he must have syphoned from the baked goods one of the producers brought for everyone earlier in the day. 

“I-I just…” Jisung whispers, wanting so badly to dart his eyes away, to grasp the blanket that was on the furthest side of the couch, bury himself beneath it and dissipate into nothingness. “It’s ironic that you like them because–” 

Think of a lie.

Think of a lie.

Think of a lie. 

His wrist was still clasped in Minho’s hand, their closeness so culpable that he was sure the older man, one of his best friends in the world, could smell the embarrassment wafting around his body. He didn’t quite realise that with how Minho was seated, thigh-to-thigh with the man who imagined himself half-way dead, his other hand had found its way to the head of the couch, just about curled around Jisung’s neck. 

“Are they about me or something?” He says, perhaps intended as a joke, but neither man laugh. 

Minho’s eyes were dark and glassy; that strange deepness that tantalised Jisung from the very first moment he walked into that practice room all those years ago. He could see his chest rise and fall, he could feel his blood in his ears and his heart palpitating in his chest. He couldn’t understand what the fuck was going on. 

Jisung knew that this was the perfect time to break out into some sarcastic iteration of ‘you wish,’ or ‘how did you know?’ It was part of the sentence he inflicted upon himself when he learned to accept that Minho would be nothing more to him than a strangely tragic, shockingly real dream that fluttered through his life. Perhaps Minho would shove his shoulder, laugh, or sigh longingly that he didn’t actually care who Jisung wrote his songs for and change the topic to one of his ramblings or complaints. 

But when the window to save himself cedes as the seconds tick on, he finds himself at a loss. 

He didn’t even need to speak to give his answer. 

And with that, Minho nodded, blinked and clasped his bottom lip with his teeth. 

Jisung braced himself for some sort of contemptuous disgust. He had hoped that if the day ever came when Minho realised that Jisung saw him as far more than a friend, he would let him down easily. Make a joke out of it. Feign a grossed-out look on his face. Pretend it wasn’t the reality consuming him wholly and all at once. 

He didn’t want a discussion. He didn’t want a lecture. He didn’t want Minho to speak with him in that soft voice that only revealed itself in his most vulnerable of moments. He didn’t want to know that Minho felt sorry for him. 

However, never in his wildest dreams did he imagine that Minho would clear his throat, shuffle a little closer to the younger man, and slide his hand from its grip upon his wrist to entwine with his fingers. He never considered that Minho would delicately use his other hand to snake around his head, grasping the softness of his unwashed hair marred by the imprint of headphones, nor did he imagine that his obsidian-hued eyes would flicker to his lips. 

“Hyung… I–” 

Jisung doesn’t get another word out before Minho leans forward– creating a ripple in the space-time continuum and marking a collision of seismic scale. He doesn’t even realise that he has the gentle fervour of Minho’s lips against him until he feels the softness of his movement. He was sure that first touch, that prick of the thorn on his untouched fingers, that perfect awakening into a realm he imagined impossible, had lasted forever. Minho’s lips could have been pressed against his own for three seconds, a minute, an hour, a lifetime. His mind would never have caught on until he softly moved, nose leant against the man who felt himself unable to breathe, and truly kissed him. 

His body was frozen. The shock couldn’t quite settle and for a lost moment, Jisung was unsure if he should even reciprocate the tangible reality before him… just in case it was some far-off fantasy that usually pestered his solitude. 

But Minho’s lips moved… softly, apprehensively, almost fearfully… and Jisung’s body began to thaw. 

While his eyes had the audacious whim to remain open to ensure he wasn’t just making this all up, they lolled to a close when he tasted Minho. It was the remnants of his cherry lip balm and coffee… It was the guttural breath that fettered from his lips when Jisung kissed him back– slowly, clumsily, without any semblance of control… It was the pliancy of his mouth and how in a mere second it was open with a certain hunger he had never felt in his life. 

Jisung wanted to press two hands against his chest and sabotage his weary heart by telling Minho this was a mistake. He wanted to stifle a fake laugh and emulate the playful whimsy that occurred when he and Felix brushed lips when they ventured too closely. He wanted to pull apart and prepare a long-winded message to the group chat that very night that he had to go on an indefinite hiatus because he would never recover from the heartache that would follow this. 

But his fist wrapped around the collar of Minho’s hoodie and his mind essentially said ‘fuck it.’ 

Euphoria coursed through his veins when he felt Minho’s tongue, lips, breath and hands against his own. Warmth was spreading to his chest, and he immediately drew the older man closer that their teeth accidentally clanked under the desperation. A low grunt escaped the kiss and the shakiness of Jisung’s weak heart continued to thunder like colliding storm clouds. 

Jisung just about whimpered from Minho’s sinuous hold on his scalp, moving his lips with a type of ferocity that he had never quite known. His mind wasn’t computing the gravity of the situation, and all he could think of was more, more, more. On repeat. Like a broken record. 

Minho seemed to let go of that apprehension that was dredged in his first bout of kisses and essentially doubled down on the younger man. The hand wrapped around the back of his head fell to his neck, holding him so close that Jisung imagined he would be unable to pull away. Spit-slick lips combed against one another, and in an instant, his other hand roughly reached for Jisung’s t-shirt. With a strengthened pull, he beckoned him upon his lap – thighs bracing thighs, a portrait of everything they shouldn’t be doing. 

Jisung pulled away for a mere second to adjust to being on Minho’s lap, off and away from his comfort zone yet feasting upon this perfect slice of heaven. His arms were wrapped around Minho’s neck and when his eyes reopened despite his conscience screaming at him to run and run quickly, he melted into the pool of onyx staring back at him. 

Minho’s eyes were dark and tense– and after all of these years of crawling through fire, jumping through hoops, and sacrificing every ounce of normality, Jisung quickly realised he had never seen such a look from the older man. It was primal. Hungry. Minho was looking at Jisung as though he didn’t care for the beginning nor was he concerned about after. All he wanted was now.  

Jisung melds into another kiss, melting into Minho’s touch and his grasp of his waist. He was hardly sure if his lips were even in cohesive movement with Minho’s. He was hardly sure if he could keep up or if he was even good at this. 

But he wasn’t caught up in trying to understand or attempting to be perfect– something Minho could brag to his friends about. He simply wanted to taste, to hold, to feel his skin beneath his fingertips and to pretend that this wouldn’t consume the rest of his life. 

And Minho was just so desperate. It was strange to see so much energy etching from his hands that were roughly grasping his hips and the teeth that were clasping on his bottom lip. It was as though he was edging the taste from Jisung’s lips– as though he wanted to savour him and keep it forever. 

Jisung couldn’t help the small noises that fell from his mouth. The whimpers, grunts, and sheer inability to control the way he whined when Minho’s hand traversed along his spine to grasp his backside with a controlled fervour that rivalled a scorching sun. 

Back arching like a cat, desperate for Minho to hold him tighter, he just about whimpered when he felt his hand clasp the sinuous meat existent there. He had felt Minho’s hands on his ass at most concerts, most award shows, most places where there was a camera and a myriad of screaming fans to herald such an action. But here, it was different. Where he imagined it to just feel as it always had– second nature, it was the complete opposite. 

It felt as though it was the first time Minho had touched him… really touched him. 

Of course, with his grasp and the way Minho licked into his mouth, Jisung could barely control the stiffness in his sweats or the way he was near pulsating at his blurred sense of conscience. His mind was a symphonious motorway of poor decisions and what worsened it, was the idea that Minho was just as liable for the twenty-car pile-up. 

Dreamlessly, Jisung’s eyes fluttered open even when they were tasting one another as though they were starving. And Minho’s dark eyes were staring back. Lazily. Half-closed. But nonetheless, there and watching. Perhaps Minho was also investigating whether this was all but a strange dream. 

“Can I– Can I–” 

“Yes– fuck, do anything.” Jisung musters when they pull apart for something as insignificant as oxygen. 

It was hardly a second of a delay when Jisung felt Minho’s hands relinquish their hold around his waist and upon his backside and instead fumble with the ties of sweats that were keeping his achingly hard cock at bay. 

It was embarrassing to be this hard. God. It was embarrassing for Minho to see him like this. To see just what he did to his body and the uncontrollable nature of the stardust he left in his wake. It was embarrassing to be reduced to nothing more than a whimpering chasm of a man when he felt a hand dip beneath the waistband and wrap around his cock. 

But Jisung was practically leaking and upon the first traversal from base to tip, all clumsy and feigned from their weird positioning, he imagined that no greater euphoria ever existed. His stomach rolled like a contemptuous wave at sea, hips practically grinding to etch closer and closer to Minho’s touch that was upon him and all around him. 

They were no longer kissing, but lips were pressed against one another; an amalgamation of tongues and teeth with no such coordination. Jisung was muttering and whining into Minho’s mouth, breathing into him as though they shared a pair of lungs, tasting him as though it were his final meal. 

Minho’s hand was moving up and down his aching cock with intent. Quickly. Messily. Knowing exactly the hold he had over the younger man and capitalising upon it as a form of torture. 

Jisung was unsure whether it was the exhaustion of the past five years or the culmination that Minho was touching him like all of the fantasies he played over in his mind when his eyes were closed before bed… but he knew he wasn’t going to last longer than a minute. He was starved… deprived… frenzied. 

And Minho pumped and pumped, ascertaining a rhythm with teeth that were clasped around his bottom lip. A guttural grunt left the older man’s lips, the other hand wrapping around his hips to grasp the meat of his ass, rolling the flesh between his fingertips, savouring the feel, the pliancy, the need. 

Sharp breaths filled the studio. White noise filled the space between Jisung’s ears. Danger filled the voice of his conscience. 

But Minho wouldn’t relent and continued to fist his cock until the younger man saw stars all around him. Usually careful, Jisung felt himself slowly letting go… slowly kissing goodbye to the very premise of control. 

All he needed was a measly five more seconds of Minho’s hand wrapped around him, rolling his wrist with expert precision and kissing the younger man as though it were second nature, to feel the sutures holding him together dissipate into nothingness. 

It was quick and rushed, but fuck it felt like heaven when Jisung felt himself come undone, saturating Minho’s hand, his hoodie– whatever else fell victim to the relentless war path of his pent-up passion. His chest constricted, his eyes squeezed shut and he was unsure whether he whimpered or moaned… all he could recall was his voice echoing something into the ether and the symphony of songbirds filling his ears. His fingertips softened their grip on Minho’s shoulders, his breath stuttered and while he was adjusting to feeling so perfectly spent… so breathless, so warm, he felt the flame reignite– he wanted more. 

Head filled with fuzz, Jisung ventured forth into another kiss– despite the mess, despite his conscience, even though they were entangled in this web in one of the recording studios on the third floor of the company building; at the avail of anybody who may walk in. 

But Minho’s lips aren’t there. 

His head is lolled away. His hands were slowly coiling from the younger man’s body which felt like an anchor dredging into some pathetic seabed. His eyes are opened, sober and staring as though he had no idea what had just happened. 

Jisung snapped back to reality a little too quickly when he saw the apprehension on Minho’s face, and just as hastily, he scrambled to his feet, adjusting the waistband to his sweats and glaring at everything he left behind. 

“A-Ah…” He stutters, eyes frantically glaring about the room– doing anything to avoid the fact Minho was sitting on the couch, a visible stain on his hoodie, and wide-eyed as though in shock. His shaky hands find their mark on a box of tissues by the control centre and while he had the autonomous wish to wipe himself clean, he essentially flings them toward the older man. 

“Thanks,” Minho’s voice is small when he grabs a handful of tissues, wiping himself down and Jisung just wants to die. 

He tucked himself into his sweatpants and watched breathlessly as Minho furrowed his brow, chewed the lips that were still slick in their shared saliva and cleaned any evidence of what just happened. 

Jisung wanted to melt into the carpeted floors. He wanted to douse himself in gasoline and light a match. He wanted to dye his hair green, legally change his name, and start a new life in a remote folk village where nobody would ever find him. 

Minho’s silence felt like the vacuum of space; ready to consume everything in its path. 

All the younger man could do was thin his lips, and glare at Minho’s dishevelled hair, his sobered eyes and his heaving chest. The gravity of the situation was so… so clear. 

They had made an earth-shattering, career-destroying, irrecoverable mistake. 

“I–Um…” Minho clears his throat, standing to his feet with eyes glued to the floor, finding his way to the rubbish bin by the corner of the room. “I…” 

Jisung blinked at him– their proximity, the taste that still lingered in his mouth and the way his stomach was still coiled like a knot. 

“I just remembered I have to– I have to go,” he coughs, still avoiding Jisung’s glassy eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” 

And like a stranger leaving an elevator, he nodded his head and brushed past the man who felt as though he were about to explode, shutting the door behind him with unrivalled stealth.

Jisung was unsure how long he stood there, breathless, broken, bereft with a sense of longing that threatened to eat him alive. 

But when his phone pinged and he saw the notification from the delivery driver that his food was on the way, he imagined he would never have an appetite again. 

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 .

Jisung was almost sure his migraine was going to kill him. At least, according to the first website that revealed itself after a hasty search of his symptoms. It said that he had about three months left to live and needed to seek medical attention immediately. 

It would be logical to blame the premise he didn’t get a wink of sleep the night prior, but he usually stayed up all night when they had a flight to catch first thing in the morning. He never got a headache that felt as though two hands were clasped around his temples and applying so much pressure that he imagined his head would pop like a burst bubble. He would usually just fuel himself with enough coffee to get him through the tirade of paparazzi and fans lining the perimeter of the airport, and then pass out the second he sat down on the plane. 

It also wasn’t so far-fetched to blame the change in seasons– it was a cold November, and he usually developed a sniffle or a catch in his throat when the mornings were so frigid he needed to wear about four different layers just to step out of the dorm. 

But he was distinctly about to concur with the premise that he very well may be dying. 

His chest felt like it was going to concave. He continued to clasp it, taking sharp breaths, feeling that in every inhale he was limiting the amount of oxygen circulating in the van en route to the airport. He was sucking it in as though it were his and only his… and if he took all of the oxygen for his selfishly greedy lungs, then it would suffocate the driver, their manager, Chan, Changbin– 

“You okay?” 

–Hyunjin. 

Jisung’s voice betrays him because all he can let out is a mere squawk of a noise. 

It helped that the man sitting next to him, with shoulder-length black hair and designer shades that covered most of his face, would’ve been unable to hear the pathetic iteration of a cry for help due to the headphones clasped around his head. 

He had that worried look on his face, lips smacking the gum in his mouth, his brow furrowing as it always did when he had the readable concern that was as subtle as a punch. It was endearing in a way. He knew Chan and Changbin would very viscerally go to war for him… but they didn’t possess Hyunjin’s keen eye in spotting the very visible unease wafting around Jisung’s body. He was always the first one to notice when Jisung would fidget a little too much when he was thrust into a social event he really didn’t want to be at, or if the surge of the crowds was too much too quickly. It was perhaps child’s play that he was able to identify his best friend nearly combusting beside him. 

“Want me to…” Hyunjin raised his eyebrows and angled his chin toward the manager who sat a few seats ahead, whose head was lolled against the window, with soft snores etching out of his masked mouth. 

Jisung’s head shakes quickly and desperately when the older of the two pulls his headphones to rest around his neck. 

“I’m okay,” his voice registers deeply, as though out of practice. “Just nerves about the flight.” 

Hyunjin squinted his eyes in response, hardly reading that as any sort of excuse considering how frequent their flying schedule had been for the entirety of the year. 

“Really,” he just about coughs, “I watched a documentary last night about this plane that exploded right on the tarmac and–” 

“Alright, please stop talking,” Hyunjin grunts with a roll of his eyes, syphoning back on his headphones and thankfully, turning the other way. 

All he had to do was keep his head down. He brought a pair of sunglasses and a mask. He was well equipped to hide his face from the crowds and the cameras– more than happy to just be a stand-in for Han and perhaps at the earliest convenience, escape into the bathrooms of the first-class lounge to become the very broken Jisung. 

When they arrived at the departure gate, the clamour of flashing lights and screams echoed through the glass windows and into their van. Jisung glared at himself in his phone camera, tousling his hair, ensuring that his face could barely be seen from the sunglasses, the white mask, and the hood now atop his head. Only eagle-eyed fans would recognise him, probably from deducing his existence apart from the other members, and he was happy to keep it that way. 

“Passports, boarding passes, ID cards…” Their manager was going through the laundry list of everything they needed as the door slid open and Changbin and Chan got out of the car. It was all white noise to Jisung– especially when he could see the other dorm’s van ahead of their own and the flash of blonde from Felix’s hair already venturing toward their car to greet the others. Fuck. He was almost wishing he just feigned an illness– or told his manager that he needed to see a doctor before he left the country, allowing him to catch a flight after the others had already landed. 

“You coming?” Hyunjin was staring once again, ice to his glare. He, unlike Minho, was very quick on calling Jisung on his bullshit, and the younger man surmised that the whole plane exploding on the tarmac excuse wasn’t going to fly if he continued to act strange. 

Swallowing back the grunt of nerves, Jisung wrapped a bag around his shoulder and ventured out of the car, practically using the few inches Hyunjin had on him as a human shield. 

“Fuck, it’s freezing,” a voice grunts and Jisung found his filtered gaze softening when Jeongin brushed against him. “I need to get a jacket like this.” 

Jisung glares at the padded jacket covering his chest and the hand tugging it. 

“I’ll buy you one for your birthday.” 

“That’s ages away, hyung,” the younger man murmurs, huddling so close to Jisung that he was almost glad he couldn’t see anything, or anyone, from his covered view from behind the van. 

He was quick to notice Chan and Changbin in some talk with Felix by the front of the car, Seungmin and Hyunjin in close confines by the rear, and Jeongin basically syphoning the surrogate warmth from Jisung’s body. He knew Minho had to be nearby… but he wasn’t about to go searching for him. 

It had been the longest fourteen hours of his life. There was so much guilt, so much shame, so much inability to process the fact he fucking kissed and got an embarrassingly quick, extremely heavenly, handjob from his best friend, colleague, and the man he was comfortable secretly loving forever. He had only felt this way when he would say something overtly humiliating in an interview or on stage, and see flashes of it torment him all through the night until his mind let it go ten months later. 

The torture in question consisted of quick mental jolts of Minho’s lust-drunk eyes staring back at him when their lips were pressed against one another, the way his hands felt when they were rampant along his body, the low-hewn noises falling from his perfect lips… then the sobering jumpscare comprising of the way he looked at Jisung as though he were a ghost the second he finished, and how quick he was to flee from the crime scene in true hit-and-run fashion.

Almost six years of friendship gone with a flick of his wrist. 

Oh god, how embarrassing… 

“Did you get up to much with Minho-hyung last night?” He muses with those fox-like eyes, two fingers clasping the nose of his face mask to lower it to his chin. 

“I’m sorry?” Jisung coughs, hoping to some greater deity out there that he misheard the younger man due to the sensory overload of clamouring fans, demanding paparazzi, and the very obvious expedition his mind was upon in searching for Minho through the crowd of managers. 

“He didn’t get home till’ late, I thought he was at the studio with you,” his tone was pressing, befuddled, and ultimately unaware of anything below the surface. Thankfully. 

“Oh,” he shakes his head, plastering on a smile despite his lips, nose, and eyes essentially being covered. “He dropped by the studio for a sec’ but I wrapped up early. How was dinner?”

“Mm… you didn’t miss much. That’s the last time Hyunjin recommends a place.” Jeongin sighed, and as their manager made one more round in front of the members, eyeing down their hands that he ensured had a passport, boarding pass and ID card, he ushered the transit vans off with a nod and the wave of flashes drenched the cancerous thoughts that spread rapidly through Jisung’s mind. 

The embarrassment. The dread. The question of where the hell did Minho go after? 

It was all so quickly quashed when Jeongin brushed against his shoulder and Felix– who greeted him with a grin and squeeze of his arm– arrived on the other side as they stood in line for the cameras and fans who seemed to rejoice at their arrival.

A great weight pestered his peripheral vision. Right by the end of the line, head down and beneath a hood, in some low talks with Chan who was quiet this morning. 

Minho was standing far away. One hand pocketed in his tracksuit pants, the other waving at the crowds. Jisung couldn’t see his face, but he could see his body, feel his aura, and inhale the giant fire threatening to burn down everything they had built in such proximity. 

And there goes the shame… 

They had all worked so damn hard for everything. All of those arguments rendered them to tears. The thousands of words in lyrics that will never see the light of day. The smile he saw on Seungmin’s face when they won their first rookie award, the vitality in Chan’s eyes when his mother rang to congratulate him for their million-selling album, the way Hyunjin beamed all the way home when he saw the views to one of his fan cams. Jisung would ruin it in one failed swoop all because of his greedy feelings and the desire that he was more than comfortable to remain as just that– rather than the ammunition used to shoot himself in the foot. 

With every click of the camera staining his shaded sight and scream of his name amongst the echoey departure gate, his eyes were only borne to the figure at the edge of the line. His chest continued to constrict, his breath dissipated, and his hands began to shake so much that–

“Hannie,” a voice only motivated by cheer and glee hummed, and Jisung felt an arm link with his own. “You okay?” 

Was it so obvious that he was concaving before their very eyes? 

“Fine,” he smiles, precariously from beneath the mask covering his face. “You?” 

Felix, in the decorum of the designer fit meticulously chosen for him to model at the airport, lolls his head to the side. He had that knowing look in his eye, and that gentle smile always resting on his features– knowing as well as Jisung that anyone could read their lips and that any behaviour outside of smiley, cheery, and unproblematic would end up as a parcel of news. 

“Mm-hm,” he hums with a grin, glaring back at the crowd with those gleaming eyes, throwing up a peace sign and a finger heart amongst a wave. “Big night last night or something?” 

“What?” He turned his body toward the younger man, gaze narrowing at two things; his words and the way he seemed so painfully happy in saying them.

“Hyung said you were together last night,” he ushers his chin toward the cubic square of earth Jisung’s entire heart existed upon, sure to speak between clenched teeth in a grin. “And you’re both weird this morning. Hungover?” 

“I am not being weird, and I’m not hungover,” Jisung scoffs, rather weirdly. “I’m tired, and scared our plane is gonna’ explode on the tarmac, and I haven’t had a coffee, and my head hurts.” 

Felix laughed at the whine escaping his best friend’s lips and held his arm even tighter. 

“Liar,” he muttered in Jisung's ear, and the older of the two autonomously raised a hand to wave, seeing as the others were still in various poses and the security lining up was just about ready to receive them at the terminal. 

He was almost glad for the conversation to be over, and he celebrated every single step he took toward the gate if it meant being far and away from any prying eyes and in the sanctity of the plane seat to which he would plant his roots and hibernate until they reached their destination. 

The walk through the airport helped. They had little choice but to operate in a single-file line– Jisung straying at the back behind Felix, and Minho somewhere at the head of the group with Seungmin and Chan. He could ignore the flashes and yells by simply dragging his gaze upon the clinical floors and instead following the footsteps of Felix’s limited-release designer sneakers– which Jisung made a mental note to borrow– through customs and baggage. The second a hostess led them toward a waiting lounge for first and business class, Jisung immediately found a couch by the corner and essentially threw himself upon it. 

His headache was hardly relenting. It certainly didn’t help to have Felix and Hyunjin whispering so clearly about Jisung when they were ahead of him in the customs line, and it was only worsened by the fact that Minho completely ignored his existence just as he suspected. Sleep would be the only thing to heal the relentless torment. 

Well… Sleep and a memory-erasing device. 

When he felt the cushion above his head yield, he almost found himself groaning. 

It was probably Hyunjin utilising the privacy of the sealed door and limited entry to infiltrate an attack on all of the cryptic behaviour Jisung exhibited in the lounge. It was most likely Felix, coming back to rub salt in the wound by pestering a ‘Come on, where did you go out?’ or ‘Why didn’t you invite me?’ There was also the possibility it was one of their managers, ready to lecture him about the antisocial and less-than-desirable disposition he purported since he was forced to leave the house at the crack of dawn. 

But when that familiar cologne, that achingly perfect portrait of Jisung’s culminating dreams and nightmares, enters his nostrils, he can only lean his head backward and blink at the two dark eyes staring down at him. 

“Hi,” Minho hums, as simple as that. 

“Uh– hey,” Jisung found himself coughing, stifling to sit up so he wasn’t this curled-up ball of anxiety. He fisted the shades from his eyes, withdrew the mask to his chin, and glared quizzically at how lax Minho was on the far side of the couch. His legs were spread, posture slouched, phone in his hand with two twiddling thumbs typing something or other. 

He was as cool and casual as ever– as though nothing had happened the night before. 

“Tired?” He sighs, like business as usual, that same mindless small talk they all threw at one another in airport lounges all around the world. 

“Very.” 

“Mm,” he hums again, flicking his eyes to his phone with a shrug. “At least it’s a long flight.” 

And then he just went silent, ignoring the 23-year-old melting pot of a man beside him. 

Jisung wasn’t sure whether to adopt the vernacular of a simple idiot, completely detached from everything they did the previous night as though it were normal for two best friends to make out and touch each other in a recording studio. Or if he should unload some long-winded exposition about how he had no intention of ruining everything and if Minho continued to ignore him he would be more than happy to dig his own grave. 

Neither option came to fruition. Not when he could barely string a sentence together. 

“Are you okay?” Minho lets out in that soft voice, tilting his eyes up to glare at the younger man. 

Jisung blinks. 

“You’re the third person to ask me that this morning.” 

Minho smiles. Breathlessly, knowingly. The only person in the universe who knew why Jisung thought he was to explode like a supernova. 

“I have no idea why you wouldn’t be okay,” he hums, folding an arm behind his head and flickering his eyes back to his phone. “We get two days off once we land.”

“Really– not a single idea?” Jisung pesters, more than literate in Minho-ology to know that more was hidden beneath the surface. 

He would feign nonchalance whenever he received a compliment from the higher-ups at the company, the choreographers or directors on set. He would shrug, play it off, roll his eyes. When Jisung and the other members would tease him about it, he would do this same mindless carelessness. Act as though he had not a clue what they were talking about. 

Exhibit A– denial. 

Except now when Jisung would glare at his best friend, bottling up his inability to not look at his lips when he spoke, imagining what they tasted of and how they felt against his own, he knew far more than he ever intended. 

“Why are you making that face, Jisungie?” He hummed, as though it were a normal fucking Tuesday morning, and Jisung wondered if he made it all up. 

“Do you…” Jisung felt like he had nothing left to lose as far as acting like a normal human being went. “Do you not… not remember–” 

“Remind me to never drink that shit whiskey of Chan’s ever again.” 

Jisung’s glare narrowed at the intrusion, or rather, who the intrusion seemed to be. 

It was the same musing Changbin bothered the entire dorm with that morning when they were piling into the van between yawns, grunts that headphones weren’t connecting to devices, and the odd grumble that they needed a year’s break. But Jisung was a little preoccupied that morning, in trying to forget, forget, forget… to even afford the older man the time to hear him out. 

“I told you, the stuff I have is better,” Minho huffs, pocketing his phone and paying Changbin the attention he otherwise felt frugal in affording Jisung. “All of Chan’s top-shelf shit tastes terrible.” 

“My head feels like it’s going to pop… didn’t even have time to work out this morning and this flight is going to take ten fucking years,” Changbin sprawled himself out on the lounge, legs upon Jisung’s as though he were a simple fixture to the upholstery, rather than an asteroid heading toward destruction. “Hm? What’s wrong, Jisungie?” 

“Nothing is wrong,” Jisung truly couldn’t control the venom to his tongue, shoving the hood resting on his head down until it met his shielded eyes. “Can everyone stop asking me that?” 

Minho and Changbin’s silence was enough to send the younger man into a stupor. 

“Jesus, did I interrupt something?” Changbin murmurs, glaring between the older man to his left and the younger man to his right. 

“You didn’t interrupt anything,” Minho diffuses it with a sigh, before veering his gaze to the vessel of a person on the opposing side of the couch. “Jisungie just owes me… that’s all.” 

“I… I do?” 

“What?” Changbin snorts, lips tugging to the side in a smirk. “You lose a bet?” 

“In a way,” Minho continues, straight-faced, unperturbed. “He owes me a coffee and a new hoodie– right, Jisung?” 

Jisung blinked, unsure just what Minho was playing at. Upon the first instance, he was almost relieved that the entire night wasn’t just a figment of one of his fantasies that got a little out of hand. But when the words began to seep into his skin like acid, the searing burn of every syllable left a lasting print. A coffee, yes he understood why that was owed. But a hoodie… he could just about die. 

“U-Um…” He trails off, watching Minho as though he were to command him when to blink, or to breathe. With a flicker of his gaze, he could just see the confusion clad to Changbin’s features and quickly realised he needed to snap out of it. “Yes… That’s right.” 

Minho’s lips shift to the left and his head lolls against the cushion of the couch. His eyes were always so achingly deep– his scent, his demeanour, his ability to suit any style but choosing comfort every time. Jisung thought he had a pretty decent read on the older man… but it was like the previous night opened up an entire other side. 

“Oo… If you’re getting coffee, pretty please get me one too,” Changbin sits himself up, severing Jisung’s view of the man he was depressingly in love with. “Just get my usual.”

Jisung’s eyes softened at the sight of his best friend, almost glad for the out he presented in that irritating chagrin. 

“Fine,” the younger man muttered, ignoring the fact Changbin owed him about three coffees at this point, shoving himself away from the lounge and aiming a shy whisper Minho’s way. “You want your usual too?” 

Minho nods, arm wrapping around Changbin’s shoulder as it usually did in their shared comfort with one another. He still had more to say… that much was clear in the deepness of his gaze and the way he was almost capitalising on watching Jisung squirm like a loser. 

“Oh and Jisungie,” Minho says when Changbin is too busy on his phone to care anymore. “I do remember, by the way. How could I forget?”

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 .

Jisung felt as though he was held hostage. His wrists and ankles were not bound, nor was there tape across his mouth. It wasn’t known to the greater population that Han Jisung of Stray Kids was irrefutably a prisoner of his best friend who now knew his deepest, darkest, most embarrassing secret. There was no ransom posed, nor was there a gun held to his head. 

Nonetheless, he could almost empathise with the woman on his screen– in some drama where she is kidnapped and waiting for the leading man to rescue her. Except, he had no such faith that anybody would gallop toward him on their noble steed. Not when he was buried in blankets and pillows, with all of the curtains drawn in the hotel room to emulate what he imagined a cave to feel like. 

“Unrealistic,” he muttered between mouthfuls of chips, glaring at the love interest’s hands all over the damsel. 

With his music, the feelings he felt for Minho were easy to copy over from memory to paper. The realism of it, for a man who hadn’t experienced anything more than a rushed hook-up with an old friend when he visited his family a couple of years back, was all shaped by the myriad of drama and romance animes he utilised to keep himself afloat. But having experienced a strange amalgamation of the two in the recording studio, he was starting to find the cynicism in his past ideologies. 

He almost had to be grateful for the two days in which they got to settle in the city before they had to perform a show. The first day, Jisung, like the rest of the members, slept from midday to midnight– all mutually exhausted, and unaccustomed to the time zone to bother one another, outside of the group chat that fell victim to Chan sending links to articles they were mentioned in, or Changbin asking a question that went unanswered. 

Jisung saw Minho at the set-up for tomorrow night’s show that morning. But, he had little time to dwell upon anything below the surface– they actually had to pay attention to the walkthrough of the arena they had never performed in. It was one of the rare occasions where Jisung could ignore him with ease, knowing they had bigger fish to fry and that the older man was equally as distracted. It seemed with the 14-hour sleep they all garnered on the first day in the new city, Jisung was able to hide his scorned eyes and the members stopped doting over him as though he had porcelain skin. 

When the door knocks, Jisung quickly snaps a hand upon the remote and pauses the TV. With a glance at his phone, he saw no messages from their managers, or staff, or any of the others… in fact, he had no messages at all. 

And then the door knocks again. Once. Twice. A third time, and Jisung just about jumps out of his cocoon-like bed, brushing the crumbs from his face and running a hand through his hair that desperately needed a wash. Fuck. 

He pounced around his room, glaring at the suitcase sprawled open and the bags he had all over the couch. His brain went into overdrive, quickly stuffing his underwear from the previous day into a pocket of his backpack, throwing the wrappers of the chocolates he helped himself to in the bin, and running past the mirror to make sure he looked presentable. 

“I’m coming,” he grunted when he swung open the door, comfortable in knowing the security at the end of the hall would only ensure authorised personnel would be able to get this far. He almost expected to see Minho standing there, ready to talk about what happened, or to even address that it did. He almost hoped it was him because despite it all… a day without being in the same room conjured this pathetic longing he could never quite drop. 

But when he braced two sets of gleaming eyes in the doorway with mischievous smiles pestering their lips, he felt himself a fool. 

“Hannie,” Felix sang as he helped himself into the hotel room, still wearing the same matching tracksuit from the arena walkthrough. “Are you busy?” 

“He’s not,” Seungmin surmised with a snort, following the blonde into the dark cave Jisung was happy to call home, all the while the oldest of the three stood glaring between them. 

“Good,” Felix huffs, essentially throwing his body onto the slept-in bed, propping himself upon the tuft of pillows in his surroundings. “What has he got in his mini-bar?” 

“Just as I thought,” Seungmin’s loose and freshly washed hair lights up in blue fluorescence when he opens up the small fridge by the wardrobe and desk. “It’s the same in every room.” 

“Ugh,” Felix grunted into the pillow as though they had a dire problem to face. “Let’s just order a bottle of something from room service. Put it on my account but we’ll split it five ways.” 

“‘Kay, I’ll message the others,” Seungmin sighs, easing his body to lean against the now-closed mini fridge, phone pulled from his pocket and thumbs typing wildly. 

“We have soundcheck in the morning… I don’t know–” 

“Since when were you eighty years old?” Seungmin bites with a laugh, unable to hide his smirk in the direction of Jisung still loitering in the doorway. “And my body is still in Seoul… I’m gonna be up for hours.” 

Jisung’s eyes met Felix’s– hoping that as one of the people who knew him best, he would recognise that solitude and many blankets made up the ideal cocktail he had in mind. 

But with the twist of his lips to the side and the widening of his eyes that could melt the polar caps, Jisung knew he had not a single choice. 

“I am not leaving the hotel with this situation,” Felix lets out, brushing a hand through his bleached blonde hair that was scheduled to be touched up in the morning to hide the roots. “Please Hannie… let’s just have some fun.” 

Jisung glared between Seungmin and Felix, sighing. 

Perhaps, he needed this. 

Perhaps, a single evening of thinking about anything else… anyone else… would do him good. 

And so, with a resentful huff– and truly not putting up much of a fight, Jisung muttered a contemptuous ‘alright but we’re doing it in your room.’ 

Felix’s smile widened with every knock on the door. 

It had become something of a ritual for all of the members, sometimes a manager or two, or even other idols if they were at special shows or festivals, to utilise a single hotel room as a bar, club, or restaurant– purely to avoid cameras and prying fans who waited by the lobby. 

Like most rituals with the band, it was never planned initially. It just kind of became… habit. 

Thus, the third knock at the door in the past five minutes after Seungmin sent an inconspicuous picture in the group chat – Felix standing behind the hotel room desk turned make-shift bar, mixing the liquor they ordered with some of the mini-fridge soda. 

Changbin and Chan, clad in their workout clothes, skipped a shower and decided to venture back to Felix’s room— both arguing back and forth about a production issue Jisung so willingly opted out of weighing in on. Hyunjin wearing nothing more than a pair of grey sweats, the white hotel robe and sheet face mask followed after them and now nearing the portion of the night where he drank enough to conjure that deep cackle when Seungmin said anything. It was just Jeongin and Minho who could only be the ones knocking on the door and Jisung began to wonder if it were possible to feel as empty as he did. 

“It’s that same demo I played for them back in LA,” Changbin grunted, head leant on the pillow in Felix’s lap as though Chan was still not hearing him. “They said they were happy to sign off on it– I can’t understand why they’re staying so silent.” 

“They said they would consider it… not that they would sign off on it,” Chan hits back, sipping at the beer he ordered on his own accord– never quite enjoying the sweetness of Felix’s signature drink. “It’s not worth getting worked up over either.”

“Do you have to talk about work now?” Hyunjin practically groaned, sprawled across Felix’s bed, which had now become the table for their snacks and the surface for him and Seungmin to laugh while they continued to argue. “You should hear them at home. It's just yap, yap, yap all day long– ow!” 

“Next time it’ll be a kiss instead,” Changbin says almost like a warning, pointing a finger at Hyunjin’s thigh which became victim to a sharp press of his knuckle. 

“Wouldn’t you like that?” Hyunjin found himself cackling again, rubbing over his thigh with a mending hand. 

“That’s so ominous,” Seungmin shivered, untangling himself from Hyunjin’s serpentine limbs to stand to his feet, phone leading the way as he etches to the door. “Idiots with food are here.” 

Jisung sat up from his slump upon the armchair, suddenly feeling the air around him flurry. 

He hated the anticipation of seeing Minho. It was never like this before. Despite being painfully in love with the man, it was his personal secret of grandeur (that he swore off ever telling, even if it had to be waterboarded out of him.) But Minho knew now. It wasn’t as though he recognised that hey, they were all extremely tense, sexually frustrated, and touch-starved with their barely-time-to-breathe schedules. He could live knowing that what they did was more of a helping hand between best friends who were that comfortable with one another. 

But Minho knew that with everything Jisung wrote… he had him in mind. 

It wasn’t about relief. It wasn’t to experiment. It was for something far more sinister. 

“Tell me again why we’re your personal slaves,” Jeongin bit toward Seungmin as he flounced through the door with three bags of fast food that very quickly settled the score between Chan and Changbin. “You could have ordered it to the room or had the hotel bring it up.” 

“It’s good cardio, Innie,” Minho hummed, following the youngest with hair tucked beneath a backwards cap, loose track pants and a t-shirt Jisung remembered him buying at an airport gift store three years back. “Where’s my drink?” 

Beckoned and keen, Felix grinned as he carried over two wine glasses (all that remained in the hotel room cupboard) filled to the brim with a pink concoction he was super proud of. 

“Quickly tell me if I need to add anything else,” the blonde beamed when Minho took hold of the glass, glaring at the liquid with that smile of no teeth and lips tugged to the side. “It’s two types of soda, some honey, sweetener and vodka.” 

Jisung could barely hide his smile when he saw Minho’s face from the doorway. He raised his eyebrows and softened his gaze– such a telling sight he only really afforded Jeongin and Felix when he felt it cruel to disagree with them. 

“Honey and sweetener?” He tests, glaring at the glass. 

“You’ll love it, trust me,” Felix asserts with a nod, skimming past Minho to give Jeongin his.  

Minho pressed his lips against the rim and as he took a sip, Jisung was sure to notice his eyes squeezing shut.  

“Good?” Felix tests. “Or should I add more sweetener?” 

“God no,” Minho grunts, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before plastering on phase two of not wanting to crush Felix’s dreams in any way in the form of a gentle smile. “It’s ah… it’s great.” 

“Well, there’s more where that came from,” the blonde winks, heading back to the makeshift bar. 

Jisung continued to chuckle under his breath– completely torn apart internally, but physically unable to mask the sheer adoration he felt for Minho’s little quirks that he could never quite hide. He loved how Minho thought of himself as a subtle man… but every gesture, every sigh, every slow blink and twist of his lips gave him away. 

When their eyes met from across the room, Jisung dropped his smile. God… Why did he drop his smile? They always smiled at one another. They always caught each other’s gazes first– even when no words were said. They always sat next to one another in practice rooms and backstage. It wasn’t even like Jisung could dig a hole and burrow himself deep within to try and hide the searing hot tint to his cheeks. But he wanted to. He wanted to dig a hole. He wanted to keep digging and digging until he reached the other side of the world and he didn’t have to show his face to the one person who he couldn’t love–

“You keep making that face.” 

Minho had already crossed the room, sliding right beside him on the arm-chair that was barely big enough for one and a half people. He had the fresh scent of a shower clad to his skin, his hair practically falling out of his cap from being so recently dried. 

“What face?” Jisung questioned, knowing exactly the type of face he pulled. 

Minho squinted his eyes, swirling about the pink drink so the cubes of ice danced around the glass. 

“You fell victim to it too, huh?” His gaze carries lower, to Jisung’s drink clasped in his fist and leant on his knee– creating a circular patch of moisture upon his light-coloured tracksuit pants. “God– how have you had so much already?” 

Jisung blinked once more, unsure why Minho was speaking to him so casually. It was like nothing happened. It was almost assured that nothing happened. It was like he was doing the damage control in keeping it that way. 

“I–Ah,” Jisung’s voice is small, unnatural and the exact tone Minho would recognise as forlorn. “I like Lix’s sweet drinks.” 

Minho knew that already. But like they were acquaintances– not best friends, not two people who saw one another every single day, not two members of the band that changed their lives, he simply nodded as though it were new information. 

“What did you do today after the walk-through?” He asks, wrapping an arm around the head of the chair, not quite touching Jisung but as always, the proximity was too close to ignore. “I didn’t see you so I figured you were sleeping.” 

“You’re halfway right,” Jisung nods, pressing his lips into a fine line as he shuffled about the arm-chair– straying further away from Minho just in case his touch felt as icy as they left it in the recording studio. “I’m guessing you did the same.” 

“Can’t shake this jet lag,” he mutters. “It’s midnight and I want lunch.” 

Jisung laughs again– not sincerely, not really. 

And then the silence envelops them once more. The loud kind. The deafening type of silence Jisung saw in dramas where the leads were trapped together in an elevator– once-enemies with something a little deeper going on beneath the surface. But unlike the extremely corny yet heart-racing stereotype that the younger man spent the afternoon nearly crying over, he knew the silence wouldn’t be broken by a kiss or one lead turning to the other, looking deeply in their eyes and whispering a honeyed ‘I love you.’ 

Jisung knew he had to accept that when Minho fled the scene the other day, he ensured that whatever the hell happened would never happen again. The louder Hyunjin’s laughter rose as he and Changbin were arm-wrestling with Chan and Seungmin as an audience, and the more intense the argument Jeongin and Felix were having at the bar about the last video game they played became, Jisung sighed. 

He knew he would love Minho forever. But he couldn’t afford to lose a best friend. 

“I don’t want things to be weird,” he forces himself to say, watching Minho stay completely still. “I hope you know that.” 

Minho flashes his teeth and takes a sip of the sugary concoction Felix may as well have whipped up in a confectionery factory. 

“Why would things be weird?” He asks, with a voice as light as air. “Do you think things are weird?” 

“Hyung,” Jisung lolls his head to the side with a crooked smile. “This is weird.” 

Minho shoots him a look. 

“Do you feel uncomfortable?” He seemed to drop the nonchalance and sat himself up taller on the armchair, so close to Jisung that their thighs were pressed against one another and the sting of his cologne was ensnaring his senses. “Because if you’re uncomfortable with what happened…” 

“I’m not uncomfortable,” Jisung chewed his lip, not wanting to spell out the garish details of his longing when the other members were a pile of limbs on a bed four feet away. “It’s just– the inside of my head has become a strange place.”

Minho’s lips tug to the side. 

“The inside of your head has always been strange,” he says, as though Jisung had no idea. “You’ve only now noticed?”

And the younger man felt himself laughing, so naturally placing a hand on Minho’s arm as he always did when he would say something intended to be rude. 

“You say that like you’re not the strangest person in this room.” 

“Are you sure about that?” He furrows his brow, ushering with his chin toward Hyunjin now with two feet on the bed, crouched and whispering something in Changbin’s ear as Chan, unbeknownst to any of them, begins to unfurl the laces from his sneakers. 

“No… you have a point,” Jisung chuckles, and then for a split-second, everything felt normal. His eyes flickered toward his hand clasped around Minho’s bare arm and softened oh so easily. “But I just want us to be normal– even if neither of us are. Do you get what I’m saying, hyung?” 

Minho’s lips thinned into a line as his chest continued to rise and fall. Jisung could almost see the words he had hidden behind his teeth. Maybe they were words that hurt, maybe they were words that wanted to utter a thank you so that they would no longer be marred by a silly little mistake in a recording studio. Jisung wondered if they were the same words he had hidden behind his teeth. Words like there’s nobody else in this world for me but you… because when Jisung looked at Minho, that was all he knew. 

“I get it,” he nods with a sigh, holding out a fist for Jisung to bump– the most platonic sign that they were to settle the score, put it all in the past and carry on through the very strange galaxy they called home. “But work on being normal first.” 

Jisung missed Minho’s fist with his own and instead connected it to the side of his ribs until the older man snorted. 

“Just shut up and drink your sugar in a cup,” he rolled his eyes, settling into the armchair as Minho cringed, glaring at the wine glass and like a switch, everything felt normal again. 

This wasn’t so bad. 

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 .

When the night settled into a very messy circle of spilt drinks and one too many hiccups, Chan connected his phone to a speaker and played a bunch of archived songs from back in the day. The audience consisted solely of the members who were cringing at their voice cracks, teasing one another about being out of tune or poking fun at the very confident lyrics written by fifteen-year-olds with a dream. Jisung was relaxed against Minho’s shoulder with a certain sense of ease, settling into his defeat from an argument with Changbin about a song they co-wrote almost eight years ago. 

He could barely help the smile to his lips, or the way his eyes ran around the room at the state of the members– not quite drunk but comfortable enough to laugh freely and talk generously. 

“It’s like your voice was deeper when you were seventeen,” Jeongin teased with a high-pitched chuckle, head leant on Felix’s lap as the older man poked his cheeks. “And what was that last part of the song? Something-something touch you tonight…” 

“Who the hell were you two touching back then?” Hyunjin laughs, pointing a suspecting finger between Chan and Changbin who glared at one another with hopeless eyes– unable to get over the provocative lyrics they made up as inexperienced teens. 

“Take me all night…” Seungmin’s cheeks were pink, leant against Hyunjin who had rid of his hotel robe to utilise it as a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. “The only thing you were taking all night back then was skin medication and energy drinks.” 

Jisung laughed, glad to stay out of the crossfire. It helped to be only a third of the production team, and glaringly absent from Chan and Changbin’s unreleased pre-debut songs which they put all of their blood, sweat and embarrassingly horny tears into. Aside from the angsty bridges and raps recorded in the bathroom of their trainee dorm, he was mostly unscathed from their biggest critics– themselves. 

“Yeah… yeah… I’m not sure what we were thinking,” Chan muses with a grin, squinting his eyes toward Changbin who couldn’t not return the smile that radiated like a full moon. 

“Thinking with our dicks, that’s what it is, hyung,” Changbin pinches the bridge of his nose, able to poke fun at himself if it meant an enjoyable night. Despite his ability to tease the past, Jisung could still see that prideful smile wishing to come to fruition– still so utterly proud of just how far they had come. 

“Why don’t we listen to one of Jisungie’s songs?” The voice closest to Jisung suggests. “I’m sure you’ve got a couple of ancient files in there.” 

Jisung leant his head back on Minho’s shoulder, their eyes meeting through the haze of laughter and one too many drinks. 

“You wouldn’t have any of my songs on there,” the younger man says to Chan without breaking eye contact with Minho. 

He could feel his hand resting on his hip as they were gathered in their little pile on the floor. His thumb had been stroking the soft cotton of his track pants for the past ten minutes– which was hardly out of the ordinary, even before Jisung’s personal exodus in the recording studio. Minho’s touch, albeit the catalyst for the younger man’s late-night thoughts and early-morning daydreams, was second nature. 

“Well, he better look hard, hm?” He flashed his eyes and if Jisung saw Minho as he did the others, he would jokingly pucker his lips and lean forward with all of the confidence in the world– nothing to lose, nothing to hide, nothing to fear. But all he could muster was a crooked smile, uncaring if Chan decided to dig through the oldest files he had to play some catchy beat Jisung probably wrote, sang and recorded within a half-hour lunch break between language lessons and dance practice. 

Yet when Jisung heard a familiar note on a keyboard, one that he hadn’t thought of in six years, he felt his stomach drop. The gentleness of the opening chords– a medley he spent an entire week thinking of, and not without a whole session in the studio with Chan to turn it into a beat worth singing over. The softness of his breath as he began to sing lyrics that he wrote on a napkin in the company cafeteria. The lightness in his voice signified his age– seventeen and at a time in his life when he discovered a new feeling he never imagined possible. 

“This is the napkin song, right?” Chan’s smile was bright and wide as the lyrics continued to play out. They were simple lyrics. Not as nuanced or as complex as his writing style these days. There were no metaphors aside from mentions of a bleeding heart and the way butterflies felt zooming around a stomach. There was no deepness. There was no need to read between the lines. The lyrics were literal. Juvenile. They spelt out his feelings and burned them upon a page– a time capsule of the day Jisung met Minho. 

“Napkin song?” Felix asks between a mouthful of fries, leaning on Seungmin’s shoulder. “I’ve never heard of a napkin song.” 

“Jisungie wrote it on a napkin,” Chan lets out, glancing at the man who suddenly wished he didn’t have ears. “It was half-smudged from being bunched up in his pocket all day and there was a stain of chocolate in the corner of it.” 

“Not even I have heard this song,” Changbin scoffs, leaning an ear toward the speaker as though Jisung were demoing a song he intended for the next album. 

“You can turn it off– this one is just… yeah, it sucks,” Jisung wished he had the strength to command, but it instead came out in a pathetic whisper. “It’s so embarrassing.” 

“Not as embarrassing as the last song that played,” Hyunjin mutters under his breath, sure to cast a teasing glare toward Changbin. 

“I’ve always liked this one, come on,” Chan huffs, turning it up. “It’s so sweet.” 

Jisung felt a chill crawl up his spine– suddenly remembering every single lyric, word, syllable– every single brick that built the fortress that ensnared his heart when Minho came to mind. 

“I have never seen anybody who shines like you, sings like you, feels like you,” Felix repeats part of the song, that gentle smile playing upon his lips. “Hannie had a crush it sounds like.” 

Minho had more than tensed behind the younger man– who was no longer leaning upon him as though it were second nature. Jisung sat erectly, thumb clasped between his teeth, biting into the flesh as every flash of the past came forward. He wrote that line with Minho’s confidence in mind. The only member to be introduced so late in the game. The only member to look into Jisung’s eyes, not with that same wariness they all afforded one another when being a trainee felt more like a competition than a sure thing. 

He wrote the song about that very first day. His smile. His warm gaze. The way Jisung didn’t even need to hear his speciality to know he was a dancer from the way he carried himself. 

“Oh baby, be mine, be mine, be mine,” Hyunjin sang along to the chorus with a drunken vernacular, grinning toward his dormmate who felt an invisible rope wrap itself around his torso and squeeze every ounce of oxygen from his lungs. “I see our future, our life, our hopes and dreams…” 

One bullet followed the next. 

He remembered smiling to himself as he wrote the lyrics– so far removed from the premise of realism that he genuinely imagined that the rest of his life would be as pretty as it all of a sudden became because he met Minho. Every line felt like a punch in the stomach. Seventeen-year-old Jisung once dreamed that in the future, the band would be as big and as successful as they were… but he also imagined being able to love and be loved by Minho in the same capacity. 

He had no idea of what to expect from the older man when he turned on his hip and braced him within his sights. He wasn’t laughing like Jeongin or Hyunjin. He wasn’t making noises of adoration like Felix or Chan. He wasn’t critiquing the lyrics like Changbin or sighing in boredom like Seungmin. He was staring at the speaker as though it had grown a pair of legs and was about to scurry off. 

Eyes were slowly blinking, bottom lip tucked beneath the top, body completely frozen. 

The expression on his face was so unreadable, so fortified in lacking emotion, so painfully silent. 

‘When you said ‘hello’ I felt my heart leap, when you said ‘goodbye’ I wanted to die…’

They were not masterful lyrics but they were once everything to Jisung. He could handle criticism– they all could considering how harsh those primitive years were. But seeing Minho almost look as though he were going to be sick, that same pale ghost fronting from the recording studio, Jisung felt his insides shift. 

He couldn’t listen to another lyric and when Hyunjin leans toward the speaker and demands they play another one of Changbin’s sex-fuelled early works, Jisung saw it as the perfect out. He glanced at Felix, furrowed his brow and muttered that he needed to use the bathroom. He was quick to use their laughter and clamouring voices to ascertain he wouldn’t be followed and diverting the bathroom to the left of the hotel room, he simply etched out of the door. 

Jisung could feel his stomach at his feet and his heart at his knees, legs doing their darndest in clamouring through the halls– wanting so badly to run hard and fast toward the cave he spent all day building and hibernate forever. 

When his door was in sight, his jolting hands reached into his pockets, trying to find the key card he brought with him. Balls into fists, they found nothing more than gathered lint, his phone, and the premise that he very well must have left it in Felix’s room. His heart was running like a wild stallion set for the chase and the second he snapped his head up, he glared at another pair of eyes sauntering toward him, key card in hand, and that vitality that still hadn’t returned. 

“I ah… I forgot my– thanks,” Jisung holds a hand out to the last person he wanted following him. 

But Minho doesn’t hand over the key card. Instead, he leans a shoulder against the hallway wall and deadpans a stare toward the younger man. Jisung had seen that type of look before. It was the same face he made when he didn’t want to outwardly articulate his worry or concern, nor did he wish to stir any sort of trouble. It was the type of look he only reserved for issues he had no clear control over. 

“Hyung, come on,” Jisung murmurs, voice weakening in every syllable said into the ether. “Please–” 

“So even back then… your songs… they were about me?” He whispers to the broken man before him. 

Jisung felt his eye twitch and mouth dry, hoping that with how they left things, the making out and touching would be the biggest issue facing them– not the fact Minho was his muse in everything he did. 

“Minho…” The younger man whispered, suddenly feeling that sobering shame traverse from the back of his neck to the base of his spine. “I-I’m sorry–” 

“You’ve always felt like this,” he murmurs, probably intending it to be a question at first, but it comes out as a scathing confirmation of the truth. “Even… Even then…” 

Jisung felt his bottom lip quiver, unsure if it was the few drinks he had with the others or the fact it had been the longest week of his life. But when he looked at his best friend– one of the only keyholders to the vault in which he locked away his true feelings about everything, he realised that secrets were secrets for a reason. 

“I don’t think you understand,” Jisung whispered with a pathetic laugh, feet taking another step away from the older man. “Not even a little bit.” 

“I… I do understand it’s just–” 

“The other day in the studio… it wasn’t just a little bit of fun to me,” he shakes his head, glaring through a haze of tears readying to race down his cheeks at the earliest convenience. “It’s just something I have learned to deal with all these years.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Minho snaps his eyes up, jaw tensed and brow furrowed. “It’s been what? Five– no, six years and you haven’t said anything.” 

“How could I say anything?” Jisung was never afraid of raising his voice if it meant he got his point across. “If the feelings were… if they were ever reciprocated nothing could come from it and I’m sorry but, I learned some time ago that getting my hopes up in wondering was futile.” 

A small scoff escapes Minho’s lips. 

“You wouldn’t know because you haven’t said a word,” he mutters. “You’ve been killing yourself over this and you’ve never even thought of asking for help.” 

“Look at our lives, Minho,” Jisung runs a hand through his hair. “We have to pencil in a single afternoon to see our parents months in advance these days. We don’t have the luxury of asking for help.” 

“But you write these songs and produce them and perform them with me… and you don’t even think to ask how I feel about any of this?” Minho huffs, eyes dark and flurried. “I know you like telling everyone that you know what’s going on in my head– but you have no idea.”

“Because I already know the answer,” Jisung whispered, seeing the deepness of Minho’s gaze. He was quick to notice the way Minho’s body tensed when he mentioned the songs and the way he hadn’t looked paler in his life. Maybe Minho felt the same attraction as Jisung felt… but he had a fair reading that the love that often powered him through the day, was as one-sided as a coin with only tails. “And I’m not throwing away everything we have built with the others– not now or ever.” 

“You think I want that?” Minho retorts, knitting his eyebrows together. “I know that nothing is easy– not even close. But why– why haven’t you said anything? Fuck Jisung… all these years… all these years we could’ve been– we could’ve been different.” 

“Not really,” Jisung whispers. “It’s been much easier when I was the only one in the world who knew.” 

Minho blinks at the words. 

“If you won’t even listen to me, you’re probably right,” he says, features unmoving in spite of Jisung’s leaking facade and welling tear ducts. “You should’ve kept it a secret.” 

The words should’ve hurt more, Jisung knew that. But for a battle-weary and broken body, Minho always hurt.

Despite how soft his touch was, Jisung often checked for bruises because of the impact it had upon his psyche. Despite how gentle his voice was, Jisung studied the words he said in the morning, during practice, right before bed and throughout his sleep. Despite how happy Jisung was having Minho so close, he dreamed of an easier life a little too often when they were far, far away from one another. 

“If I had a choice in who I loved, I would choose someone else,” Jisung muttered, eyes raking the floor between them that suddenly felt so distant. “It would make it easier on me and it surely would make it easier on you.” 

When his gaze carried upward, he could see the visible hurt on Minho’s features. They never fought. Not really. They never had a reason to when all they were to one another were two flecks of the universe that shared the same trajectory. He didn’t know what Minho looked like when he was upset. 

He noticed the way he would thin his lips when the choreographer said something out of pocket to one of the members during practice. He noticed the way he would exhale from his nose when Changbin or Seungmin said something he was hardly in the mood to entertain. He noticed the way he muttered under his breath when the schedules were running behind, or if they had to stay longer at a venue than anticipated. 

He didn’t quite know what to make of Minho’s face– his furrowed brows, the lips that looked as though they had more to say, the clenching of his jaw and the balled fist that immediately retreated into his pocket. 

“So, you love me then,” he says matter-of-factly, eyes raking from floor to ceiling, wandering far away and in ardent avoidance of Jisung’s pleading gaze. 

“For the past six years, yeah.” 

Minho shifts on his feet once more, that tentative wall he always seemed to guard himself with, hardening. 

Once again, he went to open his mouth, but all that came out was a soft and resentful ‘I’m sorry,’ before he took another step away from the broken man before him. 

Jisung was unsure why this conjured a weak smile to bloom from his lips.

“You should be happy, hyung,” Jisung whispered through the debris of his broken heart, feeling a tear race down his cheek that was now searing hot. “We’ll be singing songs about you to fifty-thousand people tomorrow night. That’s something good to come from this, right?”

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 .

The next night rolled over like a contemptuous wave wreaking havoc on anything that crossed its path. Unlike the previous few days of sleeplessness and the cacophonous sounds of his inner turmoil spinning out in real-time, Jisung slept and slept and slept until he was needed. He was pulled from his room by a manager for soundcheck and very easily stayed under the radar between the forlorn moans of being hungover that the other members were echoing on the stage. He was able to sing without thinking and dance without looking up from the floor. 

He was able to ignore Minho as easily as Minho was ignoring him. 

By the time they were backstage, the arena at capacity, the caverns beneath the stage a highway of technicians, stylists and managers making their final touches, Jisung felt warmed up enough to put on a show. He hadn’t spoken to Minho all day. Not at soundcheck, not when they had an early dinner backstage, not even when they were the only two left in the makeup chairs. 

It was an easier feat than he ever imagined possible. 

Like the others before a show, all of their personal proclivities usually took the backseat when they had to perform. They paused their worries and their woes– disregarded their arguments, words they wished they said, words they wished they didn’t. It was a cathartic experience and despite the adrenaline Jisung already felt coursing through his veins from hearing the crowd erupt into screams in anticipation, it was the proverbial silence that was nearly making his ears bleed. 

It was dark beneath the stage when the second last song blasted through the arena before they were scheduled to be in position. The mic pack was strapped securely around his body and clasped in his back pocket, his in-ears were working and resting on his shoulders, and his microphone was held by a fist fidgeting around with the glittery ties to his stage costume. His body felt warmed up from the stretches they were tasked with doing and his throat was thoroughly exercised through the vocal practice he perused with Seungmin and Chan. 

The others were all amidst their personal rituals before a show– Hyunjin pacing up and down, Felix and Jeongin lightening the mood by playing a game with their hands, Changbin rallying enough momentum with the stagehands and technicians that his bellowing voice could be heard even without the microphone. Chan was still stretching and Seungmin’s lips were continuing to move with lowered eyes– ensuring that the same level of perfection he brought to every show would carry to tonight. 

Jisung was just about to get in the very last of his throat exercises before his lungs forgot the premise of breathing as he felt an unexpected touch on his waist. The familiar sensation, like an old friend whose presence was suddenly soured, sent a jolt of electricity through his core, and he turned slightly, glancing down at the hand resting on the side of his waist. The fingers were gentle, the touch unmistakably Minho’s. His stomach dropped, and the mixture of anticipation for the show and unresolved pain from the previous night resurfaced. 

His chest constricted when Minho stepped closer, as though they were the only two beneath the stage. His heart beat at a rhythm unknown to calm and order. Jisung’s eyes studied Minho’s fingers as they traversed along his stage costume, slipping beneath the fabric to brush against his bare skin. His eyes darted around with nerves that wouldn’t relent, ensuring that the other members were still engrossed in their pre-show rituals. It was like time and space continued to warp around them, but for a brief moment, it felt like the dappled darkness of the corner became a wrinkle in time. 

Then, soft lips with a permanent residence in Jisung’s memory brushed against the side of his ear. 

“I’m sorry,” Minho whispered, his breath warm against Jisung’s skin. “I really am.” 

Jisung’s stomach somersaulted at the unexpected apology he felt he didn’t even deserve. The sincerity in his voice tugged at his heart– a flame dancing around a fragile match that could combust at any given moment. Eyes glazed over his fingers that were gently petting his skin as though he didn’t care for the restrictive costume of sapphire and silver, and while the voice Jisung wished to whisper an ‘I’m sorry too’ was lodged deeply in his throat, he had the strength to place a hand over Minho’s. 

He was warm and soft– a bright enough flame to set Jisung alight. 

His chest continued to rise and fall, brows knit together as he glared at their hands collected together in some dark cavern beneath the stage and some ten feet away from fifty-thousand people who were waiting on them. He didn’t have the words to articulate how he felt. He was terrified of Minho. He was terrified of gifting his heart to somebody who could clasp a singular fist around it, squeeze and ensure that Jisung never loved again. 

But when Jisung’s thumb traced patterns along the flat of Minho’s hand, he had no qualms about the love he felt. His touch, his taste, his voice, his mind– they were all worth losing every part of himself over. Even if Minho wanted nothing in return. Even if Minho wanted nothing more to change. Even if Minho wanted somebody to use. 

He was used to loving Minho unabashedly– never expecting reciprocation, never expecting action. It was just the way things went. 

And like most things in their beautifully harsh lives, it was cut short. 

“You two– get over here,” it was Chan, finally finished with the stretches that were more appropriate for a football player, pointing a half-assed finger between Jisung and Minho who separate like two bergs in a warming sea. “We’re going to go out tonight and give it our best.” 

“Aye, aye, captain,” Changbin bellows with a grunted cheer, grinning from ear to ear as he slams a hand atop Chan’s. 

“Got it, Grandpa,” Seungmin sneered, hand atop Changbin’s as Felix, Hyunjin, and Jeongin followed suit. 

Minho raises an eyebrow toward Jisung, who felt his features still as stiff and frozen as they were relinquished the night before. It was hard to be normal. It was hard to feel fine. But when Jisung glanced down at Minho’s hands atop the other six hands that he would crawl through fire for, he obliged with an unfettered smile. 

When it was time to go on stage, the lights bathed them in a kaleidoscope of colours, and the roar of the crowd engulfed them as they stepped onto the platform. The sea of faces blurred into a mosaic of emotions, and for a brief moment, Jisung felt the weight of his worries recede. The adrenaline, the pulsating energy from the fans that vibrated the arena, and the idea he was surrounded by his members, safe and ready to perform. 

It didn’t help that tears had been threatening to spill all day. Seeing the fans, the signs they held up, the chants of their names, and the overwhelming love that became a reminder of why they did any of it… he could just feel his waterline growing with catharsis. 

Nonetheless, he put on a show. 

Once the final notes resonated through the arena of the last song in the set, and the deafening cheers of the fans reverberated in the cavernous space, the exhaustion that gripped Jisung’s senses repurposed itself with a sense of accomplishment. As always, the camaraderie among the members backstage was palpable. Sweaty and breathless, exchanging smiles and high-fives, bowing and thanking technicians and passing on notes about what they wanted to do differently at tomorrow’s show. It was all routine. 

For now, even with Minho on the other side of the group, too adrenaline-fuelled and exhausted to offer him more than a close-mouthed smile, Jisung felt a sense of peace in his chest. It was all one big mess and the words they said the previous night burned tiny holes into his weary heart, but it was one obstacle over and all he could invest his sights upon was the premise of rest. 

Jisung didn’t stay out like the others. He never understood how Changbin and Chan often worked out after a show, despite being mutually exhausted and covered in a sheen of sweat already. He did, however, take a leaf out of Hyunjin and Jeongin’s book who always sauntered straight back to the hotel, showered, ate, and passed out. He just assumed the others were planning on getting dinner or hanging out in someone’s room again, but he could barely help the grin that fell from his lips when his key card made a noise and he was granted access to the room. 

Once he was showered, wrapped in nothing more than a pair of track pants and a white hotel robe, he settled upon the bed, flickered on his drama and brought up his phone. 

He didn’t have any messages or calls– but he didn’t mind. 

I’m sorry. 

It was enough for Jisung to realise that in everything that he did… in everything that he felt… Minho would always be his best friend. They understood one another’s flaws. They understood that no part of their lives was intended to be easy. They understood that at the forefront, they would never lose one another. 

He knew it would take time. He had no such faith that he would ever fall out of love with the man. But now that Minho knew his deepest secret, he felt an itch of the weight that suffocated him for years, alleviate. 

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 .

Jisung didn’t even realise he had fallen asleep with the lights on when his bones jolted as quick as his lids. It was a strange amalgamation of jet lag, exhaustion from the show, and the past week of cacophonous noise that gave him no sense of time or place. When he reached for his phone, he had no clue what time it would read. It could’ve been ten minutes, or it could’ve been ten hours since he fell asleep– he felt equally as befuddled.

At first, he thought he dreamt of the knock at the door. 

But then it sounded again… and again… and he quickly realised that no, it wasn’t midday and time for another soundcheck– it was two in the morning. 

A grunt fell from his lips at the very possibility the suspects behind the door were Seungmin and Felix– who left the arena together after hitting the town, ready to barge into Jisung’s room and host a celebration with a bottle of vodka and all they could raid from his mini-fridge. He glances at his phone once more, seeing not a single message, and rolls his eyes– expecting as much. 

“I’m coming!” Jisung’s voice was deep and a product of singing and rapping for two and a half hours. He couldn’t wait to open the door, mutter a ‘no fucking way,’ to his bandmates and close it in their faces, ready to crawl beneath the sheets and hibernate until he was actually needed. 

It was an unspoken rule in the band that interrupting sleep was next to a sin. He would be the richest man in the world if he converted the instances where Changbin, Chan, and Hyunjin spat contemptuous words of anger at one another back at the dorm, into cash. 

And to add insult to injury, they knock again. 

Such frustration almost awoke a sleeping lion deep within Jisung’s chest– further propelling the ‘this better be good’ when he opened the door. 

It took his eyes a few attempts to make out the sight before him. The man at the door didn’t have Felix’s bleached hair and the smile that could melt the polar caps– nor did he have that same nonchalance and mischievous whim that Seungmin carried with him anywhere. In fact, he wasn’t even facing Jisung– as though he was ready to walk away if he hadn’t answered in that instance. 

As clear as day, Minho stood in the doorway of the hotel room. He was still wearing makeup, his hair was a product of sweat, hairspray and wax– scuffed around as though his hands had spent tenure there. He had that unreadable expression on his face, almost guilty. He had since changed– wearing the same black pants and loose-fitting t-shirt he brought to change into out of his stage costume. His chest was rising and falling, and the second their gazes met, Minho opened his mouth but nothing came out.

“Hi,” Jisung murmured, rubbing his eyes as he hugged the door. The sight was so sobering that sleeping was a mere afterthought he could very happily live without. 

“Did I… Did I wake you?” Minho glances behind him into the room, scratching an itch behind his neck. 

“No– no,” Jisung lies, shaking his head. “I-I well… yeah, a little bit but I was just dozing off.” 

The older man nodded a few times and thinned his lips, still loitering as though he had no idea what to say. The past twenty-four hours were as turbulent as a current and with the way Minho was looking at him, Jisung had no such faith they had found a calmer shore. He could see the words lodged in his throat, the neurons firing effectively throughout his brain, the fingertips that were fidgeting with not a single idea of where to put them. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” he says in a small voice, his black eyes at the forefront of Jisung’s view. “Jet lag… and all that.” 

Jisung nodded again and thus, the staring continued. 

It was a strange task to articulate just where they left it. He was hardly sure whether he needed to hold contempt over the words they spewed at one another, or if there were words left unsaid. 

He didn’t know if showing up at his doorstep, at two in the morning, looking as though he were lost in the labyrinthine caverns of his mind, required any words in particular. 

But when Jisung’s lips began to move, it was like his body had already made up its mind about what it needed to do. 

“I-I wanted to say sorry–” 

“Don’t,” Minho whispered. “Don’t say sorry.” 

“But–” 

“Don’t,” he repeats, shaking his head. “I don’t want… I don’t want you saying sorry when there’s no need to.”

“But what I said…” Jisung’s voice was as weak as his body felt. “I don’t feel good about it.” 

Minho shook his head once more, bottom lip clasped beneath the top. 

“Can I come in?” He huffs, eyes darting into the room once more. Jisung blinked. Minho was more likely to shove past Jisung, rummage through his clothes until he found something he would be comfortable in, shuffle under the covers and resume whatever the hell the younger man had paused on the TV, leaving him out in the hallway. He would never ask permission. He would never look at Jisung as though they were two strangers, unsure of the language they needed to use to communicate with one another. The nerves suddenly sept into his skin like acid. 

“Yeah,” Jisung whispered, moving aside for the older man to brush past him. 

Jisung took a moment to collect himself before slowly closing the door behind them. The click of the latch echoed in the quiet room, and he stood there, his hands still pressed against the wood, unable to move in knowing Minho was behind him. He studied his fingers, his nails, the bracelet on his wrist, and the split in the paint on the door. 

He was so frightened. He was so frightened of the unknown, of his best friend, of the way he knew his heart wouldn’t be able to survive whatever the night brought. 

As the seconds stretched into an uneasy silence, Minho’s presence continued to pulsate behind him. The room felt smaller in a way. The tension suffused through the air. His heart continued to beat but he knew nothing more than the sight ahead of him. 

He didn’t dare turn around; his chest was rising and falling, and the blood swishing between his ears drowned out every other sound. It was as if time were suspended, and they were caught in a very delicate balance, teetering to the brink of something neither of them fully understood. 

Then, just as he felt backstage, a hand gently settled on his waist. The touch was familiar, it would always be, yet it sent those prickly shivers down his spine. A head leaned against his shoulder, and he could just smell Minho’s cologne. It was the type of painfully confusing proximity that made Jisung’s stomach churn with an irrefutable army of nerves and a strange, scary, but undeniable comfort. 

The quiet in the room was deafening, broken only by the soft sounds of their breathing. Jisung was only strong enough to close his eyes, trying to steady his weight, but his mind was a circus and he was merely a trapeze artist trying his best to balance. 

His hands were nearly trembling as they clung to the door, the wood beneath his fingertips offering little refuge from the surge of nerves coursing through his veins. The silence was unbearable… a deafening symphony of unspoken words and emotions that he had no idea how to articulate. Jisung’s heart continued to hammer away at a rapid tempo. He couldn’t turn around; the fear of facing whatever lay ahead held him captive, and he wondered if Minho sensed that same turmoil within. 

As Minho’s hand tightened on his waist, it was as if a vice clamped down on his soul. He knew he was on the edge, and a part of him wondered if Minho would push him over and crush him into a million little pieces. 

“Minho,” Jisung whispered, leaving behind an eerie calm. “This will break me, you know that, right?” 

“I know,” he replies and the younger man flinches when he feels Minho’s fingers on the side of his neck, gently caressing the skin there as if Jisung were to crumble in his arms. 

“And you’re okay with that?” His voice was a mere shadow of a thing… shaky and unstable. “With breaking me?”

In the silence that followed, Minho’s hand continued its deliberate journey, snaking from his waist around his stomach. The touch was possessive… pulling Jisung into a proximity that was breaching the territory of terrifying. 

The fingers on Jisung’s neck danced with purpose, a subtle exploration that continued to send shivers down his spine. The pressure Minho applied was just enough to coax Jisung into tilting his head to the side, surrendering to his power, his hold, his soul. 

Gulping audibly, his breath caught in his throat as his eyes fluttered closed. He felt Minho’s lips, warm and tender, pressing a gentle kiss on the exposed skin of his neck. It was delicate, akin to a feather, leaving the younger man unsure if it would blow away just as easily. 

“I’m okay with that,” he whispered, lips dragging along until he left a kiss closer to the spot beneath Jisung’s ear, earning a shiver and the hitch of his breath. “Are you?” 

The silence persisted, making both men so acutely aware of their shared breaths and the synchronicity of emotions. 

Jisung chewed his lip, melting into the touch that wrapped around him like a paper-thin cocoon. It was true that words would be the catalyst for fracturing the fragility of the atmosphere in the hotel room. He knew he had to protect himself– to fortify his walls, preserve their friendship, and ensure that he wasn’t wielding the blade that would surely sever his heart in two. But with Minho’s lips upon him, his hands, his breath, his skin… Jisung had no such doubts. 

Jisung would let Minho destroy him. Tear him apart. Fragment his soul. Devastate his core. 

And for that, he didn’t have anything further to say. Only: “Break me.” 

In a heartbeat, Jisung felt Minho’s hands manoeuvre him around until his back met the door. It wasn’t like the last time– when Minho took him by surprise, giving him little room to breathe or time to realise just what they were doing. No. This time, Minho had Jisung facing him– their chests rising and falling in sync. His hands travelled upward, studying the path to Jisung’s lips with his eyes. 

Jisung’s breath hitched, caught in the web of emotions that strangled him upon impact. Minho’s proximity was overwhelming, and the weight of unspoken words hung between them like a heavy fog. He had no such assurances that the room around them had shrunk so far inward that they were the only two people left in the universe.

Minho’s fingers traced the corners of his jawline, a tender exploration into the realm of terrifying. Jisung tried to steady himself, tried to find the words in the chaotic symphony of thoughts, but the darkness that enveloped him threatened to swallow any thought of cohesion. His touch ventured further, his fingers threading through Jisung’s hair– gentle but possessive. 

“All these years…” Minho whispered with lips hovering dangerously close– their breaths mingling together in a storm of conflicting emotions. “You made me wait all these years.” 

Jisung swallowed hard, the lump in his throat betraying the stark intensity of his emotions. 

“Do you blame me?” Jisung murmurs, so close their lips brushed against one another’s as the words fell. “I-I never thought…”

“You never thought I wanted this?” He whispers, eyes flickering downward at the barely-there space separating them. “You never thought that this was killing me too?” 

“Because we shouldn’t be doing this,” Jisung’s voice was a weak susurration, unable to control his fists that reached forward and grasped Minho’s t-shirt. “You know that, hyung.” 

Minho tilted his head to the side, fingers having run their course against Jisung’s cheek to cradle his jaw. A small noise escaped his mouth– like he understood his sentiment but disagreed profusely. 

“So stop me,” he whispered, pestering forward and pressing his lips against Jisung’s. It was a gentle kiss at first– like Minho was testing the type of control he had in Jisung’s presence. Soft billowy pink and the strength of the world– it seemed futile in a sense. Their eyes remained open, both checking that yes, this was all happening, and gazes melded deeply like two colliding skies. Minho’s self-control was hinted at in that first kiss… but control slipped away the second they tasted one another. 

They kiss again. And again. And again. Until they were no longer little rustled pecks– affectionate, gentle, innocent. 

Instead, their lips moved as though they had no premise of tomorrow or the consequences of the big, fat looming shadow that would envelop them wholly if they were not too careful. The softness of Minho’s tongue almost made Jisung whimper already– knowing how badly his taste was sought, leaving him little time to breathe… feel… understand the totality of their actions.

Jisung’s hands wrap around Minho’s neck, inadvertently sliding a knee between his legs. He was in a small juncture of heaven. Leaning against the door, Minho’s mouth laving against his own, his head pounding with euphoria, hands roaming all over his body as though they were exploring each other for the first time. Jisung seemed to let go of that small voice in his mind that spoke words of caution and with all the strength he could muster, he pulled apart with spit-slick lips and leant his forehead on Minho’s. 

“You know I… You know I’d let you do anything you wanted,” he whispered, perhaps pathetically, perhaps weakly– but drenched in the unfettered portrait of the truth, his truth. “If you just wanted this and nothing more… I’d take it.” 

Minho didn’t reply in words. With a single, purposeful tug, he unravelled the knot securing the hotel robe that clung to Jisung’s body. The robe succumbed, sighing softly as it unfurled, unveiling the warmth of his honeyed skin like a clandestine unveiling. Jisung could feel his stomach rise and fall, his breath hitch, his hands grasping Minho’s t-shirt tighten. 

His eyes, two pools of darkness edged with that scathing desire, flickered downward– tracing the contours of his bare chest as though it were a work of art. With slow, deliberate movements, his fingers reached forward, brushing along the sides of his body, studying every whisper of a caress until Jisung felt the sharp edge of those goosebumps resurface and pierce through his skin. 

“I know,” he leans forward and kisses just beneath the heart-shaped juncture of his throat.

The touch felt like a spectacular wisp of a butterfly’s wing– far too soft to stir anything more than that swirling feeling at the base of his stomach, but oh-so noticeable that Jisung’s grip strengthened. 

“I-I just want you, Minho,” he whispered, feeling his throat burn as it echoed every word. “Nobody else.” 

Another kiss is left on his collarbone, so softly, so sweetly and then, under the guise of holding him closer, he murmurs an “I know.” 

His hands carried further, smoothing over Jisung’s shoulders and down to his thin waist, palms pulsating with heat until he found his hips, fingertips pressing into the supple flesh and sturdy bone. In the same capacity, Jisung’s grip relinquished on the older man’s t-shirt, unshy in travelling his palms from his hips to slide up the fabric and upon his bare skin. He had never touched Minho before. 

More times than he could count, they reduced themselves to a pile of limbs on the departure gate floor. He had held Minho’s shoulders and caressed his neck when they collapsed upon one another after an arduous practice or performance. He had wrapped his arms around his neck and pulled him into a hug more times than he could recall. 

But feeling his skin move and yield beneath his fingertips, soft, taut, completely within reach, it was like a sweet dream he once had of waking up at home. 

“Tell me something else I know,” the voice whispered, when hands travelled back to his shoulders, palming off the robe that was the only object of confirmation that any of this was real. 

“Min–'' Jisung shivered when he felt the air of the room envelop his now bare torso. But Minho had already delved into the next motion of laving a gentle bite upon the skin of his collarbone. The softness of his tongue against the bone and the soft skin protecting it earned a slow and breathy moan to leave Jisung’s lips. His eyes so naturally closed, unable to control the way his fingers curled around Minho’s waist, grasping his skin, tightening his hold, hanging on for dear life. 

The euphoria overcame him when he felt his teeth glaze the surface, suckling a mark that wouldn’t be unwanted come morning. 

“Hm?” He mutters between kisses against his collarbones, arms snaking around Jisung’s body until he feels a hand against his backside, softly stroking the cotton of his track pants. “Tell me.” 

Jisung’s blood was hot and searing and fuck if he didn’t get Minho’s shirt off in the next ten seconds, he was sure that he would never be able to speak again. 

“But you already know how I feel,” Jisung hummed, head leant against the door as Minho’s hands continued to wander downward, slipping beneath the waistband to his sweats and affording a sturdy squeeze against the underwear-covered flesh. With the hitch of his breath, he presses his palms on Minho’s chest and pulls away. “You’re just being mean now.” 

The older man clearly noticed Jisung’s eyes so loyally borne to his shirt and took a step closer, tearing it from his body and to the floor with little care. His skin was as soft and warm to the touch as honey in a sunlit room, and while he wished to sit there forever and drink in the sight, their lips were together once more. 

It was agonisingly urgent with a voracious appetite that spoke words of more, more, more. They were still getting the hang of balancing that want and the type of coordination they needed. Teeth clumsily skimmed teeth. Hands entangled in hair, pulling a little too tightly. Bare chest against bare chest. It was a dance Jisung imagined he would never get used to… but all he heard in the space between his ears was the soft sound of Minho’s breathing and hunger clinging to it. 

“I want to hear you say it,” Minho muttered, leaving the younger man no time to answer for his bottom lip was clasped between his teeth– suckling every bit of taste from his mouth as though he were a meal. “I need to hear it.”

Jisung’s fingers ran across Minho’s stomach, his chest, his shoulders… to the ties of his pants that held everything he needed. His lips upturned into a breathy laugh when he could feel Minho’s grip on his backside resume– tighter, harder, ensuring he wouldn’t be able to move without giving the older man what he wanted. 

There were fewer ways to lose all semblance of self-respect than whispering just how he felt against Minho’s lips. It was something he let slip the night before under the guise of emotions that often didn’t relent. He knew it would hurt to say so explicitly– just as it hurt sitting, watching, and observing all he couldn’t have from afar. 

But he would lose all sense of self… all sense of purpose… all sense of dignity if it meant he could have Minho for even something as insignificant as a night. 

“I love you,” Jisung says through closed eyes, uncaring if Minho didn’t say it back or if saying so was the equivalent of dousing himself in gasoline. “Always have… always will…” Then, the flames set him alight, and upon opening his eyes, he realised that all that remained– all that he could give Minho was char and ash wrapped in skin and flesh. 

Minho’s top lip twitched, one hand tightly grasping his backside as the other travelled to his neck– fingertips feeling like kisses. But just as quickly, his hands were now laced in Jisung’s hair, manoeuvering his head to the side, presenting his neck for his lips to feast upon– leaving kiss after kiss until Jisung’s fingers were running rampant along the canvas of his back. 

Heat in immense pools of lava at the base of his stomach, he could barely control the way he rutted against Minho’s pelvis, unable to control the pulsating length trapped within his track pants scream for expulsion. It was strange that in saying those three words out loud, the weight that once suffocated and crushed his shoulders lessened and lessened. He no longer felt as heavy, or as tired. He felt light enough to melt into Minho’s touch, his arm now snaking around his waist to pull him so close that it hardly felt like he was grounded on the earth and he was instead floating through space. 

“Again Jisungie,” Minho whispered against his throat, hands so tightly gripping his body that he was sure the tips of his fingers left red marks in his milky flesh. “Please… just tell me again.” 

“I love you,” Jisung murmurs, with nothing left to give but his body for his soul had already transpired… owned completely and irrefutably by the man before him. “How many times do I need to say it, hyung?” 

Minho’s lips coil into a smile, their noses nudged against one another and moving so fluidly. 

“Enough times to make up for six years of saying nothing,” he mutters back and little could dissuade Jisung from pestering forward into the steepness of another kiss. It was so frenzied, so messy and out of practice, but always returning to form in demonstrating just how much they needed one another. It was rough and clumsy, wet and soft with hands grasping nothing in particular, just the endless toil of whatever they could.

“Can you… Can we…” Jisung’s voice was a whisper, pulling apart with only a thin line of saliva separating them. He wanted nothing more than to feel Minho in his hands, in his grasp, in his mouth, in his body. He dreamt of this day. Fantasised about it. Outlined the logistics. Imagined the feeling.

“You want me to fuck you…” Minho whispered, unsurprisingly comforting and settling the nerves running rampant in Jisung’s chest. 

“Yeah,” he kisses his lips that were sheen in a layer of their shared taste, suddenly so unafraid of the consequences of tomorrow. “Do you want that?” 

Jisung watched on with glassy eyes as Minho pulled away, gaze following the fingers that travelled between the cavern of his chest, to his toned stomach and toward the ties around his hips– the only layers of clothing left. 

“Yeah,” he nods, nudging their noses together in the movement. “I really do.” 

And Jisung melted into another kiss, unable to control the squeak that fell from his lips when Minho’s hand clasped around the stiffness in his sweats, sure that, like last time, his fuse would be short but the pleasure immense. 

The kisses and bites clad to his neck and collarbones pulsated when he began walking the younger man back, until his calves hit the bed, laying him down upon the slept-in sheets. He wanted so badly to open his eyes, to drink in this view, to form a memory he could always revisit in the hard times sure to follow. But he could only focus on Minho’s hands, rampant and hungry, untying his sweats and slowly creeping a hand down. 

Sat to his elbows, Jisung was surprised at how naturally their bodies fit together when he spread his legs, allowing Minho to lay atop him comfortably. 

“Is this okay?” Minho murmurs against his lips when he pulls apart, leaving gentle kisses that prickle spikes on the back of Jisung’s neck. 

“Course it is,” Jisung hums, wrapping his arms around Minho’s back, fingers grasping the flesh. 

“Just… just making sure,” he licks against a bite, slipping his hand from Jisung’s stomach, beneath his sweats and the dark underwear, to wrap a hand around his pulsating length– the one who missed his touch a little too much. “It’s not like we’ve done this before.”

“Hyung,” Jisung could barely control his smile, digging his fingers into his skin, leaning his head upon the older man’s shoulder as he grasped his cock with a warm hand. He felt all of his breath escape his lungs, unsure whether this euphoria would be the catalyst for his happiness. “I want this… I really do.” 

He wanted to wrap Minho up in a ball, assure him that he could do anything and everything– even if it hurt in more ways than one, even if it eclipsed every coming sun or drove a stake through his heart. But he’s touching him with gentle, sweet strokes, and he’s struggling to even string a thought of cohesion together. A heated flush clawed its way down from Jisung’s throat to his groin… his legs shifting about to give Minho better access to traverse from base to tip– his breathing shallow and noisy. 

He teased at the tip with his little finger, all while kissing the sides of Jisung’s throat– marking him as his and nobody else's. Jisung could just feel Minho against him, the stiffness, the reality, the idea that Minho wanted him too. At the same time, Jisung edged his pelvis forth until he could feel Minho’s length against his inner leg. 

It was true that Minho filled everything in his universe. He provided the air to the trees, fish to the seas, light to the sun, and the twinkle to the stars, and as such, he filled Jisung’s mind with a symphony of lust. He couldn’t hold back his whimpers and mutters, kissing, biting, sucking whatever skin was available, pressing his pelvis up again and again, feeling the gradual rut alongside Minho’s stroking hand. They were so close to one another, but the clothes separating them felt like a brick wall. 

“Here,” Jisung whispered, gently grasping Minho’s wrist belonging to the hand clasped around his cock. “We’ll take off yours… and then you can take off mine–” 

“Yeah,” Minho huffed, pulling away for Jisung to reach forth in unclasping his pants, sure to brush a hand against his hard length. With a crooked smile that could add fuel to the sun, the older man couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped his lips, finding the positioning so misguided that he had to roll on his back. “I’ve always hated these fucking things.” 

Jisung snorted, turning on his hip to give Minho some help, tugging at one of the belt hooks to etch them toward his knees. With both hands on board, it was a walk in the park and with the kick of his sneakers to the floor, Minho was left in nothing more than his grey underwear. Jisung’s eyes fell to the bulge and perhaps inadvertently, his finger slipped toward the waistband– asking permission with a bright gaze and bit lip. 

Reaching upward, Minho clasped Jisung’s jaw in his hand, lips smothering lips which were wet and plump. With a quickened movement, the older man manoeuvred their bodies so Jisung fell flat on his back on the bed. Smiling into the kiss, Jisung could just feel Minho’s fingers skipping straight to his underwear, giving a tug that unfurled both his sweatpants and the cotton protecting his modesty in one swift movement. Naked and completely at his best friend’s mercy, the cold sunk in when Minho pulled away, lust-drunk eyes flickering to his chest, to his pelvis, to the cock his hand immediately clasped over. 

It should’ve felt like a strange mixture of embarrassing and awkward to be this naked in front of Minho. It should’ve conjured pink cheeks and a nervous stomach. It should’ve forced his body to reach for a blanket or a pillow to preserve all he could offer. But seeing Minho’s warm gaze, the one he thought of when he wrote sweet melodies about sunny days and moonlit nights, he melted into the sheets. 

Sure not to get lost in the feeling, Jisung tugged again at Minho’s underwear, slipping them toward his muscular thighs and then to the floor in one swift movement. Together, naked, completely at one another’s mercy, 

It was meant to be serious. It was meant to be intimate. It was meant to feel like they were two adults, taking that next, crucial step. 

But the second their eyes glazed over one another, after taking in the sights– Minho’s size, the way his naked body looked like a complete portrait, rather than the one Jisung forced himself to imagine with the fleeting glimpses allowed to him throughout the years, they both broke into wide smiles and gentle laughter. 

“This is crazy,” Jisung bumbles, kissing Minho’s shoulder, palm tentatively running alongside the length of his cock, trying not to quiver at its thickness and how it looked as pretty as he once dreamed. “You know that right?” 

“I know,” he whispers against his lips. “Bigger than you imagined, huh?” 

“God, hyung… how old are you?” Jisung hit back, affording a playful slap to his arm as Minho gladly grinned. 

“Come on, it is, isn’t it?” He let out that airy laugh– the one where the wrinkles formed by his eyes and a dimple appeared on his right cheek. 

Jisung couldn’t help but give it another tug, earning a hitch of Minho’s breath in response as they both glanced down at all he held in his hands. Pulsating, hot, leaking at the tip– he was right in a way. It was bigger than Jisung imagined. Thicker, too. 

While he wanted nothing more than to refuse Minho the satisfaction, he started to do the math in his head and very visibly gulped when the first semblance of logic filtered through his mind. 

“Yes, actually,” he muttered, eyes flicking back up for their gazes to meet. 

Minho read his eyes quite sturdily, exchanging that same look they always gave one another when they couldn’t openly say what they wanted. 

“If you don’t want to… I get it– it’ll be better if we had something to make it feel better, otherwise, I can let you–” 

“–No,” Jisung whispered, shaking his head, chest rising and falling as Minho continued to roll his wrist, shivering when his fist made contact with his aching tip. “I want you inside, I don’t mind.” 

Minho blinks. 

“But we don’t have anything to make it feel better– it might hurt.” 

Jisung raised an eyebrow and suddenly felt that jolt of realisation completely bypass the appendage all of the blood was rushing toward and head straight to his brain. He left a tentative kiss on Minho’s cheek and stood to his feet, completely abandoning the man naked and waiting on his bed to head into the bathroom. 

“What are you doing?” He couldn’t help his smile when he heard Minho’s voice call out to him. 

Almost blindly, Jisung fiddled through his toiletry bag, all the way to the base of it where a bottle of lubricant he bought half a year ago with Felix lay dormant. It followed one of the late-night walks that ended with them in a convenience store, a few too many drinks from dinner arming them with more confidence than usual, and the added peer pressure that Felix was buying a pack of condoms because he actually used them. Jisung carried it with him on tour with hardly an expectation it would ever be cracked open. 

“I have this,” Jisung shrugs, clamouring back to bed as he chewed his bottom lip, trying to unwrap the protective plastic wrapper around the bottle with the clear, gelatinous substance. “It’s meant to help, right?” 

Minho sat up on his elbows, slowly blinking at Jisung’s fumbling fingers. 

“Oh,” he scratches an invisible itch behind his head. “I didn’t realise you had time… for that.”

Jisung ignores the comment by pressing his teeth on the clasp of the protective wrapper of the bottle, cracking it in half so he can peel the layer away. 

“This whole time I thought you were napping in your hotel rooms,” he raised an eyebrow and Jisung took the bottle from his mouth and glared at the older man. 

“It’s never been used you idiot,” he says beneath his breath. “None of us have time to sleep around on tour.” 

“Mm… Maybe you don’t,” he mutters with those teasing eyes and Jisung practically whines when Minho perches himself upon his knee, manoeuvring the younger man’s body until his head meets the pillows. Jisung’s knees parted so naturally and Minho slid between them, their hardened members brushing against one another as his elbows braced each side of his head. 

“Hyung, don’t tell me that,” Jisung whispered through a stardust haze, unable to control the thumping of his chest or the trickle of precome that dribbled out of his slit and down his cock when Minho’s hands were all over him once more. He was sure that the older man had once put a spell on him– perhaps all those years ago in that practice room or when he first heard his soft, but utterly confident voice. 

“I’m sorry,” he chuckles with a smile against his lips. “I’ve only wanted this… only wanted you.”

“I know what that’s like,” Jisung whispered when Minho tugged once more, feeling his sensitive skin yield and move in every caress and traversal of his length. 

“And you’ll let me touch you,” Minho whispered, fingers travelling down further, down the ridges by his thighs, leading past his perineum and toward the cavern Jisung never imagined Minho would near. “Just like how I imagined.” 

Jisung sighed dreamily against his lips, not feeling the nerves he thought would consume him, not harkening any insecurity for his body or how Minho would perceive it for he was looking at him with those eyes filled with fondness and adoration and not holding a pinch of regret when he spread his legs further. 

“I imagined things too,” Jisung hummed, tugging at Minho’s cock with a lucid wrist. “There’s a lot of things I’ve always wanted to try.” 

“Like?” Minho’s eyes were hazy and dark in the lamplight of the hotel, and his skin was sweet honey against the white sheets– Jisung almost lost his train of thought. 

“It’s embarrassing,” he was instantly a puddled mess when Minho’s fingers brushed against his hole– reality catching up to him quicker than he anticipated. A whine escaped his lips and his eyes squeezed shut when he applied that apt amount of pressure on the sweet spot, unable to pull that tantalising gaze from the younger man. “I-I don’t wanna say.” 

“Jisungie,” Minho's voice was a pur, lips connecting with his throat, suckling against the skin as though collecting taste on the tip of his tongue. “Please.” 

“But it’s embarrassing,” he whined again and Minho withdrew his wandering finger from the tender skin of his backside and pressed a knuckle all gentle and sweet against Jisung’s cheek. 

“Show me then,” he whispers back, a compromise in a way. 

Jisung chewed his bottom lip, the swishing about the base of his stomach and the noises sounded off in screams and shouts in his mind, but his want outweighed the small voice in his head that spoke words of caution. With two hands braced on Minho’s shoulders, he gave into a gentle push, repositioning them so Minho’s back was laid on the lush bed and Jisung could hover over him– thighs bracing thighs. 

He caught sight of Minho’s growing erection pressed against his lower stomach– angry, pulsating, needy and all Jisung could think about was satisfying that long-thought dream of tasting him. He gulped back the last of his nerves, shuffled further down the edge of the bed, and glared back at the older man who was staring, bewitched by a sight he never imagined he would see. 

“You wanted to try this?” He whispered, dark eyes staring at Jisung who held his length in his fist, staring at the tip, mouth salivating and doe-eyed gaze seeking purchase. 

“Mm-hm,” he nods, tugging at it so casually, as though they were made to hold one another. “Is that… Is that okay?” 

A small noise escaped Minho’s lips as he continued to glare down at the man between his legs, unsure, tentative, completely at his mercy. 

“Yeah– I… Yeah.” 

Jisung’s brows furrowed as he stared at the tip, softly stroking the entirety of his length, unsure just how to tackle something like this. He wanted to be good. He wanted to be gentle. He wanted to drink in whatever further noises escaped his perfect lips. 

And so, he simply pressed his lips, which were wet and slick from all their kissing, against the tip of his cock, doing nothing more than pecking the surface. Minho’s thighs moved in a jolted movement and a breathy hitch of his voice filled the room. Jisung didn’t want to look away from the sight ahead of him as he delved into his next action of licking at the head, blinking his eyes slowly to not miss a single twitch of his jaw or bite of his lip. 

It was a strange dream. So strange he never imagined it coming true– because why would it? 

His thoughts left him as he slurped at the tip in one fleeting lick. They met gazes when Jisung went back again, daintily pressing his lips onto his cock and removing them just as quickly, repeating the motion until Minho’s thighs tensed and his fingers laced into his dark hair. It wasn’t hard to get used to having Minho in his mouth. Stretching his lips, forcing him to breathe through his nose rather than his mouth, having to listen to the stout noises he was making. 

From the tip, he slowly began to take more and more into his mouth and sucked. It was euphoric to know that he was making Minho feel good and that when he squeezed his eyes shut, he didn’t need more than the hands tightening or loosening in his hair to know just what he was doing to the older man. Jisung lowered so far down that his eyes welled up in tears and a slight gag reverberated through his length when the tip met the back of his throat. He gripped the base and gave one long upward pull, stroking his length once when he withdrew his mouth to seek air. 

“Fuck… You’re so pretty,” Minho’s breathing turned into sharp pants, thumb tracing the underside of his jaw to brush against his pink lips. 

Jisung blinked through gentle flutters, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He felt his own cock shift, not quite the actions but moreover the words that fell from his mouth became the catalyst to his sensitive flurry. 

Pretty. Minho thought he was pretty. 

With little to hold him back, he sucked in a breath as his lips navigated over the delicate tip of his cock. Relaxing his jaw and tilting his head to the side as his eyes opened back up and stared at the older man, he reached a hand downward to tug at his aching length when he saw Minho’s bit lip and flushed cheeks. He didn’t have time to remember that he had only ever done such an act once before– with that friend of the family who seemed to ask him a few too many questions about Felix and that he was dripping in inexperience. But with the way Minho grasped his hair, pulled him closer and muttered gravelly curse words under his breath, the doubts slipped away and into the night.

He was determined… taking him deeper and deeper whilst flattening his tongue on the underside of his cock– breathing through his nose, pumping the base of it, bracing himself when Minho would buck his hips upward to the point where his tip would rub against his uvula. He barely realised his chin and lips were slick with spit, far too concentrated on Minho’s gaze and how quick it was to give him away. 

Jisung could feel Minho’s cock pulsate in his mouth, his hand tighten in his hair and the type of sounds he could listen to forever if he were allowed as his spare hand wrapped around his thigh, holding him close. It was like the twitch of his length signified his impending release and the ache from his stretched jaw sent alarm bells throughout Jisung’s mind that he was close.

Squeezing his eyes shut, flattening his tongue and holding his breath, Jisung took his cock further down his throat, unshy of the gags that reverberated through his humming ears or the hand tightening in his hair. He was so sure that Minho needed only a little bit more until he came down his throat– which he intended to drink in every drop if possible, inexperience and nerves aside. 

But the adrenaline ceases to course through his veins and instead, the fingers laced in his hair tug so hard, coaxing the younger man’s mouth off and away. Wiping his lips and blinking through two hazy, lust-drunk eyes, Jisung tilted his head to the side. 

“I’ll come if you keep doing that,” he muttered, chewing his bottom lip. “And there’s still more I want to do before I fuck you, Jisungie.” 

Jisung’s stomach rumbled and cock twitched, suddenly remembering where they were, why they were doing this, what it would all lead to. He let out a gentle cough, unable to gather his bearings before Minho reached down to clasp a hand on his forearm, tugging him upward until he was straddling his lap. He could just feel Minho’s slick cock beneath him, rubbing against his entrance, so close and real. 

He wished to speak– to say anything that would offer a semblance of strength or knowing… but their lips were together once more. It was like Minho wanted to taste him. His tongue laved against his own, uncaring of how madly the motion was. There was no semblance of coordination or care. They needed one another– more than Jisung ever imagined they would, more than his wildest dreams could illustrate. 

All the while their lips, hot, immersed and desperate, moved in synchronicity, a slight pop of a cap brought the younger man back to reality as Minho fiddled about with the bottle of lubricant. The nerves reappeared and despite how comfortable he felt as a ball in Minho’s arms, he couldn’t help but pull away to follow his movements. 

“It’s cold,” Minho muttered against his lips, eyes dark and concentrated on the glob of clear liquid pooling on his index and middle fingers. “Ready?” 

“Mm-hm,” Jisung nodded without a second thought, dividing his weight to his knees to give Minho better access to his opening– the opening in which he ran his two fingers across gently, jolting his skin with the oozy cold of the lubricant, gliding across the sensitive skin until a small shiver traversed the entirety of his spine. “I’ve been ready for so long.” 

Minho smiled and while he imagined such a look to be drenched in that lustrous mist that had been wafting about the hotel room since they kissed one another, it held something else– something deeper. Jisung couldn’t quite see any reservations in his glare. After the recording studio, he imagined that the face he made– the one where he looked as though he had witnessed a ghost– would haunt him forever. But this… but now… there could be little to dissuade him not to wrap his arms around Minho’s neck, spreading the knees that were bracing his hips that inch wider and melting into the feeling of his fingers running up and down his entrance. 

“You’re gonna need to tell me again,” Minho murmured in the same tone of voice he had used when he was so sure of something. Jisung bit his lip, twisting his head to try and get a better look over his shoulder, only seeing a hand softly petting his backside whilst his other hand ran in soothing circles over his lower back. 

“Tell you that I love you?” Jisung’s breath hitched when he felt the tip of Minho’s finger at his fleshy entrance, a beckoning tease. 

“Mm,” he nods, tracing the skin of his entrance in circles. “Just wanna hear it again.” 

Jisung leaned his forehead against Minho’s, fingers spread and grasping his bare shoulder when he felt the slip of his index finger challenging the tightness of his hole in one swift movement. An utterly coarse noise escaped his throat and the sound didn’t quite relent– not even when he felt his finger moving about inside of him. It was a jarring feeling… one he only ever felt at his own doing. He had touched himself to this exact picture so many times before… wishing, dreaming, imagining that Minho would feel this heavenly. 

But this reality was a little nicer than Jisung’s late-night musings– when he knew the others at the dorm were asleep or with noise-cancelling headphones on, that they’d never hear him bite his pillow and whimper into his fist when he curled his fingers into himself, imagining Minho behind him, kissing his neck, whispering that he couldn’t wait to fuck him and ensuring that he reached nirvana. 

“I love you,” Jisung’s voice was a whine, the slick glide of Minho’s finger exploring parts of his entrance he never knew existed. He never imagined that a single action could send his mind into such a tizzy. He never imagined that the second he pressed so far forth he felt his knuckle upon the skin of its surroundings. 

“Sound so pretty when you say it,” he huffs, licking the skin of his throat. “Everything you say sounds so fucking pretty.” 

Jisung nearly collapsed into the crook of Minho’s neck, panting into it when he twisted his fingers in sharp thrusts until he reached his prostate, massaging it languidly as the younger man swore beneath his breath. He added another, and while he had no real concept of time and place, with curtains drawn and no passage to the outside world, he could just envision the sky full of stars above them. 

He fucked into Jisung until his cock trickled onto Minho’s stomach in leaking exertions of his pleasure. His hips shook and knees buckled under the pressure– so responsive when Minho withdrew his fingers until only the tips were lodged inside or completely committed to the act and ventured knuckle-deep until the younger man was shaking. 

With a third, Jisung could just about die– the pressure making it difficult to adjust. Minho kept hitting that sensitive ball of flesh with fingers against the muscle that prodded and prodded. He knew that with such an expanding feeling, he could very easily become a mess of limbs, mutters and crossed eyes if he kept entering him as he had. He was filled completely, resulting in a burning sensation that travelled entirely to the sensitive tip of his cock that needed more.

“Talk to me,” Jisung whispered, squeezing Minho’s flesh for purchase. “Please… Talk to me.” 

“I wanna know what you feel like,” Minho’s lips brush against his throat, curling fingers earning yet another whimper to fall from Jisung’s cries. “I wanna know what you feel like wrapped around me… are you this tight?” 

Jisung bit his lip so hard he wondered if he would draw blood. 

“Find out,” his pleasure-slurred voice said, hips rocking downward until Minho’s knuckles were leaving an indentation in his skin. 

“I think I have to,” Minho rasped, and in a fleeting moment, his fingers had vanished and Jisung instead felt a hand on either one of his hips, manoeuvring their bodies until his back hit the soft tuft of bed and Minho laid above him. “I’ll go insane if I don’t.” 

“Here,” Jisung whispered as he searched for the lube on the bed, popping open the cap to squirt a generous exertion onto his hand. “Let me…” 

Minho chewed his lip as Jisung slathered the gel generously on the length of his cock. 

Wordlessly, the older man reached past Jisung’s pliant body and grasped a pillow, raising an eyebrow as he motioned toward his hips. 

“Up,” he commands and Jisung obliges by planting his feet on the bed and pistoning his hips, finding comfort upon the pillow Minho laid beneath him as he did so. He truly had nowhere left to hide. He was in a position where Minho could see his every breath, every whimper, every tense of his stomach and buckle of his legs. But just a single cast of that warm gaze settled the tides that became wild rapids throughout Jisung’s core. 

“Minho,” he muttered through that delicate haze, flinching when he felt a single finger back inside of him until the second knuckle met his backside. He was trying to relax… take deep breaths and not succumb to being swallowed whole by the voices in his head that suffused the darkness. “Need you now.” 

“I know,” he whispers, for a fourth time. 

Jisung could just feel his tip pressed against his entrance and his entire body stiffened, hands reaching upward to grasp Minho’s– not wanting to go through this alone, not wanting to share this with anybody else, not wanting to risk that feeling of nothingness ever again. 

“Relax,” he nodded, gaze warm and filled with comfort. “We’ll take it slow.” 

Jisung swallowed back the reservations at the base of his throat. 

“I’d let you do anything,” his soft voice translates, eyes loyally borne to the way Minho tangled their fingers together, resting their gathered hands by the side of his head as their faces neared– only separated by the fact he had not entered his body yet. “You know that, though.” 

Minho doesn’t reply further than leaving a gentle kiss on the side of his mouth, glaring down to their hips and grasping his cock to press against his entrance. He felt it all when he edged inch by inch until they were one body– at one another’s avail, completely. 

Jisung’s chest stuttered at the sudden stretch that went far beyond what he felt with his fingers. He was sensitive and quick to grasp Minho tighter… but drenched in that heat that was floating around them. Minho didn’t move– he didn’t need to. Their eyes met, blinking and unsure. 

They must have stared at one another for a good twenty seconds. It was rare to experience something new together these days. They exhausted all of the restaurants between their dorms. In the countries they frequently visited, they had already perused through all the tourist attractions and tried the culinary delights each nation was famous for. They walked about eight of the thirty-one bridges of the Han River, realising very quickly it gets old after the first few. 

But this feeling, this lasting memory that Jisung knew he would never forget– even if the night ended in flames and the walls around them concave, it was something truly special… truly new. 

And because of that, Jisung didn’t find it strange when Minho’s lips turned into a small smile, and then a nudge of their noses together. The happiness caught on like a fire set wild, burning Jisung’s internal forest until he could give nothing more than shallow breaths of ash. 

Minho whispered his name when he gently thrust into Jisung, fucking him slowly with a steady rhythm, getting used to the tight fit, the younger man clinging onto him for dear life and the premise that nothing would ever go back to the way it once was the second they were finished with one another. 

“I…” Jisung whimpered, unsure if he wanted to suffix the sentence with a love you or a want this forever. His mouth was agape, only touched by Minho’s lips when he would thrust so deeply their faces may as well have become one. It was all so gentle, all so tender. Minho kissed his lips, his cheeks, his jaw, his neck… all the while pushing his cock in and out of him until his knees felt like they were going to give out. 

The pillow beneath his hips helped Minho reach so deep that stars were dazed out of the corner of Jisung’s eye. It wasn’t without that stinging sensation… not completely… but with the way Minho held him, whispered that Jisung felt so perfect, and kissed him with the fervour of six fucking years, it was easily eclipsed. 

Minho’s movements became sharp and the hotel room filled with soft moans and grunted breaths. He couldn’t help the whimper that fell through his teeth when he felt a hand clasp the length of his cock. It felt just as euphoric as the first time. He felt the slick of the lubricant drip down onto the bed, the harmonious squelch of their movements punctuating what little sense he could make of the situation. 

It was hard to hang on when Minho continued to fuck into him all the while pumping his hand up and down his length– ensuring he too saw the sunrise on the horizon. Overstimulated from all of the lube and friction, Jisung’s hands wrapped around Minho’s neck and kissed him so deeply– tasting his lips, drinking in his taste, syphoning what breath he could from his mutters and grunts. He kissed and kissed and kissed him. He could do so forever. Happily. Stupidly. Selfishly. 

“Look at me,” Minho whispered as he rolled his wrist, rubbing against the tip of Jisung’s cock to the point where he felt the base of his stomach twitch. “Look at me when you come. I wanna see.” 

Jisung’s insides coiled into a knot when the words fell from Minho’s mouth. They pulled apart and the younger man complied, fighting against the current that wanted so badly to squeeze his eyes shut, hide in the crook of Minho’s neck and come undone in the older man’s hand. But Minho only needed to ask, and Jisung would give him his soul in a box wrapped in ribbon. 

Minho continued to pump him through it– graduating to hard thrusts that rocked the younger man’s body to the point where the noises that escaped his mouth were teetering the brink of out of control. Jisung’s body was almost shaking, just about quivering, and with the way Minho’s dark eyes doubled down in their dire stare, he felt himself let go after a few more tugs of his cock. 

His eyes were blown and darkened when he came in Minho’s hand. His mouth fell open with soft cries and the strange warmth that attached itself to spilling his load before the same eyes he thought of every night in his dreams. One hand scrunched the sheets whilst the other clung onto Minho’s neck. While it was the sensation of being so deeply used by the older man, it was the way Minho looked at him as though he didn’t even blink. He didn’t want to miss a single part of it– not even a second. 

“Min– fuck,” Jisung panted as he went slack, saturating the space between their naked bodies, and collapsing into Minho’s arms as he continued to fuck him through the orgasm. 

It didn’t take much longer. With a couple more thrusts, and a stare that never dissipated, Minho’s body let go into Jisung– tying them together. 

Jisung felt the warmth injected into his body now full and tired, following the long drawn-out grunt of satisfaction that Minho made to sound angelic. Collapsing upon him like a blanket, uncaring of the mess, or the fact that Jisung’s body was covered in wistful pink marks like a sullied canvas, a gentle kiss is left upon the younger man’s neck. He could feel Minho’s soft breaths on his skin, a sheen of sweat melding with Jisung’s and almost autonomously, he employed a single hand to tangle in his hair, holding him as close as he needed to. 

“Six years, Jisung,” Minho said softly into the crook of his neck. “Six years.” 

Jisung pressed his chin on Minho’s head in a motion that could only be construed as a nod. 

“I know,” he whispered back, feeling the tethers of pleasure wash over him all at once and now came the rain of exhaustion. “It’s a long time, isn’t it?” 

Minho made a noise against Jisung’s skin. 

“Either I’m stupid, you’re stupid or we both are.” 

Jisung laughed gently, biting his lip as he stared at the ceiling– having nothing left to weigh him down. 

“I think we both are,” he concurred, Minho’s hair as gentle wisps between his fingers. 

The older man grunted, withdrawing his head away from the soft cavern he found solace in to crack his neck to the side, making a sharp click sound when his ear met his shoulder. 

“M’tired… I’ll tell you that much for free,” he huffed, eyes squeezed shut and despite his pink cheeks, slick lips and hair going in five different directions, Jisung felt his stomach simmer at the sight. It was the same man he fell in love with all those years ago. The fittest person he knew– who grunted and groaned, feigning exhaustion whenever convenient. 

“Of course you are,” Jisung rolled his eyes and took a deep breath, glaring down at the mess they made of themselves and each other. “Are you planning on sleeping forever after this?” 

Minho sighed and raised his head for their eyes to meet. 

“We have an early soundcheck,” he whispers and like an elevator reaching the lobby from the penthouse, Jisung got a reality check. 

Their lives were an endless tirade of show after show, schedule after schedule, meeting after meeting– with no end in sight. It would be physically impossible to lay with Minho between sunrise and sunset, where they wouldn’t need to do more than order room service, watch the TV shows they adored and never have to leave. It was a blessing only marred by the torturously painful curse that was loving Lee Minho. 

“Yeah– I almost forgot about that,” with a twist of his lips and furrow of his brows, he barely caught onto the fact he was frowning at the thought. 

“Wanna order some food and have a shower?” Minho offers, sensing the dread clinging to Jisung’s skin. “Don’t want to show up tomorrow stinking of sex.” 

Jisung’s lips coil to the side. 

“Yeah,” he whispered, hating that all he could see was the looming shadow surrounding their bodies– one they couldn’t run from, couldn’t hide from, couldn’t escape even if they tried. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful shadow and Jisung would follow Minho anywhere, even if the darkness did so too. “You’re paying, though.” 

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 .

A smile seemed to follow Minho’s every movement the next morning. By some strange twist of luck, the older man had an alarm programmed to sound on his phone when dawn came knocking. It worked out exceptionally well since their managers usually just barged into their rooms if they thought they had overslept. If they were to barge into their naked bodies, wistfully one under the covers, with traces of room service, strewn clothes, and the faint scent of their mixed colognes, it probably wouldn’t end well. 

Hence, how the alarm saved their asses and empowered Minho to quickly get himself dressed to escape to his room down the hall within the knick of time. 

Jisung sat cross-legged on the edge of the stage as he watched the technicians fiddle about with the screens behind the band and all around the arena. He couldn’t help but feel that same warmth when he saw Minho on the big screen. He had that pretty smile, bright and unfiltered– a portrait of no makeup, hair hidden in a cap, with comfortable clothes that hung on his figure. He was laughing through the song with Hyunjin and Felix, the three who always tackled this bridge with unseriousness and fun– brightening up their early morning calls and utterly tight schedule. 

Everything felt right in the world. His body felt warm… needed… wanted. In every blink, his mind cast itself back in fleeting flashes of Minho’s lips, his hands, the way it felt to really be held by him. But as he sat, dormant, watching the man he loved with that added glow surrounding his silhouette, he felt that familiar feeling wash over him like a wave made of molten lava. 

Again, he was sitting, watching, observing. 

But… he didn’t want to sit, watch and observe. He didn’t want to hide how he felt to the world. He didn’t want to tuck his hands beneath his thighs to suppress their autonomous whim in wanting to lace with Minho’s. He didn’t want to lie to Minho– or to himself… that this wasn’t slowly destroying him. 

It was a dark shadow that continued to pinpoint a curious detail of the previous night. His heart was laid before the older man. Minho had free reins to decimate it through the centre, rip it apart with two fists, squish it into a ball and throw it far, far away. And yet… Jisung didn’t even get to see a glimpse of his.

He wondered if Minho’s heart was as sensitive as his own. He wondered if it was quick to show itself or shy when confronted. He wondered if he gave it to those in the past with little thought, or if he guarded it with iron and steel. He wondered if he would see it… the same way Minho saw Jisung’s heart– all bloody, raw, and his. 

The words he spoke were some he would never forget– but he truly couldn’t help but wonder if there was more left buried beneath the surface, and for that, he couldn’t help but feel empty. 

“Han Jisung!” A voice grunts through the microphone and Jisung turns on his shoulder to about six pairs of eyes on him as Changbin begins to rap a familiar verse– his verse. 

“Ah– sorry, sorry,” Jisung shook his head when he realised he missed his cue, fiddling with the microphone before it was too late, and Changbin had successfully rapped the entirety of his part– leaving him sat to the edge of the stage with a mixed bag of onlookers, gawking at him in every way. It helped to have Chan discussing something or other with one of the technicians to the side– he couldn’t bear that protective glance toward him. 

“Boo!” Seungmin bellowed into the microphone as Jeongin began to sing his part through the daggers he was sending toward the younger man. “Jisung sucks!” 

Jisung shot Seungmin a playful glare, finally paying attention to the backing track and raising a fist where he quickly flashed his middle finger at the younger man who seemed to laugh to himself. 

He knew he had to pay attention but his mind remained preoccupied, the weight of Minho’s silence pressing on him. 

As the soundcheck progressed, Jisung managed to stay on track, but his inner turmoil persisted. Each song felt like a chore and he couldn’t bear to pay any mind to the lyrics. 

It was only hours later, in one of the backstage changerooms – a space that had once served as a locker room for the sports teams who used the same arena, he stood alone. The room echoed with his vocal warmups for the past half hour, a routine he adhered to religiously, despite the show being hours away. His reflection stared back at him in the mirror, a mask of practised professionalism and the broken eyes that once held the entirety of the universe in them the night before. 

Once he finished the last notes of his warm-up, he felt his heart jolt when he caught a glimpse of two familiar eyes in the mirror. 

“You sounded nice,” Minho raised an eyebrow, casually strolling with those deep dark eyes, always a mixture of understanding and concern. His footsteps were gentle wisps along the tiles, echoing off the walls and resounding in the younger man’s chest. Jisung could only blink at him through the mirror. 

It wasn’t a strange sight to see Minho before a show. They usually warmed up as a pair– singing their favourite soundtrack songs, or intricate anime openings that helped with their pronunciation and garnered secret laughter that the others wouldn’t understand when they would adlib or mock the characters’ voices. It hadn’t been weird all morning. In fact, everything felt normal. Minho’s gaze lingered upon him as it always did and in the fleeting glances they stole, Jisung couldn’t control the way his stomach coiled and breath hitched– knowing that there was nothing he could hide from him anymore. 

He didn’t need to move far, far away, change his name and become a hermit who lived in a forest lodge. He didn’t need to buy a shovel to dig himself to the other side of the world. He didn’t need to propose that he take an indefinite hiatus from the group… knowing that he could never face the man he loved simply because of that one fact. 

But he couldn’t shake that feeling that all they could be was this. 

“Thanks,” he sucks in a raspy breath, fingers pressing against his throat, massaging the skin as though it had the power to heal his vocal cords. “Are you warm?” 

“Nope,” he pops, sure to close the door behind them. “That’s why I’m here.” 

Jisung hesitated before responding, choosing his words carefully. 

“Well… I can’t do too much,” he turned away, staring back at himself in the mirror as he rubbed beneath his makeup-less eyes. “Last time they put me on vocal rest.” 

A hand is gently placed on his shoulder, turning the younger man back until their gazes apprehensively meet. 

“Been looking for you everywhere,” he whispers with that soft voice, the one Jisung heard read his thoughts aloud. “Are you hiding again?” 

“M’not hiding,” Jisung murmured back, cowering in his hiding spot. 

Minho shot him a look. The same look when he read through Seungmin’s fictitious tales that he set up to confuse Hyunjin. The same look he gave Chan when he would try and sprinkle sugar over a delicate situation. The same look he loved to give Jisung when he knew he was lying. 

His hand was gently massaging his shoulder, squeezing the flesh covered in a thick hoodie– all the while his eyes softened when they traversed his face… sure to linger longer when they bypassed his lips and his almost glassy eyes. 

He knew there was nothing he could hide from Minho and god he really did try. But the second he felt that poisonous lump forming in his throat, his voice opened and crackled all the same. 

“Well… I–” 

Minho sighed from his nose, the other hand finding its way to the side of Jisung’s cheek which was shockingly warm from the threat of spilling hot tears. 

“There you are,” the older man whispered, gaze unwavering. “Come on, tell me.”

Jisung felt a strange mixture of relief and warmth wash over him. 

“Is it about last night?” Minho began, his voice a gentle murmur. “About what we did?” 

All Jisung could muster was the shake of his head and the thinning of his lips. 

“It’s not about what we did,” he whispered, but the tremor in his voice betrayed his attempt at nonchalance. 

Minho posed that same hardened look in response, ripping Jisung’s autonomy to subdue his feelings away. His hand, still resting on his soft cheek tucked toward his hair, slid between the strands that had been washed the night before in their shared shower between kisses and complaints that Minho was going to get shampoo in his eye. 

Jisung knew he couldn’t escape the truth. He couldn’t escape the intensity in his glare, or the way he felt when held in his arms. Minho was both the safest place and an active volcano– surely harmless, but Jisung was far too frightened to venture anywhere near the edge. 

All he had the strength to do was whisper into the ether… hoping and praying that Minho still understood him better than anybody else he knew. 

“Last night… I told you, and you… you never said it back.” 

Minho’s expression shifted, a flicker of realisation crossing his face. Jisung felt the tension in his silence like a thick cloak, and all he could do was stare back at him, with nothing left to lose, nothing left to give, and furrow his bottom lip beneath the top. 

Jisung’s heart palpitated in his chest as Minho’s features transformed before him. The unfamiliar apprehension etched on Minho’s face hinted at a vulnerability that Jisung had never witnessed. He had never seen his eyebrows raise, as though he were collecting the thought from his brain and was preening it to fall from his mouth. He had never seen his lips thin and posture straighten in one swift movement. He had never seen such a look before. 

For a moment, it felt like time had frozen. Jisung’s mind was loud; racing with uncertainties, those regrets that followed him to sleep, and the fear of pushing Minho too far, too fast. He bared his soul the night before, and now, the unspoken words echoed in the space between them. 

Just as Jisung was about to give up, angry at himself for rushing Minho into a feeling he wasn’t sure was reciprocated, Minho cleared his throat. The sound cut through the heavy silence, and the younger man silenced that worried little voice that never shut up in his head. 

“I-I’m not good with words like you,” Minho muttered, his gaze fixated on the space between them– not affording Jisung anything even akin to eye contact. “If I wrote a song about you, about how you make me feel, it would be a mess.” 

Jisung’s eyes widened. The honesty of his words struck a chord within him. A pesky, sensitive, emotional chord that was strumming quietly in the base of his chest. 

“It would just be lyrics on a sheet of paper that went on and on and on forever,” he continued to glare at the blank space, almost as though he was scared to face the broken man before him. “None of it would make sense because how can I make sense of something that never ever made sense in my head?” 

Jisung swallowed that poisonous lump, but another soon formed in quick response, refusing his eyes the autonomous whim to blink in case he missed anything. 

“I-I thought that… I thought that if I came to terms with making sense of it all, I’d hurt you so bad that you wouldn’t want anything to do with me and god Jisung– I never want that,” he sucks in a soft breath, flickering his eyes toward the younger man. 

“How could you… How could you hurt me?” Jisung’s voice is weak, but there. “You could never– would never.” 

“Because I– I never loved you in the ways that I should’ve,” he whispered, clearing his throat, evident discomfort in the way the words fell from his lips. “At first, when I realised I didn’t see you like I saw the others, not even a little bit, I thought maybe one day I’ll grow the balls to do something.”

Jisung felt his eyes soften, unable to control the need to reach a hand forward, and clasp Minho’s wrist with his fingers. 

“And then the feelings changed,” he huffs, raising his eyebrows. “I didn’t want to just date you and see how things went. I didn’t want to see if you wanted a casual thing. I didn’t want to even try because I was too weak– too scared.” 

“They… They changed?” Jisung whispered, only strong enough to glance at Minho’s wrist held to his body. 

“Mm-hm. I loved you– even back then,” he says, pressing a shoulder forward, completely unbeknownst to the idea he completely, irrefutably, and wholly shifted Jisung’s world. “But as the years went on and on… and we got busier and busier… I stopped imagining what it would be like to take you out to dinner or to hold you until we fell asleep because we’ve been doing that forever– even if we both thought we couldn’t be anything more than what we were.” 

Jisung didn’t quite know what to make of the words and for the first time in a long time, he felt no need to jump in. He just wanted to stand before the man he loved and listen. 

“I could only think of what it would be like if we had a place of our own or went on holiday– just the two of us. No cameras, no managers, no phones,” he whispers, a subtle smile playing on his lips as though he was imagining the two of them, in a house by the beach somewhere. “Just us.”

No alarms. No deadlines. No interruptions. Jisung could just smell the sea breeze and feel the salt on his skin, long after they had swam through the waves together– not quite good at it, but giving it a real go. He could just see the wrinkles that would form by Minho’s eyes when he laughed, or the way he would curse Jisung out if he lost a game of cards that they would play by the fire between a bottle of wine. He could feel his fingers and lips all over his body… only imagining the endless ways they could explore one another if left to their own devices. 

“I started to think about ways I’d need to wake you up of a morning because fuck it’s impossible with you sometimes,” a laugh followed along, and Jisung blinked through the tears that craved freedom from his ducts the more he spoke. “I thought of how I’d introduce you to the rest of my family– not just my grandparents… even–” 

“Even that uncle of yours who you can’t stand?” Jisung whispers, knowing his cheeks were pink, flushed and ready to be saturated but not caring… not even in the slightest. 

“Yeah– even him,” Minho scoffs with a chuckle. “I thought about after we slow down with the music and the performances and how I’d need to buy a place near yours just so I can have somewhere to go. I thought about how I’d need to come by once a day, to clean up your dirty dishes and do your laundry because I know you hate it and I hate it too but if it meant I got to hear your laugh and watch you pretend to help, I’d be happy enough to I don’t know… retile your entire kitchen or something while I was at it.” 

Jisung laughed, and then he cried. 

“I thought that maybe… if I imagined hard enough… I could maybe stand beside you, sign some papers, and tell the world that I loved you more than anything,” he whispered as Jisung silently felt his bottom lip curl beneath the top, trying to suppress the sobs that wished to follow. “And then I thought, if you didn’t believe in that or didn’t need a piece of paper that told the world we loved each other– I could just be yours forever, and that would be enough.” 

The ground beneath Jisung moved on a seismic scale. The words were a cascade, a torrent that swept him away in a deep ocean– one he once imagined would drown him, but all he saw on Minho’s face was that gentle fervour of someone who loved him… truly loved him.

 His eyes swam with unshed tears, and he found himself lost in the beauty of Minho’s envisioned future. The lazy mornings, shared laughter, cats they could collect and spend all of the money they made with music in spoiling them. He thought of having the members over for dinner, where they would all end up in the kitchen with Minho– eating dinner out of the pan before he even plated up, just like they used to. He thought of how they would need an apartment big enough for a piano so he could write songs and have a perfect muse to draw inspiration from. He imagined their walls– filled with mismatched frames that held pictures of their families, their accomplishments, awards and group photos (even the embarrassing ones from when they were teens). He imagined their bedside tables– one side an endless pile of comic books and action figures, the other an endless pile of novels and some flowers in a vase. 

His gaze remained fixated on Minho’s, searching for sincerity and instead, finding a vulnerability that mirrored his own. 

“I’m not sure how I could say I love you and have it mean… all that,” Minho’s fingers brushed against Jisung’s, that touch bearing comfort and a mutual understanding. “And maybe I’m still scared and stupid and out of touch with this– with you, but when you told me you loved me and I couldn’t say it back, it’s not because I don’t, it’s because I didn’t know where to begin.” 

In that quiet moment, two souls laid bare, Jisung felt the fractures that had formed in his heart find solace in the man before him. A tender smile graced his lips as he squeezed Minho’s hand in reassurance. He could just see their reflection out of the corner of his eye. A mess of a portrait but one he loved… one that he loved just so much. 

It conjured that same feeling he felt all those years ago– when they first made it big. Seeing the crowd scream their name, sing along to the songs they put everything into, hold up signs and dance along to the choreography, he developed something of imposter syndrome. He questioned why he felt like he was undeserving of all that attention, all that praise. But over time, the question of why soon turned into plentiful realisation. 

Because that is what they deserved.

“And look, if you want a song, I’ll write you one,” he continues unabashedly as he reaches a knuckle toward Jisung’s cheeks to wipe away his tears. “But it’ll probably go for ten minutes and Chan would straight out refuse to produce it.” 

Jisung laughed into Minho’s chest, finding safety in his touch, his arms, his breath when it hit the crook of his neck as he wrapped him into a bundle. He could smell his cologne, the hotel shampoo, the strange sweetness from the hairspray probably residual in the cap upon his head. 

“I don’t want a song,” Jisung whispered in his arms. “I don’t want anything more than this.” 

A laugh reverberated between the barely-there space separating them. 

“I love our life, Jisung,” Minho murmured by his ear, leaving a kiss on the delicate skin. “I love doing this with you. I love all the places we get to go. All the people we get to meet. I don’t want that to end.” 

Jisung nodded, pulling apart for their eyes to meet– even if Minho’s were the dreamiest in the world and Jisung’s were red in all the places surrounding them. 

“I love our life too,” he whispers, meaning it. “Really… it’s nothing like I ever imagined.” 

“And maybe when I’m thirty and my joints crack so much that you’ll have to be my live-in nurse, we can find a place that’s just ours and start another life… just like the one I imagined.” 

They were sweet words, a melody– Minho’s magnum opus. 

Jisung imagined the violins and the piano that would dance alongside the lyrics. He imagined Minho’s voice, his legato and intonation. He imagined laying back in his bed, impossibly big headphones wrapped around his ears and listening to their song on repeat. 

He imagined that it very well may become their reality… but not without venturing upon the greatest ride of their lives first. 

And so, Jisung whispered the remaining lyrics of their song toward the man he would love until the moon dipped below the horizon and never returned, until the stars faded into memory, until the sun heated the earth and exploded into an all-consuming ball of energy. 

“Together– as we are now, as we were then.”