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There’s always been something wrong with him, in a way Jisung never quite understood how to put into words. Many things, most likely, but some of them do have words and they’re easier to talk about. It’s easier to talk about anxiety, about the brutal beast that lurks around every corner, because it has a name. There’s something to blame when his hands shake and his face goes numb and taking in breath is a herculean task. It’s easier to identify and because of it, it’s easier to tame. To wrangle under control and understand and try to come out on top of. That part is simple, very much so, breathable and palatable and while not normal or stereotypical, it’s manageable.
Whatever this thing curled through Jisung’s ribcage is, it’s not as easy to tame, nor as easy to manage. Jisung is a lyricist, a musician, an artist; he pours everything he has into his songs and he watches a little too much anime to get the job done. He writes about loss and love and all sorts of things and yet the songs he pens after yet another slice of life romance anime always feel so… detached. Jisung always finds himself frowning at the page, unsure if they make any sense, even as everyone around him reassures him. And it’s not like he can even claim that they’re just appeasing him; Chan and Changbin are far from people who would spare his feelings about something that is, quite literally, their entire job. They always have tweaks and adjustments but the core of it all is the same: Jisung writes well, composes well, performs well.
He’s not sure when the performance extended to every day, all the time, no matter what. He grew up watching cute shows and daydreaming about the perfect relationship, he writes songs about it and wonders and watches people as they pass by on the street and makes up stories for them in his head. Jisung loves romance, loves all the different kinds of love, he knows everything there is to know about them from rabbit hole research nights clicking through wikipedia articles and scholarly articles and blog posts. Jisung knows everything there is to know about love, and he adores it, and he knows that he should crave it.
The secret he keeps locked deep in his heart is that, when he had his first kiss, he’d fought down the urge to throw up afterwards. It had been so uncomfortable, wrong in a way that made his skin crawl. It had been with a girl, so for years, he tried to make himself believe that it’s just because he didn’t like girls; even if that was still a terrifying thought. It turned him into a bit of a moody and aggressive teenager, floundering through emotions bigger than himself, stranded and scared and unsure. Jisung isn’t really proud of how he acted during that time, but there’s nothing he can do about it now. And when he finally kissed a boy (Jeongin, in the practice rooms, something the younger vehemently denies) the same thing happened.
Jisung had tried so hard to brush it off, laughing and joking about it, but deep down there was nothing but terror. He never really spoke about it, never tried to put a word to it. It just didn’t make sense. Jisung adores the concept of romance, he writes about it all the time, he knows the ins and outs of it all and he wants to have someone that knows him almost better than he knows himself. He wants that closeness, that companionship, that feeling of being the first choice and the one that’s always considered. Jisung wants to be someone’s first priority, craves it so bad it makes his teeth ache. And yet both times he’d tried to kiss someone, it felt wrong. Grating against his skin. Jisung remembers brushing his teeth over and over and over but the feeling just wouldn’t go away. It persisted.
He buries it.
As deep down as he can go into his heart, Jisung buries it. He writes love songs and thinly veiled sex songs and laughs it off when he’s asked for his inspiration. He gives the same bullshit answer he always tells the fans and it feels so hollow because it’s the only answer he has. He’s enamored with the idea of love, but the moment it’s offered, he recoils. Jisung doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand why this is happening, why he’s like this, why he can’t just kiss someone and be normal about it. Maybe it’s sensory, he decides eventually. Because something has to give. Something has to make sense. He can’t keep tripping his way through life without knowing what he feels or why he feels it. He’s a musician, for fuck’s sake, emotions are part of the job. He sees the sappy lyrics Changbin writes about Hyunjin, the red on Chan’s cheeks whenever they’re working on another sex song he conceived.
Jisung is… adrift.
He doesn’t know how else to explain it. The lack of a tether, the way he seems to be the only one that sees the gaping cavern between himself and his bandmates, his friends, his family. His people. He loves them, and he loves them with everything he has, and he doesn’t really understand how something like that isn’t enough. Romantic love is beautiful, sure; it sounds like a dream come true, like everything that everyone could ever need in life. It’s supposed to be the ultimate goal, the peak of life, and Jisung wants. He does. He really, truly wants to love someone and be loved in return. But every time Changbin muses about what flavor chapstick Hyunjin is wearing or Chan mumbles another line of weirdly specific prose that can be linked to Felix, Jisung feels the cracks expanding.
The catalyst is an accident. Jisung never really pays attention to his social media algorithm, and it’s inevitable that he gets videos about his own band, but the editing and the caption make him freeze dead in his tracks, staring blankly at the screen. He’s alone in the studio, for once, Changbin long asleep and Felix having dragged Chan out somewhere; Jisung waved them off around midnight. It’s been a couple hours since and Jisung is sitting by himself, on the floor, watching with empty eyes as a video plays on his phone screen. A video with a cutesy romantic song in the background with a compilation of moments of him onstage with Minho, or in video content with Minho, or just existing around Minho. The caption is squealing about heart eyes and romance and how they’re so sure that they kiss and Jisung feels sick.
He loves Minho. He does! He really, truly does! He loves Minho in a way that isn’t really the same as the way he loves everyone else, somehow, but he doesn’t want to kiss him. He’s perfectly content with the way they are now, because Minho has never made him feel like a second choice. Minho knows him, down to the bones, to the marrow, to the soul. Jisung has never met someone he’s clicked with faster or someone he’s loved more, but the mere idea of kissing him feels so, so wrong. Jisung wants everything with Minho but not that.
Never that.
Jisung’s phone slips from his fingers and hits the floor, saved from cracking by the screen protector and the case. Never that. The phrase spins in his head for a moment, two, three, and then the devastating realization finally sets in: Jisung doesn’t want to kiss anyone, not even the person he’d say he loves most if forced to admit it. He doesn’t want sex with anyone. He doesn’t want any grand romantic gestures or things that have some sort of layered meaning or to call anyone as a romantic partner. He doesn’t want to be a boyfriend, have a boyfriend, get married. He doesn’t want to have kids. He doesn’t want any of it. It sounds repulsive when he puts himself in the shoes of a romance protagonist and the sudden slam of realization is nothing short of horrifying.
How could he just… not desire that? Not want it? He’s been writing love songs for years. Jisung knows love. He wants someone that’s his person, but he doesn’t want to kiss them. He wants to be the most important person in Minho’s life.
He doesn’t want to date him.
The breath Jisung takes shudders, catches. His exhale is a sob, confused and devastated and grieving. He doesn’t understand. Love is human, isn’t it? Something so intricate to existing? How can he just not want it? How could he have never felt it? He feels dizzy, remembering drinking games he always won and truth or dare rounds he breezed through. Every time he’d frowned at metaphors and needed someone to explain them and not quite understood something that everyone else seemed to just inherently get. He’s never gotten it. He’s never understood a goddamn thing.
Jisung wishes he could throw his phone and watch it shatter. He wishes he could block the fan who made the edit. He wishes he could rip himself out of his body and shove his soul into something that could understand it all. Jisung wishes he could want to love someone, and yet he doesn’t. He just… doesn’t. Romance is something he’s always found so beautiful and been so fascinated by and yet it’s two in the morning and he’s cracking, breaking, splintering apart because he can’t partake in that beauty. Contracts and company bullshit aside, there’s no space for someone who refuses to kiss, refuses sex, refuses every natural part of a romantic relationship. There’s no space for him.
He has notebooks on notebooks of words and lyrics and scribbles that relate back to love because he’s always been fascinated by it. He’s watched dozens of shows, read books and manga, listened to love songs from other musicians and admired how beautiful it all is. Love is something that’s so gorgeous, so pretty, so… good. And Jisung can’t feel it. There’s nothing humming beneath his skin except platonic adoration for his friends, his family. But if he can’t love someone, can’t kiss, can’t fuck, would anyone ever keep him as a priority? He’s seen how people always pick their partners, whoever they’re dating or married to. Jisung wants to be a first choice but not like that but there isn’t any other way.
A gentle knock on the studio door rips Jisung out of his thoughts, and he tenses, waiting. Changbin and Chan shouldn’t be returning at all, given the time. That really only leaves one other option and Jisung is quick to lock his phone, ignoring the urge to throw it at the wall. Not even a moment later, the door pushes open, and Minho is standing there, eyes tired, bundled in a hoodie and sweatpants. He has a studio access keycard in one hand and his phone in the other and Jisung stares, waiting. Praying. Wondering.
There’s no spark, or flurry of butterflies. There is nothing. There’s never been anything, and there never will be, and Jisung shatters, curling in on himself, face shoved into his arms to avoid meeting Minho’s gaze. He knows Minho like the back of his hand and he knows that the other will falter, frown, and then step inside and close the door. The door clicks shut a moment later and Jisung knows he’s right, especially when Minho crouches down next to him, one hand hovering in the air before reaching to rest against the top of Jisung’s head, smoothing through his hair. Jisung wishes he wanted to kiss him. All he wants is a hug.
“Jagi-yah,” Minho calls, his voice soft, concerned. “What’s got you crying in the studio at this time of night?”
Jisung’s chest hurts. It aches, wanting to cave in on itself. He wishes he could want Minho in a way that everyone deems normal, because this would be a justified breakdown. But it isn’t. And it hurts. Jisung is shattering to pieces over the fact that he will never really love someone the way he’s supposed to and he doesn’t know what to do about it. It’s a long-standing defect, from the girl on the playground to Jeongin in the practice rooms and everything in-between. Something is broken, something is wrong, Jisung could’ve been such a good boyfriend for Minho but the word referring to himself makes him want to scream. Rip his own skin off to get rid of the discomfort.
“…Nothing important,” Jisung decides on as an answer, and Minho clicks his tongue.
“If you’re crying, it’s definitely important.” Minho sounds so sure, so calm, so everything Jisung should want and need. Jisung wants to hoard him to himself, to ensure that he’s always Minho’s number one person, but he can’t ask someone so bright to sacrifice the amount of things it would take to be on Jisung’s level. To rip out so much humanity and sink down into the depths. To become something other, something not quite right, something behind the aquarium glass wishing and wondering and praying for something to change when it never will.
“It’s nothing.” Jisung knows he sounds raw, cracked. But there’s no words for this because it is nothing. There is nothing. There are words for liking boys, there are words for liking both, but Jisung doesn’t know if there’s words for liking neither. For liking nothing. For being so far out of the ordinary he’s drifting alone in an endless void of space, watching stars pass, wondering why he can’t just glow the same way they do. It looks so easy, and sounds so easy, and yet. Jisung can’t do it. He just… can’t. There is nothing, no tether to grab onto, there’s no way to explain this. He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know where to start.
“Mm. Okay.” Minho’s voice is soft, so gentle, so kind. Jisung wishes he could love him properly. He wishes he could be the person Minho deserves instead of this broken, bleeding mess. “Let’s go home then, hm? Get you into a proper bed.”
Jisung can only nod, can only let Minho help him stand, can only lean against him as they call the elevator and request a taxi. Jisung fiddles with Minho’s hand between his fingers, staring blankly as stray tears keep falling. They just won’t stop, even as Minho wipes them away, even as Jisung can see the confused furrow in Minho’s eyebrows. The ride to the dorms is quiet, broken only by the occasional sniffle from Jisung. He doesn’t have words to fill the silence and Minho is the kind of person to let someone speak on their own time, and so they end up not speaking at all. Jisung wishes this was a problem he could voice, something simple, something that makes sense. But this is a storm, endless, sharp winds ripping through Jisung’s skin. There’s no sign of them slowing or stopping. All Jisung can do is weather them and wonder if it’ll ever end.
Minho’s hands are so gentle as he helps Jisung out of the car and into the dorm, both of them silently kicking off their shoes and adding them to the pile by the door. Jisung’s heart burns when he sees Felix and Chan’s shoes right next to each other, like they belong together. Jisung won’t ever be able to belong next to someone, even if he tries. Because if he tried, there’s the risk of not being enough, of never finding someone looking for the same thing as him. He doesn’t even know what the hell he’s looking for beyond someone to put him first.
Minho does such a good job of it. He deserves so much better.
The nighttime routine Jisung is gently pushed through isn’t as intense as it probably should be, but he doesn’t care; he’s too drained for it. Too exhausted from possibilities spinning through his mind and the crushing sense of grief that hasn’t left. Love is so prominent everywhere, in everything; it’s the ultimate goal for everyone. And yet here Jisung is, not wanting it, purposefully turning his back on the golden prize. It’s not a goal he has, nothing he wants. Even if he wishes he could want it, if nothing else than to fit in, to be normal, to be—
“Sung-ah.”
Jisung blinks when Minho calls his name, looking over at him. He’s sitting on Minho’s bed as Minho changes into sleep clothes, and Minho seems to have finished, standing before Jisung with his hands on his hips. Jisung blinks up at him once, twice — wonders if someone else in his position would want to kiss Minho. Jisung just kind of wants a hug.
“Hyung.”
Jisung’s response is in the same tone; flat, expectant. Minho tilts his head and Jisung tilts his own right back. They stare at each other before Minho eventually climbs into the bed, throwing an arm over Jisung’s waist, keeping him close as Jisung folds into his touch. This is something Jisung wants, craves; he thrives on touch, on physical affection. And yet the idea of Minho’s lips on his own makes him sick.
“Sleep,” Minho instructs, and Jisung hums, forehead against Minho’s chest, not reaching for sleep. Anyone seeing them tangled close like this might assume that they’re boyfriends, lovers; Jisung hates both words. He doesn’t want them. He wants Minho, but not the way everyone apparently thinks he should want him. He wants to cuddle Minho and hold his hand and be his first priority but he doesn’t want to kiss, doesn’t want sex, doesn’t want the labels that make him feel nauseous. Jisung wants and wishes and it would be so, so much easier if he was made with the same makeup as everyone else, if he was able to actually understand the innuendos and the constant desire for love.
But he wasn’t. So he doesn’t get it. And there’s such a profound sort of loneliness to it that Jisung doesn’t know how to handle.
Minho’s fingers tap against Jisung’s back, a simple gesture, three light points of pressure. A silent declaration of love.
Jisung squeezes his eyes shut tight, and mourns the person he could’ve been if he could just love Minho.