Archive of Our Own

Chan comes offstage panting, covered in a thin sheen of sweat. He can feel the layer of glitter dusted across his cheeks growing sticky; his perfectly fitted outfit clinging. He fans his face. He’s elated. Meets Soonyoung’s grin, Junhui’s, Minghao’s. Falls into their arms, buoyant.

He killed the stage, and he knows it. Lighter than air as his feet carried him through the steps they can do in their sleep after so many months of practice. After so many months before that spent dreaming of making his vision a reality. His friends flowing through it alongside him, perfect united harmony.

Not his first summer showcase – the dance school where he teaches puts it on every year – but the first one where he choreographed the closing performance he does with the other instructors. Usually it’s Soonyoung, who’s his senior and has been with the company longest. This time he insisted Chan – the youngest of them – take the reins.

It heartens him, this faith. He knows who he is, and he knows he’s good, but it’s an honor to have it acknowledged by someone he respects so deeply. So nothing can get him down tonight. It went amazing. He was certain it would.

More than that: Wonwoo was in the audience. Chan might be the only person in the world who considers performing in front of their crush exciting rather than absolutely terrifying, but it gave him even more confidence. He peeked through the curtains before they went on and saw Wonwoo – stuffed between a bickering Jeonghan and Seokmin; you’d never know they’re in love unless you were close enough to see the softness in their eyes – peering around the packed room like he was slightly intimidated and a lot amazed. A precursor to the look of awe Wonwoo wears on occasion – when he watches a movie that blows him away; when Mingyu drops off a Tupperware of his homemade bibimmyeon; when Junhui brings over his cat for Wonwoo to take care of when he goes home to China for a visit or accompanies Joshua to Los Angeles.

It’s the way Wonwoo’s eyes widen behind his circular frames. The way his mouth forms that little O that curves slightly up at the edges. Wonderment made person, and so beautiful and innocent that Chan almost feels bad for wanting to devour him.

So he’s fantasized about the way Wonwoo’s mouth might drop open when he sees Chan performing his own choreography. How he might come up to Chan after the show so astounded he couldn’t wait until they got back to their shared apartment; had no choice but to sneak backstage and find the nearest dressing room to pin Chan down in, where anyone might walk in on them.

Chan didn’t get a glance of him after the show, the curtains sweeping closed as they took their bows. So he’ll have to imagine the expression. Easy enough – he’s studied it. He’s sure movies are awesome and Mingyu’s bibimmyeon is great and Junhui’s cat is cute when she’s not being a menace, but he’s never really noticed. He sits beside Wonwoo and tries to be surreptitious about his staring, probably failing miserably. He dreams of that look on the nights he almost tells him about his feelings, then chickens out at the last second.

Soonyoung is squeezing him so tight he might suffocate before he even sees Wonwoo again, whispering earnest and heartfelt congratulations. Junhui has pulled back from the hug, taking Minghao with him. Over Soonyoung’s shoulder Chan sees him twirl Minghao around in a clumsy circle that ends with them almost toppling to the ground and Minghao releasing a string of Chinese from his lips Chan can only assume are expletives based on past experience. Junhui giggles with delight and twirls him again. Soonyoung finally releases Chan, who makes a big show of folding over and steadying himself on his knees, catching his breath dramatically.

Wonwoo does sneak backstage, though not to kiss him. He peers around the curtain last, behind all the rest of their friends – and God, Chan forgets just how many of them there are until moments like this, where they all shuffle behind the curtain single-file to congratulate the dance troupe.

He straightens back up. Feels the grin that has made a home on his face ever since the curtains fell grow wider than he thought possible. Gets a few claps on the shoulder as everyone crowds around them. His eyes are locked on Wonwoo, though, who is beelining in his direction.

On his periphery Chan is aware of Mingyu extracting Minghao from Junhui’s hold to engulf him in his big arms, lifting him clean off the floor. There’s Seungkwan and Seokmin, arms linked and singing their congratulations as they fall all over Soonyoung. There’s Hansol shaking his head at them fondly and going for Junhui, before Joshua cuts right in front of him in order to kiss his boyfriend wetly on the lips – to loud groans from the rest of the room. Hansol changes direction swiftly, eyes wide in alarm. Joshua and Junhui don’t stop making out. If anything they’re spurred on by the exclamations of disgust ringing out.

Everyone gathers around, but Chan has eyes for only one person. And there are butterflies in his stomach. Even after years of living with him, Wonwoo still has that effect. But who can blame Chan, when Wonwoo’s eyes twinkle like that?

So Chan doesn’t get kissed. That’s okay. His dreams serve him nicely anyway. The hug is just as special, he thinks, his stomach fully somersaulting as Wonwoo envelops him. He is warm and broad and safe and in his arms Chan lets his body go slack for the first time since the final rehearsal this afternoon, hours ago. His muscles soften.

So he sighs as he melts into the embrace, Wonwoo tightening his grip. So a hug from Wonwoo is more effective at relaxing him than a hot bath has ever been. So he almost falls asleep there and then. So he’s about ten seconds away from blurting out a confession he’s not ready for yet, especially not when they’re surrounded.

So Soonyoung’s eager, booming voice addressing the room is both a blessing and the worst thing to ever happen to him.

“We’re going out tonight, right?”

Wide, hopeful eyes scan the group as Wonwoo lets Chan go again. He is swept up in Seungcheol’s embrace next. From a few paces away, Jihoon gives him a huge, proud grin. He can feel Soonyoung looking at him expectantly.

“Go shower,” he laughs, twisting out of Seungcheol’s hold to look at Soonyoung. “You stink.”

Soonyoung sticks out his tongue, but the rest of his face is laughing. Eyes, nose, cheeks, all of it scrunched up in glee.

A loose plan is made. The dance troupe will clean up and get changed, then meet everyone else at the bar two streets away. A favorite haunt of the entire dance school, booked out tonight in celebration of the showcase for anyone that wants to come and is of age (that includes all the instructors and older students that performed this evening) as well as their friends and family. Chan is aware theirs will make up a massive chunk of it. Maybe he should be embarrassed. Instead he just feels lucky.

Soonyoung, Minghao and Junhui head in the direction of the dressing rooms. Joshua is holding onto Junhui’s hand for as long as he can until they are forced to separate. He clutches at his chest theatrically as if they won’t see each other again shortly. Mingyu gives Minghao a resounding smack on the cheek. There’s a surreptitious look passed between Soonyoung and Seungkwan – as surreptitious as those two are capable of being. That’s new, Chan thinks, and makes a note to pay more attention.

Everyone else begins to trickle in the direction of the exit, those that haven’t hugged Chan yet swooping in for their turn. Before he can make for the dressing room himself, Wonwoo tugs at his sleeve.

Chan turns around to be met with his searching gaze and his stomach does another somersault as soon as his eyes make contact with it.

“Hey,” Chan mutters. “You okay? You feel like going out with everyone this evening?”

Chan loves to party. Loves it. But he knows the look that’s creeping across Wonwoo’s features – the one that says he’s not quite feeling up to all those people, the sticky floors, the loud music.

“Would you be mad if I didn’t come?”

“Do you know me at all?” Chan asks, mock offended. He’s grinning, because Wonwoo is so damn cute shifting from foot to foot, fidgeting with the bracelet on his right wrist.

“I don’t want you to think I don’t care enough to celebrate you. You were amazing.”

Chan punches his shoulder. Then wonders why he did that – to hide his burgeoning blush, maybe. The reassuring smile comes easy and Wonwoo matches it, even with his eyebrows still knit together in apology.

“I’m tired,” Chan says. “Like, really tired.” It’s not a lie at all. He’s been pushing himself extra hard for weeks to ensure tonight goes perfectly. “If you wait for me to go freshen up quickly, we can go home together?”

“You don’t have to miss out on your evening for me!” Wonwoo looks aghast at the thought of it, eyes horrified saucers behind his glasses.

“I’m not,” Chan says. It’s not a lie either. He does love to party. But also, he really is tired. And another irrefutable truth is this: if he goes out and Wonwoo doesn’t, he will spend the entire evening wishing he was with him. It’s the reason he likes to drag him out whenever he gets the opportunity. Claims it’s good for him, which is just a clumsily sewn veil for his own separation anxiety (which itself is a more palatable way of saying enormous, embarrassing crush on his best friend and roommate). Another reason might be that alcohol makes it a little easier to be all over him; with both their inhibitions lowered, touches flow more freely and with less caution.

Chan doesn’t push, though. Not if Wonwoo doesn’t want it. Home with him beats a bar any day.

“Honestly, I just wanna go home and unwind with a movie or something,” he says earnestly.

Wonwoo’s eyes brighten at the prospect, some of the anxiety fading out of them. He nods eagerly.

“If you’re sure,” he says. Chan gives him his biggest, brightest smile, the one his mom describes as winning. One of these days it’s got to work on him, doesn’t it?

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he promises, and just about skips off to get changed.

Wonwoo spends the entire walk to the subway, subway ride, and walk from the subway to their apartment coming back again and again to how good Chan was onstage. He even pulls out his phone to proudly show Chan the video he took, though it’s not centered because, as he sheepishly admits, his eyes weren’t actually on the screen; too riveted by the live performance. Chan almost disintegrates under all the praise, so devastatingly sincere because Wonwoo is rarely anything different unless he’s joking.

Getting home and into the shower is a sorely needed mental reset. He breathes. Tries to will his wildly rabbiting heart into submission. Wonders, for a moment, why he wanted this and didn’t just go out with the rest of his friends. Knows it’s because he is weak and Jeon Wonwoo makes him a crazy person.

And not long after, they end up on the sofa watching Avengers: Endgame for what is probably Wonwoo’s twentieth time and Chan’s third, at least. He still couldn’t give you a rundown of what happens in it. They have two flavors of potato chip – honey butter and cheese – and some gochujang caramel corn on the coffee table. A Funko Pop of Naruto is the appointed snack bowl guardian.

The fact that Chan does not actually give a shit about the Avengers is a secret he’ll take to his grave. He asked Wonwoo to pick because he has no wishes tonight except the couch, snacks, and him – though he didn’t say that last part, of course.

The first time they watched the movie together, Chan spent it all enraptured by Wonwoo, who was enraptured by the screen, and didn’t even have to pretend not to have understood anything when he asked Wonwoo to explain the plot afterwards. Mostly, of course, to get him talking – unfurling like he only does when someone shows an interest in one of his passions – and to keep his legs in Chan’s lap, where they’d landed sometime during the second act. Chan had worked up the courage to start petting them during the third and Wonwoo had let him.

The second time they watched it, it was after Wonwoo had come to Chan’s room and knocked so softly Chan almost hadn’t heard it. He’d had red eyes, a red nose, and been even less capable of holding eye contact than otherwise when he’d asked, in a meek tone, if Chan would be in the mood to keep him company.

Chan hadn’t asked what was wrong. He’d taken what was being offered to him, picked out the movie because Wonwoo was struggling with making a decision, and spent the entirety of it stroking Wonwoo’s shoulder. Squeezing when he took shaky breaths and looking intently at the screen when Wonwoo started crying near the end, determined not to spook him out of ever being vulnerable again. Grateful for this precious gift; more grateful for the smile Wonwoo gave him when the credits finished rolling. Watery but genuine, with eye contact and everything, right before he dropped his head onto Chan’s shoulder and draped his arm over his waist, curling his fingers into the hem of his t-shirt like it was the only thing anchoring him.

They stayed until Chan’s arm fell asleep. He kept stroking Wonwoo’s shoulder and didn’t dream of telling him of his discomfort, just shook his limbs out privately in his room later on, once he was certain Wonwoo had settled into his own bed with even breath.

Both times, Chan didn’t register too much of the onscreen happenings.

He can already tell that tonight is going to go similarly when the opening plays and Wonwoo immediately scoots right in beside him until their sides are pressed against one another. Chan tautens initially, but he’s already relaxed by the time Hawkeye – that’s Hawkeye, right? That was his name? – discovers his family is missing.

One of them needs to be chill, and even though Wonwoo is the one that initiated the proximity, his back is far straighter than anyone’s should be on their own couch as they’re watching one of their favorite movies. So Chan lets go of his own tension. Lets his hands come to rest in his lap, his pinky already poking at the material of Wonwoo’s sweatpants, toying with the idea of letting his entire hand trespass over onto his leg. They will be cuddling sooner or later. How long they take to get there varies, but the hypothesis has never been disproven, and the result has never been disappointing.

Another secret Chan will take to the grave with him is that even though he does not give much of a shit about the Avengers, and could not recite the plot of this movie from start to finish with a gun to his head, he is rapidly considering it one of his favorites, too. It’s the three-hour one-minute runtime. Three hours and one minute of uninterrupted Wonwoo time, and this time their bodies have been in contact since the Marvel logo pieced itself together on the screen, which is new and not something he’ll squander willingly.

He dares a glance to the side to find Wonwoo with his eyes glued to the movie. The room is unlit save for the television, a string of pale fairy lights that is draped across the shelf of anime and Riot figurines and Switch game cases on the wall behind them, and whatever weak beams the rising moon is conjuring through the window on the far side of the room.

The TV reflects in Wonwoo’s glasses. Behind them, his eyes are more illuminated than any of the room’s other light sources. If Chan keeps staring, he’s going to pitch forward in an attempt to go deep sea diving, and he forgot to bring an oxygen tank to his own living room. His bad. He should know better than to not be alert in this apartment.

The rest of Wonwoo isn’t any less fatal to take in. He changed out of his jeans and button-down (devastating, by the way) once they got home, while Chan was showering. But Chan thinks he’s significantly less life-threatening in his sweats and old t-shirt than Wonwoo is.

Wonwoo’s wearing one of his favorite shirts – a worn, faded brown with a print on it from the restaurant his dad used to work at. Loose in the collar from his dad’s habit of ripping the necklines of his shirts open in the heat of the kitchen, and a little too short on the waist because Wonwoo turned out taller than anybody expected. Sometimes, when he stretches, there’s a strip of honey skin that Chan sees every time he closes his eyes for a good few hours afterwards, burning infrared in his mind’s eye like a thermal signature, or like he stared at the sun too long. Somedays he needs an oxygen tank at home, and somedays it’s sunglasses. Maybe a blindfold. He always pretends to himself he doesn’t see the trail of hair when that happens, the one that leads down beneath the typically too-low waistline of whatever pants Wonwoo’s wearing, but his subconscious conjures up the image in the most inopportune moments regardless.

Today, Wonwoo’s sweatpants are frayed and similarly well-worn, a little short on the ankles too, a little low on the hips as usual, and hugging the rest of him a little too nicely. When Chan reaches for the sofa’s armrest and the blanket hanging there to throw over their legs, it’s only partially for the coziness factor.

It pools in Wonwoo’s lap, around Chan’s hips. He swallows and forces his eyes back onto the movie. There’s characters on screen he swears he’s never once seen.

Wonwoo shifts beside him, and Chan doesn’t know if the way he scoots even closer is an accident. If he turned his head now, he’d go cross-eyed trying to take in Wonwoo’s profile. He can hear him breathing. It raises the hair on Chan’s arms, the back of his neck. He’s slumped against the sofa, but his hands are way too stiff atop his legs.

This isn’t weird. They’re best friends, and nobody in their circle knows anything of personal space. When they’re out in public Chan has no problem putting a hand on the back of Wonwoo’s neck, or throwing his legs in his lap, or letting Wonwoo casually rest an arm around him. It’s not weird. Weirder would be sitting this close and trying not to touch him.

It’s just the beginning that’s awkward, before one of them finds a way over the threshold that should be no more than a tiny step. Chan’s pinky twitches.

He’s got a little less than three hours of Wonwoo-time left. He is the same dude that was onstage tonight captivating an entire audience with the movements of his body and thinking nothing of it. He is Lee Jung Chan. He’s unstoppable when he’s fiercely determined, which he often is. And he’s going to make the most of this fucking evening.

So he lets his hand cover Wonwoo’s knee underneath the blanket. It’s a more natural position than before. And it’s not weird. It isn’t.

He thinks that Wonwoo goes rigid for a brief moment, but soon he settles into the casual touch. Sinks partway down the sofa. Finally lets some of the tension out of his own body – slowly, as if through the pinched neck of a balloon. Nestles in closer, head hovering just inches from the crook of Chan’s neck.

Surely he can’t hold it that way all evening. His head will drop onto Chan’s shoulder eventually. Chan practically vibrates at the prospect. For now he tightens his hold on Wonwoo’s knee and tries not to shudder every time one of them shifts and Wonwoo’s hair brushes his jaw. Tries not to turn his face into the top of Wonwoo’s head. Tries not to grab him by the chin, climb on top of him and press his mouth to Wonwoo’s – open and messy and frantic like he can find oxygen in the same place that’s stealing it from him.

Wonwoo’s head lands on Chan’s shoulder some mysterious amount of time later. Chan is ignoring the clock pointedly, because it feels too much like a countdown.

Wonwoo scooted away from Chan in between just long enough to reach for one of the bowls of chips – the cheese flavor, his favorite – but came right back, and they crunched in silence for a while, Chan reaching awkwardly across his own body with the hand further away from the bowl because he refused to take the other one off Wonwoo’s leg.

In the process of Wonwoo’s scooting, it slid up and now rests on his thigh. Warm and so much wider than Chan ever remembers, because when Wonwoo walks around the apartment with his sweatpants rolled up to the knee, his calves always look so skinny.

The bowl was emptied and placed aside and Wonwoo licked his fingers – Chan didn’t watch, he didn’t, he didn’t, he wasn’t entirely transfixed by the way Wonwoo’s tongue darted so quickly in and out of his mouth like a kitten lapping up milk – and immediately following that, he rested his head on Chan. He had to slide a little further down to do it, and so Chan’s hand traveled further still up his thigh, but it was by accident, he swears it.

He can feel the thick cotton of Wonwoo’s sweatpants bunching up under his palm, which is beginning to sweat. It’s hot under the blanket. Wonwoo is a furnace beside him.

Tony Stark is doing something on screen, maybe. And some robot chick Chan can’t remember the name of. There’s a raccoon in this movie too, if he recalls correctly. Whatever.

Wonwoo sighs softly. He smells of his lime-lily shampoo and artificial cheese. The combination is a little odd, but Chan still wants to consume him.

The weird chemical cheese flavor and salt sit on the back of his own tongue. He forgot to bring a drink. He swallows. Licks his lips. Rests his own head against Wonwoo’s. Soft hair tickles his cheek, his chin. A broad shoulder is pressed against his chest. He wonders if Wonwoo can feel the heartbeat trying its hardest to escape containment within. If he can, he’s kind enough not to say anything.

Now, typically, Chan is used to Wonwoo breaking up the spell that falls over them every few minutes to point out something on screen, as if Chan really is watching this for the first time. Maybe Wonwoo knows he never registers anything. Maybe he’s just really excited about Tony Stark and the raccoon and the robot chick.

Not tonight though, it seems. After another vague while, Chan notices Wonwoo’s been suspiciously silent for longer than he’s accustomed to during their movie nights (he almost always lets Wonwoo pick the movie even if isn’t Avengers, so screw him, he likes seeing him excited). Despite the man he’s horrifyingly in love with being pressed up against him, Chan did find himself getting distracted by the movie. The CGI is impressive, even if the ensemble is too enormous to keep up with.

Now he deliberately turns his focus back on Wonwoo. His breathing is even, his head is heavy on Chan’s shoulder, and when Chan angles his head ever so slightly – not enough to dislodge him, but enough to get a surreptitious peek – it makes sense.

He’s sleeping.

Well, shit. That’s cute. And actually cute is the understatement of the millennium, but Chan has no words for the acrobatics his heart starts performing inside of him at the discovery. It’s like it’s been replaced by a miniature Minghao on one of the days he feels like showing off with his background in b-boying. What the fuck.

No shot he pays attention to the movie now. Not with Wonwoo’s eyes fluttering beneath their lids – is he deep enough into sleep to be dreaming? – and not with Wonwoo’s mouth slightly parted, the tiniest glimpse of his front teeth poking out beneath his top lip, lit in fluorescent blue by the blissfully ignorant TV.

Who cares if half the universe has been snapped out of existence. Jeon Wonwoo is asleep on top of Chan. He bites the inside of his cheek half to hold back a squeal and half to check he’s not dreaming. There’s a smile spreading across his lips and he can’t force them into compliance.

Holy shit, this is so fucking precious.

It stops being precious eventually. Chan has no idea how long Wonwoo has been asleep, but he finds himself still in the middle of trying not to gawk non-stop – even if Wonwoo isn’t aware of it, because it feels a little creepy – when Wonwoo’s weight shifts.

Chan’s hand falls away from Wonwoo’s thigh, but he doesn’t have time to mourn it because Wonwoo’s body is turning sideways and before Chan can even register that, Wonwoo’s slinging a leg over his lap. His hand drops from where it had been previously resting at his own side and lands somewhere dangerously close to Chan’s groin. Already there’s a first twitch of interest – bad Channie. Stop it.

Except Wonwoo’s letting out a soft little noise of contentment. It flutters out from between his lips in a humid breath, and then his head rubs against Chan’s clavicle in a few languid motions before it stills again, fully snuggled against his chest.

Chan considers taking his glasses off for him. They’re getting pushed off-center by his new position, but he’s not about to risk waking him. Wonwoo falls asleep with his glasses on constantly. Chan’s walked in on him sitting up disoriented and disgruntled on the sofa, adjusting them with his hair sticking up and the pattern from the couch cushions latticed into his cheek on more occasions than he can count. Wonwoo loves napping. It’s just never happened with Chan. It’s just never happened on top of him.

Wonwoo lets out another soft noise, almost like a purr. Then something that sounds like a Mmmh, disguised as a rumble that comes from deep in his chest.

Chan hasn’t been on alert this high since the one time he went to California with Joshua and they ended up on a hiking trail that led them beneath a canopy of spiderwebs strung across the low-hanging tree branches. Joshua, who’d pushed for the hike and promised to buy Chan dinner afterwards like the good hyung he is, had very quickly abandoned the pretense of caretaking and had cowered in Chan’s shadow until they’d gotten out of the forest safely. Junhui laughed his ass off when they met up with him back at Joshua’s family’s place that evening. Chan felt the phantom crawling for the next two days. Joshua hasn’t been forgiven yet.

Every breath that escapes Wonwoo’s lips now tap dances along his skin in a similar fashion, raising goosebumps in its wake. Every sound he makes sends a chill skating down Chan’s spine and he has to actively fight not to shiver with it.

Wonwoo’s body seems to be turning further and further into him and – wait a fucking minute.

Is that something pressing into Chan’s hip? It can’t be… can it?

He is not going to lift the blanket and check. He’s seen Wonwoo in the mornings when they shuffle awkwardly past each other in the hallway in front of the bathroom. He’s seen more than he ever should have of his best friend, who he wishes he didn’t know sleeps without underpants. Yeah, he’s thought about what it would feel like to be pinned beneath the physical proof of Wonwoo’s arousal, but surely that’s not what this is.

He will not check. He has self-restraint.

Except then Wonwoo moans his name.

“Chan-ah,” he says, and it’s horribly breathy. Surely this is a prank. Surely he’s not actually asleep, or that didn’t actually happen. That’s more likely; it just sounded like it. Wishful thinking so strong it turned hallucination.

Only then it happens again.

“Chan-ah,” Wonwoo sighs, and it’s louder, a little fuller, a little more like gravel, and unfortunately unequivocal. Chan knows what his name sounds like in Wonwoo’s voice – it’s his favorite interpretation of it. He’s never heard it quite like this, but that’s definitely what Wonwoo said.

Chan’s forgetting how to think any words that aren’t Oh, fuck. Oh, shit.

This is not happening. He squeezes his eyes shut like that’ll rescue him. All it does is heighten the rest of his senses, which is interesting information but extremely counterproductive in his current predicament. He shivers despite his best attempts at being cool. Casual, even. His dick thinks the very idea of cool and casual is hilarious.

If Wonwoo wakes up now and finds Chan’s body reacting the way he’s trying so hard to keep at bay, he’s not sure how he’ll talk his way out of it.

If Wonwoo wakes up now… Fuck, maybe Chan should try and slide out from under him. Pillow Wonwoo’s head on the sofa and slither away into his bedroom to deal with his filthy little Wonwoo-problem quietly, like he is regrettably used to doing. But he’s afraid any motion will wake him, and what then?

Is the best course of action to let Wonwoo ride out this dream and pretend he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary once he finally comes to again?

Ride out was a bad way of formulating that, Lee Jung Chan. Stop thinking. Go back to Oh, fuck. Oh, shit.

Easy enough to manage. Another little moan drifts out of Wonwoo’s lips. And that is what it’s doing: drifting, like it doesn’t understand the urgency Chan’s feeling. The sound is airy, hazy, has the dreamlike quality this whole evening has taken on. Chan’s forgotten there’s a movie playing at all. His muscles are so tired from dancing, but they have somehow located the energy to go taut like a guitar string anyway. Thanks for nothing.

He’s holding his own breath. He tries to release it slowly, but it comes out juddering. The next inhale he takes is a hiss. Wonwoo moves against him. Once, twice. Little rolls of his hips. Chan wants so badly to know what he’s seeing beneath those eyelids. He looks so deceptively innocent. Are his cheeks tinged pink? The light from the screen flickers over his face, the yellow fairy lights shine on him from behind. Chan thinks he can make out a flush in the shadows. Wonwoo’s nostrils flare with his breaths.

It’s Thor, in the end, that wakes him, with a terribly-timed bolt of lightning to his weird glowing axe-hammer-thing. Chan doesn’t know why, of all the things, this is what jars Wonwoo back into consciousness, but he’s too busy chastising himself for not thinking of turning off the fucking volume before something like this could happen to contemplate it.

As soon as Wonwoo’s eyes start to blink open – rapidly while he attempts to get them to focus, brain still lagging behind in a miniscule show of mercy – Chan tears his gaze away. Stares at the TV harder than he’s ever stared at anything, his eyes beginning to burn with the intensity. He’s hyper-aware of every blink, wondering if a badly timed one might give him away. Terrified to breathe, to swallow, to move at all. His lower abdomen feels white-hot and he wonders if Wonwoo can feel heat coming off it in waves.

He hears Wonwoo clear his throat, and even just that causes another torrent of goosebumps across his skin. Hot and cold flashes like a fever trying to speedrun its course. He feels Wonwoo first curl into him, like a cat preparing for a big stretch, and then very suddenly jerk away.

The warm, heavy pressure against Chan’s hip is ripped away from it. Disappointing, and at the same time a relief of Everestian proportion.

The sluggish, sleep-drunk pace of Wonwoo’s breath comes to an abrupt halt before kickstarting itself into something much more panicked. He goes paper-maché stiff, then seems to consider the suspiciousness of that and slowly lets himself slump against Chan again – though his hips are angled decidedly away.

He does not look at Chan. Chan doesn’t look at him either, but he can see in his periphery the way Wonwoo stares with singular focus at the screen. Chan has entirely lost the plot. That raccoon is there, and that robot chick, and a bunch of other heroes of all shapes and sizes and species. He wonders if any of them would have a cure for the way his heart is stumbling in his chest. Are hearts supposed to go that quick, that wonky? He wonders how long he can let it do that before he needs to consider checking himself into a clinic.

He just needs to be nonchalant. Nothing happened. For all Wonwoo knows, Chan didn’t notice anything off at all. That’s plausible, isn’t it? Maybe, when Wonwoo woke up, he was still too sleep-addled to realize he was literally on top of Chan. Surely he doesn’t know he was speaking in his sleep.

Is he still hard? Chan certainly is. He tries thinking of all those spiders again. Of the sticky heat of California and the horror of a million tiny, hairy legs on him. It does nothing. His cock stays resolutely hard in the confines of his sweatpants. If anything, it stiffens further out of defiance. Chan feels deeply betrayed by his own anatomy. Next time someone compliments him on his excellent body control, he wonders if he’ll be able to thank them and mean it.

His hands hang awkwardly in his lap and a part of him is convinced that’ll draw attention to it. Wonwoo has forced himself to relax again, but Chan hasn’t, and if he wants to believe this isn’t weird, he needs to act like it.

So he forces some of the tension back out of his muscles – Jesus, they’re going through the wringer today. Wishes he had a cold glass of water for his dry throat. Almost gets up for it and remembers at the last moment how terrible of an idea it would be to throw the blanket off his lap. His arm was already halfway up, so he does the next best thing and stretches, then settles it behind Wonwoo along the sofa’s backrest. Like a teenager in the movie theater with his crush. What is happening to him?

But Wonwoo snuggles closer into the space that has been created for him at Chan’s side. Shoulder presses to ribs, head rests against chest. Eyes are still fixed on the movie. He doesn’t say a thing.

Partway into a battle scene that feels far longer than is probably strictly necessary (he won’t tell Wonwoo that, though), Chan starts to wonder what the big deal is. Wonwoo’s the one that was having a dream about him. Unless it really was a prank, which wouldn’t make Chan the asshole.

This is Wonwoo. There’s no reason to feel uncomfortable around him. He’s clearly into Chan. If it’s not in the same way that Chan is into him, so be it, but there’s attraction there, at the very least. And if Chan is honest with himself, he suspected it long before this wonderfully revelatory dream. Maybe friends can get touchy, Lord knows everyone they know is, but not like them. And when they do, then it’s easier than this. Doesn’t only happen deep into private evenings or when there’s drinking at play. That is a direct response to a tension that is decidedly more than platonic. It’s what he’s certain he’s been seeing Seungkwan and Soonyoung engage in lately, now that he thinks about it.

Chan is not naïve. It’s also not the first time he’s been attracted to someone, and he knows from experience that more often than not, when it’s reciprocated, you feel it.

He finds some of his confidence returning to him the longer he turns it around in his head, holding its sides up to the light. Or maybe it’s the fact that he can tell Wonwoo is struggling more than him that allows him to breathe a little easier about the whole thing.

It’s funny he can tell this when he can’t see Wonwoo’s face and Wonwoo hasn’t said a single thing since he was so rudely awoken by one of the many superheroes he idolizes. But maybe that’s exactly what’s so revealing.

Wonwoo’s humiliation hangs around him like a cloud. Like plumes from a fireplace. Even without seeing his expression, Chan can practically smell it. Can definitely feel his skin burning hot where their bodies are pressed together, even through layers of clothing. It emanates from his every pore. It almost makes Chan feel bad for wanting to eat him.

Almost, but not enough to stop him from wanting to try for it. Maybe the semi-darkness makes him brave, the sounds of the movie that mask absolutely nothing. The upper hand he’s definitely got now that he has his body somewhat under control again.

He is not watching the movie. Maybe Wonwoo will get mad at him about it later, and maybe Chan will enjoy it. Or maybe Wonwoo’s not watching either. Some people overthink so loudly you can hear it; Wonwoo goes very quiet instead. Just like this.

For now there are more important things on Chan’s mind than the Avengers reuniting. Like how long might be appropriate before he tries crawling his fingers under Wonwoo’s shirt. Just the hem, at first. He’s dreamed of that waist, and he’s closer than ever before to getting a grasp of that fantasy.

Wonwoo hasn’t moved back away from him, and he takes that as a good thing. If anything, every time Wonwoo shifts, Chan swears the already minuscule distance between them shrinks just the tiniest bit further. Soon there will be nowhere closer to go, and he cannot wait to find out what that means for them.

So Chan lets his own head drop, bringing his face against the top of Wonwoo’s head. Short hairs caress his nose, a lot softer than they look. He’s wondered, if he ran his hands through Wonwoo’s hair, would it be brittle? Tacky with gel or hairspray? Straw-like from how close he holds his hairdryer to it, or split from the aggressive way he rubs it with towels?

It’s none of the above. Silky, even. It smells faintly of lime and lilies. His shampoo comes from those care packages his dad sends him on a monthly basis, along with the homemade ggultteok that Chan always ends up eating most of because his sweet tooth is much more pronounced than Wonwoo’s, who can only ever handle dessert in small doses.

Chan likes to buy him potato chips to make up for it. Chan likes to buy him potato chips just to see his eyes widen in delight and his face open up the way it does when he gets surprised, like after years of living together and growing into something Chan would probably call best friends a lot less reluctantly did he not wish for it to be something different, it still doesn’t occur to him that Chan might like to see him happy.

So tonight Chan’s being a little selfish. He never steals the ggultteok; Wonwoo usually gives them to him before he even has to ask. He’s wondering, now, how much he can get away with craving. How badly Wonwoo wants to make him happy, or if maybe their palates are more similar than they think somewhere beneath the surface.

Chan-ah, his brain supplies helpfully, but the voice isn’t his own. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to think his own name again without hearing that breathy fucking tone of it. Silky, like Wonwoo’s hair. Full and rich and healthy.

His arm is resting loosely around the back of the sofa still. He brings it down to Wonwoo’s shoulder. Gets impatient very quickly and lets it slip down Wonwoo’s arm some of the way, hovering over his elbow. Wonwoo inhales sharply before his breath lurches back into a steadier, albeit quickened rhythm. Chan extends his index finger just far enough to ghost across the skin of Wonwoo’s elbow and is rewarded with goosebumps and a thick swallow from Wonwoo he feels and hears, even over all the CGI fighting he still hasn’t thought to turn down.

It emboldens him.

He scoots down the sofa a little further so his face is right at Wonwoo’s head rather than over it. Inhales him. Sneaks his hand around and underneath Wonwoo’s elbow, fitting it into the small space between Wonwoo’s arm and his ribs. He waits a moment, and then lets his hand settle its full weight against Wonwoo’s flank. Immediately he can feel his breath, the way it expands his torso. The way his body sinks in on itself again when he exhales it. Rinse and repeat. It stutters for a moment. Wonwoo goes taut again when Chan’s palm spreads over his body, and when he relaxes this time, it’s in starts and jerks. Like he’s tripping into it rather than softening.

Chan pushes his nose into the top of Wonwoo’s head, more comfortably now that he’s closer to it. Rubs it there a couple times, soaks in the texture, the scent. The way Wonwoo shivers beneath his grip. His t-shirt is thin cotton and Chan can map out every rib down to the place his bones fall away into softness. Untensed obliques. He trails an index finger over them, down to where he knows Wonwoo’s shirt is riding up, that enticing sliver of waist before his sweatpants begin. He doesn’t touch it. Not yet.

“Are you okay?” he mumbles in a low tone. His voice feels a little rusty with disuse and he’s afraid of disrupting the magic. Plus he’s probably interrupting Tony Stark or Captain America or something. But the language of Wonwoo’s body is more important than anything they could possibly be saying, even if they are saving the universe, and Chan needs to be certain he’s not making a mistake. He said, Are you okay? but what he meant was, Can I keep going?

Wonwoo’s a smart kid. Chan thinks he’ll understand him.

Wonwoo inhales sharply. When he exhales this time, it’s in one big whoosh. Chan feels it through the pores of his own t-shirt. Humid. It sinks into and through him, grabs ahold of his spine and wrings it. Sends sparks in every direction until his limbs feel all tingly. The loosened coil in his stomach curls itself a little tighter again. Shoots a signal down to his groin. Pay attention.

“Ye-” Wonwoo begins, but his voice comes out squeaky. He clears his throat, a haptic rumble in his chest. Chan takes the opportunity to be bold and ghosts his lips against the feverish skin of Wonwoo’s forehead. He finds he quite likes when Wonwoo is reduced to a stuttering mess, and now Wonwoo seems to buffer for a good long moment before he finds the word he’d been hunting for.

“Yes,” Wonwoo says. Chan smiles, a private little thing, but then he thinks: why keep it for himself like it’s a secret? He repositions himself again. Leans back a little so he can tuck Wonwoo into his hold more comfortably. Wonwoo’s head is against his collarbone now, hair tickling Chan’s jugular. Chan brings his lips to Wonwoo’s temple. Makes sure that smile is still on his lips; he wants Wonwoo to feel it. You make me happy.

Happy is an understatement. Even just being Wonwoo’s friend bends him like a glowstick.

His hand is still tracing up and down Wonwoo’s side ever so lightly. He’s been getting nothing but green lights, so the next time he reaches the hem of Wonwoo’s t-shirt, he lets his fingers creep past it. They make contact with hot, smooth skin. He’s unsure if the sparks are coming from him, from Wonwoo, or a combination, but it feels like touching an electric socket – only with a lot less pain. Only it’s not just one spark, it’s a cascade of them, and they’re washing over Chan’s entire body until he shudders so violently there’s no way Wonwoo didn’t feel it. Like driving over a pothole. Like a feedback circuit. Like this is literally crazy and he has no idea how they got here but he can’t think of a reason why they shouldn’t keep going.

Wonwoo turns his head ever so slightly into Chan’s body as the shudder finishes shaking through him. Chan feels a little better knowing that there’s no way in hell Wonwoo is paying any more attention to the movie himself. It’s fine. He probably barely even needs the subtitles anymore, and Chan’s glad to know some things are more important.

From this angle, Chan still cannot see most of his face, but he can see that his ears have gone darker than the rest of his skin. Can see the smooth slope of his forehead, the knife-sharp bridge of his nose. The texture of his skin, level in places, bumpy across the ridges of his cheeks where remnants of teenage acne live. The curl of his long, dark lashes behind the lenses of his glasses. They’ve been pushed slightly askew again by the position of his head. Chan can feel one of their temples against his collarbone. He wonders if it’s uncomfortable like this, but Wonwoo makes no attempt to remove them.

His breath hitches again. Chan hears it like it’s the only sound in the room, as if the TV isn’t even on. As if he has selective hearing that lets through only Wonwoo, that cliché of his surroundings fading in the presence of the object of his affection. Chan can’t help that everything’s secondary to him.

Chan lets his fingers sink into the flesh of Wonwoo’s waist. Tentative at first, but he’s being brave tonight, and Wonwoo’s letting him. So he keeps going.

Wonwoo’s skin is so supple. He’s not flexing, but Chan can feel the muscle he’s made of beneath thrumming (outrageous, by the way, for someone who spends most of his free time in front of a PC). Chan squeezes gently before he carries on his travels. Wanders his hand along Wonwoo’s front, feeling a little like he’s reading a book beneath a blanket, shining a flashlight onto the pages. Anyone could plainly see what’s happening beneath Wonwoo’s t-shirt if they cared to look. Neither of them mention it. The blanket is pooled around their hips and legs but it’s slipping further down each time they shift. Chan looks down and sees it: his hand underneath Wonwoo’s clothing. The tiniest stretch of skin below that he’s thought forbidden previously.

Chan splays his hand across Wonwoo’s lower abdomen, and to his pleasure, it tightens. Wonwoo’s breath does that thing again, that thing that channels Chan’s focus, turns him single-minded like otherwise only dancing can manage. He’ll do anything for more of it. He’ll do anything to uncover all the other reactions he might be able to elicit.

He can feel Wonwoo’s pulse through his stomach, abdominal aorta working overtime as it quickens. His muscles keep contracting. Chan would like to learn each one individually. With his tongue, preferably.

Which reminds him. He brings his lips to Wonwoo’s temple again, right at his hairline. This time he lets them linger longer, meander up and down it. Sometimes pursing them, sometimes just letting them trail lazily across searing skin. Wonwoo twitches like his instinct is to jerk away, but he doesn’t. He responds to the touch beautifully, stretching up towards Chan’s lips when he retracts them. Chasing them like a flower chases the sun’s rays; like he needs them to function.

Chan relents. Kisses Wonwoo’s hairline again and again. His forehead. The patch of skin where his sideburns taper off. The mole at his ear Chan’s spent far too many minutes of his life observing. He wonders, if he counted up all the time he’s spent watching Wonwoo and trying to absorb every detail of him, how many hours it would amount to. Days, maybe, or weeks.

He thinks he could build a lifetime of it and never consider a single moment wasted.

Fuck, Chan’s entire body is tingling like a foot that has fallen asleep. Like Wonwoo startled him into rousing too quickly. He is struck with the urge to move, to do something with this incandescent energy streaming through his veins. It’s all heading in the same direction. He’s twitching back to life somewhere Wonwoo will definitely notice now that the blanket has been rendered effectively useless, but it’s too late to stop it.

He doesn’t know what the fuck is happening. Or he does, but he doesn’t know how, why tonight.

But they’re in this together, Chan thinks. Wonwoo is encroaching further and further on his space until he’s half in his lap again. Chan spares an apologetic glance for the TV, where it looks like Captain America is now wielding Thor’s hammer, or something. That’s when Wonwoo nudges the neckline of Chan’s shirt down with his nose and attaches his own lips to the newly exposed skin and – oh. Oh, shit. Chan’s not the only one that can be bold, it seems.

Wonwoo’s lips are plush and so fucking warm and Chan wasn’t prepared for – are those teeth? Is Jeon Wonwoo leaving open-mouthed kisses to Chan’s collarbone while fucking Thanos wreaks havoc in the background? And is he angling his body towards him and slinging his leg back over Chan’s hip, this time with intention? It lands heavily across him, shooting bolts of lightning all over the place. The warmth of Wonwoo’s body meets Chan’s crotch.

Chan growls, a low sound in the back of his throat. Scrabbles around for the remote somewhere to the left of him, zaps it at the TV with more aggression than it deserves. Regrets, for a moment, the impulse. Silence has never felt quite this dense between them, and the absence of the light from the TV plunges the room darker than he expected with just the feeble string of fairy lights and the moon left to help his vision. Wonwoo’s stopped moving, his lips paused at the swell of Chan’s chest.

Well, it’s too late to take back that particular decision.

Chan throws the remote aside again. Brings his hand to the top of Wonwoo’s head, strokes over it tenderly, hopes that will kickstart him back into action. He wonders if Wonwoo’s still sleepy. Every muggy breath exhaled directly onto Chan’s skin leaves goosebumps in places he didn’t know could get them.

His hand comes to rest at the nape of Wonwoo’s neck. He’s burning up. Chan’s other hand is still at his lower abdomen, and he wants so badly to dip lower with it. He plays with the fine hair at the back of his head.

Wonwoo turns his face to graze his teeth over Chan’s shoulder, and all the hair on Chan’s arms stands on end. He has to close his eyes and suppress a tremble.

Fuck it. He needs to get proactive. Take back some of his control. Alcohol never got Wonwoo into his arms before; that was always him. Or the centrifugal force of the bubble they find themselves in on these long, intimate evenings just for the two of them.

He kisses Wonwoo’s forehead one more time, tries to draw strength from the heat of it; the sweat beginning to break out there.

“I want you,” he whispers, and there’s only a slight tremor to it. Laughable to be afraid of Wonwoo’s reaction when it’s a truth so apparent it probably didn’t need verbalizing. He’s literally got an erection and Wonwoo’s literally half-on top of him well on his way to a matching one. Still, the second the words leave Chan’s lips, something shifts. Wonwoo, for the first time since the movie started, looks at him, and the moonlight and his adjusting eyes and the old fairy lights work together benevolently enough to allow Chan to drink it all in: the way he tilts his head up inquisitively in the cradle of Chan’s hold and blinks at him in spellbound fascination. His shiny eyes are positively ruinous. Chan fights the urge to avert his gaze. Forces himself to endure what this does to him.

It’s like Chan sees it all happen in stop motion. He blinks, and Wonwoo’s eyes widen. He blinks, and Wonwoo’s mouth forms that perfect little O of his dreams, the one that curves up at the edges. Wonwoo’s cheeks are the red of ripe strawberries, he can tell this even in the dimness. Chan brings both hands to his waist and grips him tightly. Makes as if he’s going to lift him so that Wonwoo gets the message and pulls himself up, finally twisting fully around so they’re chest to chest. Repositioning himself in awkward shuffling little motions until he’s got one thigh on either side of Chan’s lap, and then he settles his weight against him. Fully and unapologetically.

Chan has to bite down hard on his lower lip to keep from moaning. Yeah, Wonwoo’s hard. Undoubtedly.

That guileless smile of his is obscene. It’s going to single-handedly give Chan chronic insomnia and Chan won’t even be mad about it. He slides his hands back up under Wonwoo’s shirt, lays them flat against the muscle of his lower back. Beneath his fingertips, Wonwoo’s lumbar spine shifts like a snake in the grass when he nestles in closer to Chan. His hands find purchase on Chan’s flanks. It damn near singes him even through his clothing.

Chan dives in. He goes for Wonwoo’s jaw first: kisses all along it, special attention to the underside of his chin, where there’s a patch of stubble he must have missed this morning. Sandpaper against Chan’s lips.

He follows it until it narrows into nothingness, and finds Wonwoo’s throat at the end. Then his shirt. It’s loose in the neckline, worn; Chan’s thought often enough when he hangs around the house in it how easy it would be to slip it off one shoulder. Expose smooth muscle and unmarked skin. He is delighted to find it has enough yield to allow this.

He pulls back for a moment to admire – Wonwoo’s eyes are tracking him intently, still wide and shiny like they can’t quite believe what’s happening – and then he attaches himself to the newly revealed patch of skin. He’s literally seen Wonwoo shirtless (he has a tendency to come out of the bathroom that way post-shower, hair sending droplets of water rolling down his throat and the dip between his pecs), but something about this, in this moment, is worse. Maybe because there’s less on display its effect is more concentrated.

He starts with care, with tenderness. But the first time Wonwoo grinds down against him he abandons all intentions of treating him gently and sinks his teeth in. The next time Wonwoo walks out of the bathroom half-naked and dripping, Chan wants to see violet and blue and green and know it’s his doing.

He presses his palms into Wonwoo’s back with urgency. Wants to choke all the oxygen out of the atmosphere between their bodies. Here in the dimly lit living room filled only with their panting, he aims to make jigsaw of them.

Wonwoo is breathing so heavily. Chan’s blood is rushing in his ears, his heart, his pants. He crawls his hands further up the expanse of Wonwoo’s back, and once he gets between Wonwoo’s shoulder blades lets his nails out like a cat. Is rewarded with a whimper so tiny, so uncharacteristically high-pitched he almost thinks he imagined it. Wonwoo’s fingers tighten in his shirt.

He finishes his oral exploration of Wonwoo’s delts and decides his shirt needs to come off him. Chan’s greedy. Sue him. He’s been waiting a long time. He leans back, tugging at the material, and watches as Wonwoo gets the message. Is horribly enamored by the way it slowly dawns on him. His face is wide-open and Chan wonders how he ever thought he couldn’t read him. Like his desire hasn’t been plain as day on his features long before this evening. He doesn’t look at anyone else that way. Chan would know; all he does is watch him, even in group settings. No wonder he didn’t pick up on Soonyoung and Seungkwan, actually.

In the pale light he observes Wonwoo, sitting there with his shirt hanging salaciously off to one side, blinking his innocuous eyes, unable to close his mouth. The blanket has gotten twisted up between them. Wonwoo’s shoulder glistens and Chan stares blatantly, with satisfaction – he did that, that’s his spit, maybe that’s gross but it’s just them here so who gives a shit. Then he is very quickly distracted when Wonwoo pulls the shirt over his head, biceps flexing, and tosses it somewhere onto the floor behind him.

It’s far from the first time Chan’s seen him shirtless, but it’s different like this. Every dip and curve and rounded edge casts shadows Chan wants to burn into his retinas. Wonwoo’s pecs are pronounced and creamy-smooth. His stomach is flat but soft, untensed. His frame is broad and imposing. His face is still stunned; Chan can practically see him buffering, like he’s lagging a few seconds behind everything that’s happening to him. It’s appallingly endearing.

Chan rips the blanket out from between them. Enough, it’s way too hot in here already. Wonwoo has to lift himself up so Chan can extract it from where it’s all tangled up, and when he finally gets it free he casts it aside passionately, as though it personally wronged him.

Wonwoo lowers himself back down. It’s better like this, with less between them. It can get better still. Chan allows his eyes to travel down and linger for a moment. Wonwoo’s cock is straining against his sweatpants and he made that happen.

He needs to touch him again this instant.

Chan starts at Wonwoo’s hips, where he already began earlier to make a home for his fingertips. Takes a few long moments to settle into home base, savoring. Then he explores the world that has just opened up to him. Slides his hands all over the planes of Wonwoo’s exposed skin, luxuriates in its satiny feel like a cat in a bar of sunlight. Learns every pulse of the life rushing through the sinew beneath. Feels Wonwoo’s abs when they contract, his xylophone ribs, delights in the startled giggle that escapes him when Chan brushes his armpit. Smooths his palms over Wonwoo’s chest, experimentally rolls a nipple between pinched fingertips.

The giggle dies in Wonwoo’s throat, is reborn as something just as startled but far more guttural and animalistic.

“Holy shit, you’re hot,” Chan hears himself saying. It’s getting easier, speaking like this. Being brave. Wonwoo flushes a shade deeper every time Chan does it, and Chan’s quite enjoying thumbing through the swatches, deliberating on which one he’ll choose to paint his world in. There is a part of him that wants desperately to turn the lights on to see him better by, and another part of him that’s afraid of scaring him away like he’s a skittish fox cub. There’s a large part of him, too, that loves the dreamlike shroud the room is bathed in.

There’s a fireworks display in his belly. Popping candy in his bloodstream. His heart is doing determined lunges in his chest like it’s skipped the last ten leg days and wants to make up for it in a single session. He feels eleven again, his first boy crush on an upperclassman propelling him through the long afternoons that drag on unendingly in sunbaked classrooms.

But he’s grown, and he’s got a handful of Jeon Wonwoo boob at his disposal. Or most of one, that is – he finds his hand isn’t quite big enough to cover it, and that information makes him short-circuit.

He gets himself together. Keeps toying with the nipple, enjoying what it does to Wonwoo, who’s closing his eyes now. His other hand Chan lets follow its whims, tiptoeing up Wonwoo’s throat until it ends up on his face, where Chan runs a thumb tenderly along the hinge of his jaw, the divot in the skin just above his upper lip, his cheekbones and their scarring – raised like anaglypta pasted to perfection.

“Chan-ah,” Wonwoo whines. Whines. His eyes are still closed, his face is ten shades more saturated than the rest of him. Chan hasn’t even touched him below the beltline yet and he already sounds wrecked. Oh fuck oh shit indeed.

“What is it, baby?”

“Oh, fuck,” Wonwoo answers. At least they’re at the same level of eloquence. His hips jerk involuntarily. Then he repeats, huskier: “Chan-ah.”

It sounds just like it did when he was dreaming. Is this what Wonwoo was picturing?

A kittenish grin spreads on Chan’s lips from one side to the other, a glissando. He flattens his palm over Wonwoo’s pec, squeezes it. Rubs his other thumb over Wonwoo’s lower lip.

“Did you like being called baby?”

Maybe the confidence should have come sooner, considering what got them in this position. But dreams don’t have to have a rhyme or reason. Dream-Wonwoo might want entirely different things than his conscious counterpart. That’s what Chan’s been telling himself so he doesn’t have to confront why it took him so long to make a move (and not just this evening).

But this isn’t Dream-Wonwoo. This is Real-Wonwoo, and Real-Wonwoo’s dick is throbbing against him.

“Chan-ah,” he repeats, and Chan is going to look into getting a little speaker implanted directly into his eardrum where he can play that word on repeat. His own name has never sounded so fucking delicious.

“Wonwoo-yah,” he offers in return, his voice raspy and half-broken with want. “Wonwoo-yah. Baby.”

Wonwoo rolls his hips down against him. His eyes shoot open again, all deer-in-the-headlights delectable. Like he didn’t give his body the instruction. Like his own arousal frightens him. Chan is not going to read into it. It’s ridiculous to be unsure now about whether they’re on the same page, so he won’t be. He’s going to be encouraging, like he knows Wonwoo appreciates.

“Fuck, that’s good,” he sighs. “Baby. I mean it. I want you. Wanted you for ages.”

Wonwoo’s eyes have landed on Chan’s lips and he seems to be having a hard time commanding them somewhere different. Chan thinks: not yet. He has wanted a taste of Wonwoo for as long as he’s known him, but the other week he read something about delayed gratification. His sweet tooth is strong, but it knows patience.

In the interim he appeases it with Wonwoo’s chest. Feels like licking it, so he does. Whatever. He’s seen Wonwoo sleep cuddling a plastic figurine of Green Lantern. Fucking Green Lantern. They’re both strange.

He flattens his tongue along Wonwoo’s pec, pressing down on it just to feel its give. He tastes a little salty. Chan scrapes his teeth over nipple and is rewarded with a beautiful, pitiful whimper. There’s a voice in his head that says, Take in everything you can before you never get the chance again.

He has to override it and tell himself that if he wants another chance, he can create it. This is a beginning, not an ending. And he’s having a blast, but he’s also getting impatient. Wants to devour, like he hasn’t eaten in days.

Time to be brave again. He pulls back. Runs his thumb over the shell of Wonwoo’s ear, pinches his lobe between his fingertips, then drags his nails down Wonwoo’s bicep. Pride fills him at the angry red lines they leave in their trail. Watches as his hands find back to their favorite hideaway at Wonwoo’s hips. Paws at the waistband of his sweats.

Wriggles a finger underneath it. Then another, and another. Wanders his hand along Wonwoo’s lower abdomen where there’s that trail of hair he follows to the place that’s emanating heat all through the rest of him. It’s humid in Wonwoo’s underwear, like a sauna. He keeps his eyes on Wonwoo’s crotch as he inches his fingers closer to the promised land. That’s his hand in Wonwoo’s pants.

And it finds what it was searching for. Closes around thrumming cock. There’s no going back now. Wonwoo gasps as soon as Chan’s fingers make contact.

Chan rolls it around in his palm, runs his hand around to map out every ridge and bump and vein. Slides it up all the way to the tip, where he’s getting wet, then dips all the way down to his balls. Explores their seam, gently cups one, then the other, gets used to their weight, their texture. Unfamiliar in a familiar way.

Wonwoo is hissing like a broken valve, his breath hot steam against Chan’s forehead. Chan looks up to meet his eyes, finds his pupils blown wide and devastating. A lake of want in place of irises. He is struck by the urge to look away because it’s so overwhelming. They’ve never been this close. There is no background noise. It’s the most intimate moment Chan’s ever experienced and Wonwoo’s hands are finally scrabbling around for his shirt. Every time skin brushes skin, Chan sparks aflame like a Zippo.

He takes his hand out of Wonwoo’s pants just long enough for Wonwoo to pull his shirt up over his head. It joins Wonwoo’s, wherever that landed, and is promptly forgotten. Perhaps they should take their pants off. Perhaps Chan is all out of patience, already reaching for Wonwoo’s cock again before Wonwoo’s even turned back to face him.

When he does, Chan pauses. Decides he’s going to try something. Lifts his hand to Wonwoo’s lips instead, prods at the seam of them. Wonwoo allows them to part easily. Sucks Chan’s fingers in without hesitation. The inside of his mouth is lush velvet and his tongue swirls around eagerly, coating Chan’s digits in spit. Chan closes his eyes and lets his head roll back for a moment. If Wonwoo feels this good around his fingers, how will he feel someplace different?

He bites his lip. Looks again. Feels the pull like an invisible elastic band around the two of them as he straightens his head. The pressure only eases when he can see him. Wonwoo is watching him intently, and when Chan meets his gaze his cheeks tinge another shade darker, but he doesn’t break the gaze. In fact he begins to grin around Chan’s hand. Another image for the many sleepless nights Chan has ahead of him, though he’s wondering now if maybe he can ask Wonwoo for assistance when that happens.

He quirks an eyebrow.

“That’s perfect,” he says. Takes his hand back. Finally lets it find its way back to Wonwoo’s cock, smooth with lubrication now as he closes a fist around him.

“Oh,” Wonwoo says. It’s almost comical. The obscene noises he’s been making for what feels like hours at this point, and the first time Chan gives him a good proper stroke, he just says Oh. He’s kind of ridiculous. He’s kind of perfect.

His hands grip into Chan’s shoulders hard. Maybe they’ll leave indents of their fingerprints. Maybe Chan wants Wonwoo’s DNA pressed into him.

“You’re hot,” he tells him. Understatement.

Wonwoo grins again. It’s lopsided and Chan’s heart does another one of those b-boy tricks he must have picked up through osmosis in the dance studio.

“I think,” Wonwoo says, then interrupts himself with a hiss as Chan reaches his tip again, dragging his thumb over the slit. “I think you’re hot, Channie.”

Chan’s hips give a violent buck, jostling Wonwoo, and he has to find his grip again. He’s stroking with intention, pumping his hand properly up and down Wonwoo’s shaft, the need to move this along suddenly critical. And maybe his movements are getting sloppy, and maybe it’s taking everything he has to keep himself steady. He’s torn between watching the action, where he can see Wonwoo’s cockhead peeking out of his waistband pearling beautifully with precome, and watching Wonwoo’s face because – well, it’s Wonwoo’s face.

Wonwoo ends up taking the decision away from him by falling forward against Chan, mouth to forehead, panting. Chan watches the way his entire torso twitches. Can see the way his abdomen keeps going concave as it contracts. Watches the tip of his dick, flushed and pulsing, leaking all over the place. Tries to remember exactly what it feels like to have Wonwoo’s pleasure in the palm of his hands, responding to his every act of service.

Wonwoo’s breath is moist against Chan’s forehead. His pitchy whimpers and deep groans quiver against Chan’s skin. Chan tightens his hand. It’s beginning to ache. He keeps going, and going, and going.

“Fuck,” he pants out. He can tell Wonwoo’s getting close. He’s not sure how exactly, but he just knows. Something in the rhythm of his noises, something in the desperation with which he’s started rocking his hips to aid Chan’s motions. You don’t notice just how much you pay attention to a person’s little habits and mannerisms when you spend so much time around them until something changes. Quickens, heightens.

“Fuck,” Wonwoo echoes. There’s still a little disbelief to his tone.

“Baby,” Chan whimpers. Feeble, imploring. His stomach is swooping and he feels giddy saying the words, a little nervous, a lot excited. “Baby, will you say my name? Please?”

“Chan-ah,” Wonwoo offers immediately. It’s nice to know he’s so willing to please.

“Yeah,” Chan breathes.

Wonwoo goes on diligently.

“Chan-ah, Chan-ah, Chan-ah.” Chan is going to die here, happily.

“Yeah,” he repeats. His brain’s already mush.

“Chan-ah.” It’s like a mantra. And then Wonwoo’s words start to slur: “Chan – ah ah ah ah!” They tumble out in an urgent flurry, a warning or a promise or the angels singing. Dramatic, whatever, Chan’s in love with him. Of course he writes poetry in his head.

There’s probably no meter that could capture the stuttering of Wonwoo’s hips. The fluttering of his eyelids. The way he spills over Chan’s hand and his own pants like a knocked-over inkwell. Words scatter in Chan’s mind and he loses his grip on language entirely. He can’t think, he can only watch and see and feel. His hand is hot and sticky and the sounds leaving Wonwoo’s mouth are so broken and reedy Chan would almost think he was crying, if he didn’t know that Wonwoo cries silently.

“That’s it, baby, so good for me. Wonwoo-yah.”

He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He’s just saying something, but Wonwoo seems to love it. He rocks his hips with more agitation, more intentionally, as he rides out the last of his orgasm. And then it’s over and he slumps forward against Chan with all of his body weight. The sofa supports both of them. Chan wipes his hand on the blanket – it’s fine, they’ll wash it.

He brings his arms around Wonwoo’s waist. One of his hands grips his own wrist loosely to keep them in place, and the circle of his arms rests over the swell of Wonwoo’s ass. Wonwoo’s lower back is slick with sweat. His lips slip off Chan’s forehead and he buries himself in the crook of Chan’s neck, still winded.

Chan’s still rock hard and Wonwoo’s clearly aware of it because after a few suspended moments that stretch out like a shadow on the pavement on a summer’s evening, he picks himself back up. Doesn’t move from his perch on Chan’s lap, where his thighs have gone from tensed to entirely slack and quivering with the aftermath, but he adjusts his glasses with one hand and then gets to work untying the drawstring of Chan’s sweatpants.

“You don’t have to –” Chan begins to say, but is cut off very suddenly by a new sensation. Wonwoo’s lips on his.

Oh. Oh, fuck. Oh, shit.

He forgets what he was saying. Loses himself in the velvet of Wonwoo’s mouth – this is where all those pretty sounds are born. He tastes – well, of cheesy potato chips, mostly, with the thickness of residual sleep hanging heavy over it, coating the tongue that begins roaming all over the inside of Chan’s mouth like it’s searching for lost treasure. It’s kind of gross and kind of ridiculous and definitely perfect, because it’s Wonwoo and it’s them and it’s just so intimate.

Wonwoo pulls away and leaves Chan breathless, taking the opportunity while he’s still in his daze to work his way into Chan’s underwear and graciously repay the favor. Chan’s leaked enough he doesn’t need extra lubrication; it was beginning to cool at the tip of his cock. His underwear definitely has a wet spot at the front. Wonwoo’s fingers are just as deft as they look. Maybe it’s the gaming or maybe it’s something else he does in his bedroom when Chan’s sleeping. Which Chan hasn’t thought about before. Definitely not.

In any case, Wonwoo feels amazing and Chan is worked up enough that this is going to be a quick affair, but he’s tired. They both are. He abandons all concerns of making it last and comes with a grunt, his vision doubling for a moment, and without much fanfare past that, much as he’d like to muster up the same energy Wonwoo gave him. But Wonwoo’s smiling like he isn’t even thinking about it. Like he’s just happy to be here. Chan can’t help but mimic it, lifting a shaky hand to Wonwoo’s chin to tilt it up from where he was staring at the mess he just helped Chan make of his sweatpants. Chan needs to look into those eyes.

Wonwoo’s smile widens. It’s just so beautiful, awed and devilish all at once. A little afraid and a little excited. Like it’s just dawning on him. Like he got away with something devious. Chan rallies his remaining energy to surge forward and kiss him again.

This time there is nothing more pressing to take care of, so they settle into a languid, lazy pace. Really taking the time to explore each other. Chan has melted into the sofa and Wonwoo has melted into him and he got what he wanted: he can no longer tell where he ends, where Wonwoo begins.

Of course, they still need to breathe. So they do part eventually. Wonwoo slumps forward again, his head finding its favorite spot on Chan’s shoulder, where he presses a final wet kiss to his neck.

Skin on sweaty skin, chest to chest. Chan’s hands go back around Wonwoo’s waist. Wonwoo’s snake between Chan’s neck and the sofa cushions. There are no sparks left, not like before, but the embers glow hot and steadfast and warm them all the way through. Their breath takes on a synchronized rhythm as it slows, and they stay for so long Chan wonders if Wonwoo might fall asleep again. He thinks he could sleep, too. Anywhere, at this point. He could be picked up and deposited over the drop of a ninety-degree rollercoaster and remain unfazed, limbs heavy and brain stuffed with cotton. Soft, sleepy, pleased. A kitten on a pillow, tummy full of milk. Lazy and happy.

Wonwoo goes to clean up first, moving off of Chan with a groan and a stretch of his limbs. Much as he’d like to, Chan doesn’t know if he’s allowed to follow him into the shower, now that clarity is returning to him. So he remains where Wonwoo leaves him.

They pass each other in the hallway, Wonwoo coming out of the bathroom with just a towel around his hips – and yes, there are bruises forming at his shoulder and neck. Chan looks away, then huffs out a laugh because that’s ridiculous. His hand still smells of Wonwoo’s dick.

Wonwoo smiles at him, hopeful, and Chan’s heart twinges.

He shuts himself in the bathroom and groans inwardly. Strips and drops his sweatpants and crusty underwear (disgusting, he knows) over Wonwoo’s in the hamper. Gets in the shower and tries not to overthink. Wonders how, after this entire evening, he’s still standing.

He gets dressed in his bedroom, leaving the door open a sliver. Just in case. Either Wonwoo sees it like a beacon or he was already on his way, because he’s at Chan’s doorframe just a moment after Chan’s stepped into his sleep shorts.

“Hyung?” Chan asks. Wonwoo is wearing a pair of shorts himself, nothing else. He’s stunning. He leans sleepily against the doorframe. His hair shines wet, the stronger smell of lime and lily drifting over to Chan. His mouth waters and his heart skips like a broken CD.

Wonwoo fidgets with the hem of his shorts. Looks down shyly. Asks, in a voice so quiet Chan has to strain to hear it, “Can I have a shirt of yours to sleep in?”

Oh. Fuck. Wonwoo’s going to be the death of him. Chan’s heart immediately goes all Minghao in his chest again. Jumping and twirling and backflipping.

Show-off, he thinks.

Pathetic, his heart whispers back at him. And, well. Chan can’t refute the argument. He’s already rummaging through his closet for a big shirt to give Wonwoo. Settles on a plain grey one with a cartoon dinosaur printed on the front of it. Because Wonwoo looks so charmed by the dinosaur every time Chan wears it.

“Thanks,” he says when Chan has tossed it at him, nearly fumbling it. Cute. Cute cute cute. He holds it between his hands like it’s something holy for a long moment, just staring. Hesitates. Steps into the room again. Into Chan’s space. Drops the hand with the t-shirt to his side and brings the other up to Chan’s face, cradling it. His skin is cool like a fresh pillow. He’s hesitant.

That was wrapped around my cock not too long ago, Chan’s mind supplies helpfully. He’s lucky he’s too spent to get hard again.

Wonwoo leans down and kisses him. Chan stretches up onto his toes instinctively to meet him. Sighs softly into the kiss, soft as a rose unfolding on an early spring morning. Dewy and optimistic.

“Goodnight, Channie,” Wonwoo hums.

“Night, hyung,” Chan responds dazedly. Realizes only once Wonwoo has left and shut the door behind him that he didn’t ask for a shirt in return. Curses himself for it.

The next evening, there’s one laying on his bed anyway. The brown one from the restaurant, freshly washed. Chan’s not going to get picky and demand one that smells of Wonwoo. That comes later, maybe. For now they’re being normal. Wonwoo left for work before Chan was even awake, and by the time Chan came home from his work Wonwoo was in his room at his PC. They said a quick hello, exchanged a wave Chan refuses to consider awkward.

He didn’t kiss Wonwoo hello, but Wonwoo also didn’t kiss him. So he figures they’re being normal. Well, with the exception of the clothes-sharing, and the way Chan’s heart seems to think the events of the other night were an invitation to get even more crazy about his best friend. His stomach has gone from simple butterflies to full-on plummeting every time Wonwoo so much as breathes in his general direction.

In the following weeks, they fall into a new kind of routine. In daylight they don’t talk about it, though they walk around wearing each other’s clothes and exchanging smiles so furtive it’s like they share a secret, and in a way they do. One that they don’t speak even to each other.

Chan still hasn’t gotten used to the sight of Wonwoo wearing his t-shirts. Wonwoo’s being more obnoxious about showing skin, too. Stretching bigger. Rolling up his sleeves or his shorts. He gets closer when he passes Chan, brushing him constantly. Doesn’t say sorry.

Soonyoung’s started giving them weird looks when they go out with their friends. Weirder than usual, that is. Seungkwan wears a knowing expression that Chan finds quite irritating and quickly returns at the two of them. Jeonghan wears one that’s eerily similar when he makes eye contact with him. Seokmin is just as innocent as always, but Chan knows those two are talking about them in private.

He doesn’t think he and Wonwoo are behaving any differently, really. Maybe Wonwoo’s a little more easily affectionate with Chan, but they’ve always gotten there in the end.

Is it the air around them? Has their energy changed? It should be more awkward than before if anything, considering they’re not talking.

But they go home from these outings holding hands, and Wonwoo kisses Chan in the elevator, in the doorway, in the kitchen, in the hall in front of the bathroom.

And whenever they settle onto the sofa to hang out and watch something, the reaction is almost instantaneous. Pavlovian, even. Movie nights are sacred, are insular, are the highlight of Chan’s existence.

Without fail he ends up on top of Wonwoo ten minutes max into any movie, sliding his shirt up his torso with hunger, with reverence. Drawing lines between the moles that dot his skin with his fingers, his nose, his tongue. Or Wonwoo ends up on top of him, raking his teeth over his hipbones and littering his inner thighs with bruises. Igniting him.

The couch sees a lot more than it probably bargained for when Wonwoo picked it up off Karrot before Chan even moved in.

And in these weeks Chan learns quite a few interesting things about his roommate. All of them he files happily away in his mental Rolodex for easy access, relying on the (so far validated) assumption it’ll never be too long until he gets to use them again.

He learns that Wonwoo likes a little degradation in the buildup and a lot of praise towards the end. The first time a Good boy slipped from Chan’s lips was a transcendental experience for both of them. Even better when it’s been preceded by a litany of Fuck, you’re pathetic – or something in that vein.

He learns that there’s little he wouldn’t do to get Wonwoo whimpering and his eyes fluttering shut the way they do when he’s losing himself to climax, his chest heaving and flushed scarlet, his lower abdomen twitching. In fact, Chan has yet to even approach that boundary. To even see it on the horizon. Maybe it doesn’t exist.

He gets more and more settled in this routine they’ve forged, and maybe that was his mistake. He knows he wants more, but there’s a big part of him that has convinced itself this is fine, and it’s great, and it’s enough, and talking would ruin everything – otherwise why hasn’t Wonwoo attempted it?

He gets to have Wonwoo in the evenings, and he gets to hear his hoarse morning voice most days, ten octaves deeper than it already is while he makes coffee and tells Chan about whatever weird dream he had. While he pretends he isn’t caressing Chan’s hip when he brushes past him to get a spoon for his eggs, or bringing his mouth a little too close to his ear when he reaches around him to grab a towel for the dishes.

He gets to sit on the couch reading on his phone or reviewing dance videos Junhui sends him with one hand, the other scratching Wonwoo’s scalp where he’s between his legs on the floor, gaming on his Switch – moments before Chan pulls him up by the collar and presses him into the cushions.

He gets to surreptitiously brush his hand along Wonwoo’s ass when Wonwoo picks him up from dance school and they hug, and relish in the shivers it elicits. The one time Minghao walked by and audibly gagged lives somewhat fondly in Chan’s memory, even if it was mortifying.

He gets to call Wonwoo hot whenever he feels like it, even in daylight, where he can clearly see the hue he blushes. His eyes are allowed to linger on slivers of skin and V-lines and biceps, and Wonwoo’s linger back.

And every night Chan goes to bed alone when all he wants is to know what it’s like to sleep curled around Wonwoo instead of resorting to shoving his nose into his t-shirts and imagining it – but it’s more than he’d ever dared to hope for in the first place. So he tells himself it’s enough. More than enough, even.

But life’s never quite that simple, and he can feel it. He’s growing more and more restless, and maybe he’s projecting, but that energy seems to thrum in the air between them. Bouncing back and forth, amplifying. There’s only so much tension that can be released physically.

Someone’s going to have to say something.

It was a toss-up who it would be, but in the end it’s neither of them.

It’s Seokmin that effectively ruins this careful balance they’ve crafted. Most of Chan is glad there’s somebody to blame, and the rest of him wishes he’d locked himself and Wonwoo inside their apartment after that first evening and never subjected whatever shifted between them to outside evaluation.

Maybe the problem is that this time they’re hanging out at somebody’s home instead of at a bar or a restaurant. The atmosphere is the wrong kind of in-between; the boundaries grow blurry.

Mingyu invited everyone over for dinner because he wanted to show off with the new cast iron wok Minghao got him as an anniversary gift. They ate, and the food was amazing as expected, and Wonwoo looks particularly scrumptious this evening with a simple raglan t-shirt tucked into jeans, which means that Chan has spent the entire evening thus far feeling like a terrible friend for wanting to do nothing more than leave so he can finally unravel him.

It was Jihoon who asked if they were all in the mood to play some games, and Jihoon rarely suggests prolonging a hangout past what was a given when he could also go home and sleep, so it felt sacrilegious to fuck off after dinner. So they didn’t.

So they’re on the sofa now and Wonwoo claimed he was cold which Chan is pretty sure was bullshit, but nobody questioned it. So Mingyu brought him a blanket. So Wonwoo spread it innocuously across both him and Chan. And now they’re halfway into watching Joshua lose a round of FIFA against Seungcheol on the TV and claiming he isn’t when everyone can plainly see the score in the corner of the screen, and Wonwoo’s hand is in between Chan’s legs. Not quite at his dick but close enough to it that it’s all Chan can do not to squirm.

When Wonwoo squeezes his inner thigh, Chan’s breath stops for a moment, and Wonwoo looks at him and smiles slyly, and they have eleven fucking friends surrounding them so did they really believe no one would notice the clandestine glances they keep exchanging? Chan’s certain the tips of his ears are crimson. He’s sweating in some seriously unsexy places.

Wonwoo leans in and noses at his earlobe, then leaves a little nibble to it, and when the fuck did he get so brazen?

And so Seokmin apparently has enough and breaks his silence. And as soon as he does, eleven sets of eyes land on them, narrowing in suspicion. Many glinting, full of mirth. Even Joshua gives up on accusing Seungcheol of cheating and they both let their players idle on the screen while they focus their full attention on Wonwoo and Chan, controllers forgotten. This is serious.

“When did this happen?” Seokmin says, indicating the decided lack of space between their bodies. The – now that Chan looks at it – not-at-all discreet lump of Wonwoo’s hand beneath the blanket.

Wonwoo retracts it as if it’s been burned, folding his hands together atop the blanket instead, but it’s very obviously too late. He doesn’t scoot away, though. Chan’s not sure if that’s better. He’s not sure how to handle this. He does appreciate Wonwoo’s proximity under any circumstances.

Soonyoung’s face unrolls into something ecstatic. Seungkwan, whose hand is around the back of Soonyoung’s shoulders in the armchair they’re sharing, gapes. His eyebrows disappear behind his bangs. Seokmin’s grinning so hard Chan’s certain he can’t see anything. Jeonghan has a hand on Seokmin’s thigh and a fiendish eyebrow quirked. Jihoon covers his mouth with his palm. Hansol is merely blinking. Junhui’s got his lips twisted into an amused smirk and Minghao hides a smile in Mingyu’s shoulder. Mingyu makes no attempt to hide his.

Chan looks at Wonwoo, helpless, his face blazing. Wonwoo merely tilts his head to the side, equally exposed and uncertain. Blushing similarly. Not the time to think about how cute he is, but Chan’s pitiful in his presence. How no one’s commented on it thus far is probably a miracle, truthfully.

“Um,” Chan says, clearing his throat to steady his voice. “What exactly do you mean?”

“You never told us you finally started dating,” Jeonghan says. Chan’s going to kill him. What does he mean, finally? He looks really proud of himself, too. Jerk.

Joshua’s eyes widen so hopefully that it would crush Chan to correct the assumption, but this is so far beyond awkward he doesn’t even know what to call it.

Wonwoo offers a weak chuckle beside Chan, but doesn’t say anything. Well. If he’s not going to, Chan isn’t. Let him dash their hopes if he wants to.

The room tapers into the most uncomfortable silence of Chan’s life, worse even than the moments in which he first realized Wonwoo was asleep and hard against him on that fateful evening, and some kind of odd game of chicken unfolds where neither of them is willing to dispute Jeonghan’s statement – but also not willing to confirm it.

Jeonghan gets bored eventually. Rolls his eyes. Says, “Let us know when you figure it out, and we’ll celebrate then.”

Seokmin mouths a Sorry at Chan and Chan’s finding it really hard to be mad at him. He seeks out Wonwoo’s gaze for some kind of comfort but Wonwoo is staring resolutely at anything other than him. He still doesn’t budge from Chan’s side though.

They make it through a few more rounds of FIFA that Chan barely registers and Mingyu smiles a little too big when he hugs them goodbye like it’s his duty as host to make up for the awkwardness. They say their goodbyes to everyone else at the street corner and then it’s just Wonwoo and Chan and a night sky blanketed in clouds and the weight of everything unsaid.

Wonwoo takes his hand anyway, even as they pass the entire way home in silence. The gears in Chan’s head are working overtime and soon they will start sparking. Wonwoo is silent in the way he gets when he’s stressing. Usually Chan finds that Wonwoo’s nerves allow him to be more confident, because someone needs to take the reins. Tonight he’s struggling. But as always, he’s determined.

He waits until they’re inside and Wonwoo has let go of him, fully prepared to call him back into the living room if he tries to run into his room and hide for the rest of eternity.

Chan needs to give Wonwoo more credit. He goes to the cupboard and gets out two glasses he fills with water for them, then carries them over to the sofa and looks at Chan expectantly. Chan forces a deep breath. Swallows a large sip of his water, his hand going Zippo on him again when their fingers brush as he takes the glass, before placing it down on the coffee table. Wonwoo copies him and then they sit facing each other. Silence descends.

Wonwoo picks at the hem of his jeans where his leg is folded in front of him and the action is becoming more and more jittery the longer he goes, and Chan can’t take it. He sighs loudly. Grabs Wonwoo’s hand away from his pants and holds it between both of his. Runs his thumbs over Wonwoo’s knuckles in a manner he hopes is soothing. Opens his mouth to speak, but Wonwoo beats him to it.

“I’m so sorry,” he says. The words spill out of his mouth in a jumble. This was not the kind of unraveling Chan was picturing, but for Wonwoo, he’ll bear anything. He increases the pressure of his thumb on Wonwoo’s hand, keeps the rhythm steady.

“What are you apologizing for, hyung?”

“I – I got careless. I didn’t know they’d think we were a couple, I didn’t want to make you uncomfy, I… I’m sorry.”

Despite Wonwoo’s very clear apprehension, Chan is powerless to the smile that tugs up the corners of his lips.

Wonwoo frowns at him, eyebrows knitting together. “What’s so funny?”

Chan shakes his head. “You’re cute.”

“Oh,” Wonwoo says dumbly and blinks a few times in quick succession. Further supporting Chan’s statement, in his opinion. “Um. You too.”

“I’m sorry,” Chan says. “If what Seokminnie-hyung said upset you.”

Wonwoo looks panicked. “N-no! Um. No,” he exclaims. “I just, uh. Please don’t think I’d consider dating you upsetting, oh my God. I just – ugh, fuck.”

Chan is just the tiniest bit amused. Wonwoo is so eloquent but when it comes to matters like this, he’s a different person. Chan feels a little blessed to bear witness to it, but mostly he just isn’t sure what he can do to help him. He plays with Wonwoo’s nailbeds and takes a steadying breath.

“Wonwoo-yah.”

“Hm?”

It feels like they’re back at the start line, and at the same time somewhere unprecedented, far off the track. Chan’s good at adapting, though, he thinks.

“I’d like to kiss you right now.”

“Oh.” Wonwoo blushes. “Um. Yeah, sure. Okay.”

So Chan does. The whole thing is hilariously tentative and PG. He’s back to being eleven again with that first boy crush, all giddy, all frightened. His stomach’s aflutter and his heartbeat’s erratic.

Wonwoo pulls back. His lips are shiny. Chan chases him to place one more gentle kiss to them.

“I don’t want things to change,” Wonwoo says. Chan can feel Wonwoo’s pulse through his sweaty palm, elevated. “Or I don’t want them to get, um. Weird. I – I don’t know how to do this. I’m. You mean too much to me to risk just because we got a little too swept away that first evening. I – um. I’m sorry for that, because that one was on me, I think. I got careless.”

He winces, like that’s not how he meant to say it. Chan swallows and tries not to let it sting. He’s not sure Wonwoo has ever known how serious he is about him. He squeezes Wonwoo’s hand in the space between their bodies. It feels vast.

“I don’t want them to get weird either. But do you really think they will? I mean,” he says, smiling again. “It’s us, right?”

“Yeah,” Wonwoo says. He’s pale. “It’s us. Um.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Wonwoo-yah. I’ve loved everything that’s happened since that evening. I…” he trails off, unsure how much he should say.

Wonwoo releases his lower lip where he’d been biting it and smiles weakly. He’s having a hard time meeting Chan’s gaze. The silence inflates between them. Chan doesn’t let go of him.

“I’m really tired, Chan-ah,” he mutters at their intertwined hands eventually. “I’m sorry. Can we talk another time, maybe?”

Chan’s heart sinks, but he won’t let on how crestfallen he is. Wonwoo’s older than him but he’s inexperienced. He’s never had a long-term relationship, never had anybody serious. Chan knows what rejection feels like and this isn’t it, so there’s hope beneath his disappointment – but he’s not going to push it. He swallows again, because there’s a lump in his throat and it’s stupid. He meant what he said just now: it’s them. It’s not going to get weird; he won’t let it.

“Sleep, baby,” he says. The baby slipped out and he stills when he realizes. Surprising, actually, that that hasn’t happened around their friends. He worries it was a mistake but the way Wonwoo’s face softens tells him it was quite the opposite.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. Chan gets up with him. Opens his arms. Doesn’t kiss him, because it feels like Wonwoo needs a hug more in this moment. He squeezes with all his might, arms tight around Wonwoo’s waist. Wonwoo squeezes back. Then Chan watches him pad into his bedroom and shut the door behind him.

Chan sits back down and takes a shuddering breath, closing his eyes against the tears pricking in them. Wishes now, in the aftermath of the conversation, that he’d just said fuck it and been entirely honest. Wonders if he wasn’t because he was trying not to overwhelm Wonwoo, or if he himself is more afraid than he lets on after all.

There’s no reason to cry, though, because he’s Lee Jung Chan, and he’s never backed down from anything that mattered to him. If there was no solution to a problem, then it wasn’t meant for him to begin with. And one way or another, he knows Wonwoo is.

Jeon Wonwoo is – he’s fine. Really. He’s got his heart in check, or he would if Chan would stop fucking testing it.

He told himself he was fine with the way things were. Not labeling things. Not dating, but definitely more than friends. It’s not exactly what he wants from Chan, but being ungrateful would be ridiculous.

But then Lee Seokmin.

And then Chan, looking at him like that. The same way he looks at the kids he teaches when they complete a dance routine successfully. Affection so loud it pours from every part of him. Pride mixed in with it.

And Chan saying, I’ve loved everything that’s happened since that evening. And Wonwoo ending the conversation early so he didn’t accidentally blurt out, I LOVE YOU! Yes, in all caps, because that’s the way he thinks it. That’s the way he feels it. It’s his loudest emotion. Has been since the first few weeks of knowing Chan. And they’ve been happy, he thinks. They’ve worked well this entire time as roommates and best friends and then whatever the hell else they became recently.

But what if Wonwoo ruins it? He’s ruined every other relationship he might have had a chance at. Historically he’s not great at this. And he can feel it happening again. Their kind-of conversation was only last night and neither of them are at work today, which is amazing but also awful, because they are moving through each other’s spaces more carefully than they have since the first few days of knowing each other.

Wonwoo’s already fucking it up because he doesn’t know how to act. Because all he wants to do is sweep Chan into his arms, shower him in compliments and kiss him all over his beautiful face, then the rest of his body. Tell him exactly how he feels; rip his chest open with his bare hands and let it all spill to the ground between them. Let Chan figure out what to do with the mess and trust he could handle the consequences. Risk burdening him for the possibility of something greater coming of it.

But he’s so scared.

They make it to the far side of the afternoon in this precarious limbo – all the way until the sun starts to set, tinting the world outside their windows sepia. Wonwoo is acutely aware of all the space they’re leaving each other, even though when Chan speaks to him it’s as friendly and open as ever.

He wonders if Chan tossed and turned all night too. If he had to fight himself not to tear out of bed and run into the other room begging for resolution.

Wonwoo braves the world outside his bedroom, which he’s been doing his best to ignore with the aid of his headphones and League of Legends-induced raging except for when he needed something, in order to throw out the containers from the takeout he just finished eating.

He finishes washing his hands and is about to retreat back into his room when Chan’s door opens. They stand in the hallway facing each other and Wonwoo’s heart longs. It feels heavy and swollen and feverish in his chest, but what doctor do you go to for this?

Chan smiles at him. Wonwoo smiles back, and at least it’s genuine, because how could it not be? It’s Chan. He turns Wonwoo all gooey and rich and sugary, like the inside of a brownie. No, he can’t ruin this.

Chan goes to the bathroom, sidestepping Wonwoo on the way, and Wonwoo lingers awkwardly in the hallway. Chan startles when he comes back out, like he wasn’t expecting to see him waiting.

“Chan-ah,” Wonwoo begins. His voice comes out plaintive and he feels humiliated for no reason he can name. He meant what he said yesterday: he doesn’t know how to do this. But he also meant when he said he wouldn’t risk Chan, and damn it, he’s going to take matters into his own hands. He has to. This is worth it.

Chan hums, cocking his head in question.

“Can we – um.” Wonwoo shakes himself. When did he become such a stuttering, inarticulate disaster? Jeonghan would have a field day with this. But then he’d probably take Wonwoo aside and whisper sincere words of encouragement, and Wonwoo would believe them because Jeonghan is right about everything, much as he hates to admit it. “Do you want to watch a movie?”

Chan lights up. He beams, all his brilliant teeth out and shining. Wonwoo’s heart takes a tentative step towards the edge of the cliff. Maybe, he thinks, it has wings.

“You pick,” Chan insists. And Wonwoo, as has been the case lately, does not actually care what they end up watching. He’s not planning on paying any attention, though he’s also not planning on getting lost in hooking up this evening. He just wants Chan close while he works up the bravery to lay his heart out for him. Never once has Chan handled his vulnerability with anything less than the utmost grace. So he’ll get there. He can do this.

He pictures Jeonghan putting a hand on his shoulder and looking him in the eyes, telling him, You’re amazing, Wonwoo-yah. Anyone would be lucky to be loved by you. Like this, he psychs himself up as he flips through Disney+. In the end he settles on the first Spiderman movie he sees. He’s not even sure which one it is.

Chan was busy getting drinks and Wonwoo’s favorite chips, and when he comes into the living room Wonwoo settles back against the sofa’s backrest and opens his arms for him, indicating them with a tilt of his head. If Chan wants to cuddle, that’s a great first step. It doesn’t matter that Wonwoo’s heart is thundering against his ribcage like Secretariat at the ’73 Belmont Stakes.

He tucks Chan into his body and tries not to care that Chan can certainly feel how it’s racing. Can hear it, once he lays his head against Wonwoo’s chest. Wonwoo breathes in and out slowly until he calms and tries to focus on enjoying how Chan feels in his arms, this warm, sweet little sunshine of a human being. The stupidest, hottest, cutest person Wonwoo’s ever met. He tousles Chan’s hair just so Chan will do that pouty little frown thing he does sometimes that Wonwoo is absolutely obsessed with.

Chan does, and Wonwoo is growing more and more certain his heart can actually soar if he lets it. They settle in and Wonwoo tries to watch the movie and he promises himself, every time a new scene begins: After this one I’ll do it. After this one I’ll tell him.

And because time has a funny habit of speeding up every time you don’t want something to end, the credits roll before he can, and the room is doused in crushing silence. But he can do this.

“Chan-ah?” he tries. There’s no response. As usual, they’ve got only the fairy lights on. He peers down at Chan, who is a reassuring, steady weight against him. Squeezes his shoulder gently. “Chan-ah?”

Chan’s eyes are shut. His breathing is even. He’s sleeping. Shit. He’s so fucking adorable it genuinely physically hurts. He looks so innocent like this. This was never just sexual to Wonwoo, and in fact it’s absurd to imagine it could have been enough for him.

His heart’s still soaring. His nerves are making him feel crazy, but he’ll stay here and let Chan sleep on him for as long as he’s allowed to. He watches the credits finish rolling down the screen, then the post-credits scene, and right when the movie goes silent is when Chan begins to mumble in his sleep.

Wonwoo freezes.

“Wonwoo-yah,” Chan’s slurred voice is saying. Wonwoo’s breath catches. “Wonwoo-yah, I have a secret.”

His face is turned into Wonwoo’s chest and Wonwoo fears for a moment that the way his heart picks up speed will be extreme enough to wake him. There’s a small smile on Chan’s lips. Wonwoo didn’t know you could smile in your sleep.

He listens. And Chan mutters, “I love you.”

Wonwoo genuinely nearly screams. He has no idea how to process that. He feels like he should react even though Chan still looks as peaceful as before the life-altering confession he just uttered. He doesn’t want to wake him, but he’s malfunctioning and all this sudden energy inside of him has to be channeled into something. What he ends up with is a strangled, high-pitched noise forcibly escaping his lips.

He covers his mouth with the hand that’s not around Chan’s shoulders instantly, but Chan’s already laughing.

Wait. Chan’s laughing?

“Chan-ah?” Wonwoo whispers.

Chan cracks first one eye open, then the second.

“Hi, Wonwoo-yah,” he says, and his giggles are radiant and lovely. “I have another confession to make. I wasn’t actually sleeping.”

“What is wrong with you?!” Wonwoo exclaims, his head spinning.

“I fucked it up,” Chan sighs, pulling himself up to a seated position. He doesn’t budge from Wonwoo’s side though, putting a hand on Wonwoo’s knee and caressing it. Wonwoo glows. “I wanted to wait and see if you’d say anything. In case it was easier if you thought I wasn’t actually listening. Sorry if that was mean.”

“Downright evil,” Wonwoo says. His cheeks hurt. How long has he been grinning?

“Does that mean you liked what I said?”

Wonwoo sighs. Covers Chan’s hand with his. Mutters, somewhat petulantly, “Yes, but you beat me to it.”

“What was that?” Chan needles. “I didn’t hear what you said.”

Wonwoo knows damn well he did. Still. He takes the leap, his feet kicking the air beneath him until he realizes he’s not dropping. He looks Chan dead in the eyes – shiny, bottomless, heart-wrenching – and says it even as his voice shakes.

“I love you, Chan-ah. Happy?”

Chan kisses him. Slides his hand out from under Wonwoo’s so he can take both Wonwoo’s cheeks into his grip and kisses him again and again and again, stealing the breath from Wonwoo anew every single time Wonwoo attempts to break away and say something. He tastes of Wonwoo’s favorite chips, even though the bowl sits untouched before them. He must have snuck some as he was getting them.

Chan kisses him until they’re both gasping and giggling and then he finally backs away just a little bit. Plucks Wonwoo’s hands from around his own waist and interlaces their fingers. Strokes his thumbs over the backs of Wonwoo’s hands with reverence.

“Please tell me again now that you’re awake,” Wonwoo pouts. “I deserve it.”

“I was awake, baby,” Chan teases.

“Please,” Wonwoo repeats. He’s Chan’s baby. He tries for puppy-dog eyes and doesn’t know if he succeeds, but maybe Chan’s just as weak to him as he is to Chan after all, and maybe he always has been. Chan rolls his eyes, but they can’t belie his unquantifiable fondness.

“I love you,” he says. Then tacks on an, “You idiot.”

Wonwoo’s Chan’s idiot. He’s the happiest he’s ever been. He tackles Chan to the sofa and tickles him and kisses him repeatedly even though both of them are grinning into it and he meets tooth just as much as he meets lip.

He could spend forever doing this. He’ll never get sick of it.

He pulls back and hovers over Chan’s ecstatic face just long enough to be brave one final time – though is it brave if he’s fairly certain of the answer to the question he’s asking? Does it matter?

Chan looks at him with sanguine enthusiasm and that’s the only thing he cares about. Wonwoo is buoyed. He’s flying.

“Boyfriends?” he asks, voice lilting with the hope it’s dripping in. For once he doesn’t worry about whether he sounds stupid.

Chan pulls him down by the back of his neck and crashes their mouths together all over again. It feels like it’s the first time. It feels like it’s the thousandth. Chan whispers the answer into Wonwoo’s mouth in between more kisses. There is a certainty to the word that leaves no room whatsoever for doubt in Wonwoo’s mind.

So something did change between them. Turns out it’s nowhere near as awful as Wonwoo feared. Quite the opposite, even.

“Boyfriends,” Chan agrees.