Archive of Our Own

Minho peels open his eyes and—

Nope.

He winces. Clenches them shut against the light pouring from the gap between his blackout curtains. His head throbs like he’d gone rogue on the soju last night (he hadn’t) and when he clutches his tummy, it feels sore to the touch like he’d purged its full volume into the toilet bowl before heading to bed (he hadn’t—in fact, he’d spent the last few hours of his Sunday scrubbing it clean). His pillow case is damp where it sticks to his cheek and neck with sweat, and when he scratches idly at his arm, the contact zings across his tender skin, hypersensitive.

“No,” he croaks to the empty room. Comeback day is in less than three weeks. Preparations are deep underway, and today’s schedule is jam-packed. He can’t… yeah, he simply can’t. This, whatever this is, cannot be. It can’t, and it won’t. He takes his fucking vitamins, he eats well-rounded meals, he works out and goes for walks and feels the sunlight on his skin. He’s vaxxed, tested more than regularly, wears a goddamn mask. He does everything right. And he won’t fucking stand for it.

But Minho quickly realizes that he can’t stand at all when he nearly blacks out getting out of bed. He makes to grab onto his desk for balance but only swipes a drinking glass from its precarious perch, and both him and the glass go tumbling noisily to the floor.

Hurried footsteps in the hall. Then, on the other side of the closed door: “Hyung?” Felix. “Everything okay in there?”

Minho cracks his eyes open to glare at the puddle of water soaking into his rug. He’s on his side, shoulder smarting beneath him. The glass, at least, is mercifully intact. “Fine,” he calls, voice hoarse.

“Hyung—”

“I said fine.”

Hyunjin has only just set foot in the practice room when he declares, “Jeez, hyung, you look like shit!”

And. And. Minho knows. Had masked up in his own dorm and pulled the brim of his hat down to his nose before he’d climbed into the car behind Jeongin, Seungmin, and Felix, silently daring them to comment on his puffy eyes or stiff stagger or the way he’d demasked solely to throw back a handful of painkillers and chug down half a water bottle.

Changbin, Jisung, and Chan file in like little ducklings behind Hyunjin. The latter drops to a squat beside Minho, probably marveling at his itchy, weepy eyes in hideous clarity under the unflattering overhead lights. “I wonder if Jisung gave it to you,” muses Hyunjin. “Or you gave it to him.”

Minho hasn’t the time to utter even a questioning noise before Jisung collapses to a seat at his other side and flings his mask theatrically to the floor. “You did this to me?” rasps Jisung, grabbing a hold of Minho’s achy arm, wiggling at it weakly. Minho registers belatedly that he too looks worse for wear—tired, above all, eyes rubbed raw like Minho’s feel. “You evil, wicked hyung, how could”—Jisung coughs, then plows on melodramatically, like he’s uttering his final words—“how could you? To little ole me?”

Minho means to evil-laugh, but it comes out absentminded. His focus is zeroed in on the unusually soothing warmth of Jisung’s grip. And, sure, Jisung is his rock, regularly grounds Minho to the present, but this… this radiates down his arm to his fingertips, seems to spread to his chest and up his throat, to his cheeks. Minho regards Jisung’s hand with bemusement, breathing easier, lighter. And when Jisung’s grip relaxes but his hand remains in place, Minho imagines he might feel something, too. He reads too deeply into Jisung’s uncharacteristic silence, the roundness of his drowsy eyes, his chapped lips hanging slightly parted. The choreographer enters and Hyunjin wanders off, so Minho takes the opportunity to wind his arm around Jisung’s shoulders, drag him into his side.

Jisung comes willingly. Melts, even, as he encircles Minho’s waist in his arms and lolls his head onto Minho’s shoulder.

Minho feels like a gust of cool wind blows at the fog coating his mind. Clear thoughts float toward the surface. “Bit dramatic,” he mutters finally. “I think you just missed your hyung.”

“Fuck off,” hums Jisung somewhere near Minho’s ear. Then his arms flex around Minho’s middle. “But also, like. Please don’t.”

Minho’s lips quirk. He observes as Changbin tries to squat the weight of both Felix and Seungmin dangling from his back. The choreographer saves Minho’s breath by intervening first.

“Feels so nice,” Jisung mumbles, almost drunkenly.

“Don’t be weird,” Minho says lightly.

Jisung scoffs, unbothered, his breath warm on Minho’s neck. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Minho doesn’t. He merely exhales, checks the time on his phone. “Practice waits for no one.”

“Practice waits for Han Jisung,” Jisung argues, petulant.

Minho tries to budge, working against every instinct telling him to stay put, but Jisung only whines.

“Hyung, ask practice to wait for Han Jisung just this once.”

Minho extricates himself, leaving Jisung to crumple against the floor.

“Why do you hate me,” Jisung asks the floor.

Minho jabs a toe between his ass cheeks through his baggy sweats. Wills himself to meander toward the others, where Chan catches him by the elbow. “Hyunjin said you’re sick, too?”

Minho blinks, all nonchalant, fluttery eyelashes. “I feel fine.” And it’s the truth. He feels… exceedingly ordinary.

Chan responds with a squinty, skeptical look. “Hyunjin said Hannie—”

Minho points to where Jisung is now demonstrating their point choreo, enhanced by overenthusiastic hip thrusts as Hyunjin doubles over in laughter. Also just… normal. “Hyung, I think we’ve established that Hyunjin is not always right.”

But as they get into starting formation and Minho feels the sole of Jisung’s foot against his back, as Jisung drags his sweaty hoodie over his head mid-practice and tosses it into Jeongin’s face, as Jisung takes too urgent of a sip from his water bottle and a good mouthful goes dribbling down his chin, Minho can’t help but wonder if he’d only dreamt waking to that searing ache in his head and bones.

The headache has been gnawing at him for over an hour when Minho finally slumps against the wall of the practice room, sliding to the floor. It’s verging on late—at least, much later than his first stint in the very same room that morning, and he’s alone this time. He hasn’t even been here that long, but he’s beginning to find he can hardly move—much less thrash his head about like the choreography demands—without dull spikes of pain streaking from the core of his head outward to his temples.

He’s slouched against the wall, scrolling through his own bubble messages, when a KaTalk notification pops up at the top of his screen.

9:43pm 한이

did you go home yet?

Minho lets the notification disappear. Stares at his screen until it goes black, unlocks his phone if only to escape staring at his own tired eyes in its reflection. Then he seeks out Jisung’s message with a sigh.

me 9:47pm

what’s it to you

9:47pm 한이

why do you hate me?

[sticker]

where are you

me 9:48pm

practice room

9:48pm 한이

I’m in the studio

me 9:48pm

groundbreaking.

9:49pm 한이

[sticker]

come up

Minho shuts his eyes. He hesitates against offering an excuse, knows it’d read too transparently to Jisung. He could simply just… go home. Sleep this off.

And yet, before he registers his body moving, he’s already gathering his shit and turning off the lights behind him and:

me 9:53pm

lazy ass

Minho takes the stairs, though every step feels like a toothpick inserted just so into his brain. By the time he’s reaching his destination, he feels like his head need only be cubed up for serving as hors d’oeuvres.

The studio door opens before Minho even arrives. He only knows this because Jisung pokes his head out into the hall.

Minho squints at him, continues in his shuffling approach.

“I sensed your presence,” Jisung says loftily, lounging in the doorframe. When Minho’s squint only narrows, he adds, “And I heard you dragging your feet.”

Minho won’t contest that. If any of his limbs were detachable, he probably would’ve shed the extra weight by the third flight of stairs.

He squeezes past Jisung in the doorway, tosses his bag to the floor and slumps onto the couch. It’s musty in the dark little studio, like Jisung’s been roasting in here all day, and Minho pulls his mask off, makes a face. “Smells ripe in here.”

Jisung shuts the door. “Thanks, baby, you too.”

Minho’s lips twitch at a smile. He rolls his head back onto the cushions, shuts his eyes against the glow of a screen cluttered with mixing software he can’t make heads nor tails of.

The couch dips beside Minho. Jisung wordlessly gathers him into his chest. He even rubs his chin into Minho’s greasy hair, which is gross on several levels, but then Minho decides he needs it, this, and pitches his weight into Jisung heavily enough to get him sliding down to his back. Jisung clings to Minho, laughs quietly. They aren’t quite horizontal, and Minho isn’t quite between Jisung’s legs, toes still grazing the floor. But it’ll do. And it does wonders for Minho’s head.

Jisung’s chest thumps under his ear, not exactly at a calming pace.

“Can you slow your heart down,” mutters Minho. He rubs his cheek against Jisung’s soft, pilling hoodie.

“Hm?” Jisung shifts beneath him. “Oh, yeah, just gimme a sec.” Then he grunts, hand clenching into a fist against Minho’s back, and Minho lifts his head in befuddlement to find Jisung pulling the spitting image of a toddler-trying-to-poop face.

“What the fuck,” Minho whispers, stifling a laugh.

Jisung eases up, cracks a smile. “Weird. That usually works.”

“I’m sure.” Minho reevaluates his position, and drags his legs up onto the couch with him, rolling fully onto his stomach and making room for himself between Jisung’s legs.

With his cheek to Jisung’s chest again, it occurs to him that his headache is… gone.

Then, Jisung mumbles, “How’s your head?”

The question takes a moment for Minho to process. “My head?”

“Mm.”

“Fine?” Minho blinks, watches the computer go to sleep. His heart lurches, and he wonders if Jisung can feel it through his ribs. “Why?”

“I just thought…” Jisung trails off. “Didn’t you mention… like, earlier? I thought—”

“No,” Minho says dubiously. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Oh.” Jisung falls silent. Takes a deep breath that makes Minho’s head rise and fall. “Never mind.”

Minho’s eyebrows remain in a furrow until he becomes cognizant of it, lets them smooth out. Relax your face, his trainer always tells him.

Then Jisung’s stomach growls, so long-winded it seems to wail for attention.

Minho bites back a smile.

Jisung clears his throat. “Maybe hyung could,” he starts, low and quiet. When Minho peeks, Jisung is contemplating the ceiling. “Hyung could come over. Grace me with his company and his talents. In… in my kitchen, specifically. Wouldn’t have to be anything too fancy, of course. I’m no chooser. Only a beggar.” Jisung takes a breath. “And beg I will.” His eyes dart down to Minho. “If you want, I mean. If you’re feeling generous.”

Minho watches him back, bats his eyes sleepily. “We’re shooting early tomorrow.”

“You can stay over.”

Minho feels his chest warm over. “That wasn’t my main concern,” he lies. “You just can’t blame me when you wake up all puffy tomorrow.”

“An unsalted meal isn’t a meal at all.” Jisung smacks at Minho’s ass to drive the point home. “So was that a yes?”

Minho awakens two minutes before his alarm. He reaches for his phone on Jisung’s nightstand to switch it off before it can blare into the early morning silence of the dorm.

The night prior, he’d thrown together a simple meal for Jisung from the pitiable contents of the fridge, left him to have at it and bumped into Hyunjin, who’d greeted him uninterestedly on his way to use their shower. He’d then made himself comfortable in Jisung’s bed, wearing a clean set of Jisung’s pajamas, and watched the darkness behind his eyelids, willing the undertow of sleep to sweep him away. Later, Jisung entered the room quietly, also freshly showered by the smell of him. He’d crawled in behind Minho, laid with his side pressed along Minho’s back, the strobing light from his phone screen dancing in blue flames along the wall.

Minho then awoke on his side, tucked into Jisung’s chest with the latter spread-eagle on his back.

Minho observes him now, propped up by his elbow. Rolls his eyes when he notices the way the smooth sheets lay over Jisung’s groin.

But really… Minho feels fine. He feels good. Tired, always, but good. And Jisung looks deep in sleep, hair flattened on one side, so Minho can do only one thing: pinch his nose shut.

Jisung rouses, gasping through a gaping mouth and shooting up onto his elbows. The sheets slink away from his skin to pool at his waist, leaving him infuriatingly bare-chested. He belatedly blinks the sleep from his eyes, at which point they track over to Minho, who finally unhands his nose, flushed pink from the pressure.

Jisung stares at him blankly. Then his face crumples as he yawns voraciously and flops back down to the mattress. “Been a while since you last did this,” he mutters, voice low and throaty, and rubs at his eyes with balled-up fists.

Minho nibbles at his lower lip. “Tried to kill you in your sleep?”

“No—hyung, you should know to never admit your intent to murder. What the fuck. Anyway, I meant since you last slept in my bed. Not since we moved, at least.”

Minho’s gaze slides to the sheets. There’s a hole in them just big enough to poke his finger into. “You said I could stay over,” he mumbles. “Would you rather I bunked with Channie-hyung? Your couch was off-limits. I don’t need to check between the cushions to know there’s more than chip dust buried in there.”

“If it’s buried it can’t hurt you.” Jisung grins. “But… no? No, this was… what I meant. When I said you should stay. I dunno. Just making an observation.”

Minho hums, still nebulously evading Jisung’s eyes. He listens to Jisung take a deep breath. Sees, not even from his periphery, as he reaches under the sheets to scratch at his balls and make a subtle attempt at adjusting the draping so his morning wood isn’t quite so glaring.

Cute.

“How do you feel?” asks Jisung.

Minho meets his eyes. “How do I feel?”

Jisung nods, lip caught in his teeth, pupils wide in the curtained room. He’s got a few days’ worth of stubble growing in, Minho observes, that’ll be gone by the time they shoot. “Yeah. ‘Cos… like, I think we both had a bit of a rough start.” His gaze flits away. “Yesterday morning.”

Minho frowns at the reminder. He’d gotten his sock wet stepping on his carpet post-water spillage, felt its unpleasant dampness inside his shoe all the way to the company building, and yet he’d still managed to convince himself he’d only imagined waking twenty-four hours ago to actual worlds of pain. “Mm.”

“I, for one, felt like I got hit by a truck,” says Jisung. He yawns again, stretches his arms above his head and arches his back from the bed. And Minho… Minho watches him. He’d basically have to flip over not to. “And then the truck decided to be nice, gave me a chance to get back up, just to reverse right back over me.”

“Mm.” Minho finds himself thumbing at a freckle on the side of Jisung’s arm. “And now?”

“Feel like a brand new persooon,” Jisung falsettos in English. While he waits for Minho to react, to catch some musical reference that will inevitably fly over Minho’s head and bounce off the wall, Jisung offers a wide-eyed blink, a cute, toothy smile. Then Minho rolls his eyes, clambers over Jisung’s supine form. “Wait, where are you going?” Jisung whines.

“To use the bathroom before you.”

“That’s… yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

Minho snorts. And when he’s trying to be gentle about opening Jisung’s bedroom door, Jisung mutters, “Jagiya.”

Minho halts mid-step, glances over his shoulder. Jisung’s rolled onto his side, cheek smushed to his pillow. He looks altogether very… well, Minho can’t really finish that thought without unlocking a little safe he’s long suppressed into lockdown. A little safe with a figurative code he intentionally forgot, with a figurative padlock and a figurative key he figuratively threw into the Han River.

Jisung smiles. “Thanks for dinner.”

Minho’s silly heart roams the bottom of the river with a metal detector. And instead of granting Jisung an answer, he turns to leave. “Do you want me to take my time so you can have your morning wank?”

“Hey,” Jisung yawps, followed by silence. And an obnoxious yawn. “Nah, I’ll just take another shower, I guess.”

They’ve been filming something that won’t see the light of day for at least a month, going on long enough that the sun’s dipped below the horizon—at least, Minho surmises it has. He hasn’t seen so much as a window in a hot second, merely the twinkle of stars in his weather app indicating the evening’s arrival.

They’re on a break for a bit, and Minho has laid claim to a corner of the couch on set, slumped with his head propped up in hand, palm covering his eyes, free arm held snug over his middle. It’s the same corner he’s occupied all throughout filming, mood deteriorating by the hour as what was initially an ache in the pit of his stomach began to devour him whole. He already pities the Stay who’ll notice him sulking in silence, make compilation clips of the footage and worry for him. The half-smile-half-grimace isn’t exactly his best look.

The armchair at Minho’s side groans with the scrunch of faux leather as Jeongin sinks into it. “Earth to hyung,” he says, and Minho doesn’t need to look to know he’s got his mouth full. “They brought in the catering.”

Minho grunts. The worst part of this, whatever’s been plaguing him lately—or more precisely, as of yesterday morning—is that he’s usually excellent at holding a poker face, at smothering just how badly his body is crying out for rest or relief until he’s alone at last.

It doesn’t even feel like an option now. He’s far from being alone, so hiding in plain sight is the best he can do. This isn’t a pulled muscle or some mild back pain, but he can’t just voice that. If he did, they’d probably drag him to the hospital. Maybe they should, he thinks, then snorts aloud. Not a chance.

The couch bounces beneath him. Minho’s already mid-sigh when Chan begins, “Minho, there’s food—”

“Hyung?”

Minho unsticks his eyelids. Lowers his hand… eventually.

Jisung stands before them. He looks a little sickly, or a lot sickly, if it isn’t just the fluorescent overhead light giving that milky tinge to his skin.

“You good, Jisungie?” hums Chan, and then Minho notices that Jisung’s hand is proffered. Weakly, fingertips trembling a bit, but it’s there. Minho decides in the moment that he cares far less about looking shameless than he does about feeling like… well, himself. And right now, he’s so, so far from it. Might as well be orbiting a different fucking sun.

Minho hefts himself from the couch, takes Jisung’s hand. And luckily Jisung is on the same page, doesn’t give him a second to feel awkward or presumptuous before he starts off furiously toward the studio doors with Minho in tow.

“What—where’re you going?” Chan calls, and Minho can only manage so much as a vague gesture to bat off Chan’s concern. He already feels more lucid just clinging to Jisung’s clammy hand.

Jisung bursts into the men’s bathroom down the hall, drags Minho in, and forces the door shut.

Minho catches himself on the opposite wall, pulse hammering out of his temples and throat, hand pressed to his stomach again. But his own doesn’t have quite the same effect as Jisung’s.

“We’ve gotta stop meeting like this,” mutters Jisung, who mirrors Minho’s stance in pitching his weight against the door, head tipped backward. Minho absolutely doesn’t stare at his bared throat. Not for long, at least.

“Like what,” says Minho dryly. He huffs a chuckle, suddenly out of breath. “Whatever could you mean, Hannie. Everything’s fine, everything is just dandy and completely and utterly normal. I don’t feel even remotely close to—”

“Dying?” Jisung blinks at him wearily.

Minho swallows. Shuts his eyes for one, two—

“Hyung,” Jisung whispers.

—Three. He pushes off the wall, traipses to the sink where he clutches at the edge of its counter. In the mirror, his eyes look hollow, the perimeters of his lips tinged a bizarre shade of violet.

“Hyung, what’s happening,” breathes Jisung.

Minho regards the picture Jisung’s figure paints through the mirror. It’s a real shame he doesn’t feel as good as he looks; big, cozy sweater swooping low over his collarbones, tucked into tight pants that nip him in at his waist. Minho forces his gaze to waver, though it isn’t all that difficult when his eyeballs threaten to roll out of his head. He settles on an ever-eloquent, “I don’t know.”

Time seems to short-circuit when Jisung suddenly plasters himself to Minho’s back, wrapping him in his warm arms. “It’s not just me, right?” he asks, quiet and hoarse and close to Minho’s ear.

Minho’s eyes flit between the counter and Jisung’s reflection above his shoulder. He shakes his head.

“But it’s not anyone else either,” adds Jisung. “It’s just us.”

“Aren’t we special,” breathes Minho.

And they watch each other through the mirror. Minho is simultaneously grateful for and loathing of the flush that rises to his sallow cheeks. It takes with it the pain, brings with it that unhinged vibration just beneath his skin barrier. He breaks the eye contact only to turn in a circle to face Jisung.

Jisung’s eyes are wide, and he sways backward at the sudden closeness of their faces. He doesn’t get a chance to escape, though, because they both stiffen at the urgent approach of footsteps toward the door, heel clicks echoing in the hall.

They fade in passing.

Jisung breathes out, and it fans over Minho’s face. “Come on,” he mutters, and drags Minho by the hand into one of the stalls.

The toilet in that particular stall is… beyond disgusting. “Oh, gross,” Jisung laments, recalculating his route and swinging Minho into the neighboring one.

“Now we’re two feet away from that literal shitstorm, instead of one,” Minho says brightly, as Jisung practically pins him to the stall door to lock it.

Jisung huffs, steps back (as far as he can with the toilet right fucking there). “At least there’s a wall in between.” He lets Minho’s hand dangle free. “And when you really think about it, we’re already in one—”

“Don’t let go,” Minho reprimands, fingers begging back into Jisung’s grip.

Jisung takes pause, eyes flickering down to their hands. “Oh. Right.”

“Sorry,” mutters Minho. He doesn’t know what came over him. But when he goes to retract—

“Don’t,” Jisung protests softly. He seeks a more secure clasp on Minho’s palm, then decidedly readjusts to fully lace their fingers.

Minho doesn’t look at him. Gives the toilet paper dispenser his undivided attention.

“Um, can I just.” Jisung sighs out his nose. “Can I make sure we’re on the same page? Because, like… this feels really… fucky, for lack of a better word, and I don’t really believe in… in things like…” Jisung hesitates. Or runs out of steam. “And I feel like you wouldn’t, either.”

“Things like what.” Minho’s the hyung here and he feels oddly responsible for whatever bullshit he and Jisung have roped themselves into, and yet, he can’t bring himself to do a goddamn thing, even to be the first to broach the topic. He feels powerless—and in a way, should he decide to believe what’s happening is real, that it’s possible, it’d only become more insurmountable. Because whatever is happening… yeah, Jisung knows him. Knows he believes in matters of this earth, concrete phenomena explained by science and understood and certified by people far smarter than him.

And this feels wrong. Absurd, like something borne out of Minho’s strangest dreams.

“Things like…” In Minho’s periphery, Jisung drops his head backward, chin to the ceiling. Carefully, he starts, “I don’t know how else to put it, so… it’s… it’s felt like… like if I spend too long away from you, without touching you, my body starts to give up.”

The back of Minho’s tongue tastes sour.

“And—and at first I thought, like, no fucking way that could be true. Like when we went into practice yesterday morning and you—you held me and it all just. Went away. And I thought nothing of it in the moment. But when I asked you to come to the studio, it was ‘cos I felt like shit again, like I was fucking wasting away or something, and I thought seeing you would help. And… it did. I swear. And then you slept over and we cuddled and woke up fine but I haven’t touched you since this morning and now it’s…” Jisung digs his phone out of his pocket, exhales. “Past seven.”

Minho stares blankly at the time on Jisung’s lockscreen.

“Hyung,” mumbles Jisung, like he’s treading on ice. “Please, is it just… is it just me? It’s okay if it is, but I’d, um, really like to know how fucking crazy I sound to you right now.”

“You sound unhinged.” Minho squeezes Jisung’s hand tight when he feels him fidget in his grip. “But, mm. I feel unhinged.”

The weight of Jisung’s gaze is heavy enough to sense, even when he can’t return it. “Yeah?”

Minho nods. “Mm.”

“Fuck.”

Minho nods again, chuckling humorlessly. “Yep.”

Footsteps in the hallway again. A thump on the door, followed by the groan of its hinges as it opens, and Minho and Jisung lock eyes. Purely out of instinct, Jisung flings his arms around Minho’s neck as Minho grabs for the backs of Jisung’s thighs, and they get him off the floor before the intruder can stroll past the stalls. Jisung’s thighs hug Minho’s middle tight, and they’re fine until Jisung emits a strangled noise when he realizes he can see above the stall, ducking down to tuck his face near Minho’s. They freeze, breaths held and noses touching, until the intruder finally unzips his pants at the urinal.

Minho exhales silently. Jisung grins like an idiot.

I’ll drop you, Minho mouths.

Jisung shakes his head slow and smug. No, you won’t, it says.

Minho digs his nails into Jisung’s ass. Jisung’s jaw drops in a muted scream.

It goes on like that until the intruder has finished washing his hands. They wait for him to exit the bathroom, but instead, the footsteps rove into the adjacent stall.

Fingers curl over the dividing wall moments before Jeongin’s head appears above it.

“Yah, pervert!” Jisung scoffs. Nearly loses his balance trying to smack Jeongin like a pitiful game of whack-a-mole.

“What are you two doing.” Jeongin grimaces, then tsks audibly, dropping his forehead to the divider. “God. Do I have to tell Chan-hyung about this? I don’t want to.”

“We’re not doing anything,” says Minho.

“Yeah,” Jisung agrees, too punchy to be genuine. Minho side-eyes him. “What the fuck is wrong with you anyway, peeking into occupied toilet stalls? Someday it won’t be me in hyung’s arms in here, and you’ll get the crap beaten out of you or the police called on you. Or both.”

“I saw hyung’s shoes under the door.”

Jisung’s face remains stony. “I hope you slip and drown in the explosive jjamppong diarrhea in that toilet you’re standing on.”

“Noted, thanks. Can you hurry it up, though? Whatever it is you’re doing? I think they’re waiting on you to start filming again, and I’d like to go home today, maybe.”

“We’re not doing anything,” Minho repeats.

“Excellent. Then you can join us.” Jeongin drops out of sight, shoes hitting the floor.

Minho eases Jisung to his feet as the door creaks behind Jeongin.

“I hate that kid,” says Jisung, through a grin that says otherwise.

Minho hums, smoothing out his rumpled sweater. He rolls out his shoulders; Jisung isn’t as light as he used to be. “Well. That wasn’t incriminating at all.”

Jisung laughs, reaching around Minho to unlock the stall. Minho then shuffles out backwards. “Wait, you think Jeongin thought he caught us—what, hooking up?”

Minho makes his way to the sink, turns on the faucet to scrub his hands clean Lady Macbeth-style. Regrettably, none of his foolish thoughts make it down the drain. “You’re right,” he deadpans, “he probably thought you just needed a boost to help me fix my contact.”

Jisung snorts somewhere behind him. “Better that than he know about our… our curse. Or whatever. Anyway, I’d way sooner hook up with you than touch your eyeballs.”

Minho buries his shock in a timely, false cough. “You’d rather touch my balls than my eyeballs?”

“Hell yeah.”

Minho rolls his eyes. He catches his own gaze in the mirror, just to check the status of his poker face. Intact, luckily.

He’s on his way to dry his hands when Jisung corners him by the paper towels. “Do you wanna come over again? Tonight?”

Minho bites his tongue, shifts his weight nonchalantly. “And stay over?”

“I mean… yeah.” Jisung’s power stance seems to slump a tad. “If you want.”

Minho’s lips twitch, amused. He looks down to dry his hands. “I don’t have a change of clothes.”

Jisung tuts his tongue. “What? Just wear mine, asshole, what kind of excu—”

“Okay.” Minho gives Jisung’s head a gentle shove as he strides past him.

“What? Oh! Thanks. I mean—good. Yeah.” Jisung catches up to Minho in the hall, brushes a hand over the small of his back. “It’ll be good for us, I think. An investment in our wellness. Health is wealth, and all.”

On Saturday evening, Minho returns home from the MBC Dream Center to find Jeongin in his bed.

He has headphones on. Doesn’t even notice Minho’s entrance until he’s been sat on top of.

Jeongin, prone on the sheets, pauses whatever he’s watching and pulls out an AirPod. “What?” he demands, straining to look at Minho over his shoulder.

Minho sputters. “What do you mean what, you’re in my fucking bed!”

Jeongin turns back, settles his chin on Minho’s pillow. He’s not so impertinent as to shove the earbud back into his ear, at least. “The wifi connection’s better in here.”

“Okay?”

“And you’ve barely been home all week, what do you want me to say?”

“I—” Minho falters. It’s true. He’s spent every night since their bathroom encounter in Jisung’s bed (as Jisung’s little spoon, though that’s an unnecessary detail). In the mornings he wakes before sunrise, detangles himself from Jisung, fixes himself eggs (occasionally, a vaguely judgmental Hyunjin will stalk into the kitchen to grab water, still yet to sleep a wink), and grabs a car to the company before anyone else is quite ready to carpool (much less to awaken). He’s swung by his own dorm a couple times to grab toiletries and skincare needs and changes of clothes, but they’re busy enough that if he ever finds himself laying down for an extended period of time, it’s at night.

In Jisung’s bed.

And the pain—the pain of the unexplained variety—has kept itself at bay. In a matter of days, it’s almost become unspoken between them that this (whatever this is) seems to work. But Minho knows it can’t last forever.

For reasons such as:

“If I’m allowed to ask,” says Jeongin, jolting Minho out of his thoughts. “Why are you guys suddenly being, like, really obvious about… uh, doing stuff? You and Hannie-hyung.” He locks his phone, spins it between his fingertips. Loses it mid-spin to the abyss between Minho’s mattress and headboard. “Fuck.” Jeongin delves his arm in, and Minho shifts off his back. To be helpful, of course.

Jeongin succeeds in fishing his phone from the rungs of Minho’s bed. “You never were before. I mean, it was obvious in a different way, like… subtler, because you didn’t think we’d notice it was obvious. Even though it was. But now it’s just like you don’t care.”

Minho despises beating around the bush. But this—this he’d rather not touch on at all. He’d rather raze this particular bush to the ground with a lawn tractor, burn its roots and scatter the ashes in the sea.

“Doing… stuff,” he echoes, sounding hollow. He surmises his brain might be 404-erroring, though from the frown Jeongin gives him, it most certainly is. They’ve reached Minho’s least favorite topic: that obviousness, obviousness he can usually brush off with a laugh or a curl of his lip and a roll of his eyes. But this predicament (curse, as Jisung had labeled it) has him needing Jisung in a way he can’t so easily hide. It’s too physical, too close to the surface; not like the need buried deep that Minho’s long since learned how best to deal with.

Jeongin groans, rolls onto his back. “Hyung,” he huffs, “I hate talking about this, too, so please don’t make it harder than it is, like, I know you don’t need me of all people to tell you about the birds and the bees or however that metaphor—”

Minho comes back to himself. “Yah, enough, shut up, stop right there.” He sighs harshly, rubs at his eyes until they burn. Bounces off the edge of the bed to his feet. He heads to his closet—that’s actually what he’d come home for, clean clothes. Not to chat with their maknae about his hideous, deep-seated crush on their groupmate. “If you hate it so much, why even ask?”

“Because it’s weird!” Jeongin insists. “Like, did something happen? Did one of you confess, is that it? Or both of you? Are you guys finally for real for real?”

Minho coughs out an incredulous laugh. “Confess—Yang Jeongin, there’s—there’s nothing to confess. There’s nothing going on, we’re not doing stuff. We aren’t doing anything. Jisung and I are just… both going through something right now.” Minho makes a face at his underwear drawer when it registers just how fake and un-himself everything he’s spouting sounds. “That’s why we’ve been spending more time together.”

“Spending time. Uh-huh.” Jeongin snorts. “You make it sound like you’re going through second puberty or something. What could just the two of you possibly be going through right now that the rest of us aren’t, that isn’t—you know! Fill in the blank, you’re not stupid.”

Minho doesn’t dare turn to face Jeongin. It’s for the best. “It’s personal,” he mutters. “All that matters is that nothing you think is happening is actually happening.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not lying!”

“Yes you are!”

The bedroom door cracks open wider. Felix pokes his head in. “Who’s lying?” Then he grins, squinty and sugar-sweet, at the sight of Minho. “Naw, hyungie, you came home!”

“Why does everybody suddenly care that I’m home!” Minho shoves the drawer shut. “When I’m home all the time, no one gives a fuck!”

“Because it’s spicier when we know where you’ve been in the meantime.” Felix waggles his brows.

Jeongin grimaces, face-plants into Minho’s pillow.

Minho halts in stuffing his bag full. What is—what is he doing, honestly? The fact that even Jeongin is reacting the way he is should be a reality check.

Minho reconsiders his bag, the boxers dangling halfway out. Reconsiders the worn-out, threadbare pair of Jisung’s boxers that he’s got on now, under his clothes, that are a little too snug on him. Maybe he should let Jisung know he won’t be coming over tonight. “Literally, don’t…” Minho sighs, bowing his head. He lets his bag sag to the floor. “Don’t speculate about things you know nothing about.”

Felix hangs in the doorway, wry smile widening tenfold. “Aw, hyung, I know we could never even begin to fathom the depth of your connection—”

“There is nothing happening between me and Jisung,” Minho interrupts flatly. Not of that nature, at least. The supernatural, though, perhaps. He grabs his bag, flings it in his closet. “Now get out of my room. Both of you.”

Jeongin looks up from his phone. “Aren’t you leaving?”

“No.”

Jeongin blinks. “What do you mean?”

Minho scoffs. “It means I live here! Vacate,” he juts a finger at the door, at Felix, “the premises.”

Jeongin stares, eyes narrowing. Then he rolls off Minho’s rumpled sheets. “We need a second router,” are his parting words as he squeezes past Felix.

Felix lingers. Minho, frankly, would be shocked if he didn’t, and he can sense his hovering presence with his back turned as he smooths his sheets flat and fluffs the pillow Jeongin had crushed.

“Hyung,” Felix utters.

“Mm?” Minho turns around, perches himself on the sheets he’d just perfected. “If I ever want to talk about anything, I can always come to you?” He bats blank eyes at Felix.

Felix’s lips press into a soft pout. Then he nods rapidly, bangs bouncing against his forehead.

Minho exhales, rests his head in his hands, and rubs at his brow. “Yeah, thanks, Yongbokkie, I knew that.”

Felix nods again. Glances at Minho’s closet, then shuffles backward out of the doorway, closing the door gently in his wake.

Minho picks at a painful hangnail on his finger, eyes flickering to the door. He instantly regrets pressuring Felix out, because when he takes even a second to reflect, he thinks Felix might be the only one around who wouldn’t laugh if he simply blurted I think I’m cursed to die without Jisung’s touch. He might even believe it.

Minho flops backward onto his bed, which shouldn’t feel so cold and unfamiliar after four nights away. He holds a staring contest with the ceiling until he works up the nerve to locate his phone.

me 7:02pm

change of plans

tired

staying home tonight

9:20pm 한이

ok!!!

sleep well

It’d been a shitty idea.

Well, not shitty until Minho wakes up alone to every muscle in his body united in waging war against him. Before that he’d stretched and tidied and done a face mask and baked a cheesecake as he’d never done one using a bain-marie. But it hits him just how shitty at the ass crack of dawn the following morning.

His fingers crawl up the mattress as fast as he can tolerate to tap the screen of his phone. Among the myriad notifications are several texts from Jisung that Minho strains his eyes to read.

3:48am 한이

hyung

are you sleeping well

I really goddamn hope you are

4:15am 한이

because I’m not sleeping well!

4:17am 한이

haven’t slept at all actually!!!

insomnia swag

I wonder whose terrible idea this was

would you happen to know

5:30am 한이

hey so

want to meet at company

maybe

before schedules

5:34am 한이

please

jagiya~

5:59am 한이

I know you’ll be up soon so

please

miss you

mostly I’m just dying ahaha are you dying hahaha but yeahhhhh miss you

6:13am 한이

I’m already here btw

come find me~

[sticker]

no but really.

The last had been just over five minutes ago.

Minho’s joints creak as he tries to gain mobility of his hands.

me 6:19am

omw

6:19am 한이

THANK FUCK

Jisung naps for a solid hour and a half on the studio couch with his head in Minho’s lap. Minho pets his hair long after he’s dozed off. And it hurts Minho—in a way far different from the physical pain—when the hour they’re expected to start a full day of rehearsal nears and he has to rouse Jisung.

Jisung sits up with creases in his cheek from Minho’s sweatpants. Mumbles, “Morning,” as if he hadn’t already said the same to Minho, who’d entered the studio before seven AM and walked directly into Jisung’s arms.

“Hey.” Minho stares at a bit of dried drool at the corner of Jisung’s mouth. Smirks when he spots the little damp spot on his own pant leg. “Practice soon.”

“Mm.” Jisung sags into Minho’s side. “I’ll kiss you if you go downstairs and get me an iced americano.”

Minho’s face warms, but he manages to huff, “That’s not a fair trade.”

“I’ll come to yours tonight. So you can sleep in your own bed again.” Jisung yawns, obnoxious and jaw-cracking next to Minho’s ear. “If you be a doll and run and get me an iced americano.”

“I spent every night this week at yours. You owe me.”

Jisung groans. “Just this once, hyung—”

“I made you something.”

Jisung goes silent. He sits up, looks at Minho with sleepy eyes rounded. “Huh?”

“I baked you something.” Minho shrugs, because when his brain screams act casual, it’s apparently his body’s knee-jerk reaction.

“You baked for me?”

“No.”

“You just said—”

“I wanted to try making something, and it was incidentally something you’d like.”

Jisung snorts. Scoots onto Minho, his knee cutting off circulation to Minho’s leg. “What’d you make? Where is it?”

Minho calls upon his barely-existent inner immunity to Jisung’s sparkly eyes and shoves him off, getting to his feet. “It’s at home. You can have it when you come tonight.” He checks the time on his phone. “If you sprint, you can still get a coffee and squeeze in your coffee shit before rehearsal.”

Jisung ignores him. “Jagi, you didn’t have to bake for me,” he coos, giving Minho’s ass a pinch. “Is that what you did last night, hm?” Jisung sidles into his space even when Minho’s very deliberately trying to focus on his phone, and curves a palm over Minho’s belly, sneaks a finger under the hem of his shirt. “After ditching me in my lonely, cold bed, you were stuck thinking about me, huh? Decided you wanted to make me something sweet?”

Minho swallows back the burgeoning fluster from his tone. “Who said anything about sweet? I took our bathroom trash and tossed it in the oven for you. Thought you’d like that. Seasoned with dirty cotton swabs and Seungmin’s toenail clippings and my blood-stained sock from when my blister burst during practice last week.”

“Sure you did.” Jisung grins. He bites Minho’s shoulder through his top—surprisingly hard, at that—and extricates himself. “‘kay. Gonna go grab coffee. And take my coffee shit.”

“You do that.”

“I’ll think of you while I’m at it, don’t even worry.” Jisung collects his various unnecessary accessories where they’re scattered about the studio, sticks a bucket hat on his head and slings his bag over his shoulder. “Thanks for the emergency cuddles. And the sweets.”

“They’re not yours yet.”

“The cuddles are,” Jisung disagrees, masking as he opens up the door. “They’ve already happened and I’ll always remember them and no one can take them away from me. Unless they erase my memories, like… like what’sthatspell, from Harry Potter? You know.”

Minho knows that Jisung knows he doesn’t, in fact, know. Still, Minho tamps down on a smile. “Bye, Jisungie.”

“Obliviate,” Jisung enunciates. “Yup. I’m a genius. See you soon, honey.”

Late in the evening and post-rehearsals, Chan and Changbin hang back to skulk around the studio. Jisung manages to look a little apologetic as he heads out with the rest of the pack.

“They don’t need me,” Jisung assures Minho, though he’s probably just exonerating himself.

On exiting the building, the air is crisp and the sky dark. Minho’s just climbing into the car when he hears Hyunjin’s distant, expectant, “Jisung-ah?”

Jeongin, seated in the middle row, meets Minho’s eyes with a singular arched eyebrow. Minho resolutely plows past him into the backseat and tucks himself into the corner.

Outside, Jisung fumbles through, “Oh—oh, yeah, you get the car to yourself, man! Surprise! See you tomorrow, Hyunjinnie, love you!” And then he comes stumbling in over Seungmin’s legs, plants himself in the back row between Minho and Felix.

“Cozy,” comments Jisung, wiggling between them. Jeongin gives all three sardines packed into the back a side-eye that gets a stilted laugh out of Felix.

Minho can’t quite scowl the way he’d like to; Jisung’s body, joined with his from shoulders to hips to knees, grounds him in the moment, melts away what he’d thought was soreness from their long day setting in but could very well just be the separation getting to him again. He lays his head back as the car falls under a blanket of quiet, traffic rushing outside.

At home, Minho is the last to disembark the car, and he thanks their driver as he slides the door shut. When he turns, the others have piled inside already, but Jisung waits for him patiently, silhouette backlit by the soft glow of the outdoor lights.

“You want that cake so bad, don’t you,” mutters Minho as he brushes past.

“Did you say cake?” Jisung trips on Minho’s heels as he follows.

Inside, Minho abandons Jisung to take a shower. He figures he’ll last at least that long after spending the commute home pressed up against one another.

On his way between the bathroom and his bedroom, pajama-clad and hair damp, he catches Jisung and Jeongin mid-video game in the living room. Jisung is flopping, which is all he needs to decide it best to not disturb them.

Minho sprawls out in bed on his stomach, devotes his attention to responding to his backlog of texts. He’s swiping through cat updates his mom sent when his head jerks up at commotion in the hallway.

“Jesus Christ, can you put on a shirt? You don’t even live here,” comes Jeongin’s muffled sputter through the wall. “Or a bra, maybe.”

“I just showered! Since when is there a dress code?” Jisung yelps indignantly, rapping knuckles on Minho’s door, though he’s already wearing a shit-eating grin when he slips inside.

“It only applies to you,” says Jeongin. Jisung shuts the door on him.

He’s clutching a towel low around his hips, looking every inch a figment of Minho’s most shameful dreams, golden skin and soft rounds of muscle on display. Still, Minho goes for detachment as he regards him.

Jisung bats his eyes, flashes all his teeth. “Hyungie, can I borrow—”

“Fine.”

Jisung sits behind the kitchen counter, fingers laced beneath his chin with attention rapt as Minho slides the cake pan from the fridge.

“It’s been chilling since last night,” Minho finds himself waffling on as he runs a knife around the cake’s edge, pops the latch to release the sides of the pan.

“Wah, hyung,” Jisung extols, “it’s beautiful.”

“It’s a cake.” Minho’s lips quirk, though, as he cuts Jisung a slice.

“Damn right it is. A cake I would marry. I’d honeymoon with that cake in Jeju-do. Look at that swirl thing—how did you do that? It kind of looks like… ha, it’s giving geomijul.”

Minho rolls his eyes, tucks a fork onto Jisung’s plate before sliding it to him across the bar. “Tell me if it’s bad,” he mumbles offhandedly, wiping the counter clean of stray crumbs.

“Only if it’s bad? It’s like you want me to shut up.” Jisung tucks in, and Minho rounds the counter to sit beside him.

Jisung moans something pornographic before his taste buds could have even possibly registered a trace of flavor. Minho smacks him on the thigh. “People live here,” he scoffs. Jisung, however, traps Minho’s hand against his leg, traces fingertips over the knobs of Minho’s knuckles.

“It’s good, hyung.” There are crumbs of chocolate base on Jisung’s upper lip as he insists, “It’s really, really good.” Then he lets Minho’s hand go, if only to grab the seat of Minho’s stool and drag it closer to his. He settles his own hand on Minho’s thigh, squeezing gently, and fits a second, generous forkful in his mouth, chewing indulgently.

Minho rests his cheek in his hand, glares punitively at his leg when it twitches at Jisung’s touch. He acknowledges Jisung’s compliments with absentminded hums, answers, “I dunno,” when Jisung asks him how long it’d taken to make. Feels Jisung’s fingers clench around his thigh. It makes Minho’s head feel light and floaty whilst the pit of his stomach sinks so, so heavily, seeing Jisung enjoy something he’s made. Knowing he can tell Jisung a secret like this, tell him I love you like this, without him ever truly comprehending beyond a saccharine little dopamine rush.

“Sure you do,” mutters Jisung, and Minho’s already lost the thread of conversation. “I know you do. Mm”—another mouthful—“can’t believe you made me this. There wasn’t even an occasion. I mean, I’m sure it’s for everyone else, too, but, you know. It’s still… like, sweet. Sweet of you. And it’s really good, I wasn’t kidding.”

Minho blinks lazily. The crumbs still cling stubbornly to Jisung’s lip. “It’s just a recipe from the internet.”

“What? That’s bullshit. My life is a lie. I thought you invented cheesecake. I don’t want it anymore.” Jisung squints, pointedly takes another bite. “You don’t want any?”

Minho shakes his head, lets himself smile for three, two. “I’m okay.” One. Carefully, he lifts his hand, dusts the crumbs off the corner of Jisung’s mouth.

Jisung looks at him openly, cheeks full. “You sure?”

Minho nods silently. Jisung lays his fork down, scrubs at the other side of his mouth. Runs his tongue over his teeth, eyes the cake. And all Minho can do is watch.

“Seconds?” he hums. And Jisung half-smiles, rubs at his jaw.

“Yeah. Just a sec. Um.” Jisung clears his throat. “Hyung, I’m about to ask you something really weird.”

Minho blinks, unaffected. Things couldn’t possibly get any weirder, and also: “You’re always weird.”

“This is a different weird.”

“Well, you have my attention.”

Jisung nods faintly at his plate. “Okay, yeah. Here goes.” He looks at Minho. “Can I kiss you?”

The white noise of the dorm—the hum of the refrigerator, the shower that’s been on since they entered the kitchen, the sounds of the night through the cracked kitchen window—floods Minho’s ears, vibrates inside his ribs. And if he hadn’t known Jisung for almost five years now, he would’ve forced out a laugh already, reading sarcasm somewhere in the waver of his lips or mischief in the twitch of his eyebrow.

He catches nothing now—and boy, does Minho look. He looks for anything, any sign he could be playing himself into a trap, but he finds nothing. Not a cue for anything but pure vulnerability.

“Yes,” Minho mumbles before his mind can catch up, preoccupied cogs turning at overdrive as his eyes search Jisung’s face. They stop turning altogether when Jisung’s shoulders relax, when he smiles faintly and puts weight against Minho’s thigh.

“Really?” utters Jisung, and Minho laughs, sounding faraway.

“Haven’t changed my mind just yet.”

Jisung tips Minho’s chin up with featherlight fingertips. “How ‘bout now?”

Minho’s gaze falls to Jisung’s mouth. “Are you gonna wait ’til I do?”

Jisung cracks a smile. “Probably not.” He bridges the tiny gap between their stools and brushes his lips to Minho’s.

Minho’s pulse goes wild in his throat. Jisung’s fingers hover just beneath his chin, daring Minho to draw back, sit up straight, but he can’t, doesn’t want to. Then Jisung tilts his head, kisses him again, firm enough that Minho knows it’s real that time. He winds his fingers around Jisung’s wrist below, urges the hand latched to his thigh to stay put.

Breath tickling Minho’s lips, Jisung mumbles, “This is not how I thought it’d go down.”

Minho exhales, shaky. “How what—”

“How I’d end up kissing you.”

Hot blood fizzles and pops in Minho’s temples, under the skin of his cheeks. He bites the tip of his tongue, heart lurching when he feels it brush Jisung’s lip inadvertently. “So you’ve thought about it?” he teases. Casual.

Jisung laughs, quiet and warm. “I haven’t… not,” he murmurs eventually. His nose nudges Minho’s. “Thanks for the cake, though.” Then he grips Minho’s chin, leans confidently into an open-mouthed kiss that catches Minho’s upper lip and wets his teeth and tastes like chocolate cheesecake.

In the quiet kitchen, the sound of their lips separating is obscene when Minho nudges Jisung back by the middle of his chest. “Someone could come in,” he scolds, though he can’t deny the thrill the thought gives him, the rush in his chest. His hand whips up to smudge away a wet spot at the corner of his mouth.

“Okay,” states Jisung. He’s only staring at Minho’s lips. “But I wanna keep going.”

Minho snorts. Burns to his very core. “I do have a bedroom.”

Jisung smirks. “Is that an invitation?”

“No.” Minho gets out of his stool and goes to pack the cake up, but Jisung cries out, “Wait!”

Minho freezes, hands mid-air.

“I need more,” Jisung insists. He slaps another slice on his plate and licks his fingertips clean.

Minho can’t help it when he smiles, incredulous. “Are you taking that with you?”

“Yes?” Jisung’s bare feet track out of the kitchen. “I’ll eat the whole damn thing, baby.”

Minho shuts them quietly into his room. He idles by the door, fingernails biting into his palms, as if any second now he might just snap out of this, discover himself back in his familiar reality. A reality where Jisung hasn’t kissed him—a little peck at that, innocent enough—but where he doesn’t awaken to pain coursing like venom through his veins.

When he turns, Jisung has set his cake plate on Minho’s nightstand, and he’s in Minho’s oversized shirt and Minho’s briefs next to Minho’s bed just… watching him back.

“What,” huffs Minho, pushing away from the door. A flush tingles at the tips of his ears.

“You alright?” says Jisung. He smiles tentatively. “Dying for my touch yet?”

“Get out.”

Jisung giggles, and Minho smiles in surrender, wanders toward the bed. “You?” he prompts with a side-eye.

“I’m not in worlds of pain, yet, no.”

“Disappointing.”

“I knew you’d think so.” Jisung bites his lip. Rocks back and forth on his feet. “If I was, would you kiss me again to make it go away?”

Minho plops himself on the edge of his bed when he can no longer face Jisung without feeling like an idiot for literally just standing there. “You kissed me,” he argues quietly, picking at the covers between his legs.

“Yeah, I did.” Jisung’s shadow covers him, but Minho keeps his chin pointed stubbornly toward his chest. Then Jisung’s fingertips make gentle contact with his neck, grazing upward to cup him beneath the jaw. Minho’s eyelids flutter, registering the focus of Jisung’s gaze in the half-light. And when Jisung’s knees nudge his legs further apart, Minho spreads them as wide as the bed will let him, breaths coming heavier as Jisung bows to kiss him once with a sweep of thumbs over Minho’s cheeks. Then he presses Minho down against the mattress, climbs on his knees in between Minho’s legs.

“Okay?” Jisung hums gruffly, and Minho nods, scooting back to make room for Jisung. His heartbeat is thunderous in his ears when Jisung gets above him on all fours, knees nudging the insides of Minho’s thighs like he dares him to spread them further, and he does. Minho can always do better.

He feels dizzy as Jisung dips in to seal their lips together. He curls his fingers over the back of Jisung’s neck, trails them into his hair, strokes them down his cheeks as his tongue pleads into Minho’s mouth.

Jisung’s hand hesitates at Minho’s waist, and when he whispers, “Hyung, can I,” Minho nods rapidly, heels digging into the mattress as Jisung’s hands scoop and squeeze at his waist and under his back, as he rests his weight in the cradle of Minho’s hips, only thin layers between.

Jisung lets out something like a moan, and though it’s quiet and private and muffled into Minho’s mouth, Minho holds him by the cheeks as he lays his head to the pillow. “Walls’re thin,” he breathes, which isn’t a lie, really. Jisung nods in understanding, bites his lower lip, which Minho then pries free with his thumb, eyes riveted. Not missing a beat, Jisung kisses the pad of his thumb, setting hummingbirds aflutter in Minho’s chest. Then he pecks Minho’s mouth, his cheek. Rolls off to the side, though his forearm remains trapped under Minho’s lower back.

“Fuck,” Jisung remarks, staring at the ceiling. Then he grabs his plate, sets it on his belly, and goes about sawing himself a bite of cake.

Minho laces his fingers over his chest. “Are you eating because you don’t know what to say to me right now?”

Jisung only responds once his mouth is full. “Yeah.”

Minho grins, lifts his arms up to cover his eyes. “Jisungie…” he sighs, and when he lowers his arms, he finds Jisung looking at him, eyes wide and cheeks full of cheesecake. “What?”

Jisung squirms to free his arm from beneath Minho, abruptly lays the back of his hand over Minho’s face. “Don’t look at me like that.”

Minho laughs suddenly. “Like what!” He pins Jisung’s wrist to the mattress. “You looked at me first!”

“Don’t look at me at all right now. You’ll make it worse.”

Minho’s smile fades to something of a half-crescent. “Do you wish you hadn’t?” he asks lightly, casually. He tries to tread carefully. Doesn’t want Jisung to think all it took was one kiss for Minho to fall in love with him. No, it’s far more complicated than that.

Jisung blinks, meets his eyes. “No,” he exhales. “No, I’m glad I did. I think. Just.” He wets his lower lip, scans Minho’s face. “Hyung, I said don’t!”

“Don’t—perceive you?”

“Yeah, don’t!” Jisung laughs, incredulous, and his fork clinks his plate as his hips twitch on the mattress. “I’m serious!”

Minho blinks slowly. His eyes roam down to Jisung’s plate. Beyond, to the tented erection in his boxers. And as amusing as Minho finds Jisung’s little don’t look at me act, it’s like a blow to the chest to see his arousal.

Jisung’s boner kicks visibly, and his knees twitch inward toward each other. “I told you,” Jisung mumbles, and his smile is wry but sheepish. “You’re making it worse.”

Minho exhales a soft chuckle. He turns onto his side, though he obeys Jisung’s command, fixes his eyes on the sheets beside Jisung’s supine hand. “Would you… want me to do something about it?”

Jisung swallows audibly. Minho’s face burns hotter the longer he goes without responding, which is a while. Long enough for Minho to count several of his own breaths. Then Jisung settles on, “As… as much I really want you to, um…” He pricks at the smooth surface of the cake with his fork. “I feel like it’d be too much for me. Right now. Like, it’s been so long since I first thought about kissing you and now that I finally did, it feels like I have to wait a couple years before I can—you can touch my dick.” Jisung chuckles, self-deprecating.

“Who said anything about touching your dick? I just wanted to point at it and laugh.”

Jisung grits his teeth, thumps the back of his fist against Minho’s chest. “Asshole.”

“Mm.” Minho smiles, conniving, as he shields himself from Jisung’s attack. “I’ll stop perceiving you, then.”

“You better.” A pause. “Thanks.”

“You better finish your cake.”

As Minho rolls over onto his other side, he hears Jisung’s fork hit the plate again. “I said I’d eat it all, baby. Just give me a day to get to the rest.”

Minho curls up facing the wall, hands tucked close to his chest. It’s been so long since I first thought about kissing you… His heart thumps fitfully. But what does that mean, he thinks. What do you mean?

“Hyung.” Jisung says it around an audible mouthful, fingertips meeting Minho’s back, delicate between his shoulder blades.

Minho shifts into the contact. “Yeah, Hannie.”

“Did you like it?”

Minho huffs. “You couldn’t tell?” Though, he knows how Jisung tends to self-doubt. “Yeah. I did.”

Jisung breathes deep. His hand slips up to squeeze Minho’s shoulder, then it disappears. “Me too.”

Minho smiles to himself, finds it impossible to shut his eyes.

“Hyung.”

“Mm.”

“Want me to turn the light off?”

“Frankly, the thought of you eating cake in the dark frightens me.”

“I didn’t think about that.”

“Naturally.”

When Minho opens his eyes, he can feel it in his stiff muscles that he’s slept like a rock, unmoving through the night. Once he’s rubbed enough sleep from his eyes, he peeks over his shoulder to find Jisung at the opposite edge of the bed, back toward Minho, still fast asleep. Minho resists all urges to awaken him or pinch his nose shut and rolls out of bed, heading responsibly for the shower…

…where he less-than-responsibly beats one out to the thought of Jisung gripping him tight when he’d pinned him down and kissed him.

As he tiptoes back into his room, he prays to every god he doesn’t believe in (but might still hold pity for him in their hearts) that Jisung is dead-asleep.

No such luck.

“Hey,” Jisung breathes as Minho shuts the door behind him. He’s on his back, arms folded behind his head, ever-present morning wood and all. He gapes around a stupidly loud yawn, and his plate from last night is empty on Minho’s nightstand.

Minho wonders if it’s written all over his face that he’d come with Jisung’s name trapped in his throat not ten minutes ago. “Hi,” he returns distantly, heading for the closet.

Jisung says nothing for a while as Minho puts on underwear. And Minho doesn’t dare turn to see if he’s being watched.

Then: “You feeling okay?”

Minho blinks at the sweats he’s halfway into. “Hm?”

“Just. I dunno. I don’t think we cuddled at all last night? So, like… you know. I thought that figurative truck would’ve already hit me by now.”

Minho continues dressing, tucks a smile into his chest. “Are you asking me for cuddles?”

“No. Maybe. But… okay, hear me out, I have this fucked-up theory.”

Minho lifts a brow. He grabs a t-shirt, turns with his hip leaned against the closet door. Dryly, he tells Jisung, “I’m on the edge of my seat.”

Jisung squints, then eases up with a sigh. “I can’t even be mad. I feel like I’m surrendering to the unknown when I start theorizing about this shit. Like I suddenly believe in vampires, or something.” He scratches at his scalp, sweeps his messy hair back. “Okay, so… I kissed you last night.”

Minho hums. Yeah. He remembers.

“I was thinking, and… do you think there’s a chance that, like… the more we do, the longer we can spend apart?” Jisung blinks at the ceiling, then at Minho. “Without that—that awful, dismemberment kind of feeling coming back?”

Minho considers him. Pushes away from his closet to take a seat on the bed, his back to Jisung. “What do you mean more?”

“I mean…” The sheets rustle as Jisung shifts. “Like, so far the pattern has been that… if we hug or cuddle or something in the morning, we’ll be fine until the evening. Roughly. And the day you MC’ed, you didn’t come over, and I started feeling like shit that night, and… yeah. But we kissed last night, and I guess it’s still early, but I feel fine. Don’t you?”

Minho nods, picking at the frayed tag of the shirt in his hands.

“Right. So. By more, I mean… like, if we do more than cuddle, like if we kiss, or whatever, maybe it’ll last… longer.”

Minho swallows thickly. “Mm.”

“Just a theory.”

“Mm.”

“Probably stupid.”

“Definitely.”

Jisung kicks gently at Minho’s lower back. Minho half-smiles.

Jisung comes to sit cross-legged near the bed’s edge by Minho. “What’re you thinking about?”

“I don’t really know,” Minho lies. In fact, Jisung has made it impossible to not think about kissing him. He’d even brought it up himself.

“Okay. That’s okay. You don’t have to think anything.” Jisung nods quickly. Freezes, seems to get a second wind and nods again. And, after a silence, “Hyung.”

“What, Jisung.”

“Do you think we should try to get ahead of the curve? Like… take… preventative actions.”

Minho feigns being dense. “Can you speak like a human, please? Not like you just teleported here from Mars.”

“I know you’re playing dumb.”

“Good. I’d worry if you didn’t.”

Jisung groans, massaging at his temples. “Sometimes you make me wanna put my head through the wall.”

Minho only smiles. Is already watching Jisung when he lifts his head.

“Lee Minho-ssi,” Jisung says flatly, taking Minho’s chin in his fingers to align their gazes. It’s an alarmingly familiar gesture. “Would you like to kiss again? So we aren’t in immense pain a couple hours from now?”

On the outside, Minho laughs, but inside his heart seems to ram itself against his ribcage like it’s trying to escape between the gaps. “That seems like… a logical course of action, Han Jisung-ssi.”

“Okay.” Jisung nods, tapping Minho’s chin with his thumb. He cracks a smile. “I agree. Should I, um. Brush my teeth first?”

Minho doesn’t give a flying fuck. “It’s okay,” he utters, then flushes, not expecting himself to sound quite so breathless.

“‘kay, ‘cos I’m lazy as fuck and I kind of just really wanna…” Jisung holds Minho’s chin in place as he surges in to kiss him. His fingers find the shirt Minho’s still clinging to, wrench it from his grip and fling it to the floor.

Minho feels more naked than he’s ever felt being just topless around Jisung the second that Jisung’s hands find purchase on his bare shoulders and press him down. Jisung’s shirt hangs loose over his frame as he climbs over Minho, and Minho realizes he can’t keep his hands to himself any longer. Out of some latent, indulgent curiosity, he lets his palms scope out Jisung’s lats through his shirt, feeling their flexion.

Jisung looms above him, thumbs his lips apart. And it makes Minho’s head spin, the way Jisung seems to know what he wants to do to Minho and simply… does it. It’s nice for once, he thinks, to be able to let go, let Jisung lead.

More than nice. Minho digs his nails gently into Jisung’s back, allows Jisung to lick into his mouth with a dulcet hum.

Jisung’s lips are slick when he draws back to breathe, and Minho opens his eyes just in time to catch his gaze. “Do you, um…” Jisung trails off, and the muscle in his arm bulges as he leans his weight into one, runs his spare palm up the middle of Minho’s bare chest, making him shudder. Still searching Minho’s eyes, he squeezes at Minho’s pec, then just at his nipple. Minho clamps a hand over his mouth as he throws his head back onto the sheets, overwhelmed by the sensitivity, the sudden wave of arousal, the panicked edge to his own breath.

“Do you like that?” Jisung finishes, voice low, and he’s still rolling his thumb over Minho’s nipple as he bows to kiss his collarbone, his sternum. “Hm?” His eyes flit up to Minho, and he reaches out to coax Minho’s hand from his face. “Do you?”

Minho nods faintly. Jisung smirks, drags his lips across Minho’s skin to latch his mouth to his nipple, fingers boldly snaking their way into Minho’s mouth.

It takes him unawares. Minho’s eyes roll back, and he muffles a keen around Jisung’s fingers, wets them with the flat of his tongue. In his squirming, he manages to lift his hips from the mattress, nudging into Jisung’s body hovering above. Jisung grunts, bears down into him until Minho feels the shape of Jisung’s cock against his thigh, then abruptly seems to think better of it. “Sorry,” Jisung apologizes, faint, and Minho turns his head away so Jisung’s fingers slip wetly across his cheek.

“S’okay,” he breathes, draws Jisung up by the back of the neck to kiss him again, feels the pulse of blood in his achy nipple. And as they kiss, Jisung’s hand maps out the skin of his lower stomach, pressing against the swells of his breaths and gripping hard at the dip of his waist.

“Hyung,” Jisung exhales between kisses.

Minho strokes his soft cheeks, presses a thumb to a spot of stubble he’d missed shaving just under his chin. Smiles when Jisung nips at his lower lip. “Mm?”

Jisung hesitates, licks his lips. Grins even as he ducks his chin to hide against the side of Minho’s neck. “I’m so horny right now,” he whispers, like it’s a secret.

Minho’s eyelids glide shut. He chuckles, but it’s absentminded, pours every ounce of focus in his being into the reality of what Jisung is telling him. Minho winds his arms around Jisung’s neck, hugs him close, feels the warmth of his body all over, fizzling into his own skin. “I would’ve never guessed,” he manages steadily.

“Mmm.”

“Is it my fault?”

Jisung laughs into his neck. “Yeah, fuck. You did this. Fuck you.” He touches a kiss to Minho’s neck, then strains to prop his upper body up with his arms, rearing directly over Minho. “Can I tell you something.”

Minho’s lips quirk. “If I say no—?”

“Then I won’t say a word.”

“Ever?”

“Well…” Jisung frowns. “I’d have to change my brand… and it might cause some problems with, uh, the whole rapper thing…”

Minho smiles, dazed. Considers Jisung, bed-headed and thick-armed, pretty and kissed raw. “You can tell me,” he says airily.

Jisung takes a deep breath, a quiet sort of seriousness settling into his features. “I wanna come on your pretty stomach,” he whispers. “S’all I can think about right now.”

A shiver rattles Minho’s body from his scalp to his toes. His hands trail down from Jisung’s shoulders, press into his solid chest. For a moment, he hears only static in his head. Then, he mumbles, “Touch yourself.”

He sees the disbelief spark in Jisung’s eyes. “What?”

“You don’t want to?” Minho taunts.

Jisung blinks in a flutter.

“You can touch yourself.” Minho swallows. “And come on me.” He strokes the back of Jisung’s hair. “I want you to.”

Jisung watches him. Breathes in deep through his nose, transfers his weight again between his arms. “Like…”

Minho doesn’t let him finish. “Please.” He nods faintly, palming Jisung’s cheek. And he watches, lower lip caught in his teeth, as Jisung’s hand lifts, disappears behind the drape of his shirt. As Jisung’s lips part, as his jaw drops. With his shirt in the way, his boxers still on, Minho couldn’t see even if he wanted to. Maybe it’s better that way.

“Fuck,” Jisung whispers, eyelids easing shut. His shoulder strains against the fabric of his shirt as he strokes himself. “Fuck, hyung, I’m so sorry.”

Minho hums. “Don’t be sorry.” His fingertips ghost behind Jisung’s ears, over the sides of his neck. “I want you to,” he breathes again. Minho’s chest seems to compress under an invisible weight. I want you bleeds heavily between the lines.

Jisung hisses between his teeth. “You gonna think of me jerking off on you every time you look me in the eye after this?” He’s half-smiling, but Minho can sense his nerves.

“Hm. Maybe,” Minho ribs, smile wry. “It’s hot.”

Jisung laughs, drops his head so his bangs fall into his eyes. They’re greasy, in need of a wash. “You’re hot.”

Minho squirms a little again. He’s burning up, sheets sticking to his back with sweat, cock heavy and trapped under his thick sweats. “Shut up.”

“Nah,” Jisung mutters. Then he keens a little, enough to both make Minho’s stomach flip and his eyes dart to the door. “God, hyung…”

“Shut up,” Minho spits. “For real.” He gently clamps his hand over Jisung’s mouth. Jisung’s eyes then squint up sweetly as he grins.

“Sorry.” Muffled, behind Minho’s hand. “S’just. ‘m just close.”

Minho swallows. His hands discover a mind of their own and frantically fold Jisung’s top around his waist, holding it in place and out of the way. “I wanna see.”

“You… yeah? Really? Fuck.” Jisung crawls up higher, knees bracketing Minho’s hips, and he shoves his boxers down below his balls, exposing his cock, slick and leaking and pink in the tight circle of his fist. Minho gasps, open-mouthed, swallows a moan as he arches his back from the bed to nudge against Jisung’s fist.

“Please,” he whimpers. And, like, holy shit, that’s Jisung’s cock. It frightens and dizzies Minho, the realization that Jisung need only ask and Minho would offer his mouth or turn over onto his hands and knees for him, right here and now.

Tongue between his teeth, Jisung rubs the wet head of his cock against Minho’s tummy. His eyes find Minho’s as he mutters, “Talk to me, baby.”

“Um.” Minho grips tightly at Jisung’s shirt, muscles twitching in his abdomen. He’s not really built for this—talking during hookups. He can’t remember the last time he did, in fact. He also can’t remember the last time talking felt hard with Jisung, but he’s never hooked up with Jisung, has he?

Fuck. He’s hooking up with Jisung. And Minho almost feels like Jisung, blurting something embarrassingly inopportune when he utters, “I got off. Earlier.” Jisung must be rubbing off on him. No—Jisung is literally rubbing off on him.

The man himself blinks at Minho through the strands of his fringe. “What?”

“In the shower—when I took a shower.” Minho keeps his gaze on Jisung’s hand. Blood rushes tangibly to his face. “Got off thinking… about how you grabbed me. How you grabbed me when you kissed me.”

“Hyung,” Jisung breathes brokenly. Minho’s eyes glaze over, heart pounding in his ears as Jisung paints his stomach with ropes of come.

Jisung drops to his elbow, whether intentionally or with a newfound weakness in his muscles, Minho can’t tell. He smears his softening cock through the mess on Minho’s stomach, lips smudging Minho’s skin as he tells him right in his ear, “So pretty, god, you’re so pretty.”

Minho loses track of the minutes until Jisung collapses beside him, panting like he’s just sprinted a marathon. His nose is tucked right near Minho’s damp hair, and, “Mm,” he hums belatedly. “You smell good.”

“I was clean,” remarks Minho. He sits up halfway, still flushed all over, his body holding fast to the heat. It should be gross, the mess on his stomach, now pooling in his navel—but it’s just stupidly hot, and Minho’s going to hell, if he isn’t already there. “Keyword was.”

Jisung chuckles, guilty as charged. Tries to tug his boxers back up, but his hands won’t fully work yet.

Minho ignores his struggle, watches his own stomach rise and fall with his breaths. Then he reaches for the tissue box on his nightstand.

“I’m an asshole,” Jisung whispers.

Minho hesitates. “Elaborate.”

Jisung sighs. Sits up abruptly. “Here, wait—I should be doing that.” He tries to grab the tissue box from Minho, who holds it out of his reach. He surrenders quickly to slumping over his own lap. “I said… I said last night that I thought it was too soon for you to, uh. Touch my dick. Then I just go ahead this morning and… touch you with my dick.”

“I invited it,” murmurs Minho. He balls up the bundle of tissues, tosses it at Jisung, though it doesn’t get much air and lands on the bed between them.

“Right.” Jisung scratches his head. Is silent for a while. “I think we should be set,” he says. “For the day, maybe.” When Minho only gives him a quizzical stare, Jisung supplies, “On the curse front.”

Minho blinks. That. “Right.”

“Yeah.”

Minho stares—continues to, that is. And when he resolves Jisung won’t be looking back at him any time soon, he says, “Are you showering here? You should grab it quick or Seungmin will get in before you.”

Jisung seems to shake himself out of a trance. “No better way to start the day than by stealing Kim Seungmin’s shower.” He hops off the bed, grabs his cake plate, pulls his boxers up all the way. “And telling him you jizzed all over his loofa earlier.”

Minho’s face heats. “I would never be so obvious,” he hums nonetheless. “In his face wash, maybe.”

Jisung grins, heads for the door. “I’m so using his towel.” He stalls with his hand on the doorknob. “And having cheesecake for breakfast. The service here is great. I’m never going home.”

“You like my service, huh?”

Jisung glances over his shoulder. Upon meeting Minho’s eyes, he crumples into hushed laughter with his forehead against the door. “Shut. Up.”

They’re able to spend that evening apart. Jisung has the freedom to return to his night owl routine, of which he informs Minho over text. Meanwhile, Minho himself lapses into one of his own, spending hours in bed mulling over the possibility that there might just be some truth behind Jisung’s handwavy theories.

He has to wonder if Jisung thinks of him at all when they sleep separately. If Jisung has to feel that wretched pain to be reminded that he needs Minho—for that and that only. If Jisung has begun to associate that wretched pain with seeing Minho, if he’ll want to think of him at all once he doesn’t need to.

Whenever that will be.

Minho feels it creep back in at dance practice the next morning. He can tell by the way Jisung holds his shoulders and pulls down the brim of his cap that he does, too.

Minho tugs his hood over his head and dips into the hall when they’re on a water break and he thinks no one’s watching. He hears a patter of footsteps rush to catch the door before it can shut fully, and even through the waxing ache in his joints and muscles, the pit of his stomach churns with an indescribable thrill.

“We can try the vocal rooms,” mumbles Jisung, appearing in his peripheral vision.

They stumble into the first unoccupied vocal practice room. Jisung shuts the door on the light of the hall, bathing them in darkness. Minho knocks into a music stand, startles when Jisung’s fingers wrap his wrist to hold him steady.

“Should we,” utters Minho, directionless, and lets Jisung walk him back against the wall. When there’s no further left to go, Jisung’s fingers feel up his neck, his jaw, loosen the mask around his ears, tuck it into the front pocket of Minho’s hoodie. Minho waits, breath held, and counts the seconds until Jisung kisses him, light and tender, hands pressing to the wall to bracket Minho’s waist.

“Okay?” mumbles Jisung. Minho responds by drawing him back in.

It’s just them, the four walls of the vocal room, breaths heavy and tongues meeting, until Jisung mutters, “Can I touch your ass,” and Minho laughs out an I guess that turns into a whimper the second Jisung kneads at him.

Then Jisung steps back. Minho can’t feel him anymore, can’t begin to imagine what he’s doing. Then, Jisung demands, “Tell me something nasty.”

Minho chokes. “What—”

“Like.” Jisung whines, snaps his fingers. “Give me something gross to think about. Give me something that isn’t your ass, because—hyung, fuck, come on. You should be good at this.”

“Oh.” Minho melts into the wall. Snickers belatedly, some bizarre amalgam of relief and amusement dripping from his heart to the pit of his stomach. “You can… think about your dad.”

Flatly: “My dad.”

“Getting his asshole waxed.”

“What—okay, what the fuck.”

“By Kim Seungmin.”

“Okay. Yeah. Sorry I ever asked.”

“You’re forgiven.” Minho smiles faintly.

Jisung slaps the lights on, forcing Minho to squint against the sudden brightness.

He then shuffles to stand toe to toe with Minho. And he takes one of Minho’s hands, toys with his pinkie finger. “Hyung, I should’ve returned the favor yesterday,” Jisung says solemnly.

Minho blinks. Jisung’s bottom lip is sucked pink. “Hm?”

“I didn’t—”

“Oh.” Minho snorts in understanding. “Don’t worry about it.”

“But I am worrying. And I—I wanted to. Like, I do want to. I hope you know.”

Minho says nothing.

“But I didn’t which was selfish and I’ve felt like shit about it since but I was just, like, lowkey overwhelmed, which doesn’t make sense ‘cos it was me who instigated and shit, but I… ah, I haven’t really been with… guys. That often.”

“Mm.”

“Don’t sound so shocked.” Jisung cracks a smile.

Minho says nothing for a moment. “I mean, I just—do you—are you into guys? I didn’t know.” And he genuinely didn’t. Minho’s been quietly open about his sexuality with the group nearly since its nascence, relatively transparent about whoever he’s seeing. He doesn’t overshare in that department, but is generally an open book when asked. And Jisung would ask, sometimes. He himself just never told.

Jisung only stares. Gawks, really, eyes round like he’s seeing Minho for the very first time. He lets out a laugh with a serrated, bewildered edge. Then, finally, “Yeah.” He pauses. “Yeah, I just… don’t know what I’m doing.”

Minho’s heart remains lodged in his throat until he remembers, Ah, yeah, this is where I ought to speak. “You don’t have to know.” He clears his throat. “Nor do you obviously have to try. With me.” He hopes it sounds less soulless than it does nonchalant.

Jisung sighs, shoulders slumping. “I want to know. I just don’t want to… suck. Figuratively.” Minho’s just thinking they’re overdue to get back to practice when Jisung adds, “Did I ever tell you about the only blowjob I’ve ever given that was so bad the guy left to go train at a different company?”

Minho chokes on air. His head spins, struggling to root up a roster of every male trainee who’d passed through in recent years. “I’m… pretty sure I’d remember it if you did.”

“I mean, yeah. I know I didn’t tell you. It was a couple years ago and I never told a soul ‘cos I was super nervous and I literally threw up on this dude’s dick, and then we never talked about it and he left, probably because Stray Kids’ Han gave him the worst blowjob of his lifetime and he couldn’t handle reliving a nightmare every time he saw my face.”

“Jagiya.” A shrill, untimely laugh bubbles out of Minho’s chest. Jisung is taking a hand mixer to his brain, and with every word, he turns the speed up. Minho claps his hands onto Jisung’s cheeks. “Probably because he wanted to debut.”

“I just told you I threw up on a dick and you’re laughing at me. Of course you are.”

“That’s not why I’m laughing at you.” Minho thumbs over Jisung’s cheeks. Draws him in to press a kiss to his forehead. “Thank you for telling me your little story, Hannie.”

Jisung groans, “Hyung…”

“Whoever it was, I hope he feels the crushing weight of the world in shame for gagging you with his dick every time he sees Stray Kids’ Han’s bigass head on an ad.”

Jisung sighs. His shoulders deflate whilst his cheeks puff out into Minho’s cupped hands. “He didn’t even gag me. I just got overconfident.” He offers a rueful smile, peers downward. “Consider the boner killed.”

They get by, kissing behind closed doors. As reluctant as Minho is to give them any credibility, Jisung’s theories seem to ring true; a kiss one morning before practice will stave off symptoms of separation until the morning next. Sometimes, though, when he’s about to head home at night or they’re grabbing dinner together, Jisung will seek him out, drape himself over Minho’s back or kiss his neck or plant himself in Minho’s lap when there are five glaringly available seats. For extra luck, Minho thinks. Or then that’s just Jisung being Jisung.

Comeback day creeps up on them, brings with it the tide of promotions. They pre-record for Music Bank. By that afternoon, Changbin’s rapid COVID test comes back positive.

Their schedule dissolves. They move into separate hotel rooms to quarantine, and one by one, more tests turn up positive. It wouldn’t be the end of the world—even with Hyunjin’s birthday and their debut anniversary falling into the quarantine zone—if it didn’t mean Minho would have to go over a week without seeing Jisung. To the realist in Minho, it still isn’t, but it sure as hell feels like it.

Thursday, March 26th

3:41am 한이

hyung

how are you

me 6:03am

never better.

yourself?

11:20am 한이

lol

As Minho fumbles with his keys at the door, he thinks only of his imminent collapse into his own bed. Resolves that not even a rogue Yang Jeongin seeking better network connection can stand between him and this vision.

Minho had considered asking his driver to drop him off at the other dorm, then immediately rethought it too desperate a move. If he’s made it this long, he can last another day without Jisung.

Or the sixteen or so hours, that is, until he sees him. Not that Minho is counting. He’s not counting anything. In fact, he’s fully lost count of the creaks of his joints, the shooting jabs of pain up his spine.

He drags his suitcase inside, leaves it by the clutter of shoes in the foyer. He’ll get it later—when he’s in no less pain than he is now, ha, so maybe he won’t get it later. The door slams shut behind him, the racket echoing through his pounding head as he recalls in rolling-credits-style every time he’s ever scolded his dongsaengs for being careless with the door. His cats don’t like loud noises—not that they’re here, it’s just a principle he abides by. He just can’t be bothered right now.

“Oh, you’re here. Wait, whoa.” Minho vaguely registers Seungmin’s presence in his periphery as he schleps through the living room and toward the hall. “Hyung, I thought you said you were asymptomatic.”

Minho speaks not, gunning for the hallway as fast as he can manage, which isn’t all that fast considering he’s wading through the constant, caustic burning of distance beneath his flesh.

“Are you sure you’re not still sick?”

Nearly there.

“Jisung is here, by the way.” And when Minho lifts his head, eyes bleary, Seungmin snorts. “Figured that would do the trick.”

Jisung is indeed here. He’s sitting on the couch, palms trapped politely between his knees, watching Minho with rounded eyes that scream of exhaustion. Seungmin shuffles off with ice clacking in his coffee tumbler and a parting, “Bye, then.”

“Hyung,” mumbles Jisung.

Minho swallows. At his sides, his fingers tremble and resist when he tries to close them into fists. “Hi.”

Jisung rises, approaches him cautiously. His thumb slips into the open curl of Minho’s fingers, digging into the center of his palm, loosening the tension in his hand. “I didn’t know when you’d be back,” Jisung mumbles. “I’ve been here a few hours.”

Minho avoids his eyes. “You could’ve asked.”

“Yeah.” Jisung bites his lip. “Hyung…”

Minho wraps himself around Jisung, chin tucking into his shoulder. As soon as he does, Jisung encompasses him, arm warm across the backs of Minho’s shoulders, clever fingers carding up through the back of his hair.

Minho grabs fistfuls of Jisung’s hoodie. It’s soft, smells lived-in. And it’s frankly embarrassing that every lungful Minho gets of him, he feels lighter, younger. Less sick in his body, more just sick in the head.

“Missed you,” murmurs Jisung, a low rumble by Minho’s ear.

Minho sighs. “My newfound, attractive pain-killing qualities do tend to have that effect.”

Jisung scoffs, like he wants to tell Minho that’s not the only reason. But he doesn’t. And Minho can’t even take offense, not when he knows how shitty it’s felt the past week or so.

Then, “Minho-hyungie.”

Eyes shut, Minho hums. Thinks he won’t be quite finished standing in the middle of the living room cuddling Jisung anytime soon.

“Hyung.” Jisung’s fingertips skim the back of his neck, goosebump-inducing. In a whisper, he asks something Minho never thought he’d hear a first time, much less a second: “Can I kiss you.”

Minho sighs into Jisung’s shoulder, empties his lungs completely of air. Flustered, cheeks prickling, he mutters, “Anyone could come in,” like the first time.

“Just a little kiss, hyung.”

“We’ll have plenty of time for that later.”

Jisung noses his temple like a needy kitten. “A tiny little… it’ll be over so fast, seriously. Please.”

And Minho… Minho doesn’t realize he’s crying until he lifts his head from Jisung’s shoulder and drags in a shuddering breath. There are twin tear stains on Jisung’s hoodie. Fucking hell.

Jisung exhales, “Oh, hyung.” And when Minho threatens to withdraw, to escape, because there’s something the hell wrong with him, Jisung’s hands anchor him and cradle his face. Minho uselessly fists the excess fabric at Jisung’s sides, mortified and blinking against stinging tears. “Hyung, is it—it was so shitty, I know. It was goddamn awful.” Jisung’s thumbs sweep gently under his eyes, collecting moisture. “I’m not gonna let it happen again. I promise. I don’t know… I don’t even know how I can promise that but I’ll do literally anything to make sure it doesn’t. Okay?”

Minho sniffs. He can only manage to stare at Jisung’s chin, but he nods briskly.

“Okay.” Jisung strokes his cheeks again, breathes out a broken laugh. “Fuck, don’t make me cry, too.”

“Trust me,” rasps Minho, eyebrows lifting, “I also would rather nobody fucking cry right now.”

Jisung smiles. He kisses under both of Minho’s eyes, where the saltwater wets his skin raw. And when Minho closes his eyes, Jisung’s lips press to his eyelids, too. Minho only grips his hoodie tighter.

“Just a little one,” hums Jisung. And even when Minho’s laugh comes out like a scoff, even though his upper lip is wet and snotty, Jisung is undeterred, pecks him on the mouth.

He drags Minho back into a hug. Minho rests the heavy weight of his head on Jisung’s shoulder, the one he’s yet to dampen. And when he peels open his eyes, he registers Felix parked in the living room doorway, empty water glass in hand.

Felix’s jaw snaps shut. Sorry, he mouths to Minho, grins sheepishly and waves before he shuffles back into the shadows of the hall.

Minho clicks his tongue. Great. He turns his face into Jisung’s shoulder, counts to ten. Decides Felix is something Future Minho will sort out. Present Minho, however, asks, “Do you wanna stay and watch something?”

“Ah, jagi, I thought you’d never ask.”

Minho looks up from his phone to discover himself vis-à-vis with the last piece of otoro between Jisung’s proffered chopsticks. He scoffs, swallowing down his smile. “Watch where you’re sticking those.”

“My chopsticks will go where it please them.” Jisung bats his eyes, flaps the fish near Minho’s nose. “Do you want it or not?” His hair is clean and fluffy, parted down the middle, and he cards it out of his eyes in a way Minho finds insufferably charming in the comfortable, low light. The restaurant is dim, and they’re tucked into a booth in the very back.

Minho sips from his sake—his third (fourth?) glass. Probably a negligent indulgence, but it’s a celebratory occasion. They’d wrapped up music show promotions earlier that day, and his Monday belongs only to him. He can spend it as hungover as he’d like.

He considers Jisung’s chopsticks, still raised. “Do you want me to want it?”

“Do I—what? I was just being nice.” Jisung laughs, exasperated, scrubs his hand over his tired, smiling eyes. “Take it—”

“Why be nice?”

Jisung blinks. “Ever?”

“To me. Why be nice to me.”

“It just so happens that I like you. As a person.”

“Do you?”

Jisung starts to retract his hand. “You know, I’m starting to wonder—”

“I want it.” Minho drops his jaw for Jisung, waits patiently to be fed. Jisung tsks, but follows through, and Minho sits back, chewing smugly. Is just tipsy enough to deeply consider dragging the toe of his shoe up Jisung’s shin to his knee, to stick his foot into Jisung’s lap. But even in the shadows he’s not quite that stupid. He merely nestles his foot up against Jisung’s, lets his knees relax apart. Feels a spike of heat strike the very nape of his neck and crawl over his scalp as he swallows his mouthful and echoes, dryly, “You like me as a person.”

Jisung, also a few glasses in, nearly snorts out his nose what he’s drinking. Coughs as he sets his glass down on the table. “Mhm.” He slides his glass along the table, from hand to hand. Adds, gazing downward, “Maybe too much.”

Minho catches every last word, few as there are. Lets none slip through his fingers, wrings them so tightly of unintentional undertones that they must crumble in his hold. He shifts his foot, bears down against the top of Jisung’s shoe.

Jisung lifts himself out of his slouch, laces his fingers together and leans onto his elbows all business-like. Shuffles his feet to trap Minho’s between them and fixes him with a solemn gaze. And in that low, low voice he pulls out of thin air more often than not these days: “Hyung, you did well.”

Minho, head tipped back against the booth, meets Jisung’s eyes and lifts an eyebrow. Huffs a chuckle. “What are you talking about.”

“Just. Everything. All of it.” Jisung shakes his head. “These past few weeks. Promotions. You owned it all. You always do, but this time especially. I admire you. For real.”

“Did you chug sake when I went to the bathroom?”

“Maybe. No, I didn’t. I’m trying to have a serious conversation with you, if you would believe it.”

Minho leans forward, mirroring Jisung’s posture with elbows propped. Gravely, he says, “I don’t like having serious conversations with you.”

“Then just accept the compliment.”

“I don’t even know what you’re complimenting me about.”

“Just…” Jisung sighs, lets Minho’s foot go. “Everything. I said everything. I admire you. How hard you work.”

Minho’s brows furrow. Jisung’s eyes are disconcertingly open, sincere. Minho almost wishes he looked even a little disingenuous. “You work hard, too, Hannie.” And in ways Minho couldn’t even fathom being so gifted. He ought to mention that, if it really is a serious chat that Jisung wants. But his tongue ties itself into a knot.

“I know.” Jisung cocks his head. His eye-line dips when Minho bites his inner lip. “I’m just lucky to get to watch you. And learn from you. And to be… where I am. Where I always am.”

Minho swallows audibly. It’s late. He seeks out the bill from the corner of his eye. “You should probably go pay.”

Jisung smiles loosely. He’s probably sleepy, full of good sashimi and good alcohol and a tiresome couple weeks behind him, not unlike Minho. But he wears it so well, handsome and bare-faced in overpriced athleisure. He stretches his arms above his head and groans out, as if accepting defeat, “You’re so fucking annoying.”

Minho grabs the bill himself, pulls his mask on and slides out of the booth. “News to me.”

They walk home, hoods and masks up, hands in pockets with shoulders bumping. Jisung’s dorm is closer,  and at the vestibule door, he turns silently to look at Minho, eyes awash with the night.

Minho scratches his neck, glances over his shoulder at the street, then back. “I need to pee.”

Jisung exhales a laugh as he moves to hold the door open for Minho.

Upstairs and in the foyer, they toe out of their shoes. Minho peers into the dark apartment. “Is everyone out?”

“I think only Hyunjin’s here.”

“Mm.” Minho dances his fingertips along the wall as he makes his way to the bathroom through the dark.

Behind him: “Hyung.”

“Mm.”

“I haven’t kissed you since this morning.”

Minho snorts. “Mm.”

“Did you know raw salmon and tuna are actually aphrodisiacs?”

Minho can’t hold in his laugh. “What?” He nudges the bathroom door open, and Jisung follows him in. They make twin grimaces in the mirror when the lights are flicked on and their eyes have to adjust.

Jisung shuts the door, beelines to wash his hands. “Yeah. It’s the omega-3s in salmon. They boost dopamine, or something. And then there’s something in tuna that increases sperm motility—”

“Motility.”

“Yeah, like—”

“What do you want motile sperm for, Jisungie?”

“I didn’t say I—okay, shut up, I wasn’t done, there’s also zinc in fish, which—”

Minho flushes the toilet, tugs his sleeves back as he goes to the sink. “I did know all of that, actually.”

Jisung frowns to counter Minho’s grin. He’s perched on the edge of the bathtub, elbows against his knees. “Then why’d you say what?”

“Came out of fucking nowhere, what do you mean?”

“We just went for sashimi, that’s not nowhere!”

“Okay, fine.”

“And I’m horny.”

“Oh.”

“Yep.”

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

Minho clutches the edge of the sink with wet hands and he glances at Jisung. He doesn’t expect giggles to bubble out of his chest the second they make eye contact. Jisung cracks, too, hands covering his face as he bows between his spread legs, back shaking with laughter.

Minho picks himself back up to dry his hands, though it’s still hard to catch a full breath. “Jagiya.”

Jisung rakes his hair out of his face, dabs at tears in the corner of his eye. Minho catches it all through the mirror. “Hm?”

“I was also thinking. About your theory.”

“Babe, I have so many theories.”

“Your theory about our curse.”

Jisung is silent for a beat. “Ah, that one.”

Minho nods. Leans into the sink. “Have you ever thought…” He notices Jisung’s steady gaze trained on him through the mirror. “That maybe… if you fucked me, you wouldn’t ever have to touch me again?”

Jisung swallows visibly. Meets Minho’s eyes in the mirror before he hangs his head, rubs at his brow. And eventually, when Minho feels he might just start to shake from the endless silence, Jisung mumbles: “I just think I wouldn’t be able to.”

Minho casts his eyes down to the counter, bites his lip hard enough to hurt. “To fuck me?” He doesn’t mean to whisper it, but it comes out hardly above a breath through his red-hot embarrassment.

Jisung hums, quiet and contrary. Takes a breath. “I wouldn’t be able to fuck you and never touch you again.”

Minho’s eyes squeeze shut. His legs, too, to counteract the weakness in his knees.

“Hyung, c’mere.”

Minho goes, and he sinks to his knees on the hard tile between Jisung’s parted legs. He feels like he doesn’t even really breathe until Jisung’s hands cup his face, until his thumbs pull back Minho’s lower lip, gently unhinge his jaw and press inside his mouth.

Minho peels his eyes open. Something like power courses through his veins seeing the blatant fixation in Jisung’s eyes as he purses his lips around Jisung’s fingers, soaks them with the flat of his tongue.

“Holy fuck,” Jisung whispers, traps his lip between his teeth as he painstakingly replaces one of his thumbs with two of his fingers. Two fingers he eases as deep into Minho’s mouth as he’ll take them, until his knuckles hit Minho’s front teeth and Minho coughs around them. Jisung allows him to recover without ever letting go of his face, curls his fingers into Minho’s tongue. Then Jisung swears again when Minho sucks on his fingers, and Minho hates it, the thought of over-inflating his own ego, but he also thinks that maybe, just maybe, Jisung looks a little mesmerized. And the fact that Minho could ever mesmerize someone like Jisung… well. He deigns to feel a little special.

“Is hyung like this with all the boys?” mutters Jisung as Minho rises up to his knees, nearer now to Jisung’s eye-level. And Minho is certain the answer is no; he’d never trust anyone from the get-go the way he implicitly trusts Jisung, and in more ways than Jisung could possibly know from what Minho tells him (that is to say, not a whole lot). But he’s grateful, almost, when Jisung doesn’t afford him a chance to respond, instead breathes in deep and grips Minho’s jaw with spit-slick fingers and takes his time to finally, finally kiss him deep.

Between kisses, Minho catches Jisung’s lower lip between his teeth. Lets it go to whisper, “Is the door locked?”

“Hm?” Jisung strokes the back of his hair. “It’s—yeah, yeah. Yeah, I remember locking it.”

“Perv,” breathes Minho. And Jisung laughs, but then Minho’s tugging at the waistband of Jisung’s sweats, pleading, “Hannie, help.”

Jisung shimmies out of his sweatpants faster than Minho’s ever seen him move. “Fuck off,” huffs Jisung, when Minho points this out. And it’s a bit of a silly image, Jisung completely bare from the waist down on the edge of the tub. Sillier, even, when Minho’s dragging the bathmat over to cushion his knees and Jisung, knock-kneed with hands tucked into the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie, shivers and complains, “My ass is cold.”

And Minho’s in a weird mood. Weird, as in he’s still a little drunk and he can’t stop giggling and Jisung is half-naked and it isn’t even the half Minho’s accustomed to (though he values both halves equally). So he collapses onto the bathmat, curled up in a ball, laughing helplessly while Jisung wails at him not to.

“Get up,” Minho breathes, still chuckling though finally struggling to his own two feet. He offers Jisung his hands, pulls him standing with more strength than necessary. Then he gets to rubbing his palms together to generate some heat. “You need me to warm it up, huh?”

Jisung settles his hands on Minho’s shoulders, grin dopey. “I mean, I wouldn’t protest—is this weird? Why am I the only one with my pants off?”

Minho steps close to Jisung, as close as he can go. He’s not-so-vaguely aware of Jisung’s erection between them. “There’s no shame in being pantsless in the bathroom, Jisungie,” Minho tells him in a soft murmur, right up against his lips.

Jisung puffs a breath. Minho feels the warmth of it tickle his lips, sees Jisung’s smile in the blur of his eyes. “Can you just grope me already? Makes me nervous not seeing your hands.”

Minho smiles. He cups Jisung’s soft little bottom gently, gives his right cheek a pat. Lifts his eyebrows. “Is this what you wanted?”

“This is it, yeah. This is everything I’ve ever wanted.”

“Ever ever?”

“Yeah. Ever ever. I’m peaking. Right now. Me, twenty-three, no pants, in the bathroom. Lee Minho, twenty-five, hands on my freezing ass. My dick, rock hard even though Lee Minho’s been laughing at me for five minutes, the fucking bastard. No signs of flagging, though, not while the vitality of youth courses through my veins.”

Minho bumps their foreheads together as he laughs, full of stupid, stupid lovestruck glee. “How did I ever get so lucky as to share this moment with you.”

Jisung kneads at Minho’s shoulders through his sweatshirt. “Right? Think of all the people who’d pay to switch places with you right now.”

Minho wrinkles his nose. “That’s an alarming number of people.”

Jisung chuckles. He strokes his thumb over Minho’s cheek, digs it in below the jut of his cheekbone. “It was a joke, anyway. They’d all pull out the second they figured out everything else they’d have to deal with.”

“I wouldn’t.” Minho’s hands smooth up to the small of Jisung’s back. And he can’t quite hold eye contact after the confession, inane as their whole conversation is. He nudges his nose to Jisung’s, peeks downward. “Is the vitality still coursing?”

Jisung chokes out a laugh. “Oh, it’s coursing alright.”

“Mm.” Minho arches into Jisung’s body, squeezes at his ass as he pulls their fronts flush. “Hannie.”

Jisung’s voice is impossibly low. “Jagi.” He’s also on his tiptoes to drape his arms over Minho’s shoulders, cage him in.

Minho hums, shuts his eyes. “Can I blow you,” he whispers.

Jisung’s breath shudders tangibly against Minho’s lips. “Yes please.”

They work as a team to tug Jisung’s hoodie off, then the ridiculously threadbare tank top he has on underneath. Minho walks him up against the wall, toes the bathmat over. Says too much without saying anything at all when he kisses Jisung firmly on the mouth, then moves to his cheek, his jaw, his neck. The center of his chest, where Jisung cradles his head firmly to hold him in place as Minho drags the flat of his tongue up his sternum, between his pecs. His sweet tummy, which Minho spreads his fingers over, to which he peppers indulgent kisses until Jisung makes it difficult to ignore his cock.

Literally. He’s gripping himself, nudging his leaky tip to Minho’s cheek. And Minho could be playful, glare up at him with an icy What is wrong with you, but his body reacts faster than his mind. He tilts his head so Jisung’s tip slips over his parted lips, eyes half-lidded with every last intent to embody Jisung’s wildest fantasies come to life. And by the way Jisung groans as he pets Minho’s hair from his eyes, he’s headed in the right direction.

Minho tongues over Jisung’s knuckles, wets his shaft until he reaches the head, holds eye contact and accepts it into his mouth when Jisung feeds it to him. His head goes a little fuzzy thereafter, but it reaches Minho in snatches—he can feel his fingertips where they dig into the soft flesh of Jisung’s thighs, his scalp where Jisung grips a handful of his hair, his chin where saliva drips wet and messy and Jisung’s balls press up against his face, his nose where it stings and his breaths come harsh. The soft sounds of Jisung’s pleasure are the best part.

Minho coughs when Jisung pulls out, kneels to Minho’s level. Wipes his chin to kiss him while Minho’s still catching his first full breath. “Hyung, you’re so good to me,” whispers Jisung, fingers featherlight as he strokes Minho’s hair behind his ears.

But Jisung is still hard. “Wanna make you come,” exhales Minho, covering Jisung’s hands where they cup his face.

And he has half a mind to sit back on his heels and ask aloud, What the fuck just came over me? but Jisung doesn’t laugh, doesn’t tell him he’s desperate. Or maybe he likes that Minho’s this desperate.

“Yeah, baby, me too, I just wanna take you to bed, yeah? Can we do that? Let’s go to bed.”

Jisung tiptoes ahead down the hall, clutching his bundled clothes to his crotch. Minho follows, albeit slowly, still in a bit of a daze, but also to savor the comedy of Jisung’s awkward stride and his cute ass.

He’s quiet about shutting the door to Jisung’s bedroom. Jisung is busy clearing his bed of junk Minho has seen him sleep amid in the past, but Minho apparently gets the royal treatment whenever he stays over (the privilege of not having to sleep in a pile of Jisung’s trash and dirty laundry).

Jisung catches him looking. “Why are you staring at me and not getting naked?”

Minho huffs, goes to tug his sweatshirt over his head. “Don’t you think we’d be curse-free for at least a couple days after I took your cock down my throat?”

Jisung freezes. And Minho only realizes this once he’s standing there, free of his sweatshirt, hugging it to his bare chest with goosebumps prickling his arms.

“Um,” starts Jisung. He perches on his bed, scratches at his chin. “I mean. I’d like to see this through for… for obvious reasons.” He jerks his chin pointedly down at his lap. “But I also don’t want to… I’m not just trying to ward off the curse, hyung.”

Minho tangles his fingers in the fabric of his sweatshirt. He supposes that makes sense. Jisung is a guy—a guy with an active libido, a guy who also happens to be into guys. It isn’t far-fetched that he’d want to get his dick wet for reasons that don’t include warding off the unearthly promise of grueling pain.

It feels good to Minho, too. In the moment.

Minho nods faintly, eyes cast downward as he drops his hoodie, goes to strip out of his pants. “Right.”

“Hyung.”

Minho lifts his eyes vaguely, doesn’t quite look at Jisung before he looks away again.

“We don’t have to… do anything. If you don’t want to.”

He’s sweet, thinks Minho. “I want to.”

“You’re sure?”

“Have I ever been unsure of myself?” He kicks out of his bottoms. Then he smiles, wry and faint, eyes darting to Jisung. “Don’t answer that.”

“You can be unsure. And you should tell me if you are.”

Minho chuckles. “And you’re very cute.” Jisung pouts defiantly as Minho approaches him, hikes himself astride his lap. “But I am. I’m sure.”

Minho sees Jisung’s chest fill unsteadily as he takes a breath. But he doesn’t touch Minho with his hands. Only where Minho’s settled against his bare thighs. “We don’t have to fuck,” Jisung whispers.

“Oh?” Minho’s brows twitch. He skims his fingertips across Jisung’s collarbone. “Do you not want to?”

That, at last, makes Jisung crack a smile. Curl his fingers into the sheets behind him. “I… I mean. I do. I really want to.”

“So do I.”

Jisung swallows. Minho admires the length of his neck, the way the movement travels down its column. “H…oh.”

Minho’s lips quirk. “Yeah.”

“That’s… good.”

“Is it?”

Jisung breathes out a laugh, shuts his eyes. “I mean… yeah. Fucking fantastic, if you’re really asking.”

A shiver runs down Minho’s spine. He winds his arms loosely around Jisung’s neck, grinds down into his lap and curls around him to brush a kiss to his neck. “And what’re you gonna do about it, Mr. Aphrodisiac?”

Jisung smacks Minho lightly on the flesh of his thigh. “You little shit.” His smile is audible.

Minho’s instinctive response is to soften into Jisung in every place they fit like puzzle pieces. He arches until he feels their cocks align, sighs into his neck, cards fingers through the back of his hair. “What do you wanna do about it.” Makes a soft noise when Jisung grips his ass with open palms. “Please.”

“God,” Jisung chuckles. His hands are hot as brands against Minho’s skin, fingers wandering down the cleft of Minho’s ass, up to the softness at his waist. “I want… you to suck me off. While I finger you.”

Minho sucks his lower lip under his teeth when he realizes he’s drooling onto Jisung’s shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Then I want you to ride me.”

Minho grins through his dizziness as he noses up Jisung’s neck, nips at his earlobe. “Never thought about this in your life, have you?”

“Just like I never thought about kissing you.”

Jisung has to fumble around in his nightmare of a nightstand drawer before Minho can clamber atop him.

“Don’t worry,” Jisung says from—well, behind Minho’s ass. Minho has to remind himself that it’s just Jisung who is staring directly at his asshole, but that only makes his face go up in flames, his nerves skyrocket. “I’ve put fingers in an ass before.”

Minho makes eye contact with Jisung’s dick, tongue in cheek. “Your own?”

A few beats of silence, then: “Yeah.”

Minho hums. Wraps his fingers around Jisung’s length, works up saliva in his mouth that he lets drip over the head. “That’s hot.”

Jisung’s breath stutters as Minho takes him in, bobs his head shallowly. “It is?”

Minho pulls off, tongues wet kisses up the side of Jisung’s cock. “Of course it is. If you liked it.”

“Yeah,” comes Jisung’s shaky response. “Yeah, I did. A lot. Fuck, hyung, your junk is, like, all up in my face. Your legs look fucking huge.”

Minho bites back a smile, wiggles his hips. Feels his cock bob between his legs. “Oops.”

“Fuck, what the fuck. That’s the sexiest shit I’ve seen in my—my life, can I touch you?”

Burying the soft words against Jisung’s hip bone, Minho murmurs, “You can do whatever you want to me.”

He’s tugging at Jisung’s cock, mouthing at his tip, when the first lubed finger teases at his entrance and presses into him. Jisung kneads at his ass with his spare hand, and Minho whimpers around him, pulls off to just use his tongue when Jisung’s finger nudges deeper.

“You know,” Jisung utters conversationally, though his airy tone and twitching legs betray him, “this all feels like… like the most elaborate dream I’ve ever had. Like us getting cursed was just the prelude to the hottest wet dream of my entire existence. And I’m gonna wake up to the nastiest nut ever and it’s gonna be so nasty it distracts me from the dream I just had and then I’ll promptly forget any of it ever happened.”

Minho’s breath catches when Jisung stretches him with a second finger, just like that.

“Okay?” Jisung queries, and Minho breathes, “Yeah,” brow twisted in a tortured furrow.

“But I’m pretty sure this is all real,” Jisung plows on. “Which in itself is, like. Unreal.” And Minho chokes out a gasp, clenches tight around Jisung’s fingers when they curl just so. “Whoa,” utters Jisung, and Minho flushes all over with warmth, realizing he’s just leaked over Jisung’s chest.

Experimentally, Minho peers down between his arms. Arches his back deeper, pushes back onto Jisung’s fingers. Bumps his cock against Jisung’s chin.

As much as Minho (against all logic) enjoys Jisung’s blathering, he likes it quite a lot, too, when Jisung wraps his lips around the head of Minho’s cock, scissors him open while he sucks. Minho tries to hold his own, return the favor, but he can barely even hold his tongue when Jisung rolls his fingers against his prostate, prods his tongue in sweet, hesitant little licks at Minho’s slit. Jisung lets him slip from his mouth, claws his nails gently over Minho’s ass. Tells him softly, “Shh, baby, just a little—a little quieter.”

And Minho remembers they’re not home alone. It makes him want to weep. He drops his forehead to Jisung’s skin, noses against the hair at the base of his cock, breathes him in. “Jisung-ah,” he keens.

Jisung squeezes at the junction of his ass and thigh, maybe just to milk the last few seconds of the view. Then: “‘kay, yeah, yeah. Turn around, baby.”

Jisung sits up whilst Minho navigates his way around. And it’s unexpectedly intimate, meeting Jisung’s sweet, round eyes as he holds a condom out to Minho. “Can you—? My fingers’re all…”

Minho nods. Jisung’s lips are raw, like he’d been biting at them when he hadn’t been sucking Minho’s cock.

Minho swallows thickly, and his fingers feel like jelly, so he can’t quite rip the condom wrapper even when he actually tries. And he knows Jisung’s had sex with girls before, so— “Is this… am I gonna be your first?” He tilts his head to the side, and he can feel but can’t quite face Jisung’s wide-eyed gaze. “First boy?”

Jisung gulps audibly. “Yeah.”

Minho shifts astride Jisung’s thighs, eyes roaming the planes of his chest, his tight little core. “Have you thought about this? Ever?” With me, he means. He fleetingly meets Jisung’s eyes. “Before today?”

Jisung scoffs. “Is hyung trying to check my ego right before I need it the most?”

Minho lifts a brow. Resists the pleased twitch of his lips when he gives Jisung’s cock a few pumps and Jisung’s hips jerk from the bed. He rolls the condom over him, rises onto his knees, takes Jisung under the jaw. “Jagiya,” he hums, thumbing Jisung’s lower lip, “I think the last thing you need right now is your ego.”

And for a moment, Jisung looks like a lost puppy cradled in the palms of Minho’s hands, mouth in a perfect, befuddled little ‘o’. Then he shuts his eyes, sighs. Hastily wipes his hand on the sheets, skims his palms up Minho’s quads. “I’ve thought about it,” he tells Minho, neither shy nor bold. “Before today.” His hands follow the curve of Minho’s ass, the dip of his back. “Before the… curse.”

Minho’s head feels so heavy. And once Jisung’s pressed a kiss to his sternum, he drops his forehead down to Jisung’s, digs his nails like claws into his shoulders. “You never said.”

And Jisung grins, like it’s the funniest thing he’s heard all day. Whispers, “Hyung, literally… why the fuck… would I say a thing.”

Minho doesn’t have an answer, not one he can freely give. And when Jisung tips his chin up for a kiss, Minho obliges.

Jisung finds the lube amid his rumpled sheets, slicks himself up, and their breaths are shared as Minho reaches between his legs, thighs straining, to guide Jisung’s cock inside him. The feeling of utter fullness punches a moan out of Minho’s chest, but Jisung doesn’t try to stop him that time. He’s bizarrely silent, jaw clenched, eyes dark and fixated.

Jisung lets go of Minho briefly to hold himself up. “Wrap your—baby, wrap your legs around me.”

Minho does as he’s told, clinging to Jisung’s shoulders, and he feels it as Jisung crosses his legs under his ass. Circles Minho’s waist with his arms.

Minho’s never felt so close to anyone, so close his heartbeat seems to echo in the space between them. Their breaths catch in tandem as he squeezes around Jisung, grinds against him, cock rubbing Jisung’s belly.

Minho has been ardent about skirting it, but it’s getting harder to ignore. And he thinks it’s unfair that he’s spent years staring Jisung down into submission, flustering him with his unafraid gaze, yet within weeks he’s been reduced to this, too scared to be the one to look in fear of what he might find.

So when he finally looks Jisung in the eyes, working his hips in a slow grind, it’s with an infernal, small smile he can’t will off his face. “Why’re you looking at me like that.”

Jisung exhales a little puff of a laugh. Lets the silence stretch on languidly, hands roaming Minho’s back, until he whispers, “Why do you think.”

A shudder runs from Minho’s scalp to his toes, and he melts, tips his forehead onto Jisung’s shoulder. Sighs into his skin, thighs locking snug around Jisung’s hips. “I don’t want to think.”

“Mm.” Jisung’s mouth presses along the overheated skin of his neck. “I know.”

Minho hides behind the darkness of his closed eyes, feels Jisung around him, inside him. Ghosts his lips over Jisung’s shoulder. Then he swallows, lifts his head until their cheeks align, then further to catch Jisung’s lips with a sense of urgency. “Lay down.”

The bed creaks as Minho readjusts, as Jisung lowers himself to the mattress. Minho bites his lip at the change in angle, steadies himself with palms spread over Jisung’s solid chest. He gets slightly more leeway like this, more control to distract himself from the reverent way Jisung’s fingers skim his thighs and waist and cock, more reprieve from Jisung’s gaze with the shadows between them.

Though Jisung himself is hard to ignore, alive under Minho’s touch, plush lip caught in his teeth, unruly hair in his eyes and fanned out on the mattress. Jisung bends his knees, hands sprawling possessively over Minho’s hips. “God, you look…” He clears his throat, only to moan lowly when Minho lifts on his cock, takes him back in. “Beautiful.”

Minho wants to hide—and simultaneously not at all. He exhales a sheepish huff. “Jisung…”

Jisung wraps his fingers around Minho’s cock. “Shut up.” He digs his nails into Minho’s thigh to emphasize. “I mean it.”

“Fine.”

Jisung laughs, sudden and shrill. “Fine?”

Minho gets him back, though, as he starts to build up a slow rhythm. He pitches forward, plants his hands on the mattress above Jisung’s shoulders. And his mind feels numb, iced and hot all over as he arches his back to get Jisung where he needs him most. And he tells Jisung, quietly, “Thank you.”

Jisung beams, all greedy hands on Minho’s waist, slick fingers teasing at Minho’s nipples. “You’re welcome, gorgeous. Now tell me I’m sexy.”

Minho tries only to roll his eyes. But he’s so hopeless it’s laughably futile, and he drops to his elbows, nose nudging Jisung’s as he smiles, breathless. “Tell me I’m the best fuck you’ve ever had.”

“It’s not even over yet. Tell me I’m objectively the hottest guy to ever get you in his bed.”

Minho hums, then grants, “You’re the shortest guy I’ve ever fucked.”

“Literally go to hell.” Jisung laughs, body quaking under Minho’s. “And never come back.”

“Mm… I’m not quite finished in this realm.”

Jisung snorts, cups Minho’s cheek. “No, you’re not.”

Minho is supremely derailed from the task at hand when Jisung coaxes his lips apart, seals their lips in a kiss. And when he takes a breath, he even feels hysterical enough to tell Jisung, “It’s never felt like this.”

Minho’s hips are lazily still, so he feels it all the more when Jisung’s jerk from the bed. He squeezes around him, revels in that feeling of, perhaps, being wanted.

He lets Jisung roll him onto his back, press back inside. Jerks himself off as Jisung fucks him fast and hot, comes with a strangled cry over his hand, his belly. Jisung kisses all over his cheeks, then his chest when Minho relaxes his head to the mattress. And Minho feels him everywhere, even where he isn’t.

He grabs the backs of his legs when the strength melts from them, when he can’t keep them locked around Jisung’s waist any longer. Breathes, “Keep going.”

When Jisung fills the condom, propped up and looming over Minho, Minho watches him openly. Strokes Jisung’s hair back from his eyes, thumbs over the pretty, lax swell of his bottom lip when he moans.

Jisung collapses beside him. And they don’t speak, just breathe, knuckles brushing on the mattress, until Jisung feigns a guttural snore and Minho dissolves into laughter. Jisung gets up, though, helps Minho clean up at least to Jisung’s own standard of that’ll do. And Minho thinks he passes out the second his head hits the pillow, but minutes and minutes pass and Minho’s still staring at the sliver of moonlight between Jisung’s cracked curtains when Jisung mumbles into the night, “Do you feel un-cursed?”

Minho smiles faintly at the window. It’s almost as if he’s carried this curse around in his chest for years, known the dormant weight of it long before it reared its ugliest head. “I don’t think I even know how that’d feel.”

Jisung huffs. Is silent a while. “Right.”

After that evening, Jisung and Minho make a game of testing the boundaries of the curse—à la you can look but you can’t touch.

They make it three days, painless. Then it comes back, full force, like it’d never left.

Minho sticks his slippered foot in Felix’s bedroom door a split second before it can close. Felix jumps, then, turning when the door rebounds open, and grabs at his chest when the sight of Minho startles him. “Yah, hyung, you scared me to death,” he accuses, voice thin.

“I need to talk to you,” Minho says flatly. He hears the floor creak behind him, glances over his shoulder to find Seungmin hovering.

Seungmin’s eyes dart quizzically between them. “Uh… what’s going on in there?”

“Hyung’s being scary,” answers Felix. Meanwhile, Minho grabs Seungmin by the front of his t-shirt and hauls him inside the bedroom, fighting the unwilling shuffle of his feet.

He then proceeds to shut and lock the door.

“Isn’t that a little extreme?” Seungmin says, eyeing the lock and smoothing the rumpled front of his shirt. “I doubt Jeongin cares.”

“I just don’t want you to feel tempted to escape,” Minho answers lightly. He drags Felix’s desk chair so it blocks the path between the door and the bed, then takes a seat, fingers laced in his lap.

Felix and Seungmin exchange a reluctant look.

Minho points at the bed. “Sit.”

Felix seats himself immediately. Seungmin first squints at Minho, but follows suit.

Minho clears his throat. “Just so you’re aware, I had a long debate with myself about whether or not to embroil you both in this… unusual… situation.” He digs his heels into the floor, swivels the chair to and fro. “But then I realized Yongbok had already implicated himself—”

“Oh god, I think I know what this is about,” mutters Felix.

“—and I frankly don’t care whether Seungmin gets involved or not. But I figured… in approaching a sensitive topic like this, it’d be best to have both the head and the heart present, as to have… a balanced discussion.”

Felix splits into a grin. “Naw, hyung, are you saying I’m the heart?” he coos.

Seungmin makes a face. “And I’m the head?”

“No. You’re the impartial third party. I’m the head, because I know everything.”

“I’m still the heart, though, right?” Felix interjects.

“Yes, Yongbok-ah, you’re the—”

“I’m very confused,” announces Seungmin.

“Look, just.” Minho leans forward, plants his elbows on his knees. “I’m going to tell you something that will sound… completely batshit. Batshit as in if you were the ones telling me this, I’d get up and leave because I don’t believe in bullshit like this. I just don’t.”

“Then how is this fair?” Seungmin deadpans, gesturing to Minho’s strategic position holding them hostage.

Minho slumps backward in the chair, arms limp like his marionette strings are loose, and stares at the ceiling.

“Yah, just let hyung speak.” Felix nudges Seungmin in the side. “Anyway, I’m too curious now.”

Seungmin sighs, makes deliberate eye contact with Minho’s lethargic, lidded eyes. “Sorry. Go on.”

Minho picks himself back up. Realizes he didn’t really plan on making it this far. “Um.” But Felix and Seungmin only gaze at him patiently. Felix even offers a small smile, the only shred of hope tethering Minho to the chair and holding him back from throwing his hands in the air and simply telling them to forget it.

“So…” Minho swallows, eyes gravitating to Felix’s window. “Almost… almost two months ago, I woke up feeling, like… the worst I’ve ever felt. Physically. Just… everything hurt. Everything. I’ve since discovered it could get worse, but that’s not really relevant.” His tone is perfectly stable, but he can feel the sweat begin to prick at the back of his neck. “Fuck, I’m not gonna give a whole backstory. Basically, Jisung and I realized we suddenly weren’t able to spend too long apart or the shit feeling would come back. Apart, as in… to make it go away again, we’d have to be… physically intimate.”

Minho scans his captive audience, gauging reactions. Felix’s hand is clamped over his mouth. Seungmin looks to be processing, which is more than Minho could have asked for.

“That’s why you…?” Felix utters. “Hyung, oh my god.”

“I mean, it sounds totally fake,” says Seungmin, finally. “It sounds like you and Jisung just want an excuse to touch each other all the time, which you were already doing before this supposedly began.” He scratches at his neck. “But for all that’s worth, I can tell you mean it. That you’re not lying about the… hurt.” Then Seungmin’s brow softens, thoughtful. “No wonder you were a mess after quarantine.”

“Hyung,” says Felix, trampling over Seungmin’s final syllable. “I have something to say.”

A bizarre sensation of validation from Seungmin’s words hits Minho like a ton of bricks. So he’s only half present when he mumbles, “Then just say it.”

“I cursed you,” blurts Felix.

Minho blinks.

“And Jisung.” Felix heaves a breath. “I… I think.”

Seungmin frowns. “You what?” He glances warily at Minho, gives him a bodily scan, as if this curse might be oozing from his very pores into the air they’re all breathing. “Cursed? This all got so trippy so fast.”

If Minho were Minho of two months ago, he’d promptly exit the conversation at the first hint of witchcraft or astrology or anything of the paranormal variety.

Unfortunately, he’s Minho of today, who stays rooted to the chair. “Yongbokkie, can you…”

“Elaborate,” Seungmin finishes for him. Minho glares. Seungmin has nothing to do with this—or he didn’t, until Minho literally dragged him into the fiasco. He only has himself to blame.

Felix wilts over his own lap, hugging his knees. For a moment, he’s silent. Then he groans. “I don’t know how to phrase this without making myself sound weird and desperate.”

Seungmin rubs up and down Felix’s back. “Minho-hyung’s been weird and desperate since he got us in here. You wouldn’t be the first.”

Minho resolves to ignore Seungmin. “I’m not trying to interrogate you, Yongbok-ah. Really, I’d just like to know if this is… if Jisung and I will be stuck like this forever. Or if there’s a way to end it. That’s all. And if you don’t have that answer, I give you and Seungmin both permission to continue pretending I’m not losing my mind and we’ll all go about our lives.”

Felix sighs, scrubbing his hands over his face. He drops them, limp with defeat, eyes trained on the floor. “I tried to cast a love spell on Chan-hyung.”

Minho grits his teeth against emoting. When Seungmin’s eyes bulge, Minho sends him an aborted gesture to shut the fuck up.

“There was a new moon at the start of March,” Felix manages, ears flushed bright pink. “So I made… there’s this thing called moon water, I’ll spare you the details, but… that was, you know, almost two months ago.” Felix’s eyes flit to Minho, back down. “As part of the spell, I had to… try to get it into his food. Or get him to drink it. God, it sounds silly, but—”

“Clearly it did something,” muses Seungmin.

Felix rubs at his cheek. “Yeah. And the cookies I make, that recipe requires hot water, so I just… used it. The moon water.”

“You brought those cookies to practice,” Seungmin says. Minho stares at him blankly. Again with the narration. “Even I had some.”

“I thought since I’d… set my intentions, and whatnot, it wouldn’t do anything to you guys.”

Minho digests this. “And what were your… intentions, Yongbok-ah.”

Felix sniffs, hikes his knees up onto the bed. Slots his chin between them. “That if deep down, Chan-hyung truly liked me back… If we were meant to be, he wouldn’t be able to ignore it.”

Minho freezes. It’s almost as if his heart goes stock-still.

“Obviously nothing happened,” finishes Felix. “For us.”

“I can’t believe magic is real,” Seungmin huffs, a crease between his brows. “That you can do magic. That magic is gonna be the reason Minho-hyung and Jisung get their heads out of their asses. Wait, you said physically intimate, holy shit—”

“Shut up,” Minho gripes. “Not like that.” His head goes hot with the lie.

“But they kissed,” says Felix. “I saw it.”

“Yongbok-ah…”

“You kissed?!” Seungmin gasps. Then his countenance goes lax. “I don’t know why I said it like that. I’m not actually surprised.”

“Fuck,” says Minho, point-blank. He’s so tempted to shout it, but all he does is dig his nails into his scalp. He hates the fucking moon, he hates chocolate chip cookies. Hates himself for liking chocolate chip cookies. And he can’t hate Felix, but he can certainly hate magic, and he’d really prefer to return to a time when he’d wholeheartedly denied its existence. “Fuck. What the fuck do we do.”

Felix looks remorseful. “It was just… something I saw online. There were a ton of variations of the spell, people doing it different ways, saying different things, but they all just kind of boil down to… manifestation. You know? There’s no… counter-curse, or anything like that.”

Minho laughs bitterly. “If you could do magic two months ago, I’m pretty damn sure you could do it now. So break it. Break the curse.”

Felix’s eyes are deep, dark pools of guilt.

“Hyung,” Seungmin says, stroking Felix’s spine again. “Breathe.” And Minho very nearly pounces on him, threats about wearing a jacket made from Seungmin’s skin to work tomorrow teetering on the tip of his tongue, but Seungmin continues stolidly, “Don’t… don’t let yourself get riled up. You look like you want to choke me out, but just give me thirty seconds. Is Felix’s spell wrong? Do you not like Jisung? Like—that?”

Minho sets his sights obstinately on the window. He inhales through his nose, lets it rush back out. “It isn’t wrong.”

“Do you want to keep it a secret forever?”

Minho says nothing. He’s too preoccupied maintaining his immovable poker face.

“You don’t have to keep it a secret,” Seungmin contends. “From him. Or us.”

“Maybe it’ll just go away,” Minho whispers, and feels pitiful for it. He clears his throat and says, louder, “It could go away someday.”

“But why wait until it does?” Seungmin drapes his arm across Felix’s shoulders. “None of this would be happening if Jisung didn’t apparently want you back right now. Listen, I know about as much about magic and moon water as the next guy, but from the sound of it, this curse won’t let you go until you stop ignoring it.”

“But I’m not ignoring it. I’ve talked to him about it.” Minho crosses his arms. “I’ve talked to Jisung about the curse.”

Seungmin stands up, giving Felix’s shoulder a squeeze. “But you haven’t talked to him about your feelings.”

Minho icily catches his gaze. Holds it, sinister and unblinking.

Then Seungmin shrugs, mimes a mic drop. “Boom,” he says. Sidesteps Minho’s chair and lets himself out of the room.

Minho spends the following minutes of silence grinding his teeth to a pulp. Felix lets down his knees, scoots forward to the very edge of the bed. “Hyung, I’m sorry.” He swallows, and he looks on the verge of tears as he continues, “I can’t believe I put you through that.”

Minho will not be the reason Felix cries tonight. But any juice left in him has been wrung dry. “No, no,” he comforts halfheartedly. “This has been… a very enlightening conversation, Yongbokkie.” Really, Minho has never felt more headfucked. He scoots the chair close enough that he can pat Felix’s knee. “I’m sorry about Chan-hyung. Even if he doesn’t… you know, I know he still thinks you hung the moon.” Minho frowns in thought. “And frankly, a huge part of me still believes none of this could possibly be real. Maybe you don’t need magic at all.”

Felix half-smiles, huffs a laugh. “It’s okay. I’ll get over it.”

And Minho wants to say, Me too, because for as long as he can remember, that has also been his resolution: get over Jisung. But what Felix asked for, the universe handed directly to Minho, though not quite on a silver platter. Maybe a rusted-over iron platter that gives him tetanus when he slices his finger open on it. But it’s there, nonetheless.

“You should tell Jisung,” mumbles Felix. “If not… you know,” he pauses to smile weakly, “then at least what I told you.”

Minho hums. “I’ll butcher the bit about the moon water.”

Felix grabs the handle of Minho’s chair, rolls him closer. Bends in half to lay his cheek to Minho’s knee. “I can send you the link.”

Minho’s veins are live wires.

He thinks—no, actually, he’s positive he could spend a solid three more hours on stage. Longer, even, as long as Stay would be willing to stick around and keep him company and entertain his vehement dance demands, as long as security would permit him to overstay his welcome. And when that allowance expired, they’d still have to catch him first.

As it stands, he acquiesces. Pretends he isn’t biting his tongue about one last, impromptu encore as he follows Felix down the stairs below the stage.

It’s a whirlwind thereafter. Tears shed, hugs, kisses, and shots with their team in the green room, changing out of sweat-soaked stage clothes, an overdue, heavy meal after a long weekend.

Felix, bless him, is red-eyed all night, even deep into the after party, where the atmosphere is warm and spirits are high and the music is probably quite a bit louder than Minho perceives it to be, a bit buzzed with ears still ringing with the echoes of the stadium. To anyone but those who have lived with them, it would seem a casual affair at the other dorm, but Minho’s practiced eye tells him they definitely had housekeepers come by in anticipation of the party. He hasn’t seen it so clean (albeit now crowded with friends and coworkers and cluttered with drinks and snacks) since they moved in.

Minho has only just sat down, having returned from the bathroom (where he’d taken a good, long look at himself in the mirror, pinched himself in several spots to make sure he was still lucid, then promptly washed his hands) when a glass slams against the coffee table before him.

Jisung’s ass hitting the couch cushions follows. “Jagiya,” he greets.

Minho lifts a brow. “Long time no see.”

“Actually though.”

Minho scans Jisung, head flurrying with visuals of him on stage the past three days. It’s amusing, in a way, to think about how hard Minho would have fallen in those three short days, had he begun with a clean slate and not already hit rock bottom long ago.

Jisung is staring at him expectantly. He nods toward the coffee table. “I brought you a drink.”

Minho snorts, tilts his head toward said drink. He takes note of the shot glass floating inside. “Poktanju?”

“Mhm. I did all the hard work for you, too. Saved your pretty head from the mad bruise I’m gonna have tomorrow from banging my head on the table back there. Kinda dizzy now, honestly. Might’ve overdone it.”

Minho blinks, incredulous. “I can’t believe you concussed yourself for my drink and didn’t even invite me to witness it.”

“I couldn’t find you! I tried, I swear! Anyway, Hyunjin took a video, if you’re that desperate.”

Minho slumps into the cushions, stares at the glass. Sighs, chuckling quietly. “What the fuck is wrong with you.”

“Where do I start?”

Minho smiles, meets Jisung’s eyes. Looks away when his heart lurches a little too hard.

“Anyway,” says Jisung.

“Anyway.”

“Drink up.”

Minho glances at Jisung again. His bangs are too long, covering one of his eyes, but Minho won’t dare to mention it lest he jinx himself and some higher power decides Jisung needs a trim, pronto. He likes it far too much, the roguish hair to match his roguish grin, the shadows over his smiling eyes. And…

Jinx, wow. Okay. Minho rubs at his eyes. He’s a man of superstition now, it seems. Through and through.

He grabs the glass because, in the end, he’ll do anything (most things) Jisung asks of him. And, of course, Jisung makes a scene of it, stands and hoots as Minho chugs it down, recruits the nearest bystanders to join in on his hyping.

Minho rolls his eyes once he’s lowered the glass, lifts a placating hand to silence his audience members. Then he directs a finger at Jisung. “Han Jisung, sit your ass down.”

Jisung does so. And once they’ve become old news, once everyone’s returned to their conversations, Jisung mutters, “I’d have sat in your lap, but.” He clicks his tongue, sweeps his eyes about the room.

Minho hiccups violently in response, slaps a hand across his mouth. Jisung only claps and lets out a peal of delighted laughter.

Minho sighs. Presses the pads of his fingers to his ears, which must be on fire. Then he considers his empty glass, the tour merch socks Jisung is sporting. The people he loves around him, and the boy he loves right beside him.

“Hannie,” he says airily, gaze trapped on the floor. Then he smooths his fingers over his eyebrows, covering his eyes. “Fuck.”

“What? What is it?” Jisung wiggles closer attentively. “You feel okay? Was that too much? I didn’t know how much you’d had to drink—or is it…? Is it… you know? I don’t feel anything yet, but we can still have a cuddle right here, hyung, it’s been an emotional night, no one will think twice. Or we can go to my room—”

“No, shut up.” And it’s so abrupt that Jisung recedes. Minho has to grab him by the wrist before he can get too far. “Sorry, I didn’t…” Minho breathes through his nose, drops his head backward. Jisung is still nearly hip-to-hip with him, still close, still all soft edges and alert eyes. “Sorry. I have words to say and they’re just not… coming.”

Jisung regards him. Then he smiles crookedly, turns to prop his elbow near Minho’s head, cheek sweetly pillowed against his hand. “Take your time.”

Minho nods. He can’t even blame it on the alcohol when his pulse is rabbiting like this. He draws a breath, tries again. “Hannie.”

“Take two,” murmurs Jisung, rosebud lips pursed in a mischievous smile. “What is it, hyung.”

Minho peers into Jisung’s eyes. And that lasts right up until he mumbles, “I like you.” His eyelids flutter with overwhelm. “As a person.”

Easily, too easily, Jisung laughs, cheeks bunched. “I like you, too. As I’ve… said.”

Minho shakes his head. “No, I mean…” He shrugs a shoulder, eyes boring through his glass on the table, inspecting the way it distorts the room. The couch might as well be an island in a sea of distortion. Minho can’t perceive anything but Jisung, only vaguely himself. Everyone else blends into the din of the party. “I like you so much.”

Jisung doesn’t appear quite so amused anymore. But his smile is private, just for Minho, as he whispers, “I like you so much, too.”

Minho stares, at a loss. Uncomprehending.

“And I have. For… a while.” Only then does Jisung split back into a grin. “Jagiya.” He digs a finger into Minho’s side. “Why do you think I kissed you?”

And Minho immediately blurts, “Because… because of the curse. Your theory…”

“I didn’t have any reason to theorize at all until I’d already kissed you.”

Minho feels at the hot back of his own neck. “The cake—”

“—was a top-tier wingman. You deserved to be kissed for a cake that good.” Jisung shifts so he can prop his feet up on the coffee table, ankles crossed. “Though… all I really did was get off on you. So you made me a cake and made me come, which wasn’t really fair. I still think about that.”

Minho’s eyes dart from figure to figure in the dusky room, anyone who could possibly be edging on their personal bubble of the couch. But the bass is still pumping, Changbin is obnoxiously MC’ing a drinking game in the kitchen that Jeongin looks to be crushing, Felix and Chan are chatting in the shadows of the hall.

And Jisung… Jisung is at his side, smiling faintly at his lap like he has a secret no one’s in on.

No one but Minho.

And though he’s still feeling whiplashed, like his blood is violating all legal speed limits and laws of gravity in rushing to his head, Minho mutters, “Well… no time like the present to remedy your guilt.”

Jisung bites back a grin, tugs at the collar of his t-shirt. Rolls out his shoulders, relaxes his head backward to face the ceiling. He whistles lowly. “Okay. I wasn’t expecting that.”

Minho joins him in staring at the ceiling. It’s not all that exciting, could use some glow-in-the-dark stars. “I can be spontaneous.”

“I know.” Jisung sneaks a hand between Minho’s back and the couch, runs fingertips up his spine where his shirt sticks to his back with new sweat.

Minho gulps, which is rather difficult with his head tipped back. “I also have to tell you about… fuck. About the fucking moon.”

Jisung chuckles. “I already know.”

“What?” Minho thrashes to sit upright. “Yongbok told you? About—the magic?”

Jisung’s gaze is soft beneath his eyelashes. “Baby, he felt guilty as fuck, of course he did.”

Minho frowns at his hands, useless in his lap. “I should’ve told you first.”

Jisung’s fingertips graze his cheek. “You did me one better.”

Minho bats his hand away. Instantly regrets it, bundles it between his own. Quells the urge the kiss Jisung’s every fingertip and knuckle. “What.”

Jisung sits up, angles toward him again. “Hannie,” he imitates in a poor rendition of Minho’s voice, something nasal and a few octaves too high. “I like you. As a person. Nooo, Hannie, I mean I like you sooo much.”

Minho glares. “I retract the statement.”

“And yet it’ll always live here.” Jisung taps his temple, smile smug. “And here.” He pats his heart.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“And there.” Jisung swings his arm out of Minho’s hold, jabbing a finger toward the window. “You can’t really see her, since there was a new moon last night. Yongbokkie told me. But she’s there, and she knows, and she heard you. And she’ll always remember. The moon knows.”

Minho scoffs. “Don’t tell me you spent last night making moon water, too.”

“I didn’t need to.” Jisung leans back, arms crossed behind his head. Hums as he stretches out his legs, looking unreasonably self-satisfied. “Who needs magic when you have love!”

“Dear god.”

“That is, in itself, magic.” Jisung beams. “I’m gonna write a song, watch me. Anyway, wanna go make out in my room?”

“Why?” Minho deadpans. “Feel the curse coming on?”

“Nope. Just horny.”

Miraculously, it’s music to Minho’s ears.