Archive of Our Own

“What if you hate him?”

“I… think you’re asking that the wrong way around.”

“Or worse. What if you like him?” Haebin removes a hand from the steering wheel to cover her mouth. “Oh, god. What if you gang up on me together? New nightmare unlocked.”

“Two hands on the wheel, Han.” Minho makes a grab for the oh shit handle, not because he feels unsafe. But because he knows it will bug Haebin.

“Get down from there, you big baby,” she mutters. “I’ll see your two hands and raise you two appendages.” One foot still pressed to the gas, she proceeds to worm her knee out of the leg room, hike it toward her ear. Minho is mystified for all of a split second until he recalls that they are on the road. And Haebin is trying to put her foot on the wheel.

A startled laugh bubbles out of him, and his hand shoots out for the wheel. But they’re still moving at a snail’s pace down the same dirt road they’ve been on for a half hour. “You get down—you madwoman, you’ll kill us all!”

“Us all,” Haebin mocks. Her leg is back where it should be. There was never any danger. “There are two of us in this car, Minho. If we both died right now, it wouldn’t be the most tragic thing to ever happen, now would it?”

That… is a particular reason Minho enjoys Haebin’s company so. They are equally morbid.

“Might be a bit sad for your dad.” Minho checks the time on his phone. “He’s expecting us in time for dinner. He’d have to eat alone.”

“Psh. He’ll eat without us if I don’t respond to his ‘ETA?’ text when he knows I’m a sensible driver—”

“Anyhow,” Minho barrels through, “you’re forgetting we aren’t alone.” He peeks into the backseat. “You are recklessly and heartlessly neglecting Ficus.”

Buckled into the middle seat of the back row is a potted plant. Its tallest leaves smash into the ceiling of Haebin’s car. “I still can’t believe you got my dad a tree,” she deadpans.

Minho scowls. He had to bring something. It’s Haebin’s own fault he knows fuck all about her dad. “Don’t call him a tree. Imagine I stroll into your dad’s swanky chalet and tell him that woman’s told me so much about you.”

“Swanky chalet,” grumbles Haebin. “And I’ve barely told you—”

“We are a family of three,” states Minho flatly. “A girl, her humble servant, and their son, Ficus. If this car crashed right now, and Ficus’ trunk broke, we would be tragic front-page news. Please respect that.”

“Sure. Front page of the Middle of Buttfuck Nowhere Herald. I respect it.” She is silent. Then she sighs. “Though… it’s not quite the glory I imagined for my obituary.”

“Well, get us to your dad’s in one piece and you can keep dreaming big.” Minho purses his lips, sinks down in his seat. Twiddles his thumbs. “Haebinnie.” Twiddles some more, and exhales thinly. “What if he hates me?”

“Who?”

Minho glowers.

Haebin smiles at the road. Clucks her tongue. Cranes out a nuisance of a hand to pinch at Minho’s cheek. “Naw, Minho.” Her acrylic nail stabs him in the inner ear instead. “That won’t happen.”

“What makes you so sure?” Minho rubs at his ear. “I’m hateable.”

“No one hates you. Rather, everyone thinks you hate them, which is what causes this miserable little spiral of yours.”

Minho tips his head against the headrest, unconvinced. “Mm.”

“Appa doesn’t hate anyone. Not really.” Haebin drums her nails against the wheel. “Not more than himself, anyway. He’s just… a big goof. You’ll see.”

Big goof with a big fucking wallet, thinks Minho.

Haebin had warned him her father was a hotshot music producer. Even at this stage in their relationship, she’d refused to share even his name, much less his producer name, presumably lest Minho do some invasive Googling. He wouldn’t have, but he gets it, kind of. Even if she knows now that Minho has genuinely no interest in celebrity shenanigans or gossip or, least of all, gold-digging, he gets it.

He’d clocked it not the moment he met her, but that same night, that Haebin came from money—or made a lot of it. It wasn’t the Birkin dangling from her elbow or her Moncler puffer—he was about as dimly aware of pop culture as he was of fashion—but rather Minho putting his blind trust in letting her pick the restaurant for their first date. It was the first prix fixe meal of his life, and he’d been attracted to her audacity, waving off the offer of menus and ordering from memory for them both. At the night’s end, when the bill came around, the server placed it nearer to her (what does that say about Minho, huh), so she’d snatched it up—he commends her pluck to this day—and scanned it calmly, until Minho demanded, “Hand it over.”

His visceral reaction—coughing back up what was probably part of his steak, choking on it, tears in his eyes (from the choking, for fuck’s sake), etcetera—spoke for itself. He’d learned in the hour prior that she was a yoga instructor. And wondered if he was, perhaps, in the wrong industry.

Minho paid. Because… ego. Got a cute little call from his bank the next morning, too, as he’d gone under his minimum checking account balance.

He’d learned, eventually, that the yoga teaching didn’t quite cover weekly Michelin star meals. So… he’s been primed, to an extent, by the time he steps out of Haebin’s Porsche onto soft, fragrant earth in the Middle of Buttfuck Nowhere, and looks up the hill to the looming house.

It’s like the Cullen home. From Twilight.

He will tell Haebin later, maybe before bed. And she will try to throttle him with a pillow.

Minho’s left eyebrow crawls up his forehead. And he is still idling by the open car door when Haebin appears at his side. Mockingly, she mirrors his squint with her suitcase and purse and duffel already in hand. Minho registers this, then snaps into action. “Oh, babe, let me help.”

Haebin makes a face, simultaneously recoiling and smacking him with the butt of her duffel. “Go get your tree.” With her cargo, she proceeds to hobble up the front walk, which is a winding, ruggedly-yet-stylishly-landscaped journey in itself. The Han house is set deep in the woods, purportedly also on a lake Minho can’t see from here. The trees are thick all throughout the wood, but thin closer to the house, leaving it haloed by an open patch of summer evening sky that sets its harsh angles and windowed walls in stark relief.

Minho gets his tree. Lucky for him, he’d done legs yesterday at the gym, so by the time he crests the final stair his quads are on fire and he’s broken a sweat despite the pleasant forest air.

From behind the fern leaves in his face, “Oh, you shouldn’t have.”

Minho laughs, uneasy. The door is open—he can tell, just barely, by his view below the leaves. So he steps presumptuously over the threshold, sets the pot down beside a jumble of shoes including the heinous tattered Birkenstocks Haebin wore for the drive.

Out of habit, he pulls a face at the jolt of pain when he straightens his back.

Haebin’s dad is there still, holding the door open with his shoulder. He’s… shorter than Minho expected. Maybe an inch taller than Haebin herself. Shorter than Minho, at least. And as he cocks an amused brow, Minho whips his hand away from his lumbar. “Really. You shouldn’t have,” Mr. Han—Mr. Han? eugh—continues. “It’s an unsolved mystery how I just barely kept Haebin alive until self-sufficiency.”

From deeper in the house, Haebin shouts, “I am a product of many au pairs. Give credit where it’s due.”

Haebin’s dad splits into an abashed grin. “A solved mystery,” he offers.

Minho toes out of his shoes, tries not to smile. “That’s fine. It’s… supposed to be symbolic, anyway.”

“Of?”

Minho blinks at his discarded shoes. Scratches at the side of his nose. “I—,” and when he never finishes, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be the plant au pair, anyway. While I’m here. Which is… why I brought it. Thank you for having me.”

“Of course. All friends of Haebin’s are welcome here.”

Minho’s gaze flits up immediately. Haebin’s father’s eyes are big and guileless and doe-y. Then Haebin appears, smacks her dad on the shoulder with both hands in passing. “He knows we’re dating,” she grumbles, bowing to grab Ficus. “He’s just a forest hermit who hasn’t spoken to a living human in weeks, which is why he’s having so much fun tormenting you.”

Minho breathes a little easier. Laughs, unnerved, though he’s comforted by the fond roll of Haebin’s eyes as she hefts the plant into her arms.

Haebin’s dad shrugs, smiles easily. Proffers his hand. “Jisung.” Minho takes it. Jisung’s hand is callous-rough and so warm. “And you’re Minho. Which I also knew.” He envelops and squeezes Minho’s hand more than shakes it. His cheekbones are high and rounded, like Haebin’s. They have matching rosebud pouts, too. Minho is, perhaps, gawking. “So, thank you for the plant, Minho. And thanks for taking care of it. Make yourself at home.”

Beyond Jisung, the first floor glows with leaf-patchy sunlight on warm wood. It feels like the outdoors are within.

Some ways off, Ficus propped precariously against the dip of her stomach, Haebin demands, “Either of you dipshits know anything about feng shui?”

It’s just gone eight in the evening. Post-delivery-dinner, Haebin is horizontal on a sun lounger on the deck. Beyond, the sun sets above the few trees separating them from the lakeshore, dazzling on the silvery water. Minho sits cross-legged on the adjacent lounger. And below, Jisung treads the mossy ground that dips toward a long, creaky pier, phone held to his ear, one hand in his pocket. His words get lost on the water, but Minho can still make out his distant intonation, the delight here, the laughter there.

“So,” says Haebin. Her eyes are shut. Minho will probably carry her to bed soon. It’s the least she deserves for transporting her passenger princess all this way. “The verdict. Do you hate him?”

Minho scoffs. “No.” He drops a leg, if only so he can tap his antsy foot against the deck. “He’s nice. He’s being too nice, actually. Why hasn’t he cross-examined me about my intentions with his daughter?”

Haebin laughs. “That’s a valid question, actually.” The answer is, however, not enough to drive her upright. She remains lax and starfished, eyes sealed shut. “I told him not to. I told him… it’s not, like, serious, you know. We didn’t come here to get his approval ‘cause we’re trying to elope, or whatever. We came here because… A, we both desperately needed a vacation; B, not everyone has a roomy, well-maintained lake house in the family, but I do; and C, he does not get exploited nearly as much as he should for his well-maintained lake house, and he should feel lucky I’ve decided to grace him with some daughterly company. So… we are dating, and he can judge you if he wants to, but I don’t want to hear it, and he knows that. Because frankly, I don’t care what he thinks of you. You’re good company, and that’s what I think of you.”

“I’m… good company.”

“Yes.”

Minho squints. Through a mess of dark hair, Haebin cracks an eye, then a toothy smile. “Don’t be cute,” Minho mutters, eyes drifting back to the yard. Shore? Yard. He lets his eyes scour the scenery until he deems that Jisung is indeed gone. From within the house, there’s a muffled thud as the door shuts. Through the windows, Minho watches Jisung traipse in, carding through a stack of mail. Shortly, he appears at the back door, peeking out onto the deck.

Minho meets his eyes with too much immediacy. Jisung smiles, a mirror image of Haebin, so he looks away.

“I’m gonna hit the sack,” announces Jisung. “You guys need anything?”

“I hate that idiom,” grumbles Haebin. “And it’s not even nine. You’re not going to bed, stop lying.”

Jisung pouts. Minho knows because he’s looking again. Funnily enough, it’s an expression he could only now imagine on Haebin, having seen the imprint of it in father’s features and never on hers. “Well… no. I’m going to disappear down to the studio, and by the time I do hit the sack, I hope you’ll both be asleep.”

Haebin kicks her dangling leg at the air. “You should give Minho a studio tour tomorrow.”

“If that’s something he’d like.” Jisung smiles kindly, high cheeks bunched. The full light of it on Minho in the dusk is a lot to bear.

“He would like,” mutters Haebin flatly. Her eyes are shut again. Minho smiles a little, too. “You should be nicer to your sacks, appa.”

“Okay, kid.” Jisung meets Minho’s gaze. Proceeds to roll his eyes, gentle. It feels… conspiratorial. Minho’s lips quirk. He looks down to his lap. “I put clean sheets and towels in your room.”

“Uh huh.” Haebin gets up onto her elbows. “But you didn’t put them on the bed, did you, appa? The sheets?” At Jisung’s hesitation, Haebin clucks her tongue, and she, too, glances Minho’s way. Minho feels stupid—stupidly special, to be the chosen, sole third party, the audience for their familiar ribbing. “This lazy ass. Forty-something and doesn’t know how to make a bed.”

“Watch it,” Jisung scoffs, halfway to closing the door. “Did you expect to come here and get turndown service?”

“Of course. That’s why I brought Minho. He cooks and cleans and does sunrise yoga with me, at sunrise at that, without needing to be bullied into it.”

“Then Minho can put the sheets on.” Jisung reopens the door just to brush Haebin’s forehead clear of hair, dip and kiss her there, and give Minho a companionable salute. “Good night, you two.” He disappears into the house, though Minho can watch him through the windows as he goes, if he only squints hard enough.

When they head to sleep later, the bed has been impeccably made.

Haebin rips the sheets from under the mattress where they’d been tucked in, hotel-style. She clambers beneath, scoffing. “Showoff.”

Minho is slicing a cantaloupe when Jisung saunters into the kitchen.

It’s almost noon, but he’s clearly come straight from bed. His dark hair, kissed with one-offs of gray, is rumpled, and the shadows of stubble on his upper lip and chin are dark. Notably, the fold lines in his t-shirt are clean and straight, which makes Minho think he hadn’t slept in it, but rather tugged it on after rolling out of bed.

Overanalysis, certainly.

Jisung laces his fingers, extends his arms high above his head, groaning. It pulls at the hem of his top, reveals the sparse, dark hair on his lower belly. There’s a slight clatter of steel on granite as Minho loses and regains his grip on the knife, but Jisung does not flinch.

“What’s this?” Opposite Minho, Jisung spreads his hands on the island. His voice is low and rough, and he clears his throat. Minho feels it all the way down to his toes. “I don’t remember buying fruit.”

“Breakfast,” says Minho. “We went to pick some stuff up.” With a sweep of his knife, the melon cubes land in a bowl. “After sunrise yoga.”

“Sunrise.” Jisung clicks his tongue. “I admire your grit.”

“It was nice out on the pier,” Minho chuckles, quiet. It had been quite beautiful, actually. Minho had never seen such still water. And he wasn’t really one for meditation, but while Haebin had sat down to do hers, he’d maneuvered himself onto a big rock overlooking the lake, its gritty surface barely warmed by the early light of the sun, and watched. Watched the shoreline opposite. There is a house there, distant but a straight-across swim away, painted bright red. He’d watched the water ripple when someone drove a noisy little boat past. “And it felt good. I was so stiff after sitting in the car all day yesterday.”

“I bet.” Jisung scans the island. He peeks under a big salad bowl covering a plate of steaming pancakes. “Oh, Minho,” he laughs, like you shouldn’t have.

Minho feels his neck color. Haebin likes a sweet breakfast, is all, but he doesn’t tell Jisung that. It’d be like stating trivial facts to someone with a doctorate. “You can help yourself. Haebin’s still outside.”

“I hope you know I won’t be expecting this every day you’re here,” says Jisung, bringing down a few plates from the upper cabinets, “now that you’ve done it on the first morning. I don’t like to make my guests work.”

“But I like to eat well.” Minho pauses, whilst slicing strawberries, to prop his hip against the counter, pop one into his mouth. “And she’s told me you’re… not a fan of cooking.”

Jisung rubs a hand over his face, still puffy with sleep. “Something tells me you’re sugarcoating that,” he mutters, smiling wryly. He drags a few pancakes onto his plate with pinched fingers. “She’s always humbling me. Bless her. Not a fan is an understatement. I don’t suppose you’ve heard about boiled-eggs-in-the-microwave-gate?”

Minho tries to hold a straight face. Tries his damnedest. Then he caves, turns back to the cutting board. “She wouldn’t even tell me your name.” He taps the knife against the board, pushes another strawberry between pursed lips. “But she’s told me… well. Myriad… illustrious personal stories.”

“Illustrious.” Jisung laughs. “Oh, I bet. I’m pleased you’re finally able to put a face to the nitwit from her stories.” And as he turns to open the silverware drawer—Minho had been looking for that—Minho swears, or perhaps deludes himself into thinking, that Jisung pauses in noticing Minho’s garb. Garb—his biker shorts, rather.

Minho twitches. Presses a sweet strawberry half onto the flat of his tongue, eyes out of focus on the cutting board. Feels the juice pulse out between his teeth and fill his cheeks. He sets the knife down. “I’ll go get Haebin.”

“Welcome to my secret lair.”

Minho paces the stairs down to the basement. It’s… a pseudo-basement, really. The Han house is nestled into a hill that dips toward the lake, so even the dim bottommost floor is, on the lakeside wall, windowed from floor to ceiling. And it is dim, at this time of day. Jisung flicks some lights on while Minho descends the last step, and even then, it takes his eyes a moment to adjust. It would be brightest, he imagines, at sunset, when the sun reflects off the lake’s surface and into the room.

The studio setup is sprawling and the mixing console is enormous. “You could launch a spaceship from here,” says Minho. “Fucking mission control.” Jisung laughs, hands in his sweatpant pockets. A lineup of guitars on stands, some on the wall, in neutrals to electric hues—Minho couldn’t name all the different kinds—interspersed by platinum records. A whole drum set, too, inside the windowed booth. And nearer to the back windows, the floor is depressed seventies-style, following the contour of the hill. A massive sectional couch molds it into a conversation pit, closes it off from the baby grand in the corner. Minho envisions falling asleep there, on the couch, watching the wind caress the needles on the trees outside.

He can’t form any useful words that aren’t it’s great or I like it down here, but Jisung is watching him like he expects something more. Not… in an impolite way. Mostly it suggests that he’s… curious. Curious what Minho thinks. So Minho wanders down the steps into the conversation pit, idles where he can examine the array of throw pillows, as Jisung sinks into the big chair by the mixing console. Even though he’s slumped, socked feet in house slippers, he looks in-charge.

“You ever have people come by here to record?” Minho nods at the booth behind Jisung.

“Not really. If I ever have a session I’ll commute… wherever everyone else is. By car or plane. Or both.” He smiles, flashing teeth. Minho sinks onto the couch, sets a throw pillow in his lap. “I don’t really use this space for work. Mostly if my friends come and wanna fuck around. Building this was more of a… self-indulgence, y’know. A pet project.”

“Mmh.” Friends. Minho doesn’t ask. He’s sure they’re as high-profile as Jisung himself. His eyes wander. Under glass on the coffee table, numerous dog-eared memoirs; Prince, Nina Simone, RZA, Michelle Zauner.

“Haebin told me you’re a dancer.”

Minho isn’t expecting it, so he laughs, loud and a little crazed. Blinks heavy eyelids. The silhouettes of the trees reflected on the table’s clean surface play with his eyes. “I wouldn’t say that.” He drags his hands over the pillowcase, fingers feeling out the knotted patterns in the crochet.

“What would you say?”

“I don’t dance.” He glances down at the pillow. “Not anymore, anyway. Sure, I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed once. With… dreams. And aspirations.”

“Don’t make me feel older than I am, Minho.”

Minho chuckles, doesn’t look up. “Well, it’s true. I hurt my back a few years ago. In… one of those ways I’ll probably never be able to fully fix. So now I just… teach. Mostly kids. And choreograph, sometimes. But really just teach.”

Jisung is silent. Then, “What kind of dance? Is it a specific—”

“Ballet.”

Minho looks up to see Jisung smile, faint. “I bet you’re brilliant.”

Minho’s pulse flitters like a moth around a lantern. “Not like I used to be.” He doesn’t know why his heart is in his throat like this. He compacts himself enough to set his chin on the back of the couch. And when he opens his mouth again, the words simply… come. And, bizarrely, he doesn’t try to stop them. “It was harder than I expected. Like… hitting this limit. I always thought I could get better, just keep… getting better. Keep pushing the limit. So long as I had the drive… which I was never short of. But I wasn’t careful enough, and pushed myself too hard, and I hit it. That limit. I made that limit, really, for myself. And it… fucking sucked. When the one thing I thought I was good at bit me in the ass.”

Jisung watches him, swaying to and fro around the axis of his chair. He sighs, tips his head back, so the column of his golden throat is only longer. “Lucky for those kids, then, that they’ll be taught to take care of themselves.”

Minho hums. He watches the shadows on the floor dance with the back-and-forth of Jisung’s chair. Dryly, he says, “Maybe I was born to be a cautionary tale.”

“Maybe,” says Jisung, though he doesn’t sound like he’s kidding. “It’s special, you know. To care about something so much you get reckless.”

Minho churns those words over in his head. He feels his lips twitch, and he looks Jisung in the eye, finally, from across the room. “Are you turning my life’s greatest tribulation into song lyrics?”

For an entire second, Jisung is neutral. Then he blanches. “What? No!”

Minho likes it, the incredulity. The way it looks on Jisung’s expressive face. He lets himself smirk. “I’m kidding.”

“And I’m not.” Jisung pushes out of his chair. “An endless well of drive, Minho. Not everyone has that. And to keep at something, to keep it in your life, even when it betrays you? Betrays your body—irrevocably?” He clicks his tongue, heads for the stairs. “I wouldn’t have been able to do that.”

Minho thinks he’s exaggerating. Making it too flowery. He finds it hard to believe someone like Jisung, who’s made it this far doing something he clearly cares about, wouldn’t be able to do that. Hasn’t, in fact, already done that.

Minho clears his throat. Jisung is still on the stairs. “Uh—”

Jisung stops in his tracks. “Do not call me Mr. Han.”

“I,” utters Minho. He laughs, crackly. “I wasn’t—maybe I was going to.”

Jisung sets a hand on the handrail. “You can call me—”

“Jisung,” says Minho. Doesn’t look at him, though. He can tell, regardless, that Jisung is smiling. Something about the air— dust floating in the slivers of light that trickle in through the windows and onto the dark floor—or maybe Jisung’s voice. “Do you have a grill?”

“It’s out back. By the fire pit.” Jisung comes back down the stairs. He enters Minho’s periphery, hopping down into the conversation pit, heading to the windows in the back. Or—doors. They’re doors. He pushes on them, until two panes fold toward the patio. The air that floods in is sweet. “You can see it if you come stand here. By the mouth of the pier—it’s a bit hidden by the trees.”

“Okay.” Minho glances up. Jisung has his hip against the doorframe, sweats riding low where his hand weighs down his pocket. “I bought pork belly this morning. So.”

Jisung sucks a breath through his teeth, claps a hand onto his stomach. It creases his shirt. Minho clenches his teeth hard enough to bolt his jaw shut. Hard enough to distract from the gesture going straight to his cock. He presses all his weight into burying his elbows in the throw pillow as Jisung says, “You’re spoiling us.”

“I’m only paying my dues.”

“I told you that wasn’t necessary.”

“And I respectfully ignored you.”

Jisung laughs. “Fair enough. I suppose I’m… not really the boss of you, anyway.”

Every inch of Minho is tense under the surface. But above, his eyes flit weightlessly to Jisung. He frowns in thought. “Eh.” Shrugs his shoulders.

Jisung looks back. Huffs something like a laugh out his nose.

Haebin stomps down the stairs. It’s an aptly-timed intrusion, right into the strange lull in conversation that has claws around Minho’s neck.

They turn toward her in tandem.

Haebin stares back, clutching the handrail at the foot of the stairs. “You’re both so weird. Are you being awkward down here? Do you really need me to mediate?” She shuffles huffily over to the pit, hops down onto the cushion directly beside Minho. “Well? What do you think of the man cave? The myth cave? The legend cave?”

“Aw, come on,” huffs Jisung, who’s folded his arms over his chest and dropped his head back in defeat.

Haebin curls her fingers around Minho’s wrist like a little devil. Puts on a sickly little voice. “Oh, appa. Are you feeling okay? You’ve had a guest in your man cave for five whole minutes and you haven’t done an Elton cover. This whole time I’ve been sitting upstairs, waiting for you to show off.” She turns, utterly grave, toward Minho. “It’s his worst habit.”

Jisung rolls his eyes. He does, after a beat, pick himself up heavily from the doorway and head dutifully for the piano.

Haebin releases Minho to clap her hands eagerly. “‘Tiny Dancer,’ maestro, please! ‘Tiny Dancer’!” She strokes Minho’s hair primly. “For my tiny dancer.”

Minho scoffs, head-butts her hand away. And she settles, comfortably, with her cheek on Minho’s shoulder.

Jisung himself settles behind the piano, squares his shoulders. Does an exhale that puffs out his cheeks. Minho feels the crochet of the throw pillow under his nails.

Jisung then mimes tapping a mic, clearing his throat, leaning into it. “Romans, countrymen… and lovers. This one’s for the tiny yogi.” Minho feels it, the flexion of Haebin’s cheek, as she smiles against his shoulder. Jisung lifts his eyes, fingers tinkling softly at the keys. “And the tiny dancer.”

Quietly, Haebin goes hehe, pinches at Minho’s pink neck. He sets his palm on her thigh. As Jisung plays, it seemingly goes numb.

Minho wishes he could see his hands. It’d feel more real. It’s enough, though, to see the tongue trapped in concentration between his teeth. The soft sway of his body, the nod of his head, as one melody flows into another. The grin that lights his face, crinkles his eyes, when the chorus swells and Haebin cries, Let’s fucking go!

“I suppose I’m not really the boss of you, anyway.”

“Eh,” Minho agrees, airy, “technically, no.” Then he is silent, until, “Not like you’ve tried, though.”

He picks at his fraying cuticle. The basement is unlit but for the overcast afternoon light glowing weakly all along the back wall. The water shines silver between the needly boughs.

By the open door, Jisung says, “Hm?”

Minho clears his throat, but he isn’t brave enough to look up. The pillow in his lap seems to weigh a ton, dragging him down into the dip between couch cushions. “It’s not as if you’ve tried,” he repeats, soft but enunciated crisply, for Jisung’s sake. So he can make out Minho’s every word. “To be the boss of me.”

Nothing but birdsong leaks in through that open door for the very longest time. So long Minho grows tense, so long Jisung might as well have left him alone. But when he looks up at last, Jisung remains in the doorway, hands in his pockets. He’s smiling, too, at Minho. Faint, crooked. Mockingly amused to the point of condescension. Minho rolls his eyes away, neck ablaze.

“I don’t think I’d have to try,” muses Jisung, “all too hard.”

Minho feels, hears him approach. It’s only when Jisung’s shadow settles over him that he startles upright in bed.

His chest heaves. Beside him, curled with her back to Minho, is Haebin, silken sleep mask over her eyes. It’s migrated a bit, so part of the mask is to her temple. Minho’s sheets are a tangle at his feet, and his sleep shirt is stuck to his back, neck tacky, upper lip damp. He checks his phone; it’s only gone four. And beyond the foot of the bed, past the rag rug and an assemblage of decorative urns, the windows are uncurtained. The sky is misty and pale with the threat of sunrise. The water is, again, very still.

Minho extricates himself from his blanket. Risen from the bed, he moves on delicate tiptoe to the balcony door, pops the lock and the handle with his breath held, and steps out.

The air is brisk, sends a wave of goosebumps crawling frantically up his legs all the way to his scalp. It wakes him up, but his muscles remain tense as he settles his arms over the balcony railing.

It looks out onto the back of the property. The water is like glass, so much so Minho yearns to disturb it. But there’s nothing to throw and it’s been years since he lobbed anything that far, maybe the last time he played baseball, and—

The air carries it up to him, the musky odor. Strong. Like a fucking skunk’s backside. He peers downward. The balcony extends above the patio beyond the basement studio, and below, at the patio’s very edge, is Jisung. Smoking; barefoot, so his toes just touch the grass; long, black sweatpants; topless. The dramatic vee of his golden back makes Minho’s breath stutter, his stomach churn, fervid. And now Minho can’t move, can he? Lest Jisung know he’s watching.

The drum of a woodpecker nearby startles Minho. The longer he stands, the more the sky yellows. When he sets one foot atop the other, balancing, its sole is cold against his skin.

Jisung finishes his joint. Every breath Minho gets of the same air makes his blood pulse hotter. He rests his chin on folded arms, watches Jisung turn, squinting toward the trees, to an angle where Minho can appreciate his chest, how the oncoming light spills over its curves, rounds of muscle shifting under skin. And then he turns the rest of the way, a full one-eighty, to seek out the ashtray. On his way, from the corner of his eye, he spies Minho. Minho—who is motionless, who doesn’t try to hide or run or look away. He’s frozen, down to his silent tongue. Jisung presses the roach into the ashtray, lifts the same hand to send Minho a gesture—two fingers, a peace sign, but crooking, like each of his fingers is saying hi. Minho’s heart thrums in his ears, and Jisung flashes him a nod and a smile, eyes bloodshot and sleepy. Then he heads back inside.

Minho lingers on the balcony. Maybe he imagines it, as he’s outside and the birds are awakening and tittering in full force, but he thinks he can hear Jisung ascend the stairs inside, shut himself into his bedroom.

Only once the sun has crossed the horizon does Minho reenter, tuck himself back in, and lay, body abuzz.

He does not fall back asleep. Nor does he join Haebin for yoga.

Haebin is pulling out of the driveway and Minho is in the midst of watering Ficus from a milk frothing pitcher when he hears a door hinge squeak deep in the house, followed by Jisung’s voice. “Haebin?”

Outside, gravel crunches under the Porsche’s tires. Minho clears his throat to call, “If you run, you might still catch her.”

Jisung appears. “Huh?” He’s in a muscle tank with such swooping armholes it might as well be a bib.

Minho meets, then abruptly avoids his gaze. He tips the pitcher. It’ll be Jisung’s fault if Ficus drowns—not that the pitcher can hold much. “You just missed her.”

“Oh.” To Minho’s sickening delight, Jisung shuffles into his periphery, perches on the edge of the couch. It’s a long one, low to the ground, upholstered in soft bouclé. They could both lay on it and not touch. And it probably cost a few months of Minho’s rent. “Where’s she off to?”

“Post office. And the health nut store.”

Jisung snorts. Probably looks on as Minho repurposes his espresso machine accessory to care for his new plant grandchild. “Sorry about that.”

Minho looks up. “About what?”

Jisung’s smile is crooked and his eyebrow is cocked. He nods at Ficus. “Sorry I don’t have a watering can.”

Minho waves him off, starts toward the kitchen to return the pitcher to its rightful place. “Don’t tell me that while I’m still laboring under the delusion he’ll live to see another day after I leave.”

Jisung laughs, far off. But once Minho’s set the pitcher to dry, he turns to find Jisung on the opposite side of the island, palms pressed to its surface. Only once Minho has already startled does Jisung say, “Boo.”

Minho clicks his tongue, leans backward into the counter, hands pinned between its edge and his ass. And Jisung is looking at him now, like, looking, visibly assessing, and god, what the fuck does he want? What could he possibly—

“Do you lift, Minho?”

Minho coughs, throat dry. “What?” Was Jisung—

Jisung smiles, apologetic in the puppy-like slant of his brows. “Sorry. I was gonna ask Haebin, but she’s gone now—not that she lifts weights, so that part doesn’t really matter, does—”

“You want me to spot you?”

Jisung stares at him. For one, two. Blink. His smile flashes with hope. “Would you please?”

Minho’s lips twitch. He looks both ways; toward the windows to the lake, then toward Ficus, silhouetted against the forest beyond. His shoulders creep up in a shrug. “I’m not doing anything else right now, am I?”

If Minho had done anything more than stare at the lake and Jisung since his arrival, he might’ve noticed there is a conservatory above the garage. A conservatory filled with gym equipment.

It’s an overcast day, but the sunlight is bright through the layers of clouds and trees as it filters in.

Jisung, ahead of Minho, strolls to the weight bench, takes a seat. The next time they make eye contact is when Jisung is already supine, settling his fingers around the barbell while Minho looms just behind. Minho tries not to smile, lips pursing against it. Jisung… fully beams. They both laugh, and Minho’s head drops toward his chest, where his heart lurches unevenly. But that only means he has a perfect bird’s eye view of Jisung. He picks up his chin to peer out the windows. “Chest day?”

Jisung grunts in affirmation. Wiggles his hips a little as he settles his feet. The smile on Minho’s face fades unconsciously, watching Jisung lift the bar, seeing the strain of the weight ripple through his chest, his neck, his gritted teeth. Minho makes for a terrible spotter, he realizes, when Jisung finishes out the set and the bar clanging onto the rack is what rattles him out of his daze. Jisung could’ve—fucking died, maybe, and it would’ve been because Minho’s head was in the clouds. Again, he tries to look anywhere, anywhere but Jisung. But then Jisung puffs out his cheeks, sits up with his elbows to his knees, and tells Minho over his shoulder, “Gimme a few minutes,” and all Minho can do is eye up what the threadbare muscle tank exposes of Jisung’s back.

He is sick. Officially.

He wanders over to a rack of dumbbells. Picks up one that’s cute and pink and has a white 3 stamped into its end. Makes a show of bicep curling. Jisung snickers, swipes his thumb across his upper lip, then falters a little. “Uh. Back there, in the kitchen,” he starts, “I didn’t mean to…”

Check me out? Minho wants to say. It sits on the very tip of his tongue, eager, daring. But he clamps his teeth together, gnashes it to bits.

“To judge,” finishes Jisung. “To seem like I was judging… you. On how you look.”

Minho smiles a little. So… checking me out? His heart jerks. “You didn’t.” He transfers the pink weight between his hands. “You wouldn’t have been far off, anyway. I mostly do functional training now, but. I did more lifting when I was still dancing.” In a piss-poor effort to mime lifting a ballerina, he raises his arms above his head, hands clasped around an invisible waist. “For partnering. It helped. With that.” Then he drops his arms to his sides, deposits the pink weight where he’d found it. “Though since I’ve been chez Han,” he clicks his tongue, “all I’ve done is yoga.”

That makes Jisung smile. “You can use whatever you want here, you know. Any time. Long as you’re safe about it.” Safe? As if Minho is a child. Jisung’s hands on the bench behind him prop him up, stressing the curves of his arms.

Minho makes a show of looking around the room, as if he’d just walked in. Eventually, he mumbles, “Thank you.”

Jisung looks him up and down. For fuck’s sake—Minho swears he does. But then his eyes are directed out the windowed wall, like he’d never perceived Minho in the first place. “When I was your age, I was just in it for the vanity muscles,” offers Jisung. His smile turns wry. “And none of the functional fitness.” His fingers card absentmindedly through his hair, and Minho watches, distantly riveted by the flutter of dark tresses over his forehead. “But, y’know. Then I got older. Realized there’s more to life than looking good in tight shirts.” His eyes flicker back to Minho, amused. “Like… being able to bend over to empty the dishwasher.” Abruptly, and before Minho can think too hard on the prospect of Jisung in a tight shirt, Jisung throws him a curveball. “Is that how you guys met? You and Haebin?” He quirks a brow. “Some kind of… dance-fitness adjacency?”

Minho needs a moment to regain his mental footing. Then he snorts. “No.” Wanders over to the machine nearest Jisung—a leg press—and drapes himself over the seat. Either it’s a stupid choice, or a coquettish one—no, it’s both, because he can’t look directly at Jisung unless he tips his head back, peers at him upside down. Which he does. Blood rushes into his face. He bats his eyes, less coquettish and more blank. “We met on an app. Super original, I know.”

Jisung shrugs. “Not a bad thing. That’s just how the kids do it these days. Can’t be helped.” Blinking, he seems to belatedly register what he’s said. “From what I can tell.”

If there’s an evil glint in Minho’s eye, so be it. All the windows in the conservatory are sealed shut so the room bakes in the diluted summer sun and smells like a peaty, grotty locker room and… he likes it. “From being on the apps yourself, sir?”

Jisung snorts, eyes on the leg of his shorts where he fiddles with it. “No, Minho. And please don’t sir me.”

Minho swallows, face carefully neutral. Inside, he burns. Outside, he merely folds his arms over his chest. The silence threatens to stretch on, gluey and stifling, until he remarks, “Haebin told me she really wishes you’d date.”

Jisung’s answering smile is faint, just enough to fill the apples of his cheeks. “I’m aware she’s… of that school of thought.” He lifts his eyes, and something changes in his smile, softens, but Minho can’t put his finger on what. Maybe it’s Minho that gets him; sprawled on the leg press, hair falling away from his forehead, neck and ears undoubtedly pink. Maybe, maybe. He hopes, vainly. Minho isn’t usually so vain as to be unrealistic—unless he wants for something terribly.

Jisung clears his throat, proceeds to lay back on the bench. Resettles his grip on the barbell.

Right. Minho is up, then, vertical startlingly fast. His vision swims as he staggers back toward the bench.

“Careful,” murmurs Jisung warmly once Minho is behind him again, eyes clearing. He swallows—Minho watches the bob of his Adam’s apple—and trains his eyes on the bar, where his fingers are curled. “Even if I were on the apps,” Jisung says, though Minho had been under the impression he’d already closed the chapter on this topic, “I wouldn’t know what the kids were doing. That should… go without saying.”

Minho waits for him to either lift the barbell or elaborate. He does neither. So Minho murmurs, “Because of the age range?”

Past the bar, Jisung glances his way, eyes flat. Then he grips the bar with conviction, hefts it up.

Minho’s head tips to the side. In his mind, the minutes to follow unfold far differently. In his mind, he asks Jisung, Why say it if it goes without saying?

But he only watches Jisung pump his way through the set. Catalogs the plates on one end of the barbell, does some mental math to determine it’s basically his weight. And on the final rep, when Jisung gets shaky on the uplift, Minho merely hovering his fingers under the bar is enough to propel Jisung’s arms straight.

Adrenaline, thinks Minho, as the metallic clank of the bar in the rack rings in his ears.

Haebin is sitting on the pier, legs dangling in the water, when she tells Minho, thoughtful, “You’ve been quiet.”

He treads water a few feet off. Arms working, his knees float up toward his chest, distinctly… embryonic. “Have I?”

“Mm. Since we got here.” Fingers curled around splintery wood, she glances toward the house. “He’s not giving you a performance evaluation, you know. It’s not like… at the end of this, he’s gonna tell me he hates you, and I’ll have to ditch you on the side of the road and drive back to the city without you.”

Minho drifts closer, grabs onto the ladder hanging off the pier. Frowns dubiously.

“Even if he does tell me hates you, I wouldn’t ditch you on the side of the road.”

Minho snorts. “That’s not it.”

“No?” Haebin considers him, swinging her legs, sloshing the water. “You’ve just seemed… a little shy.”

“I can be shy!” Minho protests. “Sometimes.”

“You are not shy.”

“Not me. Itzyyy.” Minho gyrates on the ladder.

Haebin reaches out to grapple at his shoulders and shove him off said ladder. He goes tumbling back into the water with a squawk that sends birds into flight from the trees reaching over the water.

When he resurfaces, hair plastered in chunks over his forehead, Haebin is smiling angelically. And Jisung is there, on the pier. Fuck.

Minho sinks back under, slicks his hair away from his face on the way up.

“I feel like I’ve just borne witness to a crime of passion,” mutters Jisung. He is, blessedly, in an oversized shirt and shorts. He squats to set a plate on the pier.

“Aw, appa, you’re not just a witness. You’re more than that. You’re my dad, so you’d have to help me tie the weights to his body and dust off your little boat so we could take him out to the deepest part of the lake.” Then she freezes. “What’s this?”

Minho wades back to the ladder. This is… obviously a platter of sliced fruit. Haebin, however, seems to not be having it. Jisung scratches the back of his neck. “I just thought I’d—”

“In all my years on this earth, you have never once cut up fruit for me.”

“Hey now, I’ve definitely—”

“You waited fifty years to put a knife to some fruit!”

“I’m forty-four,” Jisung grumbles. “And that is just downright untrue.”

Minho hauls himself up onto the pier, dripping everywhere. Haebin tells him flatly, “He’s trying to impress you.” Her eyes roll to Jisung. “Minho already enjoys my presence enough to have come all this way with me, appa. You don’t have to butter him up. Whether or not you get blessed with grandchildren is not up to Minho.”

“Dude!” Jisung splutters. Then he laughs, bewildered, embarrassed, and throws his hands to the air. “I was just—trying to do a nice thing. For my daughter!” He starts off toward the house again, fingers clasped at the back of his neck. “And this is what I get! All this… flak!”

A gust of wind breezes over Minho’s damp skin. By the time he realizes he’s shivering, Haebin is already tossing a towel around his shoulders, scrunching her nose at him in endearment. He half-smiles, half-glares back, then plucks a strawberry from the fruit platter. “There’s a boat?”

“There’s a boat,” Jisung calls. He’s back where the pier meets the land. “I just pulled her out of the garage last week, actually. Cleaned her up.” He points toward the north, where the shore is rocky and densely wooded. “There’s a little inlet up there where she’s docked.”

“I hate when men call boats she,” mutters Haebin, pinching at a slice of pineapple.

“We could take her out later,” muses Jisung, voice still raised to carry out to them. “Maybe before sunset?”

“Do not let him con you into getting on that shitbucket.” Haebin fits the entire slice into her little mouth—surprisingly capacious, when stretched open wide—in one go, then implores through her chewing, “When I say I’d go on there to dispose of a dead body, that is literally the only reason I would ever board that deathtrap. You’d think he’d have a yacht or something, considering he only ever wears the same fancy sweatpants so all those royalties do not go toward diversifying his closet, but no. It has to be a shitty smelly little motorboat that he’s so fond of.”

“The wind is blowing this way!” Jisung hollers as he heads back up the hill toward the house. “I can hear everything you’re saying!”

Minho smirks at Haebin, pulls the towel tight around his shoulders. He licks strawberry seeds from between his teeth, listens for the distant thump of the door shutting to ask, “Does it have a name? The boat?”

“That’s the most insulting part.” Haebin lays back on the pier, hands pillowing her head. “It’s… Beanie. Like—you know. Hae… beanie.”

Minho snorts into laughter so obnoxious it echoes on the water. Haebin smacks him on the leg.

The light in the sky is fading as Minho weaves his way on needly ground, around wayward branches and mossy rock, to the cove where Beanie is docked. It’s a cozy spot, sheltered by trees curving out over the water, over another pier. Jisung is casting off when he spots Minho wobbling across the rocky beach, and he grins, holding fast to the rope and stepping back onto the pier. This one is newer, doesn’t creak under Minho’s weight.

“So,” Jisung says as Minho approaches, “you didn’t let Haebin poison you against my Beanie?”

Minho snorts, because the question is ridiculous. Minho… is ridiculous. He doesn’t even know why he’s here. Two years ago, he hadn’t even known how to swim. Surely would not have boarded a boat captained by a full-time music producer with some half-assed boating safety certification.

Well… he knows why. But if asked, he couldn’t share, couldn’t make peace with the why—not while he’s here. Not while it—he—is too close for comfort. “Figured I’d give it a chance,” he answers vaguely, hands on his hips as he comes to a stop beside Jisung. He watches the boat rock softly with the ebb of the water. It’s indeed a rinky-dink little vessel, with a bulky motor hanging off the back. “How do I…”

“Oh, just… hop on.” Jisung reties the rope. Then he comes close, kneels, grips the gunwale. “Here.” He offers his tanned forearm, which Minho blinks at. “It’ll be a little unsteady, but. You’ve got that danseur balance.” Jisung’s smile is amicable as ever.

Minho sputters something of a dubious laugh. But it’s weirder the longer he stays put, so at last, he grips Jisung’s arm, puts his weight into its warm stability, and steps onto Beanie. He spends a harried moment with his life flashing before his eyes as he envisions it capsizing, but Jisung counterbalances his weight, and after a series of humiliating stumbles, Jisung says, “That’s it,” and Minho makes it onto the bench by the motor. His palm buzzes where he’d held Jisung; he can still feel the phantom dig of bone against his skin. He curls his fingers around the dusty seat, heart pounding, and exhales. A bug skips across the water in his periphery.

“I think the odds of you killing me and tossing me overboard,” Minho murmurs, as Jisung steps with practiced ease onto the boat, “are lower than me doing so myself.”

Jisung flashes him a wry smile, gathers the rope. Does some shit with the motor Minho really, really is not paying attention to, and steps around Minho to reach the helm while muttering, “I won’t let it happen either way.”

Minho’s stomach swoops.

Then Jisung bows and grabs a lifejacket from the floor to toss Minho’s way. “Put that on.”

Minho slips his arms in, buckles it over his chest. While he’s sat, he struggles to pull it down, to keep it from riding up near his ears.

The motor is loud when it sputters to life. It dawns on Minho that Jisung doesn’t have a life jacket of his own. His eyes flit to the water, neck flushing against the bite of the wind. He thinks back to swimming lessons. Then, he probably would have laughed at the prospect of being twenty-three and puffily-vested on a boat on the open water with only his girlfriend’s dad for company.

For a while, they don’t speak, if only because the motor is that loud, roaring in Minho’s ears as Jisung steers them out of the cove. His hair whips about his face. The red house across from the Han residence fades into a speck. The sky is the color of a creamsicle, dotted with wisps of cloud and purpling like a bruise the further out they head.

By the time Jisung slows the boat, the rocky shoreline is distant on all sides. Minho couldn’t retrace their path if he tried. And Jisung looks sexy with his legs spread, now straddling his bench, hand on the helm; sunset yellowy on his tanned arms and calves and catching in the grays in his hair.

The boat bobs gently. Minho grips again at his seat, palms clammy. Pinks bleed into the sorbet melange above the darkening tree line. It’s quiet but for the lick of water at the hull and the sporadic sounds of human life that drift out to them; maybe families on their own shores, barbecuing. Sitting around fire pits. Minho messes with his windswept hair, but keeps one hand grounded on the bench. Clears his throat, and says, “I used to be really scared of deep water.” Listens to it slosh, a quiet background to the ungainly plod of his heartbeat. “Any water where you couldn’t see to the bottom.”

Jisung’s eyes are… devastatingly sincere. Minho aches for him; from within his very core, it radiates to his pores, spreads over the skin pulled so tightly across his tremulous chest. “I hope you know I didn’t mean to pressure—”

Minho huffs to interrupt him. Thinks back to the gym. I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to. Thinks Jisung should mean it, for once. “You didn’t.”

Jisung watches him, unreadable.

“I’m still scared right now,” Minho admits. He digs blunt nails into the bench, then smiles, slowly. Holds Jisung’s eyes as long as he can—until Jisung himself looks away. “For what it’s worth.”

Jisung is already adjusting his grip on the helm. When he takes a breath, he pulls it deep into his chest, and it pulls at the buttons on his shirt. “You wanna head back?”

“No.”

Jisung tips his chin—half a nod. Rests his elbows on his knees.

“I like it out here.” Minho looks onto the water. The sun threatens to touch the trees. He turns toward Jisung, head cocked. “Would you ever get a pet?”

Jisung appears taken unawares. “A pet?”

“Yeah.” In the middle of the lake, across from Jisung, Minho feels silly in his vest. Like he’s wearing floaties in a pool, but Jisung can touch the bottom. It’s a comfortable sort of humiliation that sits in the pit of his stomach, stirs his insides, makes his heart skip beats. “Seems like it’d be quiet.” He nods toward the shore way off behind Jisung, though the Han house could be anywhere, for all he knows. “Without… Haebin around.”

“It is.” Jisung shrugs. “I like the quiet, though. Most of the time. I like being able to choose when it’s…” His face twists in a grimace. “Chaotic.”

“Are we chaotic?”

Jisung smiles. Shines it directly on Minho. “Just enough.” Then he scratches at the shadow of stubble on his chin. “We did have a dog, actually. When Haebin was younger. A little Bichon.”

“I’m gonna start calling my friends little Bichons.”

Jisung’s shoulders shake a little as he laughs, silent, ducking his head and grinning at the deck of the boat. “Mm. Her name was Yellow.”

Minho blinks. “Aren’t Bichons—”

“White, yes.” Jisung’s eyes flick to his, creased with amusement. “To understand why Yellow was called Yellow, you would need to travel back in time and ask three-year-old Haebin.”

Minho’s cheeks ache from smiling. The taste in his mouth is sweet. The love in his heart for Haebin is heavy.

“Anyway.” Jisung scratches the back of his neck. “Yellow died right before Haebin graduated high school.” He rubs fingertips into the inner corners of his eyes. “Right in time for my nest to empty.” When he lets his arm go slack, Minho watches the dangle of his fingers. The glint of his wedding band as he twists it round and round. “And it never felt right to… replace her.” Jisung hesitates, then lifts a placating hand, lips twisted wryly. “Sorry. I do know how that sounds. I’ve had a lot of therapy.”

Tentatively, Minho smiles.

“I know it’d be a waste if I thought I was… allowed to love one dog all my life. One daughter, one wife—or partner, one friend…” He clears his throat. “Like… if Haewon and I had had another baby, it wouldn’t have… replaced Haebin, obviously.” He rubs again at his chin, then blinks in a flutter, eyes returning to Minho. “And I do have more than one friend. But I digress.” His smile is warm and easy. “I’ve thought about it. A dog would like these woods. But as always, it’s just… inertia.” Jisung shrugs. The clouds rolling in behind him are thicker than the milky wisps they’d been on their way out. “I’ve found that, for me… most times it’s easiest to do nothing.”

Jisung picks himself up suddenly, a half-head taller than he’d been, slumped over his knees. “There I go again, god. Sorry, Minho. Hope you zoned out for most of that. Not every topic is Pandora’s box with me, I swear.”

Minho is calm. And he is… happy. If Jisung wants to reassure him of that, maybe he wants Minho to ask again—and again. “That was hardly a tangent.”

“But I did manage to wrap up my late wife and dog and therapy into one—”

“Well, when you put it like that…” When Jisung balks, Minho cackles. The sound of it seems to fizzle into the humid air, skitter across the lake like a skipping rock until it sinks and disappears. “No, I just meant,” says Minho, “it didn’t… feel like a tangent.” He senses the weight of Jisung’s eyes, but can only watch the clouds as they move in. “I like… the way you articulate yourself. Haebin is good at that, too. Articulating her feelings. She must’ve gotten that from you.” He laughs, clipped and weak, messing with the hair that’s tucked behind his ear. “I’m not—that’s not something I’m good at.”

The sun’s edge dips behind the tree tops, blurring them. “But you’re a good listener,” Jisung muses. Minho wasn’t expecting him to turn the tables like that. His neck burns. “You almost… seem like you aren’t listening, actually, which makes it easier to talk to you. To keep yammering. Somehow.”

Minho hums. “That’s just it, actually. I’m excellent at ignoring people.”

Jisung scans the sky. His smile makes Minho want to throw his life vest off, fall overboard, pretend he can’t swim. “Embrace it,” mutters Jisung. Then, “Sunset felt quick, huh?”

They’re nearing the pier when Minho feels the prick of a cool raindrop on his neck. It slithers inside the collar of his top. Above, the clouds are thick, opaque and dusty with dusk. Storm, too, maybe. He sticks out a hand, palm-up. “Did you feel that?”

“Hm?” Jisung is busy with the rope. The motor putters gently as he tries to nestle Beanie right up against the pier.

Another drop splats square between Minho’s eyes. “Rain. Do you feel it?”

“Rain?” Jisung is up on the pier now, securing the rope. And, oh, there’s a ladder, which… Minho distinctly recalls disregarding when he’d clung to Jisung’s arm and tumbled onto the boat earlier. He climbs said ladder, unbuckling his life vest. Only when it begins to drizzle in a fine mist does Jisung notice. “You can head inside. I need to cover the boat.”

“Okay.” But Minho only stands there, vest dangling from his fingers. He shifts his weight between his feet. “Can I help?”

Jisung hops down onto the boat again. “Nope.”

Then the sky opens up like a cracking dam.

The rain is loud as it patters the exposed deck of the boat, a shower of darts on a dartboard. “Fuck!” shouts Jisung, and Minho can’t help but laugh though Jisung is obviously struggling with the tarp.

“You sure I can’t help?” Minho calls, cupping a hand over his eyes.

“Why are you still here?” Jisung shoos as he clambers back onto the pier, lays flat on the planks to stretch the tarp over the bow.

“I don’t know!” Minho declares, shoulders hunched against the downpour. He squints at the shore, the trees; against their dark shadows, the angle of the pelting rain is easy to discern. The surface of the water is alive. The visibility anywhere else, though, is moot.

Then Jisung is up. “Okay okay okay, let’s go!”

Minho nods. Jisung’s touch to his back is light through his damp shirt. The rain bounces off the pier, dribbling off and into the water, and Minho is too hyper-focused on the ghost of Jisung’s touch that he—eats shit, fucking nosedives on the pier, slips and tumbles to his knees, stinging and burning, drops the vest, too, but then Jisung gets him under the arm, hauls him to his feet. On land, the earth is soft, almost buoyant underfoot, absorbing the rain like a sponge as they sprint up the hill toward the house. Minho’s heart thrums in his ears, as loud as the rain, chagrin and butterflies trapped in his stomach. “Studio!” shouts Jisung, and Minho nods, hair sopping against his forehead, dripping between and into his eyes. Under the balcony, they find brief relief, but it’s inside the studio, where the air is cool and the floor underfoot is dry but for the runoff from their skin and hair and clothes, that Minho finally feels his heart begin to slow.

Jisung is by the glass door, back against the wall, slicking his hair from his face. His soaked shirt clings to every contour of his chest. He’s breathing heavy, too; Minho tries to match his to Jisung’s, breath for breath. Hands propped on his knees, he peers at Jisung through the gaps in his hair. His pulse pounds in his throat, his temples. Water drips from his nose to his mouth to his chin to the floor, forming a puddle on the hardwood at his feet. The rain outside roars through the cracked door, and a flash of lightning over the lake widens Jisung’s bright eyes. They remain silent until the distant rumble of thunder.

At last, Jisung looks at him. Catches him smiling—oops. Fuck it. When they laugh, they’re almost in sync, barely a beat apart. Minho shakes his head, straightening and tugging at the hem of his shirt where it seals against his stomach.

“That was,” starts Jisung. Rivulets of water tarry down the long column of his throat. Then, “Shit.” He approaches Minho so fast it should be wildly concerning the way Minho doesn’t flinch, the way he fearlessly invites it. But when Jisung gets close, he kneels out of Minho’s line of sight. “You’re bleeding.”

And—oh. He is. There’s a scrape on his knee from his foolish tumble, a diluted trail of red down to his ankle. Some smeared on his fingers, too, from leaning.

Jisung stands, grunting at the change in altitude, and snaps his fingers thrice. Points with his forefinger. “Bathroom.”

Minho glances at the expanse of immaculate midcentury modern he’s about to mar with rainwater and blood and dirt. “I don’t want to—”

Jisung chuckles. Intones a mildly condescending, “Minho,” then toes out of his sandals.

There’s a bathroom in the basement. So if I really don’t want to, I never have to leave, explains Jisung. He puts down both the toilet seat and lid, unearths a first aid kit from the closet. “You should rinse it off,” he tells Minho, and when he turns and Minho is on one leg, mid-elevé with his bad knee in the bowl of the sink, Jisung makes a noise. “What are you doing?”

Minho frowns at him through the vanity mirror. His stomach is in knots just seeing their layered reflections. “Rinsing.”

Jisung scoffs. Tucks a smile toward his chest as he turns away. Minho clocks it in the rounds of his cheeks. “Yeah, but. Figured you’d… use a washcloth. Not… put your entire leg in the sink.”

Minho blinks. Watches the water run clear over his skin. “Less mess?” he responds dubiously.

Jisung has him sit on the toilet lid. Doesn’t wrap him in a towel, per se, that would verge on too-imaginative, but he does drape one over Minho’s shoulders. Minho can see it, in Jisung’s wet hair, where he’d run his fingers through it, where his nails carved paths. Wants to fit his own there. Observes, under the glare of the bathroom light, the sprinkling of stubble on Jisung’s upper lip, his chin. The lines at the corners of his mouth where his skin must give way to his enormous smile. The moisture from the rain, clinging to his skin, sticking his dark eyelashes together. His lips are pink, dry, bitten; his brows strong, edges blurry with overgrowth. Jisung works with all the diligence and none of the grace of a nurse, and it really isn’t that deep, the scrape, more superficial than anything. Yet he disinfects, lays a bandage over it. Maybe it’s the dad in him.

Meanwhile Minho wants to point his toes, hook his leg over Jisung’s shoulder, bend it behind his neck. Drag him between his thighs until he can’t possibly get any closer.

Instead, he says, “Sorry,” into the silence while Jisung repacks the kit.

“Shh.” Jisung waves him off. Continues to Tetris the contents of the kit when it won’t snap shut. Then he resolves just to brute-force it, huffing. “Thanks for coming on the water with me.”

Minho only breathes. When he peers out the door, he can see several pairs of wet footprints on the glossy hardwood. “Yeah.”

Haebin’s socked feet, pale-blue and corgi-dotted, materialize in his line of sight. “I fell asleep watching Chopped,” she announces, rubbing a sweatshirt paw at her eye. “And when I woke up it was pouring.” She gasps at Minho’s bandaged knee, his pathetic, wet state. “Aw, my poor drenched kitty!” she squeals—from a distance. “I’m… not gonna touch you, though. I’m dry, and you’re… not.” She leans in the doorframe. “What happened?”

Minho smooths his fingertips over the bandage. “I… fell.”

“Right.” Then she makes a crumpled face, flattening herself to the wall when Jisung squeezes by in all his sopping glory, threatening to hug her with spread arms. “Away, beast!” she roars.

“You should take a warm shower, Minho,” Jisung advises on his way out. His footfalls are soft, ascending the stairs.

“You should take a warm shower, Minho,” Haebin mimics, voice pitched husky and nostrils flared. “Anyway.” She comes to perch on the edge of the bath. “Chopped. It got me thinking. You wanna help me make brownies?”

“Do I want to make you brownies,” Minho translates flatly. The corner of his mouth curls.

Haebin bats her eyes. She is on her phone, scrolling recipes on Google as if she’ll help, though she knows Minho has one memorized. He could never go wrong with Felix’s brownies. “I know you’re injured, but, I mean. If you’re offering.”

Minho chuckles. He feels like he’s going to explode. Like a party popper. His remains would litter the studio bathroom floor, disposable as crinkly little shreds of confetti. He sighs, hugs the towel tight around his shoulders. “Just let me change.”

“Home tomorrow.”

Minho hums. He runs his fingertip over the spokes of the little sunshine tattooed on Haebin’s shoulder. His body is tired from working overtime against his mind; from nights spent sleepless and others spent in perhaps too deep a sleep.

Haebin burrows into his chest. She whines, “I don’t wanna go to work.”

Again, Minho hums. His arms move to wrap her, hold her behind her birdlike shoulder blades. Her hair is damp, freshly shampooed. And he knows, breathing it in, that Jisung’s must smell the very same. She’d been mid-shower when she’d run out of her own, called out to Minho, had him fetch shampoo from her father’s bathroom. And maybe Minho had overstayed his welcome in the lingering humidity of Jisung’s bathroom, steam still clinging to mirrors and glass, as he inspected Jisung’s hair caught in the shower drain, Jisung’s toothbrush and razor by the sink. In the bedroom, Jisung’s reading glasses and creased notebook on the bedside table, Jisung’s rumpled sheets, Jisung’s cologne left uncapped on his dresser. He’d held the cap, turned it over in his palm, and resisted smelling it. Replaced it. A picture frame on the dresser, too, one of few in the house; a pretty young woman, a flushed, disgruntled baby. Then Haebin had cried, “The shampoo, Minho!”

Unknowingly, he squeezes her a little tight. Shortly, she tips her head up, chin digging ticklishly into his chest, and serves him a cocked eyebrow and smirk. “You literally just showered.”

“Mm?” Then Minho feels her little leg shift pointedly between his thighs. He flusters. “Oh.” Swallows, but snorts to play it off. “Sorry.”

Haebin tuts. She lays her cheek again to his chest. “Hush.” Her fingers slip under his t-shirt, acrylics gentling down his stomach, making him twitch. “I already said you’d been quiet, but.” Her nail dips in his navel, and without preamble, her hand slides down the front of his briefs. Minho drags in a thick breath, eyelids drooping shut. “I also thought the woods just… really weren’t doing it for you. Or is it all the family time? Oh, it’s totally the family time.”

Minho exhales, husky. He can’t unglue his eyes. It already feels like he’s sweating through his shirt. “Thought you’d be relieved. For a break.” One hand on Haebin’s back still, he brings the other to knead at his own chest. Whore, he thinks despairingly. “You’re on vacation. After all.”

Haebin huffs. “Don’t put words in my mouth. You know I think it’s fun to watch you squirm sometimes,” she murmurs evenly. Her open palm strokes over Minho’s half-hard cock, up, down, and then she’s shifting her weight, withdrawing her hand. “On your tummy, Minho.”

While she disappears from the bed, he rolls over, face-plants in the pillow. Squirms to shove his boxers down. Haebin snickers, somewhere in the room, and Minho thinks they have the same laugh. They have the same fucking laugh. It makes him pant, makes him break out in a prickly sweat under his arms.

“Jeez. Look at you.” The mattress dips under Haebin. “I’ve told you a thousand times you don’t need to bottle it up. You can just tell me.” The smooth, short-clipped nails of her fore and middle fingers touch lightly at his tailbone, dragging downward into the cleft of his ass. Minho hikes his hips up. Haebin wolf-whistles teasingly, and he knows it’s for the intensity of the arch in his back. The first time he’d attended one of her yoga classes, she’d loudly praised his cat-cow pose in front of a full class of middle-aged women. “You sucked it up and made me brownies. I can suck it up and play with your ass.”

Well, isn’t that mortifying. But Minho’s perking cock disagrees. And when he starts to wriggle, starts to whine, Haebin pinches the back of his thigh. “I know, I know. Anyway, here… my dad’s studio is totally soundproof. He can’t hear us.” Her fingers spread at his hole, dry. He feels her longer nails graze his cheeks—goosebumps. His hamstrings jerk. Then she slicks up her fingers. He only knows because he’s twisted his neck to see. “We can’t hear him.”

Minho’s Pavlovian response is obvious, but it gets caught in the brain-to-mouth filter he’s been honing his whole life. Still, as Haebin’s fingers stretch him open, prod deep and make him drool into the pillow, he imagines it anyway: the soft padding of footsteps in the hall, the shadow cast in that slice of light spilling under the door. Subtle as the snap of a branch in the woods, yet enough to have him seizing up like a prey animal, whimpering, wanting. Waiting.

Haebin is already trundling down the path to the driveway with all her belongings, valiantly pretending she hadn’t just exchanged emotional goodbyes with her father, when Minho finishes knotting his second shoelace.

Jisung’s strong back is a hardy doorstop, letting the breeze in and watching his daughter go. And as Minho stands, they look at one another too fast—or, it feels too fast, but when Minho looks again, it seems that Jisung never looked away. He’s smiling faintly, head cocked so his hair grazes his brow. “Well?” He twitches an eyebrow. “Relieved to escape at last?”

Minho snorts. “No.” He rubs at his ever-warm neck. “It felt like another world here. Like… this was the escape.” Which is stunningly, disgustingly confessional, when all Minho had planned on saying was thanks for having me, have a nice life, goodbye (sorry I’m a pervert implied). So he adds, “Thank you,” blinking between Jisung’s eyes, “for having me.”

“My pleasure. I mean, you were a pretty low maintenance guest.” Jisung chuckles. His smile crowds his eyes. “I was probably a higher maintenance host, really, for all I… took advantage of your cooking.”

Minho smiles reluctantly, hums as he plays with the stud in his ear. “I’m just glad nothing went to waste.”

“Nothing,” Jisung agrees. “I licked every plate clean. Chewed on every bone.”

Minho laughs, covers his eyes with his hand. Sick. Through and through. When at last he peels it away, sighs and bends to grab his bag, Jisung looks sweetly sympathetic. And of all the alternate timelines Minho flicks through in his mind, in none of them does he go and sink into Jisung’s chest like he wants to. Which is good, he thinks. He’s never been punched in the face. And he’s not about to change that now.

“Minho.”

Minho glances up, bag handle clutched in both hands.

“Just.” Jisung shrugs a shoulder. “Keep looking out for Haebin, would you? And keep… supporting her. She’d never say she needs it, but. It’d bring me comfort. Knowing there’s someone close by, in her corner.”

Minho swallows. Nods rapidly. “I’m in her corner. Of course.”

Jisung’s lips press into a tight line, and he nods back. “Take care of yourself, too.”

Minho is on the top step when Jisung says, behind him, “You should let me know if you need anything. Ever. Either of you.”

He peers over his shoulder. Down in the driveway, Haebin honks. She rolls down the window, hollers, “Hey, wrap it up! I need to make it home before The Bachelorette airs!”

Jisung grins, pushes away from the door. “Whenever,” he murmurs.

“Okay.” Minho thinks he must only mouth it, because the sound doesn’t reach his ears.

They make it onto the road—the real one, the paved one, not the bumpy, gravelly one Minho imagines if he tried to follow again would lead to a dead end, the Han lake house a figment of his imagination—when Minho finally lets himself say, “I think I left my trunks.”

Haebin blinks at the road, turns down the music. “At appa’s?”

Minho sinks his nails into his thighs. “I left them to dry. By the grill. And then the rain soaked them again so I—”

“Okay, Cinderella.” Haebin glances at the touchscreen on the dashboard, at their ETA. “If we turn back now I’ll miss The Bachelorette.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’ll grab them whenever I go see him ne—”

“Should I text him?” Minho pinches at the thin skin of his neck, rubs it between his fingers. “Just. So he knows they’re there.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.” Haebin grabs her phone from the cupholder, unlocks it with her face, tosses it into Minho’s lap. “His contact is the old man emoji.”

Minho locates it, shares the contact with himself. That is probably not what Haebin meant. He deletes the message on her end, because he is spineless, and stashes her phone in the cupholder.

He doesn’t save the contact, as if that should keep his conscience clear. He does start a chat, though. And a message that takes him twenty minutes to compose. He hasn’t even hit send when Haebin asks, “Did he say anything?”

“No,” mumbles Minho, erasing the entirety of the message and switching apps as if caught red-handed.

“He’s probably sleeping,” mutters Haebin. She skips a few songs, making faces at the playlist of her own creation. “I swear he’s nocturnal when no one’s around to keep him in check.”

At last, while Haebin is perfecting her droning Julian Casablancas impression, he does it.

He spends the next five minutes staring at the horizon, pinching at his mouth until it bruises and trying not to vomit. In the driver’s seat, Haebin trills I’M ATHLETIC GIRL! Then Minho’s phone buzzes between his thighs.

The weekend after their return, Minho meets Haebin for coffee, and she tells him they’re better off as best friends. “Like, best friends, though. Not just friends.

“I don’t think it’ll be that different, really,” Haebin elaborates, swirling her iced latte. There are almond croissant crumbs all over their table, because she insists on tearing it apart with her fingers, piece by piece. “Like. At all. Except I’ll touch you a bit less.” She fans out her crumb-coated fingers. “And I can get all my nails done long.”

There’s a girl on her laptop at the table adjacent who lowers her headphones to her neck like she’s anticipating the oncoming tea. So Minho stares, nonreactive, into his cold brew, and thinks about Jisung’s unanswered texts.

“You’re not speaking,” notes Haebin. “Minho. I’m gonna need you to speak.”

Minho swallows, shakes his head. Clears his throat. He’s barely spoken all morning. “I—yeah. Okay. It’s fine.”

“It’s fine?” Haebin laughs, not unkind. “Are you upset?”

Minho meets her eyes, scratches at his jaw. She’s wearing a ratty baseball cap and vintage Nina Ricci earrings (she’s taught him so much). There’s a visible knot in her hair. Were they alone, he’d untangle it for her, but instead he side-eyes their neighbor. Is he upset? Well, no. That wouldn’t be the right word. Maybe… three parts guilty. One part relieved.

The evening they got back to the city, Haebin had dropped him off outside his building and promptly sped uptown in pursuit of The Bachelorette. Minho had trudged up the few stories to his apartment, musty from sitting untouched behind blackout curtains for over a week and messy from last-minute packing. He’d dropped his bag to the floor, slumped to a seat at the kitchen table. And with his head in his hands, he’d thought: maybe what happens at the lake house can stay at the lake house. But… that was just it. Nothing had happened at the lake house. Anything that happened had happened within him, and he couldn’t excise that, couldn’t throw it in a box and shove it in an attic. He was stuck with it. Stuck carrying it around, shackled to the rungs of his ribs, until… until this, he supposes. This rotten relief.

Haebin sounds frustrated with his silence. “Minho—”

“Well, I did just get broken up with.”

She hesitates. “I mean. Gently, though. Right?” Blinks her hopeful eyes. “You know I love you. Like, actually. And we’ve been on the same page this whole time. Right? Like, we’re not in love, or anything. And you really do make a good boyfriend—”

“Was it something I did?” Minho feels nauseous with dread. It’s not so much the what that discomfits him. It’s the impending why.

Haebin clicks her tongue. Fills her cheeks with air, lets it whiffle out between her lips. Then she shoves the rest of the croissant in her mouth—a sizable chunk—and checks her phone. “I just think this is better,” she says around her mouthful. “For us. It’s not just that you like sex, Minho, so don’t go spiraling now. We’ll talk later. I have a nail appointment, so I have to run, but.” She stands with one knee still on the chair, cups a hand at the table’s edge to sweep her crumbs into. Most of them cascade to the floor. “One more thing.”

Minho stops clawing at his eyelids. Sits back, defeated, against the hard bench. “What.”

“We’re friends,” says Haebin, and oh, the queen of eye contact can’t look at him, so this is going to be good. “We are. You’re not getting out of this, unless you really never want to see me again. So I do expect to see you next weekend. At Chris’ wedding. You’re still my plus one, boyfriend or not. So.” She clears her throat, rounds the table to dump the contents of her hands in the trash, clap them together to loosen the crumbs. “We’re friends,” she repeats. “And I know this ask is going to be difficult for you to swallow, given your high libido and questionable taste and myriad daddy issues, but.” At last, she meets his eyes. “Don’t fuck my dad.”

Minho is frozen solid. Petrified.

Haebin gives a singular nod, the sort of non-smile smile that makes her lips disappear, and drums her nails against the table with finality. She seems to give Minho a chance to soak it in. Then, “Appointment,” she mutters. And she’s off. The cafe door jingles behind her.

His table neighbor puts her headphones on.

Don’t fuck my dad.

It’d be a total riot, the crown jewel of a roast, a dinner table story to go down in history and outlive even Minho, but Haebin tells no one. Never brings it up. Not when she’s drunk at Chris’ wedding. Not when they go out to dinner and Haebin’s showing pictures of her scorpion-posing on the lake house pier (taken by Minho) to Minho’s coworker Yunho. Not even when The Bachelorette finale rolls around and it’s just the two of them. No; she eats the risotto Minho makes and demands he arabesque-lift her so she knows how it feels and screams in his ear when her favorite pathetic-boy contestant gets rejected.

Don’t fuck my dad.

But Minho might as well fuck every forty-something single parent in the city.

A few older couples, too. He walks, knowingly and brazenly, into the we saw you from across the bar trap.

He inhales so much Chanel No. 5 it must give him brain damage. Removes so many suits off so many bodies he begins to pick up when a blend is more wool than polyester. He hollers in pain stepping on Legos, drinks milk straight out the carton from fridges littered with magneted crayon drawings and report cards and college acceptance letters. He licks c-section scars, gets gray pubes stuck between his teeth. Gets interrupted mid-giving-head by phone calls that cannot go unanswered; from the school, the ex, the teenaged son who doesn’t know how to use a rice cooker and—if by chance they’re at a hotel—the babysitter.

They like his flexible, during-school-hours schedule. Sometimes, if he whines enough, they’ll let him stay when their lunch hour is up and they inevitably have to return to work. And, stark naked and alone, he’ll wander into gourmet kitchens the size of his apartment with fridges the size of his bathroom, fully stocked weekly with fresh produce and meat and dairy, only to stick a pan of dino nuggets in the oven.

They like his stamina. And they really like his flexibility. Forty-something really isn’t that old, but something about the gap, the way they acknowledge it time and time again—can’t go a day without it—and look at Minho with awe and reverence and nostalgia makes him feel like a novelty. Makes him feel new and shiny and special and invincible.

It’s the start of summer when it hits him.

Minho is on Haebin’s dressing room couch messaging Don; Don, who is in private wealth management and lives actually not far from Haebin; Don, whom Minho had only met last week but is already sending him unflattering, fluorescent-lit dick pics from his office bathroom. It’s Minho’s grimace at his phone screen that halts Haebin mid-sentence.

“What?” She smirks. She’s on the floor by her open suitcase, folding bikinis—Minho never knew they needed folding—packing for her influencer friend’s bachelorette weekend on the Amalfi Coast. “That’s an ugly dick pic face if I’ve ever seen one. Like—the dick is ugly. Not your face. But interpret as you wish.”

And the thing is… she knows. Not that Minho’s Tinder age range is set to forty-plus, but that he’s been sleeping around for the better part of a year. She calls it his can’t be tamed era, which is embarrassing, but he still finds a strange sort of solace in her keen, bemused fascination with his sexcapades. He leaves out the incriminating bits about stepping on Legos and eating dino nuggets, leaves in those that he knows will make Haebin’s brow twist in either distress or intrigue. Goddamn. That’s a thing? And you like that? Oh, now that’s just nasty, Minho.

He locks his phone, lays it flat on his thigh. Decides he won’t be seeing Don tonight after class. Should tell Tiffany he’s free. “You don’t want to know.”

“Unless he has a weird fucking dick tattoo like that other guy, I really don’t.” She rises to go peruse her sunglasses collection. “Anyway. I think I’m gonna extend my trip into next week. Go see some boarding school friends who’re staying in Dubrovnik.” She sighs. “God. Minho. I’m so glad to finally be getting out of the country. This cabin fever is eating me alive.”

Minho arches an eyebrow, head propped in hand. “If you promise to bring me limoncello, I will promise to swallow my bitterness.”

She squints at him over her shoulder. Then she turns, smilingly, to debate between two near-identical Celine frames. “I will bring you several bottles.”

Minho blinks placidly. “Then I hope your trip is fulfilling.”

“Fulfilling, wow. Thank you.” Haebin disappears behind an open closet door. “But I’m serious. I haven’t left the country since February. Since winter, Minho. When appa and I went skiing. Oh, shit. Did I ever show you my Prada ski suit? I don’t think I did. I got it while we were out there. Hold on, I need to dig. Unless it’s in my storage unit? Oh, goddammit. Might be. See? That’s how long it’s been.”

Minho’s train of thought swerves, screeching, off its moral tracks. And all it takes is Haebin reminding him she’ll be out of the country—without her father.

Already he’s formulating a sticky, underhanded plan to see Jisung while there’s an ocean between them and Haebin. He stares, incredulous, at the damask print of Haebin’s rug. Just how fucking unhinged is he? What good came of an entire year of staying in his lane—his lane of fucking every parent but Haebin’s? Just how much gall does he have to dive headfirst into oh, you’re leaving the city? perfect time for me to go fuck your dad! Maybe all of it—the nuggets, the report cards, the Chanel perfume—only made him a monster.

That’s when it hits him.

It hits Minho that he’s tried. So hard. Oh, how he has tried. And yet, for all his trying, he can’t fuck Jisung out of his system.

Without fucking Jisung himself.

He could be the shiniest, newest, most special DILF-and-MILF-fucker in the city, and he’d still feel like a bottomless pit. Sure, he has fun—most of the time—fucking parents twice his age. And he thinks they wouldn’t call him again if they didn’t have fun fucking him. But it isn’t about the fun; rather, it’s that no one he was seeing a year ago is he still seeing now. No one he was seeing three months ago is he still seeing now.

But what he is still doing is thinking about Jisung.

“Earth to Minho.” Haebin has her phone outstretched. It’s a picture from her Instagram; her on her ski trip last winter, sky blue and mountains white (and Prada ski suit black). “You saw this, right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Minho says before his vision clears. He coughs into his fist. He’s sweating a little. His phone buzzes—probably Don. Fuck off, Don. “My handle’s right there, babe. I liked it.”

She snatches her phone back. “Oh, right.”

Minho rises from the couch, nauseous. “I have to go.”

Haebin pouts. “You don’t teach ’til five.” She springs up beside her suitcase, bikinis tumbling from her lap. “I’ve only worn boyfriend jeans and men’s boxer shorts the past four months, I don’t know what I’m doing. You were supposed to critique my pre-planned outfits!”

Minho avoids the elevator. Forty flights of winding stairs should be more effective at clearing his head. Maybe on the first floor, he will emerge sane. Dizzy, but sane.

No such luck.

As he steps woozily from the air-conditioned lobby into oppressive city humidity, the only thing on his mind is Jisung’s number, buried in the rubble of his messages.

He storms down the sidewalk, dodging tourists and equally dogged locals. What would he even say? What does he expect Jisung to say back? Maybe Jisung would laugh. Maybe he would pity. Maybe he would drive six hours down from the lake house to the city to break Minho’s jaw. Or is he too gentle?

What he is is mature. Jisung has morals. Maybe he took Haebin’s—and Minho’s—advice seriously, and is no longer single. Minho had only ever been relevant to Jisung’s life by virtue of dating his daughter—a tie she’d severed shortly after the very trip they’d met. Jisung must know he’s no longer in the picture… like that. Hasn’t been for ages. And there is no way in hell Haebin told him about Minho’s… latent desire, so to speak. Right?

Right?

He has nothing going for him. Nothing concrete, nothing in his favor. All he has to go off on are hazy, faded memories. Biased memories. Moments he could have hallucinated, for all they’re worth; Jisung looking at him a couple seconds too long, divulging something a little too personal, touching him a little too tender.

Maybe Minho was only seeing what he wanted to see.

Maybe he was reading Jisung all wrong and he isn’t even queer. Jesus, maybe he’s a fucking homophobe. What does Minho know?

And it isn’t as if don’t fuck my dad has an expiration date. As if it were followed by a tiny asterisk leading to a footnote stipulating: while I’m in a three-thousand-mile radius.

He’s still a half-hour from his apartment, so he shoves his way into a coffee shop to purchase something that’ll burn his tongue in an adequately distracting way. In line, he stews; waiting for his order, he stews; sitting down with his coffee, he furiously posts on r/sex (It’s been a year and I (24M) haven’t stopped thinking about fucking my ex’s (24F) dad (45M). P.S. she told me explicitly not to fuck him. So… can I still fuck him?). And he refreshes the post every fifteen seconds, coffee scalding his throat, until he sees that first downvote. Then he deletes it.

Hours later, he disembarks the metro near the dance studio fifteen minutes before his Beginner II kids are set to arrive. Texts from Don and Tiffany sit unopened on his phone, growing fuzzy with mold, and his hands shake as he strides into the studio, nods curtly at Soobin the pianist, and sits on the floor to change into his dance sneakers.

His early birds trickle in. One still has a foot of glossy auburn hair hanging down her back, and Minho calls her over with a wriggle of his finger to ask what’s with the hair. Mommy didn’t have time, is the answer, so he has her sit on his stool while he unzips the dedicated bobby pin compartment of his bag, sticks a few between his teeth, and twists her hair into a neat knot.

“Thank you!” she yawps, hopping off the stool. Then, frowning with her whole face: “Minho, why do you have so many pins anyway? You don’t even have hair.”

Minho’s eyes blow wide. His hands fly to clutch at his head, and around the pins still in his teeth: “I don’t have hair?!”

He ducks out to use the bathroom while his evening teens change into their pointe shoes. And with his forehead glued to the inside of the stall door, he scrolls back through his messages until the month on the conversation timestamps changes. The year.

Hope you beat the traffic. Minho stares it down. Presses on it, nearly thumbs-down reacts in his fumbles. Takes several quick breaths in succession. And begins to type.

Hi, it’s Minho. Just in case your phone deletes old messages. Or you deleted my messages or didn’t save my contact, all of which are understa

No.

Hi, it’s Minho. I hope you’ve been well.

He kicks at the corner of the stall, listens to it rattle. Might as well talk about the fucking weather, dipshit. He decides, instead, to act like he’s texting Don, or Sherry, or Jen, or Raj—fundamentally, like he doesn’t give a fuck.

When in reality he gives far too many.

It’s late and he’s mopping the studio when his phone vibrates, noisy across the expanse of vinyl floor. He doesn’t rush to get it; when he’d peeked after his last class, it’d only been Don with a moronic Hello??? because Minho had ghosted his dick pic and Haebin with outfit mirror pictures (i have 3 nights and 4 night outfits—please ruthlessly eliminate one, your high ruthlessness). So he finishes mopping, double-checks his attendance bookkeeping, and grabs bubble tea from the place on the corner fifteen minutes before they close, like an asshole.

When he collapses into a seat on the mostly-empty metro, he dares to check during an interval of spotty underground cell service.

And, just over ten minutes later:

Minho drops his phone. It clatters to the disgusting metro floor, and his nails come away with muck underneath when he frantically snatches it up.

He sits upright, catatonic. Misses his stop. Gets off at the next one and doesn’t catch a train going backward, because he is eternally and without fail convinced that walking will screw his head on straight.

Alas, he feels busted as ever, even with a few thousand steps behind him.

And he is all too aware, as he wades into the darkness of his apartment, that he doesn’t have permission.

So asking for forgiveness, and asking for it later, is his only option.

There is a car waiting at the curb.

There’s a car. He sees it through the street-facing window in the hallway.

Minho exits the building on tiptoe, nothing but a backpack over his shoulder.

The driver—presumably—lounges against the car in a crisp navy suit, hand in pocket, chuckling at something or other on his phone. He very quickly spots Minho, hovering far enough to not block the flow of foot traffic, but to still be rather awkward. “Oh. Hi! Minho?” he guesses, grin bright. Shouldn’t he check ID, or something? Should Minho ask for credentials? Maybe he trusts Jisung far too much.

“Yes.” Minho adjusts his grip on his backpack strap.

“You wanna throw that in the back?”

“What?” Minho blinks. “Ah—no. It’s fine.”

The driver nods graciously, bowing to pull his weight off the car and open the door for Minho, gesturing in. “It’ll be a six hour drive, give or take, depending on traffic.”

Minho sits dumbly. The car is nice inside. Roomy, nondescript. Smells new and leathery. He hugs his backpack to his chest.

The driver shuts the door once Minho’s legs are in. Circles the car, climbs into the front. Jauntily, he flashes Minho a smile over his seat. “Let me know if you need me to make a stop, sir. Or if you want to change the music.”

Minho takes a breath. “Okay.” He won’t. Maybe he should, though. He doesn’t want to arrive at Jisung’s begging to pee, does he?

Unplanned, he dozes off listening to the driver’s selection of lo-fi rap.

And thrashes awake mid-nightmare of said driver parking at a remote gas station and dragging Minho out back where the porta potties are to shoot him in the head.

But they’re still on the road. On a tree-flanked highway.

Minho only realizes he’s clutching at his chest when the driver clears his throat up front. He tears his hand away.

“Damn, sir, you were out cold,” chuckles the driver. Minho squints. “We’re an hour and a half out, FYI.”

His tongue feels fuzzy, his eyes heavy and crusty, and his neck twinges. “Thanks,” he answers flatly. Pats around for his phone, which he’d sat on in his sleep. Nothing from Jisung. He texts Yunho his eternal gratitude (again) for covering his weekend classes. Summer intensives start Monday, so if—god forbid—Minho has yet to return by then, Yunho would have to work like a dog to cover Minho’s classload on top of his own. But… Minho will be back. By early next week, he’ll have exorcized Jisung from his system once and for all. He’ll be in an identical black car on the way back to the city, maybe with this same gent driving. He’ll roll up to summer camp a new man. Maybe he’ll take a vow of celibacy. A celibate summer. That’d certainly be something. Haebin would never believe it.

Haebin.

Right.

Minho sighs with so much gusto the driver’s eyes flick to him through the rearview mirror. He stares back, blank, until they’re back on the road where they belong. Then, on his phone, he navigates to the Find My app.

Haebin’s most current location is from four hours ago, at the airport. She must be in the air now.

He selects her name. Hesitates, thumb hovering over Stop Sharing My Location.

Then he taps lightly, wedges his phone under his thigh, and directs his eyes out the window.

His entire body is in knots as the car bumps up the road to the Han residence.

Seriously. Minho could pass out. It’s like he’s been moving on autopilot since Jisung responded to his message—getting his ass covered at work, hastily packing—only to feel like he’d teleported here, six hours away from home.

He’s tempted to ask the driver to turn back, because… sure, Minho has vile thoughts. Has never not had vile thoughts. Mean, despicable, dirty thoughts galore, all running around uninhibited in the Overcooked kitchen that is his head. But there’s a difference between having them and acting on them that is, he thinks, what truly makes someone vile.

The car is parked now. When the driver slips out, the air that rushes in is thick and forest-sweet and familiar, and Minho is still in the backseat, motionless, heart so gorged with hot blood its every beat is onerous. And fuck, is it beating.

The door nearest Minho opens. “Sir, we’re—”

“I know.” Minho snatches his phone, drags his bag out behind his heavy limbs. And it is bizarre, to smell the soft earth below, feel the muggy air wrap him, see the overcast sky and treetops wink at him through their reflections in… all that glass that is the Han house. Bizarre to feel it all without Haebin there.

But that also means that when Minho turns, finds Jisung—god, Jisung—coming down that twisting front walk, mussed hair and wire-rimmed glasses and massive tee and denim cutoffs and house slippers, stopping halfway and squinting against the bleach-white sky, smiling like he has a secret, because he probably-definitely does… that it’s just for Minho.

Jisung sticks a hand in his pocket, waves with the other. “Thanks, Hoseok.”

And the driver. Just for Minho… and the driver. Hoseok.

“Anytime, big guy!” Hoseok jogs around to the driver’s side. “Sunday, then?”

Jisung cups a hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun. He’s far enough that Minho shouldn’t be able to tell just whom he’s looking at, but he can feel it. Feel Jisung’s eyes on him. “Minho?”

Minho clears his throat, slings his backpack over his shoulder. As if Jisung merely speaking his name doesn’t make his muscles seize up. “Yeah,” he confirms. “Sunday.”

Jisung nods. Back to Hoseok. “I’ll let you know what time.”

“Alrighty, boss.” Hoseok lets himself back in the car. “Later, gators.”

And once Hoseok is sufficiently far down the bumpy driveway, Minho grimaces.

Jisung laughs, easy, ticks his head toward the house, a movement that sets his body in motion back up the stairs. “Coming?”

Minho thinks he doesn’t need to answer that.

He moves like he’s operated by strings. Up ahead, when Jisung reaches the door, he turns around to kick away the doorstop and hold it open. In that moment, they lock eyes, and Minho wants to dissolve into thin air. Jisung smiles and Minho smiles too but he can’t look, not for long, as he dips his chin and ducks into the house.

He’s removing his shoes when he hears the door latch behind him, and it’s real. He’s here and it’s real. Jisung hovers, hands pocketed, and this is very likely where they’d greet each other; shake hands were they strangers, hug were they friends, but they are neither. “The trip up was okay?” asks Jisung.

“Yeah.” Minho takes a breath. Even that feels laborious. “Long. Apparently I passed out for most of it, though.”

“Oh.” Amusement tickles Jisung’s pretty eyes. Just looking at his face, right there, is. Fucking overwhelming. “Good.”

Minho nods. He still can’t catch his breath, but he tries to be subtle about it. Then Jisung runs his fingers through his hair and his gaping sleeve slips up his bicep and Minho’s eyes snap right to it. And he knows he’s failing.

Jisung clears his throat. “You hungry?”

Minho blinks. His backpack is still on his shoulder. He feels a bit too much like a schoolkid, so he lets it sag to the floor. “Uh.” He presses his hand to his stomach. “Now that you mention it.”

Jisung half-smiles. “I hope you still like sushi.” And when Minho barely reacts but to furrow his brow, Jisung adds, “You mentioned it. Last time.”

Minho’s pulse flutters like a hummingbird’s. “Did I?”

Jisung bites his inner lip, glances toward the windows. And if Minho didn’t know any better, he’d say it’s Jisung who’s flustered now. Maybe he does, though. Know better. “I mean, I goddamn hope you did,” he chuckles.

Minho shrugs his shoulders. Sounds like him. “Probably.” He just wouldn’t have thought it’d be… of note.

“I had a friend come by earlier,” says Jisung. He’s still peering out the windows. “She’s an itamae, and she… threw some stuff together for us. So… whenever you want to eat.”

An electric shock zings through Minho’s core, trying to stomach this. Jisung had a sushi chef come and prepare sushi. For them. For Minho? He utters, “Strategic friendship,” because he can’t think of anything else.

Jisung looks back at him. His smile is warm. “It’s symbiotic.” He rubs at his upper lip. “You might wonder what value I bring to the table, which is a valid question, but I am actually a decent concert ticket hookup.”

Minho smiles. Swallows. His eyes flick toward the kitchen, then the windows past Jisung. He’s buzzing out of his skin so violently his mind feels like a slate wiped clean. Like he’ll only shake off anything that tries to stick. He’s not sure he’s internalized a single thing Jisung has spoken since his arrival. So as an airy afterthought: “Sushi sounds… really great. Thank you.” He fiddles with the handle of his bag. “Do you mind if I shower first? The drive was—”

“No, no.” Jisung gestures toward the stairs. “Go for it. I left some towels out for you.”

Minho is making for said stairs and realizing Jisung didn’t say where he’d left the towels but figuring it’s already too late to turn and ask when he stops short.

“Holy… shit.” He gawks. “Ficus.”

“Excuse me?”

Minho stares at the potted tree, precisely where it’d been when he’d last watered it. It verges on needing a new pot, though, is the thing. In a year it’s flourished, leafy and unkempt and verdant. Minho swears it’s grown two feet in height. Then he turns to Jisung, who idles by the doorway still. “The… tree,” he says. Laughs, breathless. “It’s called a… ficus. But—never mind. I’m just shocked you managed to keep it alive.”

Jisung pokes his glasses up his nose, meanders nearer. Doesn’t make eye contact. “I tried,” he admits. “Sorta.”

“It’s fucking huge,” insists Minho.

“There were a few times I thought it was a goner.” Jisung glances at him, lips quirked. “Got all droopy. But it bounced back.” Minho returns the gaze. Watches Jisung rub the side of his neck pink. “It’s like a kid, I guess. You don’t notice how much they’ve shot up until you compare all the little notches on your door jamb. But this, I… wasn’t measuring.”

Minho bites back a smile. Appraises Ficus silently. Then, quietly: “Good job.”

“For not killing it?”

“Mm. Good job for not killing it.”

They lock eyes. Minho chews at his lip. Jisung says, “Shut up,” and Minho beams.

Jisung left him towels… on the guest bed. The same room he and Haebin slept in last summer. Minho debates whether it’s a small-dick move, or if Jisung simply would’ve felt too presumptuous leaving them on his own bed. Jisung had been so cautious all last summer; careful to never offend, overstep, and when he thought he had, to call it out and apologize. Never brazen.

But Minho is here. He’s here now. If there’s ever a time for anyone to be brazen, it is now—because who knows when the hell there will be a now like this again. He fingers the fluffy material of the robe Jisung laid out, folded neatly beside the towels. It’s red, nearly the same shade as Minho’s swim trunks, which are there, too. He picks them up, smells them. They’re clean. Well—obviously. What the fuck else was he expecting? It’s been a year. His head’s a little too fucked.

Again, though. He’s here. Jisung sent him a car that brought Minho, just Minho, hundreds of miles up the coast so he could escape the city. Maybe that’s brazen, at last. Maybe it’s a move, even if it still hides under a blanket of excuse. Escape.

Minho sighs. Takes stock of the towels, the robe, his trunks. His ratty backpack on the fine hardwood floor. He gathers the towels and heads, decidedly, for Jisung’s bedroom.

He tries to stride through like he lives there, detached from the pile of dilapidated books on the bedside table, each with bookmarks stuck around halfway through. From the sweatpants strewn across the floor, several pairs of them. From that same cologne on the dresser—a new bottle, unblemished and nearly full. It all smells like Jisung, so much so Minho is tempted to throw open a window because he’s half-hard before he ever sets foot in the shower.

It must be the longest shower of his life. Not just because he wants to scrub every inch of himself raw and clean, but because he devotes an equal amount of time to snooping. Turns over this and that bottle, peeks onto this and that shelf. Hair mask, body scrub, shaving cream. Speakers embedded in the ceiling. He uses Jisung’s shampoo, conditioner, soap—the works. Maybe he’s deranged; he’ll find out when he goes down to eat, gets close enough that Jisung can smell him. And as he towels off, eyeing himself between the gaps in fog in the vanity mirror, he considers donning nothing but the red robe to descend the stairs. But somehow, after all of this, that is what seems cliché, screams pick me too loud. As if Minho hadn’t already wailed and begged by texting Jisung out of the blue.

He changes into one of one-and-a-half changes of clothes he’d astutely packed—basically his pajamas. Not even cute ones—but he doesn’t own cute pajamas, what is he talking about. If he holds still, his hands will tremble, so he doesn’t. He keeps moving. And he leaves the robe draped over the edge of Jisung’s bed, so he’ll know where to find it.

Down the stairs, past a diagonal of framed photos, Haebin in school uniform year after year. Jisung is setting spots for them at the island, and greets him with, “There he is.”

Minho scoff-laughs, quiet. “Sorry for the holdup.”

“No holdup.” Jisung places a sake glass on each placemat. “You ready to eat?”

Minho climbs onto a stool just as Jisung sets chopsticks before him. “Please.”

He has nothing but praise for Jisung’s itamae friend and the beautiful sushi platters Jisung produces from the fridge—not that he voices it. He doesn’t voice anything at all, because he scarfs down the food like he hasn’t eaten in days. Only gains the dim self-awareness to possibly pace himself when he catches Jisung watching him, maki squirreled away in his cheeks. Minho feels his neck color. Swallowing that next mouthful is a whole lot harder. “You like it?” asks Jisung, as if Minho hasn’t fucking inhaled half the platter.

Hand held near to his mouth as he chews, Minho nods quickly.

Jisung smiles, faint. Sets his chopsticks down, sips from his sake. Exhales. Drums his fingers against the counter. And Minho knows it’s all leading to… something. Which ends up being: “Does Haebin know you’re here?”

The question doesn’t exactly pull the rug out from under Minho’s feet. He’s been expecting it, waiting for it. He stalls until he’s swallowed, then clears his throat to murmur, “No.”

Jisung nods, a little tip of his chin. His brows furrow, almost imperceptibly. Minho thinks, You knew. There’s no way you didn’t know. “She’s… off to…?”

“She’ll land in Naples in a few hours, I think.”

“Right.”

“Bachelorette in Sorrento.”

“Mm. Fun.” Jisung rubs at his jaw. Minho tries, actively, to not let his eyes cloud over. “You guys still hang out? I know you aren’t…”

“We’re not,” Minho agrees. Sandwiches his hands between his thighs, and squeezes tight. “But—yeah. All the time.”

Jisung smiles, but it suddenly seems put-on, even as he says, “That’s good.” It strikes a chilly fear in Minho’s chest—the cold weight of being an impostor. But it was Jisung who decided to bring up Haebin. “That you could stay friendly.”

“Yeah.” Minho exhales. “She actually…” He doesn’t know why he speaks. Why the fuck he bothers to start that thought. Maybe it’s the guilt, dragging his heart down into the pit of his stomach. Maybe it’s because he thinks… Jisung will comfort him. For—for what? Betraying his daughter? Laughable.

Jisung regards him patiently. And when Minho neglects to finish: “She did what?”

Minho chews at his lip. The pounding of his heart is intolerable. He’d rather vomit it out of his chest than keep it in there, rattling him. He tries to correct his posture, but it doesn’t help. His eyes go out of focus on the collection of pots and pans hanging by the wall opposite. He’d missed them after just a week in Jisung’s kitchen. His own isn’t nearly so well-appointed. “She told me not to come. Here.”

He glances at Jisung, who is… expressionless. “She said that?”

Minho’s skin crawls. He hasn’t had to think about it for nearly a year. There was that post-breakup limbo Minho had spent with bated breath, expecting Haebin to throw it in his face like a gag pie. She never had. And after that… for eleven-or-so months, it hadn’t mattered, because Minho was never going to see Jisung again.

What a fucking joke. Either he was in denial, or he was pretending to be decent. “Not in exactly those words,” Minho admits.

“In what words, then?”

Minho shuts his eyes, shoulders slumping, head drooping backward. He whispers, “Please don’t make me.”

“Minho. Come on.”

He picks himself back up. Rubs at that crick in his neck from sleeping weird in the car, then focuses on folding his napkin along the cleanest of lines. The sushi feels heavy in his stomach. “A year ago, when we got back home, she told me,” he clears his throat, “to not fuck her dad.”

He can’t look at Jisung or he’ll burn. Even when Jisung murmurs, “You mean…”

“I mean that she said, ‘Don’t fuck my dad.’”

The kitchen is silent. So is the forest beyond. Minho doesn’t count but it has to be minutes before he peers over at Jisung. Jisung, head in hands, shoulders jittering uncontrollably. And for a second, Minho fully believes that he’s—what? Crying? before Jisung lowers his hands and Minho stares, wide-eyed, at his massive, albeit abashed… grin.

Jisung stands from the table with his plate, stool screeching unpleasantly. And on his way to the sink, he announces, “Well, fuck,” and it practically echoes through the house.

Minho’s napkin is a neat, tiny square. He can’t feel his dangling toes, but can where his shirt sticks to his underarms. He utters, “What?”

Jisung proceeds to putter about, to finish off the last of his sake and gather his chopsticks and, once Minho’s given him the go-ahead, Minho’s place setting, too. “What what?”

Minho blinks. “You.” He rolls back his shoulders. They pop. “You think it’s funny?”

“I…” Jisung chuckles. Plates clatter as he loads the dishwasher. “Frankly, Minho, I don’t know what I think.”

Minho shifts on the stool. Holds his breath for one, two. “Are you angry with me?”

Jisung shuts the dishwasher, comes to rinse off his hands in the sink opposite Minho. He turns the water on, then off, without ever wetting his hands. Instead, he clutches at the counter’s edge. His eyes are round, and the lenses of his glasses reflect the pendant lights above. “Am—am I angry? With you?”

Minho stares back. Nods his head, quick and jerky.

Jisung smiles, faint. And it’s gross, really, that Minho feels instantly better. Lighter. “I’m not angry,” Jisung murmurs. Turns the sink on again. “With you. Or anyone, for that matter. Mainly, I’m just… I don’t know. Not surprised. I shouldn’t be surprised.” He soaps his hands twice. The water runs a while. Then Jisung states, “My daughter is shrewd.”

Minho blinks lazily. His heart rate is slowing, but only gradually, still twice its usual speed. The water froths over Jisung’s hands. Jisung towels off, cracks his knuckles, and Minho squirms in place. In the low light, his hands look rugged, dirty, as if he hadn’t washed them at all. “You did raise her,” Minho says distantly.

Jisung laughs with crinkling eyes. “She did not get that from me.”

Once the kitchen has been cleared, Jisung suggests they “sit for a bit.” And what that means in practice is Jisung sprawling out horizontally on the longest part of the living room couch, with Minho not too far, not too near, legs in a butterfly stretch. It’s bizarre, because… they’ve effectively acknowledged the elephant in the room. But that didn’t make it any less elephant. It still sits on the couch between them, living and breathing elephant-breath so the air feels heavy and muggy.

Jisung looks to be checking his emails on his phone. Minho’s is upstairs; he has nothing to fiddle with. So with fingers wrapping his ankles, he watches the Netflix trailer that autoplays when Jisung turns on the TV.

He thinks back to the kitchen. My daughter is shrewd. Shrewd. Shrewd, because… she picked up on it? On Minho’s thirst to rip Jisung’s clothes off his body? Is that it? He lets his spine sink into the couch. Maybe he should feel humiliated. When he’d revealed what Haebin told him, Jisung hadn’t seemed anything but… bewildered. Maybe amused. Not flattered, certainly. Not even necessarily surprised. Had he known, too? All this time? Had he been waiting? Maybe Minho is the butt of the joke here. He’s the butt of the joke, and he had to come all this way to understand.

On the chaise end of the couch, Jisung sighs, a labored, enduring sound. He’s laid his phone on the empty cushion separating him and Minho, and, propped up on throw pillows, his head lolls Minho’s way. He blinks, then, with a sweet sort of serenity.

Minho looks back. He doesn’t feel quite so calm. His skin prickles where the blood rushes to it. He draws his knees to his chest, feeling bare, and mumbles, “What?”

A smile twitches on Jisung’s lips. “What what?” he says, tone so light his words float on air. Stretches, arms above his head, shirt peeling back from his stomach. Then, “You look cute.” He jerks his chin, so subtle he could be gesturing at anything. “With your hair like that.”

Minho gets an instant head rush. Because—that’s all it takes, isn’t it? A throwaway comment is all it takes to know he might not be alone in this. Maybe he was, but maybe, just maybe, he isn’t now.

And if this is a joke, he will take it. He will offer himself to it, limb by limb. “Like what.” His head weighs itself onto the cushions.

Jisung shrugs a shoulder. He reaches an arm behind his head to grip the back of the couch. “Air-dried. All fluffy.”

Minho goes cross-eyed pretending to look at his bangs. When he runs his fingers through them, the scent of Jisung’s shampoo fills his nose. He smiles, then, pinched, and it feels foolish. “Bet it looks stupid.”

“Nuh-uh.” Spoken with adorable conviction, too. Like this isn’t already an exchange of utter nonsense.

Minho rolls off the cushion, feeling leaden as he clambers onto his hands and knees. “You’re stupid.”

Jisung laughs, breathy. “Oh, yeah.” Doesn’t move or take his eyes off Minho once while he crawls across an ocean of couch to Jisung, while he hefts himself astride Jisung’s lap. God, Jisung is warm. Warm between his thighs. Solid, sturdy. He lets out a sort of grunt as Minho settles, and lays a hand to the bare part of Minho’s thigh that his shorts don’t reach. Jisung isn’t a big guy, certainly not tall. But Minho harbors no doubt, still, that Jisung could take him. Handle him.

“Hi,” whispers Minho. His hands come to rest on Jisung’s shoulders.

Jisung’s eyes are beautifully lidded. “Hi,” he returns laughingly. Always a laugh in his voice, his eyes; it melts Minho’s heart. His thick hair, speckled with gray, scatters over his forehead, grazes his lashes, and Minho wants to knot his fingers in it, hold him steady so he doesn’t ever stop looking at Minho the way he is now. Like he’d do anything Minho asked. Like he’d do anything to make him happy.

It would make Minho so happy to kiss him. Finally.

But when he bows beyond a few inches, Jisung no longer grips the back of the couch, because he’s catching Minho by the throat.

Reflexively, Minho’s jaw drops. It takes him aback. He sucks a sad little gasp in. Jisung isn’t squeezing, per se, but Minho’s got some weight against him, some weight that makes it just that bit harder to breathe, some weight he could ease off if he really wanted. But there he remains, nails digging into Jisung’s shoulders, neck cradled against Jisung’s rough palm. Making sure Jisung feels it when he swallows.

Jisung’s dark eyes flit to his mouth, so Minho licks it, flagrant. That pulls at Jisung’s lips, gives Minho a wry peek of teeth. Solemnly, Jisung says, “We shouldn’t.”

Minho knows he’s being toyed with. Still, he responds, “I know,” drags in an audible breath, and anchors his hands on Jisung’s shoulders. Arches his back, because he’s very, very good at that. “But I’m already here.” He takes his time batting his eyes, just once. “You gonna make me go all the way home?”

“I should.” Now Jisung does squeeze, just a hair. He digs his fingers up a little higher, under the bone of Minho’s jaw where his pulse throbs.

Minho whines, a weak, watery sound. But he’ll go where Jisung wants him to go, even if it means he has to peer at Jisung down the slopes of his cheeks. He circles his hips, suddenly needy. And it frustrates him a bit that Jisung doesn’t visibly react but to grab at more of the flesh of Minho’s thigh. “Did you know?” he asks thinly.

Jisung’s forefinger traces the corner of his jaw. “Know what?”

Minho huffs. Shuts his eyes. “That I wanted you.” He whimpers when Jisung begins to move under him, pull Minho into him, rub against him, because it means Minho’s no longer on steady ground. He’s only at Jisung’s mercy. “Last summer.”

“No,” Jisung answers, soft and instant. Minho’s eyes flutter open. “I never—would’ve never thought.” He watches Jisung’s lip go white under his teeth. “You were—perfect. You were the sweetest thing I’d ever seen. I would’ve never thought—”

Minho gasps, shrill. Feels woozy, dripping with syrupy-thick want. Panics that he’d cut Jisung off making silly noises when he’s saying literally everything Minho wants to hear. I did, he thinks. He bears down so Jisung can feel how hard he is. “The whole time,” he whispers.

Jisung shakes his head. Minho gets off on his disbelief. “Your chest is pink,” Jisung points out, lips quirked. Tender.

Minho frees a hand to cling to Jisung’s wrist. It’s tense, locked tight for how gentle his fingers are. He doesn’t need to peer down into the scoop of his top to know he’s burning, gross and mottled and flushed all the way up to his face. He squeezes at Jisung’s arm, gives him a pretty smile to make up for it. “It does that.”

Jisung clucks his tongue. “Sweetest thing.”

Minho’s muscles jolt. He can’t hold the smile. He feels too hot, trapped in his skin, cock trapped in his pajama shorts, neck trapped in Jisung’s hold. He scratches his nails down Jisung’s clothed shoulders. “Please,” he breathes.

Jisung hums. Minho threatens to collapse when Jisung’s hand withdraws, but he catches himself. Jisung doesn’t travel far, anyway, only goes to cup Minho’s chin, to pull at his bottom lip. Knead at it like putty. And, so gently: “What do you want, baby?”

Static sparks in Minho’s skull. He leaks into his shorts. “Please kiss me.”

“Tch.” The tip of Jisung’s thumb runs over the ribbing of Minho’s lower gums. “You ask for so little.” Minho has only one thing to say, but he’s preoccupied ducking his chin and taking Jisung’s whole thumb into his mouth. Luckily Jisung reads his mind. “But you’d take anything, huh?”

Minho nods, slow and grave as his eyes roll back into his head and his lids seal shut. He sags against Jisung’s chest, forearms flat to its solid plane, as he blows Jisung’s thumb. Tastes like nothing, clean from soap, maybe soy sauce under his fingernail. He drags his teeth over the folds of Jisung’s knuckle. His brow furrows when he feels Jisung’s arm wrap his middle. He’s getting messy now, has to slurp because he’s drooling from smelling Jisung so close, feeling the heat of his breath. Jisung prises his thumb from Minho’s mouth and Minho nearly cries out for it, but then he holds the back of Minho’s head, tells him, “I’ll give you everything,” like he means it. “Everything you want.”

Jisung removes his glasses, tosses them down the couch, and kisses him slow, controlled. Patient, like he’s got nowhere else to be. When Minho gets frantic, pent-up desire bubbling over, Jisung knots his fingers in his hair, holds him back. Waits, sometimes, for Minho to open his eyes, so he can tell him, “Slow down, Minho,” and know he’s listening. Not that Minho really is. He keeps forgetting. Tries to sneak his hands under Jisung’s top. The first time, Jisung takes his hands, guides them up his chest, over pecs Minho wants to bite and suck. The second time, Jisung captures both his wrists in one hand, yanks them above both their heads.

So Jisung sets the pace. Minho tries to let him, if only because he gives Minho a bit more of his tongue with each kiss. Jerks him by the hair when Minho tries to bite him. And Minho grows to understand, muscles relaxing, head fogging, that Jisung likes him pliant. Pliant and just the right amount of eager. Eager enough to lean in, beg for another kiss when Jisung draws back to breathe, to look at him, to pet his hair from his eyes. Not so eager as to get handsy through Jisung’s basketball shorts, which is difficult because they really are so thin and Minho can feel so, so much of him—there’s so much—nestled against his ass.

He squeezes at Minho’s wrists, pulls at handfuls of Minho’s hair, holds Minho’s jaw in his calloused fingers like his bones are porcelain, fingers at his mouth like it’s malleable. Minho drips so much in his shorts there’s no way Jisung doesn’t notice; he’s hyper-aware of the way Jisung’s shirt hem rides up his stomach right where Minho arches into him, damp fabric on bare skin. And Minho tries so hard to pretend he doesn’t notice, because if Jisung does too he might pull his top down and cover that cute hair on his stomach Minho’s coveted since last summer. The same way Jisung won’t let him feel up his chest, won’t let him rub his big cock through his shorts. But Minho’s boiling, and he wants all of Jisung, wants him everywhere. He can only be good for so long, lips raw from Jisung’s sucking and cheeks stinging from Jisung’s stubble, before he’ll need Jisung to follow through on his promise to give him everything.

Maybe it’s that Jisung grows lax. Maybe he just… wants Minho like Minho wants him. But his hands gravitate away from Minho’s hair, from his face, to map out the span of his shoulders, the dip of his back, to squeeze at the meat of his ass. It transpires so subtly, though, that it doesn’t penetrate the thick fog over Minho’s mind until he’s hiccuping, rutting against Jisung’s lap like an animal, panting and letting Jisung kiss him through his slack-jawed babbling. And—he panics. Because when it comes to Jisung, he is easy to please, he doesn’t ask for very much at all, but if he’s held out this long and Jisung wants to give him the world then goddammit, he’s going to take the world on offer.

In a daze, Minho pushes away from Jisung’s chest. Rolls off him—right onto the carpeted floor, where he catches his breath in child’s pose, forehead to the rug fibers.

Through the rushing in his ears, he hears Jisung sit up. “Everything okay?” He sounds startled. Fair enough—Minho is senseless. But Jisung… Jisung is so sweet.

Minho blinks hazily. If he stays where he is, he’ll get a rug imprint on his forehead. But he can’t quite move… yet. So he slaps his hand at the air, swallows thickly around pooling saliva, and utters, “Yeah.”

“Are you—”

“Yeah.” Minho lurches onto his haunches. With the back of his hand, he rubs the drool from his mouth and chin. God, he’s snotting a little, too. Lovely. And all they’d been doing was kissing and frotting. Squatting like this is painful, so in full view of Jisung, he adjusts so his cock goes down the left leg of his shorts. He’s still breathing so heavily. “I. Just.” He licks his lips. Wants to pounce on Jisung, wants Jisung inside him—right here. On his nice couch. To ensure he doesn’t act on intrusive thoughts, he rises dizzily to his feet, scrubs the hair from his eyes. “I just want… everything,” he explains slurringly. Looks down as his shoulders fall from their shrug and his hands slap his thighs. He’s tenting his pajama shorts comically.

When they lock eyes, Jisung gives him a funny smile. “Do you?”

Minho nods, determined. Then declares, airy, “I’m going upstairs.”

Jisung hums, still smiling. “Would you like me to join you?”

“Yes.” Minho turns. Staggers until he can grip the stair railing. “But not right now.”

“Not right now?”

“No.”

“Then… when?”

“Use your best judgment.”

Minho trundles up the stairs to the sound of Jisung’s fading laughter.

Senses returning, he beelines for Jisung’s bedroom. Turns on a lamp or two, because the sun has nearly set. There’s a full-length mirror in the corner, and Minho goes to stand before it, verges on melting down because Jisung was perceiving him like this?

There’s nothing to be done about his swollen lips. He discards his sweaty top and nasty shorts in… well, Jisung’s laundry basket. Then he picks up the red robe. It dangles from his fingers as he evaluates himself, stark naked, from head to toe. He sighs, rolls his eyes away, and slips into the robe. Whatever. Jisung already said he was perfect. He wouldn’t take that back now, would he?

Minho hurries into the bathroom, checks his teeth, rinses out his mouth. Smooths out Jisung’s sheets, props the door open so when Jisung finally turns the bend at the stairs, the first thing he’ll see is the bed.

The bed, where Minho perches. He ties the robe. Then he waits.

After settling, he only need wait a minute or so, and still he manages to psyche himself out twice. Jisung ascends the stairs slowly, turning off lights as he goes, darkening the downstairs before he turns, fingers skimming the glass panel guarding the stairway. When his eyes come to rest on Minho, he smiles. Shakes his head. Then he drops, absurdly, to his knees.

And he’s still a whole hallway away. Minho, legs crossed, laughs abashedly. Leans backward onto his hands. “Get up,” he calls. His voice is too loud in the big house under the weight of darkness. It’s just them. Just them.

Jisung grins, a silly smile that makes Minho lightheaded, and drags himself to his feet. Makes a show of contorting his face in pain. Minho stifles a giggle.

The shuffle of Jisung’s house slippers is really rather goofy. And when Jisung comes into the bedroom doorway, hand on the doorframe, he looks Minho up and down… and up. Shakes his head again, hair falling in his hazy eyes. He shifts, pops his hip, and the heft of his cock is glaringly obvious, bunched up in his shorts.

Minho can feel his skin grow tacky underneath the robe. He stares at Jisung, determined not to crack. If Jisung’s ever dreamt of him, he wants to be that. He wants to be a dream. “What’re you waiting for?” he mutters.

Jisung chuckles, toes out of his slippers. “I’m a pretty patient guy.”

“Well, I’m not.” Minho squirms at the way the fabric draped over Jisung’s crotch moves with him. “And I’ve already been patient. I’ve been good an entire year.”

“You were very good.” Jisung approaches the bed’s edge, so Minho lays back on his elbows. The robe still covers most of him, even if it parts loose at his chest. He tilts his head, lowers his eyelashes.

Jisung’s gaze is soft. His arms hang lank at his sides. He tells Minho, “You’re beautiful.”

And Minho has to look away. It feels intimate. He wants it, he wants more, and yet he can’t handle it. “Shh,” he reprimands, flustered. Kicks out at Jisung’s leg, making Jisung laugh. Then he meets his eyes. “Tell me again.”

Jisung grins. “You,” he begins—voice low, so low, at a frequency that vibrates under Minho’s skin, inside his bones—kneeling again, “are so beautiful.” His warm hand starts at Minho’s exposed knee, runs down his shin to his ankle, lifts his leg straight. He kisses Minho’s instep, lets his leg come to a rest… knee hooked over Jisung’s shoulder. Minho only breathes, chest in tremors. Claws at the sheets. It’s futile, his nails are so short. “Can I untie this, baby?” murmurs Jisung, parting Minho’s legs so the robe falls modestly between them.

Minho sucks on his bottom lip. He feels… blurry. His neck goes so hot his ears ring. “I know you must think I’m,” he clears his throat, “a ballerina, or whatever, but I’m not in the same shape I was when I was actually dancing—”

“Minho.” Jisung is between his legs. So warm, so sure. His fingers graze through the fine hair on Minho’s raised thigh. “I’m sorry. But… I want you. All of you.” He holds eye contact, though he tilts his head so he can press his lips to the inside of Minho’s knee. “And I don’t care.” Bows his head, mouths lower, where Minho’s inner thigh is twitchy and pale. His hand canvases up Minho’s opposite thigh, onto the robe, to tuck thick knuckles under the knot at his waist. “Can I?”

Minho reclines so his shoulder blades touch the mattress. He shields his face with his hands, simply breathing, his body more alive than his mind, his muscles and his skin and his heart all responding to Jisung’s call. Then he uncovers his face and breathes, “Yes.”

Jisung unwraps him like he’s trying to preserve the paper on a gift box. He’s on top of Minho and between his legs, paring back the robe, cupping him under the jaw; kissing his mouth, his chin, his neck. His hands smooth over Minho’s stomach and thighs while he sucks on his nipples in turn, before he trails his mouth down Minho’s tummy, strong, curious hands kneading at his waist where it’s soft. Minho surrenders to the point of half-cognizance; his fingers are light in Jisung’s hair, barely-there, and he hums and keens to tell Jisung what he likes, which is everything. Jisung is so gentle, so reverent, so much so he makes Minho feel stupid for the flutter in his chest and the vertigo in his head. He has enough sense, at least, to realize dimly that Jisung’s still wearing his shirt. He hooks his fingers in its collar when Jisung’s just about to deposit himself between Minho’s thighs, and makes a petulant sound. And he loves it, the way Jisung glances up at him, licks his shiny lips, and rises, amenably, to tug his t-shirt off.

Minho hums. He did that. And god, he’s so pleased about it. Jisung’s already getting back down to business but all Minho can do is dazedly admire the strong, dependable shape of him, his golden skin, the way he wears the ghost of an undershirt-shaped tan. Minho would like to see him lay out in the sun. Minho would like to lick the sun-induced sweat from his skin. And he holds his head up to watch Jisung’s arms flex until his neck hurts and he can’t anymore and he gives himself to the feeling of his thighs splayed on Jisung’s hard shoulders and Jisung’s tongue dragging up his cock.

Jisung hums musingly. “You got so wet downstairs, baby, didn’t you?” Minho doesn’t watch, but the sensation judders through his body as Jisung strokes his cock, wets his tip and blows and suckles on it. Eyes clenched shut, he can hear it. Jisung’s spit is noisy. “I can taste it.”

Minho inhales so hard it stings. Colors dance behind his eyelids as Jisung takes him into his mouth. And he thinks Jisung has to have sucked a dick—or five—in his lifetime. When? Just how long ago? But what does it matter, really, when he’s Minho’s right now, when he responds to Minho’s thighs boxing his ears by grabbing rough handfuls of his ass.

Jisung makes him tremble, makes his thighs twitch and his stomach jump and his hips jitter into the tireless, measured suction of his hot mouth. Slow and intentional, as with everything he does, like he wants to wring out Minho’s every last drop of composure. But Jisung has no idea that by virtue of it being him, just him, Minho feels it all the more acutely.

He’s tweaking at his own nipples where Jisung had kissed him only moments ago, breathing hard, struggling against Jisung’s grip pinning him to the bed, when it hits him that he’s flickering like a candle in the wind. He cannot, by any means, enter an orgasmic stupor yet. So he whines, “No, no,” and sticks his foot against Jisung’s shoulder. Jisung resurfaces—noisy, again, when Minho’s cock slips from his mouth—and says, “You didn’t like it, baby?” so Minho only whines louder—“No”—because that’s wrong, he did, he liked it so much. But now poor Jisung thinks he’s done something wrong, crawling over Minho with the loveliest inquisitive doe eyes.

Minho barely gives him room to speak. He twines his arms around Jisung’s neck, drags him into a kiss. Loses himself in letting Jisung kiss him, over and over, confident and practiced and so good. But then he goes to fling his buzzing legs around Jisung’s middle and recalls Jisung's stupid basketball shorts, feels them catch on the sweat coating his skin. Recalls Jisung’s cock, which he needs—yesterday. Minho locks his ankles and thigh muscles, arches off the bed and pushes up into him, frantic, panting. When Jisung’s teeth finally let his lip go, Minho whimpers, “Fuck me,” and gets to hear Jisung moan for the first time, so gravelly he nearly blacks out.

Jisung helps Minho get rid of the robe. Finally removes his basketball shorts, too, and the logo briefs he’s got on underneath.

Of course Jisung is hung. Of course he’s been hung his whole time. And Minho has a one-track mind, so when Jisung knee-walks back onto the bed with lube and a condom—condoms, god, Minho wonders when he bought them, if he’s had them, when he’s last used them, if the box is new—and his cock pink and bobbing from a thatch of dark hair, Minho presses his knees together and stupidly blubbers, “You’re so big,” like he’s drunk on the fact and watches too much porn.

Jisung piques an eyebrow, fans Minho’s thighs into a perfect straight angle against the mattress. Smiles a little, too.

It’s bad, it’s so bad, yet Minho can’t help but think the last and only time he was fingered under this roof, he’d thought of Jisung, yearned for him to hear. And now he has him. His fingers, too. Manifestation… does not fucking work. But six-hour-long implied-booty-call commutes do.

Jisung fingers him like he’s a virgin. Like he’ll want to fit four inside Minho before his dick ever enters the splash zone. Against the bud of Jisung’s lips, Minho breathes, “You know I’ve taken dick before, right?” and Jisung laughs in apology, hushed.

“Got carried away.”

Minho clings to Jisung’s face, fingers twisting up his sideburns, into his hair. “I like it.” Then he gasps, “Ah,” when Jisung prods at him just right.

Jisung licks his lips. His eyes scope out Minho’s face, greedy. “You ever date guys?” he mutters. God knows why he asks, it’s not really dirty talk, but Minho doesn’t care. His horned-up brain grabs it and runs wild for the hills. Thinking of dating Jisung makes his aching cock give a kick, so maybe it is dirty.

“Yeah,” he whispers, heady. His whole frame shakes as he squeezes pointedly around Jisung’s fingers. Jisung is so close Minho can’t read anything in his blur of an expression. Then Jisung kisses near his mouth, his jaw, and Minho breathes out a whine, head tipping back. His nails scrabble pathetically at Jisung’s scalp. “I’m into—everyone.” Everyone. But I only think of you. Every time, for the past year, I’ve thought of you. Then, panicked, because he needs Jisung and doesn’t want to deter him in any way but is also inexplicably clinging to vestiges of his pragmatism, “Ah, you can bite me but below the collar, please, summer intensives start Monday and the studio AC is shitty and—mm.” His brain turns to mush when Jisung feeds him his tongue, head numb and fingertips tingling and hips jolting as Jisung pets deep and wet inside him. Half of him wants to lay there, inert, let Jisung’s able touch guide him; the remaining half will turn black and die if he doesn’t get to feel Jisung’s cock now.

Abruptly, he hooks his ankles behind Jisung’s thighs, urges Jisung toward him, into him, one hand reaching to grapple at his ass, the other slinking between them to wrap around Jisung’s cock, thick and hot and long-awaited. Just the contact makes Minho moan, slack-jawed, against Jisung’s mouth, and he can feel the restrained way Jisung shudders but counters Minho’s need with patience. The way he catches himself against the mattress when Minho makes him stumble. Minho feels like his head overflows, because Jisung is still fingering him, not even to stretch him, just to render him dumb, and he turns his head from Jisung’s kiss, fingertips toying with the head of Jisung’s cock, to exhale, “Can you get on your back. Please.”

Jisung smudges his lips to Minho’s cheek. Lifts his head to give Minho space to breathe. From the way he smiles slowly before he says it, he must know just how cheesy it’ll be. “Since you asked so nicely.”

Jisung lays flat. He’s gorgeous, thick hair fanned out on the pillow, chest spread and rib cage expanding with his every breath. Minho acts like his entire body isn’t already giving out beneath him as he gingerly gets up, lube dripping down the inners and backs of his thighs, spit down his chin. But he’s so senselessly magnetized to Jisung’s cock that he thinks he’d make it there regardless of lost feeling in his limbs.

Minho crawls over Jisung. Jisung swears through his teeth, like he’s not expecting the view, for Minho’s knees to spread before him, ass propped up and exposed.

Minho’s only dimly aware of it, though. He drops his leaden head so he can run his tongue over the length of Jisung’s cock, gripping at the base. His girth makes Minho’s fingers look sad and stubby. And just that alone would be enough to make Minho drip, for his hole to flare around the probing of Jisung’s finger, but then he notices the tattoo on Jisung’s hip, just deep enough into his v-line that his low-slung sweatpants have kept it hidden all this time. Kept it a secret from Minho. It’s… of a little island. And it might be meaningful and precious, but all it does is make Minho’s mouth water over Jisung’s cock. He covers the tattoo with his hand, slides that hand around to squeeze at Jisung’s balls. Arches his back and squirms at his waning command over his muscles when Jisung’s palms spread his ass, clap onto the meat of his thigh, mold and jiggle it. Like he’s marveling, like he’s mesmerized—and Minho loves to be mesmerizing. He rocks back, fist pumping his spit down the length of Jisung’s cock, and breathes, “I’d sit on your face but I wanna sit on your cock more.”

Jisung jerks in his hold. It makes something stir deep in Minho’s stomach, opens pockets of shivers all over his body. The muscles in Jisung’s legs flex, too, as he sinks his heels into the mattress. Minho drools, thighs wobbling. “You wanna put this on me?” murmurs Jisung, tossing the condom down the bed, and Minho is relieved, comforted, to hear the slight tremor in his voice. So it’s not just Minho.

There’s a little tear in the packet, like Jisung knew Minho wouldn’t be able to get it open on his own. Not with his gummy fingers. Minho gives Jisung’s tip a sloppy kiss to show his gratitude. Bites his tongue in concentration as he rolls the condom on, peeks over his shoulder and seats his bottom against Jisung’s chest once he has.

Jisung’s open palms circle over the rounds of his hips, kind, kneading. And when Minho catches his eye, he smiles faintly.

Minho’s heart gives a resounding knock. Just a smile from Jisung feels like… approval. Like a pat on the head—or a nice pat on the ass. An attestation that he likes Minho, that he wants him. “You okay?” Jisung asks softly, hand trailing up Minho’s spine. He sounds like he maybe can’t breathe under Minho’s weight, but he’s also not complaining.

Minho licks his lips, flashes Jisung a grin and cranes his arm out to grab the lube without ever un-seating himself. He sounds tipsy when he declares, “I’m gonna ride you.”

Jisung laughs, hoarse. “Okay, baby.”

When he sinks down on Jisung’s cock, his jaw locks so wide it feels wired in place, tensed and nearly painful. He claws at Jisung’s knees. It stretches and it burns, all the way up to the heat in his neck and face. He whines, airy and open, squeezing tight when his ass presses down into the cradle of Jisung’s hips.

“Holy fuck,” Jisung exhales, grappling at the flesh of Minho’s ass. And Minho laughs, pitchy and a little deranged, a little gone already, as he hangs his chin toward his chest. He’ll take not seeing, if he can give Jisung this view.

He works himself over Jisung’s cock, sweat beading at his hairline, his upper lip. Jisung lets him work, lets him do as he pleases, lets him revel in feeling out his fullness. In wringing the low sighs out of Jisung, the gentle, almost mindless slaps to his ass. Minho could tell him to hit harder, but he doesn’t want him to. Not this time, at least. He likes that Jisung wants to appreciate him, to touch him for the contact, for the feel of his skin, and not just for the red welt of a handprint.

Minho works, tireless—until he tires. Until Jisung bends his legs again, fits his hands around Minho’s waist. Tells him, “Sit back, honey,” and guides his hands so they’re propped against Jisung’s warm chest, behind him, where he can’t see. But Minho does, leans back into him, wobbling and testing his stability. He pulls his legs out from underneath him so they can splay, open, to match Jisung’s.

But any remaining control leaks out of his muscles when Jisung digs his heels in, fucks up into him. Minho’s elbows nearly buckle, and he cries out to the ceiling, to the skylight, where the sun has faded. Everything Jisung kept in check—all last summer, all of tonight—Minho feels now. Inside, he shakes and shudders, a buzzing between his ears, a heat in his bones, as Jisung pumps into him, fucks him deep, again and again and again, punching defeated noises out of Minho’s chest. It gets slippery with sweat underneath Minho’s palms and he slips but goes nowhere; so strong is Jisung’s grip on his waist. And he wonders, distantly, if they’ll leave fingerprint bruises on each other from holding on so tight.

When he peels his eyes open, drops his chin, he sees sweat drip down his chest and mingle with the smudges of precum on the folds of his stomach, shiny in the room’s low glow. Feels his muscles jump abashedly when saliva drips from his apparently open mouth to join the mix. His cock bounces obscenely. And he can’t even do anything to help it, any of it, body fading into sweet depletion. He can only feel himself where Jisung grabs him, where his cock spears him open. Like only Jisung’s touch can remind him he’s sensate.

Minho’s jaw is open against the—the sheets now. He doesn’t remember getting there, getting on his side, Jisung behind him, arm hooked under his leg. Then Jisung reaches so Minho’s knee slots over his elbow, gets his calloused hand around Minho’s cock, and it’s practically one, two, three before Minho spasms on the sheets, coating his chest and Jisung’s knuckles and Jisung’s nice sheets white. Panting, his voice comes from somewhere deep within him, deeper than his throat, as he reaches back for Jisung’s neck to mumble with waning lucidity, “Cum in—me. Cum in me.”

It won’t really be in him, no, god, he’d love that, but he wants to feel it still. Feel Jisung use what’s left of him, slice through that thick, muggy fog over Minho’s mind and body. And the way Jisung hugs his waist so tight, face tucked in his neck, is precious, like he’s burying himself, all of him, so deep into Minho when he cums.

He holds Minho, continues to, until it feels like their breaths come in tandem. Strokes his hand idly over Minho’s stomach though he’s made an utter mess of himself. Lets Minho onto his back, leans over to kiss him lightly on his lips, though he’s made a mess of himself there, too. Distracts him with these kisses as he pulls out of Minho, who feels carved satisfyingly hollow. Hazily, Minho smiles, though he can’t see clear or straight, eyes crossing. So with bumbling inaccuracy, he entwines his arms around Jisung’s neck, wrists lax, to keep him close. Jisung eases himself down, careful to not put any weight onto Minho though he really could if he wanted. Minho could take it. He strokes Minho’s hair from his eyes as they kiss. Jisung is careful, even, about unsticking the strands of Minho’s hair glued to his forehead with sweat.

There’s a part of Minho that wants to say thank you, but Jisung makes him feel like he doesn’t have to. He did say he’d give Minho everything. Never asked for anything in return. Minho feels so lucky.

Jisung tells him again, against his lips, that he’s beautiful. Minho hums, pleased. Gives the nape of Jisung’s neck a scratch. Because Jisung had turned him inside out and still, thank god, he is beautiful.

Jisung’s nose is pressed to his hair when he murmurs, “You use my shampoo earlier?”

Minho is half-asleep. He bites his lip. In a moment, he’ll ask Jisung if they can take a bath, use that big tub in his bathroom, the one by the window that overlooks the lake. If Jisung can carry him there. For now, he says, “Yep.”

Jisung chuckles. Minho feels the vibration of his chest as he does. Minho feels content. And Minho feels, with startling clarity despite the warmth engulfing him and the lube dripping out of him, that he waited all this time, came all this way, knowing there would be no getting Jisung out of his system.

There’s an Adirondack chair on the pier. That’s new.

Minho’s muscles ache. He sets his mug of tea on the chair’s arm, pulls the flaps of his red robe tight around his body, and eases into the seat.

It is late in the morning—late for Minho. The sun scintillates on the water, and the air is quiet, calm, until a scream of glee echoes across the lake. Then another. On the shore opposite, where the red house is, there’s a pier—also new. Minho doesn’t recall it from last summer’s boat ride. Where he sits, the splashes of children leaping from the pier sound like coins plip-plopping into a fountain, one wish at a time.

He sips his tea. Back home, Yunho will be just starting warmups with the Beginner I class. Minho smiles at the thought of grouchy kids on a Saturday morning. He’s mostly in the shade, but the sun is white-hot on his legs until the clouds swallow it. A barely-there wind brings no cooling relief but flutters his hair, urges it into his eyes, and there’s a rhythmic sloshing that echoes on the water, growing louder, as—he squints—a blue-striped floaty sloshes toward him, in the distance.

Minho is reaching the dregs of his tea when, perhaps ten feet off from the pier’s end, the floaty comes to a stop. And a head rises from behind it, hair matted, big eyes blinking.

Minho lifts a hand and waves.

The head disappears back under. When it resurfaces, the floaty is traveling back whence it came.

Then there’s a light touch on Minho’s shoulder—a hand. Minho likes to think he’s a master in the art of remaining unbothered, but still, he’s never known himself to feel so calm as to barely flinch like this. He glances at it, the hand, at Jisung’s tanned knuckles, the thumb smoothing over Minho’s shoulder. Tentative, almost.

“A family moved in there a few months back,” murmurs Jisung. “Into the red house. They have a few young kids.”

Minho bites back a smile, eyes fixed on the shore. “I may have just had the pleasure of making acquaintance.”

Jisung hums. “Maybe they’ll tell their parents about Mr. Han’s new friend.”

Minho chuckles. His teeth clink the edge of his mug. He wants to twist his neck, invite Jisung’s fingers into his mouth, like, immediately, but that’s far too rogue. “You’d be lucky,” he says instead. “I make a pretty decent friend.”

Does he, though? Debatable, when Minho recalls where he is. Whose pier he’s on.

Jisung squeezes his shoulder through the fluff of the robe. He doesn’t speak for a good while. And when he finally does, “I thought you’d left,” he admits, small.

Minho blinks. The floaty is a minuscule dot on the gray-blue. “Like…” He pauses. “Left left?”

“Mhm.” Jisung’s hand is inside the collar of his robe now, thumb massaging his shoulder, where it’s sore.

Minho scoffs. He tips his head backward so he sees Jisung upside down. Sees Jisung awake, for the first time that day. Muscle tee, board shorts. His eyes look a bit like they’d rather be closed still. Later, Minho might ask him, politely and wheedlingly, to not shave. “I told you I was going outside,” he insists.

Jisung blinks down at him. “What?”

“When I got up. I told you.”

“You did?”

“Yes.” Minho rights his head. Recrosses his legs, fixes the hem of the robe. “You just sleep like a fucking rock.”

“Oh.” Jisung puts some weight in his hand. Then, musingly: “No one’s told me that in a while.”

Minho’s lips twitch. He sets his mug in his lap, folds his arms snugly over his chest, and clears his throat. “Guess you haven’t changed much, Han.”

Jisung’s hand disappears. It feels like a loss, until it’s cupping Minho under the chin, tipping his head backward so Jisung can kiss him.

Minho licks his lips after, triumphant. Presses them together tight, scanning Jisung from beneath his lashes though he’s halfway to a crick in his neck. “How’s it feel?”

Jisung’s sorting Minho’s hair again with the utmost concentration. Sweet. “How’s what feel?”

“This. You like it?” Minho bats his eyes. “Being taller than me for once?”

Jisung tongues the inside of his cheek, looks out on the water, contemplative with brows in a furrow. A muscle in his jaw pops as he grinds it. And, very softly, he murmurs, “I should spank you for that, darling.”

Minho cackles in delight. It echoes on the water every which way.

Is it a phase?

Felix tells Minho it is. Tells him he’ll get over it, move on… but while he has it, he should milk it for what it’s worth.

Felix says he should really tell Haebin, particularly if he thinks it’ll last. Felix is also a blabbermouth, but Felix is an ocean away, fucking his dissertation advisor. Minho doesn’t think he needs his guard up.

Again: is it a phase?

Minho isn’t so sure himself. Anyway, if it is… how else would one navigate life, if not in phases?

And until he finds the answer, Minho will continue to disembark the metro at his home stop, unwieldy dance bag bouncing on his hip, and round the corner onto his street with a jog in his step. To greet Hoseok—lounging against his car with a cigarette and carelessly flouting idling laws—with a curt nod on his way into his apartment to have a quick shower and grab the overnight bag he’d left by the door. And a coat—he needs a good coat. It gets cold up by Jisung, colder than the city ever does.

They’ll be driving late into the night, but after months of sporadic visits, Minho has honed his skill of zonking out in the backseat, horizontal, head pillowed on his backpack. And it’s a long weekend, anyhow. He can take his time. He can sleep in with Jisung, maybe stick around long enough in bed behind closed curtains to kiss him good morning. Slip under the sheets and show him how much he missed him.

Maybe it is a phase. Maybe it’s unsustainable, dropping off the face of the earth once a month with a new paltry excuse to go hole up in the woods, cook for two in a gourmet kitchen, get fucked in said gourmet kitchen.

Last time, Jisung floated the idea of going on a trip. Somewhere that isn’t the little pub or the butchery or the health foods store in the sleepy town nearest Jisung’s home. Somewhere far enough they’ll need a train or a plane. Maybe they’ll go away for the new year—it’s not as if Minho has anyone else he’d rather kiss at midnight—if only because, by then, the winter holidays will be winding down. And Haebin won’t be visiting.

A phase… precarious. Maybe Jisung will get bored first. Hell, maybe that’ll be Minho.

A phase, dishonest. Certainly. It would be easiest, really, to let it fizzle out, implicitly never speak of it. Let memories be memories.

Minho climbs into the backseat of Hoseok’s car. It’ll be past four, closer to dawn than dusk, when they make it to Jisung’s. But, maybe, like last time, Jisung will wait up for him. Open the front door with drowsy eyes, wrap Minho in his arms, say nothing about the enormous bouquet waiting in a crystal vase on the kitchen counter like a welcome home.

Maybe Minho will take the flowers home again. Maybe half of them will wilt before they ever see the inside of his apartment.

Precarious, dishonest… sure. But it is also warm. Precious. It can be everything at once, hanging in the balance like the dewy spider’s web in the wind, strung between those branches where Minho once left a red swimsuit and did not look back. If it can be everything… then maybe it is love, too.