Archive of Our Own

“Seungmin-ah,” Jisung murmurs, half of his name lost in the sheet his face is squished against. A frown crosses his features, overcolors the drowsiness of his remaining slumber. “You’re awake already?”

Seungmin lets his gaze fall and steady to Jisung’s face, curling a soft smile. “Mm,” he lies, curls his fingers around Jisung’s wrist and holds it like that — a warm weight in the cusp of his palm. “Did you have a good dream,” he asks, voice thinning.

Jisung shifts, then, the bed creaking under their moving weights, and close his fingers around Seungmin’s hand, just below his elbow — a familiar gesture Seungmin had done to him when Jisung grabbed his hand during one of the campus’ events, shaky pupils and trembling feet attempting to find an anchor.

Are you okay? Jisung’s eyes speak, yet his voice successfully rings in Seungmin’s head.

Sweet. And soothing.

There’s a growing dampness behind his eyes and Seungmin thinks he’s going to be sick. He breathes in the morning air and it’s stuck in his nose, morphs itself into a sniffle. His heart feels like it’s constantly breaking and gluing itself back.

“I just,” he tries, but his voice breaks.

Jisung slips a hand under him and curls it around his ribs. He pulls Seungmin close so his lips graze over the slipping collar of Jisung’s t-shirt, tears pooling in the dip of skin.

Jisung’s hand rubs his back so gently a sob wracks out of his chest.

Seungmin doesn’t like to cry. Doesn’t like to be seen crying — it shames him. His single-lidded eyes don’t puff and swell after he cries, so the remaining of his breakdown won’t litter all over his face. So he won’t feel like crawling out of his skin after being forced to face the five-year-old version of his heart.

“It’s okay,” Jisung murmurs, his words vibrating next to Seungmin’s skull.

Seungmin cannot comprehend what is okay, because nothing around him seems to be okay, at all. There’s a dying succulent sitting on the windowsill. There’s a journal with three empty pages and a page half-filled with total gibberish. There’s a pile of laundry collecting dust behind the closed door, crumpled and bunched like a small kid hiding from the world.

“I don’t think there’s anything that should make me feel this tired.” The words finally spill into the knuckles of his trembling hand instead of another sob. “I just,” — he sniffles, and Jisung kisses the crown of his head ever so gently — “I’m so tired. There’s so many things I have to do but I don’t want to do anything.”

Jisung hums. “Having a reason to be tired is not a must, you know,” he whispers, and Seungmin is glad he doesn’t pull away or prompt Seungmin to get off his shoulder. “You know what you have to do, right?”

“I know,” he mumbles, breathing out a sigh that makes Jisung shudder. “I have to do laundry.” He has to. It has been piling there for three days simply because he doesn’t think he has energy to separate the colors from the white. The fabric softener is on the high cabinet and he will have to pull a chair to reach it.

He can’t even get out of bed without wrestling with the desire to just roll on the floor.

“Mm. I hate laundry,” Jisung says instead, his giggle warms Seungmin’s heart. “What was it that kept you from doing it?”

“It’s stupid,” he whines. People get tired of serious things, not this. People get tired of work, of responsibility, of exams. Not something as simple as doing chores.

Jisung laughs again. “I promise it’s not. What is it?”

“I have to separate the white from the colors.”

“I thought you’re going to say you can’t reach the cabinet to take out the fabric softener.”

“That too,” he admits. “Don’t be a smug. I’m taller than you, silly.”

“I know you are,” Jisung says, and suddenly he rolls them over until Seungmin’s back hits the mattress. His elbows find their places under Seungmin’s knees and he hauls him up, drawing a yelp out of him.

“What—” Seungmin half-screams, another startled yelp catches his throat as he hits Jisung’s shoulder with his chin. “Jisung!” he yells, face growing warm as Jisung simply giggles, hopping off bed and sprints out of the room.

Seungmin can’t bite back a smile that had formed in the tip of his mouth. His giggles are quiet, most of them lost in the dip of Jisung’s collarbone as he loops his hands around the thin neck, breathing in his warmth.

Jisung lands a brief kiss on his temple and sits him on the kitchen counter, marble cold under his thighs. “You have to eat,” he states, ducks under the cabinet and pulls out a pan. He opens another cabinet above Seungmin’s head to grab a pair of chopsticks and kisses his cheek as he closes it. “What happened to Kim Seungmin who always eats three times a day?”

“Someone kidnapped him,” Seungmin jokes, fidgeting with the edge of his shorts.

Jisung frowns at that. “I gotta save my beloved then,” he says matter-of-factly, grabbing two eggs from the fridge with one hand and failing. The eggs slip from his fingers and meet their tragic fate on the wooden floor.

“Use both of your hands, Jisung-ah,” Seungmin laughs. He takes the chopstick from Jisung’s hand and places it on top of a napkin, neatly folded next to the stove.

Jisung also laughs, snickering through his way to grab tissues from the side, scooping the shattered eggs clumsily. Seungmin stops trying to help after Jisung yells “Don’t get off the counter!” for the third time.

He prompts on watching and laughing at the growing frown settling deep between his features instead, the yolk too sticky to be wiped with tissues only. “You gotta mop that,” he advises, giggling at the huff Jisung lets out.

“Whatever,” Jisung says, piling sheets of tissues together and wiping the floor as clean as it allows him, and calling it a day. “So,” he walks back with two eggs in a bowl this time, a proud look on his face. “Where were we?”

“I don’t know what you’re about to make but if you’re talking about conversation, you’re about to save your precious Kim Seungmin who eats three times a day.” He doesn’t mean to sound like sulking but he does anyway, a pout threatening to unfold.

Jisung chuckles. “Oh yeah, that.” He cracks the egg with such deep concentration his brows are knitted together, only separating as it cracks successfully without dragging any shells into the bowl. “Any Kim Seungmin is precious to me,” he mutters, in his fun, teasing tone, an eyebrow raised.

“Suuuuure.” Seungmin picks the eggshells from his hand, throws them to the trashcan below his feet. “What are you trying to make?”

Jisung whips the eggs in a bowl and snorts at his question. “What else am I capable of making without burning the kitchen down?”

“Omelette, then,” he concludes, then laughs as he presses the back of his hand on Jisung’s cheek. “Aaw, and here I thought I’d finally get to cook an omelette on your head.”

Jisung shakes his head with a smile as he flicks the knob, turning the stove alive. “Well I have bad news for you, my dear, I don’t get sick that often.” He giggles at the pout on Seungmin’s face and pours his beaten eggs into the pan.

“You sure that’s non-stick?” Seungmin teases, enjoying the sheer panic coloring Jisung’s face for brief seconds.

“Don’t joke like that,” cried Jisung, poking Seungmin’s cheek with the other end of his chopstick. “I got them mixed once, Seungmin-ah, just once. I know the difference now.”

Seungmin laughs again, but then he realizes his cheeks ache from laughing too much and the implication his overwhelmed mind comes up with is far too terrifying than he had imagined. He looks up to Jisung, all smiley after successfully flipping the omelette without tearing it up, and he feels sick.

He feels like crying again.

There’s a fear of the moment not lasting for eternity and it claws his insides, bones rattling with the force of it all. His hands are shaky as he hugs his own knees. He breathes heavily and fails in stopping an exhale to be caught in his throat. He clenches his eyes close and it feels like he’s underwater.

A soft voice surges through his ears and the caught breath falls heavily out of his lips. It feels like he’s been hauled from the water again, the air reek of eggs and faint trace of burning iron.

He opens his eyes and sees a hand that isn’t his own resting on top of his knee: a gentle, warm weight akin to anchor.

Next to him, Jisung is humming a song.

He still has chopsticks in hand circling around his omelette, pulling the browning edges from the pan surface. Their eyes meet in a brief moment whose impact lasts longer than intended, and he smiles.

And Jisung’s smile — it’s all sun, stars, tenderness, and magic.

There’s a click of the stove being turned off, and Seungmin thinks Jisung will have to take a plate from the other side of the cabinet now, will have to leave him for a brief seconds, will have to leave—

“Mm,” he suddenly hums, his cheeks are full when Seungmin looks at him. “T’is is ‘ood,” he mumbles, then cuts a piece of omelette straight from the pan and offers it in front of Seungmin’s bitten lips. “Eat,” he says.

Seungmin lets his mouth be nudged open by the chopstick and eats the omelette piece. Lets the pure taste of egg pervade his sensory. Of course Jisung forgot to add salt. He wants to laugh or nag him for it, but finds himself giving him a series of rapid nods and a thumbs-up instead.

Jisung grins. “Does it taste okay? I feel like I’m forgetting something.” He cuts up another piece.

It’s the salt, silly, Seungmin wants to say, but the words dissolve in his tongue, mixed with the eggs and faint sweetness of tangerines. So he forgets about words and lets his mouth fall open, lets himself be seen wanting, lets Jisung spoil him rotten despite all the clumsiness clinging onto his limbs.

Next to him, Jisung’s fingers squeeze around his knee in tenderness similar to the way he feeds him another omelette piece.

And another.

And another.

“Now,” Jisung says, collecting all the dishes and shoving them into the sink, “I just need to feed you two more times and my precious, healthy Kim Seungmin will be saved.” He glances at Seungmin’s room and his face shifts into a gentle smile. “Should we do laundry now?”

Seungmin nods. “Mm. But you get to sit around this time, I want to do it myself.”

Jisung snickers, nudges his knees apart and stands between them, a hand on Seungmin’s neck. He looks at his eyes as if they are the only lights in his world. “Okay,” he whispers, as if it’s a little secret.

It’s not. Jisung always thinks if he doesn’t do something for him he will be thrown away for good. It’s not true. Jisung is the only stable presence in his life. Jisung doesn’t need to earn his love at all.

Love has never meant to be earned, anyway.

And Seungmin will always choose to love Jisung.

Even if the world is ending, even if Jisung is fate and Seungmin is time and their engagement with each other puts the world into tangled threads of chaos; Seungmin will choose him again.

I love you, he wants to say, but the words feel like they have been uttered too often to keep its precious meaning, so he presses a small kiss on the corner of Jisung’s mouth instead, and hopes it’s enough.

Jisung’s lips crescent into a smile.

It is enough, then, he thinks, the remnants of his joy spilling as little giggles as Jisung takes him into his arms again, drags a chair with him and lets Seungmin pick the fabric softener out of the cabinet.

“Now we separate these,” Jisung says, then laughs at the glare Seungmin shoots at him. “Sorry, you separate these.”

Jisung hums another song as he watches Seungmin throwing one clothes on top of another, his voice soft and soothing. Sometimes Seungmin hums along, if the song is familiar enough. Sometimes he doesn’t. Not because it’s unfamiliar, rather because Jisung’s voice is clearer in his ears without the mix of his own.

It doesn’t take that much time until the clothes are separated and ready to be washed. For a brief second he’s already on the path of berating himself over what exactly has been keeping him from doing it, but Jisung hums another song and the path disintegrates into the thin air.

“You did it,” Jisung says, flopping over Seungmin’s figure sprawled on the floor. Next to them, the washing machine whirrs to life. Jisung pokes the exposed skin under his lifted tee with a giggle.

“I did it,” he muses, then grabs Jisung’s hand that keeps poking around his belly. “What are you doing?”

Jisung looks up to him with a pout. “I’m giving you a reward. Have you heard about positive reinforcement?”

“Jisung,” he laughs, a mix of shame and insecurity burns in his chest. Fingers balling on the edge of his t-shirt and tries to pull them back down, to cover the skin that should never be exposed in the first place, not worth to be displayed, not-

“Shush,” Jisung hushes him, and he’s already trailing kisses all over Seungmin’s stomach, his head nuzzling onto the skin. His touch a gentle warmth littered across his skin.

He rolls around to settle in between Seungmin’s legs, nudging them apart with a sly smile. “Can I?” he asks, playful glint clouding his eyes.

“You’re insane.” Seungmin deadpans, tries to cover his burning face but that means letting Jisung disappear from his sight. He doesn’t want that.

Jisung hums into his skin.

His whole body vibrates in such intense frequency Seungmin feels like he’s about to explode.

“You love me,” Jisung simply states. His voice is soft, in a low range of tone, yet it carries such raw urgency and vulnerability — one Seungmin has seen frequently enough to recognize even the tiniest tip of its existence peeking behind Jisung’s careful facade.

“Mm.” He hums. Let his fingers curl under Jisung’s jaw to cradle his cheek gently. “I love you.”

A smile blooms on Jisung’s face, his lips curling petals of hibiscus. White teeth peeking behind them in something Seungmin can only define as lovable.

He wants to hug him. Wants to extend his hands so he can encase Jisung’s figure in a hug so big the world won’t be able to reach him. Wants to press him close so there’s not an inch of his skin without the remnants of Jisung’s warmth.

Jisung places a small, softest kiss on the skin above his waistband and pushes himself up, hovering above Seungmin’s body. “I love you,” he says again, his voice a tremble of hushed whimper.

It sounds like a promise, also a plea. Like a fragile request born from uncertainties.

Raising an eyebrow, Seungmin decides to reach behind his neck and experimentally pulls, a soft ‘oof’ falling from his lips as Jisung pliantly drops onto his chest; a face burying itself on the familiar neck.

Seungmin places a hand on Jisung’s back and feels a shaky sigh caressing his jugular. “Jisung?” he call, and tries to get up so they can sit — but Jisung is a dead weight over his body.

“Stay like this,” Jisung murmurs against his ear. It tickles, only a bit, but it is the softest tone Jisung’s voice ever reached. It sounds too much like a plea rather than a simple request.

Seungmin hums. His fingers find their way up to Jisung’s hair, mindlessly toying with the long ends under his right ear. He lets them drown in the flow and find themselves resting over the nape.

Gently, he reminds himself. Though he realizes his body doesn’t need any reminder when it comes to Jisung. It’s muscle memory, at this point.

The quiet hum. Fingers over skin.

Gentle, gentle.

Lovingly.

Then Jisung lets out the last, heavy sigh, and pulls his face out of Seungmin’s neck.

The next word Jisung mutters sounds like a muscle memory. “Sorry.”

Seungmin frowns. “You just hugged me.” Gently, he plants a peck over the smiling mole. “It’s nice,” he admits. “Why would you apologize for that?”

Jisung just smiles, but it wanes shakily over his face. “I want to take care of you,” he says, then, still with a troubled look on his face. “But I keep getting overwhelmed — in a good way — whenever I realize that I can take care of you if I want. That I have the ability to do it.”

“You do, silly,” Seungmin muses, a giggle sweet upon his tongue. “I don’t even like to be taken care of, but I let you do it.”

These are things he usually finds shameful to admit, and he’s always caught between either being severely emotionally constipated or a broken dam of emotions, but he wants to get past it.

For Jisung.

For himself.

For them.

He wants to try walk past the shame of being vulnerably seen and takes Jisung’s hand so he has a reminder that they can always rely on each other.

So when Jisung just smiles again — still equally shaky —, he curls his fingers around Jisung’s wrist and lets the dam spill. “You know, sometimes it’s overwhelming for me too,” he confesses, holding his gaze on Jisung’s eyes and feels his own eyes watering. “Sometimes, even I find it hard to believe that you’re here. And I find it hard to believe you’ll stay, as well.”

A frown settles in Jisung’s face, and he is quiet for a while. He blinks, once, then he speaks, “Baby, did I corrupt you?”

“Did you what?”

“No! I mean, like,” he laughs, although his laughter sounds too similar to empty cans clashing against each other to be called a laugh. “Those are my thoughts, usually, I never expected you to think like that…” — His eyes widened in surprise, seeming to realize something — “Wait, I didn’t mean it like, like you're not supposed to feel what you feel, I just- I mean, I didn’t think you would-”

“I got it,” Seungmin calms him, swallowing a laugh as he sees the tell-tale signs of rambling, panicking Jisung. “You definitely did not. I never believed in eternity, at all, you know? But now I just, yeah. I really, really want to spend eternity with you, and sometimes that desire itself is frightening.”

“I find all kinds of desire frightening,” Jisung says, eyebrows drawn together. He looks at Seungmin’s face and his smile finally looks genuine, but a trail of quiet tears runs down his cheek. “Like this. I want you so much but that scares me, a lot. I want to take care of you but it gives me, uh, control? And I fear I might, well, to put it simply: fuck it all up.”

“One day,” Seungmin airily says, “I’m seriously going to call the cops on you.”

Jisung laughs at that, the air feels easier to breathe in, but the warmth that had enveloped them is yet to dissipate. “See, I would’ve asked ‘the cops or a therapist’ now but I’m already seeing one on a weekly basis.”

Seungmin cracks out into a sudden laugh, it bubbles out of his throat and settles around them the way seafoam settles among sand.

“Don’t laugh at that,” Jisung faux-cries, shaking Seungmin’s shoulder as much as their position allows. “I’m seriously mentally fucked up, please, I’m a mess.”

At that last comment, Seungmin calms his laughter into soft giggles, patting the side of Jisung’s head and plants a kiss on his temple. “And unfortunately, I love you anyway,” he murmurs into his skin.

Jisung laughs, wipes a trail of tears with the back of his hand and grins. “Is it really something unfortunate?”

“Eeh,” Seungmin shrugs, then pulls both of them to sit — Jisung cross-legged on his lap. “I was talking with your brain and it seems to be not in the same team as you, so I assume it’s unfortunate for it.”

“It’s not always not in the same team with me,” Jisung argues, conjuring a pout. “Brain holds great power. And if I may quote the one and only Spiderman, ‘With great power comes great responsibility’. Sometimes my brain just-”

“Give up on responsibility and go apeshit?”

Jisung cracks up another laugh, a certain laughter of his that has his teeth shine in all its glory and his eyes disappear into little slits. The scrunching nose. The rattling shoulders. The way sunlight caresses his cheek in an adorning glow of gold.

Seungmin lets himself bask in the familiarity of Jisung’s fragments of joy.

“You know my brain too well,” said Jisung, then, after his laughter had subsided into a not-so-frequent chuckle. “I love you for that.”

Seungmin rolls his eyes in faux annoyance. “Quit being sappy, poet.”

“It’s my job!” he argues, jutting his lips out in an exaggerated attempt at a kiss which Seungmin silences with his palm.

Jisung’s fingers hold around his wrist and he plants little kisses on the back of his fingers instead.

Seungmin feels his breath hitch. Each kiss Jisung pressed into his skin reaches deep to the bone. His phalanx rattles; as if they’re about to hatch flowers. Like they have been ivory snow and spring caresses its surface.

“You’re my everything,” Jisung mutters, hushed and careful — each word threaded with care to form a sentence. “My breath,” — he removes his hand to hold around four of Seungmin’s fingers — “My home,” — kisses the back of his palm with a sweet smile — “My God.”

The soft laughter Seungmin lets out are warm. “What’s that, am I Jesus now?”

Jisung grins. “If  I say you’re better than him will someone call the cops on me?”

“Tune down your voice,” Seungmin says, going with his joke. “Then no one will hear.”

He gets a soft hum in return. “Now, what shall we do?”

“Wait for the laundry to finish,” Seungmin answers, pondering with his thoughts before deciding to pinch Jisung’s nose. “And I believe I’m getting a positive reinforcement present?”

Jisung looks amused. “Oh are you now?”

“You said it, not me.”

“Do you want the real thing, or?” Jisung lets the question hang in the air, already shuffling to sit with his knees around Seungmin’s thighs. He shifts his gaze back to meet his eyes, face twisting in a smug grin. “Hm?”

Seungmin wants to knee him on the crotch. But there’s something in the glint of Jisung’s clouded lenses that he is yet to figure out what. It’s there, peeking behind his pupil, a shadow lurking behind closed door. “Anything you want,” he says instead.

“I’m starting to think this is my present instead, sweetheart.”

“Am I not enough of a present already?”

Jisung lets out a pained laugh, then kisses the corner of his mouth. “You’re more than enough for me,” he says, lips curled into a sweet smile. “Should I wrap you in a bow?”

“Shut up,” Seungmin whines, warmth flooding his flesh and bones, gushing behind his veins like honey. “Have you ever, go all the way?”

Jisung frowns. “You know the answer to that.”

Seungmin does know. It’s there, in a series of confessions Jisung made in front of the apartment door, tears-streaked face and trembling hands clutching on Seungmin’s sleeve in fear the moment he let go Seungmin would crumble into ashes of his dreams.

It’s there, reflected in his practiced hands in the way they kept Seungmin steady as he succumbed to pleasure, shuddering through a tender little sigh as warmth flooded behind his sweatpants. In the careful kiss and the soothing words he whispered after.

He does know. But he doesn’t know how to confess his vulnerability without being asked — so he does conversation like one does fishing; push and pull for a question whose answer will be his confession.

It’s easier, that way.

“Oh,” Jisung exclaims, then, an imaginary lightbulb pops over his head. “Seungmin-ah, have you?”

Of course Jisung figured it out. “Uhm,” he swallows a bile, “No?”

“You don’t sound so sure.”

“No,” Seungmin whines, heat surging to his ears. He imagines the tips are getting so red right now. “No, Jisung-ah, I have not.”

Jisung hums, then he does this thing where he chews on his lips, head tilting aside as his eyes bury itself into a deep thinking. “So do you, like,” he starts, but trails off his own words again, eyebrows furrowing. “Sorry, love, please spell this out for me. Do you want to have sex?”

A mix of shame and desire licks and burns his inside like a tongue of fire. “Yeah,” he admits, avoiding Jisung’s eyes. “I do want to do it, and not just that, everything, actually, I just,” — he breaks out a few peals of soft laughter, because everything is hot and ridiculous and embarrassing, and he’s turning into a replica of rambling, panicking Jisung — “I don’t know,” he cries, pressing his palms against his face.

“Don’t hide from me,” Jisung laughs, his hand patting softly against the side of Seungmin’s hair. “I got it, I understand.”

He is laughing again, but there’s a certain warmth in Jisung’s laughter that never makes Seungmin feel ridiculous for being laughed at. It makes him feel precious, as if Jisung just looks at him and can’t help but let out his joy in its rawest form — laughter.

Seungmin feels Jisung’s arms pressing against his ears and realizes he is being hugged. His coccyges throbs in dull ache as it’s curled this way — slumping far forward his head is against Jisung’s chest — but he can’t find it in himself to worry.

Instead, he looks up with renewed confidence fished out of a forgotten corner in his chest, musters the best expression of cutesy he can make, and asks, “Will you do it? With me?”

Jisung looks at the ceiling with a pained groan; but his lips are curling into a smile.

Seungmin knows he won.

“And you wonder why I call you puppy,” Jisung says, ruffling the hair in his hands and rubbing them like one would to puppy’s ears. “How could I ever deny you, sweetheart?”

“Quit being sappy before I bite your nose off.”

“Okay, okay,” he laughs, a fondness in his eyes residing like sun and it’s borderline impossible for Seungmin to miss it. “So, bedroom? You sure you want this?” he asks, like a bargain, as if Seungmin is the one compromising his want and not the other way around.

Seungmin bares his teeth around Jisung’s nose — a barely there nibble. It’s enough to make Jisung shrieks.

“What’s that for?!” he gasps, covering his face as if Seungmin just stripped him bare.

“You’re annoying,” Seungmin snarls, leans down and bites on Jisung’s palm. He laughs as Jisung just shrieks again. “Shut up and fuck me already, you sappy poet.”

“Ow,” Jisung whines, but giggles slip between his teeth. “Demanding puppy,” he says, conjuring a pout.

Jisung’s hands curl around his thighs and his feet scrape off the wooden floor in an instant; the ground is suddenly out of reach. “I didn’t say you can carry me!” he protests, swinging his feet so they kick on Jisung’s hips.

“Quiet, puppy,” Jisung murmurs against his lips, nibbling on the bottom one in what Seungmin assumes to be a revenge.

He bites Jisung’s lip back.

Jisung pulls off with a smile and nudges on Seungmin’s forehead. Jisung drops him on bed, and Seungmin bounces; once, a giggle falls from his lips. He’s engulfed in the taste of Jisung: the sheet under his body, the tangled duvet pressing warmly against his back, the man of dreams grinning above him.

He reaches out a hand towards the light, grasps the front of Jisung’s t-shirt and pulls him forward.

A certain scene comes to mind, a similar desire clouding his mind as he grasped the front of Jisung’s shirt in a space that reeked of salt and leather and Jisung. The muscle that jerked against him. The palm against his opened mouth.

But Jisung goes easily this time, slides his thigh between Seungmin’s legs and crawls on him, eyes never leaving his gaze. Their lips find each other again; without a barrier of burning hand, and Jisung is warm.

Seungmin sighs the name of his lover into Jisung’s mouth and trusts Jisung to catch it.

And Jisung does, his lips parted and grins as he whispers Seungmin-ah, in the same, hushed caress. I’m here, he says, pulls Seungmin’s lip with his teeth in a gentle nibble and lets it bounce back.

In the insanity of having his blood burning and his muscles trembling; Seungmin wishes Jisung would’ve bitten his lip raw. On the brink of insanity, he wants everything of Jisung and swallows him whole.

In the depth of insanity, Seungmin wonders if he has always wanted Jisung this madly.

“I want you,” he murmurs, embraces the source of his forest fire and lets him burn himself whole. “Jisung-ah, I want you,” he whines, a plea missing the literal word, and pretzels his arms around Jisung’s neck.

“You have me, love,” Jisung says, nipping at his jaw. He flexes his thigh where it’s pressed up between Seungmin’s legs and Seungmin arches his back, a groan slipping past his bitten lips.

Seungmin tightens his arms around Jisung’s neck and untangles them when Jisung coughs against his cheek. “Sorry,” he whispers, the words about not wanting the world to see Jisung melts into saliva in his tongue. He looks at Jisung’s eyes — dark and glimmering with tongues of ignited fire — and he realizes he never wanted anyone, anything, else.

He would let himself burn in Jisung’s flame until he’s nothing but charcoal blackening under dust of ashes, and still, he will find Jisung’s arms again.

Jisung hovers above him, elbows next to Seungmin’s shoulders, and grins. The fluorescent lamp he had forgotten to turn off has its amber light dancing around Jisung’s lashes, littered on his cheeks like he’s a boiling magma on the brink of spilling.

“Come on,” he rasps out, delirious with want. “Your gaze alone isn’t going to fuck me.”

Jisung laughs, mostly air than laughter, his hands finding the edges of Seungmin’s starry pajama short and pulls. “Demanding puppy,” he breathes, his voice dropping into a frequency Seungmin had never witnessed.

Throwing Seungmin’s short aside, he strips out of the supreme t-shirt with a quick tug over his head, clumsy hands ripping clothes of their bodies like peeling bandages off healed wounds.

Seungmin feels like a pulsing wound on the verge of bleeding. 

Jisung’s hand — the same hand that had stripped his body bare — pauses on Seungmin’s white t-shirt, a kind smile spreads across his face as he looks up to Seungmin’s eyes. “Do you want to keep this on?” he asks.

Jisung’s palm rests on the plane of his stomach and it warms him, his body, his chest, turning his thoughts into a static sound of muted murmur. “Yeah,” Seungmin exhales, more air than word. His fingers curl around the edge of the fabric and pull it down as if he’s smoothening it — pretends it’s not embarrassment that begins to swell under his skin.

Jisung hums, his thumb sinking on the side of Seungmin’s hip. “I love every inch of you,” he suddenly says, the words warm and fluttering around them like chirping birds.

The bedsheet cools under his skin. It hardens. Like floor. Like bathroom floor. Memory flashes upon his eyes and distends reality. “Enchanting,” Jisung said. His voice that echoed around the four walls. The way it warmed his heart. Reached all the way to his closed ribcage. Hugs and curls around each rib like vines of flowers.

“Baby,” Jisung — the present Jisung — calls him again. He touches Seungmin’s forehead. Seungmin blinks. It straightens the distorted reality, wipes the cloud of memories. “What are you thinking about?”

He lets out a shaky exhale. You, he wants to say, but the word that used to flow easily through his mouth stumble on his teeth, stumble on the shame, on the sudden shyness. He looks at Jisung between his legs and he wants to bury himself alive.

“You’re so red,” Jisung muses. He sounds infuriatingly fond. “Are you shy, Seungmin-ah?”

And Seungmin cannot say, I’m so embarrassed I want you so much it drives me crazy, so he sticks out his tongue and mumbles in a shaky voice. “Shut up.”

Jisung does that thing where he grins annoyingly wide and raises his eyebrow. It makes him look like a cartoon character. Seungmin wants to say that much but the word flings itself back to his throat as Jisung grinds forward, his chest against Seungmin’s crotch.

“Jisung,” he huffs, accompanied by a laugh that choked on a moan. His palm balls into a fist next to his hip, a handful of bedsheets in his grasp. “Warn the man before you do anything, please.”

“Mm.” Jisung’s eyes gleam. Seungmin, for a second, thinks it comes from the night lamp, but it wasn’t that sparkly before. It looks like sun hitting a broken mirror.

Jisung looks down, runs a shaky finger down his parted bangs. Seungmin’s chest clenches. “Thought presents are supposed to be about surprises?” he asks, still in his playful tone. But Seungmin doesn’t miss the gloom behind it.

“Jisung-ah,” Seungmin calls, sensing his uneasiness. He reaches to cup Jisung’s cheek in hand, tries to lift him off where their bodies connected. “Baby, come here.”

Jisung removes himself completely, pretzels his legs and runs a harsh hand over his hair. Eyes darting everywhere but Seungmin. Lets out a shuddering exhale and fidgets with his own fingers.

Sitting up, Seungmin takes Jisung’s hands on his own. “Jisung-ah,” he calls again, searching for his eyes.

Jisung doesn’t lift his eyes from their joined hands. He stills, the only sound coming from him is his shuddering breath: the harsh flow of air, the slight motion of his shoulders.

After a minute, he finally whispers, in a thin voice like he hasn’t used it for so long he forgets how to pronounce words with his tongue. Forgets how to make his larynx vibrate. Forgets how to live. “Sorry.”

Seungmin swipes his thumb over Jisung’s, letting it run down each of his fingers like a bird tracing its path on tree branches. “What are you sorry for, Jisung-ah?”

“I freaked out again,” he mutters, threading his shaky words. “I keep doing this. Whenever something good is happening, I just,” he sucks in a harsh breath, “I always find a way to mess it up.”

“Baby,” Seungmin says, his fingers brush on Jisung’s elbow and hold him like that. “You didn’t ruin anything. I would be mad if you were to force yourself to continue when you’re not in the right headspace.”

“I know.” Jisung finally looks up, his eyes glazed over with thick tears, already on the brink of spilling. “See, I know that, I understand. Logically, I know nothing is wrong, but my mind is so—”

“Talk to me,” Seungmin offers, gives a gentle squeeze around his elbow. “Is your brain going apeshit again?”

Jisung’s face twists into a smile, wet chuckle falling from his lips. A shudder runs through his body and Seungmin grabs a duvet behind him to wrap both of them in.

“I got scared,” Jisung starts, a trail of quiet tears trickling down his cheek. “I’m trying to handle this better, and most of the time I can tell I’m handling it, but I think, what I feel towards you is so big and I still can’t shake off that fear of messing things up between us.”

He stills, like he’s pondering with the words, with things he wants to say, figuring out how to say them. But then he sighs, and just stays quiet.

“Jisung,” Seungmin finally breaks the silence between them, pulls Jisung closer to his body so he can encase him between his arms; safe, safely from the world. “You know that even if you make some mistakes, it doesn’t mean I will leave you, right?”

He feels Jisung nods against his shoulder.

“So there should be nothing wrong with making mistakes, yeah?”

Jisung nods again, but he doesn’t look quite sure.

“Is it the control?” Seungmin tries again, tries to reach Jisung’s mind, tries to understand his thoughts. “You said it earlier, too. Is it the control that freaks you out?”

“I had you underneath me,” Jisung mutters in his low voice. “I had you underneath me and you looked like you would jump off a cliff if I said the word and it scared me so much, the idea that I get to do that to you.”

“I would not jump off a cliff,” Seungmin says, trying to thin the air that starts to feel rather hard to breathe in. “Do you want to try, like, I don’t know, do you want to try it next time, but I do what you do?”

Jisung pulls off his head from Seungmin’s shoulder with his eyes slightly blown. “Huh?”

“Like, yeah. Things you did earlier, but, I do it?”

“You want to try being the one on top,” Jisung states. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, that. I don’t mind, really, and I think I might like it? So yeah, maybe we can try that. Unless you don’t want it?”

Jisung blinks. “Unless I what?”

Seungmin laughs. “Have you short-circuited, baby?”

“You want to fuck me,” Jisung says, eyes still rapidly blinking. He exhales a soft laugh. “How could I not short-circuit when my beautiful boyfriend just said that?”

“Shut up,” Seungmin laughs, pressing palms against his ankles and fiddling with the skin. “So do you want? That?”

“I’m already as naked as a baby,” Jisung mutters the words without that much care in the world, his face scrunching in a certain smile of his that Seungmin would never be bored of seeing. “If you don’t fuck me right now, I will cry.”

Seungmin rolls his eyes. “Who’s the demanding one now,” he chortles, a hand on Jisung’s thigh and the other has its fingers sinking on the back of his neck. Experimentally, he pulls him close, closer, until their noses bump on each other.

Jisung’s eyes flutter close and an exhale departs from his lips, so soft it almost gets lost in the thin air.

Seungmin catches the next exhale he lets out and slots their mouths together — lets the act speak for the affection that had swelled past his flesh and bones can accommodate, lets it speak for the feelings he can never verbalize.

He rolls them over until Jisung pulls off with a gasp, the edges of white duvet spread behind his shoulders like wings. Seungmin touches his forehead and smiles at the warmth, at the non-existent flinch that he had realized didn’t happen because of his cold skin.

“Is this okay?” he asks, prompting himself on one hand as he tucks a stray strand behind Jisung’s ear. He grins at the blush, at the surge of warm blood behind the honey skin. 

Jisung looks up to his eyes and curls a sheepish smile. “Yeah,” he whispers, gives Seungmin a nod and kisses the corner of his mouth. “I’ll tell you if something feels wrong, baby, don’t worry.”

“Mm. Tell me if your brain goes apeshit, too,” he reminds him, relishes in the laughter Jisung lets out, smiles at the reassuring lift of his thumb. “Okay,” he says, inhaling a tick gulp of air. “Okay,” he says again, sitting on his heels and fumbling with his hold on Jisung’s waist.

“Do you,” Jisung starts, sitting up on his elbows. “Do you want me to tell you what to do?”

“Please tell me,” He blurts out, a little too immediate. He laughs at the way Jisung’s eyes widen in his sudden reply. “Sorry, my brain is short-circuiting now. Tell me what to do, please.”

Jisung giggles, his peals of laughter like petals of the spring sun. “Okay,” he says, rubbing on Seungmin’s shoulder with a smile. “Let’s start slow, puppy, you got the lube?”

Wordlessly, Seungmin leans into the side of the bed, fishing a bottle of lube out of the drawer. He shows it to Jisung and pretends it’s something less intimidating, like a bottle of soju, or perhaps, a bag of tangerines.

“Mm. Now you can pour that to your hand,” Jisung explains, and Seungmin follows him, uncapping the bottle and pours a generous amount onto his palm, letting it coat his fingers until they’re all slick and slippery.

He frowns when Jisung lets out a soft laugh. “What?”

“Nothing, just,” Jisung coughs the rest of his laughter into a fist, “why does it look like you’re applying hand sanitizer on your hands?”

Seungmin really should consider kneeing Jisung on the crotch. He can’t even begin to look at his bare crotch right now, can’t stop the warm and fuzzy clouds gathering around him whenever his gaze lands on Jisung’s skin. “Stop teasing me,” he huffs, his dry hand resting on Jisung’s thigh. “Just tell me what to do next?”

Jisung spends suspiciously long seconds staring at his thigh, but then he blinks a few times and just grins up to him. “You can try getting a finger in, slowly. I’ve never bottomed to anyone before so, yeah. Don’t rush it.”

He inhales a warm gulp of air. Doesn’t know where to put his gaze on. He fumbles around with his hold on Jisung’s thigh and hears a soft gasp as he sinks a thumb to the soft skin. He looks at Jisung’s eyes and makes a mental note to look at them whenever he’s unsure.

“I’m going in,” he announces, easing his fingertip in. He watches Jisung exhaling a soft sigh and pauses in his tracks. “Is that okay? Should I—”

“Keep going,” Jisung says, half air and half his low voice.

Seungmin wants to call him demanding again but Jisung looks so flushed, his skin as red as apple’s peels. So he stays silent, pushes his finger until it reaches the second knuckle and stops again when Jisung sighs.

“Keep going,” Jisung says again, and Seungmin can’t really tell the difference between impatience and desperation — unsure which emotion is currently surging behind his veins.

“Okay,” he says, gaze shifting to find Jisung’s hand balling into fist just next to his waist. Seungmin wants to reach over and hold his hand. So he laces their fingers together like a ribcage and sinks his other finger deeper.

Jisung’s mouth falls open.

“Jisung-ah?” Seungmin calls, and thinks Jisung might find him annoying by now, but the kind of expressions Jisung is making are out of his reach — far from the kinds he had memorized whole-heartedly, far from the kinds he had understood like the creases of his own palms.

Jisung finally peels his eyes open. “It’s good,” he says, throwing a hand over his face. “That’s your… middle finger?”

Seungmin has to look to make sure. The act of looking at where his finger disappears forces him to bear a full-body shudder. “No,” he says, curling the fingertip experimentally. “It’s my pointer finger, why?”

“Why the fuck is it so long?”

He has to hold back a sputter of laughter. “What do you mean long?”

“What else can long mean except long?”

“I don’t know, for a second I thought it was just an attempt of flattery,” Seungmin says, still experimentally toying with a finger he has inside him, twists and curls it one way to another, until he jabs on a particular spot that has Jisung’s body arches off the bed; a shaky moan tumbling past his lips.

He blinks, once, frozen in time. These are the sounds he had never heard Jisung make. He looks at his left hand; the way Jisung’s fingers clench around his, with so much desperation and twitch of pleasure in each knuckles.

This is Jisung he had never seen before.

He blinks again and Jisung lies limp on the bed, his eyes clenched shut and lips covered by the back of his hand — but Seungmin can hear his panting breath.

“What the fuck,” Jisung mutters, completely breathless — his voice adopting that high tone at the end of his sentence, like he’s being hauled from one place to another. “How did you do that.”

“Was that the…?”

“Prostate, yeah, Seungmin-ah, you can say the word. Please don’t make me give you an anatomy lecture here, your man is out of breath.”

Seungmin chuckles. “Prostate, yeah, okay,” he says, the word a little strange upon his tongue. “Should I keep going?”

“If you don’t keep going, I will cry,” Jisung threatens, his hips shifting a little. “Although, don’t touch that again, just add more fingers, one by one, and stretch it out.”

Seungmin nods, finally understanding the shifting of Jisung’s hips and carefully pulling out his finger. He looks at Jisung again, looks at the way sunlight needles across his eyelids, and eases in another finger. It’s harder, now, and he has to bite back an ‘ow’ when Jisung clenches around them.

“Does it hurt?” he asks, rubbing his palm across the plane of Jisung’s stomach; watches the muscle contract and releases. At the absence of answer, he leans into Jisung’s space, pushes the stray strands back so they don’t cover his eyes. “Jisung?”

Jisung’s eyes flutter open with a shaky exhale. “It doesn’t really, hurt?” he says, asks? Seungmin’s not even sure. His breaths still come out in soft little pants. “Just strange. You can keep going, baby, I promise I’ll tell you if it hurts.”

Seungmin decides he should trust Jisung in this. “Okay.” He nods, wiggle his fingers around until they’re deeper inside, pries them open in an attempt to stretch him properly.

He keeps going, still paying attention to Jisung’s face and every twitch of his muscle; still gently rubbing up and down his hips. As he pushes another finger in, Jisung whines.

And he seems to not be the only one startled by the sound, for Jisung, too, has his eyes blown wide and a hand clasping right over his mouth. He reaches for a pillow to cover his face with, and Seungmin laughs. “You can’t hide from me,” he singsongs.

Jisung is saying something to the pillow, but most of his words got lost in the fabric before they can reach Seungmin’s ears. Seungmin leans into him again, coaxing the pillow out of his face. “I can’t hear you,” he says, smiling at the tender little sighs Jisung lets out freely without any barrier. “What did you say?”

“Can you,” he whispers, sucks in a mouthful of breath and pants them out within a brief trembling second, “Can you, touch?” He looks quite beautiful like this, with his bitten lips and blushing cheeks. It leaves Seungmin breathless.

“Touch?”

“My cock, my dick, my penis, which term do you want to use?” he rambles, shoving his face into the pillow again — his gaze landing everywhere but Seungmin’s. His feet jerk when Seungmin’s fingers shift inside him, another whine mumbled by the pillow.

“Oh my god,” Seungmin laughs, unsure if laughter is even appropriate given the setting they’re in but he can’t help it at all. “Okay, I’ll touch you,” he agrees, trailing his fingertips on the sides of Jisung’s length before wrapping it inside.

Another mumbled whine falls around them.

Everything is experimental, now, and Seungmin is hyperaware of it. He twists his fingers around until he finds an angle that draws a pleased sound from him, tries figuring out the speed of his other hand that doesn’t have Jisung’s feet pulled tight like loaded arrows.

At some point it just reminds him of learning guitar. Jisung feels like a series of strings being tightened and loosened, malleable under Seungmin’s care. His thumb swipes over the cockhead and the sound Jisung lets out, though barriered by the pillow, is heavenly.

He can’t believe it took them so long to finally do this.

A hand creeps over his wrist and tugs its motion to a pause. He looks up and finds Jisung’s face, blown-wide eyes darkened and far away. “I’m ready,” he mutters, shuddering through another exhale. “Get inside me, Seungmin-ah.”

Seungmin gulps in a dry air. It whooshes past his cartilage; a harsh caress that fuels the fire. Get inside me, Jisung said. Seungmin short-circuits. His limbs that have been doing good halt in their goodness, desire trembling in its own fear.

He blinks. Again. And again. A part of him hopes he can blink his muscles to work.

Jisung tilts his head at Seungmin’s questioning gaze, guides Seungmin’s hand to his waist. “Okay?”

Seungmin sinks his thumb in the flesh of Jisung’s hip and huffs his nerve through an exhale. “Okay,” he assures; part for Jisung and part for himself. He takes in a deep breath. “I’m good.”

“You don’t have to be good.” Jisung smiles. His face stars littered. A lock of hair drapes over his eye; glimmering iris peeking behind it. Scintillate.

Seungmin shifts forward and the action causes his erection — that he hadn’t been paying attention at — to graze against his t-shirt, a gasp tumbling past his lips. He gives it an experimental tug, coats it with the lube he had used in Jisung and it burns.

It’s strange, to touch himself like this. To be alone with his body again. His fingers twitch on Jisung’s skin and he realizes he’s not alone with his body after all. He reaches to hold on the side of Jisung’s lower chest; the ribs that expand in each of his breath.

He looks at smiling Jisung, thinks of the words he said, and guides himself in.

Jisung still has his fingers around Seungmin’s wrist, a gentle cuff of familiarity. It’s weightless, at first, but the tips start sinking and clenching around him as Seungmin pushes deeper inside; a garbled moan choked in a grunt.

Halfway, his brain assists, delirious with sudden rush of adrenaline it started talking by itself. His eyes threaten to close but he fights hard to keep it open, watching Jisung’s body tremble underneath him.

He struggles to see Jisung’s expression as Jisung throws his head back; a moan that sounds suspiciously close to whine falls between them. “Baby.”

Jisung looks up to him with a shaky huff, his face colored sunset-crimson. “Yeah,” he breathes, fluffy hair tousled over the pillow. “Keep going.” He inhales, and Seungmin watches the rises and falls of his flushed chest, resuming his motion until they’re skin-to-skin.

“Hah,” Jisung exhales, a harsh breath that immediately followed by a gasp, and tugs on the front of Seungmin’s t-shirt. Seungmin tucks his head on his neck, but Jisung is still pulling at him, poorly concealed whines falling from him in every shift of Seungmin’s hips.

“Jisung-ah, baby,” he calls, his breath whips a few locks of hair off his forehead. “Breathe.” He holds him on his neck; by the side of his ribs, holds him close nothing would ever separate them. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Jisung breathes. His eyes flutter open and he looks at Seungmin, murmurs against his ear, “Ruin me. Burn me until there’s nothing more than what is yours.”

Honest to God, Seungmin wants to laugh. “You’re mine already.” He kisses the corner of Jisung’s mouth and braces himself on his elbows. “My boyfriend, my sappy poet, my beloved storyteller, my darling Jisungie.”

Jisung’s eyes light up. He blinks, once, lashes fluttering. “I love you,” he whispers, hearty smile ghosting over his lips. He reaches for Seungmin’s arm and cups his bicep like one would to flower’s stem. “My home, my breath, my God, my everything. I love you.”

“See,” Seungmin laughs, pulling out to pushes himself back in, smiling at the way gasp stumble past Jisung’s teeth. “Sappy poet.”

He thrusts again, still agonizingly slow; experimental. And again, harder than the last one. Adrenaline gushes behind his vein. Burns him. Sets his heart ablaze. In the brink of insanity he wonders if he’s hurting Jisung but the other mewls, high and clean in the warm air, and he keeps going.

“Seungmin—”

Jisung’s voice. Sweet and low. Seungmin looks down and finds him struggling to blink back his tears. Seungmin doesn’t want him to struggle against pleasure, doesn’t want him to bear down on them like one would stuff a sleeping bag. Seungmin wants him to let go.

There’s a way to do that. He has done it just a few minutes ago. Or was it an hour? Jisung distends reality. Adrenaline, too. Jisung and adrenaline fuck up his sense of time and reality.

It doesn’t matter.

Something inside him snaps. Flickers. Ignites. Fills his veins with nothing but desire. A broken dam. Shattering completely. He braces himself on his knees and grabs a hold of Jisung’s waist, fumbling with its angle.

It took him three tries. He angles it, angles it, until it reaches a spot that has Jisung’s stomach clenches. Has his body curves forward, spine curling off the mattress and wails toppling over his parted lips.

Unfiltered.

“Got it,” he cheers. He drives his hips forward with confidence, now, leaning down to catch Jisung’s cry with his own lips. It’s sharp, like edges of bones. Like carpal bones. He swallows it whole in its tangerine-sweet glory.

“Seung— I’m,” Jisung whines, a trail of tears falling down his cheek. His head jerks back as Seungmin thrusts inside, reaching the same spot over and over again. “Seungmin-ah, baby,” he tries again, choking on his own moan.

Jisung clenches around him. Every thrust, every clench, it drives Seungmin further deeper into the hands of pleasure. Strings thrum in his stomach; pulled tight, tighter, past its limit — threatening to snap.

“Jisung,” Seungmin grunts. Doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know how to stop his hips from moving on its own accord; not like he wants to stop. Jisung holds his arms so tightly he might as well claw on them.

“I’m not” — Jisung takes a shuddering breath, pulling Seungmin close — “I’m not gonna last,” he confesses. He clasps his teeth around Seungmin’s shoulder, shivers running down his body.

At the feeling of Jisung’s teeth on his skin, Seungmin shudders. He doesn’t bite, yet, not quite. Just barely there, teething on the skin but not quite breaking. Is it insane in his part if Seungmin wants Jisung to bite him?

Abandoning his borderline terrifying motif, he licks on the column of Jisung’s neck instead, says, “Neither do I,” in a voice lower than he intended, and lets his hips do the work.

Jisung’s cries and whine are muffled by his collarbone, now, enough for them to not echo around the four walls. But it does nothing in stopping them from entering Seungmin’s ears. Each syllable like feathers being thrown into a fire.

“Seungmin-ah,” Jisung says, and Seungmin burns. “Please,” Jisung whines, hips moving to frantically meet his thrusts, and Seungmin is a lit fireworks on the brink of ignition.

Jisung lets out a particularly loud cry into his shoulder, his teeth sinking onto the soft flesh — and he comes. A deep, guttural moan erupts from his throat, like his belly has been scooped raw, and warmth spurts out of his untouched cock — paints his flushed chest in white.

Seungmin explodes like fireworks.

He slams and fucks him through it; lifts his head to see Jisung’s face in his orgasm high: eyes-clenched and face-scrunched. He touches his forehead like one would tend a fevered person and tucks a lock of sweaty bangs behind his ear.

Jisung’s head drops back, hanging limp from Seungmin’s hold. A streak of white slashed through the needle of sunlight over his eyelid. Seungmin pulls out and traces Jisung’s face with his gaze long enough until the eyes flutter open.

Their eyes meet in raw longing and Seungmin can hear his heart drumming against his eardrums. “Are you okay?” he asks, ignoring the desperate twitch of his erection, like how his fingers would whenever he wants to hold Jisung’s hand.

It’s weird again. To be alone in his body. There’s something akin to grief stirring behind his navel and he wants to rewind the time, wants to go back to when it wasn’t there.

Belatedly, he realizes he doesn’t want a life without Jisung.

“Remember that thing you said about my screws being too tight,” Jisung asks, his voice shakily regaining its original tone. He blinks and his eyes come back clearer than they have ever been. “I think you just fucked them out of my head.”

Seungmin rolls his eyes. “Stop being dramatic, old man.”

Jisung snorts. “I’m merely eight days older than you.”

To his surprise, Jisung grabs on his neck and rolls them over — a smirk dancing over his lips. “Your turn.”

Seungmin isn’t sure what to do, but Jisung has that certain look of his Seungmin can only find when he’s reciting a poem he loves the most; the glimmering of his eyes, flooded with surety; the curls of his lips, the candace of his voice.

He nods, and Jisung fumbles with their positions until Seungmin’s spine aligned with the headboard, the other seated in his lap.

“I’ll start,” Jisung says with a smile. He runs a finger down the side of Seungmin’s dick and Seungmin jerks, a gasp tumbling past his gritted teeth.

“Ah,” he gasps, body jolting and shivering as Jisung keeps running his finger up and down his length, a satisfied smile on his face. “Jisung, Ji—”

He trembles and sinks his fingers on the sides of Jisung’s waist, biting the inside of his cheek as Jisung closes his fingers around him.

Seungmin trembles. Jisung is warm. He’s dizzy, so dizzy, the ground crumbling under his crossed legs. The world purpled around them. He looks up to Jisung’s face — the only light in the room — and finds him smiling, fondness residing in his eyes.

It warms Seungmin’s heart. Scoops out the grief and fear that had settled like ashes in the pit of his stomach and throws it away. “Shit,” he curses, slumping forward. “Jisung, I’m not going to last.”

“Please don’t,” Jisung chides, a shaky laugh falling between them as he thumbs over his cockhead. “It’s almost afternoon and I still have a mission to save my healthy boyfriend.”

Seungmin thinks he really should’ve kneed Jisung on the dick. Wipe that cocky grin from his face. He opens his mouth to say something about it but another moan sluices itself out of his throat.

What was he thinking about again?

Each drop and movement of Jisung’s hand fuels the fire inside him, burning the strings tangling his fireworks, cutting the strings until it’s ready to explode, like gentle hands tucking him to the blanket of pleasure.

“Does it feel good, baby?” Jisung whispers, his voice caressing his eardrum. It reaches the trembling heart he had wear up his throat. His forehead drops to lean on Jisung’s shoulder and he shudders.

Jisung’s thumb digs on his slit.

His eyes roll back.

“Such a good puppy, made me come so hard I almost black out.” Warmth caresses the back of his head. He blinks dizzily and sees Jisung’s skin again. Good. He’s good. Seungmin’s good. “I love you so much, do you know that?”

Jisung’s fingers are soft as bird’s feathers as they rest on the expanse of his stomach. It’s so warm. His belly thrums. Jisung touches him and he’s sun-kissed. Like unfurling leaf being caressed by the spring sun.

He wants to stay like this forever.

“My beloved Seungminnie, I will give you everything, sweetheart.”

I want to give you everything,

“Hh—” Seungmin chokes on a cry, once, clenches his eyes shut, and he explodes. Pleasure washes over him, jerks in his stomach and bursts; muscles going rigid and relax and rigid and his spine flexes and curls and there’s so many different things his body does he struggles to keep track.

His eyes roll back and fireworks explode behind his lids.

It’s warm. He is shivering, trembling, a leaf unfurling from a tree’s scar in the middle of typhoon. But it’s warm. Warmth rubs its hands around his body. Warmth caresses the back of his head, touches his forehead, cradles his left cheek with its palm that smells like sunshine.

Warmth calls his name.

He blinks his eyes open.

Jisung shines, in his familiar smile that illuminates the entire room. “There you are,” he says. It sounds like a song. Seungmin wants to spend his whole time listening to it.

He hums, nuzzling his forehead to Jisung’s neck. His entire body is buzzing, his tongue too thick and stiff to formulate words. He slumps further forward and lets himself be embraced by Jisung’s warmth.

“You’re so pretty,” Jisung whispers, his lips on the crown of Seungmin’s head. He runs his fingers down the back of his hair; smoothers through the tangled locks. “I will give you everything,” he says, and Seungmin breaks.

I want to give you everything, Jisung had said, months ago, years, even. I want to give you everything but everything burns in my hands, he had added, tears-streaked and crimsoning face.

I will give you everything, Jisung said, ten seconds ago. There’s pride in those words, surety clawing its feet in each syllable, in each breath he let out uttering those words. It sounds like a promise. Like a vow.

Jisung caresses his cheeks. Coaxes him out of his shoulder and thumbs his tears away. “Why are you crying, Seungmin-ah?”

He sniffles. Love grows like kitties in the atrium of his heart. Grows too big his heart threatens to explode, flesh and bones adjust ‘till it becomes a rabbit. Pushes around the myocardium and expands, expands — until his body is all heart and rabbit’s playground.

Sometimes it jumps around the floor of daisies. Sometimes it plays with tangerines and the sweetness bursts behind his veins. Lights up like an acidic candle. He faces the rabbit inside his heart and the rabbit wears pride in its eyes.

“I’m proud of you,” he squeaks out, lifts his gaze towards Jisung’s eyes. He reaches around his neck and pulls him close. Closer. He doesn’t want to be alone in his body without Jisung.

“That’s,” Jisung’s laughters are stiff, but fondness still peeks behind them. “That’s, I don’t know how to respond to that. Did you have an epiphany while nutting your brain off?” 

Seungmin scrunches his nose and snorts. “Forget everything I said. I hate you.”

“That’s wrong,” Jisung argues, conjuring a pout. He pinches the bridge of Seungmin’s nose and laughs. “You love me.”

Seungmin gasps in an exaggerated attempt to breathe. “No I don’t.”

“Mm. Said Kim Seungmin who, like, half an hour ago, just called me baby.”

His face warms. “Whatever,” he says, leaning onto Jisung’s shoulder. He blinks a few times, trying to get rid of sleepiness whose hands are already trying to grab on him. Trying to tuck him under the blanket of slumber.

“You’re sleepy,” Jisung states, his jaw on the side of Seungmin’s head. “Do you want to bathe? You can sleep in the bathtub while I cook dinner.”

Seungmin shakes his head. “Shower with me,” he mutters, the words feel sticky on his tongue. “After that I’ll watch you, cook,” — he catches himself already dipping his feet to the sea of unconsciousness and pulls himself back — “from the, mm. Counter.”

The fondness that flutters behind Jisung’s giggles glows like a suncatcher. Sunlight touches its surface and becomes more than it could ever be. It’s beautiful. Jisung is beautiful.

He wants to tell him that much but his head lols sideways and he has to brace himself on a hand before slipping away again. He giggles. Jisung touches the back of his neck and picks him up easily — the bed dipping in little creaks as they move away.

“Stay here for a bit,” Jisung mutters, sitting him on top of a towel spread over the countertop. It’s fluffy. It’s warm. Jisung flashes him a wide smile and fills the bathtub. He tiptoes to reach the upper cabinet and fetches a bath bomb.

Seungmin blinks. Slowly. Jisung notices him, of course he does — and squeezes his cheeks, thumb swiping under his eye. “What are you thinking about?”

“Was thinking of,” he trails off, watching little stars scintillate in Jisung’s eyes. “Oh, uhm. You remember you said you want to write a poem but you don’t know what to write yet?”

Jisung hums. He kisses the bridge of Seungmin’s nose with a giggle. “What about it, baby?”

“Was thinking of, like, loving someone unconditionally.”

“Mm. Keep going.”

“Yeah. Like you’re a forest and you fall in love with fire. Or, hm. What else can burn? Meteor?”

Jisung’s eyes sparkle. “Volcano?”

“Mm,” Seungmin hums, then giggles again, because it’s funny how Jisung is still not letting go of his face. “I’ve been thinking about it. Thought you might like something like that.”

“You know me too well.” Jisung smiles as he unwraps the bath bomb, throws it into the filled bathtub and watches it bubble like carbonated water being shaken too much. “Get inside, love.”

Jisung’s touch on his bare skin is warm. It soothes him, the same way firewood does to frostbitten skin. “Can I take your shirt off?” he asks, and Seungmin nods. His torso half-submerged. The bubbles tickle against his skin.

He reaches for Jisung’s hand. Jisung scoops the bubbled water with his other hand and rubs Seungmin’s shoulders.

Seungmin scoops a cloud of bubbles and blows it to Jisung’s face. They drape over his eyebrow. And nose. Seungmin reaches over to boop his nose.

Jisung giggles. “Am I cute?”

Seungmin squints so hard he’s deeply frowning. “No.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Jisung retorts, rinsing the soap from his own body and fetching a bottle of shampoo. It fills the room with a scent of apple and honey.

His shampoo that Jisung loves the most.

“I can’t lie,” he answers matter-of-factly, shampooing his hair. Jisung mirrors him with a grin. “Sorry, Jisung-ah. I really can’t see you as someone cute.”

Jisung hums. He conjures an exaggerated pout as he rinses bubbles from his hair. He coughs in panic laughter when the water gets inside his eye.

Seungmin, already finished rinsing his hair successfully a minute earlier, can’t find it in himself to not laugh at the sight of Jisung desperately rinsing his eye under the sink. He slaps his butt in his way to fetch a towel.

“Ow!” Jisung yells, glaring from one eye.

Seungmin tosses him the towel in his hand and grabs another for himself. His own butt gets slapped from behind.

“Heh,” Jisung snickers, his eyes one reddish and one clearer than ever — squinting under the overhead lamp as he giggles. “Got my revenge.”

It’s strange, to be seeing each other bare like this. Seungmin had made it his own mission to lay his heart and soul bare for Jisung to see; hoping Jisung could give him the equally desperate trust and allow himself to do the same.

And Jisung does. It’s easier to spot his clues, now, it’s easier to tell there’s something wrong that Jisung can’t quite figure out. It’s easier to look through him without being afraid of breaking him in an attempt to get in.

It’s easier, now. Jisung goes to him whenever something is wrong instead of running away. Jisung searches for his hand instead of letting his fingers twitch in flaming restraint.

Jisung doesn’t barrier himself from an output of affection with his hand anymore.

Jisung opened the door for him. Let him see the inside of his ribcage instead of shutting him out. And it’s enough.

Still, to be seen bare like this — physically, that is — it is quite strange. There’s another mole under Jisung’s collarbone he never realized has been there. There’s a healed scar slashed from his lower chest to the dip of his hip. There’s so much more of Jisung he has yet to discover; and his entire life seems to be such a short time to learn him inside out.

“I never noticed,” Jisung suddenly says, running a fingertip on Seungmin’s right shoulder — right above his clavicle. “You have a mole here.”

Seungmin touches the part Jisung had caresses and struggles to swallow a smile. “You’ve never seen me shirtless, silly.”

“Mm. That’s true.” He drains the bathtub with one tug. Shakes his head around. Water with the taste of apple and honey and Jisung splatter all over the surface. On the mirror. On the floor.

On Seungmin.

Seungmin frowns with his eyes clenched shut. But his heart is warm. “Why can’t you just dry your hair like a normal person?”

“I love you and you’re the only person whom I can be not normal around,” comes Jisung’s answer. He is ruffling Seungmin’s damp hair, giggling. “I love you, Seungmin-ah.”

Jisung’s words warm his chest. His ribcage feels like a fireplace. His heart rabbit-jumps. The rabbit wears love all over its flesh. All over the moon.

“I love you too, Jisung-ah,” he mutters, smiling. He looks at Jisung’s eyes and sees stars sparkling inside them. It’s an overused allegory, really, but it fits him the most — and Seungmin doesn’t care about cheesy allegory as long as they work.

Jisung’s lips crescent into a smile. Seungmin wants to cradle him close and lets him play with the rabbit inside his chest — lets him face everything of him. It’ll take time. But he will spend all the time in the world to do so.

“I’m starting to think,” Jisung says, wrapping the towel around his waist, “we should just order a take-out.” He scoops Seungmin into his arms again, way too easily, and presses a kiss on his nose. “I don’t want to do anything right now.”

Seungmin scrunches his nose. “That’s fine with me.” He catches on the twitching of Jisung’s reddening eye, cradles his face in his hands and presses a small kiss over his eye.

He blows on his closed eyelid softly. “There. The boo boo shall go away.”

Jisung laughs. Jisung is laughing and Seungmin wants to kiss his smile. Wants to cover every part of him with kisses so he knows everything about him is loved. Wants to breathe with Jisung’s name on his lips so he will understand loving him is as natural as breathing.

That it’s not something Jisung must tiptoe around for, not something Jisung must earn. Loving Jisung is easy and natural. The way moon loves a bird that sings song of ocean’s home through the lonely night.

The Seoul’s sky is beginning to purple as they lie on bed together, limbs tangled in a familiar scent. Jisung had kicked the empty box of pizza down the floor with a promise to take care of it tomorrow. Jisung had pulled Seungmin close against his chest and turns the bluetooth speaker on.  

The light splatter around the walls like stars. Through the song, two blue whales are coming back home, carrying hopes of world without fear. Next to him, Jisung is humming along.

“I think,” Seungmin whispers, his fingers recalling memories of thrumming strings. A blurred shadow of his father. The clearest form of Han Jisung. He licks his bottom lip and tastes the familiar, acidic sweetness. “Think I’m gonna play guitar again.”

Jisung squeezes his wrist in a gentle warmth. “Mm. Do you want to use my guitar?”

Jisung’s guitar. What he wouldn’t give to hold a piece of Jisung and stitch a wound closed. “That sounds nice.”

“Mm. It’s in my apartment. I’ll take it out tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Seungmin says through a smile, nuzzling closer to Jisung’s warmth. He’s dipping into that sea again, his eyes blinking slowly and his head threatening to fall.

Jisung rubs the side of his head and presses him closer against his arm. “Are you,” he suddenly asks, but he trails off his question, again.

Seungmin hums. “Am I what?”

Jisung swallows. He tightens his hold around Seungmin’s body. “How are you feeling now?”

Seungmin recalls the conversation they had this morning, the sturdy warmth of Jisung’s embrace around his. He thinks about Hannie — his succulent — he had saved and watered, the journal still not filled but he can do that tomorrow, and the laundry is already half dry on the balcony.

So he says, “better,” and he means it.

Outside, the rain pours in a steady fall. Sometimes, better is enough.

“That’s good,” Jisung says, running his fingers down his hair. “I feel a lot better, too. And a lot, inspired. I think I’ll write the poem tomorrow.”

That’s good. Seungmin hugs him tighter. Listens to Jisung’s quiet breathing. He still has his feet both on the sand and the sea. He blinks slowly and he’s closer to the sea than he is to the land. Jisung caresses his cheek and both his feet are in the water.

“Go to sleep, baby,” Jisung mutters, and Seungmin dives into slumber wearing joy in his heart.

#

Volcano

I’ll protect you, it’s okay to hurt. I will embrace

       the wounds you shed.

to me you’re already a sin

       already a sin.

light up, for me. brighter,

       more please.

light it up for me, brighter. even the dark night,

       doesn’t scare me  — I’m with you, after all.

I’ve seen it hundred times over, and still

       I lack so much.

my scars-covered heart, as if

       only you could notice them.

you were so warm when you hugged me tight, I guess

       I teared up, it was the first time.

I’ll protect you, it’s okay to hurt. I will embrace

       the wounds you shed.

to me you’re already a sin I can’t refuse, ‘cause

       you’re sweeter than evil.

burst into flames,

       wound me.

if you like, I can be anything.

you can hurt me (I don’t care)

you can burn me, unlike those

       who ran away, I will

embrace you.

like a volcano; love at a temperature

       that melt when touched

take me to you, way below

       the end of the ground

it’s okay if everything burns down

I could go back hundreds of times, and

       my choice will always

(you) so I can melt into you

hug my body (even if it hurts)

       it’s okay.

among cold and harsh waves,

your heat is what I need;

       you are my volcano.

I’m the drought, you’re rain;

       I’m paper, you’re a poem.

your attention changes the brightness of my empty heart,

       you’re light.

your arms, my home, my breath, my God.

you grabbed me when I was flying (fly again)

my falling days were sorrow, but after you appeared,

       my lifted mouth corners won’t come down.

why, why, why, don’t wanna go back, back, back

to you, who shines the brightest:

       I will give you everything.

every day, day, day, I can feel you.

tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, I can’t wait.

wondering how your smile will brighten

       and make me laugh this time.

I can’t live without you.

even if I die,

       you’re the only one.

even if I’m reborn over and over again,

       it’s only you.

you’re the only one,

       I want to give. it’s only you.

my heart is burning.

when I’m thinking of you, my mind is

       like a volcano.