Archive of Our Own

T-1004. SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA.

EARLIER—

“Fuck,” Joshua swears.

He’s lying on his side of the bed, phone in one hand, the other tucked behind his head, between the bed and his pillow. His eyebrows are knit together, moisturized lips pushed out in a distinguished pout. He looks hot. Jeonghan would tell him this if it wasn’t for said frown tugging at his lips.

“Work email?” Jeonghan prompts. He’s scrolling through those links of DIY slime that Seokmin sent him. Because it started as something for their students, and then Seokmin actually really enjoyed it, and then he read something about the stress relief it provides and stuff, and it was all very real and factual, and now they’re gonna buy a kit. Because that’s what adults with adult money do.

“No,” Joshua says, and then groans, rolling onto his stomach so he’s in Jeonghan’s vicinity, body heat lighting Jeonghan up immediately. Hmm. Nice. Jeonghan feels like a little lizard with a heat lamp around Joshua sometimes. “From our landlord. They’re raising the rent next month.”

“What?” Jeonghan pries the phone from Joshua’s hand and scrolls himself. Reads, but does not really weep, not yet. “Money hungry monsters. We should kill them.”

“No, we shouldn’t,” Joshua says, but he sighs, rolls onto his back again and lets Jeonghan still scroll through the email, swipe around at his phone a little more, too, just because he’s curious. Joshua gets so many emails from his gym. Clingy, they are. “Fuck. What now, though?”

“What do you mean what now?” Jeonghan laughs. “What, this second? We could have sex. That’d be fun.”

“Dick,” Joshua mumbles, but he’s smiling a little, so Jeonghan knows he doesn’t entirely mean it. “I mean like, what are we doing about here? We should be thinking about this, right? Paying extra when we could be living somewhere else, paying the same amount for more space. We’d be stupid to stay here, wouldn’t we?”

“We could literally never be stupid, ever, that’s the first thing,” Jeonghan says, and then he sets both his phone and Joshua’s to the side, slime and stress inducing emails to be dealt with later as he wiggles over to Joshua, pins him into the mattress and kisses his nose once. “Also, we could still afford it, technically. I make decent money and we have savings. Also, you have a fancy merchandising job. Wait, a minute, babe, I thought you were my sugar daddy.”

“Yah,” Joshua groans, tries pushing at Jeonghan to get off him, but ends up settling for his arms around Jeonghan’s shoulders instead, hands at the nape of his neck. “It’s the principle of it. Also, maybe a new place wouldn’t be so bad. I mean, we’ve been here for how long? Five years?”

“Five,” Jeonghan confirms. Five blissful, habitual years. Jeonghan’s loved every second of it. He likes their tiny bedroom and their tiny shower and the faucet in the kitchen that refuses to pump cold water. It’s quaint. Their first place together. “You want out?”

“Maybe,” Joshua says with a shrug. He pushes some of Jeonghan’s hair from his eyes, fingers delicate, light. Then, with a bit more of a theatrical flair, “Plus, rent increase is like—the first bad omen always. The calm before the storm.”

“You’re superstitious and dramatic,” Jeonghan tells him, and then he kisses his cheek, and then his jaw, and then he bites at the skin there because Joshua is just so damn edible sometimes. In a totally normal way.

“Ow,” Joshua half whines-half moans, and Jeonghan feels a pang of victory, rent increase be damned. “Bitey.”

“Dramatic, I said it,” Jeonghan teases. He lets a hand trail down Joshua’s body then, gives a squeeze wherever he deems fit, letting out a sigh of contentment. “You’re also hot. So hot. Did you wanna fuck now?”

Joshua rolls his eyes, annoyed, or so he wants to seem, but then he pushes Jeonghan off him, stands, tosses his shirt to the dresser and Jeonghan is almost certain he’s got stars in his eyes, he’s won. There might even be a little drool slipping down his chin, too. It’s fine either way; would do wonders for Joshua’s ego and god knows he deserves it.

“Think about it, though, ok?” Joshua is saying once he’s pantsless, too, climbing into the bed again and sitting his super cute butt directly on Jeonghan’s already semi-interested dick, where it now gets a lot more interested.

“Hm?” Joshua’s cute to think Jeonghan still has any idea what he’s talking about. He stopped hearing anything that wasn’t a choir of angels the second Joshua rolled his eyes at him. His hands go instinctively to Joshua’s waist, thumbs digging into the flesh there. “Think about—?”

“Finding somewhere else, maybe,” Joshua finishes. He eyes Jeonghan in that very specific, somewhat stern way that does nothing to quell the heat Jeonghan feels kicking up in his belly. “New apartment. Something bigger, maybe. Could be good for us.”

“Oh.” The heat building in his stomach mixes with something else, then. Annoyance, guilt, avoidance? No. Fear? Maybe. But why— “I’ll check some listings at work this week.”

“Good boy,” Joshua says, and Jeonghan actually moans at that, or at least he tries because Joshua’s mouth is on his then, and that’s that.

Butterfly effect.

THEN—

Jeonghan does try looking. He sat on two separate lunch breaks and scrolled apartment listings, read so many fine prints, mapped out so many distances from potential places to where Joshua and he work, checked out the convenience of subway lines, even checked the convenience to Joshua’s preferred grocery store, the whole thing.

But it was a bit fruitless. Either too out of the way for the rent price to be worth it, or lacking certain amenities, or stuck by a really loud street, and they both know Jeonghan needs his total peace and quiet to rest, and—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, really. So he tried, yes, and he thought about it, definitely, which is exactly what Joshua asked him to do.

So forgive him for prioritizing something else, right now.

“He’s gone, Shua.”

He. Him being a Troll doll. Icon of the 1990s, obviously. He is pocket sized, adorably ugly, tall head of blue hair standing straight up on his head, and for some reason, he wears a long tee shirt that says Bingo! on it, so Jeonghan has taken an affectionate liking to calling him that. On his wrist, there is a poorly drawn watch. It says it’s a little past six, but Joshua insists it’s 6:06, which is demonic to him, despite being short an actual six. The weirdest thing, though—the thing that makes him so unlovable to everyone around Jeonghan—is that his face is upside down. Eyes where a mouth should be. Mouth where some eyes would be. Weird nose still in the middle of his face.

Must’ve been some sort of factory defect. It is admittedly a little horrifying. Jeonghan still loves Bingo with everything in him. He found him at a garage sale in college, and Soonyoung actually shrieked in fear when he first saw him, and Jeonghan knew he had to have him. He’s been carrying him for years. He’s had good luck for years. And then last week, after he brought him to his dentist appointment, he went missing, and now Jeonghan is sort of in crisis. Only sort of, because he knows it’s a doll, he knows he’s a grown man, but still—still, it will matter more than Jeonghan thinks, somewhere in the future, in some timeline.

“Maybe the demon that possesses him got tired of you babying it,” Joshua muses. He’s only half interested in Jeonghan’s search—his third search this week because Jeonghan’s mother did not raise a quitter—laptop open in front of him while he looks through a series of apartment listings himself instead. “Up and left. Off to inhabit the next haunted doll.”

“Ha-ha,” Jeonghan deadpans, crouches down to the floor to check under the couch. Nothing. Not even a single dust bunny because Joshua just had a cleaning spree and got everywhere. Jeonghan picks his head up, looking at the back of Joshua’s head as he sits on the aforementioned couch. He squints. “You didn’t throw him out when you were cleaning, did you?”

“No,” Joshua says, and Jeonghan knows him very well, actually, so he does know he’s not lying. “I don’t like him, yes, but I wouldn’t throw anything of yours out like that. I’d at least give you a warning.”

Jeonghan groans, laying his body over the back of the couch, chin digging into the top of it, arms hanging down sadly over the front. Joshua doesn’t even flinch. He’s looking at an apartment that looks way too expensive for them to even remotely afford, but Jeonghan knows his boyfriend has finer tastes and likes to dream a little, so he says nothing.

“Gone. Totally gone,” Jeonghan concludes. He sighs, loud. Dramatic. “There goes my good luck and never ending fortune. What do I do now, Shua-yah? I’m probably going to walk out of this apartment and a piano is going to fall on my head.”

“Very Tom and Jerry of you,” is all Joshua says. “We should move before that’s able to happen.”

“Move-move, like, seriously?” Jeonghan raises a brow, keeps his voice careful and even, just in case Joshua’s feeling a bit prickly today or something. He comes around the front of the couch and plops down next to Joshua, sinks into the old, comfy cushions. “I thought you just wanted to look. See if anything was actually convenient.”

“I am just looking,” Joshua tells him, and then he looks at Jeonghan with a tiny grin, and Jeonghan feels his heart skip a beat in his chest because he’s stupidly in love with him. As it turns out, eight years of dating Joshua Hong does not get old, not one bit. “But if I happened to find something? I mean, you look with the intention of actually wanting, don’t you?”

“I guess so,” Jeonghan agrees. He’s been looking for Bingo for two whole days. He looks at Joshua every time he gets out of the shower or comes home from a jog or just rolls over in the morning with bedhead because he wants him. Always eyes the pastries in the window of the bakery by work because he wants those, too. “What’s your dream place, then? Unlimited money, anything in the world.”

“Penthouse overlooking the river, obviously,” Joshua says. He laughs, closes the laptop a little and turns towards Jeonghan, one hand sliding up to his thigh. “Floor to ceiling windows. We could probably have an at-home gym or something. Really big closet.”

“I could finally have a place to keep my Legos.”

“That was the idea,” Joshua nods. “I’d buy the Hermès kitchen line just to be a pretentious douche.”

“You could never be pretentious.”

Joshua hums, laughs a little. He scoots even closer to Jeonghan, letting the laptop slide off his lap to land on the unoccupied part of the couch. His hand at Jeonghan’s thigh grips a little tighter, just a bit.

“We’d need a big living room. For entertaining guests,” Joshua continues. Jeonghan looks around their current living room; tiny, IKEA furniture, a lamp that Jeonghan got from his grandma that looks like it’s from 1989. Hell, it probably is from 1989. Still home, though.

“Color scheme?” Jeonghan asks. “We couldn’t do white or beige. Mingyu could never come over for drinks. He’d stain your carpets with red wine he’s spilled.”

“Neutral, but not too boring,” Joshua answers. He raises an eyebrow at him. “You’re considering Kim Mingyu when buying your dream apartment?”

Jeonghan laughs, and then shivers a little when Joshua’s hand goes even higher, and then he does not think of Kim Mingyu at all. Joshua’s lips graze the side of his neck. God.

“No, definitely not,” Jeonghan shakes his head. He leans back and lets out a happy sigh, just as Joshua actually presses his lips there. “What about our room? What would you put in there?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Joshua teases, and then he turns Jeonghan’s face so he can kiss his lips, and then he lets go of him entirely, spot on his thigh where his hand previously was now freezing cold. The son of a bitch. “What about you, then, hm? What’s your dream place?”

It takes a minute for some of the blood to come back to Jeonghan’s brain. He shrugs. Jeonghan’s never really thought about a dream place, anyway, because he likes it here, he always has.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Anywhere you are.”

Thank god he means it.

NOW—

Jeonghan is loose-limbed, sticky, and happy. It was a good Friday night. Friday nights are usually good, anyway, I mean—it’s the fucking weekend, but this one in particular, Jeonghan is feeling especially chipper about.

Work today was good. With the end of the year coming up there isn’t much left to teach, mostly just projects and final tests, and today he watched his fourth graders present the dioramas they had to make on ecosystems, and it was surprisingly very entertaining. Then the bus driver gave him a free fare home today, just because. Afterwards he and Joshua met at the new sushi bar they’ve been wanting to try, and Jeonghan ate half his weight in various salmon dishes, and then they split dessert because Joshua’s been wanting ice cream, and then they came home, and it got like, eons better somehow.

Joshua took his self-mandated after-work-shower while Jeonghan watered the plants and then cleaned out the leftovers in the fridge from this week, until Joshua did that thing where he pretends he left his facial scrub in their room, and Jeonghan did the thing where he had to get it, bring it to him, and then he was showering, too, except like, with a lot less actual showering and a lot more greedy hands.

It started there, and then it briefly paused in front of the bathroom mirror—cramped, hardly any room in there because their place is by no means big—but Jeonghan’s sort of a freak who likes to watch, and then it was them in their bed, so good, better than good, the very best.

Which brings them to now. Loose-limbed, sticky, and happy. Jeonghan is so content it’s insane. The ultimate Friday night. The only thing that would make it better is like, if the slime he and Seokmin ordered finally shipped, or even better, he finally found Bingo. Who is still missing, by the way. Jeonghan considered putting up posters about him. Jihoon talked him out of it.

“Shit,” Jeonghan swears, huffing out a breath, blinking up at the ceiling once, then looking over to Joshua. He looks the same as Jeonghan must, all fucked out—and beautiful and glowy and like, a million other things—but he also looks a little more smug, which Jeonghan would be annoyed about if he wasn’t so overcome with like, a disgusting sense of fondness right now. It should be embarrassing how much Jeonghan likes him, seriously.

He tells Joshua this in some words or less. “I love you,” he says and wholeheartedly means it, obviously.

“I love you back,” Joshua returns, gives him another satisfied look before he kisses his cheek, then sits up and frowns a little, as if he’s only just noticing the aforementioned, sticky, post-coitial state they’re both in. He’s probably going to shower again, because if there’s one thing Joshua loves, it’s using up all the hot water, but whatever—maybe Jeonghan can use it as an excuse to jump in there with him again. At the very least, get some heavy petting. “Oh, ew.”

See?

Jeonghan is a good boyfriend and a very chivalrous one at that, though, so he stands, stretches his arms over his head and cracks a bone there before he reaches for his shirt from earlier, something to give them both a half-assed cleaning so they can stay in bed for just a little longer. Jeonghan has like, Joshua’s body heat to absorb and stuff.

“You shouldn’t have showered in the first place,” Jeonghan points out, wiping at the cum sticking to Joshua’s stomach, tacky and gross, all while doing a very expert job of not getting turned on again. Because it’s tacky and gross, yes, but it’s also—come all over Joshua’s body, and Jeonghan’s just a guy. “You knew what you were doing.”

“Maybe.” Joshua shrugs. Evil. He circles Jeonghan’s wrist with his hand and stops him, tugs him down for another kiss, sweet, but enough tongue that it’s just shy of a little filthy. “Or maybe you’re just easy.”

“Both can be true,” Jeonghan allows, wipes himself, then goes to walk the shirt over to the hamper because he’s got an extra pep in his step today, stopping halfway when he— “Oh, my god. I thought I lost him for good!”

Joshua sits up fully straight now, eyebrows furrowed together as he cranes his neck to see what Jeonghan’s referring to, what he could’ve possibly found now, on the floor of their bedroom, a place they frequent, a place Jeonghan never thought to look for—

“No,” Joshua says, immediately, eyes zeroing in where Jeonghan triumphantly stands, still naked, now grinning like he’s just got laid and won the fucking lottery or something. Because apparently, his Friday night can get better. Life is so good. “No, I hate it. How did it come back?”

“I knew you were secretly hoping I’d never be reunited with him.” Jeonghan scoffs, tosses the shirt in the direction of the hamper at least, and then makes his way back over to the bed. “Bingo is not an it, by the way. He came back to me because he knows I need him. He knows he’s vital to my being.”

“You sound insane,” Joshua tells him, frowning still, and admittedly, very cute. Even though he like, is definitely disturbed about the little reunion happening. Jeonghan peels the covers back to slip back into bed, setting Bingo carefully on the nightstand. Joshua scoots a little further to the other side which is only somewhat rude, but when Jeonghan traps him and kisses him once, Joshua lets it happen, defeated. Score. “And the fact that he just randomly appeared on our floor seriously makes me think he is haunted. I just cleaned.”

“Maybe you swept him up from a corner or something,” Jeonghan says, and then kisses Joshua again, his mouth, and then the corner of his mouth, and then his cheek. “You’re like his knight in shining armor. He’d never kill you now.”

“What a relief,” Joshua says, or so Jeonghan thinks he says, because he sort of smothers his mouth with his own then, takes him yet another kiss, and then one more, and Joshua just tastes so weirdly good all the time that Jeonghan always wants to kiss him, and— “Hey.”

“Hi,” Jeonghan says back, stupid, but he doesn’t stop, presses another kiss to Joshua’s lips.

“Jeonghan-ah,” Joshua tries, “I need to ask you something. Can we—”

“Yes, you can call me daddy next time we have sex.”

“Oh, my god, you’re unbelievable,” Joshua manages, but not without a laugh first. “Yah, Yoon Jeonghan!”

“What?” Jeonghan asks once they pull away, and Jeonghan frowns at him, which he knows Joshua doesn’t appreciate because he rolls his eyes, right before Jeonghan tucks his face into Joshua’s neck and kisses there instead. He continues, between kisses, “What could—possibly—be—so important?”

“Our living situation,” Joshua says, a bit entertained nonetheless, giving a light tug to Jeonghan’s hair, forcing them to lock eyes now. Ah. All good things must come to an end. The end starts here. “Did you give any more thought to like, if we find something better than here? Since we last spoke about it.”

“I mean—kind of. A little,” Jeonghan says. He feels weird inside. Good mood slowly getting sucked away by the unwanted, evil, anxious thoughts. The same feeling he got the other day, the first time Joshua brought it up. Moving. Ack. “I looked at a few apartments nearby, but they’re basically all the same price. Wouldn’t make a difference.”

“It would if we had more space,” Joshua points out. “We’re paying more for like, nothing now. I sent you so many listings.”

“But those weren’t here,” Jeonghan points out. He did look at them, and they were good, but they weren’t—they were something completely new. “They weren't in our neighborhood now. Don’t you like it here? It’s nice.”

“Other places could be nicer, too, though, angel,” Joshua says, gently, and he reaches out to push some of Jeonghan’s hair from his face, and Jeonghan sort of wishes he could just kiss Joshua again, or that Joshua will remember he hates being gross and wants to shower, leave Jeonghan here until they both forget about it and then come back, happier, and make out until they pass out or something. “Seongsu-dong. Mapo-gu. Maybe we could actually go to some places. Could see apartments together, in person.”

“I guess,” Jeonghan agrees, halfheartedly. Awkward, all of a sudden.

“You guess,” Joshua laughs, just a little. “You’re acting like I’m asking you to move to LA right now or something.”

And at that—Jeonghan pointedly does not laugh. He knows it’s a joke, but it still—wakes something up in him. Some kind of new level, new territory of anxiety, maybe. One Jeonghan is not usually familiar with. In the future, in some future, any one at all, he will regret that. For now, though—

“Jeonghan-ah,” Joshua says. There’s a very slight edge in his voice. You wouldn’t be able to hear it if you didn’t know Joshua as well as Jeonghan does. Jeonghan knows him better than he knows himself. Jeonghan is practically the author of The Official Guide To All Things Joshua Hong. Hell, he might as well work on a second volume. So he knows he’s annoyed, at least a little. “That was a joke.”

“I know it was a joke,” Jeonghan says, because he does. He nods. “I’m fine with looking somewhere else. You’re right, it’s probably better to see some places in real life, and like, our place is small, so we can—we’ll find a day.”

But that doesn’t satisfy Joshua, not in the way Jeonghan had hoped. Dammit. Maybe he needs to work on some edits for volume two.

“What if I wasn’t joking, though?”

“What do you mean?” Jeonghan asks, slowly. Like he’s afraid to make any sudden movements. Joshua’s still got his hand in his hair, but it’s paused now, frozen in place. Gone is the gentle movement of his fingers. Jeonghan is not a fan.

“Like, what if I wanted to up and go back to LA? Home.”

Jeonghan’s stomach turns. Complete one-eighty. “This is home, too,” he says, careful again.

“LA was my home first,” Joshua points out. His voice is going—a bit frigid. Slightly. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“Well, that’s—we’re not going to,” Jeonghan says, before he quickly adds, “like, not right now, that is.”

“Jeonghan.”

“Fine,” Jeonghan says. He doesn’t know why he’s getting so freaked out all of a sudden. Los Angeles would be—I mean, it’d be fine, but—but his home is here. They’ve made a home together here. Why would Joshua want to leave that all behind? “It would be… weird, sort of. I mean, all our friends are here. Even your mom is here now, and like, our jobs. You have a really good job, Shua.”

“I have other family and friends in LA, too,” Joshua says. Argues? Is this an argument? “Also, Seoul isn’t the only place you can get a job.”

“I know that,” Jeonghan says. Snaps, just a little. “I can’t even speak English.”

“Let’s say you did—”

“But I don’t—”

“You wouldn’t wanna move there, at all,” Joshua concludes. He’s since dropped his hands from Jeonghan’s hair, and there’s a tightness in his jaw that wasn’t there before, and now Jeonghan knows he’s annoyed. Official Guide or not. “Have you ever even thought about it? A future where maybe we would? Maybe I’d want to?”

No, is the short answer. Jeonghan never thought of it because he likes to live in the moment, because life is easier that way, because there’s enough to worry about, and things are good as they are, so why come up with what if’s and someday’s? It’s not that Jeonghan would never want to. He’s not like, completely unreasonable. He knows Joshua misses Los Angeles sometimes, even with everything they have here, even though he’s been living here for over a decade now. He just didn’t expect to have to confront it like this. Especially now.

He also didn’t expect to feel so—weird about it.

“Just because I’ve never thought about it doesn’t mean I’d never want to,” Jeonghan says. Tries very hard to keep his voice even, void of any emotions. “It’s—change is scary.”

Joshua groans now, rolls over a little so Jeonghan’s no longer leaned against him, and Jeonghan misses his warmth, hates the sick feeling he gets in his stomach instead.

“I know, Jeonghan-ah, I know,” Joshua says, and now Jeonghan can definitely tell he’s aggravated, anyone would be able to tell, incredibly so. “God, I knew you were going to do this. You don’t actually want to move. And I’m not just talking about LA, I’m talking about here, in general. Why don’t you wanna move? It’s the perfect opportunity to—”

“You knew I was going to do this?” Jeonghan is a little bit offended. He also forgets that Joshua can read him just as good as he reads Joshua. Goddammit. “I didn’t even—that’s not even entirely true.”

“Jeonghan-ah.”

“What?”

“It’s been like pulling teeth getting you to talk about a different place,” Joshua tells him. “I know you like it here, both of us do, but you can’t—you cannot be scared of change forever. There’s like, only so much I can do. It’s—you always do this!”

“What?” Jeonghan says again. He feels like he’s been sucker punched. “I don’t always do anything. What do you mean?”

“Making things official between us, moving in together, me moving jobs,” Joshua starts listing. Which are all things that kinda freaked Jeonghan out at the time, sure, but it’s also normal to be a little hesitant about things sometimes. Change is scary. “Hell, it took you like, three months to get over the new box design for Frosted Flakes last year.”

“The other one was my childhood!” Jeonghan defends himself. “It’s ugly now!”

Joshua rolls his eyes now—not the fond kind, but the actually annoyed kind. The kind that tells Jeonghan he’s sort of in deep shit. To tread lightly.

“Whatever,” Joshua decides. He shakes his head. “That wasn’t the point, anyway.”

“What was the point then?” Jeonghan challenges. “If it wasn’t just—shitting on me for no reason?”

Joshua looks at him now, eyes wide. A bit incredulous. Like he’s on the verge of laughing even though nothing is actually funny, and oh, god. He really is in deep shit. He had a tone, didn’t he? When he was meant to be like, carefully treading, letting Joshua just blow off steam, he added more fuel to the fire.

Goddammit.

“That is not what was happening,” Joshua says, very slowly and Jeonghan feels all icky all over now.

“Ok, I know, I didn’t mean—”

“If you can’t actually see the issue here,” Joshua continues, carefully, a bit terrifying, voice flat and sour, “then you clearly are not ready to understand it in the first place.”

“Shua, wait,” Jeonghan starts, a groan, really. “Honey—”

Joshua gets up then, doesn’t even look at Jeonghan in their suddenly-too-big bed, with the sudden cold tension between them. “I’m taking another shower,” he says. “Goodnight, Jeonghan-ah.”

So Jeonghan’s in deep shit. Easily avoided deep shit, which is sort of the worst kind. Like, he definitely dug this hole, and now he’s gotta get in it, bury himself, and suffer. Or however that saying goes. He can’t remember. He doesn’t care to remember right now. Not when he royally fucked up.

Instead he leans back, sighs, craving a shower himself and more importantly, Joshua—for him to be here right now again, happy, warm, not wanting to like, wring his neck or something. He glances at Bingo on the nightstand still and reaches for him, turning his ugly little body over in his hands. So much for a good night.

“Sorry you had to see that, little buddy,” he says to him. “Maybe you can use some of your luck to fix whatever just happened.”

Bingo, expectedly, does nothing.

“I know, it’s my fault.” Jeonghan groans to himself. Bingo is still once more. Jeonghan rolls his eyes as if he’s offended him. “You sound like Shua when you nag.”

Jeonghan is loose-limbed, still sticky, and much further from happy now.

* * *

The bed is already empty when Jeonghan wakes up the next morning.

Joshua is still mad at him. Or no, not mad, just really fucking annoyed at his face, which is what Joshua said to him last night once he was squeaky clean and Jeonghan tried to grovel a bit, tried to smooth talk him out of their little disagreement so he could get some sweet spooning and a few lazy kisses before bed. Didn’t work.

Instead, he essentially got the silent treatment and Joshua’s back turned to him all night, and Jeonghan is about ninety percent sure that getting stabbed with a kitchen knife would hurt less, and no, he is not being dramatic.

He checks his phone, responds to a few messages from Seokmin about about tracking updates for their slime, likes Seungcheol’s entire Instagram story from last night out with Wonwoo and Junhui solely to piss him off, and then checks his messages with Joshua, sees absolutely nothing, and sighs. He rolls over, makes pathetic eye contact with Bingo still there, and then sees a piece of paper folded under him, too, and with a surprising amount of energy for the morning, reaches for it, eager.

went to the gym with mingyu

love u

And that’s it. At least he got a ‘love u,’ but Joshua also wrote that part in English, which feels less personal, less like he means it. Not even an ‘I’ in there. Didn’t even spell out the word ‘you.’ And Jeonghan is aware he’s overthinking now, but like—they didn’t even get to talk about it last night. And also—never go to bed angry. That’s like, rule number one in relationships. And yet.

“Yet you pissed him all the way off,” Seungkwan concludes that afternoon, taking an obnoxious sip of the Americano Jeonghan so graciously brought him, a fair fee to pay as entry to Seungkwan’s home to unload last night’s problems.

“Yes,” Jeonghan agrees, painfully so, sucking in a breath. He swirls the straw of his own drink and sighs. He’s been doing a lot of sighing this morning. “I know I fucked up, but he was joking in the first place. You know, about LA. I didn’t laugh, which could’ve been it. Should I have laughed?”

“I don’t think not laughing at his half-joke is why he wants you dead.”

“Ok, that was too far.” Jeonghan takes a sip of his coffee and then scoffs. “He does not want me dead.”

“Sorry,” Seungkwan says, shrugs, and then takes another sip.

Behind him, in the living room, Hansol and Chan are cooped up watching some sort of—action movie about like, dimension hopping or something. Jeonghan’s never seen it, but he’s pretty sure it’s like, a massive franchise. Or wait, is this the one with the multiverse? What’s even the difference?

Seungkwan turns around as the main character presses a few loud buttons on the dashboard of whatever it is that’s taking him through time, or space, or dimensions, and he’s annoyed. “Can you turn that down?” he asks.

“No,” Chan says, but Hansol does, anyway, because he, unlike Jeonghan apparently, does not like to upset his boyfriend.

“Why are you even here, Lee Chan?” Seungkwan demands. He rolls his eyes. “You don’t live here!”

“Yeah, and thank god I don’t!”

Seungkwan mutters under his breath, something along the lines of yah, this punk. He shakes his head. Takes another sip.

“Anyway,” he says. “Should we walk through this together or something? I mean, do you really need me to spell out why he’s upset with you? I thought you were smarter than this, hyung.”

“And I thought you were kinder,” Jeonghan counters, frowning.

If he knew he was going to be kicked around a little while he was already down, he would’ve gone to Minghao. At least he would’ve been a little gentler about it.

“Sorry,” he says again, and still sounds like he doesn’t mean it. “But I can’t pity you when it comes to Joshua. You know him better than any of us. And not for nothing, but did you seriously think him—wanting to go back to LA would never come up or something? Sure, he’s been here a while, but he was there longer.”

“I know that,” Jeonghan says. Of course he knew that. He’s a little dense, a little too apt to living in his own perfect bubble, but he’s not stupid.

Behind them again, there’s another chorus of loud beeping on the TV. “Do you think time travel would fuck with your sleep cycle or would you just adjust automatically?” Chan asks.

“It’s not time travel,” Hansol tells him, slight edge to his voice as if he’s annoyed. “He’s jumping across dimensions. Through the quantum realm, dude. Where have you been this whole time? Have you not seen the first two movies?”

“I saw them with you,” Chan insists. He sinks deeper into the cushions of the couch, hugs a Shrek throw blanket tighter over him. “A little realism wouldn’t hurt them, I think, though. Time travel or dimension hopping—it would totally fuck with your REM cycle.”

“I guess?” Hansol scoffs.

“Imagine how nauseous that’d make you feel, too?” Chan goes on. “Insides gotta get fucked up when you’re moving through the quantum realm. I’d be sick as a—”

“Can you shut up?” Seungkwan snaps again. He turns fully in his chair and groans, loud, specifically in the general direction of Chan and his Shrek throw. “Hyung’s in crisis.”

“I am not in—”

“Also,” Seungkwan continues, promptly ignoring Jeonghan, by the way, “it’s only like—noon. Why are you here so early? Why couldn’t this have waited until like, at least two? All the beeping from this goddamn movie is giving me a headache.”

“There is no time like the present,” Hansol responds very gravely. He does not look away from where the main character is now flying through—hyper-space, or wherever it is that launches you across dimensions. Jeonghan wouldn’t know. He really never did see the movies. “That’s actually a quote from the sequel. It’s better in context.”

“I’m cancelling our Netflix subscription,” Seungkwan decides.

Hansol gasps. Finally looks over at him and shakes his head. “Sadist,” he concludes.

“Anyway.” Seungkwan turns back to Jeonghan, frowns, and then takes another sip of his coffee. “I don’t even think it’s entirely about moving to the US. It’s about moving at all. You’re being a baby, hyung. You need to tell him you’d move.”

“He’s mad because I don’t wanna move?” Jeonghan grimaces. Gets that terrible, uneasy feeling in his stomach again. “That—I didn’t even like, fully say that. Honestly, I think Bingo pissed him off even more than anything else.”

“What?” Seungkwan gapes at him. “Are you talking about that heinous Troll doll you carry? Like children carrying haunted dolls in horror movies?”

“He is not heinous,” Jeonghan argues, and then reaches into his pocket, pulls Bingo out because he needed any extra luck and good fortune he could get today, and sets him very carefully on the table between them. Seungkwan eyes Bingo with a disdain eerily similar to Joshua’s. It makes Jeonghan miss him. “I found him last night—I thought I lost him after I took him to the dentist—and then once we were reunited, that’s when Shua started getting all—annoyed.”

“It is not your Troll doll’s fault,” Seungkwan says blankly. “Are you seriously dumb or just being avoidant on purpose? And can you put that away? He’s outrageously ugly.”

“Rude. What if I spoke about you that way?” Jeonghan prompts, taking Bingo in his hand again and holding him very close to his heart. “Or worse, someone you loved. What if I called Hansol outrageously ugly?”

“It would be true!”

“Lee Chan,” Seungkwan calls with a groan. “I swear, oh my god—”

“Aw, hyung,” Hansol interrupts, and the movie is still going, but he’s surprisingly turned away, facing Jeonghan over the back of the couch. “Bingo’s like your very own Mercury Ring. How cute.”

Jeonghan looks at Seungkwan, confused. “What did your boyfriend call him?”

“The Mercury Ring is what activates the multiverse travel in the movie,” Hansol explains, sounding very dignified. “It’s supposed to just be a good luck charm, but then the main character gets struck by lightning when he’s wearing it—he was just coming from his driver’s test—it ends up being a metaphor for travel in general, it’s pretty funny—and then the ring starts slicing holes through the dimension, and he keeps falling in.”

“That feels far-fetched,” Jeonghan says.

“Of course it’s far-fetched.” Chan scoffs. “It’s science fiction, hyung, this would never happen in real life.”

Jeonghan shakes his head, looks back at Seungkwan with pleading eyes. “Can we get back to my crisis?”

“So you admit it’s a crisis.”

“I fucked up, Seungkwan-ah,” Jeonghan reminds him. “It’s going to be a crisis if I don’t fix it soon.”

“He thinks you don’t consider his feelings. His wants. Your future together,” Seungkwan explains, sounds very bored about it, like this was all obvious in the first place. Was it? Should Seungkwan be writing The Official Guide To All Things Joshua Hong? God, Jeonghan hopes not. “Which—I mean, is that true?”

“No,” Jeonghan says, nearly immediately, and then pauses, thinks about it. “I mean—”

Of course he’s thought about their future together, at least a little, in some capacity. The future and change and thinking too far ahead is scary, but Jeonghan’s also super in love—has been for years now—of course he’s thought about what lies ahead for them.

Getting something bigger together, something to share. A house, maybe, or like, a dog, or a vacation timeshare somewhere tropical. He’s thought about taking Joshua to fancy places on big occasions, big anniversaries, big birthdays, things to celebrate together. He’s even thought about the semi-impossible, like Joshua with a ring on his finger and shared last names, and Jeonghan’s never really allowed himself to think any further than that because it might just make him dizzy, because Joshua is his now, his forever, but what if Jeonghan isn’t his?

It’s not like Jeonghan has reason to believe that, per say. Joshua loves him. So much. So fiercely. But still—he’s—Joshua is so much bigger than any of this. Than Jeonghan, than Seoul. He always has been. He’s bold. He’s brave. He knows what he wants. He has a fancy job and a fancy title, a good paycheck and Jeonghan—he’s just here. Been here. Scared of change and being brave and like, the mere possibility of moving to Los Angeles.

God, he’s pathetic.

“I love him,” Jeonghan says. “So much. But what if—I don’t know. There’s probably so much more for him out there. Like, not just in LA, but everywhere. What if I’m holding him back?”

“What?” Seungkwan looks genuinely shocked. A little scared. Almost like he’s been burned. “Why are you even getting at that? Hyung, are you like, breaking—”

“No,” Jeonghan stops him. Can’t even bear to hear Seungkwan say it. “I would never. I’m just afraid—”

“Afraid of nothing,” Seungkwan stops him. He puts a hand to his chest and takes a hasty sip of his coffee. Shakes his head only a tad dramatically. “Oh, my god. Don’t even scare me like that. You and Shua hyung are like, meant to be.”

“I know,” Jeonghan says, swallowing the awful feeling burning from his stomach to his throat. “Let’s just say, hypothetically, that one day he wakes up and realizes I’m like, a loser, though. Or something.”

“Hyung,” Seungkwan says slowly. He scoots a little closer and puts a gentle hand on Jeonghan’s. It’s a little damp from the condensation from Seungkwan’s coffee cup, but it comforts him nonetheless. “I think he already knows you’re a loser—”

“Yah, Boo Seungkwan—!”

“But so is he,” Seungkwan adds, like that makes any of this even better. Secretly, it does. “Seriously, you guys are perfect for each other. In a scary way. Honestly, when you first started dating, I thought like, maybe the rapture was coming or something. It was like the two biggest evils in my life had come together to form one giant evil. You work too well together.”

“Thank… you?”

“So I don’t think one conversation that caught you off guard means you’re going to break up,” Seungkwan continues. “Or means that you should. You were scared, you still can be scared, but ultimately, you love Shua hyung. And despite you thinking you might be—too much of a loser, he loves you, too. Isn’t that what matters? Like, that you have each other? No matter where?”

“I mean, yeah,” Jeonghan says. Means it. Obviously. “Fuck. I fucked up for literally no reason. I am a baby. I am scared of change, but—but that’s nothing we can’t do together. I think?”

“Well, yeah,” Seungkwan agrees with a shrug. “And you totally did fuck up for no reason, but that’s why you have me. To tell you that. To call you out on your fuck up’s.”

“Ok, that’s enough,” Jeonghan decides. “I’m still the hyung here.”

Seungkwan holds his hands up like he’s surrendering. Over by the couch, Chan lets out a loud guffaw at the TV, and Seungkwan turns again, once more irritated.

“You guys are seriously killing the vibe in here. We were having a heart to heart,” he says primly.

“No, you weren’t,” Chan says. “You were pointing out hyung’s flaws. This movie is hilarious.”

“It’s moderately funny,” Hansol corrects. “Let’s not give the writers more credit than they deserve.”

“Tough critic.”

Hansol looks over at Seungkwan and pats the space next to him. “You guys wanna watch? I can brief you on what you missed.”

Seungkwan sighs, but shrugs, looks at Jeonghan and tilts his head a little. “Wanna stick around?”

“As interesting as this whole franchise seems,” Jeonghan starts, stands, and gathers his things; keys, phone, Bingo, “I have to pass. I gotta apologize to Shua. And if I’m doing that, I should also try to like, get him some flowers or something. Maybe a family sized bag of cheese balls instead. They’re his weakness.”

“How romantic.” Seungkwan frowns. “Well—good luck. Let us know how it goes, ok?”

“Sure,” Jeonghan says, heads over to the door and slips his shoes on, just as the character in Hansol and Chan’s movie has a comedic run-in with one of his friends in another timeline. Chan is laughing again and Hansol is eyeing him like he has zero sense of humor. “Thanks for your help, Kwan-ah. Hansol and Channie—enjoy your movie.”

“Thanks,” Hansol returns. He looks over his shoulder for just a second as he adds, “When the next one comes out, we can all see it together. Take Josh hyung, too, if he hasn’t killed you by then.”

“You’re very funny, Chwe Hansol,” Jeonghan tells him. Sarcastic, obviously. Joshua will not be killing him, thank you.

“Thanks,” Hansol echoes, and then Jeonghan mumbles out his last goodbye’s, throws them a wave, and then he’s out, determined pep in his step as he silently hypes himself up for the conversation he and Joshua should have, need to have.

Change is not scary. Change is nerve-wracking, sure, but it is not scary. Nothing has to be scary if he has Joshua. He’ll always have Joshua. That is—if Joshua doesn’t like, get tired of his shit, and—no. No, that wouldn’t happen. Joshua loves him. Joshua loves him despite being a little more successful, always a little unobtainable, a step ahead of Jeonghan. Wait, that’s not it, either.

Jeonghan is sort of shit at these pep talks, isn’t he?

He sighs as he steps onto the street, pulling his phone out to shoot Joshua a text, a hi my love, heading home soon, i wanna talk and kiss you stupid, when he accidentally flings Bingo out of his pocket at the same time, and the poor little guy lands a few feet up the sidewalk. Jeonghan sighs again, annoyed. He cannot afford to lose Bingo again, though, especially not right now, not when he is in deep shit, royally fucked up.

He jogs a few paces ahead, tucks his phone away for now, so focused on retrieving Bingo that he doesn’t even notice the guy on the bike coming his way, food delivery strapped to the back, and then it’s too late, the guy colliding with Jeonghan’s side, and—ow, and—

.AEROK HTUOS, LUOES .4001-T

Jeonghan wakes up slowly, groggy. Groggier than usual. He feels—oddly nauseous. Like he just got off that one ride at the carnival they have every year by his parents’ house, the one he swears he will never go on, but still always does, that shakes you upside down and then also sideways. He feels weird.

He’s in bed. That feels weird, too. Not the actual bed part, because that feels fine. But just like—he’s been here before, beyond his bed, but as if he’s been in this moment before. He’s on Joshua’s side of the bed. Joshua is not with him, but there’s light coming from underneath the bathroom door, and Jeonghan can hear some movement from in there, so he assumes that’s where his boyfriend is. Jeonghan is also naked. Loose limbed. A little sticky.

Wasn’t he just at Seungkwan’s? Was that—a weird dream? It feels like one. Too real, though. Tangible. If he focuses, smacks around at the salvia in his mouth, he swears he can taste the coffee he just had with him. But that can’t be possible. Because he’s here, and when he reaches for his phone it says it’s Saturday, late-early-whatever hours of the morning, meaning Friday was only a few hours ago. Like it never even really ended. But Jeonghan swears he already did Friday, swears he did most of Saturday, too, because it was Friday when he pissed Joshua off, when he said the wrong thing and Joshua—

“You’re already up?”

Joshua emerges from the bathroom, pair of sweats low on his hips, naked torso on display, still toweling at his hair, damp from what Jeonghan assumes is the shower. He’s probably still mad at him. He should be, because what happened is that Jeonghan pissed him off and then he got up and went to shower and told Jeonghan goodnight, but he—he’s talking to him, and his eyes are soft, and it feels different. Jeonghan gets that wave of nausea again.

“Yes,” Jeonghan says slowly. “Why would—I mean. Yeah.”

“Ok, weirdo,” Joshua scoffs. He tosses the towel into their hamper. Joshua’s got a few marks at his neck, across his chest, one on his hip, purple and pinks in the shape of Jeonghan’s lips. Jeonghan remembers leaving those. He just did. “Just figured I would’ve tired you out more. Am I losing my touch?”

Jeonghan stays frozen, confused, watches as Joshua climbs into bed and settles in, grabs his phone, gets under the covers, and just—scrolls, cozy, normal.

He must’ve been waiting for an answer, though, because he looks up then, dropping his phone. He frowns. “Hey. I’m talking to you. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Jeonghan says quickly. Lies, sort of. Feels that weird pang of nausea again. “Aren’t you—you’re not mad at me?”

“What?” Joshua looks genuinely surprised. Confused, just as confused as Jeonghan is feeling. “Why would I be mad at you? What did you do? Jeonghan-ah, did you—”

“No, I didn’t—” Jeonghan shakes his head, hands up. “The apartment thing?”

“What apartment thing? What’s wrong with the apartment?” Joshua asks. He looks around the room as if he’s going to find his answer. His brows are furrowed, and his mouth is opened the smallest bit in confusion, and Jeonghan—Jeonghan is still just as confused. He stares back at him. Tries to pick out what’s so weird. Because this looks like Joshua, sounds like him, smells like him, acts like him, but it’s— “Jeonghan-ah. I’m serious. You sure you’re alright?”

“I am,” Jeonghan says. Nods to make it more convincing. He’s fine, he’s pretty sure. He doesn’t—it’s not like he feels in danger. And maybe—maybe this is like, Joshua’s way of just trying to work through it. He’s a little avoidant sometimes. Maybe it’s late and he’s tired and he just doesn’t feel like dealing with it. Or maybe— “I just had a weird dream, I think. It was so real.”

“Poor baby,” Joshua teases. Normal. So normal. He reaches out to slide his pointer finger down the bridge of Jeonghan’s nose. He’s warm, the same way he always is. “Wanna talk about it?”

“You were mad at me,” Jeonghan explains. Joshua lets his finger wander a little more, over the slopes and curves of Jeonghan’s cheeks and forehead and chin, and Jeonghan feels—better. It’s Joshua. “Because I was a douche.”

“Poor baby, indeed,” Joshua says again, even though Jeonghan is certain he’s teasing him this time. He scoots a little closer, laughs in that very specific way he does when he’s making fun of Jeonghan. He taps at Jeonghan’s lips and Jeonghan presses a single kiss to the pad of his finger. “Did you make it up to me at least?”

“I woke up before I could,” Jeonghan says with a sigh. He gives Joshua a pout, all regretful, and he gets a kiss for that. Tastes like Joshua. Jeonghan feels his nausea subdue just a bit. “I had a whole speech planned and stuff, too.”

“And stuff,” Joshua scoffs. He kisses Jeonghan again. A little dirtier. Still Joshua. A Joshua oddly—not mad at him.

Maybe he needs to stop having two coffees during the day or something. It was—a really realistic dream. A realistic nightmare, more like. Is the rent increase real or did he make that up, too?

He pushes it out of his mind. Doesn’t really wanna get into it right now. Kisses Joshua again. Harder, bitier. “Yes,” he says against Joshua’s lips. Grabs hold of Joshua’s jaw and holds him there, maybe a little less than gentle. Shifts his leg so it slots with Joshua’s. “And stuff.”

“Incorrigible,” Joshua scolds. Says it right into another kiss. “You’re so annoying.”

“The worst, I know,” Jeonghan agrees, turns Joshua’s face to the side so he can litter a few more marks at Joshua’s collarbone, suck at the skin behind his ear. Decides all this is much better than Joshua being mad at him, anyway. “Think you can go again? Wanna?”

Joshua groans a little, something out of aggravation and the way Jeonghan mouths at his neck again, bites there, too. “Incorrigible,” he repeats, except it’s all breathy, and Jeonghan wants him so bad. “I just showered. Again.”

“I know,” Jeonghan says. He runs a hand through Joshua’s still damp hair. “I don’t know why you did that considering the night is still so young. Plus, you smell extra good right now. Wanna like, eat you up or something.”

“Weirdo,” Joshua accuses him again. Kisses him once more. More tongue, more wandering hands. Joshua grinds down a little, shifts so his knee collides with Jeonghan’s crotch, and Jeonghan moans. “You’re not coming inside again, though, at least. Get a condom.”

Good enough for Jeonghan. He gives Joshua another filthy kiss, lingers, and then rolls over, reaches for the nightstand and—

It’s not there. It’s—there’s nothing there.

“What are you doing?” Joshua asks. He pushes himself up, untangles he and Jeonghan’s legs and leans to the other side, the nightstand there instead. He looks at Jeonghan like he’s genuinely worried about him. “Is it your first time here or something? Maybe I did tire you out. You’re all mixed up.”

Jeonghan laughs, but it sounds forced. He sits up, watches as Joshua retrieves a condom, the same brand they always use, nightstand perfectly the same as it always is, too. Except just—on the wrong side of the bed. And now—now Jeonghan sits up more, and—wait.

“The door is on the right,” he says. Feels nauseous again. Insanely so.

“Yeah?” Joshua tilts his head. Frowns. “And the nightstand is on the left, and the dresser is also on the left, and—”

“Wait,” Jeonghan says. He stands, slowly. Joshua looks at him like he has about four heads. “Just—wait.”

“I am.” Joshua sounds impatient, despite it. “Baby, are you sure you’re ok? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m fine,” Jeonghan says, even though he like, definitely isn’t now. Something is wrong. Or maybe not wrong, just different. “Let me just—I need to pee.”

“Ok?” Joshua’s frown deepens. “So go? You started this.”

“Sorry, I know,” Jeonghan apologizes—a habit when it comes to Joshua—whether this really is Joshua or—god, of course it’s Joshua, it’s just—something’s different. “I’ll be right back. Just… stay.”

“You’re being a freak,” Joshua points out, but Jeonghan’s already walking to the bathroom, as calm as he can, feeling oddly wobbly as he walks to the right of the room, and it should be the left, he’s certain.

Even the door is turned on wrong. Swings out when it should swing in. Jeonghan struggles for like, a whole four seconds, endures a myriad of more weirdo accusations from Joshua and laughs all of them off, and then he’s inside, shuts the door behind him and pauses, back against the door, chest heaving like a goddamn horror movie.

Everything’s backwards in here, too. Like, it’s his bathroom, the same one in the same apartment they’ve been in for years, except the toilet is on the left instead of the right, and the shower is on the right instead of the left, and the mirror is on the right instead of the left, and Jeonghan thinks he must be hallucinating. Or maybe he’s still dreaming. This is a really bizarre dream. There’s a lot of layers. Very meta.

He walks to the mirror and looks at himself. He looks the same, he’s pretty sure. He’s also—still naked which is a little jarring right now all things considered. He splashes some water onto his face, rubs at his eyes. When he opens them again, everything around him is still backwards.

“What the hell,” Jeonghan mumbles, and then he opens up the medicine cabinet, goes for some fever reducer or something because that must be the problem here, and gets a fucking jump scare instead when he sees it—him, Bingo—what the hell is he even doing in here and—his face. His fucking face is on right side up, and he looks normal, and— “Oh my god. He’s normal!”

“Jeonghan,” Joshua’s voice calls out in their bedroom. “Hurry up.”

“Just a sec!” Jeonghan calls back, and then grabs at Bingo, thumbs coming over his perfectly normal face. The horror. “Oh, my god. They maimed you. My poor, lucky Bingo.”

He shuts the medicine cabinet, comes face to face with his reflection again and stares once more. And he—his reflection is flipped, too. Like, doubly flipped, not the way it should look in a mirror, it’s all wrong. The mole Jeonghan has below his eye, the one Joshua kisses when he’s extra clingy, it’s on the left side instead of the right. The scar on his elbow from his surgery a few years ago is on his left arm now. The same bruise on his knee from when he got a little too into that blowjob he gave Joshua last week sits on the right.

Nearly the same, otherwise. Nearly.

“Except it’s not,” Jeonghan whispers—like, a manic-panic whisper—as he looks at Bingo again, beyond perplexed. “This isn’t right. How do I make it right? Fuck.”

“Jeonghan-ah,” comes Joshua from outside again. More worried this time. “You’re freaking me out. Are you ok, seriously?”

Goddammit. Maybe he should—explain the whole thing. Maybe he’s like, in a really bad dream, eons worse than the other one, and he can figure it out with dream-Joshua, he can talk it through and then wake up and everything will be normal again. Is that a thing? He’ll make it a thing. Nothing is real, anyway. He can do this.

He clutches the newly beauty standard approved Bingo and reaches for the doorknob, sucks in a breath and tries to gather his thoughts.

Hey Shua, it feels like everything is backwards, and I think this is some kind of fucked up nightmare so you can’t get mad at me because this isn’t real. Wait. Is it?

Jeonghan doesn’t find out. Not really, not yet. Because he turns the knob, expects Joshua, and instead, everything goes white.

HERE, THERE, EVERYWHERE.

Jeonghan wakes up again. Nauseous. Not in his bed this time. No Joshua. He feels even more uneasy than he previously did.

“Hansol,” he hears. Chan, he swears it is. But where is Jeonghan supposed to be? Back at Seungkwan and Hansol’s apartment? He’s positive he left there. “Hansol hyung, hey. He’s up.” A beat of silence. “Get over here.”

There’s some footsteps, some mumbling from what Jeonghan assumes is Hansol, and then he’s blinking at a bright light in his face, hand over his eyes to shield from it as he finally sees them. It is Hansol and Chan. They look—normal. Neutral expressions on, safe for Chan’s, a typical, tiny flavor of confusion knit into his brows instead.

“Why are you two looking at me like that?” Jeonghan asks. Frowns. “Where the fuck is Seungkwan? And why is it so bright, god, close a blind in here. I know you have more ambient lighting than this.”

“He’s confused,” Chan concludes. He looks at Hansol and frowns. “And angry.”

“I’m not angry,” Jeonghan corrects, though confused, well—kind of. He sits up on the tiny, uncomfortable cot he seems to be in, and looks around. This is not Seungkwan and Hansol’s apartment. The room is blank. Looks endless. Just—white, bright light everywhere. It’s him, and the cot, and Hansol and Chan, and absolutely nothing else. “Am I dead?’

“What?” Hansol actually laughs at him. “No. Why would you be dead?”

“I don’t know,” Jeonghan snaps. “Considering I was—at your apartment, and then suddenly in mine, except everything there was backwards, and now I’m here. This looks like a hospital. Like, a really freaky, fucked up hospital. Why are you two here?”

“It’s not a freaky, fucked up hospital,” Hansol assures him. He pauses, seems to be thinking. “Actually, it’s like, not even a place.”

“What?” Jeonghan is still frowning. Looks around and sees nothing. “But we’re here.”

“Here, there, everywhere,” Chan elaborates. “It’s everything. An in between. A feeling, some might even say.”

Hansol shrugs. “I would not say that.”

“That’s why I said some,” Chan says.

“An in between?” Jeonghan blinks at them. They nod, in unison, very earnestly. “Am I on drugs?”

“Nope,” Hansol tells him. “Dimension hopping, hyung. Parallel universes. This is sort of like the quantum realm. Like the movie from earlier! Cool, right?”

“I’m on drugs.”

“You’re not.”

“No, I must be.”

“Except you’re not.”

“Fuck you,” Jeonghan swears. A reflex. “I’m being serious, stop. This is like—a really awful, evil prank, you know. Even though I’ve like, definitely done worse to you guys, you can’t—this is mean. I’m fragile right now.”

“It’s not a prank, hyung,” Chan says. He sounds a bit sympathetic about it. “It’s a real thing. How else would you explain your apartment—the last one you were in. The backwards one. It wasn’t Seoul, like, our Seoul.”

“Our Seoul?” Jeonghan sits up somehow straighter. “But it was Seoul. It was—me and Shua.”

“T-4001,” Hansol says. Jeonghan isn’t sure if it’s supposed to mean anything. “The one we’re usually at is T-1004.”

“It was backwards?” Jeonghan says, points out the obvious, really, and then gets even more confused.

“Duh,” Hansol confirms. “And then there’s like, dozens more.”

“Of Seoul?”

“Yeah,” Hansol nods. “Of parallels. Of you and Joshua hyung and me and Seungkwannie and everyone.”

“And me,” Chan adds. He frowns at Hansol. “Why did you not name me? I’m standing right here.”

“I’m dreaming. I’m drugged. I’ve been kidnapped and they drugged me and you are—not really Hansol and Channie at all,” Jeonghan decides. The most logical explanation he can come up with.

“First of all, why would anyone want to kidnap you? You’re a grown man with like, no real assets,” Chan asks, sitting into his hip. He looks unimpressed. “It’s us.”

“Ok, first of all: fuck you? Secondly—” Jeonghan continues, huffing out a breath, “if it is you guys, then like—what’d I get you for your birthday last year?”

“A framed photo of me and Seungkwan,” Hansol answers.

“Aw,” Chan coos. “That’s actually kinda sweet.”

“Except it wasn’t.” Hansol scoffs. “Hyung stole from my apartment and then just—wrapped it up. It was a photo we already had.”

“Still better than what he got me,” Chan says with a pout. “I got a punch card for the smoothie place by Jihoon hyung’s. And then the punch card ended up being stolen from Junnie and I had to give it back.”

“Alright, fine.” Jeonghan secedes. Then, “But if we’re here, who’s like, home?”

Hansol and Chan look at each other. Blink. Chan’s perpetually confused face gets even more confused.

“I don’t know,” Hansol says after a minute. Honest. “They don’t answer that part in the movie.”

“The movie?” Jeonghan squawks. “Genuinely like the one you two were watching this morning? Yesterday morning? Was that even—did that happen?”

“Yes and yes,” Chan affirms, grinning. “We totally told you Bingo was like your Mercury Ring.”

“I still don’t fully understand that. I never saw the movies. And this is real life!”

“Sheesh, hyung, you must’ve been living under a rock,” Chan mumbles. “Regardless—it’s Bingo. Your ugly looking Troll? Yeah, he’s the thing moving you through time and space.”

“Don’t call him ugly. This is the worst dream I have ever had,” Jeonghan groans. He flops back down onto the cot and Hansol and Chan lean over him again. “How do I wake up?”

“You don’t,” Hansol says. Then, hastily, “Not until you like, learned your lesson, obviously.”

“What?” Jeonghan sits up again. “What lesson do I have to learn? Also, are you telling me Shua was right about Bingo being possessed or something? Is that what this whole thing is? Some demonic overtaking?”

“He wears a watch, hyung,” Chan says, suddenly pulls Bingo out of nowhere, too, Jeonghan’s Bingo, the one with the admittedly ugly, upside down face, and waves it around. “Prime vehicle for parallel switching. That’s like, the basic rule of the multiverse.”

“Is there a guidebook or something?” Jeonghan asks. “I’d like to read it.”

“Same, kinda,” Hansol agrees. “Basically, you’re just gonna keep doing this until you—figure out what it is that you need to like, learn.”

“I don’t need to learn anything, though,” Jeonghan argues. “I need to apologize to Joshua for being a dick and then like, fuck him silly. With so much love. The way he deserves!”

“Ew.” Chan gags. “Just because we’re in between right now doesn’t mean we can’t hold anything you say against you once we get out of here.”

Jeonghan ignores him, rolling his eyes. “How many… parallels are there, then? Multiverses, timelines, whatever they’re called.”

“Literally hundreds.” Hansol shrugs. “Different cities, different people, different planets. But always you and always Shua hyung, in some way, somehow. It’s cool, isn’t it?”

“No, not cool,” Jeonghan shakes his head. “I’m going to have a panic attack. Please just tell me I’m on drugs.”

“You’re not.” Chan tsks. “The sooner you accept it, the sooner you can move on. You have a valuable lesson to work through here.”

“Is there a universe where I kill you both and get away with it?”

“Nope,” Chan says, way too sincere, way too unbothered. “But there’s that one where you and Shua hyung are coworkers, there’s that one where he’s like, the heir to a thorne, that one that’s literally just like now, but like, if you were British, the one that’s like—where is it, hyung, is it Saturn?”

“Mars,” Hansol says.

“Mars?” He must have a fever. This whole thing must be a terrible fever dream.

“Mars, right,” Chan nods, and then keeps going, “The one where Shua is blond—“

“Wait, blond?” Jeonghan pauses. Joshua was blond for a bit right after they graduated college. It made him so deliciously slutty. Jeonghan reaped every benefit. Maybe this isn’t actually so bad. “Take me there.”

“Pervert,” Chan accuses him and Jeonghan actually feels a pang of shame. “It doesn’t work that way, anyway.”

“How does it work then?”

“Randomized,” Hansol says. Shrugs again. “Like I said, we don’t have a handbook. Plus, Bingo can’t be too reliable, I mean—you did get it from a garage sale. Where is he even capable of shipping you off to, you know?”

Jeonghan just stares at him. Hansol stares back, because he’s very good at that. “Is that supposed to be charming, Hansol-ah?”

“No,” Hansol says. He laughs. The bastard.

“At least you have us,” Chan interjects. He grins, all his teeth on display, and throws an arm around Hansol. Does jazz hands with his free hand. “Soonyoungie hyung’s gonna go ape when he figures out we’re here.”

“Here—”

“There, everywhere, yeah,” Chan finishes. Jeonghan doesn’t even know where he was going with that. More disbelief, most likely. “Anyway, we’re sort of like your spirit guides, so don’t sweat it. When you finish in one dimension, you’ll come back to us, we can hug it out, and then onto the next.”

“I don’t want spirit guides or a hug,” Jeonghan laments. He might sound like he’s whining, but like, he thinks it’s warranted. “I want to be home. With Shua.”

“Plenty of those to pick from,” Hansol says, way too geeked all things considered, and gives Jeonghan a sheepish smile. “Hey, that’s kinda nice, isn’t it? Like, in every universe, in every dimension, you always have him.”

Jeonghan feels sick all over again, but not the nauseous sickness, the heartwrenching, in love kind of sickness. It’s like what Seungkwan said earlier today—the two of them are just meant to be. And there Jeonghan went and fucked it up, and now he’s—zipping through a fucking multiverse to fix it.

Couldn’t he have at least like, just had to buy him flowers to make up for it?

“Fine, whatever,” Jeonghan says, squashing down the butterflies and ache he feels in his chest, the one for his Joshua, T-1004, or whatever. “So like, hypothetically, if this was real, if I wasn’t dreaming or tripping out, how’s this work?”

They grin. Jeonghan’s stomach turns again.

T-526. BUDAPEST, HUNGARY.

Jeonghan’s eyes open. Wave of nausea. He sucks in a breath, counts to ten, and then exhales. The way Chan and Hansol told him to. Supposed to make him less sick. He sort of thinks Chan was just lying, but whatever. He rubs his eyes. Sits up.

He’s alone, in what looks like a hotel room. It’s quiet, and it’s clean, and it’s much larger than any hotel rooms Jeonghan has stayed at himself—or on T-1004, he guesses—ones he stayed in on family vacations, or beach trips in college with Soonyoung and Seokmin, or random getaways with Joshua. It looks expensive. He must have money here. Wherever here is.

Hansol and Chan told him it was simple, this whole multiverse thing. When he wakes up, wherever he wakes up, if he stays calm, if he goes along with the people around him, then there shouldn’t be any fuck ups, any more holes sliced in the Bingo-induced-quantum realm or whatever the fuck. Jeonghan still doesn’t get it. But he’s himself in every universe. Yoon Jeonghan, 29, libra, blood type B, and overall pain in the ass.

Jeonghan is at least clothed in this universe when he gets out of the bed. Which is a little more comforting considering he woke up butt ass naked last time. He’s got on a big tee shirt that has a cookie on it and a pair of loose shorts. When he stands and stretches, he feels—achy, but a different kind than usual. Not the ache he gets because he knows he’s getting old, not even the ache he has after a particularly vigorous night of doing Joshua, but just—different. Well-oiled, maybe. Surprisingly, oddly limber.

He heads over to the windows, draws open the blinds, squinting at the sunlight that pours in now. It looks hot outside, although he doesn’t even really know where outside is. It doesn’t look familiar. Not Seoul. Not even any other city he’s ever been to. Not Los Angeles, Busan, or Daegu. Nothing. It’s only mildly terrifying.

He reaches for where a phone is tossed onto the armchair in the corner, his own, he assumes. It’s got a case on it that has a wallet attached. Jeonghan takes a minute to admire it. Ugly, but handy. The lock screen is a generic iPhone wallpaper. He must be boring here.

When he swipes up, he’s met with a passcode. Fucking—dammit. He tries his own, the one he has on T-1004, and somehow, it works. Joshua’s birthday, still. He wonders where this parallel’s Joshua is then.

His phone is still in Korean despite the foreign city outside. He has dozens of missed KakaoTalk notifications, about a hundred emails, Instagram app with upwards of a thousand notifications. He swipes to the weather app to see where he is. Budapest, it tells him. Huh.

He flops back onto the bed, intent on doing some good, old fashioned phone snooping—which is ok because it’s his phone, technically—and then he hears a sudden, somewhat familiar shout from the hallway followed by even more familiar laughter, and freezes. It sounds eerily like Seokmin and Mingyu. Maybe he’s losing it. Actually, he’s pretty sure he’s been losing it.

He ignores it for now, heads back to messages and searches Joshua’s name in his contact list. He gets nothing. Searches Jisoo and gets nothing as well. He even tries a few cringe pet names that he’s guilty of—baby, honey, sweetheart—and then he still gets nothing, and he’s about to give up, see if that really is Seokmin and Mingyu in the hall and see if they know anything about this Joshua, when he sees it.

Joshuji. Now that’s gotta be him.

Except when Jeonghan clicks on their message thread, it’s practically empty. Mostly just—Jeonghan spamming Joshua with things and Joshua only sometimes responding. There’s a few texts about grabbing drinks that always go unanswered. One about Seungkwan not being home that Joshua responds with ‘k’ and then Jeonghan had sent him an eggplant back. There’s a few photos of Joshua in front of what looks like the Han river, at night, a hat pulled over his head, practically hiding his whole face, and the message with it is just ‘pretty~’ and Joshua responds to that with a single red heart.

There’s a few more messages Jeonghan doesn’t understand. They keep referencing a Hoshi or a Coups or a Dino, and then there’s a bunch about what looks like a fucked up schedule in Shanghai, and Jeonghan feels just as confused after he goes through everything than before he started. Fuck.

What lesson is he even supposed to be learning here?

There’s a knock on his door that startles him out of his thoughts. It’s heavy, but not in a threatening way, just—obnoxious.

“Hyung,” a voice on the other side whines. Soonyoung, it sounds like.

Jeonghan opens up because it feels like that’s the right thing to do. It is Soonyoung on the other side. His hair is bleached blond, though, while the current Soonyoung, T-1004 Soonyoung’s hair is black, and he’s wearing a sweatshirt that has Chrome Hearts printed across the chest. Soonyoung’s always had an expensive taste, sure, but Chrome Hearts feels—unnecessary.

“Hyung, what’s taking you so long?” he asks. He’s still cute, still pouty. He looks tired. “We’re leaving soon for the shoot. Did the managers not wake you?”

Soonyoung pushes himself into Jeonghan’s room, looks around at the things he has out on the table there—a passport, a charger, Bingo (the son of a bitch), a couple bottles of vitamins, and a bag of foreign chocolates, along with a bag, his, he assumes, and—is that YSL? Damn.

“I must’ve missed them,” Jeonghan says. Does his best to act natural, normal. He has no idea why there would be managers and what kind of shoot they’re going to, but if Soonyoung says so— “I was… nauseous. Didn’t feel well. Must’ve been that thing we ate. Was weird.”

“We had Korean food last night, hyung,” Soonyoung says, and then laughs at him, like he’s ridiculous. He picks up the bag of chocolates and plops himself in Jeonghan’s bed.

Jeonghan peeks outside into the hallway before he closes the door, spotting Seungcheol at the end of it who throws his arms up and gives him a confused look, and before Jeonghan can ask what the attitude is for he says, “Stop wasting time! You have ten minutes!”

“Ok, mom,” he says back—because like, what’s Seungcheol’s deal here—and Seungcheol pauses, looks even more confused, and stops what seems to be some manic pacing to just stare at him. His hair is pink, also, which Jeonghan tries very hard not to laugh at.

“Mom?” he repeats. “What are you—eighteen again or something? Yah, Yoon Jeonghan!”

“Ok, sorry, whatever,” Jeonghan apologizes half heartedly. Still doesn’t know what his deal is. “I’m getting ready!”

He shuts the door behind him and pauses against it. That was odd. Soonyoung is comfortably in his bed now, though, helping himself to his fancy chocolates despite the fact that it’s—what time was it—around seven in the morning.

“You don’t have to lie about being sick, by the way,” Soonyoung is saying now. He wiggles in Jeonghan’s bed, giggles a bit, too. Like he knows a big secret or something. “I’m sure you had a big night last night. You and Shua hyung.”

Jeonghan doesn’t know what he means by that. Slowly reaches for his suitcase and starts pulling out whatever clothes he can find in there that are similar enough to Soonyoung’s. He owns a lot of hoodies. Lots of big tee shirts, too. Balenciaga, Vetements, more YSL. What the fuck?

“What about me and Shua?” Jeonghan looks at the stickers on his suitcase next—the dozens of them. He must travel a lot. He’s still confused. What the hell does he do for a living?

“You guys are still like, you know,” Soonyoung waves a hand around, “fucking without making it official fucking? Which is what I assume he was doing in here last night? And by assume, I mean, I know. Because Wonu told me. He saw Joshua hyung leave his room and go to yours.”

“What?” Jeonghan freezes. Fucking Joshua without it—being official? What is he? Twenty years old? Jesus. He shakes his head. “Whatever. We’re—we’re both adults. Tell Wonu to mind his business.”

“Both adults?” Soonyoung laughs so loud and so abruptly he nearly chokes on the chocolate he’s eating. He coughs, slapping at his chest, and once Jeonghan is sure he’s not going to die he disappears into the bathroom to change. Jeonghan doesn’t get what’s so funny. “So that makes your ten year game of cat and mouse ok? You’re so funny, hyung. You and Shua both. You guys are so silly, seriously. Worse than like, Seungkwannie and Vernon were.”

Who the hell is Vernon? And why is he—with Seungkwan? Seungkwan’s supposed to be with Hansol. This is—Jeonghan doesn’t like it. Ew. He hopes there are no outliers dating his best friends in other universes, he’s not sure he can take any more of that.

He also doesn’t like the fact that he’s not with Joshua. Like, what’s that about? What is the Jeonghan in this universe waiting for? They’re fucking, apparently. It’s obvious Joshua likes him then. Right?

He thinks about the other thing Hansol and Chan warned him about, though—something about not making any rash decisions in these parallels because then that would open new timelines, and then it fucks up the space time continuum, and Jeonghan didn’t get to ask what that was because then Hansol and Chan started arguing over it.

In any case: that means he can’t do anything about it. The whole him and Joshua thing. He’s here to learn a lesson—fuck that—something from this universe, and then like, leave, in a timely manner.

“We are not silly,” Jeonghan argues from the bathroom, though he’s not even really sure what he’s arguing, it just feels right. “Me and Shua get each other. We have like, an out of dimension connection. There are layers. You wouldn’t even begin to understand, Soonyoungie.”

“Soonyoungie?” Soonyoung repeats with a laugh. Jeonghan doesn’t get what’s so funny again. He slides the bathroom door open, fully dressed now, pair of sweats nearly identical to Soonyoung’s on, and a hoodie. He went with the Vetements just to feel a touch fancy. Soonyoung sits up, giving him a smile. “Finally done?”

“Yes,” Jeonghan says slowly. He grabs his ugly phone wallet thing. Then, “Hey, let’s pretend I’m like, totally not even from this universe or something. Where are we going again?”

“Hyung-ah,” Soonyoung shakes his head, unimpressed, “you’ve been watching those movies with the kids, huh?”

* * *

They’re in an idol group.

It was the last thing Jeonghan expected, he’ll be honest, but he kinda doesn’t entirely hate it. He didn’t think he could sing or dance, but he looked himself up on the ride here, squashed in the back of a van between Chan, who goes by Dino for whatever fucking reason, and Junhui, who spent most of the time talking his ear off about a goddamn movie he was just in in China, because that’s just the norm for this universe apparently.

Anyway, as it seems, Jeonghan’s not half bad at singing or dancing, and he’s had about fourteen different hair colors in the past two years alone, and he’s been lots of places and won lots of awards, and Jeonghan doesn’t actually give a shit about any of that because he also apparently isn’t dating Joshua, he’s just like, occasionally fucking him. Which is ridiculous. The world's worst cliche, really.

They’re in Budapest for some sort of music video shoot. Bingo must’ve got him here on a good day at least because they’re not actually filming anything yet, just doing some kind of blocking and spacing and a bunch of other industry shit that Jeonghan didn’t get but nodded very politely at when it was explained to him in a giant field in the hot, Hungary sun, and then he went to sit with Seokmin—Dokyeom?—and Seungkwan under the trunk of a production car and eat a bowl of yogurt.

Being an idol is not as glamorous as it seems, he’ll be honest.

The good thing is that he’s finally seen Joshua, this parallel’s Joshua, who also sings and dances and is apparently sort of fucking crazy on variety shows and is good at being generally a little evil—Jeonghan read a Reddit page about this Joshua to see what he’d been missing, and then kinda fell in love all over again—and he’s also still beautiful, except his hair in this universe is lighter than normal, a pretty chestnut color, and it’s permed, which makes him look cute, very sweet. His face is more tired, Jeonghan can tell from his eyes, but he still looks healthy, still looks like he works out, but Jeonghan can also tell he probably has a weird idol diet that he’s always reading about, because his face is the tiniest bit thinner, thighs the tiniest bit smaller. Hm.

“Can you stop ogling him?” That’s Seungkwan, to his left. His hair is an artificial orange. It actually suits him nicely. “I’m going to throw up on you. It’s too early for that.”

“I’m not ogling anyone,” Jeonghan half lies. He pokes around at the yogurt in his bowl for a split second and then goes back to looking at Joshua, currently doing some sort of screen test with Jihoon and Hansol. He laughs at something Jihoon’s just said and Jeonghan feels his heart twinge. “Maybe you should stop ogling Hansol. Isn’t he hot? Don’t you like him?”

He’s pretty sure suggesting something isn’t the same thing as fucking up the space time continuum, so he lets himself have this, just once. He just cannot believe Seungkwan is with someone called Vernon. God. What is he not seeing in this Hansol? He’s just the same as T-1004 Hansol. Just a dude, really!

“Yeah, Kwan-ah,” Seokmin chimes in, body starting to shake with a fit of giggles, the kind that Jeonghan knows will have Seokmin leaning all over him soon enough. “You totally have a crush on Hansolie. So embarrassing for you.”

“God, you’re annoying,” Seungkwan mumbles. He leans over Jeonghan to reach Seokmin, attempting to flick him in the forehead. Seokmin hides behind Jeonghan at the last second and Seungkwan swears at him under his breath. “Anyway—“ Seungkwan looks at him now, brief eye contact before he goes back to his yogurt, very dignified, “pretending I have a crush on Vernonie is not going to change the fact that I actually did something about it while you’re still—playing your weird mind games.”

Ohhh, and Hansol is Vernon. Now why the hell did Jeonghan miss that on his Naver search? Now he just looks like an asshole.

“Mind games,” Jeonghan repeats with a subtle scoff. He looks at Joshua again, watches him stretch his arms over his head and yawn a little, cute, before he seems to catch Jeonghan’s eye, looking directly at him. “It’s not mind games.”

Jeonghan feels his breath get caught in his throat kinda. Joshua’s so beautiful. Joshua squints at him, as if to silently say what, what could you possibly want, and when Jeonghan just smiles at him, he smiles back, only the side of his mouth curving up slightly, but Jeonghan sees it because he always goes looking for it.

Joshua turns back around before he can do anything else, starts laughing with Jihoon again before he seems to get dismissed by the PD and walks over to Wonwoo, knocks into his shoulders as he sits next to him on a folding chair. This universe’s Jeonghan is so stupid seriously.

“It feels like mind games,” Seungkwan mumbles. “Because one minute you love him and then the next you’re scared to take the leap and then the next you’re like—letting him fuck that actor—“

“Wait, what?” Jeonghan sits straight up, nearly drops the bowl of yogurt in the process. What is this Jeonghan seriously doing?

“Shua hyung told me it wasn’t exclusive with you guys,” Seokmin adds, matter-of-fact. “I asked him because I thought him sleeping with other people would freak you out. Totally did, obviously.”

“What, no, fuck you,” Jeonghan says. He takes a hasty bite of his yogurt. It tastes awful, all of a sudden. “I’m fine. I—me and Shua get each other. I’m not worried. We’re—“

Meant to be, Jeonghan wants to say, wants to point out that Seungkwan’s the one who said that in the first place, but he doesn’t think it’d go over too well right now, so he swallows down more yogurt and awful tasting jealousy bubbling up in his throat and shrugs.

“We’re fine,” he decides.

“Fine is a weird way to—“

Seungkwan doesn’t get to finish, cut off by another PD needing the rest of them for a group shot to work on spacing, especially because they’re going to be CGI editing some kind of background that they need to make sure fits properly, and blah, blah, blah—Jeonghan stopped listening again when they put him next to Joshua, and he doesn’t even care if that makes him a loser. Makes him an out of place loser. The Jeonghan of this realm needs to fucking get with it.

It feels like the right thing to do again, so he reaches out to poke at Joshua’s side, to feel the sturdy muscle through Joshua’s sweater under his fingers, to feel the warmth Jeonghan’s so familiar with, much more content with bringing out that irritated little pout Joshua always gets when Jeonghan’s like this, trying to get under his skin.

It’s nice that the craving to annoy Joshua seems like it’s—multi-universal, at least.

“What do you want, Yoon Jeonghan?” Joshua mumbles, and Jeonghan can see Junhui peering over them on the other side of Joshua, and he wonders if everyone else in the group is in on their will-they-won’t-they or not.

“Your attention,” Jeonghan says, the truth. “I like hearing you say my name, y’know.”

“Corny,” Joshua accuses him. He rolls his eyes. Jeonghan feels alive.

“Yeah, sure,” Jeonghan admits. Shrugs. Pokes him again, harder this time, practically digging his fingers all the way into his flesh. “But you like that, right?”

Joshua doesn’t answer, but Jeonghan sees the tiny upward curve of his lips. Jeonghan preens.

* * *

Jeonghan is bone tired, ready to either go to bed or better yet, back home to the right fucking dimension—being an idol is not for him, he doesn’t think he could withstand all the physical exercise required—when there’s a knock on his hotel door, barely audible.

He knows who it is before he even opens the door. Can just feel it. The same sixth sense he has when he’s at home, when he’s where he should be, T-1004 with his Joshua.

“Shua-ssi.”

Joshua doesn’t wait to be invited inside, hardly even returns Jeonghan’s greeting, just gives him another half smile and knocks into Jeonghan’s shoulder on the way in. He looks just about, if not, more tired than Jeonghan knows he himself looks, and it makes Jeonghan’s heart sort of ache for him.

“It’s late,” Jeonghan tells him. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do here. Are they—is Joshua here to fuck him? Do they hang out like this if they’re not? More importantly, can Jeonghan even fuck him or is that like, cheating, technically? It’s not his Joshua, but it is Joshua, and—

“I couldn’t sleep again,” Joshua explains, and he takes a seat on the edge of Jeonghan’s bed, crosses his ankles and presses his palms into the comforter, leaning back just a little. Blinks once, then twice. Stupid, pretty doe eyes. He’s also got a tank top on, arms out, the tiniest bit of skin peeking out the bottom of it, so Jeonghan is positive he knows what Joshua is trying to do. Diabolical, even in this universe. Every universe, he assumes.

(And Jeonghan is weak for him in every universe, too.)

“So you came to see me?” Jeonghan pretends he feels all special about that. Actually, he does feel special, but he’s not too sure being so forward about that would go over too well in this universe, so it laces it with a bit of sarcasm to play it safe. “Shua-yah, I’m honored. You chose me of all people to bore you to sleep or something?”

“Or something,” Joshua mumbles, rolls his eyes a little, but can’t fight the obvious fondness that seeps in. Jesus, the Jeonghan here is a real idiot. Joshua is so clearly into him. “Were you going to sleep?”

Joshua sounds genuinely concerned. Like he might have actually really bothered Jeonghan or something.

“No,” Jeonghan says. He was actually going to watch a shit ton of fancams. His own, and then Joshua’s, and then Mingyu’s because apparently he’s popular and Jeonghan needs to know why. “I’m up, anyway. Feel all—weirdly wired.”

Jeonghan plops down on the bed somewhere behind Joshua, with his head in the mound of hotel pillows he’s hoarding up there. He tucks his arms behind his head and sighs, eyes the line of Joshua’s arms, the muscles in his back, and then Joshua’s turning around to face him, and Jeonghan feels like he’s been caught.

“Is that supposed to be an invitation?” Joshua tilts his head a little. Smiles, but not in the way Jeonghan’s been used to—sweet, teasing—instead something a little eviler. Hungrier, even. “A suggestion?”

“Uh,” Jeonghan says, not at all intelligently. “Yes? If you wanted to stay and talk—”

“Oh,” Joshua drags the vowel out a little, and he scoffs, like he’s kind of annoyed. He turns so he can crawl up the bed to join Jeonghan and it’s—it’s seductive, Jeonghan knows because he’s seen him do it like, hundreds of times before. Fuck. “So now you wanna talk about it.”

“It,” Jeonghan repeats, stupid, useless, confused. Joshua settles somewhere next to him, but he’s still kneeling and still looking down at Jeonghan like he’s starved, and Jeonghan feels his blood get hot. “Define it, Shua”

“Playing dumb was never cute.”

“I’m always cute.”

“You’re also always a pain in my ass,” Joshua adds. He slides himself into Jeonghan’s lap, and Jeonghan’s hands go to his hips automatically, and then he feels all weird and dirty about it because this is Joshua, sure, but it’s not his Joshua. God, he really wishes he had that multiverse handbook now. Because it’s not cheating, but it feels like it. “And infuriating. And dense—”

“Wait, dense?” Jeonghan frowns. “That’s just mean.”

“I thought you liked me mean.”

He leans down a little so he can level with Jeonghan, and Jeonghan keeps his hands planted on his hips, pointedly does not move them even though it’s obvious Joshua’s trying to get him to. Trying to crack him. He takes Jeonghan’s chin between his thumb and his pointer finger, holds his gaze there, and for a second, Jeonghan thinks he’s gonna kiss him, hopes he does. Joshua does not. Instead, he smiles, lazily swipes at Jeonghan’s bottom lip with his thumb, and then sits back up. Finished. God, the Joshua in this universe is kinda mean.

And this universe’s Jeonghan probably is infuriating and dense, or so it seems, and so current Jeonghan, the Jeonghan, tries, very pathetically, “I—I don’t—”

“No, stop,” Joshua says suddenly. He frowns and there’s a tightness in his jaw. The same tightness that tells Jeonghan he might be in deep shit. The one he remembers from the last time he saw him, his Joshua. What’d be do? “We weren’t doing that, Jeonghan-ah, you can’t—fuck, god, you always do this.”

“What?” Jeonghan squawks. It feels eerily like their last argument. “What do I always do? I didn’t even—do anything?”

“That’s the problem,” Joshua tells him, and he rolls off his lap now, flops onto his back instead in the empty space next to Jeonghan. If they were home, if they were in T-1004, it’d be Joshua’s side of the bed. Jeonghan feels homesick, all of a sudden. “You don’t do anything. You fuck me, and then you do nothing, and then you let me fuck an irrelevant actor, and you still do nothing, and then you look at me like—like, fuck, oh my god.”

Jeonghan doesn’t know what to say, so he stays still. Silent. He wishes he could beat this Jeonghan’s ass, but something tells him that doesn’t work with the general theory of multiverse switching and dimension hopping, so he digresses.

“Did you care that I fucked that guy?” Joshua asks now. He’s still looking up at the ceiling, and there’s still that tightness in his jaw, the annoyed look in his eye. “Seriously, Jeonghan-ah. Don’t give me a bullshit answer.”

Yes, Jeonghan wants to say. He’s almost certain he’d care in any universe. Joshua is supposed to be his. He is his.

Because he’s here. Joshua is here, even though he’s—even though they’re both fucking famous, even though Joshua could have anyone he wanted, he’s here, in Jeonghan’s room, annoyed and a little mean and so, so pretty. He went to Jeonghan. Seems like he does, every time. His.

“What do I look at you like?” Jeonghan asks. Stupid, he’s sure. Knows for a fact it is when Joshua fixes him with a look, eyebrows furrowed, mouth slightly agape. Irritated, beyond so.

“What do you mean, what do you—”

“Shua-yah,” Jeonghan says. Softly, coaxing. Watches as Joshua melts the tiniest bit, shoulders deflating.

“Like you want me,” Joshua says after a minute. Firmly, but quietly still. There’s the smallest waver in his voice, Jeonghan can tell. Because he knows Joshua. “Like you want me all the time. Like it really matters to you that you have me all the time. You do it—you do it when it’s not just us, too. In the group. It’s so annoying. You’re so annoying, Yoon Jeonghan.”

“I know,” Jeonghan says. He’s annoyed, too. He’s not subtle at all here and yet he’s still stringing Joshua along. Somehow. God. “I think I’m—probably scared.”

“Probably?” Joshua repeats. He laughs at him. “You’re talking like you don’t already know. Like it’s not you.”

“Sorry,” Jeonghan says quickly. He still doesn’t really know what lesson he’s supposed to be learning here. Communication? Mutual trust? How to properly execute a high note while dancing? “I do know, I think. Just—you have to be patient. For a little longer.”

“I’ve been patient,” Joshua tells him. Groans again. “This is what I’m saying, Jeonghan-ah. Years of this, whatever we’re doing. You’re infuriating and I hate you and yet I can’t ever get rid of you. It’s infuriating.”

“I know,” Jeonghan says. He does, seriously. Because Joshua is here, even though they’re both fucking famous, even though Joshua could have anyone he wanted, he’s here, in Jeonghan’s room, annoyed and a little mean and so, so pretty, he went to Jeonghan, just like he would at home, in Jeonghan’s universe, and probably in the next, too. Because Jeonghan loves him, and Joshua loves him back, and—and—

He feels nauseous again. Weird. Fuzzy. Sort of like he did back in the backwards bathroom back in T-4001 and then he’s hit with the sudden realization that this must be it, he must’ve—figured something out, and he still has no idea what it is, he has no idea what’s even going to happen once he’s—fucking zipped out of here, but he knows it’s coming because he looks at Joshua and his heart sort of aches again, misses him already. Misses his own Joshua. Jesus, how many more times does he have to do this?

“Jeonghan-ah?” Joshua says, voice less icy than it previously was, more confused instead. “Are you—ok?”

“Yes,” Jeonghan lies. He stands, as quickly as he can, grabs Bingo and then makes a beeline to the bathroom. Which probably makes him look like a freak, but he also doesn’t really care considering this isn’t like him, and the Jeonghan of this universe could probably use some public humiliation, anyway. “But just in case I’m not when I come back out, maybe have this conversation again. Like, say exactly what you just did, just again. Because I still don’t fully understand how this all works. Kay?”

Joshua sits up straight, frowns, utters out a very indignant, “What the actual fuck, Yoon Jeonghan?,” and then he’s gone before he can even get the door shut.

HERE, THERE, EVERYWHERE.

“So? What’d we learn?”

Jeonghan sits up abruptly, scowls, and then stands entirely, feeling a little shaky on his legs. The room—the space, whatever this is—looks a little different than last time. Everything is still white and endless, except now there’s a couch there, looks like it’s made of nylon and would be wildly uncomfortable. Hansol’s laying on it, though, completely flat, while Chan stays hovering over where Jeonghan was, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement.

“That I’m a cowardly son of a bitch?” Jeonghan suggests. He has no fucking idea otherwise. “Also, we were in an idol group. In Budapest. Seungcheolie was like, in charge of us. And all the fans were obsessed with Mingyu. It was insane.”

“Idol group?” Chan repeats, eyes wide. He gets, somehow, even more excited then. “What was my position? Visual, probably.”

“There are positions?” Jeonghan frowns. “What—like, top or bottom?”

Chan frowns back at him. “You need to talk to Seungkwannie hyung when we get back.”

“Whatever,” Jeonghan huffs, throws a hand at him and then goes around the couch to properly, peacefully pace. “Me and Shua also like, weren’t together.”

“Weren’t together?” Hansol repeats, incredulous. “Damn, that’s a bummer. What about me and Seungkwannie?”

“Go on your own multiverse travel, Hansol-ah. It’s not about you and Seungkwan right now!” Jeonghan pauses. “You were, though. I almost thought you weren’t because you went by Vernon.”

“That was my name on soundcloud in high school.”

“So what happened then, hyung?” Chan asks, joins Hansol on the couch by nearly crushing his feet. Hansol does not flinch. “I mean, you must’ve learned something. Bingo brought you back.”

“I don’t know,” Jeonghan says, because he really fucking doesn’t. “I thought maybe I had figured something out about honesty or whatever, but—I mean, he wasn’t being entirely honest—”

“Typical Shua hyung.”

“And also,” Jeonghan sucks in a breath. “I couldn’t be honest either. How much can I say without fucking up the space time continuum, by the way?”

Hansol hums. “Not a lot.”

“Great,” Jeonghan huffs again. He pushes Chan over so they can crush Hansol together. He wants to go home. “And not for nothing, but do I have to keep feeling like throwing up every time? They should make motion sickness pills or something.”

“I’ll put in a word with the big man,” Hansol says. He struggles to tug his legs up so he can sit normally again, Chan doing little to help. “Onto the next?”

“I fucking hate everything,” Jeonghan decides. But the thing is he has no choice, he’s pretty sure. Goddammit. “Yeah.”

L-1159. PLANET B, TZ ARIETIS.

This time, when Jeonghan wakes up, he actually does throw up. There’s, conveniently, already a bucket next to him. It has some sort of purple, gooey liquid in it. Jeonghan is a little terrified to realize that’s what just came out of him. If it sort of felt like an acid trip before, it definitely feels like one right now.

Jeonghan picks his head up out of the bucket and pauses. Looks straight ahead at the window. Outside looks like a fucking dessert. Sand for miles, a few oddly shaped plants that he definitely doesn’t recognize the species of, and further than that, some homes, or what Jeonghan assumes are homes, tiny huts lined up with tin roofs. He glances up at his own ceiling and sees the same, ugly tin. Design is not the strong suit in this universe, he guesses.

What the fuck?

When he swings his leg over the side of the alarmingly uncomfortable bed, he’s in, he throws up again. More purple liquid. It tastes exactly how he imagines a rainbow would taste. Obnoxious. Overly sweet. Disgusting. It also looks suspiciously like the slime he and Seokmin made at work with their kids, the same kind they ordered a fucking DIY kit for, and he wonders if this is the universe’s way of playing a prank on him for it.

He sucks in a breath and kicks the bucket to the side, forcing himself up entirely, willing away the urge to vomit for now. The room he’s in is weird. There’s not a single piece of furniture in here that looks like it belongs with the rest. There’s a metallic bed frame, and then there’s an emerald green, velvet armchair, a mahogany bedside table, a Power Rangers clock on the wall that looks like it hasn’t worked since it was six pm in 2006, maybe. A pair of curtains already draped open, shabby looking, a little teared on the bottom, but some sort of shiny blue material.

There’s a mirror leaned against the wall next to the window. He looks like shit. Obviously because he’s been—puking his guts up, but there’s also a bruise forming around his left eye, freshly injured. He’s wearing a light pink jumpsuit that has a rip in the knee. He has no idea if this is supposed to be his everyday wear or pajamas. What the hell does he get up to for fun in this parallel?

And where the hell is he?

He starts searching the room for clues. Finds Bingo, an ancient looking iPod, a tablet he can’t figure out how to turn on, some sort of smart watch he also can’t figure out how to turn on, and a goddamn wrench. Great.

He makes it halfway to the door before his body threatens to revolt against itself again, so he goes back to the bucket, gets rid of more purple looking slime, and he’s still face first in said bucket when he hears his door swing open, familiar voice judging him—

“God, you drank way too much.”

Jihoon. Jeonghan would recognize that tone anywhere. Only, when Jeonghan picks his head up to look at him, Jihoon is red. Like, his entire fucking face, and his hair, and his hands, and the only thing that isn’t is his eyes, those are big and black and endless, and the jumpsuit he’s got on, identical to Jeonghan’s. Maybe this is his everyday wear. It’s possible Jeonghan is a loser in this parallel, too.

“How’s that hira juice now, huh?” Jihoon laughs. “You should’ve listened when Seungkwan tried to stop you.”

“You’re red,” is all Jeonghan says. He needs to brush his teeth.

Jihoon just gives him a look, unimpressed. “No fucking shit. You must still be drunk or something,” he says. Then, with a semblance more of authority in his voice, “We got work to do, dumbass. Get up.”

And then he’s gone.

So Jihoon is red here. Cool. That’s fine. And Jeonghan gets like, punched in the face for fun or something. Cool.

* * *

Jeonghan’s entire closet is coveralls, which makes more sense when he emerges from the miniscule room he’d been puking his guts out in and finds it’s attached to a garage. He’s a mechanic. Of some sort, because when he stands at the edge, taking deep breaths and trying very hard not to throw up on the fresh jumpsuit he just put on, he’s met with Jihoon and Wonwoo (he’d know Wonwoo anywhere, he has the same, nerdy looking glasses here, too), working on—what looks like a goddamn spaceship. Which would mean—he’s in goddamn space.

Chan mentioned something about space, didn’t he? That one parallel on Mars, or whatever. And like, Jeonghan isn’t dense, he’s watched the documentaries Junhui’s always got on, he knows there’s life beyond their solar system. It’s just like, there’s Jeonghan beyond their solar system? Jeonghan and Joshua? God, Jeonghan needs to find him.

“Look who finally joined us,” Wonwoo mumbles, wiping his hands with a rag, doing his best to conceal a grin that Jeonghan knows too well. He’s endeared. Entertained with him, at least. “Are you still gonna be sick?”

“Maybe,” Jeonghan says. He can still taste the slime in his mouth. He doesn’t think he’d wish it on his worst enemy. “Are we on Mars?”

“Are you being stupid on purpose or did the hira juice actually melt your brain?” Jihoon snaps. He looks at Wonwoo over the ship between them—it’s not really big, honestly just looks like an obnoxious car—and frowns. “Should we be worried?”

“I don’t know,” Wonwoo muses. “Jeonghan, how many fingers am I holding up?”

“Four.”

“See?” Wonwoo shrugs. Goes back to—whatever he’s fucking doing underneath this ship. Is Jeonghan expected to work on that? He hopes not. “He’s fine.”

Wonwoo is not red like Jihoon is, but his hair is white, like whiter than any bleach could do, and he’s got some kinda tattoo going up the side of his neck. Except it’s light blue and it looks more like it’s under his skin than an actual tattoo, and it’s like, fucking glowing. Maybe they’re aliens. Humanoids or whatever. Jeonghan doesn’t know, he never really got into the Star Wars franchise.

“Are you, though?” Jihoon prompts. Jeonghan trudges over to where they’re working, leaning up against a trolley of tools, still trying not to puke. It’s cute in here. Sort of like Grease, if Grease was in outer space or something. “You weren’t really last night. Before you drank half your weight in hira juice that is.”

Jeonghan hums, rubs at his head and then his eye, wincing when he’s painfully reminded of the bruise he’s got there. “I had a weird dream last night,” Jeonghan lies. It’s becoming a staple line. His only method of survival. “Can’t remember what actually happened and what didn’t. Jog my memory?”

Jihoon pauses, giving Wonwoo a look again. Wonwoo gives one back. Jihoon makes another face. Jeonghan wonders if this is some sort of alien-to-alien communication or just years of friendship that Jeonghan is now left out of.

“He’s fine!” Wonwoo insists and he says that part out loud, thank god. He starts to explain, “You made us go out.”

“Because you’re an avoidant weirdo,” Jihoon adds.

“Because Shua is back,” Wonwoo keeps going. “Did you remember that part?”

“Shua—”

“Yes, Joshua,” Wonwoo says, “your boyfriend-not-boyfriend who’s like, currently a spy for the resistance or whatever. You know he can never tell us—”

“He’s not a spy,” Jihoon scoffs. He looks at Wonwoo like he’s got ten heads. Jeonghan wonders if there’s any aliens up here that actually do have ten heads. He’s thankful his friends aren’t one of them. “He’s like, a hitman. I thought that was obvious.”

“How is that obvious?” Wonwoo frowns. “He wears all black. He carries a weapon. He has a nondescript, piece of shit ship, and never tells us what he’s actually doing. Does that necessarily make him a hitman?”

“It doesn’t make him a spy either?”

“Anyway,” Wonwoo huffs, looking at Jihoon pointedly, “he’s back, hence the reason you had to drink yourself stupid. Because you were avoiding him, even though he was fucking there?”

“Stupid of you,” Jihoon says pitfully.

“Then,” Wonwoo doesn’t stop, “someone made a pass at him and that got you all pissed, so you said something about it—stupid again, on your part, he was a big guy—and then you got punched. How’s your eye, by the way?”

“Sore.” Jeonghan grimaces. He holds a hand up to it again and presses lightly. Yeah, the guy must’ve been big. At least he was willing to defend Joshua’s honor here. Or his own honor? He kinda has to kick that possessive streak, probably. Let this be a wake up call for T-1004 Jeonghan.

“Makes you look cool, though,” Jihoon offers, like it’s any consolation.

“Thanks,” Jeonghan returns. “So where’s Shua now? I should probably see him. And… apologize.”

“Think he was staying with Seungkwan and Hansol this time while he was here.” Jihoon looks at him funny again. “Also—apologize? Were you body snatched last night or something? You never apologize.”

Oh, dammit, is he an asshole here or something? Also, what did Wonwoo mean by boyfriend-not-boyfriend? Is this another fucked up situationship? Jeonghan needs to grow a pair.

“Well, maybe I wanna start,” Jeonghan says primly. He shrugs. “I’m taking the day off. I just decided.”

“Oh, come on,” Wonwoo groans. “You can’t do that. We have to finish this engine today! We told them we would!”

“That was before I was vomiting purple goo,” Jeonghan says. He doesn’t really care who they promised what. That’s this universe’s Jeonghan’s problem, not his. “I’m going back to bed.”

“Lazy! And annoying! And—” Wonwoo calls after him, and Jeonghan’s just hardly made it inside before he vomits again. He’s starting to think he might cancel Seokmin and his order when he gets back.

* * *

Jeonghan deduces, through his expert sleuthing skills, the following:

He’s human. Born October 4, 1995, in South Korea, same as he has been. In 2007, on Earth, there was apparently a massive space boom. Jeonghan was one of the lucky ones to get a free ride. It was like boarding school, but in space. Boarding school except like, you’d never see your family again, which—whatever. Jeonghan likes his parents in T-1004, but maybe they’re total douchebags here or something. Not his business.

Anyway, he’s been fucking around up here since then, on Planet B, and Planet B is sort of in the middle of some kind of intergalactic war, apparently. He guesses that’s what Joshua is—a spy or a hitman or whatever for, but Jeonghan doesn’t care all that much because he’s been making an honest living as a humble ship repairman, and he’s got some friends, and an iPod loaded with 2006’s top 100, which is pretty sweet. Good year.

And then, some way, somehow, he’s sort of also got Joshua Hong—human, LA born, spy or hitman or whatever—who Jeonghan knows from like, the space boarding school or something, who he’s been in love with since forever. Checks out.

It’s sort of a dead end there. If only because the tablet Jeonghan figured out how to turn on dies, and then he can’t figure out the charger, and so he gives up. At the very least, he’s stopped puking, which is a plus.

And so Jeonghan puts his big boy pants on—meaning, he keeps wearing his coveralls—seamlessly figures out which direction Seungkwan and Hansol’s place is (he asks Jihoon until Jihoon tells him to fuck off), and heads over to see Joshua, his boyfriend-not-boyfriend.

(“I still think you were body snatched,” Jihoon had noted, nearly yelling over the Justin Timberlake song in the background, because apparently, it’s still 2006 up here for all of them. “You facing a situation head on is so unlike you.”

“Let him rock,” Wonwoo had defended him. Jeonghan felt proud. Then, “Also, have you considered he’s just trying to get on Joshua’s good side so they can fuck about it?”)

Joshua greets him like he’d been expecting him. Maybe he was. This is sort of typical; you know, the whole, following Joshua everywhere no matter what thing, so he probably was expecting him, or maybe Joshua has some sort of sixth sense. Don’t they have that in Star Wars, too? Hansol would know. He wonders if they have Star Wars up here.

“Took you long enough.”

Joshua doesn’t even look up to see him. He’s laying on the floor of the room Seungkwan and Hansol graciously gave him, and one of his legs is kicked up across his knee, scrolling through a tablet, bored. He’s in shiny, black leather pants and top, and Jeonghan feels his mouth go dry at the sight. His arms are big. His hair is short, almost like a buzzcut. White, like Wonwoo’s was, but Jeonghan can see the tiniest bit of roots showing, gives away the fact that’s still human. Which is good, because Jeonghan isn’t too sure he’s ready for monster fucking yet. Alien fucking? Wait—not like he’s going to, anyway, but—

“Finally stopped puking up your guts?” He pulls the tablet away and grins. Winks at Jeonghan, too. Fuck. “Cute jumpsuit. Do you own anything else?”

Jeonghan had forgotten he was wearing that. He folds his arms over his chest, suddenly self conscious. Joshua eyes him like he sort of wants to eat him. Jeonghan knows that look well.

“It’s comfortable,” Jeonghan says anyway, very dignified. “Plus, some of us have like, boring people jobs.”

“Here you go again.” Joshua rolls his eyes, tossing the tablet to the side and sitting up. Jeonghan feels like he must’ve said something wrong. He huffs. “Fine. Feel like drinking again?”

“Not really, honestly,” Jeonghan says. He doesn’t think he can handle any more purple slime coming out of his body. “We could always stay here.”

“Cute,” Joshua says. “We’re going, anyway.”

Jeonghan listens, because he’d follow Joshua anywhere, obviously.

* * *

Joshua holds himself differently here. More confident, more guarded, a touch scarier. Hot, unfortunately, because Jeonghan is a little gross like that. Anyway, he’s also—here now, but isn’t always, he comes and goes, and that, that apparently pisses Jeonghan off. A lot.

“So,” Joshua says, tucked away in a corner booth of the bar he dragged them to, “aren’t you gonna ask me how I’ve been? You know, considering you ignored me last night and I’ve been away for the past—however many solar phases.”

“Right.” Jeonghan watches as Joshua takes a long sip of some neon, glowing liquid. The sight alone makes Jeonghan sick. Jesus, what’s in their alcohol up here? “I wanted to say sorry about that.”

“That’s funny,” Joshua says, and actually does laugh at him. Jeonghan feels like he’s been punched in the gut, in a bad way. “Like you haven’t been ignoring me since I left, anyway, because I pissed you off so bad last time.”

Oh, dammit, Jeonghan really is an asshole here, huh?

“I haven’t been—” Jeonghan doesn’t know if he should fight it. He also doesn’t fully grasp the nature of their relationship yet, because it’s obvious Jeonghan likes him, may even love him here, but to what degree? They’re not together-together. “I’m like, busy.”

“Busy,” Joshua repeats with a scoff. “With your normal person job, huh.”

Jeonghan frowns. What was it that Joshua does here again? A spy or a hitman or whatever. Something dangerous. Something that like, could probably kill him. Jeonghan thinks his hostility towards it is at least a little justified.

“Why say it like that?”

“Doesn’t feel so good, does it?” Joshua raises a brow. He laughs again, though it’s a tiny, fleeting thing. Less sarcastic than the last. “That’s how it feels when you try and—convince me to stay here with you, instead of, you know. Doing something that actually betters the Galaxy?”

“You’re saying repairing junky ships isn’t bettering the Galaxy?” It’s a partial joke. Mostly because Jeonghan doesn’t really know what to say, and it’s obvious Joshua’s trying to have an actual conversation here, and dammit. He really wishes this whole thing came with a guidebook, or like, a fucking script, at the very least.

“Don’t be a prick,” Joshua mumbles. He takes another sip of his drink, and Jeonghan is genuinely in awe that he doesn’t grimace at the taste. Then, quietly, “I miss you when I’m away you know.”

It sounds like a confession. A secret. Something that he doesn’t even want to let Jeonghan hear. It tugs at his heart, makes his insides turn, lights up that Joshua-related-sector of his brain with all the good, lovey stuff.

“So it hurts when you give me the silent treatment, or you don’t support me, or act like this could never work,” he finishes. Turns a little so it’s sort of like he’s shutting Jeonghan out now. Vulnerability without accountability.

And god, Jeonghan is a real asshole. Seriously.

“Which is why I’m… saying sorry.” Jeonghan doesn’t know if he’s supposed to, but something tells him deep down the him here wants to. Because a pouting, broken Joshua is not good for any him, in any universe. “I—miss you, too. That’s all.”

“I don’t need to hear you say it,” Joshua says. Like he’s annoyed. “Because it always goes like this. I’m away, and you hate me, and then I come back, and it’s like everything’s ok for a little, and we get too comfortable, and then I have to leave again, and I’m the bad guy because it’s not that I don’t want to stay, but because I can’t—”

“You can’t?” Jeonghan can’t help it; he feels an ache in his chest over the idea. The idea that somewhere out there, there is Joshua, and then there is him, and they’re not together, not physically, but their hearts are and that makes it even worse.

“No, I can’t,” Joshua confirms. “And you know that. You know what’s important to me, and I know you think I’m stupid for putting my life at risk or whatever—”

“You are stupid for that,” Jeonghan says. He’d say it in any universe. “Because you’re too important to—“

“And so is this!” Joshua stops him. He huffs. Sucks in a breath. Takes another sip of that god awful alcohol. “I hate spending half our time together fighting. We’re never going to agree, Jeonghan. You have to—you either have to let it go or let me go.”

Never, he wouldn’t, he couldn’t. The thought makes him sick. Scared. Anywhere without Joshua—no, never.

“Ok,” Jeonghan says. Because that’s just it. “Ok, then. Do you—you want another drink?”

Because having him here, at least for now, is better than nothing.

* * *

“How’s your eye?”

Planet B Joshua, much like the Joshua he has back on Earth, is much softer when it’s just the two of them, when they’re alone, nothing around but a few distant stars to eavesdrop.

He’s just as warm, too. Jeonghan can feel it, the heat radiating off his body from where he’s pressed up against him underneath the weird, tin roof of Jeonghan’s place, with the ugly curtains and the uglier clock, everything that feels out of place and anything but home. Joshua, though, he feels more like home. Even if it’s not his Joshua, not exactly.

“It’s fine,” Jeonghan says. They’re both talking quietly, as if they might wake anyone else. As if all this is still a secret between just them. Jeonghan raises a hand and presses at it. “It hurts only a little.”

“Only a little,” Joshua repeats, teasing tilt to his voice. He rolls over a little to get a better look at Jeonghan, one of his hands gently going to the bruise. He barely runs over it, but Jeonghan’s body lights up with goosebumps, anyway. “You were so stupid for that.”

“I know,” Jeonghan agrees. “You make me that way, though.”

“Stupid?”

“Stupid.” Jeonghan nods. That’s true in any universe. Adds, “Brave, maybe.”

Joshua hums, traces over the lines of Jeonghan’s face, and Jeonghan closes his eyes, imagines he’s not in goddamn space, and everything feels normal for a second. Feels like he’s back in his bed, in his own apartment, and Joshua is there so everything is ok. Everything is always ok, if Joshua is there.

“You’re braver than you think, anyway,” Joshua tells him. Gentle. Quiet. Home. “You don’t need me to make you feel that way.”

Jeonghan cracks open an eye, slowly. Joshua is still looking at him. It’s the same look he gives Jeonghan at home, in moments just like this, intimate, just them. Jeonghan feels his heart tug with warmth and homesickness and an ache for his Joshua that’s yet to be soothed, although it’s come close, though, at least now.

And then he’s sitting straight up. Nauseous. Sick.

Fuck.

“What?” Joshua asks, frowning. Like Jeonghan really ruined the moment. He guesses he did. “Are you—”

“I’ll be right back,” Jeonghan says. He won’t be, not as himself, anyway, or well—he will, he will be himself, but— “I think I might be sick again.”

“You’re a real lightweight these days, huh?” Joshua rolls his eyes. “It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”

“You will again in like,” Jeonghan looks at the Power Rangers clock, pausing, “forty seconds. Hold onto that, kay?”

Jeonghan’s been trying to hold on, too. It’s not really working out.

HERE, THERE, EVERYWHERE.

He comes to with one last aggressive expulsion of purple goo. Jesus christ.

“Jesus christ,” Hansol says out loud. He does not move out of the couch he’s sat on still, but Chan jumps nearly ten feet in the air with an affronted squeal. “What the hell is that?”

“I’m a massive lightweight in that universe,” Jeonghan says. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and grimaces. Do they have water in the in between? Mouthwash? “Also, I need to cancel the DIY slime I ordered with Seokminie.”

“Alright,” Hansol says slowly. Confused, obviously, but Jeonghan doesn’t care because he is even more fucking confused, thank you very much. “Welcome back? I think.”

“I was in fucking space,” Jeonghan tells them. Madly. “Jihoon was there and he was red, and Wonwoo was like, so pale, he was practically blue, and Shua was—well, he was super hot, but he was also like, dangerous. Or had a dangerous job? Isn’t the resistance a Star Wars thing?”

“Star Wars?” Hansol tilts his head. “Hyung, that’s a totally different franchise than the multiverse movies. We can’t do a crossover, they’re different production studios, it’d be a whole thing.”

“Right.” Jeonghan huffs, side stepping the puddle of goo as he gets up, starts pacing once more. As one does. “So I still learned nothing, by the way.”

“Nothing?” Chan seems shocked. He’s folded up on the back of the couch, somehow balanced there. “Bingo took you back.”

“You don’t say,” Jeonghan groans. Is it too early to get sick of Bingo’s shit? He thinks he already is. He’s starting to wish he stayed lost in their apartment forever. “We were only—half together this time. In love, but apart, and we kept fighting over it? I had a black eye, too.”

“Black eye?” Chan repeats with a frown. “Did Shua hyung—”

“No,” Jeonghan stops him. “Of course not. Someone was hitting on him and I tried to defend his honor? Or so I was told. Tried being the keyword, also, because I obviously got my ass handed to me.”

“Aw. That’s kind of romantic.”

“And stupid,” Hansol adds, which Jeonghan does not appreciate.

“What were you doing when you got brought back?” Chan asks. “Maybe we can figure it out from there.

“Laying in bed,” Jeonghan recalls. He thinks about it some more. “Talking about feelings, I guess.”

“Gay.”

“Which is what we were doing last time, too.” Jeonghan is connecting the dots. Or at least he thinks he is. “Maybe that’s—do you think it’s communication? I mean, we had conflict the last two times. Maybe that’s it?”

“Ooh!” Chan is delightedly pleased. “That’s a good theory.”

“You had conflict in real life, too,” Hansol points out. He taps at his chin like he’s truly thinking about it. “You could be onto something.”

“So communication and facing challenges head on, and blah, blah, blah,” Jeonghan concludes. “Yay, we figured it out. Can we go home now?”

Hansol hums. “Something’s telling me no.”

“And what the hell is something, Chwe Hansol?” Jeonghan frowns. “Where are you even like, getting this inkling?”

“Don’t question it,” Chan chides him. He shrugs. “Spirit guides, remember?”

T-143. SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA.

Jeonghan is on a couch. His insides feel better than last time, which is a relief. His body feels normal. Like, normal-normal, the way it does everyday he wakes up. For a second he thinks he might’ve snapped out of it. That maybe he finally woke up from this evil, awful, tortuous dream, but then he sits up all the way, and he is not home. Not anywhere he truly recognizes, actually. Fucking great, again.

The room he’s in is quaint, though. Looks wonderfully average. There’s a TV, two armchairs on either side of the couch he’s curled up on, and a coffee table, an open laptop balanced precariously on the end of it. He brushes his finger across the mouse pad, watches it light up and goes to check the time, or see if he can get a good sense of location, when he hears a voice behind him instead, familiar. Too familiar.

“Yah, Jeonghan-ah.” Seungcheol. “You did it again? That’s like, the fourth time this week. You’re getting obsessed.”

Jeonghan turns around to face him, keeping confusion to a minimum. Seungcheol’s hair is black now, no longer pink the way it was on T-526. He looks like he’s in pajamas. Like he also just woke up, just like, not on a couch, with a laptop staring at him.

“Obsessed with what?” Jeonghan asks. He turns to look out the window, relieved when he sees the familiar Seoul skyline. Does he live in this apartment in this universe? Or does Seungcheol? Do they both? Why is he on a couch? Where the hell is Joshua?

“With your e-boyfriend,” Seungcheol says. There’s the tiniest bit of disdain in his voice. “Joshua. If that’s even like, his actual name. I still think he’s a catfish.”

“Catfish?” No fucking way. Does he like, not know Joshua in this universe? Is he really just—a guy on his phone or something?

“I know, I know.” Seungcheol rolls his eyes, coming around to take a seat on the armchair there. He pulls out his phone, tugs the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and doesn’t even spare him one glance. “You’ve spoken to him in real life, whatever. He could still like, be a catfish or something. AI is getting scary these days. Don’t give him your credit card info.”

“Why would I give someone my credit card info?”

“I don’t know.” Seungcheol looks up, shrugs. “Pretty people make you stupid.”

“What the fuck, man?”

“Sorry.” Seungcheol does not sound like he means it. He stands, finishing up typing something on his phone, and then looks at Jeonghan again. “Anyway, I’m going to breakfast with some of the guys. Coming?”

“I guess so,” Jeonghan agrees. He has no idea what else he’s supposed to do. Also, he’s been dimension hopping for a minute now. He’s pretty hungry.

Seungcheol tells him they’ll leave within the next forty minutes or so, which means Jeonghan has forty minutes to snoop, to figure out what the hell is going on here, what the hell he’s supposed to be learning when Joshua is—not physically here.

Apparently, this is the apartment Jeonghan shares with Seungcheol. They’ve been roommates for a while. At least three years because there was a post-it on the dresser in Jeonghan’s room that said happy 3rd roommate-iversary, with a poorly drawn rabbit on the bottom signed by Seungcheol, which Jeonghan hopes this universe’s Jeonghan made fun of him for. Something tells him he did.

He seems to have a relatively normal life. Boring. Which is fine. He is definitely in Seoul, which Jeonghan is truly so happy about he could cry, and after one quick scroll of his phone—his passcode is his own birthday this time, which only broke him a tiny bit—he concludes that he’s got all the same friends, and he talks to his family all the same, except he’s a high school teacher instead of grade school, and he’s also—very vehemently into aquariums, specifically, building them, and then like, doing nothing about it. Which is a very obscure interest for him to have and Jeonghan doesn’t know how to feel about it. He doesn’t think he’s ever even owned a fish before in T-1004. Maybe he had a goldfish when he was younger. He doesn’t even remember.

Regardless—that’s how he knows Joshua. He met him on some sort of online forum for it. Joshua was looking at home decor ideas, and then he stumbled into DIY’s, and then he stumbled into DIY aquariums, and Jeonghan can’t even scroll that far back in their messages to see how and why, but that—that’s how they met.

Met, being used very loosely. Because he doesn’t even know Joshua.

He’s friends with him on nearly every social media Jeonghan has on his phone, even Duolingo, where Jeonghan is trying to learn English. So if that doesn’t say he’s down bad, he has no idea what does. Joshua’s hair is dyed a light brown here. Shaggy. Cute. Normal. They talk all the time. As often as they can, anyway, because Joshua Hong lives in LA and the time difference is tricky, but he speaks Korean well because his grandparents did at home, and sometimes his grammar when he types is iffy, but Jeonghan doesn’t mind, in fact he’s endeared, because of course he would be. Seungcheol thinks Joshua is a catfish. Seungkwan thinks his aquarium obsession is getting out of hand. Soonyoung thinks Joshua is hot, so he’s pretty happy for Jeonghan.

Jeonghan is confused.

“How’s the boyfriend, hyung?” Mingyu asks later, over coffee and a pastry Jeonghan is eating surprisingly quickly—he really was hungry—waiting for the rest of their food to come out. Mingyu is giggling when he says it, and Minghao kicks him underneath the table to shut him up, and so Jeonghan knows he means Joshua.

“Mingyu-yah,” Minghao says, a warning, and Mingyu holds his hands up, best puppy dog eyes on display as he feigns innocence.

“It was a question!”

“It had ill intentions,” Wonwoo says, most likely only to add more fuel to the fire. The pot-stirrer that he is.

“He’s been talking to him for like,” Mingyu thinks about it, “six months! That could be a boyfriend!”

“Eight months, actually,” Seungcheol corrects, almost like it pains him, and like—wow, ok, it might pain Jeonghan, too. Eight months is a long time to just talk to somebody. Then again, that somebody is Joshua, so Jeonghan understands. Jeonghan would talk to him for an eternity. “They were sending each other links to DIY projects for a solid two months as polite casual conversation before it took a turn.”

“Two months of links?” Minghao frowns. “What changed?”

“Jeonghannie sent him a nude and pretended it was a mistake,” Seungcheol says, and Jeonghan actually almost chokes on his coffee when he does. Wonwoo laughs out loud at that. Silly and loud. “Were you not at Channie’s when he was strategically planning this?”

“Ok, that’s enough,” Jeonghan catches his breath, gives Seungcheol what he hopes is a threatening glare even in this universe, and when Seungcheol rolls his eyes but still seemingly gives up, Jeonghan thinks it’s safe to say it is. “He’s not my boyfriend, and also, he’s good. Great, even.”

“He fell asleep in the living room again talking to him,” Seungcheol spills.

“Do you fucking mind?” Jeonghan snaps. He doesn’t know why he’s getting so defensive. Lack of Joshua will have you mad at anything. Like, why the fuck is Mingyu smiling? The nerve. “I don’t see why it’s everyone’s business. I like Joshua. We have good conversations. We’re also not hurting anyone, so—”

“We just feel like maybe you’re missing out on things actually, physically here,” Minghao says, ever the honest friend. He shrugs. “Joshua seems really nice and all, but like, what if you’re losing real life opportunities for—a guy in your phone who likes DIY aquariums?”

“Well—well—” Jeonghan pauses. “What if I like, love him?”

“What the fuck, hyung?” Mingyu looks genuinely stunned. Eyes wide, mouth a bit agape, the whole thing. “You just said he wasn’t even your boyfriend. Now you think you love him?”

“When you know, you know,” Jeonghan just says. He shoves the rest of his pastry in his mouth and crosses his arms over his chest. He knows because he has him back in T-1004 and loves him there and his life is fucking awesome. He does not need to prove that to his so-called friends here. “Can we change the subject now? Because like, I’ve been meaning to ask, have I always been a DIY person or is the aquarium thing random? Was my dad a fisherman or something?”

“Hyung.” Minghao frowns. “Your specific brand of avoidant based humor is usually better than that.”

* * *

Jeonghan’s dad was not a fisherman, and yes, he has always been into aquariums. Because he’s a fucking weirdo, apparently. Jeonghan feels like it must be some kind of carry over aspect of the DIY slime he’s got in T-1004. Sort of like the slime shit he ate in the last parallel. Why couldn’t he and Seokmin have ordered something more normal? Less DIY. A really nice massage chair or something instead, maybe.

“Hyung.”

It’s just him and Wonwoo when they’re all getting ready to leave, Seungcheol up paying while Mingyu and Minghao grab some pastries to go, only because Seokmin will kill them if they come back without any for him, and apparently, they still have a soft side for him in this universe, too.

Wonwoo looks guilty. Or maybe a little empathetic. Unusually tiny.

“Yes?” Jeonghan looks at him, and then Seungcheol on line, and then back at Wonwoo again.

“I know everyone’s been making fun of you for like—wanting to fuck the aquarium guy—”

“Hey.”

“But I actually support you,” Wonwoo says. He scoots a little closer, gives Jeonghan a toothy smile. “It can still be a relationship even if you haven’t like, actually met, you know?”

“Ok, sure,” Jeonghan allows. He eyes him. “Why the hell are you saying this now, by the way? I could’ve used the backup earlier.”

“Honestly?” Wonwoo shrugs. “More risk than gain. I didn’t feel like getting made fun of, Mingyu would’ve never let it go.”

“Let what go?” It feels like Wonwoo’s talking in code. Is he supposed to know what the hell he means? Do the Jeonghan and Wonwoo of this parallel like, do this?

“I’m talking to someone, too,” Wonwoo shares, honestly a bit excitedly, scooting even closer, almost with a startling amount of energy. He flips his phone around to slide it to Jeonghan, an Instagram page pulled up. “We didn’t meet on a forum for DIY’s, but it was close enough.”

Jeonghan actually guffaws when he sees it. Like, so loud that Seungcheol looks over at them, asks what?, over the crowded cafe and everything. They wave him off.

“Moon Jun?” Jeonghan asks once he’s pulled it together. “You—you’re talking to him?”

Jeonghan could’ve sworn he had all the same friends as he does at home. In fairness, there are a lot of them. Maybe he missed something when he did a quick scan of his own social media. Because this Junhui has like, 300k followers on Instagram, and present Junhui has maybe sixty-eight. He posts pictures of the food he makes and selfies with Chan when he gets drunk and absolutely nothing else.

“Yeah, why?” Wonwoo’s expression gets serious. “You know him? Have you seen his videos or something?”

“No,” Jeonghan returns the phone. “What the hell does he do?”

Wonwoo grins, delighted. “He posts reels of him rating stray cats in his neighborhood. He lives in China, but he went to school here so he speaks Korean, too, which feels randomly fated in my case. Anyway, most of the comments on his videos are about him—I mean, he’s hot as fuck—but I commented about the cat every single time until he slid into my DMs asking why I wasn’t horny.”

“What the fuck?” Jeonghan laughs. Somehow, that’s very Junhui. “And that worked?”

“Yeah.” Wonwoo shrugs. “Because I was actually so horny.”

“That’s… very nice for you?”

“Thanks.” Wonwoo grins again. It’s actually kind of cute. Also—does this mean he’s horny for like, T-1004 Wen Junhui, too? What the fuck? Jeonghan makes a mental note to ask when he gets back. “The point is—I actually look forward to talking to Junnie. He’s—we have a lot in common and he’s a good listener and he’s super interesting. Like, way more interesting than any of the guys Mingyu’s tried to set me up with.”

Wonwoo sounds so genuine, it’s almost a little startling compared to his Wonwoo. Maybe he should be horny for T-1004 Junhui. Seems like it makes him soft.

“Plus, the phone sex is crazy,” he adds.

“Ah.” Jeonghan nods. It was short lived. “Well, yeah. I mean—that’s how I feel about Shua, too. Like, the listener part and stuff. It’s nice.”

“Right,” Wonwoo nods. “Just because someone isn’t with you doesn’t mean they’re not like, important to you. You know?”

“Yeah,” Jeonghan agrees.

Feels weirdly like crying all of a sudden. He misses Joshua. His Joshua.

“But if anyone asks,” Wonwoo continues, “I have nothing to do with Jun. If you think you have it bad, imagine how bad I’ll have it. At least Mingyu and Seungcheol hyung are a little afraid of you. I have no authority.”

“Fair enough.” Wonwoo has a point. “I’m like, probably heading out of here soon, anyway, so don’t sweat it. Your secret is safe with me.”

“Heading out of this cafe?” Wonwoo tilts his head. “Yeah, we’re all leaving.”

“No,” Jeonghan says. “This dimension, Wonu-yah.

Wonwoo laughs.

* * *

Joshua Hong: midnight your time later? ^^

Yoon Jeonghan: ill be there~

It’s almost midnight now. The day dragged on. Jeonghan’s life really is boring here. Or maybe it’s just boring because he doesn’t have Joshua around to bother, to follow along to the grocery store, to wait around outside his office for, to look forward to coming home to at the end of the day. God, he’s gay. He also really, really misses Joshua. Midnight cannot come sooner.

It’s just an audio call tonight, because apparently they like to switch, and last night Jeonghan had fallen asleep on FaceTime, so Joshua’s giving his eyes a break from the horrid blue light because he’s selfless like that.

Jeonghan said his goodnight, don’t wait up to Seungcheol and then he washed his face—his skincare routine was surprisingly the same as it is normally—and then he changed into some pajamas, slipped under the covers and now he’s waiting like a kid on fucking Christmas, cell phone in his hand, headphones in so he does not miss even a single breath from Joshua. He feels kinda crazy. Hell, he is.

But still—at exactly midnight, his phone rings. Joshua, followed by a few little fish emojis, lights up his phone. His name is even saved in English, so Jeonghan knows he doesn’t play about this Joshua, because it takes a lot for Jeonghan to even consider trying to figure out the English keyboard. Wow. His Duolingo must be paying off.

“Shua?” Jeonghan answers. As if it might not even be him. Jeonghan really is crazy.

“Hi,” he returns, simple, just that, and Jeonghan feels like he’s finally home, like he can exhale, like he can relax and just be him, just for a minute.

His voice is smooth. Warm. He sounds a little rough around the edges, like he’s just woke up, maybe, and then Jeonghan remembers the time difference and is sure that must be it. Fuck, they must really like each other to do all this. What is Jeonghan saying? Of course they like each other.

“How was your day?”

“Fine, boring,” Jeonghan tells him. If he closes his eyes, it almost feels real, like he’s back home and Joshua is right next to him or something. Homesick, he feels it again. “I waited all day to talk to you.”

“Cute,” Joshua says under his breath. “I just spoke to you yesterday.”

“But it feels like forever,” Jeonghan says, because it really, really does, it still does because this is Joshua, but he still aches for his, his own. “How was your day? What’d you do?”

Joshua went to a farmer’s market with his friends from work. Jeonghan and he used to go to one right outside Seoul on Sundays right after they graduated college, but then they moved in together to the place they have now and the farmer’s market got too far, too out of the way, and now they don’t go. Jeonghan suddenly wishes they could again. Maybe when he gets back, they should start up the tradition again. They had these mini pies Joshua really liked. He wonders if this Joshua Hong in LA likes mini pies.

He listens to Joshua laugh over a story about someone Jeonghan’s never met, and then he lets Jeonghan share more about his day—breakfast, the park he and Seungcheol walked through coming home, the random package of aquarium supplies that Jeonghan literally had to open because something just compelled him to—and Joshua laughs at him, too, oohs and aahs, and Jeonghan feels so physically sick over him, he needs him with him immediately.

“Jeonghan-ah,” Joshua says after a beat of silence. Jeonghan’s just finished explaining plant substrate for his latest project, which is something he didn’t even know he had in him. Go figure.

“Hm?”

“You know what else I did yesterday?” His voice is different now. Looser. Sweeter. Like honey to his ears. Jeonghan recognizes a familiar heat build up in his stomach and oh. Oh, my god. They’re doing that part of the long distance phone call, too.

“Uh,” Jeonghan plays dumb, “what? Ha-ha.”

“Was thinking about you,” Joshua says. Jeonghan swallows, throat dry, bobs around nothing. “Right before I went to bed. And then I woke up still thinking about you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Another awkward laugh threatens to spill over his lips. He mentally apologizes to the Jeonghan of this universe, because he’s totally about to ruin his game. It just—still feels oddly like something he shouldn’t be doing. Is he thinking too hard about all this? Maybe. “What—what about?”

“Pictures you sent me last time,” Joshua says, and now his voice gets even lower, all syrupy, and Jeonghan physically cannot will away the blood rushing to his dick even if he tries. He also panics—what the hell did he send him last time—and beelines to their chat, scrolls a little until he sees two dick pics, seemingly a before and after of all this, and he mentally curses himself. Goddammit.

He scrolls up a little higher and sees ones of Joshua, though, and almost moans out loud. Almost, because he’s trying to play it semi-cool here. Joshua is in lace, though. Lingerie. Jeonghan’s never seen him in lace before. He fears he’s going to have to make that a reality when he goes back home. Oh, my god.

“Fuck,” Jeonghan swears, anyway. “You really—“

“Tried fucking myself,” Joshua explains, and he’s got this airy quality to his voice Jeonghan’s never really heard before, and it sort of might kill him. They’ve never done this before, phone sex. They’ve never actually been apart longer than a break from classes, but back then, they sexted rather than talking, because Jeonghan shared a wall with his parents, and nothing about that was enticing. “Pretended it was your cock.”

Jeonghan lets out a useless squeak. “How’d it—did you finish?”

He feels hot all over. Admittedly a little more than hard in his sweats. If he closes his eyes, this, too, feels as if they were just back at home, as if it was a long day and Joshua was putting on his best performance to get Jeonghan off, as if he’s right next to him in their bed, their apartment, their universe.

“No,” Joshua says, a little whiny. “I wanted to wait. Not the same if you’re not there.”

“Fuck,” Jeonghan says again. He opens his eyes, suddenly very aware of the situation. Still also—turned on. God, morals are a confusing thing. He shakes his head. “Are you fucking yourself again right now?”

Joshua hums. Almost something like a breath and a whine. Jeonghan feels insane. Goo coming out of his ears, foaming at the mouth a little, the whole thing.

“What about you?” he asks. “You touching yourself, too? Fucking your hand like you’d fuck me? Is it just as good?”

“I am,” Jeonghan says immediately. “Of course it’s not as good, though. Can’t be as good as if it were actually you.”

Joshua laughs a little at that. Like he’s pleased. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Jeonghan is—so fucking hard. He closes his eyes again and encircles a hand around his dick. Moans. “Fuck, Shua.”

“You sound so hot. I bet you’d be so good for me if I was there,” Joshua continues. If he listens close enough, Jeonghan swears he can hear the hitch in Joshua’s breath, the rustling of his sheets over the line. “Would you be good, Jeonghan-ah? Listen to me?”

“Yes.” Not without a little bit of a fight, maybe, but yeah, yes, always. Joshua’s so good at getting what he needs out of Jeonghan. In every universe, Jeonghan is sure. “Whatever you wanted.”

“God,” Joshua breathes. Whines. Moans again, louder, breathier. “What would you do, then? If I was there? If you could—oh. Could do anything you wanted?”

Jeonghan’s imagination runs wild. Twisted and greedy and aching for it. Flash memories of Joshua and him, in different positions, different places, different times. What would he do? What wouldn’t he do? Everything, anything.

“Kiss you, first of all,” Jeonghan says. Thinks a little more about it. “Your mouth is so pretty. Tastes pretty.”

“Tastes pretty?” Joshua repeats, endeared, mostly, confused, maybe a little. Jeonghan doesn’t know how this Joshua’s mouth tastes—he doesn’t even really know this Joshua in real life.

Jeonghan hums an affirmative, anyway. “Would kiss you all over, though,” Jeonghan adds. “Your body is—wow.”

“Cute,” Joshua mumbles. “Keep going.”

“Your thighs are extra sensitive,” Jeonghan says, adds, stupidly, “probably. So I’d spend extra time there. I think I’d like it most between your legs, anyway, so—“

“Fuck,” Joshua cuts him off with another sharp exhale. “Jeonghan.”

“I know.” Jeonghan knows, believe him, he does. “I wanna—I wish I could hold you. Need to hold you so bad. Feel you.”

Joshua’s clingy after a good fuck. Especially pliant and satiated and more opt to telling Jeonghan he loves him, not like he doesn’t all the time, but it’s different when he’s softer, more tired, when he thinks less and does more, loves a little gentler, more openly. Jeonghan knows he loves him, anyway, no matter how he shows it, but there’s something so special about it. The way Jeonghan’s the only one who gets him like that. Who will know him. Be able to feel him that way, loose limbed and bone heavy. Sticky. Sweet. So sweet.

Jeonghan’s stomach aches. Homesick, again.

“You’re touching yourself, right?” Joshua prompts. Edges of his voice dripping with want. “Tell me.”

“I am.”

Of course, he is. Jeonghan would do just about anything Joshua asked of him.

It feels good, though. It feels weird, too. Makes Jeonghan want to be home even more. He aches again, deeper in his chest this time.

“Good boy,” Joshua coos, and Jeonghan moans again. A weakness, even here, Jeonghan guesses. “So good, Jeonghan-ah. All mine, too, right?”

Yeah, yes, of course, yes. Jeonghan feels his insides flip completely now. Go from hot to hotter and then feel like a roller coaster drop, and he—oh, no.

He sits up, eyes completely open now. The ache in his stomach and his chest gets tighter, then releases, then tighter, and—he’s going to be sick. It’s happening, again, and yet—he still doesn’t know why.

What lesson did he learn here? That he’s—a horny son of a bitch? Down astronomically bad? That Jeon Wonwoo is a horny son of a bitch? Also, this doesn’t mean he cheated, right? I mean, there wasn’t even technically an actual person involved, and it was Joshua’s voice, and—

“Shua,” Jeonghan says, desperate, “I like you so much. I wanna—I’m gonna see you soon, ok?”

Joshua laughs a little. “Ok,” he says. Sounds confused. “You sound like you’re going somewhere. Where are you going?”

“I’m not,” Jeonghan says. “I’m—nowhere away from you, at least.”

And then, like the liar he apparently is, he’s gone.

HERE, THERE, EVERYWHERE.

The room is getting bigger. Because now there’s a bed Jeonghan keeps waking up in, and a couch, and a chair, and a table, as if they even need any of this. Hansol’s back on the couch. Chan is, oddly enough, sitting cross-legged on the coffee table.

“You look worse than normal,” Chan greets him. He frowns a little, like he’s weirded out. “Sweaty and all flushed. What the hell happened to you there?”

“There was no actual conflict, first of all. Shua was my long distance boyfriend,” Jeonghan explains. He, admittedly, does still feel a little hot under the collar. He kinda wishes he never went down the phone sex route. It’s not like he’s going to have any privacy any time soon to deal with it. “And I never met him before in real life.”

“What the hell?” Hansol frowns. “Wait a second, ew. Did you guys have e-sex?”

“How old are you?” Chan turns to look at him. “E-sex? Seriously? That’s some shit a middle aged woman would call it.”

“We did and we didn’t,” Jeonghan says. He sits up, swings his legs over the side of the bed, all while expertly ignoring the looks of disgust Hansol and Chan give him. “Have I ever expressed an interest in making aquariums here? Because the me of that universe was obsessed with them.”

“No,” Chan says. “Once I asked you to see the baby otters at the actual aquarium and you told me you’d rather eat pencil lead.”

“Oh, really?” Jeonghan frowns. “That seems harsh. Even for me.”

“Yeah.” Chan blinks at him. “I know.”

“So you built aquariums,” Hansol concludes. He still refuses to sit up straight on the couch. Jeonghan feels like the nylon must be sticking to him at this point. “Is that what you learned? Maybe you need a hobby.”

“No, that is not what I learned.” Jeonghan clicks his tongue. Starts pacing. He’s getting a lot of steps in these days with all that, which is probably the only plus. Calf muscles for days. “Actually, it’s becoming impossible to figure out what it is I’m learning if I’m not even in a relationship with Shua. Is that what I’m learning? That I can like, survive without him or something?”

“Hyung,” Hansol starts, “look at the state of you. You think you can actually survive without him?”

“That is—” Jeonghan pauses. “Both the sweetest and most evil thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Hansol shrugs, humble. “I meant every word of it, too.”

“I don’t know how many more of this I can do, though.” Jeonghan huffs, throws himself in the uncomfortable chair and then throws his head in his hands, too. Dramatic, but warranted. “I seriously just wanna go home. Don’t you guys wanna go home, too? It’s been days.”

“Time moves differently for us than it does for you,” Hansol explains. “We’ve only been here for like, thirty minutes.”

“Oh, fuck you two,” Jeonghan swears. “It’s been ages, actually. I miss Shua.”

“I know you do,” Chan says sympathetically, even comes around to give him an encouraging pat on the shoulder, a half hug. “Which is why you gotta get back out there and keep looking. For like, your lesson, or whatever. We’re like, close. I can feel it!”

“Your optimism is starting to piss me off,” Jeonghan tells him.

“Sorry.” Chan shrugs. “But I feel a little vindicated, then. Payback for refusing to see the baby otters with me.”

“I apologize,” Jeonghan sighs. “We can go when we go back.”

“No, it’s cool,” Chan says. “I went with Shua hyung, anyway.”

Jeonghan sighs again. Tired. Mentally, physically, emotionally. “Of course you did.

T-2003. TOKYO, JAPAN.

It’s dark in the room he wakes up in. Still. A certain eerie silence that Jeonghan can only equate with loneliness, feeling lost, a little uncertain. He’s been feeling like that a lot lately. He’s almost forgotten what it’s like to not feel alone.

God, he hopes he really is almost done with this shit.

He deduces he’s in another hotel room. The walls are beige, the sheets beneath him are crisp white, the curtains gray. There’s a TV in the middle of the room, switched off. A dresser underneath. A table underneath the window to the left, and on it, Jeonghan can make out the shape of a glass and a half empty bottle, whiskey, maybe, something brown and awful tasting, illuminated only by the sliver of light from outside seeping in. He draws the blinds. Squints at the neon from the street, the surrounding buildings. Tokyo; he’s almost positive that’s where he is.

There’s a phone on the table, lifeless next to a charger. It’s dead when he tries to turn it back on. He plugs it in, riffles through a few other things there in the meantime: Bingo, obviously, a pack of cigarettes with a lighter shoved inside, a pack of gum—a brand he recognizes from Korea, and a crumpled up piece of paper, his name written on the front where it’s folded, in a handwriting he does not know.

Jeonghan, the letter reads, although it may not feel it, going our separate ways will ultimately be for the best. Maybe in another life there’s hope for us, but in this one, I think the right thing to do would be to let you go. Take care of yourself, I will always love you.

It’s signed by someone named Sowon. Jeonghan’s never heard of a Sowon in his entire life. He feels oddly icky all of a sudden. He must’ve been in a relationship with her, right? In a relationship with someone who wasn’t Joshua. She’ll always love him. He feels like throwing up again. Gets hit with another terrible wave of loneliness. What the hell is he doing in Japan?

He throws on a pair of jeans and shoves his keycard into the pocket, puts the pack of cigarettes into the other one because it feels right, and heads into the hotel hallway, blindly follows signs to the elevator and waits. The clock on the nightstand said it was nearing one in the morning. It’s not an ideal time to be moving around an unfamiliar city, in an unfamiliar universe, no phone, no Joshua, nothing, but Jeonghan can’t be bothered, anyway.

He’s staying on the sixth floor. The hotel is not as nice as the one he had in Budapest. It’s not even close to being as nice as home is, his place with Joshua. Everything is dull, and dated, and Jeonghan can’t shake the sense of dread in the pit of his stomach, the way that loneliness seems to eat him from inside out.

Whoever Sowon is must’ve done a number on him. That’s the only reason you do something like this, right? Some kind of quarter life crisis trip to somewhere no one knows you. Drink yourself to sleep so you don’t have to be reminded you’re alone, put yourself somewhere where you can’t run into anyone who might know you for your past, get over it.

In college, sometime around their senior year, Jeonghan and Joshua had taken a break. It lasted two weeks. Spurred on by the possibility of Joshua moving back to the states for an internship there, and Jeonghan had freaked out over the idea of long distance, and Joshua had freaked out over Jeonghan freaking out, and they ultimately decided on a break.

Jeonghan was beside himself. He did anything and everything to distract himself in those two weeks, which included a lot of moping, a lot of complaining, and a lot of crashing on Seungcheol’s couch so he wouldn’t feel so goddamn alone. It felt like Jeonghan was getting his insides ripped out. Seungcheol had called him dramatic then, but Jeonghan had felt like it was pretty accurate. Life without Joshua was awful. Lonely and boring and bleak. Two whole weeks of it—it was a miracle Jeonghan survived.

Joshua stayed in Seoul in the end. Got an internship with a company here, instead of there, and Jeonghan allowed himself to be selfish, celebrated the fuck out of Joshua, and they never had to worry about distance, or a break, or worse, a breakup, ever again.

He doesn’t know what he’d do if he lost Joshua now. He can’t even stomach the thought.

The hotel he’s in has a bar; near empty at this hour, but something to do, somewhere to be that isn’t the darkness of his room, with the beige and the grays and the hum of his air conditioner. He takes a seat, scopes out the singular other person at the other end of the bar, and mentally plots his next move: find Joshua.

Is he here? Or is he in Korea? Does he know Sowon, whoever Sowon is? Is Jeonghan supposed to find her? He doesn’t think he wants to. Doesn’t think it would soothe the ache he’s got inside, the one he knows so well from that Joshua-shaped ache from years ago, the one he’s feeling now again, the one where he’s in one dimension and his Joshua is in the other, and—

“What can I get you?”

It’s him. Fuck, that was easy. Jeonghan has to stop himself from like, actually jumping with joy. God knows he could right now.

Joshua’s hair is dark again. Looks like he’s got an undercut, pushed up off his face to expose his forehead, which Jeonghan is very, very into. Not like he wouldn’t be into any Joshua, it’s Joshua, but like, this is different. Nice.

His smile is polite. It’s clear they don’t know each other, not yet at least, especially if the accented Japanese Joshua is using is anything to go by. Jeonghan took Japanese in high school, he’s actually not half bad at it, but Joshua took it in college, struggled a little with pronunciation even though his vocabulary was above par, and Jeonghan always found it cute, because of course he did.

He still does now, too.

“Just a beer,” Jeonghan says, in Japanese. Then, chances it, in Korean, “Whichever one. Surprise me.”

Joshua raises an eyebrow, smiles at him just a little. Pretty, pink lips pleased, maybe a little shocked. He grabs a glass and chooses one from the draft. Jeonghan isn’t even paying attention to which it is, more focused on Joshua’s hands around the glass, the concentration in his brows, the carefulness he pours with. He slides it over to Jeonghan once it’s threatening to spill over the top, forces Jeonghan to look elsewhere again.

“You’re Korean?” Joshua asks. Tilts his head a little. Cute, so cute.

“I am.” Jeonghan nods. He takes a sip even though he doesn’t really feel like drinking. Does he even have money for this? Whatever. He can charge it to this Jeonghan’s room. “You are, too, I take it?”

Joshua hums, nods. He leans up against the bar, crosses his arms as he does and Jeonghan doesn’t even try to hide the way he’s looking, watches the familiar muscles of Joshua’s arms bulge in the black tee shirt he’s got on. He has a tattoo—multiple, actually, black and white and muted colors that decorates his left arm, a few scattered designs that catch Jeonghan’s attention immediately. Pretty. His Joshua has two tattoos, Jeonghan is very familiar with them, especially how the skin there feels under his lips. The extra designs on this Joshua make him ache even further for his own. Close, but not quite.

“What are you doing here?” Joshua asks next. Jeonghan misses his voice. Misses his warmth even though he can feel radiating off his body from across the bar. “Visiting?”

“Guess so,” Jeonghan says. He takes a sip of his beer. “I’m trying to get over someone, I think. Learn a lesson and all that.”

Joshua laughs at him. Jeonghan misses his laugh more than anything. Beautiful, silly, so him.

“What, like soul searching?” Joshua tilts his head. “How’s that going for you?”

“Not great, I haven’t left my hotel room yet.” Jeonghan laughs with him. Watches Joshua’s eyes crinkle into a smile. “Would be better if I had someone to show me around.”

“That’s typically how it goes, I guess, yeah.”

“Yeah,” Jeonghan repeats. “When do you get off here?”

Joshua falters, just a minute. Blush creeps from his ears to his cheeks, colors him the slightest shade of pink. Jeonghan aches.

“Presumptuous,” Joshua chastises him, light. He’s still smiling. “Maybe I have plans after this already. Maybe I want to go home and fuck off to bed.”

“Maybe,” Jeonghan repeats. He grins wider now. “So?”

Joshua sighs. Clicks his tongue. “Two,” he says, and Jeonghan feels the pit of loneliness in his stomach get a little smaller.

* * *

Jeonghan’s never been to Tokyo with Joshua, he only came once on a family vacation when he was fourteen, but he thinks the city suits him nicely, thinks he looks especially gorgeous with the neon lights bouncing off the curves of his face, thinks he likes the smile it brings out in him. They’ll have to come back. His Joshua and him. Maybe an anniversary. Summer vacation next year. The idea makes Jeonghan miss him more.

“What do you do for work, Yoon Jeonghan?” Joshua asks.

They’re eating chicken skewers, bumping shoulders as they walk down one of the quieter streets in the city. Joshua dragged them all the way to one specific stall to get them. Insisted it was the best. Jeonghan agreed because of course he did.

“I’m a teacher,” Jeonghan says. He has no idea what this Jeonghan does. He hopes it’s teach. Hopes it’s more than just being a lonely loser, pining after Sowon. “What about you? Is the hotel bar your only job?”

“For now,” Joshua says with a nod. “I’m just getting comfortable around here. In Tokyo.”

“Really?” Jeonghan tilts his head. Knocks into his shoulder again, just to feel the slightest bit of Joshua’s warmth against the bare skin in both their tee shirts. “You’re such a natural here. Best tour guide I’ve ever had.”

“Thank you.” Joshua laughs. “Maybe I’ll consider tourism as the next career path instead.”

“You’d make good tips. You’re attractive and people are shallow.”

“Oh?” Joshua snorts now. Less of a laugh and more of a scoff. Indignant, but still amused. “And are you?”

“Am I what?”

“That shallow.” Joshua stops walking for a second, just blinks when Jeonghan stops, too. Smiles, but somehow only with his eyes. Pretty, just like they are back home. Big, brown, endless. “Did you only wanna talk to me because I’m hot?”

“No,” Jeonghan says immediately.

I wanted to talk to you because I have to, because I’m meant to talk to you here, and I’m meant to in the next universe, and the one after that, and even in the next life, too, probably. I wanted to talk to you because I feel like I might die if I go too long without.

“I needed a friend,” Jeonghan explains. “You seemed like you could be one.”

“Interesting,” Joshua mumbles, starts walking again. “Is that a line?”

“No,” Jeonghan repeats. Then, only when he can see the tiniest of smiles forming on Joshua’s face again, he adds, “Unless you’d like it to be.”

“Ask me later,” Joshua dismisses. “Tell me about your ex.”

Right. Sowon. Whoever that is. She must’ve been impactful enough to get Jeonghan here.

“Right person, wrong time, maybe,” Jeonghan tries. He shrugs. “She wrote me a letter.”

“A letter to like, break up with you?”

“No,” Jeonghan says. Thinks about it. “Maybe.”

“What’d it say?”

“Nosy.”

“You said you wanted a friend,” Joshua reminds him. “You should know I'm a very nosy friend. Notoriously. Horrible gossip.”

“How unfortunate,” Jeonghan says, but he fishes through his pockets, finds the note smushed in there and hands it over to Joshua. “See for yourself.”

Joshua’s eyes light up a little, delighted. He scans it quickly, then frowns, turns it over in his hands as if he’s expecting more once he’s finished.

“What’s wrong?” Jeonghan asks. They stop walking again.

“She said she’ll always love you, but she’s giving up,” Joshua points out.

“I guess,” Jeonghan says. “Isn’t that, uh. Couldn’t that be considered brave in a way?”

“I guess,” Joshua echoes. He shrugs. Stares at the note again. “Feels braver to love someone despite everything. Ends of the Earth, no matter what, right?”

“Yeah,” Jeonghan says. Can’t help but smile just the smallest bit. “Like, across dimensions and different universes or something. That kinda thing.”

Joshua laughs at him like he’s ridiculous. “Exactly like that,” he says.

* * *

It’s nearing three when Joshua takes them to Shibuya. The LED screens there are huge. The streets are a quarter of how crowded it is during the day when everyone else is out, which Joshua says is ideal for actually coming here, because otherwise you can't see anything over any phones snapping photos, through tourists, and it’ll only agitate more than it would impress.

“How long ago did you move here?” Jeonghan asks next.

They’re picking up bits and pieces of each other as they go. It’s funny. The way Jeonghan knows his Joshua inside and out, but now he has to relearn—dozens of him. Slight differences. Minor quirks. All him, nonetheless, Jeonghan guesses.

“About four months?” Joshua doesn’t think too hard about it. “I needed a change.”

“From Korea?”

“No.” Joshua laughs a little. “I’m American. My family spoke Korean at home, so I just—it stuck. I’m from LA.”

“Ah.” Jeonghan nods. Los Angeles, everywhere and anywhere. Obviously. “So what was there that you had to get away from?”

In front of them, there’s an animation of a butterfly coming out of its cocoon, colorful wings spreading, floating off into a field of daisies. Jeonghan looks away for a minute to look at Joshua.

“An ex,” he says. He eyes Jeonghan carefully. “He didn’t leave me a letter, though.”

“He was silly to leave you in the first place,” Jeonghan can’t help but say. “What happened?”

“Right person, wrong time,” Joshua repeats from earlier. He laughs now. “Are you really in the position to be saying he was silly to leave me? You still hardly know me, Yoon Jeonghan. I could be awful. Evil and mean and a terrible kisser.”

“You could be, I guess.” Jeonghan forces a laugh back. I know you more than I know myself, he doesn’t say. “Just—can tell. You’re not any of those things.”

“I guess it’s like that sometimes,” Joshua allows. He shrugs, knocks his shoulder into Jeonghan’s just as the butterfly animation begins again. “You do feel familiar, you know. Like I’ve known you before. Somewhere else.”

Joshua looks at him now, like really looks at him. It feels like he’s seeing him for the first time. Or maybe he’s seeing a new part of Jeonghan. The part he knows deep down. The parts he knows across other places, other dimensions, other happenings.

“You’ve never been to LA, have you?” Joshua asks, somewhat teasing. His gaze lingers on Jeonghan’s mouth, seeps with want, with curiosity, a look Jeonghan knows too well from him. He swallows, hard, around nothing.

“I haven’t,” Jeonghan lies. He has; he’s visited Joshua’s family there a few times now. One time they went to Disneyland. He’s seen the beaches. Tried the sushi place Joshua likes so much. Drove past Joshua’s high school, and his childhood home, and the corner store he went to everyday after camp over the summers. “Is it nice?”

“It is,” Joshua confirms. He looks back at the butterfly. “When everything there doesn’t remind you of your ex, that is.”

Jeonghan hums. He’s still looking at Joshua because it feels wrong to look away, feels like he sort of can’t, like nothing compares to the beauty right there, no amount of LED animations or anything.

“Would you ever go back?” Jeonghan asks. “That’s home. You probably miss it.”

“One day, yeah,” Joshua says. He looks at Jeonghan again. “But home’s more than a place, anyway. Sometimes it’s as simple as a feeling. A person. Your person.”

“Right. I get it,” Jeonghan says and he feels like crying again.

* * *

Joshua lives in a small studio apartment, quiet, and secluded, but not entirely lonely. There is a tiny, pristine white couch, surrounded by a few potted plants when you walk in. If you look close enough outside, crane your neck a little, the LED and neon lights that paint the city seep inside here, too, but the moon really shines here, kisses the lines of Joshua’s face the way Jeonghan wishes he could.

He supposes this would be the part of the night that he does. He’s on Joshua’s couch, and Joshua is next to him, and Jeonghan has never been here before, hasn’t been in Tokyo in over ten years, and he’s alone, but Joshua is here. Looks at him like he would look at him at home, the way his Joshua would, and Jeonghan feels the twinge in his stomach, the pang through his heart, and wants.

He wants to kiss Joshua, so he does. Kisses this Joshua, just to see if it would help, if it would dull anything over. Joshua kisses him back, the same he would at home, almost. Soft, sweet, but firm, takes what he wants little by little underneath. Whines a bit when Jeonghan opens his mouth for more. Squeezes at Jeonghan’s thigh when his hands get restless and wander. Licks into him, tastes the residual alcohol from before, replaces it with himself instead.

And Jeonghan still aches, still feels the twinge and the pang and the hurt, but less, maybe a little so.

“You kiss me like you have before,” Joshua tells him when they pull apart, barely enough to breathe their own air yet. He’s so quiet, Jeonghan thinks you could hear a pin drop. “How do you do that?”

Because I have, Jeonghan still doesn’t say. Because I’m in love with you, my you, and I’d do anything to feel you how I can again, doesn’t matter where, or how, or why.

Jeonghan wants to go home. Thinks the loneliness from the whole night is eating him up inside, making him sick, a punch in the stomach sort of thing. Overwhelming. Nauseous.

He already knows what it means before it happens, but he can’t help but associate it with that specific loneliness sitting in his gut this time.

HERE, THERE, EVERYWHERE.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Jeonghan is up before Hansol and Chan even realize he’s back. They’re sitting crossed legged on the floor with the Game of Life between them. What the fuck? Since when did they get any type of entertainment here?

“Hyung!” Chan smiles at him, tiny game piece in his hands. It’s the blue car. “Can’t do what anymore?”

“Dimension hop, probably,” Hansol answers for him. He nudges Chan from across the board. “It’s your turn to spin.”

“I’m calculating my next move, you bitch,” Chan mumbles. He stares at the board a little longer. “Where’d you go, hyung?”

“Tokyo,” Jeonghan says. “And I was lonely, so lonely it made me sick, and I had an ex that wasn’t Shua, and he was there, just as lonely, and it was—god. I hated it. I can’t keep doing this, I’m telling you!”

“But you came back,” Hansol says slowly. “Bingo made you. Let’s like, talk through it.”

“No,” Jeonghan says, adamant, annoyed, frustrated. He starts pacing again. Loops around the whole setup they got now, watching as Chan finally spins. “No. I don’t wanna talk through it. I’m not learning anything. I’m somewhere I shouldn’t be, and it’s terrifying and disorienting, and the only time I feel a semblance of comfort is when I’m with him. Joshua.”

“That’s a start,” Hansol points out. “Maybe that’s what you’re supposed to learn? Stepping outside your comfort zone?”

“But I’m not,” Jeonghan argues. “I’m not stepping out of it at all.”

“Right,” Chan muses, moving his car up two spots. He looks at Hansol and shrugs. “Sounds like he’s sort of using Shua hyung as a shield or something. Have we looked into seeing if Bingo serves any other purpose other than the multiverse switching thing? Maybe he can help.”

“He is inanimate, Chan-ah.”

“I miss my Joshua,” Jeonghan laments, ignoring the two of them. He throws himself onto the nylon couch, watching as Chan happily adds a husband to his game piece now. “I don’t want to keep seeing him in other universes, I want to see him in my own. This isn’t fun anymore, I wanna go home.”

“Was it ever fun?” Hansol prompts. He takes his own turn. “More about the last universe though because I kinda can’t help but ask—who the hell was your ex?”

“Irrelevant,” Jeonghan waves him off. “Unless either of you know a Sowon.”

“A woman?” Chan laughs at him. “When was the last time you dealt with a woman?”

“When I fucked your mom last week.” Jeonghan doesn’t have the time to recount all his bisexual prowesses. Chan gasps and now it’s Hansol’s turn to laugh. “Just be thankful the ex wasn’t Shua. Because then I’d end up on some kinda cross-dimension wanted list. I would’ve killed somebody.”

“Good thing you’re not overreacting,” Hansol says. He doesn’t even look up from the game. As if any of this is anything to be taken lightly. “Did the idea of having someone else instead of him make you appreciate Josh hyung more then? Maybe that’s what you’re supposed to be getting at. Gift horse, or whatever.”

“Hansol-ah,” Jeonghan says primly, “if I appreciated Shua anymore, I would have to be medicated.’

“And they say romance is dead.” Chan grins, like he really is charmed by that. He watches Hansol pull a card, leaning over in an attempt to read it. “Nice, hyung! Free cruise. Fictional Seungkwannie would love that.”

“Shua always wanted to go on a cruise,” Jeonghan whines to no one in particular.

“Take him when we get back,” Chan tells him. He shrugs, otherwise more preoccupied in the game. He makes eye contact with Hansol, then starts giggling as he adds, “If we ever get back.”

Jeonghan lunges at him.

T-1963. CORK, IRELAND.

Joshua owns a farm. Jeonghan helps one of his cows give birth and then miraculously gets Joshua’s number. Somehow, the birth of a calf is not even as jarring as it is when Jeonghan feels himself fading just when Joshua tells him he’d like to see him again.

T-320. DAEGU, SOUTH KOREA.

Joshua is a single dad, Jeonghan is his daughter’s teacher. Jeonghan lives with Seungcheol here, too, which isn’t half bad, except for the fact he’s kind of a cockblock. For the best, probably.

T-18. A CLUB, SOMEWHERE.

Finally—Joshua is blond. Score.

T-9949. SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA.

They’re coworkers. They are not dating, but they’re also not-not dating. Joshua hates him. He also doesn’t hate him. Jeonghan doesn’t know if he’s more concerned with that or with trying to figure out what they actually do for work.

L-3453. AMARE, ORION SPUR.

Space again. Joshua and he are some sort of intergalactic royals. For whatever reason, Seokmin is there and the energy between them is weird, the specific kind of weird. Jeonghan is gone before he can confirm if they’ve had any threesomes before or not. Which he thinks he’s grateful for. Because ew.

T-9153. PARIS, FRANCE.

Jeonghan is a painter, Joshua is his muse. Joshua is beautiful all the time, but especially so with the Paris sun setting over his features. It makes him harder to say goodbye to.

T-1230. LOS ANGELES, USA.

It’s warm.

If Jeonghan allows himself an extra minute of pretending, of keeping his eyes shut, blocking out whatever unfamiliar horrors lie next, it’s almost like he’s back home. Because it’s a specific warmth, one that feels like Joshua, wraps around Jeonghan like the only comfort he’s ever known, he’s ever needed. A warmth that spreads through his body, from the inside of his chest, out. Nice.

He’s in another unfamiliar bedroom when he finally comes to. Still nauseous, which he’s used to by now. It’s minimalistic around him, but somewhat cozy. The bed is big. Jeonghan is on his side, or what would be his side he guesses, and the other side is empty, but the sheets there are wrinkled, as if it was occupied just a few moments ago.

Jeonghan is naked when the sheet falls off him as he sits up. Hasn’t woken up like that in a minute, kinda hates it, but he hates most things about all this now, anyway, so he doesn’t think too hard about it. There are clothes strewn across the floor, going from the closed door to the bed. It’s a long way, to be honest. This room is nice, spacious. Much bigger than the room Jeonghan’s got at home.

The walls are cream, and there’s an ornate looking armoire up against the wall, a tall mirror, an equally ornate looking chair, one that doesn’t look at all comfortable, a quirky looking rug. Looks very Joshua, if Jeonghan does say so himself, but he also could just be—trying to find him in anything and everything, so overcome with want that it’s starting to make him crazy.

There’s a phone on the nightstand that Jeonghan confirms as his own when he checks the lock screen and sees a photo of him and Joshua staring back at him. Fucking score. He feels a pang of relief, relief they’re already together in this parallel, that he must be closeby. The photo is nice. Normal. It’s a selfie, a beach behind them, and Joshua’s smiling with all his teeth, and it’s obvious Jeonghan’s looking at Joshua through the selfie lens, obvious that he’s in love with him, too.

The passcode is Joshua’s birthday again. Thank god. He has less unopened texts than he did last time he so easily unlocked a phone of his, less emails, less Instagram notifications, so he knows this isn’t another bizarre, unrealistic timeline where he’s like, famous or something, and so he scrolls to his weather app and—ah.

Los Angeles.

Jeonghan cranes his neck to peer out the window, through the slightly drawn curtains. He can’t see much. Doesn’t see anything different than a few buildings, same as they might be at home. Jeonghan wonders what part of Los Angeles they live in. If they’ve always lived here. What he does for a living, what Joshua does.

He has a funny feeling in his stomach still. He blames it on that post-switching-dimension nausea for now.

“Oh, you’re up.”

It’s Joshua. He’s emerging from what looks like the bathroom, fresh faced and smelling just like he does at home, after a good, long shower, like that specific lotion he uses, the one that makes him especially smooth. He’s dressed, which makes Jeonghan feel only the slightest bit embarrassed. He tugs the sheet up just so he can protect his modesty.

“I needed another shower so I got up earlier. I know these are emergency sheets, but I hate them and I never want to use them again, they make me feel so fucking itchy” Joshua tells him. He pauses in front of their dresser, picks up his own phone and starts typing. “Did you want coffee? I’ll get some now so we don’t have to stop on the way later.”

“Later?” Jeonghan has learned that playing dumb is his only bet at survival. This universe’s Joshua does not seem to appreciate it.

“How many times do I have to actually remind you?” he asks, annoyed, but there’s a hint of fondness seeping in, Jeonghan can tell. He puts down his phone for a second. “Or are you being annoying again? I’ll kill you with my bare hands if you are.”

“Hot,” Jeonghan decides. Joshua’s eyes flash with something evil before he adds, “Not being annoying, unfortunately. Please tell me.”

“Flower arrangements,” Joshua says tiredly. He starts typing again. “If you don’t wanna come, fine, but I’m not the only one getting married here, and you said you wanted to—”

“Married?”

Jeonghan almost passes out. He thinks he yelled a little. Of excitement? Of fear? Both. Joshua can’t be serious, can he? Like, they’re not getting married, right? Maybe that’s what he does. Maybe he’s like, a wedding planner.

“Ok, you’re just being annoying now, it’s too early to do this bit,” Joshua decides. He rolls his eyes, tucking his phone into his pocket, and then grabs his shoes, heading over to the doorway. “Text me if you want something!”

And then he’s gone.

Jeonghan notices it, then—the goddamn ring on his third finger. An engagement ring, it must be. Because he’s—well, he’s getting married. To Joshua. Because he lives in Los Angeles and he can do that. And they love each other, have loved each other, Jeonghan guesses, and like, ok, Jeonghan is sort of freaking out.

Why is he freaking out?

He starts snooping on his phone again. Detective Yoon on the fucking case, thank you very much.

He opens Instagram first. Jeonghan’s page is mostly pictures of him and Joshua, because he’s a fucking simp, and then if he scrolls further, there’s a few dumps where they’re obviously in Korea, and Jeonghan feels his heart tug, just a teeny bit. Same friends—Seokmin, Seungcheol, Mingyu, everyone—just not here. Jeonghan chooses to scroll past.

There’s the engagement post, though. Ugh, how cheesy. Jeonghan, unfortunately, can’t say he hates it.

The post is from four months ago. It has the most likes on Jeonghan’s whole page, comment section filled with a mix of English and Korean that Jeonghan can comprehend surprisingly better than normal. They look insanely happy. Beach behind them again. Joshua’s the only one with a ring in the photo, so something tells Jeonghan that he got one for him later, and Jeonghan feels stupidly endeared. Because of course Joshua would do that.

The Jeonghan here seems chill. Not terrified of marriage and being in a foreign country at all. He’s probably fun at parties.

Not like Jeonghan is necessarily scared of marriage, though, he just—never fully thought of it. Sure, he did in passing, but, you know, given the whole South Korea thing, he couldn’t really afford himself the luxury of dreaming about stuff like that. But being in America? That is scary. Portion sizes alone, not to mention everything else going on over here. And yet, he did that? Did it happily?

He seems happy from Jeonghan’s investigative snooping. Has plenty of friends here, a good job as a language teacher here, their apartment seems nice, he still talks to all his friends and family back home, and he also has an Erewhon membership apparently, which seems like a big deal.

Huh.

The Jeonghan here must be fun at parties. He looks at Bingo on the nightstand and feels like he’s somehow silently agreeing with him.

* * *

Deciding on flower arrangements is just as meticulous as it may sound, but Jeonghan doesn’t entirely hate it. Maybe that’s just because he likes watching Joshua’s concentrated face, or the way he pushes his bottom lip out when he’s unsure of something, or the way he laughs at a joke one of the women helping them throws out, delighted.

So there are worse places Jeonghan could be right now, way worse than following Joshua and giving his vague opinion—the Jeonghan of this universe could be very into flower arrangements, he doesn’t wanna fuck his vibe up. It’s especially nice when Joshua holds his hand, only in brief spurts of a moment, and sometimes he plays with Jeonghan’s ring there, and Jeonghan gets disgusting butterflies in his stomach, and he’s starting to think maybe marrying Joshua Hong wouldn’t be too bad. He was already going to spend forever with him, anyway. A ring could be a nice bonus.

“Angel?” Joshua prompts. He’s gesturing to one of their final contenders. It’s neutral, a lot of white roses—or at least Jeonghan thinks they’re roses, he doesn't really know flowers—but it’s nice, very classy. Very Joshua. “What do you think?”

“I love it,” Jeonghan says, and he’s not even looking at the flowers when he does.

* * *

“So fun stuff now?” Joshua asks, over dinner later, after they’ve looked through countless flowers and then made a pit stop to the craft place to see these jars Joshua kept seeing on Pinterest in real life.

(“They’re tacky,” Joshua had decided, “so tacky. I can’t believe we just wasted this much time.”)

“I’ve been having fun all day because I’ve been with you,” Jeonghan tells him. He shoves a large amount of noodles into his mouth, slurping loudly. They’re at a Japanese place in little Tokyo. Which is only funny because one time Jeonghan came here with his Joshua, in their universe, and they sat one booth over. Nice to see this place stands in multiple parallels. Their ramen is addictive. “What could possibly be more fun?’

“Dick,” Joshua swears. He pokes around at his crab roll. “I’m being serious. Honeymoon thoughts?”

A honeymoon. Jeonghan feels more butterflies in his stomach at the thought. He never considered one, but he’s heard pretty cool things. Like, fucking the whole time, being served insane food whenever you want, nonstop relaxation and just—well, it’d be just them, just him and Joshua. Seems nice.

“Good question,” Jeonghan muses. “Somewhere warm? You’d look cute in a tiny bathing suit.”

“You piss me off,” Joshua mumbles, but he’s smiling, so Jeonghan knows he means it, but he doesn’t mind it. “But thanks for thinking about it. My gym membership isn’t just some kind of specific brand of torture, it actually does have a desired goal.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve definitely noticed,” Jeonghan says, making it very clear he is taking in Joshua’s arms, same way he does at home, honest to god a little hungrily. “So. Somewhere warm is a go or?”

“We’re always somewhere warm,” Joshua points out. He puts the crab roll into his mouth, chews a little. “What about somewhere cooler? New York. London. Amsterdam? It’ll be closer to Winter when we go.”

“Amsterdam could be cool,” Jeonghan says. It would be cool, hypothetically obviously, because this Jeonghan isn’t going on a honeymoon, he’s—hopefully going back home, to his own Joshua. But still, “Or London. We could make fun of the accents.”

“We could do that in New York, too.”

“London is funnier,” Jeonghan says. “Why not somewhere warm, though? Humor me here, Shua.”

“Because sometimes something different is good,” Joshua says simply, shrugs. He picks up another piece of sushi, holding it in his chopsticks for now. “A change?”

“A change,” Jeonghan repeats, dragging out the word a bit, tasting it on his tongue, letting it sit there.

He thinks about it. Thinks about it as a whole. What it means in the grand scheme of things. The Jeonghan here, his life is about to change. He’s getting married. Isn’t that big enough of a change? Moving here was a big change, too. And yet, he did it, continues to do it.

God, Jeonghan—real, actual Jeonghan—really is a coward. Isn’t he?

“A change could be good,” Jeonghan decides after a second. He inhales a few more noodles. “We should look into London then.”

Joshua pops another crab roll into his mouth. Silent satisfaction.

* * *

The apartment they have in LA is massive. Jeonghan doesn’t really know how, I mean, he has to assume that Joshua’s the one carrying the weight here, he’s just a teacher, but he also doesn’t wanna look too far into it, because poking around in someone else’s finances is just an invasion of privacy, even if it is technically himself.

But it’s nice. Really nice. Nicer than the place they have back in Seoul, in T-1004 Seoul. Big living room space, newly furnished kitchen with those appliances Joshua is always itching to snag whenever they’re on a sale, floor to ceiling windows, the whole nine yards. Feels oddly similar to Joshua’s dream place that Jeonghan asked him about all those weeks ago. Maybe some place like this and Joshua are meant to be. Somehow, somewhere.

They’re on the couch now. Joshua has some American reality show on that Jeonghan is hardly following, but he feels at ease here, in the too big apartment in the foreign country because he has Joshua. He’s warm against him. Always is. It’s different from the kind of warmth T-1004 Joshua has, but it’s still good, still nice. Jeonghan feels—at peace.

“Is the point of the show just to fuck each other?” Jeonghan asks. He’ll never understand how American television gets away with it. “It’s called Love Island.”

“You are so naive,” Joshua tells him with a laugh. “There is absolutely zero way anyone is actually finding love on this show.”

Jeonghan shrugs, watches as a so-called couple has a run around conversation about feelings that comes out inconclusive. Jeonghan is so glad he doesn’t date.

“I would if you were there,” Jeonghan says. “We would so totally win, Shua.”

“That’s cheesy,” Joshua tells him, barely biting back a smile. “We’d have to—”

Joshua’s cut off by a phone vibrating loudly on the coffee table, and it takes Jeonghan approximately eight seconds to even realize it’s his. He always keeps his ringer on at home. Mostly because it’s the Dooly the Little Dinosaur theme song and that song fucking slaps, but apparently the Jeonghan here doesn’t think so.

The caller ID tells him Seokminnie is calling. Jeonghan picks up only after Joshua gives him a confused laugh, followed by a, “aren’t you gonna get that?”

“Seokmin-ah?” Jeonghan answers. As if Seokmin, like his Lee Seokmin, isn’t really going to be there.

“Hyung!” Ok, yes, his Seokmin. A little too loud and excitable. Jeonghan oddly misses him. “What are you doing?”

“Watching American couples fuck on TV,” Jeonghan says. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t understand the legality of that,” Seokmin mumbles. “Nothing, though. I just saw your text from last night now. Did you still wanna talk?”

“My text?” Jeonghan doesn’t remember finding anything particularly urgent in his messages while snooping this morning. He scrolls to Seokmin and his conversation, anyway, reads the last message that very simply says: can you get cold feet even though youre very in love ??? freaking out seok-ah ㅋㅋㅋ call me ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

Ohhh, ok.

“Uh,” Jeonghan looks at Joshua, still focused on the TV and looking halfway to sleep, and stands. “Yes.” He pulls the phone from his ear and whispers to Joshua, “I’ll be right back. Seokminie needs, um, fashion advice. You know how ugly his shoes are, this might take a bit.”

“Fashion advice?” Joshua scoffs. “Why would he call you for that?”

Jeonghan doesn’t have time to argue about that—he thinks his fashion sense is just fine, thank you—so he just rolls his eyes instead, heading down the hall to their room, carefully shutting the door behind him. He exhales once he’s alone.

“Ok,” he says into the phone. “Um. So yeah.”

“So yeah,” Seokmin repeats, laughing a little. “Hyung, what do you seriously mean by cold feet? I mean, are you like, not trying to marry him or something? Do you not see yourself—forever with him?”

“What, no, of course it’s not like that.” Jeonghan gets terrified even at the thought. It feels, suddenly, eerily similar to the conversation he had with Seungkwan back at his apartment. Before the whole—this happened. “I just—it’s scary, no? All this… change.”

“Oh, this again,” Seokmin laments, sounds like he genuinely feels bad about it, too. “I thought you got over all that. Your fear of change or whatever.”

“I—what?” Jeonghan pauses, just before placing himself precariously on their massive bed. Fear of change? Like, the one he kinda has in real life despite the fact he swears he doesn’t? He had that here, too?

“I get it, hyung, I do,” Seokmin says. “But think of it this way, I mean, moving to LA terrified you at first, too, right?”

Jeonghan had assumed it didn’t. Assumed this Jeonghan just went for it, fearlessly and bravely and boldly.

“Which was valid,” Seokmin continues. “I don’t think I would’ve been able to do it. But you did. And you still feel confident in your decision, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Jeonghan says, albeit a bit hesitant. He doesn’t think he’d necessarily want to—I mean, not now at least, not without warning. Waking up here was startling. But if he had time, if he built a routine here, he could live. Of course he could live. “I’m with Joshua.”

“Exactly,” Seokmin says. Jeonghan can hear the smile in his voice. “So don’t you think you can do the whole marriage thing, too? I mean, again, you’re with Shua hyung. In fact, the whole point is that you’re with him forever.”

“Oh,” Jeonghan says, stupid.

And it—it clicks then.

“I have Shua,” he says again, slowly.

“Yeah,” Seokmin confirms. He laughs, more of a snort than anything. “We just said that.”

“So it doesn’t—it doesn’t matter where, or how, or why,” Jeonghan is having a goddamn epiphany, “because I have him. I’ll always have him. That’s why moving here wasn’t bad, and Seoul is never bad either, and—holy shit, Seokmin-ah. I think I figured it out.”

“Figured what out?” Seokmin asks. He sounds confused now. “That you love your fiancé? I would’ve thought you did that like, probably closer to five years ago considering how long you guys have been together.”

“Seokmin-ah, hey,” Jeonghan ignores him. He feels his heart racing, thrumming with excitement. Feels like all the missing pieces in his head, in this stupid fucking puzzle Bingo dropped in his lap are falling into place, filling out the blanks. “Hyung’s gotta go. I love you, ok?”

“What?” Seokmin asks. “Are you like, dying? Where are you going? You never say I love you like that.”

“You fixed my problem,” Jeonghan tells him. He rolls his eyes. He doesn’t have time for this right now, not when he can feel the weird, bubbly, nauseous feeling building up inside especially. Goddammit, Seokin—accept his love. “I'll see you soon.”

“You and Shua hyung coming back to Seoul or something?”

“Or something,” Jeonghan says. “Later!”

Change—overcoming his fear of it, that’s what this was all about. Dozens of different cities, different times, different circumstances, but Joshua in the center of it. It was scary, and it was unnerving, and being somewhere new so frequently made Jeonghan feel like he was on the brink of insanity, but Joshua—he soothed it. Every time, without fail, no matter where.

Budapest, Plant B, Tokyo, a Seoul with Joshua halfway across the world—terrifying. Jeonghan has lived in Korea his entire life. He has habits and routines and friends and things he knows, but he also knows he can do other things, does other things, because he has Joshua. Makes him work for anything and everything. Challenges him, always has, in life and their relationship and even stupid things like picking what to order for dinner. And he’d never let him fall, never let him slip up or freak himself out, not once.

Jeonghan thinks about life on T-1004. How graduating was scary, until it wasn’t, until Joshua was right next to him, walking the stage, too. His first job was even scarier. Everything was new and the school he was working in was huge and Joshua put a note in his lunch everyday that said i love you, you never do anything less than the best, anyway, and then it wasn’t so bad, wasn’t so scary. Moving was scary for a little, too. It took a lot to get used to. The neighborhood, the creaks the floors made at night, the new distance between their place and Seungcheol’s, who was always just a few doors down at university, until he wasn’t. Until it was better, because he was doing it with Joshua.

Holy shit. He could totally live in LA. He could live in LA, or Seongsu-dong, or Mapo-gu, or New York, or Paris, or fucking outer space—he could do whatever. As long as he had Joshua.

Joshua. Jeonghan misses him so much. Feels the ache in his chest and the nausea get bigger, build, build, build. He grabs Bingo who’s still lying lifeless on the dresser. He is kinda ugly. Jeonghan isn’t starting to hate him, but he is definitely not too fond of him after all this.

“I figured it out, you son of a bitch,” he says. He feels giddy. A little crazy because he is talking to a Troll doll, but giddy. “As long as I have Shua. It’s fine. All this is fine. I could keep going. Where next, you know? Hong Kong? Thailand? That club where he was blond again?”

Bingo just stares.

“Ok, that last one was a joke,” Jeonghan says with a roll of his eyes. “Whatever. Doesn’t matter. I’ll always have him. Joshua. Fuck! I’m so gay.”

And thank god he means it.

T-1004. SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA.

NOW, AGAIN—

For the umpteenth time, Jeonghan wakes up. It feels different than the last time, though. The last—however many times. He’s just as groggy, maybe more, but he doesn’t feel like vomiting, which is all he could really ask for right now. It’s still bright. A different kind of bright than Here, There, Everywhere was. There’s a beep in the background. Steady. Like a heartbeat. He blinks once, twice, and—

“Hansol!” That sounds like Chan again. Jeonghan gets the strangest sense of deja vu. “Hyung, Hansol hyung, he’s up.”

There’s some rustling. Then, Hansol, “Shit, really? Hang on, let me get Shua hyung and the rest of them.”

“Hey, hyung,” Chan says gently, dragging out the vowels. He pokes his face into Jeonghan’s line of sight. Smiles with all his teeth. “It’s Channie, your favorite dongsaeng, which you’ve always said. And you’re Jeonghan. Remember? And Hansol hyung was here, and he’s getting Shua hyung, and—”

“Where the fuck am I?” Jeonghan manages. Terrified. Is this another parallel? “Where’d the ugly couch and the Game of Life go?”

“Couch? They couldn’t fit a couch in here, they could hardly fit our friend group.” Chan frowns. “Seungkwannie hyung confiscated Life when I tried to keep collecting husbands, though. He’s such a party pooper.” Chan shakes his head, then gets a more confused look on his face as he asks, “Wait—you remember that? How long have you been conscious again?”

“Conscious?” Jeonghan repeats. What the hell happened? Where the hell is he? “Is this not—”

“Hyungie!” Soonyoung bursts into the tiny room they’re in now, eyes wide with concern, rushing over to where Jeonghan is still reclined in an eerily similar bed to the one in Here, There, Everywhere. He takes his hand. “Oh, my god, you’re finally up. I thought you weren’t gonna make it. Wonu tried to convince me to start writing your eulogy.”

“What?”

“I didn’t, though!” Soonyoung assures him. He smiles, same round cheeks as always. Chan is behind him, eyes still wide. “How’s your head?”

“My head?”

“Yes, your head,” Soonyoung confirms. He turns to Chan, doing a poor job at whispering, “God, maybe it’s worse than we thought. It’s gonna be like 50 First Dates or something. Maybe we can teach him to be less evil if we have to start from scratch.”

“Evil?” Jeonghan is indignant. “Yah, Kwon Soonyoung—”

“That’s not happening,” Chan ignores Jeonghan with a subtle shake of his head, “the evil is always within, anyway.”

“They’re coming,” Hansol says upon return, looking mildly winded. “Junnie and Seokmin hyung were raiding the cafeteria. Making Seungcheol stuff his pockets with shit because he has those massive cargo pants on.”

“Ooh,” Soonyoung delights, “do you think they got me another bag of those fancy foreign chocolates?”

“Like the ones you ate in my room?” Jeonghan asks, confused. So confused. But Soonyoung totally invited himself into his hotel room in Budapest and went to town on some chocolate, didn’t he? Did Budapest even happen?

Soonyoung looks at him like he’s just as confused. “Your room here?” he prompts. “Because yeah. I can’t put those down. Must’ve made like, four trips for them.”

“I think I’m on drugs,” Jeonghan concludes slowly. He must be now. This is getting way too fucking meta.

“Well, yeah,” Hansol confirms. “The doctor has you hooked up to at least a few different things, I’m sure. You got hit by a fucking bike messenger, and then, nearly cracked your skull open, dude. Or something.”

“I got hit by—”

“Jeonghan hyung!” That’s Seokmin, but there’s also Wonwoo and Junhui and Mingyu and Minghao and—everyone else comes filing in, too. Wow, they really don’t have room in here. Wherever here actually is. Is he at the hospital? The walls look reminiscent of the place he took Soonyoung when he broke a finger. Doing—god knows what. “Oh, my god, you’re awake. We thought you were dead.”

“No one thought that except you and Soonyoungie hyung,” Minghao points out. “He was concussed. That’s it!”

“I am so fucking confused,” Jeonghan concludes. He looks around at everyone, still kinda scared, a bit terrified, and then finally, like a choir of angels has just started singing and the obnoxious, white lighting of this place has taken on a more heavenly glow, “Shua.”

Jeonghan could cry. He’s felt like this for the past—however many parallels, anyway, but now—now he knows that’s his Joshua, T-1004 Joshua, which means he must’ve learned whatever fucked up lesson there was, and oh, my god, he doesn’t even care.

Fuck Bingo, seriously.

“Joshua,” he says again, probably a bit pathetically, but his friends make way so Joshua can come over to him, and he looks a little worried, and tired, and maybe a bit annoyed, but so, so in love still, and Jeonghan feels like his heart is going to beat out of his chest with how big it is, how fast it’s pounding, but like, the excited pound, the type that tells him he’s in love, too. “What did I—”

“Do not,” Joshua starts, very coldly, with a wag of his finger and everything, “do not fucking do anything like this ever again.”

“Do… what?”

“Get hit by a delivery guy and spend—” Wonwoo looks at his watch, “—a good seven hours passed out unconscious.”

“What?” Jeonghan frowns. Confused! “But what about the multiverse hopping?”

Everyone blinks at him.

“You mean the movie Hansol and Channie were watching this morning?” Seungkwan asks. He’s caught an attitude now, just at the thought of it. “Stupid and poorly written and the main character was so annoying. But I did like the ending, unfortunately. What about it?”

“No, not the movie,” Jeonghan tries to explain. He shakes his head. “It was me who was—I had a weird dream, I think.”

“Being knocked unconscious would do that to you,” Mingyu says. He shrugs, reaching into one of the pockets of Seungcheol’s pants and pulls out an entire buttered roll.

“I was in like, forty different places,” Jeonghan keeps going. Now that he mentions it, his head is sort of aching. He doesn’t think he gives a shit, though, because Joshua is holding his hand, and it’s warm and comforting and he’s here. “Space, and Paris, and Tokyo. All over the place.”

“Space?” Seungcheol laughs at him. “Like Star Wars?”

“No,” Jeonghan snaps. “Not like Star Wars, that would be like, a licensing problem, or something.”

Seungcheol blinks at him. “What?”

Jeonghan ignores him, looking to where Chan and Hansol are attempting to re-setup Life. “You guys were there. You were supposed to be my spirit guides, but you just kept pissing me off,” he explains.

Hansol shrugs, unbothered. Jeonghan is pretty sure Chan is trying to rig it so he gets more husbands again. “Sounds about right,” Hansol says.

“Except not.” Chan tsks. He does not look up from his game piece. “We were probably like, just trying to do our job, and you—”

“And Bingo,” Jeonghan continues. He looks frantically around the room for any sign of him, spotting him on a table in the corner, lying lifeless next to his belongings; phone, keys, wallet, etc. “Bingo was the one—moving me around. He was like, opening the portals, or whatever.”

“I told you it was evil!” Joshua points at him, vindicated.

“Did you learn nothing from the movies, hyung?” Hansol sighs. “They’re not portals, they’re holes.”

Soonyoung giggles. “That’s what she said.”

“What would you know about what she said, Kwon Soonyoung?” Jihoon laughs at him. “You are the gayest person alive.”

“So what I’m getting is that Bingo is definitely possessed,” Junhui concludes, expertly ignoring Soonyoung’s argument over why he is not actually the gayest person alive, which no one is listening to because it’s damn near a lie. “I got a guy for that, if we wanna try and exorcise him.”

“Wait, and you guys were there,” Jeonghan points at Wonwoo and Jihoon, and then to Minghao and Mingyu, “and so were you.” He looks at Seungkwan and Junhui, “And you guys were there—”

“Was I there?” Seokmin asks. He’s eating some kind of jerky stick that Jeonghan can assume came from Seungcheol’s pockets as well. “Lie if I wasn’t. Also, was there like, a Wizard of Oz setting or are you just unironically doing that bit where she wakes up?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jeonghan confesses. “I never saw that movie.”

“Yo,” Hansol marvels, “we need to get you on Letterboxd.”

“I don’t know what that is either,” Jeonghan tells him. He turns to look at Seokmin again, “Also, I’m cancelling our fucking DIY slime order.”

“Aw, what?” Seokmin whines. He even stomps his foot a little. “It finally left the packing facility!”

“I spent the majority of my time in space puking up a substance that looked exactly like it,” Jeonghan shivers at the memory. If he concentrates hard enough, he could probably still taste it. “If I see it again, I might instantly projectile.”

“That’s a disgusting image to paint,” Wonwoo tells him. “Also, imagine going to space and you’re vomiting half the time? That’s embarrassing.”

“In one universe you were there and you were having phone sex with Moon Jun. Major crush on him,” Jeonghan says, just to be evil. “So maybe that’s more embarrassing. Are you harboring real, actual feelings for him, Jeon Wonwoo?”

“Junnie?” Wonwoo startles. His cheeks get insanely red, and then his ears, too, and then Soonyoung is next to him fully bent over laughing. “I’m not even—”

“Aw, Wonu-yah,” Junhui coos, wildly unphased, “should we be grabbing dinner after this or something? Want me to wine and dine you?”

“That’s not—”

“Ok,” Joshua lets go of Jeonghan’s hands in favor of clapping once. Loud enough. “As much as I like recounting Jeonghan’s amnesia trip with you guys, can it wait until later? I’d like to be alone with my post-comatose boyfriend, I think.”

“Valid,” Mingyu says through a bite of the roll he’s still going to town on. “Anyone feel like noraebang after this? It’s still a Saturday.”

“No,” Seungkwan says. “Because you’re convinced you have idol-like-talent—your words, not mine—and you suck all the fun out of the room every time we go.”

“Say what you want,” Mingyu says with a shrug and a scoff. “I have total confidence that I would be a fan favorite if we were in a boy group.”

Jeonghan does not tell him he’s sort of right. Kim Mingyu deserves to be humbled.

Instead, he watches his friends file out into the hallway, snacks and Life and all, leaving just Joshua, who still sort of looks like he might wanna kill Jeonghan, but like, less than he did before, you know, before the whole dimension hopping thing—or, well, before Jeonghan was like, concussed. Because that’s what happened, apparently.

“Hey,” Jeonghan says slowly once they’re gone, their chatter getting further and further down the hall until it’s completely silent. “Long time no see, baby. Ha-ha.”

“You are an absolute idiot,” Joshua tells him. He sighs, standing from where he was perched on the little stool next to Jeonghan’s bed and starts pacing. Jeonghan would get up and try to stop him, but he’s connected to a few wires right now and would really not rather fuck with them.

Joshua continues, “Genuinely just—did you even look both ways? Are you six years old? Do I need to start accompanying you everywhere so you don’t—brain yourself on the concrete?” Jeonghan doesn’t think he’s expecting an answer, so he stays quiet. It’s a good call because it doesn’t seem like Joshua is finished yet. “You’re so lucky you were still in front of Seungkwannie and Hansol. What if you had been anywhere else? Somewhere unsafe? Somewhere I couldn’t get to you quick enough? What if you died?”

“Shua, honey,” Jeonghan interjects. He gives him a tiny smile. Joshua does not seem charmed. “I’m not dead. But I do have a little bit of a headache, so can we—”

“Fuck, I’m sorry.” Joshua winces, lowering his voice as he comes back to Jeonghan. He presses one of his hands to Jeonghan’s forehead and frowns. “I’ll see what’s taking the doctor so long. I need to get out of here. Before they forcibly remove us. The guys are so loud.”

“I know,” Jeonghan agrees. He laughs a little. “How’d they even get in here? Don’t you have to be like, family or something?”

“Nothing like that matters here, Jeonghan-ah,” Joshua says slowly. “This is all fake, anyway.”

“What?”

“Kidding.” Joshua laughs at him. “Myungho knows one of the nurses. Wow, your dream must’ve been really awful. You just looked like you wanted to cry. Poor baby.”

“It was,” Jeonghan admits, whines a little, and then Joshua squeezes his cheek and he thinks he might really cry, just like, in the good way. “Get me home, Shua-yah.”

“Will do,” Joshua promises, and then he heads over to the door, stopping only for a second to toss something in Jeonghan’s direction. He’s laughing as he says, “He can keep you company while I’m gone.”

It’s Bingo. The son of a bitch.

* * *

Jeonghan gets diagnosed with a mildly traumatic brain injury, which is just a fancy way of saying he’s stupid as hell and should watch where he’s going next time. The doctor tells him it’s a lesser case, so he shouldn’t have any cognitive issues, and his memory will be ok, and the only thing is that he may be more prone to headaches for a bit, should avoid driving and anything else that uses fine motor skills, and there may be more weird dreams. Which doesn’t excite Jeonghan in the slightest, but at least he has Joshua now, his Joshua.

“You were bad ass. You had a weapon and you wore tight leather. I think part of me was afraid of you.”

“Tight leather just feels like you being pervy, but you should be afraid of me all the time. Also, were you not afraid of me when we were famous, too?”

“I wasn’t afraid-afraid, that was different. That was like, juvenile-situationship-feelings-afraid.” Jeonghan pauses. “And space was hardly the perviest universe, in my defense.”

“Oh? And what was, then?”

Jeonghan shrugs, or so he tries the best he can, body squished up against Joshua’s in their bed. “You were blond.”

“Yoon Jeonghan.” Joshua laughs at him. Actually, Jeonghan’s been walking him through every single one of the dimensions—dreams?—and Joshua’s been laughing at him. Which is fine, Jeonghan guesses. He would take that over anything else, because that means it’s just—Joshua, his and only his. “You’re annoying. At least we always had each other.”

“Yeah,” Jeonghan agrees. He missed him so much. Missed this, being in their bed, so close that Jeonghan can’t tell where he ends and Joshua begins, together, in love. “I had to find you every time. Wouldn’t have made it out if I didn’t.”

“Ok, you big romantic.” Joshua snorts out a laugh. He’s got one of his hands in Jeonghan’s hair, long fingers combing through the strands. He pushes it up enough to kiss Jeonghan’s forehead and Jeonghan feels like melting. “You should make this into a novel or something. Write a screenplay. Make some money off it.”

“It would take forever to cast someone as good looking as you,” Jeonghan says, mostly just to make Joshua laugh, but also like, he means it. “I don’t think I’m cracked out for Hollywood, anyway.”

Joshua does laugh. Silly. Jeonghan feels it in his own chest and feels so alive. In love. Achy again, suddenly. Stupidly thinks about the whole point of—the fucked up dreams he was having. How it didn’t matter where he was, as long as he had Joshua, that they were happy together. Thinks about their argument about the apartment. The way he kinda needs to man the fuck up.

He sucks in a breath, starts, “Shua.”

Joshua hums, still carding through Jeonghan’s hair. He smells like home, and he feels like home, sturdy and warm and there.

“I wanted to say sorry,” Jeonghan says carefully. “For how I acted last night. I was being a real asshole.”

“Jeonghan-ah,” Joshua sighs. “It’s fine. We don’t have to talk about it right now. You’re—we’ve had a long day.”

“Actually, I’ve had several,” Jeonghan corrects. “Time worked weird in the multiverse.”

“That was a dream, my love.”

“Doesn’t matter, I still wanna—” Jeonghan sits up now, stares down at Joshua and his pretty, brown eyes, and his pretty, pouty lips, and the curve of his cheeks, or the line of his jaw, the old, half-opened piercing holes still in his lobe and he wants, wants always. “I need to say sorry. Because I love you and I was a dick and we’re in this like, forever. Beyond forever.”

Joshua grins, just a tiny bit. “What could possibly be beyond forever?”

“Asshole,” Jeonghan swears. “Like, Planet B or something, probably.”

Joshua hums again. Smiles some more. “Continue.”

“I’d live anywhere as long as I was with you and I mean it,” he adds. He flops down a little so he’s closer, leans half his body on top of Joshua, arms on either side of him. “I know I’m a coward sometimes, and I do hate change, but not all—not all change has to be bad. Sometimes it’s good. Most times it’s good. It’s good if it’s with you. You know?”

“I know,” Joshua tells him. He slides a hand up to Jeonghan’s face, thumb swiping across his cheek. “And you’re not a coward. Don’t be mean.”

“Sort of a coward,” Jeonghan compromises. “So I’m sorry. Because you do—you’ve given up so much to stay here, to be here with me, and I—I don’t care where in the world I am anymore. I get it now. You know? Like, as long as I’m with you, seriously.”

Joshua kisses him. Jeonghan doesn’t know if he’s doing that thing where he’s trying to shut him up—a foolproof Joshua Hong-ism—or if he’s being genuine about it, but Jeonghan doesn’t think he minds either way. Thinks Joshua tastes like home, too. Sweet. Familiar. His.

“You’re being such a sap,” Joshua tells him, pressing one last kiss to his still-wanting-lips. “How long did this multiverse shit go on for? It feels like it changed you. You little romcom protagonist.”

“So long, Shua,” Jeonghan laments. He kisses Joshua again because he’s greedy and he loves him. “At least a week. A lonely, sad, terrifying week. Maybe even more.”

Joshua nearly coos, a bit patronizing, but then he’s kissing Jeonghan again, soft, with the teeniest bit of tongue that Jeonghan goes chasing.

There’s not one person out there like Joshua, he thinks. As sweet. As a perfectly, deliciously mean. No one who has the same lines by his eyes when he smiles, or the specific glide of his lips when they’re like this, no one who makes the same, tiny, pent up noise when Jeonghan—

“Jeonghan-ah.” Joshua sounds out of breath already. Jeonghan’s not looking at him because he’s too busy sucking an insane hickey into the side of his neck like he’s eighteen again, but he’s certain he’s making a little aggravated face, Jeonghan can hear it in his voice. “Baby. We can’t—you were just concussed. You can’t be serious.”

“Serious about being madly, deeply in love with you?” Jeonghan pulls back. Admires his handiwork. Joshua’s gonna kill him, probably. “Because I am the most serious, then. Take off your clothes.”

“No.” Joshua straight up laughs at him. It sort of turns Jeonghan on even more. Sadly. “You’re supposed to be resting. No—recreational activities. The doctor said it.”

“I’m pretty sure he was talking about like, badminton,” Jeonghan counters, but he lets Joshua maneuver him onto his back—carefully—into a mound of pillows. “Not sucking your dick.”

“It’s one and the same,” Joshua muses. Like he’s suddenly very uninterested. He’s so annoying. “You need hand-eye coordination for both.”

“Great,” Jeonghan says, “now I’m going to get hard next time I play badminton with Seungkwannie because I associate it with your dick. You pavlov’d me.”

“I think you’re just a freak, actually.”

Jeonghan hums. He has no argument.

He reaches for Joshua’s hand then, interlocks their fingers, and just stares for a moment. Focuses in on Joshua’s third finger. Empty, obviously. Thinks of LA. The matching rings they wore there. Marriage. Things like forever.

“Hey,” Jeonghan says. Joshua just turns, expectant. His lips are pink and swollen, and there’s a splotchy red mark on his neck already blooming, and he looks a little tired, but like he’d stay up with Jeonghan forever, and Jeonghan loves him. “We should get married one day.”

Joshua laughs, bright and bubbly. Not at him, per say. Jeonghan smiles because he loves him. Because he loves his laugh. Because he’s serious.

“Ok, Yoon Jeonghan,” he says. “In this universe? Or a different, parallel one?”

“Here. All of them,” Jeonghan says. Means it.

Joshua laughs again, kisses Jeonghan’s fingers where they’re still holding hands. “Alright, then,” he says. “I do.”

* * *

Jeonghan delivers Bingo to Junhui in a shoe box a week later.

The doctor said he can go places by himself now, so that was his first stop. Joshua has his location, though, so he has been tracking Jeonghan from his desk at work all day, like Jeonghan is a Sim or something.

(Jeonghan kinda likes it, if only because Joshua’s been giving commentary about his day.

“Why have you been in bed so long?” Joshua asked around eleven. “You need to get up. Take the medication for your head, for one. Then open a window, maybe. Breathe.”

“Was jerking off thinking about you,” Jeonghan had said. Which was a lie. He was just playing Candy Crush. “I’m up now.”

“You’re also not charming.” Joshua’s a liar, too. “And that’s not safe for work.”)

So, anyway—Junhui really does seem to know a guy who dabbles in expelling malevolent spirits, and Jeonghan is maybe just as superstitious as Joshua is now, if only because he just had the weirdest series of dreams in which Bingo was making his life hell, and Jeonghan once read dreams are manifestations of reality and stuff, which leads him to believe Bingo could be a little otherworldly. Which would be cool, to be clear. He just has too much else going on in his life right now.

“Do you have anything you wanna say?” Junhui asks. He’s holding Bingo up directly to Jeonghan’s line of vision, across his kitchen table. Wonwoo and Jihoon are in the living room behind them, watching some kind of documentary about life on other planets that Jeonghan thinks hits way too close to home for his liking, all multiverses considered. “You know. Like, if there really is a demon in there. Thank him for his service, or whatever.”

“Sure.” Jeonghan shrugs. “Bingo the Demon, thank you for not killing me in my sleep, and I’m sorry if you didn’t like being babied all these years, the Troll you’re trapped inside is just super cute. Also, thanks for not killing Shua, too. That was really nice of you.”

“He should kill me if he’s feeling blood hungry,” Wonwoo complains from the living room. “This documentary is so fucking boring. Life in space? Aliens? Unrealistic. Can we turn this off?”

“Be careful what you wish for, Jeon Wonwoo, he has ears. Tiny, upside down ears, but still,” Junhui teases and Wonwoo goes silent.

Jeonghan is pretty sure there’s still some residual tension after the recounting of their internet relationship on T-143. Jeonghan’s surprised he even agreed to be here right now, but something tells Jeonghan that Jihoon and Soonyoung’s scheming probably have something to do with it. He doesn’t know. This isn’t their story, anyway.

“Ok,” Junhui says to him now. “Anything else?”

Jeonghan thinks about it. “Also, sorry for anything you may have seen me and Shua do when you sat on that one shelf next to my bed in college,” he says quickly. Oops. “Now I’m done.”

“Freaks,” Junhui mumbles, albeit a bit fond. “Kay, that’s it, then. I’ll give him to my buddy sometime this week, and then once he’s sure he’s demon-free, I’ll bring him home to you.”

“Thanks, Moon Jun.” Jeonghan pats him on the back. “I owe you.”

“I’d expel a demon for you anytime, hyung,” Junhui says with far too much seriousness. “End of an era, huh.”

“For the best, too,” Jihoon chimes in. “Jun-ah, you are not letting that thing stay in here overnight. Get rid of it as soon as Jeonghannie hyung leaves.” He seems to get an idea then. “Actually, Wonu will go with you.”

“I will not,” Wonwoo argues. He sits up like he’s all offended. “Junnie is perfectly capable of—”

“Alright, I’m done here,” Jeonghan decides. He opens his phone to a text from Joshua. At junnies????, it says, tell him i love himmmm. “Shua-yah says he loves you.”

“I love him, too,” Junhui returns emotionlessly. “See you guys around?”

“You will,” Jeonghan confirms. He heads to the door, stopping by Wonwoo and Jihoon only to hit them with a, “Life on other planets is totally real, by the way. So fuck you.”

“Ok, hyung, sure.” Jihoon nods very solemnly. Then, just as Jeonghan’s leaving he hears, “Jun-ah, I swear to god, get Bingo out—!”

End of an era indeed.

* * *

The realtor described the apartment as an escape from usually busy Seoul, just off the beaten path, but still close enough to indulge in all the rich food and shopping the city has to offer, with it’s spacious, moderately new furnishing, curbside trash pickup, and even an in-unit washer, which she makes a really big deal about. Joshua did that thing where he pretended to think about it for a solid fifteen minutes until he shrugged, looked at Jeonghan and gave him a look, and then played it very cool and said, it’s cute, I guess we’ll take it.

It is cute. Bigger than their last place for sure. Jeonghan still misses some things about it, like the faulty lock on the closet door by the bathroom, or the way the light hit the living room around the time Jeonghan got home from work, or the next door neighbor’s cats, the memories, but he’s learning to love here, too, already making new memories.

Home. Their new home, together.

Jeonghan and Joshua looked together, like they promised. This place was the obvious choice. Good neighborhood, lots of space, and even equal distance between Joshua’s place of work and Seokmin’s apartment, which Joshua argued that Jeonghan spends most of his free time waiting for Joshua to come home at, anyway, and Jeonghan couldn’t really argue, so they made the leap.

It’s been good. Really good. A few weeks before they moved in, Jeonghan got the all clear from his doctor that he could drive and stuff again, and by and stuff Jeonghan assumes he meant make crazy love to his super hot boyfriend, so he fucked Joshua on every flat surface imaginable, and then a few of the same places again, and it sort of made Jeonghan regret not moving sooner because they have so much space to work with now.

The island in the kitchen is a prime location, in Jeonghan’s opinion, even with the scattered cups and empty cans shoved to one end, Joshua perched at the other.

“That was fun, right?” Joshua somehow still finds it in him to ask, even with the whole, you know, Jeonghan balls deep inside him thing. “Like, it was a good party?”

“It was a great party,” Jeonghan agrees, and he does mean it, but he’s also feeling dick-stupid enough that he’d agree with anything Joshua said right now. He mouths senselessly at Joshua’s chest and then thrusts up again and Joshua moans. “Best housewarming ever.”

Joshua laughs a little, then moans again. “I think you like this part better,” he teases, and like, yeah, Jeonghan thought that was obvious.

“Guilty,” Jeonghan manges. He kisses Joshua’s mouth next. He tastes like peach flavored soju. Yummy. “Are you close, baby? Wanna see you come so bad.”

“I will,” Joshua promises, and then adjusts himself a little, and when he moans again, Jeonghan is right there with him. “Fuck. I love you.”

“I know,” Jeonghan says. Sort of wants to laugh at the abrupt confession, but doesn’t, because he makes another embarrassing noise instead. Joshua is so hot. So annoying. “I love you back. So much. So—”

“Jeonghan,” Joshua says, whines more like, head dipping back, eyes closed, and Jeonghan’s pretty sure he’s never seen a more beautiful person in his whole life. It’s a little insane, especially after like, this long, but still, Jeonghan can’t believe Joshua gets to be his sometimes. In this life, and hopefully the next, and the next after that, too. God, the whole multiverse hopping thing really did make him cheesy. Anyway, “I’m close, I’m—“

“Come,” he tries to say. “Come for me.”

Jeonghan doesn’t even know if the words come out. But he kisses Joshua again, finally slides a hand onto his cock, and strokes once, twice, and then Joshua’s coming between them with a gasp, followed by Jeonghan’s name, and then Jeonghan’s finishing, as if on command.

Cool. The new apartment is so, so cool.

“Fuck,” Joshua swears as he comes to, pushing himself up off the counter, some random pieces of confetti stuck to the back of his arms, probably his back as well. Because Soonyoung and Chan walked in and threw out fistfuls from their pockets, and now Jeonghan’s sure they’re going to be finding them for weeks. “That was good. You’re good.”

“Just good?” Jeonghan pouts, and Joshua kisses him for it, nice and slow, so Jeonghan’s won.

“Yes. I need to keep you humble,” Joshua says. He grins, kisses Jeonghan again, and then huffs out a sigh. “I have confetti in places confetti shouldn’t be. Let me up?”

“I will kill Soonyoungie and Chan with my bare hands.”

“No you won’t.” Joshua slides off the counter, wincing at the pain of—all that. “They’re your favorite.”

“True,” Jeonghan admits. “I won’t.”

He gathers their clothes—pants by the door, top by the dishwasher, another pair of pants but the kitchen table—watching Joshua pull a few pieces of confetti off his arms, frowning at the discomfort. He’s so cute. Jeonghan would like, eat the confetti off him, if that was a normal thing for a normal person to do.

“Shower?” Jeonghan offers.

And Joshua nods, “Shower.”

Joshua doesn’t pretend he forgets his facial scrub like he normally does, but instead, Jeonghan gets in with him immediately, and it’s much roomier than their last shower, which is nice. Joshua uses his giant hands to shampoo Jeonghan’s head which is also nice, and then when they get to the body wash part, it's half assed because they can’t be trusted with any wandering hands, and they know they’ll end up back here, anyway, so it’s fine.

The mirror in the bathroom is bigger than the last one, too. Which means more space to finger Joshua against, even though Jeonghan-ah, fuck, I don’t need it, hurry, but because Jeonghan wants to see it, because he likes to do it.

And then they’re outside, in the bed, and they’re still damp, but they at least remembered to put their towels down, and Jeonghan kisses Joshua like he’s the only person in the world that matters, and Jeonghan is pretty sure he is.

“Hey,” Joshua says against his lips, in between a messy, slow kiss, “we should fuck somewhere we haven’t before.”

“Tonight?” Jeonghan laughs a little, feels Joshua’s smile against his lips, so smiles back. “You’re gonna complain your back hurts tomorrow.”

“Are you calling me old or something, Yoon Jeonghan?”

“You said it not me,” Jeonghan mumbles with another laugh, kisses Joshua long and hard again, with tongue and teeth and probably too much spit. They pull apart. “So? What’d you have in mind?”

“We have pretty big living room windows,” Joshua points out. He shrugs, and his eyes are all big and brown and annoyingly pretty, perfectly seductive, that Jeonghan sort of feels his brain turn to goo, come right out of his ears. “What’d you think?”

“I think moving was the best decision we ever made.”

Joshua laughs. “You’re just saying that because we have a lot of material to work with now,” he teases.

“Not only because of that,” Jeonghan says. He slides his hands into Joshua’s, just holds them there for a moment, pressed into their silky sheets, the expensive kind, the kind that is very much all Joshua’s doing. “I like it here, I think.”

Joshua leans up to kiss him. Chaste, sweet. “You think?”

Jeonghan hums. Thinks about it for real. About change and how it’s not always scary, especially not when he has Joshua, the person he loves more than anyone else, his person. Change can be good. Change can be things like the weather or the seasons or getting older and that can be scary, but it’s less so when you’ve got something good right next to you, with you the whole time. Moving was scary. At some point, maybe.

“Not think, I know,” Jeonghan says. One more kiss, because he’s greedy, because he can, because he’s in love. He doesn’t even think he’s talking about the apartment anymore, when he adds, “It’s already felt like home, anyway.”

Joshua grins.