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“Sungho,” Riwoo calls from the other couch. “Want to join?”
He wiggles the Nintendo Switch in his hand in Sungho’s direction. It’s Woonhak’s - Jaehyun bought it for him after his first paycheck at his mall job two summers ago. When things were easier, when there was no college and they could hang out whenever they wanted. Back then, he never knew how hard it would be to get all his friends in one room again.
“Nah,” Sungho says, waving his hand sluggishly. There’s a weird tingling feeling at the tips of his fingers and a layer of static blanketing his brain. He’s been on the cusp of falling asleep for the better part of an hour. “I need to go soon, anyway.”
It’s winter. They’re caught between the end of their first year and the beginning of their second. In a few weeks they’ll be going different directions as fast as their feet can take them, but, right now, they’re together. There’s a flurry of snowfall outside the window, the wind creaking the old frames of Jaehyun and Woonhak’s family home every so often, and a soft layer of white sitting on the windowsill.
They’re somewhere past 9pm, but winter’s dark evenings make it feel later than that. He should be getting home soon - his parents don’t like it when he’s out late. He really thought they’d lay off him a bit, now he’s an adult and can make his own adult decisions. He doesn’t have a curfew anymore, but for all the disappointed looks and sighs he gets when he comes home after dark, there may as well be.
He should leave. He doesn’t want to. He can barely think about moving right now, let alone taking a late night bus home to his part of town.
Besides, it’s freezing outside. Inside, they have blankets and pillows set up around the sitting room, and half emptied bags of chips and glasses with the last dregs of soda strewn across the floor. Jaehyun and Woonhak’s parents are visiting family for the holidays, but they’d opted to stay behind. To hang out. To take an overused promise to catch up and turn it into reality.
Taesan and Leehan are on the floor by the heater. Taesan is stretched out like a cat on a sunning rock, limbs sprawled and eyelids heavy. Leehan is curved around him, filling the spaces between them. Sungho watches with half lidded eyes as they exchange quiet touches when they think no one is looking: a loose hair tucked behind the ear, hushed whispers in the other’s ears, fingertips walking over slivers of bare skin.
They’ve been together for as long as Sungho has known them. It’s never not been Taesan and Leehan. He can’t imagine what it’s like to have someone so constant, to be that close to someone for so long. Envy sits indigestible in his stomach, uncomfortable and heavy. He’s never considered himself in desperate need of a relationship, never craved it like that, but sometimes when he looks at them something unpleasant and achy stirs in him that he’d rather ignore.
The couch dips as a weight settles next to him, then there’s an arm around his shoulders and a familiar face pressing close to his own, unmistakably Jaehyun’s. There’s no one else who is always in his space. Sungho doesn’t move, doesn’t dodge his advances like Taesan or Woonhak might. He’s not nearly awake enough to put up a fight, but he does sigh heavily, to at least give the illusion of discomfort.
“Yeppi,” Jaehyun starts, giggling when Sungho groans at the nickname. He’s in a light gray sweater and a pair of oversized jeans, his already round features even softer against the backdrop of low lighting and quiet hum of the heater. He’s grinning lazily at Sungho, head tipped lopsided towards him. “Don’t give me that look. You’re practically falling asleep.”
“I'm tired,” Sungho complains, pushing at Jaehyun’s face half-heartedly. “You have no idea how exhausting it is to babysit all of you.”
“You can’t be tired yet. We’ve barely hung out,” Jaehyun whines, prodding at Sungho’s side, his shoulder, anywhere he can reach. Sungho gives up trying to bat him away and instead resigns himself to the press of Jaehyun’s fingertips into his skin.
“We’ve been hanging out all day,” Sungho tries to argue, but his words fall flat when he sees the earnest look on Jaehyun’s face.
“Not us. Not just the two of us,” Jaehyun says.
He laughs when Sungho’s face softens, because he knows Sungho has fallen right into his trap. The heady sound echoes loud into the otherwise quiet room. Taesan looks up briefly before dropping his head back down onto Leehan’s arm. Sungho wonders if Taesan still gets vertigo whenever his skin touches Leehan’s. If it ever stops.
Jaehyun withdraws his arm, and Sungho misses it instantly. He says nothing, though, just watches out of the corner of his eye as Jaehyun leans back into the couch and tips his head back. The silver loop in his ear catches the light. Sungho was there holding his hand when he got it, sixteen and afraid of a little pain. He’d cried when the needle broke skin and Sungho bought him two twists on the convenience store gachapon to stop him sniffling.
(He’d got the same keychain in both capsules. One is on Jaehyun’s bag and the other is on Sungho’s.)
“Stop guilting me.” Sungho snorts, eyes dropping. He’s scared if he lingers on the way Jaehyun’s jaw sits under his skin for too long that he might burn a hole into the side of his face. “I need to get going soon,” he repeats, like he’s trying to persuade himself, too. “You know what my parents are like.”
“Okay,” Jaehyun says, the slightest hint of disappointment behind his voice. “Can you stay for a hot chocolate, at least?”
“You just want one yourself. Don’t use me as an excuse.”
“So have one,” Jaehyun says, the glow in his eyes unfaltering. “For me.”
Sungho gives in, always. He shakes his head and puts on an over exasperated voice, “Okay. Okay, fine. A small one.”
Jaehyun grins, pleased with his win and the anticipation of something sweet. He practically leaps out of his seat, offering his hand to Sungho to pull him up too. “Come on,” he says. “Help me make them?”
He’d be perfectly happy drifting off on the couch, but Jaehyun is looking at him with pleading, expectant eyes, and Sungho has never been good at saying no to him.
He slips his hand into Jaehyun’s, and for one dangerously long millisecond, allows himself to feel the soft flesh of Jaehyun’s palm, the smooth of his skin under his own fingers and the way they fit almost perfectly together. It’s over as quickly as it started, like their fleeting touches always are. Jaehyun hauls Sungho to his feet and lets go. Sungho trails him to the kitchen, the ghost of Jaehyun’s hand still sparking at his fingertips.
He leans on the counter as he watches Jaehyun fish two mugs out of the cupboard. One speckled with paw prints and the other with flowers twisting around the edges. It’s the mug he always uses when he comes over. Nobody else touches it.
He likes being at Jaehyun’s. It’s cluttered in a homely way, his family is always welcoming, and it’s far away from his parent’s prying eyes. His own house is too perfectly pristine, a product of his mother’s fixation on cleanliness, something he’s unwillingly picked up along the way. He wishes the sight of chip bags on the floor and crumbs on the couch didn't instill as much anxiety in him as it does. He’s still unlearning that.
“I’ve missed you,” Jaehyun says, so casually Sungho almost misses it. His brain is still on slow mode and the domestic sounds of Jaehyun pottering around the kitchen is almost making him fall asleep standing up.
“What?”
“I said I’ve missed you.” Jaehyun turns to face him, a carton of milk in one hand. He’s smiling, wide, hopeful. “Do you miss me?”
Has Sungho missed him? More than he could ever put into words.
Jaehyun and Riwoo are at the same college, but Sungho had applied somewhere different. Somewhere closer to home. Sure, he’d made new friends, found new people he got along with, but they weren’t his people. They weren’t Jaehyun . He regrets it, sometimes, wishes he could have followed after them. His parents would never have let him: too far away, impractical, out of their reach. He still wishes.
Next year, Taesan will go with Jaehyun and Riwoo to their college, but Leehan will join Sungho at his. Sungho hopes the separation won’t be as hard on them as it has been for him.
“I… I missed you too,” Sungho says, trying not to let a year's worth of pent up emotions seep their way into his voice. It’s not enough. It will never be enough.
Jaehyun was right, they haven’t talked much since they’ve been back. Just the two of them. Sungho thought it would be easy, to slip back into things, to act like they did before. But a year without Jaehyun is worse than he thought, has unsurfaced a lot of things that he’d rather not confront. His chest tightens whenever he thinks about him. His heart leaps into his throat when he calls him. He tries to push the feelings down, ignore them, tell himself it’s just because he’s missing his best friend, but it’s not that. It’s more.
No, it’s worse. So much worse. Being around him messes with his head more than being away from him. Maybe he’s been avoiding him without meaning to. He doesn’t really know anymore.
“Really?” Jaehyun asks excitedly, eyes curving with his smile. He finishes up their drinks and hands one steaming mug to Sungho. “You really did?”
Sungho knows it’s just casual affection, like Jaehyun gives to everyone, overflowing and unsparing. Jaehyun tells everyone he misses them. Jaehyun would have made any of them a hot chocolate if they asked. Sungho knows it’s not special, not something reserved just for him. He’s ashamed of the selfish part of him that wishes it was, that he could have this side of Jaehyun all to himself.
“Really,” Sungho says, cradling it in his hands. It’s warm in his palms, and the soft steam spirals past his face. “I--”
Before he can say anything else, something potentially ruining, Woonhak pops his head around the door frame, his body wracked with a yawn that he tries to hide with his hand. He can barely keep his eyes open.
“I’m going to bed,” Woonhak mumbles, rubbing a hand over his face. “Everyone else passed out. Just wanted to say g’night.”
Jaehyun laughs softly, eyes bright with adoration. “Goodnight, Woonhakie, sleep well.”
“Goodnight,” Sungho echoes, failing to hold his own fond laugh back when Woonhak mumbles something else unintelligible and shuffles out the room like a zombie.
They sip at their drinks for a while, the taste sugary sweet on his tongue. The quiet is caught somewhere between comfortable and uncomfortable. He wonders if Jaehyun is feeling the same, or if this is just another regular hangout for them, another forgettable conversation that will blend into the backdrop of his life.
“Will you stay?” Jaehyun asks. “I know your parents want you back, but… stay.”
How is he supposed to say no when Jaehyun has just told him he misses him, when he misses Jaehyun so much it hurts. He shouldn’t stay. He can’t.
“I don’t know…”
“Please?” Jaehyun pleads. “Just this once?”
“It is late,” Sungho says, like he needs an excuse. Restraint strains at his voice, always holding back, holding back, holding back. When will he let himself have this? Have anything? “I could stay, I guess.”
“You will?” Jaehyun says, sputtering as he chokes on the rest of his drink, too surprised that Sungho actually agreed with what he asked. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand sheepishly, and something warm and affectionate curls in the cavity of Sungho’s chest.
“Be careful,” Sungho hisses, but he breaks into an unexpected laugh at the sight of Jaehyun’s excited grin. “Yeah, I’ll stay. They’ll survive. I want to stay.”
“Great,” Jaehyun exclaims, dumping his now empty mug into the sink. Sungho finishes his, too, and does the same. His fingers itch to wash them up right away but he refrains. “It’ll be just like old times. Everyone sleeping over. I feel like we’re kids again.”
They head back out into the sitting room and, like Woonhak said, sleep has settled like cobwebs in all corners of the room. Riwoo is curled up on one couch, a thick fluffy throw tucked around his body, his pink hair a tuft of cloud peeking out the top. Leehan is on the other, head propped on one of his arms against the armrest, a space reserved next to him. A tap is running water in the bathroom upstairs, the sound distant and muffled. When Taesan is finished washing up, he’ll fill that gap at Leehan’s side.
“You--” Jaehyun says, almost too quickly. His hand finds Sungho’s wrist and he curls his fingers around it softly. Sungho hopes Jaehyun can’t feel the way his pulse jumps under his fingertips. “You can stay with me. My bed is big enough for both of us.”
Oh. That sounds like an imminent nightmare.
He can’t even fight back. He feels weak under Jaehyun’s expectant gaze, in his grasp. Helpless, like a bird caught in a wolf’s teeth, bleeding feeling around his fangs, dripping red and pink. He has no choice but to give in, to give up the struggle.
“We’re bigger than we were,” Sungho hears himself protest faintly.
Jaehyun shakes his head insistently. “It’ll be fine. We’ll still fit.”
“If you steal the covers, I’m kicking you off,” Sungho jokes to mask the fact that being that close to Jaehyun is possibly the worst thing he can imagine right now.
He still follows Jaehyun up to his room.
It’s exactly how he remembers it from a year before, albeit emptier with all the belongings he’s taken away to college. His childhood books line his shelves, his desk is stacked high with old school textbooks, and there’s an array of colorful robot toys scattered around the room. There’s something comforting about being in here, somewhere untouched by time, a pocket of memories safe and tucked away.
Jaehyun rummages around in his drawers and produces an old shirt and a pair of sweatpants from the back. “You can borrow these,” he says, pushing the clothes into Sungho’s hands. “So you’re comfortable.”
Sungho takes them without complaint. “Thanks,” he mumbles, heat rising to his cheeks.
He turns away before Jaehyun can notice and heads to the bathroom to change, because though he’s changed in front of Jaehyun before, in the locker rooms in highschool for gym, there’s something different about it just being the two of them. Something closely intimate. He’s not sure he can take Jaehyun’s eyes on him like that.
The temporary solitude is a relief, a break from the nagging tension bunching in his muscles. He pulls on the change of clothes. The shirt sits too tight on his shoulders, the fabric stretching around his broad frame, and the sweatpants hang loosely off his waist. The faint scent of Jaehyun’s musky, soapy cologne still clings to the fabric. It takes everything in him not to press his face into it and inhale.
He looks silly, feels embarrassment prickling at his skin. It’s just Jaehyun. It’s not like he’ll care. Sungho cares.
He splashes cold water onto his face and looks in the mirror. He swipes the wet strands of hair out of his face. He doesn’t feel as asleep as he did earlier. He doesn’t think he’s going to get any sleep tonight, not now.
Oh, right, he should probably text his parents.
Sungho pulls his phone from his now discarded jeans pocket. He tells them he's staying the night. They won't like it, but that’s why he’s texting instead of calling. Easier to ignore their protests this way. They've never liked Jaehyun and his baggy clothes and his wonky smiles and his perpetually messy hair. They think he's a bad influence. They don't know Jaehyun is perhaps the best person he's ever met.
Jaehyun is their safe space, their escape, all of them. He’s the world that they orbit, the center of everything, their burning molten core. They seek him out like a flower grows towards the sun, basking in his rays, an infinite warm comfort. With Jaehyun, they’re themselves. With Jaehyun, Sungho doesn’t have to worry about who his parents want him to be. With Jaehyun, he feels the things he’s starting to understand now.
Sungho leaves the bathroom and pads quietly back to Jaehyun’s room, careful to step softly so he doesn’t wake the others, avoiding the one creaky floorboard he remembers the exact spot of. When he slips past the door, Jaehyun is just finishing changing his bedsheets. There’s a fresh scent of clean white hanging in the air, a subtle hint of blossom, like spring. He wouldn’t have minded them smelling a little more Jaehyun.
Jaehyun notices his presence and looks him up and down, eyes lingering on the way his clothes sit on Sungho’s edges. He’s grinning, a laugh bubbling in his throat and Sungho sighs, folding his arms across his chest, the sleeves bunching tight around his biceps.
“Don’t,” he warns. “Don’t you dare. Don’t say a word.”
“I wasn’t going to,” Jaehyun deflects, swallowing down his giggles. “It’s not funny, sorry. I’m not laughing.”
“You are. You’re laughing at me,” Sungho hisses. “Give me a pillow,” he says, not quite meeting Jaehyun’s eye. “I’ll sleep on the floor if you’re going to be like this.”
“It’ll be cold. And uncomfortable,” Jaehyun persuades, patting the edge of his bed and looking at Sungho insistently. He knows he’s going to win. He knows Sungho is going to give in. “Just get in the bed. I promise I’ll stop.”
A moment of hesitation. Sungho weighs up his options. A night on the cold hard floor of Jaehyun’s bedroom. He’ll wake up with an ache in his back and a crook in his neck, and he may as well have slept on the floor by the heater downstairs. Or, a night in Jaehyun’s bed, equally as uncomfortable because he’ll be too conscious of Jaehyun next to him. Jaehyun’s breathing. Jaehyun’s skin. Jaehyun, Jaehyun, Jaehyun.
He chooses Jaehyun.
“Fine,” Sungho relents, dropping himself onto the bed and scooting back until he hits the wall. “I want this side, though.”
Jaehyun lights up, and if he had a tail it would be wagging right now. He smiles, nodding quickly, and heads for the light switch while Sungho climbs under the covers and settles in for a night straight from hell.
Jaehyun flips off the light and the room is submerged into darkness. Sungho can hear Jaehyun breathing across the room, can feel his own heart pounding in his throat. He shouldn’t be so nervous over something so simple. Jaehyun fumbles around in the dark, wincing when he stubs his toe on what Sungho presumes is the corner of his desk.
He flicks something, and a glow erupts from the light sitting on his desk. The lava lamp he’s had since he was a kid. It casts a blue and green ocean over the walls, the lights swimming around in the confines of its tank.
The bed creaks when Jaehyun climbs in next to him, and Sungho’s breath hitches painfully. He can’t take this back. He can’t escape.
Jaehyun’s bed is, in fact, not big enough for both of them. It’s a twin sized mattress, bigger than a single but smaller than could fit them both comfortably. When Jaehyun finally settles, they’re face to face, their knees brushing together, and Sungho almost jumps out of his skin. He must flinch, because Jaehyun inhales sharply.
Every time they shift, their skin touches. A loose elbow, their knees, he doesn’t know where to put his hands, his feet, and there’s a dull ache in his hip but he can’t move because he feels like Jaehyun is tracking his every movement.
It’s quiet. Awkward. The silence is charged with something Sungho can’t quite place, crackling in the minimal space between them. They can both feel it.
“Do I make you uncomfortable?” Jaehyun whispers into the dark, and Sungho’s heart stutters to a stop in his chest.
“What?” Sungho asks, barely breathing. “Why do you--”
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Jaehyun says, with a certain sadness, a certain hurt behind his words. Guilt pulls at Sungho’s heart, tight and forceful, because as much as he hates to admit it, it’s true. “I mean, you’ve barely talked to me all break. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice? How you’ve been brushing me off, finding any excuse not to stay?”
“I stayed,” Sungho says quietly, voice clogged with desperation for Jaehyun to understand. “I’m here.”
“But you… I make you uncomfortable. You won’t even look at me.”
“Jaehyun, please--” Sungho says, but still pulls back when Jaehyun shifts forward, crowding into his space again . Jaehyun presses closer, and Sungho moves back, back until his shoulders are against the wall and he's cornered with nowhere to run. He shouldn’t have chosen this side of the bed. His voice comes out breathy and laced with distress when he insists: “That’s not it. You know it isn’t.”
Does Jaehyun make him uncomfortable? Yes. Not in a bad way. Not in a disgusted way. He makes Sungho uncomfortable in the way that every interaction between them results in a flash of heat, a prickling under his skin that he can’t itch, an unexplainable, inexplicable yearn for more . And that terrifies him, because he’s not used to wanting, to needing. He’s never felt so strongly before and it’s new, unexplored territory that he’s never been taught how to deal with.
Sungho hates this. He’s supposed to be the collected one, the stable grounding, the clear mind. With Jaehyun, he’s a mess. He doesn’t know how to act. His brain is a tumultuous battleground between reason and feeling, a bloody war with no end in sight. He could let it win, this feeling, this uncontrollable pull towards Jaehyun. It would be so easy. He could let it be easy.
“Then what is it?”
His face is as close to Sungho’s as it can get without them touching. He can see it outlined in the dark, can tell each of his features apart even without sight. The ache in his hip is long forgotten, replaced by lightning surging through his body, racing in his veins and crackling at the places they meet. Their knees. The strands of their hair caught together with static. The brush of their fingers on the mattress between them.
“Jaehyun--”
“It’s what, Yeppi?”
Jaehyun pushes and pushes and keeps picking away at Sungho’s resolve and he’d do anything to make Jaehyun understand, to put words to the fluttering of wings trapped inside the bars of his ribcage, to feel a little less war torn and a little more at peace with the way he’s feeling.
Sungho is good with words. He’s not good with these words. He knows a lot of things. He doesn’t know anything about this.
The tip of Jaehyun’s nose grazes his own and everything in Sungho crumbles. He balls his fist in the fabric of Jaehyun’s collar, and Jaehyun freezes in his grasp because he’s not sure if Sungho is going to push or pull and Sungho doesn’t know either until he’s yanking Jaehyun forward and crashing their lips together because this he knows. This he can convey without words.
It’s quick, short, hard. Their noses bump together and if he was of saner mind right now, Sungho might have been embarrassed about how clumsy and desperate this feels. It’s a burst of pure feeling, so sudden, so fast, that he barely has time to register how soft Jaehyun’s lips are, how there’s muted traces of his cologne under the scent of fresh laundry, how Jaehyun’s mouth is curving upwards in a smile against him.
When Sungho pulls back, so surprised at himself he almost knocks his head straight against the wall behind him, his shock is mirrored on Jaehyun’s face. For all his teasing and pushing, he hadn’t expected Sungho to do anything like this. Jaehyun touches his index finger to his lips, traces the spaces where Sungho’s lips had been.
Instant regret spills from Sungho like an overflow. Was that wrong? Did he misunderstand?
Jaehyun is staring at him, eyes as wide as saucers, and Sungho stares back, chest swirling with a sickening cocktail of white panic and hot fear. He shouldn’t have done that. He’s messed up. Years of friendship, lost down the drain for one stupid mistake.
(He’s always known Jaehyun likes boys. He’s never known if Jaehyun likes him .)
But then:
“Do it again,” Jaehyun whispers, a little breathless, a little full of wonder. “Kiss me again.”
Jaehyun, with his eyes gleaming in the dark, Jaehyun, his universe and everything in between, Jaehyun, who Sungho never really was good at saying no to.
So Sungho kisses him again, slower this time. He pries his fingers from Jaehyun’s shirt and instead curls them gently around the curve of Jaehyun’s jaw. He grazes them up the side of his neck and Jaehyun shivers under his touch and, oh, this is different. He’s making Jaehyun skin bump with gooseflesh, he’s making Jaehyun’s breath catch in his throat as he inches his face closer and closer again.
A curl of heat manifests in the pit of his stomach as he presses his lips to Jaehyun’s, licking higher and higher until the flames engulf his entire body, from his toes to his fingertips to his ears.
There’s a lingering stickiness to his lips, sweet with sugar and chocolate, and Sungho presses in closer, harder, to chase the taste. Jaehyun’s hand instinctively finds Sungho’s waist, his fingers fitting perfectly into the curve, like they have done countless times before but never in this context, never holding him so gently, so tentatively, and for all of Jaehyun’s confident front, Sungho knows he’s just as nervous as he is.
“Do you get it now?” Sungho asks when his lungs strain for air and they have to draw apart, his heart pounding and chest heaving in mismatched beats that leave him lightheaded.
“I dunno,” Jaehyun hums, practically buzzing in Sungho’s hands. He inches closer again, closer. “You might have to do it once more. Just to make sure.”
Finally, Sungho laughs, and the tension that’s been building up and building up all night ebbs away until there’s nothing but the aftertaste left. Jaehyun laughs too, then they’re both laughing, and Jaehyun is pressing his cheek into Sungho’s palm and Sungho feels so stupid . How long has he spent worrying about this? How many times has he avoided Jaehyun this break, couldn’t talk to him, refused to even look at him?
He’s wasted so much time.
“You should brush your teeth,” Sungho tries to joke. It does little to cover the shake in his voice. “Sugar will rot them away. I don’t know if I’d still like you without teeth.”
The remark earns him a weak kick from Jaehyun. “But you like me now?”
“Seriously? That wasn’t enough?”
“I mean, I kind of thought you hated me.”
Sungho exhales, rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. “You just… I was confused. You confuse me. These… feelings are confusing.”
“We can figure it out,” Jaehyun says, bright and full of hope. Streetlights in the fog, a ray of light, blinding and pure white. “Slowly. At your pace. Whatever you want.”
He’s not even sure what he wants. He’s never done this before, never had a chance. He wants, wants, wants, but has no idea what .
What does he want?
Jaehyun.
“I’m not as put-together as you all think I am, you know,” Sungho admits.
It's embarrassing, to be exposed like this, to have his outer shell peeled back to reveal all this raw emotion boiling inside him. Jaehyun won't care. Sungho finds he doesn't care all that much either.
Jaehyun shifts so they’re closer again, undeterred. “That’s okay. You don’t have to be.” He presses his nose against Sungho’s cheek, slightly cold, then his lips, warmer. “It’s just me. You don’t have to pretend.”
“I know,” Sungho sighs. “I just… It’s scary. Missing you so much. Needing you so much.”
“I’m sorry,” Jaehyun whispers, a trace of fear in his voice that mirrors Sungho’s. He’s pressed into Sungho’s side, his arm thrown lazily over his middle, hand splayed on his waist. Sungho doesn’t think about escaping this time, let’s himself indulge in the heat radiating off Jaehyun like his own personal heater. “I shouldn’t have assumed. I should have done something sooner.”
“I could have said something too,” Sungho says. “I could have, I don’t know, not avoided you. Not made you feel like that.”
“It’s okay.” Jaehyun’s hand searches for Sungho’s, linking their fingers together when he finds it. He squeezes it, long, tight, comforting. “I get it now, I understand,” he soothes, forgiving. Always giving, giving, giving, and Sungho feels somewhat selfish, partaking in it, taking it for his own.
“I wish we had more time,” Sungho says. “Before we have to go back. I wish we could do more together.”
Because he’d almost forgotten that after all this, even after confronting everything he’s kept hidden, they’ll be torn apart again in a few weeks. That Jaehyun will disappear off to his college and Sungho to his. That they’ll
“I can send them home in the morning,” Jaehyun says. “The others. I’ll get them to take Woonhak out and we can spend some time together. Just us two. We can talk about this, anything, everything.”
“Yeah,” Sungho breathes, his eyes heavy and weighted. Jaehyun’s leg twines around his, and that, and the promise of something more, something together, is enough for the comforting familiarity of sleep to take him. “Okay, tomorrow. We can do tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, Yeppi,” Jaehyun repeats, face pressed into his shoulder, and maybe this isn’t the nightmare Sungho thought it would be after all.