Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jeongin

Jeongin loves parties, and he loves the chief’s apartment, and he loves looking cute at parties in the chief’s apartment. He put on his favorite red T-shirt, he dabbed on a bit of lip gloss, and Jisung has pinched his cheeks so many times that it looks like he put on blush, too.

He doesn’t love pining for things he can’t have, namely because there isn’t a lot in life that he’s wanted and was not able to get eventually, either through hard work or asking his parents or because the universe simply gave it to him, so he supposes his current situation is good practice.

He cannot have Seungmin, he understands this, and he will not fight Seungmin on it because he knows this is probably a matter of principle for him. But that doesn’t mean he is happy about it.

Kissing Seungmin was so good. Jeongin had loved it, just like he’d suspected he would. He wants so much more of it, and he definitely wants to have sex with Seungmin, and also probably to marry him one day—and he didn’t even get to bite his neck, he thinks mournfully.

“Ien-ah. Cutie pie. Baby. Sweetie. What has got you frowning like that?”

Jeongin looks at Jisung, who is looking extra pretty today with his dangly earrings and black choker and British rock-band shirt.

“All week, my baby has been upset, hm?” Jisung croons, arms reaching out as though he’s going to hug Jeongin.

Jeongin holds him off, but it does make him smile a bit. Seungmin went to the kitchen to get Jeongin a drink a minute ago, so it’s just him and Jisung by the couch corner Felix recently vacated to chase Dr. Bang out the door. Everyone else is absorbed in the karaoke; even Hyunjin who initially claimed no interest in it, and Mingyu got convinced to sing a song by Chief Seo.

“Talk to papa.”

Jeongin snorts. “Aren’t you twenty-four? That’s only a year older than me,” he says, but he loves Jisung a lot and he appreciates him checking on him. Maybe he can tell him a version of the truth? “I have a crush on someone and they rejected me.”

Predictably, Jisung drops his act to frown and address Jeongin a bit more seriously. “Oh. Sweetie oh no, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe anyone in the world would reject our perfect baby Ien-ah. That sucks.”

“…Yeah.” Jeongin pouts into his empty cup. In the background, Mingyu concludes his surprisingly heartfelt rendition of a power ballad to raucous applause. “I really wanna kiss them again,” he sighs.

“Who do you want to kiss?”

Oh no.

Jeongin’s head snaps up and he sees Seungmin is back already.

“Uh.” Now what? “I.”

He sees the realization dawn on Jisung in real time. His eyes widen and go from Jeongin, to Seungmin, then back to Jeongin, and then, because he is the best, he grabs Jeongin’s arm.

“Ien-ah! Let’s go to the bathroom, quick!”

And he pulls him away, Jeongin stumbling after him and throwing an apologetic: “We’ll be right back!” to Seungmin over his shoulder.

There is someone in the bathroom already, so they wedge themselves into the corner behind the door and half under the coatrack, standing on people’s shoes while they wait. Thankfully no one else is here.

“You like Seungmin?!” Jisung hisses, looking delighted. “And you said kiss again! Does that mean you’ve kissed him? What is it like? I bet it’s good, the quiet ones always—”

“Jisung, oh my God,” Jeongin interrupts, also whispering. “I’d really like to keep this between us!”

“You and me?”

“Me and Seungmin!”

“Right.” Jisung winces. “I mean, I guess I know too, now, but I promise to keep it to myself. Oh my God, did Seungmin reject you because he is still ‘undecided’?”

“Undecided? On what?”

“On whether he’s interested in other people like that.”

Jeongin is pretty sure Seungmin’s responses during their short make-out session were not those of someone who is uninterested in the proceedings, but he didn’t think to ask Seungmin to confirm that. He didn’t know he was supposed to.

“Oh. Well, the reason is that I’m a medical student and he’s a resident, I think.” They didn’t verbalize it, technically. But that exchange of looks, and Jeongin had assumed—he’d been so sure. Should he ask? “I guess he said ‘we can’t do this’ and I just figured that was the reason.” He should ask.

“…That’s kind of hot.”

“Jisung!”

“Do you think jealousy would work on him? You could make out with Jiwoo again. Or me! I’d make out with you.”

Jeongin doesn’t mean to visibly grimace at the idea, but he does, and Jisung’s face falls comically. Whoever was in the bathroom comes out, enclosing them in their corner and remaining out of sight while the door is open.

“Hey! Don’t you think I’m cute? Why did you make that face at the thought of making out with me?”

The door to the bathroom swings shut again, revealing that mean-looking hot nurse, Nurse Lee, on the other side.

Jisung’s face goes from theatrical disappointment to a kind of shy joy that Jeongin has never seen him display. “Oh! Hyung!” he lets go of Jeongin immediately to turn towards Nurse Lee fully. “Chan left, right? I was wondering if you—”

“Are you two gonna make out?” Nurse Lee asks, crossing his arms over his chest. The tone is diverted, expectant, but something is off about his eyes, and the scary dark bags under them. Jeongin is frightened. “Can I watch?”

“Absolutely—”

“Not,” Jeongin finishes, emphatically. “As in there will be nothing to watch, because we are not making out.” He turns to Jisung, hoping he will catch on to his double meaning when he adds: “I am not into the whole jealousy thing.”

He can tell that the fact that he isn’t solely referencing Seungmin clearly flies over Jisung’s head.

He sighs and leaves him there, because he didn’t actually need the bathroom but judging by the way the hot nurse is looking at Jisung it seems like those two might.

Seungmin is exactly where they left him, only the cup he had brought for Jeongin is empty, and his cheeks are just that much pinker. Hyunjin is still sitting by Changbin and Wooyoung in the karaoke audience, and Felix hasn’t come back. Mingyu is on Changbin’s other side, but he is chatting with Harin and Sooah.

“Hyung, can I… talk to you? For a second?”

Seungmin nods, but looks around them as if to indicate the opposite-of-private environment. “Here?”

“Um, no. Outside?”

A round of applause for Jung’s rendition of a Blackpink song makes for good cover and Jeongin ends up leading Seungmin out of the apartment altogether. They shut the front door, walk down the empty hallway beyond, and inspiration strikes Jeongin last minute, as he decides to lead Seungmin into the stairwell next to the elevator.

It’s not a very large space, but it’s private and unlikely to be intruded into; the chiefs live on the eighth floor so no one will be taking the stairs, especially at this hour. The lights are motion-operated, so they are bathed in an unflattering halogen as soon as they step inside and walk down one flight, but it’s quiet.

They pause at the next landing, between the seventh and eighth levels.

“Is everything okay?” Seungmin asks. He’s a bit flushed; he’d had a couple of drinks before finishing this latest one. But he seems perfectly with it, and Jeongin gages him sober enough to have a serious conversation with, in addition to definitely sober enough to remember it.

“Yeah. I think? I wanted to clarify something with you. About… us.”

Seungmin blinks. “Okay.”

The way he looks at Jeongin sometimes feels so studious, like he’s literally studying his face for a test. It’s unnerving, but in a good way.

“I’m… so sorry, but Jisung figured out that I liked you, and then he said something that made me think… I should talk to you about it.”

“Okay. What… is it?”

“Well. I guess…” He steels himself. “I understand that you don’t want to kiss me again. But Jisung said, at some point you’d felt… undecided. On like. Kissing in general? I think that’s what he meant? And I-I had assumed the reason you rejected me was that I am a student, but we didn’t really talk about it so if it’s that you didn’t like the kissing, I just wanted to tell you that I like you anyway, I don’t need the kissing, so if you didn’t want—”

“Jeongin.” Seungmin puts a hand up, halting him. “Hold on. I used the word ‘undecided’ in a conversation with Jisung about my sexuality, yes, but I have since… decided.” The tips of his ears are tinged red. “The kissing was… it felt good. I liked it.” His eyes flicker to Jeongin’s mouth when he says it. Hm. “A lack of interest in physical contact was not the reason I told you we can’t… engage in more physical contact.”

“…Oh.”

“You understood me correctly; I meant our relative academic positions.”

Jeongin wishes Seungmin looked a bit less attractive in a tight grey shirt, while saying the word ‘positions’ to him.

“Oh. Okay.”

He didn’t imagine it, then; the groaning, the moans, that jerk when Jeongin tightened his hold on Seungmin’s neck.

There’s a pause, and they must stay so still that the sensor stops detecting movement and shuts the lights down, enveloping them in darkness. Both Jeongin and Seungmin move their hands towards the ceiling, and the bulb flickers back on.

“I didn’t apologize for my actions, that day,” Seungmin says into the silence. “I should have. I’m sorry. I let it go on longer than I meant to.”

“Please don’t, hyung I really, really wanted you to—”

“I lose control around you sometimes.”

Jeongin stares.

“…What?”

Seungmin always seems controlled. And in control. He always seems cool and calm; even when he was being so brave talking back to JYP, even during the chest tube though he had a significant reaction to it later—and maybe that’s it, isn’t it? He seems those things, but he isn’t. Even now, a couple of drinks in at a rowdy party with his co-residents, he seems fully in control.

What if he isn’t?

“My… reactions to you. I can’t control them. And that affects… my actions, sometimes.”

Jeongin’s heart-rate speeds up, thump-thump-thumping until it’s almost a thrum.

“Right now—" Seungmin starts to say, and then cuts off like he hadn't meant to speak, like he planned this perfect illustration of his lack of self-mastery, and oh God, is he drunker than Jeongin assumed?

“What’s… what are you feeling, right now?” Jeongin whispers.

For a long moment, he thinks he isn’t going to get a response.

Then the lights turn off again, and in the darkness Jeongin hears:

“I really want to… I’m trying to think of an excuse to kiss you again. Even though I know I shouldn’t.”

No way.

Jeongin swallows, and takes a step forward. The lights show him Seungmin standing in the exact same place. “How much did you have to drink, Seungmin?”

“I. Three.”

Three drinks is not as much as Jeongin thought it would take for Seungmin to say something like that to him.

“You can kiss me,” Jeongin says. “If you want to. You don’t need an excuse, you can just—”

Seungmin shakes his head. “It’s… wrong. And I might get emotionally attached.”

“Are you? We kissed already. Do you feel emotionally attached?”

“I.” Seungmin seems hesitant. “I… don’t think so.”

It hurts to hear, more than he thought it would. He knew it already, but God, it hurts.

“Great! So we can kiss again, if you’d like.” He’ll take kissing Seungmin as an analgesic for not being able to be with Seungmin. “Just for a little while.”

“I don’t know if I want…” Seungmin takes a step forward. He’s looking at Jeongin’s mouth again.

Please, thinks Jeongin. Let me have this, please. If nothing else—

“If you want to kiss me?”

“If I want to do it for just a little while.”

The thrum of Jeongin’s heart becomes a hum, something so fast it feels continuous, and he wants—he needs—

Seungmin takes another half-step, bringing them closer. They are very close now.

“I really… I really want it,” he says, hoarse. Jeongin can taste his breath, tinged with the taste of alcohol. They are standing so close. “Jeongin.”

“Hyung—”

They close the distance, and it’s different than their first kiss; Seungmin is less hesitant, more insistent, putting both hands on Jeongin’s waist right away and bringing him flush against him. He dives into the kiss, inhaling through his nose as Jeongin moans, opens for him, their tongues touching and sliding and Seungmin tilts his head like he learned to do last time. Jeongin circles his tongue in Seungmin’s mouth and Seungmin grunts, hands clenching where he’s holding Jeongin, and they stumble back until Jeongin is pushed up against the wall.

Jeongin whimpers, arms coming up around Seungmin’s shoulders. He sucks on Seungmin’s tongue, noting the surprised groan that elicits, and then he grabs the back of Seungmin’s neck, gripping it in his hand.

“Jeongin,” Seungmin pants, breaking the kiss already. “Don’t—don’t—”

Jeongin lets go immediately, gasping out a: “Sorry, I’m so—”

“No, don’t stop—”

Jeongin’s stomach flips violently, and he quickly puts his hand back, fingers digging in, and Seungmin shudders in his arms, hips punching forward instinctively.

“Jeongin,” he pants, then kisses him again, his tongue deep in Jeongin’s mouth. Jeongin whimpers, hooking a leg around the back of Seungmin’s knee. He’s going to get all the way hard if they keep going at this pace, he’s already starting to. Seungmin hisses when their groins connect and then Jeongin—feels him. He’s getting hard, too.

This could be his last chance. Jeongin breaks their deep kiss to trail smaller kisses down Seungmin’s cheek, to his jaw, and then—finally, finally down to his neck.

Seungmin shudders.

Jeongin opens his mouth and tongues the skin, pantomiming a bite without putting any actual pressure behind his teeth, just laving Seungmin’s jugular with saliva, sucking lightly, wanting so badly to suck harder. He tastes so good.

“Oh. That feels.” Seungmin shoves his hips forward again, letting out a low moan. “Jeongin, I’m… this is…”

He’s fully hard, suddenly. He thrusts against Jeongin again. “Jeongin.” He thrusts again, then again, picking up a rhythm. “Jeongin.” He’s saying it with urgency, saying it just to say it, Jeongin is delirious with the sound. “Jeongin. Jeongin-ah. Ien-ah—”

Jeongin lets his teeth scrape the skin and gives it another wet kiss, sucking just a little bit more—

“Ien-ah, ah, ah, I’m gonna—I’m—no. No.”

Jeongin stops, instantly, and Seungmin stumbles away from him. He goes as far as the opposite wall in the little landing, which he leans against for support.

“I’m.”

“Seungmin—”

“I told you, I don’t want.” He’s breathing so heavily, his eyes are unfocused, he looks… like he was about to… “Please don’t—”

“I won’t. I’m sorry, did I—”

“No, no not… your fault. I just can’t.” His hand is on his chest. “I was going to say please don’t apologize. It’s just… me. I was right. I was right, I can’t just kiss you for a little while. I want.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I want more than that.”

Jeongin knows he means sex, orgasms, not ‘more’ emotionally, and despite his current physical state wishes he could trade one for the other, because he’d rather be with Seungmin than sleep with Seungmin—and he wants to sleep with Seungmin a lot, so he really, badly wants to be with him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, throat tight. He’s going to cry. He doesn’t want Seungmin to see him cry. “I’m so sorry, hyung.”

“Don’t… Jeongin.” Seungmin shakes his head, opening his eyes. “Don’t apologize, please. I started this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I will—from now on I will stick to my word. We can be friends, but just—just friends.”

Just friends.

“…Okay.”

“I’m going to go home.”

“Okay.”

“Jeongin.” Seungmin’s chest is still heaving, but it’s subtler now, and his breathing is less affected. “Are you okay?”

Jeongin loves Seungmin’s caring nature, and he loves Seungmin’s capacity for empathy and concern—unfortunately, he also loves Seungmin, so he is very much not okay.

“Mh-hm, I’ll be fine. Good night, hyung.”

“I’ll see you on surgery rounds on Monday.”

“Yeah. Yeah, see you Monday.”

Seungmin leaves through the door to the seventh floor, and Jeongin blindly makes his way back upstairs, trying not to contemplate the month of twenty-four hour close-contact they have coming up.

Felix

They take the elevator and leave the building together, initially with the plan that Felix will walk Chan to the curb and make sure a car comes to pick him up safely.

But then something occurs to him.

“Would you let me drive you?” he asks. “I’m a good driver. I could take you home; that way your car isn’t stuck here tomorrow.”

That suggestion is objectively good, he thinks. Nothing wrong with it. Nothing untoward.

“Or would you… do you want to crash on my couch again? If you’d rather.” He swallows. This part is harder to justify to himself. “So that your wife doesn’t see you. Like this.”

Chan could pass for sober if only spoken to without speaking, and in the right lighting that disguised the red splotches on his face and extra red of his lips, nose and ears. But Dr. Choi is smart, and won’t miss those things—Felix certainly doesn’t, watching Chan’s gorgeous face bathed in lamplight.

“Not my wife,” he mumbles.

“Oh. Right.” He didn’t forget, exactly. “Either way, I think that’s better than you calling a car.”

They made it all the way to the silent parking lot, but Chan hasn’t even taken his phone out yet, let alone called for the ride. It’s warm out, a balmy summer night.

“Would you give me your car keys?” Felix pushes. “Come on. I owe you for when you did it for me. Let me drive you.”

Chan isn’t swaying, but there’s something loose in his stance regardless. His eyes are very… intense, tonight. “Drive me where,” he says, low.

Felix shivers. “Wherever you want.” He forces a smile. “Up to you. Your place or mine.” Yikes.

“Yours,” Chan says, without pausing to think about it.

Then he seems to take a beat and reconsider.

“I mean.” He winces. “I mean, it’s late, it’s… what, past midnight? Nari has a call day tomorrow, I can’t risk waking her up from sleep, she has to be up in four hours, it’d be…”

“…inconsiderate,” Felix tries, and Chan nods, pointing at him.

“Yes, yes, inconsiderate. She needs to rest.”

“Rest is so important,” Felix nods back. “So…” He puts his hand out, and sees Chan look at it uncomprehendingly. He is so cute when he’s drunk, so endearing. He looks so hot in that black tank top that Felix will have to avoid looking at him so as not to swerve off the road. “Keys?”

“Oh, right, right.” He puts the keys in Felix’s palm, and then docilely leads him to his car.

Felix drives them to his apartment, and they spend the short ten-minute journey in silence. He can’t tell if he’s imagining the tension between them or if he is just feeling so much tension on his end that it’s bleeding into the air. He thought, until an hour ago, that Chan was straight, but the way he said ‘You’re really pretty’ sounded… not straight. It sounded like Chan thinks Felix is really pretty and wants to do something about it. He has certainly been very… attentive, the past few weeks, but Felix didn’t think—or at least, hadn’t let himself think—

He shifts in his seat as he finally allows the idea to bloom, but it’s a pointless, aimless notion. Even if Chan is into men and thinks he’s pretty, that doesn’t mean anything can or will or should happen. Especially should.

“We’re here.”

Chan nods. Of course, he knows the building. They make it up to Felix’s place without running into a single soul other than the night doorman, and Felix lets Chan inside.

“Make yourself at home,” he says as his shoes come off.

“Hm, I wish,” Chan mumbles, but Felix must have misheard.

He gets Chan a glass of water and gets one for himself even though he is perfectly sober, and then he joins Chan on the couch he already dropped himself down to sit on.

“Here, hyung.” He gives him the glass, and their fingers brush. Their eyes meet in the dim light, and Felix can’t help looking down at Chan’s mouth, noting again how full his lips are, watching as Chan brings the glass up to drink from. The rim presses into his bottom lip, emphasizing how plush it is, how good it would probably feel against Felix’s neck, or chest or stomach or thigh—

“Uh,” Felix braces himself to get back up. “I-I should go change, and wash my face and—”

“Wait.” Chan puts the glass down hastily on the coffee table, wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist. “W-wait, before you go to your room, I-I wanted to thank you.” Felix stays. “You’ve been so kind to me, you’re letting me use your couch, you drove my car… you even left the party early because of me. You’re so good, I. I don’t know how to thank you for being so good.”

Before he can list the R-rated ways in which he’d like to be thanked, Felix is hit with a realization. “Oh, shit.”

“What?”

“Mingyu. I forgot about him; I left him all alone.”

Chan’s earnest features become clouded. “He will hardly be alone Felix, the place was still packed when we left.”

But Felix feels guilty. Mingyu knows some of the other residents but he’d made Felix promise he would be around for him to rely on in case he felt shy. He didn’t even text him to tell him he was spontaneously leaving—he didn’t text anyone. What if his co-interns are worried about him right now?

“Felix. What’s wrong?” The storm-clouds disperse as quickly as they gathered, and now Chan just looks concerned and maybe sad. “Are you. Do you want to go back for him?” Not sad; defeated. “Did… things change for you, since we last spoke? You like him now, don’t you?”

Felix sighs. The fact that Chan can’t tell how stupidly head-over-heels Felix is for him is so impressive that it’s almost concerning.

“No, I don’t. He still hasn’t made a move, by the way.” He fishes his phone out of his pocket as he says this, and sees the where u? CB did the smart le sserafim ass-shaking dance I need emotional support text from Hyunjin and the ?????? from Jisung with a pang of guilt.

“He would have tonight,” Chan says darkly.

Felix texts his friends back and reflects on Chan’s words. He might be right, Mingyu has been very affectionate all month, but that’s all it’s been. Maybe he’d been waiting until Felix’s time with the surgeons was over, and was going to make his move tonight—or maybe he’s just an affectionate person. Either way it doesn’t matter. He texts Mingyu so sorry I left something came up!! I believe in u and hopes they can remain friends, because he honestly likes the guy.

“It doesn’t matter if I still don’t like him like that, hyung.”

Chan’s shoulders sag. “Oh.” He lets out a long breath. “…Okay, and you don’t, right? You still don’t like him.”

Felix grins, switches to English. “For the last time: I do not like Mingyu.”

“Okay!” Chan says, grinning back helplessly. “Okay, I’m sorry.”

“You’re so worried about me,” Felix teases. “I can take care of myself, you know? I can handle guys like Mingyu.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” Chan replies. “You should be taken care of—you should be waited on hand and foot.” And then, he adds: “Guys like Mingyu don’t know how to do that. He wouldn’t do it right.”

Felix’s grin falls off his face.

“He wouldn’t?”

“No.” Chan shakes his head. “He wouldn’t take care of you properly.” His voice got quieter.

Felix’s does too. “Properly, like… waiting on me hand and foot.”

“Yes.” Chan is looking at him and Felix can’t breathe. “Yeah, like that. He keeps calling you ‘prince’, but you deserve…” He searches for the words, switches to English again. “You’ve heard of princess treatment? You deserve princess treatment.”

Princess. Pretty. All these words that make Felix shake and shiver inside, and Chan doles them out so freely, like it costs him nothing.

“Princess treatment,” he echoes.

“Yeah.” Back to Korean. “Gifts, compliments, someone whose purpose is your happiness. He should cook for you and get you nice clothes and jewelry if you’d like that. He should take care of you in every way, really… dote on you, you know? I want that for you.”

Felix gives a slow nod. “Me… too.” He feels exposed, hearing desires he has barely let himself think about being spoken out loud like this. It doesn’t seem fair, that Chan would understand his most tremulous wants on instinct. “Thanks, hyung.”

Chan shrugs. “It’s the truth. You’re too precious, it’s the least of what you deserve.”

Princess. Pretty. Precious. He’s really—this is really—

“I-I should go to bed.”

Chan watches Felix stand up, head bobbing in surprise like the drunkenness can’t keep up with a sudden turn of events. “Oh. Oh right, yes you… you need to get that beauty sleep.”

Beauty. It’s an idiom, he can’t mean—but he said pretty, ‘You’re really pretty’, he said—

“Will you be comfortable, here?” Felix asks him. “On the couch?”

He’s standing over him, looking down at Chan from a devastating angle, and Chan’s lips slowly part as he considers the question. Or… maybe he doesn’t, actually; nothing in his eyes portrays active thought, he looks like he’s zoned out for a second.

Neither of them says it, what the alternative is. It’s implied. It would be terrible to say it, it would get them one step closer to putting it into action.

“I-I’ll be fine. Of course I’ll be fine,” Chan says finally. He’s still looking up at Felix, his gaze refocused, and there’s something… pleading there, now.

“Are you sure?”

Chan nods, and that pleading expression isn’t new, Felix realizes. He’s seen this look on his face before, a version of it last time Chan was in this apartment. It’s something subservient that begs of Felix the way a vassal begs their ruler, fearful of the consequences but having to ask anyway.

Mercy, Chan’s gaze is asking. Please. Please, have some mercy.

“…Okay.”

Felix steps away, shaking, and Chan lays down sideways on the couch but doesn’t break eye contact while he does it. “Good night, Felix. Thank you for saving me.”

“You saved me first,” Felix reminds him, the words coming from the deepest register in his throat. “Good night, hyung.”

And then he makes himself walk to his room, alone.

*

The next morning, Felix wakes up to Chan gone.

He left a cupcake on a plate with a post-it note next to it simply saying ‘Thanks again! Got you an iced Americano in the fridge’ and Felix feels stupid for imagining them spending the morning together, or even part of the day together. The fragile tension of the night is gone; the imploring look on Chan’s face is meaningless now, in an empty apartment full of bright morning sun.

Chan has a fiancée. Chan might think he’s pretty and precious and he said that thing about ‘princess treatment’ but he is engaged to be married, and nothing can ever happen between them. Felix feels, abruptly, so sad that his eyes fill with tears, and he eats the whole cupcake standing up in his kitchen, crying, just like that.

When he checks his phone he finds no additional messages from Chan, but Mingyu responded to him last night by saying: no worries my prince hope u get some sleep, your friends are awesome and covering for u no one noticed who you left the party with

And he cries harder.

“Dearest, I don’t understand,” his mom says, as he sputters and confesses an abridged version of the events yet again. She has always been a confidante for him, but he barely had a love life in medical school so at most he would admit to a hookup here or there, and not go into detail. He hasn’t been heartbroken like this before. “This person you have a crush on works with you?”

“He’s my attending,” Felix cries, and doesn’t correct her regarding how much more than a crush this has become. “He’s also Australian, you’d—you’d like him, he’s so kind…”

“And it’s against the rules?”

“There’s no actual policy eomma, but it’s implied, that an attending and a resident should never… especially an intern… but that doesn’t even matter because he’s with someone else. He’s with someone else, he doesn’t… we can never...”

“Oh, Felix…” she sounds worried. “My love, you’ve never talked about any boy like this. What is it about this one?”

What, indeed? Every new thing he learns about Chan has him falling deeper, every cute expression or gesture, and now his clumsy drunken demeanor, so sweet and earnest. ‘You’re really pretty’. It was better, to think Chan was straight; it placed him further away. This feeling—to be close, to be far, it’s to be nowhere, and Felix wants so badly to be somewhere with Chan. Anywhere with Chan.

Mercy, Chan’s eyes had begged, and Felix thinks: What about me? Who will have mercy on me?  

Seungmin

The first day of his second rotation has him waking up at 4am, so Seungmin is two hot coffees and a canned latte deep by noon. He picks up the surgeons’ style quickly, and adapts to the flow of the day without issue, but he does not enjoy it. He does not enjoy the consults, or the longer hours, or Jeongin’s subdued presence. He especially does not enjoy Jeongin’s unobtrusiveness—he seems determined to be quiet and stay out of Seungmin’s way or indeed eyesight, and Seungmin does not want that. Never wanted that. He misses Jeongin’s enthusiasm, his interest in patient presentations, his eagerness. That’s all gone. He still works very hard but as soon as he is given the choice between doing a task with Seungmin or going to the operating room for six hours, he chooses the OR.

It's hard not to take that personally, from a future pediatrician.

Seungmin has been wracked with guilt over his drunken faux pas at the party, and he hoped to make it up to Jeongin by being a good resident to him this month, but he will only be able to do that if Jeongin stays in a room with him long enough to allow it. He got an email request on Sunday to fill out an evaluation for Jeongin from his ER block, and already sent it with a carefully neutral but overall positive review, realizing as he did that he’d been making a point of not working too closely with Jeongin on shift, as he didn’t have much specific feedback regarding Jeongin’s presentations or his clinical skills.

Their surgery seniors this month are Chul and Hongjoong. Chul takes some warming up to according to Felix, but Hongjoong proves himself to be something of a spitfire immediately, and a friendly one to boot. He is the one paired with Seungmin for call, in addition to Jeongin of course.

Their first day goes by in a busy rush, and then their second day is their call day, and it goes by in an endless, exhausting rush too. Jeongin mostly sticks to Hongjoong and barely interacts with Seungmin at all.

That’s how it is most of the first week, in fact; Jeongin following Hongjoong around and Seungmin off to see consults, down in the ER for patients (and to briefly greet his friends), then back up to the surgery floors by himself. On Friday Hongjoong tells Jeongin to take the weekend call day off, so Seungmin is in the hospital for 24 hours from Saturday morning into Sunday, while Jeongin enjoys his weekend, which is a good thing, of course, but his total absence is even worse than his quiet.

*

“Week two!” Hongjoong says, with an impossible amount of enthusiasm at six in the morning on an August Monday. “We’ve got this, team.”

Jeongin gives one of his big smiles away to him, and Seungmin slurps his coffee and ponders developing indigestion, acid reflux, or gastritis versus having another reason to be upset.

“Jeongin, are you ready to be on call again?”

“Yes, sunbae!” his smile gets even bigger, and he high fives Hongjoong. Those two seem to get on like a house on fire, as Jeongin’s avoidance of Seungmin has pushed him right into Hongjoong’s orbit. It seems fairly tame; a mixture of the friendly and professional without anything else unsavory between them, but there are moments when Jeongin is laughing or giggling with the senior where Seungmin remembers his words at the party: Jisung figured out that I liked you and shortly afterwards, I like you anyway. He said that he likes Seungmin. He wants to kiss Seungmin and he likes him. Why smile at Hongjoong so much, then?

His irritation persists all day, as Hongjoong takes Jeongin to the operating room to watch an urgent gallbladder case and Seungmin continues to run around the hospital alone until it’s time for the day team to leave, and the night consults begin.

It is, blessedly, very slow in the evening; the first time Seungmin’s call shift has not been busy.

“Okay so only one consult so far, and that patient is stable for admission…” Hongjoong scrolls through their patient list on the computer screen in the surgery charting office. “I think it’s nap time? We might not get a chance later. I’ll go to the senior on-call room; you two can duke it out over the intern one.”

Seungmin looks at the chair Jeongin had curled up in next to him, and his stomach flips when he realizes Jeongin’s eyes were drooping shut. He opens them, startled, once he notices Seungmin’s gaze. Seungmin is so unnerved by the eye contact that he looks away.

“Oh. Yes, okay—I-I’m fine,” Jeongin says. “Dr. Kim should get the nap, I don’t matter.”

Seungmin shakes his head. “You matter the most. I have charting to finish.” The charting part is not technically true. “Go, Jeongin. I’ll come wake you if a new consult comes in.”

“The bed is pretty small or I’d suggest you share,” Hongjoong says with an suggestive eyebrow raise, already on his way out of the room.

“Absolutely not,” Seungmin says flatly. “Ien-ah. Go to bed.”

Jeongin slowly gets up and follows Hongjoong outside. By the time the door shuts Hongjoong has him giggling at some joke that was delivered too quietly for Seungmin to hear.

Their overnight attending is Dr. Choi, who makes herself readily available when needed, but is not expected to get involved in person unless the consult patients need emergent surgery. Seungmin sends a message in the ‘Surgical Team Block 2’ chat about the single consult they have, tagging her so she knows to round on the patient in the morning, and then tries to scrunch his limbs into the office chair he’s in, resting his head on his knees.

The pager wakes him about thirty minutes later.

“This is Dr. Kim with surgery, I was paged?”

“Seungmin! It’s Sooah, I’m working the next couple of overnights in Red Pod with Hyunjin. He says hi.”

“Hi Sooah.” Despite his exhaustion, he is pleased to hear her voice. “How can I help?”

“We have a patient with appendicitis down here—can you and your senior come assess them? No rush, the patient is stable and their pain is controlled, but I think they need to be admitted to your department.”

“Sounds good, I’ll be down there soon.”

“Yay! See you soon. We have latte cans from the lounge, I’ll save you one.”

He calls Hongjoong to let him know while on his way to the intern on-call room. None of his shifts have had enough downtime for him to attempt to sleep there, but he was shown its location and function on his first day just in case. It’s only a few hallway turns from the surgery charting office, past the quiet, dimly lit night-nurses station, past the family room.

The room itself is small, and all it has is a bed, a pillow, a blanket, and a stool. It’s not even a suite with a bathroom, the bathrooms have to be accessed from the hallway.

Jeongin is asleep, and doesn’t rouse when Seungmin walks in.

He’s lying on his side facing the door, and thus facing Seungmin. He has a sweater on over his baby-blue medical student scrubs and the blanket on over those; the AC in the room is cranked really high for some reason, Seungmin would be cold too. The cold is, unfortunately, probably not the reason Seungmin starts having palpitations.

“Jeongin,” he says softly.

Jeongin’s slack features are relaxed in sleep, his beauty so singular and never more apparent. His soft hair is falling over his forehead and spilling onto the pillow. Seungmin tries to remember how it felt to touch it because he must have, during one of their fevered kisses he must have reached up and touched—but no, that didn’t happen, he grabbed Jeongin’s hips or his waist instead. So many parts of his body he wanted to touch, and he barely covered any ground.

“Ien-ah.”

Still, no response. The palpitations are at their worst right now—his heart is truly racing, galloping at nothing, at Jeongin peacefully sleeping and looking beautiful while doing it. Jisung had suggested paroxysmal atrial fibrillation to him way back when… if only it were that, if only Seungmin’s heart had created a bunch of new electrical pathways that led to irregular beats, instead of this. 

It’s funny; it only occurs to Seungmin in that moment that he probably should have worried about emotional attachment sooner.

He has proven that he requires lots of time and study (and even consulting his friends) to interpret his own reactions to things; why did he assume that if he started to develop feelings more complex than attraction he would just know? Inherently?

He imagines himself waking Jeongin with a kiss; something soft, to his forehead or his cheek, something that’s not a prelude for sex at all. Something like affection. His heart beats faster, and he wants it. He wants that.

He’s too late to his own signals, again.

“Hyung?” Jeongin murmurs, blearily opening his eyes. “Oh, sorry, is—everything okay?”

Seungmin sighs, furious at himself for letting this, too, take him by surprise. “We have a consult in the ER, want to come down with me?”

Jeongin quickly gets up, nodding and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah thanks hyung.” He slips his shoes on and stands up, stretching his hands up above his head.

Seungmin looks away before the sight of Jeongin’s stomach pushes him to some other insane action, and then they head to the elevators in silence.

Changbin

Not many people use the resident’s lounge, because it is tiny and most of the resident’s laptops are equipped with remote log-ins to the electronic health record so the charting computer’s purpose has become sort of moot. Snack retrieval is the most common reason to go there; a quick task, and even the couch doesn’t get much action, since ER shifts don’t have downtime that might allow for covert sleeping.

So Changbin is surprised to walk inside before conference lectures start on Wednesday and see Hyunjin there.

“Hey.”

Hyunjin seems startled. He is sitting on the couch wearing scrubs, and either just finished an overnight shift or is scheduled to go straight to working after conference. The bags under his eyes suggest the former.

“Oh. Hey.” He blinks a few times, runs a hand through his hair. It’s stringy, needs a wash probably. He’s still the most beautiful person on the planet, and Changbin wonders how he got over Hyunjin a few months ago, and how he is expected not to fall again with him around now. “Sorry, I was… deciding on whether a nap before conference was a good idea. What time is it?”

“Uh. A quarter to eight, I think. You could nap for… ten minutes.”

“Shit.”

The more Changbin looks at him the more he decides Hyunjin doesn’t just look tired, he looks wan and sad.

“Did something happen?” he asks, making his way to the couch to sit next to him.

Hyunjin’s eyes flit to him and away. He exhales, slow. He looks awful, for Hyunjin.

“A patient died last night.”

Shit.

Changbin knows this pain well. He also knows this isn’t the first time Hyunjin has seen someone die over the past six weeks, but Hyunjin, contrary to how people perceive him, feels things more deeply than most. The thorns are there for a reason. He waits to see if Hyunjin will share more.

“They were only forty-nine years old. Dr. Yoon said I should be the one to tell the family, that it’s good practice. It’s one of the skills of an ER doctor.” That last part sounds like a quote. “I had to…” his voice thins. “I had to tell their spouse, and their kid. A fourteen-year-old kid.”

Changbin puts his arm around his shoulders, and Hyunjin melts into him—he rests his head on Changbin’s chest and drapes himself over his side, so he is being completely held up by him.

“I’m so sorry, Hyunjin,” Changbin murmurs. “I am so sorry, that is awful.”

“It’s not fair. They had end-stage cancer, I know why we couldn’t save them, I understand it clinically, but it’s not…” Hyunjin turns his face into Changbin’s shirt. Moisture quickly seeps through the thin material. “I know it’s part of the job too, but I hated it. I hate it. I can’t get that kid’s face out of my head.”

Changbin nods, squeezing him tighter. “I know. I know, it’s the worst thing we do.”

Hyunjin hiccups. “And then. Then I had to.” One of his hands reaches up to wrap around Changbin’s shirt fabric. “Then I had to keep working. My patient with an ankle sprain was upset that there was a delay, and then I had to keep seeing new patients, for hours, talking to them like nothing had happened, like I was fine…” he trails off when his voice starts to sound too wet, clinging to Changbin and openly crying now, and Changbin holds him and mutters soothing nonsense that won’t fix what happened to Hyunjin tonight, knowing intimately how that particular kind of pain feels and why there is nothing that can be done to take it away.

They stay like that for an unknown amount of time, wrapped up in each other, long enough that Changbin knows they might miss the first lecture, and will be lucky to not be late for the second.

Eventually he pauses in his stroking of Hyunjin’s hair, and he leaves his hand there, cupping his head in his palm.

“You should skip conference this morning, Hyunjin. Go home and sleep.”

“I don’t have another shift tonight,” Hyunjin muffles into him. “Plus attendance is mandatory. You know this.”

“I do, but I’m a chief and I’m telling you that you should go. There are extenuating circumstances—”

“I don’t want to be the intern with extenuating circumstances,” Hyunjin rebuts immediately, which is how Changbin knows he’s starting to come back to himself. “We’re expected to attend at 8am even if we worked until 7am that morning. I will go.”

Changbin sighs, and is about to continue the argument when Hyunjin adds:

“And I don’t want to be alone right now.”

And the sentence dies in his throat. What he starts to say instead, is: “I could come home with y—”

“That’s not a good idea.” Hyunjin starts to draw away from their embrace, and Changbin reluctantly lets him. They face each other, sitting close as they are. Hyunjin is red and puffy and his hair had felt a bit greasy under Changbin’s fingers; he’s so amazing. He did something so horrible and difficult tonight, Changbin is so proud of him. “But thank you. For offering.”

Changbin nods.

“I should go wash my face,” Hyunjin says.

“Okay.”

“Thank you. For…” he motions to Changbin’s chest in a way that looks like’s pointing to his pecs, specifically, even though Changbin knows what he’s trying to indicate.

“My great rack?”

“Oh shut up.” Hyunjin hits the left pec with an open hand and no effort behind it. “I meant the emotional support, but I take that back now.”

“Sorry, so you’re saying you did not feel supported enough by my chest?”

“I hate you.” But he’s fighting a curling smile by his mouth, Changbin can tell. “Go be chief, I’ll see you in the auditorium in a few.”

Changbin gets up, smiling and flexing his arms to show his pecs off even more. “But I worked so hard for these at the gym, are you sure—"

“Yah! Go away!”

*

Hyunjin does indeed appear in the auditorium shortly after Changbin sits down in the first row next to Wooyoung. He looks better and he tied some of his hair back. He is greeted with a hug by Felix, who moves so Hyunjin can have the seat between him and Jiwoo; after a few whispers into each other’s ears, Felix gasps and hugs Hyunjin again, and then the hug turns into a sort of sideways cuddle while they sit next to each other and attend the lecture. Changbin’s heart swells with affection for them both, and gratitude for Felix specifically, for taking care of Hyunjin like that.

“Hey.”

Wooyoung taps Changbin’s knee subtly with a pink fingernail. He has been a long-term JYP hater and took to the suggestion that seniors wear nail polish with more gusto than most.

“What?” Changbin murmurs back. They are in the very front, and the lecturer is their co-senior Eun who won’t care that they aren’t paying attention, but if any of the attendings notice they could get a scolding.

“Look at JYP.”

Wooyoung looks angry. Changbin quickly glances down their row at JYP, and notes that… he is looking at Hyunjin and Felix, too. They are still cuddling, arms around each other and Felix is cradling Hyunjin’s head on his shoulder; so sweet. JYP does not look happy about it.

“He has a problem with Felix,” Wooyoung whispers.

“He has a problem with toxic masculinity,” Changbin hisses back. If JYP tries to break up Hyunjin’s current source comfort Changbin is going to create some very real problems for him. He won’t let that happen.

“Has he said anything to you about your nails?” Wooyoung asks. “I haven’t heard anything since we all started doing it, and it’s been a couple of weeks.”

“Nope.” Changbin can’t look away from JYP. He’s at the edge of his seat, ready to intervene if JYP gets up, or tries to say anything, he is ready to fight—

Oh God, he can’t be turning into Chan.

“… any questions? If not, then I’m going to turn it over to my co-senior Dr. Seo, who has an M&M case to tell us about!”

There’s a round of applause that is more generous and louder than Changbin deserves (especially at 8:30am) as he stands and walks up to the stage, fishing his USB out of his pocket. Eun claps him on the shoulder as they pass each other, and Changbin grins.

“Sorry guys, bear with me a second, I didn’t have time to email myself the final draft of this today.” He chances another look at Hyunjin while he plugs in the device, and sees that Hyunjin sat up, head no longer on Felix so that he can stare at Changbin.

Changbin figured he’d get busted as soon as Hyunjin insisted on attending lectures today, but he wasn’t expecting such a reaction. Oops.

“All right. Let’s kick off. This was a case of a sixty-two-year-old woman with a history of diabetes, hypertension, and an umbilical hernia repair…”

He launches into his lecture, quizzing the interns sporadically (purposefully not picking on Hyunjin or Sooah to answer, because the post-night interns always get a pass) and turning to his co-seniors and the attendings for more complex input into the case. It’s painless, one of the many lectures Changbin has given, and he wraps up his teaching points with a couple of minutes to spare before the 9:30am coffee break.

As soon as he’s done the excessive applause starts up again, and he scoffs and blushes, letting himself check on Hyunjin again.

Hyunjin is glaring at him with an intensity that makes Changbin flinch.

Oh, well. He supposes their tentative camaraderie of the morning was too much to ask for. Back to square one, it is. At least Hyunjin glaring at him is comfortingly familiar.

Minho

On Thursday, Seri asks him out to lunch to vent about her unrequited love for Choi Nari, and Minho is all too happy to eat in silence and listen. This happens periodically, especially if Seri has to consult the surgeons for one of her patients and Dr. Choi is on call. Minho has had a lot on his mind since the end of block party, and he appreciates the distraction, so they meet up at a salad place that’s midway between their apartments and pick a booth that will facilitate the level of privacy their conversations tend to require.

They are both in athleisure as is their staple during these meals, and bare faced because there will be facials in their near future. Minho is seeing Jisung in the evening, but there are a lot of hours to fill before then. It’s a great way to pass the time on his day off even if Seri has told him the story before.

“And then she said that she remembered me because I was the best ER intern she’d ever worked with, and I just can’t get over how crazy that is, it’s such amazing praise, I don’t think she says it to many people—”

“I think I’m falling for Jisung.”

Seri drops her fork.

Minho stares at her, blinking.

He had not planned on saying that.

“…What?” she says. Her eyes are wide. “Minho. What?”

“I.” He can feel his ears burning. “I-I’m sorry, I interrupted you, we don’t have to talk about—”

“We are absolutely talking about this!” She picks her fork back up and stuffs a large amount of salad into her mouth, like she’s gathering energy for the shift in the conversation. “I need us to talk about this in detail. Now.”

Ugh.

“You’ve been sleeping with him for about a month, right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s already a bit longer than average for your pets, but nothing crazy. I thought it was just sex, you’re not hanging out outside of that, right?” He shakes his head. “What… makes you think you’re falling for him?”

“I don’t.” He coughs. “I don’t know. At first I thought it was just that the sex is so good, but. Some other stuff happened recently.”

“Elaborate.”

“I felt really weird at the party last weekend. Like… I only wanted to talk to him. Or at least be around him and hear him talk.”

Seri chews another forkful, listening intently.

“And I.” He shifts uncomfortably. They talk about sex plenty, he’s not sure why this feels awkward to say. “I think I get off on… him being into me.”

“Okay. We’ll revisit that first thing, but that second thing is pretty normal, Minho.”

Minho shakes his head. “No, I mean like… the idea of him being into me. Gets me off like nothing else ever has. Like.” He grits his teeth. “Like I came in my pants, the other day.”

Seri almost chokes on her next forkful of salad. “The fuck? Mr. Stamina himself?”

“Shut up.”

“No, no, I just… this is all so… new, for you.” She looks thoughtful. She’s still chewing. “Let’s go back to the party. You’re there, and…?”

Minho thinks back to the events of that night. He hovered around Jisung the whole night; commandeering his attention the first couple of hours by talking to him about nonsense and happily listening to him chatter away about music, about the procedures he’s done so far, about the hobbies he hopes to have time for when his schedule improves… and then freaking Changbin had interrupted them and made him babysit Chan. Minho had been furious, and Jisung had left, and he… hated that. He missed him? They were in the same damn room, and he missed him.

And then he overheard that convo outside of the bathroom. He is never possessive of his flings, but the thought of Jisung kissing that med student had made him want to vomit and cry, possibly at the same time. The med student is so cute, normally Minho would have found that hot, might have even tested the waters to see if the student was interested in joining them for a night… but as soon as the idea had crossed his mind he’d crossed it out, violently. He didn’t want someone else to get close to Jisung like that. He had spent the subsequent hours of the party glued to Jisung’s side, grateful that Chan left, grateful that the med student came back only to sulk in a corner by himself. And it had been fun; Minho had laughed at all of Jisung’s silly jokes, even the unfunny ones because they sounded funny in his voice, or it was the delivery, he’s not sure but Jisung just made everything so sweet and hilarious, and then Jisung went up to karaoke…

“He sang a ballad. And I.”

He’d felt—he’s not sure how to describe it, even to himself. Jisung’s friends had all left by the end of the night, the party had been winding down, and the chiefs had cajoled the only remaining intern into singing. And Jisung’s voice had sounded… so damn beautiful. He’d looked so perfect, standing there, performing with a twinkle in his eye and a shy grin on his face, blowing exaggerated kisses to his audience of a handful of drunk, delighted seniors, and Minho had imagined himself running around the room with a butterfly-catcher keeping all of them, trapping all the air kisses, hoarding them for himself.

“I just had this… feeling. Of… wanting him. Not just for sex, not just his body, wanting… his focus.” It’s so hard to explain. “Wanting him for myself.”

Seri leans across the table.

“Have you ever felt this way before?”

Minho shakes his head.

“Do you want to date him?”

“I.” He’s not a romantic. He doesn’t date, it’s just not his thing—but would dating Jisung mean spending more time with him? Getting to listen to his adorable rambling stories, and his thoughts on the newest blood-thinner medications, and his rants about his favorite romantic comedies…? “I want to be around him all the time,” he says finally. “Does that… mean I want to date him?”

Seri looks like he just revealed to her that he has a terminal illness. “Oh, God,” she chokes. “You do have feelings for him.”

“That’s what I said—”

“Yeah but like… you really do!”

“I know!”

“What are you going to do? You have feelings for the person you’re having sex with!” Then she seems to realize what she just said. “Wait, isn’t that a good thing? Just tell him?”

Minho shakes his head even more vehemently. “Absolutely not. He made it clear it was just sex from the beginning, and he might be seeing other people for all I know.” The thought alone is nauseating. “I can’t tell him, that means our arrangement ends.”

“You have to tell him.”

“I can’t stop seeing him. I don’t want to.”

“Minho, you’ll be torturing yourself.”

“…Yeah.”

He was always the sadist in his prior sexual dynamics, but maybe he’s an emotional masochist, and he’s only just finding out.

“Doesn’t it seem like he’s into you too? He’s the one asking to see you multiple times a week, right?”

“No.” That he’s sure of. Why else would Jisung have been the one to bring up that they were free to see other people? “He’s just new to kink exploration, so I’m his gateway into that world. I make him feel good, but he’s not into me…” the word tastes sour in his mouth. “…romantically.”

Seri ‘aah’s. “You’re his kinky sex Yoda.”

“…Not how I would have phrased that, but sure.”

She finished her salad, so she pushes her bowl aside and reaches for his hand. Minho is not typically one to draw comfort from hand-holding like this, but he finds himself making an exception this time.

“Minho. I really think you should talk to him.” She tightens her grip on him for a moment. “I know you’re not going to, but I just want it on record so I can say ‘I told you so’ later.”

“You want the credit.”

“I do. I want the credit.” She grins. “And I want speech time at your wedding. At least five minutes, with power-point slides.”

Minho chuckles under his breath, and is grateful for her despite the way his heart clenches at the thought of her being right.

*

“All I’m asking for…” Minho grunts, fucking in deeper, gripping the crop in his right hand and Jisung’s hip in his left. “Is five.” Slap. “Goddamn.” Slap. “Minutes.” Slap. “You can’t last five minutes?”

Jisung moans, even as Minho caresses the red welts as they bloom his ass, his upper thighs.

“I’m…” his voice is wrecked already. “I-I’m… sorry…”

Minho watches him, hungrily tracking Jisung’s side profile, his hunched, vulnerable shoulders. He watches the span of his back tapering to his waist, then back up to his mostly-hidden face where what he can see of Jisung’s expression is tight, pinched, tense. His neck is snugly decorated with the black choker he wore to the party, as per Minho’s request, and it looks so fucking good but Minho wants to get him a collar, so that it’s something he gave to Jisung.

“You’re so pathetic. You’re lucky you’re so pretty or I wouldn’t bother with you.”

Jisung fists the sheets tight, gasping. “Th-thank you, hyung, I-I’m so sorry, I—”

“That’s right,” Minho fucks in again, deliberately angling his hips to hit Jisung’s prostate, making him spasm. “You should be thanking me.”

“Ah, hyung please—”

“You’d better be grateful,” Minho fucks in harder, rough. “I barely get in you and you’re already close.” He does it again, flesh hitting flesh so it sounds like he’s slapping Jisung again. “You’re lucky I’m so generous.” 

“I-I am, hyung you’re so… so good, make me feel so good… thank—ah, thank you, hyung thank you thank you—"

Minho spits on Jisung’s lower back, making him flinch.

“You’re lucky I have nothing better to do,” Minho snarls, stomach cramping with pleasure. His free hand spreads the saliva along Jisung’s skin, down to the cleft of his perfect ass, until his fingers are touching the delicate skin of his rim where he’s stretched around Minho’s cock. “Than fuck sniveling little interns in my spare time.”

Jisung starts crying, rocking back into his thrusting, head turning fully sideways on the mattress so Minho can see at least half of his face properly as the tears flow. He knows better than to cry if Minho can’t see it. “I’m, yes, yes, I’m so… ahh, nghhh yes—"

He’s trembling, shuddering, about to come, and Minho loves when he gets like this.

“Hyung, I’m, I’m, so sorry but I’m gonna—oh, I’m, so close, I—nghh sorry, fuck—”

He slaps him with the crop again, and Jisung squeals, sobs out a: “Th-thank you…”

“You can’t even make it one more minute? One more minute for your generous hyung who felt sorry for you? I’m fucking you out of pity, Jisung.”

“N-no I—” Jisung’s hands are by his head, still gripping the sheets so tight his knuckles are white; he’s going to come untouched. “Oh, oh, oh—" He spasms around Minho’s cock. “I’m—s-sorry, sorry sorry sorry sorry—"

Minho speeds up even more, making sure to hit his prostate relentlessly while Jisung comes, and Jisung is crying out apologies, sobbing so gratefully, and Minho almost—he’s so close too, if he wasn’t hellbent on making sure Jisung feels good first and is taken care of after, he’d let go now.

“Oh God,” Jisung whimpers. “Oh God that was so fucking good.”

Minho needs to pull out or he’s going to come, too.

“D-Don’t pull out, please.”

Can Jisung read his mind?

He reaches back with a clumsy hand and grab’s Minho’s hip, pushing him in flush.

“Can you… keep going?” he mumbles, panting into the mattress because he turned his head away after his orgasm. Minho allows this, for now.

“You want me to?” Minho asks. He’s had partners fuck him before and the feeling of getting fucked again after coming was too overstimulating for him, he never liked it.

“Yeah. Want you to come inside me,” Jisung says, muffled.

Minho is wearing a condom, but he will definitely come while fucking Jisung if Jisung is asking.

He drops the crop and starts up a gentle rhythm again, shallow thrusts that are a form of teasing torture for him, but he doesn’t want to make Jisung too uncomfortable.

“Mmmmm yes, like that,” Jisung sighs, dreamy. His breathing is evening out. “Love. That.” Timed with Minho’s thrusting.

“I know you love it,” Minho mutters. “You can’t get enough of it, can you?”

“Nope.” Jisung sounds almost sleepy, but he turns his head and he’s smiling. Minho is just glad he let him see again so quickly. “You can go harder.”

Minho groans softly, speeding up as permitted. He feels amazing, muscles burning and aching, Jisung squeezing around his dick so tight.

“Harder, hyung.”

He moans and goes harder, Jisung a limp, boneless pile under him.

“You still love it? Even now?” Minho gasps.

“Yeah,” Jisung slurs. “So good.”

“Love making you feel good,” Minho hears himself whisper, sweat dripping into his eyes. “Fuck.”

“Hmm,” Jisung sighs back. His ass bounces with Minho’s thrusting, his whole frame is getting pushed around, really, and he looks drugged and somnolent, totally at peace. “This is the best I’ve ever felt.”

“Fuck.”

“Are you close, hyung?” Jisung closes his eyes. “You made me come so hard, I want you to go harder, go as hard as you want, love it when you let go—”

“Yeah, close, yeah,” Minho pants, so close, slamming into him at a brutal pace. “Tell me. Tell me how it felt, to—"

“It felt amazing, you… you always know what I like, you make me feel amazing, I loved it when you hit me.” Jisung shudders. “You always know.”

“Yes, yes I knew from the moment I saw you, I knew you’d be perfect for me, you’re so perfect Jisung—” Minho barely recognizes his own voice, the reedy earnestness of it. “Knew you’d love this but I didn’t know how much, fuck, I love fucking you, I love it, I think about it all the time, I love fucking you so much—"

Shut up shut up shut up what the fuck is he saying—he’s going to give it away, the words will unscramble and he’s going to say it, even though he’s just barely acknowledged to himself that he’s starting to fall—

“Fuck, ah, ah, Jisung, Jisung—"

Jisung hums happily as Minho’s hips stutter in rhythm as his dick tenses, grip tightening on Jisung’s hips. He doesn’t say it but he thinks it, he thinks I love fucking you in a different order, with the words rearranged and is terrified, horrified to realize that they ring true.

“Jisung, Jisung, Jisung—”

He hurtles over the edge, moaning Jisung’s name.

*

Jisung falls asleep in his arms, later, and Minho watches him and remembers Seri’s words with a heavy feeling in his chest.

Minho, you’ll be torturing yourself.

But he can’t let this go. He can’t let time with Jisung go. Not yet.

Hyunjin

He is so furious at Changbin that he spends his post-overnight post-lectures day in bed, sleeping fitfully and writing various drafts of an angry text to the number he still refuses to save on his phone (but now knows by heart). Then he spends his day off on Thursday plotting a confrontation of some sort while he works out, cooks, cleans his apartment and rage-paints like people do in the movies. The rage-painting is not as satisfying as he was hoping (it never is).

By Friday, he has still not calmed down about the fact that Changbin was going to skip his own lecture to help Hyunjin, even though it could have gotten him in serious trouble with JYP and Dr. Kim. It was stupidly selfless and heroic, and Hyunjin can’t forgive him.

He's thinking this while in the elevator on his way out of the resident housing building when a figure that he recognizes steps inside.

“…Minho?”

Minho is one of the best nurses at SNUH, but he is not a resident, and there is no way he lives here.

“Hey, Hyunjin.” He gives him a curt smile. “Headed to shift?”

“No, I just really enjoy waking up before 6am.”

“Got it.” He doesn’t acknowledge Hyunjin’s sarcasm. Did he not pick it up? Is he okay?

“Uh, I was kidding. I’m working at seven. You?”

The elevator deposits them on the ground floor and they both head out together. Minho seems troubled.

“Yeah, I’m working, too. Blue pod today, though, with the second and third-years.”

He scratches the back of his neck. The bags under his eyes are very dark; more so than usual.

“Hey man, are you… okay?”

Minho looks up at him, then almost trips over an uneven bit of sidewalk. Hyunjin catches his arm, but that was answer enough; Minho has an inner grace of movement that Hyunjin noticed right away when they met, something must be really wrong.

“Uh, sorry, shit. I’m fine, I just… have someone on my mind.”

“Oh.”

He was not expecting such blunt honesty.

They start walking again, and Hyunjin wonders if Minho actually wants to talk about it. Maybe this is Minho’s version of a cry for help, even if it’s help from his emotionally maladjusted coworker who he’s never hung out with alone. “Is it the person who lives in my building?”

Minho smirks, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’d be funny if I said ‘no’, right?” But the smirk drops. “But yeah, it’s him. Have you ever realized you like someone after having no-strings-attached sex with them?”

Okay, what the fuck. It is too fucking early for Hyunjin to answer that.

Thankfully, Minho proceeds as though the question was rhetorical. “Anyway, it fucking sucks. I don’t recommend it.”

“You don’t say.” Hyunjin manages a shaky chuckle. “I’ll keep that in mind going forward, I guess.”

“Please do.”

They spend the rest of the walk in companiable silence, with Hyunjin’s mind awhirl, wondering how he got to the point where he has something in common with Lee Minho, who has always seemed sort of an enigma to him: a notoriously scary-looking nurse who is somehow adored by their pediatric patients. This new information about the particular brand of pain Minho is feeling does make Hyunjin feel closer to him. Maybe they should start a support group for guys who can’t get over their situationships, even though Hyunjin doesn’t have the excuse of still being in it, like Minho does.

“Have a good shift, Dr. Hwang,” Minho says when it’s time for them to go to different pods.

“Good luck, Nurse Lee,” says Hyunjin, and means it. He hopes Minho gets what he wants from his person in the end; at least one of them should.

*

He gets home that night and heats up his food in the microwave, too tired to do it in a proper pan.

The email notification pops up as he’s scrolling on YouTube for a mindless video-essay to watch while he eats, and he accidentally clicks it open. It’s to his work email account, and it’s from Dr. Park Jin-young.

JYP sent an email to the entire residency and attending staff titled: ‘Rules for conference attire and accessories on shift.’

Hyunjin straightens with a start, frantically thumbing his way to it and reading, reading…

Two minutes later, he is calling that number that he didn’t save and putting it on speaker.

“The fact!” he shouts. “That it starts by separating the rules by gender!”

“Hyunjin, I just saw it—”

“Did you know he was going to send this? Did you—”

“Of course not. I’m—we’re meeting in five minutes in the living room to talk about it, the chiefs—”

“Can I come?” he asks, and knows it’s pushy, but he’s so mad he can’t think past how mad he is.

“Of course you can come, I’ll—actually, I’m going to text the residency-wide group chat and invite everyone who is free and wants to talk about it. You know where to go, just come meet us at the apartment.”

The residency-wide group chat is titled ‘SNUHER I barely know her 2025’ which Felix assured Hyunjin is a hilarious group-chat name in English. Changbin sends a message to all thirty-two residents within a few moments of hanging up the phone, alerting them about the content of the email and inviting them to join an emergency discussion at the chief’s apartment in thirty minutes. And then the likes start piling in.

*

Every single resident who isn’t currently working comes to the impromptu late night meeting, which means almost thirty people are spread out amongst the couch, chairs, tiny stretch of kitchen counter, and floors. Hyunjin and Felix are sandwiched in an old armchair together by the window, Jisung next to them. Seungmin is on a twenty-four-hour call shift, which Hyunjin finds unfortunate since he is their little group’s MVP when it comes to JYP bullshit.

Changbin, San and Wooyoung are standing in front of the TV, where someone cast the screenshot of the stupid new ‘rules’.

“I assume we are all here because we do not agree with the spirit of the guidelines in this email and we are interested in a plan of action to stop the hospital, and our program, from enforcing them.”

“And to kick out JYP!” Seri calls, and several people pick it up, shouting: “Yeah just fire him!” and: “He’s the worst!”

Changbin puts his arms out in a calming gesture, and the noise quiets immediately. He has every resident eating out of the palm of his hand, Hyunjin thinks. “Okay. Is everyone here interested in a leadership change within the program? We’ll vote anonymously on the chat, so as not to peer pressure anyone.”

The poll results, a minute later, are unanimous.

Changbin nods at his phone, smiling grimly. “Great, that’s great. I agree, obviously, so many better people could do a great job in that role—”

“Dr. Kim!”

“Dr. Cha!”

“Dr. Bang!” says Eun, and everyone cheers.

“Love Dr. Bang!”

“Oh my gosh, yes, Dr. Bang is the best!”

“Okay, one step at a time, guys,” San calls. “We have to decide on a plan of action. How are we planning to make our opinions known?”

After a good amount of brainstorming the decision to write and sign a letter on behalf of one-hundred-percent of the residents denouncing the gendered rules about hairstyles, accessories and the use of nail polish is made. They also plan a much bigger meeting with the attendings who are in the know about general displeasure with JYP’s stance on resident matters, and will hold the release of the letter until that meeting can take place. In the meantime, continued defiance of the dress code is encouraged among all who feel comfortable directly going against JYP’s orders.

Hyunjin holds Felix’s hand throughout the conversation, but to his credit Felix is not acting as though this is all on him. And it’s not; Seri’s hair is cropped shorter than is acceptable per the section on women’s hairstyles, and Jisung wants to be able to wear stud earrings on shift, which is allowed for the women but not for the men. Hyunjin likes wearing nail polish sometimes, too, for goodness sake.

Throughout the forum, Changbin is the ultimate authority, and the ultimate mediator. He’s keeping the topics moving, he’s keeping order, he’s throwing in a joke when they need the tension to break, he is available to listen to their venting. San and Wooyoung are great but Changbin is the chief’s chief, in Hyunjin’s eyes: if they elected residency presidents Changbin would win by a landslide. He’s so respected, in addition to being loved. He’s in his element here.

It's past midnight by the time they call the meeting to an end, and start sending people home. Most are yawning with exhaustion and many have shifts at 7am tomorrow, though Hyunjin is neither.

Hyunjin… is in a mood.

It’s not a bad mood, but it’s not good either, and he can’t look at it too closely or something is going to snap. He knows what he needs to do to fix it, though: he needs to talk to Changbin. Alone.

He lingers. There’s no polite way to frame it; he purposefully stalls, tells Felix he wants to use the bathroom before heading out so to please leave before him, and then lets everyone else in line go ahead of him. Of the two bathrooms in the chiefs apartment, one is directly accessible from the living room and the other is in Changbin’s bedroom, but most people don’t know that, and the line forms outside. When it’s finally his turn, he spends way too long touching up his make-up, adjusting his hair, until he’s sure the last few farewells were said.

He’s a pro at this, after all.

He comes out expecting all three chiefs to still be in the living room, but it appears San and Wooyoung went into their room and Changbin is alone in the kitchen, which is too perfect.

“Oh hey, Hyunjin. I didn’t see you leave.”

Hyunjin shrugs. “Now you know why,” he says. “Never left.”

“Ah.”

He walks into the little corner created by the half-island, and tries not to feel like he’s literally cornering Changbin, though he sort of is.

“Did you forget.” Changbin cuts himself off, and Hyunjin knows why.

It’s almost exactly the same scene, is the problem.

Oh, Hyunjin. Did you forget something?

No. Can we talk in your room?

Uh… why not out here?

Because some of the things I want to say to you can’t be said out here.

And this feeling, this… itching, scratching feeling, this mood, the memories make it worse.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“About JYP?”

“About Wednesday.”

Changbin ‘ah’s in understanding again. “My lecture—”

“You could have gotten into real trouble for that,” Hyunjin cuts in. “You didn’t tell me; what if I’d said yes? What if I had said ‘Changbin, I need you to hold me all day while I cry in your arms’, huh? Would you have just done it?”

And Changbin—selfless, strong, beloved leader Changbin, says: “Well… yeah.”

“Why?” Hyunjin bursts, and Changbin winces, looks over at San and Wooyoung’s door, motions for Hyunjin to follow him to his room.

“I-I was just…” he closes the door behind himself, and this is too much, really, Hyunjin will not move on from this. At least the bedsheets are a different color; purple, with pink pillows. “I was trying to help,” Changbin finishes, in a more measured tone. “Helping you was more important.”

“That’s idiotic. What if they kicked you out?”

“I’m a chief resident, Hyunjin, I don’t think they’d kick me out of the program, even for missing an M&M—”

“You don’t know that! It would have definitely gone on your record, it could affect your career, it was so stupid, hyung!"

“Why are you so mad at me?” Changbin asks.

Hyunjin wonders if he means now or the grander scheme of things. Why is he, Hyunjin, so mad at him all the time? Why can’t he, Hyunjin, process feelings like a healthy, well-adjusted person and why does everything about Changbin make him, Hyunjin, feel like he’s choking on how many damn feelings are building up—

He grabs Changbin’s tank top straps, one in each hand, and pulls him abruptly close.

Their faces are an inch apart.

Changbin gapes up at him, shocked, confused. Understandably.

“I am furious,” Hyunjin pants. Because you are too good to me, he doesn’t say. Because I can tell you moved on from us and I can’t, he doesn’t add. “Because I was really fucking close to asking you to hold me all day while I cried in your arms, and I would have hated you when I found out you got in trouble afterwards.”

Changbin’s breath gusts over his chin. It smells good, like he already brushed his teeth.

“Hyunjin, it’s okay to need that. You went through something traumatic, asking for help would have been okay.”

Hyunjin trembles. Changbin is too good. Too good.

“You know, I spoke to Dr. Yoon about the case, after you told me what happened. He said you were amazing. I know SNUH wasn’t your first choice for residency, but you know you’re still amazing, right?”

And Hyunjin drops his forehead onto Changbin’s shoulder, a puppet with his strings cut. The words completely paralyze him; he’s too weak to hold on to the anger that was never really anger anyway, and he lets himself be gathered in Changbin’s huge, strong arms, and feels his heart thumping harder than ever, like it can sense what lies on the other side of Hyunjin’s ribcage and wants to press up against it, or at least get closer.

“Do you…” Changbin’s voice is so soft. “Do you want to stay here and let me hold you all night while you cry in my arms?”

And all Hyunjin can do is nod, defeated.

Chan

Chan gets home after his Friday shift with a headache. The Blue Pod had been busy and then he caught a glimpse of Felix leaving Red Pod but Felix didn’t see him, and he’d chickened out of going to greet him or asking to walk out of the hospital together. He has been avoiding Wednesday lectures in order not to see Felix there (thankfully attendings are not required to attend), and he has been resisting the urge to text Felix a four-paragraph apology about how insanely inappropriate his drunken behavior was at the end-of-block party, but in the absence of that he didn’t text him at all. For over a week.

Instead of texting Felix, Chan has been seriously working on ways to professionally murder JYP for what he said to him, and has a pile of emails in his inbox waiting to be read. He has barely been sleeping because his nights are taken up by research into prior cases of program director censure, and even trying to find instances of someone being fired. Changbin has been aggressively monitoring his work schedule and trying to get him to give away more shifts, but that has translated into more time on the couch and in his study, not necessarily more time sleeping. If it’s not work and it’s not research, it’s the guilt that keeps him up.

And now, a headache. A bad one; temples throbbing and vision blurred, he should really try to sleep for at least a handful of hours tonight if he can manage it—

“Hey, Channie.”

Nari is in the living room when he walks in, which is already unusual, but the way she stands up when he shuts the door behind him makes it seem as though she was waiting for him there. Nari never waits for him.

“…Hey, Nari.”

And then he sees her expression properly, and his hackles raise. Something is really wrong. He fucked up, and she knows it.

“The statement for your rental of unit 602 was in the mail,” she says, and Chan gets to watch as the piece of paper that is about to bring their fragile arrangement crashing down around them is waved in the air.

Unit 602 is Felix’s apartment, of course.

“Apparently selecting the ‘paperless’ option only kicks in after the second month. We’re so shit at checking our physical mail that there were, like, forty envelopes in there; the doorman asked me to please empty it this afternoon. It was mostly publicity, granted, so I might have missed this. You almost got away with it.”

Her tone is quiet but victorious, like she’s relishing holding his fuck-up over him and telling him about it. But Chan knows it won’t be as uncomplicated as that.

“Who’s the lucky lady?” she cocks her head. “Or guy. Or person who doesn’t subscribe to gender like that.”

Chan drops his backpack on the floor. He feels awful, but he also feels protective of Felix before he feels anything else, and he’s glad his name wasn’t on that bill.

“It’s not—it’s not like that. With me and him.”

“Him. Hm.” She looks down at the envelope again. “Am I reading this correctly; you’re making him pay half? That’s so unlike you Channie, you’re such a gentleman usually. I figured if you were fucking someone you’d at least pay for the place you do it in in full.”

“I’m not fucking him. I promise you, Nari, I’m not—”

She snorts, and then she seems to take in his face.

"Wait, you really aren’t?”

Chan shakes his head. “Really. I promise, I’m—I really fucked this up, I know that, and I’m so sorry—"

“You put a pretty young thing up at an apartment in town and you're not even sleeping with him?" She looks so shocked... and then she bursts out laughing. "Chan! That is so fucking embarrassing!"

“Nari, please—”

“No, no this is priceless!” She’s still laughing. “It’s so you, Channie! Let me guess.” And there it is; a mean glint in her eye, not real humor, not real relish. Nari is only truly mean when she’s hurting. “You like this person. You have a crush on him, maybe convinced yourself that because you didn’t actually sleep with him then you weren’t doing anything wrong.”

“Nari—”

“No, sorry, I know you’ve probably been killing yourself about it regardless. You’re too noble to cheat by fucking someone, and too noble to think that not fucking them absolves you of anything. You’ve probably been feeling really badly about all this; sorry if I’m contributing to your self-flagellation right now.”

She puts the letter down on the table like she didn’t just dissect him organ by organ, reading him with terrifying accuracy, reminding him that he once thought she knew him very well.

“Are you going to explain it to me? Or should I keep guessing?”

And so, after everything… here they are.

It happened.

Chan swallows. Steels himself, because he owes her the truth.

“I think I’m in love with him,” he says.

He doesn’t care how insane it sounds, even to him. He knows it’s true. It’s ridiculous and impossible and true.

Nari, for once, seems speechless. She looks tired; she probably sat around processing the letter by herself all afternoon. She never looks this tired after a 24-hour call, she always has an energy about her, always tucks fatigue away easily within her body; in front of patients and their families and in front of residents and in front of Chan. But now she looks tired, and small; she’s swimming in a large hoodie of Chan’s. He used to like it when she took his clothes.

“I’m so sorry, Nari.”

She nods.

“I’m. I really am so sorry. I didn’t mean for it to happen, I never wanted this. I am helping him with the rent but he doesn’t even know I’m doing it; I was concerned about his previous living situation, so I… arranged this behind his back.” The ‘and yours’ is so loud between them that it’s almost like he said it, too. “I do love him, though. He doesn’t know that either.”

“Were you going to marry me anyway?” she asks. Her voice is tight, and Chan knows she is his fiancée but he still can’t believe that something he did brought her this close to tears. He got so used to feeling like she didn’t really care what he did, one way or another. But of course that couldn’t be entirely true, if she agreed to marry him.

“Yes.”

She nods again, looking at the floor in front of his feet.

“Okay.” She sniffs. “Okay, well. That’s very noble of you, Channie. But I don’t want to marry you anymore.”

Chan holds himself very still, trying not to let the relief in because that would be too awful, to feel good about what’s happening, even with how horrible he has been lately. It would be too cruel.

“Nari—”

“Can you stay with this guy? Or… or someone else?” She looks back up at him. “I promise I’m going to be incredibly professional about your consults but I’d prefer to not see you outside of work for a while.”

“I. Yes, I can leave, but—”

“Thank you. I have to call my parents now, so I’d rather be alone when I do that. Sorry to ask you when you just got off work, but can you please leave tonight? Now?”

Chan just nods.

“Grab a bag, I guess? Grab some clothes and your laptop and stuff.” She motions towards their room. “Take a few minutes, I mean. You don’t have to leave this second. But like… definitely leave as soon as you’re done.”

“…Okay. Yes, I can. I will do that.” He looks at her again. She still hasn’t cried, technically. “I’m really, really sorry, Nari-ah.”

“Yeah, I know.” She sounds exhausted. And then she gives him a little smile. “It’s funny, I know you’re a good man, Channie, I do believe you about not meaning to hurt me. I know you’d never do that on purpose.” She makes a face, and the implication is there, that he hurt her anyway; she’s admitting it, even though they’ve been so distant. Chan is more shocked by that than he is by her lack of a screaming reaction, or lack of shouting. It’s very like Nari, actually, to go straight for the practicals once the break-up has been established. Him leaving. Him packing. Calling her parents. Work staying the same. Admitting to hurt is not like her at all.

“I. I’ll go pack.”

“You do that.”

But as soon as he turns away she calls his name.

He turns back, and notes that she’s not holding back tears anymore. Her eyes are dry.

“I think I should be sadder.”

She looks at him like she asked him a question and is expecting an answer.

When he doesn’t speak, she adds: “I should be devastated, right? If I loved you.”

A look passes between them, of… Chan’s not sure. Understanding? Maybe this is the most they have ever understood each other.

“…Yeah,” he says. “Maybe.”

And then he can’t think of anything else to say, so he leaves.

*

Way past midnight that same night, Chan knocks on the door of a familiar apartment with a gym bag full of clothes slung over his shoulder and a suitcase at his feet.

Changbin opens it for him, in a pink hoodie and sleep-mussed hair. “Hyung,” he says in greeting, eyes huge. “You did it?”

Chan’s text had only said: can I crash with you tonight Nari and I are over

“She did. But… yeah.” The relief has started to creep in despite his best efforts. He walks inside as silently as he can, and should have braced himself for the sudden firm backwards hug Changbin gives him. It almost knocks him off his feet; Changbin is so strong, it definitely knocks the breath out of him.

“I’m. So proud of you,” Changbin says into his ear. “This is good, Channie. This had to happen, and things will be better for you now.”

Chan gives himself a moment to enjoy it before squirming out of Changbin’s grip, and he can feel the ghost of a smile on his mouth, something looser than he's felt in a while.

“Thanks, Bin.” His eyes land on the couch, where Changbin prepared a couple of blankets and an extra pillow. “You have company or something?” he asks, because he used to sleep in the same bed as Changbin all the time when they were co-residents.

“Uh. Yeah.” Changbin is wincing when Chan whirls on him, and then he makes a dismissive gesture. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow. Just… be cool in the morning, okay? Don’t say anything.”

Chan gapes at him. Changbin usually tells him about his partners within minutes—hell, he’s still convinced he got a call during, once. Plus he’s been celibate for almost a year, or so Chan thought.

“Who?” he whispers, glancing at Changbin’s bedroom door.

Changbin cringes. “You have to be cool.” And for an insane, breathless second Chan is convinced that he is about to say it’s Felix, but of course that’s not—“Uh, Hyunjin. But it’s not like that tonight—shit, this is a way longer conversation.”

Chan sits down with a thump, landing on the couch purely by coincidence.

“Nari found out about the apartment I got for Felix, and I told her that I was in love with him, and I am,” he says, staring up at Changbin. He pats the space next to him. “I need a distraction. Start talking.”