Chapter Text
The morning is pale and hushed, the kind of light that feels like forgiveness - soft gold blushing over window panes, dust dancing in the still air. The bed is warm beneath him, unfamiliar only in how complete it feels.
It does nothing to ease Jaehyun’s racing heart. He wakes with a start, body jerking upright in the bed, panic blooming in his chest like a sudden storm. His hand shoots out instinctively, and - thwack - his palm connects, not with the empty space he feared, but with a very solid, very warm face.
“Okay, ow,” Johnny says groggily, one eye squinting open. “What the hell.”
Jaehyun stares at him.
He’s real.
Johnny’s hair is tousled, cheeks flushed from sleep, one arm thrown lazily across the pillow. The sheet has slipped down to his waist, and there’s the faint red mark of Jaehyun’s hand blooming across his cheekbone.
He looks at Johnny, taking in the mess of his disheveled hair, the tousled curls sticking up in every direction. Johnny’s chest rises and falls with each waking breath, and Jaehyun’s heart stutters at the sight of him so close, so undeniably real.
Johnny is shirtless, relaxed beneath thin sheets, and Jaehyun can’t help but notice how the morning light catches on his skin - how the lines of his chest and the slope of his shoulders look just a little too perfect in this stillness.
Jaehyun watches a lock of hair fall over Johnny’s forehead, his fingers itching to smooth it back, to touch him, but he holds himself still, unsure of what to do next.
His heart races in a different way now - slower, deeper, but still a little frantic.
Jaehyun tries to focus, to pull himself together, but everything feels so strange, so fragile. How had they gotten here? How had he let himself fall into this, into Johnny, so completely?
“What’s going on?” Johnny mutters, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he pushes himself up. He winces as he turns to look over at Jaehyun, blinking awake when he notices the fear that must be so very apparent on Jaehyun’s face, “Did something happen? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Jaehyun takes a slow, steadying breath, still lost in the feeling of Johnny next to him, so real and so undeniable.
“How did we -” Jaehyun grips the quilt close to his chest, as if he hasn’t spent to most of last night sprawled fully naked under Johnny, “How did we get here?”
Johnny sits up fully, rubbing at the back of his neck, “I mean, I kissed you and - things escalated and then I carried you up here, and then we -”
“Wait, stop.” Jaehyun clears his throat, “I remember that part.”
God.
They’d kissed until their mouths were swollen. Touched like they’d been waiting their whole lives. He’d said things - things - he would normally never allow past his throat, not even in the darkest, most private hours of the night.
He remembers every word.
Even God can’t help him now.
Johnny’s breaks into a grin, “So do I.”
“I meant,” Jaehyun waves at the space between them, which isn’t all that much considering how they’re in bed together, “How did we get here? And where is this going?”
Johnny’s lips form the perfect o. He reaches for Jaehyun’s hand, slowly twisting their fingers together, thumb tracing circles idly as he hums.
“I’ll go wherever you want me to go,” he says simply, so simply it almost startles Jaehyun. As if the weight of everything - of the weeks apart, the years unspoken - has already been accounted for and folded away. Johnny sees the fear in Jaehyun’s eyes like a light, “I hurt you and I - would do anything to make things right.”
Jaehyun sighs, relieved and anxious all the same.
“Let me spend the rest of my life making it up to you,” Johnny adds, and the way he says it - as if there’s no world where he won’t - makes Jaehyun’s insides flip. He brings Jaehyun’s hand to his lips, breath ghosting over knuckles, “At the very least until you forgive me.”
Jaehyun considers it for a second, “I don’t want that.” He amends quickly when Johnny stills, “I mean - I don’t want this hanging over our heads for the rest of our lives.” Jaehyun licks his lips, inching closer, “There’s nothing to forgive. All I wanted was for you to be mine.”
“I am,” Johnny whispers. He curls an arm around Jaehyun’s waist, pulling him close. Jaehyun lets himself be held, settles with his back to Johnny’s chest, burning up when Johnny hugs him tight, “I’ve always been yours.”
The words fold over them, soft as dawn.
“I hoped so,” Jaehyun sighs, relaxing into Johnny’s touch. “I just - had to wait for you to come back to me. I didn’t know if you ever would.”
Johnny answers him with his hands first - one brushing lightly over Jaehyun’s chest, the other pressing their bodies closer - and then with his lips, pressing a trail of feather-light kisses along Jaehyun’s neck.
“You won’t ever have to think about that again,” Johnny murmurs. “I’m not going anywhere. Not without you.”
Jaehyun watches the sunlight crawl slowly across the ceiling, resting against Johnny, sinking into him. For the first time in weeks - maybe longer - his body feels light.
Not because the ache is gone, but because Johnny is here. Beside him. Real and warm and absurdly alive.
They lie like that for a while, tangled in silence, in breath and skin and the hum of morning light. Jaehyun can feel the steady thrum of Johnny’s heart against his back, the absent-minded pattern his fingers trace along his chest - thoughtless, tender, like he’s memorizing him.
It feels like something worth staying awake for.
Then, almost like an afterthought, Johnny says, “Can I ask you something?”
Jaehyun hums in reply, eyes still half-lidded, too full of quiet to speak - too intoxicated by the workings of Johnny’s hand.
“Why did you leave the deposit at the Mask?”
Jaehyun’s eyes fly open. He’d hoped Johnny wouldn’t come to know of it, wouldn’t ask about it. Or if he did, that it would be weeks from now, when Jaehyun could laugh about it and pretend it meant nothing.
But now, wrapped in the aftermath of last night - skin bare, heart soft - the lie feels too far away to reach.
He hesitates. “Because you cared,” he says finally. “About them. The attendants. You smiled at them like you knew them. Like they mattered.”
Johnny shifts behind him, just a little. His hand goes still where it rests over Jaehyun’s navel. “I was never with them,” he murmurs. “In that manner. If that’s what you thought.”
Jaehyun’s lips twitch, embarrassed despite himself, “I know.”
“Then why -”
“I wanted to be part of it,” Jaehyun blurts out, before Johnny can twist the knot any tighter. “Not out of envy. Not really. I just -”
He turns his head slightly, cheek pressing to Johnny’s collarbone, whispers with his eyes squeezed shut, “You give people things without realising. Warmth, kindness. That quiet little smile you do when you listen to someone and you actually mean it. It’s different from how you look at me.”
Johnny’s breath catches faintly.
“I used to think that difference meant I was special,” Jaehyun says. “But that day… I don’t know. I saw you being kind to them and I thought - I want to be part of everything he touches. Everything he leaves a mark on.”
Johnny exhales slowly and presses a kiss into Jaehyun’s hair - one of those kisses that’s more breath than anything, like he’s trying to sink it into the skin.
Jaehyun turns his head slightly, watching as Johnny traces gentle shapes into his arm - idle loops, crooked letters - as if he’s spelling something only the two of them could read. The touch is barely there, but it roots Jaehyun firmly in the moment.
“I don’t know why you thought I wanted anyone else,” Johnny says quietly, low and close behind Jaehyun’s ear. “You’ve always been the only one.”
Jaehyun doesn’t speak. The words settle somewhere between his ribs, sweet.
It should feel impossible - but Jaehyun knows how dreams feel, and this isn’t one. His shoulder aches faintly. The sheets are tangled. His skin is still flushed from where Johnny had touched him like he might vanish.
And still - some quiet, foolish part of him whispers: what if he does?
Jaehyun closes his eyes for a moment, willing the thought away. He doesn’t want to ask again, doesn’t want to sound desperate. But he needs something. A sign. A thread to hold.
So instead, he says it lightly, casually, as if the question isn’t everything:
“You’re staying for breakfast, right?”
It comes out quieter than intended. A little too careful.
But Johnny doesn’t hesitate. “I’ll be here for every breakfast for the rest of your life, Jaehyun. That’s a promise.”
The words hit like sunlight breaking over cold water - sharp and warm all at once. Jaehyun laughs before he can help it, breathless and a little embarrassed. He buries his face in Johnny’s chest, trying to hide the smile tugging at his lips.
Johnny’s fingers stroke lazily down his back, steady and sure, and when Jaehyun drifts off again - this time into the kind of sleep that doesn’t end in panic - he does so with the quiet certainty that when he wakes, Johnny will still be there.
And in the morning after that. And the one after that.
Until the end of all things.