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It’s so late Minho can feel the weight of the early morning pressing onto the back of his eyelids, fatigue threatening to turn his mind into cotton any moment now and the silence of morning makes him itchy, makes him want to scream or zip his mouth up and never speak again. It’s one of the moments that seems spellbound, reality is a little altered and it makes Minho afraid to move, afraid to speak in case he breaks the unexplainable atmosphere that has settled across them. It’s like an empty hospital hallway, or a gas station in the AM and the sound of the computer monitoring humming dust out of it’s system is simultaneously relaxing and unnerving. Jisung asked him to come tonight, whining too close into his ear that producing in the practice room was lonely if he didn’t have someone with him, and Changbin was already curled up sleeping on his bed with Felix. Minho had agreed with an exaggerated smile, trying and failing to hide the fond smile that had crept up on his face. He’d stopped trying to hide his soft spot for Jisung ever since Chan had begun teasing him about it across the kitchen counter and hadn’t stopped since. He’d tried to deny it at first, vehemently shaking his head with his cheeks blushing pink whilst Jisung perked his head up just above the back of his sofa, a curious glint in his eyes.
It was mutual, of course. Anyone could tell that Jisung was as fond of Minho as Minho was of him, the lingering touches and the strange moments of intense eye contact were tell tale enough but recently the lines were getting a little blurred. He and Jisung had woken curled up together in the same cramped single size mattress one too many times now to be considered purely platonic but Jisung still flashes him the same smile every time he slides out from under Minho’s bed cover in the early morning and Minho likes him the best like this, eyes greedily raking him in like a man starving. He is like floating gossamer and the white of the stars, soft even though Minho knows he can be tough, heart like homesickness and rose petals on satin. The experience of waking up to Jisung, swollen eyes and pillow marks across his smooth skin is like a bitter triumph - the fact that he is able to see this, to feel this but knowing that it’s not at all what it seems, that this is just who Jisung is. His smile is a constant, a comforting presence that has been in Minho’s life since the trainee days and he can think of a thousand and one moments where he’s been flashed that smile across the stage, or the practice room or the dorms and felt completely anchored, completely safe and yet he can’t help but wonder what would happen if that smile changed a little, got softer or warmer or wider at the edges. He lies there every morning, heart like a bird in chains, that same smile glued to the back of his eyelids like piercing sunlight and wonders what it would be like to kiss it off of his face. This is how they have always been. Reaching for each other and never quite touching.
He enjoys spending time with Jisung, but the other boy has been staring at the computer screen for a while now and the silence is starting to make Minho a little stir crazy. Jisung sighs again and Minho listens for the telltale rhythmic press of the backspace and the younger boy erases another line of lyrics. He feigns nonchalance for a while, tapping away at twitter as if people are awake and updating their timelines at this ungodly hour. He counts the beats of his breath, runs his eyes over the cracks in the ceiling until he simply can’t take it any more and sits up. The noise the cracked leather makes as he peels his bare legs (it’s always unnecessarily hot in the JYP building, so he had opted for shorts despite the winter weather) away from it makes him wince, breaks whatever spell had formed over the silence of the practice room as Jisung takes his hands off the keyboard and leans back into the office chair with another long, suffering sigh.
“You alright?” Minho asks him, sliding up the other end of the sofa so he can reach a comforting hand out to settle on Jisung’s shoulder. The boy in question turns his chair around slowly, and lifts his hand up to grab onto Minho’s own, absentmindedly playing with his fingers and in the early morning, Minho can’t even attempt to hide the hitch in his breath. He wonders how it’s possible to be homesick for a feeling he doesn’t even know.
“Yeah,” Jisung replies, eyes still closed and head tipped back in defeat against the chair. Minho takes every inch of him in whilst he isn’t looking (sometimes, he does the same when he wakes up before Jisung, head propped up on an elbow because there is nothing more soft than Jisung asleep, love-song gentle and filled with heaven light).
“Having trouble?” Minho murmurs gently, ignoring the blaze trailing across his skin in the wake of Jisung’s fingers skating up his arm.
“A little,” the boy replies absentmindedly, eyes opening as he gazes at Minho from underneath his lashes, “Writers block, I guess.”
They’re still looking at each other. Minho prays Jisung can’t feel his goosebumps.
“What’s the song theme?” Minho finds himself asking, craning his neck over Jisung’s shoulder to gaze at the document pulled open on the computer screen. Jisung had always preferred to lyric write on the computer, where he could simply erase words that made him embarrassed or flushed all the way up to his ears, words a little too honest to spit in a rap or sing in melodies. There’s only a couple of lines on the page even though they’ve been in here for a couple hours already and Jisung really must be having a hard time.
“Love,” Jisung sighs out and Minho has a hard time accepting the irony. Jisung has trouble writing a love song and Minho could write a thousand for every millisecond his and Jisung’s eyes stay in contact. He lets the silence stretch slightly too long.
“Ah,” he says finally, “You can’t relate?”
Jisung’s eyes flick up to his again, and his fingers pause in their ministrations on his hand. He opens his mouth to say something and it seems his breath catches in his throat and he closes it again like he thought better of it.
“I don’t know,” he says, looking down again, “Maybe.”
Minho keeps looking at him, heart open and aching.
“Can you?” Jisung asks him. There’s something hopeful in his voice that Minho latches onto.
“Maybe,” he mimics. Yes, is what he wants to say. He doesn’t know if he can stand another morning of watching Jisung walk away from him, the other side of his too small bed getting colder but still smelling of him.
“Wanna help me?” Jisung asks him, finally letting go of his hand to push away from him a little and back into the desk. Minho can’t imagine the kind of things that could go wrong if he and Jisung wrote a love song together so he clears his throat and lies back against the sofa again, tipping his head over the opposite arm. He can feel Jisung’s eyes on him.
“I can’t write love songs,” he says finally and it’s ridiculously true because he’d only describe Jisung in as many words as it takes to write a song and then some and he’d look stupid and people would know and Jisung’s side of the bed would stay cold even if he finally decided to take up all the space like a normal person. He can imagine some of the lyrics now, not cheesy in an embarrassing way but too true, too raw for him to turn into notes and sing from his own two lips without him shying away. He’d probably just end up murmuring Jisung’s name anyway. He thinks perhaps love songs can only be written by people who aren’t in love because love isn’t the kind of emotion you can put a tune to if it presses against your chest, real and true and getting heavier by the day. The clock above them ticks past three AM.
They stay in silence for maybe another half an hour before Jisung starts sighing again and before he knows it, the younger boy has spun his chair around and dragged himself out of it, flopping down on top of Minho instead. Minho let’s out a little puff of breath as Jisung wriggles against him to get himself comfy.
“That’s it,” he says, “I can’t write love songs.”
Minho can’t look at him. He’s worried about what will happen if he does so he looks at the bare lightbulb on the ceiling for so long it remains burned into his vision even when he looks away. He can feel the softness of Jisung’s hair against his chin.
“You can’t?” he finds himself asking, voice lifting at the end.
“I can’t,” Jisung confirms. He sits up a little, elbows either side of Minho’s chest so he can prop himself up and look at him without straining his eyes, “It’s either fake and cliché or too real for me to say out loud and I can’t find a balance, something I’m not embarrassed to sing but not too shy to sing either. They always say you should speak from experience but it’s not helping me right now.”
“Ah,” Minho says, finally lifting his head to look at him, “So you can relate.”
Minho wonders if it’s him going crazy or if Jisung’s cheeks really are blushing pink under the harshness of the light and Minho wouldn’t change a thing about him for all of the treasures in the universe. The younger looks down, bashful.
“Maybe,” he murmurs, “I don’t know, there’s something about them that just…”
“Just?” Minho presses, breathless and he’s kind of addicted to the pain of his heart being torn out of his chest. Jisung looks up at him now, his eyes are like dawn breaking over Seoul, the heavens granting them a new golden day.
“God,” he says, “I can’t even say it.”
“Go on."
“There’s something about them that makes me completely brave. I just…feel like I missed them before I even knew them, you know?”
I know.
“Do they know?” he questions.
Jisung smiles up at him, a hint of mischief in those brown eyes of his.
“A little, maybe.”
Minho leans his head back again.
“You must love them a lot,” he says quietly.
The lightbulb seems a lot less bright than it was before.
They leave at ten to four in the morning, the silence between them buzzing as Jisung flicks the lights off and they make their way down the corridor of JYP together. It’s raining when they leave, and not the kind of light, drizzly rain that coats you in a layer of condensation by the time you get home. No, this is the kind of shower that only occurs when God is angry, when the earth deserves punishing and the rain pelts down in thick, fat drops, soaking every being deep into the bones. It is entirely the reason the word ‘downpour’ was created. He and Jisung stand by the door for too long, both of them in strange, trance like states as they stare out at the end of the world.
“It’s too late for the buses to be running, right?” Jisung asks him.
Minho glances at him in the reflection of the glass.
“Right,” he murmurs, “Guess we’re just gonna have to face it.”
Minho thinks of love stories, and wonders whether or not they are star crossed like Romeo and Juliet, fated for feuding and tragedies and tearing the family apart. He moves to open the door but just before he does, Jisung reaches for his wrist.
“You said maybe, earlier,” he says, speech stilted as if he rehearsed for this but it still didn’t come out quite right, “When I asked you if you were in love. What does that mean?”
Has his heart ever beat this fast? It seems to move in time with the droplets hitting the pavements of Seoul.
“It means I lied,” he says defeatedly, too tired, too beaten to even attempt to hide it anymore, “I love someone but I wish he made me brave like you.”
Jisung looks like he wants to say something and they stare at each other for a while, the door cracked open a little where Minho’s leaning on it so they can hear the rain. When Jisung let’s go of his wrist, closing his mouth and looking away, Minho throws open the door and is immediately soaked.
Jisung laughs when he joins him, high pitched and echoing across the empty streets. Minho tries hard not to stare too much and fails within the first minute. The rain is so loud it’s hard to hear anything else and Minho has to strain his ears to catch Jisung’s laughter when he skirts a couple of metres away to throw his arms out and spin around, face open and turned towards the heavens like he is an angel and this kind of rain isn’t a punishment at all but a blessing, a cleansing. Minho reaches out for him and wraps an arm tight around his waist, pulling him flush against his body. They’re both shivering and the warmth of Jisung’s body against the cold of his own is strangely feverish. The younger boy turns away from the sky and towards him instead, hands coming to curl around the collar of his shirt.
“Han Jisung,” Minho begins, having to shout a little over the volume of the rain, “I’m in love with you.” It’s not poetic, even though Minho thinks maybe if he couldn’t write love into a song, he could write it into a poem. It’s simply a statement, but it’s true all the same. Jisung’s grip on his shirt becomes tighter, and his smile, that smile, grows practically exponentially. He is all the stars in full brightness, all the planets aligning, perfectly.
“I can’t write you a love song but I like the way you look when you wake up next to me, and the way you make my heart break from the way you look when you’re asleep and I haven’t done it yet but I can already tell my favourite by far is the way you look right after I’ve kissed you.”
And then he does, leaning forward to press his lips tentatively against Jisung’s own. It’s a strange sensation, lips slick with rain water but warm against each other, the contact thrumming with electricity. Jisung’s hands come up to grip at Minho’s wet cheeks and when they pull away, Jisung’s eyes stay closed, mouth lifted slightly in his smile and Jisung’s ribs burn against Minho’s hand where it’s splayed against them, holding him close enough to make his breath catch.
“So I do make you brave,” is the first thing Jisung says when he recovers enough to open his eyes and it’s such a Jisung thing to say that Minho has to kiss him again, run his hands down his sides just to make sure he’s real.
“I love you too,” the younger says when he pulls away and the words alone are enough to make the rain stop around them, to quell God’s anger as if he said to all the angels stop this punishment and sing instead, there are two boys in love.
The next morning, he and Jisung wake up with their hands intertwined together, legs tangled underneath Minho’s duvet and he doesn’t have to lie awake and wonder what it feels like to kiss Jisung’s smile off of his face until he’s hot and pliant against him.
“I’ve still got to write that love song, you know,” Jisung says, against his mouth, a little breathless.
“People in love can’t write love songs,” Minho replies, shrugging before pulling Jisung in again.