Work Text:
Jisung came home after an exhausting day at work to find his boyfriend of a year (and three months, not that he was counting) sipping a stupid cup of stupid tea in their kitchen. Calm as anything, eating stupid Tim Tams that they always had stocked up in their stupid snack stash.
And he could feel all the extra stupids that littered his vocabulary for the past few hours slowly drain out at Chan’s happy grin.
"I couldn’t be bothered to cook, so I ordered chicken. I wanna be gross and unhealthy tonight. You want some tea?"
Sometimes he couldn’t take how great his boyfriend was, so Jisung did what he’d been planning to do all the way home and face planted on the sofa.
The pillow might have covered most of his face and swallowed most of the scream he let out, but he was pretty sure that Chan heard him anyway, if the chuckle he let out while he opened and closed cupboards was any indication.
The sound of glass slowly being placed on the table (and not the coaster as they agreed ) would normally have Jisung barely rolling his eyes, too used to Chan’s refusal to do things that he deemed unnecessary. But today he raised his head from the pillow he was trying to smother himself with, and sent Chan a glare.
"I figured you needed something a little stronger and a little more soothing." He wiggled a bottle of wine at Jisung and placed it with the lid still firmly on, on the table. "But I’ll let you decide."
"I hate you." Jisung moans. He meant it too. Chan was always good at reading his moods.
"Aww babe." Bangchan pulled him up enough so he could slip under Jisung. Positioning himself as the pillow Jisung badly needed. "Want to share with the class what got you in such a mood?" His stupidly spindly fingers soothingly carding through Jisung’s hair.
Apparently Jisung hadn’t managed to get rid of all the stupids running through his head just yet.
"We’re so fucking easy." He moans into the leg that he’s currently pressed into.
"We’re what now?" Chan’s hand had stopped moving and Jisung made a sound of discontentment to get his boyfriend to continue to stroke his hair.
"This. This! This is easy! How is it so easy!?" He flails an arm into the general direction of their apartment.
The weird collection of succulents that Felix keeps bringing over. Chan’s neat tower of scrawled notes and lyrics on the coffee table. The bathroom where Jisung’s pile of clothes resided (which Chan would patiently pile in the laundry basket). The kitchen. With multiple pans that had no traces of ever having been burnt, because they got rid of all the shit pans when they moved in together .
"Did you… want this to be complicated?" It was all the more frustrating to Jisung that Chan understood his haphazard gesture.
"Not particularly." He sighed in defeat. Chan pulls at a chunk of hair gently, signaling that Jisung should sit up for the conversation.
"So what’s the problem?" He laces their fingers together, a physical anchor to stop Jisung from running away with his thoughts.
"This is weird."
"This being?"
"Living here. Together. I don’t know. Our relationship." Their relationship of one year and three months, because how the fuck did that happen? And who’s counting anyway.
"Okay, I’m going to need you to talk quickly, because this… doesn’t sound great, and I might start to panic." Chan frowns.
"It’s not. I mean." Jisung growls in frustration and surges forward to quickly plant a kiss on Chan’s lips. "We’re fine."
"Okay?"
"We are." Jisung squeezes Chan’s hands comfortingly.
"Okay. "
"We hooked up. We hooked up for months, hyung. And now I live here. And Minho is giving us one of Soonie’s kittens next week. Isn’t that weird?" he scrunches his nose in frustration, the urge to plant his face back into the sofa too strong, but he understood that Chan needed to see his face for his particular brand of weirdness this evening.
"No…? It happens…?" Chan managed to sound completely reasonable even as he watched Jisung with puzzled eyes. But after a year (and three months, but seriously, who’s counting?) of handling Jisung’s random outbursts, his reaction was probably to be expected. "We had sex, figured we wanted more than casual sex, and now we live together. Which part of that is weird?"
"There wasn’t… I don’t know! There wasn’t conflict! No character development!"
"I resent that. If this is a dig at my sleeping habits - I told you that I’m just naturally nocturnal. And it’s not like you’re any better."
"Not that. But don’t think that I didn’t notice that you only managed to crawl into bed at 5am yesterday." Chan gave him a sheepish grin as Jisung barreled on. "It’s just, didn’t we just kind of fall into a routine too easily?"
"I know you work with stories for a living babe, but sometimes real life is just boring and things work out with minimum drama." The small smile that tugged at the corners of Chan’s lips calmed and irritated him at the same time. It was that tiny stupid smile that always made Jisung want to forget the world for a little while, because their tiny bubble of whatever was always so comfortable.
"I don’t want drama. You know I hate drama. I don’t handle suspense and conflict very well." He scoots closer to Chan, needing the comfort of Chan’s warmth, before finally giving into the urge of diving into the comfort of Chan's sturdy, sturdy shoulders. He sighs happily as Chan wrestles him into a comfortable back-hug. Talking was sometimes a little easier when he didn't have to see Chan's face.
"But you’re freaking out?" He asks into Jisung's hair softly, voice a little too uncertain for Jisung's liking. He hadn't meant to make Chan question their relationship, after all.
"I’m not? I’m just… this was easy." He looks down at their intertwined hands resting on his stomach and freaks out that little bit more that he’s not sick of the sight yet. Not even after a year (and three months. A year. And. Three. Months.)
"Yeah, it kind of was. Is. And I’m not even going to make a joke about you being the easy one. I've always liked that about us. How we didn’t really have to go through crazy fights to get here. Or the angsting over transitioning a friendship into a relationship that Felix and Changbin are still doing."
"This is real though, right? You’re real?"
"Did you smoke something? Because I thought we talked about sharing." He nips at Jisung's ear playfully.
"I hate you. You’re not taking this seriously." He pinches Chan's arm in retaliation.
"It’s hard to take something seriously when I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about."
Chan was always unbearably patient, just another thing that Jisung loved with all his heart. This stupid man, who he had been with for almost two years (a year and three months), had quietly ticked all his boxes of wants and needs without fanfare. And the discovery that he made just hours ago that Chan was everything he ever wanted bubbling up to the surface once more.
"I just love you, okay!" He threw the words out like they were playing hot potato, and Jisung could feel Chan's sudden sharp intake of breath.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"I mean, I love you too." And the thing is - it was true. Jisung knew. Because Chan was a reassuring presence in his life. A quiet grin and a steady hand whenever they had to go to a place that was overwhelmingly crowded. A hot cup of tea whenever deadlines hit, and Jisung had to stay awake another hour closer to twilight. A neatly made bed that was so satisfying to slip into after a long day, because Chan was a lot neater than his boyfriend.
But hearing it, he supposes, was a completely different thing.
"That’s good." He could feel the flush that decorated his own face, and was gratified to see that Chan’s ear was turning into an alarming shade of red that bordered on neon in its brightness as he turns slightly to meet Chan's eyes.
"Wow. Okay."
They continued to look at each other, mirror images of stillness, save for Chan’s fingers slowly tightening their grip.
"I, uh…"
"Can you just kiss me right now, hyung?" Jisung huffs impatiently, embarrassment at his own ridiculous anxiety over the discovery of his own feelings now overtaking him.
"I can do that."
Chan was lazy weekends spent gaming and reading and silently navigating their apartment. He was movie nights with friends piled up and endless boxes of food getting delivered to the door. Chan was sunlight and moonlight, and the dim nightlight in their bedroom that Jisung refused to part with.
He never realized how easy things could be before Chan, a slow, steady slide into love that calmed down the anxious thoughts that often whispered to him.
The smooth slide of their lips together was everything Jisung wanted, and nothing he recognized. In all his years of falling into and out of love, in all his years of writing about love, the explosion of emotions, the quickened heartbeats and butterflies that ran riot, he had never imagined falling in love could be so easy.
"Are you done with panicking about us now?" Chan asked softly, lips still grazing his.
"Mm." Jisung nuzzles his nose into Chan’s own.
Or maybe he just never slipped so deep in love before. This calm and serene, absolutely perfect place of clarity that he occupied with Chan.
"I can’t believe it’s taken you this long to realize that you love me."
"Fuck you. I hate you. It’s not like you ever said anything before." he accuses, slightly annoyed at Chan's snort.
"You’re such an idiot."