Work Text:
Six
Jongin throws a big party for his sixth birthday. They order so much food, onion rings and truffle fries, and even the little cheese bombs he loves from the bistro downstairs. He gets to wear his favorite pullover, the one with the hot air balloon patched on the front and a little embroidered bear leaning out of it. Jongin’s only just gotten big enough to fit into it, even though Sehun gave it to him when he turned five.
Sehun isn’t here yet. Instead, Wonshik hangs off his arm, noisily sucking jelly candies from small plastic cups. Wonshik is okay. He always shares his lunch and his crayons, and they live in the same building so sometimes his mom picks Jongin up from school. He's nice and Jongin likes him, but Jongin likes Sehun most. It's because he’s funny and good at tag, and because Sehun likes Jongin most too, even if Jaehyun is always trying to partner up with him during recess.
Sehun is his best friend, but saying that could hurt others' feelings so Jongin keeps it to himself. A small, pretty secret, like the gift-wrapped presents by the TV.
-
“Jonginie, do you want to cut your cake now?”
Jongin startles, eyes latching onto his mother’s smile. He shakes his head, “Sehunie’s not here. An’ Seulgi.”
She frowns, lips pursing together. “I’m going to call their moms, but if they don’t get here soon we have to cut it okay? Everyone else has to go home.”
Seulgi arrives first, her shiny hair in two pigtails, a blue bow on each. Jongin likes her lots too, she smiles pretty and goes to the same ballet class as him. She pushes a big gift into his arms and grins at him, flaunting where two of her milk-teeth have already fallen out.
“Happy birthday Jonginie, I picked your present myself!”
Jongin smiles widely and thanks her the way he’s been taught. He can already tell it’s a plushie through the wrapping paper, but he’s not going to open his presents in front of everybody. His mother says it’s not nice to show-off; so he’s going to unwrap them later, with Sehun’s help.
Soonkyu noona sets up a game of musical chairs, with all the chairs from their dining table lined in a haphazard row. Jongin nearly makes it to the last three, but Soojung slides into the seat before he does, and he falls right onto her lap instead. He’s about to tell noona, mouth agape, but then the doorbell rings and takes all his indignation with it.
He follows his mother to the door, game forgotten, and shuffles his feet eagerly as she pries it open because it’s got to be Sehun. For a second, all he sees is bright yellow wrapping paper, and then Sehun’s face pops out along the side, excited and warm.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY NINI!” Sehun screams, loud enough that his own mother flusters, laughing as she brings a palm over his mouth to shush him.
“Sorry! I left work a little late today and then we got delayed in the traffic,” she says.
“No no, it’s absolutely fine, come in.”
They leave their mothers in the vestibule and Sehun shoves the present into his waiting arms, the box tinkles tellingly. Jongin has no idea what’s inside, but he thinks this is the biggest present he’s gotten today. Bigger than Seulgi’s plushie, even.
“You’re going to love it,” Sehun tells him confidently.
Jongin giggles, setting the present on to his (complete) pile before dragging Sehun away. Musical-Chairs is over when they reach the den, and Jeongyeon stands victorious in the center, a little bag of candies held aloft in her fist.
“I lost musical chairs, Soojung pushed me,” he complains under his breath.
“It’s okay, I’ll win the next game for you,” Sehun replies, chivalrous.
“I can win on my own Sehunie.”
But they don’t play any other games afterwards; instead, Jongin’s mother lights all seven candles (one for luck, he whispers to Sehun) on his pretty marzipan cake. Jongin slides the knife through the fondant, careful to cut a neat, square slice. It’s a little messy, but he presses the piece to his mother’s lips, offering her the first bite like he’s seen noona doing on her birthdays. Sehun is the first to smear frosting across his chin, giggling as he pops his finger back into his mouth with satisfaction. After that, all Jongin can do is let his mother pull off his jersey so everyone else can attack him with the cream too.
Much later at night, after Sehun’s mother has left and they’ve unwrapped all the presents, Jongin and Sehun sit on the clean wood floor of his bedroom. They assemble the race track Sehun bought him—the one he’s seen in advertisements on TV, the big one with loops and curves that Jongin can’t wait to try.
He’d hugged Sehun terribly hard once he'd unwrapped it, both mothers cooing as noona took pictures on the film camera. His mother had only let him assemble it after they’d both showered and changed into their sleep clothes, and Jongin’s eyes droop as he clips another piece together. He glances at Sehun, who's busy working on the loop, eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he holds the parts to his chest.
Eventually he caves, voice whiny when he says. “Sehunie ‘m sleepy.”
Sehun looks appalled. “Already!? But this is a sleepover!!”
“Yeah but I'm tired from openin' presents an' the party.”
Sehun places the plastic on the floor, crawling over to him so he can pat his knee. “But you liked my present best, right?”
Jongin nods, sleepy but sure. “We can play with it in the morning? We can build it super-fast when we wake up.”
Sehun considers it, a heavy exhale accompanying his efforts. “Okay, but you gotta wake up early. Like for school ‘kay?”
He climbs onto the mattress pulled out by Jongin’s bed, snuggling under the spare duvet that his mother laundered just for Sehun.
Jongin whispers a “g’night Hunnie,” into the dimness of the room, already asleep when Sehun replies.
-
He's woken abruptly, startled at the insistent tugging on his sleeve. The room is dark now, he knows noona switches off the night light before she goes to bed.
“Wha-”
“Nini I wanna go home,” Sehun says from somewhere next to him.
Jongin sits up, hand extending aimlessly in the dark until it hits skin. “Why? Do you miss your mom?”
There’s a tearful hiccup in response, and Jongin immediately grabs Sehun, pulling him up so he’s next to him on the bed. He wonders if he should wake his mom up, maybe she’ll make Sehun feel better. Or even drive him home.
He’s thinking about doing it, when his eyes find the digital clock on his desk. It’s an Iron-Man one that his dad bought from Singapore—but the best thing about it is that it only shows numbers, so even Jongin can tell the time on it. He glances at the blurry 4:15 displayed on screen, before turning back to Sehun.
“Hey Sehunie?”
Sehun hums back pitifully, and Jogin wraps an arm around his shoulder.
“I could wake up eomma to take you back, but I think it’s going to be morning soon anyway.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it says 4 on the clock, see?” Jongin points to the clock, chubby fingers illuminated in the moonlight.
“So that means it’s going to be morning soon?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure?”
Jongin nods seriously. “Positive. Mom wakes me up for school when it says 6 on the clock, and that’s soon.”
Sehun is silent again, and Jongin can’t help but plead. “Sehunie, please will you stay? I want us to finish making the racetrack, and play on it together.”
Sehun is quiet in contemplation. “Alright. Can I sleep up here? It’s warmer.”
Jongin smiles, “yeah of course, ’m gonna scoot over, do you wanna be near the wall?”
“Jus’ near you is okay.”
Fifteen
At first, Jongin hates middle school. It’s big and daunting, and there are so many more students, their faces set to permanent scowls over the collars of starchy uniforms. Fortunately, Sehun is in the same class as him — in the same row of desks by the dusty, sealed windows. So Jongin doesn’t make any new friends the first month, but he doesn't really have to.
Eventually though, he does take a liking to the boy who sits across from him in the row over. Jongin notices that he mostly keeps to himself, doesn’t like sharing his (admittedly, delicious) lunches. They get partnered together for Traditional Literature one Wednesday afternoon, during an otherwise boring lecture. Kyungsoo—Jongin finds—is funny, quiet and quick-witted. And somehow still, more responsible than both him and Sehun combined.
They become a trio, gangly and dumb as they make their way through sixth and seventh grade. Those are good years, novel but calm. It isn’t until eighth grade that things start changing.
Kyunsoo is mostly absent the summer before the last year of middle school, but Sehun and Jongin stay attached at the hip like they always have. They still go to the arcade by the park, tall enough to play on the big basketball machines now. It becomes a race over those two months; whose limbs will outstretch the other’s, who’ll get a silly, wormy mustache first.
To Sehun’s utter dismay, by the time August hits and school reopens, Jongin has managed to inch his way over him by two or three centimeters. They cackle when they catch sight of Kyungsoo by the school gates, shorter than both of them now, if only by a little. He looks more sturdy, skin healthy and tanned from sunny weeks at his grandmother’s mountain home in Goyang.
The first day of school that year is strange, the girls seem prettier, and the boys seem taller, cooler.
There’s an imperceptible shift in the air as the year draws to an end. Jongin finds himself noticing more; girls and their pretty waists, the skinny biceps in the boy’s locker room, the wiry forearms poking through yellowed sleeves. It becomes impossible to ignore. He catches himself listening for the way Sehun’s voice deepens, rasping and tripping over words. Watches how the sunlight shines off the sweat on Soojin’s nape when she sits in front of him. The way Kyungsoo’s hair sweeps over his forehead in gentle waves.
Desks start brimming with confessions, little candy-colored envelopes stuffed with ruled-paper and petals and stickers. Jongin feels like he’s still catching up, like he’s late to a party that everyone’s been at for hours already.
Kyungsoo is the first of them to kiss someone on the lips--some girl from the theater class he takes at the community center over the summer. He tells Jongin and Sehun about it when they meet him for a meal after dance class, both of them sweaty and starving.
“It was mostly…...slimy?” he reports. “But my heart beat so fast throughout, and her lips were so soft.”
Sehun scrutinizes Kyungsoo over his neglected plate of tteokbokki. Jongin faces no such qualms, nearly on the verge of ordering another portion.
“Did it feel special at least?”
Kyungsoo concedes. “I don’t think I’ve ever been that nervous in my life.”
Sehun nods approvingly. “Are you going to see her again? Does she have any friends?”
Kyungsoo laughs, a little prideful. Jongin isn’t particularly enamoured, but he tries his best to remain interested in the exchange. All he really wants though, is for them to finish quickly so they can go to the arcade before math tutorial.
“I’ll ask her. Then we can all hang out together.”
They don’t quite manage to hang out, busy between high school exam preparations and dance lessons and the arcade and their own swelling imaginations. The rest of the summer passes in an uneventful, blandly-rountined blur. And for all his indifference, Jongin somehow manages to bag his first kiss before Sehun.
It happens three weeks after school reopens. Nayeon has her hands tucked behind her back, smiling prettily when she asks him if he’d like to get patbingsu with her afterschool. Jongin wonders if he should say no, but he doesn't have hagwon or dance class today, and the weather is pleasant after weeks of muggy rain.
Jongin is charmed; she's talkative and bubbly but doesn’t overstep. She tells him that her friend Mina is in the same dance class as him, and that she loved the performance they put up last winter. She orders a special off-the-menu patbingsu garnished with red bean and matcha and powdered sugar, and winks at him conspiratorially when he asks her how.
He has fun despite his initial reservations. They scrape the bowl clean, laughing and exchanging anecdotes, and when his shyness punctures the conversation, she’s good at filling it up again. She feeds her number into his phone while they’re walking to the bus stop, and kisses him behind a thick telephone pole. There’s powdered sugar caught on her lip balm, and the kiss is sweet just like her.
He tells Sehun about it later in the evening, perched on the old swingset in their neighbourhood park. Sehun's just returned from football practice, hair still damp from the shower. The swings creak pleasantly when Sehun shakes Jongin’s shoulder in disbelief.
“Wah you turned out to be a big hotshot for someone so disinterested,” he says.
Jongin shrugs. “It just happened. It’s not like I planned it or anything.”
Sehun scoffs, and punches Jongin’s arm playfully.
The year presses on. Nayeon is a constant—until she isn't; schoolwork and dance and hagwon and a million other things taking precedence, and eventually they decide to break up. He sleeps over at Sehun’s place that weekend, limbs sprawled on his bed while Sehun finishes his homework on the floor.
“Do you think I’ll regret it?”
Sehun hums in question.
“Breaking up with her, I mean.”
Sehun looks up, pen caught between his teeth. “Probably? But only for a little while.”
“I can’t believe you haven’t been with anyone.”
“It’s definitely not because of a lack of options.” Sehun reminds him, nose in his book again.
Jongin supposed that was true. Sehun is on the football team, he’s smart. He’s not quite Jongin’s height, but he’s tall, and handsome. It’ll happen eventually, he thinks.
They go for a camping trip at the end of the school year, a pathetic, school-sponsored thing at the end of ninth grade to allow them to ‘destress.’ It’s stupid, but it’s the first time in a long while that Jongin’s hours are free and unhassled.
They play cards in their tent, Kyungsoo teaches them over the light of his torch, whispering so the teachers can’t hear. Sehun is a sore loser, Taeil keeps cheating and Youngho keeps getting too loud on accident—but it’s the most fun Jongin has had this year.
They have to stop when they get called outside for the campfire, which quickly devolves into couples canoodling in shadowed corners. Even Kyungsoo runs off to find Seungkwan, despite all their teasing and complaining.
Sehun stays, and he’s good company, full off dry quips and easy laughter. They make a game out of it: pointing out the couples and the exes, Sehun’s earphones dangling between them. Eventually the warmth of the fire and the music lull Jongin nearly to sleep, his cheek resting against Sehun’s boney shoulder. He’d have slept off too, had Sejeong not walked up to them, her shy gaze meeting Sehun’s.
Jongin realizes with dawning horror, that she’s about to confess. Her friends giggle and point from across the bonfire, and Jongin feels an almost suffocating wave of embarrassment for her. In all the time he’s known Sehun, he’s never accepted a confession.
“Sehun, could I speak to you for a moment?” She isn’t loud, but her voice rings with confidence.
Jongin straightens up, leans slightly away from Sehun in a futile effort to remove himself from the situation. He holds back a sympathetic wince, studying the trees around them with renewed interest as he waits for Sehun to let her down gently.
“Yeah, sure.”
Jongin jerks back towards him like a slingshot snapping back into place. He stares at Sehun’s face in stupefaction as he stands up, and wonders briefly if Sehun’s somehow misunderstood. But Sehun only squeezes his shoulder and follows after her, earphones tugging away from Jongin’s ear.
It’s nearly midnight when Jongin returns to the tent after playing with some of the guys from the other classes. Neither Kyungsoo nor Sehun is back, and Jongin feels like he’s in seventh grade again, trying to discern why it always feels like he has to catch-up. Fortunately, he’s too exhausted to entertain that particular train of thought for long. He curls into his sleeping bag and falls asleep nearly instantaneously.
When Sehun wakes him up, it feels like it’s only been minutes since he fell asleep, but a glance at his phone tells him it’s almost 4 in the morning. He opens his mouth to berate him, muscles heavy and useless with sleep, when Sehun cuts in:
“I kissed her! I kissed Sejeong.” he whispers urgently.
Jongin pushes up onto his elbows, mouth spreading into a grin. “Really? Did you like it? Do you like her?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? She’s really nice. Really smart, too.”
“What was it like?”
Sehun pauses, and Jongin can picture his eyebrows pinching together in thought. “Warm? I might have bitten her. I think she’s kissed people before, because she knew how to do it.”
“Are you going to date her?” Jongin whispers into the darkness. The intimacy of it prickles at him strangely, whispering so close together even though they’re alone in the tent.
There’s some rustling as Sehun settles into his own sleeping bag. He turns to face Jongin, exhale hitting his chin in a gust of warm air, before retreating again, finally comfortable.
“I don’t know, I don’t think we have any time. It’ll be like you and Nayeon.”
Jongin spares a thought for his ex-girlfriend, misses the comfort of having her around for a second before blinking it away to say: “congratulations Sehunah.”
Sehun scoffs. “What is this? Graduation?” but Jongin can hear the glee in his voice.
Nineteen
College is the first time Jongin goes somewhere without Sehun’s steady presence at his side. It doesn’t hit him at first, he’s too elated about getting accepted, but it registers eventually—a week before Sehun is set to leave for his own first-choice in Japan.
On the worn carpet of Sehun’s bedroom are three cans of chilled soda and a single, intimidating bottle of Soju. One is sufficient, neither of them have much of a tolerance yet, and Jongin absolutely despises the taste. It’s mostly a rite of passage; his parents are away for the weekend and that means they have to do something illicit or otherwise frowned-upon.
Sehun pries the can open, grumbling all along. “I can’t believe Kyungsoo is in Jeju, that fucker.”
Jongin snorts, “you sound jealous.”
“I am jealous.”
He pours them a glass each, three-quarters of diet coke for every one-quarter of soju. Jongin sniffs his own delicately, before squaring his shoulders and downing it.
“Slow down!” Sehun yelps, fingers curling around his elbow. “You can’t pass out.”
Jongin pauses, affronted. “It’s not like you’ll have to drag me back home.”
“No, it’s not that. We have to make the most of time we have left, c'mon.”
“Right." That’s when it strikes Jongin, acrid taste still on his tongue. "What day is your flight again?”
Sehun takes a big sip, winces, and adds a little more of the soda. “This Sunday, early morning, you wanna come to the airport with me? I think mom’s driving.”
Sehun looks at him, barely repressed excitement pushing his cheeks up, up, up. Jongin feels unmoored, he wonders if the alcohol’s gone the wrong way—though he hasn’t had nearly enough.
“Yeah I’ll come drop you off. When’s your first break?”
"Missing me already?”
He might’ve meant it as a joke, but it comes out gentle. Jongin snorts, fiddles with the edge of his glass before muttering a quick, “you’re gonna miss me more.”
Sehun laughs. “Yeah, yeah I probably am.”
Sehun doesn’t return for winter break that year, or the summer break after. He tells Jongin he’s interning at some indie film company over text, tells him it’s a dream come true.
Jongin is thrilled for him, even if he hasn’t heard Sehun’s voice in months, or seen him on video call more than thrice. It isn’t Sehun’s fault; they’re both busy. They have work, they have new friends, and there are always more urgent, proximal things to attend to.
They keep up over text, but it’s not the same. Some days when he looks at Sehun’s instagram updates, he almost doesn’t recognize him. He looks bigger somehow, buoyant. Fulfilled.
Jongin’s life moves forward too, brisk and new. He moves into an apartment closer to campus with Kyungsoo and some guy that Kyungsoo knows from the performing arts program, Jongdae. He doesn’t know how it happens – he’s always had a small, intimate set of friends – but it begins with Jongdae befriending Baekhyun. Then Baekhyun introduces them to Yixing, a colleague from the studio he’s interning at. Yixing brings Minseok, because he's unwaveringly loyal to the mandarin-speaking senior who helped him navigate his first two semesters. Two drunk weekends later Minseok succumbs, and invites along another senior, Junmyeon—who is intelligent and handsome and someone Jongin’s mother would beg his noona to date.
The apartment they rent for three, regularly houses at least two more occupants, and the nights that they get drunk sometimes spill over to the next mornings. He doesn’t get to call Sehun as much anymore, but he finds that it doesn’t bother him as intensely as it did earlier. He never thought he would, but Jongin likes the noise that comes with being around his new friends.
He starts dating a Chinese exchange student on the dance team. Qian is older than him by a year, and she’s an incredible dancer. One evening when they’re the last ones left in the danceroom, he quietly asks her to dinner. So on a warm Thursday the next week, they go to the new Italian place at the edge of campus. At some point during the meal, she elegantly twists the carbonara around her fork to offer Jongin a bite, and that’s that.
Slowly he learns what it means to really like someone, to want to earn their respect, and want the best for them. The hours he spends with her are full and bright, afternoons in dance class, evenings at her place.
He texts Sehun the first time they have sex, still breathless at the memory. Sehun had lost his virginity within his first month on campus, and Jongin remembers that phone call well. Sehun had been flustered, the awe yet to dissipate from his voice—they had been juvenile.
Now, the conversation goes differently.
He can hear the teasing smile in Sehun’s voice when he asks him. “Are you in love Nini?”
“Shut up.”
Sehun laughs, “I’m seeing someone too,” he adds softly.
Jongin gasps. "Why didn’t you tell me? Is it Sana?”
Sehun is quiet for a moment, and Jongin let’s him be.
“It’s a guy actually. Um, you remember I told you about Chanyeol? The other Korean at my internship?”
“Oh,” Jongin feels like he’s mouthing the words without actually saying them. “Oh wow.”
Sehun laughs again, stilted and nervous.
Jongin wants to reassure him, tell him he doesn’t care, tell him that he has friends who are gay and bisexual. He wants to congratulate him, and ask about Chanyeol. But-
but.
It doesn’t matter because none of his other friends are Sehun, who he’s known forever. Jongin feels odd and betrayed, like Sehun’s kept something from him. And then he realizes that he’s making this about himself, his shoulders stubbornly caved-in.
“Jongin?” Sehun cuts in. “Can you say something please?”
Jongin inhales, releases himself from the stiff hold. “I’m-I dont really know what to say. I’m really happy for you, of course-”
Of course,
“-I just wish you’d told me that you’re—you’re?”
“Bi? I don't think I ever really acknowledged it myself. Chanyeol’s helped me alot.”
In a small, dark pocket of his mind, Jongin bristles at the thought of Chanyeol, of some strange man "helping" his best friend. In Sehun’s absence, Jongin clings to the notion that they’re always going to be connected in some profound way; that his own primacy in Sehun’s life is secured as his ‘childhood best-friend.’ It’s a pointless thought, possessive and idiotic.
He jokes instead, pouting as he says, “sucks to not be the most important guy in your life anymore.”
Sehun snorts. “You lost that title when you stopped calling me.”
“You stopped answering you asshole!”
Sehun cackles into the phone, and everything is almost right again.
He tells Qian about it when they’re waiting at the bus stop after dance practice.
She whistles. “Wow that’s nice. I guess everyone discovers something about themselves in college.”
Jongin leans onto her shoulder, muscles aching with exhaustion. “Not me. I haven’t.”
She pats his knee, presses a kiss to the crown of his head, “All in good time baby.”
The seasons change. Qian and he break up in the fall as her time in Korea draws to an end. It’s sad and stupid, but he understands that it’s for the best. The last time he sees her, they eat convenience store kimbap on one of the rusted benches in the park by the science building. There aren’t many people around but the silence isn’t stifling. She kisses him once on the cheek, once on the lips, and then it’s over.
He tells Sehun about it on the phone that evening.
“Do you think you’re gonna regret it?”
Jongin’s mind flits back to years ago, and he huffs out a laugh.
“No. I don’t think there was any way around it.”
“You’ll be okay, Jonginie. Do you want me to come over this break?”
Jongin scowls. “Fuck off, like you actually will.”
“Hey. Just say the word.”
Sehun’s voice is so nice, soft and deep and soothing. Jongin does miss him. The feeling was like a tiny pebble caught in his shoe, usually unobtrusive, but always there and mildly grating.
“Of course I want you here.”
“Then hyung will come.” Sehun answers self-importantly.
Jongin can barely catch his breath over how hard he laughs, only pausing to cuss Sehun out.
He doesn’t anguish over Sehun’s impending arrival. It’s not going to happen, so he refuses to get his hopes up. And by the time finals hit, he’s forgotten about it completely.
Winter break starts in the third week of December, and Jongin decides to stay at the apartment this time. Last year he’d gone back home and it had been a disaster, there just wasn’t enough space and he hadn’t been able to get a minute alone.
The first Monday into break finds Kyungsoo and him sitting on the fire-escape outside Jongin’s window, legs swinging in the air as they fork pieces of hotteok into their mouths.
“Has Sehunie mentioned anything about coming back this break?”
“No, not recently—have you spoken to him?”
Kyungsoo nods. “Last week he said he was thinking about booking his tickets. I think his boyfriend’s coming too—what was his name?”
“Oh. Chanyeol?”
He deflates at the thought of having to share Sehun when—if—he gets here. Kyungsoo laughs at his expression, catching Jongin’s chin between his thumb and forefinger.
“Lighten up. This is you we’re talking about; I’d be more worried about Chanyeol getting neglected."
When Jongin speaks to him later that week, Sehun doesn’t mention any travelling plans and Jongin doesn’t think about it too much.
The days bleed into each other, and he does what he’s most adept at: destroying his sleep schedule. Which is why he’s half-awake and stricken, when something taps against his window at 4AM on a Tuesday night.
His eyes have barely shut, laptop still warm on his thighs, when the sound of someone rapping their knuckles against the glass makes him shudder awake. It’s happened before—drunk college kids who’ve wandered too far up the fire-escape—but there’s something so purposeful about the tap-tap-tap this time. Jongin inches his way across the room, footsteps careful, before sweeping the curtain away.
His time at university has taught him to expect most things; pissing freshmen, someone in a felt bear costume—and on one particularly memorable occasion, there had even been a baby. Now all of it seems more believable than the sight that greets him.
Sehun pants on the other side of the glass, his hair a shocking blonde.
Jongin blinks. And blinks again.
Sehun pointedly taps against the window once more, jolting Jongin into motion, fingers swiftly undoing the latch. He watches as Sehun climbs in, dusting his puffer jacket and sliding off his backpack.
He looks at Jongin expectantly.
“Nini? You good?”
Jongin barrels into him. “Shut the fuck up.”
His gut twinges when he realizes Sehun’s taller than him now, the breadth of him firm and imposing. His eyes squint the same when he smiles though, and everything about him is still painfully familiar.
“I can’t believe this. I don’t believe it actually.” Jongin says, without letting go of him.
Sehun laughs, and it’s refreshing to hear the sound in its truth, undistorted by distance and poor connection.
Later, during the incongruously long minutes of night right before sunrise, they talk. Sehun lays down across from him, cheek cushioned on his folded arm, borrowed clothes stretched over his long frame.
“So? Anyone since Qian?—Who I will regrettably never meet by the way.” Sehun frowns a little and Jongin swipes at the crease between his eyebrows, easy and unstudied.
“No. What about you? Kyungsoo told me that Chanyeol was coming with-?”
“Oh, he has. He’s at his mom’s place.”
Jongin sighs, pillows his head on his forearm. “Is it time to meet the parents already?”
Sehun huffs. “No—we broke up, actually,” Jongin must look as surprised as he feels, because Sehun elaborates, “it was mutual, we just fit better as friends.”
Jongin smiles, “are you gonna regret it Sehunie?”
“Nope.”
“I’m glad.” Jongin pauses, considering, then he asks: “so was it just a him thing, or—?”
He doesn’t complete the question, afraid that it’s rude, but Sehun answers readily.
“I think I’m bisexual.”
Jongin hums in understanding, eyelids getting heavier with each blink. “How did you know you liked him?”
Sehun grins, shifts a little closer. “At first I had no idea. But then I realized I’d go out of my way to do things for him and,—it was a lot like how I am with you, actually.”
“Yeah? You trying to tell me something Sehunah?”
Sehun laughs. “No, that was part of why I had such a hard time figuring it out. But then we kissed and obviously, after that I could tell.”
“Obviously” Jongin mimics, slurring into his pillow. "That’s really sweet."
“Are you already asleep!? Jongin, I just got back.”
Jongin laughs, but refuses to open his eyes. Instead he draws Sehun closer, roughly pushing his cheek against his shoulder.
“Sleep.”
Twenty-three
Sehun moves back to Korea when the monsoons are raging around them, violently wet and humid. He starts working at an upcoming magazine with a small, sophisticated office in one of Insadong’s side-lanes.
Jongin moves in with him on a rainy Sunday, bent body shielding the boxes from the weather as he yells at Sehun to hurry up. They spend all day sliding boxes into the bedroom across from Sehun’s—the only other bedroom in the apartment—and by the time they’ve finished, the sky is a clear, crushing orange, alight with the setting sun.
The memory is precious.
Jongin starts working at a local animation company, and it’s good, challenging work. Plentiful. Living with Sehun is joyful, of course; on the weekdays they fight about dishes in the sink, and on the weekends they fight about whose turn it is to mop and vacuum. Jongin has nearly forgotten what life was like before the steady, safe, rhythm of this mundanity.
They fall asleep on the couch sometimes, exhausted after work, dinner plates stacked on the coffee table and TV droning on in the background. More often than not, Jongin wakes in a haphazard pile on the sofa, his neck bent at some godawful angle as it negotiates with the crook of Sehun’s shoulder.
Sehun is better at cooking between the two of them, he says it’s because he had to teach himself while living in Japan. Whatever the reason, Jongin is happy to spend his mornings dozing on the marble countertop, watching Sehun slice green-onions in practiced motions.
Sometimes, his mouth goes dry at the sight; clever, capable fingers, whisking eggs and salting meat. Jongin shakes it off. He’s terribly sleepy, that’s all.
Jongin is better at laundry. He’s patient, he handles their clothes with meticulous care. Some Sundays Sehun follows him to the little laundry nook, smiling over his shoulder as Jongin smooths out the creases in his work-shirts.
“You do that really well.”
Jongin scoffs. “It’s not hard; you’re just saying that because I do it for you.”
It’s easy to fall into the lull, work and home—and Sehun, by extension.
Their friends visit, of course. Chanyeol’s studio is close by, so he’s there every other day, toting a lethargic Baekhyun and bulging bags of takeout.
Once upon a time, Jongin had had to get used to him. Get used to the way Sehun and Chanyeol share space so easily, and have memories that none of them are privy to. It’s barely a blip though, Chanyeol is impossibly easy to love.
Kyungsoo comes over once a week, fists wrapped around fat, fragrant bags of food. He’s a chef de partie at one of the fancy restaurants downtown, and his cultivated palate is a welcomed intervention.
They get drunk together once a week, just the three of them, and Jongin is reminded of hot summers from when they were younger.
On one particular occasion they have fried shrimp and beer. Towards the end of the night, Kyungsoo leans back against the couch, arm loosely curled around his stomach as he sighs in contentment. It isn’t unlike any other time they’ve hung out, the shape of it no different from any other Friday night in Kyungsoo’s company. But it’s what he says next, that stays with Jongin.
“I’m going to be sad when the two of you move out.”
Sehun giggles, Jongin can tell he’s drunk with the way he flops onto Kyungsoo's shoulder. “We’re not moving out, what’re you talking about?”
“I don’t mean right now, I mean eventually. When you do.”
Later, Sehun washes out the beer glasses while Jongin collects all the grease-soaked paper-towels from around the couch. Once he’s tossed them he turns to Sehun.
“I don’t wanna move out.” It sounds petulant.
Jongin knows he’s drunk, and that’s probably why his consciousness has snagged so singularly on what Kyungsoo said. But he can’t get rid of the urgency, he needs Sehun to know.
Sehun laughs, which isn’t the reaction Jongin wanted at all. “We’re not moving out Nini.”
Jongin shakes his head, slightly distressed. “Kyungsoo said eventually.”
Sehun pauses, places the last beer glass onto the drying rack. He studies Jongin in that quiet way of his, looks almost sober. His eyes soften.
“I don’t wanna move out either.”
There’s a vote on the group chat, and it’s decided that the new year’s party will be at their place this time. Neither Sehun nor Jongin object; they’ve never hosted before, it’s only fair.
Sehun stows away the three vases they own, and Jongin hides the console in Sehun’s room (two years back some friend of a friend of a friend got drunk and stolen one of Chanyeol’s expensive recording mics). They clean the apartment inside out on the day before, and the evening has them loose-limbed and exhausted on the couch.
Sehun’s hair is still damp from the shower and little droplets race down his nape. Jongin traces their movement with his fingertips and Sehun swats his fingers away, ticklish.
He falls asleep right there, hands bunched into the worn cotton of Sehun’s t-shirt.
Jongin had only been hoping to get slightly tipsy, but Minseok and Kyungsoo keep using him to test out their cocktails, and now it’s five minutes to midnight and Jongin is sloppy drunk.
He curls into the warmth of Sehun’s side, let’s him support him. Jongdae says something, voice loud over the music, and Sehun laughs. It reverberates through his chest and Jongin smiles wider, presses himself closer.
He only emerges when Baekhyun pauses the music and yells. “THIRTY SECONDS TO GO!”
Sehun’s hold around his waist loosens, and Jongin doesn’t expect the panic that floods him at the action. Suddenly anxious at the thought of Sehun leaving him to go kiss someone in the crowd. But Sehun doesn’t leave, only reorients himself so that he’s facing Jongin. Somewhere over his shoulder Chanyeol starts the countdown and Jongin’s heartbeat rabbits, fast and frightened and full.
When Jongdae bellows out a “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” Sehun dips down to hug him, mouth against his ear.
“Happy New Year Nini.”
-
Jongin probably passed out. He can’t remember much.
When he swallows his throat clicks with dryness, and his tongue sits sandy and useless in his mouth.
A glance at the clock tells him it’s quarter to four. He wonders if he should check on the situation outside his bedroom, maybe get himself some water. His eyes fall shut, stubborn, and he decides he’d much rather deal with all of it tomorrow.
He’s almost asleep again when the door opens, light from the hallway blanketing the room. He squints at Sehun’s silhouette until he shuts the door behind him.
He doesn’t say anything, just slides under the covers beside Jongin.
“Sehun?” Jongin feels him shift nearer and anticipation bubbles in his gut.
“Hey. How’re you feeling?”
Jongin winces. “‘M okay. Has everyone passed out?”
“Yeah, or gone back home.” Sehun’s palm finds his hip, thumb dragging over the jut of it.
Jongin doesn't say anything for a few breaths, eyes slipping shut at the caress.
“Jongin?” Sehun asks this time, suddenly far closer than moments ago.
Jongin lets their noses brush together, pressing his own into the warm softness of Sehun’s cheek.
“I didn’t get a new year’s kiss this year.” Jongin grins, hints.
“Yeah? You want one now?” there’s a smile in Sehun’s voice. Jongin’s heart jumps in his chest. For how big of a leap this is, he’s never been more sure of something in his life.
He presses his lips over Sehun’s, firm and fond and irrevocable.
Twenty-eight
Sehun leaves his enlistment center on a spring morning. He looks clean and healthy, and jubilant when he spots Jongin by the metal barricade.
Jongin himself returned a month ago, and his hair has grown out now, soft and thick. Sehun says as much, drags long, warm fingers through it when he kisses him soundly in their car. His eyes are sweet, stuck on Jongin as he drives.
The noon sun is high in the sky when they reach home, sunlight flooding the wooden floor of the apartment. Sehun fucks him right there on the sun-warmed slats, gentle and loving and desperate.
After, with his head pillowed on Jongin’s bare chest, he says, “tell me everything.”
Jongin tells him about his promotion at work, about the dance classes he’s been taking on the weekends, about Jongdae’s beautiful baby girl, still small and pink.
Sehun already knows all of this, they speak on the phone. Still, he hums and listens, and then gets up to make them lunch when Jongin’s stomach rumbles under his cheek. Jongin has missed this, has missed it more than he can put into words.
Things don’t fall into place immediately. Sehun has to get used to work, has to reimagine the life he left behind. He’s sloppy, he forgets the groceries, forgets his pan of boiling water, forgets laundry, wakes up too early, drinks too often.
Jongin tries to be understanding--he spent the month after his military service on his own, answerable to no one. He wants to give Sehun that space too; but patience is a limited, inscrutable resource, and Jongin eventually breaks.
He’s had an awful day, he’s snivelly with the seasonal flu, he has to go in to work this weekend, his joints ache, his favorite coat has been at the dry cleaners' for weeks. He's tired—more than anything, he’s tired. He just wants to go home, eat, and sleep.
Sehun’s on his second bottle when Jongin walks in, feet on the coffee table. He’s always enjoyed drinking, and that’s fine, Sehun holds his alcohol well. But tonight it’s aggravating in a way that makes Jongin walk over and swipe the glass from his hands. He tosses it onto the carpeted floor where it lands with a muted, ominous, thunk.
Sehun gapes at him, fingers still poised in the air. “What the fuck.”
“Did you buy the groceries?”
“Ye-no-what?”
Jongin pulls himself up to his full height. “You’ve become irresponsible.”
Sehun stares. "I'm sorry, what?"
“God, stop acting so fucking clueless," Jongin brings up a hand to fist through his hair, "you’re all over the place these days; you forget shit all the time-”
Sehun's eyes narrow to slits. “Whoa what- I’m trying? I haven’t been here in a-a whole year, I’m trying-”
Jongin scoffs, bag landing on the floor. “It’s been a month Sehun! I just want to come home and be able to hold a sober fucking conversation with you-”
“Oh fuck off! I drink like two nights a week, you’ve been busy and now this is on me? I forgot the groceries-once? Twice? And, what, suddenly my whole lifestyle is shit?-”
Jongin feels livid, and the back of his eyes burn with it. “I don’t get to see you, and that makes me upset! Why the fuck are you okay with that?”
“Because I know you’re busy and I know it’ll pass,” Sehun pauses, inhales. “Look, if you’ve had a bad day at work-”
“Don’t.” Jongin spits, “don’t pin this on my work, when it’s about you.”
He leaves before Sehun can answer, slams the bedroom door shut loudly, only to find himself even angrier. Frustration crawls under his skin, and sticks in his gullet.
He sleeps, still in his stupid work-shirt, his throat gummy with unshed tears.
Sehun wakes him up late into the night. So gently that Jongin almost believes he’s woken up on his own, if not for the long arms around him, familiar and grounding.
“Come with me?” Sehun whispers.
He wraps the duvet around Jongin, walks him to the kitchen with his chest against Jongin’s back. He pushes Jongin onto one of the chairs, before slipping away to switch on their dimmest lamp.
In the meek light Jongin can see the crumpled spare-duvet on the couch, and he swallows, suddenly feels like he’s about to cry again.
The guilt comes first.
Sehun’s face is blank, serene. Jongin watches as he reaches for two bowls, placing one in front of Jongin and the other on the placemat opposite. He measures out cereal into both, adds a teaspoon of honey to each, and grabs one of the cold milk bottles from the refrigerator.
Then he sits across from Jongin, fingers threaded together. Jongin’s eyes drop to his own lap.
“I want us,” Sehun says, voice softer than crushed cashmere, “to never go to sleep hungry, or angry at each other, ever again.”
The shame comes second.
Jongin wilts. “We always wake up okay, it shouldn’t matter.”
Sehun is quiet, and Jongin’s gaze stays on the fraying seams of his pajamas.
“Nini, look at me for a sec.” Sehun doesn’t continue until he does. “I want to be with you for the rest of my life, and that includes when we’re ninety and old and frail. What if we don’t wake up? What then?" Sehun smiles, wry and handsome. "You gonna die mad at me, baby?”
Jongin sobs out a laugh, and it’s so ridiculous, so fucking ridiculous how Sehun makes him feel.
Sehun drags him into a hug, lips stamping kisses onto his cheeks, his hair, his eyelids. “We’ll both do better okay? If you’re feeling like this you can’t wait until you’re that frustrated to tell me.”
Jongin nods, kisses Sehun back as furiously as he fought with him.
+1. Thirty-four
They pick Eunjoo up from kindergarten on Fridays; Jongdae usually has recording late into the evenings, so they get to keep her till 6PM.
He looks forward to it, watching her run up to them, tiny legs carrying her away from the bright yellow school gates. Sehun holds her bag, and Jongin holds her, presses his smiles to her cheeks as Sehun teases her about something or another.
They usually go to the Thai place at the end of the lane, the ajumma there is generous with her prawn pancakes. She recognizes them now, doesn’t ask them whose daughter Eunjoo is, and always gives them a whole stack of paper-towels to clean after the falsely-ambidextrous four year old.
In the dappled light, Jongin watches as Sehun teaches her a new game—something about animals that fly. Her shrill squeal rings through the cafe, brimming with delight. Later, as Jongin is spooning minuscule bites of papaya salad into her mouth, Sehun says:
“Joo-ah, I met Nini samchon when I was your age, you know?”
Jongin’s eyes widen in realization. “Oh my god, you did!”
Eunjoo claps her hands over her chin, “when you were four?” She holds out four of her stubby fingers, the thumb clumsily folded over her palm.
Jongin nods, hands reaching out to hold hers. “Mhmm, at kindergarten.”
She looks amazed. “At my kindergarten?”
Sehun laughs. “No, another one. Maybe we can take you there sometime.”
-
After they’ve dropped her back home, Jongin drives them to the supermarket. Sehun is quiet on the seat beside him, still beaming.
“I think I want one.”
He sounds calm, sure. Jongin’s face melts into a smile when he pictures it, three of them.
“Yeah, me too.”
Im Haneul is born in September at a hospital in Gwangjin. Jongin and Sehun pick him up from the adoption agency a month later, orange and crimson leaves crunching beneath their feet as they jog up to the entrance.
He’s so small when Jongin holds him for the first time, barely the length of his forearm. When Sehun cups his head from behind him, his hand easily dwarfs the little thing. They cry, of course they do, sobbing and gratified in front of the adoption officer as she presses a cloth bag of Haneul’s things into Sehun’s palm.
Haneul isn’t fussy, he eats happily, grows into a chubby, rotund, moon of a baby. Jongin is a clingy parent, keeps him clasped to his chest while he works and refuses to use the high-chair to feed him. He cradles him on his lap instead, both of them babbling happily as he spoons vegetable puree into his mouth.
Haneul likes Sehun’s hold most though. In the rare moments when Jongin surrenders the baby to Sehun, he dozes off nearly instantaneously. Haneul spends entire afternoons curled up on Sehun’s chest, both of them napping on the couch.
“It’s because I’m calm,” Sehun says, proud. He cups a Haneul’s back, kisses the downy hair on his head.
Jongin leans against Sehun’s side, grinning when Sehun smatters kisses on his head too. “You are.”
Haneul usually sleeps through the night, static from the baby monitor crackling inconspicuously until his first bottle at 7AM. Sehun keeps saying it’s their baby monitor that’s broken, but once in a while—when Haneul wakes up hungry, or with a wet diaper—the thing sputters to life, wails sounding through.
The first time Jongin wakes up to it, he’s terribly disoriented. He struggles out of bed, pulling the covers back over Sehun before leaving to check on their baby.
He pulls Haneul out of the crib, murmuring soothingly as he checks his diaper. He’s still clean so Jongin rocks him against his chest.
“Are you hungry baby?” He whispers, hoping the racket hasn’t roused Sehun. “Shall we get you a bottle Haneulie?”
He turns to walk to the kitchen, but Sehun’s already standing there, a warm baby-bottle held out. He looks sleepy, hair flying in every direction and stubble dotting his upper lip. But he smiles into the kiss Jongin thanks him with.
Haneul barely finishes half the bottle before he’s asleep again, petal lips falling lax around the rubber nipple. Jongin’s about to place him back in the crib, when Sehun stops him.
“Let’s keep him with us? We have to get up soon anyway.” Sehun points to the little digital clock on Haneul’s dresser.
It’s an Iron-Man one from Jongin’s childhood; he can’t remember where it's from anymore, but he thinks his father bought it overseas. The faded thing still works, 4:03 emblazoned across the screen.
“Yeah, okay, will you carry him?”
Jongin thinks he'll remember this, even at ninety and old and frail—Haneul bracketed by the length of their bodies, warm with love.