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5.
The first time went too fast for Jisung to process it until it had already happened.
In his defense, he was a little more tired than usual; he had reached the stage of sleep deprivation where everything started to look funnier than usual and time went by with underwater slowness. In his defense, he was used to doing it without expecting anything but a cackle and some disgust played up for laughs.
In his defense, when he puckered up his lips in Felix’s direction, demanding a kiss that was nothing more than a playful joke—a skit among the members, they all played around with how far they’d go, a funny bit, just a joke—the last thing he was expecting was for the guy to grin and move closer, his pretty heart-shaped lips ready to kiss back.
Jisung’s heartbeat froze, his brain uselessly scrambling for an appropriate reaction and coming up with cat facts instead—If your kitty loves you, it will try to copy your movements! We call this mirroring, and it usually—
He wasn’t aware of pulling back until Felix’s giggle brought him back to Earth. On his left, someone cackled brightly in response to unheard words. They were on camera, Jisung remembered, heartbeat halting with a screech for the second time. He forced himself to laugh, pulling away from the magnetic, unrelenting pull of Felix’s eyes, the slightest tremor taking over his hands.
The next question from the oblivious interviewer was meant directly for Jisung, but as he tried to remember what the hell he had said later that night, all that came back was static. Gray, scratchy noise took over his thoughts, making him toss and turn in bed even though his body was begging him to shut down.
Felix must’ve known that Jisung would pull back, right? That would explain why he had pushed forward with such abandon, open want written all over his face, as if he had finally been given access to a precious reward.
He must’ve known. Jisung rubbed his eyes a bit more strongly than he had intended to and pushed the sight of those pretty lips further down his mind.
Jisung had seen every single freckle at once—maybe the sudden shock of the moment had imprinted them on his brain.
But Felix was playing around, just like Jisung always was.
Felix, who didn’t hesitate to demand pecks on his pretty round cheeks whenever he could, on any occasion he could claim he deserved them.
But this time—
Jisung buried his face into his pillow and groaned. He slept without dreams.
4.
It’s not like he was expecting it, Jisung told himself. He had very carefully not thought of the interview fiasco again, burrowing into a maze of work, restless nights, work, dance practice, that one beat that he couldn’t get the hang on no matter how many different arrangements he tried, work—
He was doing great, thank you very much.
He definitely didn’t steal glances to Felix whenever he could, a strange heat coalescing in his chest when he saw how easily Felix found his spot in everyone’s laps, how cheekily he ran his hands down everyone’s bodies at the slightest provocation—Wow, hyung, your chest is getting really toned lately, that’s so cool!
And Jisung definitely, definitely didn’t replay his reaction to Felix’s lips getting dangerously closer to him in his head, hot-burning shame alternating with despair. Every scenario ran through him and they all fucking sucked to picture; Felix pulling back at the last second, laughing at him, Felix getting mad at him, Felix actually—
Felix actually kissing him.
Jisung knew what those lips felt like. He had received his fair share of pecks and little bites from him without thinking much about it, and, fair enough, he tended to look at them first thing whenever he checked out Felix’s pictures. The pretty lips, the pretty freckles, the pretty eyes, everything about Felix was so pretty that it made Jisung’s head spin. For a while he’d attributed the strange swoop in his stomach to jealousy, but as he skittered around the practice room and tasted heat in the back of his throat when he saw Felix jumping on Changbin’s back and hanging out like a kitten for some reason, he had to come to terms with himself.
There was no way that the way his heartbeat accelerated when Felix did as much as look at him was just Jisung wishing he looked like that, but the other options were too thorny to consider properly, he told himself. His dumb brain acting dumb could make things harder for himself, especially when he essentially spent twenty-four hours a day with Felix, but he didn’t need to act on it.
That’s why Jisung wasn’t expecting anything when he tried to kiss Felix again. And if his hands shook a little more than usual, with nerves that he hadn’t even experienced while performing to thousands of people for a long, long time, that was between him and his pillow. All he had to do was wait for a bit, get closer to Felix, put a hand around his shoulders, and maybe if he was lucky he’d get to kiss him on the cheek like so many times before.
He wasn’t expecting anything beyond that.
He definitely wasn’t expecting Felix to turn around as soon as he was close, reaching to hold Jisung’s face with an overly-warm hand and happily offering his own mouth to him.
Jisung barely had the wits to pull back this time, a shrill, obnoxious laugh that he recognized as his own filling the room. Nobody had even noticed the exchange, nobody was even looking at them, and still his breath caught in his throat like he’d sprinted his way to Felix’s side.
Ah, fuck, he had pulled back again, hadn’t he?
For a moment he expected Felix to look at him with disappointment, disgust even, but when he dared to look up all he saw was a challenge. Felix’s eyes were twinkling with badly concealed mischief, and, fuck, how was he still so cute even when he pulled out his most annoying laugh?
Once again, no words were said before the whirlwind of the next song to practice starting surrounded them. Once again, Jisung couldn’t have talked if he’d tried.
3.
“Sung-ah?”
Jisung shot awake like he’d been dunked in cold water. It took him a second to take awareness of his surroundings and place himself in time and space—the studio, the sticky fake leather of the sofa, Thursday evening. Mixing time, probably. The lyrics he had half written in his head and had—fully disappeared in his sleep. Fine, fine. He’d find them again.
Chan was frowning down at him. Okay, not good. Fix it, idiot. Fuck.
“Just resting my eyes,” he said in the cutest tone he could muster through the cobwebs of sleep that still clung stubbornly to him. “Don’t worry for me.”
“Too late.”
Jisung whined. “You know I could fall asleep in the middle of a busy road, you dramatic old man.”
Chan sighed. “Your dark circles have gotten worse.”
“Aw, you’re keeping tabs on me!”
Chan sighed again, more forcefully this time. “Whatever it is, you know you can, like… talk to me, right?”
I’ve been thinking of kissing your little Lixie, actually. Just thinking about the words made Jisung cringe inwardly. This wasn’t fucking happening. He had too much to do to also worry about his brain going haywire over dumb shit.
Still, Chan’s eyes were tinged with worry, and Jisung still loved the guy.
“It’s okay,” he smiled, this time genuinely. As genuinely as he could muster. “You’ll know one day, maybe.”
Chan raised an eyebrow, but knew better than to keep digging.
Once Jisung had consciously thought of the words kissing Felix, once he had turned them around in his mouth and bit down on them to taste their core, it was impossible to push them away. The idea haunted him in his dreams, embarrassingly teenaged dreams from which he woke up sweaty and, more than once, embarrassingly hard. It followed him through his day, jumping to the center of the stage whenever Felix talked to him or smiled in Jisung’s range of view; it tortured him like a single drop of water that never stopped boring into his skull.
And then it happened again.
That time, he couldn’t even blame Felix for it. To be fair, if he stopped to think about the situation for long enough he couldn’t blame Felix for any of it, except maybe for being born with such kissable lips.
Jisung would definitely blame Felix for that, yes.
Casual was the keyword, as it always was. Jisung worked very hard to appear as effortless as possible to the people around him, thank you very much. It felt a little strange to be focusing so much on someone who had already long ago made it into the list of people Jisung could be himself around, but, then again, that was before Jisung had discovered that he wanted the guy’s mouth on his own.
His traitorous heart still crawled up his throat as he got closer, an adrenaline reminiscent of roller coasters as they climbed closer to their drop filling his veins. “Hey,” he stuttered.
Felix turned—twirled, the word was twirled, the bastard always managed to make every movement look so elegant and ethereal—and beamed at him. For a moment, Jisung considered throwing all his carefully crafted plans out the window and acting as usual.
He couldn’t, though. Not when he’d finally decided that he wanted this.
And then Felix grinned, and he puckered up his lips like a burnt offer to a god. Whatever dumb shit Jisung was ready to say died in his throat with a pathetic squeak.
For a single moment, the entire planet balanced on the edge of a sword. Jisung could go further, he had pictured this happening so many times in his head that he was practically sick of it, he could try, he could—
Felix laughed, and all Jisung could think about in his half-delirious state was how pretty his teeth were. He wanted Felix to bite him, to take claim of him, to chew on his flesh and leave nothing behind.
In the blink of an eye, Felix was gone. Curse his eternal energy and endless need to make everyone happy, he was already across the room making a dumb joke to make Changbin laugh, unaware of the heartbeat that was pulsing right under Jisung’s skin, making his organs boil and his heart short-circuit.
Jisung took a deep breath, and forced himself to walk away.
2.
Sometimes Jisung wondered exactly what part of his brain was the one that doomed him every single time. He couldn’t recall much of his biology classes anymore, but he was sure that if someone sliced his skull open and put it under a microscope they’d find an area of gray matter clearly labeled Stupid Ideas Generator. How else could he explain the shit that took a hold of his thoughts and drilled him with the most remote possibilities, the what if?
True enough, he could kiss Felix straight on the lips. He could make out with him, probably making a sloppy mess if Jisung’s long untested kissing skills were involved. He could—
A sudden, lightning fast cramp in his foot brought him back from his fantasies. He had to bite down the inside of his mouth to avoid groaning out loud; last time he’d checked his phone it was past 2 a.m, and the last thing he needed was to wake everyone up with his restlessness. Even as he grimaced through the process of stretching his foot and settling back down he couldn’t stop thinking about Felix, and how his pretty, sharp canines dug into the plush flesh of his lower lip when he pretended to act coy.
Fuck.
Fuck it.
He had never really focused on how much of Felix’s relationship with everyone consisted of touch until he learned that he could get addicted to it. Every time Felix hugged him for no reason, every time he slapped him jokingly, every nap shared in a sweaty puppy pile; every little moment built up like an old dam that had long ago given up on its task. The cracks spread further each day, and Jisung wasn’t sure if he minded them at all. He ran his fingers through them, and fantasized of being engulfed by the storm.
Truth be told, he was still terrified. Whenever he sat down and forced himself to think about Felix, to become fully aware of things he usually just acknowledged in the corner of his eyes, his heart started beating painfully hard against his chest and his breathing became shallow. He wasn’t even afraid of rejection itself—hell, if he knew what the hell he was afraid of it would’ve probably made things easier.
Jisung had always faced challenges with as much of a cool head as he could muster. He was used to endless to-do lists in ten different places at once, to lyrics written down in the spur of the moment and forgotten until he found them months later buried in his phone notes; he was used to self-imposed daily schedules that he rarely managed to follow through. And still he planned, just as he now planned every step that would lead to Felix’s lips on his own.
He refused to look beyond that moment. Anything that happened would be for future Jisung to deal with; he figured that the kiss would give him radioactive superpowers, and the brain clarity he so badly needed.
The fourth time, Jisung was too nervous to figure out if he was acting naturally enough. He figured that either he was royally fucking himself and by extent the dynamics of his group and his job, or Felix had already caught on and would find his stumbling cute. He could only hope.
Walking toward him seemed too dangerous. Knowing himself, Jisung would probably trip on his own feet and manage to bruise his ass, so he instead kept an eye on Felix in the recording booth and willed him to join him in the couch afterwards with nothing but the feverishness of his thoughts.
Shockingly, it worked.
Felix plopped himself down right next to Jisung, his smile bright and relieved. “I did good, didn’t I?”
It was adorable how much a single compliment could make Felix’s entire day, making Jisung want to shower him with love. He grinned back. “You were sick in there, dude. Those growls!”
Felix brightened even more. He was close enough for Jisung to feel his body heat as he pressed against him, a thought that once had come to Jisung refused to go away.
“Changbin hyung said it was good! It’s a relief,” Felix answered, sitting back on the couch and relaxing all at once. There was an inch or less of skin showing through a rip in his jeans, too high to be a knee rip and getting closer to his thigh.
Jisung put a leash and a muzzle to his brain and refused to let it continue. Figure out how to kiss him first, you dumbass.
All he had to do was wait until Chan was busy with the directions, and everyone in the studio focused on Seungmin’s notes into the mic, and he could—
Jisung could—
He was a fucking coward, wasn’t he?
As he stared at Felix’s profile, pretty sure that he was being too obvious but unable to stop himself, he remembered the signs that usually accompanied statues and sculptures in museums. The last time he’d been to a museum he’d been in middle school, in a field trip that had felt boring as hell at the time, and his poor suffering teachers had drilled into the class’ heads that no matter what they do, no matter how much they wanted, they weren’t allowed to touch the art.
The recording session came and went, and Jisung didn’t move.
1.
“You can’t hide from me forever.”
Jisung groaned. If getting stupid feelings for a guy that was pretty as an angel wasn’t enough, he also had to find someone who was as sly as a villain. And who always wanted to talk about it, on top of that. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, dude.”
Felix frowned. “So you just avoid me out of nowhere, then? Ouch.”
Oh, fuck. “No, fuck! That’s—that’s not—I just—”
“I’m joking! I’m joking, come on.”
Jisung wished he could reach into his chest and pull his heart out to make it stop pounding. He could unclog the strange mess in his throat, while he was at it. Instead, he threw his head back and wondered if it would be too rude to focus on the TV; now that Felix had knocked on the door of his own room, sat down on his bed, and looked directly into his soul, he had nowhere else to go.
“You’re gonna laugh at me.”
“Is that what you’re scared of?”
Jisung frowned. “I’m not scared,” he lied through his teeth.
With a sigh, Felix joined him lying on his bed, essentially spooning Jisung like he always did with his dumb Changbin pillow. “Well, I’m a bit. Scared, I mean.”
They were so close. Jisung could’ve turned around and tasted Felix’s breath on his lips, could’ve felt his heartbeat through his skin. The thought was like freefall: exhilarating, practically tempting him to jump. “You shouldn’t be.”
“Did I do something wrong?” Felix asked, and his voice was so tiny that Jisung couldn’t help himself.
He turned around, facing Felix, focusing on a single freckle that rested right on the bridge of his nose. “You couldn’t do something wrong if you tried.”
Felix huffed out a laugh. “Now that’s just not true.”
“You know what I mean.”
Out of nowhere, Jisung wished he had been listening to music before Felix had walked in unprompted. At least he could’ve focused on that, instead of hearing each breath Felix took as clearly as if it was his own. Silence was sticky, malleable.
After a moment, Jisung found his own voice again. “I’ll tell you tomorrow,” he said.
A coward, through and through. He could’ve kissed Felix’s entire face if he had had the guts; he could’ve tasted what victory felt like if he hadn’t been tied down by his own self.
And yet, through the faint blue light of the TV, Felix was smiling as if he knew exactly what Jisung was thinking about. He pushed himself closer and planted a kiss on Jisung’s cheek, sweet and gentle. “Deal.”
Liftoff
The last time Jisung had woken up before his alarm went off had been the day of his first proper performance in front of an audience, so long ago that he’d forgotten about it completely. He wished he was half as confident on his kissing skills as he was on his rapping; maybe he would have avoided the stress stomachache that he could already feel coming.
Breakfast tasted like nothing, barely spiked by the taste of coffee that he’d brewed way too strong but that wasn’t enough to wake him up properly. The only thing that shook him out of his daze was his phone notifications, going off with at least four new texts incoming at once.
Jisung stared at them, nervous giggles dissolving through the tension in his shoulders. Felix had sent him a heart emoji, followed by a good morning text, followed by a good morning text in English, followed by three other random emojis in separate messages. For once, the guy’s tendency to send a million short texts endeared Jisung more than it annoyed him. Shit, he was going soft.
He breathed out all the air in his lungs at once. This was Felix, for fuck’s sake. Jisung could do this.
Their schedule had never dragged on as endlessly as it did that day. Jisung went through the motions, hamming it up maybe a bit too much during the filming of their new variety appearance but being rewarded by laughs all around. Felix laughed as easily and openly as usual, clapping delightedly and smiling in Jisung’s direction, maybe a bit too much.
Jisung refused to think that he was imagining things. The ghost of the peck on his cheek still reminded him, Felix’s low voice seeming to remind him of his promise with each glance. By the time their team won some kind of game and Felix essentially jumped to his arms in celebration, he knew he could take the plunge. Felix was warm and alive and giggly in his arms as Jisung spun him around as best as he could, and he knew he could do this.
The funny thing about time was that no matter how slowly it seemed to pass, the finish line always arrived in the end. Jisung found himself washing the grime and the make-up of the day under a spray of water hot enough to sting, the exhaustion of the day already settling like a familiar layer of dust on his bones. For a split second he fantasized about Felix forgetting all about their deal, and he was surprised to see how much the idea hurt him.
“Jisung? You in here?”
Jisung squeaked, suddenly afraid of having summoned Felix with his thoughts. He could see his silhouette through the shower curtain, fuzzy in the edges from the condensation. “What the hell, Lix.”
Felix laughed. “Channie hyung told me you were showering!”
“So you just, like, walked in?”
“He was right, wasn’t he?”
Jisung closed the faucet and reached for the towel, goosebumps littering his skin from the sudden lack of warmth. He laughed nervously. “I mean, I know you’ve seen me naked before, but—”
“That’s fine, I can wait here.”
Little weirdo. Jisung laughed again. He wrapped the towel around his waist, suddenly eager to get out and see him. “Why did you send that one emoji, by the way?”
“The black cat one? You know I like cats,” Felix answered, puzzled.
“No, the fucking—the rainbow, dude.” Jisung reached for the curtain, only to find that Felix had done the same and was keeping it closed instead.
“Oh, just because,” Felix shrugged, still keeping him trapped inside the shower.
Jisung huffed out a laugh, struggling to reach for any part of Felix through the slippery plastic. He touched something that felt like his nose, and his teeth, and then he was getting closer, still giggling, still dripping wet and cold, and then the curtain was gone and they were kissing.
The best part about creating music was the moment when the clouds parted and you could see the song clearly for the first time. And now, Jisung thought dazedly, he was seeing everything just as clearly as a brand new sky. He giggled into Felix’s mouth, breathless.
Felix hummed. “What?”
“Nothing. I like this.”
Felix tasted like mint toothpaste, and his teeth were sharper than Jisung’s wildest night fantasies. He couldn’t focus on anything but how easily their mouths fell into each other, how he didn’t need to think. What the hell had he worried so much about? Another giggle bubbled up his throat, and this time Felix laughed too.
“I knew it.”
Jisung opened his eyes. “Shut up. We’re kissing now. Shush.”
“That we are,” Felix laughed. His hands were wandering all over Jisung, raising brand new goosebumps and tickling him in all the right places.
Jisung reached for Felix’s hair, grabbing a fistful and pulling in a flash of boldness. Felix groaned into his mouth. “Took you long fucking enough,” he whispered.
Heat that had nothing to do with the fogged up bathroom took over Jisung, spreading all the way from where Felix was licking into his mouth to every inch of his skin. His anxiety had melted like a piece of candy under the sun of Felix’s presence, and he smiled again.