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Hoseok has to box up all of Jeongguk’s stuff. Taehyung gives him a look when he tells him this. “Why? What stuff do you have to box up? And - does it… Like. Matter?”
Does it matter.
Does it matter?
Taehyung asks because even if Jeongguk sees his favorite hoodie left behind on the back of Hoseok’s kitchen chair, or if he finds all of the copies of books he’s stolen from him over the years, or his favorite shampoo that he leaves in Hoseok’s shower for when he spends the night, it won’t matter.
He won’t remember any of it.
But. Hoseok decides. Best to box it all up for now.
“It’s not for him, it’s for you,” Namjoon says, nodding. Hoseok doesn’t need anyone to think that any of this is about him. It’s not. It’s about Jeongguk. His Jeongguk. Lying in a hospital bed still looking half dead but at least conscious now, in the middle of extensive testing for cognitive abilities, because he sustained major head trauma in a car accident.
Hoseok has been in and out to see him, while both unconscious and conscious now. They all have, but they all have received the same response. The same blank stare. No look of recognition or fondness. None of Jeongguk’s bunny smiles with crinkled nose when Hoseok throws himself on top of him (not that he would right now). There is nothing. It’s a blank page of a person on top of starchy white sheets. A whole lot of nothingness and nobody, because Jeongguk barely speaks even though he can, retaining both the motor skills and vocabulary for it. He just won’t speak to any of them, his friends, or even his family.
Because he doesn’t remember them. Any of them, or any of Hoseok.
“Honey,” Hoseok’s mother coos at him, brushing his hair back off his head. He’s been hiding in his apartment for the past couple of days now, not up to going back to the hospital. “I just spoke with Jeongguk’s mother. All the tests are coming in the same as the initial exams.”
Hoseok nods. “It’s permanent.”
She nods. “There’s no such thing as absolutes in memory loss, sweetie, but it looks like certain adjustments will need to be made.”
Can he do it? Can Hoseok befriend Jeongguk all over again? Maybe Jeongguk would be better off without him. Maybe Jeongguk could have a whole different set of friends and start over. Be happier. Jeongguk can be happy and Hoseok can be - whatever.
“We think it best if he came to live with you,” she adds.
“Wait - what? Are you serious?” Hoseok feels blindsided. Sure, Jeongguk basically lived with him before, but in time only. In name, he had his own place with Jimin. Jimin who bawled to the point of making a mess all over a nurse at the hospital when he staggered through the doors upon arrival of the news.
“Honey,” his mother says carefully, eyeing him. “I’ve spoken to the Jeons.”
“So you’ve said.”
“We’ve come to an agreement.” She sighs, fiddling with her bag in her lap. Whatever it is, Hoseok knows it won’t be good. “Jeongguk’s medical bills are immense, and they will continue to pile up for a while. Your father and I have agreed to pay them all.”
Hoseok wilts. Oh. “Yeah. That’s - great, Eomma.” His family’s money should be able to do some good, he thinks.
“There are conditions though. Everyone has agreed he shouldn’t live alone.”
“He doesn’t live alone - ”
“Jeongguk will move in with you at the end of next week,” she cuts him off. “They’re going to discharge him tomorrow. He’ll go home with his parents for a bit until they need to go back to work.”
“ …What?”
“It’s for the best, sweetie. He shouldn’t be alone, and you know him best.”
“Knew him.”
“And we were thinking of a wedding next spring. The weather might still be dicey in April, but before it gets too hot. I know Jeongguk hates the heat. Your father and I always thought that the gardens over in the Gwon district would suit you, and - ”
“Wait, wait. Who is getting married?” Hoseok asks, genuinely confused as to why his mother is boring him with details of a wedding when his best friend no longer remembers his name.
“Well. You and Jeongguk,” she says. “That’s one of the conditions. We’ll make sure that he gets everything he needs - any kind of medical assistance or mental health services - but the one condition on his end is that he will join the family.”
“By forcing him to marry me?”
What the actual fuck? His mother just dropped a small grenade in his lap and Hoseok doesn’t know where to look or what to think. This is a whole other level of insanity that Hoseok can’t wrap his head around, already can’t wrap his mind around how different things will be now that Jeongguk isn’t his friend, and she’s telling him that he’s meant to be his husband?
“What are you actually talking about? Jeongguk is a real breathing person who has just been through real trauma! He is not a publicity stunt for your company!”
His mother takes his hand and puts it in her lap, patting it. “Jung Hoseok, listen to me, okay?” She sighs, smiling at him so softly. Hoseok thinks this is already the most time they’ve spent together since he was about seven-years-old.
“It was always headed this way, wasn’t it?” she asks.
“What?” What was?
“You and Jeongguk. It was always going to be the two of you. Eventually, this is where things were headed. Honey, I know this is a bump in the road, but we have the means to make this happen for you and him both. It’s okay to let it happen now.”
Hoseok opens his mouth but finds he has nothing to say. A bump in the road?
A bump in the road?
A bump in the road would be discovering a new allergy or maybe getting fired from a job. Losing all of one’s memories is simply not a bump in the road.
“We weren’t even dating!” Hoseok finally shouts.
“Oh, honey,” she says in that mockingly patient voice, patting his cheek. How many times has she done this to him? Enough that when Hoseok closes his eyes and thinks of his mother, this is the exact moment he thinks of. “But you were in love with him.”
In love with Jeongguk? Well, obviously. Anyone who could see or hear would have been able to deduce that. What Hoseok felt for Jeongguk was immense to the point of encumbersome. It’s a physical weight he carries with him at all times, a love for a boy that started almost at the inception of memory itself for Hoseok. Jeongguk has always been known to Hoseok; they grew up together, and sure - Hoseok’s fantasies have always been that things will stay the same. That it would be just the two of them forever and ever, however that might look, but Hoseok never told Jeongguk that he might like it to entail romantic endeavors.
And now, he’s glad for that. How much harder could this have been for him? If Jeongguk had been his boyfriend, it would have been so much worse.
“Does he know?” Hoseok asks. “Did you tell him? Did his parents? That he was going to be shipped off with a total stranger?”
“We’re all strangers right now, honey, but we won’t be forever.” She kisses his cheek as she collects her bag. “We’ll be family.”
Jeongguk comes to him looking almost the same, delivered to him by his brother and mother with only a single duffle bag and a few cardboard boxes. “He didn’t want anything else,” his brother explains to Hoseok quietly, Jeongguk’s mother’s voice audible just barely in Hoseok’s second bedroom where they’re putting his stuff down.
If it was hard to see Jeongguk in the hospital looking ill, it feels ten times worse to see him standing in Hoseok’s apartment looking unsure what to do. He looks distinctly fawn-like, standing in a wide open space hunched in on himself, seemingly waiting for someone to tell him what to do, but it’s just the two of them now.
“Is it alright if I still speak familiarly with you?” Hoseok asks on his side of the kitchen island. Jeongguk shrugs.
“We were friends, right?”
Hoseok tastes bile.
“Well, you can call me whatever you like.”
Jeongguk grimaces. “Like husband?”
Hoseok startles; he was unaware if Jeongguk had been told that little detail or not yet. “Jeongguk, I - ”
“Do you want to marry me?” he interrupts, eyes still trained on the ground.
Hoseok doesn’t reply. He doesn’t want to lie and say no.
Jeongguk nods. “Right.” He pads away quietly on socked feet, closing the door behind him.
Prior to his accident, Jeongguk’s work was freelance, meaning now when he’s meant to return to “normal,” there is little normal schedule for him to follow. It doesn’t make things easy for him. Hoseok, for better or worse, has always thrived in a routine, and especially now in the mornings looks forward to escaping to his corner office in the company building to hide from his hardly present roommate. Surely, Jeongguk waits until Hoseok leaves, and that’s why he never sees him. The alternative is that he just truly never leaves his room. Which is worse? Hard to say. Either way, Hoseok tries to give Jeongguk plenty of space during the day, sometimes at night too, electing to crash on Seokjin’s couch every once in a while.
Seokjin narrows his eyes at him when he shows up a second night in a row. “If not here, I’ll just go to Minnie’s,” Hoseok says, crossing his arms. Jimin won’t kick him out, no matter what.
He just - would rather not be there, because that’s where Jeongguk used to live too.
“This can’t go on forever, Hob-ah.”
Hoseok collapses face first into his friend’s couch. “Well, apparently his memory loss can, so.”
It’s winter, and in a few mere months they’re supposed to get married. His mother (and often, sister) remind him every time he sees them. “Jeongguk will look very handsome in his color, don’t you think?” they say to him, picking out a new suit for the rehearsal dinner, because even that needs to be orchestrated to the nines even though there will only be about twenty people in attendance.
At home, Jeongguk cooks. “What is that?” Hoseok asks innocently, because food is a safe, neutral topic.
Jeongguk shrugs. “Don’t know. Just an experiment.”
What it is is Jeongguk’s version of homemade falafel, because he got on a falafel kick about a year ago and made it nonstop for two months. Maybe it should comfort Hoseok to see what looks like the same recipe being made, but his mouth tastes of ash.
“Tastes good, Gguk-ah. You always were a good cook,” he says when he is offered some.
Jeongguk shrugs. “Are you surprised I still am?”
“Not at all.” Memory loss doesn’t exactly work like that, after all, even if doctors and scientists can’t tell them how it’s supposed to work.
Jeongguk doesn’t eat. He likes to cook but doesn’t eat. Hoseok isn’t sure if he does it to curb boredom, or if because it’s purely for Hoseok, like that’s part of the agreement. Jeongguk is marrying him and he needs to play the role of the house wife, or some fucked up idea like that. Maybe Hoseok shouldn’t eat any of it either, but when it’s all Jeongguk offers him, it’s hard to decline.
“Will you come with me to my next doctor’s appointment?” he asks Hoseok a few days later. Most of Jeongguk’s time is still spent with doctors, or physical therapists, or his regular therapist.
“Um, sure?” Jeongguk has never asked him to before.
“I’m supposed to bring different people with me when I can,” he explains. “I don’t know if they think it’ll shake some memory loose or if they just want to make sure I’m not isolating myself, but.” Jeongguk shrugs.
Oh. Okay. So it’s not because he specifically wants Hoseok there. That’s fine. “No problem, Ggukie!” he says with as much enthusiasm as he can muster.
Except on the day of, Jeongguk balks in the garage. “Are you okay?” he asks, even though Hoseok knows that’s a stupid question. Jeongguk kind of just zones out in the direction of Hoseok’s car.
“Can we take your bike?” he asks quietly, one hand shyly coming up to grip Hoseok’s elbow. It feels like ice cold water poured down his back, because it’s the first time in almost three months that Jeongguk’s touched him.
“Sure, if that’s what you want?” Hoseok would admit to being confused if he didn’t want to spook Jeongguk while he’s willingly touching him; why does he want to take the bike? He’ll have to hold onto Hoseok the entire time, and they’ve been playing the long con game of hide and seek for weeks and weeks now.
“I know it’s stupid. I know a car is safer, but…” Jeongguk shrugs. Jeongguk had been in a little sedan like Hoseok’s when the accident happened. “Maybe a bike will feel easier. I dunno.”
“It will be different, that’s for sure.” Hoseok walks over to the trunk of his car next to his bike and opens it to find the spare helmet. “Put this on.”
Jeongguk dryly laughs. “Maybe one more knock on the head would do me some good.” He puts the helmet on anyway.
Truth is, Hoseok got his bike and his license for it on a whim, in part because Jeongguk didn’t think he’d ever do it. He didn’t use it all that much except for an alternative to a late night walk to clear his head. It was fun, sure, but like Jeongguk said - unsafe, especially in a city like Seoul.
“You’ll have to hold me tighter than that,” he says, grabbing Jeongguk’s tattooed arm and pulling him down the back of the seat so their torsos sit flush against one another. It’s only when Hoseok starts the engine that Jeongguk clamps on tight around his waist.
He’s grateful his dongsaeng can’t see his smile.
The hospital that Jeongguk gets the majority of his check-ups at isn’t far, but Hoseok might take the more scenic route to get there. Jeongguk settles against his back, helmeted head resting against the back of his by the time they come to a stop.
Neither one of them move out of their hunched position for a long moment.
“Thanks.” Jeongguk waits until they’re back home and sitting across the room from each other to bring it up.
“Did it jog any memories for you?” Hoseok asks, just a hint of teasing in his voice, because apparently they’re at the point they can joke about it.
“In a way,” Jeongguk replies quietly. “Reminded me what it must feel like to be a normal person.”
“Oh, Jeongguk - ”
“It’s fine, hyung.”
It’s the first time he’s called him hyung in months, too. Hoseok tears up and hopes the other doesn’t notice. “We could, uh. Go out for more rides. You know. If you’d like.”
Across an entire room, Jeongguk smiles the tiniest bit, barely visible in the dark light and in how low he hangs his head. Doesn’t even look Hoseok in the eye any more. “Sure, hyung.”
Hoseok doesn’t think he’ll take him up on it; he’s wrong.
Before Jeongguk wasn’t that interested in the bike, even if it was his dumb idea. Now Jeongguk loves it. Tells him he prefers it over riding in a car, even if statistically it’s less safe and doesn’t make any sense after surviving what should have been a fatal car accident. “The car flipped more than five times, the eye witness said,” he whispers to Hoseok in the dark on a bridge, bike parked between them.
“But I guess if you survive something like that, it’s nice to feel it in its own way,” he says another night, the bike parked beside the tiny tteokbokki cart.
“Jeongguk.”
But Jeongguk shrugs. A more nihilistic version of Hoseok wonders if he were in Jeongguk’s place, if he would have rather just never woken up, but he will never voice this question aloud to anyone, ever.
“What do you think I was like, back then?” Jeongguk asks. “Everyone has some version of me to tell. You never told me yours.”
“What did others tell you?”
Jeongguk shrugs. “That I was artistic, and musical. A good dancer. A so-so student.” Hoseok snorts. Jeongguk was a great student. He was good at everything. Is good at everything. “Seokjin told me my favorite food is his curry, which I suspect to be a lie, and Taehyung told me my favorite color is purple. Jimin used to live with me and tells me that I only like vanilla scented things, whereas Namjoon and Yoongi are always together and say that my favorite thing in the world is to act like I hate romantic dramas then stay up all night to watch them.”
Hoseok chuckles. “That is true. Or, was.”
They fall quiet for a short time to eat their tteokbokki. “Have you watched any recently?” Hoseok asks. “Do you still like them?” Are your tastes the same, he wants to ask. How different can a person become when given a total reset?
“I don’t know. Isn’t everything kind of a romantic drama?”
Hoseok squawks, “I think not! That zombie movie you watched with Joon-ah while I hid in my room certainly did not feel like a romantic drama!”
Jeongguk chuckles, scraping the bottom of his carton container. “Oh, there was plenty of romance and drama in it, though.”
Hoseok rolls his eyes and takes Jeongguk’s empty box from him to throw out the trash. When he turns back around, Jeongguk eyes him intently. “Some days, my life feels like a horror movie.”
Hoseok gulps. “And other days?”
“And other days,” Jeongguk looks down at Hoseok’s lips. “A romantic drama. For sure.”
Things are changing now. Jeongguk accompanies Hoseok to his mother’s wedding planning, and his mother, absolutely delighted, drags along Jeongguk’s mother so all four of them can taste cake and tea and inspect place settings together.
Jeongguk reaches for his hand before they go in to get the final fittings for their tuxes. It’s been five months since his accident and none of his memories have returned. He makes new ones, but it was twenty-four years of memories he lost so it will take another twenty-four to come close to replacing them.
“We weren’t romantic before, you know,” Hoseok confides to him, nestled on a small loveseat with Jeongguk while their mothers and Hoseok’s sister conduct the show.
Jeongguk leans in close, closer than he needs to. “Are you sure?” For once, he looks Hoseok right in the eyes and it’s him who looks away.
The last weeks leading up to the wedding are a blur, and Hoseok can’t catch his breath or keep his heart from racing. Every time he sees Jeongguk he feels faint, declines any dinner he makes for him and refuses to take Jeongguk for a bike ride. He tries to stay on Seokjin’s couch again at night, but his hyung chases him out. He goes back to his office and spends the next three days there without leaving once until his secretary politely suggests he refreshen himself at home.
When he walks through the door, it’s quiet and dark inside his apartment. As gingerly as he can, he tries to make it to his door before Jeongguk spies him, but from the dark living room his betrothed stands, almost robotically as he pivots on his heel and follows Hoseok down the hall.
“Where have you been?” he asks.
“Work.”
“Where have you been at night?”
“Fuck, we’re not married yet, Jeongguk!”
Jeongguk snaps forward to grab Hoseok’s wrist. “Why do you think you get to run away, huh?” He shakes Hoseok’s arm. “I’m the one who was hurt. I’m the one who is only told what to do and who to be, but you’re the one running away.”
“I’m sorry!”
“The only thing that feels right, feels like it might be a real memory, is kissing you, and loving you, but you told me we weren’t romantic!”
“We weren’t! We’ve never kissed!”
“Bullshit!”
Hoseok wretches his hand out of Jeongguk’s hold. “I wouldn’t lie to you about that! Just ask any of our friends. They’ll tell you. We weren’t together.”
Jeongguk stares. And stares. And he doesn’t say anything.
“...Did you? Ask them?”
Jeongguk nods.
“And they told you no, obviously.”
“They told me we were in love.”
“Oh. Jeongguk, that’s not - ”
“It’s true. I don’t need the memories to know it’s true.”
They stand silently in the dark hall between rooms and honestly - none of this feels romantic. They’re getting married in a week and it doesn’t feel full of love. Not like the love Hoseok imagined when about to wed. “Jeongguk, listen to me.” He takes in a deep breath. “If you don’t want to do this, there’s still time. I will get you the money. You don’t have to worry about anything. I can get you set up somewhere, I’ll get my lawyer to orchestrate an account that my parents can’t touch, I promise.”
“Hyung.” It’s almost a whimper. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“Right.”
Right.
“Can I stay with you tonight?” Jeongguk asks, biting his lower lip. It used to be pierced, before the accident. Hoseok hasn’t seen it since.
“Of course,” he rasps, opening the door to his room.
In bed, they lie side-by-side, then face-to-face. “I thought the whole point of me moving in was so I wouldn’t be alone, but you’re always gone.”
“Gguk,” he gasps. “I’m sorry. I - wanted to give you space. This relationship isn’t exactly… Equal, anymore.”
Jeongguk rolls onto his back to look up at the ceiling, silently in agreement, Hoseok supposes. “When we get married, can we start over?”
Despite himself, Hoseok half smiles. “Start over again?”
“Yeah. Except this time, we’ll both be clueless together.”
“Sure, Gguk-ah.” Honestly, Hoseok feels clueless all the time, so it’s no great stretch of the imagination for him.
On their wedding day, Jeongguk positively clings to Hoseok’s side all night. “I’m really sorry,” he says after stepping on the back of Hoseok’s heel for not the first or second time. “I just don’t remember any of these people, and they’re all here at once!”
They make it through the ceremony, Hoseok sweating buckets even though his mother is right - the weather is perfect that day. Jeongguk looks every bit the part of radiant groom, and he keeps his eyes plastered to Hoseok’s so he doesn’t have to look at anyone else. He doesn’t even look up where they’re walking in the reception hall, hand clasped in Hoseok’s and half hiding behind his back.
Jeongguk was shy when he was young, but over the years he became just as social and outgoing as Hoseok. Now, it seems he’s reverted back into his old form. It makes Hoseok fondly think of their grade school days when Jeongguk was too little to play on the same playground as him.
Now, they’re married, and they’ve only kissed once. “Are you sure it will be our first kiss?” Jeongguk had asked in more than one way in the past week.
“I don’t think I also developed amnesia, Gguk.” Hoseok’s just imagined it so many times it feels like there could be memories of kissing his best friend. Like everything else leading up to their marriage, it doesn’t exactly feel romantic, but it doesn’t feel wrong either. How could it? Hoseok loves Jeongguk. He’s loved him for so long.
“I’m supposed to take your name, right?” he asks on the dance floor.
Hoseok pushes some of Jeongguk’s long hair behind his ear. “Why do you say that?”
“I dunno. Your family is important, right?”
“You’re my family now. I’ll take your name if you want.”
Jeongguk loses the deer in headlights look when they make it back home late that night, early the next day in actuality. He collapses into Hoseok’s bed where he’s been sleeping the past week and is snoring softly before he even removes his bowtie. Hoseok has to gently turn him over onto his back and loosen the tie and top of his shirt before crawling in next to him.
“So what’s it like being married to Ggukie?” Jimin asks him, the two of them spread out on the floor of the dance studio they have to themselves for the night. Jimin even strolled right in with bottles of soju.
“Not like I imagined it,” Hoseok confesses, and they both laugh at that, well aware that Hoseok did have fantasies of it before.
“Do you still love him?”
Hoseok frowns. “Of course. I don’t think I’ll ever stop, even if the version I fell in love with is no more. That’s - honestly irrelevant.”
Jimin nods, then throws his head back for another swig. “Do you think you can love this version too?”
Hoseok thinks about Jeongguk who’s already learned how Hoseok likes to organize his kitchen, who makes dinner for him most nights and when he doesn’t leaves a cute note on the fridge. He thinks about their long bike rides together, sitting pressed into one another both on the bike and off of it as they quietly order hotteok at midnight.
Hoseok got what he wanted. It was his fantasy that he and Jeongguk would be together forever, just the two of them, no matter what.
Be careful what you wish for.
“I would love any version.”
Time doesn’t slow down, or change. Jeongguk doesn’t “get better.” The memories don’t come back, but with time lips become looser, and no one minds telling or hearing old memories. For a long time, no one wanted to talk about the past in front of Jeongguk; maybe because they were waiting for him to remember on his own, or maybe because it was painful for them. It doesn't matter any more.
Jeongguk listens to the stories with less of a pained look now and more thoughtful instead. Serious, like he’s studying what they tell him. “But I was clearly in love with you,” he says to Hoseok. “And we seriously never dated? Not once? Not like a hint?”
He says this in front of all of their friends and they laugh, boisterously. Hoseok blushes, hiding behind his drink.
“I prefer new JK,” Seokjin announces, immediately swatted by Jimin by his side and Taehyung from across the table, spilling Namjoon’s drink in the process. “What? Old JK silently pinned. New JK is getting it done!”
Yoongi groans, thunking his head on the table. Either because he’s had too much to drink or he regrets all of his friendships. Hoseok shifts to the side to hide behind his back because as small as his hyung is, he’s bigger than the beer in front of him.
Jeongguk pulls him away from Yoongi and lifts him into his lap. Seokjin hollers and claps while Yoongi actually stands up and moves to the other side of the booth to squeeze in next to Joon (but really sitting in his lap so they mirror Hoseok and Jeongguk).
“Maybe I should learn to drive your bike,” Jeongguk remarks a couple of nights later when it’s just the two of them on another late night jaunt.
“Wow, is this husband business going to your head? Do you feel all alpha, macho man now? Manhandling me how you want, insisting you pay for our dinner from our joint account, and now you want to be the one who drives.” It’s all teasing - truthfully, Hoseok knows how good it is that Jeongguk’s expressing interest in driving, because he hasn’t been behind the wheel of anything since his accident.
“I think it could be fun to be the one in charge for once,” his husband, formly best friend replies, leaning into Hoseok, lips a mere inch from his. Hoseok’s heart jumps into his throat, air audibly catching in his throat. Jeongguk grins.
“What’s gotten into you? It’s like all I had to do was put a ring on it,” Hoseok grumbles, but so very pleased that Jeongguk seems happier these days since the wedding.
He shrugs. “I feel more - settled, I guess. Now it feels like I can move on.”
Hoseok’s shoulders relax. For so long, he felt like Jeongguk’s jailer, like he was the one putting a ball and chain around his foot. For some, marriage could be a prison, and Hoseok didn’t want that for anyone, most of all Jeongguk, so to hear that the other man feels like he can move on now produces nothing short of unabashed giddiness on his part.
Jeongguk takes up his freelance work again; he doesn’t have to. Monetarily, he doesn’t ever need to work again, but it’s good for him. It’s a new (old) routine, something outside the confines of Hoseok and their apartment. Jeongguk starts hanging out with the others more regardless of whether Hoseok goes with or not.
“He seems a lot happier these days,” Taehyung mentions to Hoseok when he stops by his office just to show him some pictures of Jimin from their weekend, as if Hoseok hadn’t seen them already in his Instagram stories.
Hoseok hums; on his desk sits a framed photo from their wedding day, both smiling, and anyone who sees it comments on how happy they both look.
“You’re doing a good job, you know. It can’t have been easy, but…” Taehyung shrugs. “You always loved him the most, and it’s okay to let him love you back now. I know you’re worried because it’s not the same Jeongguk, or whatever, but. This Jeongguk loves you, just like the old Jeongguk loved you.”
Taehyung comes around Hoseok’s desk to pull him to his feet and shake his shoulders. “Do. Not. Waste. Your. Second. Chance!”
“Kim. Tae. Hyung.” Hoseok shakes his friend right back. “I love you. That is all.”
Physical intimacy at first isn’t kissing or sex; it’s holding hands on their way up from the garage to their apartment, then crawling into a bath together. Over the years, Hoseok has seen all of Jeongguk’s body more than once, but not like this. Not in an open invitation. Hoseok gets to touch with all the intentions he’s always had, sliding his hands up and down in and out of the water while appreciating Jeongguk.
“You’re so pretty, and handsome. It’s unfair.” Hoseok pouts.
“But you’re pretty and handsome.”
Hoseok splashes some water at his husband, giggling with dripping wet hair all throughout the apartment the rest of the evening.
“Maybe this is the best way to fall in love,” Jeongguk whispers, head perched in Hoseok’s lap as they sunbathe on their balcony. They’ve been married for over six months, and it’s been more than a year since Jeongguk’s accident.
“It wasn’t fair to you, but I came into this relationship with zero anything. Zero expectations, zero baggage.”
“I think some might call memory loss huge baggage, Gguk.” Hoseok combs his fingers through Jeongguk’s hair the way he knows the younger craves.
“You know what I mean, though.”
“I do.”
“You do?”
Hoseok hums. “I do.”
Jeongguk sits up from Hoseok’s lap and turns to face him. It’s dusk, the sun barely glowing at this point. Already the days are getting shorter, summer come and gone. It’ll be winter soon. The light on Jeongguk’s face reminds him of how radiant he looked on their wedding day, or on the day Jeongguk graduated college, of his face turned up to him when Hoseok was still taller and they played together on a playground.
Jeongguk’s face remains the same. Breathtaking. It’s amazing how it feels like nothing has changed at all, but for Hoseok, it did.
They share their second kiss.
And they don’t wait another six months for their third.
They don’t even wait six seconds.