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By the time April rolls around, that day in December has faded into a dream, gossamer and threadbare and ephemeral at the edges, but that doesn’t mean Hyunjin has forgotten.
“Do you think he feels weird about it?” he asks Felix one morning, having secreted himself away to the other dorm. He’s on his back on Felix’s bed, head half-tipped over the edge so he can stare at the closed door and pretend he feels casual about this.
Felix is sitting on the floor, back to the wall, and eating a jerky strip. “I ‘unno,” he says around a bite. “Maybe like, a little awkward?”
Hyunjin groans. “He’s avoiding me.”
“No he isn’t.”
“Yes he is! We’re in the same group, obviously he can’t avoid me, but he hasn’t touched me in nine days.”
Felix swallows, and then his mouth tips into an amused smile. “You’re keeping track?”
Hyunjin throws a pillow at him, which Felix dodges neatly. “Come on, I need support. Should I just ask him if he’s mad at me and get it over with?”
Felix’s expression sobers a bit. “Why would he be mad at you?” When Hyunjin doesn’t answer, he throws the pillow back, hitting Hyunjin square on the nose. “Yah, why would he be mad? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Maybe I’m a bad kisser.”
“Stop fishing for compliments.”
“I think I made him uncomfortable,” Hyunjin says. He kicks himself up until he’s lying on the bed properly, curled into a comma because he’s not done feeling sorry for himself and doesn’t want to keep looking Felix in his beautiful, sympathetic upside-down face. “He seemed so off afterwards, do you remember? Like I upset him. He said we were fine but he wouldn’t tell me if I did something, I don’t think. Not if it was about this. He would just keep it in.”
There’s a sigh, and then some rustling, and then the bed is dipping next to him as Felix joins him, attaching himself to Hyunjin like a backpack. “I think you should talk to him, baby. I didn’t realize you were still tearing yourself up over it.”
“It’s been months,” Hyunjin says. He can hear how small his own voice sounds. “What if I messed everything up and it’s too late to fix it?” What if he doesn’t want me anymore? is the ugly question he can’t bear to ask aloud.
“Never too late,” Felix replies, with such confidence that for a moment Hyunjin forgets to doubt him. “He’ll be proud of you for opening up to him. You know he will.”
“I don’t want him to be proud,” Hyunjin lies, “I just want things to be normal between us.”
Felix pats him on the stomach comfortingly. “It’ll work out. He adores you. I bet he’s not mad.”
Hyunjin doesn’t say that it’s worse if Changbin isn’t mad. Changbin getting mad is scary sometimes, but it’s not unfamiliar. It doesn’t make a pit open up in Hyunjin’s stomach and threaten to swallow him up from the inside out. Hyunjin doesn’t feel guilty because he thinks Changbin will be angry.
No, that would be much simpler, and the reality is a tangled mess that Hyunjin keeps getting caught in like so many spiderwebs.
I want him to look at me like he loves me again, Hyunjin doesn’t say, because it’s selfish and unfair. But it’s true.
“You could always ask hyung about it,” Felix says, jerking his head toward the door.
There’s only one hyung who lives in this dorm, and he has a propensity for shoving tissues into Hyunjin’s mouth. But somehow, even still, it’s not a bad idea. “Maybe I will,” he answers. “You think he’d know?”
“They used to talk a lot,” Felix says. “In our room at the old dorm, when Channie-hyung was out. I think they didn’t realize I was under the covers, or thought I was asleep or something.”
“What did they say?” Hyunjin demands.
Felix giggles. “Honestly they just insulted each other a lot, and then sometimes would sit in tragic silence. It was weird but it seemed to make them both feel better.”
“Ugh.”
“Sorry I can’t be more helpful.”
There’s nothing to apologize for, so Hyunjin waves him off, hoisting himself up and ruffling Felix’s hair as he rights himself. “It’s fine. I’m gonna go next door I guess.”
“Good luck!” Felix cheers him on, and Hyunjin walks out with at least half a smile on his face despite the sneaking uncertainty that Changbin wants anything to do with him at all. Only one way to find out, he supposes.
/
Minho, maybe unsurprisingly, is less than elated to open the door to Hyunjin’s pleading expression. “What,” he says flatly.
He’d murder someone for you without blinking, Hyunjin reminds himself, which helps him regain his confidence in the face of that glare. “I have a question for you.”
“Okay.”
He chickens out at the last second, asking the easier question instead, though it comes out no less awkwardly. “Do you think Changbin-hyung, like… is into me?”
Minho just stares at him for a long moment. “Jesus,” he says at last. “Come in, I guess.”
/
Hyunjin has been dithering aloud in circles for upwards of five minutes when Minho cuts back into the conversation.
“Spit it out,” he demands. He’s sitting on his bed with a droll expression, watching Hyunjin make a fool of himself on the floor.
“Hyung and I kissed a few months ago,” Hyunjin says, squeezing his eyes shut. When he’s met with silence, he opens them again, and Minho looks exactly the same. “You knew.”
Minho shrugs.
Hyunjin rolls his eyes in response, masking his growing nerves. Every time he turns this puzzle over in his head, the answer looks more and more like the one he’s been trying to deny. “Okay, well, I’m freaking out.”
“You’re always freaking out.”
“Why did I think you would be helpful?” Hyunjin asks aloud.
“I have no idea.” Minho pokes him in the side with a socked foot, making him jump. “You should just talk to Changbin.”
“Well, Felix said hyung probably isn’t mad or anything, but I’m nervous to just ask him about it directly. You know how he gets all like, serious about stuff.”
“You told Felix?” Minho asks, eyebrows shooting up.
Hyunjin rolls his eyes. “Everything is fair game with the 00-line. You should know this, your boyfriend is one of us.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Minho shoots back immediately.
“He literally is.”
“I barely tolerate him.”
“Ugh,” Hyunjin says. “Whatever, I’m just saying we don’t really have secrets. And I needed advice, and Felix is nice to me.”
“If you wanted someone to be nice to you, you wouldn’t have come to me.”
God, Minho is so dramatic. “I know that. I just don’t know what to do. It happened months ago, and he hasn’t said anything, and I keep twisting it around in my head. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I miss him even though I see him literally every day.”
“Again, you should be telling him this.”
“I don’t know how!”
“Ah, hyung,” Minho says, in a terrible high-pitched impression of someone who is apparently supposed to be Hyunjin, “I’ve been pining terribly. I know you’re short and weird and do a lot of aegyo but I think you’re the love of my life—”
Hyunjin smacks him, dodges a kick, and then smacks him again for good measure. “You are the worst,” he huffs, still adrift on how to proceed and now embarrassed to boot. “I’m never telling you anything again.”
“Oh no,” Minho answers sarcastically.
A knock at the door interrupts Hyunjin’s train of thought, which had been primarily focused on coming up with a good comeback, and Hyunjin freezes. A moment later, the door creaks open, and Seungmin pokes his head in.
“Seungmin-ah,” Hyunjin breathes, relieved, “can you tell your boyfriend he’s being an asshole?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Seungmin says, at the exact time Minho says, “I’m not his boyfriend.” They both laugh, meeting eyes. Hyunjin is going to be alone forever.
“Never mind,” he declares, running hand through his hair as if flipping it before flouncing out.
While Seungmin offers a token effort, Minho doesn’t try to stop him from leaving, and they’re both still giggling when Hyunjin walks out the door, no closer to answers than he was before and significantly more stressed out about it all.
/
That night, when Hyunjin is lying alone in his bed, he puts in his earbuds and closes his eyes. Their kiss in Japan comes to him in lush sensory detail, every moment so vivid he stops being able to tell what’s embellishment and which memories are real. Did Changbin really look at him so tenderly? Did Hyunjin really try to flirt while they giggled together, limbs intertwined on the bed? Or was it a normal evening, nothing special, not even for Changbin who guards himself so carefully?
In their old dorms, and before Seungmin and Minho had gotten together, Hyunjin would have probably climbed into Seungmin’s bed. It’s the quietest place in the world when Hyunjin’s head feels loud, but this storm is his to bear alone.
I like Changbin, he mouths to himself, just to test out the shape of it in his mouth. How embarrassing. How utterly true, with the ring of something he’s known longer than he’s known it. In a way, it’s a comfort to admit it to himself.
It takes him a very long time to fall asleep that night, and longer to shake off the cobwebs from a dream he can’t remember when he wakes up.
/
For all that Minho’s advice was useless, he gets points for simplicity. Just tell him. It’s not exactly rocket science. Hyunjin is absolutely not going to do that, but he can appreciate the directness.
Instead, Hyunjin starts observing.
The first time he tells Changbin he wants to go to the gym with him, he’s laughed off, but it doesn’t stop him. He tries again the next day, and Changbin’s surprise remains but he tentatively agrees.
Sixty minutes later, Hyunjin needs to be bailed out from a squat, and he nearly cries with relief when he’s allowed to sink to the floor, legs jelly. So that’s a bust. Though Changbin’s warm laughter as he helps Hyunjin up might have been worth that pain even as it makes Hyunjin’s heart do cartwheels in his chest.
Nevertheless, Hyunjin perseveres.
Over the next two weeks he does all of the reconnaissance he can manage, even going so far as to rope in Jisung, who’s un-nosy by nature but loves a scheme, to try to gather information on Changbin’s feelings or lack thereof toward Hyunjin.
The screenshot he gets back of the text conversation makes him sigh exasperatedly, Jisung’s half-assed attempt met only with Changbin steamrolling right past to discuss logistics for a recording session for some guide they’re working on, which Jisung of course falls right into without sparing another thought for Hyunjin’s plight, doubly frustrating because he’d only called in help in the first place because he keeps sabotaging himself.
A food run turns into Hyunjin panic-inviting the whole group out for a noodle date. An attempt at flirting leads to a faceplant of a bad joke in a conversation that Changbin extricates himself from the moment Jeongin plaintively wails about needing help buttoning the back of his shirt. I love you, Hyunjin thinks determinedly in Changbin’s direction, as if Changbin will be able to read his mind and respond in turn, and Changbin asks if he needs some water or a snack because he’s looking a little piqued.
Fruitless effort after fruitless effort— it starts to wear on Hyunjin, even as he knows he’s only getting into his own way.
It’s fun if it’s a game. It’s less fun when he’s genuinely not sure how to confirm what Changbin wants, or how long he’ll keep wanting it even if that thing is Hyunjin.
“This is the opposite of what I told you to do,” Minho complains after practice one day, when only the two of them remain to buff out some imperfections on their respective dance break parts.
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
Minho scoffs. “I don’t care,” he replies, “but I think you’re jerking him around. Stop being weird and just talk to him.”
“I can’t do that! Hyung, can’t you be a good friend and complain with me about how complicated he is to read?”
“You do realize I was loyal to him first.” Minho sounds like he’s joking, but the quick darting of his eyes, nervous and shifting, gives him away.
Hyunjin clamps down on his bottom lip with his teeth. “Sorry.”
“It’s not a competition. I love all of my children equally. But I can’t deal with your complaining about a situation you could easily change.”
The worst part of all of this is that Minho isn’t wrong.
/
Hyunjin means to talk to Changbin. He really, sincerely does.
But Changbin is busy, suddenly entering a writing fugue that has him in the studio pretty much any time they’re not at a schedule or asleep, and Hyunjin doesn’t want to bother him.
But Changbin keeps looking at him like his heart is half-broken and Hyunjin balks at the honesty.
But Hyunjin is scared out of his mind, and there’s no easy way to put what he feels into words that aren’t too blunt or awkward, and he wants it to be perfect but he just can’t find the moment to lay it all out like an offering.
The closest they get is one night when Changbin arrives at his room, laptop in hand, and asks Hyunjin to listen to a song. Hyunjin means to be normal about it like he’s meant to be normal about everything lately, but his nerves are shot. He’s jumpy, awkward. He can tell that his review—it’s really nice, hyung—is landing flat even before Changbin’s expression goes a little blank in response, like he’s holding something back.
“I won’t take up any more of your time,” Changbin says. It’s diplomatic and kind. It’s not what Hyunjin wants at all. It isn’t in the plan.
The plan doesn’t really have legs, no, or a shape or a script, but Hyunjin has been clinging to it through the tempest of his own emotions.
I’m in love with him, Hyunjin thinks miserably as he stares at the line of Changbin’s shoulders. It’s not a comfort this time.
He could ask Changbin to come back, but to what end? To make things weird again? With every day that passes he’s less and less sure of what he’s doing. With every uncomfortable encounter it feels like he’s only driving Changbin further away.
Starting the conversation is scary. What would come after is scarier still. Naver search: how to be excited for something that might hurt you?
The results are irrelevant, and they don’t help.
/
Here is the most mortifying part of all: Hyunjin knows. Changbin isn’t exactly subtle. Hyunjin is worried about making things weird, and being a bad communicator, and that Changbin will get bored once dating Hyunjin loses its novelty, but he’s not worried that Changbin won’t confess back.
It’s the rest. It’s the goofy way Changbin flirts with him, shameless and giggly. It’s the way Hyunjin’s crush, which he didn’t even realize existed until maybe two months ago, well after their makeout session, was thrilling at first. Exciting. Hyunjin has always loved a chase, and loves being chased even more, but that’s not what this is. Changbin is all grounded support. All unflinching determination in the name of a challenge. He’s handsome and he’s kind and he’d do anything for Hyunjin. It’s a lot.
Changbin looks at him sometimes like he’s hung the moon and stars, and Hyunjin… Hyunjin didn’t hang anything anywhere. Hyunjin is a mess.
He doesn’t want this to become another thing he ruins simply by virtue of wanting it too badly.
/
“You’re making yourself miserable,” Seungmin says to him one night in a soft voice. Hyunjin’s head is in his lap and he’s patiently stroking Hyunjin’s hair. He’s an angel.
“I should have fallen for you instead,” Hyunjin bemoans.
Seungmin laughs, tugging gently at a lock of Hyunjin’s hair. “You’re too sweet for me, sorry.”
A long moment passes then. In the willowy low-light of Seungmin’s room, Hyunjin’s brain is just slow enough to consider bravery. “I’ll tell him,” he says. It’s barely more than a whisper, but he means it in the moment. He’ll find a way. It’s fine if it’s not perfect—all putting it off is doing is making things worse. He needs to tell Changbin how he feels once and for all.
But he doesn’t. And another week passes. And Hyunjin feels more and more pathetic with every single day.
/
During week four, Felix intervenes, and he brings backup. So not only does Hyunjin have to deal with the shame of his own inability to have a single conversation with Changbin where Hyunjin isn’t being extremely awkward, but now Chan’s earnest, concerned leader face has entered the game.
“Is everyone just going to know my business now?” Hyunjin asks after Chan is done reminding Hyunjin that they’re all here for him and want both him and Changbin to be happy.
“You’ve kind of made it everyone’s business,” Felix observes gently.
Chan is still holding one of Hyunjin’s hands. Hyunjin doesn’t take it back quite yet. “We’re here for you,” Chan says again. “And also, we would be really here for it if you confessed and got it over with. Do you really think he’d react badly? I’m genuinely asking.”
Hyunjin huffs a sigh and stops answering, instead waiting until Felix long-sufferingly changes the subject to engage again.
Just five minutes later, Jisung pokes his head in. Hyunjin groans.
“Oh, baby,” Jisung says, laughing, “are you that happy to see me?”
“We’re discussing Hyunjin’s boy problems,” Felix offers, and neatly dodges the kick Hyunjin sends his way. “What, what? It’s true.”
Jisung bounces over, grabbing Hyunjin’s face between his hands and shaking it a little. “Hyunjin-ah, you’re beautiful and you can get any man you want.”
“Hyung,” Hyunjin pleads, trying to move his head enough to send Chan a plaintive look.
Chan looks like he wants to intervene but can’t find the energy. Hyunjin can empathize with that much, at least.
“You should tell him!” Felix encourages.
Jisung immediately agrees, moving Hyunjin’s head so he’s nodding up and down. “Definitely.”
“You don’t even know who we’re talking about,” Hyunjin complains.
Jisung laughs. “I can pretend I don’t know if it would make you feel better.”
“Oh my god.”
“If it helps, he’s just as much of a wreck right now.”
“Han-ah,” Chan warns.
Jisung rolls his eyes. “Okay, sorry, we’re all pretending. Take your time, Jin. It’s not like anyone else is being affected by the two of you being incapable of pulling your heads out of your asses.”
It’s classic Jisung, isn’t it? Come in loud and bright and happy and then slip the knife under Hyunjin’s ribs. This many years in and Hyunjin still forgets to look for the sharpness in his smile. He means well, Hyunjin knows, even if the honesty stings. That’s the difference between then and now. But Jisung is still right, and it still hurts.
/
“I don’t think I can live up to the version of me that’s in his head,” Hyunjin admits on the elevator. They’re passing floor two en route to the fourteenth.
Minho groans. “Are we back on this?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. How can two people be so dense? Seungminie and I weren’t that bad, were we?”
“Seungminie and I weren’t that bad,” Hyunjin mimics childishly, and flinches when Minho fakes a lunge at him. “Sorry, sorry. I don’t think you were, but that’s also because it happened so fast for you guys. Seungmin was determined, he’s like a dog with a bone sometimes.”
“Am I the bone in this metaphor?” Minho asks.
Hyunjin rolls his eyes and sighs as long-sufferingly as he can. “It’s a different situation. Changbin-hyung could change his mind at any time once he’s close enough to see what I’m really like.”
Minho scoffs at that, and his voice goes serious. “You really think you’re hiding anything from him? From any of us?” The way his expression has darkened makes Hyunjin freeze in place. “We know that you’re dramatic and petty. We know you get overly sentimental and think yourself in circles. You never go to bed on time, you start arguments over nothing when you’re tired, you keep messing up the lead-in into the title track’s bridge even though I know you know it. I could keep going, but you get the point. What horrible thing could he possibly learn about you that he doesn’t already know?”
“Is this the part where you also say the things you like about me?” Hyunjin asks hopefully, to mask the way his heart is pounding in his chest, overwhelmed and confused and struggling to process what Minho is telling him.
Minho shakes his head. “Go ask Changbin about that. I’m sure he’d be happy to wax poetic about you.”
“Maybe I will,” Hyunjin says, and tries to mean it.
“Make the decision or someone will make it for you,” Minho answers, vaguely threatening, just as the elevator doors open. “And get out of my sight before I make my problems your problems.”
Hyunjin scampers out before he has to learn what Minho means by that.
/
In Japan, Changbin had kissed Hyunjin like he was something precious. Hyunjin has kissed many people before and since, most of them in his own group, but he doesn’t know how to forget the trail of shy heat he’d felt bloom across his cheek when Changbin stroked it.
In his dream that night, someone is holding Hyunjin very, very carefully, but when he turns around to see who it is he’s alone.
/
He wakes up the next morning to Changbin peering at him from the side of the bed.
For a hysterical moment, Hyunjin thinks he manifested this while unconscious, and shoots upright. “Hyung?” he asks, seeking any amount of grounding.
Changbin happily provides it, catching Hyunjin’s hand in his own and laughing, low and quiet and fond. “Morning. Sorry I startled you.”
“It’s fine,” Hyunjin replies automatically, drinking him in. Their faces haven’t been this close to each other in what feels like months. “Did I oversleep?”
“Not today. Still have an hour or so before you need to be up. Are you tired?”
“Yeah,” Hyunjin answers. He can’t help his pout, too sleepy to start calculating whether this might be a good opportunity to confess, and/or what would need to go into making it better. “Do you need me for something?”
Changbin’s smile goes wry. “I heard you wanted to talk to me.”
Hyunjin lies back down, shoving his pillow over his face. “Lee Know-hyung?” he asks, voice coming out muffled through the fabric.
Changbin laughs again. “Seungminie, actually.”
“Traitor,” Hyunjin hisses.
Changbin pats his belly consolingly through the thick layer of the duvet. “I don’t know what you wanted to talk about, if that helps. He didn’t give details, just said you wanted to talk and that I should come find you sooner rather than later.”
“He’s a snake and I hope he wakes up feeling like absolute garbage for betraying me.”
“Hyunjin-ah,” Changbin cajoles, “it can’t be that bad. Forget your revenge plans and talk to me.”
“I can’t.”
The hand on his stomach shakes him a little. “Yes you can.”
“It’s too embarrassing. You don’t want to hear it.”
“Try me.”
Hyunjin doesn’t answer. This still doesn’t feel real, though the haze of sleep is fading quickly to make room for the sober, anxious drum of his heartbeat at being confronted. None of the versions of this conversation he’d made up in his head involved Changbin figuring him out, even in this abstract of a sense. Hyunjin was supposed to make a plan. He was going to script it all out, maybe plan for a rainy day so they could do it outside somewhere. Hyunjin looks really good with wet hair. This isn’t fair.
Changbin sighs and peels back the duvet—easily defeating Hyunjin’s meager attempts at resisting while still holding a pillow to his face with one hand—before climbing into the bed with him. He’s flat on his back. Hyunjin can feel his warmth.
“Hyunjin-ah,” Changbin whispers.
Hyunjin is frozen like a prey animal. “Hm?”
“Hyung is sorry.”
Hyunjin pulls the pillow away just enough to take a breath and answer, low, “For what?”
“For whatever’s been making you look so sad whenever we’re in the same room lately.”
“I’m not sad,” Hyunjin protests, but it’s weak.
Changbin’s answering hum is disbelieving but indulgent. “Tell hyung what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Hyunjin replies, which is and isn’t a lie. “I’ve just been stressed.”
“Over me?”
“What do you think?” he asks. All at once he feels bone-tired, something sleep won’t fix. Pretending was easier for so long but he’s not sure that it is anymore. Maybe laying their cards out on the table will, at the very least, stop Hyunjin from feeling so sick with frightened guilt all the time.
Changbin seems to understand. “I think maybe we’re both being really stupid.” He laughs awkwardly. “I can— hyung will lead the conversation if you want. You know I’m always here for you. But I’m still nervous.”
It’s just gone May. Spring is a romantic season, isn’t it? Maybe Hyunjin, after an entire young adulthood of pushing and reaching and grabbing at everything he can shake out of this life, should finally start learning to take what he can get.
“I’m nervous too,” he admits.
Changbin’s answering smile is small and gentle. “You’re the only member I’ve kissed.”
Mortifyingly, Hyunjin feels himself start to blush. “I think I knew that, but I wasn’t totally sure.”
Like a secret, Changbin says, “You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted to.”
“Ever? That’s a lie.”
Changbin’s face pulls into chagrin, caught-out. “Let me be romantic.”
“Are we? Being romantic?”
“I think that’s up to you.”
“No,” Hyunjin says, “no, it’s up to both of us. I don’t want hyung to just do what I want to do, that’s not fair.”
“You’re right,” Changbin says. He reaches up to trace his pointer finger down the slope of Hyunjin’s nose. He’s still wearing that sweet half-moon curve of a smile. “How about this? I’m basically in love with you, and I’m not hiding it. I haven’t been for a while. I want anything you’ll give me.”
“Anything?” Hyunjin asks. He can’t help it. He’s smiling too. “Careful, hyung, the power will go to my head.”
“You’re pretty when you’re on a power trip.”
“You always think I’m pretty.”
Changbin’s smile turns to a grin. “Was I that obvious?”
Hyunjin shoves at him. They end up tussling a bit, so like that night in the hotel where starlight played audience to their nonsense. With Changbin it’s fun. With Changbin it’s easy. Now that they’re talking to each other, Hyunjin almost forgets what had him so freaked out. If he falls he’ll be caught.
When Hyunjin’s heart surfaces from the way it’s been swooping, he’s looking up into Changbin’s face, expecting smugness and finding only contentment and calm.
“Are you going to kiss me again?” Hyunjin asks hopefully.
Changbin collapses a little and giggles directly into Hyunjin’s neck, causing him to shriek at the feeling. “Shh,” Changbin tries, picking himself up but still laughing, “you’re cute, calm down, it’s fine.”
Hyunjin pouts once he’s pulled himself together. He feels warm through his whole body, like he’s bathed in sunlight. “Kiss me,” he demands.
“Only if it means something,” Changbin says. He sounds a bit more serious now. “I told you how I feel. I still don’t know where you stand.”
Hyunjin huffs at being denied kisses, which is cruel and unusual, though he can understand the agony of waiting to know if someone feels the same way. “I want to live up to the person you love,” he says after a long moment of trying to put the words together in his head. “I like you so much, hyung. I want you to keep liking me even if we get together for real.”
“What do you mean, even if?”
“Like— you know. I’m not a perfect person.”
Changbin looks at him like he’s grown an extra head, which is simultaneously insulting and encouraging. “I do know that, yeah. Neither am I. Or any of us.”
“Yeah, but…” Hyunjin trails off. Takes a moment to gather his courage before saying what he’s needed to say this whole time. “I don’t want to disappoint you.”
“Hyunjin-ah,” Changbin says, holding Hyunjin’s name so delicately within the cradle of his voice. “You couldn’t.” Hyunjin scoffs. “Of course I could.”
“I don’t want some perfect version of you. That’s not what I want at all.”
“Isn’t that what everyone wants?”
“Not me,” Changbin repeats firmly.
He’s moved a bit, lying down next to Hyunjin. Their faces are very close together now. The duvet still separates them, but it feels like nothing under the force of Changbin’s gaze.
Hyunjin swallows. “I’m scared, hyung.”
“Of what, hm?”
The words come easier now that he’s letting them. “That you’ll get bored of me. That I’ll be weird or clingy and you’ll decide it was more fun to chase me than it is to have me.”
“That you’ll be weird or clingy?” Changbin asks. He looks so surprised Hyunjin cracks a smile.
“Well— okay, that’s fair.”
“I’m the clingiest person in the entire country,” Changbin continues. His expression shades back into nerves for a moment. “And I can try to be less that way if you want, but—”
“No,” Hyunjin interrupts, “no, no. Cling to me.”
“Yeah?”
Hyunjin nods emphatically. “Please.”
“So it’s fine if it’s me, then, but you’re not allowed.”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Hyunjin says. “I know I have a complex or something. But if you promise to tell me if you’re getting sick of me before we break up then I guess I can try not to worry so much.”
Changbin curls closer. Their noses are nearly touching. “You’re asking me to make you talk about your feelings?” He sounds delighted.
“Only if we have to.”
“We’ll talk to each other,” Changbin asserts. He makes it sound so easy. “We’ve been avoiding each other since December and that’s been terrible.”
“I haven’t been avoiding you.”
“You may as well have been.”
Hyunjin has to concede the point, flashing to back the number of awkward situations one or the other of them has had to forcibly eject themselves from recently. “I’m sorry.”
“How long have you known you wanted…?”
“To date you?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It is,” Hyunjin says. His mind is racing in all sorts of dangerous giddy directions. Dates where they sit next to each other while Changbin writes and Hyunjin paints. Lazy nights cuddling watching dramas. Changbin saving Hyunjin a seat next to him at every table. “I’ve known for a couple of months, I guess. I didn’t know when we— the first time we kissed. I should’ve, but I didn’t.”
“I had a feeling.”
Hyunjin must pull a tragic face, because Changbin is quick to jump back in.
“Hey, I don’t blame you. I hoped, but I knew it wasn’t the same for you then. What changed?”
It’s a good question. A hard one. “I don’t know if anything really changed,” Hyunjin says. “It was like I was realizing something I already knew.”
“Yeah?”
He’ll indulge Changbin. “I feel safe when I’m with you.”
“You are.”
Hyunjin smiles. “I know. And I bet I’ll feel even safer if you kiss me again. And if we become boyfriends. Ugh, we’ll probably have to talk a lot more about that too.”
“Ugh,” Changbin echoes, teasing.
“Chan-hyung is going to give us such a talk.”
Changbin nods to himself. “We can work it out, though, right? I know it’s complicated within the group, but it might be easier than dating outside anyway. We just need to make sure we communicate a lot. And to the members and stuff. It shouldn’t be too bad.” He sounds like he’s trying to guarantee a path forward with sheer determination, which is cute and also forgetting that this groundwork has already been laid down.
“I mean, if Minho-hyung and Seungmin can pull it off, I think anyone can.”
“As much as I hate to use those two as a model for anything,” Changbin says, “you’re right that they have something figured out.”
“They’re so weird. And so peaceful.”
Changbin snorts. “I’m not trying to be like them. But it’s nice to know it can work at all, I guess.”
“Yeah.”
“You know I’d give you anything if it made you happy.”
All of this talking, and Hyunjin is still tragically unkissed. “Hyung,” he says, pushing his lips into a pout, “anything?”
“You’re so spoiled,” Changbin answers, on a helplessly fond sigh.
Hyunjin likes being spoiled. He likes being the object of Changbin’s attention, all of that eager focus and determined regard. He likes how much Changbin likes him, and the way the thread of their relationship pulls and stretches and snaps into place, how they tease each other, how Changbin always lets Hyunjin bring him in on the joke. Sometimes, when Changbin plays along, Hyunjin is so pleased he hardly knows what to do with himself, mirth bubbling up like soda in his chest and spearing him with a lightness he used to be scared to hope for. Let’s stay like this, he wants to beg Changbin. You and me, our fun, our silliness, our romance, our mess.
When Changbin leans in, slowly, finally, the press of his thumb on the hinge of Hyunjin’s jaw is every promise he’ll ever need.