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By the time it hits one o’ clock, almost everyone has vacated the living room floor. Taeyong, ever the lightweight, fell asleep around half past eleven, and Doyoung followed him to his bedroom soon after. The others either had excuses or other, more interesting late-night plans, and had dropped off, one by one.
That leaves three of them: Johnny, Ten, and Jaehyun.
Ten landed back in Korea a few days ago and with the lull in NCT 127’s schedules, it was Jaehyun’s idea to nab Ten while they still could and do something together.
In the dim lamp light, Johnny is almost reminded of Chiang Mai — on quieter nights, it was a little like this. Doyoung and Taeyong asleep, and the three of them creeping around to look for a room that didn’t have the tell-tale light of an infrared camera watching them sleep, or staff stationed to take care of them. Back then, Ten snuck around corners and lead Johnny forward by his hand. It was early days, then, when things like that were easy, and the brush of Ten’s hand against Johnny’s own was just that, no strings attached. It was so early, in fact, that Johnny had been glad the night masked the way he turned red the longer Ten pulled him along. When Johnny confessed this to Ten some months later, he couldn’t stop laughing.
The sound of Jaehyun’s laughter snaps Johnny out of his memories and back into the present moment. He’s missed the joke, but it must have been good, from the way that Ten’s face is all scrunched up and Jaehyun is almost falling back with laughter. When they were all here, it didn’t seem so lonely, but suddenly, the coffee table between them feels like a chasm and Johnny can’t help but wonder why he’s the one sitting on his own.
“Do you remember Chiang Mai?” he says suddenly.
Ten snorts. “What do you mean, do you remember Chiang Mai? Do you remember when we debuted? Do you remember you’re in NCT? Of course we remember Chiang Mai,” Ten quips. He stretches his legs out underneath the table and kicks Johnny in the thigh in the process.
Johnny doesn’t make a show of pretending he’s hurt for once, and he can see Ten eyeing him carefully.
“Jaehyun-ah, look. Johnny hyung is getting nostalgic.”
“I’m not,” Johnny insists immediately. He feels embarrassment creeping up on him. “I was just thinking about it.”
“Nostalgic,” Jaehyun echoes. Ten picks up his glass just so he can bring it to Jaehyun’s with a soft clink.
Johnny huffs. No need to get defensive. Conversation, when any of the older members start drinking, often turns to reminiscing anyway. Especially when Ten is around: the little time that any of the rest of them get to spend with him means that when they’re together, it feels like old times, when their hair fell into their eyes and all they knew were practice rooms and monthly assessments. And to Johnny, any moment of familiarity — even nostalgia — is rare. He’s changed so much since then.
His gaze rests on Ten, listening to Jaehyun with his chin on his hand, cheeks pink, glasses slipping off his nose.
Ten has changed so much since then.
It feels like the two of them have been teetering on the edge for three years straight. It’s hard to make any sense of, the way that tension builds between them but never snaps, only relaxes after some unknown trigger gets them to feel normal again. It’s cyclical. Johnny can’t parse it.
Despite their accusations, Jaehyun and Ten are the ones reminiscing now. Ten is recounting an old story about sneaking out back in 2014 that has been passed between them and repeated so many times that no one even remembers what was real and what embellishments were added in the years since.
“Hyung, hyung,” Jaehyun is saying now. It isn’t clear which of them he means, but he could mean both. His excitement is tempered by the alcohol, and while his eyes sparkle, his tone is soft. “Do you remember how Doyoungie-hyung got so good at distracting the managers, none of them believed anything he said for a full month?”
“He never got in trouble though,” Ten muses. “Even if they suspected he was lying to them to cover for us, he was never punished. Surely that wasn’t fair.”
“He’s not even here to defend himself,” Johnny laughs. “You can’t bring up your grudges from eight years ago when Doyoung isn’t here to squawk about them. It’s no fun.”
“Oh, John, you’re so valiant,” Ten drawls. “Defending his honour.”
“Stop it,” Johnny grumbles.
Ten is in a funny mood tonight. He seems keen on trying to poke and prod at Johnny for a reaction, even though he knows as well as anyone that Johnny is notoriously cool-headed and hard to tease. Something about it feels strangely unlike teasing, though. Johnny’s head hurts trying to pinpoint a word for it. He tips what remains in his glass into his mouth and decides to stop thinking about it.
They kissed, once.
In Johnny’s memory, every other detail about that day has dispersed to make room for the one that remains with perfect clarity. It might have been an evaluation day, but Ten was always relaxed about those. Somebody might have scolded him, but Johnny feels like he’d remember that — he’d remember who.
Regardless, the lead-up to Ten climbing into Johnny’s bed and the way he clung to him, shaking, silent, no longer matters. What mattered then was that Ten came to Johnny, and Johnny rubbed his back until Ten’s breathing evened out and he inched backwards on the bed so they could look at each other.
“Better?” Johnny asked Ten, uncertain.
Ten’s shoulders tensed for a second, then relaxed, and he rolled back into Johnny’s arms. Johnny remembers wondering if this was what friends did normally or if they were just bonded over the trauma of SM Entertainment.
“You’re the only reason I’m still here,” Ten whispered into Johnny’s chest.
Johnny gulped. “That’s not true,” he insisted. He heaved Ten up the bed so he could look him in the eye, and so Ten couldn’t hide his face. That way, they were face to face, inches apart.
“You love it,” Johnny told Ten emphatically. “You love to dance. And you love the kids, right? Like, Mark, and Jaemin, and - mmmh!”
He was cut off by Ten’s mouth crashing against his, a harried, desperate thing. Johnny’s hand came up between them and he could feel Ten’s heart hammering in his chest. Ten wasn’t doing much, just pressing his mouth to Johnny’s, and so it was Johnny that guided him into the kiss, brought his hand up to Ten’s cheek and kissed him carefully, deliberately. Johnny felt Ten’s body relax in front of him.
Ten pulled back and stared at Johnny, wide-eyed, red-cheeked, hope and trepidation on his face in equal parts.
“No,” he insisted fervently. “It’s you.”
Johnny stared back at him, trying to remember what he was saying. You love the kids - it’s him? Love?
“Oh.”
Ten swallowed. “… Oh?”
Regret seeped its way into Johnny’s bones, ice cold and unwelcome, but he stayed silent, unsure what to say, unwilling to hurt Ten, but unprepared for any of this. Ten watched his expression carefully, his eyes flitting from left to right to left to right until -
“Oh.” The bitter disappointment in Ten’s voice almost made Johnny wince. “I see.” With robotic movements, Ten inched away from Johnny and then sat up.
Johnny didn’t stop him when he went.
So they kissed, once, and never again.
Drunk, Ten is a little bit like Mark, clinging onto the nearest willing person as tight as they’ll allow whenever the whim takes him. Jaehyun is the ideal candidate for this, since he’ll accept any and all physical affection from the right people, especially once he has a few drinks in him. Johnny supposes he’s glad Ten has people like Jaehyun, who gives Ten affection, or Yangyang, who can receive it.
Ten laughs aloud and wraps his arms around Jaehyun as he does, pulling him close. Jaehyun smiles blissfully and tilts his head so Ten’s chin can rest comfortably on his shoulder. Johnny’s own shoulder twitches.
Maybe he’s the wrong height for Ten’s chin. He thought he was, but maybe isn’t. That could be why Ten doesn’t rest his head on Johnny’s shoulder like that, even though he used to, back when they were kids. Maybe they’ve grown since then, maybe that’s why Ten doesn’t lean on him anymore. It’s nothing but a feature of their bodies, nothing to do with anything else.
He pours himself another glass of soju and downs it quick, eyes shut, facing away from the table. When he looks back, Ten is still resting on Jaehyun’s shoulder.
Johnny supposes he’s glad Ten has people like Jaehyun, who gives Ten affection, or Yangyang, who can receive it.
He doesn’t consider himself to be a jealous person, although when he voiced this thought aloud to Yuta one time he was met with a loud laugh in his face. He doesn’t. And besides, there isn’t anything to be jealous over. There has never been any definition to the relationship or not-relationship or friendship or whatever it was between Ten and Johnny, and certainly there had never and realistically would never be any actual exclusivity between them. That in and of itself would require more of Johnny than he is able to give. That would require that he tell Ten the truth, about how he has never wanted to belong to a person so badly in all twenty something years of his life. About how —
Even with alcohol muddying his inhibitions, even in his own thoughts, he can’t admit it.
So jealousy should never really be something that happens to Johnny. And since he can’t admit to it without admitting even bigger things, he finds his own ways to justify himself and his actions.
“Hyu-ung,” Jaehyun singsongs. He’s sleepy, Johnny can tell from the way his voice is sitting right in the lowest parts of his register. “Hyung, will you buy us food?”
“You won’t fall asleep before it arrives?” Johnny teases. He reaches for his phone anyway, and somewhere, vaguely, in the back of his head, he hears Mark’s voice talking about love languages.
“Noooo,” Jaehyun insists, childish, eliciting a little laugh — no, a giggle — from Ten.
“You will,” Ten says. “But order it anyway, hyung.”
Even as he’s opening up the delivery app, Johnny huffs out a complaint.
“You never say please.”
Jaehyun falls into one of his belly-laughs, even if nothing Johnny said was all that funny. Ten’s face when he sticks his tongue out at Johnny is amusingly cartoonish. He suppresses a smile.
“You’d have to make me.”
Johnny is quick to tap on their favourite place and hit repeat order for himself and Jaehyun, but hesitates when it comes to Ten. He can’t even remember the last time they ordered food together.
He holds his phone out across the table so Ten can see.
“Ten? What do you want?”
Ten huddles closer to Jaehyun. “Gimme, I wanna order myself,” he whines.
Johnny’s grip tightens on the phone.
“Just look,” he says, stubborn. He feels Jaehyun’s eyes on him and sees something flit across Ten’s face, but he just holds out the phone for Ten until he leans forward to read the options on the screen. A shameful feeling of satisfaction flashes through Johnny after managing to put space between the two of them, but it’s gone before he even gets to savour it, and Ten simply leans back against Jaehyun, just as comfortable as he was before.
“Just get another one of whatever you’re getting,” Ten yawns. “I don’t even know if I’ll be awake by the time it comes, anyway.”
“Hyung,” Jaehyun coos. Johnny’s eyes flick up but Jaehyun is looking at Ten with a big, goofy smile adorning his face. “You look just like your cats when you yawn.”
Ten bursts into laughter and shoves Jaehyun away.
“Don’t be silly,” he whines.
Johnny focuses very hard on putting the delivery instructions in. He doesn’t look up, even when Ten leans across the low table and takes the bottle in two unsteady hands.
“Let me,” Jaehyun insists. There’s the sound of pouring. “You should let me do things for you, hyung,” Jaehyun beams. “Wasn’t that great? Johnny hyung, wasn’t that great?”
“Yes, great, Jaehyun,” Johnny laughs. “It should be here pretty soon.”
“That sounds good,” Ten sighs.
The truth that Johnny is unwilling to contend with is that it’s hard to watch them. It’s hard to see Ten, soft with his cheeks flushed pink and a smile ever-present on his face, and Jaehyun, doting on him unabashedly. They move around each other with such comfort and synchronicity that the tension, the feeling of a rope pulled taut, between Ten and Johnny sticks out unnoticeably. As the two of them chatter, all Johnny has is Ten’s stupid feet sticking out from under the table next to him.
“I’m going to go get… uh, a plate.” Stupid, Johnny thinks instantly. They’ll eat in the boxes the food comes in, but Jaehyun doesn’t care. He leans his head back against the couch and blinks up at the ceiling.
Johnny doesn’t look at Ten, just stumbles when putting on his slippers and makes his way to the kitchen, an unpleasant bitterness sitting in his gut.
Johnny stands there, staring at the open cupboards, not getting any plates out, for a time that could have been anywhere from a minute to an hour, but probably less than fifteen minutes, because the food hasn’t arrived.
The sound of someone entering the kitchen catches him off guard, and he whips around, only to see Ten, barefoot, walking past him to get two washed glasses from the drying rack.
“Who’s that for?” Johnny finds the words leave his mouth before he’s had a chance to reconsider and Ten shoots him a look.
“Who do you think?” Ten pours the ice water into Jaehyun’s glass carefully, then continues talking, still facing away from Johnny. “You don’t need to act so childish, John,” he gripes. Johnny notes the force with which he closes the fridge door and despair creeps up his throat. “If you wanted to…” Ten pauses, uncertain with his words. He seems to form a thought but dismisses it, forlorn. In its place, he just sighs. “I don’t know, whatever it is you want. If you wanted to, you could.”
Johnny’s laugh teeters close to a scoff.
“You don’t mean that.”
Ten turns around and crosses his arms. A stiff, dissatisfied tension sits in his jaw and alarm bells ring in Johnny’s mind instantly. Something is wrong here. “Of course I do.”
Maybe they’re both childish, Johnny with his unwarranted jealousy and Ten too stubborn to know what’s good for him.
This isn’t the right time for this, some part of Johnny thinks, but most of him isn’t in a state to think about his actions, or their consequences.
There’s a long moment of quiet. Neither of them speak. Ten stands with his back against the fridge and Johnny two feet in front of him. The sound of Jaehyun singing to himself in the living room is just vaguely audible.
Whatever it is you want. What is it, then, that Johnny wants? He knows the answer; he’s known the answer since he was nineteen. It’s Ten.
He wants to be able to touch Ten with the ease that Jaehyun does, with that kind of security, but that’s not quite right, not quite the whole picture, because what he really wants is to be able to touch Ten in ways nothing like Jaehyun. He wants to touch Ten without the fear of being misinterpreted, and not because he doesn’t have feelings for Ten, but because he does.
“You don’t mean that,” Johnny repeats, quieter this time.
“Stop,” Ten’s tone is harsh. “Don’t call me a liar.”
“I’m not —”
Ten doesn’t let Johnny interrupt. “I don’t know if you think I’m stupid, or if you’re stupid, but you need to stop. I know what I’m talking about.”
Johnny swallows. “How do you know?”
He isn’t specific, but Ten doesn’t need him to be.
For the first time since they stepped foot in this kitchen, something soft finds its way back into Ten’s eyes.
Johnny has always privately treasured the way that Ten looks at him. He’s gone back through candid footage of them both and paused on Ten watching him. He’s looked for moments that make Ten go soft and tried to replicate them just so he might elicit that same reaction — and there’s no one else who Ten looks at like that.
It’s the one thing that Johnny knows is all his.
“For nine years,” Ten begins, “I have been content with the way we were - are. Hyung, we’re each other’s best friends.”
Johnny isn’t sure he likes where this is going.
“I’ve been content because… because I allowed myself the fantasy of a future where that’s not the case. And I’m…” Ten lets out a wry laugh. “I’m so good at waiting.
“So I’ll wait for you, hyung, while you figure out why you’re acting so childish. You take your time. But don’t be annoying while you do it.” The edge returns to Ten’s voice now, but somewhat tempered.
Johnny stares at Ten’s back as he turns to leave, stunned.
In a flash, Johnny’s hand closes around Ten’s wrist. Ten doesn’t stumble, and the way he turns to look back at Johnny, it almost feels like he’d been expecting it.
“Ten,” Johnny says, louder than he meant to. His heart is racing. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Ten stares up at him, unphased. Almost defiant.
“What?”
“Ten,” Johnny repeats. The anguish he’d been keeping carefully restrained all night finds it’s way into his voice and Johnny hates how it sounds like he’s begging, but he loves the way in response, Ten lets out a little laugh. He keeps his eyes locked on Johnny’s, and steps forwards, tilting his head up just a little, the corner of his mouth twitching up into a smile.
“What?” Ten whispers.
Johnny’s lips find Ten’s when they’re still smiling, and Johnny’s hand, closed tight around Ten’s wrist, loosens his hold enough to intertwine their fingers. Ten holds on tight to Johnny’s hand. He tastes like red wine, just a little bit tart. It’s so easy to get carried away, to lose himself in the feeling of Ten’s lips against his own. His heart is beating so hard be worries that it will spill out from his throat and into Ten’s mouth.
Ten pulls away first, with his lower lip tucked beneath his teeth in a poor attempt at hiding his grin. He rests a gentle hand on Johnny’s chest.
“You’re so nervous,” Ten breathes, tinged with mirth. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this nervous in my life.”
“I can tell you’re trying not to look smug,” Johnny murmurs. “’s not working.”
Ten slips straight into a pout and Johnny needs so badly to kiss it so he leans back down into Ten’s space but Ten wriggles out of reach all too easily.
“Ten.” Johnny whines again, but this time, Ten keeps walking and Johnny stumbles over his feet to follow him in time. It isn’t until later that Johnny notices that Ten forgot about his and Jaehyun’s waters altogether.
It takes Johnny a moment to spot where Jaehyun is.
“Jaehyun-ah,” he laughs. Jaehyun is lying slumped on the ground, dangerously close to rolling under the table. He’s fast asleep.
“I guess you were right,” Ten whispers. “Should we wake him up?”
Johnny shakes his head no. Warm affection surges in his chest and he looks down at the sleeping Jaehyun with a fond smile.
“Let’s just get him a pillow and a blanket,” Johnny decides. “I’ll move the table.”
“You sure you can do that?”
Somehow, Ten’s lips had a sobering quality to them.
“I’m a strong boy,” Johnny jokes.
Ten snorts and leaves him to it. He returns after a little while with a pillow and blanket from what looks like Donghyuck’s bed. Carefully, gently, he gets down on his knees and slips the pillow under Jaehyun’s head, then, as quietly as possible, covers him with the blanket. He moves with such genuine care that Johnny’s heart can’t help but clench a little at the sight.
When Ten stands up again, he comes face to face with Johnny. Ten looks up at him, pink cheeked and smiling so softly that it almost hurts to look back at him.
Whatever you want.
“It’s you,” Johnny says quietly.
Ten tilts his head to one side. “Me?”
“That’s what I want.” And then, when Ten just blinks up at him, “I lo-mmph!”
His words are stifled by Ten’s finger over his mouth, pressed hard against his lips like he’s forcing the words back in.
“Tell me tomorrow,” Ten says firmly, still quietly, still trying not to wake up Jaehyun. “For now, let’s just eat, and then sleep, and then tomorrow, you can tell me. Okay?”
If he’s honest, Johnny doesn’t want to wait another second, but Ten’s words make sense. The sobering effect of Ten’s kiss is wearing off, and if Johnny is going to do this, he’s going to do it properly.
And besides, they’ve held back for nearly ten years. Johnny can wait one more night.
“Okay.”