Archive of Our Own

There’s these boys…

"Think he'll like it?" 

Jungsu looks up from his hands carefully adjusting Gunil's tie in the lamplit parking lot. He snorts, smoothing down the shoulders of Gunil’s suit. "Your outfit? Hell yeah. He's gonna like a lot more than that." He opens the car's backdoor, reaching in and grabbing the flowered boutonnières Gunil had ordered weeks ago, despite not yet having a yes or no. 

He hands them to Gunil, treating them just as fragile as he's watched Gunil handle them, just out of courtesy. "He likes you ." 

Exhaling shakily, his nerves only visible in the slightest tremble of his fingers as he pins the flower to his chest pocket, Gunil smiles. The rosy hue in his cheeks and the sparkle in his eye are nothing but lovestruck. Distantly Jungsu wonders when it happened, wonders how he, Gunil's best friend and Seungmin's childhood friend, missed when these two just clicked . 

How does he of all people miss that? 

"You'd know best wouldn't you?" Gunil sighs, reaching up and fixing Jungsu's hair like he tends to, Jungsu inclining his head almost out of habit. He watches Gunil's fingers stop shaking, just to part his bangs. 

There's a jump in his heart rate, a swallow that tears through his throat. "What do you mean?" he rasps. 

Pulling back, Gunil turns to examine his reflection in the car window. Swiping his finger under his eye to clean up the gel liner and dark shadow surrounding his lashes. "You dressed me. And, I mean, you're his best friend, aren't you?" 

Shrugging, Jungsu grabs Gunil by the bicep, makes him face Jungsu once more, and pulls from his pocket a tube of glittery lip gloss. He's not sure whose best friend he is, really. He uncaps the lipgloss, and Gunil parts his lips, brows furrowed in his concentration to remain still. 

Easy and light, he swipes the applicator over Gunil's blushed lips, snatching his hand back too quick, feeling his pulse quake along the wand. It's okay though because Gunil pops his lips, spreads the gloss perfectly and nods. The image of his pretty, glittery smile seared into Jungsu’s mind. 

"Ready?" He shines all over, his eyes piercing through Jungsu. His voice holds more depth than necessary. Jungsu feels like he's being asked about much more than the prom. 

"If you are," he says. 

**

Jooyeon pulls Jiseok onto the dancefloor to dance with him alone, without the addition of Hyeongjun and Jungsu, and Hyeongjun goes to investigate the buffet. Jungsu is left alone at the white clothed table, his chin resting in his palm, watching. 

His best friend, and his childhood friend. Hand in hand. 

Forehead to forehead, their arms draped over each other. Swaying together under the rented country club garland lights like moonlight. With the way they were acting, you would think it was just them two in the room, the music all theirs and all other noise quiet. Smiles hidden in each others' collars. Young and pretty, all the naivety of a flower bloomed in spring. 

Jungsu watches, sipping from a plastic glass cup of water. If it's his best and his best friend, which one will get him as best man? 

It's reasonable for him to ask these sorts of questions now. High school is over, and the world has changed. Six has become four, and three has become two. 

You can't slow dance with three. 

**

Jungsu has spent his whole life knowing Seungmin. There are only three years he can remember where he didn't see even a glance of Seungmin at least every other day. When he started kindergarten, when he started middle school, and when he started high school. Seungmin always following behind him in staggered steps. He doesn't know a life without Seungmin. 

Knowing Gunil comes a lot quicker. Crammed all into one school year like a crash course. 

Technically they've been friends since Jungsu approached the quiet, awkward boy sitting by himself in their middle school cafeteria, but somehow all the six years that follow feel like nothing compared to this. 

They decide on a whim to be roommates. Gunil's top choice is Jungsu's second choice, and Jungsu's second choice gives him better aid, and so here they are, rooming together in the resident hall. All of Gunil's things are nestled beside Jungsu's, and Jungsu thinks saying Gunil had been his best friend before, had been an oversight. He'd known nothing then. 

He knows too much now. It feels like he's knowing Gunil all over again, right from the very start, all the way to the impending dead end. 

It scares him, maybe understanding what Seungmin was gushing about on that first day of sophomore year. 

He knows Gunil's study habits, fluctuating between surprisingly sane and effective, to downright dysfunctional. More than once, does Jungsu have to lift Gunil up from his uncomfortable desk chair, and navigate him to bed. He does it when Gunil is drunk too, blabbering away about nothing and everything, gushing about how much he loves Seungmin, the rest of their friends, and Jungsu by extension. 

Sometimes he still remembers Gunil’s hot breath against the skin of his neck. You know you’re gorgeous, Su. I like you so much. Jungsu tells himself it was a dream. He won’t ask why it’s a dream he would have. 

Those moments, despite Jungsu sleeping much earlier and waking somehow much later than Jungsu, also allows Jungsu to know how Gunil sleeps. 

He doesn't really mean to look. Sometimes he's just in his bed, across the room from Gunil's, and he looks over, and sees Gunil's face squashed into his pillow, illuminated by the soft glow of Jungsu's many scattered lamps and string lights. Gets to see Gunil at complete and utter peace, none of that unstoppable drive and pressure wired through his body in constant tension. 

Lax and helplessly gentle in every quality of his features. Full cheeks and small lips and still wet hair. Jungsu tears his eyes away, again and again, but a few times, he snaps a picture, and he sends it to Seungmin. And Seungmin endlessly adores each and every one Jungsu gifts to him.

See, if Gunil is the last thing he sees every night before he sleeps, it makes sense that he would appear in Jungsu’s dreams. A recurring subject of Jungsu’s interest, a recurring character in his mind. 

It's a strange year for him, a year without Seungmin. Even before, when he was a freshman and Seungmin a middle schooler, he a middle schooler and Seungmin a fifth grader, they could waltz into each other's houses whenever they wanted to, on each and every whim and impulse. Their mothers knew each other's sons like they were their own. Seungmin's bed was as much a comfort to Jungsu as his own. 

In college, miles and miles away, hours apart by car and even more hours apart by train, they can't quite do that. Audio calls and Facetime chats are hardly sufficient in comparison. 

He knows he's being dramatic, but Jungsu feels like he's missing a part of himself, without Seungmin there at his side. His other half, halfway across the state. 

"We need to come down soon," Jungsu says, phone perched against his desk lamp, pen unmoving against the page of his notes, "Your boyfriend is unbearable, I can't keep handling him on my own." 

Seungmin chuckles softly, and Jungsu sighs, wishing he could see it rather than just hear it, imagining in his mind's eye the way Seungmin's lashes flutter against his cheeks, teeth blindingly displayed between deep smile lines. Freckles just barely peeking through. 

"Not my boyfriend yet," Seungmin says dryly, exasperated. The keyword being yet. 

To make it easier for the both of them, aka, making it "easier" for Seungmin, Gunil wanted to wait until Seungmin was in college too, for them to be anything official. Jungsu hasn't pried, but he has his suspicions as to why. 

He hums, doodling close-eyed grins onto his notes. "Only a couple more months." 

Only a year ago, he would've jumped when Gunil leans against his back with his full weight, trusting Jungsu to hold him up no matter the precarious position. Now, it’s his new normal. Like something domestic. Gunil hooks his chin over Jungsu's shoulder, looking at his phone to see if the call was audio or video. He pouts when all he sees is Seungmin's contact photo, Seungmin at the zoo posed next to a fox. 

Never before did Jungsu think he’d meet anyone as touchy as himself, but Gunil comes close. It’s a weird feeling, being the one doted on, rather than doing the doting. And with none of their younger friends there for Gunil to distribute his affection, it all comes bearing down on Jungsu. 

His touches relieve, momentarily and in fragments, the emptiness that Seungmin’s absence leaves behind. 

"What's he doing anyways?" Seungmin asks, faraway. Piano notes play in the background of the call, and Jungsu pauses, listening as Gunil melts into him at the sound of Seungmin's voice. 

Glancing at Gunil out of the corner of his eye, so very close to him, mouth curved in this gentle way that gives Jungsu unexplainable hope in the world. "Lately, it's playing his sappy love songs on repeat at every hour of the day. What'd you do? Propose?" 

Gunil wraps an arm around Jungsu's other shoulder, squeezing his bicep. "As if you wouldn't be there for that," he jokes, and Jungsu's stomach almost twists, thinking about it. Best friends and best mans. Who will he pick, who will pick him? 

"Gunil, hi," Seungmin says, no longer distant, his full focus on the phone, voice up close and clear as a harp's chime. "It's been a while." Some saccharine tone dripping from his words, thick enough for Jungsu to drown in. 

"A while?" he echoes, incredulous, covering his notes and his doodles with his forearm. "I walked in on you two just a week ago reciting sonnets to each other." His voice is light, airy, but Gunil pulls away from him, pacing to the end of the room and opening the window. Jungsu watches him, his expression unreadable. 

There's an unnatural pause on the other end, and then Seungmin mutters, "Yeah, yeah. Can you give the phone to him? Just for a second?" 

Gunil comes back to the desk, leaning his hip against the edge of it, arms crossed. Jungsu hands him the phone, trying to at least act like he doesn't desperately want to hear what Seungmin says to Gunil in those brief moments before Gunil sighs loudly and melodramatically, a smile, troubled, but there, crossing his lips. 

"Alright, bye, I'll text you." A beat. "And call, I know, I know. Now let me give Jungsu back his phone." He blows a kiss into the phone, all sappy and corny, and Jungsu's cheeks feel warm just witnessing it. 

"Never do that again," he gags, accepting the phone back, pressing it to his ear. "Unbearable, I'm telling you." 

Seungmin laughs, the sound muddy. "I'll take him off your hands soon, don't worry." As if Jungsu ever does anything but worry. Seungmin would know best, he's always felt just the same amount of it. "I'll talk to you later, Su. Bye, love you." 

Jungsu clears his throat, lowering his head to his notes, feeling Gunil's inexplicable stare cast on him. "Bye," he murmurs, "Love you too." 

The moment the call ends, Gunil's music starts again, and Jungsu exhales, trying hopelessly to focus on his notes. Just a couple more months, and this strange feeling in Gunil's presence and without Seungmin's presence, will dissipate. 

The butterflies will migrate. 

** *

He and Gunil are still freshly recovering from finals and packing up their dorm to take back home for the singular three months of summer, but they're as right as rain sitting in the audience of their friends' graduation. 

Before the song starts and the high school students, their schoolmates just a year ago, come filing out, Gunil leans over Jungsu's lap, rummaging around through Jungsu's bag without asking, or really needing to ask, and pulling out Jungsu's compact mirror. 

"You need to get one of your own," Jungsu complains, leaning back so Gunil can access his bag with more ease. "What are you doing?" He observes raptly as Gunil flips the compact open, putting it up close to his eyes and peering into his reflection with scrutiny. 

Prodding his finger beneath an eye, Gunil glares at himself. "Stupid eye bags," he sighs, "I tried covering them up so Seungmin doesn't worry, but I'm not as good at makeup as you or Jun." He frowns, and Jungsu doesn't see why. 

"You look perfectly fine." He takes the compact from Gunil, grabbing him by the chin and examining him closely. He sees the bags, he does, but he wonders if he can only see them because he's also spent the past nights of the past few weeks, watching Gunil not sleep or eat or do anything of any sort to take care of himself. 

He wipes his thumb beneath Gunil's eye, rough enough to make the older wince and whine. "Maybe instead of using expired concealer you stole from my sister in the seventh grade, you could just fucking sleep next time, idiot," he grumbles, trying his best to be unaffected by Gunil's simpering gaze. "You don't wanna worry Seungmin—what about me, huh? What if my arms are sore from carrying you to bed every night?" 

Pulling a face, somewhat defensive and entirely guilty, Gunil lets Jungsu wipe off all the shitty concealer, revealing nothing but the faintest of puffiness beneath baby short lashes. He tugs his face away from Jungsu's grip, unexpectedly earnest when he says, "I'll try to take more care of myself next year. I'll learn how to be better at it." Jungsu feels a pain in his heart, looking upon Gunil and his determination. "For me and Seungmin?" He lays his palm on Gunil's knee, tapping his fingers against dark wash denim. "Or for you too?" 

Gunil worries at his lip. "Me too." And the conflict on his face hints to something more, something deeper Jungsu can't apprehend before the music is starting, and their attention snaps to the stage. 

With each of their friends' names, they stand up and cheer, as loud as they possibly can. With happy flushes and embarrassed flusters tinting their cheeks, their friends look up at them as they walk down the aisle, and wave. It's what they'd done for Jungsu and Gunil, just the year prior. 

Sunlight is golden and the sky is pink when the ceremony ends, and Gunil almost vaults over the football bleacher fence to get to their friends. His face glowing with this prideful smile that infects Jungsu's own lips and heart. He grabs Jungsu's hand, and pulls Jungsu down the stairs, their joy blending in with all the sobs of families and friends surrounding them. 

Jiseok is crying when Gunil sprints towards him, taking him up in his arms and twirling the shorter around with a loud, celebratory shout that makes Hyeongjun inch away from the scene. 

Jungsu is there to pull the long-haired, lanky boy into a delicate hug. They watch together as Jooyeon attempts climbing onto Gunil's back. Jungsu turns his head, spotting Seungmin rushing through the crowd with a gorgeous grin, positively beaming in the fading daylight, his diploma in one hand, the other holding his sequined cap to his head, the tassel flying about his face. 

He sees Jungsu looking first, somehow only brightening further. "You made it," he says, a little breathless. It's the first time they've seen each other since spring break a whole ten weeks ago. Jungsu is only afforded the time to gently unwind his arms from Hyeongjun's shoulders before Seungmin lunges at him, wrapping him in a bone crushing, heartachingly warm embrace. 

He returns it effortlessly, burying his face in Seungmin's neck, vanilla and lavender fabric softener wafting over him. "Of course I did," he huffs, "I'm always gonna be here for you. No matter what." He presses his fingers into the small of Seungmin's back, basking in the success of the boy who he'd grown up alongside. His heart is so big in his chest, it almost hurts. 

Seungmin nuzzles his nose into Jungsu's shoulders, sniffling only once, eyes teary but refusing to shed. "Thanks." His voice soft, cradling years of appreciation and love that melts Jungsu's skin to the bone. 

"Min!" 

Seungmin only extracts himself from Jungsu's hold for one other person, practically tackling Gunil to the ground, swallowing the other in his flowy graduation gown. He grabs Gunil by the cheeks, pulls him in and kisses him so tenderly all the others look away, but not Jungsu. Jungsu can't. 

Gunil compensates the kiss, peppering Seungmin's face in them, the affection withheld and forced onto Jungsu for so many months, pouring out all at once. He squeezes Seungmin so close and so tight Seungmin wheezes for oxygen. "God, I'm so proud of you." 

"I was always gonna graduate," Seungmin laughs, trying to fix his face from Gunil's attack, "Did you doubt me?" 

Calming down, helping Seungmin smooth his hair out and wiping the edges of Seungmin's lips, lipgloss sticking to the pad of his thumb. "No," he says, soft, "Doesn't make it matter any less." His eyes the gentlest shade of brown that Jungsu has ever seen. 

There's a tap on his arm, and he's forced to tear his gaze away. Jiseok pouts up at him. "You're crying," he remarks, almost like a complaint. 

Jungsu reaches up, wipes the back of his hand along his face, the skin coming away wet. "I'm just so…" He blinks, swallows, looks back over at Gunil and Seungmin separating to greet Seungmin's parents, their happiness and care for each other blinding. "I'm so happy for you all." 

He wishes then, pulling Jiseok into his own crushing hug that Jiseok fights with all his life, that Gunil will turn back around and face him, fix his hair, and say just like on the night of prom so long ago now, "Ready?" 

**

The summer before the rest of the boys move into the college, is the longest summer Jungsu has ever felt, and it starts with bidding Gunil goodbye at an airport, the biggest pout on his face because he's going to be gone for two months, flying first out to his family and old friends in Boston, and then to Korea for more family and old friends. 

"Don't you miss them?" Jungsu asks, helping Gunil pack the night before he's set to leave. Seungmin's got his head stuck in the closet, determined to make Gunil as presentable as possible on vacation. 

"Not as much as I'm gonna miss you," he grumbles, not meaning it entirely, but just earnestly enough to make Jungsu still, eyes and pulse blinking rapidly. 

Pulling out of Gunil's closet with an armful of hangers, Seungmin smirks. "Hah, I get him all summer." 

Frown poignant and theatrical, Gunil shoves a pair of pants into his suitcase, sloppily enough for Jungsu to have to fix. "You know I meant both of you." 

Seungmin shrugs, squats down behind them, using Jungsu's shoulder to balance himself. He pecks Gunil's head affectionately. "I know. We'll miss you too." 

And he's right about both things, missing Gunil, and Seungmin having Jungsu all summer. 

Hyeongjun goes to a sleepaway music camp, and Jooyeon takes Jiseok with him on a trip to a rental somewhere in the more tropical parts of California, where there are more beaches and oceans than mountains. So, like it was for a long time before, it's just Jungsu and Seungmin, and they hardly ever part. 

Nearly every day while the sun swelters down on them, they are at each other's side. At each other's houses day in and out, practicing on their keyboards with their perspiring knees pressed together, or Jungsu leaning over Seungmin's shoulder to direct the way his fingers dance over the keys. 

It's a quiet night, the night Seungmin plays for him the song he'd played for Gunil. The song Jungsu had taught him. Jungsu lays on Seungmin's bed, a fan whirring through the room, a warm sweet breeze coming in through the window he's looked out his whole life. Seungmin's voice and playing blanketing him like powdered sugar in milk. 

He turns his head to the side, heart panging vaguely when he doesn't see Gunil a few feet away, snoring softly into a drool-stained pillowcase. Seungmin's voice softens when Jungsu begins to hum along with him. 

"Yeah these things take forever," he yawns, "I especially am slow." 

**

He's thinking about it a little more, and he doesn't know why he keeps thinking about it at all. Prom. He supposes what it is really that he's thinking about, sitting in the bright green grass of the park only a few blocks from his and Seungmin's street, the park where he'd helped Gunil plan on asking Seungmin out. Is the role he'd played in bringing his two best friends together. How he'd helped both of them, so very intentionally. 

It makes him feel a little crazy, a little pathetic, for continuously reminiscing single freeze frame moments of senior year. Before everything changed for everyone, and Seungmin and Gunil were equally his, as much as he was theirs, and them each other's. 

Friends, of course. 

He isn't here alone, Seungmin laid out over the blanket he'd brought, topped with the food Jungsu's mom had cooked and packed for them. His head is rested upon the cusp of Jungsu's lap, the nape of his neck lightweight against Jungsu's thigh. Popping purple grapes between his teeth, eyes shut against the sunlight. 

They'd been here just like this for hours now, and Jungsu has no plans of moving, even if his back is starting to creak and his leg is beginning to fall desperately asleep. There are words on the tip of his tongue, begging to burst free, but he can't shape them coherently enough to let them fall. 

"You think this summer would be better if we weren't missing Gunil so much?" he asks instead, and it feels like some distorted version of whatever it was he wanted to say, the sentiments dying in his mouth with a sour taste. He notes various things, the way he collectively refers to himself and Seungmin as one, and Gunil their other, and how much Gunil has become tangled in both their shared lives without them even noticing. 

"What would we be doing if we hadn't met him?" he wonders aloud, wandering further down the incorrigible line of thought, staring up into the sky, a blue so bright it's like they're floating among it, resting in clouds themselves. 

Seungmin's lip puckers like the grape between his teeth had been bitter. Jungsu gets it, he can't imagine it either, not missing Gunil right now. He'd miss him somehow still, even if he'd never met him. "We'd be doing the same thing, I guess," Seungmin mumbles, like he too is really thinking about it. He thinks enough about it to sit up, sparing Jungsu's leg and stretching out his back. 

Straightening his legs, laying on his tote bag with an extra blanket just in case. They'd only needed one to fit on together though. "You guess?" 

Seungmin twists his back to look down at Jungsu, haloed by the sun. The slightest sheen of perspiration along his temple and the peach fuzz glowing on his cheeks making him as appealing as ripened fruit on a tree of an oasis. Delectable. Delightful. 

He pops a grape into Jungsu's mouth, and Jungsu bites into it without even thinking, the juice coating his throat in hydrating sweetness. "It'd be just us anyways," the younger muses, crawling over Jungsu's splayed form to grab their water bottle, still miraculously and graciously ice cold. "It was always just us for a long while. Even with Gunil there." 

"It was, huh?" Threaded together at the hip, cut from the same cloth, Seungmin and Jungsu never one without the other. That hasn't really stopped, Jungsu supposes, just changed a little. Now it's like Gunil was the one cutting them from the cloth, sewing them onto his own skin.

Or, maybe just Seungmin, holding Jungsu loose in his hand at a distance. Things only come in pairs, don't they? 

His breath shallows and stutters for only a split second when Seungmin drops his head against Jungsu's chest, willing his heart to steady and still. There's no reason for it to react so erratically. It's just Seungmin. The one his heart knows completely. 

Just Seungmin. 

"Was," Seungmin emphasizes, trailing his fingers up and down Jungsu's arm, bringing out goosebumps in the middle of one of the hottest days of the year. He's a little queasy, until Seungmin adds, light and matter-of-fact, "Now it's the three of us." 

He's more honest than he wants to be, replying, "I wouldn't have it any other way." 

He reaches up, running his hand through Seungmin's hair on impulse, halting when he realizes what he's doing, and then Seungmin pinches him. "Keep going, I like it. Nil does it all the time." Jungsu listens, continues, playing with Seungmin's hair, rubbing Seungmin's head while Seungmin eats his purple grapes. 

Lying there, together, they miss Gunil, letting the sunshine remind them of him up until the sun sets. To the moon, to Seungmin’s sleeping figure, Jungsu quietly sings, “But I realized that I need you. And I wondered if I could come home.” 

**    *

Just like both Jungsu and Gunil, always like them, Seungmin turns eighteen in the middle of summer, midway through June. They don't really celebrate, deciding to do a joint birthday, Seungmin's eighteenth and Jungsu's nineteenth, when at least Jiseok, Jooyeon, and Hyeongjun will be back, even if Gunil was still gone. 

Jungsu is just there sitting in Seungmin's desk chair, witnessing as Seungmin sprawls over his bed, holding the phone over his face with this sucker punch of a soft smile dusting his face listening as Gunil rattles on about how much he misses Seungmin, and how much he hates having so much fun without any of them there. 

"I'm gonna bring you all to Korea one day," he swears, "We can all visit our families, and I'll take you to all the cutest cafes. We'll have so many secret dates. I'll spoil you." And Seungmin bites his lip, rolls his eyes, all with the reddest blush staining his cheeks. 

Having been the one to see it in person the entire time they'd lived together, Jungsu fully expects it, is almost waiting for it. Gunil blowing a kiss to the camera with an exaggerated, cheesy mwah . He notices, tries not to, that Gunil and Seungmin don't say I love you when they end the call, like they do with all their other friends, Jungsu included. 

He tries especially not to think about how Gunil hadn't asked about him the entire hour he'd been talking to Seungmin. At least until twelve am on the dot June twenty-sixth, when Jungsu is roused from his light sleep by his phone repeatedly buzzing. 

Groggily, he answers. "Hello?" 

"Morning, sunshine," Gunil greets him, voice like honey, a stolen treat in the dead of night, "Happy birthday. You're old now. Facing the end of your teen years, you're practically ancient." 

Groaning despite the grin growing like mold on his face, Jungsu drops back into his pillow. "You're still the grandpa," he argues, "In a couple days you'll be nineteen too." He plays with the edge of his blanket a moment before deciding to turn on his bedside lamp and sit up fully. He wasn't tired anyways. "Will you be back by then?" 

"Should be." There's a shuffling sound, the sound of a door closing, and any background noise on the other end goes dead. It's just Gunil's voice and Jungsu now, circulating this dimly lit room. "No talking about me. It's Jungsu day." 

Ah. If Gunil couldn't be there with them in person to give them anything, this is what he gifts them instead. His utter and undivided attention. It's so valuable, and it's so Gunil, Jungsu appreciates it more than anything else he'll receive, and the weight of that would scare him, if Gunil weren't talking away in his ear, and he could almost fall asleep just like that. 

Jungsu talks, saying nothing and everything, his voice fading in and out. Gunil's tone is quiet, softer than velvet, as rich as the inky black sky outside. "Tired?" 

"It's not that late," Jungsu counters, betraying himself with a yawn, eyes falling shut beneath his knuckles. Gunil's wheeze of a laugh, breathy and faint, almost has him wide awake all over again. 

"Go to sleep, Su. Have a good birthday, okay? Tell me all about it tonight." Jungsu thinks that's it then, opening his mouth to bid Gunil goodnight, or good morning, time zone differences be damned. Then he hears a breath, close to the receiver, and the smallest, tentative, "Mwah."

The call ends like that, leaving Jungsu lying there, staring wide-eyed and stunned up at his ceiling, wondering if he'd imagined it. But he wasn't that asleep yet, and he'd heard everything that'd lead up to it. 

He holds his phone over his chest, reaching up to feel the curl of his smile, the warmth of his cheeks. 

His screen lights up and he checks it, messages from his friends pouring in. 

Min: the fucker got to your first didn't he

you mean your boyfriend

Min: if only

Min: happy birthday su

Min: i'll write more on your card ofc, but know how happy i am to still have you in my life, and how grateful i am to have ever had you in my life. you're so wonderful

Min: i love you

 thanks min

i love you too

That's another thing wasn't it. 

Gunil hadn't ended the call with an "I love you." 

Jungsu tries not to think about it. 

**

Jooyeon's got frosting still on his face from the cake Hyeongjun had baked for Seungmin and Jungsu. Blue frosting and icing writing 18+1 . Jiseok groans and rips a napkin from the table as the group moves to Jungsu's living room, grabbing Jooyeon by the chin and wiping his face roughly. Nonplussed, Jooyeon excitedly shouts, "Present time!" 

"Did all three of you really have to have a birthday within weeks of each other?" Jiseok mutters, folding up the napkin and stuffing it down Jooyeon's shirt, making the youngest squirm. "You drained me of my allowance." 

Seungmin squints his eyes at Jiseok as if offended. "Are you blaming my mother giving me life for your poor financial decisions right now?" Jungsu snorts, shoving him to the ground besides the bags and wrapped boxes sitting there before them. His heart picks up a little, thinking about his own gift to Seungmin, not here, hidden just a room away in the house, too inconspicuous to display with the rest. 

"If anything I should give my condolences for birthing a demon ," Jiseok huffs, plopping down on the rug, pulling Jooyeon in beside him, Hyeongjun regarding it all with a fond eye roll. 

Sighing, Jungsu kneels down with everyone else. "Chill out, you two." He skims through the gifts, just to hand Seungmin the ones marked with his name. Jooyeon and Jiseok grow excited where they sit, arguing over whose gift gets to be opened first, and therefore, Seungmin and Jungsu open Hyeongjun's gifts first. 

Hyeongjun gifts Seungmin and Jungsu matching necklaces, simple silver things with a charm of their birthstone, the pearl, hanging from the chain. "Here," Seungmin says, handing his to Jungsu, "Help me put it on." And so, with a delicate touch, Jungsu complies. 

Jiseok gets Seungmin a button up shirt that Seungmin jokes about burning, but Jungsu sees within the shine in his eye him already planning on how to style the shirt. He gets Jungsu a beanie from the same brand of a beanie Jungsu had complimented weeks ago. Jungsu smothers Jiseok with affection, hugging him until even Seungmin is trying to help free Jiseok. 

Jooyeon gets them both a different pokemon that they reminded him of as plush keychains. "Whenever you reach in your bag to take out your scantron for a terrifying ass final, you can look at it and be reminded of me." He smiles wide, proud. "It'll comfort you and you'll ace every test for sure." His smile wobbles a little, and it breaks Jungsu's heart a bit. 

"We're not going to forget you," he assures, pulling Jooyeon into a hug that eventually everyone joins. "We're all gonna stick together forever, no matter how far apart, okay? Look at me. A year and college, and I'm still the Jungsu who's going to retire with you." Jooyeon nods into his shoulder, hair tickling everyone's face, and Jungsu can't help but think Gunil would in that moment be looking at Jungsu approvingly, maybe even fondly. 

When it comes time to give each other their gifts, Jungsu's palms begin to sweat. Reaching behind him, Seungmin pulls out a box, a jewelry one. Jungsu opens it shakily, gasping at the bracelet presented on flocked velvet. Chains of metal lavender flowers connected by pearls. It's absolutely beautiful. He says as much, and Seungmin adopts this bashful smile, putting it on Jungsu much more calmly than Jungsu had put on Seungmin's necklace on for him. 

Then Jungsu stands, and everyone looks up at him with confusion. "Uh, one sec," he says, exiting the room, going into the guest room where he's hidden his gift, pulling it out from beneath the bed, and hefting it in his arms, exhaling unsteadily. When he enters the living room, Seungmin glares at him. 

"That better be something super small and silly," Seungmin warns, Jungsu setting the wrapped gift before him, smile sheepish, nervous. 

He steps back, feeling better giving something so big from afar. "Uh, well. You'll like it." Eyes narrowed and not straying from Jungsu's face, Seungmin tears into the wrapping paper, and this time, Jungsu is the only one not gasping. He rocks back and forth on his heels, appraising Seungmin's gaping reaction. 

Rendered speechless, Seungmin looks up at him. "It's, uh, not just from me," Jungsu explains, tugging on his ear, "Gunil and I were working in our last quarter, so we decided to both save up together. Even if you aren't pursuing music professionally like us, I thought you deserved something better than using my hand me down for forever." He waves his hand, gesturing vaguely to the brand new keyboard box beneath Seungmin's fingers. 

Seungmin scrambles to his feet, hopping over the keyboard, and wrapping his arms around Jungsu's neck, almost crushing Jungsu's windpipe. "Fuck you," he says, voice trembling gratefully, "It's amazing ." 

Later that night, Jungsu helps Seungmin set it up, a little bit in awe himself at the quality of what he and Gunil had bought. Just as nice as the one he uses for school, slim and sleek. Seungmin runs his hands over the keys reverently. 

"I still can't believe you guys did this," he mutters beneath his breath. He hasn't stopped smiling since he was gifted it, hours and hours ago, and it makes every cent and dollar Jungsu had worked for worth it. "My gift is terrible, oh my god." 

Jungsu sits beside Seungmin on his bed, turning the keyboard on atop a pile of blankets. It's unorthodox, but it's how Seungmin began practicing, and he hasn't stopped. Jungsu thinks it's cute, the way Seungmin's playing is so personal, cradled even in the confines of his very resting place. 

He clicks his tongue, shaking out his wrist. "Don't insult my bracelet. It's the prettiest piece of jewelry I've ever owned in my life." He twists it around his arm, the cool metal and pearls soothing in ways he can't even begin to describe. 

Seungmin glances at him, lips pursed. He shifts onto his knees, leaning up, cupping Jungsu's cheeks. For a moment, Jungsu's mind comes to an absolute halt, his heart leaping into his throat, heat lancing up his spine. Seungmin presses his lips to Jungsu's cheek, simple and sweet. 

"Thank you," he murmurs, his voice fluttering against Jungsu's neck, making him almost shiver. "It's perfect. It's so— you're so thoughtful." 

"Well, Guni—" 

"I'll thank Gunil later, right now I'm thanking you." He pulls back, regarding Jungsu with this smile that Jungsu's seen before, so many times, directed at him, through the phone, on the phone. It'd been a Gunil smile, or so he'd thought. "It means so much to me, and you mean so much to me, Jungsu. Thank you for always being here. I'm not ever gonna let you go." He squeezes Jungsu's shoulder in emphasis. 

Articulate, Jungsu swallows, says, "Okay." Into a pout, confused and off put by all the things he's feeling. 

The first song that Seungmin plays on his new beloved keyboard, is his and Gunil's song. 

Jungsu thinks about how he'd taught Seungmin to play that song, and wonders if it's a little bit of his song too. 

** *

With their three collective efforts, Seungmin's side of his dorm is set up in no time. When Seungmin puts up one final polaroid of all six of them on the corkboard hung over his wall, Gunil is near tears. 

"Can you stop being weird about this?" Seungmin pleads, "I didn't bring my parents for a reason." But upon looking at Gunil, all emotional and prideful, makes him emotional himself. With them both emotional, Jungsu is helpless, wiping at his eyes aggressively. "Not you too! You guys literally went through this just fine!" 

"It's just," Jungsu sniffs, ducking his head, "When I go home now, you're not gonna be there. How'm I supposed to deal with that?" A heavy silence follows his statement, and in the next second, Seungmin has his arms wrapped around Jungsu like Jungsu were smaller than him, and not the other way around. 

He rubs a hand up and down Jungsu's back, and Jungsu melts into the touch, basking in it. "We're not always gonna live on the same block forever, Su." It's a solace, that Seungmin's voice is just as choked up, the side of his face pressing into the side of Jungsu's face, damp. "But that doesn't mean I'm not always gonna be home when you need me. I'll spend the rest of my life, knocking on your front door, and you can spend the rest of your life knocking on mine. I'll always answer, 'kay?" 

Jungsu nods, their strands of hair tangling together, dyed platinum on dyed blond. After a short while, once they've both calmed down, sure when they pull away there won't be tears left to show, just the puffy red eyes left behind, they separate. 

Jungsu's eyes flick to Gunil, watching them with that same unreadable expression Jungsu hasn't been able to forget since that day in their shared dorm. Something troubling and indistinct, far from meant to be there, clouding the gentleness of Gunil's features. 

It clears in an instant, and Gunil tilts his head, offering Jungsu a crooked smile. 

"So what about it?" Seungmin asks suddenly, pulling his jacket off and throwing it on his bed, crossing his arms. "I'm officially moved in, officially promoted from high school to college student. In for a road of ratemyprofessor and debt." 

He approaches Gunil, links their fingers between them. "Ready to be my boyfriend?" 

Smiling sweetly, Gunil leans up, pecking Seungmin prettily on the lips. Jungsu's stomach almost swoops, almost sinks. Best friend and childhood friend, boyfriends. Whose best man, which will be his, he can't imagine being anyone else's. 

Gunil pulls back, shakes his head simply. "One more semester?" he requests pleadingly. 

Seungmin's face falls, but all he does is sigh. "Always keeping yourself from what you want, idiot," he chides, squeezing Gunil's hands even as Gunil untangles their fingers. 

"What I want," Gunil sing-songs, heading for the door, patting Jungsu's arm on the way, "Is for you to be happy." Without another word, he leaves. 

Jungsu blinks, standing struck still. "I'm confused."

"Me too." 

* * *

All things considered, it makes sense Jungsu would end up here again. 

On either side of things, stuck stretched between. Before it was listening to Seungmin pine loudly and endlessly about his increasingly large crush on Gunil, and then listening as Gunil confesses to him like a grave secret every time that he admires Seungmin more than he thinks he should. 

Maybe once, years ago, when Gunil was zipping up the cheap polyester eighth grade graduation gown, Gunil had listened to Jungsu too, admitting like it was simply a fact of the universe, that he's always liked this boy named Seungmin. He’d probably forgotten that. Jungsu hopes so. 

That doesn't matter anymore, right? Now it's about whatever it is between Gunil and Seungmin that is fracturing. Seungmin sits on Jungsu's dorm bed, Gunil mysteriously absent. Seungmin does that often. They may no longer be a block apart, but their campuses are only thirty minutes apart by bus, and the trip is worth it. 

"I don't get it," Jungsu mumbles, skimming over a syllabus for one of his classes, absentmindedly writing important dates on his and Gunil's whiteboard calendar. "Why doesn't he want to be your boyfriend?" It confuses him more than anyone, he thinks. 

He's seen with his own two eyes how much Gunil adores Seungmin. He's seen more than even Seungmin has felt. He's been behind the scenes. He sees what Seungmin doesn't in every voice call, has seen all the panic and bashfulness before. Maybe Seungmin might not be sure, but Jungsu is . Gunil loves that boy. 

So why?

"If only he'd fucking tell me," Seungmin groans, dragging his hands down his face, pulling at his eyes. Jungsu grimaces at him. "Everytime I ask, he's all like, ‘oh, I just want to make sure you're sure. Oh, we're just testing the waters.’ Blah, blah, blah." 

Seungmin's passion on the subject, eyes wide and hands wildly gesticulating, almost makes Jungsu smile, endeared. This is serious though. He sits back in his seat, caps his Expo marker, and considers it. "He thinks you're gonna find someone else." 

Seungmin sighs, not surprised, like he'd been suspecting the same thing himself. "He thinks I'm gonna find someone else," he concurs sullenly. He flops sideways onto Jungsu's bed dramatically, words muffled in Jungsu's pillow. "Why can't he accept that I like him? Doesn't he know he's wonderful?" His voice cracks a little, and Jungsu is caught in this strange agglomeration of sensation. 

Something like sadness, something like fondness, something he can't pinpoint. Sympathy flickering back and forth between Seungmin and Gunil without warning, the two separate entities melding together in his heart. Oh to feel so much pity for Gunil's lacking self-worth, while simultaneously feeling so much admiration for Seungmin's confidence in the same, pitiful boy. 

He stands, pushing his chair into his desk, and leaning against the edge of the bed, petting Seungmin's hair. It's become habit, since Seungmin told him he'd liked it. He'd simply never stopped. "Short answer, no, he doesn't. Long answer, he could be an all self-loving god, and he'd still think your choice is more important than his." 

"It's gotta be more than that then," Seungmin says, grabbing Jungsu's wrist, holding it to his head. "'Cause I'm making it clear as day that he's my choice. Over and over again." 

Jungsu frowns, twirling a loose strand of Seungmin's hair around his finger. "Maybe you aren’t," he suggests uncertainly. Seungmin moves his head against the pillow to look up at Jungsu fully, his hair splayed across Jungsu's blue satin pillowcase. It's unnecessarily, strikingly, mesmerizing, that sort of sight. 

The door opens, and Gunil steps in, hair a windswept mess, nose and cheeks red from the autumn chill. He takes one look at Jungsu and Seungmin, eyes flicking between them, gives a weak smile, and then snatches his shower caddy from the ground, leaving without a single word said. 

Seungmin sits up, Jungsu's hand falling in his lap, a frown poignant on his face. "Maybe I haven't," he mutters distantly. For some reason though, despite having been so sure about said choice, Seungmin suddenly looks entirely lost. 

Jungsu has his work cut out for him, clearly. 

** *

"Nope!" 

Gunil pauses midway through pulling himself up on his bed, looking over his shoulder at Jungsu, puzzled. Jungsu pulls him back by the shoulders, having found an official year ago now, that Gunil is very strong, but very weak to Jungsu's will. He makes a noise of complaint, but Jungsu is able to push Gunil into his desk chair without any effort spent. 

"You need to stop going to bed with your hair sopping wet," Jungsu scolds, plucking his towel from where it's drying, hooked on the frame of his bed. "You're going to catch a cold, and you can never style your hair in the morning." Realizing what Jungsu aims to do, Gunil sits back, uncertain tension still lining his shoulders. 

Jungsu begins drying Gunil's hair, gradual and methodical. "I could do it myself," Gunil inputs softly, voice weak. Someone is practicing bass a couple doors down, and there's music playing faintly above, and somehow, Gunil has become the quietest thing around. It's unsettling. 

"I got it," Jungsu says plainly, as simple as that. It's not an offer Gunil can selflessly deny, Jungsu is just doing it. "So, tell me." Gunil's jaw flexes, shoulders rising imperceptibly higher. "Why do you keep turning Seungmin down?" 

There's a lapse of silence, and Jungsu exhales lengthily. "You know he really likes you, Gunil. I know it was hard for you to accept in high school, but now this boy has been committed to you for a whole year now without ever asking for anything more. He cares for you so much, why are you denying it?" 

Gunil ducks his head, and Jungsu moves his hands to accommodate, wringing every strand of hair dry with unnecessary care. 

"I know he does," Gunil confesses, "I don't doubt it one bit I just…" He drums his fingers along a bouncing thigh, displaying a buzzing, nervous restlessness. Jungsu holds him by the shoulders, presses him into his seat, determined to drain it all away. The water, and the disrest. 

"You what?" 

Gunil tilts his head back over the chair, looking at nothing, but allowing Jungsu a clear view of something on his face. Not really doubt, or even anything uncertain. Frankly, Gunil looks very decided, looks very sure, and it makes Jungsu apprehensive. "I don't want to hold him back. He should be able to pursue anything and everything he wants to, and I don't want some…highschool crush to get in the way of that." 

Jungsu blinks, stilling. Then he grabs the back of his chair, pulls it down, Gunil yelping, and spins the four legs so Gunil is facing him, the noise grating. "Some high school crush?" he echoes, exasperated, "Gunil, Seungmin adores you, loves you, cherishes you. You were his best friend before you were anything more. You were someone who helped him and supported him. He looks up to you so much." 

He's on a roll now, and the words are flowing faster than he can try and staunch, his tongue eroded stone beneath a waterfall. "Pursue anything he wants. Well, moron, that's you. How many times does he got to say it before you respect his decision more than you doubt yours? What's it gonna take for you to believe that people care for you unconditionally ?" 

He tilts his chair until the back is hitting the edge of his desk, Gunil rested on this precarity beneath him, relying on Jungsu's strength to keep him stable, not even bothering to stabilize himself, gazing up at Jungsu with big doe eyes. 

Jungsu swallows, using his other hand to flick Gunil's nose, if only to get the other to stop looking at him so intently like that, in the way that makes his stomach squirm and his skin crawl. "Why is he allowed all that freedom, and not you?" he asks finally, breaths a little labored, a fire unveiled from the depths of his heart. 

Gunil blinks, lips parting slowly, Jungsu able to see where each chapped bit of skin sticks together, and pulls apart. He's rather close, isn't he? 

"I don't care for it." Gunil answers like he's asking a question, waiting for Jungsu to tell him he's right. Jungsu stares unwaveringly down at him, expectant. "I don't want to…date around, or date…I just want." He licks his lip, and Jungsu's eyes track the motion before he can stop himself. 

"I just want a place to belong, in someone's arms, like home." He turns his head, averting his gaze, trying futilely to escape Jungsu's. "I just wanna be loved. I don't want to be…a honeymoon. I want to be the home." His brows furrow, like even he can't make sense of his own words, splayed before Jungsu like pieces of a puzzle they both have to put together. 

With a hitched breath, Jungsu releases his grip on the chair, and it goes falling to the ground, Gunil's hands flying out, grabbing onto Jungsu's arms. Embarrassed, he makes to pull away, to get up and bury himself beneath the covers where he thinks Jungsu won't see him. 

Jungsu grabs him by the wrists, holding him in place. "He's offering you that, Gunil. I don't care if we're only nineteen and stupid and young, these decisions now matter, and maybe they can last forever." 

Chin wobbling, eyes glossy, Gunil nods. He looks pained, held there by Jungsu like that, his chest heaving shallowly, like he can't get enough air no matter how much he tries. "He loves you," Jungsu assures, hoping it will help, "He really does." 

I love you too, just like I love him.

He rips his hands away from Gunil's, almost tripping backwards, his own voice ringing in his head like it's always been there on repeat, but he's just now hearing it. I love, I love, I love.  

His voice comes out in a rasp, moving forward almost without the rest of him. "He missed you all summer," he says, and he wonders if he's even talking about Seungmin anymore, "He was home, right there, and he was still homesick, missing you." 

Gunil goes from gaping at him, to cocking his head in that infuriating way he does, pressing his lips together, seeking something from Jungsu, and supposedly finding it. He stands, the towel dropping from around his shoulders into Jungsu's seat. 

He flattens his palms over Jungsu's shoulders, and then against the side of Jungsu's neck, his hands finding their way into tucking Jungsu's hair behind his ear, always fixing Jungsu up. "I know he loves me," he repeats, like a broken record, senseless, "But I know what it's like to go from one home, to another." 

He pulls Jungsu down, knocking their heads together. It makes Jungsu a little breathless, their noses brushing. "It's always the childhood home that you'll love most." His hands fall away, the strings holding them up, severed. 

Jungsu thought he'd known Seungmin and Gunil best, but now, standing here, phantom hands in his hair, along his wrist, he's never known less. 

Love really does make you blind. 

God, he's screwed. 

* *

There's these boys. 

Their names are Oh Seungmin and Goo Gunil, and between the stark ages of zero and twelve, adolescence embodied, Jungsu has been gradually, gracelessly, more like sprinting and stumbling and tripping into, being in love with these boys. 

Sandbox love, some say. You could say he's on a beach, and Seungmin's the sand, and Gunil's the water, and they're both drowning him, stuck in the throes between them, but at least the final embrace will be bliss. 

Seungmin who he's known for as long as he can remember, having had Seungmin by his side before he even had a conscience. Who could never decide what hobby to stick to, but sticking to keyboard because it was what Jungsu began to love. Who knew what he liked and what he didn't, even when so unsure, trusting himself despite it. Trusting vanilla perfume and violet ceramics mugs and downy dense comforters. 

Seungmin who knew who he was, even when he knew nothing else. He'd never faltered at Jungsu's side. He taught Jungsu how to believe, how to be home. 

Gunil who didn't know anything when they met, from overseas, from a different home, from a different language. But prevailing in spite of it. Clumsy and crass, always stumbling through life in such a way that makes you question the legitimacy of doubt and shame. Because he always falls, and picks himself back up with the brightest, strongest smile you'll ever see. He's dancing, badly, perfectly, to a beat no one else can hear. Always giving bits of himself away, if it'll make someone he loves, laugh. 

No one else makes Jungsu laugh or smile as much as Gunil does. It's addicting, that radiating warmth. 

Seungmin with slender fingers, the first Jungsu ever learned how to hold. Gunil with his cupid's bow, the importance of language and the value of words soaked into his bottom lip, seeped right into all the places he bites. The contrast of gentle strength, and strong gentleness, of soft spoken generosity, and generous softness. 

Jungsu is Goldilocks, and the both of them plus him, is just right. 

But you can't slow dance as three. 

So, for the time being at least, he sets this revelation aside, and figures that being both on either side and stuck in between, provides him the perfect opportunity to mend the space between Seungmin and Gunil. They're his best friends after all, he loves them more than so, and they more than deserve loving each other. 

Here he is again, bringing his two best friends together. It's prom all over again. 

*    *    *

Except maybe Jungsu is no longer on Gunil’s side. 

Or even Seungmin’s. 

He comes home from class a couple weeks later, inopportunely stepping right in on a muttered argument. Seungmin sat on top of Jungsu's bed, Gunil directly across from him, leaning against his own bed, frustrated and heartbroken when he snaps, "I know when there's a place I don't belong. I know when I'm getting in the way." 

It's not close to any tone Jungsu has ever heard come from Gunil's mouth, and both him and Seungmin freeze in their spots, gaping at Gunil. Gunil is easily frustrated, often more sensitive than he lets on, but this is something different. This is lashing out. Seungmin has prodded too close to an invisible wound, and Gunil has flinched. 

The door falls softly shut, and Gunil's head whips in Jungsu's direction, eyes wild, frown sad, none of him angry like his voice suggests. Always gentle, even when he bites. 

He pushes off the bed, saying beneath his breath as he leaves, "He's all yours." And Jungsu isn't sure who he's talking to, before he's already gone. Once again fled. 

"Funny," Jungsu says flatly, "He's always storming out like he isn't the one living here." 

Seungmin doesn’t laugh like it’s funny. Why would he? That's Gunil’s area of expertise, and Gunil…Seungmin isn’t entertained. Rather, he’s pale in the face like someone sick, and he’s regarding Jungsu as if just meeting him for the first time, and it’s more unsettling than Jungsu could ever prepare for. 

He drops his things carelessly to the floor, approaching Seungmin cautiously. "Hey, everything alright?" He reaches up, runs his hand through Seungmin’s hair, just to soothe him. 

Seungmin’s face screws up tight, the way it does when he holds back tears. Like trying to fix a leaking balloon with a wrench. "We’ve never fought like this," he says, "Not ever this bad." It doesn’t just upset him, it seems to downright terrify him. 

Jungsu swallows, out of his depth. "You’re fighting?"

Seungmin groans, slumps forward, burying his face in Jungsu’s neck,Jungsu catching him easily. "I don’t know," he whines, "We’re not cooperating. He’s being stupid. I’m being…We’re being difficult. This is difficult." His voice trembles, his fists curling into the fabric of Jungsu’s sweater. 

Jungsu watches his own fingers card through Seungmin's hair, blond strands like split daisy petals pasted over his skin. "You're not giving up, are you?" 

On this, whatever it is. 

Seungmin exhales raggedly, tickling the tag of Jungsu's shirt, the fuzz at the nape of his neck. "I just don't know what I want," he confesses gingerly, a secret and a lie. 

It's terrifying for Jungsu to hear. There's more than just boyfriends at stake. These are his best friends. These are the people he loves, the ones he's promised to stick by forever. What does he do now? 

"Yes, you do," he says, hiding the faintest of quivering in his voice, "You always do." Seungmin knows. If Jungsu doesn't, then Seungmin has to. Who else will? 

Seungmin squeezes him tighter for a moment, an audible hitch in his breath and bob of his throat. He pulls back, wobbly, unbalanced, like he needs Jungsu's embrace to keep upright. "You're right," he admits, but he doesn't sound relieved by it, if anything, further distressed. 

Ridding Jungsu of his touch completely, Seungmin slides off of the lofted bed, his feet hitting the floor unevenly. He runs his hand through his hair, looks over at Gunil's side of the room, mouth twisting downwards. 

From the corner of his eyes he glances at Jungsu, the weight of his halfhearted stare heavy still, indiscernible. 

It's suffocating, not knowing how to help, clueless of how to proceed. He's standing in his own room, surrounded by all his and Gunil's things, things once so comforting and homey, feeling terribly out of place. "Stay here," he blurts, thinking, in his mind, the least he can do is retain some normalcy. Normalcy somehow having become him and Seungmin, side by side on top of freshly cleaned sheets and ten year old throws. 

Seungmin frowns, hands twitching at his sides, and Jungsu knows he wants that too. Normalcy. The was . The before. The things prior to Gunil, when there was nothing complex about two boys being best friends, and loving each other wholly. Inseparability merely came with living on the same block, right? 

"What if—" 

"He'll understand, won't he?" Jungsu says, nervously, way more nervous than he should be, scratching the back of his neck. There's nothing to this. Sleepovers are ingrained in their relationship. Two am nights sharing a pillow is part of what's shaped them. 

What's changed? 

"I'm always here when you need me." He turns to his bed, pulls up the comforter and folds it aside, hardly room for two atop an extra large twin bed, but they've shared smaller spaces before, and had fit just fine. "And right now you need me. You need…" He looks Seungmin up and down, feeling so unsure in the moment it's tearing his heart in two, and everything is off kilter, wrong, and he's just desperately hoping this one thing will feel right. 

He wipes at his head, clammy and feverish, feeling Gunil's upsetness all over him like a nasty residue even steel wool won't wash away. "You need to sleep. I'm not letting you get on the bus this late at night alone." 

Seungmin sighs, pulling his sweater over his head, wearing a thin tank underneath. "He'll understand," he says, like it's a bad thing. He kicks off his sweats, leaving just his boxer briefs over milky thighs, Jungsu looking away, gripping onto his comforter feeling wrong, wrong, wrong. 

"He knows us better than anyone," Seungmin mutters, climbing back onto Jungsu's bed where he's always belonged, crossing his arms over his knees, peering at Jungsu over his arms. 

Jungsu wonders if "us" is meant to be a collective whole, or something individual. He doesn't think so. Gunil would never separate them. Maybe that's the problem. 

"Yeah," Jungsu sighs. "Want me to sleep on the fl—" 

"Get your ass up here." 

**      *

When Jungsu wakes up, Seungmin plastered to his chest, his sleepshirt dotted with drool, Gunil isn't home. Or, the dorm. He isn't in their dorm room. A quick surveying glance tells Jungsu that he's come back since leaving last night. His bag not slung over his bed frame, his phone charger not strung along his desk. His favorite hoodie plucked from the door hanger. 

Jungsu's heart rolls unpleasantly between his lungs. He can't move to ease it, Seungmin clung to him by the waist, their legs tangled beneath the blankets. Jungsu feels verifiably like somehow, in some way, he's screwed up. 

But he looks down at Seungmin, hair splayed brightly over the dark, faded fabric of Jungsu's shirt like a halo, sharp nose softly poking Jungsu's collarbone, his breaths felt all throughout Jungsu's chest. Nothing about loving Seungmin, given whatever circumstances, can ever be wrong. 

It's something to be proud of and he knows Gunil knows that best. 

So what is it, that makes this so incredibly…incorrect? Incomplete? Jungsu is putting a puzzle together, and a coherent image is forming, but none of the pieces are fitting together. All he can see, beyond his own stupid infatuation, are two linked hearts, falling apart, and taking a piece of the other with it. 

What was keeping them together, and why only now, is that glue not sticking? 

He doesn't hear Seungmin wake, but he feels it, Seungmin's grip on his shirt tightening, his snuffling fading into silence. Seungmin doesn't move, not an inch. "He didn't come home?" 

"He didn't come home." 

And there they go again, feeling homesick. 

* *   *

Seungmin takes one of Gunil's shirts before leaving, boldly opening Gunil's wardrobe and pulling out the most decent fitting thing he can find. Tugging it on over his head, radiating pure dissatisfaction. "If he's gonna be stupid," he grumbles, "Then I'm stealing his shit." It doesn't really make sense, but Jungsu thinks he understands. 

He wants Seungmin to stay longer, just because he doesn't know what happens when he leaves. If he'll come back, if he'll have any reason to, his and Gunil's relationship frayed and unraveling. He's got class though, places to be, and Jungsu isn't dramatic enough to believe that this means he'll see Seungmin any less. 

Jungsu knows he means more to Seungmin than a petty (breakup?) fight, he just doesn't know where that importance stands, right now, or ever. 

He realizes, sort of hollowly, that he doesn't know what he really is anymore. To Gunil or Seungmin, and in that aspect of his life, and that is quite a great aspect of his life, he is completely lost. Largely, because he doesn't know what they really are to him anymore. 

It's scary, in that way that sets his heart racing, but makes his mind turn to cotton. Sluggish, slow. 

Like a cat, he waits at the window for Gunil to come hom—back to the dorm. When he hears the lock finally clicking open, he tries to act normal, but he doesn't think he's got any of that left in him. Normalcy. A thing of the past, when you're no longer a kid, he guesses. You turn eighteen, and nothing's like it was, like it is. 

There's those weary lines beneath Gunil's eyes, the ones Jungsu is well acquainted with, perhaps more than anyone else. Not quite bags, but puffy, and deep, serving only to make the round shape of Gunil's eyes somehow impossibly softer. He doesn't look up at Jungsu with those tired eyes, not once, kicking off his shoes and yawning into his elbow.

"Where'd you go?" 

Yet he answers after the briefest of pauses. "Hyeongjun's. Then an unpperclassman's. He invited me to a rented out studio in the music department." He talks, always more than he probably realizes. It’s fine though, Jungsu has always adored when he speaks. He loves to listen. 

"He was showing me around some composing software. It's probably never going to be my area of expertise, but I think I wanna get into a little more. Maybe write and produce something on my own. A little more than some—" He shrugs, reaching into their fridge, popping open a can of coffee "—backup drummer." 

Jungsu frowns. "You're an amazing drummer already. Someone's gonna need you one day." Gunil stares blankly into the can, circling his finger over the sharp metal tab of it. Jungsu has to wonder if he's even hearing what Jungsu is saying. 

He sets the can down, shrugs off his jacket. God, his hair is a mess. Jungsu itches to fix it. "So," he starts, tentative, still yet to meet Jungsu's eye, "How did…what…" He bites into his lip, frustrated. He grabs onto the back of his chair, digging his fingers into wood, turning the skin red and white, the way skin looks right before a bruise. "Is he okay?" 

Jungsu slips away from the window, putting only enough distance between him and Gunil to prevent scaring the other off. Again. "Yeah, I made sure of it." And Gunil hardly nods, like he'd expected nothing else. Jungsu feels that leftover frustration of Gunil's, stale and excessive, pooling between his teeth where his tongue lies. 

"What is happening with you two?" he asks, once and for all. "You two are my best friends, and this weird shit going on, is starting to freak me out and you're—I've never seen you like this before. What's—" He swallows his words, hating them, softening his voice, moving just the slightest bit closer "—are you okay, Gunil?" 

Gunil drums his fingers along the back of his chair, the noise almost infuriating in the context. And god, Jungsu just wants him to fucking look at him. "You're wrong," he says. Jungsu flinches. "You've seen me like this before." 

He turns, leaning against his chair, hiding his face behind his hair, leaving Jungsu with nothing to apprehend but the planes of his back, strong and sturdy, Jungsu's favorite place to rest. "I was like this in middle school, when we met. Stupid and upset and fucking awkward." He tilts his head back, lips parted in an undying, miserable sigh. "Never fitting in anywhere. Never picked by anyone." 

That's it for Jungsu. He takes quick, decisive steps, pushes Gunil off the chair, hugs him from behind, wrapping his arms around Gunil's waist loosely, hooking his chin over Gunil's shoulders. " You're wrong," he whispers. 

" I picked you." 

Gunil's hands come up as if desperate, limply grasping at Jungsu's. "I picked you and Seungmin picked you, then Jooyeon and Ji. Even Hyeongjun, and Hyeongjun is selective as hell. But he chose you, and he trusts you, and he loves you. You belong with us, okay?" 

Gunil doesn't respond, unsettlingly quiet. Jungsu reaches up, pokes his cheek, forces him to look back at Jungsu on his shoulder. Jungsu straightens in an instant, rounding Gunil and holding his face. "Why are you crying, please stop." He's panicked, wiping at Gunil's soundless tears like it'll make them disappear. 

Of course, Gunil laughs in response, only Gunil. Trying to swipe Jungsu's hands away, giggling through stifled sobs. "I'm sorry," he sniffs, "I keep trying to figure this shit out all by myself, 'cause I don't know how to do anything else. But even that never fucking works out." 

Jungsu hates the way tears hardly change Gunil's face, hardly moves his body in the way it should, subdued down to the very redness of Gunil's cheeks. Crying shouldn't be so quiet, what if Jungsu had missed it? "Well stop it," he hisses, continuing to clean Gunil's cheeks with his sleeves, refusing to give up, to stop before the tears do. 

"I don't know how," Gunil admits, not as sad about it as he should be. 

Jungsu rolls his eyes, scoffs, "I'll tell you how." He grabs Gunil's hands, falls back onto the floor, and takes Gunil down with him, the other falling almost right into his lap, leant against Jungsu's chest for support. "Tell me something. Not everything, maybe. But something. Are you okay? " 

Gunil exhales, a big, fatigued huff of air, and slumps into Jungsu, Jungsu making a slight noise of surprise, but easily accommodating to it, holding Gunil. It's not anything he's quite done before, but he likes it just as much as he'd expected, if not more. He wraps his arms around Gunil, wants to envelope him completely, just like Seungmin does. 

He sits back in the corner where the wall and Gunil’s wardrobe meet, the sun barely reaching them. And he holds. 

"I'm fine." Jungsu opens his mouth, preparing to glare. "No, I really am, Su, I swear. I have you and Seungmin, don't I? Even if things are rough, I'm not gonna lose either of you." Jungsu still continues to ponder why he's always included. It always sounds like it's them three, and not them two, plus one. 

"We'll be fine too," Gunil assures, despite being the one who needs to hear it, "I know we will. I just…" He buries his face in Jungsu's shirt, and Jungsu wonders if he smells hints of Seungmin clinging there. "I think I want more than I can logically have. I can't ask for it. I'm not…I'm not going to put Seungmin in that position. He should be asking for it. For anything and everything he desires." 

"…Why not you too?" 

Gunil's voice is quiet, barely there, a semblance of itself. "I don't know." He melts into Jungsu, contradicting his words in so many ways Jungsu can't even begin to describe. "I think it's not my place." 

**

"You don’t have to worry about it anymore," Seungmin relays casually, balancing his keyboard on its stand, "He finally told me why."

"Do you think the only thing I wonder about is your relationship status?" Jungsu says, a complete and utterly transparent fool. He worries his lip, taps his finger against his keys. "So…why?" 

They haven't gone back to Jungsu's room, Jungsu's bed. It doesn't feel right anymore, like when they were kids. Jungsu saves the grief over that loss of intrinsic comfort for another day. 

Seungmin doesn't respond, plugging in his keyboard and turning it on, soft clicks and movements filling the silence of the room. Jungsu can see in the hollow of his cheek, teeth sunken into skin. Winter rain chatters against the window, gentle some moments, violent the next. Fittingly tumultuous. 

So he asks a different question. "Is that what was happening then, before I walked in? You two were talking?" He frowns, leaning mopily against his board, unable to help but think he'd somehow overstepped, ruined something. In more ways than one. 

Seungmin huffs. "I don't know about talking ," he mutters, distracting himself with his keyboard, pulling printed sheet music out from his bag, prepared. They'd gone here so they could play, without bothering Seungmin's roommate, without running into Gunil. This booked studio in Jungsu's school's music department. 

It feels like just them two, in the world. It feels lonely. 

"More like..." Seungmin shrugs, shakes out his head, expression in some faraway land, broody and sullen. He's been preoccupied lately, and Jungsu can guess every reason why. At least, all but one. "Prying out his fucking teeth." Seungmin scowls, his words venomless. 

He places his sheet music upside down, and Jungsu watches him sympathetically. "I mean, it worked, didn't it?" he offers, trying his best.

Blinking, Seungmin grants him a small smile in return, worn but genuine. "That's one way to put it." His fingers dance over the keys without pressing down on any of them, playing a ghost song for someone not there. 

Jungsu just stares at him, rolling his bottom lip between his teeth. Words twist and jumble in his mind, failing to form the most painless way to ask exactly what it is he wants to know. Thankfully, he doesn't need to, Seungmin noticing his struggle, always proficient in doing just that. 

"…I dunno," Seungmin answers the unasked question. He evidently does know, yet evades explanation. "I just hate that he's right," he intones, bitter yet sweet, "Well, not completely—but mostly, and I hate him for it…" He slumps back in his chair, frowning emphatically. He rubs his knuckles over his eyes, like someone tired, or someone who's cried. 

"It just makes me love him more," he complains weakly. 

For some absolute inexplicable reason, the words make Jungsu's heart skip, warmth caressing his cheeks. Love? 

One more time, for the last time, Jungsu asks, "And he's right about…?" To which Seungmin averts his gaze, crossing his arms over his chest, shielding his heart. Jungsu can't possibly imagine something Seungmin is unwilling to tell him. He tells Jungsu everything. 

Stifling a sigh, or maybe a scream, Jungsu leans forward in his chair, bumping his head against Seungmin's arm, resting his cheek on the sharp point of his shoulder. "So, what are you gonna do about it?" 

Again, Seungmin simply shrugs, just as last as Jungsu is, and he's the one with all the information. There's a pink tinge to the tips of his ears, and he refuses to look at Jungsu, nose scrunched and brows furrowed as if he were in pain. 

"Are you gonna change his mind?" Jungsu lifts his head, tilts forward just so, Seungmin unable to avoid his eyes. "Show him his reason is stupid, and he should date, or at the very least…stop this ?" Whatever this mess can be considered. It's not just about being boyfriends anymore. It's about… them . As a whole, as a unit. 

Shaking Jungsu off, twisting his head in the other direction, Seungmin grunts. "I can't. The reason…I don't know if I'll ever be able to do anything about it. Not soon enough. Maybe not ever. It isn’t as stupid as I want it to be." A bit hopeless, sad and dreary in a way that mourns more than meets the eye. 

Jungsu nudges Seungmin a little, insistent, bordering on pestering. Selfless bordering on selfish. "C'mon now," he says, "Don't go acting like that, there's—" 

"You don't get it," Seungmin blurts, turning in his chair, facing Jungsu, pressing their knees together, grabbing onto Jungsu's shoulders. "The reason he won't date me is you ." He pulls Jungsu in, right up to him, Jungsu's collar curled between his fingers. He glares at Jungsu accusingly, breathing hard. 

And he kisses him. 

Crashes their lips together, with such force Jungsu flails to grab onto the back of Seungmin’s seat, balancing on his fingers and toes, all sense and logic dissipating, his entire being's focus lying on the point where Seungmin's lip rests between his. 

Seungmin sighs into it, some long time relief spreading throughout them instantaneously. They'd been waiting for this, for a long, long time, and it's only obvious now, in hindsight. Jungsu finds his balance, pushes himself into the kiss until they're both precariously leant against Seungmin's chair, tasting the summer fruit they'd let ripen for far too long. 

The grape bursts between their teeth. 

Jungsu rears back, stumbling back into his seat, gasping for air. Rain pelts the glass, and Seungmin's chest heaves, his breaths leaving him in short, apprehensive bursts. They stare at each other, simultaneously in shock, dumbstruck. 

Incredibly, and guiltily, awed. 

The shame hits him like a slap to the face. He jerks to his feet, unsteady. "How could you—" He spins on his heel, nearly trips over himself to kick open his case. "How could we do that to Gunil? Oh my god." He falls to his knees, shoving his keyboard in. 

Seungmin wouldn’t use him. Seungmin wouldn’t hurt Gunil. Not intentionally. Jungsu believes it, he has to. He won’t compute any other reality. 

"Jungsu," Seungmin says, voice frail, hardly reaching Jungsu. Blood rushing through his ears. 

"We shouldn’t have done that to him, and oh my god, I didn't care. I don't know if this is because things aren't working out, but you can't do that," he rasps, spiraling, rambling, understanding maybe why Gunil, with so many bounding thoughts, speaks so goddamn much, "I'm not gonna be some rebound, some second choice. It's not right. To any of us. Fuck, fuck, fuck." 

"Jungsu, please." 

It takes several tries, his hands shaking, his vision blurring, to zip up his keyboard case, the sound tearing through the air like a crack of thunder. He clambers to the door, Seungmin's fingers closing around his wrist, the boy staring up at him pleadingly. "Jungsu wa—" 

Jungsu rips his hand away, shoves himself through the door, and disappears, choking on shame and sorrow. 

**

The rain soaks him to the bone. He doesn't know what to do, doesn't know where to go. 

There's only one person he'd go to in a time like this, in regards to something like this, and he's gone and kissed his boy. 

Jungsu is floundering, without his people to lean on. He has hurt, and he is hurt, and he doesn’t have the capacity to truly consider the circumstances, nor the consequences, of a stupid kiss. 

No matter how hard or long he thinks, he can't pinpoint when this fell apart, when he or Seungmin fell, when they all fell. Came crashing to the ground, all holding out their arms to catch the other, catching no one. 

It's standing there on the side of the street past the campus, water streaking through his hair, cascading down his cheeks, still in shock. When he reaches up, brushes his fingers over his stinging lips, that he decides that he needs to do something, anything, rather than this. Rather than nothing. 

So he goes back to his dorm, and prays Gunil isn't there. 

Of course, he is. 

Jungsu opens the door, slow and careful, fingers numb, touch wet around the knob. On his bed, his laptop resting on his shins, Gunil hones in on him and his sodden state quicker than Jungsu can blink. Immediate, he slides off his bed, pulling Jungsu in fully, and fussing over him. 

"You're fucking soaked. Did you not think to bring an umbrella?" Jungsu doesn't respond, staring down on him with wide, teary eyes. Gunil doesn't care enough for a response, not more than he cares for getting Jungsu dry as soon as possible. Pushing Jungsu into his desk seat, throwing a towel over his head, rummaging through his closet, pulling out his favorite hoodie. 

He scolds Jungsu under his breath as he frets away. He pulls Jungsu's up and over his head, Jungsu simply letting him, slack, a bit flustered, still terribly fucking guilty. He starts to resist a little, but Gunil fights his feeble reluctance, shoving his hoodie, god it's his favorite one, over Jungsu's head, shrouding him in comfort and warmth and the scent of natural deodorant. Jungsu can't take it anymore. Arms pulled through the sleeves, towel wrapped around his neck. 

"He kissed me." 

He watches Gunil pause, process. He watches Gunil's heart break through those shining, dark eyes. He watches it shatter and crumble to pieces, all the bits of it pricking at his insides, his shoulders rising and falling like they're being forced. He squeezes the towels in his hands, so hard his arms begin to tremble. 

Eyes stinging, a lump in his throat. "I kissed him back." 

He expects anything but the curt nod Gunil gives him, turning away and shoving Jungsu's wet hoodie and towel into his laundry basket under his tall bed. He plugs in the kettle sitting atop their fridge, the sound of water boiling harsh and maddening. Jungsu gapes at him, gapes at his ability to act fine . Poorly unaffected. 

Jungsu deflates, hands falling limp in his lap. "You knew," he realizes, putting the pieces together, no longer numb with a kiss, numb from the rain. No wonder Gunil isn't reacting, he'd been preparing for this. 

"Of course I knew," he says, Jungsu wincing upon hearing his voice, stony and detached. Entirely, brutally forced, wrenched from his throat. "Everybody knew." He turns off the kettle, pours the water into his mug, painted flowers and leaves on top of white glazed ceramic. 

He tears into a box of teabags Jungsu keeps around for his throat and voice. He never drinks it himself. But he prepares it so well, like it was a task of his own. 

Not looking up at Jungsu, he sets the steaming mug beside him on the desk, holding his arm to his chest like he's wounded. Jungsu grabs the arm, pulls it close to him, using both hands to hold Gunil's one, cradling it to his chest, whining like a dog. 

"I'm sorry. Please be angry with me. Please. Yell at me, hit me, I don't care, but please stop just fucking standing like you're okay when I know you're not. Don't try and fool me, Gunil, I can see through it all." 

Gunil blinks, caught off guard, emotions flickering over his face in seeping segments. Brows twitching up, lips parting, the corner of his mouth jumping down, then up. "Not well enough," he sighs, "Why are you sorry anyways? It's not cheating . We weren't dating, and he loves you." 

He tries to pull away, but Jungsu doesn't let him, pulling him only closer in, his knees bent against the chair between Jungsu's thighs. "Don't run, Gunil, don't fucking run from this," he pleads. From me. From us .

Gunil swallows, hard, turning his head away, bracing himself against the desk, breathing raggedly. His lip wobbles, and Jungsu sees the glassy sheen to his eyes, sees the immense effort it's taking him not to cry. God, he just wants Gunil to cry, this one time, and never again. 

"You guys love each other, and you've loved each other for a lot longer than you've ever even known I exist," he delivers in a cracked, desperately indifferent, voice. "I'm not going to get between that. You guys make each other happy. That's what I want. I want you to be happy." 

He sniffs, grimacing at the sound, reaching up and trying discreetly to wipe at his eyes, as if Jungsu isn't close enough to see the tears before they fall. "I don't belong between you two, and I love you enough to do the job of removing myself." He shrugs. "Making room? I don't know. Helping, maybe." 

Clarity settles in with Gunil's grief, and Jungsu hurts entirely differently than he had before. His heart beating, bleeding in his chest, because the boy he loves doesn't love himself. There's something incomplete there, something lost. 

Something missing. Floating around waiting to be caught. 

He laughs, drily, incredulously, and Gunil lets out this huff of breath, his frown fading, as if Jungsu's mere laugh can stitch his heart back up. It makes Jungsu laugh just a little bit more, pulling Gunil in closer, Gunil's elbows resting against his sternum, one knee up in Jungsu's lap, the other leg the only thing keeping him standing beside Jungsu himself. "When have we ever not wanted you around?" he questions, bewildered. 

He releases Gunil's arm,  merciful, only to move his hand down to the small of Gunil's back, holds onto Gunil's hem like a lifeline. "God, everytime you're away we miss you so much we can't focus. We spent our entire summer thinking about you," he professes, "We miss you." 

He can tell Gunil is more in his head than he is present with Jungsu, staring unseeing, unlinking, down at Jungsu, teeth dug into his bottom lip not moving. "He loves you," he says, quiet, faint, and Jungsu wonders if this is the voice Gunil has been hearing at the back of his mind for months now. "And you love him." 

He grabs Gunil by the face, brings them nose to nose, the collision not painless, so Gunil will listen . "Oh, fuck that, we love you too, idiot!" Gunil's brows rise all the way up to his bangs, teeth freeing pink bitten skin. "Look at me," Jungsu says, pointless now that Gunil is finally not looking anywhere but Jungsu.

Nervous, palms damp against Gunil's cheeks, voice quivering, Jungsu swallows any and all reluctance. "...Do you have feelings for me too, Gunil?" 

A bright, rapid flush spreads from Gunil's cheeks and outwards. "Feelings? I've spent every day waking up and falling asleep to you and loving every moment," he declares exasperatedly, like it was only apparent. Like Jungsu should have known sooner, the whole time. "I'm sorry. I am. But I can’t help it." 

Jungsu presses his thumbs into the skin beneath Gunil's crow's feet, erasing purple bruises, blooming red. "You were never anywhere you didn't belong with us. You were never Seungmin's second choice," he swears, inhaling. Into the corner of Gunil's mouth, curling up under Jungsu's voice, Jungsu confesses, "You're not mine." 

Fuck slowdancing. Fuck perfect pairs. 

Much more hesitant, more cautious, than Seungmin had been with him, but just as emotional, in a way rash, Jungsu delicately lays his lips over Gunil's mouth, sure to shut him up. Tucking his fingers behind Gunil's ears, all gentleness and softness as he cradles Gunil's head between his hands, sure to handle the boy with the care he deserves. 

Gunil is tense for only a second, before leaning into it fully, halfway sat on Jungsu's lap, one arm thrown over Jungsu's shoulders, fingers skittering just below Jungsu's shirt, teasing at touch. He kisses much more calmly than Seungmin, languidly, savoring every meeting and parting. 

Jungsu can't wait to kiss them over, and over. 

"Are we even now?" he asks between calm, unhurried nips and licks. "We're all sorry and screwed. What do we do now, when you're not the martyr?" 

Gunil glares at him, and only kisses more, tasting of salt and tears. Jungsu laughs, carding his fingers through Gunil's silky dark hair. "We missed you before we even met you," he breathes. 

"I didn't belong anywhere else," Gunil murmurs, "'Cause I was meant for this." And Jungsu is glad that they're finally on the same page. 

* * *

Seungmin opens his dorm and sees Jungsu, expression switching from surprised, to uncertain, to deadset determination. He lets Jungsu in without a word, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the frame of his bunk bed, his dorm so much different than Jungsu's and Gunil's, so impersonal. 

He's almost broody, standing there and watching Jungsu with narrowed eyes. Despite everything, he speaks first. "I'm sorry for dropping that on you out of the blue and then kissing you without warning. I wasn’t doing it because of Gunil. You weren’t some rebound, I hope you know. I wouldn’t…I really care about you," he starts, strong and unwavering, "But I'm not sorry for my feelings for you, nor my feelings for Gunil. I'm only sorry it took me so long to realize." 

Jungsu snorts a little, standing there awkwardly amidst the room. If he were back in his room, he'd have no qualms about standing or sitting anywhere he wanted, at one point his things were as much his as they were Gunil's. "There were definitely better ways you could've broken that to me," he says wryly. At least that makes Seungmin the slightest bit abashed, pressing his lips together in an aborted pout. 

"You deserve to know the full truth then, I guess," Seungmin sighs, training his stare on the ground between his feet, "The reason why—"

Jungsu crosses his arms, mirroring Seungmin, raising a brow. "I know. I know everything." 

Seungmin's eyes widen, his arms loosening around his midriff. "Gunil?" 

"Told me everything," Jungsu tells, "Not without being difficult—" 

Seungmin sighs, rolls his eyes, but his shoulders relax. "Of course." 

"—I know we're all stupid, and he loves me too, and he was going to sacrifice himself to the seagulls so we could run off and elope together." 

Seungmin blinks, a huff of laughter escaping him, but he's a bit caught off guard, gazing at Jungsu, something nervous and hopeful brewing in his eyes. It’s warded off by worry. "Does he know about the kiss?"

Solemnly, Jungsu nods. "Yes…he isn’t hurt." He pauses, scrunches his nose. “At least, once he was certain you finally kissing me didn’t mean throwing his ass to the curb."

Seungmin sighs, twisting a bracelet around his wrist apprehensively. "…I really shouldn’t have done that. To either of you."

Jungsu wants to immediately agree, but he’d kissed Seungmin back, and he’d wanted it, liked it. At the rate things were going, it wasn’t a matter of if, but when, one of them broke just the same. Crossing some sort of undrawn line without meaning to, upsetting this fragile, unlasting balance of thirds. “Apologize later,” is all he can come up with. 

"So…it's not weird for you right? Us both, y'know, being like…" He shrugs, running a hand through his hair, averting the intensity of his stare. "…being obsessed with you." 

Groaning, Jungsu straightens and kicks at Seungmin's feet. "Don't be dumb," he laughs, "You already know I'm obsessed with both of you just as much." He grins challengingly. "If not more." Seungmin pouts, miffed and defensive. Frankly there's no time. 

"Let's go get that boyfriend."

***

Jungsu’s keycard in hand, Seungmin bursts through their dorm's door. Jungsu glimpses through the opening crack of the door, Gunil jump, dropping a chip on the ground and cursing. Then he double takes, eyes widening as he looks back up, noticing both Seungmin and Jungsu entering. 

Wasting no time, tired of waiting, patience spent, Seungmin crowds Gunil against the wall between their beds, the window swaying open behind him, breeze and sunshine illuminating the unsuspecting innocuous surprise on his face. "Be my boyfriend," Seungmin demands, leaving no room for argument. 

Gunil blushes pink, looking over to Jungsu, brows knitting together in confusion. He opens his mouth to say something, probably along the lines of denial, and Jungsu steps beside Seungmin, both of them cornering the boy between them. 

He grins, regarding Gunil and his increasing bashfulness. "Be our boyfriend," he adds cheerily. 

Gunil's eyes somehow blow wider, a smile loosely hanging from his lips. "You mean it?" he asks, breathless with joy, pushing himself off the wall, throwing his arms around Seungmin and Jungsu both, squeezing them in, his face buried between their shoulders. "You’re not messing with me?"

"You don't have to try to navigate this shit by yourself, Nil," Jungsu promises, stroking a hand up and down Gunil's back, smiling giddily into the crown of his head. "We can all be stupid together now." 

Seungmin hums, eyes fluttered shut, his cheek pressed against Jungsu's shoulder now. "Mhm. You don't know how pissed I am that you really thought I was going to leave you high and dry at the drop of a hat," he relays calmly. 

Gunil opens his mouth, and in unison, Jungsu and Seungmin wordlessly shout over him. "Just accept it, alright?" Seungmin clicks his tongue, pressing a kiss to Gunil's forehead. 

"Shut up, both of you," Gunil says lovingly, "I'm so happy." He hides his face in Seungmin's neck. "I love you both so much, I never thought I'd have this." 

"Neither did I, honestly," Jungsu admits, "I thought I was going to watch you two forever, and never say a word. I…was happy for you." Seungmin and Gunil lift their heads and look at him, wearing matching frowns. "It's okay now though," he's quick to add, "I mean, right?" 

Seungmin only forces them back into the hug, tight and intimate, each of them tangled up in the other. And Jungsu's questions are answered all at once. He's no one's best man, still their bestfriend, with the addition of being a boyfriend. Maybe change is good, and maybe, if the people are just right and the circumstances fall just so, three can slow dance. 

To the sound of laughter and passing cars and drifting chatter, the three hold each other close, and for once in what feels like forever, everything feels right. 

***

There’s these boys, and there’s not much to say about them yet. They’re still figuring things out, and they’re not doing it alone. No longer on either side, no in between. Together they lie on the same page, the same bed. 

Three bodies tangled together atop a twin mattress, elbows and knees digging into each other, blankets kicked to the floor, body heat more than sufficient enough. Arms wrapped around waists, noses nuzzled into necks. They shouldn’t be able to fit on the bed, but they do. They must. 

Jungsu wakes up, sunshine streaming in through the window, no one remembering to close the blinds the night before. He squints his eyes against the blinding, golden light. He looks to the right of him, gazes upon an empty, neatly made bed. His bed. One he hardly touches anymore, only to study and sit and everything but sleep and rest. 

He looks to the left of him. A cheek pressed into the meat of his arm, long gone numb, an arm lazily thrown over his hip. Gunil is blissfully unaware of his position curled up into Jungsu's frame. Seungmin practically on top of him, his face entirely hidden in Gunil's neck. Both arms wrapped around Gunil's chest. Anything to conserve space, he supposes. 

Jungsu dislodges his arm from beneath Seungmin's hand, adjusting the slipping strap of Seungmin's tank, using his nightshirt to wipe away Gunil's drool. The movement disturbs Gunil, and his eyes blink open blearily, idly latching onto Jungsu's face. He yawns, pulling Jungsu impossibly closer to him. 

"Morning, sunshine," he mumbles, groggy. 

"Morning," Jungsu replies pleasantly, much more awake. 

Sighing, Gunil opens his eyes fully, looks into the sun beaming down on them. He rubs his eyes, unable to move much more than that, Seungmin effectively pinning him in place. With a yawn, he sits up in the slightest, pressing a chaste kiss to Jungsu's chin. "You ready?" he asks, voice hoarse with sleep. 

"For what?" 

Gunil blinks, slow. "The day? The week. I don't know." He burrows closer to Jungsu, and Jungsu thinks he's only going to manage falling back asleep. 

Still, he indulges Gunil, holding him and pecking his cheek. "Yeah, yeah I'm ready, baby."