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“I'm bored,” Jungwon says into the silence of a lazy Sunday afternoon. He prods at Heeseung's leg. “Come down here and kiss me, hyung.”
When Heeseung looks over the top of his laptop, he's greeted by Jungwon's pout, his lower lip sticking out and eyes wide. He's lying on his back on Heeseung's bed, and from where Heeseung is sitting by the headboard, he's upside down. He should look ridiculous. It's the bane of Heeseung's existence that he doesn't.
The truth is there's nothing Heeseung would rather do. He wants to drag Jungwon in close, to tangle his hands in Jungwon's hair and bite his soft lower lip, to kiss him until they're both gasping for air. The wanting is so strong it feels like it's eating him up from the inside out.
It's precisely because he wants so much that he forces himself to shake his head. "Nah."
Jungwon's eyes get impossibly bigger, his pout unbelievably deeper. "Nah?” he repeats, like he's never heard the word before. “Why not?”
Heeseung looks down at his laptop screen and says, "Because you don't need my help anymore."
"What? Yes, I do," Jungwon whines. He rolls over onto his knees and crawls up Heeseung's bed to flop into the pillows next to him. Heeseung wishes he could scrub that visual from his mind. "There's still so much I don't know."
“There isn't,” Heeseung tells him. “You're good at kissing. Passing grade from me.”
“Really?” Jungwon asks, pleased. “You sure? You should probably give me a final exam.”
He leans in closer, and Heeseung leans away. “I'm sure,” he says, mustering all the strength he has to sound firm. “Go kiss someone else for your final exam if you want to so bad.”
He can hear the bitter jealousy at the idea of that in his own voice and wants to take it back immediately, but Jungwon doesn't seem to notice. “I can't,” he complains. “You know I can't. There's no one to kiss who I want to subject to…”
He waves a hand. Heeseung knows that he means the hell that is their schedules and the possibility of a dating scandal hanging over every stolen interaction.
“So find someone who gets it,” Heeseung says, forcing himself to keep his voice even this time. “Another idol.”
“Another idol?” Jungwon repeats. “Where would I find one of those?”
There's a loaded pause. Heeseung assumed the question was rhetorical, but Jungwon is staring at him like it's not. He shrugs. “Music shows? The artist gym?”
Jungwon barks a laugh and rolls his eyes. “Does hyung want me to get laughed at in the Inkigayo bathroom because I managed to mess up kissing? No, thanks.”
"If anyone laughs at you, they don't deserve you," Heeseung says. "Ditch them and find someone better to kiss."
Jungwon huffs. "Hyung," he says, in the admonishing leader tone he saves for scolding them when they're not taking something seriously. It prompts Heeseung to look up at him and open his mouth to apologize before he realizes he's not sure exactly what he's apologizing for.
Jungwon doesn't explain. He just keeps looking at Heeseung.
"What?" Heeseung says. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
Jungwon sighs. “Can you maybe put the laptop away?”
Heeseung feels off kilter, like he's somehow misjudged the gravity of this conversation. But that doesn't make any sense. Jungwon has never been anything but teasing and light about his kissing lessons. He always laughed and asked Heeseung stupid questions about his technique and thanked him as he skipped off.
Heeseung closes the laptop and sets it aside. Jungwon promptly replaces it with himself, thighs spread wide across Heeseung’s hips, settling in like he belongs in Heeseung’s lap. Heeseung automatically puts his hands on Jungwon’s thighs, then mentally kicks himself. He should push Jungwon away, not pull him closer.
But then Jungwon cups Heeseung’s cheeks with his hands, one of his thumbs brushing back and forth over Heeseung’s cheekbone. He makes eye contact, then drops his gaze to Heeseung’s lips before flicking them back up to meet Heeseung’s again, exactly the way Heeseung taught him. Heeseung curses himself for the way it makes his breath catch in his throat even though he should know better.
“Hyung,” Jungwon says, voice so quiet Heeseung would have to strain to hear if Jungwon were any farther away. “I’m trying to tell you that you’re someone better."
Jungwon leans down to close the scant distance between them. Heeseung feels the warmth of his breath against his lips in the fraction of a second before he turns his head. Jungwon’s lips land on his cheek, and he pulls back, his hands dropping back to his sides. His lips twist into another pout, a furrow of confusion between his eyebrows.
“I can’t, Jungwon-ah,” Heeseung says, eyes focused over Jungwon’s shoulder. His voice wavers, and he swallows hard. “I can’t kiss you again just because you're bored.”
Jungwon is quiet for a long moment. Heeseung’s stomach twists. He should never have let this get this far.
"What if it's not just because I'm bored?" Jungwon says.
Heeseung looks at him in confusion, frowning. “You just said that it was.”
Jungwon sighs. “That’s because I’ve been trying to ease you into this, but I’m realizing that you’re not very…observant. Or I’m not very obvious. Or maybe I’m reading you totally wrong and I’ve convinced you to do something you really didn’t want to do, in which case I’m so sorry, and I’ll go away and we never have to talk about this again. But honestly, it didn’t seem like that all the other times, or even really right now, so…”
Heeseung stares. His heart is slamming against his rib cage, his brain giving him nothing but static. “What are you talking about?”
Jungwon bites his lower lip, searching Heeseung’s face for something. “Why can’t you kiss me because I’m bored?”
Heeseung opens his mouth, but years of keeping it shut closes it for him again. Jungwon is the leader, but Heeseung is supposed to be Jungwon’s support, his safe place to land—not his burden or his complication. He shakes his head.
“Is it because you want it to mean something?” Jungwon presses. Heeseung sucks in a surprised breath, and Jungwon’s face softens. “Because it does mean something to me.”
“I know,” Heeseung says, too terrified to listen to what Jungwon is trying to say. “You trust me to teach you. I’m safe and easy and fun. It’s okay, I want to keep being that for you, it’s just that—”
“No,” Jungwon interrupts, exasperated. “I mean, yes, you’re all those things. But you’re all those things because I like you. It’s not just fun.”
Heeseung’s brain gives up on making him deliberately misinterpret Jungwon. It seems impossible, but Heeseung knows Jungwon would never say something like that if he didn’t mean it. Jungwon is looking at him, waiting for Heeseung to get over himself, and Heeseung…he wants to. Every cell in his body is screaming at him to do it. But it’s such a bad fucking idea, and it’s Heeseung’s job to point out bad ideas when Jungwon misses them.
“We can’t, though,” Heeseung says. “We can’t fuck things up for the group, we have to…”
Jungwon presses a finger to Heeseung’s lips. “Stop being such a self-sacrificing perfectionist for a second, hyung,” he says. “Do you like me back or not?”
Heeseung feels like he’s standing on stage and the floor lift started going down without anyone warning him. Five minutes ago he was going to take this to his grave, and now he’s just supposed to say it? But he can’t lie to Jungwon, and besides, what reason does he have to hide it if Jungwon feels the same?
Holy shit. Jungwon feels the same.
“I…yeah,” Heeseung says. “I like you.”
Jungwon smiles, small and pleased, eyes practically sparkling. It makes relief unfurl in Heeseung’s chest, a weight on his shoulders easing. If Jungwon is smiling at him like that, what can really go wrong?
“Okay,” Jungwon says carefully. “So…I know it won’t be easy, but…what if you gave us a chance?”
Heeseung will think back to this moment later and rationalize his reaction a million different ways. He’ll think about how Jungwon implied that he knew all the things Heeseung was worried about and had already considered them. He’ll tell himself it was obvious that Jungwon had a plan, even though it turns out Jungwon's plan is just if it gets hard, we'll figure it out like we always have. He’ll decide that, reason and good sense aside, it was a foregone conclusion that he would go wherever Jungwon led without question.
Right now, though, he’s not thinking any of that. When he surges up to kiss Jungwon, their lips colliding hard, he’s simply giving in to what he wanted to do all along. Jungwon makes a noise of surprise and then kisses Heeseung back in earnest, arms wrapped around Heeseung’s neck. He swipes his tongue over Heeseung’s upper lip the way Heeseung taught him. It draws a gasp out of Heeseung just like it always does, and his hands fly up to slide into Jungwon’s hair. He kisses Jungwon over and over, his wanting overflowing and pouring into every touch of their lips.
He feels dizzy when Jungwon pulls back and flashes a smile at him, his dimple so deep Heeseung thinks he could get lost in it. He kisses it instead, and Jungwon’s already-pink cheeks darken.
“Is that a yes?” Jungwon asks.
“Yes,” Heeseung says, incredulous that Jungwon had to ask. But then he gets it—it sounds so good out loud that he wants to say it again. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes—”
Jungwon cuts him off with another kiss. Heeseung doesn’t mind.