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Jealously is an ugly look on Seungmin, so he doesn’t wear it where others can see. But he does wear it.
It clings to him underneath his clothes, his expressions, covers his vulnerable parts. Like stupid joke underwear that was the only clean pair left in the drawer with no time to do laundry. Except it doesn’t feel like a joke, and he wishes it did, because, contrary to first impression his appearance might give, Seungmin loves jokes. No, what it feels like is this: A sickly gnarl in the pit of his stomach that knots itself tighter and tighter as he watches Changbin watch Hyunjin with all the tenderness in the world, all the tenderness that Seungmin can’t offer because his tenderness isn’t soft or comforting, it’s that of a wound, hot with infection and ready to leak disgusting fluids at a touch. It feels like knowing that he’s the least popular member of Stray Kids, and Hyunjin is maybe the most (next to Felix, who—is a whole other thing), that what draw Seungmin does have is not sensual dancing or shredded abs or rounded muscles or any other raw physical thing that Changbin himself clearly values and participates in. It tastes like the half-drunk beer forgotten on the counter, flat and bitter with all the joy and anticipation of the next day gone out of it.
None of that matters, of course, because nothing about jealousy is useful to anyone, least of all Changbin, who doesn’t appreciate the meaner, lower sides of his loved ones. Or rather, he doesn’t appreciate when they don’t try to fight them, when they inflict them upon others. Seo Changbin is a sucker for personal growth and fighting one’s demons–which is something Seungmin likes about him. But the thing spreading through Seungmin like blood poisoning when Changbin does his over-the-top flirting with Hyunjin, or trails gentle fingers over his shoulder as he rests, or looks at him with honey-farmer eyes–it’s winning, and that may be because Seungmin doesn’t particularly even want to fight it.
He knows it’s childish and unfair. His journal knows, too, and that’s the extent of his willingness to expose that infected part of himself.
“Seungmin-ah!” Calls a makeup artist, and when Seungmin blinks himself back into the hustle and bustle of the green room, Changbin is looking at him. His stomach gives an unpleasant little twist, and Seungmin hurries into the chair Youngjoo-noona proffers him before his face can give more away.
-
“You’ve been quiet lately,” Changbin murmurs, and gently squeezes Seungmin’s hand. In the seats in front of them, Jeongin dozes open-mouthed, and Felix is curled up in a way that is probably unsafe in the event of an accident to watch his TikTok feed. Little risk of disturbing them, but Changbin keeps his voice low anyway. “Is everything okay, Seungmin-ah?”
Hyunjin is in the van ahead with the others; Seungmin indulges a mean little thought of otherwise hyung wouldn’t bother before forcing his mind away. Changbin’s hand is warm, the callouses familiar under Seungmin’s thumb.
“Yeah, hyung,” says Seungmin, squeezing back. “I’m fine.”
-
They are given an entire day off; at the news, Jisung basically phases out of existence where he was standing next to Chan, presumably to reappear in his bed with coffee and a chocolate milk bun. Chan nods, and smiles, as if he won’t be in the company studio by 10am the next day. Minho sexually harasses Jeongin. Felix, concernedly, asks their manager how the intern’s mother’s dog is doing. Hyunjin, imperiously, orders Changbin not to wake him before 6pm at the earliest. The reminder of their cohabitation stings, stupidly.
Seungmin turns away before he can see how Changbin reacts, and goes to get his things ready to go home. It’ll be nice to have a day off. He can catch up on the baseball highlights, or read, or game with Felix, or all of the above and more so that he can’t slow down enough to get caught up in his own head.
“Yah–Seungmin-ah–Kim Seungmin!”
Seungmin stops, guilt snagging the edge of his heart, although he genuinely hadn’t heard Changbin calling for him the first time. Changbin catches up, and it’s fucked up, how just the solid presence of him next to Seungmin calms the hummingbird-beat of Seungmin’s heart. He’s got his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, his natural curls midway through a daring escape from the prison of hair product. Seungmin likes him so much. He wishes that would be enough, that he was a better person who didn’t nurse the hurt.
“Do you want to do something tomorrow?” Changbin asks, hands tucked away in his pockets. Cautious with his affection as they make their way through the company building, past dozens of eyes that would see the price tag of a scandal in their held hands.
“What?” Seungmin tucks his hands into his pockets, too.
“A date,” says Changbin. He pauses, forcing Seungmin to stop walking. “We could go get chicken, see a movie.”
A date. Changbin’s attention solely on him for hours. Seungmin wants it, his mouth watering in hunger for it. But the sting from earlier sticks in his throat, makes it hard to swallow. If Hyunjin will be sleeping, am I the consolation prize? He wonders, knowing even as he thinks it that it’s a terrible way to think about Changbin, but he’s too tired, suddenly, to police his thoughts into those of a good boyfriend.
“I’m pretty tired, hyung,” he says, honest to be dishonest, “can I let you know how I’m feeling tomorrow?”
Changbin frowns, not in displeasure, but as part of checking over Seungmin, examining him, so overtly concerned that Seungmin wants to throw up. “Sure, Seungmin-ah. Just text me? I can just come over, too, and we can do something at home.”
“Okay, hyung,” says Seungmin, and pulls away to get into one of the cars waiting for them. He wants to look back, to see Changbin looking after him. He doesn’t, in case he’s not.
-
Seungmin does not text in the morning. He lets himself sleep in an hour or so past when he would usually get up, and he takes his time making himself a coffee, and he wears his softest soft-from-wear shirt, and he watches hyunibini lovely moments compilation videos until, by the time Felix stumbles out of bed to come rub his face on Seungmin’s back, he’s poked at the bruise enough to make it deep violet-new.
There’s not a good reason for Seungmin to be behaving like this now; Changbin and Hyunjin have been best friends for years, close since before Seungmin showed up at the JYP auditions. And Changbin hasn’t changed his behavior towards Seungmin, which–is good, probably. This is the Changbin that Seungmin fell in love with, after all. And yet. And yet.
Changbin doesn’t text him. He’s not much of a texter, prefers to just call someone (and he always picks up when Seungmin calls). He’s probably being considerate, trying to give Seungmin space instead of pressure when Seungmin said he was tired. Seungmin should appreciate that, and maybe if that selfish, biting little part of him was quieter–or if he put more effort into quieting it–Seungmin would appreciate it.
A notification for an instagram live jerks Seungmin back into the present moment, where apparently Hyunjin has woken up and decided to give more of his time to Stay. He must be in his feelings about them, which Seungmin understands; he makes sure to grab the Talker cam to voice his appreciation for their support each time it comes around for the same reason. But usually, they do lives at hotels, during tour or award show travel, rather than during their extremely limited downtime. Hyunjin assures the audience that it’ll have to be a short live, and the better part of Seungmin, the part that loves Hyunjin and wants him to have his introvert recovery time, is proud. But as he watches, Hyunjin starts laughing at something–someone–off camera, and then quickly tries (and fails) to rearrange his facial expression into something closer to beleaguered, telling hyung to go away, this isn’t for him, it’s for Hyunjin and Stay–and Seungmin closes the livestream. After a moment, he turns his phone off for good measure.
He can spend the day tidying, doing his laundry, maybe finally getting around to arranging the decor in his room that he hasn’t had a chance to since moving in. There’s a thousand chores and to-do’s and maintenance in their personal lives that are neglected by necessity, a thousand tasks Seungmin can occupy himself with instead of wishing for stupid, petty things, like his boyfriend bursting in their door and demanding Seungmin come to bed with him. He needs to get those thoughts under control, because if he goes to work tomorrow and Changbin reads them on his face–
Jealous, demanding Seungmin isn’t the Seungmin Changbin fell in love with. It’s not the Seungmin that Seungmin wants to be with him. If he can just ride it out, get through it and over it like he does a cold, that would be for the best. So Seungmin cleans, and arranges, and glares at the sole unmatched sock that emerges from his dry laundry, and when it’s finally night enough to go to bed he turns his phone on and only looks at it long enough to set his alarm before putting it screen-down on his bedside table and willing the day off and a full night of sleep to wash away the ugly, hurt parts of him that Seungmin can’t afford to have.
-
The bruise is still there, throbbing each time Changbin yell-flirts with Hyunjin in dance practice or they bend their heads together over a computer screen, but Seungmin is breathing through it, engaging normally with the others. He makes it a point to be his regular self with Hyunjin, forces himself to remember that Hyunjin is his friend, too, and someone who deserves all the love he receives and then some. Seungmin won’t make his insecurities and projections the members’ problem. He can set it all aside, journal it out, look at it a step removed, and at some point he’ll be through it and over it, and won’t have lost Changbin to the worst part of himself in the meantime.
That was the plan, anyway. Because Seungmin is still tangled up, underwater with unseen seaweed wrapping around his limbs, when Changbin walks right up to him after a meeting and says, “Seungmin-ah, can we talk?”
Why, Seungmin wants to grouse, wants to refuse to engage with the fact that Changbin is too perceptive for his poor acting abilities, but that’s not what a good and mature boyfriend does, even if Seungmin is apparently not that at all. But Changbin deserves whatever efforts he can make to be one, so Seungmin swallows and says, “okay.”
They go to the studio, empty when Seungmin thought he remembered Jisung having it reserved. Seungmin sits down on the couch as Changbin locks the door, watches the strong lines of his back muscles as Changbin tests the handle to make sure they won’t be interrupted.
“I’m sorry to do this while we’re at the company,” says Changbin, pulling a rolling chair over to sit facing Seungmin, and Seungmin has the hysterical thought, oh, he’s breaking up with me. “But…”
“We’re never not at the company?” Seungmin offers drily, and that gets him a smile, small and soft and good and if Changbin breaks up with him Seungmin is going to burn this building down.
The smile fades after a moment, and Changbin just looks at Seungmin in a way that sets panic writhing in Seungmin’s stomach. Whatever Changbin is seeing now is not what Seungmin wants him to see.
“Please don’t break up with me,” says Seungmin, because if the bandaging is going to be ripped off, he wants to be the one doing the ripping. Let him hurt and handle it rather than someone else pull at the scabbing tissue. Even if that someone is Seo Changbin, who would fall on his sword a dozen times before pointing it at someone else.
Changbin’s eyes fly wide, and he leans back. Seungmin’s head starts to swim from adrenaline. “I’m not–Seungmin, baby, what? I’m not breaking up with you. Do you–want to break up with me?”
Seungmin, baby. Baby, baby. “No.” It comes out a snap in Seungmin’s rush to get the word out. “Obviously not.”
But Changbin raises an eyebrow, then, even as he leans back towards Seungmin. “Maybe not so obvious. You’ve been avoiding me, Seungmin-ah. Did hyung do something wrong?”
Seungmin’s stomach curls in on itself, newspaper in the fireplace, shame and self-hatred smoking out from the cinders. He poked at the bruise too much, and now Changbin can see it. If he was better, he would’ve been able to disregard his jealousy of Hyunjin, but he wasn’t, couldn’t smooth over or hide away the ugly thoughts. And now Changbin knows.
Warmth surrounds one of Seungmin’s hands; Changbin holds onto him. “Please tell me if I did, Seungmin-ah. It’s okay.”
“You didn’t,” Seungmin manages, because Changbin didn’t do anything wrong. Seungmin’s just kind of a bitch, and Changbin is about to find out. “You didn’t do anything wrong, hyung, it’s nothing.”
“It’s something,” says Changbin, “you’re not looking at me.”
Seungmin doesn’t want this patience, he wants the bandaid off. “Fine, hyung. To be honest, I’m fucking jealous of you and Hyunjin. You’re like–how you are, with him, and not with me, and lately I hate it. And I know that’s toxic or whatever of me, but it’s the truth. Sorry.”
“Seungmin-ah,” says Changbin, soft, hushed, and Seungmin should’ve just said he’s had a cold or something, because he feels a bit shredded apart even as he starts to tense and bristle. His shoulders hunch up–and a second later are pushed down, the whole side of his body going warm. Changbin moved from the chair to the couch, wrapping his arm around Seungmin’s shoulders and pulling him in.
“You’re okay,” says Changbin, and the spines flare back up, ”Baby, breathe.”
“I don’t want to,” Seungmin says mulishly, even though he had to breathe to say the words. It makes Changbin laugh, though, short and delighted, which is nice. He squeezes Seungmin’s shoulders, which also feels nice.
“Thank you for telling me, even though I can see it was difficult–”
“Okay, hyung,” Seungmin interjects, the spines stabbing into his own insides, “I know you’re trying to do this–right–but please don’t therapy-talk me. I did enough of that in my journal.”
Changbin blinks, and then the corner of his mouth quirks up. “Of course you did, Seungminnie. Okay, I won’t ‘therapy-talk’ you, but I do need to–understand better. So: Are you upset with me, or with Hyunjin?”
The direct questions are a lifeline. Seungmin can answer questions, now that the dread of the worst part is past. “No. I’m more upset that I even feel this way. It’s not your or Hyunjin’s fault.” He pauses, finds the splinter niggling at him. “Are you upset with me, hyung? For this?”
“Upset? Nah.” Changbin leans back a bit, not to pull away, but more in relaxation, acceptance. “Right now, I’m embarrassed.”
Seo Changbin has plenty of things he could be embarrassed about (chili chili crab crab comes to mind), none of which are in the room with them now. “Hyung, what do you have to be embarrassed about? I’m the one who…” He can’t even finish the sentence.
“I was making my boyfriend feel bad for the sake of being silly, and I didn’t even notice. My pride’s hurt.” Changbin squeezes him again, altogether too relaxed about the unreasonable demands Seungmin is surely about to put on him. Seungmin does trust Changbin to say if he thinks an ask is unfair or unreasonable, but then that just puts the ball back in Seungmin’s court, and Seungmin has shown he can’t rationally resolve his irrational feelings there. So where do they go from there?
“Hyung, I don’t know what to do,” says Seungmin, and, for the first time in this conversation, tears prickle at his eyes, which–how fucking mortifying. At least they’re too close for Changbin to comfortably look at his face. Seungmin tips his head back and breathes, trying to keep them from escaping.
Changbin hums, knocks their knees together. How is he so relaxed about this? “How do you want things to look moving forward? Do you want me to stop flirting with Hyunjin?”
“Hyung, no,” says Seungmin, immediate, even though the little splintered part of him hisses yes. “It’s Hyunjin, I know–” He might not be in love with Changbin, but the love and support he draws from Changbin is no less intense from it, the reassurance that he’s important to somebody around him. And the demand Changbin makes upon the lenses and screens, how he purposefully casts a net for any poisonous rumors or sneers at proclivities to draw to himself, who is strong enough and secure in himself enough to brush them off–that’s not something Seungmin would ever take from his best friend.
“I don’t want you to have to change, I just want to not feel this way. I’ve been trying not to, but.” There it is, what Seungmin had wanted to say, the bare truth of it, clean of the barbed feelings that attach themselves so easily. Something–removes itself from Seungmin’s chest, the load that sits there that much less suffocating for it.
“But you do,” says Changbin, gentle, close.
“Ugh.”
Changbin laughs again, the high, enunciated kind that Skzgi can caption in individual ha’s on its every beat. So damn charming. And they’re idols; Seungmin is competing with the entire world for Changbin’s affections.
“Ah, Seungmin-ah,” Changbin sighs. He takes Seungmin’s hand, brings it to his mouth to kiss his knuckles. Seungmin refuses to acknowledge the butterflies that action sets alight in his stomach, the warmth that spreads through him, relaxing every too-sore muscle. “I like you so much, I don’t know what to do with it.”
“You could fuck me,” Seungmin suggests, and even as he says it the craving for it, for Changbin’s focus, the physical closeness, turns the warmth white-hot. The reassurance, too, that Changbin desires him, finds him attractive. Desperation doesn’t look particularly good on him either. Add it to the pile, then.
“You,” says Changbin, his grip on Seungmin’s hand tightening, “are trying to seduce me out of this important conversation about our feelings.”
“Hyung, we can talk more later, do we have to resolve everything right now?” Say it, say the big fear, even as it feels like manipulation. But Changbin wouldn’t be manipulated, not like this, so if there’s going to be a no, that bandaid needs ripping too. Seungmin swallows. “Or do you not want me.”
Warmth, cupping his jaw, turning him to face Changbin, whose eyes have gone dark. Changbin’s thumbpad strokes over his bottom lip, the skin a bit rough, the motion too gentle for the way it melts Seungmin’s edges.
“That,” says Changbin, voice low, “is not the issue.”
Seungmin shivers. Changbin notices.
And Seungmin might’ve gotten his way, if at that moment there hadn’t been knuckles rapping on the door. “Yo, hyung, sorry to do this, but we’ve got that album sketch session in five,” Jisung’s voice comes through the door, apologetic. He doesn’t acknowledge that he must know Seungmin is also in the room; Seungmin appreciates the mercy.
“Alright, thanks, Han-ah,” Changbin calls back, and then sighs. He looks into Seungmin’s eyes, squeezing his hand again. “Can we go out after, Seungmin-ah? I want to take you out, and I want to keep talking about this, because I don’t want you to feel badly any longer, baby. Please let me.”
“Wining and dining me, hyung?” The anticipation might drive Seungmin a little insane, but he’s felt insane anyway, so maybe this will be a different kind. Or rather, give him something to hold on to while feeling insane.
“Yeah, Kim Seungmin. Wining and dining you.” Changbin leans in and presses a kiss to Seungmin’s lips. Something unlocks behind Seungmin’s shoulders, inside of his ribs. When Changbin pulls away and Seungmin breathes in, it’s shaky. “I love you. Okay? Please know that.”
Seungmin closes his eyes. Nods. Breathes in another shaky breath, and lets Changbin see him do it. “I love you too, hyung.” Lets Changbin see.