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The backyard was too dark, the light from the house barely reaching the patch of grass where Junmyeon stood. He was holding a plastic bin filled with empty bottles. He looked down at them, moving the glass around as if he were looking for something he’d lost. The sound of the glass clinking was rhythmic and hollow, cutting through the muffled bass of the music coming from the house.
Sehun stood a few feet away. He had his hands in his pockets. He felt the weight of his own phone in his coat, the expensive fabric of the wool, the fact that he had paid forty euro for a ticket to a party Junmyeon was currently cleaning up. It felt like a physical imbalance, a tilt in the earth between them.
"You're doing it again," Sehun said.
Junmyeon didn't look up. "I'm working, Sehun. I don't have time for whatever this is."
"You could say hello. It's been half a year."
“Hello," Junmyeon said. He sounded tired. Not a dramatic, cinematic tired, but the kind of tired that comes from standing on your feet for ten hours in a room where you are invisible. "Are you having a good time? You look like you're having a very expensive time."
"I've been looking for you since you left my house that night," Sehun said. "I thought you were ignoring my texts because you’d finally decided I was too much work. I didn't think you’d just... vanish."
Junmyeon shifted the weight of the bin, the glass bottles shifting with a jagged noise. "Maybe I just wanted a change of scenery. People do that, Sehun. They move on. They find things that aren't so—"
"Don't do that," Sehun interrupted. He took a step forward, his voice dropping. "Don't pretend you were just 'bored.' You didn't answer a single call for six months. You didn't even show up for your final exams."
Junmyeon’s hands tightened on the edges of the plastic bin. He went very still. He looked at the grass for a long time before he spoke, and when he did, his voice was so low Sehun had to lean in to hear it.
"I didn't have a choice," Junmyeon whispered. "I couldn't pay the rent, Sehun. It’s not a mystery. It’s just math. The scholarship stipend didn't cover the increase, and I... I couldn't breathe in this city anymore. I was skipping meals just to afford the bus to campus."
Sehun froze. The air felt thin. "What?"
"I went home to Ulsan," Junmyeon said, finally looking up. His eyes weren't angry anymore; they were just empty. "I’ve been living in my mother’s house since June. I only came back two weeks ago because I found this job that would pay for a room that doesn't have a window. That’s why you didn't see me. I wasn't hiding because I moved on. I was hiding because I was ashamed of how quickly I fell apart without a safety net."
Sehun felt a coldness in his chest that had nothing to do with the night air. "You could have just said something. I wouldn't have—"
"You would have paid for it," Junmyeon said. He wasn't yelling; he spoke with a flat, clinical kind of distance that felt much worse. "And then I’d be sitting in your apartment, looking at your things, and every time our eyes met, I’d be doing the math of how much I owed you just for being alive. I didn't want to be a guest in my own life, Sehun. I didn't want to be something you had to maintain."
"You weren't a project," Sehun said. He stepped forward, forcing himself into the cold air surrounding Junmyeon until he could feel the radiating heat of him. "I just wanted you in the room. I didn't care if the room was in your mother’s house in Ulsan or on a kitchen floor somewhere. I just wanted the person." Sehun shifted, his hands feeling heavy and useless at his sides before he shoved them deep into his pockets. "I missed you. It was constant."
"I missed you, too," Junmyeon said. He admitted it like a confession he’d been tortured into giving. "I saw a jacket like yours on the subway last week. I had to get off two stops early because I thought I was going to be sick right there on the platform."
Junmyeon slumped back against the stone wall, his spine finally giving way to the exhaustion. A small, jagged ghost of a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Was it really that quiet? I’m sure you found plenty of people to keep you entertained. People who aren't so difficult."
"They weren't you," Sehun said, his voice level. "None of them corrected my grammar. No one told me my taste in music was pretentious. It was very lonely."
Junmyeon actually laughed then—a soft, huffing sound. "Your taste in music is pretentious. That forty-minute track of white noise was garbage. I still can't believe I sat through that whole thing just to make you happy."
"It was avant-garde," Sehun countered, the familiar rhythm of their old bickering finally breaking through the tension.
"It was a headache," Junmyeon said, but he leaned just a fraction closer to Sehun’s warmth. "I’m stubborn. I have to be. If I'm not stubborn, I don't survive."
"You don't have to survive me," Sehun said. He rested his hand on the stone wall right next to Junmyeon’s hip. Slowly, as if testing the gravity of the earth, Junmyeon shifted his hand and let his pinky finger hook around Sehun’s.
"Let’s get some food after your shift tonight. I'll wait for you," Sehun whispered. "I'll be right by the door."
Junmyeon squeezed his finger, a brief, firm pressure. "You'll be bored."
"I'll watch the clock," Sehun said. "It'll be the best thing I've done in six months."
Sehun stayed by the kitchen entrance, leaning his shoulder against the brickwork. He watched the light through the glass, the figures moving inside, but he felt entirely separate from them. When the door finally opened, Junmyeon looked smaller. He’d taken off the apron, wearing a jacket that looked too thin for the drop in temperature. He didn't seem surprised to see Sehun still there. He just walked toward him, his breath blooming in white plumes.
"You're still here," Junmyeon said. It wasn't a question.
"I said I would be."
They walked toward the driveway. The gravel crunched under their feet—a lonely, repetitive sound. The silence between them was different now; it wasn't the jagged, defensive silence from earlier, but something heavy and tired. Sehun felt a strange, humming anxiety in his chest, the fear that if he said the wrong thing, Junmyeon would disappear back into the subway system and stay a ghost.
Junmyeon stopped walking abruptly. He tilted his head back, his eyes narrowing as he looked up at the yellow glow of a streetlight.
"Sehun," he said quietly.
Sehun stopped and followed his gaze. At first, it looked like dust, or a trick of the light. Then a small, white flake drifted down, landing on Junmyeon’s dark hair. Another caught on the bridge of his nose.
"It’s snowing," Sehun said. He felt a sharp, sudden ache in his throat.
Junmyeon stood very still. In the quiet, the snow began to fall more steadily, turning the world into something soft and blurred. He looked at Sehun, and his expression was caught between a laugh and something much more painful.
"It's the first snow," Junmyeon whispered. He looked down at his hands, which were starting to turn red from the cold. "You know what they say about this. About the person you're with."
"I know," Sehun said. He stepped closer, closing the gap until their sleeves brushed. He felt the weight of the moment—the superstition about the gravity of a love that is supposed to last if you see the first snow together. It felt almost too much to bear. "Do you believe it?"
Junmyeon let out a long, shaky breath. He looked back up at the sky, letting the flakes melt against his skin. "I think I’m too tired to be cynical about it tonight. It’s just... it's just happening. We're just here."
He reached out, tentatively, and slid his hand into Sehun’s coat pocket, finding Sehun’s hand inside. Their skin was cold, but the contact was grounding.
"It's just frozen water," Junmyeon added, his voice regaining a tiny, familiar spark of sarcasm, though his eyes were softening. "Don't make it a metaphor."
"I wasn't," Sehun said, his fingers intertwining with Junmyeon's in the dark of the pocket. "I was just thinking it’s cold. We should get in the car."
Junmyeon laughed then, a genuine, quiet sound that Sehun felt in his own chest. "Yeah. Let's go."
As they sat in the car, the heater humming to life, they watched the snow begin to settle on the windshield, turning the world outside into a white, indistinct haze. They didn't speak, but for the first time in six months, the silence felt like something they could actually live in.