Work Text:
Being an English teacher meant that the week leading up to a holiday break was less about pedagogy and more about sheer survival. Jisung had spent the last eight hours wrangling teenagers who were vibrating with the promise of a long weekend, followed by grading a stack of uninspired essays that made him want to reconsider his entire career path. By the time he dragged himself up the concrete front steps of his childhood home, his limbs felt like they’d been filled with wet cement. He was running on exactly zero hours of sleep, a persistent dull throb behind his eyes that pulsed with every step, and half a cup of coffee that had gone lukewarm sometime during third period.
All he wanted was to faceplant into the familiar florar explosion of the living room sofa, eat his body weight in his mom’s legendary mashed potatoes, and sleep until his alarm inevitably screamed at him on Monday morning.
He pushed the front door open, toeing off his shoes and letting his overstuffed leather bag hit the floor with a loud thud. Instantly, warmth enveloped him like a blanket. The house smelled absolutely amazing. A rich, savory wave of roast turkey and sage stuffing, cut with the unmistakable, sweet scent of cinnamon and something caramelizing in the oven.
“Mom, I’m here!” Jisung called out, his voice rough and scratchy from lecturing all day.
He rubbed his stinging eyes with the heels of his hands and shuffled blindly into the dining room, fully expecting to find his mother stressing over the exact placement of the silverware or having a quiet panic attack about the centerpiece height. Instead, he stopped dead in his tracks. His breath hitched entirely in his throat.
Sitting at the heavy oak dining table, looking effortlessly, irritatingly flawless in a soft, cream-colored oversized sweater that Jisung definitely used to steal, was Hyunjin. The late afternoon sunlight streamed through the window, catching the warm highlights in his dark hair and making them gleam. He was delicately, patiently folding a crisp burgundy cloth napkin into what looked like a perfect origami swan, his long fingers moving with the kind of precision that suggested he’d done this before.
Jisung blinked. Once. Twice. He waited for the stress-induced hallucination of his ex-boyfriend to vanish into thin air. It didn’t.
“Oh, sweetie, you’re finally here!” his mom said, bustling out of the kitchen with her favorite floral apron, carefully balancing a steaming ceramic gravy boat. She stopped mid-stride and gave him a critical once-over. “Oh my god, you look awful.”
“Mom,” Jisung started, his voice dropping to a dangerously calm, hollow whisper. He pointed a shaking finger at the table, his hand trembling with a mixture of exhaustion and disbelief. “Why is he here?”
Hyunjin looked up, flashing that stupid, perfectly bright, crescent-eyed smile that used to make Jisung’s heart do backflips. Now, it just made his eye twitch. “Hey, Jisung. Long day at school?”
Jisung didn’t even look at him. He completely ignored the greeting, turning his head stiffly like Hyunjin was a ghost only he could see, and fixed a wide-eyed, desperate glare on his mother.
“Mom,” Jisung repeated, his voice cracking slightly on the syllable. He jabbed his finger at the table again, more emphatically this time. “We broke up eight months ago. Eight!”
“And?” his mom retorted, completely unfazed as she adjusted a centerpiece that didn’t need adjusting.
“You invited my ex-boyfriend to Thanksgiving?” Jisung threw his hands up, exasperation radiating off him in waves.
“Well, he came to Easter lunch and helped your little cousin find all the eggs in the garden,” she pointed out smoothly, waving a hand dismissively. “And he was at the Memorial Day cookout. Who do you think brought that lovely pinot noir? Certainly not you. You brought store-bought dinner rolls, Jisung.”
Jisung opened his mouth, then closed it, utterly betrayed by his own flesh and blood. The fight drained right out of him because it was entirely, painfully true. Ever since they had called it quits back in the damp chill of March, Hyunjin had become some sort of festive handsome holiday phantom that haunted every single family gathering. Easter? There was Hyunjin, eating chocolate eggs on their patio, helping the kids crack them open. Fourth of July? Hyunjin was manning the grill with Jisung’s dad, perfectly flipping burgers in the summer heat. Labor day? Hyunjin brought a homemade potato salad that everyone raved about for weeks. It was an absolute nightmare.
“Mrs. Han invited me to help with the napkins,” Hyunjin chimed in helpfully, holding up his little cloth swan with an innocent expression. “You know how she stresses over the tablescape.”
“Well, I’m stuffing every single one of these freaks into your mouth,” Jisung muttered, eyes meticulously - and pretentiously - analyzing the crooked and swampy origami napkins. He drops his face into his hand.
“Don’t threaten out guest, Jisung,” his mom scolded lightly, already turning on her heel and heading back toward the kitchen. “Now go wash up, you look like hell. Hyunjin, sweetie, can you make sure the water jars are filled with crushed ice?”
“Of course, Mrs. Han,” Hyunjin said, his tone dripping with angelic compliance. But as soon as Mrs. Han disappeared into the kitchen, Hyunjin slowly turned his head, caught Jisung’s murderous glare, and gave him a slow, infuriatingly smug wink.
Jisung let out a long, ragged sigh that pulled from the very bottom of his lungs. He turned on his heel and dragged his feet up the carpeted stairs to his childhood bedroom. He pushed the door open, immediately burying his face in his pillow for exactly three seconds of much-needed therapy before grabbing a clean towel and heading for the bathroom.
Standing under the scalding hot spray of water, Jisung finally let his rigid shoulders drop. The hot water drummed against his tense muscles, and he leaned his forehead against the slick, wet tile, squeezing his eyes shut against the rising lump in his throat.
His relationship with Hyunjin hadn’t been an explosive, plate-throwing tragedy. If anything, that would have been easier to move on from. Instead, it had been a quiet, suffocating collapse. Jisung had been drowning. Between wrangling his unruly students during the day and spending every waking hour of his nights buried in research, agonizing over massive chapters of his thesis, he had completely run out of bandwidth. He had nothing left in the tank for a relationship.
He had become a ghost in his own apartment: irritable, sleep-deprived, and constantly glued to the blue light of his laptop screen. Hyunjin had been incredibly, fiercely patient right up until the point where the neglect started visibly hurting him. Jisung would look up from his research at two in the morning and find Hyunjin curled on the far side of their bed, facing away from him, his shoulders tense even in sleep. It had been a mutual, tearful agreement that Jisung simply couldn’t be a good partner right now. They had loved each other, but love didn’t write academic papers or grade stacks of essays.
So, they ended it. Jisung was supposed to mourn the loss, heal the hollow ache in his chest, and eventually move on.
Every time Jisung thought he was finally making tangible progress, a holiday would roll around and Hyunjin would just be there, sitting in his living room, perfectly charming his relatives and looking like he belonged right by Jisung’s side. It made Jisung feel insane. It was infuriating because it was terribly confusing. Did Hyunjin just genuinely love the free food, or was he doing this to torture him?
The worst part – the part Jisung would take to his grave – was the tiny, pathetic spark of hope that flared up like a match strike in his chest every time he walked through his mother’s front door and saw Hyunjin sitting there. As much as he complained, as much as he yelled, a bruised piece of his heart was desperately relieved that Hyunjin hadn’t completely erased him from his life. And Jisung hated himself for it.
He turned the water off, vigorously toweling his damp hair dry before throwing on a pair of comfortable, worn-in sweatpants and an oversized hoodie that swallowed him whole. He took a deep, shuddering breath, staring as his tired reflection in the foggy mirror, steeling himself for the chaos downstairs.
The doorbell rang before Jisung could figure out a way to safely dispose of a cloth swan.
His aunt and uncle were the first to arrive, predictably early. His aunt always claimed she needed to “help out with the dishes”, though she mostly just brought an armful of extra tupperware and bossed people around in the kitchen.
“Jisung! Oh, you look exhausted, honey,” his aunt said, giving his shoulder a firm pat as she bustled past him with a stack of glass serving bowls. Then, her eyes landed on the dining table, and her face completely lit up. “Hyunjin! You made it! And you brought the good wine again, didn’t you?”
Jisung stared at the ceiling, praying for patience.
“Hi!” Hyunjin said, the chair scraping against the floor as he stood up to give her a warm, winning smile. “Of course, I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Well, since you two are just standing around looking pretty,” his aunt decided, shoving a massive bowl of unwashed greens directly into Jisung’s chest and handing Hyunjin a cutting board. “Kitchen. Both of you. Wash the prep dishes and get this salad ready. Your mother and I have real cooking to do, and you’re breathing up our air.”
“But–” Jisung protested, tightening his grip on the salad bowl.
“Chop chop!” she clapped her hands, already shooing them away.
Moments later, they were banished to the kitchen. It wasn’t exactly a small room, but with the two of them trapped in it together, the space immediately shrank, feeling entirely too tiny and suffocatingly warm. Jisung was wadged between the edge of the sink and the granite island, and Hyunjin was standing right next to him, close enough that Jisung could feel the body heat radiating off his sweater. Their elbows brushed every single time Hyunjin reached for a cherry tomato.
Jisung yanked the metal faucet handle up, letting the water run loud and hard against the stainless steel basin to mask their voices. He leaned in close, glaring at the side of Hyunjin’s irritatingly sharp profile.
“Why do you keep showing up to these things?” Jisung hissed, keeping his voice strictly contained to a furious, frantic whisper so his family wouldn’t hear them bickering from the dining room.
Hyunjin calmly rinsed a cucumber under the running water, not missing a beat. “I was invited.”
“That’s not an answer!” Jisung whispered back, aggressively scrubbing a silicone spatula that was already perfectly clean. “We broke up months ago. You’re supposed to disappear into thin air. You’re not supposed to be at my thanksgiving table!”
Hyunjin bumped his hip deliberately against Jisung’s, forcing him to move over a fraction of an inch to make room at the sink. It was an infuriatingly natural movement, a ghost of a habit from when they used to cook dinner together in their tiny apartment. “Look, your family is fun,” Hyunjin countered, his tone defensive but laced with a distinctly playful edge. “They actually know how to let loose and have a good time. Unlike some people.”
Jisung gasped softly, reeling back, genuinely offended. “I am plenty of fun! I am a delight!”
“You grade essays on your birthday, Jisung,” Hyunjin deadpanned, not even looking up. He grabbed a sharp knife and started slicing the cucumber with obnoxious precision. “Besides, the food here is free, and it’s amazing. Do you really expect me to turn down a direct invitation from Mrs. Han? She explicitly told me there would be sweet potato casserole tonight.”
“So you’re using my mother for her casserole,” Jisung gritted out, tossing the spatula onto the drying rack with a little too much force.
“I’m appreciating her culinary talents,” Hyunjin corrected, picking up a dripping wet cherry tomato and casually popping it into his mouth. He turned his head, looking down at Jisung through his dark lashes with a tiny, teasing smirk. “And honestly? Getting to watch you pace around like a stressed-out wet cat is just a bonus.”
By the time dinner was finally served, the dining room sounded like a crowded tavern. Jisung’s family didn’t do quiet, dignified, picture-perfect holidays. They did loud, talking-over-each-other, crying-from-laughing holidays where the concept of personal space was entirely a myth.
The long table practically groaned under the sheer weight of the feast. There was a massive, golden-brown turkey taking center stage, its skin perfectly crisped and glistening. It was flanked by towering glass bowls of buttery mashed potatoes, a heavy ceramic boat of rich, savory gravy, and a massive, steaming mound of traditional herb and sausage stuffing. Next to that sat Mrs. Han’s legendary sweet potato casserole, topped with gooey, perfectly charred layer of toasted marshmallows, alongside a bubbling green bean casserole buried under a thick crust of crispy fried onions. There was the tart, dark red cranberry sauce, a woven basket of warm dinner rolls, and the heavy wooden bowl holding the crisp garden salad Jisung and Hyunjin had just bickered over. Tying it all together, catching the warm light of the dining room chandelier, was the rich, expensive red wine Hyunjin had brought.
Naturally, the seating arrangement was an absolute disaster. Through some unspoken, diabolical family conspiracy, the only open chair left for Jisung was tucked directly between the wall and Hyunjin.
They were packed in so tight that every time Jisung reached for his water glass, his elbow bumped against the soft knit of Hyunjin’s sweater. Whenever Hyunjin shifted his weight or laughed, their knees brushed warmly against each other under the table. It was torture.
But despite his best efforts to stay thoroughly grumpy, Jisung couldn’t help but relax and enjoy it a little. His family was in rare form tonight. His uncle, face flushed with wine, was halfway through a story about entirely sinking a golf cart into a muddy lake, and his aunt was cackling so hard she was wiping tears from her eyes with one of Hyunjin’s origami swans.
Inevitably, as the wine levels dropped lower in the bottles, the spotlight of family embarrassment swung around the table and landed squarely on Jisung.
“Oh, remember when Jisung tried to dye his own hair in high school?” his mom chimed in brightly, passing a basket of rolls. “He wanted to look like an anime character, but he bought the cheap bleach and left it on too long. It fell out in clumps! He wore a beanie for three months straight.”
The table erupted into booming laughter. Jisung felt a hot, prickling flush creep up his neck and bloom furiously across his cheeks. He sank lower in his chair, wishing the floorboards would simply swallow him whole. “Mom, please, I was sixteen.”
Jisung groaned, hiding his face behind his hands while the table laughed even harder. Beside him, he could hear the low, rich sound of Hyunjin chuckling. Jisung shot him a glare, but Hyunjin just bumped his shoulder affectionately.
“I thought it was cute,” Hyunjin murmured, leaning in slightly, his voice a warm hum pitched just low enough for only Jisung to hear beneath the roar of the table.
Before Jisung’s sleep-deprived brain could even begin to process the sudden swarm of butterflies in his stomach, his younger cousin, who possessed absolutely zero social filter and entirely too much audacity, leaned across the table, grabbing the cranberry sauce while he talked.
“Honestly, Hyunjin,” his cousin piped up loudly, easily cutting through the dying remnants of laughter. He looked right at Hyunjin, then darted his eyes over to Jisung. “I’m pretty sure you’ve officially got a higher attendance rate at these things than Jisung does this year.”
A few relatives chuckled in quiet, uncomfortable agreement. It was undeniably true.
“I’m just saying,” his cousin continued, entirely oblivious to the sudden, delicate shift in the atmosphere. He gestured between the two of them with his fork. “When are you two figuring it out? Because at this point, it feels like you’re just sharing custody of the family.”
The table went completely, deadeningly quiet. All the joyous air was sucked intantly from the room. The only sound was the sharp, crystal clink of a single wine glass being set down on a coaster.
Jisung, who had just taken a large, desperate gulp of his wine to soothe his nerves, violently choked. He coughed harshly, slamming a hand against his own chest, his eyes immediately watering as he gasped for air, the red wine burning the back of his throat.
“Jesus,” his uncle muttered, suddenly looking deeply interested in the arrangement of his green beans.
“I–” Jisung wheezed, his face now burning a fiery, mottled red from both the coughing fit and the absolute mortification. He felt utterly cornered, the heavy physical weight of his family’s awkward, expectant stares pressing down on his shoulders. He didn’t know how to explain the situation, mostly because he didn’t understand the bizarre situation himself.
Panic flared hot and brigt in his chest. He opened his mouth, his mind completely blanking on a witty comeback or a graceful excuse, but he didn’t have to find one.
“I just happen to have a lot more free time,” Hyunjin spoke up, his voice smooth, warm, and incredibly calm. He reached over, casually grabbing the salad bowl and offering directly to Jisung’s cousin to physically block his line of sight and redirect his attention. “Jisung’s been pulling insane hours wrapping up his thesis. It’s a huge milestone for his teaching career, and it takes up all of his nights. Right, Mrs. Han? Didn’t you say he was also getting a promotion out of it?”
Instantly, the fragile tension snapped. Mrs. Han gasped softly, the awkwardness melting away as her eyes lit up with bright maternal pride. “Oh, yes! He’s been working so hard, pouring over those books. He practically lives at that school…”
The conversation seamlessly and safely pivoted to Jisung’s job, totally bypassing the awkward, gaping minefield of their relationship. The family eagerly latched onto the new, safer topic, the volume of the room slowly rising back to normal.
Jisung finally caught his breath, his chest still heaving slightly. He turned his head just a fraction, looking sideways at the man beside him. Hyunjin was already engaged in a polite conversation with his uncle, looking completely relaxed and unbothered. But as Hyunjin reached forward for the stem of his wine glass, the warm side of his pinky, gently, deliberately brushed against the back of Jisung’s trembling hand resting on the table.
It wasn’t an accident. It was a quiet, steadying weight. An anchor that silently said, I’ve got you.
Jisung stared blindly down at his half-eaten plate, his heart suddenly beating entirely, dangerously too fast.
The dinner carried on around them, a dizzying, loud blur of passing plates and overlapping, boisterous conversations. The initial adrenaline of Hyunjin’s smooth rescue had faded, leaving behind a strange, heavy exhaustion deep in Jisung’s bones. He picked listlessly at the remaining turkey on his plate, the savory flavors suddenly muted by the tight know of unresolved tension sitting high in his chest.
“Pass the roasted vegetables, would you, honey?” his aunt called out from down the table, gesturing with her empty wine glass.
Jisung blinked out of his daze, reaching for the heavy, scalloped ceramic dish filled with caramelized carrots, parsnips, and thick cuts of roasted green bell peppers. He scooped a modest portion onto his own plate before passing the dish along. He barely registered what he was doing, his tired mind still spinning.
He picked up his silver fork, fully intending to just push the food around until he could politely excuse himself. But before his tines could even touch the plate, a different fork slid smoothly into his field of vision.
Without a single word, without even looking down at the table, Hyunjin reached over. With the fluid, practiced ease of someone who had done this a thousand times before, Hyunjin systematically picked out every single piece of roasted bell pepper from Jisung’s plate – the exact, specific vegetable Jisung absolutely despised, the one that always made his nose wrinkle in bitter distaste – and transferred them quietly onto his own pile of food.
It was pure, unfiltered muscle memory. An automatic, deeply ingrained habit built over years of shared meals, stolen bites, and quiet, domestic intimacy.
Hyunjin didn’t even pause his conversation. He just chewed a piece of bread, nodded thoughtfully to something Jisung’s father was saying about winterizing the lawn mower, and casually cleared Jisung’s plate of the offending peppers.
Jisung froze. For a split second, Hyunjin kept nodding. And then, as if his brain had finally caught up to what his hands had just done, Hyunjin froze, too.
His fork clattered softly, heavily, against the edge of his porcelain plate.
The chaotic symphony of the dining room – the sharp clinking of glassware, the booming, chest-deep laughter of his uncle, the scraping of wooden chairs against the floorboards – seemed to instantly dissolve into a muted, underwater hum. Jisung looked up from his plate, his wide, dark eyes locking directly onto Hyunjin’s.
Gone was the infuriatingly smug ex-boyfriend. Gone was the perfectly polished, confident guest who had been charming his aunt all evening. Hyunjin’s dark eyes were wide, painfully unguarded, and intensely vulnerable, reflecting the exact same terrifying shock that was currently paralyzing Jisung’s vocal chords.
Oh, Jisung thought, his heart giving one violent, undeniable thud against his ribs. Okay.
It wasn’t just about the free food. It wasn’t about sharing custody of the family or a petty, vindictive desire to annoy him. It was here, in the bell peppers, in the gentle, steadying brush of a pinky. It was the way Hyunjin was looking at him right now, entirely stripped bare, proving without a single word that he still cared. That they both still cared, so deeply and achingly that it felt like a physical weight pressing against Jisung’s ribs.
How had he just let this go for so long? Why hadn’t he fought through the exhaustion? Why hadn’t he tried harder to hold onto the best thing he had ever had? The crushing guilt of the past eight months flooded in, but right on its heels came a sudden spark of hope.
His thesis was in its final stages. The brutal late nights, the endless research, the suffocating academic pressure that had fractured them in the first place. It was almost over. The finish line was finally in sight. If he was about to have his life back, if he finally had room to breathe again… could they actually try again? After so long apart, could they still find their way back to this?
Hyunjin swallowed hard, his adam’s apple bobbing visibly against his throat. He parted his lips, hovering on the very edge of a whispered confession, a question, an apology, something. But a sudden, booming burst of laughter from the other end of the table abruptly shattered their private, fragile bubble.
Hyunjin jerked his gaze away, staring fixedly down at his plate, a sudden, dark flush creeping up the back of his neck.
Jisung gripped his fork until his knuckles turned entirely white, his chest heaving with a sudden desperate need for air. He couldn’t just let him walk away tonight. Not again.
Somehow, Jisung managed to survive the rest of the main course without spontaneously combusting. By the time the table was cleared and replaced with a sprawling spread of desserts, his nerves were entirely frayed.
He sat rigidly in his chair, mindlessly dragging his fork through a slice of dense, rich cheesecake that he was barely holding together enough to taste. Beside him, Hyunjin was working his way through a massive slice of pumpkin pie buried under an entirely unreasonable mountain of whipped cream.
Jisung carefully set his fork down, the metal clinking softly. He muttered a vague excuse about needing some fresh air to his mother, pushed his chair back, and slipped away from the table before anyone could ask questions.
He practically fled through the kitchen, sliding the heavy glass door open and stepping out into the backyard.
The biting November chill hit him instantly, shocking his system in the best way possible. The chaotic, suffocating energy of his family immediately muffled behind the thick glass. The garden was dark and completely still, the grass coated in a fine, glittering layer of silver frost. Jisung walked out to the edge of the patio, wrapping his arms around his chest, and took a deep, shuddering breath, letting the freezing air fill his lungs.
He closed his eyes, trying to process the absolute whiplash of the last two hours.
A soft scrape of the sliding glass door breaking the silence made his eyes snap open.
Footsteps crunched softly against the frosted patio stones. Jisung didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. The faint, familiar scent of Hyunjin’s cedarwood cologne drifted over to him on the cold breeze.
Hyunjin stepped up beside him, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his oversized sweater. For a long moment, neither of them said anything. They just stood there, side by side in the quiet dark, the only sound the distant, muffled conversation of Jisung’s family inside.
He finally turned his head, looking up at Hyunjin’s profile.
“Seriously,” Jisung breathed, his voice barely more than a ragged whisper. “Why do you keep coming?”
Hyunjin didn’t look at him right away. He stared out into the dark yard, his jaw working as he chewed on his bottom lip. Finally, he let out a long, slow breath, a cloud of white vapor rising in the air.
“I miss your family,” Hyunjin admitted quietly, his voice entirely stripped of the teasing, defensive armor he’d worn all evening. “They’re loud, and they’re chaotic, and they make me feel welcome.”
He finally turned his head, his eyes locking onto Jisung’s. The raw vulnerability in his gaze was devastating.
“But mostly,” Hyunjin continued, his voice dropping a fraction lower, “it was the only excuse I had left to still see you.”
Jisung’s breath hitched. His heart slammed violently against his ribcage.
“I didn’t know how else to be near you without you pushing me away,” Hyunjin confessed, taking a tiny, hesitant half-step closer. “You asked for space to breathe, and I wanted to give you that. I just–” He sighed, a heavy, shuddering exhale. “I just couldn’t completely let go. So I always replied to your mom’s texts. Because I knew if I sat in your dining room long enough, eventually, you’d walk through the front door.”
The crushing, suffocating guilt Jisung had felt at the dinner table swelled up, entirely consuming him. He reached out, his trembling fingers wrapping tentatively around the soft knit of Hyunjin’s sleeve. Hyunjin immediately froze, his eyes dropping to Jisung’s hand.
“I’m sorry, Hyunjin,” Jisung whispered, his voice cracking. “I’m really sorry. The thesis, it just–” He closed his eyes for a moment, gathering himself. “It took everything out of me.” He opened his eyes again, tears threatening to fall. “I was so exhausted. I didn’t mean to push you away, I just didn’t know how to ask you to wait for me to figure it out.”
“I would have waited,” Hyunjin answered instantly, fiercely, his hands coming out of his pockets.
“I know,” Jisung said, a hot tear finally spilling over his freezing cheek. “And that’s why I broke up with you. It wasn’t fair, you know? Asking you to wait indefinitely while I disappeared into my own head But I regretted it the second I closed the door.” Jisung took a shaky breath, taking a step closer, entirely eliminating the space between them. “It’s basically over. My thesis, I mean. I have my final review in two weeks. And, I don’t know. All I’ve wanted for the last eight months, is you.”
Hyunjin let out a shaky, disbelieving breath, his eyes wide and completely blown out. He reached up, his large, warm hand cupping Jisung’s freezing cheek, his thumb gently brushing away the stray tear. The touch was electric, a desperate spark of muscle memory that made Jisung lean into his palm.
“You’re freezing,” Hyunjin murmured, his voice thick with emotion, his gaze dropping to Jisung’s lips.
“Then take me inside,” Jisung whispered back.
They slipped back through the sliding glass door, but the house had completly transformed. The chaotic energy was entirely gone. The kitchen was clean, the lights were dimmed, and the heavy silence told Jisung everything he needed to know. His aunt and uncle had left. His parents had gone to bed. The house was asleep.
They stood in the dark hallway at the bottom of the stairs.
Hyunjin looked toward the front door, his hand awkwardly hanging at his sides. “I should probably…”
“No.” Jisung’s hand shot out, grabbing the hem of Hyunjin’s sweater. He pulled him back, his grip desperate. He looked up, his eyes pleading. “Don’t leave.”
Hyunjin swallowed heavily, his eyes darkening as he looked down at Jisung’s white-knuckled grip on his sweater. He gave a slow, jerky nod.
They crept up the carpeted stairs, utterly silent, the muscle memory of sneaking around Jisung’s parents’ house guiding their quiet footsteps. Jisung pushed open the door to his bedroom, illuminated only by the faint silver moonlight spilling through the window blinds.
Hyunjin stepped inside, the door clicking shut softly behind them.
Hyunjin stood near the edge of the bed, looking around the small, heavily poster-covered walls. A sudden, soft, incredulous laugh broke from his chest, shattering the dark tension.
“I cannot believe you still have that tragic, faded My Chemical Romance poster taped to your ceiling,” Hyunjin whispered, turning to look at Jisung with a fond, entirely exasperated smile. “I told you to take that down three years ago.”
“Shut up,” Jisung breathed, but he was smiling, too. The familiar teasing felt like coming home.
“And this bed,” Hyunjin murmured, stepping closer, his voice dropping to a low, incredibly warm hum as he boxed Jisung in between his body and the edge of the mattress. “It’s too small for two grown adults, Jisung. We established this the first time I came to Thanksgiving.”
“Then I guess we’ll just have to stay very, very close,” Jisung whispered, tilting his head up.
“I guess we will,” Hyunjin breathed, his gaze fixed on Jisung’s mouth.
Hyunjin’s hands tangled desperately in Jisung’s hair as he finally, finally leaned down and captured his lips. The kiss was explosive, a starving, breathless collision of months of pent-up agony, regret, and desperate longing. Jisung gasped into the kiss, his hands instantly finding the familiar, broad slope of Hyunjin’s shoulders, pulling him down flush against his body.
When they finally broke apart, gasping for air, Jisung’s forehead rested against Hyunjin’s. Their breaths mingled in the narrow space between them, warm and uneven.
“I really did miss you,” Hyunjin whispered, his voice rough. “Not just your family. Not just the food. You.”
Jisung’s eyes stung with fresh tears. “I missed you too.”
Hyunjin pulled back just enough to look at him, his thumb tracing along Jisung’s jawline. “Two weeks, huh? Your final review?”
Jisung nodded. “Yeah, and then I’m done.”
“Can I take you on a date? After? A real one?” Hyunjin said softly.
A laugh bubbled up from Jisung’s chest, watery and bright. “You just spent the last eight months coming to every single one of my family’s holidays, and you’re asking me on a date?”
“I’m doing this properly,” Hyunjin insisted, but he was smiling now, that gorgeous, crescent-eyed smile that Jisung had fallen in love with years ago. “I want to take you out and wine and dine you and remind you why you fell for me in the first place.”
“You don’t need to remind me,” Jisung said, pulling him closer. “I never forgot.”