Archive of Our Own

In his defence, Minho didn't mean to eavesdrop.

It's important to establish this upfront because Minho has principles, and one of them is that he respects other people's privacy… at least insofar as respecting someone's privacy doesn't conflict with his more deeply held principle of knowing absolutely everything that happens in his apartment. The apartment is his domain, and the cats are his jurisdiction. 

The hallway outside Jisung's bedroom, however, exists in a sort of acoustic grey zone, and Minho is simply walking past it at 11:47 PM on a Tuesday when he hears the words that rearrange the entire architecture of his understanding of Jisung.

"—I don't know how to tell him, though, Felix. I'm scared."

The voice that comes through the door is soft and diffused but unmistakably Jisung's. And it’s the quality of it that stops Minho in his tracks, that makes his hand freeze halfway to his own doorknob across the hall. Because Jisung's voice is usually a thing of sharp angles and sudden crescendos, all squeaky indignation and theatrical wailing and chaotic affection. But this voice, this voice is something else entirely.

Jisung sounds put out.

Minho has never heard him sound so put out in his life.

The word scared echoes in Minho's skull as he stands frozen in the hallway. There’s a moment where his brain cycles between What could Jisung possibly be scared to tell me? to It's not even about me, until finally, the words settle in his stomach, each one dropping like stones: what if it is about me?

What could Jisung possibly be scared to tell him? That he broke the fancy coffee maker and replaced it before Minho noticed? That he's been stealing Minho's hoodies — which Minho already knows, because he can smell Jisung's laundry detergent on them, and he’s never said anything because he likes it, likes the way Jisung's scent settles into the fabric like a second skin? That he wants to move out? That he's been lying about something bigger?

"I know Minho-hyung cares about me," Jisung rattles on, and Minho can picture him: probably curled up at the head of his bed, phone pressed to one ear, the other hand worrying at the hem of his shirt when he's anxious. "But there's caring— no Felix, listen to me, please— there's caring, and then there's… I don't know. I don't know if he'd understand." A pause. "No, Felix, he wouldn't. I don't know if he'd even want to hear it."

There’s another pause; there’s Felix's voice, too muffled to make out, but Minho can imagine the gentle rumble of it. Felix has always been able to be soft in ways Minho struggles with.

"No, I haven't told him anything," A loud sigh echoes through the grain of the wood, "That's the problem. I've been waiting for the right moment, and now it's been so long that the waiting is its own kind of lie, you know? Am I making sense? And every day I don't say it, it gets harder. Because what if he's upset I kept this from him? What if he thinks I didn't trust him?"

Minho's chest does something complicated then. It goes all funny, like a sort of internal tectonic shift, the slow grinding of plates he thought were stable.

"Okay." When Minho zones back into the conversation, Jisung's voice has picked back up, his voice wobbly. "Okay. Yeah. I'll think about it. Thanks, Lix. Love you."

The realisation doesn’t truly hit until Minho retreats to his own room on silent feet, closing the door without making a sound, and sits down on the edge of his bed. The floor beneath them might not be so solid after all.

What if he thinks I didn’t trust him?

The irony of it all is almost too perfect, too painful. Minho is sitting here, in the bedroom of an apartment they've shared for three years, realising that Jisung doesn’t trust him with something, and now here is Jisung, worried that Minho would be upset about not being trusted. The two of them, caught in some recursive loop of anxiety, each one afraid of the other's fear, neither one brave enough to simply reach across the space between their bedrooms and touch.

Soonie jumps onto his lap. Minho stares at him.

"Did you know about this?" he asks the cat.

Soonie blinks slowly, which is either a profound statement on the nature of trust and communication or simply a cat being a cat. Minho chooses to interpret the judgmental eyes as confirmation that he had been, in some fundamental way, failing.

"He's not scared of me," Minho mumbles to no one in particular, because it’s important to establish this upfront. "He's scared of telling me something. That's different."

Soonie blinks slowly.

"It is different," Minho insists. But even as he says it, memories are resurfacing, several small things he'd filed away into the vaguely strange are popping back up in an instant. Jisung had started to say something at dinner last week, then stopped, didn't he? Or when he pulled his hand back when Minho had made a sharp joke about his new haircut.

Ah.

When had Jisung started hesitating?

Because here's the thing: Minho has always thought of himself and Jisung as easy. Easy friendship that didn't require much effort. They kind of just are. They fell into each other's orbits sometime during their early university days, when Jisung was all nervous energy and too-big feelings, and Minho himself with all his dry observations and sharp edges, but somewhere along the way, somewhere in the lapse between then and now, the orbit had become a shared centre of gravity. They live together. They cook together, arguing about whose turn it was to clean the bathroom, fight over the last piece of chicken, and fall asleep on the couch watching terrible horror movies that Minho pretends to hate and Jisung pretends to enjoy ironically.

Minho knows the exact pitch of Jisung's laugh when he's genuinely amused versus when he's being polite. He knows that Jisung can't fall asleep without hugging something, a pillow, a stuffed animal, or occasionally Minho's arm if they were having an impromptu sleepover slash movie marathon. He knows that Jisung's ears turn red when he's embarrassed, and he cries at animated movies from Studio Ghibli, and he has a habit of singing made-up songs about whatever he was doing, little improvised ditties about doing the dishes or looking for his shoes that Minho has secretly been compiling into a mental album for years.

But Jisung is scared to tell him something. Jisung, who wears his heart on his sleeve with such reckless abandon that Minho sometimes worries about him walking through crowded spaces, all that vulnerable flesh exposed. Jisung, who once confessed to Minho at three in the morning that he still sometimes checked under his bed for monsters or bugs even though he was twenty-one years old. Jisung was scared of Minho.

Or not scared of Minho, exactly. Scared of telling Minho something. Which is, Minho realises with a slow dawning horror, functionally the same thing.

He lies back on his bed, and Soonie takes this as an invitation to stand on his chest and demand attention. Minho gives it mechanically, stroking the soft fur behind Soonie's ears, but his mind is elsewhere, turning over the problem in his mind again and again.

What had he done? Or rather, what hadn't he done? When had Jisung stopped feeling safe? Stopped feeling like Minho was a place he could confide in?

Are his jokes not landing the same way anymore? Minho knows his own voice sometimes comes out sharper than he intends. His default mode of communication has always been this kind of affectionate cruelty that was perhaps not for the faint of heart, but the ones who get it, get it, and Jisung had adapted and added onto it, but maybe not anymore?

Were the raised eyebrows and dry comments no longer helpful? What if he'd just been acting dismissive? Or perhaps the way he touched Jisung, casual, rough, shoving him out of the way in the kitchen, flicking his forehead when he said something stupid, wrestling him to the ground during arguments. Was it too aggressive, all of it?

Minho closes his eyes.

"Shit," he mumbles aloud, and Soonie meows in agreement.

Jisung had once told him that he scrunches his nose when he's lying.

They were at the kitchen table, the rickety one that came with the apartment, where the legs wobbled, and it made Minho go crazy every time someone set a glass down too hard. It was two weeks into them being roommates, and Minho had just made the first grave mistake of the day, letting Jisung cook. Well. Cook is too generous a word, really. Minho had let him make toast for breakfast.

Grave mistake, as he said.

He made his second mistake when, upon looking at the pathetic expression Jisung wore, handing the plate to him, paired with the fact he'd only known this guy for two weeks, he made the executive decision to accept the burnt toast. Not just accepting it, really; he'd taken a bite of the charcoal-blackened bread that Jisung had somehow produced from the toaster after setting it to max and walking away to answer a text, and he'd chewed, then swallowed.

And then when Jisung had looked at him with those big apologetic eyes and said, "It's terrible, isn't it? You don't have to eat that." 

Minho had replied, with what he thought was a perfectly straight face:

"It's fine. Don't worry."

He wasn’t worried. That was true. He didn’t even care for toast. What he cared about was the way Jisung was looking at him. They'd been roommates for exactly two weeks, which was long enough for Minho to learn the basics of Jisung, like that he sang show tunes in the shower, left his socks everywhere, and cried at any hint of sadness while also liking horror movies.

But two weeks were not nearly long enough for Jisung to be looking at him like that.

"Hyung," Jisung had chastised, pointing at Minho before waving his hands around wildly, "You scrunch your nose when you're lying."

The statement hit harder in the small kitchen than it perhaps had any right to. If Minho dug deeper within himself, he'd probably recognise the reason it panged around so uncomfortably inside was because of the required intimacy, not even the romantic kind, really, but the amount of detail-orientation and attention one had to pay to notice something like this, a detail not even Minho himself knew he possessed.

Distantly, a part of his brain mused how, while he'd done it to other people before, he'd never really had anyone do it for him.

For a moment, he felt like a butterfly pinned to a board, delicately trapped between the needles, waiting to dry and be hung up. But Jisung was still in front of him, so.

"I do not."

Jisung's eyes didn't leave his face. "You just did it again." He demonstrated, wrinkling his own nose in a theatrical parody of what Minho must've done. "You do it every time you say something you don't mean. You always look like you've smelled something really gross. Like the toast, actually." Jisung had tipped his head to the side then, staring at Minho analytically. "But maybe the toast was just that bad."

Outside the kitchen window, Seoul was doing its late-summer thing: the light was falling through the leaves of the ginkgo tree in the courtyard, dappling the linoleum floor in gold and green. Distantly, the sound of traffic could be heard, and in between that, the hum of the city. The toast sat between them on a chipped plate, dry as the Sahara, crumbling at the edges, a bite taken out of the acrid crust in the shape of Minho's teeth. Cool. Okay.

Minho's hand moved before he could have stopped it. His fingers touched the bridge of his nose, felt the stupid distinct wrinkle. The reflection in the dark glass of the microwave across the room caught much of the same.

He really hadn't wanted to think about it.

He stared at Jisung across the table. A part of him wanted to argue; the instinct rose in him like bile, hot and defensive. He'd never had anyone around long enough to point it out. His friendships had always been the kind that operated on the surface, really, in the shallow waters of people he'd share pleasantries with but never go much further. And it was fine, really, all of it was.

And yet, Jisung, in the two weeks he'd known him, had started chipping at the walls Minho had built for decades before him, and that was possibly the scariest thought anyone could've ever conjure up.

"That's the stupidest thing anyone's ever said to me," are the words he bit out, instead of something more vulnerable and sickly sounding that was panging around inside, but the words, while meant as a dismissal, come out weak and frail, even to his own ears.

And Jisung — impossible, infuriating, beautiful Jisung — just smiled. It was a crooked smile, landing somewhere comfortably between cheeky and sincere, the one that made the corners of his eyes crinkle in a way that Minho had already started noticing.

"And yet, you're doing it again, hyung."

They met three years ago. Minho had been desperate — his previous roommate had moved out to live with his girlfriend, leaving Minho with a two-bedroom apartment he could barely afford and exactly two weeks to find a replacement. In the midst of despair, he'd posted an ad on some housing website that he'd nearly forgotten about.

Room for rent. 2BR/1BA. Shared common spaces. Quiet preferred. Must be okay with cats (I have three.) No couples. No weird people. Actually, as long as you can pay your rent on time, I don't care anymore.

Jisung had shown up, a freshman, with a bright face and even brighter eyes, to the viewing in a denim jacket, one with the blue washed out and faded, frayed at the cuffs. There was a small rip near the collar he'd clearly attempted to mend with mismatched thread. He'd talked nonstop for twenty minutes about his music production major, his part-time job at a café, his best friend Felix, whom he'd known since high school, and his one-sided love affair with his guitar. So to say. Very weird person.

He'd been laughing at his own jokes when Minho realised he was probably rooming with him.

"You never stop talking, do you?"

"And you never start. We balance each other out."

"Literally not how it works."

Jisung had just grinned, wide and bright, and Minho had almost smiled back. He'd caught himself at the last second, because smiling at potential roommates was how you ended up with potential roommates who thought you were friends, and Minho didn't do friends. Minho did transactions. Pay rent, stay out of his way, and coexist on two separate spheres of existence with schedules that occasionally orbited close to each other — close enough to cause friction, far enough that they wouldn’t destroy each other.

But Jisung had moved in anyway, with his boxes of music equipment and his collection of mismatched mugs and his stupidly endearing tendency to sing in the shower at volumes that should have, frankly, warranted a noise complaint. Minho didn’t know how the fuck they didn’t have any.

Somewhere then, Minho doesn't know when, doesn't know how, the plates had started shifting.

It was small things at first. Jisung leaving the last slice of pizza for him even though Minho never asked him to. Jisung learning that Minho liked his eggs scrambled, not fried, and making them that way without comment, even though he burnt every single one. Jisung staying up late to watch shitty reality TV with him, even though Minho knew for a fact that Jisung had an eight A.M. class the next day, and he definitely had a midterm due next week.

And Minho, despite himself, had started giving back. Not much — never too much — but enough. He'd started buying Jisung's favourite brand of orange juice without being asked. He'd started leaving the bathroom light on when he knew Jisung would be coming home late, because Jisung was scared of the dark and wouldn't admit it. He'd started, against every instinct he had, to care.

But caring, for Minho at least, had always been a dangerous thing. Caring meant vulnerability. Vulnerability meant opening yourself up to be hurt, and Minho had been hurt enough for one lifetime. So he'd kept his walls up, even as he let Jisung get closer. He'd learned to give just enough to keep Jisung around, but not enough to risk anything real.

He thought it was working. He thought Jisung understood — that this is just how Minho is, that it doesn’t mean anything, that Jisung is okay with the careful distance Minho maintained.

But Jisung isn’t okay. Jisung is scared. And Minho has been so focused on protecting himself that he hadn't noticed he was hurting the one person he actually wanted to keep.

The first thing Minho decides — because Minho is a person of action, a doer rather than a dweller if you will, even when the dwelling is richly deserved — is that he will not confront Jisung directly.

This is not cowardice, he tells himself, because if he simply just walks up to Jisung and says hey I overheard you telling Felix you're scared to tell me something, what's up with that? Jisung will either lie, deflect or spiral into an anxiety attack, none of which will solve the underlying problem.

The underlying problem is not the secret. The underlying problem is the fear.

So Minho will fix the fear. He will become someone Jisung isn't afraid to talk to. He will rebuild the architecture of their relationship from the ground up, brick by careful brick, until the foundation is solid enough to hold whatever weight Jisung needs to place on it.

He just has to figure out how.

He starts small. On day one, he's pouring his morning coffee when Jisung shuffles into the kitchen, hair a disaster, wearing an oversized sweater he stole from Minho two winters ago and never gave back. (Minho had never asked for it back. He'd never wanted it back. He liked seeing Jisung swimming in it, the sleeves falling over his hands.)

Normally, seeing Jisung in such a state would've prompted Minho to immediately say something like "Wow, I think I've seen zombies look more put together than you do." But, he's trying to better himself for Jisung, so instead, he says: "Good morning, Jisung-ah. Did you sleep well?"

Maybe the difference is subtle enough that, paired with Jisung's exhaustion, it causes little to no change. He grunts something unintelligible and reaches for the coffee pot. But Minho notes it down, and he tried, so that's all that matters.

He can do this. There's softness in him, there's got to be. His mother, once upon a time, had told him that Minho-yah was soft like goo on the inside, but he's got tough skin. He knows it exists, he's soft with his cats, was soft with his mother, soft with Jisung in the quiet hours of the night when the world is asleep, and the pretences of his facade feel like too much effort. He just has to learn to be soft in the daylight, too.

At breakfast, Jisung is scrolling through his phone and making little distressed noises about something he's reading. Normally, Minho would ignore this — Jisung is always making distressed noises about something, it's basically his love language — but today, he sets down his spoon and looks at Jisung properly.

"What's wrong?"

Jisung looks up, startled. "Huh? Oh, nothing, just, you know, I'm checking my grades, and I'm having a mini crisis about it."

"What'd you get?"

"Uh, like an eighty?"

"Isn't that a good grade, though?"

Jisung scratches his head. "I guess. I'm just disappointed 'cause it was music history and that's not really subjective like some of my other classes, and I'd studied a lot, and it's stupid that I spent all night studying for it—" he cuts himself off. "Sorry. It's just a lot."

And here, Minho has a choice. The old Minho might've stared at him for a beat before taking that as an accepted answer and cracking a joke to lighten the atmosphere. But he's trying to do better, so he can't do that.

Instead, he tilts his head and says, genuinely curious: "No, continue, what were you saying before?"

Jisung blinks at him. For a moment, something flickers across his face — surprise, maybe, or uncertainty — and then he launches into a rambling story about the lengthy trials and tribulations he went through to study, whilst also explaining the history of music itself. It's genuinely interesting, and Minho finds himself captivated with the impassioned way Jisung's lips move, eyes sparkling.

He doesn't interrupt. He can't, if he's being honest, not when Jisung looks like this. All he does is occasionally sip his coffee and let Jisung talk.

When Jisung finishes, there's a pause. Then he mumbles, quieter: "Sorry, that was a lot."

"No, it wasn't," Minho replies simply, and he means it.

Jisung stares at him for a beat too long. Then he smiles — a real smile, the kind that crinkles his eyes and makes his whole face look like sunshine — and goes back to his phone. The moment passes, but Minho files it away. Listening. He needs me to listen.

He can do that.

The problem with becoming a different person, Minho thinks, is that he actually kind of likes who he is. Or he did, before he realised that he might be hurting Jisung without knowing it. 

He's sarcastic. He's dry. He communicates through a different set of emotions than perhaps the average person, and it's how he expresses that he cares. 

And to be fair, most of them do understand. Chan understands and is always the one quietly reprimanding him to rest more. Changbin laughs at his antics, sneaking in to try and sneak a hug in, much to Minho's dismay. Hyunjin bickers with him good-naturedly. Felix's words are syrupy sweet, singing with praise, as he offers up his own two hands to help. Seungmin understands and gives as good as he gets, the little menace. And Jeongin accepts it all greedily and then some, because he's the youngest and therefore Minho needs to give him more, more, more.

But Jisung is different. Jisung has always been different. His life is a series of capital letters and exclamation points and underlined passages and sometimes a little doodle in the margin. And Minho has spent years responding to that earnest, overflowing heart with a raised eyebrow and a dismissive wave, thinking he was being cool, thinking he was providing balance, when maybe all he provided was silence where Jisung needed echo.

Minho comes home from practice early on the second day. He finds Jisung on the couch, curled up under a blanket, watching something on his laptop. His eyes are red.

Minho's heart does something unpleasant. He sets down his bag and crosses the room.

"Jisung-ah?"

Jisung startles, slamming his laptop shut. "Hyung! You're— you're home early. I didn't— I was just—"

"Were you crying?"

The question comes out softer than Minho intended. Softer than he ever intends, usually. It sounds almost like concern, which it is, but concern dressed in velvet instead of the usual burlap.

Jisung's lower lip trembles. "No."

"Your eyes are red."

"I have allergies."

"Makes literally no sense, bug. It's February. And you're not allergic to anything."

"Whatever."

Minho should laugh. He should make a joke. He should say something dry and cutting about how Jisung never has a good excuse for anything, and the only thing that might be more terrible than his lying abilities (and Jisung had the nerve to comment on his back then, the brat) are Felix's gaming abilities. But Jisung's voice is wobbling the way it wobbled through the door two nights ago, and Minho thinks about what he heard — I'm scared, Felix, I'm so scared — and he sits down on the couch instead. Close to Jisung. Not quite touching, but close enough that Jisung could lean into him if he wanted to.

"Okay," Minho says. "You don't have to tell me. But I'm here. If you want to."

Jisung looks at him. Really looks at him, his gaze tracing over Minho's face like he's grown two heads and declared he's a fucking alien.

"You're being weird," Jisung states finally.

"I'm not being weird."

"You're being nice. You're never nice this early. Usually, you come home and yell at me for leaving my socks on the floor."

"Your socks are on the floor."

"That's not the point!"

Minho sighs. 

See. This is really hard. Exhibit A. The old Minho, and honestly, the current Minho too, would have argued until Jisung picked up his socks, but, he's trying to be softer and safer, so he ignores them for now, instead focusing on Jisung's red-rimmed eyes, and makes a decision.

He reaches out and pulls Jisung against his side.

It's not a gentle movement, exactly. Minho isn't good at gentle outside of the fluidity of dance; gentle in the normalcy of the world requires a delicacy he's never quite mastered. But it is deliberate, he'll give himself that, and it's warm, and when Jisung's head lands against his shoulder, Minho doesn't pull away or make a joke about how heavy he is or complain about the way his hair is tickling Minho's neck. He just sits there, one arm around Jisung's shoulders, and lets himself be a place to land.

Jisung goes very still. Then, slowly, he relaxes. His hand comes up to grip the front of Minho's shirt, a small fistful of fabric, like he's anchoring himself.

"Minho," he breathes out, so quietly into the air Minho almost misses it.

"Yeah, bug?"

"Are you okay?"

Minho almost laughs. Here he is, trying to become someone Jisung can trust, and Jisung is asking if he's okay. Of course he is. Of course, he's asking. That's who Jisung is — someone who feels so much that he can't help but feel for other people too, even when he's the one who's hurting.

"I'm fine," Minho says. "Are you okay?"

Jisung doesn't answer. He just holds on tighter, and Minho lets him.

They stay like that for a long time. The afternoon light shifts across the floor, golden and patient. Somewhere in the apartment, one of the cats knocks something over. Neither of them moves to investigate.

He doesn't even know if it's working. He doesn't even know if Jisung feels safer yet. But Jisung's breathing has slowed, and his grip on Minho's shirt has loosened from desperate to comfortable, and when he finally speaks again, his voice is steadier.

"Thanks."

"For what?"

Jisung doesn't really answer, but this time, Minho gets the sense not to push it.

Okay, Minho doesn't really know what today meant, but he tucks it away nonetheless, another piece of the puzzle, another step towards rebuilding what was lost.

With all the new information coming forth over the last few days, several events now make sense to Minho. 

There was a group dinner, maybe six months ago, at some barbecue place in Hongdae that Chan had picked because it was cheap and they're all broke university students and open late and didn't care how loud they got. The whole chaos of them packed into a corner booth: Changbin and Hyunjin squabbling over the last slice of pork belly, Felix laughing at something on his phone, Seungmin stealing banchan off Jeongin's plate while Jeongin pretended to be annoyed. Normal. Familiar. The kind of evening that happened so often, Minho had stopped cataloguing it, almost stopped treating it as something worth remembering.

And then Jisung had done something — Minho couldn't even remember what, exactly. Reached across him for the ssamjang maybe, or made some throwaway comment about Minho's hair looking soft today, or laughed at something Minho hadn't realised was funny, or… the list could go on. But whatever it was, it had made Minho look at him. Really look at him. Really, really look. And Jisung had looked back, and something had passed between them, and suddenly Minho felt a metaphorical hand closing around his ribs.

"You two are weird tonight," Hyunjin had said, not looking up from his phone.

"We're always weird," Jisung had replied, quick and easy, the deflection so smooth it had to be practised.

"No, weirder than usual," Hyunjin had continued, finally lifting his gaze. His eyes had flicked to Jisung with an expression Minho couldn't quite parse — amused, maybe. Knowing. "Jisung, you've been staring at him for like five minutes. You haven't blinked once. It's getting creepy."

Minho had turned to look at Jisung, genuinely curious, and had watched in real-time as Jisung's face cycled through approximately seventeen emotions in the span of two seconds: confusion, indignation, panic, a desperate sort of please stop talking that he tried to communicate through aggressive eye-daggers at Hyunjin.

"I have not been staring," Jisung had retorted then, his voice climbing an octave. "I was looking. In the general direction. Of the table. There's meat there. I was looking at the meat."

"The meat is in front of you," Felix had pointed out, sweetly helpful. It's a jarring juxtaposition to the "Oh, he's looking at meat, alright!" from Hyunjin. Which Minho had wacked him for.

Felix had continued. "Minho-hyung is to your left, Sungie. You'd have to turn your head to look at him. Which you were."

Jisung had made a sound like a deflating balloon. "Why are you all like this? Why can't we just eat in peace?"

"Because you make it too easy," Seungmin had cut in, not even bothering to look up from the banchan he was hoarding. "It's like watching a nature documentary. The mating rituals of the common univer—"

"I will end you," Jisung had hissed, but his voice had cracked on the threat, undermining any credibility it might have had.

Changbin had leaned across the table, lowering his voice to a stage whisper that everyone could clearly hear. "You know, Jisung, if you just—"

"Can everyone shut the hell up!" Jisung had nearly shouted, slamming his hands on the table and then immediately wincing when several heads from neighbouring tables turned to look. "I don't have— there's no— I'm not—"

"Guys, he's like three seconds away from exploding," Jeongin had observed, with the detached curiosity of someone watching a particularly interesting bug. "He's going red."

"Shut up," Jisung pointed a trembling chopstick at the youngest. "I'm perfectly fine. I'm normal. I'm the most normal person at this table."

Everyone had looked at him. Then, simultaneously, they'd all turned to look at Minho.

Minho, who had been quietly eating his food during this entire exchange, had blinked at the sudden attention. "What?"

"Nothing," Chan's words had been too quick, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "We're just wondering if you've noticed anything... different about Jisung lately."

Minho had considered this. He'd thought about the way Jisung had been humming more often, the way he'd started leaving sticky notes on the refrigerator with little doodles on them, the way he'd taken to falling asleep on Minho's shoulder during movie nights and then pretending he hadn't. "He's been sleeping better," Minho had said finally. "Less nightmares, I think."

The table had gone very quiet.

Jisung had buried his face in his hands.

"No, see, that's—" Hyunjin had started, his voice pitching high with barely suppressed glee. "That's not what we— Minho, this is such interesting, riveting, new information, because—"

"Hyunjin," Jisung had said, his voice muffled by his palms. "I'm begging you. I'm on my knees metaphorically. Please."

"Get on them physically, and maybe we'll talk."

"I hope you all die—"

"Because what?" Minho had asked, referring back to Hyunjin's earlier statement, honestly confused now. He'd looked around the table, trying to read the expressions of his friends, but they were all doing that thing where they communicated silently with each other — eyebrow raises and head tilts and small nods that Minho had never been able to decode.

Felix had opened his mouth, and Jisung had shot him a look of such pure terror that Felix had closed it again, holding up his hands in surrender. "Nothing," Felix had said. "No reason."

"That was the least suspicious 'nothing,' ever, Lix."

"Don't mind him," Changbin yelled with joy, "He's just trying to be supportive."

"Supportive of what?"

Another round of silent communication. Jisung had slowly lifted his head from his hands, his face a mask of forced neutrality that fooled absolutely no one. His ears were the colour of the cooked pork belly on the grill.

"It's just there's some people— ow!" Seungmin's words were cut off by him howling in pain as Jisung kicked him right in the shin. Minho had winced internally. He thought that was definitely going to bruise. And it had. "Jisung, what the fuck!"

"No people!" Jisung had practically shrieked. "There are no people! I don't know any people! I've never met a person in my entire life!"

"Not even Minho?"

"No!" Jisung's eyes were like saucers then, going wider and wider. "Can we please talk about something else? Anything else? The weather? The geopolitical situation? The existential terror of ageing? My ass? Hyunjin, I'll start kneeling physically in front of everyone, please."

"I think we should talk more about Jisung-hyung's feelings," Jeongin had gleefully cheered on, patting Seungmin as the latter continuously rubbed at his shin, still muttering under his breath.

"I think you should spontaneously combust," Jisung had replied snarkily.

Felix had leaned over to Minho, lowering his voice to what he probably thought was a private murmur but was actually perfectly audible to everyone at the table. "He's been like this for weeks. Very jumpy. Very... red. You should maybe pay attention to him. He might need something."

"What kind of something?" Minho had asked.

"The kind of something you give," Felix had said, and his smile had been so soft, so full of unspoken meaning, that Minho thought for a moment that maybe something did click into place. But. Well. If he had been honest with himself, even now, he really doesn't know what had been happening. "You're good at giving it. You just don't always know you're doing it."

Minho had stared at Felix. Had tried to decode the layers of meaning in those words. Had come up empty. "I'm going to need you to be less cryptic," he'd said. "I'm not good at cryptic."

"The understatement of the century," Hyunjin had muttered, and then yelped when Jisung kicked him too.

Chan sighed, a long-suffering sigh. He'd looked the part of someone who had been watching this particular disaster unfold for months and had given up on intervening. "Just... keep doing what you're doing, Minho. Whatever it is. It's working."

"Working for what?"

"For... Jisung's general well-being," Chan said. "He seems happier when you're around."

"I'm always around," Minho replied. "We live together."

"Exactly," Chan said, and there was something in his voice — something like a weight and a hope mixed into one — that Minho hadn't understood then. 

He’s starting to understand it now, months later, lying in bed with his cat on his chest and the echo of Jisung's voice in his ears. I'm scared, Felix. I'm so scared.

The table had dissolved into chaos after that — Changbin and Hyunjin resuming their argument, Seungmin stealing more banchan off an amused Jeongin's plate. Jisung had stayed pressed against Minho's side for the rest of the meal, his knee warm against Minho's thigh. Minho hadn't moved away. He'd told himself it was because the booth was crowded, because there was nowhere else to go, because it would have been weirder to pull away than to just let Jisung stay.

Later, walking home, Jisung had been uncharacteristically quiet. The streetlights had cast their shadows long and strange across the pavement, two figures walking close enough that their hands brushed with every step. 

"They don't know what they're talking about," Jisung said finally. "They just... they make things up. They like to stir up drama."

"They seemed pretty convinced about something," Minho said.

Jisung's hand started rubbing against the hem of his shirt, while his foot tapped the pavement. Rat-a-tat-tat. It was a tell Minho had learned to read years ago. "They're idiots," Jisung mumbled. "All of them. Incredible idiots."

"They said you've been jumpy."

"I haven't been jumpy."

"You kicked Seungmin. And then Hyunjin."

"They deserved it."

Minho thought about the way the others had looked at him.

"What is it they think you need?" The evening breeze whisked his words until they were just above a faint whisper. "From me?"

Jisung had stopped walking. For a long moment, he'd just stood there, his breath clouding in the cold air, his hands going from the hem of his shirt to being shoved deep in his pockets. Then he looked at Minho, and Minho had been taken aback by the way Jisung was staring at him. 

It was this raw hunger, the way he sometimes did, whether on accident or on purpose, Minho didn't know, but it was like he was trying to memorise the shape of Minho's face against the dark of the city.

"Nothing," he'd finally uttered, eyes still brighter than the stars behind him, his hand reaching back out for fabric. "I don't need anything. I'm fine."

"You're not fine," Minho said. "Stop playing with the hem of your shirt if you're going to lie to me, bug."

Jisung looked down, finally noticing his hands, then back up at Minho. "You notice that?"

"I notice everything about you," Minho said, and the words had come out more honest than he'd intended, more raw.

Jisung's breath caught. His ears, already pink from the cold, deepened to red. "Hyung—"

"Forget it," Minho said, already retreating, already building the wall back up. "Let's just go home. It's cold."

He started walking. After a moment, Jisung followed. Neither of them spoke again until they reached their apartment door.

But Minho hadn't forgotten the look on Jisung's face. He'd almost cracked, and Minho had, somehow, missed that almost-opening. And as he unlocked the door and stepped inside, he'd wondered — just for a second, just for a breath — if he'd also missed something important. If the others had been trying to tell him something, and he'd been too busy not-listening to hear it.

He had pushed the thought away. Had told himself it was nothing. Had gone to bed and not thought about it again. 

Now, he’s wondering if maybe he should’ve.

Back in the present, watching Jisung argue with Seungmin, Minho realises Jisung's ears are red — not from the argument, but because Minho is holding his hand. Because Minho reached out first, in front of everyone, and didn't let go.

Seungmin looks at their joined hands. Looks at Minho. Raises an eyebrow.

And Minho, for perhaps the first time, realises that maybe he's been missing something obvious for a very long time.

He doesn't let go of Jisung's hand.

The days blur together, until the small acts of gentleness, one after another, blur together into a mirage.

Minho starts making Jisung's coffee in the morning — the way Jisung likes it, with too much sugar and a splash of oat milk that Minho pretends to find disgusting. He starts texting Jisung during the day, just little things: don't forget to eat lunch or saw a cat that looked like you today, it was bald and wrinkly — the last part added as a concession to his own nature, because he can't become a completely different person overnight, and honestly, he doesn't think Jisung would want him to. The sarcasm is part of their language. He just needs to make sure it's not the only part.

He touches Jisung differently. Not the rough shoves and head flicks and wrestling moves that used to pass for affection between them, but something softer. 

Now, there's a hand on the small of Jisung's back when they're walking through a crowd. Fingers brushing Jisung's wrist to get his attention instead of calling his name. A thumb swiping across Jisung's cheekbone to catch a stray eyelash, and the look on Jisung's face when he does it, confused yet hopeful, makes Minho's chest ache in a way he's been ignoring for approximately three years.

He spends more time with Jisung. This is the easiest part, because Minho has always wanted to spend time with Jisung; he's just been too proud to admit it, too careful to show it. He stops pretending he has somewhere else to be when Jisung asks if he wants to watch a movie. He stops claiming he's tired when Jisung suggests they cook dinner together. He lets Jisung drag him to the convenience store at midnight to buy ramen and lets Jisung pick the flavour, and lets Jisung talk his ear off about nothing and everything, and he doesn't check his phone once.

And the hugs. God, the hugs.

Minho has always known that Jisung is physically affectionate — he would crawl inside someone's skin if they let him, would merge atoms if it were possible — but Minho has always kept a certain distance, a certain sharpness that he thought was protective but now realises was just... lonely. For both of them.

So when Jisung flops across his lap on the couch on Day Four, Minho doesn't shove him off. He doesn't say "get off, you're heavy" or "do you mind" or any of the other deflections he's used for years. He just puts a hand in Jisung's hair and starts carding through it, slow and steady, the way he grooms his cats when they're feeling anxious.

Jisung makes a sound. A small, involuntary sound, something between a sigh and a whimper, and Minho feels it in his own chest, resonating. Minho wants to chase after it, cradle the voice in his palms forever.

"Hyung," Jisung sighs, muffled by Minho's thigh.

"Mm."

"You're being really nice lately."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"It's not a bad thing. It's just..." Jisung turns his head, looking up at Minho with those dark eyes, and Minho's hand stills in his hair. "If you keep it up, you're gonna kill me one day."

"Why's that?"

Jisung's gaze drops like he hadn't expected Minho to actually pursue the conversation. His ears are turning red — Minho can see it even in the dim light of the TV. "I don't know. It makes things harder. There are things I think we need to talk about, but I'm not ready yet."

Minho's heart is beating too fast. He keeps his hand in Jisung's hair, keeps his voice steady. "Why can't we talk about them now?"

"'Cause," Jisung whispers. "I'm scared. And you're so nice to me right now. It would ruin everything." He turns his face back into Minho's thigh. "I just want this for a moment longer, please."

Tell me, Minho wants to say. Whatever it is, just tell me. I won't ruin anything. I'll hold it carefully, I'll protect it, I'll—

But he doesn't say that. Because this isn't about what Minho wants. This is about Jisung feeling safe enough to say it himself, in his own time, without pressure or expectation. Whatever the secret is — whatever Jisung has been so terrified to share — Minho will wait. He will be patient. He will be soft. He will be the person Jisung needs him to be.

The thing is, Minho has no idea.

The secret, he's given up guessing what it might be. He's run through every possibility he can think of: Jisung wants to move out. Jisung did something stupid and feels guilty about it. Jisung has been keeping some family issues private. Jisung is struggling with his mental health and doesn't know how to ask for help. Minho has cycled through all of these, has prepared responses for each, has braced himself for bad news or complicated news or news that might change everything between them.

 Minho has lost track; the days have started blending together, all of them golden and soft and filled with the warmth of Jisung pressed against his side.

They're on the couch again. This has become their default position — Minho sitting at one end, Jisung sprawled across the rest of it with his head in Minho's lap, the TV playing something neither of them is watching. Minho's hand is in Jisung's hair. Jisung's hand is on Minho's knee. The cats are scattered around them, Soonie on the back of the couch, Doongie curled in the armchair, Dori batting at a dust bunny in the corner.

It's domestic in a way that makes Minho's chest hurt. It's everything he's ever wanted and never allowed himself to want.

"Hyung," Jisung says.

"Mm."

"I need to tell you something."

Minho's hand stops moving. He looks down at Jisung, at the serious set of his mouth, at the way his fingers have curled into the fabric of Minho's sweatpants. This is it, he thinks. He's finally going to tell me. Whatever it is.

"Okay," Minho says, and his voice comes out steady even though his heart is trying to escape through his throat. He's prepared. He's ready. He's been ready for days.

"I've been thinking about how to tell you for days," Jisung continues. "Or I guess more like weeks. Months, maybe. And I was so scared. I was scared you would— I don't know. Laugh. Or get weird. Or stop being my friend. And then you started being all... nice. And gentle. And I couldn't figure out why, and it made me even more scared because what if you were just being nice because you knew? What if Felix told you? What if everyone knew except me, and you were all just waiting for me to—"

“Jisung." Minho's hand cups the back of Jisung's head, grounding him. "Breathe."

Jisung takes a shaky breath. His eyes are wet.

Minho’s breath catches. Underneath his ribs, his heart hammers wildly.

"I'm in love with you."

Minho stares at him.

Oh.

What?

His brain, for one long crystalline moment, simply stops working. The words echo in his skull: I'm in love with you. I'm in love with you. I'm in love—

That's not— that can't be— that's not what he was expecting. He was expecting bad news. He was expecting something broken that he could help fix. He was expecting anything other than this, this impossible, beautiful, terrifying confession that rearranges his entire universe and everything around it in the span of three seconds.

He'd tried to guess the secret. He'd prepared responses. Practised it in the mirror. But the thought that Jisung might be in love with him? The thought that the secret might be that?

It has never once crossed his mind.

Not because he doesn't feel something for Jisung, god no, because as soon as those words leave Jisung's lips, it's immediately clear that he does, fuck, he's been feeling it for years, that slow-burning warmth that he's carefully, meticulously, stubbornly labelled as friendship and habit and proximity. He's so used to shoving those feelings down, to locking them in a box and swallowing the key, that he's stopped even noticing the box exists. He's in love with Jisung. He's been in love with Jisung for so long that it's become background noise, the hum of the refrigerator, the scent of the air. It's just there. It's just him. And he's never, not once, allowed himself to imagine that Jisung might feel the same way.

Why would he? Jisung is warmth and light and endless feeling. Jisung could have anyone. Jisung deserves someone who doesn't— he doesn't even know. Someone not Minho. Someone nowhere close to Minho. 

He'd spent years telling himself subconsciously that he's not what Jisung needs, that his love would be a burden, that the best thing he can do is keep it hidden and stay Jisung's friend, that he'd ignored his most innate desires, ignored the feelings, ignored Jisung, who's been sitting there, patiently, waiting for him…

He's in love with me.

He's in love with me.

He's been scared to tell me because he's in love with me.

And then, like a door swinging open after years of being locked, Minho understands.

It all makes sense now.

He understands why Jisung's ears turn red. He understands the stupid restaurant outing, all the way back, the way Jisung rubs at the hem of his shirt, the way Jisung looks at him when he thinks Minho isn't watching. He understands the late-night conversations with Felix, the fear in Jisung's voice, the words I don't know if he'd even want to hear it. He understands everything.

And underneath the understanding, rising up like floodwater, is something else. Something he's been holding back for so long that it feels almost unfamiliar. Something that has always been there, waiting for permission to exist.

Love. His own love. Mirroring Jisung's so perfectly that it's almost funny they've both been blind.

"I'm in love with you," Jisung says again, and his voice breaks on the last word. "I'm sorry. I know that's not— I know you don't— I just couldn't keep it inside anymore. You've been so good to me, and I thought maybe if I didn't say it, I would actually explode, and that would be messy and you'd be annoyed about having to deal with it all, and that's unfair to you—"

"Jisung."

"—and I completely understand if you need space and want me to move out, I can call Chan tonight, I'm sure he has space at his—"

"Jisung."

Jisung stops talking. He's looking up at Minho with wide, terrified eyes, and his whole body is trembling slightly. Minho has never seen anything more beautiful in his entire life.

"Why the fuck would I want you to move out?"

"...What?"

"You're a fucking idiot."

Jisung flinches like he's been slapped.

And then Minho leans down and kisses him.

It's not a gentle kiss. Minho doesn't know how to do gentle kisses any more than he knows how to do gentle anything else. It's a desperate kiss with all the 'finally' Minho can muster and press into Jisung's astonished lips, a kiss that tastes like all the words they've both been swallowing for years. Jisung makes a sound against his mouth, something that might be a sob, and his hands come up to fist in Minho's shirt, pulling him closer, closer, like he's afraid Minho might disappear.

When they finally break apart, Minho's forehead is pressed against Jisung's. Their breath mingles in the small space between them. Jisung's lips are wet and his cheeks are wet and his eyes are still wide, but the fear is gone now, replaced by something that looks a lot like hope.

"You're in love with me, too," Jisung says. It's not a question.

"I've been in love with you for years," Minho says. The words come out raw, honest, scraped from somewhere deep. "I just didn't think— I never thought— I didn't know you could—"

"You're also an idiot," Jisung echoes, and now he's laughing, that wet, wobbly laugh, and Minho can feel it against his lips.

"Yeah," Minho agrees. "I know."

"Why wouldn't you be allowed to be in love with me?"

"Because I'm..." Minho hesitates, searching for the words. "I'm not good at this. At this stuff. At saying things. I thought if I told you, I would ruin everything. I thought I wasn't enough for you."

Jisung laughs again, and it's the most beautiful sound Minho has ever heard. "You've been enough for me since the day we met. You've always been enough. You've been everything. I just didn't think I was allowed to want you."

They look at each other. Two idiots, Minho thinks. Two idiots in love, too scared to say it, too blind to see it staring back at them from the other side of the couch.

"I heard you," Minho admits. "That night. You were talking to Felix. You said you were scared to tell me something, and I— I thought you didn't trust me. I thought I'd done something wrong. I thought you were going to tell me you were moving out, or that you'd done something terrible, or that you were sick. I never—" He stops, shakes his head. "I never thought it was this. I never thought you could—"

"That's why you've been so nice?" Jisung's eyes are wide. "Because you thought I was going to tell you something bad?"

"I wanted to be safe for you. Whatever it was. I wanted you to know you could tell me anything."

"Oh, my god." Jisung buries his face in Minho's chest. "Oh, my god. I was never scared of you like that. I was just nervous and scared ‘cause I didn’t wanna fuck things up—”

“Oh.”

Oh. He’s spent days worrying that Jisung couldn’t read him, that he’d finally pushed too far, that the language that Minho had carefully cobbled together for them had somehow finally crumbled without him noticing. But Jisung had read him. Had always read him, had seen all the stupid jokes and walls masquerading as wit and never once asked Minho to be anyone else. 

Jisung, all this time, had understood him perfectly, oh.

“Yeah, oh,” Jisung repeats, giggling wetly. “We're both such fucking idiots."

"I know."

"I can't believe you were over there thinking I was dying or something while I was just being the stupidest, gayest fucking guy ever—"

"I thought you might be dying, yes. Or that you'd killed someone. I had a whole list of possibilities."

"What was on the list?"

"Moving out. Family problems. Mental health stuff. A secret gambling addiction."

Jisung pulls back, staring at him in disbelief. "A gambling addiction? You thought I had a gambling addiction?"

"I don't know! It's a possibility. You made it sound so terrible."

"I did not— you know what, never mind." Jisung's face crumples into something that's half-laugh, half-sob. "I can't believe you. I can't believe us. We're the stupidest fucking people alive."

"Probably," Minho agrees, and pulls him back in.

They stay like that for a long time. The TV plays on, ignored. The cats wander in and out. The light outside the window shifts from afternoon gold to evening blue, and neither of them moves, because moving would mean letting go, and neither of them wants to let go.

At some point, Jisung tilts his head up and says, "So we're doing this? We're really doing this?"

"I don't know what 'this' is," Minho emphasises, as he reaches his hand to press his fingertips into Jisung's cheekbone. He watches, fascinated, as Jisung instinctively closes his eyes, his eyelashes fanning out onto the thin skin. "But yes. We're doing it." He watches, with glee, as Jisung opens his eyes, scrunching his nose up in disgust as Minho wiggles his eyebrows suggestively.

"I hate you."

"No, you don't."

"No, I don't."

The room quiets for a moment before Jisung speaks again.

"We should probably talk about it. Like, actual communication. Boundaries. All that stuff."

"Probably."

"But not right now."

"Definitely not right now."

Jisung smiles. It's the smile Minho has been cataloguing for years, the one that makes his eyes disappear, and his cheeks bunch up, and his whole face look like sunrise. "Can we just... stay here? For a little while?"

Minho presses a kiss to the top of his head. "We can stay here as long as you want."

"I want forever," Jisung says, and it's such a Jisung thing to say, something so earnest and absolutely certain, that Minho can't help but laugh.

"Forever is a long time," he murmurs.

"Good," Jisung smiles, and burrows closer. "I'm counting on it."