Chapter Text
The apartment always sounded different after midnight.
During the day, it carried ordinary things: the low hum of Minho’s laptop, distant traffic muffled through rain-stained windows, Jisung singing half-finished melodies while brushing his teeth. Sometimes Felix’s voice spilled through the speakerphone from the living room, loud and dramatic enough to make Soonie puff her tail up like a startled squirrel.
But after midnight, the apartment became soft in strange ways.
The refrigerator buzzed like something underwater. Pipes clicked behind the walls with uneven rhythm. Headlights from the street below drifted across the ceiling in pale strips of gold and white, disappearing slowly over the textured paint above Minho’s bed.
At 2:17 a.m., Minho was still awake.
He stared at the glowing corner of his monitor from across the room, eyes burning faintly. The unfinished homepage layout on-screen sat untouched for almost forty minutes now, frozen beside lines of code he couldn’t bring himself to read again.
Minimalist landing page.
Organic skincare brand.
Warm tones requested.
Every client wanted warmth lately.
Warm palettes. Warm branding. Warm user experience.
Minho designed websites for companies that sold happiness in neat little subscriptions.
Candles.
Tea.
Soap.
Handmade stationery.
Plants delivered in biodegradable packaging.
Sometimes he wondered if all those companies were secretly run by the same person.
The thought almost made him laugh.
Almost.
Instead, he rubbed both hands over his face and leaned back in his chair hard enough for it to creak beneath him. The sound echoed through the apartment louder than expected.
From the bed behind him came a sleepy noise.
Minho froze immediately.
Jisung shifted once under the blankets, dark hair messy across the pillow, then settled again with a long exhale through his nose.
Still asleep.
Minho let out his own breath carefully.
It was stupid, probably.
The apartment was small. Of course normal sounds traveled.
Still, guilt crawled into him instantly whenever he woke Jisung by accident, even though Jisung never cared.
Especially because Jisung never cared.
“You know normal people breathe, right?” Jisung had mumbled two nights ago, eyes still closed. “You keep sitting up like Dracula hearing church bells.”
Minho had stared at him.
Then Jisung cracked one eye open sleepily and reached out from under the blanket until his hand found Minho’s wrist.
“Come back to bed,” he’d whispered.
Like it was simple.
Like Minho’s brain wasn’t a room full of flickering lights.
Now, the digital clock in the corner of Minho’s monitor changed to 2:18.
He should finish the draft tonight.
The client expected revisions tomorrow morning. Technically this morning.
Instead, Minho stood from the desk and crossed quietly into the kitchen area, feet cold against hardwood floors.
The apartment was barely bigger than a shoebox.
One bedroom.
Tiny kitchen.
Narrow living room cluttered with cables, books, and Jisung’s abandoned hoodies.
There was a dent in the hallway wall from when Felix got too excited telling a story and accidentally slammed into it carrying takeout three months ago.
Jisung still laughed every time he noticed it.
Minho liked the dent.
He liked all the little evidence that people existed here.
The chipped mug beside the sink.
Jisung’s sock under the couch.
Soonie’s orange fur collecting in corners no matter how much vacuuming happened.
It should have annoyed him.
Instead, it terrified him a little.
Because it felt real.
Real enough to lose.
He opened the refrigerator slowly, wincing before the light even turned on.
The brightness spilled across the kitchen tiles.
Immediately, claws scratched somewhere nearby.
Minho looked down.
Soonie appeared from absolute nowhere.
The cat stared up at him with huge orange eyes, tail twitching violently.
“You were asleep,” Minho whispered.
Soonie meowed once.
Accusatory.
Then she shoved her entire head into the refrigerator before Minho could stop her.
“No.”
Another meow.
“You literally just ate.”
Soonie ignored him completely and began sniffing containers with criminal determination.
Minho sighed tiredly, reaching down to pull her backward against his chest. She squirmed dramatically in protest.
“You’re actually insane.”
She responded by trying to lick condensation off a yogurt container.
From the bedroom came Jisung’s muffled voice.
“Is she committing crimes again?”
Minho looked toward the dark doorway automatically.
Jisung stood there half-asleep, one hand braced against the frame, oversized black shirt slipping off one shoulder. His hair looked flattened on one side from sleep, eyes barely open.
Minho’s chest tightened instantly.
It happened every time.
Every single time.
Jisung looked at him like he belonged here.
Like Minho was something permanent.
Soonie wriggled free from Minho’s arms and sprinted directly toward Jisung at full speed.
“Traitor,” Minho muttered.
Jisung snorted softly as Soonie wrapped around his ankles.
“She likes me better.”
“She likes wet food better.”
“That too.”
Jisung wandered into the kitchen, scratching absently at his cheek. Up close, he still smelled warm from sleep. Fabric softener. Skin. Faint traces of the vanilla lip balm he always forgot in random places around the apartment.
Minho stepped aside automatically so Jisung could reach the sink.
“You’re still working?” Jisung asked quietly.
“Mhm.”
“You said you were almost done three hours ago.”
Minho shrugged.
Jisung looked at him for a moment too long.
That was another dangerous thing about him.
He noticed selectively, but deeply.
Not every detail. Never like Minho did.
But emotions?
Exhaustion?
Silence?
Jisung caught those immediately.
“You should sleep soon,” he murmured.
Minho nodded even though they both knew he probably wouldn’t.
Jisung filled a glass with water, drank half of it, then leaned sleepily against the counter beside him.
Neither of them spoke.
The city outside glowed dimly through the windows. Somewhere far below, a motorcycle passed through wet streets with a long fading growl.
Soonie launched herself onto a chair for absolutely no reason.
Jisung watched her with narrowed eyes.
“She has no thoughts in her head.”
“She has one thought,” Minho said. “Destroy everything.”
“That’s true love, actually.”
Minho huffed out the smallest laugh.
Tiny.
Barely there.
Still, Jisung smiled immediately like he’d won something.
That smile always did something awful to Minho.
Not awful.
Worse.
Tender.
The kind of tenderness that made his ribs ache.
Jisung reached over absentmindedly and tugged at Minho’s sleeve once.
“You’re cold.”
“I’m fine.”
“You say that about everything.”
Minho looked away first.
Outside, rainwater reflected neon signs from nearby buildings. Pink. Blue. White. The colors shimmered across the wet street like oil paint disturbed by footsteps.
For one strange second, the whole city looked unreal.
Like a movie set pretending to be lonely.
Minho suddenly imagined all of this vanishing overnight.
The apartment empty.
Desk gone.
Jisung gone.
Soonie gone.
Just silence left behind.
The thought arrived fast and sharp enough to make his stomach twist.
He hated how often it happened lately.
Not because anything was wrong.
That was the problem.
Nothing was wrong.
Jisung loved him openly, carelessly, with both hands. Felix dragged them out for dinner whenever Minho isolated himself too long. Their rent was paid on time. Soonie screamed for food every morning at exactly six-thirty like a tiny orange demon possessed by routine.
Things were good.
So good Minho couldn’t trust them.
His happiness felt thin as glass.
One mistake away from cracking.
“You’re doing the thing again,” Jisung said softly.
Minho blinked.
“The thing?”
“The staring into another dimension thing.”
Minho looked down at the countertop.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
Jisung bumped their shoulders together lightly.
The gesture was small.
Casual.
Sleepy.
It still nearly unraveled Minho.
“You coming back to bed?” Jisung asked.
“In a minute.”
“That means no.”
“I’ll try.”
Jisung sighed dramatically.
“You’re lucky I’m obsessed with you.”
“You say that like it’s unfortunate.”
“It is unfortunate. You’re exhausting.”
But he was smiling when he said it.
Always smiling.
Minho wondered sometimes if Jisung knew how frightening that was.
To be loved by someone who still smiled after seeing all the sharp edges.
Jisung finished his water and shuffled back toward the bedroom, Soonie trotting after him with determined loyalty.
Halfway down the hall, Jisung stopped suddenly.
“Oh, Felix texted earlier.”
“At two in the morning?”
“He lives like a raccoon. Anyway, he wants us to come over Friday.”
Minho made a face immediately.
Jisung laughed quietly without turning around.
“I already told him maybe.”
“You’re evil.”
“You love me.”
Minho didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
Jisung disappeared back into the bedroom.
Soon after, the apartment fell quiet again.
Minho stood alone in the kitchen for a long moment, listening to the distant sounds of the city breathing through cracked windows.
Then he returned to his desk.
The unfinished website still waited patiently on-screen.
Warm colors.
Gentle branding.
Soft typography.
Minho stared at it until the words blurred slightly.
Eventually he forced himself to finish the final adjustments, fingers moving automatically across the keyboard while exhaustion pressed behind his eyes like bruises.
At 3:41 a.m., he finally shut the laptop.
The silence afterward felt enormous.
He brushed his teeth in near darkness to avoid waking himself further, then checked the front door lock twice before catching himself and stopping before the third check.
The apartment smelled faintly like rain and laundry detergent.
When he slipped back into bed, Jisung shifted instinctively toward him without waking fully.
Warmth settled against Minho’s side immediately.
Soonie lay sprawled near their feet upside down like roadkill.
Minho stared at the ceiling.
The city lights moved slowly across it in pale silver bars.
Beside him, Jisung breathed softly into the dark.
Minho turned his head carefully.
Even half-buried in blankets, Jisung looked unbearably gentle asleep. His mouth slightly open. Hair falling into his eyes. One hand curled loosely against the pillow between them.
There were moments Minho looked at him and felt something dangerously close to grief.
Not because he was unhappy.
Because he was.
Because happiness this complete felt temporary by nature.
Fragile things always broke eventually.
Didn’t they?
Minho reached out before he could stop himself and brushed Jisung’s hair back carefully from his forehead.
Jisung made a sleepy noise and leaned unconsciously into the touch.
Minho’s chest hurt.
Outside, somewhere deep in the sleepless city, a siren echoed briefly through the rain.
The sound faded.
The apartment remained warm.
Dim.
Quiet.
Jisung was here.
Soonie was here.
Minho closed his eyes slowly, heart full of something too soft to name and too terrifying to trust.