Work Text:
Calling them “dates” had been a joke, at first. They’d pretty much all gone on some eventually, and laughed about it. Honestly, there wasn’t much difference between them and “real” dates, but there was an unspoken rule against pointing that out. No kissing at the end, no exclusive courtship with an eye to marriage or what have you, but all the in-the-moment romance and adoration and enjoyment of each others’ company. They’d just purposefully avoided ever taking the idea seriously.
So it had, for the most part, remained a joke over the years.
Until they’d had the Talk, and played a couple of dangerous games with a spinning bottle, and opened some doors that they’d always intended to keep shut and locked indefinitely.
And now K and Jo were strolling through Shinjuku Gyouen, hand in hand, admiring the hothouse butterflies and watching the artists and feeding the ducks, and it was a date.
They were still alone in Japan, all the others members promoting in Korea while the two of them worked on their ever-so-secret individual schedules, and they both missed their family terribly. Only having each other within reach had made them even more desperate to stay close and hang on.
The colours of the early summer afternoon tilted deeper and more golden as the sun proceeded slow and stately down to the horizon. To the east, and very soon overhead, clouds crept and gathered. Very quickly, as was their way in the rainy season. Always ready to crowd back in the moment they could.
Laughing as the first drops began to spatter down even as they turned to head home, they ran for the nearest gazebo, perched on the southeast corner of the lake, overlooking the stippled green water and green lawns on the far shore.
The shower likely wouldn’t last long. The trailing edge of the little squall was already visible to the east, a lightening beyond the indistinct veils of grey.
It was quite warm, and they were appropriately dressed, but they still sat squeezed together as if for warmth, K’s arm tight around Jo’s shoulders.
“Teach us to go out in May without an umbrella,” K said, grinning.
“It’s fine, isn’t it?” Jo said. “Just a little water. It’s not cold, we won’t get sick.”
K laughed. “Ever the determined optimist.”
They listened to the rain for a while, watched it drum hypnotic patterns across the lake and make the leaves shiver and sway.
“Jojo,” K murmured softly, some soft time later. “Is this a date?”
Turning his head to the side to look at K’s profile, Jo frowned. “Yes?”
“No, I mean.” K pressed his lips together, brows drawing together. “Is it a date?”
Jo understood, then. Was it still a joke? Were they still “just” friends, teammates, family, doing romance without the romance? Not that there had ever been any “just” about it, of course, but they had always made sure to stay aware of the borders of the lands where dragons lay and skirt them by at least a little. Were they still doing that now, though, after the Talk? Now that the whole landscape had shifted and expanded past its old well-trodden borders?
Jo adjusted a little to half-face K and reached out across their laps to take K’s free hand. K looked at their hands, unblinking, rather than at Jo’s face, perhaps afraid now to learn the answer to the question he’d found the courage to ask.
“To me,” Jo said, quietly and carefully, “they’ve always been dates.”
K looked up at him sharply.
“It was never a joke to me,” he continued, wondering at how simple and easy it was to say now. How safe it felt. How loud the absence of anxiety. “I know it was to you, and that’s fine—”
K gripped his shoulder convulsively, and squeezed his hand almost hard enough to ache, interrupting him. “No, no, Jojo, stop. That’s not.”
Jo stopped, looking at him, gently puzzled.
The rain siffilated briskly through the foliage, unconcerned with their little mortal drama, fixed on its own sodden business. The green was becoming overpowering, set off by the grey and the ebbing evening light.
“I should’ve been joking,” K said, looking pained and guilty. “I decided at the start that you were going to be my kouhai and colleague and little brother and friend, and that was going to be more than enough. It would’ve been more than enough, if we’d just kept going as we were.”
Again, Jo understood. He’d been too young, all the way back then. Too much younger for K have out-of-bounds feelings about. So K had stuffed them out one of the doors they’d locked and barred and left them there. Or he’d tried, at least.
But Jo remembered everything. Every moment that had made him ache and shiver with a sweetness that could not be eased.
How K had gotten up to hug him delightedly when he’d been assigned to the “Something” team, and said I didn’t think I had any chance at you. K holding his shoulders and looking in his eyes and saying Don’t worry, we’ll debut. And Take this hug and you’ll do great. Waltzing through the crowd, laughing and bothering everyone they came across. The way K had hugged him onstage when he’d been chosen, and in the green room afterwards, holding him while Jo buried his face in K’s shoulder.
When he’d pushed Jo over on the floor during that early photoshoot and attempted to tickle him but mostly just rubbed his hands all over Jo’s midriff. His weight holding Jo down, his laughter in Jo’s ear.
That live they’d done with Fuma. That still haunted Jo’s daydreams, even now, all this time later. K’s fingers walking jauntily up his arms and over his head and up his spine, the little caress over the side of his neck as K pulled his hand back into safer territory. Jo’s skin had been full of electricity for long minutes afterwards, his focus utterly in disarray, despite the presence of the camera and the crowd beyond it.
K could act very well, when that was the job at hand, but off-camera he had never really made any attempt to hide his feelings, not ever in his life, and was consequently not good at it.
Jo sighed forward to lean his forehead lightly against K’s, and felt him shudder.
“I’m sorry, Jo,” K said, small, tears threatening behind his constricted voice. “I wish I’d been better.”
“I’m glad you weren’t,” Jo said, right on the heels of K’s words, almost overlapping them. “And I hope you know I wouldn’t have just let you, if I didn’t like it. I’ve never been scared of you, and I’d never let you hurt me without telling you, because I know how much you’d want to know.”
K was silent for a moment, clutching him hand and shoulder. Then he found a few usable words. “I guess what I’m saying is this was never a joke to me, either.”
Jo smiled. “Then it’s fine, right? This is a date, and we’re fine.” He shifted a little harder, sitting almost sideways on the bench, right knee pushed firmly up against K’s hard runner’s thigh. At this angle, K’s arm fell from his shoulders, so he could bring up his previously pinned right arm to brace his forearm against K’s shoulder and cradle the side of his face.
The look on K’s face was terrible and splendid. Wild yearning at full gallop. Love so radiant it was hard to look at him.
So Jo closed his eyes against the brilliance and kissed him.
—