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Euijoo had been doing a lot of thinking, since the Talk. If they kept playing the game, sooner or later the bottle was going to land on a question he hadn’t answered for himself yet.
They were hanging out on the couch with a few of the others, watching a movie, and Nicholas was — as he often was — flopped over in his lap, watching horizontally. It had to be hard on the eyes and harder on the neck, but he did it every time, with any lap that was available, though he did seem to have preferences when he had his pick.
It wasn’t a new problem. It had sprouted in the time between I-LAND and &AUDITION, when they’d been training and travelling together with K and Taki, and had bloomed into something bright and voluminous that couldn’t be missed. They’d chosen Euijoo as leader because he knew them all best and noticed the most and kept a cool head about reacting to anything that came up; he could hardly fail to notice this.
Nicholas made no attempt to hide it or be subtle, either. He glowed with it, warm and steady as late summer sunlight, every time he was in Euijoo’s presence. Much brighter when he was looking at Euijoo directly. The members teased him about it constantly, fandom watched him delightedly, everyone knew and everyone had their own hopes and theories as to how Euijoo might respond.
It had been almost six years and he was still thinking about it. He’d fallen into the habit of accepting it with a smile but giving little back, and that seemed to keep everything stable enough.
Things had just changed, though. Radically. Doors to new worlds were open, some of the others were venturing through them, and that meant he had to decide now, one way or the other.
It was very late after the movie was over, but he was going to lose sleep either way, so it seemed better to lose it on something productive. He asked Nicholas into the music room and closed the door. Fuma, still on the couch gaming on his phone, looked up to watch them go, but said nothing and kept his face impassive, which Euijoo appreciated.
Nicholas sat down looking apprehensive, locking his fingers around his knees and rounding his back a little as Euijoo sat down and faced him.
Once again, they were going to have to have a conversation in Japanese that neither of them was quite comfortable enough in the language to manage skillfully. They’d just have to do their best. Throw in some Korean wherever it might help.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said baldly, because he hadn’t been able to think of a more graceful way to set the ball rolling. Nicholas generally appreciated straightforward bluntness anyway.
Nicholas was still and silent, looking at him with black eyes deep and wary but not uncertain. He knew what the conversation was about. Had probably known the moment Euijoo had called him in. He probably hadn’t been looking forward to it any more than Euijoo had.
“I keep thinking through the options,” Euijoo went on, knowing that he sounded detached and distant as he always did when he was in this analytical mode, emotions set aside in favour of reason and foresight. “From every angle I can find. I just can’t seem to settle on anything. What are you thinking?”
It was helpful, at least, that Nicholas understood and accepted this side of him. He’d been telling the truth on Tingle Salon when he’d said he felt he could be most himself with Nicholas. This was a big part of what he’d meant by that. It wasn’t the most camera-friendly aspect of him, but it was essential to who he was and how he led the team. Nicholas wouldn’t take his expressionless bluntness as anything negative or personal.
Nicholas’ expressive mouth worked, and he looked away as he chewed on how to phrase things. “I’ve been thinking about it, too,” he said eventually, slow and careful, “and I guess I figured you’d just keep it simple and say no? I know you don’t…”
He trailed off, uncomfortable, but tightened his fingers together around his knees and pushed on.
“I know you love me, but I also know you don’t want me, and like I’ve said all along, I’m never going to push. Not ever. And I don’t want you to try it out of pity or whatever, either. So you should probably just be honest and say you don’t want to. Not with me or any of us. Everyone will get it. It’ll be fine.”
Euijoo’s chest ached. He did love Nicholas. So much, and for so many reasons, and so many of them packed into this one little conversation already. Euijoo wasn’t sure how Nicholas did it, felt so much that hurt without trying to lock it away or force something to change. How he just sat with it and let it hurt and kept feeling anyway.
That would be the simplest and cleanest solution, of course. It was the one he’d always defaulted to, and had assumed he’d automatically go with this time, as well.
The crux of the problem was that he was hesitating.
Though he was comfortable with skinship and emotional intimacy, even enjoyed it, he was in fact — somewhat rare for an industry that attracted people who liked the idea of being physically and emotionally intimate with others of their own gender, if not as rare as fans tended to think — straight. As far as he knew, entirely so. Men were very frequently attracted to him, and he was always warmed and flattered, but he'd never felt the slightest urge to respond in kind.
He was well aware that Nicholas was in love with him, and wanted him desperately, but he couldn’t return it and had never tried to force himself to, out of respect for both Nicholas and himself. He never pushed Nicholas away, but never let him come closer, either. Was always careful to avoid giving false hope.
So he hadn’t expected to have much trouble with this. He’d intended to close his own door and let that be the end of it.
But then the bottle had landed on Fuma, and he hadn’t done that. He hadn’t even thought about it, really. Hadn’t wanted to. In the moment, it had seemed deeply natural and right for it to happen, and he hadn’t regretted it afterwards. It hadn’t been about desire. Just connection, a new cord added to the thick braided rope of the bond between them.
And if it could be that…
He’d hesitated. He was still hesitating, standing at the door, hand half-raised to close it and arrested in midair.
Haltingly, using every corner of the vocabulary he’d painstakingly earned over the years, he explained all of that to his best friend, who listened with wide but patient eyes until he was done.
Nicholas pulled his knees all the way up onto the chair, socked feet curled around the edge of the seat, and wrapped his arms all the way around his shins, a rosy armadillo flinching away from a startling threat.
“I feel like… anything I could say right now would be super selfish,” he admitted, voice as small as he’d made his body. “I swear the most important thing to me is you being comfortable. I don’t want you to force yourself. But man, I really.” The sentence ended abruptly, Nicholas’s throat closing up around the words to hold them down.
Euijoo heard them anyway, and years of hopeless yearning burning like stubborn embers behind them. He bit his lip, pressed them together, worried at them.
“I really,” he said softly, “really don’t want to hurt you, Nico. I know I shouldn’t be hesitating like this. It’s hard on you, right?”
Nicholas laughed, short and a little raw around the edges. “I guess, yeah. But I’m glad you’re thinking about it properly and stuff. I’ll live, so don’t worry about it.”
The tension in Euijoo’s chest tightened. Frustrated, disoriented love, trying to find its way through the maze of ribs to somewhere that made sense.
He didn’t want to sleep with Nicholas. He was fairly sure he never would.
But. The moment with Fuma had shown him that there was middle ground, enough of it and solid enough that he might really be able to stand on it and keep his balance. If he was willing to take the risk.
He wasn’t a coward. No coward could have survived everything he’d been through chasing his dream down this stony, treacherous road. Risk to himself didn’t scare him. It was the risk to people he cared about that was making this tough. Right now, specifically risk to Nicholas, who had already been through more than his fair share of heartache.
The question was less, therefore, whether he had the guts to try. It was whether he respected Nicholas’s strength enough to present him with the choice.
He did. Of course he did.
“I don’t know if I’ll end up okay with it,” he said, offering up all the cruel honesty he had, “but I think maybe I want to try, at least.”
Nicholas’s eyes widened. It was all so visible on his face, which was a much clearer communicator than he could be in words most of the time. The brutal flare of hope, and his frantic efforts to douse it before it scorched his bones and tender heart again. “Um… so like…?”
“I didn’t want to have to decide and figure it out on the fly during the game,” Euijoo said. “I’d definitely make a mess. A bigger one. I want to know where I stand before the next game.”
“Fair enough, makes sense,” said Nicholas, a little thickly. “So…?”
“So I need to ask for a pretty mean favour,” said Euijoo. “Please say no if you think it’ll hurt too much.”
Nicholas stared at him for a second, then planted his face in his knees and breathed as deeply as he could into his compressed lungs and exhaled very slowly. Then again, and one more time, before he finally managed to look up and meet Euijoo’s gaze.
Oh, those eyes. Captivating even when he wasn’t doing or feeling anything in particular. Breathtaking now. It was hard even to blink. The whole world seemed to iris inward until those eyes, and the world of love radiating through them, were all there was.
“It might, but I don’t care,” he whispered. “I really, really don’t care. Even if it makes me pathetic. Even if I die. Juju—”
Euijoo pulled his chair closer and put a hand on Nicholas’s tight-drawn knees, gently encouraging him to put them down and expose his vulnerable innards for the knife. It really was a cruel, awful thing to ask. He just couldn’t see any other way forward. He needed the answer. Whatever it cost.
Nicholas — beautiful, brave Nicholas, best and beloved friend — unfolded to let him in, hands climbing up Euijoo’s forearms to grasp his elbows for dear life.
Euijoo braced his hands on the arms of Nicholas’s chair, leaned forward, and kissed him. Not hard, nor lightly, just firm and intentional.
Nicholas shuddered hard, tip to toe, grip on Euijoo’s arms tightening to the point of pain. That was all right; it was only fair that Euijoo suffer a little, too, when he was doing this much damage himself.
Gritting something like a sob against his mouth, Nicholas yearned up into it, begging for just a little more, any further poisonous scrap Euijoo might be willing to give him.
Euijoo was watching his own response with focused intent. That was the point of this whole hurtful exercise: to find the answer to the question Can I go there?
He was a little dismayed to find that one of the louder things he was feeling was pleasure at the effect he was having, the power inherent in the grip he had over Nicholas’s heart. It felt good to be so wanted, and good to answer it even with such a torturously tiny taste.
He hated hurting Nicholas. Euijoo could never give enough to really satisfy the hunger he was whetting here, and he knew that, and he knew Nicholas knew that, which was why this was so cruel. But how much could he give? If he could go this far, could he go any farther?
He’d never get a better chance to find out. It had to be now.
“Sorry,” he murmured, and Nicholas flinched. “Bear with me just a little more, okay?”
“What—” Nicholas opened his mouth to ask.
Euijoo kissed him again, deeper this time. He trusted his weight to one hand on the armrest and cupped the other around Nicholas’s jaw. He tasted the subtle lingering sweetness of dessert.
Nicholas moaned deep in his throat and let go of Euijoo’s elbows to throw his arms around his neck, dragging him in as close as he could, throwing himself wide open, helplessly pulling the knife deeper into his heart.
Yes, Euijoo could go there. Not much further, he didn’t think, but at least this far. Now he knew.
He knew now, so it was time to stop. He’d drawn more than enough blood for one night.
When he tried to pull away, though, his body failed to respond for a few more moments, a little too committed for swift and easy disentanglement. There was something addictive about it, the way it was so easy to take Nicholas apart. How little effort it required.
He kissed Nicholas one more time, close-mouthed, and sat back.
Nicholas sagged forward after him, dazed and boneless, and Euijoo let him sink into his arms, holding him very gently with profound gratitude and affection.
“I think,” he said, settling himself into the space opened by his answer, “I’m going to leave the door open.”
—