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Pride month always makes Jisung a little emotional.
Not in an over-the-top dramatic way. Not in the way people expect from someone who has built a career out of putting pieces of his heart into songs and letting complete strangers dissect them.
It’s quieter than that for Jisung. Softer. A feeling that settles somewhere behind his ribs every June and lingers there. Something difficult to name, even for him.
Maybe it’s because every year reminded him that there had once been a version of himself who genuinely believed he would spend the rest of his life pretending. Too afraid.
At seventeen, standing at the back of the classroom, refusing to admit why he couldn’t stop looking at a nameless boy he can’t even remember now.
And after he finally figured it out, he had never imagined that one day he would be openly bisexual with over a million followers online. He had never imagined writing songs about heartbreak and longing and desire and having people sing them back to him at concerts.
He had certainly never imagined that one day teenage kids would send him messages saying things like, ‘you make me feel less alone.’
That part always got to him.
So when someone on his team suggested a special Pride Month Q&A, Jisung agreed immediately.
The evening passes in a blur of notifications and laughter.
He’s curled sideways across his bed with his laptop balanced precariously on his knees, and he’s been answering questions for nearly two hours, occasionally reading the funniest ones aloud to himself.
What’s your favourite pride flag? - I’m legally obligated to say the bi flag
Who was your first celebrity crush? - Next question
What’s your advice for someone who hasn’t come out yet but wants to? - Only do it when you feel safe. There is no deadline. There is no timer. You don’t owe anybody your story before you’re ready.
That answer earned fifty thousand likes in thirty minutes.
By midnight, he was exhausted.
His room is dim except for the pink moodlighting. Outside, the city has settled into the comfortable hush of late-night traffic, distant enough to sound more like ocean waves rather than cars.
Jisung stretches until his back cracks, closes the laptop, and drops his head onto the pillow with a groan.
He should go to sleep. Instead, he opens Twitter again on his phone.
His public account is still exploding with questions he hasn’t answered, pouring in every minute. Most are harmless, some ridiculous, a few surprisingly thoughtful. He scrolls lazily, half asleep already, letting them blur together as he read.
Favourite song you’ve ever written?
Do you still talk to your high school friends?
Would you date a fan?
How did you know you were bisexual?
That one stops him. His thumb freezes against the screen.
The answer arrives immediately. Not because he’d spent years thinking about it, not because he had some profound revelation, but simply because there has only ever been one answer.
One person. One moment six years ago. Jisung lets out a quiet laugh that sounds sad even to his own ears.
“God.”
The memory surfaces with humiliating ease.
Lee Minho, at twenty years old, standing beneath harsh fluorescent lights in a university hallway, dark hair falling into his eyes. One hand wrapped around an iced americano, looking up just as Jisung walked through the doors.
He was the most beautiful person Jisung had ever seen.
Nothing dramatic happened. It was just one glance. One stupid glance, and then suddenly Jisung had spent the next six years hopelessly, irretrievably in love with his best friend.
The funniest part is that Minho still has no idea. Or maybe that isn’t funny at all. More like a tragedy. And maybe that’s why Jisung has still not moved on.
Minho is woven into every corner of his life. Every tour. Every album launch. Every birthday. Every stupid late-night phone call. Every disaster.
Minho has been there for all of it.
And somehow Jisung had fallen in love with him before he even knew what love really was.
The ache of it was so familiar now that he barely even noticed it. It just lived with him, a constant passenger he refused to let out of the car.
Half asleep and feeling vulnerable, Jisung switches over to his private account.
It’s an account nobody else follows. Just somewhere he can post whatever he wants, like an archive. Thoughts he’d never say aloud.
Without thinking too hard, he taps the quote button on the question How did you know you were bisexual?
He attaches a photo. A candid one. Minho’s now-blond hair is tucked in his backwards cap, sitting at a restaurant table sometime last year. His friend had taken it on their trip to Japan, and Jisung nearly fell over when he saw it. Minho wasn’t even looking at the camera; he was simply sitting there, his perfect side profile in view as his face glowed from the sun.
Even though Jisung didn’t take it, he loves that photo.
He typed: "When I fell in love at first sight with my best friend six years ago. That’s when I knew. I still know now.”
Then he hit send.
Jisung smiled faintly, feeling lighter. He locked his phone and immediately fell asleep. Jisung, however, was completely unaware that he had not, in fact, posted it to his private account.
The doorbell starts ringing at 8 in the morning. Not once. Not even twice. But continuously. Long, frantic presses that blur together into one endless, annoying sound.
Jisung groans into his pillow and drags the covers over his head, but the ringing continues. A few seconds later, whoever keeps ringing the bell switches to fists.
Bang, bang, bang.
“Go away,” Jisung mumbles into the mattress.
They don’t.
His phone is also vibrating somewhere beneath him, trapped in the blankets, but he ignores that, too. Whatever catastrophe has apparently occurred can wait until after coffee.
The knocking grows louder, though. More urgent.
With a noise somewhere between a sigh and a whine, Jisung finally forces one eye open.
Sunlight spills through the gap in his curtains, and he’s sure his hair is sticking up in approximately seventeen directions. One of his socks has also disappeared during the night.
The knocking continues.
“What the hell?” If Jisung were more awake, he would remember that only a select few people would even have access to his door, considering you need a security code to even get onto the corridor.
He stumbles out of bed and nearly trips over a guitar stand on the way to the door. His apartment feels strangely bright, his brain thick with sleep and completely unwilling to process anything more complicated than ‘person outside’.
Jisung unlocks the door, pulls it open and then freezes.
Minho is standing on the other side. Jisung’s sleepy brain struggles to catch up.
Minho is here.
At eight in the morning.
Minho, who rarely wakes before noon because he dances late at the club. Minho, who lives thirty minutes away by car. Minho, whose chest is rising and falling far too quickly.
His hair is a mess, windblown and dishevelled as though he’s been dragging his hands through it for hours. He isn’t dressed properly either. Just old sweatpants, trainers, and a hoodie hastily thrown on. Jisung’s not sure if there’s even a t-shirt under there—and even in the haze, that thought still gets his heart rate going.
There’s something wild about him, something completely unlike the calm, composed man Jisung has known for years.
And then Jisung notices the way he’s breathing, paired with the faint flush and sheen of sweat at his temples. He looks like he’s run here.
“Minho?”
The word barely leaves Jisung’s mouth before Minho says, breathlessly, almost desperately:
“I love you, too.”
For a second, Jisung simply stares at him, because the sentence just doesn’t make sense. Sure, he understands the words themselves. The problem is that his brain refuses to arrange them into a reality that could possibly exist.
Minho looks terrified and completely sincere.
Jisung feels as though the floor has just disappeared beneath him. “What?”
Minho takes a step forward. “I love you too.”
“What do you mean you love me too?”
The question sounds ridiculous the moment it leaves his mouth, but Jisung genuinely doesn’t know what else to say. His thoughts are moving through thick syrup. He’;s still half asleep, still wearing his old t-shirt and his one sock. He hasn’t even had his coffee.
Surely this cannot be the moment his entire life changes.
“Jisung.”
“What?”
“You posted it on Twitter.”
Jisung is going to die. “What?”
“You posted that you love me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Minho’s expression softens with immediate sympathy. The kind that people reserve for somebody who is about to realise they have accidentally sent a text to the wrong person.
“Oh my God,” Jisung whispers.
“You didn’t know?”
“Oh, fuck.” The words escape before he can stop them. His eyes widen, and his stomach drops, his soul beginning its emergency evacuation plan.
“Jisung.”
“How many people saw it?”
Minho opens his mouth, but Jisung immediately lifts a hand.
“No. I don’t want to know.”
“Probably for the best.”
“I’m deleting my account.”
“Jisung.”
“I’m leaving the city and becoming a sheep farmer.”
“Jisung.”
“I don’t even know anything about sheep, how will I survive?”
“Jisung…”
Before he can continue spiralling, before he can fully process the scale of his own humiliation, Minho closes the distance between them entirely.
One second, they're standing in the doorway, the next, Minho's arms around him. Strong and certain. The hug nearly knocks the breath from his lungs.
Jisung freezes, every frantic thought screeching to a halt, because Minho is holding him. Actually holding him.
Not the casual side-hugs they usually exchange after Jisung’s concerts or Minho’s dance performances. Not the brief embrace when Minho drops him off at the airport. This is different.
This feels like somebody finally grabbing hold of something precious after years of being afraid to touch it.
Minho’s face presses into the side of his neck, and when he speaks again, his voice is so low that Jisung can almost feel the words.
“I don’t care about the post.” The confession sends a shiver through him. “I don’t care about any of that.” Minho’s mouth is close to his ear now, and it feels so intimate. “I care that you’ve apparently been carrying this by yourself for six years.”
Jisung closes his eyes.
“I care that you thought you were alone in it.” The embrace tightens further. “Because I fell in love with you too.”
Jisung’s breath catches. Minho laughs softly.
“I remember that day we first saw each other,” he murmurs. “You looked completely overwhelmed. Your backpack was half-open. You were looking around like you accidentally walked into the wrong building.”
Jisung whines in offence, but Minho ignores it and holds him tighter.
“You had these huge eyes. Like a bug.”
The words brush against his skin.
“Everything fascinated you.”
Jisung can practically see the memory reflected in Minho’s voice. It’s the same one as his.
“Then you looked at me.” His heart thuds painfully. “And I remember thinking that nobody should be allowed to be that cute.”
“Minho…”
“I’m serious. Your cheeks were so round.”
Jisung groans, and Minho laughs against his shoulder.
“So round, and you smiled at me like we’d already been friends for years.”
The laughter fades, something gentler taking its place.
“And then I got to know you. I loved your songs before anyone else had even heard them,” Minho says quietly. “I loved the way you got excited about stupid things.” His hand slides up Jisung’s back. “I loved every one of your terrible jokes.”
“Hey!”
“Especially the terrible jokes.”
Jisung laughs anyway.
The sound seems to soften something in Minho immediately. Not that there had been much distance left between them to begin with, but at some point they drifted even closer, close enough that Jisung can feel the warmth from his body, close enough that every breath seems shared between them.
The morning sun spills through the open doorway and catches Minho’s hair, illuminating the strands in pale gold, and for a fleeting, ridiculous moment, Jisung is struck by the thought that he has spent six years memorising the man only to discover there are still things about him capable of stealing the air from his lungs.
Minho pulls back and looks at him head-on. The world beyond the apartment feels distant and irrelevant, reduced to little more than background noise. Somewhere, his phone is probably still exploding with notifications. Somewhere, thousands of people are discussing the most humiliating mistake of his life.
But none of it seems particularly important now.
Because Minho is looking at him, and not like a friend. Not like the person who has occupied the seat beside him on planes and backstage sofas and late-night convenience store trips for six years.
He’s looking at him like someone special. The realisation of it leaves Jisung almost dizzy.
Minho’s hand lifts slowly, as though giving him every opportunity to pull away, and settles against the side of his face. His palm is warm. Familiar. The touch feels surprisingly intimate despite how innocent it is. Jisung leans into it before he can stop himself, and the look on Minho’s face is so openly fond that it nearly undoes him.
“There he is,” Minho whispers.
Jisung blinks. “What?”
A small smile tugs at the corner of Minho’s mouth. “That’s the face you make.”
“What face?”
“The one you don’t realise you’re making when you’re happy.”
The words land directly in the centre of Jisung’s chest.
Six years. Six years, and apparently, Minho has been paying attention to things Jisung didn’t even know about himself.
His laugh escapes softly this time, quieter than before. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I’ve been told.”
“Mostly by me.”
“Yeah, mostly by you.”
The smile lingering between them grows warmer, easier, and suddenly Jisung cannot remember why he ever thought this would be impossible. It feels absurd now. As though the answer had been sitting in front of them both for years, waiting patiently while they danced around it.
Minho’s thumb brushes lightly across his cheek, sending a shiver down Jisung’s spine.
The change between them is immediate. Minho’s eyes flicker to his face, then his mouth, then back again.
“Can I kiss you?” Minho ask quietly.
The question almost breaks him, because after six years of waiting, of wondering, of loving him in silence. Minho is still asking. Still giving him the choice, treating him with that same careful tenderness that had always made it impossible not to fall deeper in love with him.
“Please,” Jisung whispers.
Then he leans in.
The kiss begins softly. Not tentative, but careful, as though both of them are trying to savour the reality of it. Jisung has imagined this more times than he cares to admit, yet none of those imagined versions ever came close to this.
Because the real thing is something alive, real and warm.
Minho’s lips are gentle against him, and for a moment, all Jisung can do is stand there and feel it. Feel the steady hand against his cheek. Feel the way Minho exhales softly through his nose. Feel years of longing collapsing inward until they become something bright and overwhelming.
Then Jisung reaches for him.
His fingers catch in the fabric of Minho’s hoodie, bunching it in his fists as he steps even closer.
Minho makes a small sound that seems to come from somewhere deep in his chest.
Every lingering brush of lips feels like a conversation all on its own, every touch carrying the weight of things they never found the courage to say to each other. Jisung loses track of time entirely. He only knows that Minho is smiling faintly against his mouth at one point, and the realisation makes him smile too.
When they finally part, neither of them gets very far. Their foreheads stay pressed together. Jisung’s heart feels too large for his body.
Minho closes his eyes briefly and laughs under his breath. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”
Jisung immediately groans. “Don’t tell me that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m already mourning the years we wasted.”
Minho opens his eyes, reaching up to brush his thumb beneath Jisung’s eyes.
“We didn’t waste them,” he says quietly. “We just took the scenic route.”
Chan (manager): Jisung??? What the hell is that post??? You're in love with Minho-yah?
Felix: baby I hate to tell you this but you posted that on main
Jeongin: skill issue
Changbin: Here to talk when you realise what you did, bro. Thinking of you. Stay strong.
Hyunjin: Six years… SIX YEARS? AND THIS IS HOW YOU CONFESS TO MY BEST FRIEND. You're on thin fucking ice Han Jisung
Seungmin: hahahahahaahhaah
The next day:
Seungmin: I'm still laughing btw
12:43 AM
Minho: Did you mean to post that?
12:45 AM
Minho: Jisung?
12:51 AM
Minho: Jisung please answer your phone
12:58 AM
Minho: I'm trying very hard to not assume this is real
1:16 AM
Minho: Chan says you're not answering him either
1:20 AM
Minho: How are you asleep right now
1:21 AM
Minho: How do you admit your love for me and then go to bed?
1:24 AM
Minho: Actually don't answer that. You don't know you did it.
4:20 AM
Minho: I love you so much, I can't believe you did that. My bug.