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Euijoo had never even considered kissing Jo until the moment the bottle stopped. He hadn’t really considered kissing most of them, to be fair, but Jo had seemed even more remote a possibility than the rest, probably due to the combination of Euijoo’s careful avoidance of the borders around all of this and Jo’s habitual passivity and anxiety around touching others.
Euijoo looked up to find Jo’s eyes already on him, steady but uncertain. Euijoo met and held them, uncertain himself.
Jo tilted his head a degree, a very tiny question, giving Euijoo all the room in the world to dodge and do something else. They could do the Juju x Jojo cross move and everyone would laugh and it would be fine. They didn’t have to go there. No one expected them to go there.
Euijoo had built his entire life around doing things that were hard and uncomfortable for him, things that didn’t come naturally.
So had Jo.
So Euijoo dipped his chin one degree, a silent answer to that inaudible question, and Jo nodded back, just as subtly.
Euijoo was in the middle of figuring out how to approach the thing when Jo took it out of his hands, gently but firmly, by laying one long-fingered hand along the side of Euijoo’s face and closing the distance all in one self-assured, unhurried movement.
The intensity and colour of his reaction startled Euijoo. He’d expected it to be awkward, kind of embarrassing for both of them, amusing for everyone else and over quickly. Instead, something inside him resonated like a warm, weighty bell, thrumming through the space under his sternum, and he found himself leaning into it.
He’d gathered, already, from everyone else who’d gotten paired up with Jo thus far, that Jo was a surprisingly good kisser. It hadn’t occurred to him that he might end up finding out for himself. He was very much finding out for himself.
Jo was neither pushy nor hesitant, simply there within the intimate walls of the moment with him, offering and asking without demanding.
Everyone looking at Jo initially expected him to struggle mightily with all kinds of things that didn’t come easily to someone as profoundly passive, introverted, and shy as he was. Embarrassing variety content especially. The thing about Jo, though, was that he always trusted that he could pull new things off, and when he knew he could do it, he simply did it. He never hedged, never skirted, never balked. Full clear-eyed speed ahead.
He knew what he was doing when it came to kissing, and so he was all-in.
Euijoo, eyes closed, grasped around until he found the hand Jo was using to brace himself on the couch and gripped his wrist, hoping to steady himself but only making it worse. He could just barely feel Jo’s pulse under the fine, soft skin of his inner wrist, and the intimacy was dizzying.
He’d never considered this, but now that it was happening, all he could think to want was for it to keep happening, at least long enough for him to find his feet and give back as good as he was getting.
Euijoo realized, belatedly, that after Taki, he might be the member Jo was most comfortable touching.
Perhaps it stemmed back to their pair move in Under the skin, their very first choreo, in which Jo had needed to extend a hand for Euijoo to pull him to his feet — I’m right here, I’m right here — and learn to trust himself to Euijoo’s grip.
He vividly remembered that moment during the filming of their first Season’s Greetings when K had stretched Euijoo out over his back, belly up, and Jo had casually laid a hand on Euijoo’s sternum. Perhaps to stabilize him, but he hadn’t needed that, and it hadn’t felt like that, either. He had never actually figured out what it did feel like, and so it had stuck with him.
And the time during the filming of Aoarashi MV when he’d fallen into Jo’s arms on losing the palm-push game yet again, and Jo hadn’t let him fall, though his hands on Euijoo’s waist and lower back had been palpably uncertain that they were allowed to be there.
It was still rare, even now, and always so subtle it was easy to miss, but Euijoo never missed it.
Those beautiful, hesitant hands. He loved them. He’d always loved them.
He loved the one cradling his jaw right now just a little extra.
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