Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sound of a lawn mower wakes Jungmo up on his last full Monday.

It’s not my last Monday on earth but it could be. he types, even though he knows it’s dramatic. Maybe it should be.

There’s nothing like a long stretch of time and a mind full of thoughts. Jungmo knows this too well. He thought he did, at least- he’s been alone enough, he’s felt sad enough times.

This is different. This is worse.

This is rehashing a scenario in his head until it’s shiny, this is choosing one explanation and then choosing another and then choosing another.

Minhee hasn’t texted him- which is fine. He doesn’t have to. Of course he doesn’t have to. It’s more than likely he knows how Jungmo feels about him.

It’s highly likely. He thought Jungmo wanted to kiss him- he knew Jungmo wanted something. His eyes must’ve betrayed something.

Jungmo doesn’t know, and he won’t know. He’ll go back to school and he won’t know.

It doesn’t matter.

He hasn’t even looked at his Poetry and Politics homework. If he starts it now it’ll last him the rest of Monday, at least. He’ll type some ramblings about Ginsberg’s influence on obscenity in prose and maybe that’ll tire him out. Maybe it’ll drain the ruminations out of him so he can sleep peacefully, so he can lay in bed without wondering-

Without wondering what she’ll be like. She, the pretty girl that’ll catch Minhee’s eye in college- if she’ll be social and kind and beautiful, or if she’ll be soft-spoken and reasonable and good at math.

“Pathetic,” he mumbles to himself, and opens a search engine tab to find the year Jack Kerouac was born.

It’s useless to wonder about these things. He has homework to do, anyways.

None of it matters, anyways.

☼

Hyeongjun: how’s it going

Jungmo: fine

Hyeongjun: …
Hyeongjun: uh huh

Jungmo: I’d rather talk about when I see you next week

Hyeongjun: i see
Hyeongjun: trying my best to respect you

Jungmo: see u next week hyeongjun miss u

Hyeongjun: …miss you 2. stay safe <3

☼

Tuesday is slow.

Everything is slow.

He wakes up too early and paces around his room until it feels like a cage. He wants- he wants to turn into a being with claws, he wants to tear the walls down in a fit of animalistic rage.

Instead Jungmo puts on music and packs a bowl and sinks into the blinking cursor on his laptop screen.

I suppose I’ll live he writes, and he wants to laugh at the dramatics of it all but there’s no laugh that comes out. I suppose I will survive this.

He feels himself getting sad all at once, like those lead smocks doctors put on patients before x-raying them. It’s stupid, it’s useless, it’s-

All consuming. He kissed Minhee and he wants it to happen again. He wants it to happen again and again and again. He’s never wanted like this, and it hurts like the organs in his chest have been removed, it hurts deep and twisting and he feels hollow, gutted like a fish.

He’s never wanted like this and it’s never hurt like this, either.

☼

On Wednesday he wakes up to a phone call.

“Hello?” he says, mouth dry with sleep.

“Jungmo,” the voice on the other line says, “How have you been?”

“Mom,” he realizes, and the sadness in his chest collapses into something worse. “I’ve been fine.”

“We’ll be home on Tuesday,” she says, “Will you be there?”

Jungmo doesn’t know why he came home this summer. He doesn’t know if he was looking for something- attention, maybe, or some type of comfort. But he didn’t come back to the house to stew in his own depression, as much as his friends are convinced otherwise. He didn’t come home to be alone for three months- he doesn’t give a shit about the house. He doesn’t give a shit about his hometown.

“I’m leaving on Monday,” he decides. “Wonjin is picking me up.”

“Oh,” she says. “I’ll be sorry to miss you.”

Jungmo is sad. Jungmo is so very tired. He wants to understand- he wants to be perfect, he wants to make his mother happy, but more than that he feels overwhelmingly sad.

“I wish you hadn’t gone to Rome,” he says, and it comes out of him without warning. “I don’t know why you did that.”

There is a silence. Jungmo tries not to regret it. Minhee had said, after all- Minhee, righteous in his anger, had said that it was shitty.

“Oh,” she says, tone light and confused “But you seemed okay with it, Jungmo.”

He pushes the covers off his body and sits up.

“Of course I seemed okay with it!” Jungmo says, and he’s raising his voice. It’s not okay and he knows it, it’s just-

Everything has been too much, recently. No- always. His home has never felt fully safe and his parents have never cared to listen to him.

“Of course I seemed okay,” he says, quieter. “What was I supposed to say? Ask you to book a flight back? Dad doesn’t even like me.”

“That’s not true.” his mother says, and that just makes Jungmo angrier. Of course- address that part only.

“What, he’s never told you?” Jungmo laughs. It’s all humorless. He feels empty, he feels like he’s going to explode.

“Of course not. Your father loves you, Jungmo.” she says, and she sounds upset now. There he goes again, unhinging his jaw and swallowing the people around him whole.

“Sure.” Jungmo says.

“You really think that, Jungmo?”

“He’s told me,” Jungmo says.

Silence.

“I’m sure you took it the wrong way.” his mother says, and her tone is soft again, like she’s talking to a small child.

Jungmo has nothing left to give.

“I’m gonna go. Have a good rest of your vacation, or whatever.”

Jungmo hangs up the phone.

There’s something rotten in him, these days- he wouldn’t have done this before. He’s been a hard kid to deal with but he’s always tried his best to hide his negative feelings, his vices. He doesn’t lash out like this.

He throws his phone- it skids across the wooden paneling of the floor. He pulls the covers back over his body.

Maybe Minhee’s to blame. Now Jungmo wants to fulfill every impulse. Now Jungmo wants to cry.

And so he does cry that morning, under an unforgiving sun and an overstuffed duvet. There’s nothing like it- tears, that is. His body shakes with sobs and it’s a catharsis, the complete sorrow. He cries for what could have been, some semblance of support in his childhood, and for how shitty he feels.

He cries for Minhee, too, and all of the feelings that are too big to describe.

If anyone could see me now- he would write, but he doesn’t think he’ll get out of bed until Monday.

☼

Jungmo: could you pick me up on monday
Jungmo: i know it’s a lot to ask

Wonjin: shut up
Wonjin: of course i will ur so dramatic

☼

Thursday morning feels like a hangover.

It’s so much like a hangover that he almost panics- he sits straight up in his bed and looks around, but there are no bottles, there is no mess of sick or food wrappers or clothes. He smells his breath and it is nothing more than normal morning breath.

But god- he feels beaten. There is a pounding in his head and his stomach feels empty and achy.

He looks at the light through the window.

There is a gap in his chest, he feels- like a hole, something that needs to be filled and planted over and forgotten but never is. Instead it gets bigger.

He clutches his hands to his heart, as though that would help. As though that would assuage the pain- but there is no wound, bleeding and in need of pressure. There is just his shirt, the one he’s worn for two days now. Old and grey and smelling of sweat, rough under his palms.

Jungmo wonders if everyone in the world feels this way or if it’s just him- him and his father it seems, intertwined.

Unshakable. And now, with Minhee not talking to him, everything hurts ten times more.

He doesn’t go into his parents' bathroom to wash up. He has a sick feeling in his stomach that tells him he shouldn’t use their things- it tells him that he is a bad son. It tells him that he should’ve kept his mouth shut with his mother and been grateful for what they do for him.

He drags himself into his own instead, turns on the shower and doesn’t look at the stains on the floor of the tub.

Thursday: its been four days, now. Four days and no, Jungmo isn’t thinking about Minhee.

He’s not.

He washes his hair with that old shampoo and realizes that Minhee must have used it too, to wash his hair dye out, and-

He’s not thinking about Minhee, not four days later. That would be pathetic and sad- which he is. Pathetic and sad, washing his face and hair under the relentless shower, closing his eyes and feeling the water flow down his face like the tears he doesn’t have left.

He sits down after a while, naked on the bathtub floor. He sits under the shower until the water is cold, until his body is just goosebumps and the freezing air.

☼

On Friday there is a knock on the front door, a loud pounding that shakes the house down to its skeleton.

Jungmo chokes on his weed- he chokes on his weed while he pushes himself off the floor. Smoke puffs in front of him, little clouds, and he hacks his lungs out in the bedroom. It takes him a moment to catch his breath.

Perhaps there was a knock on the door, or maybe it was wishful thinking. It wouldn’t be the first time his imagination was stronger than reality.

Jungmo stands in the middle of his bedroom. His bed isn’t made and there’s a pile of dirty clothes in one corner, grays and blues and one pair of red boxers.

The doorbell rings and he’s not imagining that, he’s not, it’s strong and true and unmistakable, piercing through the silence like a gunshot. Jungmo feels stuck to the ground, like he’s grown roots to go with his wooden bedroom floor.

There’s another knock, loud and very real.

And Jungmo- he should move. He wants to move, his body trembles in place. He knows who it is. Who else would it be?

There’s another knock, two loud raps on the door, and then the doorbell rings one more time. Jungmo picks up one of his feet- he allows himself to walk to the bedroom door and look down the darkened stairwell. It’s evening, and the sun has set just enough that the house is cast in strange shadows, shapes of furniture and window frames warped by the angle of the sun.

When Jungmo was a child he felt spooked by the odd shadows. When Jungmo was home alone as a child he would stay in his room with the curtains drawn.

“I know you’re in there, Jungmo!” Minhee says, and he’s yelling. His voice carries through the front door and up to the second floor, loud and laboured and upset.

When Jungmo was younger- when Jungmo was younger he was lonely. There was never anyone pounding on the front door and calling his name, no one itching to see him.

He moves to stand at the top of the staircase.

“Your bedroom light is on,” Minhee yells, and even though it’s slightly muffled Jungmo can understand him perfectly. “Unlock the door!”

Oh.

Well, if the bedroom light is on, if he can’t deny that he’s home- he doesn’t have much of a choice.

An excuse.

The stairs creak under his feet.

“Jungmo!” Minhee says through the door, and he knocks one more time.

Minhee’s knock is loud but it isn't louder than the creaking stairs under Jungmo’s feet, or the soft sound of his hand sliding down the banister.

Jungmo should stay upstairs- he should finish smoking his bowl and he should play music on his phone if Minhee chooses to keep knocking. Under no circumstances should he see Minhee’s face again. If the summer has proven anything at all it’s that Minhee is dangerous- to Jungmo, at least, because there’s really nothing Jungmo won’t do for him.

Like open the front door.

Jungmo reaches the bottom of the staircase after what feels like hours, time dragging over the ground and stretching like taffy, minutes sliding by. Minhee hasn’t knocked on the door again, he hasn’t said anything else.

Maybe Jungmo’s taken too long coming downstairs- and that would be convenient, wouldn’t it? If he opens the door and there’s no one there and he can close it and lock it and go back upstairs and put a pillow over his ears just in case Minhee decides to come back.

The doorknob is bronze.

Jungmo reaches for it and it’s difficult, like he’s moving through molasses. The doorknob is cool and smooth and he rests his hand on it for a moment. This is it, then. He’s always been so weak.

He unlocks the door with a jerk of his hand and a click of metal.

“I can hear you,” Minhee says, and he’s not yelling anymore but now he’s so close it sounds like he’s in the room with Jungmo. “Let me in, please.”

Jungmo takes two steps back, one-two, and stares at the wooden door. He thinks he can see through it- he thinks he can see Minhee, fists clenched by his sides and eyebrows drawn together.

“It’s unlocked,” he says somehow, the first real words he’s spoken in days, and his dry throat gets caught on the syllables.

The door opens- at first, with the sun behind him, Minhee is just a dark silhouette. After a couple blinks, though, he starts to come into view, his pale skin and the grey shirt he’s wearing and his hands balled into fists by his sides.

Jungmo takes another step back.

It’s not his fault, more instinct than anything, because Minhee radiates something and Jungmo feels it in waves. He wonders, while his eyes adjust to the light- he wonders if Minhee’s always had this power, from the moment they met. He wonders if everyone feels it.

“Thank you,” Minhee says, “Can I come in?”

“Yeah,” Jungmo opens his mouth to say, but Minhee’s already in the house. Jungmo closes the door wordlessly and the light in the house dwindles.

“When are you leaving for school?” Minhee asks. He’s turned away from Jungmo, facing the dining room. His hair has grown so long- it curls at the ends, brushes his shirt collar.

“Monday,” Jungmo says, “I’ll be out of here.”

“Alright,” Minhee says. Jungmo can’t tell anything from his tone, which is impassive, and he can’t tell anything from his posture, which is ramrod straight. He doesn’t want to walk into the dining room to look at Minhee’s face.

He doesn’t want to see Minhee’s face.

A lie- he’ll write, I’ve never told myself a bigger one.

Jungmo hates this house. He hates it now more than ever, silent and bloated with just two people, dark and claustrophobic and he can’t wait to leave. He can’t wait to breathe again.

“You didn’t text,” Jungmo says, and it comes out sharper than he means to.

“Neither did you,” Minhee says, and he turns around.

Jungmo looks at the floor.

“I never text first,” Jungmo admits.

Minhee’s eyes had been rimmed with purple and he had looked pale, tired- it doesn’t matter. Jungmo’s heartbeat picks up like a small, flighty animal, and he can’t look.

“No, you don’t,” Minhee says. “It’s always me, isn’t it?”

Jungmo does not want to be here. He feels nauseous, and the floor is undulating under him. He sees it, too- the floor shifting under his feet. He should apologize. He should apologize, but wouldn’t it be hollow?

He notices, in a moment separate from all the others, that Minhee hasn’t taken his shoes off.

“Why are you here?” Jungmo asks, an exhale, and drags his vision up from Minhee’s sneakers to his eyes- cold. Jungmo thinks he flinches.

“Asshole,” Minhee says, and Jungmo wonders if that’s his gift to Minhee- a leftover language quirk. Asshole.

“You’re an asshole,” Minhee repeats, faster this time, and Jungmo should really look away from that perfect face. It’s even worse than usual, because Minhee looks… angry. This is new, more severe than the way he pulls his eyebrows together when he’s thinking. These are emotionless eyes and a small frown- Jungmo wouldn’t notice it if he hadn’t been staring at Minhee for months. The right corner of his mouth is quirked downwards, his lips are slightly chapped but still pink, still-

“Yep,” Jungmo says, and Minhee’s frown deepens.

“Great,” he says, something lacing his tone. Sarcasm, maybe- venom.

Jungmo thinks he’s made Minhee into this. Angry, stiff. Cold eyes.

“Do you even like me?” Minhee says, and Jungmo’s chest aches all at once.

“Minhee,” Jungmo says, “come on.”

“I don’t know what to think,” Minhee says. “I really don’t know what to think.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Jungmo says, because he doesn’t.

“Jungmo,” Minhee says, and oh, here he goes again. Jungmo feels his throat tighten traitorously. Minhee had yelled his name earlier, but this is different. It’s so- nice to hear. It’s so real.

“What?” Jungmo asks. He’s starting to feel frantic, because Minhee has anger in his eyes and purpose in his movements but he’s not explaining anything. He has an energy Jungmo’s never felt from him and it’s jarring, worrying. Jungmo feels anxiety like a vice.

“In the beginning, you were really nice to me. You put up with me, right?” Minhee says, and Jungmo can’t stop himself from scoffing at that.

“I didn’t put up-”

“Let me talk,” Minhee interrupts, loud and sort of mean. Jungmo closes his mouth.

The sun must be sinking- the shadows are getting longer, the house is getting darker.

“Okay,” Jungmo mutters when he says nothing else, and Minhee takes a deep breath.

“Yeah. You let me smoke for free even though we weren’t really friends and you came over to my house in the beginning to pick me up without me asking you. And I don’t know. You said I could stay over if I ever needed to.” Minhee raises his palms up for a moment- as though he was going to throw his arms in the air with exasperation, but thought better of it. He drops them back at his sides.

Jungmo waits.

“Have you ever-” Minhee starts and stops. He looks at the floor. “Had a crush on someone?”

Jungmo doesn’t mean to laugh, it’s just- well, what a question. It comes out involuntarily like a breath, and no effort can keep it in. The phrasing feels juvenile and it cuts deep, a glaring reminder of the distance between him and Minhee.

It’s not just their age. Jungmo feels sharp in a way that Minhee isn’t- pretty Minhee, who would never hurt people like Jungmo hurts people.

“Yes,” he says, before Minhee can look more offended then he already does. “Of course I have.”

“I see,” Minhee says coldly. “Well that makes sense.”

“What does that mean?” Jungmo asks, feeling vaguely like he’s being insulted.

“You’re twenty-one.” Minhee says, scoffs. “You’ve lived. You’ve met all sorts of people.”

“You haven’t?” Jungmo asks, and maybe he regrets it, because Minhee’s brow furrows and his frown deepens and his features are dark, his mouth drawn tight across his face.

“No,” Minhee says. “I haven’t.”

Jungmo doesn’t know where any of this is going. He hates it- he feels like he’s falling endlessly, like he’s bracing himself for the fatal impact. He thinks he steps back subconsciously. When his spine hits the banister he slumps against it. He feels like he’s been on his feet for hours instead of minutes.

“College will be good for all that,” Jungmo says. There is something missing in his ribcage.

Minhee sighs, deep and long. The house echoes with it.

“I mean,” he says. “I felt like I was living, during these last few months. Just a little bit.”

“I’m glad,” Jungmo says, and he is. Maybe it’s twisted, but he gets a surge of satisfaction. He made an impression, whether he meant to or not.

I didn’t really want to, he’ll write. I just wanted to be around him.

“You’re an asshole,” Minhee says, and Jungmo feels the banister dig into his spine. “You’re glad? You’ve been playing with me.”

“That’s not true.” Jungmo says, and it comes out firm. He means it. That sentiment burns him- the idea that he was playing with Minhee. As though he hasn’t been wondering if Minhee was playing with him, as though he wouldn’t do anything for Minhee-

“Oh come on.” Minhee says, tone derisive. Jungmo burns.

“That’s not fucking true, Minhee.” Jungmo says. He pushes himself off from the banister. Minhee stands in the doorway between the Entryway and the Dining Room- the doorframe is white, the walls are dark, and Minhee looks framed in dying light. There is a shadow creeping up his body that rests at his chest.

“I wasn’t playing with you,” Jungmo says firmly, because it is imperative that Minhee not think that. It almost doesn’t matter what he has to say. “I like you. I like hanging out with you. I really like hanging out with you.”

“You like me,” Minhee says, flat. “Okay.”

“I do,” Jungmo says. His heart twinges in his chest.

He thinks, for a moment, how he would phrase it. It: I like you more than you can comprehend, probably. I like you differently. I like you so much that it’s hurting me. He won’t say it.

“I like you a lot, Minhee.” Jungmo says. “I invited you over all the time because I like your company.”

“Jungmo.” Minhee says sharply.

“What?”

“We didn’t just like- watch movies, you know.” Minhee says. “We kissed. Did you forget?”

Jungmo feels cold all at once- in his fingers, in his feet. Of course he hadn’t forgotten- that would be impossible. Instead he had been stubbornly pushing it out of his mind since Minhee entered the house.

There it is- fear. Familiar around Minhee, and Jungmo can almost relish it.

“Is that why we haven’t hung out recently?” Minhee asks.

“No,” Jungmo breathes. “That’s not- no.”

Minhee- on the other side of the Entryway, eyes blazing. Jungmo tries not to look at his mouth, tries not to hyperventilate.

“The kiss was not a problem.” Jungmo gets out.

“It wasn’t a problem.” Minhee repeats, flat again. “That’s great, then.”

“Minhee,” Jungmo says, at a loss. “What do you want from me?”

Minhee’s eyes widen.

“What do I want from you?” he says, and he’s upset.

Jungmo just feels cold. Cold and exhausted and guilty.

“When we-” Jungmo doesn’t say when we kissed, “Minhee, you made it pretty clear that-”

“What? Because nothing is feeling particularly clear to me right now, Jungmo.” Minhee says.

“Nevermind,” Jungmo says, because he won’t say you made it pretty clear that it was obvious I like you, Minhee.

“Did you use me, Jungmo?” Minhee says. His arms are crossed and his fingernails are digging into his upper arms and Jungmo feels- he feels both helpless and confused. He wants to pry Minhee’s hands away from himself, he wants to yell.

“Use you for what?” Jungmo asks, and he doesn’t yell. He just speaks and focuses on the hollow space in his chest. He has a feeling he won’t like what Minhee’s going to tell him.

“Do I have to say it?” Minhee says, still cold.

“If you want me to know what you’re talking about.” Jungmo says, his words coming out harsher than he wants. He doesn’t like the flash of surprise in Minhee’s eyes when he’s mean, he just- his instinct is to protect himself.

“For experimenting,” Minhee says. “You used me to experiment with guys and then decided you didn’t like it.”

“I did not.” Jungmo says, and this time he raises his voice on purpose, a horrid echo through the house.

Minhee flinches, an infinitesimal movement, but Jungmo watches him smooth over his expression in an instant.

Jungmo’s so cold- he wonders if his skin would feel icy to the touch. He wonders if his heart is okay when he feels it seize in his chest.

“You aren’t the first guy I’ve kissed.” Jungmo says, and even though he feels like he’s struggling to breathe he needs to clarify this. “And even if you were, I-”

He breathes in and out. He looks at Minhee’s shoes, a pair of converse that obviously used to be white but are now an amalgamation of old dirt and grass stains.

“I’ve known I’m gay forever, really.” he says. “So no. I wasn’t using you to experiment.”

“Oh,” Minhee says, and Jungmo looks back up at his face. He doesn’t look angry anymore- he just looks blank, and his voice sounds flat again There’s a strand of hair hanging over his face, slightly obscuring one of his eyes.

“I’m sorry I made you feel like that was the situation,” Jungmo says.

Minhee shakes his head.

“Stop it.” he says quietly.

Even now, even though Jungmo feels like he’s going to die from the discomfort, from the fear- Minhee is striking. The shadows on his face, the ink-black of his hair against his skin, the veins in his hands where they are now clenched into fists at his sides.

“Why’d you let me kiss you, then?” Minhee asks.

“What?”

“Why did you let me kiss you? What was the reason?”

Fear, freezing cold. The shadows ensconce the room completely, now. Minhee is shrouded in darkness and Jungmo turns around wordlessly to flip on a light switch.

He looks at it for a moment, after he turns it on- the old switch, plastic and stained yellow with age and light. Jungmo turns back around slowly, like each step hurts. The steps don’t, but his chest does- he feels a hand around his lungs, squeezing, constricting his breath.

And then there’s Minhee in the light- lips slightly parted, eyes dark. Hair framing his face, one strand out of place. Jungmo looks at him shamelessly.

“Jungmo!” Minhee says, frustration palpable.

There are things Jungmo cannot say. He cannot say: because I have feelings for you, Minhee. I’m probably in love with you. He cannot give Minhee that burden. He’s never responsible, he’s never the bigger person, but for Minhee- he at least needs to try.

“I don’t know,” Jungmo says, desperate. “Does there have to be a reason?”

Minhee lets out a disbelieving huff of breath.

“Do you just go around kissing people?”

“Why’d you do it, then?” Jungmo asks, in a desperate attempt to redirect the conversation. “Why’d you kiss me?”

“What do you think, Jungmo?” Minhee says.

Jungmo reasons that it’s good he’s leaving on Monday. He’s not sure if he could survive Minhee like this- cold, angry. Closed off.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Do you really not know?” Minhee says. “Really?”

“Really,” Jungmo affirms, feeling very tired. “I don’t know why you do most of the things you do, Minhee.”

“You’re an asshole.” Minhee says quietly.

“I know.” Jungmo sighs.

“You’re an asshole,” Minhee repeats, more venomously this time. “Why do people kiss each other, Jungmo?”

“I don’t think you kissed for me the reason most people do.” Jungmo says.

“Oh?” Minhee raises his eyebrows, “Then what’s my special reason?”

“I don’t know,” Jungmo says, “How would I know?”

“God,” Minhee says, “Is it really that impossible to you?”

“What?”

“That I do things for normal reasons? That I kissed you because I like you?” Minhee says, and that makes Jungmo grit his teeth.

“Please,” Jungmo says. “Who’s playing with who, now?”

Jungmo’s not sure what he said that was the wrong thing, but Minhee takes a step backwards like he’s been shoved and his lips thin into an unamused line. Jungmo’s not sure which part it was. He knows it was something.

The house is silent.

“What’s wrong with you?” Minhee says, and it’s soft and disbelieving and it hurts. It makes Jungmo ache, it makes him want to run away.

He could list it. He goes through his days feeling disconnected and tired. He smokes weed to function. He stares at guys he can’t have. He feels hollow under his ribs and numb when he’s afraid. He doesn’t really like school and there’s not a single person he feels truly comfortable around. He feels sadness so strong it’s like a physical pain and he can feel anger just as intensely.

“There’s a lot wrong with me,” Jungmo says, feeling bitter and tired. “What do you want to know?”

“I-” Minhee says, and then blows air out of his mouth. “I’m sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”

Jungmo feels his hands dangling at his sides- like they don’t belong to him, like they’ve been stitched onto his body. He feels them clench and unclench, he feels his feet stick to the floor of the Entryway.

Minhee is looking at him, like always. There’s nothing about him that doesn’t look frustrated- the tension is visible in his shoulders, his lips are pursed. He looks at Jungmo like he’s examining him, like he always does- but this time it’s with discontent. Like he’s discovered that Jungmo is missing important pieces.

Jungmo wants to leave.

“It’s just,” Minhee says slowly, like he’s choosing his words carefully, like he’s trying to keep himself together. “You’re not this horrible, unlikable person, you know? I don’t know why you think these things.”

Jungmo doesn’t sigh, even though he wants to. He looks up- he looks away from Minhee’s eyes, he stares at the gilded light fixture.

“It’s because you don’t know me,” Jungmo says.

“Oh,” Minhee says. “Yeah, that must be it.”

It takes a moment for Jungmo to detect the sarcasm, but when he hears it he feels a jolt of frustration.

“I’m not joking,” Jungmo says firmly. “You must not know me, if you think that.”

“Which part do I not know?” Minhee asks, and his tone makes Jungmo look away from the light fixture and back at his eyes.

“Really, which part?” Minhee asks again, talking faster. “The weed? The clinical depression? That you hate your parents?”

“It’s-”

“Or that, like, you’re not very good at making friends? Like, I know I don’t know everything about you, I’m not your best friend. But we’ve been hanging out the entire summer and I’m inclined to believe that you weren’t, like, faking your personality.”

“Why are we talking about this?” Jungmo says, desperate. “Can we not?”

“Aren’t you the one who said I don’t know you?” Minhee raises his eyebrows.

“The people who know me don’t see me like you do,” Jungmo says, because it’s true. He loves his friends, he cares about Wonjin and Hyeongjun, but even they are willing to admit to Jungmo’s variety of flaws.

Minhee laughs, and it’s jarring, almost wild. Jungmo stares at him wide-eyed.

“No, I’m sure they don’t.” he says, a strange smile on his face. He doesn’t look happy, just vaguely amused.

“What does that mean?”

“What do you think it means?”

“I don’t know!” Jungmo exasperates. “Why would I ask you if I knew?”

“Why don’t you know? Why are you so unaware of everything?” Minhee says, and ouch. Jungmo feels himself wince, like he’s been hit. He’d rather be hit. Minhee’s eyes still look flat- which is the worst part. Jungmo hates it more than anything.

“I’m sorry,” Jungmo says.

“It’s-” Minhee exhales forcefully and rubs a hand over his face. “Whatever. It’s not your fault.”

“I’m sorry that I don’t understand,” Jungmo says again.

“It doesn’t matter.” Minhee says.

“Are you sure?” Jungmo asks.

“No,” Minhee says. “I’m not.”

The silence stretches. Jungmo could sleep right now- he could curl up on the stone floor and sleep through the night.

Minhee brushes his hair out of his eyes- he bounces twice on the soles of his feet. There is a frown etched onto his face that feels foreign to Jungmo, who traces it with his eyes.

“Then explain,” Jungmo says simply.

“Fine,” Minhee says.

Jungmo watches Minhee take a deep breath, slow and paced. Inhale for three seconds, exhale for three seconds. He watches another strand of hair fall from behind his ear.

And then Minhee looks straight into Jungmo’s eyes and Jungmo couldn’t move if he wanted to, not in a million years. The feeling has not been dampened by time- the electric buzz up his spine, the tension in his chest. It’s just as intense as all those times before.

“I like you,” Minhee says. “I have feelings for you.”

Jungmo thinks his heart drops straight into his stomach, a violent swing.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve made myself obvious,” Minhee says, and his voice is trembling just a little bit, now. Jungmo’s chest aches at the vision of Minhee in his Entryway. At the words he’s hearing.

“Minhee,” Jungmo says. “I-”

“And sometimes I’m positive you feel the same way,” Minhee says. “I have eyes, I mean, I see you looking at me. I see you.”

I see you.

And Minhee has- from the moment they met, almost. Saw through Jungmo’s dumb one-liners and pretenses. Understood, in a strange way, Jungmo’s sadness.

Minhee. Beautiful, worrying his lower lip between his teeth. Jungmo can’t help but marvel at his bravery for a split second- his shamelessness.

And then the panic comes, swirling in his chest like a caged animal. He feels infectious and unsafe.

He wonders what he did to sway Minhee so utterly.

“Minhee, no.” Jungmo says, the words forcing their way past his lips. “You can’t.”

Minhee opens his mouth, closes it. Swallows.

“I can’t?” he asks incredulously. “Jungmo, what the hell.”

“You can’t like me,” Jungmo explains, chest hurting, breath struggling to escape. There’s a panic in his body that grows exponentially. “I’m- not good for you. Or a good person.”

“What, and I am?” Minhee says, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Yes,” Jungmo says, and watches as Minhee’s eyes widen. “You are.”

“I’m not,” Minhee says, shaking his head. “I’m not all good, and you’re not all bad. That’s not how people work.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No,” Minhee says, sounding slightly horrified. “It isn’t.”

“But-”

“This is all bullshit, anyways.” Minhee interrupts, his voice going sharp like it does every time he curses. “You were asking me how I see you differently. There you go.”

He sweeps his arms forward in a vague gesture.

“It’s because I have feelings for you. That’s just how it is. You can’t argue with it.”

For a moment- just for a moment, Jungmo allows it to sink in. It fizzes under his skin- Minhee likes him. The conversation is too charged for Jungmo to dismiss it as a cruel joke- Minhee’s breathing is too heavy, his body too tense for him to be faking emotion.

And maybe it makes sense, too- the way Minhee had invited himself over, time and time again. The sugar cookies. The hair dye and the kiss and the endless forgiveness and understanding. The physical closeness that Jungmo always found confusing. The looks, the stares.

Jungmo wants it.

He wants it more than anything he’s ever wanted in his life- he wants it viscerally, he feels it in his body like a punch to the stomach. He wants- he wants Minhee to always look at him like he is now, with imploring eyes.

He wants to carve a space for him, he wants to change his future so it makes room for Minhee. He wants Minhee to do the same for him. He wants to walk across the Entryway and pull Minhee into his arms and press his face into the collar of Minhee’s grey t-shirt.

It’s the very reason he can’t have it.

“We can’t,” Jungmo says, and as he wants his voice to be strong but it isn’t. It’s thin and watery and Minhee shines under lamplight, shines always.

“We,” Minhee says. “So I was right?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jungmo says.

“It matters to me,” Minhee says, voice stronger than Jungmo’s. He would marvel at it, if he had the space- how Minhee was the firm one, even though he was the one who had shared feelings.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jungmo repeats. He feels like he’s going to cry, but he won’t. Not anymore.

“Why doesn’t it matter?” Minhee asks, and he’s getting mad again.

Jungmo shakes.

“What are we supposed to do? Date?” he says, and it pushes out a sardonic laugh. His hands are numb.

“Why not?” Minhee asks, eyes wide.

Jungmo will not imagine it. He breathes in and out and fixes his eyes somewhere next to Minhee- the moulding on the doorway.

“Because,” he says. “You’re young.”

“So?” Minhee says, loud, defensive. “It’s not like you’re old, Jungmo. And you like me, anyways.”

Jungmo looks at Minhee, again. He catalogues the little things- the way Minhee’s fingers twitch, like he’s trying not to ball them into fists. The way his chest rises and falls. The steep slope of his shoulders and the rise-and-fall of his sharp adam’s apple. His hair, always his hair- Jungmo’s hands twitch at his sides, a memory.

“I won’t do this to you,” Jungmo says. “It’s not a good thing that I like you.”

“So you do like me,” Minhee says, lips twitching- like he’s suppressing a smile.

He always makes it so difficult.

“I am not a happy person,” Jungmo says, and he needs to hear these things himself, too. He needs to be reminded. “I will not make you happy.”

Jungmo catalogues the little things- the way Minhee’s brow furrows. The slowness in which he parts his lips before speaking.

“I don’t need you to make me happy,” he says. “I didn’t ask for that.”

“That’s worse,” Jungmo says, the words tumbling out as soon as he thinks them. He feels frantic, rushed- tired. Tired down to his bones. “I don’t want to be a person you sacrifice things for. I can’t be that. Because I will be that. I will mess up your life.”

“That’s very dramatic,” Minhee says, flat.

“My friends have already sacrificed so much for me,” Jungmo says. “I can’t imagine what a- what anything more would have to sacrifice.”

“Jungmo,” Minhee says, and his tone takes on something Jungmo’s never heard before. “If we both like each other, why does it have to be so complicated?”

“It just is,” Jungmo says. “It’s just complicated. That’s how things are with me.”

“Jungmo,” Minhee says again, and Jungmo aches. “I’m sure you’re a little messed up. A lot of people are. But you are not the horrible person you think you are. You’re wrong about yourself.”

Jungmo shakes his head. His nails press into his palms.

“Jungmo,” Minhee says. It’s pleading, in his voice- that’s what Jungmo’s never heard before.. “I don’t care about any of that. I just like you. I never connect with people like I do with you and- I think you’re funny and interesting and handsome. I think we understand each other.”

“I’m sorry,” Jungmo says.

“Would you listen to me?” Minhee says, and his voice cracks.

“No, I- I’m really sorry. I’m sorry you’re upset.”

“Don’t be dumb,” Minhee says, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Jungmo doesn’t know. He just knows he needs to remove himself from this situation or- he’ll give in. He’ll throw away Minhee’s future for his own selfishness.

“You should go.” Jungmo says.

The house is silent.

Minhee’s eyes are wide and his mouth is slightly open and his hands have finally curled back into fists. He exhales, once, sharply- Jungmo watches him. Jungmo feels nothing.

Another massive lie.

“Seriously?” Minhee says, his voice rasping over the syllables.

“Yeah,” Jungmo says, somehow.

“You want me to go?” Minhee says again, and oh- he’s hurt. His eyes are wide and he rubs at them harshly with a palm. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Jungmo says again, and maybe he really does feel nothing- because that’s the only way he could be doing this. That’s the only way he could look at Minhee like this, blinking back tears because of him.

There is no doubt about that truth.

“If I leave right now,” Minhee says, slowly. “I will not come back.”

“I know,” Jungmo says.

“I will not text you,” Minhee says. “We won’t talk again.”

“I know,” Jungmo says, even though his heart feels like a wound. “I know.”

“You’re an asshole,” Minhee says, no fondness in it this time. “You’re really being the worst right now, you know?”

“I’m sorry,” Jungmo says, and it comes out too quiet for his confident charade. His whole body is numb, an instrument for the rest of his words. He will speak and then he will sleep.

“This is all because of your shitty self-esteem,” Minhee says, watery, angry. “You’re deciding what’s best for me without caring about what I want!”

Jungmo doesn’t know what else to say- he just looks at him. Minhee may be right, but Jungmo doesn’t think it’s the wrong thing to do.

He sees how the story goes.

He sees how he will suffocate Minhee like he suffocates everyone in his life, like his friends, like his parents. He sees how he will turn the most beautiful person he’s ever met into a shadow- he sees how it goes. He knows that he wouldn't let Minhee go peacefully once he had him.

He knows that Minhee deserves more. Now he knows he is the only person in this room who sees that.

“I’m sorry it turned out this way,” Jungmo says, and it’s the stupidest thing he could say. This was always how it was going to turn out, or some variation of this. Crashing and burning. “But you should go.”

“Jungmo,” Minhee says.

Jungmo braces himself for the rest of the angry words- the ones he deserves, sure, but they still hurt. Tonight he’s learned that angry words from Minhee are the worst of them all, biting and unyielding and so different from everything else he says.

Jungmo looks at the floor.

Jungmo looks at the floor, but Minhee is gone before he looks back up, leaving behind the echo of a slamming door.

☼

The floor is cold.

It’d be funny, if it didn’t hurt so much- the range of experiences he’s had in this house, on this floor. The growing up and the falling in love and the falling apart- the wrath of his father and the silence of the boy he loves.

Friday night is silent.

Eventually he decides that the Entryway floor is probably not the best place to sleep.

Jungmo flips the light switch off on his way out.

There, the dark- it’s like a warm coat, for a moment. Safety and comfort in not seeing anything, in not being anything. Until his eyes adjust to the streetlights and the vague moonlight.

There’s the dining table- he walks around it, past the liquor cabinet. All shining yellow and gold from the street. He walks into the living room and there is no relief there, either. Only-

Minhee on the couch, Minhee in the doorway, the smoke-

His father’s chair, silhouetted silver in the moonlight, and the coffee table where he's ground his weed what feels like a thousand times. There’s the television against the wall, the blue light on the DVD player.

Jungmo’s body makes it to the couch eventually, curled up so that it fits between the two armrests. He’s too tall, now, to lay down on it comfortably.

And- Minhee, who was taller than Jungmo, who had propped his feet up on the armrest-

Jungmo pulls his knees closer to his chest and screws his eyes shut.

☼

Saturday morning is brighter than he’s used to.

He figures out why pretty soon- he’s woken up very late, the sun overhead and the cars on the block giving off glaring reflections.

He wakes up on the couch, skin feeling sweaty and hair tangled. He stares at the coffee table for a long moment before sitting up- his joints are stiff, his mouth feels dry and disgusting.

When he remembers, it almost knocks the wind out of him.

He sucks in a deep breath and pushes his palms into his eyes- he resists the urge to scream out loud.

There are things that have to be done. he would write, if he had the energy.

“There are things that have to be done.” he says in the Entryway, the words painful against his sandpaper throat.

“I did the right thing,” he says to the staircase, which creaks under his feet in response.

The right thing feels like a stone in his stomach, like a fist around his lungs. Jungmo is out of breath at the top of the stairs- he clutches his gut for a moment.

He feels distant, still- like he left his consciousness at the bottom of the stairs sixteen hours ago, under the lamplight. He stretches out his fingers and he watches them move, tendons and skin, but there is no feeling.

He closes the curtain over his desk.

He barely has any weed left. It’s just crumbs at the bottom of the plastic bag, little nugs that disappear between two fingers. He scrapes together a bowl at his desk, getting stems and dust onto his laptop.

He stares at the pipe in front of him, he tries to run a hand through his hair. It gets stuck on the tangles and he pulls his hand through them harshly.

He torches the pipe in one go, one long and painful inhale.

There’s Minhee, in his mind- smoke obscuring his face, his distinctive features. His hair tucked behind his ears and a joke on his lips. Minhee in places he has never been- Minhee in Jungmo’s dorm room, squeezed into the rickety desk chair. Minhee at the beach, hair blowing in the wind, smiling.

Minhee saying: I like you. I have feelings for you. Jungmo wouldn’t believe it had happened if his body wasn’t reeling from the aftereffects- he would dismiss it as a figment of his imagination.

Jungmo coughs on the exhale and opens his laptop in the same beat. He knows, somewhere blurry, that there are things beyond Minhee and the house- like homework and his degree. Like poetry and composition and essays due by the end of next week and if he could only focus on those things instead, if he could only-

Get it all out of his head.

There is a space in his chest where his heart should be, an eerie weightlessness to his body.

He thinks about the liquor cabinet downstairs.

☼

Jungmo stops drinking when he’s nineteen.

It happens like this: he gets a D on his second quiz in Narrative and Theory. His heart sinks at the dumb letter, the red pen, all of it.

One of his TA’s buys him two bottles of red wine with a strange expression.

Jungmo won’t explain that he can’t drink hard liquor anymore- that the taste and the smell reminds him of a bedroom that he doesn’t want to remember. Reminds him of his parents back home in a suburban town.

Jungmo wakes up on top of the blankets in his dorm bed- the light is on, his shoes are off. Wonjin is sitting on the floor next to his head.

“You really suck, dude.” Wonjin says, and here’s the thing.

Jungmo stops drinking when he’s nineteen, but he realized he should stop much sooner. It only takes high school for Jungmo to realize that once he starts he can’t stop. He was seventeen, maybe, and itching for a drink in AP Biology when he figured that one out.

Wonjin knows. The last time Jungmo drank, the time before this one, Jungmo had some horrendous emotional fit.

The time before that he had thrown up all over his laptop.

Wonjin always has to pick up the pieces.

“I’m sorry,” Jungmo says, because he didn’t mean to black out. He never does- he can’t control who catches him drunk when he’s blackout. He’s not really sorry, though, not yet. He’s sorry he got caught.

“You suck, Jungmo, I found you in the fucking bathroom,” Wonjin says, and Jungmo sits up. “I found you on the floor in the fucking bathroom. I thought you were dead.”

“Wonjin,” Jungmo starts, but there’s nothing to say. Wonjin is sitting cross legged on the floor and he is crying angry tears and Jungmo has nothing to say. He can picture it, sickeningly- his passed-out body on the tiles. Wonjin’s face going pale.

Jungmo had felt sick.

“I thought I was going to have to call an ambulance,” Wonjin says, “Until I smelled your breath and shook you a little.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jungmo says.

“Hyeongjun was supposed to come over,” Wonjin says, “I told him I was too busy.”

“I’m sorry,” Jungmo says, and he is. Because he’s never seen Wonjin cry, he’s never seen Wonjin do anything more than vaguely sneer when he’s upset. And he’s never really thought about it- how his drinking affects other people. He always told himself that he could hide it, even when it had become apparent that he couldn’t.

His mother hadn’t been able to convince him- not to stop completely, at least. Something about Wonjin was different, though. Maybe it was this: maybe Jungmo wanted him in his life. Maybe he had chosen him, and realized that he could lose him even easier.

It’s not a good reason to stop, but it works.

Jungmo stops drinking when he’s nineteen. He doesn’t stop thinking about it, not by a long shot, but he stops drinking. He keeps himself in check by picturing Wonjin finding him on the bathroom floor- and as he becomes friends with Hyeongjun he pictures Hyeongjun finding him on the bathroom floor, too. He avoids big college gatherings because it’s impossible to avoid liquor- he starts smoking more weed and he starts going to bed earlier.

His writing becomes more coherent.

The ache he tried to fill with alcohol does not go away- he smokes instead. He writes it out and it subsides, if only for a little. He goes out for coffee with Hyeongjun in the mornings and studies for his classes and chases away the creature at his heels.

He does not drink.

☼

Saturday evening is a battle.

Jungmo finds himself halfway down the stairs before he stops himself- before he consciously halts his motion and sits down on a step.

He feels winded, still- by Minhee. By the very fact that he had a chance with Minhee, that something about Jungmo had charmed him- and that he had told Minhee to leave. That he had a chance and didn’t take it.

“I did the right thing,” he reminds himself, but it comes out quiet.

He’s seated halfway down the stairs, halfway down his impulsive path to the liquor cabinet. He sits like this for a little, trying to regulate his breathing. He watches the shadows lengthen, just like he did the night before.

Minhee.

He wonders how he encountered someone so incredible. There’s no good deed that he’s done, no karmic retribution he deserves- he never prayed. He never asked for a beautiful boy who understood him, who had feelings for him. It would’ve been beyond his imagination.

God, Jungmo wants to drink. The shell of his body aches- he still feels unattached, awfully light.

Jungmo stands up fast.

He’s done this before, but not recently- fought the urge to drink. It’s been a while, and because of that it startles him in it’s intensity.

He walks down a couple more stairs, looks down into the Entryway where Minhee stood the evening before. Thinking about him doesn’t hurt. Jungmo is too numb to feel the normal twinges in his chest- there are only the facts, laid bare. He is thinking about Minhee.

He clutches the banister and watches impassively as his knuckles go white with the force of it. He can practically feel the shape of a bottle in his hands, one of his father’s many expensive wines.

He reaches the bottom of the stairs as the sun sinks to the horizon, wrapping him in darkness once again, and he finds himself slightly grateful. It makes the choice easier- because Jungmo quit drinking when he was nineteen, and he is not nineteen anymore, so he cannot drink.

It doesn’t matter how much he wants to, it doesn’t matter that his skin is itching and he can practically taste the acid of a chardonnay.

The streetlamps shine orange in the waning sunlight and Jungmo checks to see if he has his phone before leaving the house.

He doesn’t lock the door behind him.

☼

He takes the long way to the park.

It’s more of a necessity than a choice, because the short way is past Minhee’s house and the long way- well, isn’t.

There’s something about the smell of the suburbs- it’s cut grass and the specific scent of sprinkler water. Jungmo doesn’t hate it. In his college town he catches whiffs of it and feels a pang of something like nostalgia.

Nighttime in the streets of his hometown is weird. He thinks it probably didn’t used to be, it’s just- he isn’t used to the absolute quiet, the empty sidewalks. His college town is alive until the early morning hours and sometimes, when he felt restless, he would take a walk at midnight and weave through the people.

There’s no one here, though. There are lights on in some homes- some families having dinner, probably. Jungmo feels a strange smile tug at his lips whenever he catches conversation through an open window.

He still wants to drink and it itches at his palms but his feet stubbornly follow a path created by muscle memory. He still wants to drink and he still sees Minhee in his mind but-

He keeps walking.

The park is equally empty at night.

It’s a strange echo of the place Jungmo remembers it as- he hasn’t been here in a long time. He hasn’t been here at night at all, only in the daytime, only when he was so young that he felt free.

He finds his way to the playground like a magnet, makes his way there slowly with no reasoning.

He feels hollow. He feels disjointed and unable to function, like something’s been clicked out of place. He makes his way across the grass in the park but he feels like he’s on another planet, somewhere he’s been in a past life.

The trees cast dark shadows in the huge park floodlights, shapes like monsters. Jungmo walks around them and continues to the playground.

The swingset is smaller than he remembers, but he supposes that’s how it is when you grow up. He takes a seat on a swing- he kicks up a spray of wood chips. He watches them arch through the air, across the expanse of navy sky.

After a while the only thing in the air is the sound of crickets and the far-off rumble of the highway, and Jungmo wraps his hands around the cold chains of the swing set and looks up into the night.

☼

The moon moves over the trees, a slow and steady passage of time.

Jungmo breathes in cold night air by the lungful and still can’t fully catch his breath, still thinks about Minhee crying in the Entryway of his parents’ house and it cuts into his very bones.

He thinks about telling him to leave.

He thinks about what it was like to sit next to Minhee- his magnetic presence, his warmth and his smile, the freckles on his cheekbones, the way he tilts his head when he’s listening, his dry humor-

And the way he had looked at Jungmo. So endlessly.

☼

After a while, after the thoughts swirl for hours, he takes his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans with fumbling hands and numb fingers. He almost wishes he hadn’t taken it with him. He thinks he probably shouldn’t do what he wants to do right now.

It’s midnight, and Jungmo lets out a lengthy exhale as he thumbs his password into the keypad.

He thinks he probably shouldn’t burden Wonjin but he’s too tired to stop himself.

“Jungmo?” Wonjin answers after two rings, and his voice is muddled by the phone but Jungmo still jolts. He feels like he hasn’t heard another voice in years.

“Uh, yeah.” Jungmo says, and he thinks his voice sounds hoarse. “Sorry to bother you.”

“You’re not bothering me,” Wonjin says.

“I was gonna call Hyeongjun but, I dunno-”

“I said you’re not bothering me, Jungmo. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Jungmo says.

“You are?” Wonjin asks, tone disbelieving.

“No,” Jungmo says, and kicks at the wood chips again.

“Jungmo,” Wonjin says. “You called me, so.”

“I know,” Jungmo says. “Sorry.”

He looks up from the ground for a moment- at the midnight sky again, at the slim moon and the pinprick stars. He wonders if Minhee is feeling better by now.

“I’m not as good at this stuff as Hyeongjun but I’m always here to listen,” Wonjin says. “If this is about a boy. It is, right?”

Jungmo hopes Wonjin can hear his sigh through the phone.

Do you know that I used to love you? Jungmo doesn’t say, because he thinks Wonjin probably does. He thinks that’s why it’s taken them two years to talk about boys.

“Yeah,” Jungmo says. “It is.”

“I’ll break his teeth,” Wonjin says, tone flat.

“No,” Jungmo says instantly, and all at once it hits him- like a slap to the face, like an eighteen wheeler on the interstate, like something he should’ve known a long time ago.

“No, Wonjin,” Jungmo says, “I’m the one who messed up.”

“If this is one of your self-hating-”

“I rejected him,” Jungmo says, and with that he kicks more wood chips into the air and looks into the field and can almost see Minhee now, can almost see a shaky vision of him holding back tears, see a shaky vision of him beautiful and sitting on the grass and looking back at Jungmo with a quizzical expression.

“Oh,” Wonjin says with emphasis, and then: “Well, what the fuck?”

“I think I messed up,” Jungmo says, and it feels like a revelation. “I think I shouldn't have done what I did.”

The words feel strange on his tongue but he can’t stop himself from saying them. He thinks he might be fractured, a little- he chooses to ignore it.

“Why did you reject him, Jungmo?” Wonjin asks, sounding very exasperated.

“Because he’s too good for me,” Jungmo says. “I think that I’ll corrupt him. I mean, you know me. I’m so fucked up, Wonjin, and this guy is Hyeongjun’s age and he has his whole life ahead of him and he doesn’t- he doesn’t need to be saddled with some depressed loser.”

Jungmo exhales into the night and there’s quiet on the other line- not complete silence, just the faint electronic buzz that shows Wonjin is thinking but not talking.

The crickets keep chirping, and Jungmo wishes he could sit next to Minhee again and maybe hold his hand. Maybe just that.

“Jungmo,” Wonjin says. “You’re too hard on yourself. Sure, you have problems. But I’m not friends with you because of your problems. I’m friends with you because you work really hard and you’re super funny and I think you’d kill someone before they could harm Hyeongjun, honestly, and you gave me a hug and didn’t care that I was ugly crying when my old rabbit died even though we had barely known each other for three days. I don’t think you’re just some depressed loser and neither does Hyeongjun.”

Jungmo doesn’t know what to say.

“Sometimes I think you only judge yourself by the worst things you’ve done. But we’ve all done bad things. Even this guy you like. If you hadn’t rejected him you’d probably learn that eventually.”

“I really wanted to be with him,” Jungmo says, and it comes out quietly.

Wonjin sighs and it echoes through the phone and through Jungmo’s skull.

“Dumbass,” Wonjin says. “So good at self-sabotaging. It sounds like he was a good thing for you.”

“He was,” Jungmo echoes, and he stares out across the grass and into the trees and finally up into the floodlights, until the blinding light smears spots across his vision and he screws his eyes shut.

“Honestly, Jungmo, even if you were a bad person, which you’re not- that wouldn’t necessarily be a reason to reject someone. Seriously, if he likes you and you like him and you’re both informed adults, then there doesn’t have to be a problem.”

“He said something like that,” Jungmo says.

“He sounds smart,” Wonjin says. “Maybe you should try-”

“I can’t,” Jungmo says, but he stands up abruptly from the swing. He knows what Wonjin’s going to say. He’s been thinking about it for hours, the moon passing slowly over his head.

“Why not?” Wonjin says. “What do you have to lose?”

“He doesn’t want to see me again,” Jungmo says. “He made it pretty clear.”

It’s just- his pulse is racing, and suddenly he can’t sit still with what he’s done. It’s like a bucket of cold water has been poured over his whole body and he finally feels privy to the reality of the situation- how long he wanted Minhee’s affection. How he could’ve gotten it.

He’s thinking about Minhee, because he always is. He’s been thinking of Minhee since he saw him through the kitchen window at the beginning of the summer, thinking of him in little ways and then so much it was overwhelming.

“I don’t think it would hurt to try at this point,” Wonjin says. “I sort of just want you to be happy, Jungmo.”

“I guess,” Jungmo starts. “I guess, if it all goes south, I’m going home in two days anyways.”

He laughs at that, hollow and humorless on the playground.

“I hope-” Wonjin says, “I really hope this works out for you, Jungmo.”

I don’t know if I deserve that, Jungmo wants to say, but there’s only so many times he can make others bear witness to his own self-pity.

“Thanks,” Jungmo says instead.

“I think you should keep the people who make you happy around,” Wonjin says. “I think that’s probably a good rule of thumb.”

Jungmo looks at the sky. Back in the city, when he goes back to school, there will be much fewer stars.

“Thanks, Wonjin.” Jungmo says again. “I’m gonna go, and- I don’t know. Figure something out.”

“Okay, Jungmo,” Wonjin says. “Call me if you need me, okay? I’ll still be up for a while.”

When Jungmo hangs up the phone it’s only a few more minutes past midnight but he feels different. He feels like that disjointed part of him has clicked back into place, and now all he needs to do is get out of this park and- figure something out.

He stands on the woodchips, puts his phone in his back pocket, and makes his way across the field with his heart in his throat and a new heaviness in his whole body.

☼

Jungmo takes the short way back from the park but he takes it slowly, one foot in front of the other in the earliest hours of morning.

He thinks he could choke on the feelings in his body, he thinks he could suffocate on them, so he looks at his shoes instead and continues down the sidewalk.

He pulls out his phone as he rounds the corner of the block his home is on- 1:10 am.

The crickets call into the night and Jungmo won’t allow himself to think anymore.

☼

The light is on in Minhee’s bedroom window.

Jungmo stares at it from his own front lawn, his hands shoved into the front pockets of his jeans.

He allows himself to think for a moment, to weigh the options in his head- the chances of Minhee coming down to talk to him versus the chance that he’d just be ignored. It makes him feel guilty the moment he realizes it, but he thinks Minhee won’t ignore him. He thinks feelings don’t go away that fast. His own certainly don’t.

He allows himself to think for that moment and then pushes it down. If he thinks too much he won’t do it.

If he thinks too much it’ll end right here, on the lawn where it started.

☼

He’s seen it in movies, he thinks. Romance movies.

It doesn’t feel romantic right now, only desperate, and he hopes to god that Minhee’s parents are heavy sleepers as he throws yet another pebble at the second-floor window at 1:45 in the morning.

It bounces off and lands on the grass. Jungmo picks it back up again.

The crickets keep singing.

He thinks it’s probably only been a couple of minutes but it feels like hours. He feels like he’s dying, really, like the anxiety in his body is going to make him burst into a million scraps of flesh and bone, but he keeps doing it.

Minhee’s bedroom light is still on, so he keeps doing it.

I have feelings for you, Minhee had said, simple and honest, his heart on the table, and Jungmo had tossed it aside without a second thought. He was so arrogantly convinced he knew the right choice to make.

He digs his heels into the grass for a moment, an image Minhee swirling around in his mind- angry, upset. Smiling, too.

Jungmo can’t tell if he’s coming to his senses or losing them. The thought makes him laugh a little- just a soft exhale into the night air before he throws the pebble towards the window one more time.

☼

Minhee’s porch light turns on at some point after 1:30 am- at some point, when Jungmo had started to wonder if he should go into his own house. If he should sleep away the next thirty-six hours and leave his chest as it is, hollow and short of breath.

The porch light turns on some time after 1:30 am, because Jungmo checked the time just once and since then he’s been shifting from foot to foot on the grass.

The porch light turns on. The front door opens slowly, painfully. Jungmo’s heart drops into his stomach and he takes a few steps backwards.

The crickets don’t stop chirping but I’d never have known, Jungmo will write.

Minhee is wearing a hoodie, huge and dark blue, and pajama pants. He closes the front door slowly behind himself, like he’s trying to be as quiet as possible, and Jungmo can only feel a momentary pang of guilt.

Momentary, because it’s so quickly overwhelmed by sheer relief that Minhee came outside at all.

Minhee closes the door and turns around and then he’s not moving slowly anymore, he’s striding across the lawn with purpose and long legs and all Jungmo can do is wait for him to arrive.

He’s obviously angry. It’s understandable- it still makes Jungmo feel cold.

“What the hell are you on,” Minhee snaps, and he walks right up to Jungmo and shoves at his shoulders with both hands.

It’s not a hard shove- just a bit of pressure, really. Jungmo doesn’t even get pushed backwards backwards, he just absorbs the blow in place. He thinks he deserves it.

He watches Minhee drop his hands back to his sides, shake his head in apparent disbelief. He looks pale, even in the gold of the streetlamps. His hair is frizzy and wavier than usual and his eyes seem ringed in dark circles. His eyebrows are pulled together and he’s frowning and he’s beautiful.

“Minhee,” Jungmo says.

“No,” Minhee says sharply. “Let’s get this over with. What do you want from me?”

Jungmo looks at Minhee for a moment- he thinks he only has a moment, so he takes it. He looks at the way Minhee’s shoved his hands into the pocket of his hoodie. He looks at Minhee’s narrowed eyes and closed-off face and hunched shoulders, the way he’s staring at the grass.

Even when he’s pissed, even when he’s hurting- he’s just beautiful. It’s always the same.

Jungmo exhales and figures he has nothing at all to lose.

“I’m in love with you, Minhee.” Jungmo says.

Minhee looks up from the grass.

“What?” Minhee says quietly.

“I’m in love with you,” Jungmo says, and it’s surprisingly easy to say again. All at once- Jungmo feels strangely calm. He thinks, distantly, that it’s the catharsis of letting his feelings out.

He thinks he should’ve done it sooner.

Minhee’s face is unreadable- it’s not angry, anymore. It just seems neutral.

“This isn’t funny at all,” he says.

“I’m not joking,” Jungmo says firmly, staring at Minhee. Heart pounding against his ribcage, begging him to understand. “I wouldn’t joke about this, Minhee.”

“You rejected me,” Minhee says, eyes on Jungmo in equal measure. “You- my heart hurts.”

Minhee holds one palm to his chest like a demonstration and Jungmo wants to cry.

“I’m sorry,” Jungmo blurts. “I’m a fucking idiot, okay? I’m an idiot. I thought it was the right thing to do, I- I thought I was protecting you, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m an idiot”

“Do you really?” Minhee asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you really love me?” Minhee repeats.

Jungmo looks at him- the slight tilt of his head when he asks a question, no matter what it is. No matter how charged the energy between them.

“Yeah,” Jungmo says.

Minhee looks at him endlessly- his dark eyes are still narrowed. Jungmo clenches and unclenches his fists and Minhee keeps looking at him.

“I told you that if I left we would never talk again,” Minhee says. “And you let me leave.”

Jungmo’s hands stay in fists.

“I’m sorry,” Jungmo says. It feels stupid and hollow. “I know.”

Minhee shakes his head slightly.

“Why would you do that to someone you love?” he asks, and Jungmo feels something in his chest break.

“I thought-”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Minhee says. “You’re always thinking.”

The night air is crisp and Jungmo breathes in a lungful of it. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen- he reasons that all he can do it continue.

“I know you said you didn’t want to talk to me again,” Jungmo says. “And I know I rejected you. But you’re down here now, so can I just say what I need to say and you can leave when I’m done?”

“You have more to say?” Minhee says incredulously, some sort of smile tugging at his lips. “Besides confessing your love for me?”

“Yeah,” Jungmo says simply, because even though Minhee is smiling it doesn’t feel like he’s welcome to get in on the joke.

“Are you going to make me cry again?” Minhee asks.

“No,” Jungmo says, ignoring the pain in his chest at those words.

Minhee puts his hands back into his hoodie pocket. He breathes in and lets out a long, long sigh. He kicks at the lawn with the toe of his slipper.

“Fine,” Minhee says after what feels like an hour, his tone thin and tired. “Say what you have to say, Jungmo.”

Jungmo looks at him- feels him slipping away.

It’s instinct, really, that makes him do it. He feels too demanding from where he is, too presumptuous. Not reverent enough.

Jungmo drops to both knees in a swift movement, grass pressing uncomfortably through his thin track pants, and Minhee’s eyes widen.

“What are-”

“You are the best thing in my life, Minhee.” Jungmo says, pleads, and he hopes he sounds as desperate as he feels. “You’re the only person who’s ever understood me so easily. You’re the only person who’s ever seemed so interested in me, it was so- you make me so happy that it feels wrong, like I’m taking something from you.”

Jungmo looks up at him, at the moon behind his cloud of messy black hair. Minhee looks back at him- like he always does.

“I’ve been fascinated with you since the beginning, Minhee.” he admits. “And I know now that you’re charming and funny and patient and witty but- you’ve always been beautiful. I think you probably know that.”

Jungmo thinks Minhee’s mouth softens- if only slightly. He takes a quick breath and collects the rest of his thoughts.

“I fell for you so fast. I felt so bad about it, Minhee, you have to understand- I thought I was supposed to be some cool older friend. I felt like I was betraying you.”

“You’re an idiot,” Minhee says, but it’s quiet, a murmur. “I don’t think you’re cool.”

He’s looking down at Jungmo with something familiar in his eyes- like he’s perplexed. Like he’s trying to solve a puzzle.

Jungmo shifts on his knees- he thinks he probably has prints in the pattern of grass on his skin. He doesn’t care.

“I rejected you because I don’t feel like I deserve you,” Jungmo says. “I think you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met, and it doesn’t make sense that you like me. But I don’t- I can’t really care anymore. I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours trying not to get wasted and feeling fucking awful about everything. I should’ve been normal. It’s- I should’ve told you that I liked you too.”

Jungmo puts his hands on his knees.

“I think that’s all,” he admits, heart in his throat.

“You’re right,” Minhee says. “You should’ve told me you liked me.”

“I know,” Jungmo says, and doesn’t look down at the grass even though he wants to. He makes himself look at Minhee’s ambiguous expression, at the slack of his mouth.

“You should stand up,” Minhee says.

“Will you leave if I do?” Jungmo asks, aware that it sounds petulant, and Minhee just shrugs against the navy sky.

“You’ll have to find out,” he says.

Jungmo takes a deep breath- it doesn’t help. He feels like he’s going to fall apart, like the seams of his body are ripping.

Jungmo stands up slowly, his heart in his throat. He thinks he’ll cry the moment Minhee leaves. He thinks he’ll crumble on the lawn. It’s okay, though. He’s done all he can do. He’ll pick himself back up in a couple of weeks and write something almost as beautiful as Minhee is.

He waits for Minhee to speak.

“You mean all that?” Minhee says simply, and Jungmo watches his hands travel back into the pocket of his hoodie.

“Yes,” Jungmo says, and hopes it sounds imploring, hopes it sounds true. Hopes it’s enough.

Minhee breathes out, long and loud.

“Okay,” he says. “Alright.”

Jungmo longs to push- to ask, to wonder. He doesn’t.

“I’m gonna get some things,” Minhee says slowly. “And then I’m going to stay the night at your house.”

He fixes Jungmo with a searing glare but the tilt of his head gives him away- the fact that he’s asking for permission, even if he doesn’t want to act like he is. Jungmo feels warm.

“Okay,” he says, and Minhee nods once.

“If you leave before I get back, I’ll-” Minhee starts, and then shakes his head. “Whatever. Give me two minutes.”

Jungmo watches Minhee walk away from him with something close to elation- something satisfying and wholly unfamiliar.

He doesn’t want to hope- god, he doesn’t want to hope. Instead he stares at the Kang’s flickering pork light and tries to regulate his breathing and the beating of his heart.

☼

Minhee has a black Jansport backpack on his shoulders when he comes back out of the house. Jungmo watches him lock the door with a pang in his chest- he wonders if this is how Minhee’s classmates see him, his peers. The people who get to be around him all the time.

“Okay,” Minhee says when he gets back to Jungmo, like he doesn’t know what else to say. “Let’s go, I guess.”

“Okay,” Jungmo also says, and he doesn’t know what’s happening in the slightest but he does know that Minhee isn’t gone. That he’s still standing in front of him. That he wants something, at least.

Jungmo will take it.

☼

“You’ve never dated anyone before, have you.” Minhee says as he toes off his slippers in the Entryway. It’s said like a statement, not a question, and Jungmo resists the urge to sigh.

“No,” he says. “I’ve never done anything with… someone I actually care about,” he settles on.

“You’re emotionally immature,” Minhee says bluntly.

Jungmo can’t find it in himself to be offended.

“Is this how you’re going to act all night?” he asks, maybe too recklessly.

Minhee looks up from his shoes, fixes Jungmo with a long look.

“For at least a little bit longer,” he says.

☼

“I don’t have any more weed,” Jungmo admits at the top of the stairs.

“I don’t care,” Minhee says, a laugh in his words that makes Jungmo look back in surprise. “I never smoked that much before I met you.”

☼

“Let’s watch a movie,” Minhee says, filling whatever empty space Jungmo feared there would be, throwing his Jansport backpack onto the floor of Jungmo’s bedroom.

“Alright,” Jungmo says, still feeling very lost but- willing. Willing to just go with it.

“What do you wanna watch?” Minhee asks.

“Is it too soon to watch Pacific Rim again? I wasn’t paying attention last time.”

He thinks the corner of Minhee’s mouth flicks up, like he’s trying not to smile.

“Asshole,” Minhee says. “I’ll watch it again, but still.”

“Is it okay if we watch it on my laptop?”

“Yeah,” Minhee says, and then flops backwards on Jungmo’s unmade bed.

Jungmo doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know if he even wants to. He takes in the vision of Minhee on his bed and it burns like a brand on the inside of his skull before he quickly makes his way over to his laptop.

It hits him, for a moment. The absurdity of it all.

“Are we going to talk more?” Jungmo asks in what he feels is a mature move.

When he turns around, though, Minhee’s eyebrows are raised.

“Maybe after the movie,” he says. “C’mon. Set it up.”

“Demanding,” Jungmo says, and thinks maybe he’s being too flippant for the ambiguity of the situation, for the way Minhee seems to be testing him- but Minhee just rolls his eyes.

☼

Jungmo watches Pacific Rim for a second time and still doesn’t process a single scene.

It’s not my fault, he’ll write, and it really isn’t.

One of his shoulders is pressed into the wall but the other is two inches from Minhee’s shoulder and the lights are off and it’s too late to be awake but Jungmo thinks he could only sleep right now if he was knocked out.

Something explodes in the movie and reflects on the angles of Minhee’s face, changes those shadows imperceptibly.

Minhee presses his leg against Jungmo’s.

Minhee’s face doesn’t change- he’s looking at the laptop screen like the movie fascinates him, but the gesture is obvious and he doesn’t move from where their thighs and knees align.

Jungmo thinks he’s smiling like an idiot, but he can’t stop.

☼

As soon as the credits start to roll, Minhee leans forward and presses pause on the movie.

The silence is deafening. Jungmo pulls his eyes away from Minhee’s face and looks out into the darkness at the foot of his bed.

“If we were together,” Minhee starts, and Jungmo’s heart jumps out of his chest, “would you tell anyone?”

“My friends,” Jungmo says, because it’s true. He’s not sure what the right answer is.

“I see,” Minhee says. “What about your parents?”

Jungmo looks at Minhee again- he’s looking down at his own hands, picking at his cuticles.

“If you wanted me to,” Jungmo says, even though the idea makes him want to vomit.

Minhee looks up at him sharply.

“Really,” he says.

“I mean, my mom already likes you,” Jungmo says, and for some reason that makes Minhee smile wryly.

“She might like me less if she knows I seduced you,” Minhee says.

“You didn’t seduce me,” Jungmo argues instinctively.

“Aren’t you in love with me?” Minhee says.

Jungmo opens and closes his mouth.

“I wouldn’t make you tell them,” Minhee says. “I’m sorry. I’m-“

Minhee pauses and looks back at him- his breath fans across Jungmo’s face. The light from the computer is too dim, now, to see his freckles, as much as Jungmo strains to see them.

“You hurt me a lot, Jungmo.”

“I know,” Jungmo says. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re lucky I like you so much. I shouldn’t have responded to your stupid rocks.” Minhee says, and he sounds frustrated, but his leg is still pressing against Jungmo’s.

Jungmo takes a deep breath.

“Would you still want to?” he asks.

“Want to what,” Minhee says.

“Would you still want to date,” Jungmo says.

Minhee looks at him for what feels like a long, long time, his expression unreadable. Jungmo’s heart sinks lower and lower.

“Jungmo,” Minhee says. “You can’t ask me to be your boyfriend like that.”

“Oh,” Jungmo says in a rush, relief filling every part of his body like a gas, like weed does. “Fucking hell, Minhee. You scared me.”

Minhee just looks at him. Jungmo thinks he might be vaguely amused- it’s hard to tell in the dim light.

He thinks he’s shaking so hard that Minhee probably feels it through where they’re touching. He can’t bring himself to worry about it.

“Okay,” Jungmo says. “Minhee, will you be my boyfriend?”

“What time is it?” Minhee asks.

Jungmo ignores the part of himself that wants to yell. He thinks he’s too anxious to string words together, though, so he just shows Minhee his phone screen.

“Four-thirty,” Minhee reads, and Jungmo puts his phone back down.

His laptop screen goes to sleep and the room is plunged into darkness.

“I’ll be your boyfriend,” Minhee says. “But we should go to sleep now. It’s almost sunrise.”

It takes Jungmo’s brain a minute to process it- and then it does. And then it clicks into place, and he thinks the shaking in his body turns into a buzz, a euphoric hum.

There’s a light from somewhere- the street lights leaking through the curtains, probably. After a while Jungmo’s eyes adjust slightly, just enough to see Minhee a little bit. There’s the bridge of his nose and the frizz of his hair and the sharpness of his chin.

Jungmo thinks he may never be sad again.

“Oh,” Jungmo says, and he thinks he’s smiling so wide it’s probably stupid. “That’s awesome.”

Minhee makes a noise like a choked-off laugh.

“Let’s go to sleep,” he says. “I’m too tired to say anything else.”

☼

“I want,” Minhee says, when they’re laying side-by-side under Jungmo’s duvet, a bit of space between them, and Jungmo is almost fully asleep.

Even yesterday Jungmo never would’ve thought it of himself- he would never have seen himself falling asleep while being this physically close to Minhee, so close that he can feel the actual warmth radiating off of his body.

It’s just that the moment he gets under the blanket the events of the last twenty-four hours hit him like a deadweight. He feels it all at once- the overwhelm, the worry, the elation, the exhaustion. It shoots through his body and leaves him limp.

He’s barely awake when Minhee speaks, the darkness behind his closed eyelids breaking into fractals.

“Are you okay?” Jungmo asks, and his voice comes out a little slurred.

“Yeah,” Minhee says. “Would you- I can come closer, right?”

Jungmo’s barely awake but he feels the smile on his face all the same. He doesn’t think he’s ever been this warm or this content in his entire life.

“If you want,” Jungmo says, and he falls asleep with one of Minhee’s arms splayed over his waist.

☼

Jungmo wakes up first.

Jungmo wakes up first and he thinks he’s still asleep, for a moment. He thinks he’s still dreaming.

He remembers pretty quickly, though, and there’s no denying the solidness of the arm over his stomach. There’s no denying the face pressed into his shoulder or the sounds of soft and even breathing or the few dark strands of hair across his shirt that are too long to be his.

He just looks at Minhee, something absolutely soaring in his heart.

Jungmo’s always thought of himself as bitter and reactive and sad. Right now, though- he thinks that might not be all he has. He has a wonderful airiness, a feeling bordering on bliss. A feeling that might just be bliss.

The strip of light that pushes under the curtain signifies an approaching noon, but nothing in the world could make Jungmo move. He just looks at Minhee, the rise and fall of his chest and the way his fingers are curled into Jungmo’s shirt just slightly, his slightly open mouth.

I will do anything to keep this, Jungmo will write later, like a diary. I will do anything for this as long as he wants me.

And Jungmo can see it now- the trains he will take to Minhee’s city, the buses he will catch and the hours he will spend to get just a glimpse of the warmth he feels right now, like this. He doesn’t think he minds at all, really. It thrills him.

☼

Minhee wakes up eventually, and it’s with a soft noise and a yawn.

“Good morning,” Minhee says sleepily, face still pressed into Jungmo’s arm.

“It’s twelve,” Jungmo says, but he doesn’t care at all. It must sound that way, too- Minhee lifts up his face and raises his eyebrows.

“Well someone kept me up late,” Minhee says, and Jungmo can’t think of a retort. Minhee is looking at him with soft and sleepy eyes and his arm is still wrapped around Jungmo’s waist and Jungmo could never have dreamt this in a million years.

“We’re dating?” Jungmo blurts out.

“It sure seemed like it,” Minhee says, his eyes narrowing imperceptibly.

“No I- that’s good,” Jungmo rushes. “I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t super strong wishful thinking.”

“Oh,” Minhee says, his face softening again. “That’s…”

Jungmo waits.

“Actually, I’m gonna kiss you right now,” Minhee says, and props himself up on an elbow.

“Oh,” Jungmo says, heart picking up, and because he’s an idiot he also says. “Should I brush my teeth?”

“Only if you really want to,” Minhee says, and Jungmo loves him for taking it in his stride.

“I don’t,” Jungmo says, and Minhee smiles and moves his hand from Jungmo’s waist to his cheek and leans in until Jungmo can finally see his freckles and presses a soft kiss on Jungmo’s lips, lingering for a couple of moments.

When Minhee pulls back they look at each other for a second, Minhee’s hand still cupping Jungmo’s face.

Jungmo could die happy like this. Looking into Minhee’s eyes, laying next to Minhee in bed and being kissed by him.

“It’s good you changed your mind,” Minhee says after a moment.

Jungmo reaches out for Minhee’s face without really realizing it. Either way, with his hand on Minhee’s cheek, he rubs one circle with his thumb absentmindedly. He touches the freckles and the soft skin over sharp bone before dropping his hand and feeling himself flush.

“Yeah,” Jungmo says quietly. “It is.”

☼

Minhee stands in front of the open fridge with an appalled expression.

“Holy shit,” he says eloquently. “You don’t cook, do you?”

“I can make a quesadilla,” Jungmo defends.

“Oh great,” Minhee says. “Look, let's go to mine and I can make something?”

“You don’t have to do that,” Jungmo says.

“I know,” Minhee says. “But my parents are always at the hospital and we have a fully stocked fridge. You have like one moldy tomato and orange juice.”

“Fine,” Jungmo says, a smile on his face. “Let me get my keys.”

☼

Minhee makes scrambled eggs.

“I’m actually not a great cook,” he admits sheepishly, a plate in each hand. “I mean, probably better than you, but scrambled eggs are like one of three things I can make.”

“Wow,” Jungmo says sarcastically. “I feel super betrayed.”

The eggs are good, not fantastic. Jungmo can’t help but be secretly grateful that Minhee isn’t perfect at everything.

“Thank you for the food,” Jungmo says as he finishes.

“It’s nothing,” Minhee says, giving Jungmo a small smile.

Jungmo feels larger than life- they’re alone in Minhee’s house, sitting at the unfamiliar kitchen table. There’s something so utterly freeing about being in Minhee’s presence without the secret. Without the absolute guilt and the shame that Jungmo had been carrying and letting rot inside himself. He can’t stop smiling- he thinks he probably looks stupid, but the corners of his mouth feel perpetually turned upwards.

He thinks he should act differently, maybe, as a boyfriend- he doesn’t know how, though, so he won’t think about it. He’ll just act like the kind of friend he should’ve been and hope he can figure it out from there.

“Let me wash the dishes,” Jungmo says.

“Oh,” Minhee says. “Thank you.”

☼

“I’m sorry,” Jungmo says, after he dries the dishes and puts them back in oak cupboards.

“For what?” Minhee asks, still sprawled on a dining chair.

“Everything,” Jungmo says. “Friday. Hurting you.”

Minhee frowns.

“Yeah,” he says, and crosses his arms over his chest. “Let’s talk about it some other time, okay?”

☼

Sunday afternoon passes in a blaze.

“Are you any good at games?” Minhee asks.

“Like… video games? No, not at all,” Jungmo admits.

“I see,” Minhee says, smile creeping up his face. “That’s perfect, then.”

Jungmo spends Sunday afternoon with his shoulder pressed against Minhee’s, heart keeping time with the ticking clock, losing game after game of Mario Kart.

☼

At some point, with the light through the windows turning orange, there’s the distinct sound of a car engine pulling into the driveway.

“Oh,” Minhee says, and he turns off the television in the middle of a lap in Waluigi’s Mansion. “You have a back door, right?”

“Yeah,” Jungmo says, “Why?”

“Let’s go,” Minhee says, grabbing Jungmo by the wrist and pulling on him to get up from the couch. “Come on.”

There’s the sound of keys being put into a lock and Minhee yanks on Jungmo’s arm once more time with wide eyes before Jungmo stands up.

He gets the impression that they’re being rude, that they’re running away, but he lets Minhee drag him from the living room and into what seems like his parents bedroom, and then through a screen door Jungmo’s never seen before. He doesn’t say anything when Minhee peaks his head around the corner of the house.

“I think they went inside,” Minhee says. “Okay, let’s run to the back of your house.”

“Is something wrong?” Jungmo asks as he fiddles with the lock of his own homes’ back door. They rarely use it- it gets stuck often.

“If my parents saw me they’d make me have dinner with them.” Minhee says.

“Oh no,” Jungmo jokes. “How awful.”

“Hey,” Minhee says. “You’re leaving tomorrow. I don’t want them to interfere with the rest of our time.”

“Oh,” Jungmo says, actually a bit touched.

“Do you need help unlocking the door?” Minhee asks, amusement heavy in his tone as Jungmo continues to wrestle with the doorknob.

“Who wanted to come through the back, again?” Jungmo grumbles.

“I can’t remember,” Minhee says, and when Jungmo looks up from the door he’s smiling so wide that his dimples show.

Jungmo can’t quite believe that someone so beautiful exists, let alone wants to spend time with him. Let alone likes him. Minhee leans against the back of the house and his body is long and his smile is radiant.

“You’re staring,” Minhee says.

Jungmo’s instinct is still a pang of fear- it doesn’t make him look away, though. He stops himself before he does.

“Am I not allowed to?” Jungmo asks.

“You are,” Minhee says, and his smile doesn’t die, just settles into something smaller. His eyes sparkle with something like mirth.

One of Jungmo’s hands is still on the back door lock, but he’s forgotten what he’s doing.

He thinks he’ll never be able to truly capture this in writing- not any of it. Not the contrast of the whitewashed wall and Minhee’s hair, not the way the heat of the summer makes everything slightly faded and blurry, not the absolute peace that Jungmo feels. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to explain the precise look Minhee gives him, the way it means he’s waiting for something.

He doesn’t think he knows enough words.

“Go ahead,” Minhee says, and the sun is making his eyes reflect gold, and Jungmo figures he’s not exactly opening the lock right now anyways. He takes his hand off the keys and tries not to think- just closes that small distance between him and Minhee and waits for that moment of recognition in Minhee’s eyes.

Jungmo feels anxious, still- there’s a voice telling him shouldn’t be doing this.

He finds himself having a hard time listening to it.

Jungmo reaches for the back of Minhee’s neck- watches his loose body tense up just a little, watches the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Jungmo threads his fingers through the strands of hair on Minhee’s nape and marvels at how soft they are- marvels at how long he’s wanted to do this.

“Hey,” Minhee says after what could be any amount of time, and his words fan breath on Jungmo’s face.

“Hm?” Jungmo says.

“C’mon,” Minhee says, with a slight defiant jut of his chin.

“Fine,” Jungmo says, wills himself to ignore his anxiety, and kisses Minhee.

☼

“I’m so proud of you,” Minhee says when Jungmo finally unlocks the back door. “You got us into your own home and you finally initiated physical contact with me.”

“You’re so-” Jungmo says, rolling his eyes and closing the door behind him. “I guess the whole us dating thing doesn’t change all that much, huh?”

“Oh,” Minhee says. “Am I supposed to pretend you’re cool now?”

“Asshole,” Jungmo says, not meaning it.

There’s something seamless about the way Minhee banters with him. Something about it that makes sense. Jungmo often feels like people tiptoe around him- Minhee never has. Minhee just says whatever he wants and looks at Jungmo with a smile in the process.

☼

“Shit,” Jungmo realizes when they get up to his room for the second time that day. “I have to pack.”

He opens his curtain as the sun sets, letting the evening light fill his bedroom for the last time. He’s gotten used to it, somehow- he almost thinks the ambiance is nice. He can almost tell himself he feels fully comfortable here.

It might have something to do with Minhee sprawled on his duvet, one of his legs dangling off the bed. It might have everything to do with that.

Jungmo folds dirty laundry into his big black suitcase and vows to wash his clothes as soon as he gets back to the dorm. He wraps his bong in a black-shirt to protect it from breaking. He takes most of his stuff out of the bathroom, he pulls a couple pencils out of his desk and throws them on top of his folded hoodies.

Minhee scrolls through something on his phone and occasionally laughs under his breath like he’s reading a funny post.

The sun is set by the time he finishes. Jungmo zips his suitcase up with something heavy in the pit of his stomach. When he looks up from where he’s on the floor next to his stuff, Minhee’s not on his phone anymore.

“Hey,” Jungmo says.

“Hey,” Minhee says. He’s sitting up, now, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands laced together. He’s looking at Jungmo.

“What’s up?” Jungmo asks.

“Nothing,” Minhee says, but he doesn’t look away. Jungmo can so easily see him in his dorm room, now- Minhee, sitting like he is now, maybe complaining about how thin the mattresses are. Smiling the whole time.

“Will you visit me?” Jungmo asks. “Or will I have to do all the visiting?”

“You’ll have to visit me first,” Minhee says. “Since you rejected me.”

Jungmo nods.

“Seems fair,” he says, only half-joking.

“Come over here,” Minhee says, and pats a spot on the bed next to him.

If there’s something that’s changed since the label, since the communication- it’s this. Minhee’s very open and specific with the closeness he wants from Jungmo. It had been there, before, quiet and in a joking tone, but now it’s plain. Minhee states what he wants and waits for Jungmo to decide whether he wants it too.

Jungmo doesn’t mind. God, he doesn’t mind- that’s an understatement. He feels a full body rush every time it happens.

“I’ll visit you at least once,” Minhee says.

“At least once,” Jungmo says, when he sits next to Minhee on his own bed. “Thanks for being so generous.”

“Where will you take me?” Minhee asks. Bumps their shoulders together. “Any ideas?”

“Do you like the beach?” Jungmo asks, because his brain comes back to that often- a vision of Minhee against cerulean water, his hair whipping in the wind.

“Yeah,” Minhee says. “I do. Haven’t been in… a long time.”

“It’s like a ten minute bus ride from my school,” Jungmo says. “We’re so close that seagulls always shit on Wonjin’s car.”

“Hey,” Minhee says. “Now you have a real reason to get a license.”

“Of course,” Jungmo reasons, only half-joking. “You can’t have an older boyfriend who also can’t drive.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Minhee says, petulant. “Jeez.”

“Sorry,” Jungmo says.

“It’s fine,” Minhee says, and bumps their shoulders together again.

Jungmo looks over at Minhee, who’s staring off into space.

“What time is it?” Jungmo asks.

Minhee’s eyes lose their glaze, like he’s snapping back into his body.

“Ah,” he says. “Let me check.”

It’s almost ten in the evening and the number brings something somber over both of them. Jungmo sees it in Minhee, too- the slump of his spine, the realization in his eyes.

“When are you leaving for school?” Jungmo asks Minhee. “How many more days do you have?”

“One more week,” Minhee says, and flops backwards on the bed with a groan. “God, what am I going to do all week?”

“Do you have any summer homework?” Jungmo asks, and Minhee looks at him.

“Got it done in June,” he says, sounding sheepish.

Jungmo pushes at his shoulder, tries not to wonder at the fact that he feels okay doing so.

“Why do you sound embarrassed?” Jungmo prods.

Minhee looks at him for a long time.

“I-” he says, and then stops. “I’m sort of a nerd. I was trying to act like I’m not.”

“Why?” Jungmo asks, and leans back so he’s laying down, too. “Isn’t that a good thing? To be good at school?”

Minhee rolls his eyes and crosses his arms over his chest from where he’s laying next to Jungmo.

“I thought you wouldn’t like me,” Minhee says, and it’s so quiet that Jungmo wouldn’t have heard if he wasn’t so close.

“That’s dumb,” Jungmo says unthinkingly.

“Probably,” Minhee says. “Since you went and fell in love with me.”

“You like saying that, don’t you?”

Minhee looks at him, a bothered expression on his face.

“Am I being an asshole?” he asks, and Jungmo gets the impression that Minhee’s really asking.

“Maybe,” Jungmo says. He doesn’t really care. Minhee has long eyelashes and they cast shadows on his cheeks in the right light.

“I’m sorry,” Minhee says. “I do like saying it. It makes me happy.”

“That’s fine, then.” Jungmo says. “Keep saying it.”

Minhee sighs.

“I’ll say it back at some point, you know.”

“No,” Jungmo says quickly, a jolt of panic going through his chest. “Please don’t feel like- I needed you to understand, yesterday. That’s why I told you.It was a dire situation.”

“A dire situation,” Minhee laughs a little. “Yeah, I guess it was.”

They lay there for a little, Jungmo wondering if it would be okay to hold Minhee’s hand. He doesn’t- just looks at it, the long fingers splayed on his duvet, the curve of his nails.

“I will, though.” Minhee says after a while. “If this works. If we don’t just forget about each other.”

And Jungmo wants to laugh at that, but he doesn’t. Just shakes his head slightly and sighs.

“Minhee,” he says, and he thinks it sounds like an admission. “Worry about yourself. I’m not going to have that problem.”

☼

It’s sad, really, how fast the hours pass, how quickly the natural process of Jungmo’s body makes him yawn.

“You can’t sleep yet,” Minhee says. “You’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Jungmo says, feeling a smile on his face. “Let me get under the covers, though?”

Minhee frowns at him.

“And then you’ll fall asleep,” he says, but he moves so Jungmo can get under the duvet all the same.

“I’ll try to stay awake,” Jungmo says, and props up his pillow a little so he’s not laying completely flat.

“Can I-” Minhee says, pointing to the blankets, “Also?”

“What happened to you just doing whatever you want?” Jungmo says, only half-joking. Minhee hadn’t asked the night before, after all.

Minhee shrugs like Jungmo has a point and flips up one side of the covers so he can slide his legs under. He doesn’t lay down- he doesn’t look as tired as Jungmo feels, and Jungmo feels a bit bad.

“I’m sorry for being so tired,” Jungmo says, and Minhee just shakes his head.

“It’s okay,” Minhee says. “I’m just awake because I’m still young.”

Jungmo reaches out a hand to smack Minhee’s arm.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey.”

There’s a smile on Minhee’s face.

“Sorry,” he says, like he’s not.

“Mm,” Jungmo says.

“You’re falling asleep,” Minhee says.

“Nooo…” Jungmo says. “I’m not.”

“You are,” Minhee says. “It’s okay.”

“Mm,” Jungmo says again. “Hold my hand, would you?”

He doesn’t open his eyes to see Minhee’s face, but he hears shifting under the covers and he feels a hand take his own, warm and soft and bigger.

“Is that to your satisfaction?” Minhee asks, a joking lilt in his tone, and Jungmo nods. The world is warm and dark and beautiful.

“Yeah,” he says. “It is.”

☼

The sound of lawn mowers wakes Jungmo up on his last Monday.

“God,” Minhee grumbles from next to him, a warm presence. “You can hear them over here, too?”

Jungmo yawns before he answers. He opens his eyes slowly- takes in the morning sun, the clean light in the bedroom. Minhee’s face, his eyes slightly droopy with sleep, the circle of his mouth when he yawns in return.

“Yeah,” Jungmo says eventually. “Every Monday, right?”

It’s the second time he’s woken up next to Minhee and he finds his heart breaking that he doesn’t know when he’ll be able to do it again. He stares at Minhee, tries to memorize the exact color of his hair, the shine of his eyes in the bright light of the morning, Jungmo’s old duvet pulled up to his shoulders.

“Every Monday,” Minhee repeats, and rubs at his eyes.

“Minhee,” Jungmo says, and Minhee moves his hand and looks at Jungmo.

“Yeah?” he asks.

“You really want to be my boyfriend?” he asks. “You want a boyfriend going into your freshman year of college?”

Minhee raises his eyebrows.

“What does that have to do with anything?” he asks.

“C’mon,” Jungmo says. “College is a whole different ballpark. You meet all these people, you have all these new experiences.”

Minhee rubs his eyes one more time, like he’s trying to wake himself up fully. Jungmo feels a little bit bad but he also figures it’s better to get this conversation over with.

“I believe you,” Minhee says slowly. “But I’ve always been a bit shy. I have a hard time really connecting to people. I’m sure I’ll make friends, but… you know, it’s really just you and Seongmin who I truly enjoy being around. I doubt college is going to be full of people I feel so strongly about.”

“It’s just-”

“Even then,” Minhee says. “Look, I can’t predict the future, but- I think it’s stupid not to at least try this. Who knows who I’ll meet in college. I’m not there yet.”

“You wanna break my heart, Minhee?” Jungmo says, and worries for a moment how Minhee is going to respond.

Minhee just looks at him, at first- a long moment. It’s familiar, now. Jungmo is used to Minhee staring at him. He’s sure Minhee is just as used to Jungmo staring at him.

“It might serve you right,” Minhee says. “But no. Of course I don’t.”

Something about those words knock the breath out of Jungmo’s lungs.

“Oh,” he says. “That’s good, then.”

“One day you’ll have to accept that it’s not crazy for me to like you,” Minhee says with a small smile. Jungmo thinks it might be a bit sad. “It’s fine if it takes a while. One day, though.”

“Maybe,” Jungmo says. “I think I’m willing to not think about it too hard, though.”

“Why?” Minhee says, a gleam in his eye like he’s about to say something he thinks is funny. “You like me that much?”

Jungmo rolls his eyes.

“Scoot over,” he says, even though he really doesn’t want them to ever move from where they are. “I should check my phone.”

☼

Wonjin: hey dude
Wonjin: i’ll be there at like 12
Wonjin: see u soon

Jungmo: thanks again wonjin
Jungmo: see u soon

☼

“We have like three hours until he gets here,” Jungmo says.

“Damn,” Minhee says.

With that thought in his mind-three hours left- Jungmo finds it almost easy to touch Minhee’s face, to run his thumb over the edge of his cheekbone.

Minhee smiles, small and sweet.

“You’re getting used to this,” he says.

Who taught you all this? Who have you loved? Jungmo will ask one day, maybe- for now he just pushes that thought back whenever it comes up. He has Minhee now, is the thing. That’s really all that matters.

“Sort of,” he says instead, and leans in so his nose bumps against Minhee’s and he can feel the warmth of Minhee’s breath over his own mouth. Jungmo keeps his eyes open even though everything is blurry.

Minhee closes the gap between them, his small smile never fading.

☼

Jungmo’s phone buzzes and Minhee hands it over to him with wild eyes and red cheeks.

“Wonjin’s getting close,” Jungmo reads. “Shit. I need to change out of my pajamas.”

He ignores Minhee’s bright peal of laughter as he runs into the bathroom, feels it warm his cheeks even though he doesn’t look back.

☼

“Remember to lock your front door this time,” Minhee says when they get to the bottom of the staircase, and Jungmo scoffs but has to double check his pockets for the house keys anyways.

“Wait,” Jungmo says when Minhee puts his hand on the front door handle.

“Yeah?” Minhee says.

“I’m gonna miss you,” Jungmo says, and Minhee’s hand falls back to his side.

“God,” he says. “This sucks.”

“Yeah,” Jungmo says, one hand on the handle of his suitcase.

“I’ll miss you too,” Minhee says. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Jungmo echoes, and he tries to sound humorous but he thinks it comes out hollow.

“Hey,” Minhee says. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Okay,” Jungmo says.

On the other side of the door there’s someone waiting for him- he owes it to them to be on time, but he doesn’t want to move. He doesn’t want the summer to end.

He doesn’t know what happens next and it terrifies him. He looks at Minhee and wills himself to trust him.

“Okay,” Jungmo says.

“Hug me,” Minhee says, one of his demands. “And then let me meet your friend.”

“Yeah,” Jungmo says.

When they hug he holds Minhee’s thin body close to his chest and presses his face into the collar of Minhee’s t-shirt like he’s always wanted to and tries to memorize his warmth, his arms looped around his back. The curve of his neck and the lines of his body and the quiet rhythm of his breath.

The thick sound of his voice when he says:

“Alright. Let’s go, I guess”

☼

Wonjin rushes at him as soon as he sees him, jogs across the lawn to pull Jungmo into one of those hugs where Wonjin thumps him on the back a couple times.

“It’s good to see you, dude,” Wonjin says, eyes in cheerful crescents. “You look better than I thought you would.”

“Thanks?” Jungmo says, rubbing the back of his neck. He’s quite happy to see Wonjin, actually- he didn’t realize how much he had missed his friend until he had seen him leaning against the car in his baggy jeans.

“And you must be Minhee,” Wonjin says, and Jungmo looks back at Minhee with a face that feels warm.

“I am,” Minhee says to Wonjin, and then his sparkling eyes turn to Jungmo. “You talked about me?”

“Boy did he,” Wonjin says, and Jungmo hits him on the shoulder.

“Shut up,” he says, because even though Minhee’s smiling he still has some semblance of shame.

“My bad.” Wonjin says, chuckling.“I wasn’t thinking. It’s nice to meet you, Minhee. I hope we see you around.”

“I hope you do too,” Minhee says.

Jungmo looks at them both, for a moment- flounders at the exchange they just had without him.

“I’m right here,” Jungmo says, and both Minhee and Wonjin laugh. He can’t help but feel slightly peeved, as much as he’s inherently pleased that they seem to get along.

“My bad,” Wonjin says. “It doesn’t hurt for me to help you out, you know?”

“Oh my god,” Jungmo says, and looks at the ground to avoid eye contact with a rather amused looking Minhee. “Okay.”

“Anyways,” Wonjin says. “Are you ready to go?”

Jungmo’s spirits from seeing Wonjin again plummet sharply, a physical feeling in his chest.

“I guess,” he says, and looks back up at Minhee.

Minhee’s looking at him, too.

“I’ll go to the car,” Wonjin says. “If you guys want to say goodbye. Meet me when you’re ready, okay?”

“Okay,” Jungmo says, and he doesn’t watch Wonjin walk away. He looks at Minhee.

He doesn’t know if he has anything else to say.

The sun is high in the sky and it’s hot and Minhee looks beautiful, as always, and for some reason he is Jungmo’s. For some reason, in this moment in time, he is Jungmo’s.

“Thanks for giving me a second chance,” Jungmo says, and means it more than anything in the world.

“It’s fine,” Minhee says, shaking his head. “Enough of that, for now.”

“What should I say, then?” Jungmo asks.

Minhee tilts his head.

“You could say that other thing,” he says.

“What thing?” Jungmo asks, even though he knows.

“You know,” Minhee says. “I won’t- nothing will change, yet. But I really liked hearing it.”

“I love you,” Jungmo says, because Minhee asked. He’ll still do anything Minhee asks. He thinks he might always.

Minhee’s smile is worth it, too- radiant. Wide and beautiful and showing all his teeth.

“Kiss me,” Minhee says, and his hands find Jungmo’s face when Jungmo comes up close and the kiss feels almost as soft as the first one, almost as tentative as that one before they figured things out. As that one that left Jungmo shaking and wondering.

When Minhee pulls back he isn’t smiling.

“I guess it’s time,” Minhee says, almost a whisper.

“Yeah,” Jungmo says.

They stand in the heat of the sun for a couple more moments- Jungmo watches Minhee tuck a long strand of hair behind his ear.

“Say hello to my parents for me,” Jungmo says, and grabs the handle of his suitcase.

“I won’t,” Minhee says.

“Text me,” Jungmo says. “Call me.”

“I’ll do that,” Minhee says, a smile creeping up his face, and Jungmo turns around to roll his suitcase down the driveway before it can fully form.

☼

“You got rid of the purple,” Jungmo notices when he gets in the passenger seat.

“Yeah,” Wonjin says, touching his hair. “It was getting old.”

Jungmo shrugs. He’d have more to say if he didn’t feel so utterly flattened. He looks out the passenger window- Minhee is still standing in front of Jungmo’s house, on Jungmo’s lawn.

It’s a strange picture. Jungmo hopes the next time they meet it’ll be in a city, somewhere with wide streets and cars and people and ice cream shops to visit. Somewhere where he and Minhee fit side by side. A place for them, not their parents.

“Alright,” Wonjin says. “Are we fine to go?”

“Yeah,” Jungmo says, staring at the figure that is Minhee. At the baggy shirt and the box-dyed hair that Jungmo did himself in what feels like a dream and Minhee’s hands shoved into his pockets.

“Ok,” Wonjin says, and turns the car on.

Jungmo looks at Minhee as Wonjin pulls away from the curb- he looks at Minhee as they drive down the street. When he can’t look at Minhee through the side window anymore he turns around to look at Minhee through the rear windshield, ignoring Wonjin’s chuckle.

When they turn down a different street Jungmo slumps down into his seat, lets the car air-conditioner wash over him. Closes his eyes.

It’s easy to see what he wants behind his eyelids. He can see him- Minhee, at the beginning of the summer, bottle blonde and a stranger. Minhee now, dark haired and snarky and everything to Jungmo.

He opens his eyes.

Jungmo’s hometown passes by in flashes of green and watery brown, shingled houses and groomed lawns and rose bushes and white fences, minivans and elegant street lights and the playground he went to as a child and the pharmacy his mother frequents.

At the beginning of the summer, he wasn’t sure why he’d come back home.

He knows why now.

☼

Minhee: <3