Chapter Text
Sir Coups was trying to die for love and Dinor wouldn’t stop trying to save him.
“Lee Chan, can you please stop rolling? You’re too far away to help.”
“You’re dying, hyung!” Chan looked stricken and Seungcheol looked like he was about to throw a cushion at him. Joshua intuited that it was time for him to step in. Sitting on the floor in front of Seungcheol and effectively nestled between his knees, Jeonghan shot Chan a scathing look that decided him.
Joshua said, “Chan, it’s not considered good player etiquette to interfere with another player-character’s arc. Cheol made his decision.”
Chan’s eyes were huge, but he didn’t argue further. He slumped back onto his heels, defeated, and Seungcheol was free to commence his self-destructive action.
“The body of the Deep Scion collapses to the deck of the row boat, tipping the boat slightly. Cheol, I need you to roll a…” Joshua checked his array, and decided that agility fell under Dexterity, “dex; the DC is 10. It’s 50/50 if you go in the water at this stage.”
Seungcheol leaned forward over Jeonghan’s shoulder, pressing his cheek into his hair as he rolled. Joshua pretended not to notice, like everybody had been pretending not to notice that Jeonghan hadn’t slept in his own bed for over a month, and that the two of them were painfully obvious these days. He was happy for them, but their insistence on pretending that nothing about their friendship had changed was becoming tedious. Especially when he ran into Jeonghan coming back from the bathroom at 3am wearing nothing but one of Seungcheol’s big t-shirts.
“Natural one,” Seungcheol said. “Three total.”
This was going terribly for Sir Coups, but at least he was getting his wish.
Joshua asked Seungcheol, “What’s your encumbrance?”
“My what?”
“The extra weight you're carrying,” Joshua clarified.
“That’s rude, hyung,” Soonyoung said, affronted.
“I meant his character,” Joshua said, patience wearing too thin now to banter. This session was well into its fourth hour, the combat in the bar taking up a full hour on its own. The party had managed to make it through relatively unscathed, to take a long rest (and replenish their snack supply), and convene with Cico about what they had to do next. One particularly chilling passage of play had confirmed to Joshua that Chan’s character had certainly hardened as the campaign progressed.
Cornering Kethra at the docks before they stole the boats they needed to get out to the breach, he had backed the riverboat captain against the dock wall. Joshua, in character, had been sincere when he said, “You have to believe me, I didn’t know Grond was an agent of the Sea Maiden. I’m with the Resistance, I thought he was too!”
“Insight check,” said Seungcheol, stony-faced, and he rolled his d20. “Fourteen.”
“She seems like she’s telling the truth,” Joshua said, after his own roll. She really was, in his mind.
Then, out of nowhere, Chan said, “Dinor takes out his rapier and strikes Kethra through the heart.”
Seungcheol’s mouth dropped open. “Chan, she’s unarmed.” He looked to Joshua. “Isn’t she?”
“I don’t care,” Chan said.
She was, and she died instantly. One of Chan’s lucky rolls had done its job again, and after that Soonyoung kept casting anxious sidelong glances at Chan during gameplay and hadn’t called him haraboji once.
The game moved on quickly after that. Cico explained herself, before Dinor decided to turn his act of revenge into a spree. Coincidentally (to everybody but Joshua who had of course written the campaign as such), their missions aligned. Lady Cico was being hunted by Drow in the employ of the Sea Maiden. She joined the party on their way to heal the breach, which was a mysterious rift (she explained to the party) through which the Sea Maiden and her “comet” appeared years before, and which she has kept open all of this time for reasons unknown. There were spells that could heal it, Cico theorised, but she had been unsuccessful in tracking down the twin jades required to make the most promising one work.
Coups and Hanreal high-fived then, giving their part in all of this away quickly enough, having stolen the stones in the first place in order to close the breach. A Paladin and a righteous thief; they were the perfect partnership. It was a shame that one of them had to die now. But Seungcheol wanted to DM the next game, Joshua knew, and he didn’t think it would be in character for Sir Coups to just leave Hanreal.
Still, things weren’t going quite to plan. Seungcheol had already survived two death saving throws, but there was another one coming and Joshua didn’t trust his luck to hold. He wasn’t Chan.
“My encumbrance is 25 pounds,” Seungcheol said.
“What’s your constitution modifier?”
“One,” Seungcheol said. “Can I die now?”
“Not yet,” Joshua chuckled. Seungcheol was starting to get impatient too. “You have a minute of air in your lungs, but you’ve gone overboard.” He looked around the table. “What do you want to do?”
“How far are we from Coups-hyung’s boat?” Mingyu asked. “Does anybody have rope?”
“Coups had the rope,” Chan said hopelessly.
They looked down at the board, at the three boats that Joshua had constructed in the time between the last session and this one. Coups and two of Cico’s men had been in the vanguard boat, and had taken the brunt of the attack from the Deep Scions who had attacked them on the way out across the sea. The guards were dead now, bodies already floating face down near the boat alongside the bodies of two of the Scions. The other one was under the boat that Coups had fallen from.
Jeonghan was looking down at his character sheet. “What’s the point of my wings if I can’t fly?” he muttered. Seungcheol patted the top of his head.
“Row towards Seungcheol,” Mingyu said. “Can I do that?”
Joshua checked the distance. It was as he had thought: “You probably won’t make it in time unless there’s a miracle,” he said. “But go ahead.” Then, to Seungcheol, ”Roll a death save.” He checked the distance again. “Roll three. They won’t get to you before then.”
“Again?” Seungcheol sighed. “Two sixes,” he said after rolling twice, “and… eleven!” he started to laugh.
Joshua shook his head sadly. “You’re lucky but your air is all gone, Cheol.”
A hush fell over the table. Joshua was surprised at how suddenly sombre they became, given that Seungcheol had been trying to die for nearly half an hour. He schooled his own features into seriousness.
Into the quiet, Joshua said, “Sir Coups D’Etait becomes exhausted from keeping himself afloat. Unable to draw any more breath, his eyes close. He falls into darkness.” He clarified, “His body clutches the edge of the ruined boat.”
“Have we reached it yet?” Chan asked. He was sharing a boat with Hanreal and Cico.
Joshua moved the model. “You have now,” he said.
Chan’s jaw was set. He was genuinely tense. “We pull his body on board.”
“He’s already dead,” Joshua said. “Unless one of you is a Necromancer, you can’t bring him back now.”
Chan sniffed.
“So we lost…” Soonyoung said. “He had the last stone.” He held the Nyang plushie to him tightly. “We can’t stop the Sea Maiden.”
“Fearless Peerless has failed,” Chan said.
Mingyu hummed, but said, “This was never our fight though, right?”
“It was our fight,” Jeonghan said. He sat up, squeezing himself onto the couch next to Seungcheol, wrapping his arm around his shoulder. “Oh, Cheol-ah…” He looked around the table, meeting everybody’s eyes. Seungcheol dug into his pocket and, with a rueful smile, handed his norigae, still attached to his car key, to Jeonghan.
Jeonghan took the red stone. “Hanreal kisses Coups, to say goodbye.” Seungcheol was blushing amidst the wolf-whistles and hooting that followed this declaration. And then, because Jeonghan did nothing at all by halves and they were, after all, one of the worst kept secrets in the group's history, he took Seungcheol’s face in his hands and planted a firm, closed-mouth kiss on his lips. Seungcheol was clearly taken by surprise, but he only smiled against Jeonghan’s lips and wrapped his arms around his waist. There was momentary dead silence around the table and into that silence, Jeonghan said, “Goodbye, love.”
Joshua had to hand it to Jeonghan. He looked genuinely upset and was not at all deterred in his acting by the stunned, albeit delighted, smiles of the others around the table. He wasn’t even distracted when Mingyu took a ten-thousand won note from his wallet and passed it across the table to Soonyoung.
Then Jeonghan met Joshua’s eyes and there was only challenge there. Did you think I wouldn’t?, he seemed to be saying. His lips twitched in something like a smile that he got under control quickly. Then he said, “Hanreal gives the stone to Lady Cico and says, if he died for nothing I’ll kill you myself.”
“Ooooh,” Soonyoung said. Joshua narrowed his eyes at Jeonghan but he couldn’t keep from smiling. Seungcheol was bright-red, and moving on past that uncharacteristic display seemed paramount. Jeonghan didn’t reseat himself on the floor, perching instead on the arm of the sofa with his legs in Seungcheol’s lap. If Seungcheol thought that his character dying meant he could leave, then he could clearly think again. So he sat there looking pleased and a little awkward, and Joshua moved the game on.
“Roll Intimidation,” he told Jeonghan.
“Thirteen,” Jeonghan said smugly, and Joshua rolled his eyes at the cheers of the others.
“Thirteen isn’t a magic number,” he reminded the table. He’d conceded early on 17, but he wasn’t throwing all of the rules out to concede to the numeral nods to their group. “Cico understands that Hanreal means business,” he said to Jeonghan. “Cico takes the stone. You have my sympathies for the death of your lover, she tells Hanreal. I, too, have been touched by tragedy.”
“Aw,” Chan pouts. “Poor Lord Vernon.” Hansol, who was sitting quietly next to Chan in his old place, patted him lightly on the back. He looked extra-pretty tonight, dressed down in one of his big grey hooded sweatshirts. Joshua knew this sweatshirt; he’d worn it himself a few nights before, when he got cold watching a movie. His eyes met Hansol’s and he looked away quickly. He couldn’t afford to get distracted. They were reaching the endgame.
He said, “Cico holds the stone up to the light, inspecting it.” He rolled Insight for her. Three. “This is real?”
“I took those stones from the Open Lord’s vault myself,” Jeonghan said. “Unless you think he was keeping fakes?”
Cico (Joshua) raised her brows. “That was you?”
“That was me,” Hanreal said loftily. Then he glanced at Seungcheol. “And Coups,” he said. His tone hardened. He really did commit to the bit. “You are a poor substitute.”
Joshua smirked. “Something tells me that anybody would be, when it comes to you.”
Soonyoung snickered, and Joshua expected Jeonghan to retaliate. He didn’t. He just sat there with a small, sickening smile on his face that made Joshua want to throw dice at him. Under the table, he fired off a quick message to Hansol, Are we like that? 🤮
Hansol snorted a laugh when he checked his phone but he didn’t reply. Joshua didn’t enjoy the implications of that silence.
“Your boats continue,” he said. “They pass the bodies of the Deep Scions, floating in the water and already attracting sharks. On the horizon, the Northlander Islands loom, their dark cliffs ominous in the sunset. A glimmer to the north draws the eye in that direction, a flash of green right on the edge of perception, only clear when you look at it indirectly. Like trying to focus on Pleiades.”
“Our-?”
“The star cluster,” Joshua cut Soonyoung off before he could start. “There, says Cico, pointing to the green glimmer. That’s the breach. The boats move towards it. I need… Hanreal and Dinor to roll Perception.”
“Ten,” said Jeonghan, rolling Seungcheol’s dice.
“Fourteen,” Chan declared.
“Show off,” Jeonghan muttered. Then, at Chan’s glare, “Dinor is a show off. Not you, maknae.” That didn’t mollify Chan at all, who only huffed. He’d been sulky all evening, and Joshua was starting to suspect that he was upset the game was coming to an end.
“You both feel a pulse of magic emanating from the green light. This is low at first, carried on the waves towards you. Then you notice that the waves themselves are coming from the light. The closer you travel to the breach, the rougher the waters become. Dinor, you find yourself having to sit down in the boat, overcome. Cico,” he rolled (nine), “is physically unaffected by the pulsing, but you can tell from the strain in her face as she does more than her share of the rowing, that she is struggling too.” Joshua looked up at Soonyoung. “Hoshi, I need you to roll a Wisdom Saving Throw.”
Soonyoung put down Nyang for a second and rolled his die. “Six.”
Joshua gave Mingyu a sympathetic look. “You are rowing by yourself now,” he told him. “Hoshi can’t withstand the power that is emanating from the breach.”
“Why can they withstand it?” Soonyoung looked indignantly around the table at Chan and Jeonghan and Mingyu, though not sparing Seungcheol and Hansol either, whose demise spared them too from the effects of the breach.
“You’re a cleric,” Joshua said cryptically (he hoped). “A cleric of this world,” and Soonyoung’s eyes went wide.
“The breach isn’t of this world?” Chan asked excitedly. Joshua didn’t answer him, only raised his brows and smiled into the resultant exclamations. Joshua checked his watch. He had plans for tonight, drinks he wanted to buy the others for giving him the chance to relive this part of his life again. And there was only a half-page of plot left in his notes.
“The boats reach the breach without further incident,” he said, knowing as he did that he could have spun this out into a whole extra round of combat and from the fervent looks on the faces of the others, they probably wouldn’t have minded. Well, everybody but Seungcheol wouldn’t have minded. He was already tapping his feet, ready to go to the bar. He had his phone out and even from across the room Joshua could see that he had the group chat open and ready.
It had been a long campaign. Joshua was ready for it to be over. He was ready for Seungcheol to take on the challenge of DM’ing, something he’d already been asking about, plots he’d already been pitching to Joshua who refused to listen because was already writing his own character sheet.
He was playing as a faun in the next campaign. He couldn’t wait to see how expressively Jeonghan eye-rolled at that.
The final confrontation wasn’t a fight. Cico dragged herself to her feet and Hanreal helped her up onto the rocky outcrop, on which the breach - a gate-shaped rift in the fabric of reality - was standing. Jeonghan himself got up for this, dragging Joshua to his feet too, so they stood together, looking out over the table, over Soonyoung’s head, at the wall of the dorm where the imaginary rift glimmered at them. The others all looked too, like there was anything at all to see. Even Minghao came out of his room and perched on the couch next to Mingyu, watching.
Jeonghan handed Seungcheol’s car key to him with the norigae attached. His own was in his hand, a tassel that swung from his phone. They looked ridiculous and yet Jeonghan’s expression was grave, Joshua’s too.
“Hold my hand,” Cico told Hanreal. She held out the stone, Sir Coups’ stone, and Hanreal slipped their fingers through hers, the stones sitting side by side in their clasped hands. Joshua could imagine that he could feel the magic there. Jeonghan was trying not to laugh. The others were staring at them expectantly. Joshua bent at the waist and picked up his d20.
The last roll of the game.
“If this works, the breach will close,” she said.
“If it doesn’t work?”
Cico smiled sadly at them. “Then you will see your Sir Coups sooner than you thought.”
“She’s going to kill us all!” Dinor burst out, despairingly.
“You will all die in any case, if this breach is allowed to continue.”
Joshua shook the dice. And dropped it into the tray.
“Hyung, I think you made a mistake,” Chan was leaning across the table on his elbows. The edges of Joshua’s world were fuzzy, pleasantly so.
“What did I do wrong?” he asked. He picked up the glass of water in front of him and downed it. He was probably two shots away from being actually drunk and he was already uncomfortably aware that the reassuring weight of Hansol’s shoulder against his own was all that was keeping him from falling over every time he laughed.
“You should have let us meet the Sea Maiden,” Chan insisted, and next to him Soonyoung joined in. He had been the most disappointed at the time, the description of the Astral Elf careening across the sky in a blaze of purple to land in front of the breach before it shut eliciting a shout of excitement from them both. Joshua wasn’t about to ruin Seungcheol’s plans for their next campaign, though, so he didn’t go into more detail than to give their next antagonist a few scathing words before she disappeared into the ether.
“All of my decisions… no,” Joshua sat up straighter and fixed them with a firm look. “I made that decision for a reason,” he said, nodding meaningfully at Seungcheol who was ignoring them all, caught up in a very thorough exploration of the menu with Mingyu at the end of the table.
“Arthur should be in your next game,” Seokmin said, coming back from the bathroom and stealing the chair Jihoon had vacated for a second while he went to get the owner’s attention. Seokmin slung his arm around Soonyoung. “He was the best character.”
Soonyoung gave him a scathing look. “He wasn’t even in Fearless Peerless,” he said.
“Fearless Peerless!” Jeonghan shouted from the head of the table, and Joshua picked up his beer, getting ready to knock it back. Hansol, without looking at him, carefully took hold of the glass and held it up to his own lips, meeting Joshua’s eyes just before he drank for him and giving him the briefest wink that was the most endearing thing Joshua had ever seen.
“Aw,” he said out loud, and across the table, Chan sighed loudly.
“Everybody is in love,” he said to himself, loudly because he too had already had way too much to drink. Seungkwan patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. Joshua felt a blush creep up his neck and didn’t dare look at Hansol.
“Speech!” Seungcheol shouted, and Joshua realised that everybody was looking at him. He got unsteadily to his feet and looked around the table at his members. He raised his glass of water, refilled, and held it up.
“Thank you, my friends,” he said. He had a lot more to say. He was too drunk and he was going to cry, he realised, just at the second before his voice broke. He managed only a few more words. “Say the name,” he said.
At the top of the table, Jeonghan shouted it again: “Fearless Peerless!”
Epilogue
A few weeks later
Hansol watched Joshua shuffle the deck. The cards looked worn, like he used them a lot.
“Is this what you do when you go over to Johnny’s place?” he wondered aloud. “Is this why you never invite me?” He was certain he had never seen these cards before in his life.
He thought Joshua might be blushing a little. “I’ve played this game since high school,” he said, a touch defensive.
“This too? This really makes me curious about what you were like in high school.”
Joshua shrugged. “I was the same as I am now.” He looked up. “What were you like in school?”
“I was kind of an outsider in school,” Hansol mused.
Joshua shrugged. “Me too,” he said, and continued to shuffle the cards.
Hansol was surprised by this admission. Joshua raised his eyebrows; that surprise must have been written all over his face. Hansol rushed to explain, “I guess I thought since you’re like…” he gestured at Joshua who stopped shuffling cards and cocked his head to the side, a teasing grin on his lips.
“I’m, what?”
“You’re insanely hot,” Hansol said, not even bothering to dress it up. “I don’t know, I guess I thought maybe you were cool in high school.”
Joshua laughed his soft, uncontrollably-amused laugh. “I was the closeted kid who played D&D and made bad puns for fun,” he said. “I think I was interesting.” He picked up the cards again. “Being interesting beats being cool.”
Hansol nodded at the cards. “And this game is interesting?”
“This game is fun,” Joshua said. He sounded a little insistent.
“I trust you,” Hansol conceded. He would trust Joshua on just about anything. He didn’t add that; Joshua already knew.
“I’ll explain the rules as we play. We can do a kind of practice session first and then start.”
Hansol fought back a sigh. “Is this going to be like D&D? Does it take all night?”
Joshua deliberated for a second, before shrugging. “If you like the game, we can play two rounds. If you hate it, you can give up. Just-” he leaned forward, across the tiny table between them, getting close enough that Hansol could see the tiny mole below his mouth. Joshua said, “Give me an hour. After that hour, we can do whatever you want.”
Hansol raised an eyebrow. Interesting. “What do I want?”
“Whatever you want.” Joshua smiled in that feigned shy way he had when he was teasing, that Hansol could only describe as coquettish (though never to his face).
“Is that a promise?” Hansol raked his eyes across Joshua’s body, already kind of distracted and thinking about what they might do after they finished playing cards or whatever this game was.
“I’ll do whatever you want, baby.”
Hansol cocked an eyebrow that Joshua didn’t miss, because he went on. “But! For every extra hour you give me with this,” he gestured at the cards, “we can add… something else to that list.” He leaned in so Hansol could smell his cologne, the citrus and spice of it intoxicating. Joshua was so pretty tonight. He knew how Hansol liked him to look, soft and boyfriend, in oversized flannel that he had barely buttoned up. The sexy boy next door look really worked for Hansol, and Joshua knew it. Hansol reached over and brushed his hands across one of the sleeves.
“I like that,” he mused.
“The shirt? It’s like some random brand, my mom brought it over.”
“Not- yes the shirt, but no. The, um, the nickname. I like it.”
“Baby?” Joshua said slowly.
“Yeah,” Hansol said.
Joshua shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll file that away.”
Silence fell, the only noise the swish-swish of the cards in their plastic sleeves. The sleeves were blue and a little faded, some of their edges showing wear. Joshua had probably had them since high school. Hansol watched Joshua’s hands as he shuffled, thinking through what it was that he wanted to ask him. He was planning to ask him today anyway, but he would wait now. Then Joshua put the cards on the table, laughed, and put his face in his hands.
“What’s wrong?” Hansol asked, amused.
“I’m kind of turned on now, it’s hard to get into the zone,” Joshua said, shaking his head a few times with his eyes closed. It was adorable; Hansol really wanted to drag him over the table and into his lap, but he had promised. At least one hour.
“What is this game?” Hansol asked, pushing through the urge.
Joshua grinned and started dealing, five cards each, and then he set the rest of the deck to the side.
“That’s your hand,” Joshua explained, pointing to the five cards. “And this space in front of you,” he waved vaguely at the middle of the table, “is the battlefield.”
“The battlefield for what?”
“Magic,” Joshua said, lovely eyes shining. “This is Magic: the Gathering.”
The rules took longer to explain than Hansol had the attention span for. Joshua had to repeat himself a few times, and despite earlier assurances that one practice game would be enough, they reset the table three times before Hansol started to understand the rules.
“These are the land cards, right?” he picked up a card with a red fire symbol and a cityscape that looked like Cyberpunk-meets-Star Wars. “Mountain,” he read.
“Yes,” Joshua said, and the way he sighed in relief told Hansol that communicating this basic concept had been hard won. Joshua’s hand pushing back his hair in an agitated way that only made him more beautiful.
“Sorry,” Hansol said bashfully. “I’m kind of, um, hopeless at this stuff, huh.”
“You’re not hopeless,” Joshua said emphatically. “You just haven’t played before.”
“I am hopeless,” Hansol insisted. “But you like teaching me, right?” It was a low move, but he couldn’t help himself. Making Joshua blush was one of his favourite things to do.
He was blushing now. “Keep your head in the game,” he said.
“I was talking about the game!” Hansol laughed defensively.
“I was talking to myself. Okay, let’s play another round.”
The next hour or so passed quickly, surprisingly so. Once Hansol had worked his way past the terminology, the basic concepts of the game weren’t difficult to grasp. He could see that Joshua wasn’t playing his A-game and for that, he was thankful. In the end, this wasn’t the hardest game to learn but he expected that it might not be the easiest to master.
“That’s it?” He watched Joshua first turn and then confiscate Hansol’s d20, when his life score dropped to zero.
“Game over,” Joshua said, gathering his sleeved cards together and packing them into his box. “You did well.”
“I was terrible,” Hansol laughed, “but I think I got better.”
“You definitely got better,” Joshua insisted. “Do you think I should show the others?”
Hansol thought about it for a moment. “Chan would love this game,” he said. “I doubt some of the others would have the patience to learn it. Maybe Minghao-hyung?”
“Maybe,” Joshua agreed.
“I’ll play with you, though. Again. Not right now.” Hansol stood and, when Joshua nodded, he lifted the little table and folded the legs, stowing it back against the wall where Joshua kept it. When he looked up, Joshua was sitting on the edge of his bed, stowing his card boxes into his bedside table.
“So…” Joshua said, giving Hansol a shy look. Hansol loved making him a little shy.
“So?” he challenged, crossing his arms over his chest.
Joshua sighed and shut his eyes. “So. What do you… want to do?”
Joshua was watching him, and then slowly, deliberately, he leaned back on his elbows on the bed. Hansol, still standing, almost lost his cool. But he had made a promise to himself and he would go through with it. He realised that he was a little apprehensive. He had no reason to be. He didn’t think Joshua would say no. So he said it, before he lost his nerve.
“Write another song with me,” he said.
Joshua didn’t answer right away. He sat up slowly. “What?”
Hansol ploughed ahead. “I want to write another song with you. I think we work really well together. I mean, at work. Too. And we don’t have to release it or anything but we could do it. What do you think?”
Joshua blew out a sigh. “Wow, I was not expecting that. I thought you were going to ask-” he blushed, “not that, I wasn’t expecting that.”
Hansol chuckled nervously. “Josh. We played Magic for like three hours. When you give me an answer to this question, I’m going to ask you to strip to music because I know you’d hate it.”
“I would hate that,” Joshua said in a flat tone.
“So, what do you think? Will you do it?”
“Yes.”
Hansol had confused himself. “Which one? Writing a song or the stripping thing?”
Joshua laughed, standing up too and crossing the small room to Hansol, looping his arms around his neck. “Yes to both,” he said. “We can book a studio this week, if you like. For the song. I can probably strip right here in my room, since it’s more private than work.”
Hansol was laughing nervously, slipping his hands around Joshua’s waist. “Please let me pick the music though.”
Joshua’s face fell a little. “Oh, okay. You don’t want to collaborate on that? Do you just want me to feature?” He looked so disappointed, and Hansol realised his mistake immediately. He planted a soft kiss on Joshua’s cheek.
“I meant the music for now,” he clarified. “I love you, but I think if you put on ‘Sunday Morning’ I might be the literal opposite of turned on.”
“You love me?” Joshua’s eyes were huge and he was standing so close to Hansol that they filled his entire field of vision. Hansol realised what he’d just said, had been waiting for the right moment only for that moment to appear without his even having to think about it.
“Of course,” he said plainly.
A slow, delighted, almost relieved smile spread across Joshua’s face. “I love you too,” he said. “Obviously. And I can’t wait to write another song with you-”
Hansol leaned in to kiss him before he had even finished speaking. Joshua swallowed his words, melting into the kiss. Hansol was almost on the point of telling him to skip the striptease, when Joshua drew back, and directed Hansol to sit on the bed.
“Make yourself comfortable. I know this great Ed Sheeran song that would be perfect.”
Hansol collapsed back onto the bed, his face in his hands.