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The trouble, as it often does, starts with a throwaway line from Ten.
“I don’t know,” he says. He taps the spacebar on the laptop, pausing the video of their dance practice for Kick Back, and stares at the frozen image critically. “I think you guys should do something.”
Kun looks over Ten's shoulder. He's paused the video on his own centre part, the rest of the group fanned out around him. They're all in different stages of various movements. It seems, at least to Kun, that everyone is doing something.
When Ten doesn’t elaborate, and just keeps frowning at the screen, Kun asks, “Sorry ‒ who are you talking about?”
“You and Xiaojun, duh.”
Kun takes a closer look. From this angle, he and Dejun are each flanking Ten but about three paces behind him, walking towards each other. The way they’d blocked it was so that each of them could get to their next positions, but maintain some symmetry to their formation.
“Uh, okay. And you want us to do… what?”
“I don’t know,” Ten says. “Just… Something.”
He's being unnecessarily vague. Kun narrows his eyes at the screen and tilts his head, as if he could divine what Ten is trying to get at by squinting alone.
Ten sighs. “Xiaojun!”
Dejun is on the other side of the room watching Yangyang play a game on his phone. At Ten’s call, he raises his head. “Yeah?”
“Come here!”
Dejun gets up and lopes over obediently. His grey hair is tucked beneath a cap, and his oversized frames make his face look even smaller and more delicate than usual. His eyes flick over to Kun. Kun sends him a small smile, but then Dejun is looking away, already focused on Ten.
“What’s up?”
“Sit down,” Ten commands, and waits until Dejun settles on his other side before explaining. “I was monitoring the practice video and trying to explain what I think we should do, but Kun’s not getting it…”
“What?” Kun protests, offended. “I’m not getting it because you’re so ‒ ”
“Shhh,” Ten hushes, thrusting a hand in front of Kun’s mouth.
Then, before Kun can say anything else, Ten rewinds the video a couple of seconds and hits play.
Kun folds his arms, still slightly huffy, and watches the practice play out. Ten is in the front now, lip-syncing his part. Behind him, Dejun crosses over from the left to the right, and Kun crosses over from the right to the left. As Ten finishes up his part, they linger behind him, figures visible, unable to move past each other. It’s a split second of pause, barely noticeable in the grander scheme of things, but now that Ten’s highlighted it, Kun can’t see anything else.
“Hm,” Dejun says. He’s frowning.
“Right?” Ten says, vindicated. “You guys just walk to the middle here and stop. It doesn't look nice. It's, like, awkward.”
“Hm,” Dejun says, eyebrows furrowed and his lower lip pushed out. It’s a cute look on him. “Yeah, okay. Well, what about if I ‒ Kun-ge, can I try something?”
“Hm? Okay.”
Kun lets himself be pulled to his feet by Dejun. They separate, about ten paces away, and turn towards each other in a replay of their earlier practice. Dejun sings the lyrics of Ten’s verse under his breath as they approach each other slowly, timing their steps to the music, until they have no more space to move.
Then, instead of stopping a respectable distance away like he used to, Dejun reaches out, curls his hand around the back of Kun’s neck, and tugs.
“Yah!”
Kun yelps, both from the unexpectedness of the action and from the chill of Dejun’s hands. He immediately tries to pull away, but Dejun holds him fast.
“What are you doing?”
“Figuring out how to make this look better.” Dejun turns his head, looking at their reflections in the mirror. “Relax your body, will you?”
“I am relaxed,” Kun argues weakly, but forces himself to go boneless anyway.
Big mistake. Dejun tugs him closer, Kun tripping forwards, and then ‒
Their foreheads are touching. Dejun’s face is mere inches away. He’s so close that when Kun looks up, he can count each and every one of Dejun’s long, sooty eyelashes, see the tiny scar on his cheek from an old blemish, and the points of his teeth peeking out from behind his full, red lips ‒
Kun’s mouth goes dry. His heart races beneath his hoodie.
“Uh,” he says, hoarse.
“Okay, nice!” Dejun says at the exact same time, and finally, blessedly, releases Kun.
Kun stumbles backwards. He chances a glance at himself in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and ‒ oh, no, his ears are so red they’re glowing. Fuck, they can probably be seen from space. He hopes to god that Yangyang wasn’t watching, otherwise he’s going to get a huge teasing from him.
Meanwhile, Ten has stood up, too. His eyes shine, and he comes to stand in the middle of the room, facing the mirror. “Oho, yes, yes, I think you guys are onto something! Do it again!”
“Hang on,” Kun says, even as Dejun returns to his original position. “Can we discuss ‒ ”
“Nope!” Ten says. “5, 6, 7, 8 ‒ ”
They run through the choreography again, with Ten joining in on the dance. Kun tries not to let himself sweat ‒ it's just walking for two seconds and holding still in Dejun’s embrace for even less, for god's sake ‒ and steels himself as Ten begins to sing his verse. He focuses on a point over Dejun's shoulder as they walk towards each other, before he inevitably has to lock eyes with him so that they can execute their move. It barely lasts two counts, but to Kun, that moment of stillness feels like it stretches in for much longer.
With each try, though, it gets less and less intimidating, and more and more familiar. Eventually, Kun feels brave enough to briefly cup Dejun's neck, too, feeling the smooth, warm skin there, before splitting away to his own centre part.
Once the others spill back into the practice room, holding cans from the vending machine outside, Ten puts them back to work. Kun and Dejun incorporate their new move into the practice, and on their next monitoring, it elicits several surprised yells from their other members.
“Wah!” Sicheng says.
“Nice,” Ten says, and Hendery wolf-whistles in agreement.
“The rest of us should just leave the stage, no one’s gonna be looking at us!” Yangyang howls with laughter, then his face shifts into a mischievous expression. “Hey, do you think we’ll go viral if you guys kiss, or maybe ‒ ow, Kun-ge! Stop hitting me! Think about the views!”
Eventually, Dejun takes pity on him. After another few well-placed whacks, he puts a hand on Kun’s bicep and gently pries him off Yangyang.
“Aiyah, ignore him,” he says. “I think it’s a nice part.”
“I do, too,” Kun says. He hopes the redness in his face passes off as exertion, rather than embarrassment. “I’m just teaching him a lesson.”
“Anyway, if the fans see it and get excited, isn’t that a good thing?”
“It is,” Ten says, popping up seemingly out of nowhere. “They’re going to eat it up. Like, there are going to be edits of you two doing this move.”
“Edits?” Kun repeats, alarmed. “Isn’t that a little… much?”
Ten looks at him dead in the eye, unimpressed. “That is your job. Seriously, bro. The move is genius.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” Ten says. He moves back to the speaker system, ready to play the song again for another run-through and clearly finished with the conversation. “Just trust me.”
And that, as Kun would later realise, would be the beginning of his metaphorical end.
♡
The move is a hit.
News of their first pre-recording spreads across the internet like wildfire. After the stage is broadcast, Kun goes into his hot topic, curious, and can barely scroll through it without being confronted with a zoomed-in screen grab of him and Dejun, heads tilted towards each other, hands curled around each other’s necks. There are, as Ten predicted, even edits slowing down the moment and set to embarrassingly filthy background music.
It’s good. It’s great.
One tiny, unforeseen consequence, however, is that the move is also a hit to Kun’s sanity.
The fact that Dejun is handsome is not news to Kun. What else could he be, with the dark fan of his lashes, those strong brows, the unreal angle of his cheekbones? And that was before he opened his mouth and unleashed his voice. Dejun is, objectively, an attractive man.
The problem is that Kun is starting to realise, with no small amount of despair, that he’s becoming attracted to Dejun, too.
It’s the move’s fault. Rehearsal after rehearsal, day after day, Dejun prowls towards him onstage, full performance face on, his eyes hooded and gaze come hither. Dejun looks like he wants Kun, wants to devour him, and even though it’s just for show, perfected in the mirrors of their practice room, Kun finds himself teetering on the fine line between make-believe and reality. Amidst the flashing lights and music blasting loudly through their in-ears, Kun feels a thrill zip down his spine whenever their eyes lock from across the stage, his heart leaping as Dejun reaches for his neck. Every time this happens, Kun braces for the moment Dejun feels the quickening flutter of his pulse. And every time, Dejun spins away to his next position, none the wiser, and Kun heaves a sigh that's somewhere between relief and disappointment.
But, if Kun is being totally honest with himself, it’s not just the move, or Dejun’s looks, or those sultry edits on TikTok.
It’s Dejun himself.
Dejun waits until he and Kun are alone, the others bundling out to the waiting cars, before raising the subject. “Everything okay? You ran out of there pretty quickly.”
In a moment of rare bravado, and on the last take for that day’s broadcast, Kun had decided to up the ante of the move. Call it reckless, call it unwise, call it Kun desperate to wrest control and assert himself in a situation where Dejun (unknowingly) held the upper hand ‒ whatever it was, something had possessed Kun to reach up and take Dejun’s chin instead of just caressing the back of his neck like usual. The result had been Dejun jerking back, mask slipping from pure shock, and Kun absolutely sweating through his stage outfit for the rest of the performance.
He was so afraid that he’d revealed too much until he watched back their stage and saw Dejun giggling to himself at the side of the stage. There had been the sharp sting of relief, then the glowing triumph of catching their resident vixen off-guard, which had been snuffed out quickly by a deep sense of guilt. Kun hadn’t been able to look Dejun in the eye, and excused himself to the bathroom to splash cold water onto his face. No, he told his reflection firmly, only mildly panicked. Under no circumstances was he allowed to crush on a bandmate. Especially one younger than him; especially Dejun.
“I’m fine,” Kun lies. “Uh, about earlier ‒ ”
“Oh." Dejun blinks. The long fan of his eyelashes catches on his cheek. "I didn’t mind.” Then, syrupy slow, a smile blooms across his face. “I didn’t know you wanted to dial things up a notch.”
Is he making fun of him? Oh, he’s definitely making fun of him.
“What, no,” Kun says, flustered. “I was just trying something new.”
“New?”
“Yeah. Like…” Kun scrambles, and lands on the first thing he can think of. “The fans might get bored with the choreo, right? We can try to be creative, give them something to look forward to.”
Dejun looks thoughtful. “Hm. Yes, I see where you're coming from.”
“You do?”
“Yup,” Dejun says, still looking thoughtful. He doesn't seem to have caught onto the lie. A wave of relief washes over Kun. “Something to look forward to…”
This, of course, turns out to be a mistake. Somehow, Dejun misinterprets Kun's explanation as him firing the first shot, and when the next music show pre-recording rolls around, it becomes an all-out war.
Kun bangs into the waiting room, eyes wild. “What was that!”
Dejun innocently looks at Kun through the mirrors , but Kun knows better than to trust him. “What was what?”
“That! That thing with my jacket!”
Picture this: a pre-recording at the ungodly hour of four in the morning. Kun, surviving solely on three iced Americanos, nursing a blooming headache. He approaches Dejun to execute the move, mind thinking nothing but two more minutes to go, two more minutes to go. He notices too late the flash of mischief in Dejun's eyes, and the way not one, but both his hands reach out to ‒
Dejun’s expression shifts from confused to smug. “Oh. That.”
“'Oh, that'?” Kun is speechless. His bandmate all but strips his stage outfit for him onstage, and said bandmate looks like he’s the cat who got the cream. “Is that all you have to say for yourself?”
Dejun tilts his head. “Yeah? I mean, you did the same thing to me the other day. If you can’t take it, you shouldn’t dish it, Kun-ge.”
Oooooh, comes Ten and Yangyang’s twin delighted voices from behind Kun. He hadn’t even known they were listening, nosy bastards. “Sick burn,” Yangyang adds, and gives Dejun a high-five as he squeezes past to get to his bag.
Kun's annoyance flares.
“Excuse me, I can take it! You just took me by surprise!”
Instead of looking chastised, Dejun just shrugs. “It’s fair play, Kun-ge,” he says, crossing his arms. “If you want to stop, we can just go back to the old move, no harm, no foul.”
It's an out, offered genuinely, but Kun hesitates. His members already think he’s an old fuddy-duddy, an image that Ten has somehow managed to escape despite being the same age as him. Refusing to play onstage, even if it got a little raunchy, might cement that stick-in-the-mud image. He can’t have them thinking he’s no fun. Even Dejun. Especially Dejun.
Dejun sighs dramatically. "The fans would be so disappointed, though."
Well. When he puts it that way, what other choice does Kun have?
“No way.” Kun lifts his chin: a challenge; an invitation. “Bring it on, Xiao Dejun.”
There’s another chorus of oohs. Kun ignores his other members and, ears burning, turns on his heel to leave.
Just before he exits, though, he catches a glimpse of Dejun’s smile: tiny, enigmatic, and entirely unreadable.
♡
Except ‒
Promotions come to an end after that. Their second full album gets indefinitely postponed. Ten is shipped off to China one morning, previous hair dye still staining the collar of his shirt green, and the dorm goes suddenly, eerily quiet.
One month turns into two, into three, into four, into more. The replies from the company regarding their comeback slow, and eventually stop. Somewhere along the line, Sicheng and Ten cancel their return tickets back home.
Kun does his best not to panic. The situation is understandable: two of his members have their own schedules. It wouldn't bode well to comeback now, with the resurgence of the virus in the mainland. The album is ready, but not perfect; there's still more work to be done.
But when these reasons begin to look more and more like the flimsy excuses they are, when the quarterly company schedule is released without WayV's name on it once again, when Kun feels like he's reached the end of his rope, the threads holding him together fraying, breaking ‒
He takes a deep breath. Closes his eyes. Thinks, with all his might: it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.
Kun repeats these five words to himself like a mantra. Say something enough times, and maybe you'll even start to believe in it. Say something enough times, and it will become true.
And yet ‒
And yet.
Nothing happens. The months drag on. Kun lets his hair grow long and unruly. His desperation goes sour with age; his want is so visceral, so hungry, it eats him alive. It's bad for all of them, but sometimes, Kun is envious of Yangyang's ability to compartmentalise, of Hendery’s unwavering positivity. They are handling it so much better than he is, and he's supposed to be the oldest; he's supposed to be the leader. Instead, he feels like a failure. No one, he thinks, could possibly understand.
Well, maybe not no one.
“Kun-ge?”
The door creaks open. Dejun stands there, hair black and looking soft, in sleeping clothes. The light from Kun’s computer screen casts a ghostly glow over Dejun's face, colouring him white, and the shadows under his eyes blue.
Kun glances at the clock. “What’re you still doing up? It’s late.”
“I could say the same for you.”
“You know I don’t…" Kun sighs. He rolls back from his desk and stretches, the sound of his joints popping jarring in the quiet. "Come in, come in. Do you want water or anything?”
“No," Dejun says. He steps inside and goes to sit on Kun's bed, tucking his feet beneath him. "I just… I didn’t want to be at home.”
Kun understands. He’d tried asking for a reshuffling of room arrangements to accommodate Hendery after what had happened, but it was a long shot anyway. Free room and board come at their own price. “Well, you’re welcome here anytime. You and Hendery.”
Dejun smiles. Nowadays, they are few and far between. “Thanks, Kun-ge. What are you working on?”
“Oh, just this." Kun moves aside so he can show Dejun the track, the layers of instrumentals pulled up on-screen.
“Oh? Is this one of your old songs?”
“Yeah, but I thought I might try and finish some stuff since we have time.” Kun tries to keep his tone light, upbeat. “Maybe Ten can make some choreo for us when he’s back ‒ this song, I think it’s really his style, you know?”
There is a long pause.
“Kun,” Dejun says softly. “Ten won’t be back so soon.”
“I know, but I want to be ready.” Kun lets his eyes fall shut. They still burn from the glare of the computer screen. They feel so tired. He is so tired. “We should be ready.”
There’s a certain insidiousness to inertia. Your muscles atrophy. Your memory begins to decline. Sit still for long enough, and you forget what movement ‒ what progress ‒ feels like. It’ll wear you down, chipping away at your patience and optimism, leaving nothing but a shell standing on legs of exhaustion. Waiting is just another act of natural erosion, and Kun feels like if he allows himself to stagnate, to give into despair, he’ll forget what it is that he’s been waiting for all this while.
So Kun keeps pushing. He exercises. He goes to the radio and records his programmes. He fills his day with other meaningless, time-intensive activities so that he has no time or headspace to dwell on his troubles or think about the itchy, restless feeling lurking just beneath the surface of his skin. Most days, it feels like trudging through sludge. Most days, his own dimming hope and anxiety threatens to suck him down like quicksand once the lights go out.
But through it all, Kun keeps pushing.
“Aiyah,” comes Dejun’s chiding voice. “Kun-ge, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t ‒ ” Dejun’s exhales slowly. “You know what I mean.”
Kun knows. They’ve tread this path many, many times: quietly, in shouting matches, sometimes with the other members, more often alone, but always under the purple gloaming of twilight. He shakes his head and drops his forehead into his hands.
“I can’t help it. I miss it too much.”
There’s the sound of Kun’s mattress creaking, a weight lifting off. Moments later, something settles on Kun’s shoulder, and Kun reaches up instinctively. Dejun’s hand is cold, but Kun laces their fingers together anyway. He sweeps his thumb back and forth across the back of his hand, pretending it’s for warmth.
“I know,” Dejun says, heavy, weary, commiseratory. “Me, too.”
They stay like that for a little while, hands gripping each other. Kun stares unseeingly at the vast stillness of his screen. Dejun’s right; Ten won’t be back for months. This song will probably stay hidden away for the next year or so, just like their finished tracks. Just like them. Kun sighs, and rakes the hand not holding onto Dejun’s through his hair. If only ‒ if only ‒
“Kun-ge?”
Kun looks over his shoulder. “Mm?”
“You know it’s not your fault, right?”
Surprised, Kun lets Dejun’s hand go. This is breaking new ground; they’ve never talked about this before. And even though Kun knows, realistically, that it isn’t, it still feels that way. Hindsight is twenty-twenty after all, and with it comes a litany of realisations and self-scolding: I could have done something. I should have done something. And then, inevitably, as quiet as a breath and as loud as a shot in the dark: I’m a bad leader.
“Hey.” Dejun is frowning. “Kun-ge, you know it’s not. Right?”
“I ‒ I know.”
“... But?”
Kun swallows. His voice comes out as a whisper. “But sometimes, it feels like it is.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. Dejun's face softens and hardens all at once. "You're not responsible for all of us."
“What are you talking about? Of course I am ‒ ”
"No, you're so ‒ ” Dejun says something in Cantonese then breaks off suddenly, looking away. “Ah, how do I say this?”
“Say?” Kun is confused. “Say what?”
“You…” Dejun’s eyebrows pinch together, frustrated, as he struggles to find the right words in Mandarin. “You care so much, you know? You care for us so much until it hurts you.”
“It’s fine. I’m happy to.”
"But you shouldn't be!” Dejun bursts. “You should…”
Kun thinks he should be a lot of things. A better leader. A better person. A better member, and a better friend. “I’m sorry,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else there is to say, and Dejun shakes his head so violently his hair bounces.
“No, that’s not ‒ I would ask you to stop caring, but I know you can't. So let me ‒ ” Dejun takes a deep breath. “Let me help. Let me care for you, okay?"
That wasn’t what Kun was expecting. “I ‒ what do you mean?”
“When things get tough, call me. Don’t ignore our messages. Don’t sleep the day away and come out only at night. Don’t hole yourself up in your room and make me come down to find you.”
Dejun gestures around him, at the darkened mess of a bedroom, and Kun realises: it’s always been Dejun reaching out, Dejun coming to find him. Kun’s tried to keep in touch with Ten and Sicheng in China to let them know that they haven’t been forgotten, but has he neglected the members who are here in the same country with him? Shit. He doesn’t even remember when was the last time he went to find Dejun or Hendery upstairs.
“I didn’t think you noticed,” Kun says faintly.
“What?” Dejun's brows furrow. “Of course I noticed. So, listen: come out and we can go eat, or play, or something. Or if you just want to talk, we can do that, too. Only ‒ you shouldn't have to be alone, Kun-ge.”
His eyes shine in the dark. Dejun takes Kun’s hand again. He squeezes it, hard, as if he could convey how much he means what he says with pure physical force, and a strange feeling prickles at the back of Kun’s eyes.
“You guys were the ones who didn’t want to climb that hill with me.”
“That hill was a mountain, oh my god,” Dejun groans, but then he sobers up, looking down at Kun with large, imploring eyes. “But you know we would do it again if you wanted us to, right? We’d climb a hundred mountains for you. For each other.”
Kun knows that’s an overstatement, but he wants to believe that it’s true. He almost does. Dejun has somehow mastered the art of exuding sincerity with every word, no matter how unbelievable. It’s in his eyes, Kun thinks. The way that Dejun has that ability to just look at someone with that earnest gaze and have them eating out of the palm of his hand. What works well onstage can work even better in real life, behind closed doors, in the spaces between waking and sleeping. And every time Kun sees that look on Dejun’s face now, makeup-free and half-hidden in shadows, he pretends that it’s just for him even though it’s not. Just another thing that he wants, but can’t have.
So Kun doesn’t say I’ll bet Hendery and Yangyang will have something to say about that or yeah, right. He smiles, believes that it’s true, just for this moment, and nods.
“Right. Dejun, I ‒ thanks.”
“Don't thank me, just talk to me, okay?” Dejun’s hand comes up again to rest on Kun’s shoulder. This time, he squeezes. This time, Kun resists touching him back. “But we're gonna be alright. I know we are.”
Dejun’s eyes glimmer, and Kun thinks of stars spread out across a midnight sky. Dejun’s fingers graze his collarbone as he drops his hand, and Kun thinks of meteors splintering as they pass through the atmosphere, fracturing, disintegrating into dust. He feels like that sometimes, caught between his desire and his sense of propriety. Dejun is so beautiful, so unbelievably talented, so full of love that he brims with it, that it spills over his edges. These past few months have been hell, and when it seems like every other member is pulling away, it’s Dejun who stays; it’s Dejun who grounds Kun, who brings him back down to earth. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and maybe Kun has been caught up in Dejun’s orbit all along.
If Kun didn’t know he loved Dejun before, he certainly knows it now.
“Come on, then,” Dejun says, nudging him playfully, and Kun knows it more than ever. “Show me what you’ve been working on.”
So he does. Kun turns back to his computer, pulls out the drawer with his keyboard, and starts to play along with the track. Sometimes he’ll pause to tweak a few bits here and there, or throw a harmony in. He explains what he’s doing out loud for Dejun’s benefit, but mostly, he works in silence.
“Dejun-ah, what do you think of this ‒ ”
There’s a loud snore, and Kun spins around in his chair.
“… part.”
Dejun is fast asleep. His hands are pillowed beneath his cheek and his face is pointed towards the computer screen, almost like he’d been trying to get comfortable while watching Kun work. A lock of hair falls over his eyes, and it flutters when Dejun exhales.
Kun hovers by the edge of his bed, hesitating. He could slip under the covers next to Dejun. They’ve slept squeezed up on rows of chairs in waiting rooms enough times that Dejun probably wouldn’t wake up to someone else’s body curved around his. Kun could wrap an arm around his waist. Hold Dejun close. Press a kiss to his forehead and murmur quietly in his ear thank you, I love you, we're gonna be alright.
Instead, Kun sighs, pulls the covers up around Dejun’s shoulders, and quietly slips out to sleep on the living room sofa.
♡
“Oh my god,” Hendery says. He’s even paler than usual. “Oh my god.”
He lets out an undignified squeak when Ten slaps him on the back. “Stop it! You’ll be fine. We’ve performed this song a hundred times.”
“No we haven’t,” Yangyang says, emerging from their waiting room in a cloud of hairspray. “Also, our last performance was, like, a year ago.”
“Still,” Ten says. “You’ll be fine.”
“And if you’re not,” Yangyang adds, “it’s better to puke now than to puke onstage.”
“I’ll puke on you,” Hendery threatens through gritted teeth, and Kun pats him on the arm in quiet solidarity.
Seeing them altogether again is surreal. Ten had flown back at the height of summer, and with his return, suddenly, so many things became possible. They could perform their songs as five. They could order in from their favourite Chinese restaurant, and not have leftovers to throw away. A meeting had even been scheduled with the company to discuss their next album.
All of them had gathered at the dining table the night of Ten’s return for dinner, even the managers. Relief and gratitude washing over him in waves, and his inhibitions lowered by the alcohol Yangyang had so generously poured, Kun kept saying how glad he was that Ten was back, and how hard he had worked. After the tenth time, Ten had turned to him, and for a split second, Kun thought he was going to be made fun of ‒ Dejun had even already started to pre-emptively rise out of his seat.
But absence must truly make the heart grow fonder, because instead of insulting him, Ten had looked at him for a long time. “You worked hard, too, but you can rest now,” he said in an uncharacteristically unsteady voice, and Kun had promptly burst into tears.
Now, as they’re shepherded out towards the stadium, Kun catches glimpses of his reflection and almost doesn’t recognise himself: this person with the dyed hair and smoky eyes, this person with the fancy new stage outfit. But it’s not like he recognises himself whenever he looks in the mirror these days; not really. The person who stares back has a glint in their eye that wasn’t there before. Kun sees that same look in all of his members ‒ Ten’s return had brought on a hunger, a fierceness within all of them, one that didn’t burn them up from the inside out, but fuelled them and spurred them on instead. All of them steel, forged through fire.
“Hey,” a voice says, bringing Kun out of his thoughts, and he finds Dejun by his side.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing. I know we haven’t really talked about it, but our move ‒ what do you want to do?”
“Oh.” Kun hadn’t even thought about switching things up ‒ those days feel like an eon ago, and maybe it’s because they are. “Let’s just do the normal one, like in rehearsals. Back to basics ‒ it’s only our first performance, right?”
“Oh,” Dejun says. “Right.”
He almost sounds disappointed. Or is Kun just projecting? Either way, he feels a brief twinge of unease, and takes a step towards Dejun. Dejun blinks, confused, and looks up at him through his eyelashes.
“It’s only our first performance,” Kun says again, hoping Dejun will get it. “With many more to come.”
He does. A slow, understanding smile spreads across Dejun’s face. “With many more to come,” he agrees.
They have to crouch as they run past the barricades separating them and the fans, and duck beneath the stage before they can climb onto the circular, cage-like platform which will raise them to stage-level. It’s a little late for a pep talk, but Kun makes sure to catch each of his members’ eyes, a non-verbal acknowledgement that he’s so happy and grateful for each of them.
“Next stage, Weishen V Kick Back, thirty seconds,” comes the coordinator’s voice through all of their in-ears, and Kun stiffens.
“Fuck,” Ten breathes. “Oh, fuck, it’s happening.”
Hendery nods, and gulps. “Okay. Okay. Okayokayokay.”
“Fighting, guys!” Yangyang yells, the only one of them who looks upbeat and actually stage-ready, and Kun doesn’t know how he’s still smiling because he feels like he’s going to throw up.
A hand grazes his arm. Kun looks over his shoulder, and finds that Dejun has sidled over from his place on the other side of the formation. What’re you doing, go back, Kun almost hisses, but then Dejun smiles, bright and beguiling and so utterly brilliant, and the words die on the tip of Kun’s tongue.
“Just look at me,” he says. “Focus on me later.”
And then Dejun’s gone, darting back to his original place before Ten can scold him. An engine hums, and Kun snaps back to attention as their little platform begins to rise. The intro to Kick Back begins to play. The cage around them lowers, spiralling down to reveal them to the crowd. Kun can hear their cheers past his in-ears, see bursts of champagne green shining like beacons.
“Five,” comes the countdown in Kun’s ears. It perfectly matches the beat of his pounding heart. “Four. Three. Two ‒ ”
Truth be told, Kun won’t remember much of that first stage back. He’s pretty sure that he hits all his notes, and that he doesn’t make a mistake in the choreography. Simply put, the adrenaline and nerves leading up to that day simultaneously propel him forwards and blind him to everything going on around him. As much as he wants to savour this special moment now, he knows that he’ll at least be able to watch it back later.
There’s one moment he remembers, though. As Ten sings his verse, Kun spins on his heel and, right on cue, sees Dejun do the exact same thing on the other side of the stage. His bubblegum pink hair glitters in the late afternoon sun. They lock eyes, and with practised, deliberate steps, move towards each other. As the distance between them closes, everything quietens, slowly fading away. They stop in front of each other. Their arms lift in sync. The back of Dejun’s neck is warm with damp sweat, and as he tilts his head, Kun mirrors him.
Just look at me, Dejun had said, and Kun does.
In the space between them, for an infinite, fleeting moment in time, Kun feels like he’s finally come home.
They tumble offstage in a tangle of limbs and dangling in-ears and mic packs. Kun’s legs are jelly, his hands tingling to the point of numbness. The crowd is still cheering for them. He feels shot through with light.
Ten buries his face in his hands, shoulders shaking from giddy laughter and adrenaline. “We did it!”
“We did it,” Hendery says, awed.
“We all did it,” Dejun cries, sounding choked up. He slings his arm around Kun’s shoulders and turns to bury his face in his neck, lips glancing right over Kun’s pulse point.
Kun isn’t given any time to react. “We’re so fucking back, man!” Yangyang screams right then, and with surprising strength, pulls Kun into a crushing hug.
The rest of the members pile in, hooting and hollering. Kun feels hands slip under his jacket, slide over his shoulders, cup the nape of his neck, until he doesn’t know where his members end and he begins.
They’re all sweaty. The late summer heat is suffocating in their closeness. Someone, maybe Hendery, steps painfully on his toe. And yet Kun can’t find it in himself to pull away. He stays there, letting himself be held and holding his second family in his arms, until the stage manager yells at them to get a move on and change for their next stage.
Yes, Kun thinks as he runs backstage, blood singing, adrenaline coursing, his head still swimming with the feeling of Dejun’s lips where his blood beats strongest. We’re back. We’re back. We’re back.
♡
Dejun’s lips are pressed tightly together when he enters the room. “You really shouldn’t push yourself.”
He kicks off his shoes and plunks the bucket down on the nightstand next to Kun. Kun lifts the lid and peers inside. It's brimming with ice from the machine down the hall.
“Thanks. And I'm fine,” Kun calls after Dejun as he disappears from view. “I'm sitting on a chair. I'm wearing a boot. I'm being careful.”
Dejun emerges from the bathroom a couple of seconds later, holding one of the hotel's fluffy white hand towels. “Yeah. I know you are.”
Kun watches as he carefully scoops some ice into the hand towel, then twists the ends until the ice is packed in. Dejun settles himself next to Kun’s outstretched leg. “Can I?”
It takes a minute for Kun to understand. “Oh ‒ no, I can do it ‒ ”
“I know, but can I?” Dejun asks, and it's only after Kun nods that he circles a hand around his ankle and gently lifts Kun's foot into his lap.
Kun only has a second to enjoy the fluttery feeling in his chest before the makeshift ice pack makes contact with his ankle. “Ooh,” he winces, and Dejun’s face twists apologetically.
“Sorry. Should I get another towel?”
“No, it's fine, just ‒ ” Kun gestures “ ‒ roll it around here a bit more.”
“Got it,” Dejun says, readjusting his grip, and the biting cold focused at the ball of Kun's ankle vanishes. Dejun works in silence, moving the ice pack over Kun's ankle in slow, circular movements. Slowly, the discomfort brought on by the heated, swollen flesh begins to fade.
After a minute, Dejun looks up. “Is this okay?”
“Yeah,” Kun sighs. “Much better.”
He leans back against the pillows, watching Dejun work through half-lidded eyes. Dejun’s changed out of their last stage outfit and into his own clothes, but his eyes still bear traces of that evening's make-up. He looks nice; Kun wonders if he had been going out to meet someone. Wonders what would have happened if Dejun had made it downstairs instead of coming across Kun while heading to the elevators, limping down the hallway and struggling with his crutches and ice bucket. Wonders what it means, when he thinks about Dejun scolding him and sending him back to his hotel room while he went to fetch the ice instead.
“I'm not going to say ‘I told you so’,” Dejun says, interrupting Kun’s thoughts, “but ‒ ”
“Aiyah,” Kun sits up and reaches over to push at Dejun’s arm. “Don't be like that. The doctors said I'm recovering faster than they anticipated.”
“The doctors also said you should continue to take it easy, and yet there you were, frolicking around onstage.”
“So what, you want to piggyback me throughout the rest of the stops?” Kun’s cheeks heat a little at the memory. “Aren't you worried about your back?”
“I'm a lot stronger than I look,” Dejun sniffs. “And the fans thought it was sweet that I offered. How does your ankle feel now?”
He lifts the towel, and they both peer down at Kun’s ankle. It doesn't look as inflamed anymore, and it doesn't hurt when he rotates it.
“Good. I think I'll ice it for a little longer, though.”
“Okay,” Dejun says.
Kun holds a hand out for the ice pack. Instead, and to his surprise, Dejun keeps the ice pack pressed to Kun's ankle, and uses his free hand to grab a pillow to wedge it under Kun’s foot.
“Wait, what?” Kun says, taken aback. "What are you doing?”
“Making sure you’re comfortable.”
“That’s ‒ it's late, you should go.”
Dejun glances at his phone. “It’s not even midnight.”
“Weren't you heading out anyway?” Kun says, a little desperately. “You've already helped me so much, I don’t want to keep you from your d‒ uh. I can ‒ I can do it myself.”
“You’ll just fall asleep and wake up with a puddle around your ankle again,” Dejun says, which is unfair, because it only happened once. “I’ll stay.”
“Dejun ‒ ”
“Kun-ge, don’t be stubborn and let me take care of you, alright?” Dejun says, exasperated, and Kun finally shuts up.
He’s been doing a lot of that lately, taking care of Kun. The ankle injury had complicated things, but Kun, used to having a spanner thrown in the works whenever things got a little too smooth-sailing, had tried to take it in his stride as much as possible. He had presented a plan to their management that would allow him to participate in all of their prior commitments and schedules, and thankfully, that plan was working out.
It was tough, though. Kun had to be extra conscious of his ankle at all times. Sometimes, the medication wasn’t enough to dull the pain. The mental and physical strain gradually built up, and caused him to tire more easily these days. He tried not to let it show, though. They were all working so hard, and it wasn’t like the others didn’t have their own stuff to worry about.
But even when he didn’t say anything, Dejun noticed. Dejun always noticed.
Dejun saw the wistful look on his face as they rehearsed the stages without him, and made it a point to come to his side as often as possible during performances. Dejun could tell whenever Kun was feeling down, even when Kun tried to be discreet, and let him know that he was there with simple touches and gestures. Dejun always made sure Kun felt included, and that he was never left behind.
And now, this.
It’s sweet. It’s so sweet that Kun’s teeth ache with it, and the tenderness travels all the way down to his heart, twinging pathetically every time Dejun so much as looks his way nowadays. Because deep down, Kun knows what this is: it’s Dejun being kind, and being good, and doing what he would do if any other member were in Kun’s position. Kun feels special now, but nothing lasts forever. Dejun’s attention will fade along with the crack in Kun’s ankle, and Kun, having had too much of a good thing, will be left craving and wanting even more.
“You okay?” Dejun asks, oblivious to Kun’s thoughts, and Kun forcibly stems the tide of yearning that rises up within him.
“Yup. Thanks, for…”
Kun trails off. For everything, he wants to say. A little dramatic, but even that doesn’t feel like enough.
Dejun doesn’t look like he expects him to finish that sentence, though. He gives Kun one of his soft, barely-there smiles, the ones Kun loves the most, and traces a finger up and around the ball of Kun’s ankle. His touch is a flame through the residual chill.
“Anytime,” Dejun says. “Anytime.”
♡
Kun’s ankle heals.
Oddly enough, Dejun still hangs around. He piles into the car right after Kun on their way to schedules so that they ride together, and leans into his side as they wait for their turn to rehearse or record songs. On their days off, Dejun invites himself over and cooks them all soup, knee bumping into Kun’s under the dining table.
It’s nice. It’s domestic. Kun couldn’t be happier, or more content.
Then they get to Japan for NCT Nation, and it's like someone flips a switch in Dejun, because he wilds out.
To be fair, things are relatively tame in Osaka, just a rehash of the move as originally choreographed. Maybe they pull each other a little closer, tilt their heads a little further, mimic the moment before a kiss a little more, but this is a performance ‒ of course they're going to put on a show.
But then in Tokyo ‒
“Oh my,” Ten says as they watch back that night's Kick Back stage on their manager's phone. There's a note of admiration in his voice. “You really just went for it, huh?”
“Whoa,” Hendery says. “Did you guys rehearse this, or ‒ ?”
“Oh, we don't do that,” Dejun says, just as Kun vehemently denies, “No.”
“What’re you so upset about?” Yangyang wants to know. “You liked it! See? You smiled.”
They crowd back around the phone. Someone rewinds the stage to the part where Dejun grabs Kun forcefully and tilts his face towards him, closer than anything they've tried before. Onscreen, Kun leans away and tries to resist, surprised, but Dejun holds fast. When Dejun finally lets him go, Kun's expression takes up the whole screen and can be seen clearly.
“Yeah, Kun, you smiled,” Sicheng says, pointing, and Kun wants to die.
“Okay, so I smiled,” he says. “You would, too! It's a natural reaction to ‒ to ‒ ”
“Being manhandled?”
“Getting groped in front of thousands?”
“Dejun trying to make out with you?” Ten suggests, a lilting, knowing edge to his voice, and Kun's cheeks flame, because how ‒
“You guys are awful,” he says over the sound of their chittering laughter. He gets up from his seat, and, resolutely not looking in Dejun's direction, stomps noisily out of the room.
It's not that Kun’s upset. Whatever he's feeling is a lot closer to embarrassment, and maybe even more accurately, shame. Getting to dance to Kick Back after sitting it out for months has been fun. If Kun were being honest with himself, though, some small part of it is due to the fact that he finally, finally gets this special moment with Dejun again. His heart races in anticipation every time he sees Dejun prowl across the stage towards him, and positively beats itself out of his chest whenever they execute their part of the choreography, their faces inches apart. And Dejun’s in a good mood these days. It translates into the way he rehearses, something almost playful about it now ‒ sometimes, Kun gets a quick hug; other times, Dejun taps him lightly on the butt and winks. It leaves Kun's stomach swooping in the best way possible, like in the moment before a drop of a rollercoaster, or in the instant where an aeroplane hangs suspended after take off and fights against gravity.
So to see himself so enamoured, so obvious as he dances with Dejun in front of all their fans is both humiliating and a timely reminder of what exactly this is. Reality is like a splash of cold water to his face, but he needs to wake the fuck up. Dejun is, ultimately, selling a fantasy to the masses. It feels like flirting, but it isn't. It feels real, but it's not.
It's not.
Dejun corners him in the waiting room the following day. “Hey, about yesterday ‒ ”
Kun immediately tenses. “What about it?”
“I…” Dejun glances around. The other members are busy with hair and make-up, or warming up and running through the choreography, but he still lowers his voice. “Sorry for catching you off-guard. I ‒ I thought it would be fun, but I didn't mean to upset you.”
Kun blinks. “It didn't upset me,” he says truthfully. “It was the others teasing us that was annoying.”
Dejun still looks contrite. “Well… Maybe we could practise the move for today?”
This is a first. The whole appeal of the move, at least from a performance perspective, lay in its spontaneity. Fans, aware of the potential switch up, would pull their phones out, eagerly awaiting to capture whatever would happen onstage on that particular day, and with Dejun as the one mostly initiating the changes, Kun often didn’t know what to expect, too. He liked to be in control normally, but this was an exception. It was both scary and thrilling to be on the receiving end; to not have to think, and to just let his body move and react.
But the fact that Dejun’s asking to run through the move now, hours before their actual performance, puts him on edge.
“Okay,” Kun says warily. “What did you have in mind?”
Dejun looks around. “Maybe…”
He beckons mysteriously. Kun, hesitant but curious, follows him out of the room and down the corridor towards the bathrooms. They round a corner, where Dejun comes to an abrupt stop. Kun almost walks into him, but then a pair of hands come up to steady him, and Kun finds himself manoeuvred until his back hits the wall.
“Uh,” he says dumbly.
“So I was thinking,” Dejun says. His conversational tone is at odds with the intensity with which he looks at Kun. “That we could do this.”
Then he reaches for Kun's tie, and Kun's mind whites out.
Dejun starts from the knot. He lifts Kun’s tie from where it lies on his chest and lets it run through his fingers like water ‒ slowly, luxuriously, keeping eye contact with Kun the entire time. When he almost reaches the end, he tugs, and Kun’s body tips forward with the movement. He has to take a step forward just to keep his balance. The tips of his and Dejun’s shoes touch. Dejun’s lips part slightly, his sharp inhale audible, and Kun’s breath catches in his chest.
When he finally finds his voice, it comes out husky. “You're not going to have enough time for that.”
Dejun freezes, stunned.
Then, to Kun's confusion, he barks out a harsh laugh, and lets Kun’s tie go.
“I’ll do it faster,” Dejun promises.
“That’s ‒ ” Kun feels both unmoored and anchored, sluggish and electrified. “You can’t ‒ ”
There’s a yell from the end of the corridor. Standby in five minutes. Something flickers over Dejun’s face, and he turns back to Kun. “So what do you think?” he asks. “Does that work for you?”
He runs a hand down Kun's chest, smoothing the wrinkles in his tie out. Kun studies him, but Dejun’s face has gone expressionless. Behind his smoky eyeshadow, his eyes are blank, holding none of that fire that Kun saw earlier. Kun feels wrong-footed, like he’s just missed something. Four minutes, comes another yell, and Kun doesn’t know how, but he’s run out of time.
“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it works for me.”
♡
“We practised a few times offstage,” Kun tells his phone. “Him pulling my tie. And the result was not bad. Because afterwards, I saw the video filmed by my manager, and the response from the fans was pretty enthusiastic. ”
The comments roll in so fast that they blur together. Kun taps his screen, pausing to read and scroll through them one by one. There are quite a lot of exclamation marks.
“I saw a few of the reactions posted on the internet and I ‒ wow, I couldn’t help but laugh,” Kun says, laughing now at the memory of the videos showing fans losing their minds. “This, this part ‒ I think it’s pretty interesting. It can be developed to be more fun in the future.”
In response, the bottom half of Kun’s screen bursts into a flurry of comments, and Kun has to fight down a smile.
He stays on live for a little while longer to talk about the rest of the concert, then excuses himself to eat the dinner that’s growing cold on his desk. But after he closes out of the app, Kun finds himself lying in his big, plush hotel bed, thinking.
Thinking about Dejun, and that move.
Kun wasn’t lying to the fans ‒ they had practised a couple more times before they had to go on, working out the best angles with Ten cackling unhelpfully in the background. But none of those were as charged as that first practice in the hallway. Even the actual executed move onstage, Dejun yanking on Kun’s tie so hard that he nearly toppled over and fell into Dejun’s arms, felt less… well, less. It turned out great on camera, there was no doubt about it, and the fans had screamed themselves hoarse, but to Kun, it felt… frustrated. Angry, almost.
But why would Dejun be angry?
There’s a thump, and then another. It takes Kun several seconds to realise that it’s coming from his door. The thumping continues, urgent and loud, as Kun springs out of bed and hurries over.
“I’m coming!” he calls, and flings the door open.
Speak ‒ or think ‒ of the devil, Kun guesses, and he shall appear.
“Dejun?”
Dejun stands in Kun’s doorway, still wearing his black and green concert jersey and a scowl. The second the door opens, he barrels forward and over the threshold, forcing Kun to back up.
“I asked you to come out to dinner, and you stayed in your room and went live instead?” Dejun demands as the door swings shut heavily behind him. “Twice?”
Kun hadn’t realised that it was that big of a deal. Dejun had tagged him in his dinner invitation, but the message was sent in their WayV group chat, so he assumed it was an open invite. And besides ‒
“I pre-ordered dinner from the hotel for tonight,” Kun says. “Didn’t I tell you?”
Dejun’s scowl deepens. “No. No, you didn’t tell me. Just like how you didn’t say a word about how you thought the result of my move for Kick Back was ‘not bad’, and that it was ‘pretty interesting’.”
“I ‒ ” Kun swallows, flustered, when he sees Dejun’s phone in his hand, the Weibo app open. You heard that?”
“You went live! Of course I heard it!”
For some reason, Dejun sounds mad. He looks mad, too, with his arms crossed tightly across his chest. It makes the muscles in his arm bulge in a way that is truly distracting, and Kun can’t really afford to be distracted right now.
“Well, the result was not bad,” he argues weakly. “The fans, their reactions were so ‒ ”
“Oh my god, I don’t care about the fans’ reactions! I just care about yours!”
“I ‒ mine?”
Kun’s thoughts are all in a jumble. What does Dejun mean by that? It was a performance, of course the fans’ reactions were important. Who cares what Kun thought? In fact, who cares that he stayed in instead of going out, and went live? Why would Dejun care about small, insignificant things like these? And yet Dejun is looking at him accusatorily, like he’s done something wrong, and for the life of him, Kun can’t figure out what it is.
“Kun-ge,” Dejun says. “Did you really think the result just now was good, or was it just lip service?”
“I ‒ Dejun, of course I think it was good.”
“Well, it didn’t seem that way earlier!”
“You mean onstage?”
Dejun groans. “No, in the corridor! Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you do anything?”
“Was I supposed to?”
Dejun’s expression shifts into one that Kun knows well. He wears it most often around Hendery or Yangyang when they say something particularly out of pocket, or when someone is trying to be funny or lying in an interview. But now, it’s inexplicably being directed at Kun.
“Oh my god. Don’t tell me you don’t know.”
“Huh?”
“Have you not gotten it by now?” Dejun asks, incredulity lacing his every word. “Is it not obvious? Are you blind?”
“Blind ‒ what! Of course not! I just have no idea what you ‒ ”
Dejun is clearly tired of talking. He groans again, louder this time, and takes a step forward. Kun instinctively takes a step back. It happens again, and then a third time, until Kun’s back hits the wall of the corridor.
“Wh ‒ what are you doing?”
“Kun-ge,” Dejun says, and in those two syllables, Kun hears his exasperation, his frustration, and his fondness all at once. “Please don’t be so fucking obtuse.”
Then, in a move reminiscent of earlier that night, he grabs Kun by the front of his shirt, yanks, and drags him in for a kiss.
Oh, and what a kiss.
Kun stiffens in shock when their lips first touch. Dejun’s mouth is soft, but the kiss is hard, demanding, and soon, Kun finds himself yielding. His muscles go lax, and the hand that Dejun doesn’t have fisted in Kun’s shirt cups the back of his neck, pulling him closer with ease until they’re chest to chest. Kun leans into Dejun, feeling the compact, solid warmth of him, and can’t help but sigh into the kiss. When his lips part, Dejun takes the opportunity lick into his mouth, and the hot, wet slide of his tongue sends shivers up Kun’s spine.
Heat builds between them, slow and simmering. Kun begins to grow restless, and fists his hands in Dejun’s jersey, lets his hands roam up and down Dejun’s arms and back. “Slow down,” Dejun laughs against his mouth, and the sound of his happiness makes Kun’s heart speed up in a direct contradiction.
Maybe he’s a little too eager, or a little too into it, but Kun makes an embarrassingly high whine. Dejun laughs, their teeth clacking together, but any mortification Kun might feel vanishes under the next kiss that comes, and the next, and the next ‒ all joyous, all full of love. The colour of their kiss changes like this, going from scarlet desire to the diffused pink of adoration, from boiling hot to a slow, sweet simmer. Kun feels the shape of Dejun’s smile against his mouth, and his heart swells until it feels too small for his ribcage.
Sometime between this millenia and the next, Dejun reluctantly pulls away. His hair is tousled from where Kun’s run his hands through them. His lips are cherry red from the force of their kisses, glossy from where Kun had swiped his tongue over them. Kun blinks, taking him in, woozy from the rush of hormones. What a sight. What a vision.
“Dejun,” Kun says, dazed, and Dejun smiles.
“That’s me.”
There’s a long pause. Kun valiantly tries to form a coherent thought that doesn’t centre around him thinking I just kissed Xiao Dejun over and over again, and fails.
“So…”
Dejun raises an eyebrow, amused. “So?”
He takes Kun’s hand. Kun tries to lace their fingers together, but Dejun shakes his head, teasing, and presses a kiss to the inside of his palm instead. The gesture is intimate, new and yet entirely familiar at the same time, and Kun’s throat closes up with emotion.
“God, you’re so ‒ how long?”
Dejun’s lips trail down, grazing the inside of his wrist. “How long what?”
“How long have you wanted to do this?”
Dejun kisses Kun again, right above his pulse. “I don’t know ‒ ages. What about you?”
“I think it was ‒ ”
“Kick Back?” There’s a flash of teeth as Dejun grins, catching Kun’s surprised expression. “So I guess Ten-hyung was right.”
“Ten ‒ ?”
“He guessed. I didn’t want to believe him, but I thought if I flirted enough, played my cards right, you’d know and make the first move ‒ ”
“I would have,” Kun rushes to say. “I would have, I swear to god, but I was so ‒ ”
“Blind?” Dejun teases. “Oblivious? Clueless?”
“I didn’t think you liked me back,” Kun confesses. “I didn’t think you’d ever like me back.”
The smile fades from Dejun’s face. He drops Kun’s hand, but only to take his face in both his hands, his hold gentle but firm.
“Kun-ge,” Dejun says seriously. “I’m going to say this now, because I think we’ll be too busy later to speak, but: I like you. I like you a lot. I think you’re amazing and sexy and talented, and you have done so much for me. I’m glad I met you, and that you’re in my life.”
Kun’s heart swells, then bursts. His insides must be coated with confetti now, gold and silver and celebratory, dyed the colour of Dejun’s love.
“Well,” Kun manages. “I think you’re amazing and sexy and talented, and I’m glad you’re in my life, too.”
Dejun blushes. Dejun glows. “Thank you,” he says. “I know.”
This time, when he leans in, Kun is ready. Dejun’s lush lips and delicate hands are kindling for the small, enduring fire that he’s has been stoking for almost two years, the torch that he’s carried for Dejun for so long. They don’t stop kissing even as Dejun guides them to the bedroom, too caught up in each other, until Kun’s knees hit the edge of the bed and he falls backwards. Dejun climbs atop him without hesitation, and tilts Kun’s face up for a searing kiss.
“Kun-ge,” Dejun breathes, voice climbing several notes, and Kun finds the nerve to get his jersey up and off.
He couldn’t have imagined this in his wildest dreams, but here Dejun is, half-naked and straddling him, breaths coming fast, his eyes as dark as the night sky outside. Fire flashes in Kun’s belly as Dejun leans back down, tugging insistently at Kun’s own shirt with murmurs of off, off, off, spreading across his body like a conflagration when they finally lie together, skin-to-skin.
There are literal stars behind Kun’s eyelids. There are supernovas birthing in his bloodstream, dying beneath the surface of his skin. Dejun kisses him and kisses him and kisses him, until Kun’s lungs are empty and collapsing under the weight of their gravitational attraction.
Dejun pulls back for a moment and touches Kun’s cheek. His skin is flushed. His lips are kiss-bitten. He’s panting, his want a tangible thing pressing up against the jut of Kun’s hip. It reminds Kun that this is no longer some fantasy. This is real, and impossibly, inexplicably, Dejun wants Kun just as much as Kun wants him.
“Kun-ge,” Dejun says, almost keening.
He trails a deliberate hand down the inside of Kun’s thigh. Kun wasn’t particularly hungry before, but now, he finds that he’s ravenous.
“Fuck,” he says, dazed.
There’s that smile again. Dejun gently cups the back of Kun’s neck, a momentary respite in the rush of their longing. He pulls him close until their foreheads are touching, until their noses are brushing, until there are no spaces between them. Not anymore.
“That’s the plan,” Dejun agrees, and leans back down to capture his lips once more.