Jaehwan laughs softly as he stares at the photograph between his fingers, his eyes flicker to the date printed in the bottom right corner. The two little boys in the picture are so lost in their own world they have no idea they’re being photographed—that’s something Jaehwan knows for sure—, sitting in the sandbox with numerous sand castles and sand cookies freshly built around them, and in the middle of these constructions they sit still; the smaller, sleek black haired boy cupping the tiny face of the older, curly haired one, pressing his lips to the other’s.

“Hyukie?” Jaehwan calls from the bed where he’s lying with a pillow under his head, one of his legs pulled up.

“Hm?” Sanghyuk murmurs, not deigning to glance at Jaehwan, still sitting by his desk, head hanging low as he taps away on his calculator, quickly writing down numbers into a notebook.

“Do you remember our first kiss?” Jaehwan asks, grinning.

There’s silence for a few beats, but then Sanghyuk turns around in his desk chair, eyebrows arched as he asks, “What the ?”

“Do you remember?” Jaehwan presses on.

Sanghyuk's cheeks turn red in a split second, his jaw dropping slightly, and Jaehwan revels in the effect of his words, his grin growing wider.

“Why would you talk about that,” Sanghyuk grumbles, suddenly turning back to his homework.

Jaehwan chuckles, and climbs off Sanghyuk's bed where the sheets are tangled from their sleepover the night before, leaving the box of old photographs behind. His feet make nearly no sound as he pads over to the desk, standing next to Sanghyuk. The pen stills above the grids, and Sanghyuk glances up at Jaehwan's jovial expression.

“Do you remember when you first kissed me?” Jaehwan asks, and Sanghyuk lets out an exasperated sigh.

“First of all, I didn’t kiss you,” he says, clicking his pen nervously. The blush on his cheeks is getting deeper, and oh, how much Jaehwan likes making people uncomfortable like this. Especially Sanghyuk. “Secondly, we were stupid, teenagers and now we aren’t, or— at least I’m not anymore, so please, stop talking about this.” He nods as if confirming his own statements, returning to his homework again, but he seemingly lost his train of thought, because his hand hovers above his notebook hesitantly.

Jaehwan lets out a puff of air, trying to conceal his laughter by coughing, willing his voice to sound level when he speaks next.

“Which one of our kisses are you talking about, exactly?”

Sanghyuk drops his pen and runs his hands over his face, rubbing a little too hard. When he looks up at Jaehwan again his eyebrows are messy, and Jaehwan his thumb and index finger, smoothing Sanghyuk's eyebrows out at which Sanghyuk shrieks and pushes himself away on the wheels of his chair, gasping for air like an outraged old lady when a youngster talks back.

“Are you crazy?!” he yells, grabbing the collar of his own T-shirt, wiping at his brows with the fabric, organizing them himself before Jaehwan could assault him again. Jaehwan snorts at the sight, hiding the photograph behind his back. “Why are you interrogating me, anyway?”

“I’m just asking you a few simple questions,” Jaehwan shrugs his shoulders, trying to look innocent, but his grin is almost too powerful.

“You’re aware of the fact that I could send you home anytime, right?” Sanghyuk grumbles.

“And you’re aware of the fact that I wouldn’t leave, right?”

“Touché.” Sanghyuk makes a whimpering noise, slumping back in his chair. “I’m talking about— middle school. The music festival when you won the singing contest but were too busy testing out how to imitate the moves of a washing machine with your tongue inside my mouth under a staircase to take the trophy. Happy?”

“Ah, that one,” Jaehwan says, looking down at the floor, humming nostalgically. “I had a hard time explaining where I’d disappeared to. My homeroom teacher sent me to the nurse to get a check-up after I’d told him I suddenly got diarrhoea. We concluded it must have been from anxiety. But I’m talking about the very first occasion.”

He blinks up at Sanghyuk whose grimace turns into a perplexed expression. “What are you talking about? There was nothing before that.”

Jaehwan shakes his head, and pulls out the picture from behind his back, holding it in front of Sanghyuk who creeps closer in his chair, his eyes narrowing like they always do when he tries to focus on things without his glasses on or contacts in. Sanghyuk clicks his tongue in annoyance, batting away Jaehwan's hand and the photograph in it.

“That wasn’t a kiss, I was, like, six.”

“Five, , I thought you were good at maths,” Jaehwan says, pointing at the orange print of ‘2000’ in the bottom right corner. Sanghyuk rolls his eyes. “And it was a kiss, your cheeks are all puffy from how hard you press your face to mine.”

“It wasn’t anything like that, Jaehwan, I was a kid, I kissed my grandma’s chickens, too!”

“You said your mum did that to your dad when she was proud of him and that you were proud of me for building such a nice sand castle.”

Sanghyuk stares at him for a few moments, looking like he’s on the verge of a serious mental breakdown. Jaehwan squares his shoulders, tips his chin up to show Sanghyuk he’s confident that he’s right about this matter.

“You—“ Sanghyuk starts, but he stops to take a deep breath. “You’re a ert.”

“Am not. Just admit that you kissed me first and we’re good.”

Sanghyuk closes his eyes, pretty, long lashes fanned out on top of his cheeks; he’s probably trying to keep his almost non-existent composure as he says, “It’s literally been fifteen years, and we— I thought we’ve been over this topic since at least my second year at high school, and I honestly have no idea why you’re talking about it now, but…” He opens his eyes, the grimace making him look close to ugly. “We grew up together, Jaehwan. Something like that was bound to happen, and I’d be glad if we could just put the whole thing in an imaginary box and hide it away in our mutual dark past. Can you do that?”

“Mm,” Jaehwan looks up at the ceiling like he’s deeply considering Sanghyuk's words. “No.”

“Why not?” Sanghyuk groans, throwing his head back, and Jaehwan's gaze rests on the outline of his Adam’s apple for a second too long—he swallows thickly.

“I mean, why can’t we try it again?” he asks, now having to fight to recreate his grin.

“Um, because we’re adults who shouldn’t be experimenting with the boundaries of their friendship?” Sanghyuk quips with an offensively big amount of sarcasm in his voice as he looks at Jaehwan again.

“Yeah, but,” Jaehwan averts his eyes, playing with the edges of the old photograph and hates that somehow the tables have been turned during this conversation, and this time he’s the one blushing furiously. He didn’t even mean to go so deep; he only wanted to make Sanghyuk feel flustered, because that’s funny and cute and he was so bored he was afraid he would die in a few minutes. “Doesn’t matter, forget it.”

He shuffles back to the bed with an angry pout, feeling humiliated. He puts the picture back into the disorganized collection of family memories Sanghyuk let him go through while he was doing his homework for his lecture the next day, and pulls out his phone, opening application after application without paying any attention to them. He’s so miffed at himself for being stupid.

The mattress dips by his crossed ankles, and a moment later a big hand covers his phone screen, snatching the device away from him. He frowns at Sanghyuk who looks like a parent attempting to be especially patient with his child.

“Tell me,” Sanghyuk says, sitting down on his heels next to Jaehwan.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Jaehwan. If I could read every single one of your thoughts, I’d think we’re the same person. I know there’s something.”

Jaehwan takes a cushion they kicked off at night up from the floor and covers his face with it, his voice coming out muffled by it when he says, “It’s just that sometimes I feel lonely, you know? And making out with someone is a good cure, I mean, that’s why we did it back then, too, no?”

After a moment of silence, Sanghyuk replies, “Yes, maybe.”

“Yeah, so. I can tell you anything, right?”

“I insist you tell me everything,” Sanghyuk laughs kindly, and Jaehwan's heart flutters inside his chest. He presses the cushion onto his face harder, probably making it more difficult for Sanghyuk to hear him.

“I’ve tried— to be with people. Not just making out or having with them, but, like, to form relationships.”

“Yes, Jaehwan, I know about those people.”

There’s a question hidden in Sanghyuk's tone—he’s confused, Jaehwan can hear that.

“But I can’t— they don’t— ah.” Jaehwan pulls up his knees, tries to become as small as possible. “They just don’t feel the same as you do, I don’t want to be with them, I want to be with you.”

Sanghyuk doesn’t say anything, and Jaehwan thinks he might be trying to come up with the perfect rejection. His hold tightens on the cushion and he wants to run away as far as possible; he really didn’t sign up for this when he came over the night before. But it’s his stupidity, his idiotic belief that Sanghyuk would accept his feelings, his nonsensical confession that he didn’t even mean to make.

“Are you disappointed?” he asks shakily from behind the cushion. The cushion moves, but Jaehwan holds onto it so tight Sanghyuk can’t take it away from him. “Leave it alone.”

“I can’t answer you if you don’t let me take this off your face!” Sanghyuk says, his patience apparently having been enough only until this point. He almost rips the cushion apart as he tears it out of Jaehwan's grip.

The air in the room feels cool on Jaehwan's burning cheeks, but he pushes himself up into sitting position, forcing a smile as he exclaims, “April fool!”

“It’s October and you weren’t joking,” Sanghyuk says condescendingly, and Jaehwan's smile fades.

“You’re right,” he says, feeling defeated. He picks at a loose thread of the duvet he used at night. “Sorry, I just— I didn’t want it to turn out like this, I didn’t even really want to tell you, but, like—“

“Shut up.”

“Yeah, I will, I just want to clear everything up,” Jaehwan nods, eyes fixated on the thread. “So, I totally understand that you don’t feel like that about me, but, I mean, we’re friends and all, and I didn’t—“

“Shut your mouth already.”

“Will you let me—“

Sanghyuk's clammy palms are on his cheeks in half a second, he presses his lips on Jaehwan's, and Jaehwan thinks the whole thing probably resembles that old picture a lot, or at least it’s meant to resemble it, and he laughs as Sanghyuk's lips part, the corners of them curling up, because, God, this is so damn lame. He clings onto the sleeves of Sanghyuk's T-shirt nevertheless, bunching up the fabric in his fists as they kiss—finally without the horrible washing machine effect.

At some point Sanghyuk's fingers tangle into Jaehwan's hair, his hand getting trapped between the back of Jaehwan's head and the pillow, and Jaehwan vaguely realizes that Sanghyuk's other hand is fumbling on his stomach, under his T-shirt. When Sanghyuk's lips leave Jaehwan's mouth in favour of nipping on his throat, Jaehwan says breathlessly, “What was that about stupid, teenagers and how you aren’t one anymore?”

Sanghyuk lifts his head, his eyes glinting, blush almost a neon pink on his cheeks and his hair resembling a bird’s nest.

“Uh, nostalgia?” Sanghyuk says with the corners of his eyes crinkling, his lips quivering with a half-repressed smile.

“Ah, are we going to re-enact my high school graduation after party?” Jaehwan asks, cracking up as he runs a hand through Sanghyuk's dishevelled hair gently.

“Oh, God, no way,” Sanghyuk grunts, and jumps to the bedroom door, quickly locking it. “People seeing two pairs of ankles in a toilet stall is one thing, my mum walking in on us is a completely different one.”

“She’d never make me cookies anymore, right?” Jaehwan pouts while Sanghyuk climbs back on the bed, taking his T-shirt off when Jaehwan tugs it up on his torso.

“Not for a while,” Sanghyuk replies, also pulling at the hem of Jaehwan's shirt, helping him take it off as he settles above his hips. “But, I guess, she’d have to come to terms with the whole thing at some point.”

A smirk spreads slowly on Jaehwan's face as he brushes a thumb over Sanghyuk's jaw, his other fingers resting on Sanghyuk's neck.

“You love me,” Jaehwan says, almost choking on the words when a happy laughter bubbles up from his throat.

Sanghyuk lets out a deep sigh.

“Yeah,” he says, and kisses Jaehwan for the ninth time in their life.