“Mom, no…” Jiyong moans, shaking his head as he holds the box up. He had his phone pressed against one ear

“He’s got broad shoulders, you know, it’s hard to find something warm enough with all that muscle. The stores just can’t provide.” His mother says, pretending she hadn’t heard him. Jiyong drops the box and puts his head in his hand.

“Mom.” He whines, drawing out the word until she stops talking. “I can’t just give the guy a homemade sweater! We’ve barely spoken.”

“Well, you can’t let the poor boy just freeze.” She says, clucking her tongue in disapproval. “And besides, you live right next door to each other, you must speak with him sometimes!”

Jiyong rolls his eyes and throws himself back against the chair he’s in. “We live next to each other, not with each other; I rarely see him.”

“Maybe you should make more of an effort. Who knows? You might even make a friend!” The way she says it leaves Jiyong feeling like she means something a little more than friend would normally imply.

“Whatever, mom. Thanks for the packages.” He says, sighing into the phone and staring up at the ceiling. 

“Oh, now, don’t be so fussy.” She says, her scolding voice on. “You were the one that wanted to live out in the big city, you know. The least you could do is try to be social and happy.”

Jiyong closes his eyes and runs a hand down his face. “I know, mom, I know. I’m sorry I was rude. I just…I had a lot of work to do today…” He lets the sentence trail off and hears her sigh on the other end.

“Alright dear, I’ll talk to you later…just make sure that nice young man gets the sweater!”

Jiyong nods, more for himself than for her benefit, and bids her goodnight. Once he’s ended the call, he leans forward and brings both hands up to his face, letting out a loud groan. Leave it to his mother to put him in such an uncomfortable position.

Truthfully, she would never really have to know whether or not he had given his next-door neighbor the sweater she’d sent along with the rest of his Christmas gifts; but he would know if he didn’t give it, and that was almost worse. There was also the fact that it was entirely possible for his mother to run into the man the next time she came down to visit, especially since she had managed to do so almost every time she’d visited since he’d moved here.

Daesung is, and Jiyong takes very little pleasure in admitting this (even to himself), the most attractive man he’d ever physically laid eyes on. On top of that, he just so happens to be one of the nicest men he’s ever met. Daesung had a wide and bewitching smile, the kind that made you want to smile as well. His hair was fluffy and always being flicked away from his bright eyes: it was enough to drive anyone mad.

Jiyong runs a hand through his messy mop of hair and sighs; he had had a long day and he wasn’t in the mood to go over and make a fool of himself just then. He pushes the box away from him with his foot and then stands up to stretch.

The best thing to do now is sleep, he thinks, moving toward the kitchen counter to shut off the lights before walking to his room. He gets to his room only to realize that it’s barely 8:00pm and he can’t make himself go to bed for at least another hour. His eyes land on his desk, and he decides that grading papers would be a productive thing to do before bed.

With a sigh that is more for show than really anything else, he sets about getting the papers situated and re-familiarizing himself with the material. He’s a half hour in when he sets down the paper he’s reading and rubs his forehead.

“Maybe I should just sleep.” He mutters to himself, before slowly pushing away from the desk to head to bed.

~

Daesung is pretty certain that Friday’s are a mean trick played on him by the universe.

As with most every Friday, Daesung’s morning started with a refreshing walk to work. This in and of itself is not a bad thing, except that it is December and he really should have fixed his schedule by now because ‘refreshing’ is rather stretching the truth considering the snow on the ground. His lunch break was spent finishing up the proposals that are always due by 3:00pm, but that no one has ever had finished in advance, so he didn’t get any time to enjoy his food.

Because he hadn’t really eaten, he had to endure a ride home with Seungri while his stomach growled at him petulantly and the younger man for not eating enough. But all of this could be considered a normal Friday for him. It’s as he walks up the steps and into the apartment building that he notices how much worse the day is going to be.

He can see in through the front window of the apartment beside his from the steps; and it looks like his neighbor is already home.

This in and of itself is not cause enough for alarm, as Jiyong was often home, and Daesung often saw him through the front window while on his way inside. No, it wouldn’t be strange except that Jiyong seemed to be decorating a Christmas tree, a soft smile on his face as he hung ornaments. Daesung’s breath catches in his throat as he watches his neighbor for a second through the window, before he realizes how weird it must look from the street and he hurries inside.

He takes a deep breath and flicks his bangs from his face as he punches in the keycode for his apartment and lets himself in. Friday was an awful day, full of coldness, stress, hunger, and Kwon Jiyong looking divine in his living room. Daesung shakes his head again to rid his mind of that thought, and continues on into his apartment, toeing his shoes off in the entryway before continuing.

Jiyong had moved into the apartment building around four months previously, and Daesung remembered the day rather vividly. He’d watched from his living room window as Jiyong and a friend has carried box after box into the building from the car parked on the curb. It had been an exceptionally hot day, and both men had been in tank tops; sweat dripping from them as they moved back and forth from the car to the building. Daesung had initially meant to ask if they needed help…but after watching them for a few minutes, he’d come to realize that he probably wouldn’t be able to speak to them, let alone actually help.

He sighs and leans forward over the counter, his hands holding him up. His strange attraction to Jiyong, who was anything but normal what with his ever-changing hair and his muscular friends, is something that he can’t explain or put an end to. He’s barely had an entire conversation with his neighbor! How could he be so attracted to the guy when all he knew about him, aside from physical appearance, is that he’s a teacher at a school nearby? He’s spoken more with Jiyong’s mother than with Jiyong himself, and that makes this whole thing even more ridiculous.

~

Jiyong normally stayed late on Fridays to try and get as much done as he could before the weekend started, but today he had decided to go home and decorate his sadly-barren Christmas tree. It was a compulsion that he had woken up to that morning, and he partly blamed the packages from his mother for that. He’d decided on his drive home that he would give Daesung the sweater his mother had knitted that afternoon, that way he wouldn’t have to keep thinking about it, and he could tell his mother truthfully that he’d delivered the package for her.

His brows furrow suddenly as he thinks about the sweater. Why hadn’t his mother just sent the package directly to Daesung? She definitely knows his address, and Jiyong is pretty sure that she knows his name. He shakes his head and purses his lips, holding up a length of silver garland before his face. His gaze shifts from the garland to the front window almost absently, and then darts back to the window again: Daesung was home.

He watches the man walk up the front walkway toward the building, the garland blocking his face from view. As Daesung gets closer, Jiyong starts to feel self-conscious and so turns back to the tree. He sighs as he drapes the garland around the boughs and wonders if maybe talking to Daesung would stop him from feeling so tense at the thought of the man. He nods to himself after a moment more of thought; he’d finish the tree, wash his hands, and deliver the gift to Daesung.

~

Daesung was baking cookies to give to some of his friends when there was a knock at the door. He almost didn’t hear it, his Christmas music was on rather loud, but then there was a pause between tracks and the sharp knock on his front door rang through the small apartment. He grabs a dish towel to wipe off his hands as he heads to the door to check, and makes only a small swipe at his left cheek to rid his face of potential flour.

He looks out the peep hole just as another knock sounds, and he’s surprised to see Jiyong standing on the other side. He flicks his bangs out of his face once, a nervous gesture, before slowly opening the door.

“Hey,” He says, and then mentally chides himself for the breathy sound his voice has taken on.

Jiyong fidgets nervously for a second, his hands behind his back before he seems to collect himself. “Baking?” He asks, raising an eyebrow and nodding toward the kitchen behind Daesung.

Fidgeting with the towel in his hands, Daesung nods and smiles. “Yes, cookies.” He replies, wishing that his voice would stop doing what it’s doing and go back to a more normal tone. “Would you like to come in?”

Jiyong nods after a second. “Yeah, sure… I mean, I didn’t mean to interrupt you…” He mutters, one of his hands coming up to brush his hair back from his face.

“No! No, you aren’t interrupting anything!” Daesung hurries to assure, as he ushers Jiyong into the entryway. Jiyong nods, a small smile on his face as he walks in. Daesung notes that Jiyong refuses to let him see whatever is behind his back as he comes into the room, but he decides not to comment, as he shuts the door and moves past Jiyong and toward the kitchen. “What do you need?” He asks, hoping that it doesn’t sound like he’s trying to hurry Jiyong along.

Jiyong walks slowly into the room, his eyes taking in the small differences between his own apartment and Daesung’s. It was the little details that were different between the two, and Jiyong thought that the more earthy and bare Christmas decorations that Daesung seemed to favor really fit him.

“I like your decorations.” He says softly, a finger touching the nose of an old-looking snowman wearing a checkered scarf and hat.

Daesung chuckles and Jiyong looks up to see that he’s behind the counter, forming balls out of dough. “Thank you,” He says, and Jiyong watches as Daesung rolls the dough in sugar and then places them on a baking sheet. “My friends say it makes me look more rustic than I am…but I can’t help the type of decorations I like.”

Jiyong flashes him a smile that was a little more amused than anything else, and Daesung feels his cheeks redden.

“Anyway,” Jiyong says, moving over to the counter and sitting down in one of the chairs as if he’s ever done that before. “I came over to give you something.” He says, and it takes a whole lot of his confidence to say it as nonchalantly as he did.

Daesung tilts his head to the side and wipes his hands on another dish towel. “Oh?” He asks, and he’s pleased to note that his voice is back to its normal sound. He picks up the sheets of cookies and turns to put them into the oven.

“Yes,” Jiyong says, and Daesung imagines that he’s sitting up straighter in the chair. “And you have to promise not to laugh.”

Daesung turns around at that, using his leg, then hip, to bump the oven door shut. He raises an eyebrow at Jiyong and his head to the side. “Do I really strike you as someone who would do such a thing?”

Jiyong narrows his eyes at the man across from him before waving a hand before his face in an attempt at erasing whatever he’d been thinking. “I honestly can’t say.” He says airily, before leaning down and lifting a box up onto the counter. Daesung had been about to laugh when the box was set down gently in front of Jiyong; he decided it best to hold it in.

“What…?” He starts, but trails off as Jiyong waves his hand again.

“So, because you helped her carry groceries in that time…” Jiyong starts, and Daesung nods, remembering how the woman had been so thankful for his help that he he’d felt bad for gawking at her son instead of helping when he’d moved in. “Well, she wanted to thank you again and so she asked me to give you this…” Jiyong, despite being perfectly composed outwardly, was inwardly dying while telling Daesung this.

“She needn’t have gotten me anything.” Daesung says, his voice doing that breathy thing again and he wonders if maybe he needs some water to help with it. He shakes his head and steps forward. “It’s very nice of her to think of me, but…”

Jiyong laughs, now, and Daesung is briefly worried that the other man had been playing a trick on him. But Jiyong just leans forward and places a hand on Daesung’s arm and shakes his head. “No, please, don’t worry about it. Honestly.” He composes himself and wipes at his face, pressing his fingertips against his cheeks as if he hadn’t laughed like that in a while and his cheeks were sore. “Open it before you say anything more.”

Daesung gives Jiyong a look that screams distrust, but Jiyong pushes the box closer making him have to grab it so that it doesn’t fall into the cookie dough. With a final look up at Jiyong, Daesung pulls off the ribbon and lifts open the box. Inside, amongst festive tissue paper, is a dark grey sweater. It looks handmade, and Daesung pulls it out of the box with one hand, moving the box to the end of the counter with the other.

“Is this homemade?” He asks, holding it up in front of him to really get a good look at it.

Jiyong clears his throat, and Daesung sees him rub the back of his neck over the top of the sweater. “Yes, well, mom is pretty into knitting, so.” He says, and Daesung smiles.

“It’s beautiful. But she really needn’t have gone to the trouble…” Daesung starts, but Jiyong waves him off.

“No, no, I told not to worry about it. She was very insistent that you get it.” He says, and Daesung chuckles as he folds the sweater and places it neatly back in the box. “She is worried that you can’t find good sweaters, for some reason, and so…” He gestures broadly at the box, and Daesung nods.

“It was very kind of her. You can tell her thank you for me.” He’s smiling still, and Jiyong bites his lip to stop himself from responding in kind.

“Yeah, of course. She’ll be thrilled.” He says, crossing his legs and leaning back in the chair. “Your cookies smell good…what kind?” He asks, and Daesung has to blink a couple of times to redirect his thoughts from Jiyong’s body to his question.

“Snickerdoodles…I’ve never made them before, but I figured I’d give it a try.” He says, turning to peer inside the oven and check their progress. It only took a few short minutes for them to cook, so they should be almost done. “I normally make chocolate chip.” He adds, and Jiyong nods.

“You’ve got flour on your face.” Jiyong says suddenly, leaning forward to brush it off when Daesung turns back to him. “I meant to say something earlier,” He says quietly, his eyes trained on Daesung’s cheek as his hand brushes over it.

“But?” Daesung asks, his voice back to breathy and his heart stuttering in his chest as Jiyong’s hand stills against his cheek.

“But you look so cute like this that I didn’t want to ruin it.” He replies, before pulling his hand away and standing up. “I should go…” He says, his eyes trained on a spot above Daesung’s head.

“Oh, sorry, I shouldn’t have kept you…” Daesung says, even though he knows that he wasn’t at fault for anything.

“No, no it’s me, I shouldn’t be taking up your time like this. I’ll just go.” He says quickly, turning toward the entryway and starting forward.

“It’s alright, you know.” Daesung says, and Jiyong can feel his cheeks burning and he doesn’t want to turn around. “I enjoyed your company… you can come by anytime…” He finishes, and Jiyong can’t decide if Daesung has control over the different tones his voice takes but he’s certain that he’d like to figure it out.

With a deep breath he turns around to lock eyes with Daesung. “I’ll take you up on that sometime.” He says, throwing in a bit of a smirk before heading to the door and putting on his shoes. “See you later, Daesung.” He says, and Daesung comes out to the entryway to watch him leave.

“Yes, of course.” He says, his heart still beating rather hard and his mind buzzing: he said my name.