Jinki moves out of the dorm on a Thursday in early September and Kibum feels the loss of him like that of warmth in the depths of winter.

It’s not so bad at first, Kibum works too much for his tired brain to realize he is hanging off the edge of his sanity by a thread. Sometimes the dancer mollifies himself with the notion that nobody seems to realize Jinki has left him. In actuality Kibum is sure this fact is glaringly obvious, from the whispering and sudden silences he walks into. Really, there is no enigma in being the only one who doesn’t get a hug or a ‘take care!’ text. He’d have even settled for “Listen, Kibum, I’m because leaving because of you.” At least then he’d have clarity to cling to. Maybe then he wouldn’t have felt as stupid as he did bringing home Colombian food and that movie Taemin has been ranting about. Then, maybe, he’d be able to see Jinki around the studio and agency and not feel this crippling sense of distance…of loss.

Sometimes Kibum wakes with a dizzying start, adrenaline racing with the blood in his veins. This odd type of fear crawls all over him in the dark, and all he feels is insecurity and neglect and the glaring reality that the best night of his life has lead to the worst morning.

Kibum can’t seem to forget Jinki’s lean, graceless body beside his on the living-room couch. A documentary on the growth and harvest of Marigolds playing dully on the TV but the sound was a welcome alternative to silence. Kibum has no idea why Jinki had bothered to sit there with him, when all the other members had long since wondered off to bed. He’d had one too many glasses of wine during dinner to remember when he’d begun studying the gentle curve of Jinki’s jaw, the sharp angle of his cheekbones.

Suddenly Jinki is studying him too, except his long fingers are curving against Kibum’s knee and the heat of his palm is burning a path along the shape of his thigh. He wants to tell Jinki that religion is in the flushed, carved surface of his upper lip, and solace in the round, pouty outline of his bottom lip. Kibum swallows audibly, realizing he’s gone and muttered it out loud.

Warm breath leaves Jinki in a shuddering mess of air at this. “Are you okay, Kibummie?” His asks carefully. “Do you want to lay down for a bit?” Kibum shivers at the nickname and, without thinking about it, points to the TV.

“I want one of those. Hyung, get it for me?” Kibum’s eyelashes are dark and long and flutter against the paler canvas of his cheeks as he makes a show of looking up at Jinki. Jinki’s lips tilt up gently at this, and in that interval of breath Kibum is so sure that Jinki wants him, craves him. It takes everything he can to not repeat how those eyelids had drawn down leisurely, how Jinki’s warm fingertips had trailed across his nape.

Nothing could make him dismiss how those lips had called to him in the dark, soft and heart-shaped. There was no question in the gentle gasp that had blown across his face one second and a wet mouth sliding against his the next. There was something so ironically tender in that driven, wet, greedy exchange that Kibum had rushed to press himself to the expanse of Jinki, reveling in the feeling of their hearts pounding the same jagged, disjointed rhythm.

“Hyung,” Kibum had groaned in careless euphoria along the shell of Jinki’s blushed ear, which he thinks back on with an excess of self-loathing. How ing desperate can you be? But It all ends in a few seconds and Kibum breathes while his eyes dart around to find his room the same as ever.

Kibum can only imagine how Minho and Jonghyun had helped Jinki move.

He’d heard about it that night, when Minho had taken the food from his hands and tried to calm the panicked and dreadfully confused glint in his eyes. “What do you mean, Hyung moved out?” Kibum settles on that it was probably done in a bubble of sweetness and well-wishing and he hates that the thought makes him both relieved and horridly bitter. Kibum tends to picture it a lot, actually, like when he’s drinking coffee or getting groceries at night. His mind always paints the same picture - how the sun was probably shining across the trees and sidewalks and line of the sweat on Jinki’s neck. Sometimes he wishes he’d been there that morning too, just to hear what excuse Jinki’d have for never mentioning he’d been looking for a place for months.

No, Kibum’s glad he’d been MC-ing that day because he probably would have exploded into a ball of splitting anger, explained for the world how Lee Jinki had kissed him within an inch of his life the night before.

“I think manager-hyung gets dressed in the dark,” Minho gossips, the timbre of his voice low and private.

Kibum only needs to raise a single brow to express how the pot shouldn’t call the kettle black, Minho. An utterly affronted look transforms Minho’s face into something only mildly attractive and Kibum is helpless against the nearly maniacal laugh that beats out of him until he is nothing but wet eyes, curving lips and shyly blossoming dimples. He doesn’t notice the way Minho’s narrowed eyes soften, too, because that’s when he sees Jinki in the mirror of the dance room. Kibum admits the cooler winds of Autumn have been kind to him, have turned the sun-kissed accent of his skin back into its natural hue. In the lights of the practice room, his eyes are their striking reddish brown that make Kibum want to wax poetry about the color of Ethiopian coffee beans.

The conversation the practice room has died a shamelessly fast death, and Kibum finds the weight of Jinki’s stare is a heavy, intense thing. So intense that Kibum can feel the caress of those eyes trailing from the curve of his back to the arc of his bare calves. 

Jinki didn’t have practice today, Kibum had checked…twice. He and Jonghyun were supposed to be laying harmonies on a track. Instead, Jinki’s is standing there, silent for a moment before his fingers are brushing through his hair, drawing the silky strands apart, leaving them to settle gently into each other. The thick lines of his eyebrows are drawn closer together, his expression a clear picture of vulnerability.

“What-” Minho starts in that demanding authoritative tone only he can pull off, but trails when he hears the strangled noise that leaves Kibum’s throat.

Kibum breathes uneasily, his eyes still unable to leave the newly discovered bouquet of paper marigolds in Jinki’s hands.