”I won’t say sorry first,” Jaehyun mumbles to himself over and over as he paces the floor outside Doyoung’s room. Doyoung isn’t home, he went out with Taeyong and Yuta over an hour ago and Jaehyun doesn’t expect him back for another two, at least. His petulant mantra is to convince himself that he can ride this out. Doyoung may be mad at him for his thoughtless words, but Jaehyun is mad at Doyoung for provoking them out of him.

“It’s just one sweater. I haven’t done laundry in two weeks. I need it,” he reasons to himself and finally goes for the door. He opens it with too much force and all but falls through it, right into Doyoung’s organised mess. In a second, he has located the hoodie Doyoung wore last night, slung over his wheelie chair. He snatches it up and hurries out of the room as if his tail was on fire, slamming the door shut in his rush to get back to his own bedroom. Pulling the hoodie over his head, he crawls back into bed to continue watching his movie.

Doyoung comes home two hours and eighteen minutes later, hauling his heavy books in his arms and in a thick satchel on his shoulder. Ever since he switched to law he has been claiming he’ll end up with biceps bigger than Johnny’s, their forever-absent, third roommate. Jaehyun thinks about that a lot.

He pauses his movie when he hears the front door open and watches tensely as Doyoung walks right past his intentionally left-wide-open door. It’s been four days since Doyoung last greeted him, two since the last time he did as much as grunt at him. Jaehyun breathes in deep and smells Doyoung, tucks his chin into the collar of the hoodie he stole and inhales deeply. He has always liked the way Doyoung smells, clean, with no excessive cologne to mask his natural scent. Doyoung doesn’t like cologne. Jaehyun doesn’t want to admit it’s the reason why he stopped wearing it.

He sighs again when he hears the door to Doyoung’s room close. He misses Doyoung, misses their conversations, making dinner together because neither of them like eating alone, he misses just sitting next to him in one of their comfortable silences.

Expecting to have Doyoung come barging in once he realises he’s missing a hoodie, Jaehyun wiggles under his covers and turns on his side, curling his arms around a pillow as he hits play on the dreadfully boring documentary about medieval architecture.

He goes to bed four hours later without seeing Doyoung once.

Jaehyun doesn’t do laundry for another week, he has two drawers of underwear for exactly this reason, and feels perfectly validated in sneaking into Doyoung’s room when he’s in the shower to borrow a t-shirt and flannel shirt to wear with his skinny jeans. It’s not weird, he thinks, as he jogs to the front door, yelling “bye!” in a too high voice before he leaves. He has borrowed clothes from Doyoung before, and Doyoung has borrowed clothes from him plenty of times, it’s just they usually ask beforehand and don’t sneak around like a criminal in their own home the way Jaehyun has been doing in the last days.

He runs into Johnny in the hallway, literally, and Johnny laughs as he steadies him.

“He’s gonna catch on, you know,” he says, tugging at the folded collar of Jaehyun’s shirt before stumbling his way into their apartment. Well, Jaehyun has been hoping since day one that Doyoung would catch on, that was kind of the point.

His mom is waving at him through the open window in her car even before he exits the lobby and in an instant, Jaehyun feels better about the y situation he is in with Doyoung. Spending the weekend at home with his parents is going to be a welcome reprieve.

“You’re back,” Doyoung says when he steps through the door on Sunday evening, and Jaehyun smiles brightly at him until he catches onto the snide tone in Doyoung’s voice. As he watches Doyoung gather his bowl of soup and a plastic-wrapped, convenience store muffin into his hands and walk to his bedroom, he can’t help but think that things are even worse now than before he left.

It’s been sixteen days since he and Doyoung had a proper conversation and Jaehyun is starting to genuinely miss him. He sees Doyoung every day, sometimes only for a few moments, but most days Doyoung moves about their apartment like he always has and still Jaehyun misses him. He misses the brief pats on his head that Doyoung would sometimes give when he passed him sitting on the couch, and he misses stealing a spoonful of Doyoung’s cereal every morning because he always bought the better one. He misses how Doyoung would laugh at his jokes while also calling them lame and he misses how he would always get so flustered whenever Jaehyun complimented his singing. He misses listening to Doyoung sing.

“I think you should have continued with music,” Jaehyun says without fully realising he was speaking. The already silent room grows even quieter as Johnny stops eating and Doyoung’s finger stops on the page of his textbook as his eyes fly to Jaehyun. Doyoung looks at him for several long, agonizing, seconds and then he slams his book shut and rises from the kitchen chair.

“Yes, you seem to think a lot of things about me lately,” he says and storms off. When they hear the door slam shut, Johnny tsks and puts his fork down.

“Why did you say that Jaehyun?” he asks and Jaehyun furrows his brow in regret.

“I didn’t mean to. I was just thinking how I miss hearing him sing and it slipped out!” He really hadn’t meant to; he knows how difficult it was for Doyoung to turn away from his lifelong dream for what he calls a more sensible career option. His parent’s opinion, word for word.

Johnny sighs again and reaches out to ruffle a hand through Jaehyun’s hair.

“You’re really good at making things worse, you know that,” he says, but his voice is full of fondness. Jaehyun knows that very well; his biggest fault is his inability to handle emotional disputes. Especially with Doyoung, who’s heart is like a crystal treasure, transparent and fragile. He knows he hurt Doyoung this time, even if he didn’t mean a word of what he said to him.

“What did you say anyway?” Johnny asks and Jaehyun has been waiting for it. He mulls it over in his mind, going back and forth on if he should be honest with Johnny or tell him some bull lie like he has every other time.

“He was flirting with this guy from his class and I confronted him about it because I didn’t think he should be doing that when he already has a … “ the words fall out of him with no finesse, but still he gets stuck on the word boyfriend. It won’t pass his lips.

“I got mad because he didn’t seem to care and I may have … said some mean things that I didn’t mean.” His ears are burning red and he can’t look at Johnny. No more bull lies it seems.

“Doyoung has a boyfriend?” Johnny asks, not at all what Jaehyun was expecting.

“Taeyong?” Jaehyun asks, blinking his eyes at Johnny in confusion.

“Noooo,” Johnny says, features twisting in a comical mix of surety and bewilderment.

“No?” Jaehyun asks, sinking slowly into his chair as realisation starts to sink in. He always just assumed, with the way Doyoung talks about Taeyong, and how Taeyong treats Doyoung whenever they’re together, that they were more than friends. He never wanted to confirm it though, to avoid making it real, and that seems to have been his mistake.

Doyoung is avoiding him for real now. It’s not like Jaehyun doesn’t deserve it. He desperately wants to fix things though; he can’t stand knowing that he has hurt Doyoung so much. But it doesn’t stop him from sneaking into his room to steal his clothes.

Doyoung is getting ready to go out, talking with Taeyong on speaker phone as he picks clothes from the laundry rack in the living room and goes back and forth between the bathroom and his bedroom. Johnny is nudging his foot under the table and Jaehyun huffs at him and keeps his eyes on his bowl of crappy cereal.

“Okay, where the hell is my grey bomber jacket?!” Doyoung storms around the corner from the hallway, dressed in a nice pair of chinos and a white t-shirt, with his hair styled up to show off his forehead. Jaehyun loves when he does that.

“I’m talking to you Jung Jaehyun!” he says loudly, not quite yelling but almost, and Jaehyun physically starts at the sharp tone of his voice.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re wearing my t-shirt right now!”

“I’m out,” Johnny mumbles and leaves the apartment entirely. Jaehyun starts moving erratically, mumbling unintelligible words as he fumbles out of the kitchen chair and around Doyoung who stands still in the middle of the floor, staring him down. He is in and out of his bedroom in record time, returning with Doyoung’s really nice bomber jacket that he borrowed the day before.

“I’m sorry,” he says when he hands it over, apologising for so much more than his recent hoarding and somehow, despite all the anger and hurt, Doyoung must have understood that.

He dials a number on his phone and lifts it to his ear, and for ten agonizing seconds, Jaehyun feels the most rejected he has ever felt in his life. Then Doyoung speaks.

“Taeyong, I’m going to have to cancel,” he says, adding a sorry before abruptly ending the call.

“Go on,” he says to Jaehyun and Jaehyun grips the thin jacket hard as he blinks rapidly at Doyoung and takes a deep breath.

“I didn’t mean what I said about you, I don’t think you’re like that, I was so upset and frustrated and it was the worst thing I could think of, but I didn’t mean any of it. And then when I told you I didn’t think you should have quit music, I didn’t mean it like that either, I was just thinking how much I missed you singing and it came out all wrong and I’m so sorry for that, I’m sorry for everything. Also, I’m sorry for stealing your clothes!” He says it all in a rushed monologue, desperate to get through his planned apology before his tongue ties itself in a knot and makes it impossible for him to speak.

“Why were you upset?” Doyoung says, throwing Jaehyun for a loop. None of his conversations seem to pan out the way he imagined these days. He can only blink at Doyoung.

“Tell me why you were upset, Jaehyun,” Doyoung says, commands really, but Jaehyun can’t find any words to say as his mind is wiped clean. It feels like Doyoung is coaxing him into revealing something Jaehyun has locked away inside his heart ages ago. But he can’t possibly know, can he?

“Honestly, Jaehyun! I already know! I just want to hear you say it!” Okay, so maybe he does know.

“I love you,” he whispers, so quiet he barely hears it himself. Doyoung sighs, and then he smiles, and then, in a move so unexpected Jaehyun is left gaping unattractively, he leans in and places a chaste kiss on Jaehyun’s lips.

“I love you too, you stupid idiot.”

“That’s a redundancy.”

“Shut up, I taught you that.”