Jeonghan stood outside of his door with his keys in hand. His work shift had been the worst. He was constantly thinking about Jihoon and about coming home to him. He had been going over the possibilities in his head. Either Jihoon felt the same way he did and everything would be beyond great. Or he didn't feel the same and Jeonghan was going to have to pretend to be fine and brush it off so it wouldn't completely ruin their friendship. One last deep breath to calm down his nerves before he finally opened the door. The lights were out, which was unexpected. He flipped the switch and took off his coat. “Jihoon?” he asked an empty room.

He walked over to Jihoon's bedroom and knocked on the door, “Jihoon? Are you there? I'm home.” When he didn't get a response he decided to go in. The lights were off in there too. He felt around for the switch and lightened up the room. No one was there. Something felt different. Jihoon never had a lot of stuff in this room to begin with, but it felt emptier than before. With his heart in this throat Jeonghan walked over to the closet and he pulled open the doors. Empty. All of Jihoon's clothes were gone. He ran over to the dresser and frantically opened all of the drawers. Empty, all of it. He was gone.

With his legs shaking Jeonghan walked backwards and sat down on the bed. He pressed a hand against his mouth to stifle a sob. There he had his answer. He had been right. Jihoon didn't love him and now he had ruined everything.

<>

“I still don't get why we have to come here when your kitchen is a lot bigger and better equipped.” Mingyu complained as the tried to balance several bags of groceries in his arms while following Seungkwan up the stairs of Hansol's apartment building.

“I told you. Hansol is working all weekend and he won't have time to come over. The food is a surprise.”

“But why do I have to make it?”

“Because you're a much better cook than Seungkwan is.” Minghao, who was just tagging along to be with his boyfriend, said as he took a bag from him so he wouldn't fall down the stairs.

“Not sure if you were trying to compliment him or insult me, but you're right.” Seungkwan laughed in response. He fished the key to Hansol's apartment from his coat pocket and was about to open the door when he spotted the landlord eying them from his own doorway.

“You're not having a party, are you?” He seemed grouchy and overall unpleasant, but Seungkwan had learned over the months that he wasn't really a bad guy.

“No, sir.” Seungkwan smiled at him. “Just making some dinner for Hansol.”

The landlord grunted, “Well, be sure to tell him that I need all the keys back and I have to see the place before I can give him his deposit back.”

“His deposit?” Seungkwan questioned.

“Yeah, you know, his safety deposit. I'll need to inspect the place after he's all done moving out before I can give it to him. Anyway, just tell him that, alright?” He stared Mingyu and Minghao up and down one last time before he slammed his door shut.

“That was weird.” Mingyu said.

Seungkwan nodded and opened the door with a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. The first thing that caught his eye was the stack of moving boxes against the wall. Then Seungkwan started to notice how tidy the place was. All of Hansol's random crap that usually lingered around the living room was gone.

“Is Hansol moving? Why didn't you say anything?” Mingyu asked Seungkwan, clearly missing the tension in the air.

“He's not moving. Or...well...he hasn't said anything to me.”

“It would explain why the landlord was talking about the deposit.” Minghao pointed out.

“But...” Seungkwan didn't understand what was happening. Why would Hansol move out of his apartment and not tell him? “Wait, let me just call him.”

With his phone in his hand he paced around the room waiting for his boyfriend to pick up and explain everything. Minghao and Mingyu looked at each other with worried eyes. They didn't think this was going to end well.

Seungkwan's heart skipped a beat when Hansol finally answered his call, “Hansol, I'm standing in your apartment right now and it's all packed up in boxes. What's going on?”

“Oh ...” Momentary silence, “You weren't supposed to find out that I'm leaving m-” he got cut off by another person's voice.

“Who are you talking to?” the voice said, “Hang up! Don't tell them where we are!”

Seungkwan had completely frozen at the word 'leaving', but he snapped back into consciousness when he recognized the voice of the person Hansol was with, “Is that Jihoon!? Why are you with him?”

“No, no, it's nobody! Listen, Seungkwan, I can't talk right now. I'm sorry you found out like this, but I have my reasons, okay?”

There was a disturbance as if someone was trying to take the phone from him and the other voice, that Seungkwan was now sure of belonged to Jihoon, took over, “He's busy. Don't call.”

Seungkwan lowered his phone when the connection broke and he stared at the screen where Hansol's name was still visible.

“Well?” Mingyu asked, “What did he say?”

“I, eh, he said something about leaving and having his reasons. And he's with Jihoon.” Seungkwan looked up from his phone, “Minghao, can you try calling Jihoon? Maybe he'll tell you what's going on.”

Minghao nodded. He shook his head when his call got ignored. “I'll try Jeonghan. He usually knows what Jihoon is up to these days.”

Seungkwan nodded, but he felt himself shaking and had trouble holding back tears. Mingyu walked over and wrapped his arms around him, “Don't worry. We'll get this sorted out. I'm sure it's just some big misunderstanding.” He hoped Seungkwan would believe his words, because he wasn't sure he believed them himself.

***

Jeonghan was still sitting on Jihoon's bed when Minghao called him. His tears had dried up, but he hadn't mustered up the strength to get up. “Hey, Hao. What's up?” he answered the call.

“Do you know where Jihoon is?”

Jeonghan took a deep breath, “No. No, I don't. Why?”

“Is it possible he's at work or something?”

“Not unless he has some secret job that I don't know about. Construction site is closed in the weekend. You still haven't told me why you want to know where he is.”

“We want to know where Hansol is actually, but he hung up on Seungkwan and he seems to be with Jihoon. So...”

“I feel like I'm missing some information here, Hao.”

“We're at Hansol's place right now and it looks like he's moving out, but he didn't tell Seungkwan and when he tried calling him he got hung up on. I called Hoon but he wouldn't answer.”

Jeonghan stood up from the bed. His sadness and self-blame was rapidly making way for anger. Not only did Jihoon leave without saying a word, Hansol went with him? The more he thought about it, the more it pissed him off. How could Jihoon just pack up and leave? Even if he didn't feel the same way, their friendship deserved more and he wasn't going to let him get away with it. He wasn't just going to let him leave like this. Neither one of them.

“Hao? You said you're at Hansol's apartment, right? Tell Seungkwan to wait there. I'm coming over!”

***

Sure enough not long after that Jeonghan showed up at Hansol's apartment. Mingyu had started dinner in the hopes it would provide some sort of comfort in this weird situation. Minghao opened the door to let Jeonghan in. He walked in and marched over to where Seungkwan was sitting with a sad look on his face.

“All right, so here's what we're not going to do.” He started and Seungkwan looked up at him in surprise, “We're not going to allow ourselves to drown in a pool of self-pity and doubt. We're going to go after those two and demand an apology or and explanation or something! They think they can just leave us!?”

Seungkwan stared at him not sure how to react or how Jeonghan even fit into this narrative. Mingyu, who had momentarily left his food to check on what was happening, got closer and said in a low voice, “We don't really know if Hansol left...”

Jeonghan scoffed, “His apartment is all packed up and he didn't even tell his boyfriend about his plans to move? Doesn't look very good, does it? And Jihoon,” He huffed, “I tell that little bastard I'm in love with him and he runs for the hills? Not today, Satan, not today!”

“You what!?” All eyes turned to Minghao who had yelled at a volume people didn't think was possible.

“I told him that I'm in love with him, but that's not the point! The point is that he can't just leave without telling anyone. Been there, done that.”

“Han, wait. I don't understand. Since when are you in love with him? And why would he leave if...I'm sure he loves you too. So I don't understand why he would leave.”

“Well, that's what I'm going to find out. Come on, Seungkwan!” He marched to the door and Seungkwan, confused as he was, followed. Jeonghan himself wasn't even sure what was coming over him. He was pumped up with emotion and adrenaline and perhaps this was just his irrational way of dealing with heartbreak, but at this point he didn't even care. He was going to find Jihoon and demand to have his heart broken to his face.

“Jeonghan, one question.” Seungkwan said, “This whole tracking them down and demanding an explanation is, ehm, a nice idea and all, but how are we supposed to find them? We have no idea where they are.”

Jeonghan scoffed and turned around with a devilish smirk on his face that scared Seungkwan a little, “Jihoon isn't as smart as he likes to think that he is.” He held up his phone. “When he got out I gave him a new phone. It's linked to mine. We can just follow his GPS signal.”

After getting stopped by Mingyu who insisted they should at least take some food with them, Jeonghan and Seungkwan got in the car Jeonghan had come in and started their unusual road trip. It was quiet in the car. While they had talked before and were far from strangers by now, they had never actually spend any time alone with just the two of them. Seungkwan was torn between staring out the window in silence while Jeonghan drove so he could worry about Hansol and their relationship, or filling the silence with a heartfelt conversation. He cast a glance to the driver's seat and decided on the latter.

“Do you, eh, want to talk about it?” he asked a bit hesitant.

“Hm?”

“About Jihoon. Do you want to talk about it?”

“What's there to talk about?”

“Well, like, what happened?” Minghao, one of Jeonghan's closest friends was clearly shocked to learn Jeonghan was in love with Jihoon, so it wasn't weird for Seungkwan to be completely clueless as to what was going on with those two.

Jeonghan sighed, “Like I explained in my little outburst earlier, I told him that I'm in love with him. When I got back from work he and all of his things were gone. I was preparing myself for the possibility he would turn me down, but I didn't think he'd just leave.”

“Did Jihoon hang up on you, too, when you tried to call him?”

“I didn't tried to call him. I don't want to confront him over the phone. I want to see his face.”

Seungkwan nodded. He kind of understood that. He hesitated for a moment, not sure if he would upset Jeonghan with his next question, “Is Jihoon the reason you broke up with Cheol and Jisoo?”

Jeonghan sighed again, “I suppose so. Although I didn't really realize that at the time. Are they...how are they by the way? I haven't spoken to them much lately...”

“They're okay. I think they miss you, but, honestly, I think it was best for their relationship too. They seem freer or something.”

“That's good. I'm glad to hear that.”

Seungkwan let out a small gasp when his phone went off, but he sank back when he saw who it was, “Speak of the devil. Seungcheol is calling me. I'll bet anything Mingyu called him and told him what's going on. Although he probably left out the part where you're in love with someone else.”

“Aren't you going to pick up?”

Seungkwan shook his head, “Nah, he'll just try to talk some sense into me that going on this wild goose chase with you isn't the best idea.” He declined the call and muted his phone.

“He'll worry, you know. Can you at least send him a message that you're okay and not alone.”

Seungkwan rolled his eyes, “Fine.”

“He already knows, by the way.”

“What?” Seungkwan mumbled as he typed his message to his friend.

“Seungcheol. He knows about my feelings for Jihoon. In fact, he's the one who basically told me to confess to him.”

Seungkwan smiled softly. Seungcheol was such a softy for romance, even if it involved his own ex-lover.

The conversation died down again and this, unfortunately, gave Seungkwan time alone with his thoughts. Thoughts about Hansol. What possible explanation could there be that didn't involve him leaving him. Maybe Seungkwan had become too bothersome for him or Hansol had realized he didn't love him anymore. But how could that be. Didn't he always say how much he loved him? Maybe that was true, but it wasn't enough anymore? Without realizing it he had started to bounce his leg up and down and his hands were moving around restlessly.

“Are you okay?” Jeonghan's gentle voice snapped him out of it.

“Can we put on some music or something? This whole thing is stressing me out and giving me a headache and...” He didn't finish his sentence hoping the unspoken words enough for Jeonghan to understand what he was thinking about. Not so long ago this would have been a perfect moment for him to pop some pills.

“Of course. Put on whatever you want. If this GPS is right it's about another hour or so.”

Seungkwan's head was too much of a mess to know what he wanted to listen to, so he just the radio to whatever. When a song came on that he knew the words to he absentmindedly sang along. Jeonghan decided to join him when a song far too happy for the situation filled the car. On any other day this road trip might have actually been incredibly fun.

It was several towns over, one much smaller than the one they were from, that Jeonghan turned the radio off. “We're almost there.” It was already quite late by now and the streets were quiet. Jeonghan parked the car and turned off the engine in front of the building that Hansol and Jihoon were supposed to be at. Jeonghan leaned forward and stared across the street at the building. The lights were still on. It was easy to see since the windows didn't have any curtains. “What the is this.” he spat, “Why did they run off together to go and live above some dingy bar?”

Seungkwan stared as well. “Do you really think they're in there?”

“I'm going to go find out. Come on!”