She’d been pretty, but Jongkook couldn’t remember her name as he walked home alone after their date. Yuji? Yeji? Something like that. Her hair had looked soft to the touch, just tickling her bare shoulders in that navy blue dress she’d worn, the one that told him in a glance that she had a good sense of style and would always look good on his arm. She was lovely, really. He’d already texted his mom telling her so.

She was the one who’d arranged the meeting. Every so often she’d become frenzied in a fresh wave of panic, calling him in the early hours of the morning after she’d been kept awake by the thought of her still unmarried boy. She’d ask him to go on a date with the daughter of one of her friends, or the niece of someone she knew from her yoga class, it was amazing how extensively his mom’s social circle could reach in the search for unmarried young women. Each time he’d agree to the date. He’d go because… he had no reason he could give not to.

Every time his mom asked him with hopeful eyes, “are you seeing anyone lately?”, he had to say no, he wasn’t seeing anyone, and watch her shoulders slump before she quickly stepped back into pretending not to be disappointed, telling him he’d meet the right girl soon. He could never reply to that. Usually, he’d pretend to be distracted, playing with whatever homemade meal she’d cooked for him, or else he’d try to strike up a conversation with his dad about how his shares were doing. He didn’t like to give his mom false hope, but the alternative was worse. How could he say to her, “my right girl is a guy”?

So, every few months, he picked out a smart-ish (not too smart, he didn’t want to overdo it) suit, and went to some nearby restaurant where he had to make a couple of hours’ worth of conversation with a stranger who he’d report back to his mom as being “lovely”, but who he’d also never see again. For now, it was enough for his mom to see that he was making the effort to get out there and meet girls pre-approved by her. She thought so much of her son that she never questioned him not seeing them again, presuming they couldn’t have been good enough for him, and was content with that. After all, he was a celebrity, he could afford to be picky, even now he was approaching 40.

Still, he didn’t like these evenings. He dreaded them as they approached, and the melancholy of them followed him around for a couple of days afterwards. He didn’t like to lie, but it was made inevitable by his situation. He had to pretend he was interested, or at least that he could be interested, in all these pretty girls. They sat across from him at tables in restaurants, faces earnest, eyes keen. For the first half an hour or so, they often treated him like he couldn’t be real, that the man they’d seen on the TV couldn’t really be sat opposite them. One girl had even admitted, giggling into her napkin, that she had a poster of him on her wall. He’d tried to smile, find it cute, but it was difficult when he thought of what she’d think of him a couple of days from now. All of these girls he met would forever after this date see him as cold, insincere, and not the guy he presented himself as on TV at all, when he never answered their calls or invited them out again. He felt sorry that they got dragged into being part of this charade to keep his mom happy.

On the way home from this particular date, the one with the girl whose name ended in –ji, Jongkook was feeling particularly low. The girl had talked at length to him; she hadn’t been a fangirl, but she said she admired him on Running Man, said she thought his determination and strength of character were admirable. Then she’d said, God why did she have to, she’d said that she liked how he and Gwangsoo acted together, that they played off each other “like a dysfunctional couple”. It was a throwaway remark. He’d heard similar lots of times before; they were like Yin and Yang onscreen. But in this context, halfway through their starter of pea soup, it made him feel suddenly ashamed and exposed for the fraud he was. She continued to talk, moving topics from Running Man to other TV shows she liked, while his mind stayed fixed firmly on Gwangsoo. As she spoke, he only took in enough to laugh and make noises of agreement at the right points. His mind had wandered to Gwangsoo, his big, soulful eyes that caused his heart to stutter every time they were him. His ungainly body, that looked like it could bring him athletic achievements with its impressive stature, but never did because his legs would never make strides long enough without tripping over themselves first. He was thinking about Gwangsoo’s neck, how it felt to the length of it, nip playfully, or sometimes possessively, at the tender skin there and hear Gwangsoo gasp and moan beneath his touch. As Ji-girl was telling him about her family, Jongkook was thinking about the flat plain of Gwangsoo’s stomach, the way he watched it rise and fall after sometimes, deep and fast, covered in a thin sheen of sweat that was made Jongkook so pleased to have caused it that he was often aroused once again by the sight of it.

After a while of his mind going places it shouldn’t, not here not now, Ji-girl asked him a question. He hadn’t heard anything she’d been saying for the past ten minutes. He quickly bluffed his way through it, feigning shyness all of a sudden, which, by her laugh, she found endearing.

It was at that moment that Jongkook decided he really was a horrible person, and it was that thought that had kept his mind firmly in the conversation for the rest of the date, trying to keep only the girl in front of him as his focus. He felt guilty that he wasn’t thinking of the girls he spoke to while he was speaking to them. It disgusted him that he went on dates with women, possibly raised their hopes and made them believe things about him, while his mind and heart were firmly elsewhere, firmly out-of-reach, firmly already taken. They didn’t deserve that. He shouldn’t be doing this.

This, rather than Gwangsoo for once, was what occupied his mind on the solitary walk home. Self-preservation shouldn’t come at the cost of hurting others, he was set on that fact, and what he was doing now was without question hurting others. It hurt these women. It hurt his mom, who he was lying to each and every day. And it hurt Gwangsoo. Not that Gwangsoo himself would ever say, of course. He pretended to support the idea that Jongkook had to keep his mom reassured, but Jongkook could hardly miss the way he was always taken up with something else when he was getting ready to go out on one of these dates. There was something on TV he’d been dying to see. He had to call the producer of his drama and find out his filming dates. He’d seen some cooking show and there was a recipe he was going to try. Jongkook always dressed alone in their bedroom, desperately aware of the sounds of Gwangsoo pretending to be busy elsewhere in the apartment. And as he went to leave each time, Gwangsoo never met his eye as he called out his falsely-cheery “have a good time, hyung!”.

Jongkook knew he was hurting everyone around him, and he didn’t think he could stand to be a person that selfish for much longer. As he arrived at the door of his apartment, the decision came to him naturally, not something he had to consciously choose, it was just too obvious now that there was no other way.

He let himself in, taking his shoes off in the entry-way. The lights were still on, and he could hear the mumble of the TV in the next room. Gwangsoo was still up. He always was when Jongkook arrived home last, said he couldn’t sleep until he knew he was home and safe, no matter how much Jongkook chided him for being ridiculous and losing sleep for no good reason.

“Hyung?” Came the younger man’s voice, high and inquisitive, judging for Jongkook’s mood. Sometimes he came back from dates not even able to look Gwangsoo in the face, and would disappear to the bedroom feigning a headache. Not tonight. Tonight was different, and it was the last time.

“I’m back,” Jongkook called, his own voice surprising him with its lightness, as if the decision he’d made only seconds before had lifted something from inside of him and taken some of the bitterness that was never far from the surface along with it.

Gwangsoo appeared, popping his head round the door. His face broke into a grin merely at the sight of Jongkook, whose chest, in turn, suddenly felt it was overflowing fit to burst with love for the graceless, awkward, ridiculous man stood in front of him.

“You’re back,” Was all Gwangsoo said, with so much warmth and relief and welcoming, that it was enough to spur Jongkook forward to close the space between them. He pulled Gwangsoo down with an arm around his neck into a tight hug, hoping he was expressing everything he was feeling for him in the closeness of their bodies. Gwangsoo laughed, the sound vibrating into Jongkook’s chest and making him laugh along with him for no reason at all except that Gwangsoo could do that to him. Could bring him such immense, purposeless happiness just from being himself.

“I love you,” Jongkook said into Gwangsoo’s ear, kissing behind it before nuzzling into his neck. “God, I love you,”

He didn’t say those words much, not nearly enough, it made him feel awkward to say it aloud normally, but right now, in this moment, he was more frustrated that there weren’t words bigger to express what he felt for Gwangsoo.

“Why are you being so weird?” Gwangsoo laughed, his long arms holding Jongkook firmly in place, “I – Hyung, I love you too - but what’s got into you? Did you drink?”

For a moment, Jongkook closed his eyes, held close to him the feeling of Gwangsoo’s body pressed so close against his own, arms encircling him that were more like home than the apartment they lived in ever would  be. There was no question that his decision was right, as he took in everything he had here, in this man and what they’d almost accidentally, in a fumbling way so charactersitc of Gwangsoo but not at all of himself, built together between them. For anything he might stand to lose, that he had this to keep would be enough. More than enough.

“I’m going to tell my mom about me,” Jongkook said after a long moment of peaceful quiet of holding and being held. “About us.”

He felt Gwangsoo stiffen for a second, pull back enough that he could look him in the face. His expression was shocked, not far from those silly faces he pulled every time he ran into him in a nametag elimination game.

“You are?”

“I can’t lie anymore. I don’t want to lie anymore. I don’t want to keep going on dates with women, all the time thinking about you. That’s not fair to them, and it’s not fair to you. I won’t be someone weak anymore.”

Gwangsoo blinked a couple of times, taking in what he’d said, before his lips stretched out into an enormous grin, that grin that made the corners of his eyes crinkle. Jongkook was especially weak to that particular smile, it made him want to kiss him fiercely and never stop. He didn’t even need to this time, though, as Gwangsoo made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob, before planting his lips firmly down on his, kissing him with such a thorough joy that he’d never even experienced before. Jongkook could feel the smile on Gwangsoo’s lips against his own, understood when he whispered “I love you so much” in the gaps between kisses. He knew in that moment, without a doubt, that things would be okay.