Gwangsoo wakes up, and thinks he might be dead. Or at the very least, the lights glaring agonizingly down on him must be the fluorescent tubes of a hospital ward. He’s heard about intense headaches, all the sort of terrible things they can be a symptom of. And with the pain of the one he’s currently got drumming the insides of his skull, he can only imagine the doctor’s sombre face as he delivers him the terrible news. If he is alive, which he kind of doubts anyway, he probably won’t be a couple of hours from now. No-one can have a headache this bad, feel this sick, and be unable to open their eyes for any number of seconds, without it being serious and deadly. He hopes the doctor will break the news to his mother gently, use a soft voice, maybe make some small talk first. He doesn’t think she’ll be able to make it to the hospital in time to see her son.

Although, come to think of it, is this actually the hospital? He opens his eyes a crack, receiving for his efforts a sharp thump inside his head. It sort of doesn’t look like a hospital room, with the chair in the corner almost hidden from view by a pile up of dirty laundry. And on the table is a littered assortment of nick-nacks, a lot of them giraffe themed, somehow similar to the ones he has at home, gifted by fans. In fact, come to think of it (although thinking is hard in Gwangsoo’s current state of near-death), not many hospitals have animal themes to their rooms at all, do they? Now he’s focussing his eyes a bit better, he sees those knick-knacks are the same ones he has at home. The table too, black and simplistic in a way that’s meant to be chic but is ruined by Gwangsoo’s natural untidiness and propensity to accumulate all sorts of clutter on top of it. So, someone’s either brought his table to the hospital room which, even in his debilitated state, Gwangsoo can see would be an odd thing to do. Or…

Oh god, he’s dying at home. There aren’t any doctors, or nurses only a button push away, to come save him. He’s lying in his bed in his apartment, being eaten from the inside out by whatever it is in his head that’s causing him such intense pain, and nobody knows anything about it.

What should he –

Oh, wait. He realises then that there is a noise coming from somewhere else in his apartment, not much appreciated by his head, but enough to give him hope that he might not die alone. The shower is running in the next room over, he can hear the buzz of the streaming water. Trying to piece together who would be in his apartment, as he stays still to listen, proves a fruitless task. By the bright sun unrelentingly streaming through his window, he guesses it’s late morning. That means, whoever’s in his apartment now has probably been here since last night. But he doesn’t remember last night. Thinking back, his last memory of yesterday is the wrap up of filming for Running Man, when Sukjin proposed they all go for a drink. The whole cast agreed. But then what? He’s pretty much drawing a blank after the first couple (or maybe more than a couple, if he’s honest) shots of soju touched his lips. How he’d come back to his apartment, and who he’d brought with him, he can’t fill in the gaps there.

Although, now he is thinking about it, that soju, the fair amount that he drank, might be at least partially to blame for his current incapacitated state. Maybe, although he’s no doctor so he could be being overly optimistic, what he’d a moment ago attributed to some kind of terrible disease might actually be a hangover. It’s a possibility, he decides, but too early to say for sure. He’ll have to wait and see how the rest of the day goes, and if he drops dead at any point.

Still, it would be good to find out who’s in his apartment, and since he might not be too sick to ever get out of bed again after all, he bravely inches himself up into a sitting position, making none-too-quiet groaning noises as he does so, and pushes his legs off the bed. He’s wearing yesterday’s clothes, he notes, although his shoes and socks have been taken off. He doubts he did that himself. Many times he’s come home after a drinking session and crashed out fully clothed. Whoever’s in his bathroom probably took them off for him. Which probably also means they’re not evil and probably won’t kill him if he gets up to investigate exactly who they are.

Gwangsoo manages to stand up after a couple of false starts. He’s swaying on the spot a bit, and he’s cursing the world for being too bright, why can’t humans live underground like moles or rabbits or something. But after a bit, it passes, the nausea that comes with the swaying also abates, and he makes cautious steps out of his bedroom and along the hallway, clutching the walls on either side of him as he goes, until he’s standing outside his bathroom door.

They’re still in there. He can hear the sounds of the faucet in the sink being and then off. The click of plastic against ceramic. The sound of bare feet on the tiled floor.

Gwangsoo takes a breath, not sure why he’s suddenly nervous. Spurred on by reminding himself that this is his apartment and why should he be scared by his own guest, he knocks.

“It’s open,” comes the voice. The male voice. The male voice that takes Gwangsoo no time at all to connect with a face.

“Hyung!” Gwangsoo says with relief, his own voice hurting his head a bit as he lets himself into the bathroom.

Jongkook is turned away from him, facing the mirror. He’s shaving with Gwangsoo’s razor, taking careful along the underside of his chin and neck. Gwangsoo’s attention is very temporarily taken up with that, before he realises that Jongkook is shirtless. For a second, he watches the muscles of Jongkook’s shoulder blades move clearly under the skin with the of his shaving. He could have kept staring, except he realises that he hasn’t yet said anything, and it would draw attention to his own distracted eyes and suddenly pounding heartbeat if he doesn’t at least try to appear normal and unmoved by the sight of Jongkook shirtless in his bathroom after staying the night.

“What are you doing here, hyung?” Gwangsoo asks calmly, as if he’d just met him randomly in the street. He can see in the mirror, Jongkook’s lips tip up into a smile.

“You told me last night after I dragged you back here that you were entirely sober and knew exactly what was going on,” Jongkook said, “You’re not standing by that anymore?”

Gwangsoo considers his position. Possibly not as thoroughly as he could do, distracted as he is by drops of water from the recent shower making track marks down Jongkook’s sculpted back.

On the one hand, he has his pride. If he told Jongkook last night that he wasn’t completely drunk past all reason, then he should stick to that now, however much bluffing and looking into Jongkook’s disbelieving face he’ll have to endure. On the other hand, Jongkook is shirtless in his bathroom, using his razor and looking so comfortable, like it’s something he does all the time. It’s creating in Gwangsoo’s chest a twinge of… something. Something, that if he has to name it, he might call wistfulness. Which is a dumb, poetic way of putting it, he thinks. It’s more like he wishes to anything, any kindly god that might be looking down upon them now, that there could be some way to engineer it that Jongkook shirtless (or more than shirtless, whatever suits) becomes a regular feature of Gwangsoo’s apartment, something to wake up to every morning, not just when he has a hangover so bad that he doesn’t think he’s really getting the full appreciation of it.

It’s then that he remembers that Jongkook’s still waiting for an answer. He’s having trouble with that this morning, keeping his mind on one train of thought. Maybe there really is something wrong with his brain. Not a physical thing, like it had seemed when he woke up. More like his brain can only fathom to focus on the man in front of him, who is now turning away from the mirror and towards him, exposing as he does so the full expanse of his chest, the chiselled abs, the sculpted V shape of his hips, cut off by the frustrating waistband of a pair of Gwangsoo’s sweat pants (turned up at the ankles to fit the shorter man) and the distinct trail of hair that promises to lead to even greater things. Gwangsoo is put off lying, the effort of trying to bull any memory of last night, by the new effort he needs to try and hide his general crotch area and the not inconsiderable bulge that is making an emergence there. He turns, he hopes casually, towards the doorframe, praying that the movement of this will shift the fabric of his pants enough to avoid drawing attention. He thinks he sees Jongkook’s eyes make a fleeting trip down to the very area Gwangsoo is trying to hide, but he can’t be sure.

“I must have drunk more than I thought,” Gwangsoo concedes finally, and there’s a flicker of something on Jongkook’s face. Disappointment, that he’s not going to get to quiz him through the whole charade of pretending to remember last night? The sadist, Gwangsoo thinks.

“You don’t remember anything?” Jongkook asks, propping Gwangsoo’s razor back in its holder and reaching for a towel. “Not even… what happened with us?”

Gwangsoo blinks.

“Us?” He repeats. For the first time, he finds he can take his eyes off Jongkook’s chest as a cold shot goes through him like he’s been doused in water.

Jongkook an eyebrow at him, wearing an infuriating expression. His eyes have a teasing glint.

Gwangsoo’s strains his brain, begging it to pull up what Jongkook might be referring to.

“If you don’t remember, let’s both forget about it,” Jongkook says.  

“No!” Gwangsoo says, rather too quickly, “No, I remember.”

He has no way to follow that up, and Jongkook is watching him closely.

“We were… kissing?”

Jongkook’s eyebrow goes up.

“Hugging?”

The eyebrow.

“Holding hands?”

Jongkook lets out a noise that might be a snort of derision, looking away from Gwangsoo to check his appearance in the mirror one last time, and in doing so making it clear he knows Gwangsoo doesn’t know.

“I need you to know,” Jongkook says after a pause, halting Gwangsoo’s stumbling thoughts as he’s still trying to grasp any memory of if he somehow managed to further his relationship with Jongkook last night, after months of soberly wanting to do just that.

“Know what?” Gwangsoo asks, mouth dry. He thinks he’s ready for anything. However embarrassing what he did last night was. Even if he serenaded Jongkook, or suggested they elope, he’d rather know.

“You…” Jongkook pauses again, clearly having learnt from too many cliffhanger announcements in dramas, “You use a better shaving foam than my normal brand. I’m going to switch. I just wanted you to know,”

With that, he smiles, and then leaves, patting Gwangsoo on the shoulder as he passes him by in the doorway, the younger man too dumbstruck to stop him.

--

Jongkook lets the morning sun bathe his face as he steps out of Gwangsoo’s apartment building. He’s been cruel. He knows he’s been cruel, and that Gwangsoo doesn’t really deserve it. The younger man is a fumbling ball of sincerity and feelings, mixed with a frustrating blend of being too nervous to do anything about it.

Which understanding of his character is why, last night, even under the influence of about three bottles of soju too many, Jongkook still expected Gwangsoo to hold his composure. Play his role of, “I’m completely heteroual, but do you mind if I give you puppy dog eyes and touch you at every opportunity, hyung?”, as he has doing been ever since they met. That has its charm, but after so many years, and when Jongkook looks at Gwangsoo and wants to know what it would feel like to kiss him, on the lips and then all over the rest of him, play acting that they’re just good heteroual buddies is too much.

It turned out, though, that alcohol could have a more profound effect on Gwangsoo than Jongkook thought, as he bumbled the gangly man into his car, his limbs too long to be an easy fit when the man in question was past cooperating himself.

“Could you please hold still if you’re not actually going to get in by yourself?” Jongkook had asked, trying a ‘tuck each limb in turn in and then shove’ approach, which was hardly aided by Gwangsoo giggling every time he glanced up at Jongkook’s face.

“You’re the best, hyung,” Gwangsoo slurred out, as Jongkook managed to get the bottom half of him in, sort of sideways but at least part of him was actually inside the vehicle.

“Thanks,” Jongkook replied, hardly listening. Gwangsoo had been rambling intermittently ever since they’d left the bar.

“You know, let me tell you a… a secret,” Gwangsoo said, grasping for the word. “Shhh!”

“Don’t tell me anything you won’t want me to know tomorrow,” Jongkook said, feeling not for the first time that being a non-drinker was a real disadvantage when it meant always being responsible for drunk friends. Especially oversized friends with noodle-like limbs that apparently needed 100% body contact to stay upright once they’d had a few.

“Hyung,” Gwangsoo said, then repeated the word several more times, louder each time.

“What?” Jongkook finally demanded, deciding then and there that next time, Gary could be the one to deal with a drunk Gwangsoo. Or Jaesuk and Sukjin between them. He’d only been given the task because they could all see Gwangsoo wouldn’t need help so much as to be hauled home, and Jongkook’s muscles made him the prime candidate for the task. And he himself hadn’t protested because… because he was an idiot who thought that any alone time with Gwangsoo was good. He was now happy to concede that he’d been wrong on that point.

“Hyung,” Gwangsoo said yet again, and Jongkook thought he might drop him right then and there onto the sidewalk if he dared say that word one more time. He didn’t, however, opting instead for, “I’ve been in love with you for years, you know.”

Jongkook stopped his attempt at shoving Gwangsoo into the car. He knew the younger man was drunk out of his mind. He knew he shouldn’t be taking anything he said now seriously. Drunk people might speak the truth they’re too scared to say when they’re sober, but they also spoke a lot of crap. Jongkook was annoyed with himself that, despite knowing it could be more drunk rambling, his heartbeat had still picked up. Like an inexperienced, overly hopeful teenager, he still couldn’t dismiss it straight off the bat like he rationally knew he should do.

Gwangsoo, on the other hand, seemed to be having no such internal crisis. When Jongkook glanced down at him again, he’d fallen asleep.

It was at that moment, as Jongkook finally succeeded in getting his gangly friend into the car, he decided there was no way that tomorrow morning he was going to let it rest at that. If tonight, Gwangsoo was going to throw him into a stream of uncertainty about where they stood and whether he could actually take that as a declaration, then tomorrow morning Gwangsoo could suffer the same. He’d let him believe any range of things might have happened between them that night, and then leave him not having the faintest clue what was the truth, see how he liked it.

Walking away from Gwangsoo’s apartment that next morning, then, Jongkook feels a bit better about his own confused state of ‘is he really in love with me?’, knowing that somewhere behind him, several floors up, Gwangsoo is equally in turmoil, probably wondering how bad what he did was. Whether he made a pass at him, proposed marriage or suggested they raise a dog together. He thinks he’ll give him a few more hours to panic before he calls him and tells him what really so they can work out where they go from here.