At an age it really should not be happening at, Kyungsoo suffers through a midlife crisis.

Someone he has spent a good seven years hating and making it his life mission to convince everyone else to hate too has, in the span of six months, become the person he spends entire days with. Even the usually dim-witted Sehun has caught onto the gist that maybe the famous arch-nemeses aren’t so arch-nemesis anymore. If that doesn’t say something, then Kyungsoo is not sure what does.

“Sehun thinks you two are dating,” Baekhyun had said matter-of-factly when he’d dropped by Kyungsoo’s apartment one evening with his conventional salad dinners. “Jongin doesn’t hang around with anyone. I think he’s very proud of the fact that he is Jongin’s only friend.”

“Gross,” Kyungsoo had rightfully gagged. “I would never have such bad taste.”

Afterwards though, Kyungsoo became increasingly aware of the routine he has so willingly and easily fallen into. It’s beyond him how it has come to the extent where days without being around Jongin would feel odd, like something was amiss. Kyungsoo still tries to convince himself that the whole arrangement is only to help him write his novel.

He would be fooling no one if he said that he didn’t write best when he was around Jongin.

Ideas come flowing faster than he can document them and it’s a very rare occurrence that he will go back to change them. He thinks up of all sorts of dialogue, witty one-liners and heart-wrenching conversations that take up several pages. Although he will never admit it to Jongin, he thinks that his words flow a little smoother and his sentences sound a little nicer and more beautiful. Those pretentious highbrow phrases must be rubbing off on him.

It also helps when Jongin casually drops in comments every so often. Surprisingly, he had detailed analyses of each of the characters and he inputs a many points of characterisation. A bit of dialogue here and an emotional reaction there.

“It’s surprising how attuned you are to these characters. Don’t tell me you actually indulge in reading Young Adult,” Kyungsoo snickers.

“Shut up.”

He does earnestly appreciate it though. It’s always more helpful to have two minds rather than one, and it helps prevent him from falling into periods of writer’s block that he would prefer to keep away for as long as possible.

Kyungsoo, however, is unable to input anything into Jongin’s works.

“I don’t really think the way you do,” he apologises. The moment his head is lowered down and facing the sleek surface of the café table, he braces himself for Jongin’s oncoming arrogance. A puff of the chest and a smirk, then a six minute long monologue about his unique talents. What Kyungsoo gets is far from what he expects.

“Not many people do,” Jongin says instead. “If I’m being honest I don’t really know why people read my books.”

The silence that follows is stifling. Something eats away at Kyungsoo, and he can’t bring himself to say anything. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he’d always known that the person behind the award-winning novels would be like this. But when he looks at Jongin and the glasses resting on his nose bridge, takes in the curve of his mouth and all confidence that comes with his demeanour, Kyungsoo can’t seem to find that vulnerability.

Opposite him, Jongin’s face shifts, clearing his throat like he has left himself stripped open for a minute too long. He manages a curt nod and immerses himself back into the computer screen.

Less than five minutes later, the man who had said those self-deprecating words is lost amongst the quiet chatter and buzzing ambience. Jongin’s voice has returned to being permanently coated with amusement and conceit, but the fleeting image of his face full of raw honesty still burns bright in Kyungsoo’s mind.

☂ ☂ ☂

“So why did you start writing?”

Jongin’s voice echoes through the night. They are walking down the street towards Kyungsoo’s apartment, hands buried deep in their pockets. Both of them had worked until their fingers were sore and all the last customers had already trickled out of the café. The last remaining worker had scratched the back of his neck awkwardly and asked if they could leave so he could lock the place up and go home.

“It was a talent, I guess,” Kyungsoo shrugs. “Something to escape my mundane life. Nothing overly dramatic.”

It has been raining. The street lights illuminate the damp streets with a warm glow that chases away the dark bitter cold numbing his fingers. Their shadows fall into one another, Kyungsoo’s shorter stature lost within the blurry outlines of Jongin’s coat.

“, it’s cold.” Kyungsoo rubs his fingers together and blows puffs of hot air on them, snuggling further into his black turtleneck.

“Do you want my gloves?” Jongin asks. Kyungsoo shakes his head but Jongin is already peeling them off. He reaches for Kyungsoo’s hands and balances them gently, slipping on one glove at a time. The places where Jongin’s fingers rest on Kyungsoo’s burn, and Kyungsoo thinks that it’s not only from the warmth that the fingers carry.

“Thanks,” Kyungsoo says gratefully as he stretches his fingers into them. They walk together in silence. And then Kyungsoo asks quietly, “What about you?”

“I’m not cold,” is Jongin’s response. He’s looking down at the ground, watching his feet drag him forward step by step.

“I wasn’t asking about that,” Kyungsoo says. “Why did you start to write?”

When Jongin looks at him, Kyungsoo sees an entire story behind the pair of dark brown eyes. The pupils are a black hole of loneliness, rimmed with fatigue and pinpricks of silver that Kyungsoo has always missed.

Jongin doesn’t speak for a very long time.

And he doesn’t need to, because every passing second he spends standing there, Kyungsoo is slowly prying away another one of his layers. He has told stories for over ten years now, and he thinks now that he can tell the one standing in front of him.

Jongin has always been lonely, that’s why he started writing. He sees the world in a different way; he sees the way cracks line the sky and he knows that if you blink, you’ll miss the way it shatters. He has always had thoughts but he has never had stories. It makes him insecure. He loves the way Kyungsoo’s books can take readers on a journey to escape their own lives while his books are just a reflection of the lives he sees of people on the streets. They’re normal, and they’re boring. Most of all, they’re not stories. They’re, like Kyungsoo has often described, just incoherent thoughts strung together to become an excuse of literature.

It’s nearing ten o’clock and he is standing under a street lamp shivering in the middle of November when Kyungsoo finally realises.

Kim Jongin hides behind his trench coats and smirks. He deludes himself and the rest of the world into thinking his books are “art.” And it works, most of the time.

“I admire the fact that you can take words and craft it into a story,” Jongin admits. He looks down at his hands, long and slender. “I don’t have words. I don’t tell stories.”

He stands on the deserted street and looks up at the sky, like he is searching for something. Stars. Kyungsoo would know, because he has been searching for them too. At twenty-seven years old though, standing ten minutes away from the entrance of his apartment, he thinks that he has looking in the wrong place for all his life. In the city, where light pollution clogs up the air, it’s impossible to find stars in the sky. You find stars in people, burning brilliantly behind layers of darkness. He doesn’t know if Jongin has, but Kyungsoo realises he has found his stars.

He grabs Jongin’s face and pulls it toward himself. He thinks that Jongin looks the most beautiful like this, when his face is devoid from the usual arrogance and the shadows cast from the angles of the lamp lights reveal a fragility that Kyungsoo has only ever caught brief glimpses of.

“You have words. You use words to paint art.”

It’s genuinely easy for his mind to stretch in all directions and concoct wild adventures and chaotic emotions for fabricated characters to struggle with. And though he has the imagination, he doesn’t have the words.

People are always bogged down by the words of what they read. If they sound nice, if they don’t. It’s always been drilled into everyone’s mind the importance of using similes and metaphors, and the unbelievable breath of bewilderment that occurs when something is told so beautifully through the use of juxtaposition and symbolism. If Kyungsoo was to be really honest, that is why he started to hate writing. He has never had words, and he will never have words.

Maybe it’s why he hates Kim Jongin so much.

Maybe it’s why he says his next words.

“You might not know it, but I have always aspired to write beautifully like you.”

They are so close their noses are almost touching. Kyungsoo can feel Jongin’s breath on his face and he smells of coffee and cake and fresh parchment paper. Kyungsoo’s heart is racing so fast, threatening to explode out of his ribcage. He has felt adrenaline before, in the many times he has been angry or nervous before the release of a novel, but he has never felt like this. The rush makes him catch his breath and it pushes Kyungsoo to press his lips to Jongin’s. Jongin’s lips are cold but they’re smooth, and they’re everything that Kyungsoo expects.

The kiss is short and chaste, but it’s all they need.

Jongin takes Kyungsoo’s hand, slipping his fingers through and intertwining them as they walk the rest of the way to Kyungsoo’s apartment in silence, only an occasional sound of a car rushing past on the main road miles away. He notices that they do a lot of things in silence. Their relationship is made up of silence. But Kyungsoo isn’t afraid, because silence is peaceful and comfortable. Silence, in its own way, is beautiful.

“Stay.” Kyungsoo’s voice is quiet in the darkness of his apartment. He tightens his grip on the retreating figure who is facing the door, one hand on the knob ready to turn it and leave.

Jongin doesn’t reply, but he toes off his shoes and slips his trench coat off. He lets Kyungsoo lead him through the apartment into his bedroom.

That night, neither of them feel the frigid weather of autumn welcoming winter.

☂ ☂ ☂

Four fifths of the way through working on his book, Kyungsoo hits a wall. Figuratively.

The thing with writer’s block is, it comes when you least expect it. It’s not something that creeps up on you, a slow draining of ideas and words. One day, you will wake up and look at your manuscript, read over your ideas and find yourself stuck in a rut. You lose all your thoughts in a split second and your fingers are paralysed.

For Kyungsoo, writer’s block also means his eyes adopt lenses that force him to see his work as rubbish and nothing but rubbish.

“I can’t do it,” Kyungsoo breathes through the phone. “I thought I could, but I can’t. It’s terrible, I should never have tried.”

His heart is pounding at a million beats per minute and he feels like his stomach might burst at any moment. His hands are shaking so much he is surprised he can even keep the phone in his grip and not smashed on the floor.

“Calm down,” Jongin attempts to instruct to no avail.

“I don’t know why I thought I could do it. Everything that comes out is just rubbish.” He opens his laptop frantically and decides, “I’m going to delete this.”

“Kyungsoo, stop, listen to me,” Jongin raises his voice, it’s strong and it’s steady, but it also leaks of frustration. “Kyungsoo. Step away from your laptop.”

Kyungsoo is so focused on trying to open up his folders and erase the file that he doesn’t hear Jongin swearing on the other side of the line and hanging up in a rush.

Some part of his mind still tries to salvage the draft. A tiny voice cries for him to read through his work and reconsider his decision. But every line he reads just makes him cringe even more and hardens his resolution.

His finger is hovering over the delete key in his recycle bin when his bedroom door bursts open and the laptop is ripped away from his grasp. Jongin swiftly recovers the file before shutting it down. He throws his arms around Kyungsoo and presses him to his chest, his back rhythmically, until he calms down and reverts to his regular breathing patterns.

Jongin kisses his forehead softly, lips brushing against Kyungsoo’s skin like feathers.

“Don’t you dare scare me like that again,” Jongin whispers to his temple.

“Were you more worried about the book or me?”

“The book, of course,” Jongin answers, rolling his eyes. “I love you but not that much.”

“Could you repeat that?” Kyungsoo reaches for his phone to record Jongin.

“You wish.”

Kyungsoo recalls the fateful day over three years ago when dark clouds had marred the sky and his greatest fear had come true. Jongin and Kyungsoo had been forced to sit beside each other. The Jongin he had met then, nose permanently turned up with the thrill of recently beating Kyungsoo on the bestsellers list, is more or less a stranger to him now. His features are still as sharp, but his edges have smoothed. Kyungsoo will never admit, but he is grateful that Jongin mustered the courage to knock on his apartment door and contradict the image that he had curated for himself.

Then Kyungsoo remembers.

“How did you get in?” he asks with narrowed eyes.

Jongin rocks back and forth on his feet as he avoids the sharp gaze. His shoulders are hunched up and his hands are shoved in his pockets. “I may or may not have borrowed your spare key the other day.”

Kyungsoo raises his eyebrows. “Did you ever plan on returning it?”

“That is a good question,” Jongin pauses and then adds as an afterthought, “Borrow permanently.”

“You mean stealing,” Kyungsoo corrects, voice flat.

“No, borrow permanently,” Jongin protests. He is scandalised by Kyungsoo’s accusation.

Jongin refuses to return Kyungsoo’s laptop, and spends the rest of the afternoon sitting on the swivel chair and reading through the entire draft. Kyungsoo waits, curled up in a ball on his bed, trying his hardest to keep from biting his nails. He hears the clock hung up on the wall tick second by second. They stay like that for a long time, until the sun sets and the room becomes dark.

Sometime during the wait for Jongin to finish reading, Kyungsoo falls asleep.

The time reads eight-thirty when he is slowly shaken awake by Jongin.

“Baekhyun dropped by with some food,” he says. “Do you want to have dinner?”

The sight of two places set on the dining table surprises him.

“How did he know to order enough for two?”

“I think he originally planned to eat with you, but he saw me and disappeared with a glint his eyes,” Jongin laughs. “I explained the situation to him, and I think he is a little upset you didn’t call him.”

Kyungsoo wonders when Jongin started to be the first person he called and relied on instead of Baekhyun. It has crept up on him in the past few months and when he looks at Jongin, he finds that he no longer flares with anger, but the places where animosity used to burn at him have been replaced with soft warmth.

“What are you looking at?” Jongin asks.

“Nothing,” Kyungsoo says immediately, pulling the chair out and seating himself before Jongin can catch a glimpse of the red spreading across his cheeks.

Jongin speaks up about fifteen minutes in. The words have been itching his mouth. “I finished reading the draft and I think it’s the best you’ve ever written. You’re so close, you can’t give up now.”

“I panicked,” Kyungsoo murmurs, nodding. “I think I’ll take a break.”

“I’ll join you. Want to head to Bora Bora?” Jongin suggests as he pulls out his phone, ready to dial Sehun and ask him to purchase plane tickets.

Kyungsoo recalls their conversation three weeks ago out on the glistening pavement, remembers the way Jongin gazed at the sky, and shakes his head.

“I have a better idea. Let’s go to Jeju,” Kyungsoo says. When Jongin looks at him like a deer caught in headlights, Kyungsoo smiles softly, “The best places to find stars are closer than you think.”

☂ ☂ ☂

Days, weeks and months later, Kyungsoo finishes his novel.

It’s hours past the closing time of the café and the sky outside has already darkened to a deep shade of indigo. He spends a good thirty minutes or so tweaking the ending line so it captures the mood he wants to create and closes the trilogy on the perfect note.

“It’s done,” Kyungsoo’s voice is shaking, caught between disbelief and relief. At first, he just pauses, frozen in the moment. Then he saves the finished draft and buries his face in his hands.

Jongin breaks away from concentrating on his own work and his head to the side with a proud grin. “Well, that wasn’t as hard as you had expected it to be, was it?”

“Shut up,” scowls Kyungsoo, but the irritation quickly disappears from his face. He thinks that he might start crying out of joy.

There’s only a single worker left, and he gives both of them each a slice of chocolate cake as a celebratory gift. They clink their refilled coffee cups – only writers would be able to empathise with taking caffeine at these late hours – and eat their cake in silence.

“We’ll finally be fighting for number one again,” Jongin slips casually when he finishes chewing on his last mouthful of the fluffy cake.

“What?”

“It just so happens that I’ve just written the last line of my new book.” Jongin says smugly as flips his laptop around to show Kyungsoo.

“How did you write another one so quickly.” The fork slips from Kyungsoo’s grip. His eyes flit to the corner of the screen and notices that the word count is quite hefty as well. Way to ruin his jubilation.

Jongin waves it off as he shifts the screen away from Kyungsoo to prevent him from reading it. “This one has been in my drafts for almost ten years now, I just never really had an ending.”

“Can I read it?” asks Kyungsoo.

“No, it’s a surprise.” He can’t read the look on Jongin’s face.

☂ ☂ ☂

Their works line the storefronts together.

Jongin makes a show of buying thirteen copies of Kyungsoo’s novel and demands for each of them to be signed with a different message. Kyungsoo, however, is thoroughly unimpressed by the gesture.

“I’m just really, really excited,” says Jongin. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, you know!”

“You’ve also already read most of it,” Kyungsoo responds. “Now that I remember, aren’t you someone who hates spoilers?”

“Spur of the moment,” Jongin defends. “I’m also not the one who asked for ideas about dialogue and characterisation every two seconds though.”

When the rest of the world finally reads the ending line on page 427 and flips to the ‘Author’s Acknowledgements’ page, they will blink twice, and pinch themselves. They will show it to the person beside them and ask them to read aloud the printed words, and even then, they will still not believe what their ears are hearing. Because what will be written as the first line is a thank you note to Kim Jongin, award-winning author, trench coat enthusiast, all around pretentious extraordinaire; but most of all, Kyungsoo’s sworn enemy.

Kyungsoo thinks that beats any outrageous act of support that Jongin can pull off. As always, he is wrong about everything relating to Jongin.

When his book is released a week later (Jongin argued that he should let Kyungsoo have an entire week of glory), Kyungsoo is gifted a signed copy with a personalised message from Jongin that asks him not to sue him after he finishes the book. He begrudgingly flicks past the title page and forces himself to suffer through Jongin’s newest terrible idea. Even though Kyungsoo might spend day and night thinking about Jongin and the curve of his lips when he smiles, Kyungsoo still doesn’t appreciate the man’s novels at all.

Four and a half pages in though, he’s already a slave to the book. It’s not like anything Jongin has written before. He details his loneliness growing up, his realisation of the beauty of words and portrays the way he fell in love with them. He writes about the first time he felt his pride and talent being threatened by a storyteller who wrote with pure honesty and crafted characters and worlds that swept readers on an emotional journey. He pens down their rivalry and, ultimately, their closure.

Translucence, as he has titled the work, is his autobiography.

In the acknowledgements, he thanks Kyungsoo, who taught him that stars were not found by flying first class eleven hours halfway across the world and seen lying on perfectly white sandy beaches. Stars were found in homes that were equally as dark and mysterious as they were bright and illuminating.

After spending the entire day resting against his bedhead, legs sprawled lazily across his bed, he dials Jongin’s number once he finishes the book. When Jongin picks up, they don’t exchange greetings. They start with silence, and then Kyungsoo tells him, “I finished it.”

Jongin in a breath and asks nervously, “Did you like it?”

“You found your ending,” is all Kyungsoo says through the phone.

“Yeah,” Jongin replies, smiling into the phone. “Thanks for being my ending.”

☂ ☂ ☂

There are many places Kyungsoo would rather be on a Sunday morning.

Standing in a not quite as empty but still just as messy five-level office, with a good nine hours of sleep and a plate of chocolate chip cookies in hand, is still not one of them.

Sehun, Baekhyun, Jongin and Kyungsoo are all soaking up the last few minutes of their camaraderie as they wait in front of Baekhyun’s computer for the publication of bestsellers list. Six minutes to nine o’clock, someone walks in. There are two things that surprise Kyungsoo. The first being the fact that someone other than the four people already in the room was foregoing their Sunday morning sleep-in to drop by the office; and the second being that he had no idea who the guy was. He’ll admit that he hasn’t visited the office in well over a year since he had announced his decision to resign from writing, but he doesn’t think Baekhyun would miss the opportunity to mention a new editor or author in the department.

The guy is dressed in a pale blue button up with rolled-up sleeves and skinny black jeans. He greets Sehun and Baekhyun with ease and Kyungsoo frowns. There is something all too familiar about the hair coloured rose gold and the slender nose and rounded cheeks, but Kyungsoo can’t quite place his finger onto it. Was it a description in one of his books?

“Who is this?” questions Kyungsoo.

“Intern. Kim Minseok. Director’s son. He’s just finished up his first year spring semester and he should really be out there enjoying his life but the director forced him to, quote, ‘do something useful with his life other than bruising up his body playing soccer all day,’” answers Baekhyun.

“I’m not sure if you remember but I met you at the park that time?” Minseok asks. He rubs the nape of his neck. “You seemed to be in a bit of slump back then.”

Everything clicks into place. It was his saviour. “Yeah,” chuckles Kyungsoo. “Thanks, you really helped me out there.”

Minseok laughs sheepishly and extends a hand, “It’s nice to formally meet you.”

It’s Jongin who takes the hand gratefully and shakes it vigorously three times. “Thank you for taking care of him. I am sincerely grateful as both an avid reader of his books and his boyfriend.”

“Oh my god,” Sehun gasps. He takes Baekhyun by the shoulders and shakes him back and forth. “They’re dating! I told you.”

Baekhyun blinks. “I thought we confirmed that months ago.”

“You owe me fifty,” demands Sehun, to which Baekhyun protests because he already bought him dinner three months ago for winning the bet.

He also doesn’t fail to mention, “Kyungsoo, I stuck by you and your impassioned hatred towards Kim Jongin. To think you would betray me like this.”

Kyungsoo ignores the scene and smiles warmly at Minseok, “I think you’ll make a great editor.”

Minseok thanks him and he begins to talk about his semester at college before Baekhyun exclaims, “Wait, it’s almost nine!”

All five of them crowd around the desk and huddle over the computer screen. Baekhyun pushes on the refresh key like his life depends on it when the clock reads nine o’clock. The page loads and the list prints itself in black right in the centre of the page.

“I can’t believe it,” Kyungsoo breathes.

He sees his novel title paired with his name sitting next to the number ‘2.’ The man who slides his arms around Kyungsoo’s waist has many names: his boyfriend, his friend, his enemy, and also the person who has placed first on the bestsellers chart. The one and only Kim Jongin with his pretentious titles and messes of stories.

“It’s not even that great of a book,” Kyungsoo mutters. Forget that he spent the past few weeks wrapped up in his blankets rereading it over and over again. Forget that the ending was an ode to him. Forget that he also cried multiple times as he flipped through those last pages.

“The rest of the world seems to think so,” Jongin quips.

“One day, you are actually going to be the reason I stop writing. And maybe in the middle of series,” threatens Kyungsoo.

That has all the arrogance disappearing from Jongin’s face as he throws his arm around Kyungsoo and presses him to his chest. He offers, “I’ll buy you dinner and take you to Bora Bora.”

“Also let me be number one next time,” Kyungsoo demands.

“Fine.”

☂ ☂ ☂

(Jongin has words. Kyungsoo has stories. Perhaps that’s why they don’t get along with each other.

Perhaps that’s why they fit perfectly together.)

A/N: I hope you enjoyed reading that and it won’t a complete waste of time ;A; and especially to the prompter I hope you think I did your idea justice because I remember going through the hundreds of prompts and this was the only one that really stuck out to me and I couldn’t bear not writing it! (this was meant to be more crack i’m so sorry) also thank you to my beta who was there for me through thick and thin and helped me get through writing this during exam period OTL i love you <3