A week passes. He stays alive.

It's a wrecked week, and Kyungsoo spends the most of it dramatically floating around in misery.

Kyungsoo doubts the other will still write his death. If he knows him even a little, he won't be so heartless after meeting him and seeing him in the flesh. He can be annoying but that doesn't mean he's the Light Yagami type who kills people for his 'greater good.' But he can't help but be nervous because some writers are weird as and what if he's all wrong about him? Not to mention that Kyungsoo yelled at him in front of an audience of tiny animals.

Kyungsoo doesn't know if he would take back the way he reacted, but he knows at least some of it was unwarranted. He's not sure how much you can know about someone when you've only known him as a voice always speaking about something other than himself, but as far as he was able to judge, Jongin hadn't meant ill with how he acted. He had most likely just been overwhelmed. Half the crimes Kyungsoo had accused him of had probably sounded completely foreign in his ears. They had both been too occupied with their own astonishment, he figured, and there had been no room for empathy. Not from his side either. Though he definitely had a right to be miffed, he regrets running out. There were still so many questions unanswered.

It's enough, he decides. A week is more than enough cooldown time for the both of them. When he gets home, he'll dial the number mr. Zhang gave him and ask to meet up.

His feet start walking with more resolve as they lead him out of the city park, until he suddenly stops in his tracks.

As if his decision summoned him, Kim Jongin is sitting on one of the park benches. He's wearing a long brown trench coat that's opened to show some sort of expensive sweater. He really is handsome, with his mocha hair framing his ears and face as he bends forward to hand-feed some doves.

Kyungsoo can't help but feel slight satisfaction because he's the one studying the other without their knowledge this time. Soon enough, however, he steps up and sits down next to the other.

"You should be careful when you feed those; they carry diseases," he says, awkwardly.

Jongin's breath hitches and he looks at Kyungsoo like a startled bunny. Kyungsoo wants to smile but he figures he better gets down to business.

"I wanted to talk to you," he says quickly. "I want to apologize for the way I treated you." Let's start with the easy part, he thinks, sighing internally. When an apology is the easy part of a conversation, you know it's not gonna be easy at all.

Jongin is still a little tense, but he looks much less disturbed because of Kyungsoo's general existence than a week ago. Still, the words register slowly, and he blinks stupidly a few times before saying: "Oh! No, no. You don't have to. You were right."

"I know I don't." And yes, I was right, thank you very much, he adds internally. "But I want to. I have had a while to get used to this idea, and I was still very freaked out. It must've been like getting buried in an avalanche. And I didn't make things better. So I'm sorry."

"No, I'm sorry, Kyungsoo!" Jongin throws back. Kyungsoo notices he still hesitates when saying his name, but he doesn't look at Kyungsoo like he's grown a second head anymore. "I've been wanting to visit your house this whole week, I want to talk, to apologize. I was the most inconsiderate jerk. It's just, all this time I considered you my character, and suddenly that whole idea shattered when it turned out you were a human. I acted like an idiot, I ignored what you tried to tell me, and I'm just- sorry."

Kyungsoo wasn't seeking for any apology, but he has to admit it feels very good, like a balm to the sore spot he was left with. But he also wants to cheer Jongin up, because he pouted like an infant and his voice sounds like an injured puppy's, and it has even more of an effect on him when it happens in person.

"Okay, let's be done with that now. I've been meaning to ask you something else." Kyungsoo thinks of how to go about this, but he's too scared to flat out ask 'are you still gonna kill me.' So he takes a detour.

"I've always wondered… your story about me, it never seemed to have a central lesson or fixed premise. And I just wonder, what is going to be the meaning behind it?"

"Oh." Jongin looks equal parts uncomfortable, excited and fascinated to talk about this with him. "Well- this might get weird okay? As in I'll describe your life as a plot point, or a character arc."

"Yeah, sure, go ahead, I've discussed it that way with Yifan countless of times anyways. But can I guess? Was the story by any chance about showing my unhappiness? Like, my discontentment, was that the theme?"

Jongin seems to fascinated by that first part for whatever reason, but he doesn't dig into it. "Well, yes, partially. After that breakdown at the café you were gonna reach a bit of a low point, you see, and that would get you thinking about everything you didn't like about your life. The discontentment would come out, so to say, and you wouldn't be able to hide."

Kyungsoo keeps his face carefully blank as he nods at him to go on.

"But then, from there, I would build towards this arc. You were slowly going to make some changes, make your life more like the life you wanted it to be. And it wouldn't be anything grand, I don't think that would fit, but just some small things. Reaching out a little bit more. Asking your friends for help. Opening up about your feelings. Maybe discover some new passion, like… heavy metal, or playing piano, whatever. And your life would slowly fill with more little fun things."

Jongin starts doing these little gestures the more he gets into it, a spark showing up in his eyes that was very endearing.

"And when the arc is complete, you would've learned to love yourself. You would've learned that it doesn't matter what you fill your life with, it's about how you feel about these things. And that's where real contentment comes from."

Jongin looks at him suddenly. "That kitten… did you name her yet?"

"Yes." Kyungsoo gulps. "Yeri."

"Okay, so one day you would realize Yeri hasn't come to eat her breakfast. You would start a search, walking down the road next to your house until you arrived at those crossroads, the busy ones? Yeah, and you'd see her there, somewhere in the middle between the cars, and the bad thing would be that when she sees you she panics and starts running towards you. And you'd panick too, seeing her tiny body in between all those cars and run straight at her. And yes, of course, then you'd get hit by a car."

Kyungsoo's face is pulled tight with tension as Jongin tells him about a death he might soon die, but at that last part he jumps up.

"And then I'd die? You total jackass! That's the most useless death ever! How dare you!" He starts hitting Jongin's arm in frustration.

"Ow, Kyungsoo, no it's not like that! It was gonna show that you died being completely yourself, I was gonna write it as a message to stay true to who you are-"

"By having me DIE?"

"The end result would've been really emotional!" Jongin laughs, grabbing his wrists and ending the battle.

Kyungsoo gulps and pauses. Ask him now, he urges himself. But it's not an easy thing to do.

"So..." his voice cracks a little. "Will you still be writing that ending?"

Jongin looks at him in confusion for a second. He's still holding his wrists.

"What, this ending? Of course not."

Kyungsoo looks back, and suddenly he feels how tight the strings of tension in his stomach are pulled. Only now that he can let them veer, if he dares to.

"But… It's your story. Don't you have a need to finish it? What if it's the literary masterpiece of the century?"

"What?" Jongin repeats. "Kyungsoo, I have writer's block. Everything I write is . This was the most inspiration I've had in a year and it was gonna be average at best. Did you honestly think I'm enough of a narcissist to knowingly kill someone for the sake of my ty C-level fiction? That I'd even be able to write another syllable about you, knowing it has a real impact on someone's life? That I was gonna give up on you for the sake of a profession? Kyungsoo, you mean much more to me than that. So much more."

Kyungsoo's eyes are owlish, and Jongin thinks it looks adorable as he slides his hands up to intertwine his fingers with the shorters' instead.

"W-what are y-you… wh..what does that..." his stuttering, he thinks furiously. Why does it never show up when he's ordering a pizza or whatever and only when he desperately needs the answer to something. 

"Ah yes, that's another reason I wanted to talk to you." Jongin starts blushing. "Last week in the barn, you kind of yelled at me that you are in love with me. And… I've been wanting to tell you that-" Jongin's smile is small but it beams with the power of the sun- "I feel the same."

He's looking into his eyes, nearly on Kyungsoo's lap, both their hands intertwined on their legs, and it's not like he's being subtle but Kyungsoo is still so stunned, so busy getting lost in this face so close to his. He only notices the impending downpour when suddenly the sky breaks open with a loud crack of thunder. 

"Oh," Kyungsoo says blankly. "I think it's going to rain."

"I think so too," Jongin murmurs, looking at his lips.

"You wanna come over for tea?" Kyungsoo does not feel ready to let Jongin go, but he's not ready to do this now either. Not to mention they are in public, and he's still a private person.

"What?" Jongin's eyes are big when they look up.

And maybe it also amuses him to tease this puppy-like adult. "Tea. At my place. We can catch the bus if we hurry."


--


"Do you have a cat named Hunnie?"

"Yes, he's my darling." Kyungsoo smiles over his tea.

"Did you smoke weed in high school?"

"Um, no."

"Really? How about strawberry daiquiris? I remember you taking those when..."

"My girlfriend dumped me, yeah. Please don't start again."

"Did you ever screw Yifan?"

"EW! Please. Do not. Do not EVER say that to me again."

"Ha-haa, I'm kidding. I'd be surprised, really."

"Hmmph."

"…did you ever try ?"

"Asxhjkslgl."

"Oh, my God, you did? I was totally joking!"

Kyungsoo is beet red above his tea. "Hate," he groans, "so much hate."

Jongin laughs that horrible dying seal laugh, sitting with ankles crossed in Kyungsoo's kitchen chair.

"You know, it's weird." Jongin suddenly looks thoughtful. "There are some traits I totally imagined you to have, whether I've written them or not. And other sides of you are so new, like I never could've imagined."

"Doesn't that make sense, though? I mean, you can't have thought througheverything."

Jongin shakes his head contemplatively. "But that's not it. It's just… like this, in front of me, you're just much more… complete than I ever could have imagined you to be. I mean, I know I'm supposed to have created you and all, but the more I look back on it, the more it feels like you've been here all along, and you just started whispering into my ear at some point. The way I wrote you… I mean, I did my best, but looking at you now I really only wrote the shadow of you, and only now I'm starting to see what the sun has been shining on."

Kyungsoo's heart swells from the way Jongin looks at him, and he wishes there wasn't a kitchen table in between them.


--


Jongin sticks around. It had been past dinnertime when they met in the park and it's long since gone dark outside. They move to the couch at one point, and keep getting closer to each other as their voices fill the silence, fill in any gaps between them until they feel so close to each other they breathe in the same rhythm.

"Jongin, I've been wondering…" Kyungsoo murmurs. He allowed Jongin to pull him in close, curled into his side with his legs in his lap. Jongin hums in acknowledgement, playing with their fingers. "I asked before, what the theme of your story was, but there is something else I don't get." He's quickly finding out how much of a toucher Jongin is. Now that he's allowed to, he hasn't really stopped touching Kyungsoo at all. "What made you write a story about me? Me and Yifan, we talked about this. We couldn't understand the premise or the thought behind the story, because there just wasn't anything literary about my life. Yet you wrote this whole story based on my character. What made you do it?"

He feels so comfortable talking to Jongin. Usually, it takes years for someone to get to this point. But Jongin has known some of his deepest thoughts from the start, and in a way, he'd known his through the personality that showed in his writing. He supposes it helps.

"Well, you know I have writer's block." Jongin's nose rests in his hair, and breath slightly hits his forehead with every word. "I've had problems writing on and off, but it's been sticking around for a year this time. The problem with me is that I can only write well with the aid of inspiration bursts. If I'm inspired, I can plan out an entire novel in a day and work systematically after that. But now that writing has become my profession, there's been this pressure on my inspiration that causes it to clam up. And I've been finding it very hard to let go and let inspiration find me again.

But there was an idea slowly forming, an idea of this one character who did not need much at all and gave great love and care to those around him. But beneath the man with the small wishes there was this one need, non-specified but positively burning, a general need for more.That contradiction was very appealing to me, but even more so was the idea that this character was of a pure honesty. Undeniably himself, hard-working, sincere, but still flawed in the most precise of ways. That's what drew me in really, what I saw as the core of this character's' personality. So I just started writing blindly, just trying to build a world and discover this man's daily life."

Kyungsoo has his eyes closed as Jongin speaks, and it's almost like before they met as he hears the pleasant boom close to his ears. Only it's so much better with an arm around his waist and his fingers in a gentle hold.

"I don't think anyone has ever told me something so sweet before," he mumbles, not knowing what else to say.

"I'll tell you sweet things more," Jongin replies easily. After a beat he picks up again.

"I thought about you all the time." His voice is a low mumble. "Even when I wasn't writing, I would be thinking about how you might feel about something, or what you would be doing if you were there with me. I never thought of it as romance, because I'm not quite big enough of a narcissist to write a character meant to seduce me. But when I met you in real life, I started realizing more and more that it really was romance. That's one of the reasons I acted like I did that time. All those feelings were coming at me at once."

He likes the way the storm outside fills the gentle silence. "But Jongin, you need to know I'm not just your character. Can you imagine how sad you would feel, thinking that all your thoughts and your achievements are just something made up for you by someone else? That you can't have anything else beside what is written for you on the two dimensional paper." He thinks Jongin knows this already, but he needs to emphasize it, stress how important this is for him.

"I know that, Kyungsoo." The reply is just as expected. "How could you be something only made by ink and paper? The thought alone saddens me. Of course, it might take some time to get rid of seeing you as my male lead, but as I said earlier too, I could never imagine you as you are now, alive and tangible and complete."

"Are you sure? Sure you can forget about me as a character and think of me as a human?"

"Without a doubt."


--


And when the last bus has long since rid his course, both of them silently summoning the time tables in their mind, Kyungsoo asks: "Do you wanna spend the night?"

Jongin's hand is running up and down his thigh, in a strangely chaste fashion, and he nods with his eyes closed.

And when they crawl into bed in a T-shirt and underwear, Kyungsoo doesn't hesitate to scoot right into Jongin's embrace.

And he only spends a minute with his face tucked under Jongin's chin before he's physically incapable to wait any longer and moves up to press their lips together in the dark. Jongin's breathing is soft and his chest is warm, and he doesn't know how long they lay there and do this but when they pull back the warmth of Jongin's hands on him has spread all the way to his toes.

Jongin presses another kiss to his lips, and it's so soft that Kyungsoo doesn't need the whisper of "I love you" that follows. But it's still nice to hear, he thinks, and he kisses Jongin's chest as he says: "I love you too."

Jongin hums and pulls him impossibly closer, breathes him in. For a while, they give the other sleepy kisses on any spot within easy reach, until Kyungsoo gets too tired and it's just Jongin. His warm breath and soft lips his last memory, and his last thought: he doesn't think he's in a comedy, a romance, a feel-good novel. This whole endeavor does not fit a genre. This is stranger than fiction.

A/N: And that's it! I sincerely hope you liked it, please leave a comment if you did!