“He hates me.”

Hakyeon pinches the bridge of his nose and then takes a long sip of his whiskey and looks up at Jaehwan’s reflection through the mirror Jaehwan is standing in front of, buttoning his shirt.

“You make it very hard not to hate you,” Hakyeon says and crosses his legs on the couch. “Joking aside, he probably doesn’t. He’s just got discouraged by your short and meaningless texts as well as the fact that you didn’t want him to kiss you.”

“I did want him to kiss me,” Jaehwan mumbles. “You know I get too nervous when I’m sober.”

“Which is not a normal thing. Just saying.”

“I know.” Jaehwan sighs and the mirror fogs up. “How do I look?”

“For someone who’s trying to catch someone to sleep with them so they’ll forget about their misery, or for someone who wants to drink until they’re cuddling a toilet bowl?”

“For someone who’s trying to impress Sanghyuk,” Jaehwan replies, the tips of his ears warming up. “He said he’d be there tonight.”

“Oh, so that’s why we’re going there,” Hakyeon nods, drinking.

“No, I’m— uh. Yeah, that’s why.”

Hakyeon only raises one of his eyebrows judgingly, but doesn’t say anything else.

The club is crowded and the atmosphere is stifling with Hakyeon saying hello to every other person, stopping to have a few words with them and introduce Jaehwan.

“I’ll go get a beer,” Jaehwan tells Hakyeon, but his friend isn’t even listening, so Jaehwan makes his way towards the counter.

Once he’s sitting in an armchair with his beer in his hand and two vodka shots in his stomach, Jaehwan finally scans the crowd, but the only familiar face he finds is Hakyeon’s as he walks to the seat next to Jaehwan’s.

“He’s over there, by the other counter,” Hakyeon yells over the music, nodding to the right. “Sanghyuk.”

Jaehwan’s heart skips a beat and resumes pounding in his chest at twice the normal speed.

“Hold my beer,” he says.

“You’re not trying to get into a fight with him, right?” Hakyeon asks, suspiciously eyeing the bottle. “Because that’s exactly how that sounded.”

“No, I just want to talk to him, hold my beer.”

“Why aren’t you just taking it— ugh, forget it.”

Jaehwan springs up from the armchair a little too fast and he gets dizzy, but he manages to stay upright as he pushes his way through the people on the dance floor.

“Sanghyuk,” he shouts while touching Sanghyuk’s shoulder.

Sanghyuk turns away with the remnants of a smile caused by whatever the guy next to him told him on his face, but it quickly melts off and gets replaced by an expression that Jaehwan reads as condescending.

“Jaehwan,” he says, “you didn’t tell me you’d be here.”

Jaehwan doesn’t voice his thoughts about that sounding rude.

“Can we talk?” he asks instead.

Sanghyuk tells his friends he’ll be back soon and lets Jaehwan lead the way outside.

“Where are we going?” Sanghyuk inquires when Jaehwan turns left at the corner of the building.

“I just…” Jaehwan mumbles and stops by the wall, far away from the streetlights. He can still see Sanghyuk’s questioning look and gets nervous, his nails digging into his palms.

This is it. He’s going to do it.

Without thinking about it twice, Jaehwan cups Sanghyuk’s cheeks and kisses him on the mouth, but Sanghyuk isn’t kissing him back and places a hand on Jaehwan’s chest instead, trying to push him away.

“Jaehwan,” he breathes against Jaehwan’s mouth. “Jaehwan.”

Jaehwan pulls back and shuts his eyes tight, sliding down against the concrete wall, hiding his face behind his knees and arms as he sits on the pavement.

Sanghyuk hates him.

He would cry if he could, but he stopped crying several years ago. The last time he cried was when Hongbin told him he didn’t want to be with Jaehwan anymore, because Jaehwan was incapable of loving anybody and was a cold-hearted monster who could only find satisfaction in life in someone’s arms, sated and served according to his needs, without giving back any sort of affection. He said loving Jaehwan was more futile than longing for someone who was long dead.

And he was probably right.

A raindrop falls on the back of his neck and it’s followed by several more, like the sky is mourning whatever this could have been with Sanghyuk, but then the raindrops get smeared on his skin by a warm hand that pulls him in until he’s burying his face into a jacket that smells just like the cloud of perfume in Sanghyuk’s car did back on that beautiful night.

“I don’t really understand what’s going on,” Sanghyuk says with a soft laugh, his fingers carding through Jaehwan’s wet locks, “but, Jaehwan, I wish you would let me get close to you.”

There’s silence between them, the rhythmic tapping of the rain against a manhole cover signalling the seconds they stay unmoving, save for Sanghyuk’s caresses.

“I’ve never been in love,” Jaehwan says finally. “I don’t… I don’t know how it feels to be in love.”

He expects Sanghyuk to let go of him, to leave him there, hurt, because that’s what any person with a little bit of common sense would do.

“You know, I don’t think I was in love before either,” Sanghyuk replies, tightening his hold around Jaehwan. “You might want to laugh at me for being so mushy,” he chuckles, “but I think I’m just learning how it feels to completely fall for someone. I really like you, Jaehwan.”

“You can’t,” Jaehwan shakes his head against Sanghyuk’s jacket. “I mean, what if I won’t be able to love you back?”

“You know what?” Sanghyuk asks and Jaehwan finally looks up, blinking away the rain. He didn’t know it was possible for Sanghyuk to look even more handsome, but somehow he manages, even though he’s soaked to the skin and his dark hair sticks to his forehead. “I’m willing to risk it.”

Jaehwan wants to tell him that’s the worst idea anyone could ever have, but Sanghyuk kisses him then, soft and slow and sweet, no matter the water in their mouths. Sanghyuk the side of his neck and Jaehwan grips his jacket to support himself as he tries to climb closer, leaning into Sanghyuk’s hand on the back of his neck. He feels the corners of Sanghyuk’s lips curving up against his own.

“What are you grinning at?” Jaehwan asks with a smile similar to Sanghyuk’s.

“This is so cliché,” Sanghyuk answers, brushing Jaehwan’s fringe out of his eyes, “kissing in the rain.”

“You took me stargazing on our first date,” Jaehwan says. “You seem to like clichés.”

Sanghyuk laughs at that and kisses Jaehwan again, and, for the second time in his life, Jaehwan feels that pleasant aching in his chest that he felt when he first met Sanghyuk.

And he wants it to ache forever.