9:47 AM
Choi Seungcheol: good morning

1:36 PM
Jihoon stares at the two words in the preview bubble, his head throbbing from the alcohol he’d drunk the previous night. He hasn’t gotten drunk like that in a while – he generally likes to keep a clear mind at all times, and rarely indulges in more than a couple shots of soju.

His thumb hovers over the message preview, ready to reply to his best friend’s message like he normally would, but something stops him this time.

He’s not quite sure what it is that makes him do it, but he swipes the bubble to the side instead of tapping on it, hiding the message from sight.

Staring at the bright light from his phone screen is only making his headache worse, so he puts it into sleep mode and lets it drop down to the mattress. He closes his eyes, trying to use force of will to make the headache go away (if anything, he’s probably making the problem worse).

His mouth feels like cotton and his throat feels like fire and his stomach is starting to churn unpleasantly – despite the extreme lethargy he feels throughout his entire body, he somehow manages to propel himself to his bathroom barely in time to empty the contents of his stomach into the sink. He dry-heaves for a few moments afterwards, narrow shoulders moving up and down with the force of his heavy exhalations. He hates the scent of vomit, and remembers yet another reason why he doesn’t like to drink much.

He turns on the tap, flushing the sink clean, and proceeds to brush his teeth vigorously to rid his mouth of the foul taste. After he’s done, he splashes cold water on his face to try and revive himself; when he catches a glimpse of his tired eyes in the mirror, he grimaces. He must’ve had quite a night.

The problem, though, Jihoon muses as he pads over to his tiny kitchenette and readies a package of instant microwavable rice, is that he’s still not quite sure what triggered his abnormal desire to drink, and why he feels like he’s missing something from last night.

He’s got a nagging feeling that it has something to do with Seungcheol, though, given that he was so hesitant to reply to the elder’s message. He’s never done that before.

He ponders this as he stirs his rice around with a spoon, blowing across the steaming surface before taking a bite. As he chews, his eyes wander around the kitchen, eventually landing on two soju bottles that he swears weren’t there the day before.

What happened last night?

2:25 AM
Seungcheol walks Jihoon home, Jihoon borrowing Seungcheol’s jacket as he always does after they go out late; Jihoon’s always found it a little strange – they don’t live in the same apartment complex, and they’re both men.

(They’re not dating.)

The silence is still upon them, and it makes Jihoon uneasy. He and Seungcheol have never been the types that talk nonstop, but the quiet between them has always been comfortable. He doesn’t like how this feels, not one bit, but he doesn’t know what to do about it, either.

Jihoon’s ready to punch in the access code to the front entrance and give Seungcheol a wave goodbye like he always does, but the elder reaches out and lays his palm over the keypad before he can do it.

“What’re you doing?” Jihoon asks, giving Seungcheol a vaguely dirty look. A beat later, he registers that that’s the first thing he’s said all night after they’d left the restaurant.

“Can I… do something before you go in?” Seungcheol asks, voice soft and hesitant.

This worries Jihoon. Seungcheol is never hesitant.

Jihoon nods, slightly confused; Seungcheol steps in a bit closer, far within the bubble of personal space Jihoon usually insists on maintaining. The elder slips a hand into Jihoon’s hair, giving it a soft ruffle before sliding it back to cup around the back of his head.

At this point, Jihoon would normally swat away the hand of whoever dared mess with his hair or do anything that resembled a jab at his height. He’s endured plenty of it throughout the years and generally makes it immediately known that he won’t stand for it. Seungcheol of all people should know this.

And yet, Jihoon does nothing to stop him, does nothing as Seungcheol folds him into an embrace that smells of barbecue smoke and laundry detergent; an embrace that feels warm and distinctly Seungcheol.

(Jihoon doesn’t think he’s imagining the soft press to the top of his head before Seungcheol releases his hold, but he doesn’t know how much he can trust his memory with finer details at this point.)

As if nothing ever happened, Seungcheol steps back and shoves one hand into the pocket of his jeans, holding up the other and making a small wave. “Good night, Jihoon-ah.”

Jihoon doesn’t catch himself in time to reply until Seungcheol’s already out of sight.

Seungcheol’s jacket is still wrapped around his shoulders.

2:49 PM
Jihoon supposes it’s fitting that he remembers the end of the night first – the memories start filling in as he gets up to toss the bottles in the recycling. He remembers Seungcheol walking him back to the apartment, which he’d always found kind of weird but never bothered to argue harder against, and remembers his confusion about Seungcheol wanting to do something different before departing.

It’s strange, though. While Seungcheol hugging him goodbye is certainly out of the ordinary, it’s nothing worth downing two bottles of soju for.

Clearly, there’s still something Jihoon’s missing.

He’s got a better idea now that he knows it has something to do with Seungcheol, but that could be a lot of things. If he’s not spending his free time alone, he’s most likely spending it with Seungcheol. And while the two of them do get along most of the time, it’s not completely uncommon for them to have some sort of argument.

Jihoon’s got a feeling that an argument wasn’t what triggered his sudden need to drink to forget, though; if that were really what happened, the first message he received from Seungcheol probably would have been some sort of apology, not just good morning.

If Jihoon’s really going to get into this, sending good morning isn’t something Seungcheol usually does. If he sends Jihoon something in the morning, it’s usually some sort of cute animal picture or weird meme, not a formal greeting.

Something else happened last night, and Jihoon still doesn’t know what.

He returns to his bed, flopping back down on top of the blankets with a loud exhale. He doesn’t like not knowing things, especially when it comes to Seungcheol. This isn’t like them at all.

Mentally, he tries to go back to the earliest relevant point in the night that he remembers. He and Seungcheol were hanging out in his studio (more accurately, Jihoon was trying to finish up the arrangement for one of his tracks and Seungcheol was alternating between offering helpful suggestions, browsing on his phone, and trying to pester the younger. But details, really.)

Sometime around midnight, Seungcheol had successfully talked Jihoon into shutting down for the night and going out to get something to eat; as per informal tradition, they made the quick walk to a barbecue restaurant close to the studio. They’d been seated quickly, barely needing to give their order since they end up there every other week and nearly all the workers recognized them by now.

The charcoal grill had been fired up and a plate of samgyupsal placed next to them, along with lettuce, pickled radish, and ssamjang. Seungcheol took the tongs, laying out the strips of pork belly on the grill while Jihoon poured them a shot of soju each.

“To us,” Seungcheol had joked, raising his glass. Jihoon had rolled his eyes, but clinked his glass to Seungcheol’s all the same.

That’s all normal.

Jihoon thinks harder, trying to remember what happened after that, but draws a blank.

With an exasperated sigh, he starts to roll over, but stops short when he feels something hard and pokey and decidedly not his blanket digging into his back. He sits up and feels around for the source of the offending feeling; it doesn’t take long for him to notice a mass of red fabric amidst his blue sheets.

He yanks it up, shaking it out to see what it is – it’s a hoodie, and despite Jihoon’s penchant for wearing oversized clothes, he knows that this isn’t his.

It’s Seungcheol’s.

This, again, isn’t out of the ordinary in and of itself. Jihoon has a bad habit of not dressing warmly enough at night, and Seungcheol tends to overheat; this combination leads to Seungcheol forcing Jihoon into wearing his jackets when they go out more often than not.

What’s unusual is that the hoodie is actually in Jihoon’s possession – he’s usually quite good about giving them back to Seungcheol before he goes back to his apartment.

He remembers Seungcheol hugging him before he left to go back to his own place, but Jihoon can’t imagine being that startled from a hug to forget giving the elder back his jacket.

There had to have been something else that happened that night, but what?

2:07 AM
“Hey, Ji-hoon,” Seungcheol says, slurring over his words a bit, “I have something I want to tell you.”

“What’s stopping you, then?” Jihoon asks, taking a sip of his cola before reaching for the last piece of samgyupsal off the grill. If he were eating with anyone else, he’d have asked the other person if they wanted it first, but Seungcheol’s always deferred the last piece of anything to Jihoon, so he’s stopped asking.

“It’s really important.” Seungcheol looks quite serious when he says this, and Jihoon can tell that despite the amount of alcohol he’s consumed, he really does seem to mean what he’s about to say.

Jihoon raises an eyebrow. “Go on, then. You’re acting kind of weird, Cheol-hyung.”

Seungcheol closes his eyes, takes a breath. “Jihoon, I love you.”

“You—what, now?” Jihoon sputters. He can feel his face heating up, and he’s pretty sure his ears are bright red at this point. Scratch what he said before – Seungcheol is most definitely drunk and out of his mind.

“I love you,” Seungcheol says again. “I have for a while, I think. I don’t know when it started, and I don’t really know why, either, but it’s a feeling I’ve been having. I kept wanting to say something, but I was never able to get the words out until now.”

The elder lets out a soft chuckle and follows it up with another shot. “You probably think I’m drunk and crazy—”

“Hyung, you are drunk and crazy—”

“—but I needed to say something, sometime, and I felt like I could only say it after I drank enough that my brain wouldn’t quite stop me.”

Seungcheol smiles softly, his cheeks red (from alcohol or embarrassment, Jihoon doesn’t know.) “I mean, I guess that’s it. You can forget I ever said any of this, if you want. If it were up to me, though, I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”

A silence falls over the table. Jihoon doesn’t know what to say, too shocked by the sudden confession.

(If Jihoon really thinks about it, though, the confession wasn’t sudden – if anything, it was overdue.)

5:17 PM
Things finally fit into place – he remembers the confession, the numb shock he’d been in for hours afterwards, the confusion that led him to dig out the soju that he keeps at the back of the fridge for emergencies and drink.

(Jihoon’s struck with a bit of an urge to drink again – he’s mortified.)

It all makes sense, though: the awkwardness between them after the confession, the overly-formal morning text. It all points to a shift in their relationship that neither of them quite yet know how to define.

All this time he’s spent with Seungcheol as…

…what were they, really?

Jihoon’s thought about this a few times before, but never too seriously. There was nothing that really described the elder’s place in his life: best friend seemed somehow inadequate, lovers was completely off base, and there was no other term Jihoon could think of that made sense.

Seungcheol was, is, (and Jihoon had thought he always would be) Seungcheol; Jihoon had always thought that things would be the same for the elder, too.

Now, though, he realizes that he was wrong. Seungcheol wanted Jihoon to be something else to him, and wanted to be something else to Jihoon.

Jihoon’s simultaneously more and less confused the more he thinks about this. He’s definitely not opposed to bringing something different into the relationship he and Seungcheol have. The way he thinks about it, there won’t really be much that changes – Seungcheol will still be his closest person.

But somehow, Jihoon feels like everything’s going to change. He’s put up so many barriers around himself, many for no real reason other than that he likes to feel protected, that he almost doesn’t know how to let someone in that deeply.

(The irony of it all, though, is that Seungcheol’s already seen almost all of Jihoon that there is to see, know almost all that there is to know, and what little left that he doesn’t Jihoon knows that he’ll accept with the same open heart that Seungcheol always has when it comes to him.)

Does Jihoon love Seungcheol?

When faced with the question directly, it seems almost preposterous.

Jihoon’s knee-jerk instinct is to say no, of course not – he and Seungcheol are just friends, after all.

Yet if Jihoon takes the time to pause, mull over the question before responding, he finds that the answer isn’t quite so simple after all.

Out of all the people he knows, he probably likes Seungcheol the best. He’s willing to do things for Seungcheol without a second thought that he’d refuse to do for others in the same breath. He knows Seungcheol almost as well as the man knows himself, and even though Jihoon would like to think otherwise, he knows that the reverse is also true. Being with Seungcheol in any capacity feels right – it feels like home, if home were a person that has no familiar relation to him.

If there’s anyone that Jihoon can see himself being in love with, it’s probably Seungcheol.

And yet the question remains: does Jihoon love Seungcheol?

5:50 PM
The sun’s just started to set across the horizon – the warm light filtering through the clouds turns the sky a thousand colors of pink and blue and gold. Jihoon looks out the window; he wonders if Seungcheol is, too.

He picks up his phone from the table and unlocks it, tapping on his messaging app.

5:53 PM
Lee Jihoon: I guess it isn’t good morning anymore, but hi, hyung
Lee Jihoon: sorry this is so late, I was thinking a lot

lmao don't you just love vague endings