Despite the rest of the night being spent calmly and happily, with Mino and Jinwoo eating in front of the TV and going to sleep together, the elder found himself completely restless.

He was in his favourite pyjamas, under his favourite blanket, head laid on his favourite pillow, with his favourite person holding him – and yet he couldn’t sleep.

He easily lost track of time as he lay, as motionlessly as he could, in the complete darkness. He tried to focus on the sound of Mino’s breathing, his heartbeat. It didn’t work. Jinwoo was awake all the same.

There was some kind of tightness in his throat. He may have been imaging it, but it seemed to be getting worse with every minute.

Jinwoo didn’t want his restlessness and tossing to awake Mino, so he slipped out of the younger’s hold as gently as possible.

With the disappearance of Jinwoo’s warmth, Mino flinched sleepily and felt around the empty space, but he settled a moment after. Only when he was sure that Mino was still asleep did Jinwoo sneak out of the room.

He went to the kitchen, socked feet softly padding across the floor. There Jinwoo poured himself a glass of water, then another. Still, the tightness didn’t leave his throat.

Taking a deep breath, Jinwoo dragged himself to the living room and sat by the window. Looking outside at the distant lights of Seoul, he wondered why this was happening to him. What was he overlooking?

In the darkest moment of his life Jinwoo had done everything and anything he could to make himself feel better. To forget. To leave the past behind and start anew.

He’d latched onto his one and only golden rule of self care: you don’t need to force yourself into anything.

Now, he was wondering if it had all been just a charade.

For one, when he thought a bit about it, Jinwoo wasn’t very diligent in following his own golden rule. In fact, Jinwoo was no stranger to forcing himself into things.

He forced himself to write when he didn’t feel like it, in order to meet deadlines. He forced himself to talk to people when he didn’t want to, because it was crucial for certain arrangements about his job. And thinking way back, he’d forced himself into many more things than he cared to admit.

And now he wondered if perhaps “not forcing yourself into anything” merely meant “not facing anything out of fear.”

It seemed so.

With every relationship ended, Jinwoo would simply lock away the memories and throw away the key. He’d thought that this – not dwelling on the people who were no longer in your life – was quite the mature way of thinking. Why waste your energy on something that was no more?

But maybe it wasn’t so much moving on as it had been running away.

Mino’s words came back to him; some things need to be faced.

Perhaps this was what he needed to face.

The thought alone was terrifying. Jinwoo had years’ worth of skeletons in the closet and he wasn’t sure he was ready to dig them all out.

But he knew he had to. Because if he waited until he was ready... He would never do it.

Sometimes you can’t just hideaway behind bubble baths and face masks. Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to, because they’re necessary for you to feel better in the long run.

Jinwoo stood up to get himself another glass of water. He grabbed a blanket from the couch – he always kept one there just in case – went back to the window and sat down next to it, wrapping himself up in the blanket.

He was hugging his knees, tighter and tighter, trying to bring himself to think about the past, but for a while he still resisted it.

Let’s start slow, he told himself.

For starters he thought about his most recent ex. Then the other, and the other. Then he started to think about some of the nice moments they’d shared. Then the memories started unwinding and before long there was no going back.

His head was thrown into chaos. It felt as if the world around him was crashing and burning. But in reality it was only him, sitting in the quiet living room silently by the window. He wasn’t even physically reacting to what he was seeing in his mind, but it felt like the end of the world.

That was, until he teared up.

Jinwoo touched under his eyes once he felt the first tear roll down his cheek. He stared at his shining fingertips until they started to blur with more tears coming.

The chaotic movie playing out in his mind was approaching Jinwoo’s most dreaded memories; all the unwanted touches and ignored pleas.

He was losing his breath. At first Jinwoo tried to stifle his sobs in fear of waking up his sleeping boyfriend.

But gradually he completely lost control.

He wanted to scream. He felt dirty, he wanted to rip his skin off.

“Hyung...”

Jinwoo’s head shot up. Mino looked exhausted. He was barely keeping his eyes open and he had dark circles under them. Had he always been this thin? The dim lights from outside cast treacherous shadows on his bare torso in such a way that made him look sick.

He kneeled in front of Jinwoo, resting his hands on his knees.

“Breathe, love.”

“I – can’t—”

“You can. Hey—Stop that,” Mino muttered and reached out. He wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been worried. He took Jinwoo by the wrists and pulled his hands from his arms.

Jinwoo hadn’t even realized that he’d been digging his nails into his skin, arms crossed over his chest. When Mino pried his hands away, Jinwoo saw that his forearms were all scratched up; and he was horrified.

Seeing this, Jinwoo only started hyperventilating more.

“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s alright,” Mino said quickly. “Just look at me. You’re okay.”

“It’s not okay. I’m not—”

Somehow Mino knew exactly what to do. He knew not to touch Jinwoo other than his hands, he knew what to say that would get through to him, he knew how to help him breathe again. Later Jinwoo would make the connection to what Mino had said about having gone to therapy and learning to cope with his anxiety.

It helped. It took time, but Jinwoo managed to breathe again eventually. By the time he did, the sky was fading from an inky black to a veily violet and the stars no longer matched the city light’s brightness – sunrise was only hours away.

When Jinwoo was only staring blankly in front of himself, not crying or struggling to breathe, Mino asked if he could pick him up.

At first Jinwoo wasn’t so sure, but then he realized that at the same time he wanted to be in his bed and felt like he couldn’t move. Being carried didn’t sound so bad then.

Mino scooped him up from the floor and Jinwoo was relieved to find the touch soothing rather than unwanted. Mino carried the Jinwoo-plus-blanket-bundle bridal style to the bedroom and gently placed him on top of the messy sheets that Mino had gotten out of. He kissed Jinwoo’s forehead and promised that he’d be back soon.

Jinwoo wasn’t sure where Mino had gone. He could hear noises from the kitchen but didn’t bother check what the younger was doing. He just curled up under his blanket and harshly pulled his sleeves down so he wouldn’t have to look at himself.

The smell of chocolate reached Jinwoo moments before Mino walked back into the room. Jinwoo felt the bed shift when he sat down, and he slowly unwound and sat up.

Mino was offering him a cup of hot chocolate with a few marshmallows swimming on the surface.

With a sigh, Jinwoo took the mug and leaned into the younger, trusting him to support his weight. They sat in silence for a little while, for as long as it took Jinwoo to finish his hot chocolate.

Placing the mug on the nightstand, Jinwoo wiggled into a position opposite of Mino.

“I think I owe you some type of explanation,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Mino replied tiredly.

Jinwoo’s gaze softened and he reached out to play with Mino’s hand. “You always say that and it means to world to me. But it’s not always okay. You deserve to know.”

To this, Mino didn’t respond.

Jinwoo took a deep breath before he began,

“You were right. Some things need to be faced.”

“Hyung, I’m sorry,” Mino interrupted quickly. “I never would have said that if I’d known it would hurt you this much.”

Jinwoo shook his head and gave Mino’s hand a light squeeze. “No, no, you were right. I’ve been running from it for too long and, wouldn’t you know it, when you just push problems under the rug they don’t magically disappear. I had to… go to some places I’d hoped never to return to, but I had to, in order to understand.”

He paused and let go of Mino’s hand, now fidgeting with the fabric of his pajamas. “The thing is... My past relationships had been failures and it’s left some sort of impact on me. Clearly…” He shook his head. “In the past, I'd been so pathetically lonely that I'd clung onto anyone who’d showed the slightest bit of interest in me and I called it love. I’d given so much of myself to people who didn't deserve it and got less than nothing in return. And that's what I started to expect from everyone. Even from you…”

Mino looked to the side and played with his lip piercing while thinking, before nodding once. “Yeah, I figured that much myself. But because there’s no point of me saying that I’m not like other guys, I’ve tried to show it.”

Jinwoo smiled faintly, a bit bitterly perhaps. “Yeah… That— that scared me. Ironic right? I had no idea how to act faced with genuine kindness. I just didn’t want to get hurt again. So, I thought I’d simply push you away first and trick faith.”

Mino’s smile was a sad one as well. “It’s a good thing I didn’t give up on you, huh?”

Jinwoo’s breath hitched and he needed a second to calm himself, to prevent himself from tearing up. He was sick of crying. Even if he would be crying in relief, or happiness, he was sick of it.

“Yeah. Lucky me,” he muttered.

He sighed and leaned in, easily curling himself up in Mino’s side. The younger held him and they both enjoyed a moment of peace before Jinwoo perked up, remembering something else.

“Oh, also, earlier you’ve raised some interesting points about me not turning anything down, so I’ve thought about that too and…” Jinwoo paused, trying to find the best way to word what he’d come up with. His experiences with his past boyfriends had been odd to say the least and it was difficult to express how he now felt about it.

“It’s not that I can’t say no. It’s that… In the past, when I used to say it, it didn’t really mean anything. So, since it never made a difference, at some point I just stopped saying it.” He shrugged. To Jinwoo, it was just another one of those things he had locked up  a long time ago and had now faced, hoping for things to get better.

But when he glanced at Mino, Jinwoo saw his horrified expression.

“What?” Jinwoo asked nervously.

“Love,” Mino said as gently as he possibly could. “If they ignored your no during , that’s .”

Jinwoo’s reaction may have been a bit sudden. He flinched away, covered his ears and closed his eyes. “What!? No! Don’t say that!”

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Mino was saying. “I just don’t think you realize—”

“No, you don’t realize! Come on—it couldn’t have been – that – they were my boyfriends!”

“Jinwoo. It doesn’t matter what the person is to you.”

Jinwoo shook his head and got off the bed. He started pacing the room, still shaking his head, still trying to deny what he’d known for years.

He simply never wanted to name it.

Because he didn’t want to feel like he was broken.

He stopped pacing and looked down at his hands. He sighed and went back to the bed. He curled up by Mino again and closed his eyes.

“I’ve faced too much of my past tonight. I think I want to run from this a bit longer. At least for tonight,” Jinwoo whispered.

It wasn’t an ideal solution. It was barely a solution, but it worked, just for that night.