jongseong is upset as he pulls into the driveway of the familiar two story white brick house. this house brings back memories of his mom straightening his clothes and reminding him to be on his best behavior. he remembers the pristine couch that looked like it was never used unless guests were over and the stiffling lack of hominess in the decor. there were some good memories, but the good feelings associated with those memories had faded a long time ago.

 

he gets out of his car and tightens his tie against his collar to look a little bit more presentable, looking in his car’s mirror to make sure he looks spick and span. his mom was in charge of the committee to set up the bi-annual luncheon and charity event for the neighborhood association, and since she is still trying to replace the association’s president, she volunteered jongseong to help out with planning out the logistics for the event since he was just “so good at things like that” (he’s not).

 

he walks up to the door and gives the doorbell a ring. he honestly doesn’t know what to expect since he hasn’t helped with an event for two years now, but he’s done plenty of group projects in school and he’s currently on the e-board for the future architects association (his friends dragged him into it- it wasn’t a personal choice) so helping with the logistics couldn’t be too bad. he’d just have to spend a week on this and then he could get back to spending his summer vacation the way that he wanted.

 

the door opens and jongseong blinks a couple times, not expecting the person who answered the door.

 

“well if it isn’t jongseong malfoy,” sicheng teases, a small smile forming on his lips, “it’s been a while.”

 

jongseong gets a little flustered, his cheeks warming up in hot-headed temper. he knows sicheng is just trying to get under his skin. he hasn’t heard of that nickname in years. back in the day, jongseong was forced to come over quite often since his mom would need to come over and work with sicheng’s mom on neighborhood events. sicheng was the only one who he could talk to, and since there was a four year , the only things they could really bond over were the harry potter movies and books. they spent hours watching and rewatching every movie, acting out scenes in the books, and taking quizzes together. he was jongseong potter (despite being a slytherin) and sicheng was sicheng diggory.

 

as the years passed, they’d get into countless arguments and sicheng would start to call jongseong by jongseong malfoy for his rather heartless lashbacks when things turned south, and slowly, jongseong potter became nonexistent.

 

as if it had never existed in the first place.

 

it’s not that jongseong considered sicheng his enemy (he has other enemies, real enemies, who actually wronged him in ways that he doesn’t like to admit or remember), but as they grew into their true personalities, they just never seemed to get along. on top of that, his mom started comparing every little thing he did to sicheng’s accomplishments, and started enrolling him into the same extra cirriculars and programs as sicheng to prove herself to sicheng’s mom that her son was just as good as hers. it annoyed him that he had to follow in sicheng’s steps just to be a pawn in his mom’s game.

 

“yeah, it’s been almost two years now,” jongseong says a bit coldly, walking through the open door and taking his shoes off.

 

he takes a look around and the house is the exact same: pristine, clean, and cold. he’s never felt welcomed in this house even once, even when he and sicheng got along.

 

“what are you doing home?” jongseong asks as he looks back up at sicheng, “my mom said that you got a job in china with that new music company.”

 

“oh, i did. i’m working from home for the next two weeks to help my mom with the event. she thought that i could help with the charity portion of it since my company would help give a connection to some possible artists.”

 

jongseong’s heart stops dead in his chest. he’s helping with the event, too? which means…

 

“so i guess we’ll be working together again,” sicheng smiles and crosses his arms in front of his chest, “i hope you can keep up. remember the last time we worked together on an event?”

 

“it wasn’t my fault your mom wanted things done in a specific way and never gave me directions or even a glimpse of her expectations,” jongseong grumbles to himself.

 

“you also got a cold from working too hard,” sicheng comments, the smile on his face starting to falter a bit, “we can’t let that happen again.”

 

jongseong thinks sicheng is just too pretentious. he caught a cold because they had been pulling all nighters to redo all of the decorations since they didn’t match what mrs. dong wanted in the first place. she pulled out some of sicheng’s backup plans at the last minute and they barely completed everything in time. on the last day, jongseong was so sick that he passed out and fell into the last column they were painting. sicheng ended up finishing it by himself while he slept in sicheng’s bed. during the event, sicheng kept making passive aggressive comments about how jongseong needed to be more careful if he couldn’t bear working that many hours, and how he should just go home and leave the event to sicheng. it led to them having an argument outside of the event hall and jongseong ended up storming home after all.

 

he’s never forgiven sicheng for that argument. the whole time, sicheng was trying to convince him that the event only needed sicheng there and that he wasn’t needed so he should just go home, as if jongseong was the most useless thing in the world. just because he was younger and has accomplished less than sicheng, he should listen to what sicheng has to say? because he’s the son of the association’s president?

 

and now two years later, it’s nothing different. sicheng still looks down on him and he’s even got a really cool job in his home country. jongseong wishes he could move back to seattle, too.

 

“let’s just go and get this over with,” jongseong sighs and makes the familiar route to sicheng’s dead and soulless living room. he was about to take a seat on the couch when sicheng comes behind him and grabs his arm, “um, actually, can we do this in my room? my parents are going to have guests over in a couple of hours and i’d prefer it if we didn’t have to move later.”

 

jongseong hasn’t been in sicheng’s room since he was younger. when they walk through his bedroom doors, jongseong couldn’t help but let his eyes travel around the room. he was a bit shocked at how out of place sicheng’s room looked. the shelves held all of sicheng’s different editions of the harry potter books and he can still see where he doodled on all of the spines. he’d always been into art (hence his architect major) and those spines were his first big project. 

 

there are various other knick knacks that he doesn’t know the backstory for, but when he looks around for a little bit longer, he finds their old drawings and notes from when they were in the same chess program and when they worked together to play a recital at their piano school. he had golden yellow bedding and his walls were littered with posters. next to his bedside, there was a paper nametag stuck to the top of his nightstand that read “sicheng diggory” in jongseong’s handwriting. this had to be from years ago. he doesn’t remember when he wrote it or where this nametag came from.

 

“sorry it’s a bit messy, i didn’t have time to clean it. i just came from the airport this morning,” sicheng apologizes, clearing up his desk a little, “you can sit here though. i’ll take the bed.”

 

“your room… actually looks homey,” jongseong comments, taking a seat on his desk chair, “i thought your entire family was soulless and didn’t have a personality.”

 

“hey, that’s mean,” sicheng laughs, his hand brushing the top of his comforter. he looks back up to meet jongseong’s eyes, “but yeah, i guess i can see why you’d think that. my mom just likes everything clean. she hates my room because i didn’t want to throw anything out.”

 

“why didn’t you want to throw anything out? isn’t some of this stuff old and useless?” jongseong picks up a piece of paper that looked like it was originally crinkled up but then smoothed out with a careful hand. it was the first draft of the event decor and layout from last time they worked together. jongseong had worked all morning on it while sicheng researched for catering services and live performances. he remembered crumpling this and throwing it into the trash after mrs. dong told them that the entire thing was unprofessional and they needed to redo everything. she took out a draft that sicheng had apparently created before jongseong joined and told them to do it according to how sicheng planned it. he wonders what his draft is doing on sicheng’s desk.

 

sicheng smoothly plucks the paper from jongseong’s hand, “it’s not old and useless. i like holding onto my memories.”

 

“then why didn’t you take it with you to china? don’t you live there now?” jongseong tilts an eyebrow, looking at sicheng again in curiosity. he notices sicheng’s expression become unreadable as sicheng tucks the draft into a random drawer. sicheng’s expressions are usually easy to read. it’s only when they’re about to get into an argument is when sicheng starts to keep his feelings to himself.

 

there a pause as sicheng looks down into the drawer. jongseong can see him gliding his fingers over the paper, smoothing out the wrinkles even more. sicheng looks back up at him, “yeah, i do live there now. i guess there’s something keeping me from completely moving to china. a part of me is still stuck here.”

 

“i think you should just pack up your stuff and make the full leap,” jongseong shrugs his shoulders, finally pulling out his laptop and placing it on sicheng’s desk, “i mean, keep your books and posters and stuff, but the notes from our piano recital? we came in 3rd place together and the song we made wasn’t even that great of a song. didn’t you win 1st place your final year? you should just throw this away.”

 

“why are you so adamant about throwing everything away?”

 

sicheng seems annoyed now. jongseong knew they would end up arguing.

 

“i’m not. i’m just saying a lot of these things are meaningless.”

 

sicheng’s eyebrows furrow together and jongseong couldn’t tell if sicheng was irritated or upset, “you really are heartless, malfoy.”

 

“you don’t need to call me malfoy everytime you’re calling me heartless,” jongseong shakes his head and sighs. it’d be a lie to say that the name didn’t hurt and that sicheng calling him heartless didn’t get under his skin.

 

“i’m sorry i don’t understand why all of this means so much to you. we don’t even really like each other and if the sheer amount of keeping all of these random childhood memories are the things holding you back from completely moving to china, then i think you should just let it go and prioritize what you want to do,” he waves his hands around to refer to every little knick knack in sicheng’s room, “you’re 25 now, right? isn’t it time to start a new era for yourself? did you plan on being sicheng diggory forever?”

 

silence cuts through the air as they stare at each other, and for the first time during one of their arguments, jongseong can finally read sicheng’s expression with certainty. he’s hurt. jongseong starts to feel bad for lashing out this time around. now, it was clear to him that the animosity he felt towards sicheng had been one sided. the look in sicheng’s eyes made jongseong’s heart ache and sink down to his stomach.

 

sicheng closes the drawer and takes his own laptop to his bed, his expression going back to being unreadable. jongseong watches as sicheng opens it and starts typing on his keyboard, “let’s just get to work.”

 

“wait, sicheng,” jongseong gets off the chair and sits on his bed, “listen, i’m sorry. i didn’t mean to, um, hurt your feelings.”

 

sicheng looks up at him, his face looking ice cold. jongseong wishes he could see another smile.

 

“it’s fine, let’s just start planning,” sicheng shrugs him off and looks back down at his laptop. jongseong can see event plans written out on sicheng’s laptop already. it was all pretty detailed, but the parts that were sparse were the parts that needed design input. jongseong looks over at the drawer with his old draft in it. did sicheng leave that part blank for him?

 

jongseong reaches over and holds onto sicheng’s arm, tugging it softly so that sicheng would look at him, “hey, sicheng? i’m sorry. can we just talk?”

 

jongseong can feel sicheng let out a shaky breath before he shuts his laptop and sets it on his bedside table. he turns to face jongseong again, but this time, there’s a different look on his face. before jongseong could figure out how to read sicheng’s expression, he finds himself pinned down against the bed with sicheng’s lips pressed against his. 

 

without thinking, his eyes snap shut as he reciprocates the kiss, sicheng’s lips moving against his hungrily. every part of his mouth was being tasted by sicheng’s tongue and he could feel himself melting into the mattress under him. sicheng lets go of his wrists and uses one hand to hold onto his jaw and pushes his face even closer to sicheng’s, deepening the kiss. jongseong’s hands travel to sicheng’s shoulder and torso, pulling him closer to him as he on sicheng’s lower lip until he can feel it throb in his mouth.

 

with every second that passes, he was getting more and more breathless. as he felt like he was running out of steam, sicheng pulls away from the kiss, only to slip his hand behind jongseong’s head to tilt his head upwards as sicheng nuzzles the bottom of his jawline with his nose before pressing multiple gentle kisses down his neck. jongseong feels electricity shooting through his skin with every touch, his breath heavy from the kiss, his mind spinning from trying to figure out what just happened.

 

sicheng hovers his face over jongseong’s while catching his breath, his expression finally looking soft again. for the first time, jongseong can read the love in sicheng’s eyes. for years, he couldn’t decipher the expression, but now, he understands.

 

jongseong is the part of sicheng that he can’t bear to leave behind.