Kyung is okay.

He is kind of okay with not saying anything to Jiho and perfectly okay with this something pulling on his chest whenever he hears something he doesn't want to, but he's okay, 'cause he's not doing anything about it to be different, so he's to blame anyway and he has no right crying under the shower every night whatsoever.

Kyung is kind of perfectly fine when Jiho doesn't come home some nights because he knows where he is, how he is and who's he ing tonight. He gets every single detail through text messages and he wants to throw the phone, smash it into the wall, but he's an idiot because the not so right side of him, hopes, wishes that the next message may return his feelings. But don't get him wrong, he's okay even if that never happens and Jiho comes back home in the morning all happy and Kyung is „his man“,  he gets the details all over again and Kyung has no other choice but to smile and encourage him even more.

He's okay, kind of, when Jiho is flirting with 10 of them a day and makes a list to Kyung, who's he getting out for coffee, dinner, or just a night walk. Jiho is your average charisma expert and while we're at it, Kyung is probably the best person to know that.

He's okay with the loss of appetite, sleepless nights and daydreaming doze off's, 'cause Jiho doesn't know, and that's kind of great, because he can't ruin their perfect friendship and make Jiho hate him and go away forever. Jiho doesn't notice, 'cause Kyung makes sure he doesn't, he smiles whenever the other's around, so that the other doesn't question. He may be a little off, when he swallows harder that he should and his text messages to Jiho are full of errors, but when, and if Jiho asks he just pulls out the good old „I'm just really tired“ speech. Jiho then hums and tells him „You should just sleep then“ and nothing more, and Kyung is still okay.

Kyung is okay with the sudden stop of skinship, 'cause Jiho is the bomb now and girls basically throw themselves at him, with such an amazing force, so who needs Kyung to touch, tease and cuddle with now. He's okay with the sudden stop of whispering in his ear, teasing words that sometimes used to fire his hopes up so hot, he was seconds away from confessing, 'cause Jiho is kind of too cool for that closeness now and guys that pretend cold and hard-to-get get load of girls.

He's fine when Jiho obviously doesn't want to go grab a cup of coffee with him, 'cause he's too busy doing something else.

He's just maybe, kind of okay, he's not sure.

He comes late one night, 'cause his schedule is really messed up lately and he slowly opens the door, and closes them the same, in order not to wake the others up. Their dorm is quiet, too quiet, but still reeking on a friendly atmosphere, so Kyung immediately relaxes. He throws his jacket on the nearest chair and collapses on the couch, burying his head in his hands, drawing his fingers through his messy hair and then inhales deeply, to make up to his brain for the lack of oxygen in his life. He throws a quick, distanced glare at the kitchen and he already knows there's no food left, but he didn't eat anything all day, so he kind of feels too sick from not eating to eat anyway.

He leans his head on the back of the couch, looking straight at the ceiling. He tries not to either puke or fall asleep, but he accidentally closes his eyes and he's suddenly not able to open them again. His hands are resting lifelessly on the sides of his body and his lips part just a little, that's kind of a reflex to him when he's too tired. He's just about to reach the and let all of his worries go away, when someone's hands get on the couch's back, on each side of his head and someone's head is above his, but Spiderman style. Honestly, he doesn't even want to know, but he still opens his eyes just a little, feeling the presence, and something heats up in him and he wants to kill Jiho, 'cause he just wants to sleep, and the other decided to bother him – he had a really really bad timing, you know. Then again, he can't help but smile a little, enough for Jiho to notice and closes his eyes again, still not moving an inch, and whispers a quiet „Hey“ to Jiho, and Jiho smiles so widely, but Kyung can't see that.

„You can't sleep there, you know. You'll get cramps and grimace in the morning and all and not be as cute as you can be.“

Kyung is kind of not, so not okay now, 'cause, you can't say those things to me, you don't have the right. He feels something form in the pit of his stomach and he unwillingly smiles a liiiiitle bit wider and he thinks he feels Jiho inching forward, still not opening his eyes.

„Come on, get up.“

Jiho then appears at his front, he's pulling at his hands and  Kyung is lazily, finally, opening his eyes, allowing himself to be pulled up without any actual anticipation in it, even though it is his body, but who cares. After seconds, he comes face to face with Jiho, and the other is kind of pulling him into a hug. Kyung is too weak to protest, and even if he wasn't, protesting would be kind of weird, so he just buries his head into Jiho's shoulder and he's definitely not okay. Don't do this to me, Jiho, please.

„I think I'm going to puke.“

He pulls away from Jiho quickly, pushing him a little too hard and runs into the bathroom. He lets all those things he actually didn't even eat out, and everything starts getting better, life gets better, you know the feeling – Jiho can only hear something hard constantly falling into the toilet. He drags himself to the bathroom, leans his shoulder onto the door frame and sighs.

„You know, that's what you get for not eating and sleeping.“

Kyung's hands shake rapidly while he's trying to keep his head from falling into the toilet and he wonders why's Jiho even still around.

“I don’t do it on purpose, you know. “

“I know.”

He stands up slowly, still shaking a little, immediately moving to the sink to remove the gross taste from his mouth. Jiho is, for some reason, still standing behind him. He stares at Kyung’s back and it bothers Kyung. He turns around and looks at the other and then there are flashbacks, things that are not, things that could be and things Kyung wishes could be and his eyes are getting glittery all of a sudden. Jiho just looks at him with wide eyes, ‘cause never in his life did he saw Kyung cry, never so vulnerable. But Kyung doesn’t cry, Kyung doesn’t cry, he’s a man. He just sighs deeply, suppressing it all in and Jiho goes ‘don’t cry, don’t cry on me’ but Kyung doesn’t know what’s going inside of his head.

“Kyung-“

“Look. I’m just really tired. Let’s just go to sleep.”

He is numb, his head hurts because he’d much rather cry his heart out, but Jiho is there, so if he starts crying he’ll probably crack, he just knows it. He tries to keep his composure and kind of stumbles towards Jiho, until he’s inches away from Jiho’s face. Jiho doesn’t move, so it encourages him big time. He moves to his side and softly kisses Jiho on the cheek, fingers lingering on his neck and heats up, because it’s skin contact with Jiho, goddammit.

Jiho can’t take it.

He can’t take it because he shouldn’t feel this way, he shouldn't because they fill your head with all kind of crap and say that it’s wrong, and always will be.

He can’t take it because Kyung can be beyond flawless sometimes, and he can suppress thoughts of everyone in this world except him in Jiho’s mind for what seems like an eternity. He camps in Jiho’s mind and as time passed by, he came to think of it as home.

Jiho can’t take it because Kyung likes to hug and cuddle and no personal space whatsoever and Jiho is his favorite target. He can’t take it because he kind of loses himself too much in those above mentioned so he backs away, and he sometimes gets the idea that Kyung looks sad because of lack of Jiho himself, but that’s just his imagination, right?

He doesn’t know how to take it because Kyung doesn’t know, and he won’t know – their friendship is the definition of perfect, and yeah, they are perfect the way they were and are, even though people claim nothing can be perfect.

So he hits on ladies and buys them flowers, so sometimes he thinks he’s out, totally out, but then Kyung appears at the studio while he’s creating music and hugs him from behind, telling him “Just checking on you”.

He can’t take it and it’s making him mad, really, really mad. He’s kind of especially mad at Kyung for not returning his feelings, even if Kyung doesn’t know, but still! So he texts him, while he’s making love to someone (and he’s not enjoying it, not even a little bit, to be quite honest), just to see if Kyung will flinch even a little bit, and those little errors in his answers could be everything , but Kyung just says “It’s nothing, I’m just tired” and Jiho’s castles are falling into the water all of a sudden.

He can’t take it because his life is just daydreaming and daydreaming and people tell him he looks like an idiot when he’s smiling like an, well, an idiot, to himself.

He often declaims Kyungs coffee invitations and shrugs him off coldly, because, well, let’s just say it’s for Kyung’s sake.

So when Kyung gets all ‘I’m freaking falling apart Jiho’ to him (but he doesn’t know Kyung is kind of falling apart, yet) and slides his whole hand gently across his own, Jiho grabs him at the last second and says:

“Don’t plan anything for tomorrow; we should grab a cup of coffee. You know, to make up for all the times I unpurposely blew you off”.

Kyung turns around slowly and just looks at him blankly and stares – then he finally smiles;

“Uh? What do you need?!”

“Hey! Why do you always assume I need something when I’m being nice to you - !”

“I’m kidding, fine! By the way, if this is the way you ask girls to dates, then I have no idea what kind of medication they’re on, when they actually go out with you”.

Jiho is grimacing at him and Kyung is mocking him and laughing –

“Oh, so, let me get this straight, you think this is a date invitation? Well, if you want it to be –“

“No.”

“Right. Straight forward. …Don’t lie to yourself, I know you want me.”

“No.”

Kyung stands in front of their building. He doesn’t stand like, hey, I’m chilling here like a retard, looking at an entrance door like it’s the most amazing thing in the world; that’s just his whereabouts.

Every step he takes becomes slower.

He ends up dragging his feet loudly across the cement.

And if the elevator isn’t working, there’ll be dead puppies.

All that was in his mind was him, in his bed, sleeping, not giving a .

But somewhere in his mind there was Jiho, cuddling with him. And everything in his world became even worst because that coffee was amazing and he somehow ended up sleeping on Jiho’s chest, which was like, a mine field situation for him. But he’d do it again, you know, the whole world knows he would.

The elevator opens on his floor, and he’s almost there, but it still takes him 2 minutes to reach a 5-meters-away destination. He turns the knob, and the knob kind of looks stuck, so he regrets it immediately, because he knows life too well.

Someone is opening the door on the other side at the same time, and of course it was Jiho, it must be Jiho, because when’s not Jiho? He’s kind of really pretty, but he’s always really pretty to Kyung so he tries not to notice that as much.

“Oh. Sorry”, he murmurs sleepily to him, and he sees Jiho smiling a little and telling him something but he just can’t make him sound.

Then everything is blank, and okay, and he doesn’t need to worry about his weak legs failing him, ‘cause he feels too heavy for himself, and he fears he’ll just fall on the ground and sleep there.

Jiho sometimes gets so lost in creating music that most of the time 8 hours are like 15 minutes so when he finally decides to open the window he is surprised that the night is almost at its fullest. There are happy screams of children that always hang out in the park nearby and Seoul is kind of too beautiful and the night breeze is kind of too perfect, the bad feeling he gets for not being able to spend those weird, but fulfilling nights with someone, too old.

He sighs, and laughs, mostly because his life kind of when he sums everything up. His fingers brush through his now shaved hair and although he shaved it off because of really touchy reasons, people tell him he looks hot, hotter than ever, so he likes it too. He likes it too, because Kyung is the first one to like it.

“What’s so interesting out there?”

He hears a silent voice approaching him, and he’s kind of brightening up, joining the city lights when Kyung gently pushes him out of the way and stands beside him, looking from a wide open window into the blue sky with him.

“I don’t know; the rest of the world?”

Yeah, it was more a question, than an answer, but Kyung understood him perfectly. They get taught about everything and everything, but not the basic stuff. It’s a good thing they’re rejects compared to other celebrities. But Kyung asks anyway;

“What’s a world and the rest of it to you?”

And Jiho doesn’t answer because, he swallows hard and he wants to say, and to be honest, it’s a perfect way to say it, right there, but he doesn’t, ‘cause people don’t like you back just like that.

‘You, you’re my world, and the rest of it is just people I care about, but not as much as I care about you”

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he only manages to say “I’ll get back to you on that, okay?”

Not long after, Kyung is once again at the studio, suffocating Jiho with the usual “Seriously, you didn’t eat anything all day – do you want me to stab you with this pencil to death?”

“Aw, you wouldn’t do that, you love me too much –“

“No. You’re an idiot”

And Jiho is smiling and laughing and Kyung is whining but he still sits across Jiho at a little coffee table, pushing a cup of coffee towards him. He says something about Jiho not coming back home again tonight, and that he’ll probably need it, but Jiho doesn’t notice the too sad tone in his voice.

He instead leans forward and catches Kyungs fingers with his own, and Kyung is startled, but doesn’t pull back. He just waits for Jiho to say something, anything, and stop him from doing something unforgivable.

But Jiho just continues playing with them and Kyung leans into the touch too much, and he’s kind of sleepy again. He notices he’s lately always sleepy, even when he’s not.

“You’re making me sleepy. Aren’t you sleepy? You’re always up, and you’re never sleepy, I don’t get it”

“Yeah, a little. Will of steal, baby. You should go home then, I have to finish this –“

“No! – I mean, It’s okay, I’ll wait for you”

Kyung cuts him off too quickly, and he scolds himself for maybe being too transparent – he can’t stop being such a bother to Jiho, he tells himself he’ll stop, less Jiho, more everything else, but he doesn’t because Jiho, Jiho, and oh, did he mention, Jiho, everything is Jiho.

But Jiho smiles too much for Jiho’s ‘swagga’ style and Kyung can breathe again. He pulls his and Kyung’s intervened hands towards him and leans his head into them, lips brushing slowly over Kyung’s fingers. Kyung believes he’s the first man on the planet that survived a heart attack without any proper help.

He kind of falls asleep on the couch, Jiho’s window now always open, lights always off. He dreams how Jiho snuggles beside him in the middle of the night and tells him he likes his new haircut, that he loves the way his bangs kind of slightly fall over his eyes and that he melts every time Kyung sways his head to move them out of the way – Kyung smiles sweetly in his sleep and that’s basically the best dream ever.

What he doesn’t know though, is that Jiho does that all and adds, “Yeah, you just smile, mock me”.

And he also kind of wakes up in the morning, his head in the crock of Jiho’s neck, hands on his chest, Jiho’s hand over his hips tightly. He still smells freaking great and instead of panicking, which would usually be his thing, he savors the moment, getting closer and close, Jiho responding the same.

Then people are yelling from all sides, outside, inside and Jiho wakes up with such force that he falls off the bed and Kyung is laughing at him cutely, covering his laughter with his hands.

Sent:

“Please come back.”

“Please.”

“Jiho…”

“Jiho…”

From: Kyung

To: Jiho

Jiho kind of runs away. Well, it’s not running away, when you think about it, it’s kind of a three days vacation without contacting anyone, but Kyung still doesn’t know what to do; he lies because he wants to avoid panic, when he’s actually having a major panic attack himself. He tries to tell himself that Jiho isn’t that stupid, Jiho isn’t stupid at all, and that stress kind of gets to you in the end, and that he probably needs to calm down, and give Jiho some time off.

Members question him, but he’s actually a really good improviser, he finds out. They throw this big wave of questions at him and he manages to answer them all, without cracking.

He walks into his room, the second he’s sure they’re convinced, and slides down the closed door. His look is blank and it hurts more than ever.

*

Jiho just stares at his old apartment’s ceiling.

Unsent:

“I love you”.

~ ~ ~

Someone knocks in the middle of the night and it’s a good thing Kyung has one of his not – being – able – to – sleep – because – of – Jiho nights. It could be a thief, a murdered, his mother, for all he knows, but he still reaches out for the knob, ‘cause he’s too lost to think properly.

He thinks, what the hell has my life narrowed to, and wishes he could be young and careless again, and that maybe, just maybe, life would magically change, and Jiho would be just a friend, again, like old times.

He opens the door and life doesn’t give him lemons, life never gives you lemons. He could make a cold relaxing lemonade and pee like crazy afterwards. It gives him Jiho, a hot looking Jiho with an apologetic look on his face, “I’m so freaking sorry” look and Kyung gulps hard, his hand sliding lifelessly off the door knob. He looks at Jiho for a second, before averting his gaze, looking at anything but Jiho. He’s mad and he’s sad, and he’s everything, which is never good.

“I’m sorry”

“I know”

Kyung presses his lips, forming a thin line, nodding a couple of times, and Jiho follows the movement with his eyes. Everything is dark, it’s dark in their apartment, it’s dark in the building itself; the only light source being the enormous moon, shining behind Jiho’s back through the building’s windows  – but Jiho can still see Kyung’s face perfectly, too perfectly. He kind of lifts his hands to hug Kyung, ‘cause Kyung seems like all he needs is just a hug, but the other is just swallowing hard and making confused gestures, words getting stuck in his throat every time he opens his mouth to say something. His eyes are puffy and red and glittering like crazy, this huge bubble in his stomach.

Then he stops, too quickly. He breathes in, stops, and slowly looks at Jiho, his look saying “Okay, so we’re at this, okay, I totally understand, okay, okay”, almost frantically.

“Welcome hom – “

But he gets cut off rudely. He’s kind of pressed against Jiho, running out of air, arms clumsily half in the air – half against Jiho’s shoulders, and then, when his heart skips 3 beats, 4 beats, it’s skipping beats like crazy okay, he’s dying, he realizes Jiho is kissing him. It’s awkward and uncomfortable at first, but then he completely surrenders his body to Jiho, relaxing, falling limp against him. When it finally hits him, he’s kissing Jiho, Woo Jiho, the Woo Jiho, he’s kissing him, or rather Woo Jiho is kissing him, he gasps for air, and the kiss becomes less innocent and more ‘I just need you so freaking much, get that in your head’ with Jiho moving forward, pinning Kyung against the wall. Kyung moves his hands behind Jiho’s neck, grabbing Jiho’s shirt, his hair, anything just so he doesn’t slide down the wall, because his legs are too mushy. Jiho adds tongue here and there, the sound of kissing echoing through the place in dead silence.

Kyung knows he has to wonder why’s Jiho doing this, but he kind of doesn’t want to know. He always wondered, why the hell people wonder about ANYTHING, when someone is kissing them. It’s pretty obvious, don’t you think. Things aren’t always so complicated that you have the need to question.

Jiho pulls away slowly, eyes closed, hands still tight around Kyung – his forehead falls onto the wall behind Kyung’s back and Kyung just hugs him tight.

“I kind of – “

Kyung gasps for air.

And then Jiho kind of, maybe, definitely tells him he loves him and Kyung, definitely wants Jiho to make love to him for 3 days, non – stop.