.3_

They're meeting up with the 2PM hyung for a music show and Key watches Minho and Nichkhun interact. Nichkhun is uprightly glad to see the younger boy and if Minho wasn't Minho he would probably be gushing all over the place. But, being Minho, it takes someone who's lived with him for years to notice any actual difference. To Key, it's obvious he's infatuated, though he doubts many others notice this.

They're all close and up in each other's personal space, but than they've always gotten along exceedingly well. It's like watching some kind of wooing dance as the two flutter around each other. When Wooyoung enters, it all ends rather abruptly.

Nichkhun's attention is drawn elsewhere and though he apologises as he takes his leave to join his probably-more-than-friend still Minho can't seem to help but look a whole lot heartbroken.

Like that Key learns about unrequited love and how to spot it, and somewhere in his head wheels are turning.

It gets him thinking. He starts locking his bedroom door again, because when Jonghyun gets him alone he always just ends up trying-and-failing to resist him.

When Jonghyun comes at five past midnight, Key has been waiting. He's been sitting cross-legged, nerve-wrecked, waiting for the knock to come, but nearly jumps out of his skin when it finally does come.

Before Jonghyun can knock a second time Key has jumped up and he's talking to plain wood but he doesn't care.

“It's unrequited,” he nearly shrieks and screams and he can literally hear Jonghyun cower back at the unexpected words, “that's it, isn't it,” Key is shrill and he thinks he cries a little, but he isn't very sure, “I love you and you don't love me,” he wants to be sure Jonghyun has heard but he's already banging his fist on the other side of the door, demanding entrance, “if it's unrequited you should just tell me!”

Jonghyun calms down suddenly, and it becomes silent on both ends rather abruptly.

Key tells himself he deserves to know and that if Jonghyun cowers off he'll just have to accept that he can never again go near his band-mate. Key'll just have to quit and find some other job that has nothing to do with Jonghyun – maybe BIGBANG would consider taking him on as a dancer? – because after proclaiming his love, there was no way to take it back. It was out there now.

“Okay,” Jonghyun is muffled by the wood separating them, but he is still perfectly audible, “I'll tell you. If it's unrequited, I'll tell you. Kibum, just let me in now.”

Key fumbles with the lock and throws the door open – to hell with looking desperate, he is and he's not hiding it – and immediately Jonghyun is all over him and kissing him with some sort of vigour that has his knees buckling. It's like they're melting together and Key is just so confused. And .

Jonghyun is supposed to be denying that what they have is love. Not exploring his mouth like it'll be their first time.

His hands are big and make Key feel so small in return. He drowns in the touch of warm palms pressing into his back and lips caressing his own. He's so in love, it's incredible.

It's not really funny because Key is falling again, so fast and so hard and it's unfair how Jonghyun does it – it's just plain cheating, in both senses of the word, and that's never fair.

It's like nothing has even changed, and to Key, it's rather frustrating.

Jonghyun still spends most of their time backstage hitting on girls and Key still just tries perfecting his dance moves, notes or curls.

And they kind of fall, kind of stumble back into this pattern where everything seems fine but half the time spent together they're both just rather and Key is always just feeling filthy – because he thought they'd moved past all that. And it was so disappointing that they were still so stuck.

And he's feeling less and less worthy with every day that passes. A mike will refuse to work or he'll miss a single step on stage and it's immediately just a downwards spiral of self-hatred and self-loathing, because no wonder Jonghyun won't openly admit his adoration, I wouldn't want to be associated with a fool like myself either.

Key isn't having a lot of good days, and he never seems to realise Jonghyun's smile shines the brightest when he's being referred to as something belonging to Key. And how Key doesn't understand why Jonghyun fights with stylist noonas just so he can wear something on stage that has been a present from Key, is beyond the comprehension of every single person watching.

Jung-soo probably knows. And Jiyong, too. Jinki definitely knows, and it's all Key can do to stop crying because these days they're all just tiptoeing around the issue. Like this was just a lesson they tried to teach, and that he didn't pick it up, that's his fault.

He doesn't notice how Jung-soo is throwing Jonghyun looks of disapproval and how the entirety of Big Bang is greeting everyone but Jonghyun.

He doesn't know about the leader stalking Jonghyun into the bathroom – and if he'd known, he probably wouldn't have liked it the idea very much – just to give him a long rant about love and repercussions and Key has feelings you need to accept and respect.

Onew says there's been this thing going on between himself and Minho since they accidentally kissed after a gone-wrong outing between the younger and Nichkhun. He says he doesn't know what they have, or if what they have is a thing, and that's what makes it so damn scary.

Key doesn't know how Jonghyun feels about that – but that's not his fault. It's always Jonghyun that proposes they use their mouths for things other than talking.

For a while after Onew's confession, Jonghyun is acting a little awkward. Key doesn't know how things changed, he just knows that they did, and he's not sure if he likes it or not.

At first, they change for the worst. Key never thought he could be more jealous than he had been all this time, but apparently that was a very real possibility.

These days he was always fan-servicing with others – Jonghyun used to enjoy torturing Key by seeing how far his buttons could be pushed on stage – but now, he had apparently grown bored and he'd moved on to fake flirting with other members. Key wished he could approve – gossip would stop, and that could only be beneficiary – but it was too hard. He had then cherished the hope that if Jonghyun had grown bored on stage, he might also decide to leave Key alone behind the scenes, and though that idea pained him greatly, he also knew it would be for the best.

The hope however, was idle.

Nothing much changed personally, just that now, publicly, Jonghyun turned into some sort of vicious man- out to sully all innocence. Alright, Key may overreact, but it gets the point across.

Jonghyun wasn't insensitive, sometimes it just happened to seem that way. He just reckoned that getting rid of fan-service would help make the entire thing make more sense in his own head.

It backfired.

He notices changes in Key almost immediately, and that just confuses him further. After the fail break-up Key had tried to install, the boy gave up on fighting what they had – but with the change of tactic on Jonghyun's side, the younger also just seemed to lose himself. He wasn't happy and he wasn't bossy and yes, he was still a minx in the bedroom but despite what everyone thought, Jonghyun wasn't just using Key for the . It was absolutely divine and maybe Jonghyun couldn't exactly name what he felt for Key, but he felt something and it made him care. So just because Key was still presenting top-notch performances in the sack didn't mean Jonghyun was unaffected.

What was perhaps even worse was that even though everyone noticed and everyone knew who was to blame, they were too afraid to mention it – fearing both Key’s as Jonghyun’s reaction to another friendly-advice-turned-lecture.

AN: I haven't updated this in ageeeeeees~~ but here is the new installment anyway ^^ enjoyyyy :D