They run into each other completely unplanned. Sunggyu was picking up some baby formula for his sister’s newborn, scanning the large colourful sticker that announced some sort of BOGOF deal, with conditions apply written in the tiniest font at the bottom. It is while trying to figure out what the conditions may be that he sees Woohyun, who’s eyeing a shelf packed with chewing gum with intense concentration.

“Woohyunnie?” It slips out, the familiar term of endearment, as if he’s used it only yesterday (it’s been 7 years).

“Ah-Sung…sunbae?” The ‘sunbae’ catches him by surprise, shattering the momentary dream (or was it a memory?).

His initial reaction was one of pleasure, seeing a face he knows so well after so long (he knows every curve, every line of that face; he has traced the contour of that nose and the chin religiously, peppered every inch of that face in desperate kisses. It’s funny how familiar a stranger can be). But now that he’s drawn attention to himself, he doesn’t know what to do. The other man seems unsure as well, his shoulders propped up defensively, and he is staring at him like he’s seen a ghost he had been hunting for (same level of fear and longing).

“I…you look well.”

“Yeah…you too.”

That’s so fickle that it makes him want to gag.

“We should grab a coffee-”

“I have to go-” they say at the same time.

“Oh sorry, another time then,” Sunggyu quickly says, his cheeks reddening. Did he appear too keen? Did that put the younger off? It was perfunctory, at best, to be honest. One of those weightless things you say when you see old friends (but Nam Woohyun is not a friend. He was more, and now he is less, and between him being perfect and a perfect stranger, there are things Sunggyu wishes he could forget, and things he knows he would always remember).

“No, no,” there’s pink dusting Woohyun’s cheeks too, and he’s not looking at him straight. “Let’s sit at the cafe next door.”

What started off as awkward has now become painfully cringy.

They walk to the counter, kind of together but apart, and Sunggyu puts down the baby formula; the cashier looks at Woohyun expectantly. He puts down a packet of gum.

“Separately.”

“Together.” Once again, they speak at the same time.

The cashier gawks at them, annoyed.

“It’s no big deal, it’s just gum,” Sunggyu says quickly and pays with his card before Woohyun can say anything else (It’s no big deal, he used to say himself, when Woohyun would come back drunk. It’s no big deal, he used to say, when Woohyun kissed another man. It’s no big deal, he used to say, a lot, until one day, he realized, that for Woohyun, he was the no big deal. But when he kissed him, when Woohyun wrapped his arms around him and let their lips meet, it felt like a big deal, so big that he couldn’t fathom the depths of Woohyun’s affection).

“Thanks.”

 

They sit down at the small café next door; a pretty waitress in a short skirt come to take their orders.

“Two iced americanos and…”

He looks at Woohyun, embarrassed.

“I’ll actually have a latte,” the younger says, looking away.

“And two chocolate chip muffins?” he sounds so unsure that he thinks he might cry.

Hesitating slightly, Woohyun nods.

“Sorry.” (Sunggyu is not sure what he’s apologizing for.) “It’s a habit.”

A habit from the time he always got coffee for them from the bistro next to their university, when Woohyun used to have iced americanos as a staple, in all seasons, and would get upset if the bistro ran out of ice. (So many times he had poured the ice from his cup into Woohyun’s, because his wasn’t cold enough. Maybe that helped him when the time came to say goodbye.)

As they wait for their pastry to arrive, Sunggyu tries to organize his thoughts and ends up realizing that this was a bad idea. Why did he offer to sit down and create this uncomfortable experience for the two of them - he just didn’t think the younger would agree to this. After all, the last time they were at a cafe together, they got into a pretty heated argument and Woohyun had thrown a saucer at his head. At the memory, he touches his right temple, where hidden by his hairline is a small stitched up scar.

“I’m sorry,” Woohyun says automatically. It is obvious that the same memory has risen to his mind.

He pretends he doesn’t understand and starts talking about nothing.

“It’s a fine day, the sun’s out but it’s not too humid.”

“Was that…baby formula you bought?”

“Oh yeah,” he replies, then to make sure there are no misunderstandings, he adds, “My noona had a baby.”

Strangely, he thinks, Woohyun looks relieved, like he was almost expecting it to be for Sunggyu’s baby and for him to pull up 568 pictures of his newborn on his phone and gush over them.

“Oh, umm congratulations.”

“Thanks. It’s…weird being an uncle.” (Not as weird as this, whatever this is.) Feeling inexplicably nervous, he shakes his legs under the table, knocking his knees right into Woohyun’s. The younger looks up, surprised. “Oh no, I wasn’t-that wasn’t…I’m sorry.”

He waits for the younger’s reaction, wonders if it would be that half-sly, half-flirty smile, with an eyebrow raised, and a coquettish, “Ah, sun-bae,” that made him feel things in many different planes. But Woohyun only nods and looks away, eyes unseeing.

He wants to huff, knock on the table to draw his attention, and ask him why he agreed to sit down with him if he’s not going to talk. But that feels way too entitled and Woohyun feels too much like a stranger.

“It was a deal,” Woohyun suddenly says, as if continuing a conversation they were having, “buy one get one free, you could have gotten two.”

He blinks at him.

“The baby formula,” Woohyun explains.

“Oh.” The abrupt change in topic catches him by surprise. “But conditions applied.”

“What conditions?”

“I don’t know…”

They get served and the waitress, who’s chewing gum, puts down the iced americano in front of Woohyun before he can protest. Sunggyu notices his muffin is a bit squashed but it seems the waitress wouldn’t really care if he pointed it out.

“Oh, shall we-” They try to move thing out of the way in order to exchange their drinks but the table is small and the plates the muffins are served on are way too big, complete with cutlery on the side and Sunggyu can’t help but think it’s more trouble than worth.

“Like me,” Woohyun says.

“What?”

“This fuss,” he points at the awkward rearranging of the things around the table. “Kind of like me, more trouble than worth.”

He stiffens. “Woohyun, I never…” He didn’t truly mean it, in all honestly. Tempers flare and you say things you regret and while some of them are things you’ve been trying to repress for a long time, others are meaningless. He had meant it, when he said Woohyun had no respect for him, or them, but he was worth every bit of the fuss (maybe not for other people, but for him, Woohyun could have put a dagger through his heart and spill blood everywhere, all over his ivory carpet, but he would still hold his hand, begging him not to go).

Sunggyu busies himself with the muffin. Woohyun is staring at the couple at the next table; they’re celebrating something, there are flowers, balloons, overwhelming signs of affection between the two.

“If things had been different, we would have been here under different circumstances,” Woohyun says morosely, even though it’s obvious.

“Let’s not talk about that.”

The younger takes a sip of his latte, makes a face, then says, “Do you want that iced americano?”

“No, have it.”

 

The silences are long, interjected with a few words here and there. They talk about their current lives – Sunggyu runs a small IT firm that he’s started with his friend, Woohyun is an IT consultant for a multinational company. They talk about current trends in IT in subdued voices, barely paying attention. They may not be paying attention to the conversation, but they are paying attention to each other. It’s like a game - they are trying to spy at each other, trying to see how much the other has changed without getting caught. Trying to look at things they have missed about each other. Like Sunggyu stares a bit too long at Woohyun’s lips when he is not looking. He thinks Woohyun steals glances at his fingers, while cutting up his muffin into a thousand pieces for no good reason.

They are both wondering who would break first.

(And it’s ridiculous, it’s crazy that they are sitting here, 7 years after they have last seen each other, when it had ended in tears and curses, practically strangers, but feeling this deep longing. Anyone who looks at them can see that they are not friends or ex-friends, not lovers or ex-lovers; they’re just two people madly in love. Maybe Sunggyu imagines in, maybe he just wants to believe it, for his sake. But the way Woohyun looks at him, the way he looks at him, is different.)

Turns out, they both break at the same time.

“God, I missed you.”

“I ing missed you.”

Surprised at the same confession simultaneously, they laugh.

“People fall out of love all the time, it’s easy,” Woohyun remarks (he’s not sure what he means, whether that’s a positive or a negative sign, or who it’s aimed at).

“Yeah…I guess.”

He bites his lips and Sunggyu can’t help but ogle. Woohyun gives up trying to hide it and stares at his hands openly, drumming his own fingers on the table.

Under his scrutiny, Sunggyu feels , and goes to cross his legs to save himself some dignity, when he knocks them into Woohyun’s again. This time, the man looks up and gives him half a smile. “You’re such a flirt, sunbae.”

“Hey-I’m not-I wasn’t-it was never intentional, okay?” he protests, and his heart leaps, it leaps up and out, as the smile on Woohyun’s face turns into a smirk, the right corner of his lips lifted up, and there is a flutter of eyelids (all of a sudden, it’s the same Woohyun – turn the lights on and rewind the tape back 7 years - the younger is sitting against his legs on the floor, arms on his knees, looking up at him like he’s his world, that Woohyun).

Leaning forward, he whispers in his deepest voice, “Sunbae, I know you’re not that innocent.”

There is a charged wire within him, so thin and so sparked, that when it finally snaps, he wonders what took so long. It drives him crazy (the way only Nam Woohyun can). He jumps to his feet, as if affronted, then strides off into the tiny café bathroom, where he leans his back against the door and breathes, just breathes (because it all gets to him, all the memories that he was barely keeping at bay, the nights he pretended whoever he was sleeping beside was Woohyun, when he conjured up the image of his face while kissing someone but the lips, the lips were all wrong, it gets to him; Woohyun gets to him). A few seconds later, there is the softest knock on the door and he quickly opens it and Woohyun shoves himself inside, locking it behind him.

“Woohyun, what the-”

The younger crashes into him and he has to hold onto the sink behind him to steady himself as Woohyun kisses him violently. Of course he doesn’t hold back as the feeling of the familiar pair of lips against his makes him feel feral. They don’t care, teeth clash, tongues twine, and Woohyun’s hands are on his waistband. Have they ever kissed this way before? They must have. But it feels entirely new, like he has not kissed Nam Woohyun a thousand times, like he’s never spent the night bruising those lips and leaving marks on his neck on purpose so that his other lovers could see that he belonged to him.

“It hurts,” he says, he begs, so Woohyun stops biting down on his lips but that’s not what he was talking about.

His hands are gripping the edges of the sink like his life depends on it and Woohyun’s hands ride up his waist, under his shirt, his thumbs brushing methodically against his skin like he’s painting a picture.

“What are we doing?” he laments but not loud enough for the younger to hear. But he forgot that their lips are connected and he can feel Woohyun’s lips stretch into a smile. Breaking off the kiss for a moment, he looks into his eyes deeply.

“You whine a lot, sunbae.”

“Woohyun-Woohyun-ah-” it comes out as a shameless moan as the man finds the sensitive spot on his neck, just above the mole, and grazes his teeth against the skin (he is the only man ever to find it, and remember it).

His heart is about to burst; he starts seeing stars.

It’s like he’s 23 again, it’s like he’s alive again. And the reason is Woohyun. It’s always Nam ing Woohyun!

The small bathroom looms down on them, the air smells like them, hot and heavy with guilt, regrets, and lust. Maybe he can take him back to his place. It’s Wednesday, Dongwoo won’t be coming over-wait-!

Sunggyu pushes him away with as much force as he can muster.

Woohyun looks flabbergasted as he wipes off saliva from his mouth.

“God, I’m seeing someone!” Sunggyu says in a panicked voice.

The younger’s eyes widen. “. I’m engaged.”

“!”

They both stare at each other, as further apart as possible physically in that tiny cubicle. He is breathing quick and fast, trying to get more oxygen to his brain. But instead of considering something else, like how wrong this is, what an awful person he is, how this is exactly the type of behaviour he couldn’t stand in a partner, his brain makes him aware that he is currently sporting a painful .

“So…what do we do?”

“I don’t know, I’m hard,” he double-takes at the slip, “I mean it’s hard to think!”

“Because of your hard-on?”

“It’s not like we’re deprived teenagers,” he despairs, trying to cross his legs but failing miserably. Not like Woohyun doesn’t already know.

“I have a lot of , I’ll have you know,” Woohyun says, unabashed.

He rolls his eyes. “I was under the impression you were Mary,” he spits sarcastically. “Anyway, we can’t do this!” he tries to reason.

Woohyun does not look pleased. He tries to take another step backward, hits the wall, then turning around, punches the cement mercilessly. The sound the contact makes causes him to shudder.

“You always do this to me!” he cries. “When you broke up with me, I was devastated!”

He had not expected the younger to talk about the past, not so openly, if at all. The bitterness in his voice would allude to a fresh wound rather one that has had 7 years to heal.

“W-well,” he stutters. He feels guilty, but he can’t be the only one. “You were kissing Kibum-”

“I wasn’t kissing him, he kissed me!” Turning around to face him, he looks at him with accusatory eyes. “If you had stuck around for 2 more seconds you could have seen me pushing him off of me.

Gulping, he says, “Yeah well-you betrayed my trust-”

“Are you deaf?” his voice is rising and he prays that the walls are not paper thin like the ones at his old dorm. “He kissed me! I wasn’t into it.”

“You-you always had so many friends,” the words stumble out of his lips before he can stop them. It feels petty, him talking about something that happened so long ago and it should all be water under the bridge, but standing here, with desire burning like an ache in his chest, he wants to clear his heart out. “Every weekend you were busy because you needed to hang out with this person and that person-”

Woohyun looks at him like he’s crazy. “I offered you to hang out with us!”

Hold back, hold back, hold back. The ache burns deeper, crawls its way into his flesh and blood, eating him away from the inside. “And watch you flirt shamelessly? And don’t you dare try to come up with an excuse for every time you kissed your so-called friends…”

“That was just a bit of fun, that’s how I talk to my friends. The kisses didn’t mean anything, okay? A bit of mindless snogging-”

“And how is that supposed to make me feel? Jealous!”

“Jealous!” They utter the word jealous at the same time, Sunggyu with venom and Woohyun with resentment. Woohyun’s chest is rising and falling like he just ran a marathon.

Sunggyu clenches his fist. “You knew what you were doing to me.”

The younger’s eyes flicker, his voice quieter. “You…you seemed so cool with me being…”

“Promiscuous?” he taunts.

Biting his lips, the younger crosses his arms in front of him. “That’s not fair, I never slept with anyone else.”

Sunggyu leans against the wall, resting his head and looking up at the scruffy ceiling, laughing drily. “There is a whole world between handshake and penetrative , Nam Woohyun.”

“Can you just…” his eyes are downcast. He knows, he probably guessed that Sunggyu knew. But they have never really talked about it. All of a sudden, they are having a conversation that is 7 years due. He remembers why they broke up (it’s a sobering thought), why Nam Woohyun, who is perfect, wasn’t perfect for him. “If it bothered you, why did you never say anything?” he asks quietly.

“Why do you think?” he quizzes, all the insecurities, the fears, the sadness, oh-the-ing-depression, rush back at him, like he’s 23 again. Like he’s at the bottom of his grave again, and it’s dark and lonely. “I didn’t want you to think I was a prude or narrow-minded or old-fashioned…” The words catch, somewhere between loving Woohyun and fearing that he would leave any day for something better. “You were literally the best thing ever, the ing best thing ever, okay, and like a million miles out of my league and I just-I wanted you to be happy at whatever cost because I wanted you to stay with me!”

“We were exclusive.”

Sunggyu laughs again, it’s mirthless. He can only laugh, really, because he has cried enough. “You had a funny way of showing it.”

The silence impends over them like a storm cloud, ready to explode. They had fought bitterly to the end, but he has wiped off that memory because it was too painful. The result being, he has forgotten what had actually been said (or whether they even said anything coherent given how angry they were) and what had remained unsaid. Now he is trying to understand a situation that is like a half-forgotten nightmare and all he remembers are the good stuff (the way Woohyun brought him flowers and good morning kisses, the way he held is hand in front of everyone, students, teachers, strangers on the street, the way he looked happy, no, content, when it was just the two of them).

The storm never comes and whatever it is Woohyun is thinking makes his body sags against the wall, his arms hang lose by his side.

“I was stupid,” he admits bitterly.

After a few moments and what takes him tremendous effort, he says, “Me too.”

Time seeps through the cracks on the walls and the ceiling, like a grey ghost. He thinks it’s a waste, having a conversation that is 7 years too late. At least if he was mindlessly kissing Woohyun, he wouldn’t have to think about anything. The regret and the self-loathing would come later, when he is curled up in his bed alone, wishing the younger was there beside him, on him, under him, while texting Dongwoo to tell him that they need to talk.

The best thing would have been to ignore Woohyun altogether when they met.

“I shouldn’t have followed you into that shop,” Woohyun finally says.

“You followed-what?”

“I saw you across the street and…I wanted to see you, I was curious. I wanted to know what you were doing, what you were buying, to see if I could pick up any clues about what your life is like now…”

“You know there’s social media-”

“I wanted to see you, sunbae, not what everyone else sees.”

So unplanned may not have been exactly the right word. But they have somehow avoided running into each other for 7 years in the same city, and they could have just carried that on. Except Woohyun decided to play detective and he couldn’t help but call his name out.

“Tell me something, Woohyun,” he asks against his better judgement, knowing the answer will probably hurt him, crush him beyond disrepair, “was I ever your priority? Like for one night? One hour? Five minutes?”

Sighing, the younger replies, “Yes.”

He scoffs – the younger is not convincing anyone with that.

“No, you were,” Woohyun says ardently. “See that’s the problem. You were the priority, but priority implies there were others. You were more important than the others, but they were there. I didn’t realise I didn’t need the others.” He steps forward, hand outstretched, as if he wants to touch him but is afraid. “The thing is, sunbae, you didn’t have to be the priority because you were enough. You are enough,” he swallows, “you are absolute.”

He looks down, at the dirty floor, trying to take a moment for himself. A few years after they had broken up, he had made a discovery. He realized that everyone had need and want, but if you found the right person, they are the only one you’ll ever need and you will not have any wants. And annoyingly, ludicrously, his mind had thought of Nam Woohyun.   

“The folly of youth, eh?” Woohyun tries to laugh airily, scratching the back of his neck.

Exhaling, he replies, “Looks like we have continued to be stupid.” They both smile, sad and small.

“Yeah…what are we doing?”

They come out of the cubicle, shutting the door behind them, after patting down their hairs and smoothening out their clothes, trying not to look at anyone.

They pay for their food, ignoring the pointed look from the waitress (they tip heavily), then step out in the light summer rain.

“Aish, it wasn’t supposed to rain, I didn’t bring an umbrella,” Sunggyu glares at the sky.

“Me neither, argh!”

 

They look around - the street is almost empty, a couple hidden under their umbrellas, a few braving the rain, a car drives past them, honking for no reason – everything is as usual, predictable. They look at each other.

“Why are you smiling?”

“I was wondering why I ever dated you.”

“Wow, thanks,” Woohyun looks disgruntled. “I know I have confessed to my crimes but you don’t have to be an .”

“No, I meant…” he shakes his head, unable to force the smile to a halt. Despite everything, he feels lighter, like the raindrops. It’s how the rain never have a destination, but they always find the right way, seep into earth’s welcoming arms, and find home. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have always found you irresistible.”

His lips part disbelievingly.

“Are you trying to flirt with me now?”

“No, no I just-”

“Because it’s working,” he says, the glint in his eyes returned.

A pause, a moment to reconsider his life. He does quick mental math on what the truly important things in his life are. Big decisions are not meant to be made on impulse but honestly, he’s probably made his mind up the moment he had seen him today (the detour was just for show).

“Which way are you going?”

“Towards Gangnam. And you?”

“The opposite direction.” He laughs. This is how it’s meant to be, their paths separated a long time ago, and this is a reminder. “Well, good luck getting married or whatever.”

“Yeah, you too. Whoever you’re seeing, I hope it works out.”

They take one step in the opposite direction before turning around at the same time (it’s quite dramatic, really).

“Sunbae?”

“Hmm?”

“It rained, the day you first kissed me.”

“I remember that day.”

It rains on them a bit more while they’re just looking at each other, soaking in one another. Woohyun just grabs his hands roughly and all of a sudden, they are running, running away, running and giggling in the rain like little schoolgirls, and people on the street are staring at them but they don’t care.

“Where are we going?” he wheezes.

“My flat. My fiancé doesn’t come back until 5.”

“Nam Woohyun, you’re mad!”

“That’s one way to break up,” he shouts over the traffic and the rain.

“We haven’t discussed anything.”

Woohyun stops in his tracks, looking back at Sunggyu. And right there, in the middle of the street, in front of an audience, in front of the oncoming traffic, he kisses him.

This kiss is different, more gentle, like their lips are having a conversation, their bodies warm against each other. Woohyun is holding his elbows softly, and it’s sweet. This is not the safest place to kiss a man, but more importantly, he realizes that he loves this man. Incredibly, madly. He loves him when he’s sane, and he loves him when he’s crazy. He loves him at the crack of dawn, when the sun filters in through the shutters and turns the dark chocolate of his pupils honey-glazed. He loves him at night, when his face is all angles and shadows in the dark. He loves him so much, and no conditions apply.

“What’s there to discuss, sunbae?” he asks, a lilt in his voice, a smile on his face that he could never resist.

“You’re right,” he smiles back. He knows, oh he knows. He knew the moment he called his name at the shop – he called his name because he wanted him. He called his name because 7 years and a heartbreak later, he is still inexplicably in love with Nam Woohyun. And somehow, miraculously, like a movie, like a novel, Woohyun is also in love with him. “But out of decency to your fiancé, let’s not do this before you break up.”

“My moral compass, I missed you.” Snaking a hand around his waist, Woohyun rests his head on his chest.

“No seriously,” Sunggyu insists, but doesn’t let his hand go.

“Fine, fine, let’s go and see him right now,” Woohyun says cheerfully.

“Wait, you want me to go too?”

“Yeah, Myungsoo will be delighted to see you.”

“Myungsoo?” he’s surprised. “The quiet kid from your class.”

“Yeah, the one you tutored. He had a big fat crush on you.” Woohyun laughs.

He tutored Myungsoo for a semester or so after which it was obvious he didn’t need the tutoring. But he had never said anything about liking him either. It’s a surprisingly small world.

“Yah, Nam Woohyun, you’re really mean!” he says. He feels bad for Myungsoo; it’d have been better if he didn’t know the fiancé, in which case he would have wrecked a stranger’s life. But now, he is destroying one of his junior’s life, out of nowhere. At least in the case of Dongwoo, they’ve only been on 5 dates and they haven’t made any promises.

“In return,” he whispers conspiratorially, “I’ll let you be mean to me in bed tonight.”

“Yah,” even as he pushes him slightly with his shoulder, his face reddens. To have Nam Woohyun in his bed again…his throat feels dry. “I said we’re doing this properly. You tell your fiancé, I tell Dongwoo and - we do it properly.”

“What about your hard-on?” the younger asks innocently.

“Firstly, I can take care of it myself. Secondly, not your business, not until you’ve-”

“Fine, fine,” he concedes, pulling out his phone and sending a quick text.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he implores, “Please tell me you did not just break off an engagement with a text.”

“No,” Woohyun pouts, offended that he would think that way. “I just told him we need to talk, warning shot, you know. He’ll know, I think he saw it coming. He knew I was getting cold feet.”

“You haven’t changed,” he sighs (and that has always been the fear, the fear and also strangely, the relief. If this Woohyun is his Woohyun, then who cares if 7 years have passed).

“The only man I was willing to change for broke up with me before my finals so-”

“Will you change though? Really? Because I’m telling you right here, right now, that I’m done crying so if you get up to any of your funny business-”

“Sunbae,” Woohyun stops them again, pulls him around by his waste so that they are facing each other. Other people using the sidewalk walk around them, with frowns and disapproving tsks that they hear but don’t listen. Taking another step forward, so that the tips of their trainers are touching, Woohyun looks up at him, his eyes wide and sincere, his arms circle his waste – at that moment, he wants to kiss him so bad but he knows he has something important to say, and between a sensation and a sentiment, he chooses the promise. “Sunbae, I will marry you right here, right now, promise to be yours and only yours forever. I’ll never ever hurt you. All of this,” he nods at himself, “is only yours. Nam Woohyun is Kim Sunggyu’s, and I’ll have that chiseled onto my gravestone.”

 

 

Dongwoo doesn’t sound surprised when he tells him about Woohyun, because apparently, he had gathered that he was emotionally unavailable. “Maybe that’s why your previous relationships didn’t work out either. I wanted to tell you, but I felt bad,” Dongwoo says nicely (he is so nice, he is so so nice. He decides he will send him Christmas cards and give him free IT service if he ever needs it).

Myungsoo puts up bit more of a fight, as per Woohyun. But when he heard who the man he is leaving him for, he apparently slumped into the couch resignedly and said, “Kim Sunggyu? Oh damn! Nam Woohyun, Kim Sunggyu is the only man who has ever looked good on you. At least now I can take your rejection less personally.”

“We should probably take it slowly,” Sunggyu cautiously suggests when they have shared their respective breaking up stories. “You know, like take some time to-”

“Mourn? You realise that I didn’t kill Myungsoo, I just broke up with him?”

“Yeah, but maybe we just talk on the phone for a couple of days, then go on a date-”

“I’m in front of your apartment.”

“Of course you are,” he sighs, regretting giving him his address. But when he opens the door, and sees Woohyun there, on his doorstep with a bouquet and a smile, he pulls him in and kisses him against the wall, door still wide open, like nothing else matters.

“What were you saying about taking things slowly?” Woohyun teases while he struggles to pull his shirt over his head.

“Shut up,” he says, frustrated at how difficult it is to undress Nam Woohyun because his clothes are ing tight.

“I definitely heard it though, maybe you’re right…”

Shirt discarded, he touches the younger’s skin hungrily, running his hands down his chest, against his defined muscles. “I said, take me slowly.”

Woohyun shuts the door close grabs him round the waist. “Now that,” he smiles, his teeth grazing against his lips, “I can do.”