They’re at the bus stop when Joon Jae finally breaks down. It’s dark and empty, just the two of them in this open space, Takuya’s “sayonara” hanging awful and awkward in the air between them.

“Wait!” Joon Jae shouts louder than he means to, his heart pounding in his chest so loudly he can hear it in his ears. He knows there are so many different ways this moment can go wrong, but he also knows that if he doesn’t say the words out loud now, he’ll regret it for the rest of his life.

He’s a coward. He’s always been a coward. He’s never been the first one to confess to anything…he could barely break up with Soo Jin and his feelings for Takuya are on a whole other scale. But there’s something about the image of Takuya walking away from him that makes the words buried so deep in him erupt from his too full heart. He wouldn’t be able to stop them if he tried.

Takuya turns, his hand wrapped tightly around the handle of his suitcase, and when he swivels to look at Joon Jae, his eyes are wide with surprise. Joon Jae thinks, not for the first time, that all of this was inevitable. There was nothing he could have done to have prevented himself from falling in love with Takuya. Like a moth to a flame, it was always going to happen because how could he not?

“I don’t…” Joon Jae falters, looking down at the cracks of the pavement. He feels like he’s reaching out his heart and handing it to Takuya, with no idea whether Takuya will trample all over it or handle it gently, look after it. He doesn’t know what option is more terrifying.

He’s never been good with words. Fumbles over them awkwardly, and has ever since he was a child. There’s something about the way they fall out of his mouth, stunted and deformed, no matter how long he plans his speeches out in front of the mirror, again and again. He wishes that there was some way he could express every single feeling tangling up his insides without having to use them because he knows nothing he says will ever be sufficient enough. Nothing he says out loud will ever describe what a mess he is right now. How much he hurts and how much he wants. Most importantly of all, how much Takuya has changed his life. But he owes it to Takuya, to himself, at the very least. There are a million ways this could go, but he’ll never know until everything is out in the open. I don’t want you to leave.

Takuya takes a step forward, letting go of his suitcase as he does so, like he wants to reach out and touch Joon Jae. Make sure he’s okay. And maybe that’s what spurs Joon Jae on.

“The person I like…” Joon Jae says, and he can barely say it all out loud, lest he ruin everything. They’re standing on the shakiest of foundations and two more words could knock them both down. Could destroy everything. He would say that he’s never been more afraid of anything in his life but that would be a lie. Not when Takuya walking out of his life for good is a million times scarier than this. Not when the thought of how empty his life will go back to being again without Takuya to fill every desolate piece of it up sears his very soul.

“Joon Jae?” Takuya says, soft and anticipatory, when Joon Jae can’t find it in him to speak the last couple words out loud. Joon Jae can’t even look him in the face.

“The person I like…” Joon Jae repeats, choking the words out past the lump in his throat as he feels tears roll past his cheeks. “That person is you.”

He keeps his eyes trained on the floor, hoping that it will swallow him whole. Takuya doesn’t say a word and Joon Jae feels like he is going to crumble right there. He has given Takuya his heart, his soul, on a silver platter and there is nothing he can do anymore to protect them out in the open like this.

He’s never felt like this before. With Soo Jin, and with all the girls before Takuya, he had never been the one trying to initiate anything. He’d never had to before. He had met Soo Jin at a supermarket of all places, and she had been so forward and eager that he hadn’t even thought of turning her down. She was pretty and nice, like all the other girls he had dated before, and it had felt good being with her. They didn’t need to meet up often, sometimes they’d go weeks without a date, but it was nice because she understood that about him. She got that he wasn’t great at being around people for long periods of time. That he liked the seclusion of staying in his comfort zone. Takuya, on the other hand, was a whole other story.

Takuya had come crashing into his life, sticking his nose into every crevice it didn’t belong, always there, the exact opposite of what Joon Jae had ever wanted in a roommate. In so many ways he was a direct contrast to Soo Jin, who left him in his own space with the occasional text every other day. Takuya was there when he’d come home from work, when he was watching TV, when he was in his room about to watch . It was like the other man had no boundaries. Inquisitive about everything in Joon Jae’s life, like Joon Jae was the most interesting person on the planet, rather than the boring semi-recluse that he actually was. If Soo Jin tip toed around his comfort zone, Takuya barrelled right in, making himself at home, quite literally, like he had always been there in the first place. It was the kind of behaviour that Joon Jae had always hated, but the difference was that Takuya just seemed to belong. Like he had been a part of Joon Jae’s life from the very beginning. It had only been three months, but now it was hard to remember what life had even been like without the Japanese man. No, Joon Jae hadn’t wanted Takuya in his life, but it didn’t take him long to realise how much he’d needed him.

Looking back on it now, it’s almost funny how he’d never fully realised just quite how hollow his life had been without Takuya. Takuya woke him up, but with it, he’d also been awoken to the knowledge that he couldn’t go back from this. He can’t erase the memories of the wholeness he feels when the other man is there. It’s both a blessing and a curse, and it makes him wonder what would have been better in the end. Being blissfully ignorant or feeling alive - pulse racingly, heart achingly alive - for the first time in his life.

And maybe that’s the thing. Nothing about Takuya had felt safe from the beginning, but something about him had reached out and filled up the gaps in Joon Jae’s heart anyway. He had thought he’d loved Soo Jin because he liked spending time with her, but spending time with Takuya was the only thing he thought about, yearning for it even when they were already together. Even when they already spent virtually every single day together. Making Takuya happy, getting to see that silly smile on his face, made his own lips curl up of their own accord. He felt lighter, happier, just knowing that Takuya was happy, and he’d never felt like that about anyone in his life before. With most people there was only so much he could take before he needed a break from them, but he wanted to go to sleep to Takuya and wake up to him. It was like Joon Jae had been a blank colouring book and Takuya had come in splashing colour - vibrant, pulsing colour - on to every page, crossing all the lines, but filling every white page up. And now Joon Jae knew what that was like, he couldn’t turn back and pretend like he didn’t know how it felt when someone filled your heart until it was so full it felt like it was squeezing past the slats of your ribcage.

In every sense of the word, Joon Jae had been ruined.

Takuya takes a step closer and Joon Jae can almost see his heart reverberating in Takuya’s hands. There are some moments you can’t prepare yourself for no matter how hard you try, and this is one of them. Takuya will turn him down, and go back to Japan, and Joon Jae will go back to his dark shell of a life without a heart. It’ll get better eventually, he knows, but in the same way you never quite forget your first love, there will always be that singe of ‘what if’ or ‘if only’, that Joon Jae will never quite be able to let go of for the rest of his life.

“Joon Jae.” Takuya says, voice low and close, and Joon Jae shuts his eyes.

“Look at me.” Takuya continues and Joon Jae can’t. He’s too afraid of what he’ll see.

“Yah, Lee Joon Jae!” Takuya raises his voice petulantly, stamping his foot like a child, and it’s so like him that even with his eyes closed he can see the pout Takuya always gets on his face when Joon Jae doesn’t let him have his way (which is a rare occurence in itself), and it fills Joon Jae with such sudden affection that eyes flutter open without thinking, immediately focussing on Takuya’s own, only inches from him, and with that, his breath falls away.

He’s seen this look on Takuya’s face before, but only in glimpses. That time he had almost kissed him pressed up against the wall. That time he had broken up with Soo Jin only to look up to Takuya standing in the doorway, watching them like he’d been caught doing something wrong. Everything about Takuya is an open book, but there are times, like this, when Joon Jae feels like he knows nothing about him at all. Like Takuya is an entirely different language he can’t get a handle on no matter how hard he tries.

His eyes are so soft, so gentle. Tender. And Joon Jae knows that that’s also probably in part due to himself. He’s pretty sure he can see himself and the love he feels reflecting right back at him in those eyes. But he’s smiling, and his eyes are crinkled up in that beautiful way they get when he’s happy, and Joon Jae’s mouth is dry, the lump in his throat bigger than ever.

“You really have no idea what you do to me, do you?” Takuya murmurs low, different from the way he usually speaks, his smile growing wider, eyes brighter, and Joon Jae’s forgotten what words are. Can only remember the look on Takuya’s face that feels too much like hope, buttering up his insides.

Takuya moves a hand, the one that had been clutching his suitcase, up to cup Joon Jae’s jaw in in his palm, slender fingers splaying out across his cheek, and Joon Jae’s heart stutters in his chest. He couldn’t say a word if he tried.

“Joon Jae, you really are kind of dense, huh?” Takuya grins, moving in closer and Joon Jae’s afraid that this is all one huge dream. That this is all just another moment where Takuya will push away again at the very last minute like it’s actually all a big prank Joon Jae isn’t in on. The world is cruel, Joon Jae knows this, so he never really expects too much from it. But just this one time, he thinks, just this one time he hopes it will prove him wrong.

And then Takuya is so close that Joon Jae can feel his breath on his lips, hot and sweet, like a promise. It sends a shiver down Joon Jae’s spine, and just like that Takuya presses his lips against his own and the tension melts away. Three months of pining and emotions and always being angry at himself dissolves away into this one action that feels like his insides are being lit up, as though he’s burning from the inside out, fire melting him down to his very core.

Takuya’s lips are warm against his own, and it doesn’t take Joon Jae long to respond to them, shock launching straight into fervency. Takuya’s tongue swipes across the seam of Joon Jae’s lips and he opens his mouth to accommodate it, his own fingers reaching out to grasp at the front of Takuya’s shirt, pulling him even closer than before. Takuya’s fingers curve their way around the back of his neck, tickling his nape, and the way he smiles into it is the only sense of realness that everything going on right now is actually happening.

When they break apart, Joon Jae can barely breathe, pausing to in mouthfuls of sweet summer air. He can feel Takuya doing the same right in front of him, their foreheads still pressed together, and he wonders if it feels just as surreal to Takuya as it does to him.

Their breathing slows and when Takuya looks up at him again, everything feels so clear, out in the open like this. Takuya is looking at him like he could never imagine himself anywhere else, like he’s been waiting all this time, and Joon Jae knows exactly what that feels like. He wants to laugh at the ridiculousness of how long it took them to get to this point. At how worried he had been over something so incredibly simple.

“Finally.” Takuya whispers, more breath than speech. “I’ve wanted to do that for so long.”

“Then why…?” Joon Jae begins, but his voice is wrecked, and Takuya nods like he gets it anyway. He’s still got one of his hands resting on Joon Jae’s cheek, thumb rubbing at his cheekbone absently.

“I wasn’t ever really sure whether you actually wanted this. Whether you actually wanted us enough to forget about everything else. Liking another man in Korea isn’t…well…you know how hard it is. I just thought it might be too much? I didn’t want to push myself on you like that.” He breaks off, chuckling to himself, the hand on Joon Jae’s cheek dropping to his side, much to Joon Jae’s dismay.

“But I got a bit selfish. I’ve always been the type to use skinship a lot but…but with you I got too invasive. I could never help it. I tried to teach you Japanese through , and you let me!! Then there was the face massager!!” Takuya’s lips curl upwards again, and he stares at Joon Jae with such fondness it’s a wonder he hasn’t floated up in the air the way his chest feels so light. “I like you so much. And I guess I just wanted you to be the one to tell me not to leave. I wanted you to have the choice. Whether you wanted this or whether it would be too hard.”

“All this time I was so confused by you,” Joon Jae says eventually, when he’s sorted through the jumbled mess in his mind and his brain is starting to work again, “but not about how much I like you.” He stares down at the ground again, feeling his face turn red, but laughing when Takuya leans over, looking him straight in the eyes, claiming his attention once again.

“I don’t want you to leave.” He says quietly, but firmly, this time eyes locked on Takuya’s so there’s no mistake. No way that this can get lost in translation. “My choice is you.” Takuya’s hands are hanging by his sides, so he reaches for them, threading his fingers through the gaps between them, and filling every space the same way that Takuya does for him. He hopes it will be enough. When Takuya squeezes back, it’s hard for Joon Jae to imagine a time he’ll ever be unhappy again.

“Home, then?” Takuya asks cheekily, and his face is the sun, bright and beautiful and the only light Joon Jae needs to guide him back home.

“Home.” Joon Jae nods in response, hand still intertwined with Takuya’s as the Japanese man reaches behind him to grab his suitcase.

And when Takuya turns back to beam at him, all Joon Jae can think is I’m already there.
 

epilogue: takuya and joon jae end up alternating between japan and korea for years, until they finally settle down in korea (of course, takuya takes him to odaiba to see the rainbow bridge and the gundam and they finally get to eat okonomiyaki!! they spend a year travelling the world again, where takuya takes joon jae to all the places he went the first time). it takes joon jae two years to finally confess the truth to his parents, and they eventually fall in love with takuya (BC HOW COULD YOU NOT), and when takuya introduces joon jae to his parents, he cooks his way into their hearts, and everyone is happy. when korea/japan legalise gay marriage, they get married and haeryung comes to their wedding all "I TOLD YOU IT WOULD WORK I AM THE ULTIMATE WING WOMAN" and she and takuya do their secret handshake (which involves a lot of fist/hip bumps), while joon jae watches them disgruntled, but pleased. they both love children and adopt like 3 kids and of course have a nice time embarrassing them whenever possible (esp takuya!!), and years later they like to reminisce about those golden three months when they lived together and takuya always laughs bc joon jae was such a cute lil ball of anxiety then, so joon jae shuts him up by kissing him and all the kids are like "DAAAAADS' GROSS", and takuya scares them away by winking at them and leaning in to kiss joon jae more. oh, and joon jae is never sad again.

THE AND.

A/N: NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS IN THE FINALE THIS IS MY HEAD CANON AND I'M STICKING WITH IT. i have too much invested in this ship. how do you make it stop????? just let them be happy!!!!!