Archive of Our Own

Secretly, Euijoo’s always been a little proud of his alcohol tolerance.

He doesn’t drink that regularly, especially with how packed their schedules are lately, but whenever he does, he likes it: the way one or two drinks makes the world lighter, softer, kinder; the way it somehow becomes easier to have a body, to exist within it, to breathe and speak and live. He likes it enough that he has to be careful about not indulging the urge too often. He’s familiar enough with how that feels, anyway. The denial.

So he only really drinks in a group: with the other members, mostly, high school friends, sometimes, if he’s invited and can get the time off, though he tends to leave those meetings feeling wrong-footed and strange, like an alien who tried to return to a distant home planet.

But the way it happens in a group, seeing everyone’s faces get pinker, tongues looser, hands braver—and Euijoo, watching, still in control of himself. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t like how that feels, too.

Though there’s still one person who always outpaces him.

“Aw, Euijoo, already tapping out?” Fuma asks. His voice is still steady, god knows how many bottles of soju in. His eyes are bright. “You don’t want one more?”

Euijoo scrubs a hand down his face, laughing a little. They’re sitting on the floor of Fuma’s bedroom, just the two of them. Their knees have been touching for the past fifteen minutes. Maybe longer? It’s hard to remember; they’ve been drinking, and drinking, and drinking, and so one more bottle probably wouldn’t—well—could it really hurt that bad?

Euijoo makes a garbled noise into the palm of his hand as he fights with himself. He sounds like a CGI monster, or like an ugly Pokémon. Muk, or the one that’s just a pile of garbage that he can never remember the name of—he tells Fuma this, because he knows it’ll make him laugh, and of course it does; and then there’s another bottle in Euijoo’s hand, already open, a sure thing, because it’s Fuma, and Fuma takes care of him. The condensation is slippery against his sweaty palm.

“Thanks,” Euijoo says, lifting the bottle to his lips. But then he reconsiders and asks, “Actually, do you know if we have any beer?”

Fuma raises an inquisitive eyebrow. “Not in here,” he says, inclining his head towards the mini-fridge that sits in the corner of the room. “In the kitchen, probably. What, you’re too good for strawberry soju all of a sudden?”

Euijoo laughs again. “No, I just—”

“Got a taste for a manlier drink?” Fuma asks, and Euijoo doesn’t really know how to respond to that, but Fuma continues, “It’s okay, I’ll go get you one.”

Euijoo blinks, suddenly loathe to have Fuma leave the room. Before he knows it, he has a hand clutched tight around Fuma’s wrist, mumbling in Japanese that’s been getting clumsier and clumsier all night, “No—no, it’s fine. You don’t have to—don’t go. I’ll drink this.”

Fuma, awkwardly semi-crouched from where he was trying to get up, settles himself back down onto the floor with one of his old man noises. “Okay,” he says, sprawling out again. Their thighs, touching, again. Coincidence or deliberate calculation: the exact angle that Fuma’s leg had to skew to be resting against Euijoo’s like this.

But the thought only half-catches. Euijoo’s too drunk. The only thing that really registers is how nice it feels to be touching, to be touched.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Fuma adds, which is nice to hear, makes him smile. But it feels like a bit of a non sequitur until Euijoo realizes—he’s still holding tightly onto Fuma’s wrist. And not just with one hand. Both, now.

Euijoo feels his eyes widen, feels his face—already pink whenever he drinks—get pinker. There’s somehow still a lag between his brain and his body when he finally lets go of Fuma’s wrist.

“Sorry,” Euijoo mutters. Another laugh, a little forced this time. “I must be really…”

“Drunk,” Fuma says, deep and amused. “It’s okay. The soju I opened for you—I’ll drink it instead.”

Fuma winks at him. Heat suffuses; his heart beats at what feels like a dangerous rhythm. The room spins, slow.

Euijoo says, “That’s probably a good idea.”

Fuma hums, replies, “I’m full of those.”

He reaches for the bottle; his warm hand brushes up against Euijoo’s bare calf. He drinks. His throat bobs with the motion, his Adam’s apple working. Euijoo watches. His thoughts crash against each other, deep tumultuous waves, never fully forming before they descend.

There’s quiet for a while. Eventually, Euijoo asks, “Got any others?”

Fuma tilts his head. Euijoo eyes flicker down: Fuma’s got the small soju bottle between his hands, rolling it between both of his wide palms. It looks smaller, that way, than it does in Euijoo’s own. He says, “Any other what?”

“Good ideas,” Euijoo replies.

Fuma’s eyes should be glassy, but they’re not. They’re clear. Euijoo looks into them for as long as he can stand, then looks down at his own lap. He doesn’t really know what he’s asking. But he knows that it’s strange to be asking it: and to be so willing to do whatever it is Fuma answers.

“Mm,” Fuma says, a drawn out note. Then the bottle, placed precariously on the carpet between them. “Does our Euijoo have something he wants to do?”

The tone of it, sweet but almost condescending, like he’s an adult talking down to Euijoo, makes Euijoo’s blood rush hot. He doesn’t think about their age gap often, but sometimes—sometimes he does. Deep down he likes it: the way Fuma has that kind of power over him, if he ever wanted to use it. It makes him feel sick and twisted up inside, how much he likes it. That specific timbre of want, so sharp it’s like touching a hot stove.

He’s still looking down at his lap, at his hands. They seem to have a mind of their own—without thinking, his right hand makes its way onto Fuma’s knee. Euijoo feels the warm curve of it under his thin sleep pants. The solidity of bone. Euijoo breathes out.

“I don’t know,” Euijoo says. Whispers. “You’re the one with the ideas.”

Fuma makes another considering note of a noise. “I think you have ideas, too,” he says. “You just don’t share them.”

Euijoo mumbles in reply. His tongue feels thick and heavy in his mouth, yet somehow barely-tethered at the same time. He’s sweating but he feels the urge to shiver. His body, a series of contradictions.

“Hm? Can you say that again for me?” Fuma asks. He’s tilting his head so that he can try to look at Euijoo, who has his head still bowed. Euijoo’s eyes flicker up; their gazes meet. A spark of—something. Euijoo blinks rapidly as he tilts his head again, away. But his hand stays. Grips tighter.

Euijoo takes a breath and tries to enunciate this time. “They’re bad ideas.”

His voice sounds strange even to his own ears. Low, affected by something. Alcohol, at least nominally.

“Says who?” Fuma replies. His voice, too, low. Some muscle or tendon moves in his thigh, right where Euijoo’s thumb is pressing in.

Such unmistakable gravity between their two bodies. It’s unbearable. Euijoo’s half-formed thoughts start to run away from him: is he the only one who can feel it? But Fuma’s words are so—or are they?—is Euijoo really so pathetic as to be imagining something that he’ll never—is he so monstrous, wanting something badly enough that he’s willing to—

Fuma repeats: “Says who, Euijoo?”

And then Euijoo—he can’t help it—he turns back to look at Fuma’s face, flushed and lovely and kind. Sweetly handsome, soft and just the right amount of mean. Eyes flickering down to his body, catching on his chest, strong and able, those arms that Euijoo wants to push him down and lift him back up again. The type of man that he’s been seeing in his dreams since he was a kid. Right there. No. Right here.

Everything coalesces into white noise as Euijoo‘s intoxicated brain froths and spins and trips over itself. Then all of a sudden he isn’t thinking at all. The cold reality of everything washes away. And then Euijoo’s moving, leaning in. Then—

Euijoo’s kissing him.

There’s contact. The wet warmth of Fuma’s mouth; a brief press, an exhalation. Euijoo’s heart in his throat. Fuma’s thigh under his hand, twitching. One of them makes a small noise. Euijoo’s too far gone to tell who. He leans in further, wanting—

But then it’s gone.

Someone’s pulling back. It’s not himself. The contact, the heat of Fuma’s mouth, replaced with cold empty space.

It takes longer than it should to register. Euijoo’s fingers are still holding tight at Fuma’s leg. Like he’s trying to tell him again, just like earlier: no, no, don’t go.

The room continues to spin. Then Fuma says his name. Euijoo. Euijoo.

That does it. He’s brought violently back into his body at the sound of Fuma’s voice. The whiplash shock of it. It’s the hot stove again: worse. Humiliation kicks him hard in the stomach, so sudden that he’s left breathless. Fear wraps a strangling hand around his throat. That look of surprise on Fuma’s face. God—god—

Euijoo rips his hand away from Fuma’s body. Suddenly untethered, he stumbles to his feet. The bright white of Fuma’s carpet swims in front of his vision. Euijoo thinks he’s going to be sick.

He says, “Bad ideas,” in Korean, so fast and harsh and quiet that he’s not sure Fuma even hears him as he scrambles to get out of there. “I told you,” he says, mindless and miserable. Again: “I told you. I told you.”

-

Euijoo doesn’t think about it.

That next day, bright and early at seven in the morning, trying to be quiet as he retches and vomits in their shared bathroom—he doesn’t think about it.

The rest of the day exists only in flashes. Van. Practice. Filming. Euijoo can’t get close to any of it. He does what needs to be done.

And then somehow it ends. The entire time, Euijoo is somewhere else.

Later in bed, finally alone, still keyed up with nauseous adrenaline, he has to tell himself: Close your eyes, Euijoo. It’s okay. It’s over.

But his body knows it’s being lied to; it isn’t okay, and it isn’t over. He’s going to be punished for this. Shame curdles like a physical thing inside him. He turns his face into the pillow and waits for the night to pass.

-

That day ends without Fuma talking to him at all. Euijoo had thought, with miserable fear, that this would become their new normal—that he had ruined one of the most important relationships in his life, with just one awful mistake.

It’s strange, because if anything else was wrong, Fuma would be the first one that Euijoo would go to. But now he can’t, and with something like this, the other members are also out of the question. Nicholas might understand, but Euijoo has a million reasons not to tell him this—there’s no need to hurt him, too. Euijoo feels entirely alone: built impossibly wrong, forcibly othered, pushed towards the edge of a cliff by his own monstrous hand.

Euijoo lets himself wallow in his own private melodrama for about twenty-four hours. Anything more than that, he knows, is unproductive. It’s inane to think they’ll never speak again, but maybe in a few more weeks they can just forget about all of it, can both agree to pretend that nothing ever happened—

The next week, though, he realizes that Fuma’s distance was merely an attempt to give him space​​, and Euijoo’s own attempts at continued avoidance begin to break apart at the seams.

Fuma tries to talk to him in a KBS waiting room.

There’s way too many people around, members and staff and strangers. Euijoo is deliberately thinking about nothing when Fuma whispers, “Follow me outside?”

Euijoo’s head whips around. His eyes must look huge; he can feel them, wide and afraid. He needs an excuse, quickly, so he ends up blurting out, “I’m up next for makeup.”

The stylist cuts in: “We only just started on Yuma’s!”

Fuma tilts his head. Euijoo didn’t realize they were being overheard. He grimaces, feels conspicuous and stupid.

“I’m up next,” Euijoo says again, because he has nothing else to say, no other excuse. “Let’s talk later.”

Euijoo knows Fuma isn’t going to push it, not in such a public forum, and he doesn’t. But when he turns to go, Euijoo looks at the broad far-away expanse of his back and wonders what would happen if he did.

Then Fuma tries to catch him in one of the bleak halls of the HYBE building.

“Euijoo, do you have a minute?” he asks.

No. Yes. “No,” Euijoo ultimately says. Silence until he elaborates: “Director Lee is calling for me. I’m on my way to see her.”

“I’d like to talk to you,” Fuma says. Euijoo, looking down, can see Fuma’s hand twitch towards his own. “Can we just—”

“Is it group stuff?” Euijoo asks. He crosses his arms against his torso, protective, just in case Fuma really does decide to reach out.

“No,” Fuma replies, his usually calm voice tinged through with frustration, “but—”

“I’m busy, Fuma-kun,” Euijoo says rigidly.

Euijoo turns to go. But then rounding the corner is none other than Director Lee, who takes one look at Euijoo and lets out a ha!, starts saying, ”Euijoo-ssi! What a coincidence. I thought we weren’t meeting until next week. How have you been?”—and Euijoo has to muster up a reply in the most normal way he knows how, knowing that Fuma’s still there behind him, watching the entire humiliating farce, but when she leaves and Euijoo turns back around with his heart in his throat: Fuma’s gone.

It should be a relief.

Throughout all of it, Euijoo doesn’t publicly sulk or shirk responsibilities: he does what’s required of him. Still, he keeps finding Kei looking over at him—furrowing his eyebrows, tilting his head—childish expressions that would usually prompt Euijoo to go over to him, to ask what’s up. But Euijoo doesn’t, this time. He can’t.

So in the corner of a sweaty practice room, Kei, dark-circled and mindlessly playing with that pair of handcuffs that Nicholas got from god-knows-where, meets his eyes and ends up asking him outright: “Is something wrong, Euijoo?”

Euijoo stretches the muscles of his face into a smile and tells him no. Tells him nothing’s wrong. Kei lets it go until the next day, during team dinner, when he asks again—his tone not even particularly pointed, but Euijoo feels it like a honing missile regardless when he quietly says, “I think something’s wrong.”

Euijoo’s eyes snap over to Fuma at the other end of the table, suddenly nervous, but of course there’s no way he could have heard. Euijoo’s hand clenches on his chopsticks, metal clinking together. He tells Kei again that there’s nothing wrong. Kei replies with a drawn-out sort of humming noise that Euijoo doesn’t think too hard about, eyes flickering between opposite ends of the table. With an odd little smile, he says, “Okay, Euijoo. If you say so.”

Then Yuma engages him in conversation again, and Euijoo forces himself to forget.

Eventually, Fuma tries to find him in his bedroom.

He knocks on Euijoo’s closed door. Quietly, twice. Then a little louder.

Euijoo, lying in his unmade bed, doesn’t say anything. His chest hurts. He’s tired. He tries to silently shift to put his mug of tea down on his bedside table, but he misjudges the distance—it tips, balance lost, and spills bleakly down the front of his drawers. Euijoo looks at the dripping murk of it, at the dark spot growing on his rug.

He wants to cry. It’s ridiculous; this, of all things, is what’s going to set him off? He takes a deep breath, staunches it, presses a knuckle hard into his tear duct.

He lies there, eyes scrunched up tight, waiting for Fuma to go, to leave him alone.

He doesn’t know when it happens. Maybe Fuma’s already gone. Maybe he’s going to open the door without being let in—it isn’t locked, after all. Or maybe he’s going to wait outside the entire night, waiting for Euijoo to open up the door. To let him in. There and not. Schrödinger’s Fuma. If Euijoo never checks, then maybe that trapped animal could still be in its place, alive and breathing.

Moonlight snakes through the blinds of his small window. Euijoo looks away from his soiled rug, towards the blurry interlocking bars the light draws on his dark sheets. He doesn’t call out, and he doesn’t get up, and of course the door never opens. Euijoo looks at the transposed glow of the moon, cracked and splintering right there in his own bed, until his eyelids are too heavy to stay open any longer, and everything falls away to black.

-

A full week and a half goes by. Euijoo keeps desperately clinging to normalcy; the indignities continue to pile up. It was Nicholas who said it once, Euijoo remembers, on some show with Harua, a truth wrapped up in a joke: It’s impossible for Euijoo to live smoothly. Yeah, nothing’s ever easy. That’s just how he is.

Euijoo’s learned that he can’t fight back against what the universe has in store for him. It’s a lesson he internalized before Nicholas, before any of this.

So maybe that’s why the handcuffs end up as less of a shock than they really should. Just one more thing outside of his control. One more hairline fracture—one more absurdity.

Euijoo’s first thought upon waking is still: I must be dreaming.

Endless days of troubled sleep had led to an impromptu, involuntary nap on the dorm couch. He stirred at the sound of bickering: Kei’s half-laughing tone and Fuma’s deeper one, a little louder, sounding clipped and more stern.

Euijoo had startled fully awake at the sound of Fuma’s raised voice asking are you kidding me? He instinctively shied away from the noise, from the voices, but he was stopped by something. Something was hurting his wrist. He opened dry, bleary eyes. Looked down at his hand. Saw—it. Them.

The handcuffs.

“Aw, you woke him up,” Kei is saying. Euijoo’s still trying to orient himself to the room, to the situation, this nonsensical alternate universe he’s been dropped into. He looks down at his trapped, clenching hand.

“I woke—” Fuma starts, the words resolving into a scoff. “You—”

“What’s happening,” Euijoo asks, monotone and a little scratchy. He has to clear his throat once, twice. “Kei-hyung—what is this?”

Kei looks at him with something not unlike compassion. He says, “Something broke my leaders.” Another look, then a nod, like he’s confirming it. “So I’m trying to put them back together.”

The words don’t make sense. Euijoo remains frozen, eyes darting back and forth between Kei’s opaquely sad smile and the metal wrapped around his own wrist, when Fuma says:

“Nothing’s broken,” and the words are firm, like maybe he’s trying to convince himself too. Then with a different tone, with what seems to Euijoo like deliberate lightness: “Except maybe your fingers if you don’t give me the key—”

“Hey hey hey,” Kei laughs, lightened in turn, jumping out of reach of Fuma’s free hand. Fuma keeps reaching, grasping forward, but his range is limited by the obvious fact of his being connected to Euijoo, and the way he’s clearly trying not to jostle Euijoo’s right arm too much.

Euijoo thinks about Kei’s questions, his knowing looks. Of course he was watching. Of course he pieced it together. Kei has always felt overly responsible for the state of the group dynamic: when Nicholas and Yuma fought, he was the only one who could—or, more accurately, was the only one who really tried—to get through to them. He fixed it. But this—

“You have the key?” Euijoo cuts in to ask. Both Fuma and Kei stop moving. “Where is it?”

“That’s a secret, Euijoo,” Kei sing-songs. He puts his hands on his hips, tilts his head. Then he reaches out to fix Euijoo’s hair, to swipe quickly at the side of Euijoo’s mouth. He must have been drooling. He feels his face get red. “Did you have a nice nap?”

Euijoo instinctively reaches up with his right hand to try and fix himself further, but the weight of it stops him—there’s no give at all, connected to the heavy bulk of Fuma’s arm. It quickly registers: of course it’s his right hand, his dominant hand, fully out of commission, made useless by the tether of the cuffs.

Euijoo has to breathe out slowly so that he doesn’t say something he’ll regret.

Kei continues: “But I promise I’ll give the key to you guys tomorrow. You’ll only need tonight, right? That’s when you’re gonna figure this out.”

“Kei-hyung,” Fuma says. “Are you serious?”

Tonight, Euijoo thinks. He takes a few more deep, steadying breaths, trying to regulate his temper. He tries to tell himself: it’s just one night, and it’s already after seven. He’s not going to die, even if he feels like he is. The rationalization eventually takes him far away from any sense of panic. It feels like the sort of clarity you only get standing in the middle of a battlefield. It’s something he’s gotten used to.

Euijoo stays quiet. Fuma sighs. He keeps looking back and forth between Euijoo and Kei, like he’s trying to gauge Euijoo’s reaction, to fight this battle for him. “This is ridiculous. How are we even supposed to do anything like this? Eat? Sleep?”

“You’re the two smartest people I know,” Kei says. “Like I said. Figure it out!”

Fuma scoffs. “Kei—”

Then Euijoo says, “Okay.” In his periphery, he can see both heads turn to look at him. “We’ll figure it out.”

And he will. Now that the panic’s gone, there’s that strange sense of having been struck by some omnipotent hand, unable to fight back. None of this is up to him—so he’ll deal with it. All he can do is what he’s told. All he can take is what he’s given.

Fuma’s quiet now. Kei says something that Euijoo doesn’t really process, because he can feel the intensity of Fuma’s gaze boring into the side of his face, drowning out everything else.

Then Kei leaves. His work is done here, Euijoo figures. Always an agent of chaos. Usually it’s endearing, even fun, but this is…

Euijoo suddenly needs to ask. “Were you in on this, Fuma-kun?”

“What?” Fuma’s eyebrows are deeply turned in, a little painful-looking, when he turns to look at him. “You think I’d do something like that?”

“No,” Euijoo replies, and he doesn’t, but the fact of it still doesn’t make sense. “It’s just, I was sleeping, and then…”

“I was sitting next to you on the couch,” Fuma says. “Not trying to be a creep, just… waiting for you. I must have fallen asleep too. I woke up when I felt something cold on my wrist.”

“Oh,” Euijoo says.

So Kei had seen them asleep together. And then probably he made the split-second decision to take things into his own hands—to go get those shadily-acquired handcuffs, to try to fix the situation, to deal with the wrongness that he’s been sensing between Fuma and Euijoo all by himself. Despite everything, Euijoo can’t really bring himself to blame Kei for that.

Then he hears Fuma say, “I’m sorry.”

Euijoo frowns. “What are you sorry for?” If anything, Euijoo should be the one apologizing. He’s the one at fault.

Fuma sighs and leans back against the couch cushions. Euijoo glances over, sees his t-shirt stretch tighter across his chest with the motion. He quickly averts his eyes, hearing Fuma say, “Just seems like all of this is my fault.”

Euijoo feels his jaw clench involuntarily. He doesn’t want to talk about it at all, but especially not in the middle of the living room, where anyone could walk in at any moment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was Kei’s idea, wasn’t it?”

“I’m not just talking about the handcuffs,” Fuma says quietly, and Euijoo wants to say I know, but he can’t; he doesn’t even want to touch it. He knows he needs to face it, but he still doesn’t want Fuma’s apologies. Doesn’t want his needless contrition, and then his inevitable distance.

“Whatever it is,” Euijoo says, purposefully vague, “I don’t want to think about it anymore. Please just forget about it, Fuma-kun.”

Euijoo looks around their large living space as he speaks, trying to listen for any footsteps. He’s grateful that most of the other members are still out. His eyes eventually land on Fuma again, who looks exhausted, and so unhappy, in such a bone-deep way that it makes Euijoo’s heart clench. He has to look away again.

“Alright, Euijoo,” Fuma says, around an exhale.

This would be the moment that Euijoo would smile tightly and get up to leave. Instead, he’s stuck. Sitting there in the aftermath of his enormous mistake, in the shame of still being unable to look it in the eye.

Then he hears Fuma ask, “Have you eaten dinner?”

Euijoo thinks. It’d be easy to lie about this, too. But he hasn’t eaten all day, and he’s tired of lying.

“Not yet,” he says.

“Good,” Fuma replies, shifting to take his phone out from the pocket of his sweatpants. Euijoo wonders with brief pettiness why Fuma got the privilege of having his dominant hand free. “I ordered food earlier. Probably too much. It should be here any minute.”

“What did you get?”

“Gyudon,” Fuma says. “Some other stuff too.”

Euijoo’s favorite. He tries not to think too hard about it. “Thank you,” he says.

“No problem,” Fuma replies.

Quiet while Euijoo thinks of something to say. Fuma, next to him, is likely doing the same thing. But they’re both spared by the buzzing of Fuma’s phone, alerting him that their food is here.

Fuma gets up first, but of course he can’t get very far without Euijoo following, so Euijoo does and then they’re both shuffling to the front door. Euijoo’s grateful for contactless delivery, because he doesn’t even want to think about how the handcuffs would look to some random hardworking Tokyo citizen.

Fuma picks up the food. They eat at the kitchen table, sitting side by side. The entire time, Euijoo feels like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. There’s a huge knot in his stomach. He spends almost ten minutes drinking two big glasses of water instead of eating any of his food.

This isn’t an ambush, Euijoo tries to remind himself. It’s just dinner.

When his stomach starts protesting in earnest, letting out an audible rumble, Euijoo begins to force himself to eat. But it’s difficult with only his left hand. He feels like a graceless child.

Eventually, when Euijoo accidentally drops a second piece of beef onto the table, grimacing, Fuma says, “Here.” He rests the elbow of his handcuffed arm on the table between them. Lets his hand dangle. “Use your right hand,” he says. “You can just drag me along.”

Euijoo frowns. “Isn’t that going to be uncomfortable?”

“Try it,” Fuma says. So Euijoo does. And it is uncomfortable, for Euijoo’s wrist too. It’s too taut; there’s nowhere near enough slack for it to work.

“Hmm,” Fuma says. “Should I feed you?”

Euijoo’s eyes instinctively cut up to Fuma’s face. Euijoo can tell: he isn’t teasing, not really. It’s a genuine offer.

Euijoo shakes his head. “It’s really fine,” he says, picking up his chopsticks with his left hand again. Then as if the universe is trying to prove Fuma’s point, Euijoo drops the entirety of his next bite onto the table. Grains of rice scattered everywhere.

Looking down at the mess, Euijoo hears Fuma let out a laugh that’s almost just breath. “You can be so stubborn, you know that?”

It’s not an accusation. Mostly it just sounds—fond. Like how Fuma used to talk to him before all of this happened. Euijoo’s left hand squeezes tight around the warm metal of his chopsticks.

“C’mon,” Fuma says. Then there’s a bite of food right in front of his face: Fuma’s chopsticks, piled high with rice and beef.

Euijoo looks at it. He thinks about it.

Fuma says it again, soft, “Come on, Euijoo. Can you open for me?”

Euijoo tilts his head forward. He breathes. Opens. Then he bites down, chews. Swallows.

“There you go,” Fuma says. The cadence of his voice like the warmth of the sun on a bleak winter night, unreal and undeserved.

Then Fuma’s hand is in front of him again. Euijoo takes another bite.

And then another. Euijoo’s brain slows; a fuzzy powering-off, like an old laptop that’s stayed on for too long. Fuma keeps feeding him. Euijoo keeps eating.

It’s easy, like this.

Eventually Euijoo looks down and sees his empty bowl, almost entirely clean. He blinks, focuses his eyes; looks up again and sees Fuma’s face, the soft slant of his smile. It’s a shock, the comfort of feeling full. Euijoo’s eaten more than he has in days. He barely even remembers doing it.

“You did well,” Fuma says. His free arm’s elbow is leaned against the wood of the table, his head resting against his hand as he looks at Euijoo. “Really well, Euijoo.”

“Thank you,” Euijoo replies, still feeling staticky and strange, “for your help.”

It’s an odd little back-and-forth. But it makes Euijoo’s chest feel warm, makes something pull low in his abdomen.

Still smiling, Fuma tells him, “You’re welcome.”

-

It’s too early for bed, even with Euijoo’s geriatric biological clock. Fuma sits them down on the couch. He pulls up a YouTube video on his phone about how to unlock handcuffs with a paperclip, which, after an awkward little search, they can’t seem to find in the dorm, and then one using a bobby pin, which—surprise!—they also can’t find. Euijoo tries to use his pinky nail, twisting it in the little slot, but when he lets out an involuntary hiss of pain Fuma pushes his hand away and tells him to stop, that he’s going to hurt himself. Euijoo, a little embarrassed, does as he’s told.

Fuma fiddles with the mechanism for a while longer. The soft clinking of it lulls Euijoo into drowsiness. With his eyes closed, it’s oddly comforting. Eventually Fuma lets out a big sigh and sits back against the couch cushions, almost close enough to touch, presumably giving up.

The laugh track on the Japanese variety show that they’ve for some reason decided to keep on is the only thing keeping Euijoo awake; the grating edges of it keep jolting his system into alertness. But then eventually he must get used to the sound, because his eyes start to stay closed, and he stops flinching. All noise drops away. Then the entire world does.

Eventually: “Euijoo?” A touch to the knob of his wrist. A soft metallic noise. A warm hand. “Euijoo?”

Euijoo blinks his eyes open. Two naps in one night. Proof that there really is something wrong with him. “Sorry,” he murmurs. He remembers Kei wiping drool from his chin earlier, and quickly raises his hand to swipe away any new remnants of sleep from his face. Though if Fuma was here the whole time, Euijoo supposes he must have seen them anyway. There are few things Fuma hasn’t seen, at this point.

“What are you sorry about?” Fuma asks. His voice is slow, tired, but unlike Euijoo, he’s clearly been awake this whole time. “Sleeping?”

“I don’t know,” Euijoo says. He still isn’t fully awake, which is why he says, “Everything, I guess.”

He hears Fuma breathe out. “There’s nothing for you to be sorry about,” he says. And then silence, like he’s thinking hard about what to say next. After a while: “Let’s go to bed. It’s getting late, and you must be tired.”

Fuma, delicately sidestepping Euijoo’s graceless attempt at bringing it up; Fuma, who Euijoo is still going to have to share a bed with. He tries to banish the thought for as long as possible, bites at his tongue, asks, “What time is it?”

“After eleven,” Fuma says, then, a little more tentatively, “you were out for a while, sleepyhead.”

A flutter of warmth in his chest. Euijoo quietly replies, “I guess I am tired,” instead of what he really wants to say, to ask: Why are you still being so nice to me? Why aren’t you punishing me? Don’t you understand what I want from you?

Impossible questions, even more impossible answers. Euijoo doesn’t know who he’s kidding.

They both stand up. Euijoo, a little more precariously: he wobbles like he’s standing up for the first time in his life. Fuma steadies him with a hand at his waist. Euijoo swallows, lets out a tiny thanks.

They stop by the bathroom for an abridged nighttime routine. No showers, for obvious reasons. They brush their teeth, wash their faces as best they can. He watches as Fuma takes his contacts out, as he swaps them for those frameless glasses of his: the pair he’s too embarrassed to wear on camera. The pair Euijoo has always liked. It feels domestic in a dreamy, half-asleep sort of way. The sort of thing that Euijoo won’t even be sure really happened in the morning.

Then Fuma, maybe instinctively, leads them to his own bedroom. Euijoo’s steps stutter. He hasn’t been in there since—

Fuma turns to look at him with a questioning sort of expression. Euijoo takes a deep breath before he speaks. “Can we sleep in my room instead?”

Fuma blinks. Then: “Your bed is smaller,” he says, tone neutral.

“Um,” Euijoo says, face heating. He doesn’t know how to tell Fuma the truth, that he’s too scared to go back to Fuma’s room after what he did in there. “That’s…”

“I don’t mind, Euijoo,” Fuma says. He smiles. “Whatever you like.”

So they go to Euijoo’s room.

Euijoo wakes up a little more, standing in the middle of his bedroom. He looks at the dark tea stain on his rug and quickly realizes that this isn’t any better, not at all.

Now Fuma’s going to be in his bed. Now Euijoo’s going to have to live with the memory of this, no matter what happens: Fuma lying next to him, under his childhood blankets—the ones he brought back with him last time he went to see his family, homesick and sentimental—his body there, right next to Euijoo, in touching distance. As easy and as difficult as anything. That same hot stove.

Euijoo stands there looking at his bed. When he turns to look at Fuma, Fuma’s already looking back at him.

Fuma, maybe sensing that Euijoo isn’t going to move first, puts a knee up on the mattress. Euijoo gets pulled along, forced to follow, and then Fuma’s lying back, and then Euijoo’s suddenly horizontal, forced to try to make himself comfortable alongside him. Then they’re both just lying there, the backs of their hands touching, cold metal and the warmth of Fuma’s skin.

Quiet. The distant sound of the front door opening; the members who were out trickling back in. Muffled laughter. Fuma, completely silent. Just breathing.

Euijoo can’t stand it. He whispers, “Why aren’t you…”

“Hm?” Fuma says.

Euijoo shuts his eyes tight. He doesn’t want to know, really. Doesn’t know why he’s even asking. “Nevermind."

Fuma makes an acquiescing noise. Fuma, who always takes care of him, even when he’s being childish and obstinate. Euijoo’s chest feels like it’s caving in.

Fuma’s turned on his side, facing Euijoo. Euijoo stays on his back, facing up at the ceiling. Parallel lines, perpendicular trajectories. The indelible light of the moon from the window hits them both.

Eventually Fuma falls asleep. Somehow, Euijoo does too.

-

Euijoo wakes up with a dry mouth and pain in his lower abdomen.

It’s still late, or early; the room is still pitch dark, barring the slats of moonlight. Euijoo tries to shift, to turn onto his stomach, but he’s trapped—he remembers all at once the situation that he’s in. The metal of the cuffs dig into the bone at his wrist.

He lets out a big rush of breath. Fuma stirs, but then settles again. Still asleep. The formless pain in Euijoo’s stomach slowly coalesces into something that makes sense to him—deep, sharp pressure in his bladder. He needs to go to the bathroom, and he needs to go badly. All that water at dinner, Euijoo thinks, cursing himself. He feels hot and uncomfortable, stuffy, full.

He carefully shifts again, onto his side, facing Fuma. He still can’t help but hiss a breath at the feeling of it. It comes out louder than he intended, and Fuma stirs again.

Euijoo can feel his body starting to panic. He tries to soothe himself: it’s alright. He just needs to wait until the morning, until Kei gives them the key. Surely he has enough self-control for that. Euijoo can handle a little bit of pain. He just needs to fall back asleep, and then it’ll be morning, and then this will all be over.

Minutes pass, and pass, and pass. Euijoo’s awful, treacherous body is wide awake. He tries all sorts of positions: knee up, both knees, legs flat out, on his back, everything. None of it helps. He’s awake, and he’s burning up, and something inside him is aching badly.

He can’t help but let out a tiny groan; frustrated, embarrassed, hotly afraid.

And then he hears Fuma’s voice. “Euijoo, are you okay?”

Euijoo freezes. “Sorry. You can go back to sleep.”

“But are you okay?” Fuma mumbles. When Euijoo looks over at him, his eyes are only half-open, fluttering.

“I’m fine,” Euijoo says, but even he himself can tell it sounds like a lie. It sounds like something is stuck in his throat.

“Euijoo,” Fuma starts, sounding more awake now, “hey—”

“It’s just—I need to…” Euijoo swallows. A throb in his abdomen. “I need to pee.”

There’s a pause, and then Fuma says, “Okay. Let’s go.”

Like it’s as easy as that. Euijoo almost scoffs. He lifts their connected hands between them, like, forgot something?

Fuma just smiles sleepily. “It’s fine, Euijoo. If you have to go, you have to go. I won’t look. C’mon.”

Then Fuma sits up, grabbing his glasses, like it really is as easy as that, and Euijoo thoughtlessly follows, letting himself be dragged. I won’t look, Euijoo keeps hearing, ringing in his ears, I won’t look, I won’t look.

Then they’re in the bathroom. Fuma shuts the door behind them with what sounds like an oddly final click.

Euijoo walks slowly to the toilet. Stands there, unmoving. Shaky hand at his waistband. Fuma, right next to him, turned around to face the shower. Euijoo can see the broad wings of his back when he looks up at the mirror.

Euijoo tries to breathe. His chest rattles around it. He feels—

Then Fuma, asking, “You need me to help you out?”

Euijoo feels a rush of embarrassment surge through him, a huge oceanic wave. “What?” he asks, a whisper.

“Do you want me to help?” Fuma asks again. He asks as calmly as he’d ask anything.

What is he—? Euijoo’s hands shake and shake. He’s sweating. He can tell his face is flushed red; he feels disgusting, monstrous in the way that he—god, the way that he likes it—the way Fuma’s standing there fully composed while Euijoo—

“No,” Euijoo says. Quick and as firm as he can. “No, I’m fine.”

It feels cruel, a little bit, after he rejected Euijoo’s kiss all those days ago. Sort of like he’s playing a game, toying with him—Euijoo knows Fuma, and he doesn’t think he’d do something like that—yet the mere idea of it bypasses all of Euijoo’s higher thinking. He thinks that even if Fuma wanted to be cruel to him, Euijoo would let him. That he would like it, in some twisted-up way. Fuma’s kind care wrapped up in something meaner, hotter.

He hears Fuma murmuring, a Japanese word or two that Euijoo doesn’t catch. Then, more clearly: “What are you so stubborn for, huh?” An echo of his words from earlier; the timbre of it honeyed. “It’s really okay. Just go, Euijoo.”

Euijoo swallows, tries to get his hand to cooperate. He finally gets his waistband down, pulls himself out. He tries to do what Fuma says and can’t. He tries and tries and nothing.

“I can’t,” Euijoo says.

“Yes, you can,” Fuma says. “You can do it for me, can’t you?”

Fuma’s still turned away, but he reaches and his hand lands on Euijoo’s hipbone. He squeezes, not hard, and then his hand twitches lower, like maybe he’s about to reach for—Euijoo’s stomach lurches, something syrupy and hot turning over itself, and then—yes—he’s going.

It seems like it lasts a long time. Euijoo’s face is burning hot, volcano-red. His ears ring. He stops himself earlier than he would if he was alone.

It’s enough, he thinks. Fuma’s already given him enough.

Euijoo tucks himself back away, looks up at the mirror again. He makes a point not to look at his own face; but he can see Fuma’s big, pale hand still stretched across the arc of his hip. The possessive line of it. There’s a tiny acrobat in his stomach, flipping over and over.

Fuma asks, thumb softly stroking back and forth, “Doesn’t that feel better?”

Euijoo closes his eyes, lets out a rattling breath. “Yeah,” he whispers. It does.

Fuma turns on the faucet for him. Euijoo washes his hands in the cold water, not willing to wait for it to heat up. It’s refreshing, in a way, the discomfort of it. It cools him down a little, but not enough.

Then Fuma leads them back to Euijoo’s room. It’s easier to crawl into bed this time, feels less strange to stretch out alongside Fuma’s body. Still not touching, of course—but it feels different than earlier, in a way that Euijoo wouldn’t know how to put into words.

He tries to fall back asleep instead of worrying about it. It’s difficult: he’s uncomfortable, hot and cold at the same time, a body struggling to regulate itself. Fuma too, next to him, moving and shifting, letting out little sighs and huffs of breath.

The more time passes, the more Euijoo realizes that he should have spent longer in the bathroom. He thought it was enough but he still feels tender inside, in a way that he’d usually be able to ignore, if it wasn’t for the fact that the sensation now more than anything just makes him think about the body in his bed. Fuma, his warm bulk lying there next to him. Fuma, who told him it’s okay, who touched him tenderly and whispered you can.

Euijoo can’t help the dizzying wave of arousal that swirls through him. He grits his teeth and turns again, which accidentally pulls a little too hard on the handcuffs. He hears Fuma make a low noise.

Euijoo winces, closing his eyes tightly. “Sorry,” he whispers.

Another small noise. “Can’t sleep?” Fuma asks.

Euijoo doesn’t trust his voice to come out without a humiliatingly obvious waver. He just sighs, which he figures is answer enough.

Fuma breathes a little laugh. “You’ve probably already gotten a full night of sleep, anyway,” he says. “All those naps.”

“Mm,” Euijoo says. He swallows. “Probably.”

He shifts again, onto his side. The feeling: the movement of something inside him; his cock, stirring and sensitive, pressing tighter against his leg—Euijoo lets out an involuntary little whine.

Then he freezes. Fuma’s quiet and still.

After a few desperate breaths: “D’you still have to go?” Fuma asks, low.

Euijoo’s eyes are squeezed shut so tight. He can’t bring himself to look at Fuma’s face, but he can feel Fuma’s gaze on him.

Euijoo shakes his head, forehead pressing hard against the softness of the pillow. “No,” he whispers, though the real answer is sort of, a little bit, but all the feeling does is make Euijoo squirm, make him burn that much hotter. It’s horrible and embarrassing and—good, overwhelmingly so, all these huge sensations at once. Why is Fuma even indulging this? After what happened? Euijoo can’t understand it, doesn’t understand anything.

Fuma asks, “You sure?”

Euijoo wants to whine again. He doesn’t want to have to decide for himself. “It’s okay,” he says. “I’m just…”

He doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. The strangling sense of shame, the scrutiny he can feel, Fuma looking at him like this, all of it gilded with heady arousal—he can hear himself breathing hard, catching wetly in the back of his throat.

Euijoo feels a hand on the side of his face. A warm, dry thumb swiping across his cheekbone. The curl of his ear. Euijoo’s heart pounds.

“Can you open your eyes?” Fuma asks. “Will you look at me?”

Euijoo can’t. Won’t.

“I know it’s hard,” Fuma says. “But can you… will you tell me? What you want?”

I don’t know what I want, Euijoo instinctively thinks. But that isn’t true. Euijoo wants more than he knows how to say, always has. The real answer: You. This. For you to tell me it’s okay. Please. That's what I want. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.

“I don’t know,” Euijoo ends up saying, stumbling over the words, around the feeling in his chest. He can’t voice it. Fuma’s hand is still touching gently at the edge of his ear. “I can’t…”

“Euijoo,” Fuma says, again. The way he says his name. The way it makes something inside him tremble, like the glow of the moon on rippling water.

Euijoo can’t respond, still can’t get the words out.

Silence as Fuma touches him, as Euijoo breathes and is touched. Then Fuma slowly begins to speak: “I… ever since… I’ve been going along with whatever you said you wanted. Giving you space, pretending nothing ever happened. Waiting. Because the last thing I want is to hurt you, Euijoo.”

His hand at the curve of Euijoo’s jaw. “But following your lead—it is hurting you, isn’t it?”

His thumb, right there at the hinge. “It always has been. Because you won’t let yourself have it. The thing you want.”

Euijoo’s pulse is hummingbird-quick. He manages to get out, breathless, “Are you…?”

“I want to give it to you.” Fuma caresses the skin of his jaw. “Whatever it is. All of it. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

His thumb moves up to press down beneath Euijoo’s mouth, nail catching on his bottom lip. Euijoo opens, just a little. “But then you didn’t want me to say anything. So—I tried to show you.”

Euijoo tries to understand. It starts to coalesce into something that makes sense: Fuma showing him: feeding him at dinner, telling him what he needs, helping him go. Talking him through it. Leading him throughout it all, making it easy, making it good.

A memory flashes, rising up from the depths, intimate words spoken on a huge stage: To me, Fuma-kun is my leader.

It’s always been true, hasn’t it. Euijoo finally opens his eyes, heart in his throat.

“I didn’t think you wanted it,” he ends up saying, stuttering and slow. Fuma’s thumb, moving with the motion of his mouth. “Me, I mean. You looked so surprised when I… I thought…”

“I was surprised,” Fuma says. His hand crawls down to rest at the center of Euijoo’s chest. “That you actually did it. Kissed me. But, Euijoo, I was so—fucking thrilled. You have no idea.”

Euijoo’s heart beats heavily under Fuma’s palm. “Oh,” he says. He belatedly notices that Fuma’s put his glasses back on, which makes a soft part of him want to smile. Somehow he hears himself say, “I might have some idea.”

Fuma smiles. “Yeah?” he asks, heavy, low.

“Yeah,” Euijoo repeats. He needs to get himself under control, but Fuma’s hand is slowly continuing its path downwards; Euijoo feels his cock stir again, blood warm and rushing.

“See. You don’t always have to run,” Fuma says. He looks relieved, something in his face and voice opening up. “God, even in the bathroom—I meant it when I asked. If you had said yes, I would have. I wanted to help you.”

Euijoo wrinkles his nose, ignores the pleasure that flares red-hot in his abdomen at the words, at the idea of it. “Don’t… don’t say gross things.”

“I don’t think it’s gross,” Fuma says. A beat of silence. “And I don’t think you do either.”

Euijoo lets out a shaky breath. “Are you just humoring me?” he asks, quietly. “Because if that’s the case, then—”

He hears Fuma let out a noise like a laugh. “Humoring you,” he says, almost to himself. Then Euijoo’s right hand is being moved, gently enough that the metal of the handcuffs doesn’t dig into his skin, and then the back of his hand is pressed against Fuma, over the front of his pants, where he’s hot and hard against the fabric.

Euijoo breathes out. It sounds something like oh.

“I’ve been like this since you got up the first time,” Fuma whispers. “I thought I was going crazy, with you squirming like that. That noise you made.”

“Hyung,” Euijoo says, heart beating wildly in its cage. His mouth is so dry. His hand twitches against the shape of Fuma’s cock in his sweats. He feels like he’s burning alive.

Fuma asks, “You don’t even know what you do to me, do you?”

Euijoo lets out a hurt little noise, turning his face inwards towards the pillow again. Hot waves of arousal in his stomach. His cock, throbbing.

Euijoo’s right hand, in the handcuff, being moved. Fuma, touching himself through the fabric; Euijoo’s hand, dangling limply, every few seconds brushing against the thick shape of him.

It’s barely anything and it’s still too much. Just knowing that he’s—that Fuma could do anything, and Euijoo would be at his mercy—it’s enough to make him shake. Euijoo’s abdomen is a mess of urgent need; he barely knows what he wants. But he wants. God, he wants.

Euijoo’s other hand, instead of snaking down between his own thighs to relieve some of the pressure, moves to rest against Fuma’s free one, still resting on Euijoo’s lower stomach. Mindlessly, he presses their hands down hard. Feels it, inside. Sweet discomfort, not quite pain. Pleasure like a lightning strike. He hears himself let out a broken moan.

“Fuck,” Fuma whispers. “You’re so—”

Euijoo doesn’t get to learn what he is. Fuma’s surging forward, and then Fuma’s kissing him.

It’s nothing like their first—Euijoo can’t even fit them in the same box. Fuma’s mouth is hot against his, moving slow at first, waiting for Euijoo to respond, and then once he does he gets greedy, takes the lead in a way that has Euijoo’s head spinning: coaxing his mouth open with his tongue, pressing forward, just the right amount of force.

Fuma’s mouth is warm and wet and insistent, ravenously taking everything that Euijoo has to offer. Euijoo lifts his free hand from his stomach, from on top of Fuma’s, to snake around and rest on the small of Fuma’s back. To pull his body in closer.

“I’m here, Euijoo,” Fuma whispers between kisses. “I’m here.”

Fuma gets a hand around the width of Euijoo’s thigh, hoists it up over his own leg. One of Fuma’s thighs slots in perfectly between Euijoo’s. The solid feeling of it, so much thicker than Euijoo’s own, pressing up against where he’s hard and sensitive and—Euijoo can’t help the noise he makes, a wet, gasping thing. His hips buck forward. Fuma’s hand gets tighter on his thigh.

“There you go,” Fuma says, holding him, helping him move. “It’s okay to want it. It’s okay to need it.”

Euijoo keeps his eyes shut tight. If it’s Fuma telling him, in that low, serious voice—it must be true. He doesn’t lie about things that matter. Something inside Euijoo begins to loosen. Untangling, unfurling.

“Yeah,” Fuma says. “You’re doing good. Doesn’t it feel good?”

Euijoo lets out another quiet noise at the words, the continuous pressure, then nods, forehead moving against Fuma’s. He can tell his bangs are already wet with sweat, which makes him feel a little gross; but then Fuma’s hand comes up and pushes them back tenderly, like he knows, like he can somehow read Euijoo’s mind.

Euijoo leans in and kisses him harder.

Fuma’s hand snakes up to grasp at Euijoo’s waist, curling around the arc of his hipbone. Somehow gentle even with the force of it: he pulls Euijoo’s body impossibly closer to his. Euijoo’s shocked at how good it feels, after everything; even when he used to dream about this—which he did, shamefully often—it was never like this: never so visceral, never so clear and sharply good.

Euijoo wants to reciprocate, to give Fuma something solid to grind against too, but he can’t seem to get the leverage; all he can really do is cling to the back of Fuma’s shirt and let his hips follow their natural rhythm—or is it the rhythm of the way Fuma’s moving him?—maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe it’s the same: what Euijoo wants and what Fuma wants from him.

Even the thought is such a relief. Such a burden, lifted.

Euijoo, embarrassingly, could easily get off like this, and probably soon, but he wants—he wants to see—he lets his hand drift forward to the front of Fuma’s pants, tilting his own hips back to make room, then glances down to see the shape of his small hand against the obvious line of Fuma’s dick.

A quick, sucked-in breath. Then Fuma asks, “Do you see now?”

Euijoo’s eyes flicker back up to his face.

“What you do to me,” Fuma says. Euijoo makes a small, aching noise. “How much I like it,” Fuma continues to say, mostly breath against Euijoo’s mouth. “How much I like you.”

Euijoo’s head spins; the room spins alongside him. He continues to touch Fuma over the top of his sweats, still too unsure to really go for it, when Fuma suddenly uses his lower body to knock Euijoo over onto his back. He goes easily, a small gust of air escaping his lungs.

Then, Euijoo’s looking up into the dark heat of Fuma’s gaze, and Euijoo’s legs are being moved—spread—to make space for Fuma’s body between them. Euijoo’s cuffed hand is up at his shoulder, where Fuma’s is pressing into the mattress. Their fingers tangle together.

Fuma’s head dips to kiss down the line of Euijoo’s neck. He sucks right at his pulse point; Euijoo arches at the feeling. Fuma’s free hand trails up the side of his waist to land at his chest, right above a nipple. He presses down, a sharp squeeze of his fingers. Euijoo’s back arches even further, letting out an “Ah—”

Then Fuma asks, murmured low: “D’you do it on purpose?”

The words don’t compute. Euijoo makes a questioning noise, distracted.

“The exercises,” Fuma clarifies. He squeezes Euijoo’s chest again, almost kneading. “For these.” Then a grasping pinch at Euijoo’s nipple; a barely audible, “Your pretty tits.” The sensation, a sharp pleasure-pain, alongside the crudeness of Fuma’s words—it makes his hips jerk sharply upwards.

But the answer to Fuma’s question is—well—

Euijoo, thoughtless and becoming more and more loose-tongued, just asks, “You like it, right?”

Fuma lifts his head, looks at him with a shocked, breathless smile. Then he just dips his head to trail lower, and suddenly his mouth is on Euijoo’s nipple, already hard, ridiculously sensitive, even through the material of his shirt.

Eventually, Fuma says, “Yeah,” lips right up against his chest. His eyes dart up to meet Euijoo’s. “It’s all for me, right? How could I not like it?”

Euijoo’s throat keeps catching, tiny noises escaping. Fuma’s mouth works, tongue flicking, each blunt scrape of teeth like sun-bright electric shocks. His hand snakes down to rub against Euijoo in his pants, and Euijoo’s so hard, so worked up, that his hips are twitching up almost frantically, needing the pressure, needing Fuma to give it to him.

Euijoo’s shirt gets pushed up. Fuma’s mouth on him again, with no barrier this time. The stiff peaks of his nipples, brown and bitten, when Euijoo looks down to see, the swell of his chest—his tits, he can hear in Fuma’s voice—so flushed and swollen it’s almost like, like he’s a—he has to close his eyes against the thought, embarrassed and absurdly turned on; he hears himself whine, at a high enough pitch that it almost sounds like—

“God, Euijoo,” Fuma says, lifting up again, his hand wrapped around Euijoo’s cock through the fabric. “Let me touch you. Yeah?”

Euijoo nods, and then his pants are being pulled down, and then all of a sudden they’re ripped completely off. Euijoo blinks; Fuma’s warm, rough hand wraps around him and starts to move in earnest. It’s easy, his grip, the slide of it. Really, it’s easy because Euijoo’s so—slick, leaking at the tip, all messy and pink and wet like—god, like a girl—

Euijoo’s shaking with how good it feels, the solid bulk of Fuma’s body above him, the way he’s touching him. “Kiss me,” he says, “please, ah, hyung—”

Then Fuma is, Euijoo panting and moaning into his mouth, and then Fuma’s thumb swipes and presses right below the head of his cock, his palm wrapped tight around the base, this perfect curling pressure, two more strokes and Euijoo’s about to come—no, he’s coming, suddenly, ripped out right from under him, the heat at his core spiking and igniting; pleasure like beams of light spilling and gushing through his stomach, his legs, his pulsing cock.

“That’s good,” he hears Fuma saying from far away, as he keeps stroking him, “you’re so good, sweetheart, perfect, just like that—”

Euijoo moans and shakes as Fuma talks him through it. Then Fuma’s hand leaves, and when Euijoo begins to come back down to earth, he realizes Fuma has that same hand down his own pants, is jerking himself off as he looks at him, probably still slick with Euijoo’s come, and, god, he—

“What’re you doing,” Euijoo murmurs, still a little out of it, “c’mere,” trying to coax Fuma closer to him, a hand pushing at his wrist, down at his waistband, “take these off, c’mon—”

Fuma lets out a shaky little laugh as he does what Euijoo says. “Are you in charge now?” he asks, wry and affected.

Euijoo laughs a little too, shakes his head, a strange lightness diffusing through him now that he’s come, maybe; he says, “No. I don’t want to be,” still a little breathless. “I’ve said it before, haven’t I? Fuma-kun is my leader.”

Fuma stares. Then he surges forward to kiss him. Euijoo kisses back hard.

As they make out, Euijoo knows that Fuma’s sweats are gone, but he wants his shirt gone too—he yanks on the back of it, trying to push it upwards, trying to urge Fuma to get the hint. Fuma sits back up to pull it off one-handed. They both then quickly realize he’s trapped: the handcuffs making it impossible to fully get the sleeve off.

“Well,” Fuma says. He finishes pulling the shirt off as much as possible, letting it dangle from his left wrist. Adjusts his glasses with the other. “That’s inconvenient.”

Euijoo can’t help but laugh, the situation’s so absurd; but it quickly trails off once he registers the fact of Fuma’s nakedness: the bulk of his chest, the sculpted planes of his stomach, his hard cock at the center of him. The reality of it is enough to have Euijoo’s dick twitching again in interest, already, this soon.

“C’mon,” Euijoo says again, “c’mere,” pulling Fuma back to him, fully on top. His thick cock presses against Euijoo’s still mostly soft one, and when Euijoo glances down to look, it’s—fuck—the size difference should be humiliating, but all the sight does is make Euijoo squirm, make his stomach hotly clench. The way Fuma’s so much bigger than him, so much stronger, so much more—

Euijoo lets out a moan as Fuma starts moving against him, rutting against his stomach and hip and dick; Euijoo jolting every few seconds at the feel of it, arousal rushing and swirling inside, sweetly pooling.

But the motion, the feeling of it, Fuma’s hips rocking into him, it’s almost like—like he’s—

Euijoo’s too out of it to really think about it, loose after his orgasm and still burning with desire, watching and feeling Fuma’s hips move, so he just says: “You can.”

“Hm?” Fuma asks. His handsome face, pink with exertion.

“You can,” Euijoo says again, legs spread, tilting his own hips up.

Quiet around both of their heaving breaths. Then the realization pierces through his haze of arousal: it’s too much to ask, of course it is, even half-spoken like this. He closes his eyes, embarrassed, overwhelmed. But still he doesn’t want to take it back.

Fuma just stares at him, then comprehension dawns and he says, “Fuck, Euijoo.” His hand tightens on Euijoo’s waist. “You…”

Euijoo breathes. He waits.

Fuma’s hand strokes down to his hip, his thigh. He digs his thumb in, inwards, this perfect ache, then finally says, “Let’s do it like this, okay? Can you lift up for me?”

Euijoo doesn’t really know what Fuma means, but then his legs are being lifted up anyway, swept over to one side of Fuma’s body, thighs pressed together, almost fully up in the air, and—oh. This is what he means. Fuma keeps one arm around Euijoo’s knees, keeping his legs tightly together, and then fucks forward, cock hot and hard right between his thighs.

“Oh,” Euijoo says, this time aloud, as Fuma lets out a soft groan; the position makes Euijoo’s stomach swoop, something sharp clenching low inside. Fuma’s hips stutter forward once, twice, like it feels too good to control, but then he steadies. Euijoo tries to catch his breath. It’s good. It’s really, really good.

Soon Fuma pauses, lifts his hand from Euijoo’s legs like he needs it for something. He looks at Euijoo like he’s debating with himself, and then his hand is in front of Euijoo’s face and he’s saying, low, “Spit.”

Euijoo’s cheeks flare with red, but he leans forward anyway. He does what he’s told. He gathers up saliva in his mouth, easy, lets it drip slowly from between his lips in one long, shiny trail. He looks up. Fuma’s staring at him like he can’t believe what he’s seeing.

Then he seems to come back to himself. He smiles at Euijoo and says, “Good boy.” Euijoo shakes as his own spit is smeared across his inner thighs, as Fuma’s hand tightens once more on his closed legs, as he moves in earnest, as he starts—fucking him again.

Euijoo’s head tilts back on his pillow, arching with a trembling, whimpery inhale, his entire body sliding a little with the gravity of how hard Fuma’s pushing against him. Each of Fuma’s thrusts press up against Euijoo’s balls and the line of his own cock, steadily hardening again now, more sensitive than before. His thighs clench, half-involuntary, half-trying to make it as good and tight as possible for Fuma, watching as the movement of his hips gets more urgent.

Fuma, breathing heavily, leans forward to brace himself more fully on top of Euijoo, his free hand down on the mattress. Euijoo, bent almost in half. The change in position, together with Fuma’s urgency, makes one of Fuma’s thrusts lose aim—his cock sliding lower, pressing against Euijoo’s perineum, and then again, further back still. Euijoo gasps as it slips dry at his rim; the hot, blunt pressure of the head right where he’s most sensitive.

“Shit, sorry,” Fuma says, with a weak, affected sort of half-laugh, like he’s embarrassed by his own fervor, the hunger that Euijoo can read all over his face; this hugely new desire that Euijoo’s starting to like so much, his equally greedy mirror—

Fuma has a hand reaching down, about to adjust himself. Euijoo reaches out his own to stop him. It’s the handcuffed one, Euijoo’s dominant hand, instinctual, his own fervor pulling Fuma’s arm along. To keep his balance, Fuma has to catch himself on the mattress with an elbow, face now centimetres away from Euijoo’s.

“Please,” Euijoo says, mostly breath in the scant space between them, trying to pull Fuma even closer. “Please.”

“Do you know what you’re asking?” Fuma’s pupils are blown wide, lips red and bitten. His face is serious.

Euijoo nods. He does. “I’ve wanted it for so long,” he whispers. Swallows. “You. Like this. Before I even really knew what it meant. And then as we got closer, and you… I mean, I…”

Fuma’s gaze, dark and awed.

“You understand, right?” Euijoo finishes.

Fuma says, after a heart-thumping pause, “It’s not going to be perfect.” He lifts their handcuffed hands, uses his other to push up his glasses, like he’s trying to tell Euijoo something that Euijoo doesn’t—no, can’t understand. As if Fuma like this, bespectacled and tethered and real in Euijoo’s bed isn’t the closest he’s ever been to a real-life miracle.

Euijoo says, “I don’t need it to be perfect.” The truth of the words manifests like the brilliance of the sun, rising in Euijoo’s bedroom at four in the morning. “Fuma-kun. I just need you.”

That awe etched into Fuma’s beautiful face. He seems to swallow against something, then asks, “Do you have…?”

Euijoo licks his dry lips, tosses his left arm off the side of the mattress to grope for his bedside table’s drawer. He struggles to pull it open at the strange angle, so Fuma sits half-up and does it for him.

“Way in the back,” Euijoo says. A wave of embarrassment hits him at how brazen he’s being as he hears Fuma digging around; he throws his free arm over his eyes to cover them. Then Fuma’s back on top of him. With the tiny triangle still left of his vision, Euijoo can see the unopened condoms and the opened lube both in one hand.

This job, being a leader, has taught him a lot of things. Some more maladaptive than others. But one of the most crucial is this: always be prepared, even for the most unlikely of outcomes.

This probably isn’t what the HYBE executive had in mind, when he sat Euijoo down and told him that.

Well, Euijoo thinks. Well.

Some of the embarrassment recedes as Fuma leans back in to gently remove his arm from where it was covering his eyes, to kiss him, to whisper nonsense about how perfect Euijoo is into the heat of his mouth.

A dimly-lit part of Euijoo wishes Fuma would just do it, take him now, just like this—though he knows it’s unrealistic, wouldn’t be as good as the fantasy, and anyway of course Fuma’s too kind to do something like that, to risk hurting him. But maybe in the future, once they’ve talked about it. Euijoo wants it. With Fuma, he wants everything.

Euijoo must drift a little as they kiss, distracted, because he comes back to himself with a jolting rush when Fuma’s hand, his blunt, wet fingers, slide down the inside crux of his thigh and then further back towards the seam of his ass, landing to rest hot and heavy against his hole.

“This is really what you want?” Fuma asks him.

Euijoo squirms. He nods.

“Have you done this before? With anyone?”

Euijoo shakes his head. “Only—alone. But I know that I… I just want it,” he whispers, “with you.” He shifts the angle of his hips, swallows around something huge in his throat. “I want it.”

One of Fuma’s fingers slips in halfway through Euijoo’s last sentence, like he wants it too, wants it badly, like he can barely wait.

Euijoo shakes. It hurts to breathe. One finger turns into two. Even with just this, the difference in their hand size is obvious: Fuma gets deeper than Euijoo ever could. Euijoo’s back arches at the feeling, trying to get him deeper still.

Fuma talks to him the whole time, in low, filthy Japanese that makes Euijoo’s head spin and his cock throb—good, sweet thing, you feel so perfect, so hot and tight, all mine, isn’t that right?—Euijoo can’t do anything besides close his eyes and let himself feel it.

A particularly mean crook of Fuma’s two fingers inside him and Euijoo’s hips are rocketing off the bed: this sweet, roiling-in-his-stomach feeling, more direct and forceful contact with his prostate than he’s ever been able to manage on his own. The pressure reminds Euijoo all at once of his bladder, still half-full, the two sensations always connected; it’s almost enough to worry him, to make him think that he might—go, a clenching sort of desperation, a hot jumbled handful of pleasure and sheer aching feeling.

“You’re doing so well,” he hears Fuma say, “perfect, Euijoo, I mean it, you’re so…”

Euijoo whines, trying to be quiet, feels his entire body straining, toes curling and digging into the mattress. The pressure doesn’t let up, overwhelming; Fuma doesn’t let him squirm away, but Euijoo can’t stop moving, so Fuma has to use their handcuffed hands to keep him still—Euijoo ends up digging his blunt nails into his own hipbone as Fuma holds him down.

Then three fingers. Euijoo bites his tongue so hard that he can feel himself indent the muscle. He’s usually good at stifling his moans when he does this to himself—he has to be—but the sensation, the fact that it’s Fuma’s hand, inside him—it’s almost impossible. He has to use his free hand to cover his own mouth, to stop himself from embarrassing himself further, from waking the whole dorm up.

Fuma says, “Soon I’m gonna see how many times I can make you come just like this. You’ll let me, right?”

Euijoo can’t respond in words. His head on the pillow, nodding, a body almost beyond his own control.

Fuma, his fingers twisting and crooking and pressing hard inside. “Look at you. You’d probably let me do anything.”

Euijoo’s eyes feel a little wet, closed so tightly together, the humiliation of his obvious need for once not painful: reshaped and reborn by Fuma’s knowing hands.

“Not today, though,” Fuma says, slowly pulling his fingers out. Aching loss, a flutter of his rim.

A pause, the sound of something ripping. A slick, wet noise. Then the press of Fuma’s cockhead, right where Euijoo needs him. “This is what you asked for, isn’t it?” Then Fuma’s lifting his legs up again, and then—yes—he’s finally pushing inside him. All of the breath gets punched out of Euijoo’s lungs.

“Please,” Euijoo hears himself saying, barely a word, the feeling of it, bypassing conscious thought, again, “please—it’s—”

Fuma gets halfway in and then pulls back out; then he does it again, and again, these shallow thrusts that make Euijoo shake. At some point he starts going deeper: Euijoo takes his other hand off his own mouth to dig into the sheets beside him, trying to get some sort of leverage as Fuma pushes in and in and in. Euijoo swears he can feel Fuma up in his stomach, in his throat.

“Feels big,” Euijoo mumbles out, thoughtless. Euijoo feels it: Fuma’s cock twitches inside him.

Voice tight, around a breathy laugh, Fuma says, “Byun Euijoo,” so much held there in just his name. He doesn’t need to say anything else.

Euijoo wants to smile. He’s a little too distracted.

Fuma starts moving in earnest. The momentum of it has Euijoo, slippery with sweat, sliding up towards the headboard. Fuma hooks one strong arm around Euijoo’s lower back, drags him back towards Fuma’s body, his cock, fucks himself somehow deeper, just a little bit rougher.

“Ah,” Euijoo can’t help but let out, closer to a cry than a moan, pleasure tunneling through him, “Fuma-kun—ah—”

“Like this?” Fuma grinds out. His glasses are slipping down the bridge of his nose.

Euijoo nods, the pressure and the fullness so sweet inside him as Fuma moves, but Euijoo can tell he’s lacking in leverage, one-handed and trying to hold Euijoo up like this—so he says, “Deeper, hyung,” this strange mix of languages, “please—can you—”

Fuma understands: he pulls out and puts Euijoo on his front, his stomach, with a surge of churning pressure that makes him gasp. The handcuffs force one of Euijoo’s hands behind his torso; it leaves Fuma with his forearm pressing down on the small of Euijoo’s back. Euijoo feels captured, claimed. Trapped in a good way. What happens next is not up to him; what he’s given, he’ll take. It’s the same thought from earlier, repurposed, sweetly—it sparks and catches fire right as Fuma enters him again.

Euijoo lets out a garbled noise into the pillow, something that sounds like thank you. It’s a different kind of stretch, like this. Deeper, just like he wanted, and of course Fuma knew exactly how to give it to him. He starts moving gently as Euijoo adjusts, letting out a low moan, but then he picks up speed faster than Euijoo expected—hips snapping as their bodies collide, as Euijoo’s rocked forward against the mattress. His overly sensitive cock is trapped, leaking, leaving a wet trail beneath him.

Fuma saying, “Fuck, I wish I had both of my hands. I’ll make it better next time,” which is—absurd, to think it could get better than this. Euijoo tries to shake his head to tell him some semblance of that, but it probably isn’t obvious with how much he’s already squirming, trying to get closer and further away from the onslaught of sensation.

So he chokes out, “It’s good,” half into the pillow, wanting to make sure Fuma knows, despite the fact that, really, it’s so good Euijoo can barely even speak—

Fuma’s telling him, “I wish I could keep you here like this forever. Spread open for me. Would you like that?” He’s breathless as the words come out. “Yeah? I think you would.”

His voice is so—Euijoo wonders if he’s ever going to be able to listen to him talk again without thinking about this: these words, how filthy he can be, how much Euijoo likes it. He wants Fuma to come inside him so badly he almost can’t stand it.

“Ah, ah,” Euijoo moans as Fuma thrusts and grinds right up against his prostate; he can hear himself keenly, the noises he’s muffling into the pillow, ears ringing with it. He’s—drooling, even, an obvious wet spot on the fabric, another shameful realization that ignites something inside him—god, it’s never felt like this before—

Then his noises start to take on a different sort of timbre, and Euijoo’s so out of his own head that he doesn’t even realize until Fuma’s slowing down and getting close and turning Euijoo’s face and saying:

“Why are you crying,” so soft. “Hey, Euijoo, hey—”

Oh, Euijoo thinks, blinking away hot tears, shaking, forced to check in with himself, to inhabit his body again, but once he does the answer is easy, it’s—

“It feels good,” Euijoo says, simple as that, around a wet voice and a stuttering inhale, “it feels—” Fuma starts moving again, now, like he can’t help it, “ah, it’s good, I—I like it, I didn’t think it’d be so—”

“You’re unbelievable,” Fuma’s saying, “just—fuck—” and when Euijoo turns his head again to look back he almost loses all of his breath—that look on Fuma’s face, rare and gorgeous and beyond words.

Euijoo’s still crying, a little bit, involuntary, as Fuma keeps fucking him, hips getting more and more unsteady, but still always deep enough to hit that spot inside him, each head-on press like a tiny orgasm in and of itself, and Euijoo’s never even come twice in the same night before, but his cock is leaking so much that it feels like he’s been coming this entire time, rubbing and pressing against the bed, wet like he’s never been in his life.

And then he feels himself reaching that real peak again, that rush of throbbing heat, Fuma telling him yeah, yes, there you go, but it’s different than before, than usual—his hips tremble and jerk as Fuma grinds inside, hard, something spilling from the head of his dick, but it feels—different, and there’s—a lot of it—

“I think I’m,” Euijoo gets out, voice catching around a whine, “ah, fuck, I’m—”

His entire body clenches as huge dousing waves of pleasure rush through him, each starting before the last one ends, never reaching that same climax that he’s used to, something wholly distinct as his cock pulses, as he comes and comes and keeps coming—he thinks, wildly, maybe Fuma really is going to keep him here forever, spread open and full and near-delirious with pleasure—

Then he hears Fuma’s bitten-off moan from above him, and his hips stutter, a thrust somehow deeper than all the others, Euijoo still riding out his own unprecedented, full-body orgasm as Fuma twitches and jerks and comes; he presses Euijoo down even further as he does, which traps his own sensitive dick against the mattress, making him cry out as another wave of desperate hurting pleasure crashes into him, but this time it spikes—

Euijoo has to muffle what would have been an obscenely loud sobbing moan with the pillow as it hits and he comes for real, or again, or still; the enormity of it at odds with the small bursts of semen that dribble from the head of his cock, adding to the sheets’ mess beneath him, as he gasps and trembles through it.

Euijoo can feel Fuma’s release, even through the condom, as his strong arms tremble above him, as he moans and whispers sweet filth in Euijoo’s ear. As all of it washes over him, Euijoo tries to breathe and keep the world from tilting over on its axis.

It’s difficult. But Fuma keeps him steady.

There’s a delicate untangling of limbs after. Damp sheets stripped, a blanket laid down, a promise to deal with it in the morning. Or, really, in a handful of hours. Euijoo tries to apologize, still shaking—for the mess, he mumbles, the way he lost control, how he isn’t even really sure what he—but Fuma cuts him off and asks, “Are you ever going to believe me when I tell you it’s okay?” and Euijoo—

Euijoo wants to believe him. He thinks he’s getting closer to it. Maybe one day it won’t hurt to touch, anymore.

They make it back into bed with the blankets soft around them. A kiss pressed to the nape of Euijoo’s neck. A possessive arm around his waist, the metal of the handcuffs now so warm. Another kiss, this time on his lips, one that turns into many, which ends with Euijoo pulling back with a breathy laugh when his dick starts to stir again, too exhausted for anything else.

They settle.

Then, later: “See,” Fuma mumbles into the tender skin of his neck, half-asleep. “Your ideas aren’t so bad after all.”

The words, the reminder of how they got here in the first place, Euijoo drunk and hopeless and now touched and changed and maybe even loved. The scale of it is still terrifying: wanting so much, needing something that you can’t provide for yourself. But not being alone in it—

It’s a hand reached out over the side of a cliff. A blurry path suddenly paved with light. It’s more. There aren’t really any words for it. It’s just more. Euijoo feels something inside him loosen and expand to hold on to it.

-

When it’s morning proper, they finally get the handcuffs off. Kei takes one look at them and smiles with almost manic delight—it’s nice, in a scary sort of way. Euijoo probably owes him one. Fuma looks like he’s thinking the same thing.

Euijoo goes to shower. He stands there under the spray with his eyes closed. His lower back is a fistful of deep ache; his right shoulder is sore when he tries to stretch it out; his wrist is red and a little raw. He feels alive in an uncharted, alien way. Afraid, still, but it’s indisputable: he feels good.

Then it’s a long, late afternoon of magazine interviews. Fuma sits two tables down. Each time Euijoo has to hide or shrink something about himself to fit into an acceptable answer, he looks over at Fuma, presses a thumb into the tender skin beneath his sleeve, and thinks about something real instead.

When everything’s done and they’re free for the rest of the evening, Fuma catches him around the wrist—yes, that wrist, and Euijoo can’t help but wonder on the intentionality of it—and then asks if Euijoo wants to take a walk before heading back to the dorm. He nods. He gets his things, his coat. He’s led outside into the polar winter dark.

They walk for a little while, in that peaceful quiet that’s unique to them. Even the hugeness of what they’ve done can’t pierce it, though the weight of it hangs profoundly between them. There are few pedestrians; there’s a thin layer of frost on the sidewalk. Euijoo treads carefully.

Euijoo looks over at Fuma, in two barely-thick layers, and asks, “Aren’t you cold?”

“No,” Fuma says, but Euijoo can see that he’s holding himself tightly against the chill. “You know me. I’m hale.”

“Hale?” Euijoo asks, laughing a little. They’re speaking Korean. “How do you even know that word?”

“I know a lot of words,” Fuma says. A suppressed shiver, one Euijoo wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t looking so closely. Cold puffs of breath in the air as he speaks. “Somehow I’m still trying to find the right ones to say to you.”

Euijoo inhales deeper than he should have. There’s a constricting burn in his lungs as he replies, “You don’t have to be so careful with me.”

Fuma just looks at him. Euijoo starts unwrapping his scarf from around his neck. Fuma’s gaze turns questioning.

Euijoo steers them down a more abandoned alleyway. Then he reaches out to drape the scarf across Fuma’s shoulders. Fuma tilts his face to look up at him. Euijoo forgets, sometimes. That he has a good five centimeters on Fuma, that Fuma isn’t as indestructible as he projects. This close, though, he always remembers.

“It’s cold,” Euijoo says, again. He wraps the scarf around Fuma’s neck, once, then twice. It doesn’t look particularly fashionable, but it’s utilitarian. It’ll keep him warm.

“Euijoo,” Fuma starts to say, with weight in his tone, because he can tell there’s something else hidden in this gesture; with Euijoo, he always knows.

Euijoo tilts his own head up. He looks at the moon as he speaks. “I want to take care of you, too. You know that, right?”

Fuma’s quiet.

“I don’t want it to feel one-sided,” Euijoo says. He swallows. “If we’re—doing this. I know I can be…”

A handful of adjectives could fit there, most of them negative. Fuma stops him from having to say any of them, cutting in with, “I like taking care of you, Euijoo. It makes me happy. It makes me feel good. You know that, too, right?”

Euijoo lets the words wash over him. He says, “Yes,” because even if he doesn’t know it yet, he’s learning it, “so it’s important to me that you let me do the same. For you. I’m just…” Euijoo takes in another painful breath. “I’m a slow learner. I don’t really know how any of this is supposed to go. So—”

Fuma cuts him off with a fierce hug. Euijoo lets out a trembling exhale, tucking his head into Fuma’s neck, making himself smaller again. Fuma murmurs into the side of his head, the shell of his ear, “Euijoo, I know you always want things worked out ten steps in advance—and I get it, trust me—but it doesn’t always have to be like that. It’s okay if you don’t know yet.”

Euijoo says, “I know that I… want you,” quiet and resonant in the heated clutch of space between them. “I just…”

I don’t know how to keep being vulnerable like this and still be the person that I need to be. I don’t know how to give you anything close to what you’ve given me. I don’t know what I’m going to do when you leave.

“Let me handle it for now,” Fuma says. He uses a strong hand to lift Euijoo’s head up from his shoulder, to look him in the eyes. “Can you do that for me?”

The question settles something ever-present inside him. If Fuma’s asking, he can. He has.

“Okay,” Euijoo says.

“Then there we go,” Fuma says.

The moon overhead as they start walking back through the brisk dark. The open expanse of the night sky. Fuma holds Euijoo’s hand in his coat pocket until they rejoin the main road. The warmth of it lingers all the way back home.

Once they make it inside, Euijoo turns and asks, “Will you keep my scarf?”

Fuma smiles. “Yeah,” he says. “It helped. Thank you.”

Euijoo smiles back. “You’re welcome.”

Fuma’s warm hand finds his wrist again, pressing in where the skin is still raw; there’s a deep undercurrent of meaning in his gaze as he says, “I’ll give it back to you soon.”

“Good,” Euijoo replies, aching, relieved. “I’ll be waiting.”