Chapter Text
Jeonghan remembers the very first promise they made.
They were kids in a playground playing hide and seek, and Jeonghan had hidden a little bit too well. It was the cooler version, the one where the players have to go back to the base to win. He couldn’t really hear the other kids yelling from where he was hiding. He knew his way around the playground, even his way back home, but there was something about the silence that he found unsettling. The darker the sky got, the more his fear grew. He just wanted to win the game. The stakes were high, just like they always are when you’re a kid. The problem was, his mind had started assigning shapes to the shadows that grew every passing minute, turning them into creatures, into people whose faces he couldn’t recognize, into monsters. They were scary. He realized it scared him more to run out than to stay.
So Jeonghan curled up and made himself as small as he could, tiny, and thought about his mom, and about how she would surely come and get him, right? He didn’t want to cry, he hated crying, it made his eyes puffy and itchy. It was then that he heard rustling behind him, someone moving in between the bushes, stepping on dry leaves. He turned around, his eyes wide open like saucers, and tried to scream but the sound died in his throat. He was too scared to make a sound.
“Shh, shhh!” he heard, and when his terrified brain finally caught up, he realized it was another boy, just like him. He had never seen him before. “Are you hiding too?” the boy whispered.
Jeonghan didn’t want him to know he was scared. Even at that age, Jeonghan didn’t want anyone to know his weaknesses. So instead of speaking, knowing his voice might give him away, he nodded.
“Cool,” the other boy said. “What’s your name?”
And this time Jeonghan couldn’t stay quiet, someone had asked him a question, so he audibly swallowed and answered.
“Jeonghan. What is your name?” he said, because he thought they needed to be on equal ground. If the boy knew his name, Jeonghan also wanted to know his.
“Joshua,” he said, extending his hand for Jeonghan to shake it. It was sweaty and dirty like every kid’s hand always is, and so was Jeonghan’s. He reached out to shake it as he looked at the boy’s face.
“Your eyes look like a cat’s,” he said. They really did. They were long and the corners went on and on. Just like a cat’s.
Joshua smiled at him. “My mom says that too.”
He stood up and looked over the bushes, totally unafraid of the monsters hiding in the shadows.
“I’ll go check if someone’s there. I’ll tell you if it’s clear.”
“And if you get caught?” Jeonghan asked. Didn’t Joshua want to win too?
“Then you win for me,” he said. “For both of us.”
And Jeonghan, at that age, couldn’t understand. You can’t win for other people, not in hide and seek. Maybe Joshua just didn’t like the game. That made more sense.
When Joshua was about to step out into the light, to jump away from the safety of the bushes, exposed to the other kids and to the monsters made of shadows, Jeonghan thought he was brave. He wished he was brave like him.
“Don’t get caught,” he said. “Come back for me and we can win together.”
It was an unfair request, and Jeonghan knew that, but he still made it.
“Okay,” Joshua said, smiling at him. “I’ll come back for you. Promise.”
.
Jeonghan also remembers the first time he lied for someone else’s benefit instead of his own.
Joshua had been acting weird the whole morning, he was distant, and at one point he disappeared. He then showed up to their next class smelling like smoke and ashes. Jeonghan didn’t ask. It was poor planning on Joshua’s part, even though Jeonghan always knew there was barely any planning involved.
“Who is playing with matches?” was the first thing their geometry teacher asked when she walked into the classroom, using that tone of voice that meant whoever it was was in trouble. The smell of matches carries.
Jeonghan didn’t know why Joshua was playing with matches. He didn’t know what Joshua had used them for, what he had lit on fire, but it didn’t matter.
“Me,” he said. “I only had a couple of them. Lit them and watched them burn, that’s it.”
He was thoroughly yelled at, but he didn’t care. It was easy to tune everything out.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Joshua told him after.
“Already did, there’s no going back,” Jeonghan said. “Tell me what you used them for.”
He knew Joshua would, because he felt guilty that Jeonghan had covered for him.
“Tests. I burned them.”
They were kids, barely teenagers, what else would he have used them for?
“Well if you ever wanna pull something like that again, just tell me,” said Jeonghan. “I’ll steal some dude’s deodorant to cover it up, that way no one gets yelled at.”
When he looked back at Joshua, he was staring back in confusion.
“I’m just joking,” Jeonghan went on, “I’ll only borrow it. Promise, I’ll give it back.”
That was not why Joshua was staring, and Jeonghan knew that, but he didn’t want Joshua to overthink it, mainly because he also didn’t want to overthink it himself. Jeonghan lied if he had to, but he lied for himself. He never lied for someone else’s benefit, and more importantly, he never lied to his own detriment. And yet there he was, taking the blame for Joshua without a care in the world, like it came naturally to him. It confused him, how naturally it came. And it confused him even more to come to the conclusion that he’d do it again. For Joshua, he’d lie again.
.
Jeonghan remembers the first time he rationalized he was happy.
He’d felt happiness many times before, of course, but there was just something different about it this time because it wasn’t only the feeling, it was the acute awareness of the feeling.
They were riding their bikes even though Jeonghan could drive because Joshua liked bikes better and the weather was nice. Joshua had a speaker attached to some part of his bike and his music was playing, it was almost the summer but not quite, the sky was blue and they reached the part of the road where it went downhill. They let their bikes go, started gaining speed and Jeonghan looked up, saw the grass on both sides of the road and the mountains very close, the sky seemed eternal, Joshua was beside him, and the wind was blowing their hair back.
At that moment, while speeding downhill, Jeonghan thought he was happy, and full of love for a million things.
It immediately made him feel like something was clenching inside his chest. It hurt, it hurt like it hurts when you long for something, but he wasn’t sad at all, he was happy. Maybe, he thought, it was the realization that for that minute, as they rode their bikes downhill, not a single thing was out of place. It was perfect, the moment was perfect, and maybe it was okay to feel nostalgia for the present when the present transformed into fleeting perfection.
He wanted that forever, he realized. He wanted that moment to remain for so long that he wouldn’t have to ache for it. He knew he couldn’t have it, because perfection is an imbalanced state. It can only exist for brief moments before keeling over and spilling everything into disarray. But he still wanted that forever, and if he couldn’t keep that feeling, if his heart couldn’t swell for the sky, the wind in his face, the speed, and the boy next to him at the same time, then he’d hold on with all his might to all the separate elements. He’d dig his nails in and never let go.
There was only one of those elements he had the power of holding onto forever, though, and he promised himself as they reached the bottom of the hill that he would.
.
“Would you ever make a sex tape?” Jeonghan asked Joshua.
It was two in the morning and they were awake in the tiny apartment they shared, eyelids heavy and papers scattered all around them. Jeonghan was sitting on his desk because if he studied in any other position he’d fall asleep, and Joshua was curled up on his bed because he somehow managed to not get cricks in his neck even if he twisted himself into the weirdest positions and studied like that for a while.
Jeonghan had been studying cases for hours and his brain wasn’t really processing information anymore. When that happened, his mind usually went through a chain of unfortunate events that culminated in the idea that if he failed as a law student and was starving at some point in his life, he’d probably sell a sex tape. It wasn’t ideal, but he was the type of person who was always searching for the faster, easier solutions, even if he always rejected most of them.
“With you?” Joshua asked, not looking up from his notes. Jeonghan snorted.
“Not how I meant it, but I’m flattered that that’s what came to mind,” he said, laughing when Joshua threw one of his socks at him.
“If I had to, I would,” Joshua said, still not looking up from his notes. “I think leaking sex tapes is like, an invasion of privacy in our day and age, though. Like, it’s not gonna make you famous.”
“No one would be leaking my hypothetical sex tape, though. It would literally be me saying ‘I’m Yoon Jeonghan and this is my sex tape.’ And it’d be for money, not fame.”
“So you would make a sex tape,” Joshua finally looked up at him, started capping and uncapping his highlighter.
“Well listen, if I don’t learn these cases and I fail my classes and get terrible grades and barely graduate, and then no one wants to hire me and I’m a failed lawyer with no food to eat? Then yeah, I’ll make a sex tape.”
Jeonghan was aware that he sounded ridiculous, but that was a real train of thought that he followed, and now Joshua was smiling at him, which always made Jeonghan feel good about himself. He decided he wanted to go on.
“Would you pay for my sex tape, Shua?”
“No.”
“Why not?!” Jeonghan frowned, almost genuinely bothered.
“Well if you were starving and I wasn’t I’d just give you money, I wouldn’t ask for a sex tape in exchange,” Joshua said, which made total sense, really, but now Jeonghan was having fun and he wanted to drag this out, pester Joshua a little longer.
“But if I had already filmed it, it would just be you rejecting the fruit of my labor. Like, I worked hard on it, and you’re throwing that away.”
“I’m not throwing anything away, Jeonghan, because you haven’t filmed a sex tape and this is a hypothetical scenario!” and oh, how Jeonghan loved to get Joshua riled up. His notes were abandoned on the bed and he was sitting up now, eyes wide open and arguing back.
“Can you just be a supportive friend and say you would pay for my sex tape if I was starving and needed money so we can keep studying?” Jeonghan asked, making it seem like Joshua was the one prolonging the exchange.
Joshua exhaled harshly.
“Fine. If you’re ever broke and make a sex tape, I’ll pay for it,” he said, turning around and trying to find the page he was reading before Jeonghan interrupted him.
Jeonghan was making a huge effort not to openly cackle.
“Thank you,” he said, smile wide on his face. “Just so you know, if you were broke and made a sex tape, I’d also pay for it.”
“How generous of you.”
They went back to studying for about fifteen seconds before Jeonghan spoke up again.
“What if we’re both broke and can’t afford each other’s sex tapes?” he said, unable to help himself that time, throwing his head back and laughing silently, his shoulders shaking when Joshua looked up in exasperation.
“Then we make a sex tape together and split the revenue.”
“Promise?” Jeonghan asked, the word coming out mixed in with laughter.
“Yes. Now shut up so we can go to sleep before five in the morning.”
But it took Jeonghan a while to go back to studying, because he was busy looking at the soft smile on Joshua’s face and the pink tips of his ears.
.
Jeonghan didn’t realize Joshua was a problem until he had become too big of a problem.
It was too hot outside and Joshua had gotten a different job because the last one he had sucked, and he’d told Jeonghan to come over. He was working at one of the stands in the park selling smoothies or something, and Jeonghan made him promise he would give Jeonghan one for free if he came by. So naturally, Jeonghan did. He just wasn’t expecting to have a life-altering realization at a smoothie stand on campus.
Because when he got there Joshua was barely wearing clothes. His shirt was sleeveless but the holes on the sides reached his waist, his arms were out and he looked strong, and it was weird because Jeonghan had seen Joshua without clothes on countless occasions, so why did he feel his body temperature rise by approximately a trillion degrees? It’s the summer, he told himself, the summer, just that. Except it wasn’t, not really, because he had spent at least 18 summers in his life with Joshua, and his specific skin tone had never made Jeonghan want to lick him all over. It wasn’t even only that, it was his golden skin and the way that complemented his hair color, which was somewhere in between light brown and dark blond, getting so long it got in his eyes, and he was smiling at customers and preparing fucking smoothies and Jeonghan felt positively insane.
“There you are,” Joshua said, directing that smile at Jeonghan and making him feel weak in the knees, what the fuck.
But Jeonghan, as always, was a good actor.
“I’m only out in this heat because I was promised a free smoothie,” he said, sitting on one of the stools and resting his arms on the counter.
“Strawberry banana?”
“No, let me see what you have,” Jeonghan said, and Joshua reached over and gave him the menu even though they both knew Jeonghan was going to pick strawberry banana anyway.
In reality, Jeonghan wasn’t looking at the menu. He was looking at Joshua, Joshua being kind to people and making small talk, and people beaming back because who wouldn’t beam at someone that beautiful making them a delicious cold drink on a hot summer day? Why hadn’t Jeonghan been swooning at Joshua his whole life? Or had he?
Jeonghan usually wasn’t bothered by change, he was fairly adaptable, it’s just he wasn’t used to having the metaphorical rug pulled from under him so violently. Right then he felt completely lost, and that bothered him because he didn’t like not being in control. He was the one supposed to make Joshua blush and sputter, not the other way around, and Joshua wasn’t even doing anything.
Jeonghan asked for his strawberry banana smoothie like everyone knew he was going to, and then he decided that he needed to get out of there because he felt incapacitated by the fact that suddenly Joshua glowed in the sun and Jeonghan wanted to taste him. That was in no way good, it wasn’t good for anyone and Jeonghan couldn’t think.
He sipped on his smoothie all the way to Seungkwan’s room, because Seungkwan was smart and good to talk to when you couldn’t talk to Joshua, which clearly Jeonghan couldn’t do at the moment.
“I think I have a problem,” he said once Seungkwan opened the door, walking in and sitting on his bed.
“Mhm, please come in, make yourself comfortable,” Seungkwan rolled his eyes. “What can I do for you?”
This was the part Jeonghan was bad at. He sucked at talking, especially about himself, his thing was listening. He wasn’t like Seungkwan, who could spill his guts and wore his heart on his sleeve. Hell, even Jihoon was better at this than him, at least he got the words out even if they came out rushed and ragged around the edges.
“So you know… how I’m with you right? Like, you’re my friend. And I’m also friends with Jihoon, and, you know, other people, right?”
“Yes Jeonghan, I’m aware that you have friends.”
“Yes, good. So I have friends who I treat like friends. And I was thinking that Joshua is my friend too. So am I the same - like, when I’m with my friends I don’t - is it different? When I’m with Joshua, is it different?”
Jeonghan was grateful that Seungkwan was smart, because he didn’t think any of what he said made sense at all. But when he looked up from where he was glaring at the floor, Seungkwan was almost looking at him pitifully.
“Oh, Jeonghan,” he said, and those two words opened a pit of panic in Jeonghan’s stomach.
“No, no, Seungkwan, don’t ‘oh Jeonghan’ me, I am here for you to tell me that I’m making things up,” Jeonghan practically pleaded. “I literally am in your room right now waiting for you to knock some sense into me, please don’t validate me, Seungkwan, what am I gonna do?”
“Well at least you realized,” Seungkwan said, sitting next to Jeonghan. “It only took you, what, about fifteen years?”
“Don’t make fun of me, my life is over,” Jeonghan said burying his face in his hands. “Did everyone know but me?”
“Don’t be so melodramatic, you’re gonna be fine. And I mean, there’s a chance Soonyoung doesn’t know.”
“That is not comforting.”
“Fine. Everyone knew.”
“Seungkwan!”
“You asked!”
Seungkwan placed his hand on Jeonghan’s shoulder, rubbing soothingly.
“Look, um. This is good, ‘cause now you can tell him.”
“I thought you were smart.”
“I am. And you can listen to me, or I can sit by your side all day while you take a billion ‘are you in love with him?’ quizzes on those websites for teenage girls, but I think we’ll both give you the same answer.”
“I can’t be in love with Joshua. Seungkwan, I can’t be. Aren’t there supposed to be like, phases before that? Like, butterflies, and then a crush, and then obsession or something like that, and attachment… or whatever? You don’t go from zero to in love in the three minutes it takes for someone to make you a smoothie. This isn’t the right time to fall in love.”
“First of all, that’s fucked up that you think those are the stages of falling in love, let me tell you. Second of all, there’s no wrong or right time to fall in love. Third, Jeonghan, what do you think you’ve been doing for the past decade?”
Jeonghan remained silent for a long minute.
“Oh, fuck me.”
.
Hours later, Jeonghan was sulking in Seungkwan’s bed, ready to take his fourth quiz while the younger watched a movie on his computer beside him.
How flawed is the person in question?
Flawed just like everyone else, and it wasn’t that Jeonghan was attracted to Joshua’s flaws or anything, it was more like he’d learned to deal with them. None of them made him want to push Joshua away, they were insignificant next to everything good that came out of their friendship.
Can you imagine having sex with only this person for the rest of your life?
Jeonghan thought that was too dramatic, he just wanted to know if he was in love. He didn’t even wanna imagine having sex with Joshua, realizing that his body was delicious and Jeonghan wanted to put his mouth on it filled the sex related epiphanies quota of the day.
Can you name this person’s favorite food/TVshows/band/movie?
Yes, of course he could. Either they were the same as his, or Jeonghan completely despised them.
What are your arguments like?
Very stupid. They seldom argued, too used to each other already, too aware of how not to step on each other’s toes. If they argued it was about stupid shit, like what they wanted to eat for dinner.
Jeonghan hadn’t realized that Seungkwan was looking at his phone instead of watching the movie until the question Can you both fart openly in front of each other? came up, and Seungkwan scoffed.
“These questions suck. I’m gonna ask you the real questions, since you clearly prefer the test format over your friend giving you good advice based on facts and observation.”
Jeonghan stretched out on the bed, buried his face in Seungkwan’s pillow, and waited.
“First question. Does he make you feel safe?”
“Yes.”
Jeonghan braced himself for the second question.
“Actually, fuck the questions. Listen to me, Jeonghan, are you listening?”
“Yes,” Jeonghan mumbled into the pillow.
“Jeonghan, Joshua knows you better than anyone. He’s stuck around for over fifteen years, and I know you think you’re not easy to handle, so think about what that means. You think making him laugh makes you feel good because it means you’ve got a good sense of humor, have you considered it feels good just because you like seeing him happy? You guys have a scary connection, and I mean that. It’s like it’s not just friendship, like you have a permanent place in each other’s lives. You hate that one law show because you think it’s inaccurate but you ditch your other friends to watch it with him on Thursdays because he likes it. You find it endearing that he makes your apartment look like those apartments in magazines because he can’t stand it when things are disorganized. Jeonghan, you look at him like you’d move mountains for him if you had to, and you know what’s crazy? He looks at you the same way.”
Jeonghan felt like his brain was working so fast it was going to overheat and then melt out of his ears.
“You asked me, as soon as you came in, if you’re different with him. Here’s what I have to say about that. You want to be there for your friends all the time, Jeonghan. You figure out what they need, and you accommodate. What other people need, you can give it to them, whether that’s a friend, a listener, someone to lean on, or someone to bounce ideas off of. Your interactions are more about the other person than they are about you, whether you’re listening or making fun of them.”
Jeonghan knew so far it was true. Reading people, understanding how they think and feel, that had always come naturally to Jeonghan, but to most people he was unreadable. Except for Seungkwan, who could apparently read him like a book. And Jihoon, but Jeonghan had yet to find something Jihoon didn’t excel at, so he didn’t count.
“With Joshua it’s not like that. When you’re with Joshua you are completely and unapologetically yourself. Everything you hold back when you’re with other people, it’s like you set it loose when he’s around. Things are not only about him, because when you’re with him you think it’s okay to make them about you.”
“That makes me sound like a dick.”
“Maybe. But the way I see it, it’s because with him you don’t put up fronts. You’re as free as it gets. All the things that you don’t want to show to other people, Joshua already knows them intimately. So you don’t hide when you’re with him, you’re as yourself as you can possibly be. You know why? Because all of those things that you hide, not only has he seen them, he has also stuck around in spite of them.”
“Ew, okay, enough, I get it Seungkwan,” there was blood rushing in his head. Because it was true, and if Jeonghan really thought about it, he didn’t think anyone would ever care for him like Joshua did. He knew Joshua loved him, he didn’t know in what way, but he did know Joshua loved him. And he’d have to be blind, out of his mind, he’d have to hate himself not to fall head over heels in love with the only person who had ever cared like that, and never stopped caring.
.
Jeonghan walked back to the apartment he shared with Joshua feeling empty, completely drained, and also full to the brim. So when he opened the door and found him sitting in the living room, waiting for Jeonghan to come home to tell him that he was going to move away for six months, Jeonghan thought there was only one thing Seungkwan hadn’t been right about. There was definitely a wrong time to fall in love, and Jeonghan had hit bullseye.