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The thing is, Minho notices everything about Jisung.
The way he hums when he’s concentrating. How he always orders the same thing but pretends to deliberate. The exact tone his voice takes when he’s about to say something he thinks is funnier than it is. Minho has catalogued these details without meaning to, filed them away in some quiet corner of his brain that belongs entirely to Han Jisung.
Which is why he notices when Jisung keeps looking at his phone and smiling.
They’re supposed to be watching a movie—some action flick Jisung insisted on but Jisung has checked his phone four times in the last ten minutes. Each time, that small, private smile appears. It’s not the kind he uses when Minho says something dumb. It’s softer.
“Good movie choice,” Minho says, pointed.
“Hm?” Jisung glances up, caught. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry, I’m watching.”
He flips the phone face down on the couch between them.
Minho tells himself to let it go. They’re friends. Best friends. Jisung is allowed to text whoever he wants, allowed to smile at whoever he wants, allowed to have entire conversations that have nothing to do with Minho. That’s normal. That’s healthy. That’s what friendship looks like.
Except the phone buzzes again, and Jisung’s hand twitches toward it.
Minho’s jaw clenches. He keeps his eyes on the TV, watching the protagonist dive behind a car as bullets rain down around him. Very dramatic. Very engaging. Definitely more interesting than whatever is happening on Jisung’s phone.
The phone buzzes a second time.
Jisung shifts beside him, and Minho can feel it—the weight of his attention splitting, drawn away to whoever is on the other end of those messages.
“You can check it,” Minho says, aiming for casual and missing by a mile.
“No, it’s fine. I’m watching.” But Jisung’s eyes flick down to the screen, just for a second, and there’s that smile again. Smaller this time, like he’s trying to hide it, but Minho sees it anyway.
He always sees it.
Something hot and uncomfortable lodges itself in Minho’s chest. It sits there like a stone, heavy and wrong, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. This feeling isn’t new—he’s been carrying it around for months now, this low-grade want that he’s gotten very good at ignoring. But right now, watching Jisung smile at his phone for the fifth time, it feels impossible to ignore.
“Who is it?” The question comes out before Minho can stop it.
“Hmm?”
“Who keeps texting you?”
“Oh.” Jisung picks up his phone, types something quickly. “Just someone from that production class I’m taking. We got paired for a project.”
“Cool,” Minho says, too flat to be cool.
“Yeah, she’s really nice. Super talented, actually. I think you’d like her music.”
Her. It’s a her. Minho’s brain latches onto that detail with an intensity that should probably concern him.
He nods, eyes still fixed on the screen. “That’s good.”
“Yeah.” Jisung picks up his phone again, thumbs moving across the screen. “She’s asking about—”
He stops mid-sentence as another message comes through, and that smile is back. The soft one. The private one. The one that makes Minho feel like he’s watching something he shouldn’t be watching, something that isn’t meant for him.
Minho’s hand tightens around the couch cushion.
Jisung types out a response, then another, and Minho watches his face instead of the movie. Watches the way his expression shifts—focused, then amused, then something else. Something Minho can’t quite name but recognizes anyway because he’s spent so long memorizing every micro-expression Jisung has.
“You’re texting a lot,” Minho says.
Jisung looks up. “What?”
“Nothing. Just..you’re texting a lot.”
“Oh.” Jisung frowns slightly, studying him. “Is something wrong?”
“No. Why would something be wrong?”
“You have that face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you’re annoyed but pretending you’re not.” Jisung tucks one leg beneath him, turning fully toward Minho. “Come on, what is it?”
Minho should drop it. Should make something up about being tired or hungry or literally anything other than the truth. But the words are already forming, pushed out by that hot, uncomfortable feeling in his chest.
“You’ve checked your phone six times,” Minho says.
Jisung blinks. “Okay? I didn’t realize you were counting.”
“I wasn’t counting. I just noticed.”
“Why does it matter?” Jisung asks, genuinely confused. “Hyung, what’s—”
“Who is it?” Minho interrupts. It comes out sharp, too sharp.
“I told you, someone from class. We’re working on—” Jisung stops mid-sentence. His eyes widen. “Wait. Are you…are you jealous?”
Minho’s ears burn. “I didn’t say that.”
“You kind of did, though. You’re sitting here counting my notifications, interrogating me.”Jisung’s tone softens. “Minho. Why would you be jealous?”
“I’m not.”
“You are.” Jisung sets his phone aside completely now, gaze steady. “Why?”
And there it is—the question Minho has been avoiding, the thing he’s been trying not to examine too closely because once he does, once he admits it out loud, everything changes. They’re best friends. They work together. They live in each other’s pockets, and Minho has been so careful to keep this contained.
But Jisung is looking at him with those eyes, patient and searching, and Minho is so tired of pretending.
“Because I want it to be me,” Minho says quietly.
“What?”
“I want to be the one making you smile like that. The one you can’t stop texting, the one you—” He drags a hand through his hair. “I want things I shouldn’t want.”
The silence stretches between them. Jisung hasn’t moved, hasn’t looked away and Minho can see his chest rising and falling with careful breaths.
“What things?” Jisung asks, barely above a whisper.
“What?”
“What things do you want?” Jisung leans forward slightly. “Tell me.”
Minho almost laughs. It would be absurd if it weren’t so painfully sincere. “You really want me to spell it out?”
“Yeah,” Jisung says, quieter now. “I do.”
Minho runs a hand through his hair. “I have already embarrassed myself enough so might as well go all the way. I want to be the reason you light up. I want to know what you’re thinking about when you stare at nothing. I want to get jealous over these little things and have the right to do so. Everything I want sits so carefully on this brigde of friendship that we have built over the years that I simply dont have the courage to cross it.”
Jisung is very still. His expression turns into something complicated—surprise, confusion and something else, something that looks almost like hope but Minho doesn’t trust himself to read it correctly.
“The person texting me,” Jisung says slowly, “is asking about you.”
Minho blinks. “What?”
“My project partner. She asked if I was dating anyone, and I said no, but—” Jisung lets out a shaky laugh. “I kept talking about you. Apparently I do that a lot. Talk about you. She said I should probably do something about that.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.” Jisung shifts closer, and Minho can see the rapid flutter of his pulse in his throat. “You want to know what I was smiling about? She sent me this whole message about how obvious I am. How I apparently light up when I talk about you, how your name comes up in every conversation. And I was sitting here next to you, trying not to have a crisis about it, and you—” He laughs again, softer. “You got jealous.”
“Yeah, well,” Minho mutters, rubbing the back of his neck. “You could’ve mentioned that earlier.”
“I didn’t think it’d come up in conversation.” Jisung huffs out a laugh. “God, I even rehearsed this. What I’d say if there was ever a chance you felt the same. But now you’re sitting here telling me that you want me, and I can’t remember any of it. All I can think is that you want me. You want me.”
“I do,” Minho says. “So much it’s making me stupid.”
“Yeah?” Jisung’s smile is different now, edged with something that makes Minho’s breath hitch.
Jisung moves closer, one hand coming up to rest on Minho’s knee. “Want to know a secret?”
Minho nods, not trusting his voice.
“I only signed up for that class because you mentioned you liked that type of music. I thought—” Jisung’s thumb traces small circles against Minho’s knee. “I thought maybe if I learned more about it, you’d want to talk to me about it. That we’d have another thing to share.”
“We share everything already.”
“I know. But I wanted more. I always want more with you.”
The confession sits between them, heavy and electric. The movie is still playing—Minho can hear it in the background, all dramatic music and sound effects—but it might as well not exist. The only thing that exists is Jisung, close enough to touch, looking at Minho like he’s something precious.
“So what do we do about it?” Minho asks.
“About being stupid?”
“About wanting each other.”
Jisung’s breath hitches. “What do you want to do about it?”
Minho has spent so long cataloguing moments, memorizing details, wanting from a distance. But Jisung is right here, real and solid and his, and Minho is done pretending.
Minho kisses him.
It isn’t smooth or romantic. He practically lunges across the space between them, grabbing Jisung’s face and crashing their mouths together with zero finesse. Jisung makes a startled sound before going completely still.
Oh god, Minho must have miscalculated. He starts to pull back, but then Jisung’s hands are in his hair, yanking him closer, kissing him back like he has been starving for it.
And maybe he has been. Maybe they both have.
They stumble backward until Jisung’s back hit the wall, Minho’s body pressed flush against his. Two years of tension poured into the kiss, messy and desperate. Jisung’s hands slide under Minho’s shirt, fingernails scraping against his back and Minho groans.
“My room,” Jisung manages. “Now.”
“Bossy.”
Jisung only grins, a raw, slightly crazed look in his eyes that makes Minho's blood run cold and hot all at once.
Minho lifts his head just enough to break the kiss, then grabs Jisung's wrist, pulling him away from the wall and dragging him with single-minded urgency. He doesn’t let go, even as they stumble toward the door, their steps uneven but fueled by the same desperate energy.
The distance to Jisung’s room feels agonizingly long. Every inch is a fresh kind of torment, an excruciating delay on a feeling that had been pent up for so long it felt dangerous. When they finally burst through the door, Minho slams it shut with his foot, not bothering to lock it.
Jisung walks them backwards toward the bed, still kissing Minho like he’s trying to memorize the taste of him.
They tumble onto the bed in a tangle of limbs, Jisung on his back with Minho hovering over him. For a moment they just stop and stare at each other, both breathing hard.
“This is really happening,” Jisung whispers.
“Is this okay? Do you want—”
Jisung pulls him down into another kiss. “I want everything. I want you.”
“You have me,” Minho says against his lips. “You’ve always had me.”
“Show me.”
So Minho does. Slowly, reverently, like he was learning the shape of something he’d already memorized.
And when Jisung smiles up at him — that same small, private smile — Minho finally understands that it had always been his.