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The first time Inseong asked Jaeyoon to head to the gym with him—or coach him, rather—Jaeyoon hadn’t expected too much. It’s also because of that, perhaps, that he ended up being more than pleasantly surprised with Inseong’s ability to get through the workout he had planned for him. He didn’t get through it the most smoothly, and each set had come with its own run of groans and complaints, but he got through it. For someone who’d once done a push-up and promptly declared that he couldn’t do any more, Jaeyoon would say that promising had been a bit of an understatement.
The second time Inseong asked Jaeyoon to head to the gym with him, Jaeyoon got it just right. He’d upped the intensity only marginally, and Inseong had complained about it a little (a lot) more, but he’d gotten through that, too. Jaeyoon heard later from Sanghyuk, though, that Inseong had gone home that night and bragged all about it. He’d said something about Jaeyoon being a good teacher too, apparently, which he never said to Jaeyoon’s face, but it’s fine. He said it to Sanghyuk, which meant that it would make its way to Jaeyoon eventually.
The third time Inseong asks Jaeyoon to head to the gym with him, Jaeyoon expects too much of him.
“Just a little lower,” he instructs, and Inseong follows through dutifully. Jaeyoon feels a smile blossoming to his face; Inseong picks things up fast. He knows that—he’s known that for a long time now—but he hadn’t realised it would extend to exercise, too. “Do you think you can do the last set on your own?”
Inseong nods. His hair is messy, sticking to the sides of his face, and his cheeks are a shade of visible red even in the not-so-bright lights of the FNC gym. It’s a rare sight, and Jaeyoon is almost tempted to snap a picture to send it to the group chat, but the word is almost, because he decides against it. The members can come to the gym themselves if they’re keen on seeing it; if Inseong lets them, at least. Inseong has only ever asked Jaeyoon to help him with working out, and Jaeyoon takes a small but very present pride in the fact that, amidst all its subtlety, Inseong trusts him the most.
Until, of course, maybe twenty seconds later.
It happens in a blur, like some kind of cruel joke life’s decided to play on him that he hasn’t quite caught up on. It happens as he stands and walks to the other end of the gym to grab a sip of water and it happens as he not-so-discreetly admires Inseong’s form in the mirror and the way his eyes look when he’s trying his hardest to get something done.
Inseong drops the barbell, and Jaeyoon feels his heart drop along with it.
The silence that descends sounds a little something like a horror story suspense buildup, but it’s broken almost immediately by the yelp that leaves Inseong’s mouth, and Jaeyoon can’t tell which is the most horrifying of the two.
He’s moving before he even processes his feet moving, carrying him across the carpeted length of the gym to where Inseong is standing, face a couple of shades paler. His near-perfect form is all but lost, and the barbell forgotten in favour of cradling his side.
“Hyung,” Jaeyoon says. He hears the way his voice sounds echoing off the mirrors and the walls, alight with panic and confusion and the in-betweens, and as he skids to a halt in front of Inseong the older of the two looks up at him, features pulled into a grimace. “Hyung, what’s wrong?”
“It hurts, Jaeyoon,” Inseong replies, words coming out a mix someplace between a whimper and a whisper, breath catching on the edges of the syllables as he makes a gesture towards his back. “I think—I might have pulled something.”
Inseong trusted him the most, Jaeyoon comes to realise, the heart that had fallen like a stone to the bottom of his chest finding a way to fall even further, and he’d betrayed it just like that.
“We have to—I’ll get you to the hospital.” He grabs his phone from his pocket and types his password wrong three times before it unlocks. “I’ll—just wait for a bit. I’ll call a taxi. Or one of the managers. Or one of the members. Just wait a bit, okay?”
Inseong nods, shooting him a smile. It doesn’t reach the corners of his eyes, and Jaeyoon’s hands shake even more.
“I don’t think there’ll be taxis,” Inseong manages to comment. “It’s rush hour, and it’s harder to rejoin the main road from here.”
Jaeyoon tries anyway, but Inseong’s right. He usually is, though this time Jaeyoon finds himself wishing he wasn’t.
The dialtones have never sounded so mocking before. It’s a rest day for everyone outside the ones with filming or musical schedules, so there’s no one at the company. No one he knows well enough to have the number of, at least, and he’s starting to feel a little useless listening to the calls going to voicemail. Of course he had to be the only one of the group to be unable to drive.
On his fourth try (Youngbin, Sanghyuk, Chani, then back to Youngbin), Youngbin picks up.
“Hi. Sorry for not picking up earlier, I w—”
“Hyung, come to the company.” He more or less screams it into the phone, and his words come out so fast he wonders if Youngbin manages to even catch half of it.
There’s a shuffling sound on the other end.
“Hyung? Did you hear me?”
“Yeah, I’m looking for my keys.” More shuffling, and then a jingling noise which sounds promising. “Why, though?”
“You’ll know when you get here,” he says quickly into the phone, casting a glance over at Inseong. He seems to be holding up well, but Jaeyoon knows it’s just for show. For him, really, and in a way, that makes him feel worse. “Please hurry, hyung.”
He hangs up before Youngbin has the chance to respond, turning towards Inseong and swallowing down the lump that had, at some point, risen to his throat. “Are you okay?”
It’s obvious that Inseong’s not, but the question comes before he has time to run it through his mind. Inseong shoots him a thumbs up, and then winces immediately after. “I’m fine.”
Liar.
“I’m sorry,” he replies, because it’s the only thing he can think to say. He means it.
“Not your fault.”
Jaeyoon has a feeling Inseong’s just saying that to make him feel better, too. It was. He shouldn’t have pushed Inseong to do that last set on his own. He should’ve known better—he should’ve known that Inseong would never really say no to anything, especially not to something he’d been adamant on attempting. Should’ve known that the possibility was always there, that this might’ve happened. But he hadn’t looked hard enough, hadn’t stopped it before it did happen. And he would rewind the hands of time himself if he could, but he can’t, so he reaches out for Inseong’s instead.
Inseong’s hands are warm to the touch, or maybe his are too cold. Inseong curls his fingers around Jaeyoon’s silently, his other hand lingering by his back, and Jaeyoon doesn’t miss the way his grip tightens every time his expression slips just enough to reveal the grimace resting underneath.
Mercifully, Youngbin manages to make his way to the company in record time, and Jaeyoon’s been staring at Inseong for long enough to notice the minute relief that flashes across his expression when he hears the gym doors click open. Jaeyoon doesn’t remember telling Youngbin where they were, but Youngbin has always had some sort of uncanny ability at finding them whenever they needed him the most, and he’s never been more thankful for that.
“Come on,” he says once he’s within earshot, and Jaeyoon supposes he has the strange—strange but wondrous—ability of being able to tell what’s wrong with just one glance, too, “lean on us, and let’s go.”
They move forward slowly, one of Youngbin’s arms carefully slotted against Inseong’s waist and Inseong leaning his weight against them, until they’re in Youngbin’s car and Youngbin tackles the jam-packed streets of Seoul with as much determination as he’d possessed during their pre-debut years.
Inseong’s hand doesn’t leave Jaeyoon’s until they reach the hospital.
It does turn out to be a pulled muscle (Inseong is right again), and Jaeyoon doesn’t know whether to take it as fortunate or unfortunate news. “It could’ve been a lot worse,” the doctor tells them, but Jaeyoon’s relief is short-lived, because it’s immediately followed by, “but it’ll still hurt quite a bit for the next few hours or days, and he should avoid anything strenuous for a couple of weeks while it heals.”
They don’t have a couple of weeks. Jaeyoon shoots Youngbin a glance to see the worry in his gaze reflected right back at him; they’ve started preparing for their comeback, and they were going to start on the choreographies soon.
“In the meantime,” the doctor continues, mostly addressing Inseong now, “I’ll give you painkillers, and if your condition doesn’t get better soon, do consider seeing a physiotherapist. Remember to do the stretching exercises I told you about, and the heat and ice packs too.”
Inseong nods. It’s funny, Jaeyoon thinks, that he’s the only one in pain out of all four of them in the room, but he’s the only one smiling.
Typical Inseong.
“Lighten up,” Inseong says to him as they’re waiting by the counter for the prescribed medication, “it’s not your fault. And I’ve lived through worse, remember? I’ll recover from this just fine.”
“I know, hyung,” Jaeyoon replies, although he doesn’t, not really.
The guilt doesn’t go away.
Youngbin is kind enough to not bring the issue up as he drives them back home, but the rest of the members have more curiosity than they have a filter, and Jaeyoon only just kicks off his shoes before he’s greeted by the door slamming open, nearly hitting him in the face.
He blinks. Sanghyuk stares back at him, and then at Youngbin and Inseong. Jaeyoon doesn’t bother bringing up the fact that this isn’t even Sanghyuk’s dorm; he’s in Youngkyun’s room more often than Youngkyun is nowadays.
“Wow, hyung,” he says, eyebrows raised, “what happened?”
“You look like shit,” Chani supplies helpfully from behind Sanghyuk, a glass of water in hand as he peeks out at the doorway, “are you okay?”
Inseong laughs. “Is it obvious?”
Sanghyuk eyes him. “Kind of.” Inseong’s hair is still messy from the workout and his clothes smell like a mix of gym, sweat and hospital, and his smile still doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “So what happened?”
“Let him take his painkillers before you interrogate him,” Jaeyoon interrupts, and even he’s surprised by the thin layer of annoyance that manages to creep its way into his voice. Chani visibly pauses mid-drink, and Sanghyuk’s eyebrows raise a little further as he steps aside to let them in.
The guilt doesn’t go away.
Not after Inseong’s painkillers kick him and he more or less goes back to being his regular self, and not after he explains the situation to everyone gathered in the dorms either, chalking it entirely up to himself being a little overambitious on his third trip to the gym.
He doesn’t blame a thing on Jaeyoon, but Jaeyoon has an awful, sinking feeling, still, that it’s his fault.
But Inseong never brings it up, so he doesn’t, either, because he doesn’t know how. What to say. Each time he apologises, Inseong finds a way to deflect it: he’ll get Taeyang to run through the choreographies with him one-to-one once he’s recovered. It could happen to anyone. He’s the one who said he would be fine with doing another set on his own.
So Jaeyoon settles. He settles for being there by Inseong’s side throughout the long two weeks of recovery, complete with dealing with mood swings that arose out of sheer boredom and frustration both. The first few days consist of Inseong mostly staying in bed waiting for the pain to subside, and he sticks around for that, too.
It’s maybe half past midnight, three days on from the incident and four hours on from his last visit, that he steps into Inseong’s room. He doesn’t usually come this late, but Inseong’s still awake (Sanghyuk is getting used to his multiple text messages per day asking on Inseong’s state of consciousness).
“What are you doing?” Inseong asks the moment he hears the door open. He’s lying on the bed, eyes closed but fully awake. He doesn’t have to open them to know it’s Jaeyoon.
“What else?” Jaeyoon takes a seat at the edge of the bed. “Checking up on you.”
“It’s late.”
“I sleep at dawn,” Jaeyoon counters.
He sees the tips of Inseong’s lips twitch. “I’m not dying, Jaeyoon,” he remarks, “I just pulled a muscle. You don’t have to come to see me every—what—five hours?”
“Four,” Jaeyoon corrects, turning his body so he’s facing Inseong more fully. “And I should. I—”
Because it was my fault, his brain finishes for him, and he cuts himself off.
“When was the last time you got a massage?” he asks instead.
Inseong’s uncharacteristic silence is a telling enough response for him, and he doesn’t hide the sigh that filters from his lips. “The doctor said it’d be good for you.”
“Sanghyuk and Seokwoo are both so busy,” Inseong protests, opening his eyes just the slightest. “I’ll recover fine without it.”
Jaeyoon snorts. “They’d make time for you. You know that, hyung.”
“And that’s exactly why I didn’t ask,” Inseong fires back, and Jaeyoon bites back a noise that’s a mix between a disgruntled huff and a laugh.
Typical Inseong.
“Well,” he says, “I’m here now, so lie on your back.”
“We should be going to bed,” Inseong responds, voice raised in weak protest, though it’s not really a protest at all. He complies either way, and Jaeyoon doesn’t waste time in moving in closer and rolling Inseong’s shirt up a little.
Inseong’s skin burns under his touch, and he swallows, applying pressure just above the strained muscle. He’d asked the doctor for proper ways to massage in the hospital that day, and he’d spent pockets of time between recordings and musical script reading and dance practice sessions searching them up on the Internet, too, but he knows by now that what he thinks he can theoretically do doesn’t always translate to what he can do.
“You don’t have to hesitate so much,” Inseong tells him, and he comes to the belated realisation that he’s had his hands stilled on Inseong’s back for a few seconds too long now. “You won’t hurt me.”
Jaeyoon tastes the bitterness on his tongue before he has the chance to swallow it down.
I let you get hurt once before, lingers in the silence settling, in the fingers hesitant against Inseong’s skin, in the thoughts he hasn’t been able to get out of his head since the day it happened.
“You don’t know that,” he says, a little weakly.
“I trust you,” Inseong replies swiftly.
Jaeyoon presses his lips together and his fingers more firmly against Inseong’s back.
He doesn’t know if he’s deserving of that particular privilege.
Unexpectedly—or expectedly, really—the one who notices first is Sanghyuk. Which is hilarious, considering they don’t even live in the same place, but again, he’s more used to seeing Sanghyuk (and Inseong, and sometimes Zuho) in his dorm than the members who live there.
It’s maybe a week on from the incident that he makes his way to the smaller dorm in the morning, swinging the door open to see Seokwoo halfway through drying his hair and Sanghyuk at the dining table.
“Hi,” Sanghyuk says around a mouthful of breakfast, not looking up from his phone, “Inseong-hyung went out for a walk with Taeyang early this morning.”
Jaeyoon didn’t even register that Taeyang had left the house. No wonder Youngkyun was asking where he was a few minutes ago. “Oh.” Inseong had gotten a lot better after the first few days, but he tells Jaeyoon he’s been dutifully taking walks and stretching like the doctor instructed to play it safe with their upcoming comeback.
“You know you’ve been acting all funny every time it comes to Inseong-hyung, right?” Sanghyuk asks, and Jaeyoon pauses. The sound of Seokwoo’s hair-drying fills the space for the time being.
“I have?”
Sanghyuk takes a sip of his coffee. “Yeah, and you’re doing a terrible job at hiding it, too.”
“Wow, thanks.” Jaeyoon invites himself to the dining table, taking a seat across from Sanghyuk, and the younger of the two finally looks up.
“For what it’s worth,” Sanghyuk informs him, lowering his phone to the table with a faint clatter, “I didn’t think it was possible for someone like hyung to enjoy going to the gym that much.”
“He did?” That’s news to Jaeyoon, given the wall of complaints he’d had to dealt with across all three sessions, although he supposes Inseong wouldn’t have gone for more than one if he hated it that much. “He didn’t seem to be a big fan of exercising.”
From across the room, Seokwoo shuts off the hair dryer. Sanghyuk clears his throat a little too audibly.
“I don’t think it’s about the exercise,” Seokwoo pipes up, peering at himself in the mirror. “Just an opinion.”
Jaeyoon’s eyebrows furrow a little. “What?”
Sanghyuk laughs, and Jaeyoon gets the subtle feeling he’s laughing at him, but the rest of his laughter is drowned out by the sound of the front door clicking open.
“Hyung,” he greets, throat feeling oddly drier than usual, and from where he’s removing his shoes, Inseong brightens.
“Jaeyoon! You came?”
Taeyang slips past the dining room and towards the kitchen, ignoring Seokwoo who follows behind while launching into a mini lecture on how he shouldn’t be wearing only a tee out when the weather’s getting colder, and Jaeyoon blinks as he refocuses his attention on Inseong.
“Yeah,” he says. I came for you. “Did you have a good walk?”
Inseong’s eyes crinkle by the corners. “The weather was nice. By the way, did you need something?”
“Well—”
And really, what was he supposed to say when he didn’t even know what he wanted to say?
Taeyang’s voice cuts across the living room, sounding a combination of amused and bewildered. “Why does your fridge only have protein shakes and vitamins?”
“Please respect others’ lifestyles,” Sanghyuk shouts back.
“At this rate, do you even live like a person?”
Inseong’s gaze doesn’t leave Jaeyoon’s through the exchange, and Jaeyoon is the first to drop his away.
He swallows it all down—the things he’d been trying to say, Sanghyuk’s words weighing a few tonnes too heavy in his mind, the odd, nagging feeling that something changed somewhere along the way and everything’s not quite the same anymore.
“Nothing,” he settles on, finally, bringing his eyes back up to where Inseong’s are searching his, looking for something he’s been trying to find, too. “Just thought I’d stop by for a bit to say hi. I’ll get going now. I’ve got something on later this afternoon.” He doesn’t.
“Oh,” Inseong replies, the smile dropping slightly from his face. “See you, then.”
The dryness doesn’t leave Jaeyoon’s throat. “See you.”
From then, things start going back to normal. Jaeyoon wouldn’t call it back to usual, but it’s a close enough replica. Inseong gets approval from the doctor a little earlier than expected to resume practice, and glimpses of time between recordings and crashing Jaeyoon’s dorm are spent toiling away at extra dance practice. It’s not so awkward when it comes to group activities, either, and Jaeyoon doesn’t struggle so much with dry-throat syndrome anymore.
Most of the time, at least. But then every now and then he catches the wince that crosses Inseong’s expression midway through a choreography and the way his hand comes up to brush his back; the painkillers he still carries around with him just in case; how he’s more cautious with his movements, his turn falling half-an-angle too short.
It’s not his fault, Inseong’s told him before, but the guilt eats away at him still like autumn into summer, when the heat fades away and all the leaves begin to fall.
“You get that look on your face every time Inseong brings up his injury,” Youngbin comments in passing midway through their comeback, when they’re getting their makeup touched up backstage, “you treat him like he’s something fragile these days.”
Does he? It never really crossed his mind, but he supposes he’s been watching out for Inseong a lot more—through practice room mirrors, across the room when he comes to the bigger dorm to raid the fridge for food his own doesn’t have, during brief visits to the smaller dorm pulled off with an adequate amount of nonchalance. Most of the time he says he’s discussing workouts with Sanghyuk, though both of them know it’s just a convenient excuse.
“He’s fine, you know that.” Youngbin closes his eyes as the makeup artist dabs a thin layer of eyeshadow across his eyelids. “You weren’t like this when he got injured before. Why now?”
Jaeyoon looks out at the stage lights. They blink high overhead, dappled gold and fire-white. “I don’t know,” he answers, and he’s telling the truth.
He wishes he did.
He carries that wish with him through the comeback all the way through to after the end of it.
It’s one and a half months on from their comeback, when summer’s beginning to melt away into cooler days, that Jaeyoon receives a call from Inseong. It’s two or so in the morning, an odd time for Inseong to be awake.
“Thought of something,” Inseong says before Jaeyoon can utter a word, and Jaeyoon swallows the question that had been halfway out his lips back down. A barely-veiled euphemism for couldn’t sleep. “Do you have time?”
Jaeyoon closes the tab he’d had open on his laptop. “Yeah.” If it’s for you.
“It won’t take long.”
Jaeyoon shuts his laptop and sits up in bed. “You can take as long as you want.” If it’s you.
“I was just wondering,” Inseong asks casually, and Jaeyoon can imagine him calling in the dark of his room, sprawled out on his bed with eyes only half-open, or maybe closed entirely, “if you wanted to go to the gym with me tomorrow.”
Jaeyoon nearly drops his phone. He hits his head against the wall in the process, and at the other end of the room, Youngbin looks up and shoots him a mildly concerned look. He makes a dismissive gesture at the leader and clutches the phone a little closer to his ear. “Come again?”
“Only if you’re free,” Inseong says.
“I am,” comes as an automatic response first, and then second, after enough time has passed for him to run Inseong’s words through his head three times, “the gym, you said?”
Ever since the incident, Inseong hadn’t made any more mention of the gym. And it had been for the best, Jaeyoon had accepted at some point, because as much as Inseong claims to trust him, he still isn’t sure he can trust himself.
“Yeah! I didn’t want to go during the comeback just in case, but I checked with the doctor recently and he said I’m all good to go.” There’s a soft thud on the other end of the line, which Jaeyoon presumes to be Inseong dropping his phone against the covers. “So are you up for it?”
“I’ll let you know tomorrow,” he replies hastily. “Go to bed, hyung. You seem tired.”
Inseong laughs. “Was it obvious?”
Despite himself, Jaeyoon smiles. “It’s two a.m., you know. You’re never awake at this time.”
He hears a shuffling sound over the phone; he can imagine Inseong pulling the covers up higher. “Sweet dreams, Jaeyoon.”
The smile doesn’t leave his face. “Sweet dreams, hyung.”
He doesn’t know whether he trusts himself enough to go to the gym with Inseong again after everything that had happened, but he’s still got his old weaknesses, and if there’s anything constant to life, it would be that one of those has always been Inseong.
That’s how he finds himself standing in the company gym maybe fourteen hours later, staring at the reflection of them in the mirror. Inseong’s expression is considerably brighter than his, and he’s just glad that Inseong seems to be paying too much attention to the equipment to notice.
“So what are we doing today?” It’s a first for Inseong to be this enthusiastic post-warmup, or maybe it’s just that Jaeyoon has been silent for too long. “Bench presses? Barbell? Lat pulldown?”
“We can do the lat pulldown,” Jaeyoon responds. “You said you wanted to work on that a while back.”
They never got to, his mind doesn’t fail to remind him, because of a certain incident that occurred.
Inseong grins. “Let’s go, then.”
Jaeyoon watches as he moves over to that particular set of equipment, an almost curious bounce to his step.
“You like going to the gym?” he hears himself voicing. Sanghyuk’s words from a couple of months back ring through his head.
Inseong turns back to look at him, head tilted. “Do I seem like the type of person to like exercise?” he asks, visibly amused. “What made you think that?”
Jaeyoon shrugs. “You look happy to be here.”
“That’s because it’s with you,” Inseong replies, laughing, and Jaeyoon falls silent. “If I liked exercise I would’ve started doing it a long time ago. You know that.”
He snaps his gaze back to his reflection in the mirror. Their eyes meet against the glass, and he fights the urge to swallow down the lump that he knows isn’t really in his throat. “Then why now?”
Inseong holds up his fingers, one at a time, like he’s had the answer ready for months on end. One. “I thought it’d be good to stay healthy. You know, now that we’re all getting older and everything.” Two. “I wouldn’t have come to the gym without company. Or at least, I wouldn’t have ended up staying for longer than five minutes.” Three. “I don’t know how to use half of the stuff in here.” Four. “I trust you.” Five. Save the best for the last, they say. “I wanted to spend time with you.”
Inseong takes about thirty seconds to cycle through the reasons. Jaeyoon takes another thirty before he speaks.
“Why?”
“We don’t have a lot of time left together,” Inseong answers, a chuckle following his words, but it’s soft. A little sad. “After this, it’ll be a temporary goodbye for the two of us. The gym turned out to be a convenient excuse.”
“Even after that?”
Inseong blinks. “What are you talking about?”
Jaeyoon swallows. “The last time, hyung. You got hurt because of me.”
Something in Inseong’s expression shifts. “I told you it wasn’t your fault, Jaeyoon. Don’t blame yourself for it.”
“But it was.” The words come out strange, like he’s at the confessional, like they’ve been sitting stuck in his throat for so long they come out all tangled. “You got hurt and—I could’ve stopped it.”
Maybe that’s what all this really was. Maybe he hated the idea that Inseong had gotten hurt and he could have prevented it, somehow. Maybe he hated the sight of Inseong in pain and the notion that he, however directly or indirectly, had played a part in it.
And then Inseong laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
Jaeyoon freezes where he is, a mess of confusion and perhaps some indignance, listening to Inseong’s laughter ring out across the gym.
And then he dares to ask, a little hesitantly, “what is it that’s so funny?”
“You know,” Inseong says, teasingly, “if you loved me that much, you could’ve just said so.”
It’s not a rare occurrence for Jaeyoon to wonder what goes through Inseong’s mind, and today is no exception. “And how did you get to that conclusion?”
“You’re not denying it.”
“I—” He doesn’t know if he can, so he doesn’t. Inseong’s grin widens a fraction.
“Well, you know that feeling. You can’t stand the sight of them getting hurt. You overthink things when it comes to them, even when they assure you otherwise. You lie awake at night because the things you’ve been meaning to say to them are stuck in your head.” Inseong leaves the pulldown station and walks over to Jaeyoon, eyes bright in the dim of the gym lights. “Sound familiar?”
The smell of Inseong’s cologne drifts over Jaeyoon. “I don’t know.”
Inseong shrugs. “You know, if anything, I’m glad you moved away when you did that day. Imagine what could’ve happened if I’d dropped that with you sitting there.”
“I should’ve stopped you before that,” Jaeyoon sighs. “You shouldn’t have gotten hurt in the first place.”
The grin that Inseong sends him is (surprisingly) hard to decipher. “Rather me than you.”
Jaeyoon frowns. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“That I love you,” Inseong replies simply, and for a moment, the world forgets to spin on its axes.
Inseong’s touch on his cheek draws him out of his stupor, and he stutters. Inseong’s eyes are dancing under the gym lights, a curious but familiar mix of amusement and delight both, and for a few moments more after that, his mind scrambles to make sense of everything that’s happening.
“I love you too, hyung,” he manages to get out, stumbling over his words. And it’s strange, because he’s said it plenty of times before, but never like this.
There’s something different in Inseong’s eyes now. Something sharper, edged still with the same flavour of amusement, but holding a hint of challenge, almost. “In the way I’m talking about?”
His mouth’s getting dry again. Jaeyoon licks the corner of his lips, not missing the way Inseong’s gaze follows the movement. “What are you talking about?”
Inseong smiles. “I’m talking about this,” he answers, and then he kisses Jaeyoon.
This is what I’ve been waiting for, his lips against Jaeyoon’s say, and Jaeyoon’s hand fits against the back of Inseong’s neck like a key to the lock home.
Inseong doesn’t kiss him like it’s a confession, or like it’s something spun on impulse and spurred by their imminent farewell. Inseong kisses him like it was always meant to happen, like it was just the inevitable coming together of two souls kept apart for a little too long, and in retrospect, Jaeyoon wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“Yeah,” he says against the curve of Inseong’s lips, a little later, just loudly enough for Inseong to hear, “in the way you’re talking about.”
Inseong laughs, like he already knew the answer before Jaeyoon said it. Jaeyoon supposes that in a sense, he did, if his hand still lingering against Inseong’s skin is any good indication. “I’m glad, then.”
It’s a bit funny, Jaeyoon thinks, how long it took for him to realise all this.
Maybe Seokwoo and Sanghyuk were onto something after all.
“So,” Inseong brings up, “what about the lat pulldowns?”
Jaeyoon shoots him an unimpressed look, tasting Inseong’s lip balm against his own lips as he speaks. “You’re still thinking about the exercise? After all that?”
Inseong snorts. “You say that like you don’t use it as a chance to feel me up every session.”
“Oh, touché.”
Inseong’s skin still burns under his touch, but he’s glad it’s for a different reason now. Inseong doesn’t seem to mind the brush of Jaeyoon’s hair against his cheek as he leans in closer, either, nor does Jaeyoon mind the fact that Inseong’s hands have managed to slip under his shirt a few times too many to be a coincidence (not that it ever was in the first place), and they both take advantage of that.
“You know,” Inseong comments, thirty minutes on, his back pressed to Jaeyoon’s chest and the mirth high in his tone, “I still don’t understand why the others do it, but maybe there’s some good to be had in workouts after all.”
Jaeyoon scoffs, watching with mild amusement as Inseong abandons the station to face Jaeyoon instead, their faces close enough for Inseong’s breath to fan his cheeks. “Are you sure you’ve been working out all that much today, hyung?”
Inseong grins. “You’re teaching me, aren’t you? Think of it as some extra motivation.”
Jaeyoon rolls his eyes, a laugh bubbling to his lips, but he’s still got his old weaknesses, and Inseong would definitely top the list.
“If that’s what keeps you happy.”
Inseong lights up. “In that case—”
“Inseong-hyung! Jaeyoon-hyung! Oh what the fuck—”
Jaeyoon nearly chokes on air at the sound of the gym door opening, but Inseong doesn’t make any motion to move from his current spot, instead raising his head and then his hand in a wave. “Youngkyun-ah!”
“Come to use the gym?” Jaeyoon asks. Distantly, he registers Inseong’s knee bumping against his and the taste of Inseong’s (tinted) lipbalm on his lips.
Youngkyun doesn’t really hesitate. “... I’ll come back another day. See you.” Outside, Jaeyoon hears Sanghyuk asking first time?
The door slam shuts, and Inseong promptly bursts into laughter.
“Hyung,” Jaeyoon groans, although he’s trying his best to suppress the amusement that bubbles up inside of him, too, “now they’re never going to use the gym with us ever again.”
Inseong’s only response is to grin over at him like it’s the best thing he’s ever heard.
And, Jaeyoon supposes, watching the light fall across Inseong’s messy hair and tint the red on his cheeks a shade darker than they were before, perhaps it could be after all.