the edge of alpenglow

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/35074240.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: Gen, M/M
Fandom: Stray Kids (Band)
Relationship: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know, Hwang Hyunjin/Kim
Seungmin
Character: Lee Minho | Lee Know, Han Jisung | Han, Hwang Hyunjin, Seo
Changbin, Kim Seungmin, Bang Chan, Lee Felix (Stray Kids), Yang
Jeongin | I.N
Additional Tags: Slow Burn, minsung - Freeform, Lee Minho | Lee Know-centric, Lee
Minho | Lee Know is Whipped, Han Jisung | Han-centric, Han Jisung |
Han is Whipped, Best Friends, Friends to Lovers, Hiking, Partying,
Angst with a Happy Ending, MK can only write slow burns tell a friend,
Han Jisung | Han & Hwang Hyunjin are Best Friends, hyunsung
childhood besties, minsung chaotic good, Drunk Texting, Unresolved
Romantic Tension, have you ever been in love with your best friend,
Fake/Pretend Relationship, changbin is a film student, Mountains,
minsung play a couple in changbin's short film, and they're a little too
good at it, it's about the yearning!!
Language: English
Collections: skz fanfics i want to remember and reread for ever and ever and ever
and ever
Stats: Published: 2021-11-12 Completed: 2022-10-28 Words: 68,852
Chapters: 13/13

the edge of alpenglow

by thisismk

Summary

“But I’m not an actor?”

“You’re a hiker,” Changbin said. “And that’s what is most important for my film's vision.”

Minho sighed. “Can you elaborate on the vision, then?”

“Imagine,” his friend's eyes lit up. “Have you ever met somebody and, from the moment
you met, you just clicked? And then you want to show them all of the amazing places that
you’ve been to, show them the music that you love, meet the people in their lives. There’s
this sudden, intense need to just integrate them into your life."

“Yeah,” Minho said gently. “Yeah, I get that.”

✩✩✩

Or, the one where Minho and Jisung play a couple in their friend’s short film by climbing
 mountains, navigating parties… and maybe falling in love.

Notes

the playlist for this fic can be found here, and the visuals for the fic can be found here !
 foothill
Chapter Notes

hello, friends!

Wow, it's been almost a year since I've posted. I've been reading all of your comments
on my other fics, though, and they've given me a lot of joy, so thank you for that! This
is the story that's been knocking around my brain for the past few months. Just a note-
my dad is still in chemo, so updates may be sporadic as I visit him. Thanks for your
understanding!

I've curated a 2.5 hour playlist specifically for this fic! I'll add a note for each chapter
for what songs correlate for those of you who like to listen along with reading :) I'll
also be posting some visual inspirations on my twitter.

songs for this chapter: “Daphne Blue- Acoustic” by The Band CAMINO and
“anything 4 u” by LANY

They made it through two thirds of the movie before he noticed the snoring. At first it was a gentle
buzz, hardly noticeable over the sound of the TV, but then it started to grow into an unmistakable
cacophony of snores that rang through the house. Minho sat up from where he had become one
with the couch only to find the rest of his friends in various states of unconsciousness. His features
morphed into a frown when he confirmed his fear: all of his friends had fallen asleep.

“Are you kidding me,” he muttered to their sleeping forms. “All of you?”

He shrugged the blanket off his shoulders and leaned forward, trying not to disturb any of his
sleeping betrayers (i.e. friends) as he fished the remote out from in between the cushions. He
wanted to feel offended that everyone had fallen asleep during his week to pick the show, but even
he had to admit that his choice of a period piece after a long week of midterms might have been
asking for failure. He sighed, accepting defeat, and paused the show. Bridgerton would have to
wait.

He turned the television off with a quiet click, and the sudden silence had the lump next to him
stirring.

“Is it over?”

Minho looked down to find Jisung’s face still smushed up against his thigh as he lay on the couch
next to him. One of his cheeks was spilling over the top of Minho’s leg, and it took everything in
him not to pinch it.

“Wha’ I miss?” he muttered, lifting his head and squinting in the darkness. He was blinking
wildly, as though that would somehow adjust his eyes to the darkness quicker. It was cute, but
Minho knew if he complimented him Jisung would do something dumb like punch his leg, or
protest so loudly that the others would wake up. Last week Minho had said his hair had looked
nice, and he’d responded by aggressively licking the side of his face. He was unpredictable.
“Just the whole show,” Minho laughed, pushing his head back down to his lap. “You’re fine,
though, everyone else fell asleep, too. You don’t have to get up.”

“M’sorry,” he mumbled, voice still scratchy from sleep. “I’m so tired. Not even the hot Duke could
keep me up.”

Minho giggled in spite of himself, ignoring the tightness in his chest. Chan let out a particularly
loud snore on his right, and he had to fight the sudden urge to plug his nose- he knew that he’d pay
for it the next time he fell asleep first. Chan was the ideal roommate- clean, respectful, amazing
taste in music. The only catch was that his sleep schedule was unpredictable, so when he finally did
catch some zzz’s, he did not want to be disturbed. His freshmen year, Minho had spent an entire
morning lecture with “I don’t clean my side of the room” written on his forehead in Chan’s small,
neat handwriting. His sleep aggression was part of the reason Felix and Changbin had moved in-
he was a lot less grumpy waking up with fresh pastries with friends every morning. Still, Minho
didn’t want to poke the bear.

“I even picked something other than Planet Earth,” Minho complained. “This is the thanks I get
for branching out?”

Jisung had the audacity to snort at him. “No offense, Min, but I don’t think another nature
documentary would have gone over much better.”

“Why not?”

“They’re not like us,” Jisung yawned. “They aren’t men of culture.”

Minho giggled again, but still felt a little disappointed that his friends had all knocked out so
quickly. The whole group had become accustomed to Jisung and Minho’s affinity for National
Geographic and the like, and they all tended to support their nature-obsessed friends, even if most
of them zoned out when they tried to show them Blue Planet.

“Something about all the ocean footage always puts me in a meditative state,” Felix had said.

Minho was always enraptured, though, and while he liked to blame it on his major (“How can I be
an environmental science major and not be obsessed with trees?”), the truth was that he just really
fucking loved nature. Bridgerton had been an olive branch, but next time he got to pick the show,
he’d be back to forcing his friends to learn about coral reefs in the Caribbean.

“We can watch it tomorrow if you want,” Jisung whispered, settling back into the couch.

Minho’s hand fell to his forehead out of pure instinct, no stranger to cuddling with his best friend as
he fell asleep. He supposed that he could make some sassy comment, some variation of his usual
but you’re always partying on Saturdays, so how could we hang out, but he pushed it down. Just
because everyone slept through his pick didn’t mean he had to be rude. Instead, he just said, “Don’t
worry about it.”

Jisung’s apartment was just down the street, but he didn’t seem to be getting up any time soon
based on the way he still had smashed his face against Minho’s leg. Minho reached down to lace
his fingers in his hair further, pushing the strands back out of his eyes as they fluttered closed.
Jisung let out a contented sigh when he started scratching his scalp. Minho heard another rustling
from the other side of the room, and he thought he might have heard Felix sigh. Seungmin and
Jeongin had knocked out on the floor, even though their place was in the collection of townhouses,
and Hyunjin had claimed the entire loveseat for himself. Changbin had at least had the energy to
walk a few feet to his room down the hall.
They had all planned to go on a hike the next morning at one of the local trails, but Minho had a
sneaking suspicion that they might not make those plans. There was something about college
midterms that could drain all of the energy from a person’s soul. He leaned over to ask Jisung if
he’d help him rally the troops in the morning, but when he looked down, his friend was already
back asleep. Minho considered asking Chan if he’d still be up for going when he woke up the next
morning, because it was supposed to be a really nice day and he didn’t want to miss out on the trees
changing color- he could almost hear the crunchy leaves under his boots.

“Sleep tight,” he whispered, but Jisung was already unconscious.

When he’d moved to the valley for college, Minho thought maybe he’d get used to waking up with
mountains in his backyard, but the magic still hadn’t worn off. A ten minute drive to the south had
the mountain range with the more aggressive hikes, but there were some smaller trails closer to
campus that he’d become attached to. He thought he could talk Chan into going on one of those
with him if everyone else ditched him- he was pretty used to functioning on a low amount of sleep.

A yawn escaped before he could try to stop it, and Minho decided that maybe his friends had the
right idea. He looked down one last time at Jisung on his lap and pushed his bangs back from his
forehead, noting how his blonde hair was just starting to grow out enough that he’d have to go get
his roots touched up soon. Minho closed his eyes and hoped that he could get some sleep, too, but
then Jisung gave his leg a little squeeze in his sleep, and for some reason everything felt very
warm. Minho sighed.

Maybe he was in for a long night after all.

✩✩✩

Are you coming to Econ?

Minho looked down at the screen, firing off a text back.

yeah, running late today

I’ll be there in ten

The response came in seconds.

You better be!

I can’t get through this class by myself.
I will literally die of boredom.

Minho snorted.

since when has boredom ever been a problem for you?

It was true- Jisung had an uncanny knack for filling every moment of his day with some sort of
activity or distraction. Even when he was waiting in line at the dining hall, he was talking with the
person behind him. When he brushed his teeth at night, it was to the husky voice of his favorite
investigative journalist, a true-crime podcast that dropped new episodes every week. Minho had
never met anyone else who had quite the gift for distraction.

you’re not wrong

I’m sure I could make class interesting somehow
but it would be more fun with you

Minho tripped over a step, rolling his eyes as he sent his final text.
pulling into campus

don’t text and drive

I’m at a stoplight. save me a seat!

With Harry Styles crooning in his headphones, Minho opened the door to his 9am class. He slid
into his seat in the back of the lecture hall, in the same seat he’d been sitting in all semester, and let
out a huff. He wasn’t sure why it was some unspoken rule that college students sit in the same
seats every day- they were adults, they could move if they wanted to, but he and Jisung had
conformed to the tradition all the same. Jisung had already gotten set up, his bag thrown
haphazardly on the ground, and was loading up his computer as Minho pulled his notebook out of
his bag. Jisung slid him a thermos, coffee sloshing inside.

“Oh my god, I love you,” he said, almost groaning into the cup. “I didn’t have time to make coffee
this morning, I thought I was going to die.”

“You can’t die listening to Golden,” Jisung laughed. “That’s hardly a soundtrack for death.”

Minho shrugged, continuing to sip on his coffee with a relieved sigh. Jisung turned back to his
laptop once he was satisfied that Minho liked his coffee creation

“It’s a dark roast, but I added some oat milk that my hippie roommate brought home.”

Minho laughed. “Hyunjin is hardly a hippie.”

Then why is his hair so long?” Jisung asked.

He leaned back, crossing his arms like he’d won a grand argument. Minho just rolled his eyes and
pointed at his screen. Jisung’s laptop was as disorganized as he was, folders littering the screen
wherever you looked. It drove Minho crazy- he has no idea how he could find anything with the
screen looking so cluttered. Yet, every time he needed the notes from class, Jisung knew the exact
random folder on the left side of the screen that he needed.

“There’s a method to my madness,” Jisung said. “Don’t doubt my method.”

“I don’t doubt your madness.”

They always sat together in classes that they shared, and had done so ever since the first day they
had met almost three years earlier. They met in an 8am class, which they both later agreed should
have been illegal (“Seriously, I’m going to write up a petition to abolish all 8am classes,” Jisung
insisted on one particularly sluggish morning. “It’s unnatural to be awake this early for school.”).
Minho had been sitting in one of the seats in the back row when Jisung came and sat down next to
him, gripping a comically large cup of coffee.

“You good?” Minho had asked. He’d only come to the back row to try and find a partner for the
upcoming project, not anticipating he’d find a guy testing the human limits of caffeine.

Jisung had just shrugged. He took a swing of his black coffee and then he pulled a redbull from his
bag and poured it in. When he noticed Minho’s expression, he simply said, “It’s coffee flavored.”

“That does not ease my concern.”

Jisung had noticed the thinly-veiled panic in his eyes and simply shrugged again. “My heart’s
going to explode one day,” he said, and then he downed the entire thing over the course of the
lecture.

Minho liked to joke that he only stayed friends with him so he could steal a vial of his blood for
scientific testing, but all of their friends could see that he clearly had a soft spot for him.

“Do you think Professor Chen is going to give us another group project? I don’t think I can handle
that this year.”

Jisung shrugged. “If we do, you’re obviously stuck being my partner. Be ready.”

They had settled into a fast friendship based on weekly hikes and long study sessions (always with
fresh bagels from the bakery near Jisung and Hyunjin’s apartment), and Minho had gotten pretty
good at ignoring the strange little pang in his chest that he got every time Jisung laughed at
someone else’s jokes. Jisung prided himself on being the funny friend, so he supposed his jealousy
stemmed mostly from that.

They had a standing meeting every Tuesday morning; when they had realized that they both had a
strange gap of time in between classes, they had naturally decided to spend it together. It was one
of those situations where it wasn’t worth driving home, but also too boring to just sit around the
library (though Seungmin begged to differ), so they started packing coffee in thermoses and going
to walk one of the shorter trails by campus every week.

On a completely unrelated note, Tuesday was Minho’s favorite day of the week.

Today, though, was a Monday. He hadn’t slept well, and was honestly feeling a little bit grumpy as
he had driven to campus, but he felt himself settle a bit when Jisung slid a gel pen across the desk.
Minho preferred the classic pen-and-pencil way of taking notes, knowing that he’d get distracted
with any sort of technology in front of him, but Jisung took notes on his laptop. Naturally, this led
to some Internet surfing during their more boring lectures. Sometimes they would play a game of
solitaire on slower days, and others they would not-so-subtly watch a YouTube video together on
low volume, but they never really got in trouble. Such was the blessing of sitting in the back.

Minho tried not to spy on his screen too much, but today their professor had gone off on a tangent
about taking his granddaughter kayaking for the first time and he was worried he might actually
fall asleep. He leaned over, peeking at Jisung’s laptop to find him looking at the menu of some
barbecue place that had opened recently.

“Aww, you’re taking me out for meat?” He said, sighing dreamily. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Stop spying on me,” Jisung said, giving him a playful shove. Minho threw himself back into his
chair like he’d been body-slammed, clutching his arm in a completely different spot from where
Jisung had pushed him, and Jisung had to throw his hand over his mouth to stifle his laugh.
Luckily, their professor was still droning on with his story and didn’t notice them causing chaos in
the back row. “And this isn’t for you, you insatiable black hole.”

Minho sat up straight. “Who are you going with, then?”

“You know Yunho?” Jisung said, scrolling through the drink menu. “He asked me to hang out with
him this Thursday, and I’ve been wanting to check this place out.”

Of course Minho knew Yunho- the gorgeous guy on the dance team with perfect hair and a very
clear crush on Jisung. He’d seemed really nice the few times Minho had met him, waiting outside
the English building after Jisung’s class ended, but Minho didn’t like him for some reason he
couldn’t quite put his finger on. He was just so damn tall. Maybe some primitive part of his brain
was threatened. He and Jisung ran in a lot of the same circles, so they ended up partying together
on quite a few occasions, but this was the first time Minho had heard of them hanging out in the
daytime. He didn’t like it.

“Interesting,” Minho muttered. “Sounds like fun.”

Jisung rolled his eyes. “I don’t get why you don’t like him, he’s really nice.”

“It’s not that I don’t like him,” Minho said. It was, but he couldn’t very well say that. “I’m just
surprised he asked you out.”

“Just because you find me so unattractive-”

“Wait,” Minho whipped around, cheeks red. “What?”

“I know he’s hot, but I don’t think I’m exactly bad looking, or-“

“No, you’re obviously attractive, that’s not it,” Minho rushed out. Jisung cocked his eyebrow.
“Wait, shut up. I mean-”

“I’m joking,” Jisung laughed, poking him in the side. “Relax, it’ll be fine. It’s just one dinner.” He
gave Minho a strange look out of the corner of his eye. “Besides, you probably have plans this
weekend, too. Go hang out with Chelsea or whatever that girl in your class’ name was.”

“Her name was Cherry,” Minho. “Which you know, because you talked about how stupid you
thought her name was the first three times you met her.”

Jisung shrugged.

“Besides, you know that didn’t go anywhere. She’s just a friend.”

“Yeah, like Yunho is just my friend,” Jisung said, giving him a wink.

Minho laughed, but there was no life in it. He turned back to his notes, gripping the pen like a
lifeline, but Jisung didn’t seem to notice. He tried not to let it bother him- Yunho would probably
just be like the last few guys, around for a few weeks until Jisung got bored and moved on to
someone else. Besides, everyone knew that although he went out sometimes, Jisung didn’t date.
Minho wasn’t sure why he let it bother him so much- he knew deep down that Jisung would
always put him first, but there was always that strange flash of guilt when he remembered that their
weekends were always so different, at least at night.

Minho liked to stay in, and Jisung liked to go out. It was different during the week- they were
practically attached at the hip, and more often than not they had plans during the day on the
weekends, too. But as soon as evening came, their lives split into two different worlds. Jisung
would invite him out sometimes, but they both knew that Minho would turn him down. Crowds
weren’t his thing, and he was happiest when he spent his evening curled under some blankets with
some snacks and a good show.

It always felt a little strange, considering how on the same page they were about almost everything
else in their lives. They spent their weekly walks in silence, sometimes, because they were just so
comfortable with each other that they didn’t feel the need to fill every little moment of silence.
Other times, when they were talking about one of their shows or about the cat cafe they had seen in
the neighboring city, their friends would beg them to shut up.

“Hey.”
Minho looked up to find Jisung watching him with an expression he couldn’t quite place. His chest
suddenly felt kind of tight, like after he ran a few miles, and he tried not to let the tense feeling
bleed into his voice.

“What?”

“We still on for our hike tomorrow?”

Minho softened. “Yeah, of course.”

Jisung grinned at him, and Minho could breathe again.

✩✩✩

The first time that Minho fell in love, it was with the woods. He had taken three steps onto the leaf-
covered trail when he decided that this was where he wanted to spend as much time as possible. At
only three, he was still getting the hang of the whole “walking for more than a few feet” thing, but
even years later when he was grown and could cover 10-mile hikes with ease, he would think back
to that first hazy memory of the first time his parents took him camping.

It was hard to describe the sound of the woods to someone who has never been on one of the more
secluded trails. Music, Minho would call it. Peaceful, Jisung had once offered. Boring, his sister
always said, but then she had never been one for the slower-paced outdoor activities. Anna was
always more at home doing something a little crazy, like snowshoeing in sub-freezing
temperatures or water-skiing on one foot, rather than take in the slow, methodical steps of a long-
range hike. Minho supposed it could be worse- he could have grown up in a family like Jisung’s,
who thought that weekends were made for the golf course or the country club or something
equally rich and insufferable. Jisung never made a big show about the fact that he came from
money, but Minho had been able to tell pretty early on. He still remembered the first time they did
an overnight hike together and Jisung showed up with clean, shiny hiking boots. The tent still had
the tags on.

Today the trail was especially musical, he thought as he looked around. The trail was starting to
get firmer, the cold chills that came with October hardening the mud and dirt into something more
sturdy. With the wind blowing through the trees, the soft rustle of aging leaves giving up their
grasp on branches was the perfect salve to a long week. The birds were singing, chirps and tweets
floating across the sky with the breeze, and Minho took a deep breath in. The other great thing
about going to school in the mountains was the air- whenever he felt overwhelmed, he could
always count on the air in the woods to fill his lungs with fresh oxygen and new promise.

“It’s starting to get chilly,” Jisung noted. Minho hummed to let him know he’d heard.

They had settled down by a creek bed that still had some summer holdouts- a bright splatter of
wildflowers that had yet to give in to autumn’s arrival. Setting his pack down, Minho reached up
towards the sky until he felt a few cracks in his back- he didn’t mind carrying around a heavier
pack since it meant more supplies, but every now and then his back liked to remind him that he
was a twenty-one year old college student, not a body-builder. Felix had once sent him an article
about how cracking your back and knuckles was bad for you, but Minho didn’t really pay too much
mind. If sounding like somebody stepped on a water bottle every time he stood up in the morning
was what he got for cracking his back, so be it. It felt good, and there were worse vices to have.

Their friend group should know that better than most.

He pulled one of his reusable ziplock bags out of the front pocket, cracking open the package to
grab a handful of granola. Jisung always made a big batch every Sunday evening, knowing that
Minho liked to take a Monday morning solo hike but always forgetting to pack some breakfast. He
had been horrified the first time Minho told him he skipped breakfast. He offered a handful to
Jisung.

“If I don’t feed you, I worry you’ll actually starve,” Jisung said. “One day you’ll be walking the
trail, the next you’ll have become part of the earth again!’

“Don’t be dramatic,” Minho laughed, but he always carried the packs of granola just the same.

He had once offered to just buy a big pack of pre-made granola at the local supermarket, and
Jisung had looked almost offended. Since then he just took his weekly snacks with a smile and a
soft thank you. In truth, he always looked forward to picking up his stash at the end of every
weekend. It gave him an excuse to check in on Jisung after some rougher nights, and gave them a
chance to connect before the bustle of a busy week started.

Last Sunday, he looked better than Minho was expecting. Sure, he had a bruise on his elbow and
his hair was a mess, but his eyes were clear and he didn’t seem too hungover. Overall, Minho had
counted it as a success. He tried not to wonder too much about who Jisung hung out with at those
parties- all that really mattered is that he was with him, now.

It made his heart ache, sometimes, to be so close to Jisung like this. He hiked with all of his friends
at some point or another, but Jisung was a constant in his life. He knew that, no matter how tough
of a week he might be having, every Tuesday morning he could completely check out of life for an
hour and just enjoy being outside with the one person who knew him best. Sometimes they went
the whole hour-long trail without speaking a single word. They could do the path in their sleep at
that point, every single turn and tree memorized like a map of his hometown, but every week he
found something new to love about it. Sometimes it was the sound of the breeze floating through
the pine trees, a soft tinkling almost like music. Others, it would be a deer sighting, Jisung’s eyes
bright and excited as a doe lead her two fawns through the thick forest towards the stream on the
side of the mountain. His favorite days were the ones where they spent more time at the lookout
point, just relaxing on the old wooden bench and gazing out over the valley. He hadn’t grown up
here, but every morning that he spent with Jisung looking out at the town, he felt like he was
home.

“Do you think you’ll ever get tired of it?”

Minho looked up, embarrassed that he had been caught getting lost in his own thoughts. Jisung was
waiting expectantly, face a little flushed from the cold, as Minho came back to the present.

“Of hiking?”

“Of hiking with me,” he clarified. “Of our Tuesdays.”

Minho frowned. This was the first time either of them had ever expressed anything but excitement
for their Tuesday hikes. He wondered to himself if Jisung had grown weary of the early wake-up
times- after all, they were in college. Was he being selfish, asking to hike for an hour every week
with Jisung? Should he be giving him more space? He felt something sour in his throat, a mild
panic rising before he could logic his way back to reality. He didn’t quite know how to say I could
literally never get tired of spending time with you without sounding like a total loser, so instead he
decided to check in on Jisung’s feelings first.

“Are you tired of it?” he asked.

“No!” Jisung’s eyes widened, and he sounded almost alarmed. “I just mean, I know you like to do a
lot more intense hikes and I was thinking the other day that maybe I’m taking up time that you
could be spending prepping for the A.T.”

Minho felt the sourness dissipate immediately, his face softening. Of course Jisung would be
worried about him, about his training. It was something he had been talking about since they had
met- Minho had wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail ever since he’d learned what it was. He’d
started hiking more seriously when he reached high school, and after his high school graduation he
had taken his first leg of the A.T. the summer before college started. He spent two months
traveling through Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, and he’d loved every second of it. He
tried to do a bit every summer, but he still had the biggest section of the trip left, so he tried to stay
in shape as much as possible for the upcoming challenge. His dream of becoming a “2,000 miler”
was important to him and Minho appreciated that Jisung was keeping his dream in mind, but he
didn’t want him to get the wrong idea, either.

“No, Ji,” he said with a smile. “This is what I need to prepare.”

Jisung raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t tell the other guys,” Minho chuckled. “But this is kind of the highlight of my week. It’s the
one time that I don’t feel like I need to take care of anybody, or be on top of everything all the time.
Sometimes even prepping for the A.T. feels more like a chore than a passion, on those days where
all I really want to do is relax. So, I guess the fact that I know I have some time every week to just
take a breath and be completely myself… it’s exactly what I need to be doing to prepare for months
out in the field.”

Jisung nodded, seemingly to himself, before turning back towards the path. “We’re close to the
top, you want to stop there or back at the lookout on the way back down?”

Minho considered the options for a moment, then said, “Let’s do the summit today. I feel like my
coffee will taste better closer to the clouds.”

“That makes zero scientific sense,” Jisung said, but even as he was turning away Minho could hear
the smile in his voice.

Part of their Tuesday tradition included a strong dose of caffeine. For Minho, it was usually some
type of sweet coffee, while Jisung was a bit more of a wildcard. Some days he would open his
thermos to reveal a strong black tea, or a Chai latte, or sometimes even just black coffee so strong
the smell would cling to his jacket the rest of the hike. Minho liked to think of it like a little game,
trying to guess what kind of beverage he’d bring each week. This week felt like some sort of tea, he
thought.

They hiked in silence for the next fifteen minutes, approaching the peak with the relaxed steps of
people who had done this hike many times before. They took a seat on one of the bigger rocks
(“Big Bertha,” Felix had christened it the one time he had made the hike with them) and pulled
their thermoses out of the packs. Minho cracked his open, the smell of pumpkin spice wafting out
with a pleasant warmth, and he watched with an embarrassing level of excitement as Jisung
unscrewed the top to his own cup.

“What’s your guess?” Jisung asked, pausing as he reached the last rung to unscrew.

“Tea,” Minho said. “I’m guessing… Earl grey.”

“So close!” Jisung said, popping the top off. The scent hit Minho immediately.
“Dammit,” he groaned. “Oolong?”

“Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner.”

“I should have known, you brought Earl Grey two weeks ago. You never repeat a drink that soon.”

“Aww, you remember my drinks!” Jisung fluttered his eyelashes at him and said in a sing-song
voice, “You love meeee!”

Minho flushed, reaching out to shove his shoulder

“I tolerate you.”

Jisung snorted. “Wow, I can barely handle all this adoration,” he said, looking around to the empty
pathway. “You guys hearing this? He loves me.”

“Do you expect a response from the trees?” Minho said, amused.

“Maybe,” Jisung said with a smile. “Maybe you just have to listen really, really hard.”

“I’ll have you know I’m a fantastic listener,” Minho insisted, taking a swig of his coffee. “Oh shit,
Ji, this is really good. Have you tried this one yet?”

“What is it?”

“It’s a pumpkin spice latte-”

“Because you’re basic.”

“Because I’m basic,” Minho agreed. “But it’s from that cafe in the library. I think there’s some
nutmeg or something in this, try it.”

He thrust his mug at Jisung’s face, who grabbed it with excited hands. He was always on the hunt
for a new (caffeine-laden) drink to add to his rotation, so the promise of a sweet drink was
appealing. He took a long, slow sip. Minho thought he heard him slosh some around in his mouth,
which was a little gross, but he decided not to comment on it. He waited another moment as Jisung
swallowed, then looked at him with wide eyes.

“Incredible,” he declared. “It’s like autumn in a cup.”

“I knew you’d like it,” Minho grinned. “Now give it back, it’s mine.”

Jisung snatched the thermos close to his chest, jumping up just out of reach. “Not if I drink it all
first!”

“Hey!”

Minho jumped up, running after him with faux-indignancy as Jisung tried to hide behind a tree. He
tried to dodge him and run past, but Minho was a bit faster than him. When Minho finally caught
him, he grabbed Jisung in a bear hug close to his chest. His laughter bounced off the trees, filling
the air with giggles and the subtle scent of pumpkins. He allowed himself just a moment, then two,
of holding him before he plucked the thermos from his hands and let him go.

“If I didn’t know any better,” Jisung said, throwing him a wink. “I’d think you just wanted to hug
me.”
Mihno felt his chest constrict. He smiled, pushing it down, and forced himself to roll his eyes.

“I can get a hug any time,” he said nonchalantly. “Everyone knows you’re just as obsessed with me
as I am with you.”

Jisung barked out a laugh, surprised at Minho’s honesty.

“I guess you’re not wrong,” he said. “We’re a team.”

Minho nodded. "Always."

 paisley dreams
Chapter Notes

songs for this chapter: “AAA” by Tyde Levi and “Sangsu Station” by The Black Skirts

On the last Sunday in October, Jisung woke up with a start. He blinked rapidly, but nothing seemed
to appear before his eyes. He tried blinking a few more times- nothing.

“Fuck.”

For a moment he had the irrational fear that he had suddenly woken up blind, and he flailed wildly
until he gathered his bearings enough to realize that he was on something soft. A hospital bed?
Was he really blind? He started to panic, but after another moment of aggressive blinking, he
realized that the blackness he was seeing was simply fabric over his eyes. He tugged on the edge of
the fabric and realized that it was his shirt, pulled up over his face as he had rolled around in his
sleep. He could smell the alcohol still in the fabric, a metallic tang in his nose, and he needed to get
rid of it before he puked. He pulled the sleeve of a shirt over his eyes and threw it across the room.
Now that he could look around, he realized that there was a soft light coming from his left. He
squinted, spotting a lamp on the desk lying haphazardly on its side. He made an attempt to sit up,
but his head was swimming. He groaned.

“You up, sleeping beauty?”

Jisung groaned again. He forced himself to pry his eyes open to find Minho sitting on the side of
the bed, looking over him with thinly veiled concern. He handed a glass of and two small ibuprofen
to him.

He took the pills with a swig of water, head pounding. “When did we get home?”

“I picked you up around 2:30,” he said with a yawn. He reached up to rub at his eyes. “You fought
me on it, though, so we didn’t get back until around 3.”

Jisung winced. There was a tiny flash of a memory, if he really focused. He could remember the
smell of cheap sour apple schnapps mixed with the sounds of a basement party. He recalled the
feeling of asphalt on his knees, the sting causing him to curse, and then he remembered the feeling
of trying to wrestle out of a surprisingly strong pair of arms. He was sure more memories would
come back over the course of the day, but he kind of wished they wouldn’t. He could tell that it had
been a rougher night by the way that Minho sighed when he looked back over at him. Jisung felt
another pang of guilt, pulling the paisley sheets up to his chest. Minho sounded exhausted.

“Sorry,” he said. “I promise I won’t do it again.”

Minho turned back to the window, face unreadable. Jisung waited for him to respond, to tell him
that he was full of shit, anything. Instead, he just huffed out another sigh and stood up.

“You kept saying I had pretty teeth,” he finally said. He reached down, placing a gentle hand on
Jisung’s shoulder. He gave it a squeeze before walking out of the room.
Jisung shook his head to try and wake himself up a bit more, but immediately regretted it. His
vision swam, head thumping in time with his heart, and he took in his surroundings through
squinted eyes.

Minho had gotten him home, somehow. He could see his shoes by the door, his jacket thrown
haphazardly on the floor next to the bed. He was still in the metallica t-shirt and dark jeans that
he’d put on before going out the night before. When he reached into his pocket, he let out a sigh of
relief- he still had his phone.

Sometimes he could piece together his night through texts and photos from the night before, like
little breadcrumbs his drunk alter-ego left for his sober self. He clicked on the Photos app,
grimacing when the first thing that came up was a set of twenty blurry selfies. Jisung was in a
crowd of people from his fiction class (he remembered, now, going to the basement to take shots
with them. Who knew writers could be such a wild bunch?). He scrolled up further, groaning when
he realized that he’d also apparently taken a hundred selfies in the bathroom at the house. Why his
drunk delf thought he could bring back the mirror-selfie was a mystery.

It was some fraternity- he could never remember what combination of greek letters made up
Yunho’s brotherhood- but overall he’d had a really good time. He could tell he had, by the
collection of misspelled texts to friends about how they “hadddd to come thru!” lest they miss out
on the fun.

He checked the call log next. Sure enough, there was only one entry after midnight- Minho. He
didn’t remember calling him, but there in front of him was the digital proof that he had- three
minutes and forty-two seconds, in fact. Another surge of guilt came, and Jisung dropped his phone
onto the bed. He’d seen enough to know he’d had a weekend almost identical to the others.

“You feel up to some lunch?”

Jisung looked up to find Minho poking his head in the doorway.

“What time is it?”

“A little after two.”

“Ugh,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I can’t believe I slept so late.”

“You needed it,” Minho said simply. “You didn’t want to go to bed for a while, so I had to tell you
about my night first. You wanted to make sure someone had told me I smelled nice that day. I tried
to get you to put on pajamas, but you kind of just threw yourself on the bed. I took your shoes off,
though.”

“Ugh, sorry.”

“I’m not telling you all this so you’ll apologize,” Minho paused. “I just wish you’d come hang out
with me one weekend instead of all these different parties.”

“We do hang out on the weekend-”

“During the day,” Minho said with a sad smile. “But your nights are usually booked, Ji. I only end
up seeing you when you drunk-dial me. I know you have fun, but I worry about you sometimes.”

Jisung groaned. He threw himself back down on the bed and closed his eyes. “I suck, Min.”

“Only sometimes.”
“Still, I’m sorry. I promise I’ll try to chill on the drunk calls.”

“Come on,” Minho said, tapping his good knee. “Hyunjin’s going to strangle you if we don’t get
food soon. Let’s get you a shower, your leg still has blood on it and you smell like ass.”

Jisung peeked out of one eye to find his friend finally smiling at him.

“You have such a way with words,” he crooned. “So poetic.”

Minho finally laughed, then, and Jisung felt ten pounds lighter.

As if on cue, Hyunjin appeared in the doorway. Minho ducked out of sight, and Jisung prepared
himself for his roommate’s hanger (“Hungry-anger is very real, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t
judge me for it,” Hyunjin had laughed once. “Or, just give me some snacks.”). Jisung wasn’t even
fully awake yet, but he could tell Hyunjin had reached peak-hangry.

“Wake up, you gremlin,” he yelled, hurling a shoe at Jisung’s head. “You promised me sandwiches
yesterday! We’re going to be late if you don’t get some pants on, like, ten minutes ago.”

“Well let me just go back in time and do that for you,” Jiusng grumbled. He blindly reached across
the wooden floor, trying to find the discarded flip-flop Hyunjin had used as an alarm clock. “I can’t
believe you threw a shoe at me.”

“It’s because I love you.”

“I reject shoe-based love.”

“Then you’re going to get a I’ve-known-you-since-I-was-five smack on the face instead,” Hyunjin
laughed. “Come on, up and at ‘em.”

Jisung groaned, but Hyunjin reached down to help him off the ground with a steady grip. Jisung
swayed a bit as he stood, and Hyunjin frowned.

“Dude, are you still drunk? I thought Minho had sobered you up.”

“Fuck off, I’m not drunk,” Jisung laughed. Hyunjin furrowed his eyebrows at him. “Seriously, I’m
not!”

“If you say so,” Hyunjin shrugged.

Jisung raised his hands in surrender as his friend marched over, letting Hyunjin pull him out the
door by one arm with minimal objections. It had always been like this with them, he thought, ever
since they were kids. The thing about having moms that were best friends was that you were kind
of forced to be best friends, too. They met when Hyunjin’s family moved back east, and Jisung had
immediately picked a fight with him the way only five-year-olds can: sticking out his tongue.
Hyunjin had been affronted, dramatic even at a young age, and had insisted that Jisung write him
an apology letter if they ever wanted to play again. Jisung remembered thinking that was kind of a
lot, but lucky for Hyunjin he’d always wanted to learn to write properly. He wrote out his apology
on kraft paper in big, bright blue crayon. Hyunjin loved it, and they had been best friends ever
since.

Hyunjin often told people that he didn’t actually remember meeting Jisung that first day when his
mom dropped him off at the house with Jisung’s family nanny, but then he would immediately
stick his tongue out at Jisung, so he knew better. From then on they had been a team: a loud,
chaotic, and a little bit messy team, but a team nonetheless. They had conquered the awkwardness
of adolescence and the pain of teenage heartbreak and came out the other side. When they both got
accepted to the same university Jisung had actually cried a little (but you wouldn’t catch him dead
admitting it). They’d grown from little league to college frat parties, and they were still dragging
each other into messes. Practically brothers.

“Okay, let’s get going. I told Seungmin we’d be there by nine and it’s already nine-o-seven.”

“Yeah, but he knows you’re always late,” Jisung said, scrambling to put his shoes on. “You’re
lucky you have a very patient, very understanding boyfriend.”

“I’m only late when I’m with you,” Hyunjin countered. He plucked his car keys from the hook
beside the door and blew the whistle on his keyring. “Let’s go, time to speed-shower, chop-chop!”

“I’m up, I’m up.”

Seungmin came into the picture freshman year when the school assigned him as Jisung’s random
roommate. He and Hyunjin had wanted to room together, but then Hyunjin got into the arts
program and the subsequent housing for art majors, much closer to the art building. Jisung had
reluctantly accepted the stranger into his life, finding Seungmin to be thoughtful and smart, with
just enough of a dry sense of humor. He invited Hyunjin over to meet his roommate, saying
something to the effect of, “You’re going to love him,”, and he’d had no idea how true that would
be. They were dating by the end of the month, and had been inseparable ever since.

Jisung only moped about the sudden loss of Hyunjin’s free time for about three weeks before he
met Minho. He wasn't sure how he had missed him the first few weeks of class- he supposed it
might have to do with the fact that Minho usually sat in the front, off to the right near the board,
while Jisung sat in the back left, near the exit. Regardless, they met eventually by the way of a
class project, and clicked immediately.

“Sandwiches await!” he heard Minho call from the hallway.

Jisung groaned one last time, reaching over to grab a glass of water and draining it in a single chug.
Some days it was hard to get out of bed, but when he had his friends and food waiting? Jisung
thought he could conquer anything.

✩✩✩

Somehow, the promise of food had lured all of his friends out of their Sunday-morning stupors.
They agreed to a slow-paced hike that Sunday afternoon, on the condition that they got to stuff
their faces beforehand. Minho didn’t exactly love hiking on a full stomach, but the trail they were
going to wasn’t exactly strenuous.

After getting a shower and some coffee into Jisung, he’d bounced back pretty quickly. The rest of
the guys rallied by about 3, agreeing to meet up at the trailhead after food. It had apparently been a
particularly rowdy Saturday night out for a few of them, and it was only after a round of BLTs that
anyone felt up to facing the outside world. Still, they were only human, and the eight of them had
only made it about thirty minutes before the topic of snacks came up.

“Did you guys bring the good granola?” Felix yelled from the back of the line.

“Oh no,” Jisung said. “You guys will not mooch off of me again, bring your own granola.”

“But you always make the best kind!” Seungmin groaned.

“I sent you the recipe last month, make it yourself!”

“Every time he tries to make it, he burns it,” Jeongin laughed. “He’s set off our fire alarm like three
times.”

“That’s because he thinks recipe instructions are optional,” Chan added as he ducked under a
branch. “One night I came over after a class and he’d tried to make pizza off script. It was ninety
percent toppings.”

“And you all loved it,” Seungmin countered. “Besides, cooking is all about experimentation, and
so far I’ve discovered seven different versions of granola that are not good. So now I know not to
make them like that!”

“I literally sent you a copy of my recipe,” Jisung laughed. “It’s mainly just nut butter and oats and
honey, I don’t know how you always mess it up so badly. “

They came to a stop at one of the benches that had been added to the trail sometime last spring,
pulling out their water bottles as Hyunjin and Changbin took turns taking photos of the sky with
Changbin’s big camera. He'd insisted on lugging around his big camera bag the whole day,
ignoring Minho's offers to lock it in the trunk during their walk. He'd stopped every now and then
to take some shots of the pathway, the treeline, some chipmunks hiding behind a rock. Minho
couldn't exactly see a pattern to what he was getting footage of, but he knew better than to interrupt
his creative process. He was sure he had some grand plan in mind.

Jisung cracked open the infamous bag of granola, snickering when Felix groaned in jealousy.

“He just wants you to share,” Minho said, digging his own hand into the bag. Jisung didn’t even
bother pretending to swat him away. "You know how to do that, it's like the very first thing that
they teach you in kindergarten."

“Well we can’t all be like you, you always get granola.” Chan laughed. Hyunjin waddled over,
trying to look nonchalant even as he stayed laser-focused on the snack. “You always get Jisung's
snacks because you’re his favorite.”

“No, that’s just because he hasn’t lost privileges yet,” Jisung said, smacking Hyunjin’s hand when
he tried to sneak a handful. “But that doesn’t mean he won’t in the future.”

Seungmin snorted. “Fat chance, you couldn’t say no to Minho if you tried.”

“Yeah,” Minho said, turning to Jisung to give him a grossly exaggerated pout. He reached over to
take another handful and Jisung responded by stealing the granola back.

“And just like that, privileges revoked.”

“No!” Minho yelled. “Dammit, Seungmin. This is your fault somehow.”

They laughed as Seungmin reached out to smack him, Jisung munching happily in between the two
as they dodged each others’ attacks. Chan stifled a yawn, but looked somewhat awake enough as
he watched his friends bicker. Felix stretched his arms toward the sky only to accidentally smack
Changbin in the face as he had turned back towards the group with his camera in hand. He lifted
the camera, and they all groaned.
“Oh come on, I didn’t even say anything!”

“But you’re going to,” Hyunjin said. “What is it this time? A documentary on people who won’t
share? Jisung, it’s your time to shine. ”

Jisung threw a cluster of oats at his roommate as Changbin shook his head, looking a little
sheepish. He was always trying to talk them into being in his film projects, and although they were
a generally agreeable group, sometimes the pitches were truly out of left field. Minho’s personal
favorite had been the black and white unit of his film theory class the year before- Changbin had
created a short film about a detective whose wife turned out to be the killer at the end. He still
remembered how all of them had gasped when the final reveal happened. Jisung had declared him
the next great director, which Changbin vehemently denied with an embarrassed flush, but they
had all joined in with their own praises. If that meant that every now and then Minho would hear
screams from his roommate’s side of the apartment when he was having some trouble with his
editing software, he could handle it. For the sake of the art.

“It’s just some b-roll,” Changbin insisted. “You don’t even have to do anything.”

Minho tried to shush his friends so his roommate could speak. As much as he liked to tease him
that he’d never nail the Kubrick stare, he was always a passionate reviewer for whatever
Changbin’s latest cinema project turned out to be. He gestured to him to continue.

“We’re starting a unit on music videos,” Changbin explained, adjusting a lens. “I eventually think
it could be part of a bigger project. I thought about doing something with footage from the trails
around town, get that rugged vibe.”

“Yes, because we are such a rugged group,” Jeongin laughed. “Yesterday Felix saw a picture of a
puppy and he cried.”

“And I’m not sorry!”

“What song are you using?” Felix asked. “Something folksy? I think the guys that play at that
honky tonk bar would let you use something.”

“They’re always telling me to look them up on Soundcloud,” Seungmin said with a grimace. “One
time I did, and let me tell you that somebody hurt them.”

“Brian just naturally writes sad songs,” Chan said with a shrug. “It’s a gift.”

“I was thinking of bullying Chan into letting me use one of his songs, actually,” Changbin said,
looking up hopefully. Chan sighed, but he was smiling as he rolled his eyes, so they all knew he’d
agree. He was particularly bad at saying no to Changbin. “I think it would be a cool contrast, all of
the natural imagery with some electronic music. Kind of unexpected.”

“That sounds cool,” Hyunjin said, picking at the bark on a stick. “But why do you need us?”

“I have a vision,” Changbin said cryptically. “You all have a role to play.”

“Should we hike up to the peak? You’d probably get some good shots there.”

“Now?” Minho looked up, intrigued. “The good light’s gone, though.”
“It’s two in the afternoon, there’s plenty of light.”

“Well, we could try getting some footage at the foot of the mountain, then- there’s that field with
the flowers.”

Minho shrugged, less enthusiastic now that the peak was off the table. The top of the mountain was
his favorite spot, but they were far past the best time of day to appreciate it in all its glory. Sunrise
was the only way to go.

“No, I just wanted to get a few initial shots today,” Changbin said.

Jisung looked at him and raised an eyebrow, but Changbin ignored him. The rest of the group
finished up their water break, Jisung sneaking another handful of granola to Minho, and waited for
Changbin to get one last shot of the seven boys looking out at the trees.

“Perfect, just like that,” he said, adjusting his stance. “Okay, now I want each of you to walk back
toward the path, one-by-one, starting from Jeongin on the left. Try not to look at the camera, yeah?
Now wait a few seconds until the guy in front of you is out of shot, then the next person goes, until
it’s just Minho left.”

“Why me?”

“Just trust me,” Changbin insisted. “The vision.”

Minho rolled his eyes, but kept his eyes on the treeline. The boys followed his directions almost
perfectly (Seungmin tripped over a root on his way out, but Changbin assured him that he could
edit that part out. Minho had a sneaking suspicion he did it on purpose so his part would be cut),
and then it was just Jisung and Minho left.

“Ji, look at Minho for a second before you leave.”

Minho tilted his head to the left, a little confused, but Jisung must have been better at acting
because he turned to him without questioning the direction. Minho could feel his eyes on him,
cheeks growing hot under his gaze, but he didn’t turn his head for fear Changbin would yell at him.
He wasn’t exactly sure what the vision for the short film was, but the last thing he wanted to do
was fuck it up. He felt Jisung sigh, a little puff of air hitting the side of his neck as he turned and
walked toward the path where the rest of their friends were waiting. Minho stayed still, waiting for
Changbin to give him the cue to join them. A few seconds passed, and then he heard his roommate
putting the lens back on his camera.

“Got it!” he announced, tucking the camera into his bag. “Great job, everyone.”

Conversations started back up as everyone grabbed their stuff, turning back towards the trail.
Minho let everyone else go ahead of him, wanting to make sure that nobody got left behind if the
pace picked up, but Changbin was waiting back as well. He walked over to his roommate, who was
still adjusting the various lenses he’d packed in his bag.

“You ready?”

Changbin looked up at him, and nodded. When he stood, though, he made no motion towards the
trail. Rather, he reached out to Minho and pulled on his sleeve, directing him over to a tree near the
overlook.
“You guys go ahead, we’ll catch up!” he yelled. Felix waved to let them know they’d heard.
Changbin must have noticed the look on Minho’s face, because he then said, “It’s an easy trail.
They don’t die without you with them.”

“They might.”

“Natural selection,” Changbin said with a wave of his hand. Minho snorted. “I just wanted to ask
you something, but I didn’t want you to feel pressured if I asked in front of everyone.”

Minho softened. “What’s up?”

“So, you know how I’ve been stressing out about what to do for my final project? It’s not just
because it’s my thesis film. The truth is, I’ve been thinking about trying to submit something for
Balsam next year.”

Minho’s eyes widened. The Balsam Film Festival took place every August in Rockville, the city
directly south of the valley. It was a couple hours drive away, but Changbin went every year to
take in the art of people he’d looked up to for years. The film festival wasn’t in the major circuits,
but for a more rural area it was an extremely big deal; a lot of the films that premiered at Balsam
would go on to become somewhat well-known in the film world. Indie films thrived in particular,
and although it was pretty hard to get a spot in the showings, the theater that hosted the event every
year always took a local film from somewhere in the state as an entry alongside all the headliners.
It would be the opportunity of a lifetime for a film student.

“Woah,” he said. “Dude, that’s amazing. I’m sure whatever you come up with will knock their
little film-critic socks off.”

“That’s the thing,” Changbin said, starting to smile. “I think I’ve finally figured out what I want to
do the film on.”

“What?”

“You helped me a lot, actually. Every fall when you bring back all those photos and videos from
whatever leg of the A.T. you completed over the summer, I was always kind of in awe over the
adventures you had. It really inspired me and although I always thought that the mountains would
be such a cool backdrop for a short film, I never thought I’d be able to stand filming outside for so
long without knowing the area. But the more I thought about it, I realized I already have the perfect
field guide living ten feet down the hall.”

“I’m flattered,” Minho said. “But how can I help?”

“I want you to show me some of the cool areas around the valley,” Changbin explained. “I’m still
putting the plotline together- Jisung is actually helping with the writing part. That way he could get
some writing credits, too. It kind of helps us both.”

“And the music video thing you just filmed all of us for?”

“It’ll be one of the sequences in the film,” Changbin said, starting to hop back and forth. “Dude, I
really think this could be really cool.”

“Well I’m happy to show you some local spots,” Minho said. “Anything to help, Bin.”

“I’m glad you said that,” Changbin said, grinning wider. “Because I actually have one more
request.”
Minho raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Would you maybe consider acting in the film?”

“Like what we just did?”

“Well,” Changbin’s pitch raised as he held the word out for a few seconds. “You would have a bit
bigger of a role.”

“How big?”

Changbin’s smile turned sheepish. “A lead?”

Minho was shaking his head before he could even get the words out. “Absolutely not.”

“Oh come on, Min,” Changbin begged. “It won’t be that hard- you don’t have to memorize lines or
anything! For the most part I’d just be following along as you hiked through different areas. I just
want somebody that really knows the woods, and you know all of these trails like the back of your
hand.”

“But I’m not an actor?”

“You’re a hiker,” he said. “And that’s what is most important for my vision.”

Minho sighed. “Can you elaborate on the vision, then?”

“Imagine,” Changbin’s eyes lit up. “Have you ever met somebody and, from the moment you met,
you just clicked? And then you want to show them all of the amazing places that you’ve been to,
show them the music that you love, meet the people in their lives. There’s this sudden, intense need
to just integrate your lives.

“Yeah,” Minho said gently. “Yeah, I get that.”

“I’ve always thought that a story about that feeling, that really specific experience of wanting to
share your passion with someone you’re passionate about, would be a really great short film. I
imagine the main character- you- sharing your love of the natural world with the love interest by
showing them all these secret places in the valley. I’m being honest with you when I say that I’m
not totally sure what the details are yet- you know me, I usually start with a vibe & the plot comes
later- but I think this could be a really special project. And I think you’d be the perfect person to
help me lead the audience through that feeling.”

Minho paused, taking in his words. It was true- he loved the woods like almost nothing else in his
life, and if there was something that he was going to teach people about, it would be nature.

“Yeah, but why me?” he asked. “I’m sure someone else would be better, more comfortable in front
of the camera.”

“Yeah, but you’re comfortable out here,” he said. “You can see it just in the way that you carry
yourself out in the woods. It’s like you’re at peace- and that’s the vibe that I’m going for, finding
your home somewhere unexpected. You’ll be able to give the viewers that feeling when you act
out the love story I’m imagining.”

“Love story?” Minho raised his eyebrows. “Who knew you were such a romantic?”

Changbin shrugged. “So will you do it?”

“I may have warmed up to the idea,” he said, which they both knew was a yes.

"Believe me, you will not regret it."

He trusted that Changbin would never make him look stupid, and he knew that all of his work
turned out pretty beautiful in the end. He wasn’t exactly excited about acting as a love interest with
whatever random actor friend Changbin would choose, but at the end of the day he’d do almost
anything to support his friends. He sighed.

“I’ll do it,” he said. He raised a hand to stop Changbin’s celebratory yell, continuing, “But I will
need a lot of direction. I’ve never hiked with a camera crew before, and I don’t know anything
about acting like I'm in love.”

Changbin chuckled. “I don’t think it’ll be too hard for you.”

Minho waited for him to elaborate, but he just reached back down to get his bag and started to turn
back towards the trail. Minho shrugged, going to grab his own pack and catch up with the others.
As he slung his bag over his shoulder, Changbin started to walk ahead.

“One more thing,” he called over his shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“Jisung is going to play the love interest. Just a head’s up.” Minho’s head flew up, but Changbin
was already speed-walking towards the trail. “You’re the best! We start on Friday!”

Minho blinked at his back as he walked away. He had a thousand thoughts swirling around his
head, but one sprang to the front; did Jisung already know about this? Had he agreed without
knowing who Changbin had planned on asking? He was starting to panic. How on earth was he
supposed to act like he was in love with his best friend?

Suddenly, Changbin’s voice rang out in his mind.

“I don’t think it’ll be too hard for you.”

 the first shot
Chapter Notes

Songs for this chapter are “urs” by NIKI and “2/14” by The Band CAMINO

“So something weird happened today.”

Minho cleared his throat when he didn’t get a response. Jisung stirred from his spot on the floor
and looked up, one hand still ready to turn the page of whatever reading comic he’d plucked from
Minho’s shelf ten minutes earlier. He saw the cover of one of his new favorites, a queer summer
romance called Bloom , and almost felt bad for interrupting him.

“Sorry, what’s up?”

“Changbin asked me if I could star in his short film.”

“Woah,” Jisung shot up, eyes big. “And you’re just now mentioning it?”

“It happened literally three hours ago-”

“Changbin has been agonizing over this film for months!” Jisung said. “Dude, it’s all coming
together, this is awesome. He asked me to do it but I didn’t know who I’d be with. We’re going to
be great!”

“You think it’s really a good idea?” he asked. “I’m kind of worried I’ll look stupid.”

“How?”

“Like, he’ll record me when I fall on the trail or something. I don’t know.”
Jisung tilted his head. “Min, you’re going to be great. Even if you look like an idiot sometimes-
which, reminder, we all kind of do at some point- you’re going to be able to look back at this
experience years later and see yourself hiking in a place you love. I think you’ll be really proud of
yourself.”

Minho paused. It wasn’t that Jisung wasn’t a particularly emotional person (Minho had seen him
tear up over Howl’s Moving Castle enough times to see past the cocky bravado), but they didn’t
tend to have a lot of deeper conversations, at least not when Jisung was sober. He thought of the
many things Jisung had said to him while drunk, the words spilling out of him like water, and felt
this comment hit a little differently. This was a stone-cold-sober remark, saying that he believed in
him. It made something swell in his chest.

“Thanks, Ji,” he said softly. “I’m going to do it.”

“Hell yes!” Jisung pumped a fist in the air. “Now everyone will see what a badass I have as my
best friend. Just fucking crushing trails left and right.”

“Don’t let Hyunjin hear you say that,” Minho said with a smirk. “He is pretty adamant about being
your best friend.”

“Hyunjin is my best friend in a family kind of way, you know? I’ve known him practically my
whole life. He’s like a brother.”

Minho met his eyes. “And I’m not?”

Jisung froze. He looked over, eyes flitting up and down before saying, “Do you want to be?”

Minho didn’t respond. He let the question hang in the air for a moment, knowing that Jisung
wanted him to say something else, maybe even move on from the subject all together. He was
comfortable sitting in the silence as he waited for Jisung to break. It suddenly felt very warm in the
room, and Minho wondered for a moment if their heating had broken. He had to blink a few times
to readjust, but he was still steady in the quiet. After a few moments, Jisung sighed and Minho
smiled. He always broke first.

“No,” he said gently. “You’re very much not like a brother.”

“Well, that’s good.”

Jiusng whipped his head up, blinking at him with wide eyes. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Minho said with a strained laugh. “I mean, that would be weird since we’re going to be
playing a couple.”

“Oh,” Jisung winced. “Are you okay with that, by the way? I told Changbin at the beginning that I
could act with whoever, but I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. I can tell him to replace me.”

“No, no,” Minho rushed out. “I think I’d be more freaked out if it was someone else.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I’m not.”

“You don’t have to say that just to make me feel better, I would understand if-”

“I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Yeah?” Minho noticed with a start that he had a light dusting of pink on his cheeks, and he
suddenly felt like he’d swallowed gold.

“Yeah,” he assured him.. “I’m going to be awkward as hell, but if I had to do it with anyone, it’d be
you.”

Jisung gave him a small smile. “Same.”

✩✩✩
At least once a month, Jeongin and Seungmin would head over to the townhouse that Chan, Felix,
Changbin, and Minho rented with the sole purpose of scarfing down dinner and playing a few
rounds of Cuphead on Felix’s insanely huge monitors. They usually tried to order something
somewhat healthy (“I might actually morph into a ramen packet at some point,” Minho had
warned), but Seungmin had endured an especially frustrating presentation that day, and that was all
the motivation they needed to ditch their usual vegetable stir fry for cheap fast-food place. The
nearest diner was attached to a Supercuts and it always kind of smelled like grease, but damn could
they make a burger.

“Hello boys,” Jeongin said, walking into the kitchen with two bags dangling from his arms.
Minho’s stomach growled the second that the scent of fries floated across the room. “How are the
Dirt Divas doing?”

“Ew,” Felix said.

“You have got to stop calling us that,” Changbin added.

Jeongin shrugged. The four roommates had met in a freshmen year elective class, an introduction
to geology course. Minho was the only one who was actually interested- Felix thought he was
going to get to go dig for gold, and was very disappointed when he found out it was just a lecture.
Changbin and Chan had signed up for the course when their first choice- a creative writing course-
had been overbooked. They became fast friends as they crammed for tests about mineral content
and soil composition, and Jeongin had dubbed them the “Dirt Divas” after they came to lunch
looking like “miners” after an especially exhausting all-nighter. Chan tried explaining that the
name was already taken by a somewhat successful vacuum company, but Jeongin and Seungmin
had stood their ground. Embarrassingly, the name stuck.

“What’s next week look like for you guys?” Chan asked, pulling some extra sauce packets from
the bag. “I have like three projects due, which is kind of bullshit this soon after midterms.”

“I have a paper due next Thursday, but otherwise it’s actually a pretty quiet week for me,”
Seungmin admitted. “Jeongin and I are heading out of town next Friday afternoon for that psych
conference, though, so that’s going to be stressful.”

“Three hours on a train with a bunch of science nerds,” Minho sighed. “What could be stressful
about that?”

Seungmin pinched Minho’s arm, right on his pine tree tattoo, and Jeongin laughed at him when he
squealed. He leaned his head back against one of the cheap couch cushions that they had gotten
when they moved in two years prior, ignoring the faint smell of beer from a prior spill. He had
kind of hoped they’d all stay in the dorms for another year, but Changbin had insisted that a
townhouse would be more convenient. Minho had a sneaking suspicion that he was just tired of
having to hide his alcohol in water bottles in their closet, but he’d relented just the same.

“What about you, Minho?” Jeongin asked. “You and Jisung doing another Ghibli marathon?”

“I don’t know, he might be a little busy with his latest boy.” The three other boys shared a look,
and somehow that made Minho’s mood even more sour. “What?”

“Jisung’s dating someone new?” Felix asked carefully.

“Jisung doesn’t date-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Seungmin waved him off. “Ok, so is Jisung hanging out with someone new?”

Minho shrugged, sitting up to grab his food. “That Yunho guy.”

“Oh my god, he’s gorgeous,” Felix said, turning to Chan. “He was in the showcase last Spring,
remember? He was wearing those leather pants that really showed off his-”

“Alright!” Minho yelled. He didn’t want to hear the rest of that sentence. “Got it, he’s perfect.”

The room quieted as Minho took an aggressive bite out of his cheeseburger, grumbling to himself.
Chan looked at Changbin, who gave him a small nod.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He said gently. Minho cocked his head, confused, but Chan
continued, “You don’t have to be embarrassed, it’s totally normal to be jealous.”

“Jealous?” Minho scoffed. “Of what?”

Changbin blinked at him. “Well, because you like Jisung.”

“Excuse me, what?”

Jeongin smacked Changbin’s arm and Seungmin sighed, but Felix looked genuinely perplexed at
Minho’s reaction.

“Min,” Chan said, leaning forward. “Have you ever noticed that whenever Jisung is seeing
someone you get kind of… testy?”

“What ?” He snapped.

“Yes, just like that!” Felix said, clasping his hands together. “Perfect recreation, Min, truly.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, taking another bite of his burger. “Jisung and I
are friends.”

“You’re honestly sitting there and saying you don’t have any feelings for him?” Seungmin asked,
skeptical. “You guys practically act like you’re dating already, that’s the only reason we’re
surprised.”

“Yeah,” Jeongin agreed. “When you both agreed to act as the couple for Bin’s film, we just kind of
thought … well. You’ve never even thought about it?”

Minho hesitated. He would be lying if he said he’d never thought about kissing his best friend, but
didn’t everyone? The way his friends were looking at him now, waiting for a response, kind of
made him feel like he might not like the answer. In his defense, the first time he’d ever felt that
way was before they had even met officially. He had seen Jisung on the quad, laughing at
something that Hyunjin had said, and the sun was shining off of the sweat on his shoulder and…
yeah, he thought about it, so sue him. The second time he thought about it, he’d been very drunk,
so that didn’t really count, either. But the third, the fourth, the fifth times… he didn’t have such
concrete answers for those. He shook his head, pushing it back down where it belonged.

“We just don’t want you to get hurt, you know?” Chan said, offering him a fry. Minho plucked it
out of his hand and gave him a rueful smile. “It’s hard to watch you go running to save him every
time he gets into trouble and then have to watch him go off with someone else.”
Minho winced. Sure, he got Jisung out of a few sticky situations when he drank too much, but
that’s something he would do for any of his friends. He never thought that the rest of his friends
had noticed the way he watched him, though. It made him feel uneasy.

“I appreciate the concern, guys, but I’m fine,” he said, popping the fry in his mouth. “He’s my best
friend, and that’s all.”

Changbin looked at him for a long time. “And you’re okay with that?”

He felt it again, that strange feeling bubbling up in his throat. He hadn’t ever told anybody about it
before, the feeling that he got sometimes when he thought about Jisung in somebody’s arms. It was
a strange kind of heaviness, a weight so strong that he sometimes worried he wouldn’t be able to
get out of bed without falling over. He’d be doomed to lay on the floor of his bedroom until
someone would come by and poke their head in to find him there, still staring at the ceiling and
thinking himself to death. He let himself think about it, once, really think about it. He and Jisung
had gone on an overnight hike together the previous summer, before he left for the year’s leg of the
A.T. He blamed it on the atmosphere, looking back; laying on the ground, looking up at the stars,
that could make you feel a little enamored with anyone, right? When he looked over at his friend to
find that he was already staring back, the softness in his eyes had scared him like nothing ever had
in his entire life. They went to bed, side-by-side, and never talked about the strange moment that
they had that night.

Minho wondered about it sometimes, if it was normal to feel dizzy any time your best friend held
your hand or remembered exactly how many blankets you liked to sleep with at night (three), but
any time he really let himself pick at his feelings, it was too much. So he did what he did best, and
he swallowed the feelings down so deep that he could pretend they had never even been there in
the first place. If he was in control, he could go on with his life.

“Of course I’m okay with it. More than okay,” he said, plastering on a smile. His friends shared a
glance, but said nothing in return. “He and I are going to start filming next week and it’s going to
be totally normal, you’ll see. Jisung’s my best friend. What more could I want?”

He’d had no idea.

✩✩✩

To say that Minho didn’t sleep well would be a little bit of an understatement.
He went to bed at 11 on the dot, fully intending on getting his beauty sleep before the first film
shoot with Jisung the next day. Changbin, bless him, had asked Minho one more time if he was
sure he was okay with the role, and he’d told him it was no problem.

“It’s nothing, Bin,” he’d assured him. “I’m not nervous at all.”

That wasn’t exactly true, though. In fact, from the moment he’d crawled under his plush purple
covers he’d stayed wide-awake, staring at a speck of paint that was chipping on part of the ceiling
from when he’d tried throwing a ball at it like he’d always seen in the movies. He tried counting
sheep, lofi sleep music playlists, and even smacking himself in the face (he did not recommend that
one), but nothing worked. He couldn’t seem to turn his brain off, and when he’d finally relented
and grabbed his cell phone from the nightstand, he was pleased to find that Jisung seemed to be
having trouble that night, too.

Can’t sleep , the text said. Do you think I’ll look dumb on camera?

You always look dumb <3

Minho laughed as some chat bubbles immediately appeared. Somehow, he felt better knowing that
he wasn’t the only one a little bit nervous. It made sense, though. They were always on the same
wavelength.

Wow, can’t want to fall in love on screen with compliments like that!!

Man of my dreams right here.

Minho laughed out loud. He and Jisung shot a couple more texts back and forth until he finally felt
his eyelids starting to grow heavy. He fell asleep still clutching his phone sometime after 3, and
when his alarm went off the next morning he ended up hitting snooze so many times that Changbin
came in and turned it off himself.

The next afternoon, Minho drove his old navy blue car to the base of the mountain. He picked
Jisung up from his apartment on the way, munching happily on the scones that he presented like a
prize once he had buckled his seatbelt.

“Felix was over last night,” he explained as he grabbed a vanilla one. “He couldn’t teach Hyunjin
how to make one without the icing peeling off, but I got to take his example scones. Dude makes a
damn good pastry.”
They spent most of the drive in comfortable silence, enjoying the breeze from the windows he’d
rolled down. Minho had been on this particular trail many times over his three years living in
Chester, but he never really got tired of it. He’d chosen the college primarily for the academic
program, of course, but being near the mountains was the icing on the cake- there was something
about fresh air in your lungs and a wide sea of trees that always cleared his head.

Changbin had texted him the time and a general direction of what to wear before he’d left that
morning (“Pick an outfit you’d wear on a date, but like an outdoorsy date!”), and Minho had
landed on comfortable jeans, his favorite dark green flannel, and his trusty hiking boots. He pushed
the sleeves up, a sliver of his tattoos peeking out near his elbow, and sighed. He’d actually worn
this exact outfit on a date last year, a hike with a girl from his science lecture, but there hadn’t
really been much chemistry outside of their class. Maybe today could be the shirt’s redemption.

Jisung turned the volume up, bobbing his head along with an old song from a band that he and
Minho had planned on seeing in concert later that year. They usually argued about music (Minho
was hip-hop obsessed while Jisung felt more in tune with pop) but they had found a happy medium
in this alt-rock group from a small town in the midwest. They made it a habit to always play one of
their albums when they were driving together, to keep the peace.

“Do I have anything in my teeth?” Jisung asked, turning to him.

“I am literally operating a metal death trap right now, and you’re asking me to take my eyes off the
road.”

“I had spinach in my omelette earlier this morning, I think I might have some in my teeth.”

“Well, that’s definitely worth me chancing our lives.”

“You said it, not me.”

They traded quips back and forth until Minho pulled into the parking lot, killing the engine. He
turned to Jisung and grabbed his jaw, pulling his face closer.

“Show me those chompers.” Jisung laughed, then gave him a wide grin. He was close enough that
Minho could smell his aftershave, a deep cedar, and he cleared his throat. “All clear, no spinach
stragglers. You're a dentist's dream.”
“I’m everyone’s dream,” Jisung said, hopping out of the car.

He’d gone for a similar look, just a darker wash of jeans and a pullover sweater in place of the
flannel. The little silver hoops in his ear twinkled as they walked toward the forest, and he grabbed
Minho’s hand to pull him along faster.

They rounded the corner of the first turn, making their way towards the head of the trail. Changbin
was already there waiting for them, Hyunjin standing by his side holding a second camera. He
paused, giving Minho a very pointed look after glancing at Jisung’s grip on his hand, before
turning back to continue talking animatedly with Hyunjin.

“Hello, director,” Minho said, clasping Changbin on the back. “Who’s ready to make a movie?”

“Director Seo is a little stressed,” Hyunjin said. “He forgot the lens he wanted.”

“I don’t know why every first shoot has to have something go wrong, but it always does,”
Changbin muttered. “At least it isn’t like my first short film. All that footage was shot with the lens
on the camera .”

“Something going wrong now just means we are right on track!” Jisung said with a grin. “It’s part
of your creative process. Come on, Binnie, let’s go ahead like you planned. I’m sure it’ll be great
with whatever lens-thingy you brought instead.”

Changbin sighed, but nodded. When he and Hyunjin turned to start walking, Minho gave him a
quick nod. Changbin tended to get a little strung out when he was working on a project, but Jisung
was pretty good at quelling his panicked episodes.

“The trick is to just keep talking,” Jisung whispered as they ascended. “He’s like a baby, you just
have to keep his attention long enough until he forgets why he was upset in the first place.”

Minho giggled. They made their way up the trail, stopping at a few of the lookout points so
Changbin could shoot some b-roll footage. He instructed them to act like they were on a first date,
asking some basic questions back and forth even though they knew pretty much all of the answers
already. Hyunjin took some still shots as they went, humming happily to himself every time he got
a particularly good shot. Minho was relieved to find that it actually was pretty easy- he and Jisung
just walked a little bit ahead of the other two, taking in the hike and talking about nothing in
particular.

“This isn’t so bad,” Jisung said after the first hour. “I don’t know why I was so nervous.”

Minho raised an eyebrow. “You were nervous?”

“No,” Jisung blushed. “I was just- I don’t know. I’ve never been on camera like this before.”

“You’ve been in one of his projects. That sci-fi project last year.”

“I mean I’ve never been in, like, this genre,” he said, talking with his hands. “I don’t know. I feel
like I’m just awkward.”

“What genre do you mean?” Minho asked, grinning to himself. He knew Jisung was talking about
being in a romantic movie, but it was fun to see him get so riled up. He looked over at him with a
pout.

“You know.”

“I do,” Minho laughed, having mercy on him. “Seriously though, you’re fine. We’ll get through it
together.”

Jisung’s scowl softened into something more neutral. “You’re right,” he said. “If it’s with you, it’ll
be okay.”

“What do you mean?”

“You think I’d want to fake-date anyone else?” Jisung glanced at him, taking a step ahead. “Nah.
Just you.”

Minho tripped over a root, hitting the dirt with his palms out. He hissed as he slammed into the
ground, face already turning red. He knew he’d trip on camera. Jisung scrambled over to him,
grabbing his wrists to help pull him up.
“You good?” he asked, taking his hands. He turned them over, looking over his palms quietly.
“Jesus, you’re clumsy. Let me look… you didn’t cut anything, that’s good.”

“I’m fine,” Minho said, cheeks burning. “Sorry, I always forget the trees here have insane roots.”

“As long as you’re okay,” Jisung said.

Minho nodded. He was about to take a step to keep going when he realized Jisung was still holding
his hands in his own, gently tracing over the lines in his palms. He watched him for a moment, eyes
focused as they looked over every inch of skin for any sign of injury, and Minho found himself
smiling. Jisung liked to talk a big talk, but at the end of the day he was a bit of a softie.

“Got it!”

Minho and Jisung jumped apart, glancing behind them. Changbin was nodding happily, camera
still pressed up to his eye, while Hyunjin gave them a big thumbs up. They jogged over, looking
pleased.

“Good job guys, that was great!” Changbin said. “Did you really trip Min, or was that part of the
acting?”

Minho and Jisung shared a glance. Jisung gave him a smile and a little nod.

“Acting,” Minho said, attempting to sound confident. “I thought it would show the audience that
I’m not just a perfect hiker. Make me a more relatable main character.”

Next to him, Jisung stifled a laugh, but Changbin just nodded. “Well, it was great. And you-” he
turned to Jisung, who promptly stood up straight. “Nice job looking him over. I could really feel
the concern. Don’t be afraid to really lean into that tender side.”

Jisung cleared his throat.

“Anyway, let’s move to the next scene. I think I’ve got enough b-roll of you guys talking along this
route. Min, are there any good lookout points or anything on this trail that would work for a
stationary scene?”

Minho nodded, pulling his phone out from his back pocket. He pulled up a map of the trail,
pointing to a bend in the path a little ways ahead of where they currently were.

“There,” he said, showing Changbin the spot. “It’s got a bit of a steep incline right at the bend, but
it’s a great vantage point for this side of the valley.”

“Perfect,” he said, clasping his hands. “Let’s head that way.”

The four of them made their way to the bend in the trail, turning right instead of following the path
on towards the left. Minho guided them to the edge of the treeline, to a small clearing on the side
of the mountain that faced out towards town.

“There,” he said, pointing to a collection of buildings. “That’s Main Street. You can see the post
office and the fire station there on the right.”

“Perfect, this will work great,” Changbin said. “Stand about right there, okay? Face the town for a
bit, kind of like you’re taking in the view, and Minho I want you to turn towards Jisung. Give it a
couple of beats just looking at him, but Ji I want you to keep looking out over the view. Then,
when it feels right, I want Minho to take Jisung’s hand.”

Minho nodded, walking forward to take his spot. Jisung shuffled up to come to stand by him,
twiddling his thumbs a bit. Hyunjin pulled his camera up to his eye for some still shots as
Changbin adjusted his settings, then gestured for them to set up for his cue.

“And… action!”

Minho took a deep breath. He faced the drop, closing his eyes when he remembered that the
camera couldn’t see his face for a few minutes. He focused on breathing, trying to soak in the
peace that he always felt in the woods, but there was some anxiety still buzzing under his skin. He
didn’t understand why he was getting so flustered over something as simple as holding hands, but
he needed to get it together if he wanted to help Changbin make his movie. He was still trying to
psych himself up when he felt fingers sliding between his own.
He startled, turning to find Jisung looking at him with a reassuring smile. “It’s okay,” he said. “We
got this.”

“Cut!” Changbin called. He sighed. “Nice feeling you guys, but kind of the reverse of what I’m
looking for. Minho, I want you to be the one initiating the moment. You’re the main character, so
we want people to be rooting for you along the way. Making the first move will start it off on a
good foot.”

“Sorry, got confused!” Jisung called, giving a sheepish wave. “We’ll get it right this time.”

He turned back towards the town, giving Minho’s hand a little squeeze before letting go. Minho
exhaled, the stress gone from his body. He knew Jisung wasn’t confused, that he had just done it to
help Minho get rid of his nerves, and he wanted to make sure that the next take was right. He
couldn’t make Jisung carry the whole thing himself.

“Take two… action!”

Minho looked out over the town, trying to pinpoint their townhouse in the long row of blueish-grey
homes. He gave it a moment, then turned to watch Jisung. His friend was still looking at the trees
and the town, eyes raking over the landscape with excitement as if it wasn’t his fifteenth time at
this part of the trail. Minho loved that about him, though, the ability to get excited over something
he’d seen a million times before. Even trivial things felt new with him, somehow, and Minho felt a
smile growing without having to even focus on it.

He lifted his left hand, cautiously reaching over to touch his pinky against Jisung’s. He let it linger
there for a moment, just barely touching, before he let his hand move forward, coming to a rest on
top of Jisung’s. Their hands were close to the same size, but Minho knew he had more calluses
from climbing so he was a little embarrassed as he rested his palm on the back of Jisung’s hand,
slowly ghosting down the length of it until gently flip his hand to be palm up. He hesitated, just for
a second, before lacing their fingers together. Jisung rubbed the back of Minho’s thumb, giving it a
small squeeze, before turning to face him.

Jisung’s cheeks were full and flushed from the hike, and Minho could focus on little else besides
the feeling of his hand in his own. Jisung watched him with a sparkle in his eyes, and the laugh that
spilled out of Minho’s mouth was completely involuntary. Jisung giggled under his breath, biting
back a smile as Minho pulled their hands a bit, making Jisung take a tiny step forward. They
paused there, just looking at one another, and Minho found himself thinking again. He wondered,
what if he just-
“Cut!”

Jisung gave him another smile, squeezing his hand before letting it go to swing by Minho’s side.

“That good, Changbin?”

“Yes, exactly what I was looking for!” he said. “Thanks you guys, you really nailed that whole
awkward, I-think-you’re-cute-but-this-is-terrifying first date feeling.”

“What can I say, I’ve got a lot of experience,” Jisung laughed. “Although this was a lot more fun
than most of those.”

“You get everything you needed?” Minho asked, walking over to join the other three. “Or do we
need to run it again?”

“All good, I think,” Changbin said. “What do you think, Hyunjin?”

“Oh, I think we got it.” Hyunjin nodded, looking down at his own camera. He looked up at Minho
and laughed. “If I didn’t know you guys already, I would’ve thought you really had a thing for each
other.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said. His mouth curved in a soft smile. “From the very first shot.”
 serotonin
Chapter Notes

Songs for this chapter are “Serotonin” by girl in red and “Lost” by Loote

Jisung tried very hard not to think about Minho on the weekends.

Maybe that was a fucked up thing to say about someone you consider your other half, but the truth
was that when the sun went down on a Saturday night, he just wanted to turn his brain off . He
didn’t want to think about his parents leaving another angry voicemail about his choice of major,
or his friends worrying about him when he didn’t text back on the weekends, or the possibility that
he’d never actually get anything he wrote published in the future. He didn’t want to think about all
the things that felt heavy or made his brain go into overdrive, and nobody threw his mind through a
loop quite like Minho.

The pressure of everybody’s expectations felt like too much sometimes. Whenever those feelings
would bubble up inside him, he would focus hard on his breathing and swallow them down like a
shot. It always burned as it went down his throat, dark and acrid, and yet he was somehow still
surprised when it turned his stomach. Maybe his serotonin was just fucked up.

That was usually the part of the evening when things started to get a little blurry. Sometimes he
would be dancing with someone, warm hands on his hips and sweat on his brow, and suddenly he
would blink and he’d be outside. Often, the last thing he would remember would be pulling his
phone out of his pocket and hitting the top number in his favorites, pressing the name with a tiny
little mountain emoji right before he blacked out. He would remember bits and pieces after that-
screaming with friends as someone lost at beer pong, jumping on a table to dance, tripping on the
step of whatever house he had been in for the night. Sometimes he would wake up with scrapes on
his hands from where he had fallen on the sidewalk, but every time they would be clean and
covered with little band aids with Doramon printed on the front.

Minho was there, in his hazy memories, almost every time.

He wasn’t even sure how he got him home, sometimes, when he had had an especially bad night or
had been dead weight in his passenger seat. What he did remember, though, was the smell of cedar
soap and strong arms holding him up as they waited for the elevator, the quiet ping the sign that he
was almost to his bed.
They didn’t talk about it, usually. Sometimes Minho would already be gone when he woke up, a
note tucked under a glass of water with two aspirin next to it. Other times, he’d be asleep on the
couch in his and Changbin’s living room, settled under three blankets and snoring gently. If he sat
there and watched him sleep a bit, well, nobody needed to know.

So, clearly, it wasn’t that he didn’t like thinking about Minho- on the contrary, he was on his mind
practically all the time. It was exhausting.

When Jisung was seven years old, his parents took him to Zion National park. They had thought it
would be a quick trip, take some pictures of the family with the bright orange rocks in the
background for a future Christmas card and call it a day, but from the moment they stepped foot
onto the dirt, Jisung was enraptured. He went home and wrote about it in a little journal he’d gotten
at school, a tiny moleskine booklet. He wrote paragraphs about the mountains and the trees. He
wasn’t sure when his obsession with National Parks had morphed into a desire to write as a career
goal, but somewhere along the way it became the one thing he wanted to work towards. He wanted
to take all the gorgeous, chaotic mess in his head and turn it into words that could paint pictures for
others, so that they might feel the same we he had felt in any given moment. To live vicariously.

The kids he went to high school with all had grand plans: doctors, lawyers, engineers. He knew
that’s what his family wanted- no, expected of him- but even when he tried to convince himself that
he could be happy at a desk job, he could practically feel the wind calling to him.

When he majored in writing, he could practically feel his parents icing him out. It didn’t matter that
he was acing his classes, that his professors loved him, that he’d had two successful internships at
small papers in the area with glowing reviews from his superiors. All his parents saw was a
variation away from the plan, the expectations that they had had for their only child from the day
he was born. They still were paying for his schooling (because God forbid they have a child
without a college degree) but Jisung noticed that they never told their friends what he was
studying. He could feel the weight of their disappointment every time he visited home, which was
a large part of why he started spending all his breaks on campus. Better to haunt a ghost town
during the holidays than sit at the dining room table in total silence, knowing that you’re letting the
people that gave you life down.

“Nobody is ever going to really get me.”

He’s said it over and over to himself the day he moved into the dorms. Of course, he had Hyunjin,
but he felt more like a brother by then. Family was supposed to overlook your failings and root for
you regardless of whether you really deserved it- having his support felt like home but not in the
way he was craving. He just wanted to be seen .

When he met Minho, he felt like he had finally found somebody that really understood him. He
knew that a true kindred spirit would be someone that he could walk a trail with in total silence,
taking in the soft notes of the flowers on the breeze. From the moment he met him in that boring
classroom, he knew that Minho was special. It wasn’t that he was beautiful (which he was), or that
he was just as in love with nature (though it was close). He couldn’t really put his finger on exactly
what it was that drew him to Minho, but he knew from the moment that they met that he wanted to
be in his orbit.

Hyunjin liked to say that they were soulmates, but Jisung didn’t buy that. He didn’t believe in
soulmates, really. How awful would it be if there was only one person in the billions of individuals
on Earth that was made to match you? No, he’d rather make his own soulmate. He wanted to be
able to look at his partner and tell them, I chose you. Not God, not the universe, not some cosmic
force, me. I chose you to be in my life, and I will always choose you.

When he tried to say this, Hyunjin had shushed him with a roll of his eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic,”
he’d said, as if he wasn't a drama-queen incarnate. “Dating doesn’t have to be some cosmic
experience. Most people don’t end up with the first person they date- hell, not even the first few .”

“And that’s why I don’t date,” he had said, and he had meant it.

Jiusng had spent his entire life without a partner, and he didn’t think he particularly needed one in
college. He didn’t date- everybody knew that. Sure, he would go out with people sometimes and
occasionally go home with somebody after a long night, but he didn’t date . When he finally did
decide to commit to a partner, he knew he’d be with him or her for the long haul. He thought that it
would easy, a seamless transition from friend to forever, and he hadn’t found that yet.

He had his classes, his friends, and his passion for writing and Tuesday morning hikes. Hyunjin,
who had known him since the two were in literal diapers, had always insisted that then he found
the right person he would know . He imagined the heavens opening up, the sun shining through
until it landed on just the right person, illuminating their face so Jisung could pick them out of the
crowd. The closest he had ever gotten to that was- well, it didn’t matter. Jisung didn’t date.

Minho, though, wasn’t a boyfriend. He wasn’t even a friend, really- that word only seemed to
scratch the surface. Minho was a kindred spirit, somebody whose heart was made out of the same
stuff, and Jisung remembered being so surprised when he easily settled into his life like he’d
always been there. He was a worshiper of the world, somebody who could stand in an open field
and drink in the different golden shades of yellow in the tall grass. He was a buff, tattooed guy that
always cried a little over the first snowfall of the year because it was so pretty. Minho was a
beautiful enigma.

Jisung knew from the moment they had bonded over that first hike that he would be in Minho’s life
for as long as he could. As long as he would have him. He knew in the back of his mind that he
wasn’t really good enough to be so close to somebody who was so kind, so put together, but for the
most part he was able to quiet those fears when they were curled up together on the couch and
laughing too hard. He wasn’t stupid- he knew that he was kind of a train wreck sometimes, but he
had never felt judged by Minho. He was maybe the one person that he’d ever met that had never
judged him. Jisung adored him for it.

They might have seemed like an unlikely pair at first glance: Jisung, the loud, gregarious social
butterfly with a zest for words was far more likely to be found at a house party than a cozy night in.
Minho was more of a bookworm- quiet, quick-witted, more at home in the woods than a crowded
city. As different as the two were, their passions overlapped in such a way that it was impossible
for the two of them not to become friends. It was inevitable.

Not fate , though, Jisung reminded himself. That would cheapen it, somehow, if they were just two
pawns in some cosmic game of chess. No, Jisung liked to think that they were like two little maple
seeds, the little floating helicopters that he used to chase in his backyard with his nanny following
close behind. He liked the idea of drifting along in the wind with somebody until they could settle
on the ground at the end of their journey, side-by-side. Equals.

But you’re not worthy of him , Jisung’s dark little mind would whisper, he is so very good. He’d
look at Minho’s smiling face and in between the waves of fondness there would be a riptide of
panic, the knowledge that one day Minho might wake up and realize that he wasn’t worth his time
in the first place. He’d fall into the thoughts, the pinprick of anxiety that he’d never be good
enough, and then he’d do what he did best: push his feelings down and pretend they weren’t there.
It was exhausting to care so much about somebody who deserved better, so he let himself have
Saturday nights to shut all that down. Drown it out.

He thought he was pretty good at settling his fears and just enjoying Minho’s company, but maybe
he was getting too attached for his own good. It was only a few days since their first shoot for
Changbin’s movie, but Hyunjin had already given him at least four not-so-subtle comments about
how good he and Minho had “acted”.

“Stop putting it in air quotes,” Jisung had said the night before as they tore into some tacos from
the local food truck. “You look dumb making the hand motions in real life.”

“It’s kind of like you weren’t even acting at all,” Hyunjin said. He threw a packet of hot sauce at
Jisung when he’d ignored him. “Seriously. You guys have crazy chemistry.”

“Well, then that should be good for Changbin’s movie,” he grumbled, mouth full of ground beef
and pico de gallo. “He’s lucky he has friends that are good actors.”
“Actors,” Hyunjin said flatly. “Right.”

Jisung wasn’t sure why that comment in particular had him spiraling, but it was another one of
those nights where he couldn’t get his brain to quiet down. He’d been having trouble with a new
poem all week and he’d gotten a quiz back that he’d been sure he’d aced, only to find that he’d
barely passed it. He felt nasty all day, and by the time the sun dipped down below the horizon, he
felt like his skin was buzzing.

He only made it two steps into the living room before Hyunjin was giving him the look again.

“What?” He said, reaching into the cabinet for the handle of rum. He always pre-gamed, because
you never knew what kind of shitty drinks would be at a party. At least at home he could guarantee
a decent liquor and a mixer.

“Nothing,” Hyunjin said, in a way that made it very clear there was something .

Jisung poured the alcohol into a tiny glass and threw back one shot, then two, before making his
way over to the couch. He plopped down next to Hyunjin and searched his face. “Spit it out
already.”

“Do you have a ride home?”

Jisung furrowed his eyebrows. “What?”

“I know by now that I can’t talk you out of going out every weekend,” Hyunjin said with a shrug.
“Hell, you know I come with you half the time! So seriously, no judgement here, but at least tell
me you have a ride lined up.”

“I’ll get an Uber.”

“Sure you will,” Hyunjin snorted.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You and I both know what’s going to happen tonight.”

Jisung bristled a bit, but tried not to show that it was bothering him. He crossed his arms. “I don’t
know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re going to show up to- wait, where are you going tonight?”

“Some frat party.”

“You still hanging out with Yunho?”

“Not as much,” Jisung said with a shrug. “We had a good time the first night, but he seems like a
relationship-guy. I didn’t want to hold him back.”

Hyunjin hummed. “So who are you going out with tonight?”

“This one guy from the lacrosse team I met last week. He invited me to a party at one of the frat
houses down on Clarke Street.”

“You’re going to show up to this frat party,” Hyunjin paused to offer an exaggerated gag. “And
you’re going to drink way too much, and you’re going to get sad, and then you’re going to call
Minho. You do it every time.”

“Not every time-“

“And we both know he’ll drop whatever it is he’s doing and drive over to pick your drunk ass up.
Then he’ll spend all night taking care of you, and you’ll say some shit that you would never say
sober-”

“I say stupid stuff when I’m drunk.”

“Or is it honest stuff, and it only comes out when you’re hammered?” Hyunjin said, putting a hand
on his hip. “And once Minho gets you home safe you’ll sleep it off, then you’ll wake up in the
morning remembering absolutely none of it.”

“I’d be fine not remembering this conversation,” Jisung said, rolling his eyes.

“Sung, seriously,” Hyunjin said, uncrossing his legs so he could lean forward. “This isn’t
sustainable. And just because you don’t remember what you say, doesn’t mean other people
don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

Hyunjin paused. “Look, I know you care a lot about Minho-”

“Not having this conversation,” Jisung said, hopping up from his chair. He threw back another
shot, then a big swig of whatever juice Hyunjin had bought that week (mixed berry this time, bless
him), before pulling out his phone. “I’m going to the lobby to meet some people. I’ll see you when
I get back, okay?”

“Whatever you say,” Hyunjin raised his hands in surrender. “Just be careful. You know I love
you.”

Jisung paused, freezing in the doorway before he stepped into the hallway. He looked over his
shoulder to find his roommate watching him carefully. He softened.

“I love you too, Jin,” he said. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

✩✩✩

The bass thumped in his ears, so loud that it was bordering on uncomfortable. Jisung swayed as he
reached for the cup he had perched precariously on the banister, worried that the pounding music
would finally be the last straw that knocked it over. He swallowed the rest of the shitty beer he’d
been playing pong with, wincing at the sour aftertaste, and glanced down at his watch- 1:17a.m.
Fuck , he meant to get home by midnight.
He didn’t need to call Minho.

“Is anyone heading towards Clover street?” he yelled. A few people heard him over the synthy pop
song playing, but nobody seemed to be leaving. He’d missed the main crowd heading home a little
after midnight, still enthralled in a drinking game with his new friends, and now he was regretting
it. He reached into his pocket to fish out his phone, tapping on the screen to wake it up. He swiped
up so that his lockscreen (a photo of him and Minho at the base of Sanctus Mountain) would make
way for his chaotic collection of apps. Felix had tried to show him how to organize it in an
aesthetic way, using the widgets and some fancy backgrounds, but he could never get the hang of
digital organization. He poked around, trying to pull up Uber, but when he finally came back to
reality he found himself halfway through a DoorDash order. He shook his head. Chicken nuggets
would have to wait.

He didn’t need to call Minho.

He walked over to the kitchen to get another drink. He could feel himself on the line between
drunk and starting to sober up, and if he was going to be stuck at a house party he wanted to be
properly inebriated. There was nothing worse than being the first to sober up and notice how
sweaty and gross everything was. He threw the drink back, then tried to come up with a plan.

He didn’t need to call Minho.

Jisung wandered over to one of the couches, pushed up against the wall to create a makeshift dance
floor in the middle of the living room. He sat on the middle cushion, settling in between a guy in a
plaid shirt slumped over one armrest to his left and two girls making out on his right. It was still so
loud, people were still dancing a bit off-beat in front of him, and suddenly Jisung felt very alone.

He didn’t need to call Minho.

Yet, at some point he must have, because one moment he was watching a guy that lived in his
dorm building freshman year puke into a fake plant, and the next he was looking up to find Minho
standing in front of him. He stretched out a hand. Jisung took it without even really comprehending
what was happening.

“You ready to go, Ji?”

Jisung blinked, shocked at how he had materialized in front of him. For a moment he thought he
might be a figment of his drunken imagination, but then he could catch a hint of Minho’s cologne
(some kind of woodsy vanilla scent that did ridiculous things to his head) and realized he was
really there. He was always there.

Jisung nodded, pulling on his hand. He swayed a bit as he stood but Minho placed a hand on his
back, steadying him. Jisung waved at the people they walked past, but only one or two
acknowledged him in their own party haze. Minho guided him out of the house, leading him
towards his car parked neatly along the sidewalk.

“How are you doing? he asked. “Feel okay to go for a ride?”

“Josh just threw up on a ficus,” he said stupidly. Minho nodded like he had answered his question.
“You’re not supposed to over-water those.”

“I don’t think it was a real plant, Ji,” Minho said. “Duck down, don’t hit your forehead on the car.”

Jisung plopped down in the passenger seat, head impossibly heavy. He sighed, trying to buckle his
seatbelt, but his hands refused to cooperate. Minho had materialized again, this time in the driver’s
seat, and Jisung was relieved when he leaned over the center console and clicked the lock for him.
He tugged on the belt to make sure it was snug and gave Jisung a smile. He always took such good
care of him.

“You’re too good to me,” Jisung mumbled. He reached out to take his hand, intertwining their
fingers. He felt the little creases on the inside of his palm, tracing his lifeline from finger to wrist.
“Your hands are so soft, Min.”

“Thanks,” Minho cleared his throat. “Let’s get you home, okay?”

“Even your hands are pretty. Does it ever get hard being so pretty?”

Minho sighed. “You aren’t going to remember any of this.”

“Don’t care,” he said, crossing his arms. “You’re pretty and you smell good.”
Somewhere in the back of his head, he knew he should probably stop talking, but he was reaching
the point in the night where his filter disappeared. He just wanted to say all of the things that he
usually stuffed down, too embarrassed to vocalize, and now suddenly seemed like a great time. He
should tell people things that they deserved to hear, right? He heard the engine come to life, the
click as Minho moved the car into drive. He felt safe.

“Pretty,” he said again. Minho chuckled, but didn’t respond. His drunk brain took that as a sign to
continue. “You know, sometimes people ask me about you at these parties.”

“Oh yeah?” Minho asked. “And what do they ask you about?”

“If you have a girlfriend,” he hiccuped. “Or a boyfriend.”

“I appreciate the inclusivity. And what do you tell them?”

“Guess.”

“You tell them the truth, that I’m a little single pringle?”

“I tell them to fuck off.”

Minho laughed out loud, his voice bouncing off the enclosed space of his car. At some point he
even snorted, and Jisung thought it was the prettiest thing his drunk ears had ever heard. He loved
Minho’s laugh, how sometimes it started as a giggle in his chest that escaped in little bursts. He
loved to be the one that made him laugh, too, and had always prided himself on being somebody
that could make Minho smile that widely. He was smiling now, and Jisung could smell the alcohol
clinging to his shirt and suddenly felt despondent. Minho was so bright, and he was so dark. How
could he keep dragging down the sun?

“Oh, Min,” he sighed.

“Yeah?”

“I wish I could be someone that could be with somebody like you.”

Minho glanced over, eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

Jisung blinked. “Huh?”

Minho continued to drive, still a few minutes from Jisung’s apartment. “What did you say?” he
asked again. Jisung didn’t respond, so he assumed he’d finally fallen into some sort of sleep, or
blackout. It didn’t really matter at that point; in his experience, if Jisung fell asleep on the way
back, he tended to fight him less on getting him inside. He was holding onto hope that it would be
the same case that night.

He pulled into the parking garage, killing the engine. Jisung made no motion to get up.

“Hey, it’s time to go home.”

Jisung just sighed again. “You smell good.”

“Thank you,” Minho said patiently. “Let’s get you in the elevator and you can sniff me all you
want.”

Jisung opened his eyes, contemplating the offer. He thought that sounded like a good deal. He had
a sudden burst of energy, breaking away from Minho to sprint towards the elevator. His footsteps
were loud echoes in the silence of the complex, and he jumped when he reached the end of the
hallway first.

“Ji, wait !”

He laughed, pleased when he reached the buttons first. He hit both the up and the down buttons
and giggled when they twinkled back at him. When Minho reached the doors, he looked confused.

“Why did you press both?”

“So they can race,” he said, like it was obvious. Minho just nodded.
The elevator ride passed with minimal sniffing from Jisung, but he was definitely starting to fade as
they reached his front door. He tried to fish his keys out of his pocket but he couldn’t find his
pocket (“ I swear it was just here !”). He wondered if pockets could fall off of pants. Maybe? He’d
have to Google that in the morning.

Minho got him to his bed, pulling his shoes off one by one. Hyunjin’s bedroom door was shut but
he could see a light spilling out of the crack at the bottom of the door, so he knew he was waiting
until Jisung got home safe. Minho made a stop in the kitchen before coming back to Jisung’s room,
and he handed him a glass of water. Jisung drank a few sips, complaining that they needed to
change their Brita filter, before he was hit with another wave of exhaustion. By the time his head
hit the pillow, he was halfway to unconsciousness.

“You sleep it off,” Minho said, pulling the blanket up to his chest. “I’ll be in the living room.”

Jisung mumbled into the pillow as he walked away.

“What was that?”

Jisung stirred. “Sometimes I think about what it would be like to kiss you.”

Minho froze in the doorway. “What?”

Jisung tried to respond, but he could feel himself slipping back into the darkness. He would wake
up the next morning with a pounding head and a note from Minho that he’d be back with breakfast
bagels, so try not to puke while he was gone! Jisung would check his phone for clues and rack his
brain, but there didn’t seem to be a logical explanation for how he’d woken up. There was
absolutely no memory from the night before that could properly explain why he had blinked awake
that morning with his throat impossibly dry, thinking about dark green flannel and the curve of
Minho’s lips.
 scripts & scarves
Chapter Notes

The songs for this chapter are “Time After Time” by Tokimeki Records feat. Marian
Carmel and “Don’t Wanna Be Your Friend” by Ayokay feat. Katie Pearlman

Jisung was running late. He’d like to have blamed it on his alarm clock, or daylight savings, or
even Hyunjin taking too long in the shower, but the truth was that he was just exhausted and
dreading going to class. His hair, which was usually combed into some form of submission, was
heavily tousled in a state of bed head. He had thrown on the first clean (i.e. passed the sniff test)
shirt that he had scooped out of The Chair in the corner of his room. He had a few missed texts
from the group chat and two missed calls from his parents, but that felt too exhausting to focus on
for very long. His usual black jeans had gone M.I.A. so he had to settle for a regular dark wash, and
it wasn’t until he was finally in his seat for class that he realized he was wearing two different
sneakers. The left one, a dark navy Nike, looked a lot better than the right one, a dark grey Vans
that he had owned since he was 16. By the time he finally sat down in the back of the lecture hall,
he felt like he’d already lived the entire day three times over.

“You look horrible.”

Jisung looked up. Chan, Hyunjin, and Changbin were looking at him from over the tops of their
laptops. Jisung usually loved this class, loved spending time with his friends working on something
creative, but he knew they would want to talk about Changbin’s film and he’d gotten enough
razzing from Hyunjin over the weekend already.

“Thanks, guys, that makes me feel great.” He sighed, pulling his own laptop out of his bag.

“Sorry, dude,” Changbin laughed. “I’ve just never seen your hair stick up like that. Did you have a
rough night? Maybe stick your hand in an electrical outlet?”

“Just had trouble sleeping.”

“How so?” Chan, somehow, was still typing even as he was talking. “I’m kind of the insomnia
king, so I can give you some tips if you’d like.”
“That’d be great, thanks,” Jisung said, fighting an oncoming yawn. “I feel like I just laid there
staring at the ceiling for hours. By the time I finally fell asleep, it was time to get up.”

“Something on your mind?”

Jisung booted up his computer and thought for a moment.

“I guess I’m just feeling kind of guilty.”

Chan frowned. “Why?”

“Minho.”

Changbin leaned forward, resting his cheek in his hand as he searched Jisung’s face. “Ji, if you
don’t want to do the film anymore, I totally understand-”

“No, no,” he said quickly. “It’s not that.”

His friends waited patiently, ignoring as their professor started talking about their outline reviews.

“I called Minho again this weekend,” he admitted. Chan hummed in understanding.

“I heard him get you home,” Hyunjin said. “I think he was asleep before he went to get you, he
was still in his pajama pants.”

“The ones with the cats in mustaches?” Changbin asked. “Those are hilarious.”

“Yeah, those!”

Jisung groaned. “Ugh, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize to us , Jisung,” Chan said. “Minho is the one that goes and gets you
every time. This is the first time it’s been two weekends in a row, though.”

“I know, and I don’t even mean for it to happen,” Jisung said. “I was literally trying to order an
Uber at that party. I have no idea when I called him. It was like one second I was trying to get
home, and the next he was just standing in front of me.”

“Maybe just take it easy this weekend,” Changbin offered. “I know the guys would love to have
another movie night. We all miss you when you aren’t there.”

Jisung offered him a small smile. “I’d like that,” he said. “I’ll make it happen.”

“We can have it at their place,” Hyunjin said. “Nobody hosts a party like the Dirt Divas.”

Chan groaned. “Not you too!”

“Are you still up for filming this afternoon?” Changbin asked. “I can text Minho and tell him we’re
rescheduling if you don’t feel like you can handle it today.”

“No, I want to do it,” he said. He pulled up the document he’d been working on, a loose script for
the film. “Do you guys want to read over what I wrote this past week?”

“Sure thing.”

Chan and Changbin read over his shoulder silently while Jisung tapped his fingers against the desk.
Jisung tried not to watch them, searching their faces for any hint of their response. Hyunjin
elbowed him so he’d scoot over more, making room for him to stick his head near the screen as
well. Their professor had moved on to some powerpoint about style guides, but the four of them
didn’t really need to know Chicago or APA style for a film script, so Jisung considered it a free
class to work on his part of the film.

Changbin cleared his throat. “This is…”

“What?” Jisung turned his head. “It’s… what?”

Chan and Changbin shared a glance, having some sort of silent argument over which of them
would talk, while Hyunjin just sat and looked at Jisung like he was seeing him for the first time.
He stared at him with big eyes, mouth a little bit open, and if they weren’t in class Jisung would
lean forward and blow in his face to make him blink already. He waited for their response before
making a scene, though, bouncing his leg up and down under the desk.

“Does Minho know you’re writing the script?” Chan finally asked.

“Yeah,” Jisung said. “I mean, he knows that I’m writing it, but I told him that we’re largely going
by Changin’s vision .”

“I appreciate the dedication to the role, I do,” Changbin said. “But this is, like, pretty raw?”

“I thought you wanted that?”

“I do, I do,” Changbin assured him. “And you know I love your writing, this is no exception. It’s
just, I’ve always said you guys could just play some random couple, but this dialogue is very much
you guys .”

“I just thought that would make it feel more authentic,” Jisung said, shrugging. “I mean, Min is
already nervous about being in front of the camera, so I thought that if we could talk about the
things we usually talk about, it might help him feel more relaxed.”

“Where in the plot do you think this will go?”

“Towards the end, probably. This is just what I’ve been envisioning in my head at the conclusion
of the big hike at the end, at least.”

Hyunjin finally blinked. Thank God.

“Do you think,” he said carefully. “That maybe, some of the stuff in this script is what you really
want to say?”
“Yeah, that’s why I wrote it,” he said, confused. “The characters should be able to-”

“No, I mean,” Hyunjin glanced at the two other guys, who gave him a small nod. “Do you think
that, maybe, this is what you want to say to Minho in real life ?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jisung mumbled, pulling his laptop back to the safety
of his personal bubble. “I just wrote this for the movie.”

Chan nodded. “Whatever you say.”

Changbin placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s really good,” he said gently. “Thanks for showing
us.”

Jisung cleared his throat. “Yeah, no problem.”

“So, should we forward this to Minho for today’s-”

“No!” Jisung rushed out. “Not yet.”

Chan and Changbin looked at him blankly, but Hyunjin had already turned back towards the front
of the classroom. He seemed to understand Jisung’s intentions already.

“This is for the end scene,” he explained. “I have an outline for today’s shoot in Google Drive- I
can send him that one.”

Changbin nodded. “So I take it, you’d like to keep this ending to ourselves for now?”

Jisung flushed. “Yeah, if that’s okay.”

“Of course it’s okay,” Chan said. “Hyunjin?”

Hyunjin glanced back at his friends, giving Jisung a reassuring smile.

“You know I’ve got your back, dude,” he said. “Just let us know when you’re ready.”

✩✩✩

That Tuesday morning found Minho and Jisung halfway up the mountain, boots slick with mud
from the rain the day before.

“What’s on the menu today?”

“I tried one of the seasonal drinks,” Minho said, raising his thermos. “Some kind of spice. Not
pumpkin, surprisingly.”

“How festive of you.”

“Let me guess,” Minho said, peeking at Jisung’s mug. It was a milky brown. “Soy latte with... two
shots”

“Ha! Wrong,” Jisung said with a triumphant grin. “There’s three.”

Minho rolled his eyes, thinking that was a bit of technicality, but didn’t try to counter his argument
as they started walking up the trail. Jisung ducked under a branch that had become slightly
overgrown- campus grounds didn’t take care of the trail since it was technically not on university
land, so the trees relied on park rangers to notice when they were in need of some grooming.
Minho kind of liked it like this, though, the slightly chaotic collection of leaves and branches along
the trail, the whisper of something that used to be wild.

The path along the Nolan trail was mostly flat, a very gradual incline snaking up the side of a
small mountain right at the edge of their college campus. It was popular among the students for a
variety of reasons- it was an easy beginner’s hike, and didn’t require a car to get to. Minho had
always enjoyed the Nolan, finding the slight slope of the trail relaxing before jumping into a busy
day. Some people liked to relax at the end of the day with a glass of wine- Minho liked to relax at
the beginning of the day, outside. He could feel the kaleidoscope of pebbles under his boots crunch
as he took each step, the little rocks providing a soundtrack to their walk. Crunch, crunch, crunch,
crunch. It was like a little marching anthem, keeping them in time with one another as they traveled
deeper into the forest.

“Three shots of espresso? What, are you trying to have a heart attack?”

“You’re one to talk!”

Minho laughed, caught. He’d practically had an IV drip of black tea during midterms, so he wasn’t
exactly one to chastise his friends for their caffeine supply. Still, he lived for riling Jisung up, so he
stuck his chin and the air and said, “Well, I’m older and wiser, so you should learn from my
mistakes.”

“Yeah, because you’re so mature.”

“Hey!” Minho laughed, reaching over to flick him on the arm. “I’ll have you know that I’m the
most mature one of our friends by a longshot-”

“Chan.”

“Well, besides Chan-”

“Seungmin.”

“Seungmin is smart, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to maturity. He still sticks his tongue out at
me.”

“And sometimes Changbin.”

“Don’t drag my dear, sweet roomie into this!” Minho laughed, waving off his words. “Yesterday
Changbin got his leg stuck in his pants, I refuse to acknowledge him as a sage. I had to literally
help pull him out of his jeans. Sometimes I feel like his parent.”

Jisung grew quiet, and Minho waited for him to throw in the next witty comment, but something
seemed to have killed their normally easy banter. He looked over to Jisung and was surprised to
find that his normal smile was turned into a slight frown, brows furrowed as he focused on the
ground. Minho side-stepped until they were side-by-side, halting their walk by reaching out to grab
one of Jisung’s sleeves.

“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“I know when something’s bothering you, Ji,” he said, reaching down to give Jisung’s hand a
squeeze. He ran his thumb over the scar on the back of his hand, the mole tucked between his
knuckles. “You know you can tell me anything.”

“Sorry,” Jisung said. His voice softened as Minho held his hand, and he turned to face Minho. He
tried to morph his frown into a smile, albeit a grim one. “I’m fine, seriously.”

Minho simply raised an eyebrow, waiting. Jisung sighed.

“I just had another fight with my parents this morning,” he finally admitted. “It’s nothing, literally
not even worth mentioning. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you.”

It was Minho’s turn to frown. It was no secret that Jisung’s parents aren’t exactly jazzed about him
being a writing major, thinking that the profession was not exactly a stable one. They had not-so-
gently encouraged him towards a career in STEM, but Jisung had practically fallen asleep in the
computer science class he’d agreed to take. Minho wasn’t sure if all of the pressure came from that
fact that the two of them were so tech-focused (and he meant focused- Jisung’ mom was currently
the CFO at a cryptocurrency company, while his dad was a proficient engineering fellow at a local
laboratory), or the fact that Jisung was an only child. Either way, the entire time he’d known
Jisung, he’d heard of the “discussions'' that they had about his future. Minho could see him putting
pressure on himself to succeed in writing, partly to spite them but also because he just really loved
it. Anyone who read his work could see that he had a talent, too, and Minho thought if his parents
would just give him a chance, Jisung would blow them both away.

“They’re calling on a Tuesday morning?” he asked. “I thought they usually bugged you about it on
the weekend.”

“I made the mistake of trying to stop the weekend calls,” Jisung snorted. “I said hey I’ll be busy
this Saturday and they immediately said oh no problem, we’ll just call Tuesday instead . I can’t
escape it.”

“Don’t let them get to you,” he said gently, reaching out to take his hand. “I know they don’t get it
yet, but I really think they will someday. You’re too talented for them to ignore it forever.”

“I doubt that,” he mumbled. “I think they’ll always be disappointed in me.”

“Nobody with half a brain cell could ever be disappointed in you, I mean it. Hey, look at me,”
Jisung finally looked up, eyes impossibly soft. “They will be proud of you, Ji, I promise. And if for
some reason they aren’t, then fuck them . You’re an incredible writer and anyone would be lucky to
be a part of your life.”

Jisung nodded to himself, seemingly considering Minho’s words. Jisung usually left the room
when his parents called, embarrassed at how he couldn’t hide the frustration that inevitably came
out whenever his parents commented on his major. Minho could still hear how the desperation had
bled into his voice over the course of the conversation, and he’d only actually been physically
present for one phone call out of what felt like hundreds. Jisung would look down at the caller ID,
sigh, and find the nearest exit while all of his friends pretended not to notice. He didn’t like to talk
about it, quick to shut down any attempt to broach the subject, but occasionally he would bring it
up on his hikes with Minho. Whenever he did, Minho would tread lightly, worried that showing
too much interest would cause him to shut down again. It reminded him of a deer, frozen in the
headlights and quick to spook at any sudden movement.

He finally looked at Minho again, and his eyes were a little glazed in the way that meant he was
either drunk, or about to cry. Minho hated both.

“I don’t deserve you, Min,” he said gently.

“False.”

Jisung laughed at that, voice thick. “Well, thanks.”

Minho pulled him into a hug. He told himself it was for Jisung, but if he was being honest he just
couldn’t handle staring at Jisung looking so sad this early in the morning. He could feel his friend
finally exhale in his arms, head settling on Minho’s shoulder with a soft thud .
“I’d do anything for you, Jisung, you know that,” he said quietly, even though there was nobody
else around. “Anywhere, anytime.”

Jisung let out a wet laugh. “I know,” he said. “And I love you for it.”

Minho’s heart stuttered. He hoped Jisung didn’t feel it, still pressed against his chest, but he didn’t
seem to notice anything. For a fleeting moment he thought about bringing up what Jisung had said
to him that weekend, the drunken whispers that he never seemed to remember, but he couldn’t
seem to summon up the courage. He gave one last sigh before he stepped back, giving Minho a
smile before turning back towards the path. He was only a few steps away, but Minho could feel
the absence immediately, his chest growing colder as Jisung walked ahead of him. He wondered if
it would always be like this: Jisung leading the way, pushing through the pain, while Minho was
content to love him from behind.

✩✩✩

“Hey!”

Minho looked up from tying the laces on his boots, his usual double-knot, to find his friends
waving at him wildly. Jisung and Hyunjin arrived at the parking lot at the base of the mountain a
few minutes after he and Changbin had pulled in, but they already seemed ready to get started.
Hyunjin walked over to Changbin and jumped into a conversation about framing that Minho didn’t
quite understand, but Jisung hung back for a moment. He gazed towards the top of the mountain,
eyes fixated on a patch of trees that looked close, but was in all likelihood miles away from where
they stood. Minho approached him, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

“See anything interesting?”

“I think there’s a falcon’s nest,” Jisung said, voice raising in excitement. “At first I thought that
bird just really liked that tree, but I think I can see a nest in one of the higher branches.”

Minho pulled his binoculars out of his bag. “Here, have a look.”

“Thanks,” Jisung said, taking them and pressing his eyes into the slots. “ Yes , definitely a nest!”

Minho giggled. He didn’t have the heart to tell him that falcons had a breeding season from March
to May, so it was likely an old abandoned nest from the previous season that a bird just happened to
land near. If he was a better conservationist he’d probably share the information, but it was
endearing how excited Jisung was about the situation. He hopped from foot to foot, narrating what
the bird was doing, and Minho let him have a few minutes of falcon-time before Changbin and
Hyunjin started calling them over.

“Let’s go, guys,” Hyunjin yelled. “We want to get the good light. You can gaze upon the splendor
of nature or whatever when we’re done, there’s birds everywhere.”

“You’re right,” Jisung whipped the binoculars towards his roommate and gasped. “In fact, I just
found a bird-brain!”

Hyunjin stuck his tongue out at him while Changbin laughed, finalizing the settings on his camera.
“You guys go over the plan for today?” he asked. “We can follow the script loosely, I just have a
few parts that I definitely want included. I’ll let you know when those parts come up. Otherwise,
feel free to just kind of converse like normal.”

Minho nodded, pulling Jisung towards their friends. “I read over it on the way here,” he said. “This
is the scene where the characters become official, right?”

“That sounds so old fashioned,” Jisung said. “What’s next, going steady ?”

“Whatever you want to call it,” Changbin said. “That’s the main objective for today. So, I actually
want to shoot a little differently this time. Hyunjin and I will walk ahead of you guys and shoot
from the top, so we can see your faces as you talk and move up the mountain.”

“I’ll try not to trip and eat shit,” Hyunjin said, saluting them. “Scouts honor.”

“You weren’t a boy scout, Jin.” Jisung said, tilting his head.

“Is that what that means?” he asked. “I never knew. Always thought it was just a phrase.”

Jisung laughed. “Well, I guess it still works. This path is pretty clear though, I don’t think there are
many trip hazards. I would never let you bust your pretty face, dear.”

“Which is why I adore you,” Hyunjin said, making a kissy face at him. “But I don’t know if I can
walk backwards on an incline very smoothly, so be patient with me.”

“Yeah, you should be fine,” Minho assured him. “I could walk this one in my sleep.”

“Cool,” Changbin said. “So we will shoot from the front on the way up, and then I want to get the
main conversation scene at the base of the mountain. That sound like a plan?”

Minho nodded. “This hike is about an hour and 45 minutes to the top, is that okay?”

Changbin considered it for a moment. He glanced down at his watch. “Yeah, that should actually
work. We can shoot on the way up, which takes the most time, then coming down will be quicker.
We should be done right around five, and that means we’ll have golden hour for the main scene.”

“Golden hour?”

“It’s when the light hits in the late afternoon,” Jisung explained. “It makes everything look kind of
golden, hence the name. Half of Hyunjin’s selfies are from golden hour.”

“And they’re stunning,” Hyunjin said. “Okay, let’s go!”

Minho took the first step, little rocks crunching under his feet as they began to walk towards the
trail. Jisung seemed to be in a good mood, talking quickly as he pointed out different rocks and
birds. Changbin seemed to be rolling from the moment they started the ascent, only taking a break
when they reached a more bendy part of the path.

“Jisung, take Minho’s hand,” he directed. “Remember, you guys are on your, like, third or fourth
date at this point in the story. Look comfortable with each other.”

“Impossible,” Jisung said, but he was grinning as he reached over and took Minho’s left hand in his
own.

Minho felt his heart stutter (which was stupid , he reminded himself, since he’d held Jisung’s hands
hundred of times) as they walked towards the clouds. Jisung kept talking, seemingly unfazed by
having Minho’s fingers tangled with his own. It took a few minutes, but eventually Jisung’s story
about his cousin forgetting his own middle name at the DMV had him laughing enough that the
tension left his body. He could feel the stress melting from his body like a fever he’d finally
broken, a light sweat on his forehead as they reached the hour mark.

Hyunjin managed to stay upright the entire time, even when he nearly tripped over a slippery rock
with some overgrown moss. He looked extremely pleased with himself when he regained his
balance.

“Scout’s honor!”

Jisung lost some of his steam as they reached the peak of the mountain, right around Minho’s
estimate of an hour and forty-five minutes. He looked at Minho, waiting for another conversation
topic, but he didn’t have any ideas either.

“Talk about your previous dates,” Changbin said, camera rolling. “You can just make stuff up,
obviously, but make it flow if you can.”

Minho nodded. He swallowed, trying to think of something to say, but luckily he could always rely
on Jisung to do what he did best- tell a story.

“Do you remember the first time I showed you Chasing Wildfires ?” he asked. “When you came
over to my place for the first time and I played you their album on my old record player? I think it
was the Doing Better album.”

Minho raised an eyebrow. He had been trying to concoct a story about a date that they’d never had,
something romantic like dinner and flowers, but Jisung wasn’t inventing. That had actually
happened, a few months into their friendship. His dorm room wasn’t exactly the fancy restaurant
that Minho was preparing to describe, but he found that talking about their past felt a lot easier than
trying to project some fantasy onto the characters they were playing.

“Yeah, I remember,” he said honestly. “That was the first time I saw your music collection. It’s
huge.”

“And not much that you liked,” Jisung laughed. “I was so excited when I played that album and
you finally smiled. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find any music we both liked.”
“I knew you had some taste deep down… deep, deep down,” Minho said. Jisung threw his head
back and laughed. “I had a lot of fun that night.”

“Me too,” Jisung said, giving his hand a squeeze. Minho wondered for a fleeting moment if the
audience would even be able to see that on camera. “I was so nervous for you to see my place.”

“Really?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Why?”

Jisung looked sheepish. “I mean, I’m kind of a slob.”

“No you’re not,” Minho laughed, but even he had to admit that Jisung’s room was a bit messy.
“You’re just a little more comfortable when there’s chaos.”

“I spent, like, two hours cleaning before you came over.”

Minho cocked his head to the side. “Seriously?”

“I wanted you to like me,” Jisung grinned, eyes back on the ground. “I figured a mostly-clean room
would be a good start.”

Minho smiled, but said nothing. He wondered how much of this was true, if Jisung really had
cleaned in an effort to make Minho like him back when they both met at eighteen. His memories
from freshman year were a little hazy, but he knew Jisung was in almost all of them after that night
where they listened to music together. Seungmin was the perfect roommate in part because he and
Hyunjin went out a lot, so they’d have the room to themselves to blast the music as loud as they
wanted. They spent countless hours on the floor of that old dorm room, some cheap rug from the
college aisles in Target underneath their backs as they sang off-key and ate late night takeout. They
had gone a lot of places together over their friendship, but that's where it had really started. Jisung
was so deeply ingrained in all of Minho’s college memories. He couldn’t imagine not having him
there.
“I’m really glad you invited me over,” he said. He was embarrassed to find that his voice came out
softer than he wanted, a little shy almost, but he kept going. For the film. “To be honest, it was one
of the first times that I felt like I just immediately clicked with someone.”

Jisung’s eyes rose back to Minho’s face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It was so easy to talk to you, and I remember thinking that it was nice to not have to fill
every little silence.”

“Me too,” Jisung said. “I don’t know if I’ve told you this, but I always thought you were so cool. It
kind of blew my mind when we got on so easily from the beginning. That’s one shitty part about
making friends, it’s a ton of small talk, but you were so straight up from the beginning.”

“Well, I never felt like I had to pretend with you. It was, I don’t know- comfortable?”

Their pace slowed, almost coming to a stop, as Jisung watched him closely. “I’ve always felt
comfortable with you.”

Minho felt something swell in his chest, and he was about to turn to face Jisung head-on when
Changbin’s voice rang out.

“Cut!”

He looked up to find their friends smiling. “That was great!” Changbin said. “I think that’s all we
need for this scene. We don’t need to keep climbing, since I want to shoot the rest at the bottom.
We can regroup at the beginning of the trail for the main portion.”

Hyunjin and Changbin jumped back down the path, passing Jisung and Minho, and lead the charge
down the mountain the rest of the way. Minho let go of Jisung’s hand with only a moment of
hesitation, turning to follow their friends.

His watch told him that it was exactly 5:15 when they reached the base of the mountain again.
Changbin ran to his car, pulling a tripod from his trunk that Hyunjin helped him set up near the
trailhead.
“Okay, so this is the big scene,” Changbin said, placing his camera on top of the rig. “I’m going to
have the music kind of fade out so the audience can hear you guys talking really clearly, and then
after this scene the music will kick back in for a while.”

“Chan’s song?”

“Right. It’ll be playing in the background at first but will eventually take over, so feel free to use as
much or as little of the script as you want. The only part I definitely want is the DTR.”

“DTR”

“Define the relationship,” Hyunjin said. “Read a fanfic once in a while, Min.”

He snorted, opening his mouth to retort, but Changbin shushed them both. “The script is mainly
there to just guide the story, but if it’s easier you’re welcome to use all of the exact lines.”

Jisung and Minho nodded, each shaking out their arms before turning to face each other. They
faced each other, eyes locking, and when Changbin called action they only made it through the
first few lines before they both broke out into some nervous giggles.

“ Cut !”

“Get it out now,” Hyunjin said with a laugh. “We only have the nice lighting for a bit, so we have
to get it the second time. We can’t beat a race with the sun.”

“Even if you mess up, just keep going,” Changbin encouraged. “I can always edit it.”

Minho nodded. He turned back to Jisung, who had finally finished getting all his laughter out.
They stood at the beginning of the trail, the very start of the slow incline towards the top of the
mountain. The trailhead was old, bits of the wood weathered away over time, but you could still
read the trail name and distance well enough. Minho focused on the words, the curve of the letters
engraved into the wood, until he felt like his head was clear. Minho thought over the script again,
the words Jisung had sent him the night before. He took a deep breath and waited for Jisung to
begin the scene.
“I had fun today,” he said.

“Me too,” Minho said, eyes locking with him. “Thanks for hiking with me. It’s my favorite place,
and you’re kind of becoming one of my favorite people.”

That wasn’t the exact line, but Minho thought he got most of it. He felt pretty proud of himself
until Jisung smiled at him and nailed his lines verbatim, like he’d had all of them memorized for
months.

“What are the benefits of being one of your favorite people?” Jisung asked. “Do I get a discount
anywhere?”

“How about free food once a week?”

“How am I getting free food once a week?”

“On a date with me,” Minho said. “Well, dates.”

“That’s a lot of dates.”

“It is, but I don’t think I could get tired of spending time with you.”

“Is that so?”

Jisung smiled at him. The sun filtered through a thin cloud, casting a deep golden light on his face.
Minho thought he understood why Changbin and Hyunjin had been so insistent on this time of day,
then, as he watched Jisung laugh in the late-afternoon sunlight. Minho always loved his smile, but
there was something especially special about it right then, when he was dipped in gold with the
trees behind him. Even the shadows of his face were tinged with a slight orange, and Minho found
himself mesmerized by the way the light reflected off his cheeks. Had he always been this radiant?

A bird chirped in the distance, and Minho realized with a start that he’d been staring for a few
moments. It was his line next, but he couldn’t remember a single word. What had it been?
Something about the date, he knew, but the words were escaping him. God, why couldn’t he
remember?

“Hey,” Jisung said softly.

He reached out, taking both of Minho’s hands. He backed up a few steps, until his shoulders made
contact with the side of the trailhead. He leaned back against the wood, looking up at Minho with
bright eyes and flushed cheeks as he waited for him to say the next line. Minho still had nothing.
He searched Jisung’s face for some sort of hint, but he just grinned back at him even bigger.
Eventually, Jisung just skipped over his line altogether.

“I don’t think I could get tired of spending time with you either,” he said softly. “You’re one of my
favorite people, too.”

Minho recognized that as his cue, and he took a tiny step forward until he was only inches from
Jisung. His hands were shaking, probably from the cold, and Jisung gave his hands a quick
squeeze. Then, he let go of his hands altogether, and Minho started to panic that he’d done
something wrong but Jisung didn’t turn away from him. Instead, his fingers reached up towards the
red plaid scarf he had wrapped around his neck. He unlooped it slowly, gathering the fabric in his
hands, then leaned forward and placed it around Minho’s shoulders. Suddenly, the words came to
him easily, like he’d always known them.

“It would make me really happy,” he said. “If you would be my boyfriend.”

There was a moment of silence, just a second or two, but Minho could hear his own heartbeat
pounding in his ears. Why was he getting so worked up over this, when they were just pretending?
He tried to compose himself, taking another deep breath as Jisung leaned forward. He pressed his
forehead to Minho's, giving him another golden smile, and tugged the scarf he had wrapped around
Minho’s neck.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Minho felt his heart jump to his throat. He didn’t have any more lines, he knew he didn’t, but after
a second he opened his mouth. There was more to say, somehow. He took a breath, steadied
himself and finally said-

“Cut!”
He lifted his head, stepping back from Jisung as Changbin squealed at the camera’s playback.

“That was perfect, holy shit!” he said. Hyunjin was aggressively fist pumping in the background.
“Are you guys sure you’ve never acted before? That was so good .”

Minho let out an awkward chuckle, shrugging his shoulders. “I guess we just have a good
director!”

“And producer!” Hyunjin yelled, but Jisung ran over to tackle him before he could complain.

“And the world’s greatest producer!” he crooned, smushing Hyunjin’s cheeks. His roommate
pushed him off, laughing.

“I think we’re all done for today,” Changbin said, closing his camera bag. “You guys want to grab
dinner on the way home?”

“Definitely,” Minho said. He looked down, noticing that his boots had somehow come untied
during the day. So much for the double knot. “Let me tie these up again, I’ll catch up.”

Changbin gave him a thumbs up, turning to head back towards the parking lot. Hyunjin jogged to
catch up with him, pulling out his phone to see if Seungmin wanted him to bring any food back.
Minho crouched down to the ground, working on his laces, when Jisung walked over to him.

“Whatcha in the mood for?” he asked. “Indian food?”

“How do you read my mind?” Minho asked, pulling the laces tight. “I’ve been thinking about
coconut curry for days now, how did you know? It’s scary.”

“I have my ways,” he laughed, helping Minho stand upright. The scarf fluttered in the wind,
grazing Jisung’s cheek.

“Oh, your scarf!” Minho said, reaching up to his throat. “Here, let me-”
“Keep it,” Jisung said, waving him off. He turned towards the cars. “It looks good on you.”

Minho paused. “I can’t take your scarf, Ji, it’s yours.”

“It’s no biggie,” he said. “I’ve got a thousand scarves.”

He grinned, then grabbed Minho’s hand to drag him to the car. Minho knew it was a lie, had gone
through his closet to borrow a jacket or a shirt enough times to know nearly every item of clothing
that Jisung owned, and he only had two scarves. Still, when he insisted that Minho keep it his face
lost the joking smirk he’d had at the beginning, and his eyes were soft. Minho liked it when he
looked like that, like he hadn’t been beaten down by the world all that much and there was still
something that he had a heart full of hope for. He wanted him to keep looking like that, time after
time, and if that meant that he needed to hold on to one of his scarves Minho would happily do it.

For Jisung’s sake, obviously. Only for his sake.

 what I want
Chapter Notes

songs for this chapter are “What I Want” by the Band CAMINO and “I think I like
you” by the Band CAMINO

(can you tell I like this band lol)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Although Minho obviously loved the mountains, the one downside to living in a rural college town
like Chester was that there wasn't particularly much to do outside of, well, being outside. Normally
that was fine by him, there was always a new wonder to explore, but when it came to things like
social events it was a dilemma. Luckily, the nearest city was a common stop for most concert
tours, so it was easy enough to pile their friends into Jisung’s old Rav4 for a road trip to the east.
Two hours on the road might have seemed like a long time for some people, but Minho secretly
looked forward to these long drives with his friends. Sometimes it was all eight of them, sometimes
just a handful, and on even rarer occasions, just him and Jisung. Those might have been his
favorite.

There was something about a road trip that just felt like a break from the regular day-to-day
routine, a little glimpse into what an alternative life might look like. He could close his eyes and
envision it, a life in the city with bustling crowds and little quiet. In this life he could be someone
who dropped everything for a band he'd only heard a few times, coming through the grainy
speakers of Jisung's old boombox.

"You know, they have bluetooth speakers," he had said once, laughing as Jisung adjusted the
boombox's antenna. "We have the technology!"

"Yeah, but do we have the vibe? " Jisung would say, and with a little kick to the side of the
machine the music would come spilling out again.

The concert that they currently had their eye on was Chasing Wildfires , a four-person band from
Tennessee that had blown up over the past year. One day they were relatively unknown, save for a
couple thousand passionate hometown fans, the next a TikTok trend to one of their songs had gone
viral and they were booking shows. Jisung was beside himself with excitement. It wasn't often that
he got to go to see one of the more pop-punk bands he liked in person, so the weekend felt like a
special one.

"Do you think they'll play Better Again ?" Jisung asked, bouncing in his seat even as he was
driving. He flicked his turn signal on, merging into the faster lane with a smooth tilt of his hand.
"That's my favorite one. I think if I hear it live I might actually explode."

"I think they have to play it," Minho said. "It's, like, one of their most famous songs."

"Because it's their best song."

"I think you are forgetting Still, Still , my friend," Minho countered. "Their actual best song."

"Why do you want to fight me so bad?" Jisung said, trying to hide his grin. Minho gave his
shoulder a light shove, which he swatted away with his right hand. "See, now you're trying to run
us off the road. So dramatic, Minho."

“I think Bessie can handle a little swerve every now and then,” Minho said. “This car is pretty
new, she needs a ding or two to liven her up.”

“Leave my car out of this,” Jisung said. He placed a hand on the dashboard, stroking the material.
“Don’t listen to him, Bessie, he’s jealous of your youth because he’s old and cranky.”

Minho laughed. It was one of the big, full laughs that bounced around the inside of the car, and he
could see Jisung give into a smile. “Fine, I concede,” Minho giggled. “But only if we stop at the
next gas station. I need snacks.”

Jisung rolled his eyes. “I know, I could hear your stomach growling from here.”

“Then why didn’t you stop?”

“Because we would have just had to drive somewhere else anyway.”

“Why?”

“That WaWa station in Franklin never has honey-roasted cashews.”

Minho paused. “How did you know I wanted honey-roasted cashews?”

“Honey-roasted cashews, a pack of twizzlers, and a Dr. Pepper,” Jisung listed off on his fingers.
“You always get the same thing, so I figured it would be better to wait for the station in Gatensville
because it’s a lot bigger. They had all the different roasted nuts last time we drove through.”

Minho felt a little swoop in his stomach. Over cashews .

“Wow,” He cleared his throat. “I can’t believe you remember my snack order.”

“Now, what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t know what you munched on while soaring along
the open road?”

“You’d be like most friends? I don’t think Hyunjin knows my snack order.”

“Hyunjin has the attention span of a fly,” Jisung said fondly. “I love him.”

Minho furrowed his eyebrows. “Well that’s a revelation.”

“Not like that ,” Jisung smacked him, eyes still on the road. “Hyunjin and I have been best friends
since we were in diapers. I don’t think I could be romantically involved with someone I used to
take baths with.”

“Why not? Baths can be romantic,” Minho laughed, wiggling his eyebrows. “Like those big, heart-
shaped tubs they always have at hotels in the movies.”

“Like in the rom-coms?”

“Yeah, they take up like half the room. They’re always red or pink, and I think it's probably a legal
requirement to have bath jets and some shitty champagne as part of the deal. For the ambiance .”
“Eww,” Jisung scrunched up his nose. “Can you imagine what those tubs have seen?”

“God only knows.”

“Dude, those tubs have probably seen a thousand asses.”

“And it would love to add yours to its list of lovers, I’m sure.”

“Who wouldn’t want to see my ass?” Jisung said, giving him a wink. “I have a perfect ass.”

Minho sputtered. Jisung glanced over, and when he saw how red his face was, barked out another
laugh. Sometimes Minho thought he just liked to rile him up, knowing that his face would bloom
pink and he’d start to trip over his words. It didn’t make a ton of sense to be so embarrassed about
their bodies, considering he’d seen almost all of his friends change at some point. Heck, the eight
of them had gone skinny-dipping in the university fountain their sophomore year on a dare, and
when he collected his part of the $100 he remembered feeling no shame at all. Sometimes Minho
wondered what had changed to make him so shy now.

Jisung seemed to pick up on his over-thinking, reaching down to turn the volume dial up a bit.

“You like this song, right?” He didn’t look over at him, though, focused on adjusting his rear view
mirror. “I remember you liked their second album a bit more than the first.”

“Yeah,” Minho said. He leaned back and hummed along to the song. “Thanks.”

They remained like that, just enjoying each other’s company with the music spilling through the
speakers, until they pulled into the gas station in Gatensville forty-five minutes later. Minho
offered to fill up the tank while Jisung ran inside to use the bathroom and grab snacks. He returned
with an armful of Minho’s snack order and his own go-to: a large Slurpee and a bag of ranch
doritos. Minho munched on his cashews for the rest of the drive with a full heart and a little flash
of something else he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

✩✩✩
Only a few steps into the venue, Jisung was struck by two thoughts.

First: he definitely wanted to get to the merch line before the crowd got there. He was a sucker for
band t-shirts, and his collection was in desperate need of an addition. Most of the crowd had yet to
arrive so the line was still relatively short- that was one bonus to getting to the venue early.

Second: almost everyone in the crowd had tattoos.

He supposed it must be the rock music, the raw lyrics that drew the creatives in. Jisung had never
been particularly interested in getting a tattoo, though. It wasn’t that he had anything against them;
on the contrary, he thought they looked badass and was usually jealous any time a guy rolled up his
sleeves to reveal some gorgeous piece of art on his skin. He had once spent an entire party
drunkely talking to a girl with a shoulder piece that looked so real he kept reaching out to touch it.

His own body, though, seemed to be off-limits. It was just that he wasn’t exactly the best with
commitment (Hyunjin would say that was possibly an understatement)- he changed his mind about
what cereal to have for breakfast at least three times every morning, so the idea of making a
permanent alteration to his own body seemed like something that wasn’t in the cards for him. He
spent days debating whether or not to get a tattoo the size of a quarter, on his thigh where nobody
would see, just to get over the fear of it. He assumed he would go to his grave ink-free.

Enter Minho.

Jisung didn’t even know about Minho’s tattoos for the first few months of their friendship. It was a
testament to how chilly the weather grew their freshmen year, a cold front moving in sooner than
uaual, and they both practically lived in their hoodies that fall. In fact, Jisung thought he had Minho
completely figured out by the time February rolled around. The whole group of eight had splurged
on a dinner out together to celebrate surviving the fall semester, and Korean BBQ was the clear
choice for celebrating. They were an hour into destroying some bulgogi when Jeongin reached for
a napkin at the end of the table and accidentally knocked over Felix’s cup of tea. It had flowed to
the left, soaking right onto the sleeve of Minho’s outstretched arm. He let out a curse and pulled his
white hoodie off, gathering the wet part of the fabric into a ball so he could run it under hot water
in the bathroom. Jisung found himself staring blankly at him, blinking stupidly as his friends all
offered help and Jeongin offered apologies that Minho simply shooed off. Seungmin had a Tide
pen (because of course he did), so the stain was quickly demolished and it didn’t take love for
everyone to jump back into dinner. It wasn’t as easy for Jisung- he was still in a state of shock.
Minho had tattoos.

A fucking half sleeve.

The first piece of art he saw when Minho peeled off his hoodie was a sparrow perched near his
elbow. The bird was small, but even from a distance Jisung could see that the detail was incredible.
He thought he saw a small river trailing down the back of his arm as he hurried to the bathroom
with his clothes, but he definitely wanted to get a better look later on. He barraged him with
questions the moment he got back to the table.

“You didn't know I had them?” Minho had asked, amused. “I don’t exactly hide them.”

“Obviously I didn’t know!”

“Well, they’re there.”

“Yet I still haven’t gotten to see them!” Jisung yelled. “Dude, show me everything.”

Jisung could probably draw Minho’s tattoos from memory years later, each stroke of the needle
imprinted on his brain after spending countless hours staring at them. He would take in each piece
like his skin was a gallery, admiring them in quiet moments when Minho was focused on their
friends’ conversations or some Amazonian documentary they were watching with subtitles on
because nobody seemed capable of shutting up for very long. He wanted to hear the story behind
each one, but Minho kept telling him they were just for him. Jisung wasn’t totally sure what that
meant, but he felt like if he stuck around long enough, he might get some stories out of his friend.

It wasn’t until that summer, the last before their senior year began, when everything started to feel
real and Jisung started to understand what he meant. Minho trained relentlessly for his upcoming
leg of the Appalachian Trail, a 75 mile stretch of trail on Springer Mountain. He was proud of
being a section hiker, his yearly test of will and stamina, and this stretch was one that he had been
looking forward to in particular. He would be flying down to Georgia soon to start the journey,
anticipating around eight or nine days of hiking to complete the leg. He couldn’t wait.

Jisung walked with him to mail some freeze-dried meals to some stops along the route, knowing
that in a week or two when he picked up his food, he would munch on his food knowing that
Jisung had been there supporting him from the beginning. Minho taught him all about the
Appalachians, the way that the trail snaked up the east coast like a beacon for hikers of all ages.
People that completed the hike all in one go were called “thru-hikers”, and over the span of seven
to nine months they would traverse the land with only their packs and unbreakable passion. Minho
didn’t feel the urge to do the A.T. all in one pass like some of the more hardcore adventurers, so he
became a section hiker in order to tackle the trail bit by bit. Every summer he would block out the
rest of the world for a month or two, taking in different parts of the country through their flora and
fauna, documenting his travels on his Instagram. This leg was going to be his longest yet, and he
was eager to get started; the waiting was always the hardest part.
The last Tuesday before Minho left for the airport, Jisung met him on their trail with a big smile.

“You that excited to get rid of me?” Minho asked with a grin. “Don’t be rude, at least wait until
I’m gone to celebrate.”

“I’ve decided something,” Jisung said. “I want to get a tattoo.”

Minho’s eyes widened. “You what?”

“And I want you to come with me,” Jisung continued. “Also… how do I actually go about getting a
tattoo?”

Minho blinked at him. “You’re serious?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, first you need to decide what you want. Do you have anything in mind?”

“Sanctus Peak.”

Minho grinned. “That’s awesome. I’ve always thought about getting the peak done, too. Do you
know yet if you want black and grey, or color?”

“Black and grey.”

“Okay, then you’re in luck,” he said with a clap of his hands. “I know a good black and grey artist-
they did my pine tree two years ago. Their shop is only about thirty minutes from campus.”

“Do I just show up at the shop?”

“Depends on how big the design is, in my opinion. If it’s bigger than the size of your hand, I’d
recommend having a consultation first so you can iron out some of the design details. I got my pine
and one of my birds done as a walk-in, but the river tattoo I had a consult for.”

“I was thinking like the size of my palm?” Jisung said, voice raising at the end so it sounded like a
question rather than a statement. He raised his hand up. “Just, like, this big?”

“That should be fine as a walk-in I think,” Minho said. He paused. “Actually, I still follow the artist
I was talking about. I have her Instagram handle if you want to DM her and see what she prefers for
consultations.”

“That would be great.”

“I’ll text it to you. She was really cool, I think you’d feel comfortable going to her as a first-timer.”

“Perfect,” Jisung said. He cocked his head to the side. “One more request.”

“What’s up?”

“Will you come with me?”

“Yeah, of course,” Minho said, smile growing. “I gotta keep you from chickening out, don’t I? I
took Chan once and he made it through half of the paperwork before bailing.”

“I’m just a little nervous about the whole needle thing,” Jisung admitted. “But you’ve done it so
many times, I feel like I’d be a lot more comfortable if you were there.”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Maybe you’ll be inspired to add to your collection.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

Minho kept his word, driving them to the one tattoo shop in the valley that he’d been to before. He
trusted the artist, and that was all Jisung needed to offer his arm with confidence. He closed his
eyes at first, the buzz of the tattoo gun a foreign sensation as it carved a memory into his skin, and
the vibrations made his arm feel strange. He felt panic for a moment ( Was this stupid? Was this
impulsive ?) but when he finally blinked his eyes open he found Minho beaming at him. The pain
faded away as he watched him grin, the thrum of the needle just a whisper in the background of his
mind. The artist, Chaeyoung, gave him a thumbs up when she was finished. She wiped down his
arm and then added a layer of SaniDerm to protect his new tattoo, offering him a little go-bag with
some aftercare instructions and a sample of ointment.

He gathered his things, putting a generous tip into her jar as he got ready to head home. When he
turned to see if Minho was ready to leave, he was confused to find his friend making himself
comfortable in the chair next to the one he had just vacated, all set up with fresh paper and ink,
new needles lying unopened on the table.

“What are you doing?”

Minho rolled up his sleeve, gesturing to a small patch of unmarked skin next to his river scene.
The artist pulled out a new razor, shaving the skin to prep it for the initial line work.

“You really think I’d let you have all the fun?” Minho asked. “I emailed her before we came to see
how much time she had- I’m getting one, too.”

Chaeyoung winked at them from her chair, reaching down to pull out another stencil she had
prepared. Jisung recognized it immediately.

“You’re getting Sanctus Peak, too?”

“If that’s okay?” Minho paused. “If you don’t want me to get the same one, I totally get it. I’m
sure Chae could draw up a different variation.”

“Dude, of course it’s okay!” Jisung lit up. “It’s perfect.”

Minho even got his in the same spot, the inside of his bicep. His flowed into the rest of his half
sleeve, a collection of nature scenes that he’d fallen in love with over the years. The mountains
seemed like a natural addition, and unless you saw him and Jisung without sleeves at the same
time, you’d never know it was a matching tattoo. Jisung had a strange feeling in his stomach
watching Chaeyoung carve the first lines into Minho’s arm. He reached out, offering his hand even
though Minho had gotten enough tattoos to move past the need for emotional support. He took his
hand, like he always did, and Jisung watched her work with bright eyes.

The mountain range they had inked on their arms was the same one that overlooked the valley, the
very same peaks that they walked every Tuesday morning. For Minho it represented his love of
nature, the very heart of what he believed in, and his passion for the outdoors. For Jisung, it was
the one place he ever felt like he could really breathe. Part of him thought that part of it was
probably due to the fact that it was Minho on the trails with him, but he didn’t feel the need to
vocalize that part. He had been nervous about Minho going out into the wilderness for two months
alone, but now it felt like a little piece of him was going along with him. Jisung hoped that on
harder nights of his hike, Minho could look down at the inside of his arm and find peace in the
mountains, in the little piece of Jisung’s heart that he took with him everywhere he went.

Now, standing in the middle of the concert venue, Jisung placed his thumb against the middle peak
of his mountains and felt a little more relaxed with the crowd knowing that Minho was with him. A
concert was a lot less daunting than days in the mountains alone.

They reached the merch table without much trouble and spent a few minutes agonizing over which
shirt to buy (“Dark red or dark blue?” Jisung asked. “It’s an absolutely pivotal decision.”) before
trying to scout out a spot to stand for the night. Minho swapped his shirts in the corner of the room,
folding up the one he had been wearing on the drive and stuffing it into his back pocket. He always
liked to wear merch as soon as he could, so all of his photos at concerts had him in new clothes,
whatever artist they were seeing a proud display on his chest.

The venue, the Filmore, was on the smaller side; a standing-room-only establishment with an
extremely modest second floor that only held an extra 30 people or so, it was a popular stop for a
lot of artists travelling the east coast. Jisung usually preferred to be up a floor, not a fan of the
sweaty mass that the main floor usually became by 11pm, but he was willing to chance it for this
band. For their band.

“Let’s try to avoid standing near the speakers,” Minho said. “I’ll be deaf by the time I’m 30 at this
rate.”

Jisung snorted. “Yes, because you’re so ancient.”

“Hush,” Minho said. “You’re the one that always points out that I am older and wiser.”
“ Barely .”

Minho laughed, grabbing his hand to start their trek through the growing crowd. Jisung laced their
fingers together, giving his hand a squeeze to let him know he was ready to walk.

They were able to navigate through the people towards the middle of the crowd, a little towards the
back. It was perfect- close to the action during the set, but they would be able to get out of the
throng of people to go to the bathroom or get concessions if they were in the mood to spend some
more money.

“Do you want a drink?” Minho asked.

Jisung shook his head, surprising even himself. “I’m good,” he said. “I’m still full of cherry
Slurpee.”

“Yeah?”

“Just water or something is fine tonight,” he said. “I want to remember every single guitar strum.”

Minho beamed at him. “Good idea. I’ll get us some waters!”

Minho navigated his way out of the crowd, shimmying in between couples and groups of friends in
search of the bar while Jisung stayed and guarded their spot. He felt eyes on him, and turned to
find a girl in ripped jeans and a black tank top staring at him with a strange look on her face. He
was worried he had something on his clothes, looking down to inspect for any stains, but he
seemed to have kept his new T-shirt clean so far. When he looked back up, the girl smiled at him.

“Your boyfriend is sweet,” she said.

Jisung blinked at her. “What?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just sweet that he’s running over there for you both- I had to bug
my boyfriend for a while before he finally agreed to push through the crowd to get me a Coke.”
“Oh!” Jisung said. “Yeah, Minho is the best.”

“I can tell,” she laughed. “You guys are cute together.”

Jisung opened his mouth to correct her, to tell her that they were just friends and that it was crazy
she had thought anything otherwise, but then Minho was back by his side and placing his hand on
his hip. He slid a bottle of water into his hands and turned towards the stage, trying to catch a
glimpse of the opener. The girl winked at him, and Jisung found the words dying on his tongue.

✩✩✩

The opener was a group led by a girl named Clara- at least, that’s what Minho assumed by their
introduction.

“ My Name is Clara is pretty on the nose for a band name,” he said to Jisung. “Where’s the
mystery?”

He just laughed. Minho was expecting some sort of woman with an ironic smile and questionable
taste in fashion to be the face of the band, concocting a vision of a tall, indie princess in his head
before they came to the stage, but in reality she was quite petite. She came on about thirty minutes
after they had claimed their floor spot, beaming at the growing crowd with her guitar strapped to
her body.

“Are you guys excited to see Chasing Wildfires?” she asked, and the crowd cheered. “Me too, but
they’re still getting in the zone, so you guys are stuck with me for a bit. I hope that’s okay.”

Minho cheered. He had heard some of her stuff before on a weekly playlist that his Spotify had
recommended called Big Names in Indie (hence his misconstrued vision), and he really liked her
voice. Jisung was a fan of her lyrics, and they were pleased to have found another artist that they
both enjoyed. She was younger than he had pictured, maybe a little younger than he and Jisung, but
from the first moment she started playing she seemed at ease.

“This song is called Mess ,” she said. The crowd cheered.

Jisung relaxed into his side, humming along with the song. Minho tucked him under his arm,
taking a sip of his water as Clara made her way through her 5-song set. It was an upbeat song in
sound, but the lyrics were kind of sad. Jisung always ate that kind of thing up, and when Minho
looked down at him he confirmed that he was loving the set. They sang along with her, swaying
next to the group of girls that had somehow shimmied in front of them. Luckily, they were pretty
short, so Minho was fine with them squeezing in. They still had an amazing view. By the time the
last note rang out across the room, Jisung was practically vibrating with excitement for the main
event.

The room went dark, and suddenly a loud strum of an electric guitar filled the air. The crowd
cheered as the lights came on, four young men now on stage with their instruments and
microphones. Minho heard a steady beat ring out, followed by a riff on the electric guitar.

“Oh my god!” Jisung yelled. “They’re playing it!”

Minho laughed, recognizing the beginning of Jisung’s favorite song on their latest album. A few
beats in the singer leaned forward into his microphone and began to sing. The entire room scream-
sang back at him, jumping in time with the music. A rock band with an alternative twist, they
leaned into catchy choruses and playful lyrics to go with their polished rock-and-roll sound. Minho
hadn’t been sure how they would be live- sometimes he found that rock bands were an easier listen
online rather than in person, but he was pleasantly surprised that Chasing Wildfires sounded almost
identical to their recordings. The singer’s voice rang out loud and clear as he hyped up the crowd,
chanting the name of the town they were in as the drummer bashed out an insane solo. They had
managed to get away from the speakers enough that their ears weren’t hurting, yet the feeling of
the music echoed so loud and strong that Minho could feel it vibrating in his bones.

There was a certain high that only came with live music, Jisung always said. A lover of words, he’d
always been drawn to music that leaned into strong lyrics and insisted that hearing them live gave
them new life. Minho hadn’t been so sure, not as versed in concerts as Jisung was, but he thought
that this night might have changed his mind for good. He thought that music might be to Jisung
what the outdoors were to him- a perfect escape from reality, an unchanging source of comfort.
There was nothing like standing in a room full of strangers, knowing that you were all connected
by this silent, reverent love of the same songs. He felt alive .

In the middle of the crowd, shoulders pressed against the two guys to either side of them, the roar
of a cheer echoed off the walls when Clara joined them on the stage for a joint performance. The
frontman of Chasing Wildfires introduced her again, setting up a second mike for her. Jisung
whipped around, staring at Minho with wide eyes and an open mouth.

“A duet!” he yelled. “ Oh my god !”

Minho laughed, tickled with the way Jisung was so easily overwhelmed with joy by music, and
settled into the chaos to listen to the next song. Their voices blended together beautifully, crooning
about a lost love and lingering regrets, and Jisung sighed happily. He was also a sucker for a
ballad. Minho closed his eyes, drinking in the soft sound of the acoustic guitar as they took turns
singing, the lyrics aching and beautiful. He could feel Jisung still tucked into his side, the
vibrations in his chest as he sang along with the male parts. He started singing, too, adding his own
baritone voice to Clara’s lines. He felt Jisung laugh.

Just as Minho had adjusted to the slower pace, the song ended and the rock music picked back up.
Clara gave one last wave before leaving the stage, blowing a kiss, and an electric guitar picked up
pace. A synth added to the vibe, a casual coolness underneath the bassline. The crowd started
jumping when the chorus hit, singing at the top of their lungs.

“ I think I like you, ” the whole room sang. “ I think I like you, ”

Jisung locked eyes with him, yelling the words along with the gaggle of strangers they had gotten
trapped in. It was strange to see the words coming out of his mouth, even as a song, and Minho felt
a little dizzy in the midst of the crowd.

“ I think I like you, maybe more than I should! ”

Jisung laughed, throwing his head back as the song picked up in tempo. Minho felt the hand
gripping his own, a steady anchor to be here now , and realized that in that moment he was
completely happy. All the stress faded away: the confusion of the film shoots, the grueling A.T.
prep, the anxieties of being a college senior, they all melted away, until it was just him and Jisung,
And Chasing Wildfires. And the crowd.

But mostly Jisung.

Later that night they went out to eat with some people they met at the show, taking over the corner
of a local bar to crush some burgers and beers. Minho noticed that Jisung left his drink at the bar,
grabbing a Sprite in its place, as they sat down at the table. He wondered if he felt as invincible as
Minho did.

Around 1a.m. Jisung started the drive back to Chester, double-checking Minho’s seatbelt before
hitting the highway because he knew that he would inevitably fall asleep. As much as he tried,
Minho always knocked out on the way home after events like a concert or sports game. He tried to
stay up, though, in denial about his own ability to stay awake. He had insisted that he would stay
up that time, keeping Jisung company on the long drive back, but eventually Jisung bit back a
 smile as he noticed him sinking into the seat.

“I’ll let you know when we’re back,” he said. “You can sleep, Min.”

Minho smiled, leaning against the window with his cheek pressed against the cool glass as he
started to fade into sleep. He heard Jisung change the radio, putting on a song that he knew Minho
liked. He smiled, his breath fogging up the window, and he fell asleep to the sounds of an acoustic
guitar and the feeling of safety.

Chapter End Notes

sorry for the delay! I actually got engaged this weekend (!!!) and literally the next
morning my dad had to go to the hospital so I was dealing with a lot of emotions.
Dad's stable now & I have a ring so I'm back & thank you for your patience!
 happy and sad (at the same time)
Chapter Notes

The songs for this chapter are “Happy and Sad” by Kasey Musgraves and “Left Me
Yet” by Daya

Jisung was drunk again.

Minho wasn’t sure how he even noticed it- Jisung’s social media had always been a little messy, a
collection of filters and stickers adorning each photo on his Shapchat stories, but in this one his
eyes looked just a touch too hazy. It was time stamped at two hours earlier. His smile was relaxed,
showing off a Christmas-tree themed sweatshirt that he had bought specifically for some ugly
sweater party later that week, even though Minho knew he had an exam the next morning. And
there, right before the photo disappeared into the ether, he saw the beer bottle on his desk in the
background. Of course.

“Why do we never have any goddamn cheese in this house!” Felix yelled from the other room.

“You’re an addict!” Chan yelled from the kitchen. “Nobody can eat a half pound of Brie every
week.”

“Maybe not a weak man,” Felix countered. “But I am no weak man.”

“Why do I even offer to cook dinner if you two spend the whole time talking about dairy and
screaming in my ear?”

“You adore us, Minho,” Felix said, then turned back to yelling at Chan, pivoting to a disagreement
about gouda. Minho snorted, flipping the burger, and the sizzle seemed to snap his friends out of
their cheese debate.

“Is this real meat, or one of your improbable burgers?”

“ Impossible burgers.”
“Yeah, because it’s impossible for me to eat a lie .”

Minho ignored him, sliding the veggie pattie onto the waiting bun. He heard the cats stir from their
spot on the couch, little feet tapping on the floor as they approached the kitchen. Dori poked his
head in, assessing the situation, and walked away when he realized that it wasn’t their dinner time
yet. Soonie stuck around a bit longer, eyeing the veggie patty, but must have realized it wasn’t
meat by the smell because he eventually turned away too. He walked back to the living room,
Doongie following along close behind. Minho sighed. He was always being watched in this house.

Chan tossed him a bag of chips from the pantry, and Minho caught it with one hand. The three
boys climbed up onto the barstools in front of the kitchen island, munching on their dinner in
comfortable silence as the cats played in the other room. He liked eating dinner with his Australian
roommates- sometimes, when the food was especially good, one of them would say something
especially twangy, and it would make Minho feel warm inside. He loved his friends.

Changbin was out that night; he and Jeongin had gone to the movies, catching the premiere of
some drama that nobody else was particularly interested in. Hyunjin had initially volunteered as
well, but Seungmin had a semi-formal for his psychology honor society and there was little else
Hyunjin loved more than an excuse to dress up and talk about his boyfriend. With Jisung largely
unresponsive in the group chat, the final three boys had decided on a relaxed night in. They fell
into a lazy debate over burger toppings, fighting over the relevance of grilled onions, when
Minho’s phone buzzed again. Felix looked down at his phone, then gave his face a pointed look.

“What?”

Felix shifted on his seat. He looked back down at the phone. “Is that Jisung?”

“No,” Minho furrowed his brow.

“You don’t need to lie.”

“It’s not Jisung. It’s, like, about him though. It’s someone he’s with.”

Felix and Chan shared a look. Minho didn’t understand why Felix kept looking all over the place.
He waited for one of them to say something, but they just kept staring at one another, seeming like
they both wanted to say something but weren’t quite sure how. They started mumbling something
back and forth, but their accent made it hard to pick up everything. Minho hated when they did
this. If Jisung were there he would flick someone’s forehead and demand an answer, but Minho
preferred more subtle insistance. He tapped on the table to get their attention.

“ What is it ?”

“Min,” Chan turned back to Minho with a cautious expression. “Has he been drinking?”

Minho felt a hot flash of shame. He should have expected this- it had been a few weeks since any
of their friends had tried to not-so-subtly talk to Minho about Jisung’s weekend activities, but he
had gotten pretty good at shutting them down. He didn’t get why it had to be such a big deal when
Jisung was fine the rest of the week. The two weekends ago they had gone to a concert and he
hadn’t even had a sip, so what did it matter? Still, he found himself feeling a little embarrassed,
even though he wasn’t the one heading out to a party. He wasn’t sure when he’d become so
defensive over Jisung, but the guilt had settled into his chest all the same.

“Probably,” he admitted.

“Didn’t he go out last weekend?”

“He goes out most weekends the closer we get to finals. You know that, we all know that.”

Chan looked sympathetic. “And you’re going to have to go pick him up in the middle of the night
again.”

“Not necessarily,” Minho said, shrugging. “Maybe he’ll take it easy tonight. All he’s said so far on
our chat is that he thinks I would like their playlist.”

“Jisung never takes it easy,” Felix said gently. “He’s still got that bruise from where he ran into a
table last Saturday.”

“That was also kind of Hyunjin’s fault,” Minho countered. “And mine, really. I didn’t realize
Hyunjin had moved their coffee table, so when I got him inside I just kind of pushed him towards
his room.”
“Why was Hyunjin rearranging furniture?”

“Seungmin read some articles about feng shui and positive psychology,” Minho shrugged. “You
should see what he did to his bedroom. The point is, Jisung didn’t even realize it was there. He
would have done that sober, too.”

“But he wasn’t sober, Minho,” Chan said. “That’s the point. I can’t remember the last weekend he
wasn’t going to a party, or some bar. I, for one, miss seeing him on Saturday nights. He used to
come over for dinner like this with all of us, you know?”

“We’re just worried about him.”

“I know, Felix, but what am I supposed to do? Ignore his calls and texts to let him make out with
strangers and get mono?”

“Does he usually make out with strangers?”

“Not every time,” Minho said, suddenly hating this conversation. “And he’s usually embarrassed
about it after so I don’t know if that’s much of an argument.”

“You know he gets reckless when he’s sad,” Felix said gently. “He’s been extra stressed recently,
and-”

“What do you mean?” Minho asked, tilting his head. “He’s been extra stressed? I thought he was
just, like, his normal finals-stressed. Did he say something?”

“He mentioned something to me the other day,” Felix said, shrugging. “I think he just has a lot on
his mind and he doesn’t want to let anything fall through the cracks. He’s got a lot on his plate.”

“You mean with Changbin’s movie.”

“Yeah, but other things are probably involved, too. It’s been a busy semester- for all of us, really. I
don’t think that means he needs to go out all the time, though. I think it just makes it worse.”
“So you think I shouldn’t pick him up?”

His friend sighed. “I don’t know. But I know this isn’t…” He looked at Chan, trailing off.

“It’s not fair,” Chan finally said. “For either of you. It’s not something you should feel like you
have to take care of, and one day he’s going to push it too far and he’ll really mess something up
for himself.”

“I know,” Minho said, but he was already picking up his phone. Felix and Chan shared another
look, but Minho didn’t pay it any mind. He was already thinking about where his keys were,
preparing for whatever drive he would have to make. What could he say? Old habits die hard.

✩✩✩

A little after midnight, Jisung turned around to find Minho standing by the snacks with one hand
on his hips.

“You came!” he yelled, stumbling over. “Dude, that’s crazy. I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Your friend texted me,” Minho said. He waved to a guy standing in the corner, watching Jisung
with concern. He gave Minho a small nod and a smile.

Jisung followed his gaze, frowning. “Yunho?”

“He said you kept asking for me, and he wanted to make sure you got home okay.”

“I don’t want to go home yet,” Jisung said with a pout. “I wanted you to come! Dance with me!”

“No, I think it’s time to go.”

“I wanted to dance, though.”

“You can dance in my car,” Minho offered. “Come on, I have chips in the car, too. It’ll be fun.”

Jisung rolled his eyes, but that seemed to disorient him as he stumbled back a bit. Minho helped
him out of the house, guiding him over the dip in the driveway with ease. Their steps were almost
comically different, Minho’s quiet while Jisung’s slapped across the asphalt. Minho directed him
towards the side of the street he had parked on, his car waiting like the light at the end of a tunnel a
few yards away. He got Jisung almost halfway down the street before he started protesting.

“I can’t believe Yunho called you.”

“He texted me.”

“How does he have your number?” Jisung said, narrowing his eyes. “Does he want to date you?”

“No, Jisung,” Minho laughed. “You wanted to date him, remember?”

“I don’t date-”

“I know, I know,” he interrupted. “But he doesn’t want to date me either. He just texted me from
your phone while you were in the bathroom.”

“How did he get my phone?”

“He said you threw it into the jello shots at some point.”

Jisung paused, pulling his cell out of his pocket. He lifted it up to his face and gave it a loud sniff. “
That’s why my phone smells so weird!” he said, staring at the object in wonder. “Wild.”

“It’s definitely a very lime-forward smell,” Minho said. “But why did you try to toss your phone in
jello?”
“I wasn’t aiming for the jello.”

“I mean, why did you throw it at all?”

Jisung frowned. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Come on, Ji, out with it.”

“Fine,” Jisung groaned. He placed a hand on his head and turned away from Minho. “My parents
just sent me a few texts.”

“Oh,” Minho paused, steadying Jisung as he tried to hop forward towards the car. “What did they
say?”

“They wanted to know if I’m preparing for finals ,” he said, letting out a dark laugh. “Which is
stupid, considering they don’t even give a fuck about my major, or the work I want to do. They just
want to make sure their son isn’t failing out.”

“Did you tell them you’re basically acing all your classes?”

“No, but they’d know that if they ever actually tried talking to me.”

“Maybe they are trying?”

“They’re not,” Jisung sighed. “My mom left me a voicemail last night, too. Some bullshit about
there’s still time to pick up a different minor. She wants me to drop history and pick up some other
minor that would look better to her friends, or jobs, or whatever. Like I’m actually going to change
anything-as if I’m not a fucking senior already.”

“I’m sorry, Ji,” Minho reassured him. “That’s not a fun time. They shouldn’t put pressure on you
like that. ”

“I tried telling them about Changbin’s film, how we’re acting in it,” he sighed. “Or about our
hikes, or literally anything other than school. They just kept changing the topic back to my grades.
It’s all they care about.”

“Don’t let it get to you,” Minho said, frowning. His own parents always loved to hear about Jisung
and their friends. “I’ve told you that a million times.”

“It’s not even the pressure that they put on me that is the issue,” he said. “Though, obviously, I
don’t love that part of it.”

“What is it?” Minho asked, opening the passenger door. Jisung stayed in the middle of the road,
staring up at the moon.

“The main thing is that I feel this incessant need to be good.”

“Good? At what?”

“At anything, at everything,” he said. “Then once I’m good, I feel like I need to be better, then I
need to be the best . I feel like I need to prove my worth to everybody or they’ll realize that I’m
really just a broken, lost fuck who isn’t worth their time or energy.”

He stumbled, then, falling to the ground on his knees. Minho winced; he’d have to remember to
check his legs for scrapes later. He hoped that Jisung would jump back up, mood switching back to
the happy drunk, but he remained where he had fallen on the ground. He walked over to Jisung,
offering him a hand upright. He was strangely light as he lifted him up.

“It’s exhausting,” he continued. “I’m not saying that I think I have to be perfect or anything-”

“I mean,” Minho said. “You kind of are?”

“Maybe,” he sighed. “I just can’t stand the idea that people around me are disappointed in me, you
know?”

“Ji-”
“I don’t want to make anyone look bad, or embarrass anyone.”

Minho’s heart ached. “You could never disappoint me.”

“That’s because you’re you ,” he said, eyes glassy. “But there’s nobody else in the world like you.”

“Jisung-”

“I’m surprised you haven’t left me yet,” he said, voice thick. “What if one day, you woke up and
looked at me and realized this isn’t what I want, I can do better, he’s a mess . That’s literally my
biggest fear, that I’ll become some burden that people I love have to carry around.”

Minho had to fight the urge to hug him- Jisung didn’t respond well to physical touch when he was
emotional; he’d either rebuff you or simply burst into tears. Neither seemed like a great option at
the moment, so Minho simply met his eyes and said, “You’re not a burden.”

“My parents think I am. I don’t give a fuck about them, though, they can be disappionted in me all
they want. But you? And our friends?”

“People love you.”

“Yeah, people like me and I’m popular on campus or whatever,” he said with a dark laugh. “But at
the end of the day, I don’t want to hold anybody back from living their best lives.”

He took a deep breath. The words came out a little choked.

“Sometimes I just think that other people might be happier if they didn’t have me fucking shit up
around them all the time. Like, I should just drop out or go work for my parents and finally fall in
line.”

Minho could feel the conversation slipping even further downhill- there was an edge of desperation
that bled into Jisung’s voice, causing a catch in every few words that made his eyes sting. Minho
had seen him like this before only a few times, after an especially nasty fight with his parents or a
test he didn’t do well on that he thought he’d crush, or the one fight they’d ever had, arguing about
something so stupid neither of them ever remembered anymore. Something about tonight felt
particularly heavy- maybe it was that fact that it hadn’t been Jisung that had called him to come
pick him up. That had never happened before.

“I feel like a coward,” Jisung admitted. “I know everyone thinks that I’m this bubbly, ‘who cares’
kind of guy, but it’s just so I don’t get stuck inside my own head every day. I keep waking up with
this buzzing in my brain.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like this slow anxiety that creeps up throughout the day. I try to push it down and ignore it, but
it always seems to keep growing the more I think about things. By the end of the week, it’s
suffocating, and the only way I know how to make it go away is to play the part, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“I go downtown or to some random house party and I laugh with people I barely talk to and I get
wasted off shitty liquor and warm beer because it makes me feel better. I don't have to think about
the dumb thing I said in class or my parents talking my ear off about bitcoin or all the things I want
to say but can't. But it only lasts for a few hours, because then it’s 2a.m. and I realize how much of
a mess I’m being again, and I always end up calling you because you’re the only person I know
who won't judge me.”

“You know I’ll always come help you,” Minho said. “You can always call me.”

“But you shouldn’t have to clean up my messes all the time,” he said quietly. “Everyone knows
that, too. The guys probably told you that before you came, right?”

He was right, but Minho wouldn’t tell him that.

“Jisung, we’re really close to the car. It’s just a little further.”

“I’m sorry that I’m such a coward.”

Minho silently wondered how much of this Jisung would have actually told him if he were sober.
Some part of him wished that he was, that he would remember every little bit of this conversation
so he would remember how Minho didn’t care about any of it. How Jisung could be broken and
messy and chaos incarnate, and all of it combined still wouldn’t make him so much as flinch. He
wished that he would remember Minho standing steady beside him, holding him up as he began to
stumble, helping him find his bearings again. He wished that he could know, really know , how
much Minho loved him. Some little voice in the back of his head told him that he could, if Minho
would just tell him all these things in the morning. But maybe Minho was a little bit of a coward
too.

Jisung hiccuped. That usually meant that tears were close behind, but when Minho tipped his chin
up to look into his eyes, he found them dry. Glassy, sure, but he wasn’t crying yet. He counted that
as a success.

“Let’s just get you home, Ji,” he said, wrapping his arm around his waist. He took a few steps,
guiding Jisung along the sidewalk towards Minho’s car. “Once you get into your sweats and drink
some water, I promise this will all seem better.”

Jisung mumbled something incomprehensible, but he finally started picking up his feet. Minho got
him to the passenger side of the door and then had to balance him against the car as he fished his
keys out of his pocket.

“Can you get in the car okay, or do you need help?”

“I got it,” he assured him, but he leaned to the side a bit as he opened the car door. Minho heard a
small thud as he hit his forehead on the top of the door, letting out a string of slurred curses as he
pulled his seatbelt on. He was in the car, though. Minho could work with almost anything, as long
as he’d gotten him in the car.

“We’ll be home in no time,” he said. “You just sit back and relax, yeah?”

Jisung mumbled into the window.

“What was that?”

“I said I’m already home,” Jisung mumbled. “I’m with you.”

 ✩✩✩

Jisung knew he was hungover before he even opened his eyes. He also knew he was at home,
could smell the familiar scent of his favorite lavender candle on his nightstand, but he didn’t have
many clear memories from the night before. He knew he went out, remembered the texts from his
parents and the beers and some flashes of dancing and laughing and… Minho.

He sat up in bed, groaning at the light coming in through his window. He remembered Minho
appearing and whisking him home, and he had a feeling they had had some sort of conversation on
the way home, but the details were pretty fuzzy. He felt a hot flash of shame and the minor urge to
puke, but he tried to shake both feelings out. He did what he always did when he wasn’t sure to do.

He called Minho.

“Hello, sleeping beauty,” Minho said. Even through the phone, his voice instantly calmed some of
the anxiety buzzing in Jisung’s head.

“What are you doing right now?”

“Now? I’m just watching TV. Thinking about picking up some lunch at some point.”

“What do you want?” Jisung asked. “Pick a place and let me know, lunch is on me. It’s the least I
can do after you saved me last night.”

“Hmm… I could go for some Chinese food,” Minho said. “Can you meet me at Hunan King in
thirty minutes?”

“Done.”

When Jisung arrived, Minho had already been seated at the booth in the corner. He was watching
the little yellow cat figurine on the counter, waving up and down as people walked past, and Jisung
placed a penny at the foot of the statue. For luck.
Minho slid him a glass of water as he took his seat.

“You take all your dates here?” Jisung said with a grin.

“Only my favorite ones,” Minho laughed. “I ordered for us- you still like ma pa tofu, right?”

“Yeah, that’s perfect,” he said. “Thanks, but remember the bill is on me.”

“Then I would like to change my order to duck,” Mihno said, tapping his cheek as if deep in
thought. “An entire duck. Maybe add some gold leaf on there, too, or some truffles. Really pack on
the expense.”

Jisung laughed. He took a big sip of water as he relaxed into his seat, and realized that Minho
looked a little off. He was wearing what Jisung had lovingly dubbed the “stress sweater”, an old
cable-knit that Minho always wore during exams. He used to pull it out during midterms, warming
himself with a big cup of tea and the comfort of an oversized top. Jisung used to make fun of him
for it, bringing over an extra cookie or two whenever he noticed Minho in the dark-purple jumper.
Jisung racked his brain, trying to figure out what had triggered the return of the world's most
comfortable top. He cleared his throat.

“You have a test this week?”

“What?” Jisung pointed at his chest, and when Minho looked down at his top he made a little “o”
with his mouth. He chuckled, but even that sounded tired. “Ah, no. It was just the first thing I
grabbed.”

“You keep that sweater in the back of the wardrobe,” Jisung said, narrowing his eyes. “You
literally can't grab it by accident, you'd have to move your extra sleeping bag out of the way.
What’s up, Min?”

“It’s nothing.”

Jisung blanched. Of course.

“If this is about last night, I just want you to know I’m sorry,” Jisung rushed out. “I didn’t want
Yunho to call you, I knew you were hanging out with Felix and Chan and I’m really sorry you had
to leave to come get me.”

"Ji-"

"Seriously, I was out of line and I know I can't keep relying on you to get me every time. I promise
I'll think next time, I'll-"

“I’m not mad at you, Ji,” Minho insisted. “I promise.”

"Really?"

"Really."

"Well, I'm still sorry," Jisung said, but his relaxed. “Then what is it?”

Minho pulled some change out of his pocket, lining the coins up in a row on the table between
them. He placed them on top of one another, creating a little tower next to the stack of napkins. He
had stacked six or seven when a child walked by, heading towards the bathroom, and knocked into
the table as she passed. The coins splayed out across the surface of the table, a few sliding over
onto Jisung’s side. He picked them up, one by one, and dropped them back into Minho’s hand.
Jisung waited, watching him stack them a few times before finally sighing and meeting his eyes.

“I realized this morning that I’m exactly six months from the last leg of the A.T.,” he finally said.
“I’ll be starting my last section this summer.”

“Yeah?” Jisung said. “Isn’t that good, though? You love being out there.”

"I do,” he said, nodding. “But it also made me feel a little panicked. I know I’m not, like, behind
on my training or anything. I just have some days where I wonder if I’m really prepared… I don’t
know. It’s going to be my last part of the A.T., and then it’s over.”

“That makes sense,” Jisung said. “It’s something you’ve been working towards your whole life, it
makes perfect sense that you’d get some anxiety about it being over.”

“I guess I’m just having a nervous day.”

Jisung nodded. He didn’t need to say anything else. He knew how important the A.T. was to him,
how his heart seemed to swell every time he talked about the first dusting of snow on the
mountaintops. Whenever Minho had an anxious day, or got stuck in his own head, Jisung knew
exactly what to do.

“You wanna talk about it, or do you want to think about something completely random?”

Minho gave him a grateful smile. “Something random.”

“Did I tell you about the absolute idiot that sits in front of me in my economics class?” Jisung said,
without skipping a beat. “I would bet you my entire life savings that on Monday I will spend the
entire class watching him online shop.”

“What is that, seven dollars?”

“Very funny. I’ll have you know I have at least twelve dollars in my bank account.”

“Does the guy ever buy anything interesting?”

“Hardly,” Jisung huffed. “Usually computer parts or something equally boring. Once time he
spent, like, thirty minutes researching internet bandwidth for a modem.”

“Gross.”

“I know, right? I wanted to throw a spitball at him and tell him to at least look up something
saucy.”

Minho laughed so loudly that the people at the table next to them looked over. He probably should
have felt embarrassed, hardly one to enjoy attention from strangers, but all he felt was relieved. It
was honestly the first time he’d laughed since he woke up that morning.

Their food came out steaming hot, and although it wasn’t an entire duck decked out in truffles and
gold, Minho was extremely pleased with his chow mein. Jisung continued telling him about his
classmate’s internet search habits, only pausing every now and then to shove rice into his cheeks.
Jisung kept him distracted, easily flowing between subjects that ranged from superior ice cream
flavors (mint chocolate) to what he thought Minho’s cats dreamed about (world domination).

“I have a theory that Soonie can lucid dream,” he said conspiratorially. He pointed at Minho with
his chopsticks. “Take a video of him for me next time he’s sleeping, check if his feet twitch or
something.”

“I think cats just twitch sometimes.”

“Or, he’s lucid dreaming. Who’s to say who’s right?”

Later, when they were almost done with their meal, Minho looked down at a napkin in his hand,
shredding little strips of the paper off as he talked. Jisung plucked them from the table, trying to
braid them together. He never pointed out Minho’s nervous ticks, which he appreciated more than
he could say. Still, he wanted to try.

“Hey,” he said, voice a little softer than usual. Jisung looked up immediately. “Thanks for
coming.”

“Always,” he said. “Anyime, anywhere. You deserve it, especially after how much of an idiot I
was last night.”

“I already told you, you’re fine.”

Jisung rolled his eyes. “I’m a mess, Min. But thank you.”

“Of course, we’re a team.”

“We are,” Jisung said, smiling. “Now, let me pay for lunch, then I need to get home. I’ve got some
granola to make. You can’t absolutely dominate the A.T. if you’re training on an empty stomach,
and we have filming with Changbin this week. We need to be in tip-top-shape to play America's
favorite couple.”

Minho’s chest tightened. He looked up to see if he could read Jisung’s face, but his expression was
blank, focused on his last bite of tofu.
 butterflies
Chapter Notes

The songs for this chapter are “A Boy Named Pluto” by Hailey Knox and “The Other
Side” by The Wldlfe

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Two days after their mighty group of eight had visited Cafe Monarch for the first time, Changbin
sent a text to the short film group chat (“Hitchcock’s Homies”, name courtesy of Seungmin’s
suggestion) informing them that the next scene that he wanted to shoot would take place at the
coffee shop downtown. The cafe had been the latest in the group’s quest to eat at every shop in
town, and it quickly became one of their top picks. Changbin wanted to capture the “meet-cute” as
the next part of the plotline in their film calendar, although it would eventually be fixed in editing
to work as the first shot of the film. When he explained his plan on a rainy Sunday to his friends
standing in front of the cafe, Jisung looked fairly confused.

"We’re shooting what? Can you say it again?”

“A meet-cute.”

“What does that mean?” he said, looking scandalized. “I’m sorry, but how is meat cute?"

" Ew , not that,” Hyunjin said, scrunching up his face. “This has nothing to do with actual meat,
Jisung.”

When Jisung still looked confused, Changbin sighed. “You know how, in TV or movies, the two
main characters will bump into each other for the first time in some fun, cute way?” Jisung nodded
at him. “That's what it means. You meet in a cute way. Got it?"

“No meat-meat?”

“No meat-meat.”

"Got it," Jisung said. "But why do it at the cafe? What is so cute about a coffee shop?”
Minho and Hyunjin let out exaggerated gasps. Changbin let them take the question, gesturing for
one of them to finish their extended sighing and actually explain the decision. Hyunjin finished his
dramatics first.

"Have you never read a coffee-shop AU?" Hyunjin lamented. "Never seen a Hallmark movie?
Experienced an indie rom-com?”

“You’re not explaining this very well.”

“Oh my god, Jisung, read a fanfic once in a while. It's, like, the place to fall in love."

“Isn’t most fanfiction just smut?”

“ No ,” Changbin looked horrified. “Maybe that’s what you read on your own time, but there’s
actually a lot of fics that are complex and thoughtful…”

“Smut can be complex and thoughtful.”

“Yeah, Changbin,” Minho added, wanting to be included. “Don’t smut-shame.”

“Fine,” he said, waving his hand. “I’m sure some smut is insightful and life changing or whatever.
But I’m talking about the more narrative-driven stories. The romances always have a meet-cute,
and they’re often set in coffee shops. It’s a perfect backdrop.”

"They're just so warm and cozy," Minho agreed. "And the aesthetic is unmatched."

"I think you're just obsessed with caffeine," Jisung said, narrowing his eyes. "You're a coffee
addict. Addicts will do anything to get a fix, I watched a YouTube documentary about it."

“This isn’t opiates, Jisung, it’s caffeine.”

“So you admit you’re addicted?”

"Guilty," Minho said, raising a hand in acceptance. "But that doesn't change the fact that coffee
shops are cute. It's probably well-documented in academic literature."

“Well,” Changbin said. “I’m not sure-”

"Practically science," Hyunjin interjected. “I think the president actually made an announcement
declaring it the law. It’s illegal to hate cute coffee shops, Jisung, do you want to go to jail ?”

"Well, I'm not sure about the legal accuracy of any of those statements," Changbin laughed.
"They're definitely cute, though, and the owner of this café said it would be okay for me to film
inside so that's why we're doing it here."

“What’s her name again?” Jisung asked, temporarily abandoning his faux-hatred of coffee. “She
introduced herself when we came for brunch the other day but I didn’t catch it, but she was so nice.
She gave me an extra chai latte when Felix knocked mine over.”

“Sana,” Minho said. “Chan is good friends with her, apparently they go way back. And the girl
behind the register is Mina, she’s the one that had that dance class with Hyunjin his freshman
year.”

“She was so cool,” Hyunjin said. “She worked as a professional dancer for a while before she came
to work here, I think. She and her friends make a hell of a cafe- I want to be buried in those
raspberry danishes when I die.”

“I’ll make a note in your will,” Jisung said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Your wish is my
command.”

“Also, you literally just admitted that you could go for a chai latte,” Changbin pointed out. “So
you’re a caffeine addict too, Jisung.”

"Alright, I’m a convert," he said, raising his hands in surrender. "Sorry, I just like to rile you guys
up sometimes. Hyunjin’s voice goes all high and squeaky when he’s scandalized.”
“You’re exhausting,” Hyunjin said. “Truly.”

“I love you, too,” Jisung responded, beaming at him. “I guess that coffee shop supremacy begins
now, then? Let's get some of those wake-up beans!"

Minho led the group inside, waving at the two girls in the cafe as they greeted the group. He sat
down in one of the corner chairs, setting his phone down on a small metal table situated in front of
the comfortable blue armchair. The café had a brick interior that matched the front entrance, fairly
lights twinkling from the rafters, with a few sets of tall bookshelves leaning against the back wall.
Books were lined up as far as he could see, organized by color to create a cascade of blues and
greens bleeding into warm reds. He had briefly been to the café a few times, cramming for a final
or grabbing a quick pastry to refuel after a hike, but the group’s visit the previous week was the
longest he’d spent in the space. Now that he was spending a rainy afternoon inside, warm and
sheltered from the outside world, he understood the appeal.

Jisung took the seat opposite Minho, looking around. “You’re right, it is cozy,” he said. “It’s like
an extension of the living room of a very caffeinated millennial.”

“Is that good?”

“It’s perfect,” Jisung said with a grin. He turned towards the two boys setting up their cameras.
“So, what’s the plan, Bin?”

“First, let’s get some individual shots,” Changbin said. “Jisung, I want to start with you. Just come
up to the counter and pretend to order a drink- we can do it a few times until one feels real.”

“Why don’t I just actually order a drink?”

Changbin blinked at him. “Well, I guess we can start with that.”

Hyunjin laughed, pulling Jisung from his seat to drag him towards the register. Minho could hear
Mina greeting him, eyeing the camera shyly.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be great,” Changbin told her. “Hyunjin will shoot you making the drink, but
in the film it’ll just be a second or two. No pressure, really.”
“Thanks,” she said, letting out a breath. She turned towards Jisung, waiting at the counter, until
Changbin called action.

“Can I get an americano, please?” Jisung asked.

“ Cut !”

Mina jumped. Jisung turned to face Changbin, looking startled. “What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing,” Changbin said. “The light was just a little weird where I was standing. Let’s run it
again.”

Minho watched with amusement as Changbin shot a few takes of Jisung ordering a drink,
Hyunjin’s camera laser-focused on Mina’s hands stamping the espresso into the portafilter. He
noticed Sana in the background, handing Mina everything she needed a few seconds before the
next step in the process. He wondered how long they’d been working at the cafe, how long Sana
had owned it, because it seemed like second-nature for them both. It was almost relaxing to watch,
a perfectly choreographed dance behind the counter.

Almost relaxing, he thought, because every few minutes Changbin would yell “ cut !” or “ action !”
and that kind of threw him out of his state of zen. By the time they wrapped up Jisung’s solo shots,
thirty minutes had passed and he actually was in need of some caffeine. He walked up to the
counter, giving Sana a smile.

“Can I get a drip coffee?” he asked. “With two sugars and oat milk, if you have some handy.”

“Sure thing,” she said. She reached for a cup, then paused. “Wait- is this for the shoot, or do you
really want one?”

Minho laughed. “A real coffee, please.”

“Coming right up,” She gave him a little salute with her first two fingers. “That’ll be 2.95.”
After downing his drink (a little too fast, if the burns on his tongue were any indication), Changbin
staged Minho and took a few shots of him waiting near the side counter. Changbin told him to look
“relaxed and interesting”, which was a confusing note to be given, but he must have done well
enough because his roommate only shot it twice before declaring that he had what he needed. He
called Jisung up to the side counter, too, directing him to the corner of the shot to wait for his cue.
He double-checked the lighting before he started, nodding to himself when he found the perfect
angle.

“You guys remember the gist of the script?” he asked. “It doesn’t have to be verbatim, just the
main ideas. Grab the drink, take a sip, then start the conversation.”

“You got it, boss,” Jisung said. “Let’s get it!”

“ Action !”

Jisung took a few steps into the shot. He picked up the cup of coffee on the counter, blowing on it
a little bit to cool it down. He took a sip, then made a face. Minho recognized his cue as Jisung
lifted the cup, turning it to the side to reveal the name written on the side: Ben .

“I think that might be mine,” he said, stepping into frame. “I ordered a caramel latte?”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Jisung recited, making a horrified expression. “I thought this tasted
sweet. I picked it up without even reading, that’s totally my fault. Let me buy you another.”

Minho picked up the other cup on the table, turning the label so the camera could pick up the name
scribbled on that one: Jack .

“Jack, I presume?” he asked.

“That’s me,” Jisung-Jack nodded. “And that would make you Ben?”

“Nice to meet you,” Minho-Ben said, giving him a smile before taking a quick sip of the coffee he
picked up. He hummed. “Oh, this is really good.”
“Yeah?”

“Luckily, we seem to have similar taste,” he said. “What is this, a mocha?”

“With oat milk,” Jisung recited. “I’m so sorry, let me buy you another latte.”

“Don’t worry about picking mine up, seriously. I can drink this. No worries.”

Jisung looked down at his feet, seemingly contemplating his next words. Minho knew what line
came next, had stared at the words for the entire previous day, but he waited anxiously to hear it
actually come out of Jisung’s mouth.

“Then let me buy you another coffee tomorrow afternoon,” he said, looking up. “Are you free
around one?”

Minho felt distracted, thinking about how much he loved his eyes when they were focused like
this, but was able to get some words out.

“Are you asking me on a date, coffee-thief?”

Jisung laughed, managing to nod. Minho had added that last bit on his own.

“I am,” he said. “And are you accepting?”

“I am.”

Jisung beamed at him. “Perfect.”

" Cut !" Changbin said. Jisung and Minho broke eye contact, turning to face their friend. "That was
good, but can we do one more?”
“Same setup?” Hyunjin asked, adjusting the mic taped to the end of his camera. “I think the sound
was good.”

“Yeah, the sound is perfect. I just want to get some reaction shots from Minho while Jisung gives
his lines, that way I can edit some of them to show back and forth during their conversation. Most
of that take was just on Ji’s face.”

They placed the coffee cups back on the counter and Jisung ran through the beginning of the scene
again. Minho could feel the camera on him as he waited to give his first line, and he could feel his
hands starting to sweat as the scene went on. He wasn’t sure why the camera was making him
anxious during this scene in particular- maybe it was because it was in a much closer space than
out on a mountain, or the fact that he could see Sana and Minho watching them film from the
corner of his eye- but he worried that the camera would pick up the red flush on his neck that
appeared any time he got nervous. He considered pulling out and starting the scene over, but just as
he was about to step away Jisung reached out and took his hand. He held his hand tight, just under
the view of the camera. Minho took a deep breath.

“I think that might be mine,” he said. Jisung squeezed his hand in encouragement.“I ordered a
caramel latte?”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Jisung said, and he recited all of his lines with one hand holding
Minho’s.

The scene flowed much easier after that, Minho’s nerves melting away as he and Jisung ad-libbed
some comments at the end. Changbin had them run it one more time, focusing on a wide-angle
shot that time, and that was the easiest take of all. At the end of the last shot, Minho lifted his cup
to take a sip when Jisung cracked a new joke. He laughed into his latte, so hard that a little bit of
foam flew out of the cup and landed right on his cheek. Jisung leaned forward, swiping the foam
off of his cheek with his thumb. He lingered there, just for a moment, and said under his breath,
“Cute.”

Minho’s cheeks burned. He tried to think of something to say- something his character would say-
but nothing came out. He just blinked at Jisung, watching him with burning cheeks as he licked the
foam off his finger with a lazy grin.

“ Cut ,” Changbin called, looking at them through the camera. He stood back, a curious expression
on his face as he looked back and forth between them. “Okay… I think we’re good for today.”

Hyunjin let out a little “ woot-woot !” and started packing up their supplies while Changbin walked
behind the counter to thank Sana for letting them shoot at Cafe Monarch. Minho hadn’t brought
much with him, so after he picked his phone back up from the small table in the corner he was
pretty much ready to go. He waited by the door until Jisung approached, offering his cup of now-
lukewarm coffee to cheers with Minho’s. They each finished off the last of their drinks as they
waited for their roommates.

“You know, that was kind of a bold move,” Minho said, avoiding eye-contact. "I don't think our
characters are close enough for that yet, if this is the first time they’ve met.”

“Well, I can’t help it if I feel like I’ve known you forever,” Jisung said with a shrug. “I have.”

“Yeah, but our characters haven’t,” Minho said. “So calling my character cute when he does
something dumb-”

“That wasn’t for your character," Jisung interrupted. "That was for you."

“Um,” Minho blinked at him. “For me?”

“I just mean,” Jisung rushed out, turning his head to stare at the menu on the chalkboard. “I could
tell you were nervous, so I wanted to snap you out of it. Do something crazy, to get you out of your
head. That’s all.”

“Oh,” Minho said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, this is embarrassing,” he joked. “I thought that you really thought I was cute.”

“You are,” Jisung said, smiling again. “But if I tell you that too much, you’ll get cocky.”

“Is that so?”

“It is!” he laughed. “So I’ve got to keep the compliments in check. It’s for your own good.”
“Are you saying you have other compliments for me that you haven’t said yet?”

“You’re insatiable,” Jisung said, rolling his eyes. “But yes, yes I do. I’ve got a lot of compliments
for you.”

Minho couldn’t help himself. “Like what?”

Jisung turned to face him again, smiling like he had a secret. “If I told you,” he said. “You’d think I
was actually obsessed with you.”

“Maybe you are,” Minho said, suddenly feeling lightheaded. He’d had too much coffee. “And you
just haven’t realized it yet.”

“Maybe,” Jisung said. “Or, maybe I’ve realized a lot of things lately.”

Minho tilted his head, searching Jisung’s face. He waited for the rest of that sentence, for some
sort of clarification or even a joke, but Jisung seemed to be done talking. Minho wasn’t sure
exactly what answer he was looking for, but he didn’t seem to be getting one at all. Changbin and
Hyunjin bounded over to them, handing them each danish tucked into some wax paper.

“A parting gift,” Changbin said. “Sana said we’re welcome back anytime.”

Minho smiled, taking a bite of the pastry. It was amazing- some kind of lemon-raspberry cream
cheese concoction that had him taking a second bite almost immediately. He turned to see if Jisung
liked his, too, but he was already walking towards the car. He opened the driver’s side, sliding into
the seat without looking back to see if the rest of them were following. They joined him, piling into
the car to eat their treats in silence.

Minho’s head was buzzing.

✩✩✩
“Is it normal for your friend to give you butterflies?”

“Dude, what?”

Minho flinched, startled. He didn’t even realize he was speaking aloud, so focused on the thoughts
slamming around in his brain. Ruminating , Seungmin had once explained to him. Getting stuck on
one thought, going over it repeatedly, means that there’s something you need to face head on. He
had been struggling with something ever since the shoot that afternoon, and wow his friend was
staring at him like he’d grown three heads. He hadn’t meant to say any of it out loud for this exact
reason- Changbin’s eyes widened as he looked Minho up and down. He tried to think of some sort
of explanation, to deflect attention away from his very pointed question, but his brain was suddenly
blank. Of course.

“Um,” he started speaking, not quite knowing where he was going. “I was watching this k-drama
earlier, and one of the characters said something like that.”

Changbin sat up from where he had sunk into the couch, narrowing his eyes as he searched
Minho’s face. “Uh-huh. What was the name of the k-drama?”

“It was called…” Minho mumbled, trailing off. “Um, I honestly don’t even remember.”

“You don’t remember?”

“It wasn’t very good.”

“Why were you watching it if it wasn’t good?”

“I had it on while I was cleaning the living room.”

Changbin didn’t look convinced. “Right.”

Minho nodded, trying to look casual. He stretched out his legs, knocking a pillow off the couch in
the process. “Yeah, forget I said anything. It was a dumb show anyway. I don’t even know why I
was thinking about it.” Doongie meowed from his spot in between them, perturbed at the
disturbance. He got up to leave the room, eyes down, but Changbin reached out his hand and
grabbed one of his sleeves as he took his first step.

“Wait,” he said, gesturing to the seat next to him. “Come back, I’ve actually got some thoughts on
that.”

Minho swallowed. He gingerly sat on the cushion, feeling strangely cautious of his movements for
a couch he’d slept on more times than he could count. Doongie had closed his eyes again, pleased
to have two warm bodies nearby as he took his afternoon nap. Minho reached out to scratch behind
his ears, relaxing a bit when he heard the purring ramp up. He looked around for the other two, but
they were nowhere to be found in the living room or adjoining kitchen. Minho assumed they had
taken up residence in Felix’s bed- he’d let them sleep there once, and they assumed it was theirs
ever since. Luckily, Felix loved it.

Changbin sat with his hand on his chin, eyebrows furrowed as he thought to himself. Minho
thought about cracking a joke about his roommate looking like the Korean version of The Thinker
statue, but held it back. He’d keep hold of that joke for another day. “It’s an interesting question,”
Changbin finally said, turning to face him. “We are friends with people because we like them,
right?”

“Well, yeah.”

“So in a way, I guess it would make sense for somebody that you’re friends with to give you some
sort of happy feeling when you’re with them.”

Minho nodded. Of course, that made total sense. So there was no need for him to worry about-

“But,” Changbin continued, interrupting his thoughts. “I think there’s a difference between being
happy with your friend being in your life and having butterflies around someone.”

“How so?” Minho asked. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

Changbin, though, looked genuinely thoughtful.

“I mean, butterflies are something you get when you have feelings for someone. Not what-a--
great-pal kind of feelings, though. I’m thinking of butterflies as something you get from real,
romantic feelings. When you have feelings like that for somebody, you’re happy to see them, but
also your stomach gets in knots and hands start to become sweaty. Butterflies are some kind of
special combination between joy and anxiety- you’re so happy someone is there but you’re also
nervous to be around them. It’s a full body experience, you know?”

“You’ve thought about this a lot,” Minho finally commented. “Have you had butterflies before?”

“Haven’t you?”

Minho sat silent. He honestly hadn’t given it that much thought- maybe some part of his mind
knew he wasn’t ready to start tackling those feelings and had shut off that portion of his brain.
Still, Changbin had him thinking now, and he wasn’t sure he knew how to turn that line of thinking
off once it got started. Ruminating , Seungmin’s voice called out in his mind. Minho shook his
head.

“I don’t know if I have,” Minho lied. “That was a great explanation, though.”

“Maybe that will help you and your k-drama,” Changbin said with a smirk. “Let me know if you
remember the title, I’d like to watch it.

“Yeah, sure,” Minho said. He tried to redirect the conversation away from his fictional drama.
“You should put some similar kind of storyline in your next film. You’ve got a really good vision
for this kind of stuff.”

“Or maybe,” Changbin’s eyes lit up. “I can put it in this one.”

Minho’s stomach dropped. “What do you mean?”

Changbin smiled to himself, ignoring Minho’s growing panic. He stood up from the couch, pulling
out his phone. Minho saw him pull up his notes app, typing out a quick succession of sentences in
his “Idea Dump” folder. He looked over at Minho and gave him a grin.

“I think I have an idea of the next scene for you and Jisung,” Changbin finally said.
“What scene?”

“You’ll see,” he said. “Let’s see if we can make some butterflies of our own on screen.”

✩✩✩

Jisung offered to drive to the next shoot, a quick scene at a hike that ran along the side of a river
followed by a longer shoot in the clearing at the end of the path. Changbin explained that he
wanted to get some shots of them walking the route with the river in the background, but that the
rushing water would make it hard to get any dialogue that would make it past the cutting room
floor. Minho didn’t know much about audio editing, but the way that Changbin would groan in
frustration from his room when he was working on an audio project made him trust their
judgement. He was surprised when Jisung pulled up alone in front of the townhouse to collect him
and Changbin, waving from behind the windshield.

“Is Hyunjin driving separately?” he asked, buckling his seatbelt.

“Hyunjin is working on some editing with Chan today,” Changbin explained. “I want to make sure
that the songs Chan is letting us use will work with the scenes I’ve been planning to pair them
with. Hyunjin has the best eye for that kind of thing, so I’m going to film you guys alone today.”

“I tried to get him to show me some sneak peaks, but he was being a butt,” Jisung said, turning
onto the highway. “He gave me some spiel about raw footage not being ready and editing is an art
form , but I only listened to him for a few minutes before I gave up.”

“He’s right, though,” Changbin said. “I want to get the scenes at least color-corrected before we
start showing anybody snippets of the work, let alone start working on audio-enhancements.”

“Always a perfectionist,” Minho said fondly. “That’s why your projects are always the best.”

“That’s our Bin, meticulous to a fault,” Jisung said, winking in the rear-view mirror when
Changbin blew a raspberry at him from the back seat. “Did you have any notes on the script?”

Changbin nodded. “Yeah, actually. I made some changes last night- I’ll give you both a copy when
we get to the second location.”
“Sounds good.”

They pulled into a spot alongside a beat-up Hyundai twenty minutes later, one of the only other
cars in the small parking lot beside the mountain. There were only two trails that lead from the lot,
plus one that was more off-path, but the one they wanted was a well-worn dirt route that snaked
along the lower levels of the mountain. The river cut in between the smaller mountain in front of
them and a much larger mountain, with routes long enough to have an overnight hike. Minho knew
they would be shooting on that one at some point, doing a few scenes over the course of a night so
Changbin could get some footage of him putting a tent together and lighting a fire. Rugged stuff ,
as he had so eloquently put it.

Minho always loved autumn, with the leaves turning from their regular greens to bright yellows
and vivid oranges, splashes of red dappling the landscape in front of him. His mom used to say that
autumn was nature's great purge, it's own version of shedding it's skin to make way for new life in
the spring. So many things nearing the end of their cycle, it was hard to keep track. Minho liked to
look at autumn as a start, too. The start of shorter days and longer nights. The start of morning dew
and the whisper of a chill in the air. The start of tucking jeans into his boots, and finally pulling out
the big box of sweaters that he kept in the back of his closet. He loved sweater weather- he didn't
care if that made him a stereotypical bisexual.

The first thirty minutes of the shoot seemed pretty standard- Changbin took turns focusing on
either Jisung or Minho as they walked. He shot them both walking the path from front and then
from behind, taking the time to run a bit further away for some wider shots as well. They paused by
a large rock to get some shots of the two lacing their boots up, untying them in between takes so
they could shoot it a few times until Changbin thought they had gotten it perfect.

“Do we need to look over the new scripts?” Jisung asked as they prepared to walk. He scrolled
through the original document on his phone, reading over the lines. “I’m not sure when the edits
will kick in compared to the original.”

“You’re good for now,” Changbin said with a wave of his hand. “I’ll give them to you near the
end, that’s where the changes are.”

“Got it,” Minho said, secretly relieved. He’d spent hours looking over the various scripts that
Jisung sent him for different scenes, and he had been worried that he’d get confused if a lot of the
dialogue changed. That didn’t seem to be the case, so he felt some tension leave his shoulders and
Jisung took his hand and they began their hike.

They walked side-by-side (or rather “side-by-side-by-side”, if you took into account how Changbin
filmed by walking right next to them as they made their way along the path), occasionally taking
breaks to admire the river. The water was pretty murky, not like some of the clearer pools of water
on other hikes in the area, but the rushing sound that came with the movement of the water made
Minho feel at ease.

“We can say whatever we want right now, right?” Jisung asked, still looking at the river. “Since
the music will be over this part?”

“Right.”

“Cool,” he said. “Cuz I have got the worst wedgie.”

Minho barked out a laugh. “Dude, of all the things you could have said, why ?”

“It’s killing me,” Jisung laughed, pretending to point something out in one of the trees. Changbin
chuckled under his breath. “And I feel better now that I’ve shared my dirty little secret. I feel like a
weight has been lifted and I can go on.”

“I’m glad it helped,” Minho laughed.

They then spiralled into a discussion about elementary-school bullies (“Did you ever have a bully
give you a wedgie? Or a swirly?” Minho asked. “They’re insane. Where did we even learn those
things? When I see a toilet, my first instinct is not to stick somebody’s head into it.”) as they
walked. Jisung picked up a few pretty rocks he found along the way, presenting them to Minho
like a prize.

“Did you know penguins do that?” Minho said, holding the small treasure in his hand. The stone
was light pink and smooth, a gentle curved oval shape.

“Give each other rocks?”

“Pebbles, but yeah,” Minho said. “They make their nests out of them during mating season. The
boy penguin will go out and find a pebble and bring it back to whatever girl that he’s into. If she
likes it, she’ll add the rock to her nest and that signifies that they are mates.”
“That’s wild,” Jisung said. “Any kind of pebble in particular?”

“Well, they live on some pretty rocky shores, so they’ll usually pick one a really smooth one from
the shore that they like. Apparently, males will even fight over the prettiest ones.”

“No way!”

“They do!” Minho laughed. “Some will even steal a good pebble out of another penguin’s nest and
pawn it off as their own. They’re shameless.”

“Well, you better not give some other guy or girl my rock. Promise you’ll keep it?”

Minho looked down to the stone in his hand, a rock he recognized as a quartz. He ran his thumb
along the smooth surface, grinning. “Deal.”

“This is why humans are at the top of the food chain,” Jisung said. “Our big ole brains help us
recognize the value of a good rock.”

Minho giggled, pocketing the stone so he wouldn’t lose it along the path.

They walked for another ten minutes or so as Changbin took a few shots from experimental angles
(“I don’t think I’ll actually use any footage I take upside down, but it can’t hurt to have, right?”)
and tried not to slip and fall into the river near the slipper edges. With the unscripted portion
complete, the three boys navigated to the clearing near the halfway-point in the trail. When they
finally took their first steps onto the tall grass, Changbin paused.

“Wow,” he said. “This is amazing.”

Minho grinned. This clearing was one of his favorites, a small meadow tucked into the side of the
mountain. The grass was a bit overgrown, as it wasn’t actually part of the path and therefore cared
for by the park service, but Minho kind of enjoyed that wild quality. It felt raw and real, standing in
the clearing with a range of mountains in the distance. Some bright orange flame azaleas framed
the meadow on either side, and although it was not their prime blooming season, it was still a
beautiful sight. Even the clouds seemed to be cooperating, parting so that the sun could filter
through. It was Changbin’s dream scenario for the next scene.
Minho set his bag down on a rock, pulling the stone out of his pocket so he could put it away in the
small pocket in the front of the canvas material. He zipped it shut, tucking away his treasure, as
Changbin started to set up.

“As you know, this scene is where Ben and Jack become a couple,” Changbin said, adjusting his
lens. “The dialogue is pretty much the same from the original script, but at the end I want to add
one thing. Sounds good?”

“Works for me,” Jisung said. “You ready, Min?”

“Yeah,” he said, walking over to the area the camera was focused on. “If I mess up, just let me
know.”

“It doesn’t have to be the exact dialogue,” Changbin assured him. “As long as you hit the main
points, I’ll be happy.”

“Action!”

“It’s beautiful out here,” Jisung said, looking out over the view. “Thank you for taking me here.”

“Of course,” Minho recited. He at least had the beginning down. “This is one of my favorite hikes,
and I’ve always wanted to share it with someone special.”

“And I’m special enough to make the cut?” Jisung said, giving him a Cheshire Cat grin.

“I thought that was obvious.”

Jisung giggled. He reached out his hand, pulling Minho forward so that they were shoulder-to-
shoulder, fingers still intertwined. Minho was jealous at how easy he made all of this look.

“I think you’re special too,” Jisung said. His voice was soft, butter as it hit Minho’s ears. He
suddenly became overly aware of every breath, the way that his hands felt heavy in Jisung’s. He
hoped the camera couldn’t pick up any of that- their friends would never let him live it down.
Minho took a deep breath, mentally preparing for the next lines he knew he had on deck.

“Hey,” he said, turning to face Jisung. He stared back with an open expression, patiently waiting
for him to continue as he rested a thumb on Minho’s knuckles. “I have something to ask you.”

“Ask away,” Jisung said, smiling. “I’m an open book.”

“I was actually wondering something,” he said, swallowing thickly. “I’ve had a lot of fun getting to
know you, Jack.”

“I’ve loved getting to know you, too.”

“And I was hoping we could keep spending time together.”

“I’d like that,” Jisung said, eyes dancing.

“So I was wondering…” Minho trailed off, taking a moment to breathe. “Would you be my
boyfriend?”

He felt like everything was moving in slow-motion. He heard the words come out of his mouth,
could feel the curve of them on his lips, and watched Jisung listening to him with an attentive
smile. It was so strange, though, to say it out loud when he’d been saying it in his head for days
now. For the script, of course, just for the script- but still . It felt so strange for Minho to stand in
front of Jisung and ask him for anything more than friendship, even in the context of a movie.

He knew what Jisung would say in response, because he’d read over that part of the script he’d
been emailed at least a hundred times. He’d even highlighted it at one point, a bright pop of yellow
on the screen that he could pick out immediately. Jisung (Jack) would agree to be official, they
would hug, and then Changbin would pan away slowly. He had imagined it in his head, marking
the exact beats that he would take in between looking at him and holding him close. He could
practically see the movie in his head already.

“I’d love that,” Jisung said. “Yes, I’ll be your boyfriend.”

Minho waited for Changbin to call cut, to pan away, but he kept filming. His roommate shifted on
his feet a little bit, then called out to them with his eye still on the camera.

“Okay, now this is where we’re adding in the new part,” he said. “I’m going to add music over this,
so don’t worry about talking. Just keep looking at each other, and just follow my directions.”

Jisung and Minho nodded, turning back to each other. They had been filming enough times
together to know that sometimes Changbin would change his mind at the last minute. He usually
improvised, filming through a few takes without resetting in order to save time with the promise
that he’d edit it to look beautiful later.

“Jisung, you step forward and give Minho a hug. Stay there for a moment, then pull away a little
bit to look at each other.”

They followed his directions, looking into each other's eyes as they waited for further instructions.
Minho tried to keep from swaying, a little dizzy at staring straight at Jisung for so long, and tried to
focus on his breathing. It felt like it had been hours.

“Now Minho,” Changbin said. “Wait one or two beats, then lean in and kiss Jisung.”

Jisung erupted into a coughing fit and Minho jerked back as though he had been burned, throwing
an incredulous glare at his roommate. “ What ?”

“Cut! ” Changbin said, sighing. “Oh well, I guess the spontaneous take wasn’t the way to go.”

“Changbin?” Jisung asked, panic seeping into his voice. “I didn’t know that was the edit, dude,
you’ve got to warn us about something like that.”

“You thought just springing that on me would be the best call?” Minho asked, and he was horrified
to realize how high his voice had become. “Are you crazy?”

“I thought it would help you guys not be nervous!” Changbin insisted. “I thought if I told you
before we started, you’d both get stuck in your heads all day and we wouldn’t get the first few
scenes, let alone the kiss.”
Minho frowned. He was right, of course, but that didn’t mean he was cool with the surprise
direction. He gripped his arm, squeezing it to calm himself down.

“I didn’t realize we’d have to kiss,” he muttered.

“Me either,” Jisung said, and Minho was relieved to find that he looked just as panicked. He
wondered fleetingly if he should feel offended.

“You guys don’t have to do it if you’re not comfortable with it!” Changbin assured them. “Just
hug, and I can shoot it at an angle so it looks like you’re going in for a kiss. I just thought maybe if
I surprised you in the moment, you’d be so in the acting-zone that neither of you would get too
nervous.”

“It was a good idea,” Minho said, giving him a small shrug. “But unfortunately you have deeply
underestimated my camera anxiety. I think if I had to watch myself kiss on screen I’d throw up.”

“We can just do the hug thing,” Jisung said. He shifted his weight back and forth, one foot to
another. He turned to Minho. “It kind of feels like a lot. I’m sorry, I totally get you being
uncomfortable with the idea of kissing me.”

Minho paused. “Well, it’s not that , necessarily,” he said, immediately wanting to smack himself in
the face. “I just mean, I don’t know if I’d be okay with kissing anyone on camera. It’s not just
you.”

“It’s not you it’s me?” Jisung asked with a little tilt of the head. “Are you using an old classic on
me?”

Minho laughed. “Exactly.”

“Thanks,” Jisung gave him a grateful smile. “For a second I was worried I was repulsive.”

Minho laughed again. Even in his own panic, Jisung was able to calm him down with a joke and a
little poke to the side. He took a deep breath, trying to relax after his near-meltdown. He would
have to apologize to Changbin later- it made total sense to ask two people playing a couple to kiss,
he wasn’t sure why he had freaked out so badly. Jisung seemed to be steadying himself as well,
clenching his fists at his side before walking back to his mark to reset.
“Do you want to run it again?” he offered. “We can do the hug at the end, and you can do your film
magic to make it look good.”

“Yeah, that’s perfect,” Changbin said, nodding. “Minho, just let me know when you’re ready.”

Minho joined Jisung at the edge of the clearing, waiting for Changbin’s cue to start from the top.
The second run through was a bit shaky, the both of them still visibly nervous, but the third went so
smoothly that Changbin declared the day complete on the spot. They made their way back to the
car mostly in silence, enjoying the sounds of the birds chirping back and forth somewhere high in
the trees.

As they climbed into the car, Changbin spoke up from the backseat.

“You guys did great today,” he said. “I think this footage is going to work really well."

“Thanks, Bin.”

“It’s because we have a great director,” Jisung said, throwing him a wink. “Even if you did try and
commit an HR violation.”

“We aren’t a real film company, Jisung, there is no HR,” Changbin said, rolling his eyes. “But I
wanted to say again- if you guys ever change your mind and are okay with an on-screen kiss, I
think it would really boost the film’s feeling.”

Minho gripped the steering wheel. “Maybe,” he said, trying to throw in a laugh. It came out as
more of a strangled chuckle. “I’ll keep you updated.”

Jisung looked at him from the passenger seat, trying to read his face even as he was driving.

“Who knows,” he finally added. “Maybe we’ll figure it out.”

“You could always practice,” Changbin said, wiggling his eyebrows. “That would help with the
authenticity and fix your nerves.”
 Jisung reached into the backseat to smack his leg, and Changbin burst into a fit of giggles. Minho
remained silent as he drove Jisung to his apartment, giving him a small wave as he got out of the
car and ran into the complex. Changbin moved to the front seat, buckling his seatbelt before
turning to Minho. He studied him for a moment, then said, “I’m just saying, I don’t think it’s that
bad of an idea.”

“What is?” Minho asked, but he was pretty sure he knew.

Changbin grinned at him.

“Practice.”

Chapter End Notes

Happy New Year, friends! I hope you enjoy this update :)

 push your luck
Chapter Notes

the songs for this chapter are "...speeding up" by mokita and "dna" by LANY

See the end of the chapter for more notes

It took one bad call from his parents and two solid days of ruminating about Minho for Jisung to
end up at another party.

In his defense, he hadn’t meant to stay so long. Since it was the first week of Spring semester, he
fully intended to keep things quiet. At first, it was just an invite to a low-key hangout with some
people from his prose class and a beer or two. He had showed up to one of the girls’ houses with
tortilla chips and high hopes, but then his mom texted him about his spring break plans (which
wasn’t for another three months!) and the beers quickly turned into shots. He wasn’t sure when his
conversation about the rules of haikus had morphed into a game of spin the bottle, but he was
suddenly sitting in a circle with half friends, half strangers, and an empty bottle in front of him. He
reached down, about to spin for his turn, and stopped.

He didn’t need to call Minho.

✩✩✩

Minho was halfway through his study guide for a forestry exam when his phone lit up. He tapped
on the screen, one hand still flipping through his notes, and saw Jisung’s name with a string of
squirrel emojis and a garbled text message shining up at him. He sighed, folding the corner of the
page so he’d save his spot in his notes, then got up from his desk to go grab his keys.

To Jisung’s credit, it seemed to be a tamer night than some he’d had in the past. When Minho
pulled up alongside the house, he was there patiently waiting for him on the doorstep with his
hands in his pockets. Minho didn’t even have to get out of the car (that definitely was a sign that it
was a more tolerable night of drinking) and Jisung even buckled his seatbelt in silence.

“You okay?” he asked, and Jisung hummed. Minho frowned“What does that mean? Are you
okay?”
“I’m okay,” Jisung said, and Minho could smell some cheap smirnoff on his breath. “I just wanted
to leave early.”

“Really?” Minho asked, raising his eyebrows. “That’s new. Why did you want to leave?”

Jisung frowned. “They wanted me to kiss them.”

“Oh,” Minho said, suddenly gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were almost white.
“Who?”

“The circle,” Jisung said, a little tilt in his speech. He’d definitely had a few drinks, even if it
wasn’t a full blackout. Minho would still tread lightly.

“What circle?” he asked.

“Spin the bottle.”

“And it was your spin?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t want to play,” Jisung said, shrugging. “I told them I wanted to go home.”

“Ah,” Minho said, loosening his grip. “Why did you say no?”

Jisung turned to look at him. Even out of the corner of his eye Minho could tell that his cheeks
were flushed, but not in the same way that his face usually was in the outdoors, the rosy hue they
took on whenever they hiked. Instead, it was from some combination of liquors that he probably
didn’t even remember. Jisung looked at Minho for a few seconds before answering.

“You weren’t there,” he said simply. “We couldn’t practice for Changbin’s movie.”

Minho snorted. “Oh my god, Jisung.”

“Thanks for getting me home.”

“That’s what friends are for, right?”

“Is that what you are?”

“What?” Minho waited for a response, but Jisung was silent. When he turned to look at him, he
found his eyes to be a bit unfocused. “What else would I be?”

Jisung closed his eyes. “Thanks.”

Minho didn’t understand why the vibe had gotten so weird in a matter of seconds. He hoped that
getting Jisung home would snap him back to himself, but he tried not to get his hopes up. That
usually led to disappointment. He got Jisung into the complex easily, not even having to steady
him in the elevator like usual. They stared at each other as the elevator climbed a few floors.

“Does my haircut look stupid?” Jisung said, breaking his five minutes of silence.

“No, it doesn’t look stupid.”

“I look so round.”

“You’re handsome, Ji,” he insisted. “Even if you’re round.”

“But I don’t want to be a circle.”

Minho looked at him for a few seconds, then reached out to part his hair a bit. He gave the bangs a
fluff, tucking one side back a little more than the other. The elevator dinged as they hit the third
floor.

“There,” he said. “Now you look good. You looked vaguely like a coconut before, but I think that’s
because there’s no more product left in your hair and you looked dead inside.”
“Thank you,” Jisung said in a singsong tone. “No more coconut head for me.”

He was starting to sober up a bit, enough that Minho felt comfortable sending him to take a shower
before getting to bed. He waved at Hyunjin in the living room, and his friend gave him a little
frown. Minho pretended not to see it.

✩✩✩

Jisung was a lot of things, but stupid wasn't one of them.

Sure, some nights he came home with only one of his shoes and maybe he's had to replace his
phone a few times, but he's not a total idiot. He had a 3.9 GPA and was in two honor societies and
he could read people pretty well. When Minho settled next to him on the couch in the late morning
light to watch a new nature documentary while Jisung’s hangover wore off, he could tell
immediately that he had something on his mind. Minho was usually pretty open about what he was
thinking- it was rare that Jisung didn’t have some sort of read on him or how he was feeling, so the
sudden radio silence in between small talk was a glaring red flag to him. He knew that Minho was
biting his tongue about something, worried about saying it for some reason Jisung didn’t
understand, and it was driving them both crazy: Minho, for not being able to say something to the
one person that he always shared everything with, and Jisung for having to pretend like he didn't
notice Minho opening his mouth just to close it again over and over. He let it go for the first ten
minutes of the movie, trying to focus on a pair of unfairly cute polar bear cubs, but finally he
couldn't take it anymore when he realized Minho wasn’t even watching the movie that he had
picked out in the first place.

"Spit it out."

"Huh?" Minho looked over at him, eyes wide. Jisung fought the urge to poke his cheek.

"Whatever it is you're thinking about saying," he said, turning back to the TV. "Just say it. Can't be
that bad."

He thought he saw Minho wince out of the corner of his eye. Well, that was new. Usually when he
had bad news or was stressed about something, it came spilling out like water as soon as Jisung
gave him the opportunity to vent. Whatever it was, it must be really bothering him. Jisung leaned
forward to grab the remote, pausing the movie with a click.
"Hey," he said, turning to face Minho fully. "Seriously, what's up?"

"I’m good," he said, shrugging. “It’s nothing.”

"It's obviously not nothing, you haven’t even been paying attention to Snowball and Snowflake's
first seal hunt with their mom!"

"Fine," Minho sighed. "I’m not sure how to say this to you.”

Jisung froze. He knew where this was going, now.

“I guess I've just been…"

Jisung shook his head to himself, willing Minho to say anything other than what he knew was
coming out of his mouth next. Please .

"Worried about you."

Jisung sighed one of his big, full body exhales that echoed in the room. He let it knock him over on
the couch in a dramatic huff.

"Minho," he groaned. "I get the griping from everyone else, but not you, too!"

"I'm not trying to rag on you, I swear," he rushed out. "It's just that you've been out every weekend
this month, and now you’re going out on Thursday, too."

"Most of those were super tame!" he insisted. "And on Thursday I literally left early."

"Yeah, and on Saturday you blacked out," Minho said gently. "That's not tame, Ji. I don’t get why
you’ve been escalating like this. Is something bothering you?”
“Nothing is bothering me, I’m totally fine,” Jisung lied. “It’s just a way for me to relax.”

“It's dangerous."

“Oh come on.”

Jisung stood. Minho winced again, rising to stand as well. He lifted his hands, palms facing out so
it didn’t look like he was attacking him for anything. Jisung fidgeted, twisting the ring on his
thumb over and over as he tried not to make eye contact with Minho. To an outsider, it may have
looked like Jisung was mad at him, but Minho knew him too well to believe that.

The truth was, Jisung was embarrassed.

It was an unspoken agreement between their friends that they didn’t talk about Jisung’s drinking.
They would make jokes sometimes, sure, but for the most part everyone had silently agreed to turn
the other way when Jisung went out so they didn’t have to nag him. He’s an adult, Chan always
said. We have to let him make his own mistakes . It wasn’t that Jisung felt judged, necessarily, but
he didn’t even want to entertain the thought that his best friend thought he was a mess. The first
few times it happened Minho had made it a point to ask him if he was okay, if he needed anything,
if he felt safe. The longer it went on, though, the less they talked about it. Eventually, it just
became a routine: party, call, crash, repeat. Jisung wasn’t even sure how it had gotten that way. All
he knew was sometimes the thought of sitting in his room with thoughts of his parents, his grades,
Minho, all swirling in his head was too much. So he went out. No big deal.

“Do you remember what you say when you’re drunk?” Minho asked softly.

Jisung shook his head. The truth was, he remembered almost everything from the night before.
Usually, he started to lose his recollection of the day before a party starting at around 8, when he
turned from beers to shots. Sometimes he’d wake up with flashes- the Pi Kap house, a fleeting
memory of screaming fraternity bros at a beer pong table, a girl dancing with his friends passing
through his mind. For the most part, though, it was a blank slate; he should probably be more
concerned about that, but at this point he was used to it. Weekends were designed for forgetting.
Last night had been an outlier, and if he was being honest, he kind of hated remembering some of
the things he’d said this time.

“You asked me if I was just your friend,” Minho said. “Among other things.”
It was Jisung’s turn to wince. What the hell had gotten into him to get that blunt? From what his
friends told him, he was a pretty happy drunk. Even when he blacked out, he almost never threw up
and he’d never gotten into a fight. Sometimes he danced with strangers and occasionally he would
scream at inappropriate times, but he was generally what other people referred to as “ a good time
”. Everything felt light and breezy when he was drinking, his thoughts melting away in a sweet
release, so what had catapulted him into expressing one of his worst fears to the very person the
fear was about?

“I don’t remember that,” he lied. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not bringing it up to make you apologize,” Minho said quickly. “Seriously, Ji, I’m not. It just
made me sad that you would even think that we weren’t friends, you know? We’ve been best
friends for three years. I hope you know how much I care about you.”

“I do.”

“Do you?” Minho asked, taking a step forward. “I feel like it’s been getting worse, somehow.”

“I just have a lot on my mind.”

“Like what?”

Jisung paused. He almost broke, almost snapped and said “ You!” , but was able to stop himself at
the last moment. Instead, he turned to Minho and painted on an easy smile. He hated how easy
lying about his feelings had become.

“Just school stuff,” he said. “But I’m going to take it easy this week- you don’t have to worry about
me.”

“I always worry about you,” Minho said, poking him in the side. “You’re my person. It comes with
the territory.”

Jisung laughed. “Fair enough. Enough sad talk, tell me about how your training went over winter
break.”
“It was great,” Minho said, beaming. “I did a few overnight hikes, which was kind of a bitch in
such cold weather, but I ended up spending about twelve days on various routes in total? It was
really good practice for adjusting to different temperatures, that’s for sure.”

“I can’t believe you sleep outside in the winter.”

“Speaking of sleeping outside,” Minho said. “Changbin mentioned to me yesterday that he wants to
do the overnight shoot sometime in the middle of March, would that work for you?”

“Yeah, I think that should work. It won’t be too cold then, right?”

“We’re supposed to have a warm front coming, I think,” Minho said. “At least, that’s what the
weather girl said this morning.”

“I like her,” Jisung said. “She always has cute shoes.”

“How do you know, you can’t see her feet on the news?”

“I follow her on Instagram,” Jisung explained. “She posts her outfits and funny weather memes.”

“That’s so niche.”

“You should see the pen account I follow.”

“Is it just pictures of different pens?”

“With reviews!” Jisung said. “Did you know that the average ballpoint pen can write around
50,000 words? That’s basically a full NaNoWriMo book.”

“How many pages is that?”

“100! Isn’t that crazy?”

“I did not know that,” Minho laughed. “I learn something new every day.”

“That’s cuz you’re with me,” Jisung said, crossing his arms with a smile. “Anyway, is there
anything that I should bring for an overnight shoot?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Minho reached over to his bag, pulling out a sheet of paper that had gotten a bit creased in transit.
It was an article from REI’s website, a checklist of necessary items for overnight camping. Jisung
read over the list, confused at how someone could need so many things for just one night. Minho
must have read his face pretty easily.

“It looks like a lot more than it is,” he insisted. “It’s a lot of small stuff- headlamps and flashlights,
a water bottle and a multi tool. I can handle bringing the big stuff like the tent, some floor padding,
and some folding chairs. I know you have your own sleeping bag and pillow, so you’re good there.
I can bring my own tarp and axe, and-”

“An axe ?”

“For chopping firewood.”

“Please don’t axe-murder me in the woods,” Jisung said, deadpan. “I have so much life to live.”

Minho laughed, giving him a little shove. Jisung swatted him away, smacking his hand with his
own and then taking it, lacing their fingers together. “No hitting,” he said. He didn’t let go of
Minho’s hand.

Jisung went back to reading over the list, and although he didn’t see the need for some of the items
(“Why the hell would we need a hammock? Don’t we just sleep in the tent?”), for the most part
they already had everything they needed. It seemed like an easy enough trip.
“There’s one more thing,” Minho said. “Kind of related, I guess. To the shoot.”

“What’s up?”

“Changbin asked me again, the other day,” Minho said slowly. “About if we’d be willing to kiss on
screen.”

Jisung’s face was unreadable. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him I’d think about it,” Minho said. “And if your drunk-self was being honest, I guess
you’d be open to it, too.”

Jisung winced again. He was hoping Minho’s memory had been hazy on that particular statement.
He tried to make his face look confused, rather than the panic he actually felt.

“What did I say?” he asked, knowing the answer.

“Just that you didn’t want to kiss anyone while spinning the bottle,” Minho said. “Since I wasn’t
there for us to practice.”

Jisung laughed, thinking fast. “Well, at least I’m dedicated to the role.”

“That’s one thing about you,” Minho said, smiling at him. “Nobody would ever accuse you of not
being passionate.”

“What can I say?” Jisung said, locking eyes with him. “I love what I love.”

“You also feed your dear, sweet friends that you love,” Minho said, looking smug. “So maybe you
should buy our lunch tomorrow, since you love me.”

“Yeah, I do,” he said. He paused, then threw him a smile. “But don’t push your luck.”
 ✩✩✩

“This is not a date.”

Jisung said it once more as he stared at himself in the mirror, adjusting the collar of his shirt. The
first time that he had said it out loud, it was so cringey that he literally groaned at the sound of his
own voice. He steadied himself, though, and said it a second time. The third time, it sounded like
an affirmation. Jeongin had sent him a video from his psychology conference about daily
affirmations once, trying to explain the importance of positive thinking and optimism, but Jisung
had only made it a few days of chanting I am capable, I am worthy before it all felt a little too
hokey. Today, though, he had dug the video out of his YouTube history (and that in and of itself
was quite a journey) and watched it for some sort of guidance. He needed to get it through his head
before he left the apartment, or he would end up saying something stupid. He could feel it.

He buttoned up his shirt- another flannel, today’s a deep burgundy color with black lines that was
at least two sizes too big for his frame. He touched up his hair, because even platonic outings with
friends deserved some semblance of being put together, and even added a spritz of cologne.

A platonic spritz.

Ever since Changbin had suggested that he and Minho kiss for the short film, he had been having
trouble keeping his brain in check. It became worse after Minho had brought it up again, and
Jisung couldn’t stop spiraling about whether or not he had meant what he had said, two weeks
earlier. Every thought about Minho somehow skewed to the idea of kissing him on camera (or even
crazier, off camera ) and every time he had a vision of it he nearly needed to sit down. He was
actually worried his heart might explode at some point. Jisung kept reminding himself that this
was a completely normal outing with a friend, just a day together to try and shake off some of the
nervousness that had built over the days of filming, and he needed to act normal. That seemed hard,
though, because every time Minho texted him suddenly his hands were sweaty and he couldn’t
remember how to spell. He’d gotten like this with everyone he’d ever had a crush on, and he
wasn’t stupid , so he was trying to shut down his screaming brain before the situation could grow
any bigger. It was natural, with them acting every week. That’s all it was, he needed to remember-
acting .

“He is a cute boy,” he said to the mirror. “I know that. Anyone with eyes knows that. And that’s
okay! There are lots of cute boys at this school. I have even kissed some of them.”

The mirror offered no guidance.

“I don’t have to kiss every boy I think is cute,” he said, urging the mirror to understand where he
was coming from. “I can be friends with a cute boy. Just friends.”

He paused, giving himself one last look-over, and nodded to himself when he felt that the mirror
finally had a grasp on his feelings. He turned around to grab a jacket when he saw a shadow out of
the corner of his eye and nearly passed out.

“ Jesus !”

The figure laughed from his spot in the doorway, leaning against the frame. “My name is Kim
Seungmin, actually.”

“How long have you been there?”

“Long enough.”

“ Why are you there?”

“Now, that’s not a very nice way to greet your friend,” Seungmin said, shaking his head. “Did our
year of living together mean nothing to you? I’m just some warm body now?”

“Yeah, yeah, I love you,” Jisung said, rolling his eyes. “Seriously, dude, you scared me. I thought
you were some intruder.”

“Who says I’m not?”

“Please don’t rob me,” Jisung laughed. “I thought you and Jin were going out for lunch. You guys
decide to stay in?”

“Sorry,” Seungmin finally said. “We were able to leave but he spilled coffee on his pants so he
wanted to change first. I was sitting in the living room when I heard you practicing your soliloquy
and thought I’d drop in for a front row seat.”
Jisung groaned. Seungmin must have taken that as an invitation to enter, because he took another
few steps until he was fully in the room. Jisung gave up and gestured to his bed. Seungmin threw
himself forward with an unceremonious flop , then laid on his stomach with a pillow stuffed under
his chest. He shimmied until he got comfortable, then sat up a bit to look up at his friend with
searching eyes. Jisung willed him not to say anything, but Seungmin wasn’t very good at following
directions.

“So…” he said, cocking his head. “Who are you not going on a date with?”

“Nobody.”

“So Minho?”

“Shut up,” Jisung said, throwing a sock at his head. “It’s not like that.”

“I mean it kind of seems like th-”

“You obviously weren’t listening to my self-directed TED talk!” Jisung said. “Because I just spent
the last ten minutes reaffirming the fact that he is just my friend. He’s been my friend for three
years.”

“Just like my last two boyfriends were my friends,” Seungmin said sagely. “Hyunjin is a good
friend of mine, too. The best .”

Jisung threw the second sock.

“Okay, I’m done,” Seungmin laughed. He handed the socks back over so Jisung could put his
boots on. “I did want to talk to you about Minho, though.”

“What about him?”

“What’s going on with you two?”

Jisung opened his mouth, but Seungmin continued. “And before you say nothing , I want to remind
you that I just watched you give yourself a lecture.”

“It is nothing,” Jisung insisted. “I don’t know what Hyunjin has been telling you, but-”

“He hasn’t said anything,” Seungmin said, furrowing his eyebrows. “Ji, I’m not talking to you
because Hyunjin asked me to. I don’t want you to think we’re all talking about you behind your
back, it’s not like that. I’ve just noticed when we’re all together that you guys seem a little…”

He trailed off, and Jisung put a hand on his hip. “A little what?”

“Tense.” Seungmin said, but his voice raised a bit at the end so it almost sounded like a question.

Jisung blinked at him. “Tense?”

“I don’t even know if that’s the right word,” he shrugged. “You’re the writing major, not me,
maybe you know a better word for it.”

“I’ve got a word for how I feel about this conversation.”

Seungmin stuck his tongue out at him. When Jisung laughed, he broke into a smile before relaxing
back onto the bed, searching Jisung’s face for a moment again. He wasn’t sure what he was
looking for.

“It’s just been different lately, I mean,” He finally said. “You guys have always been glued at the
hip, that’s not new, but recently you guys seem to be kind of tip-toeing around each other a bit
more than usual.”

Jisung huffed. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“And you’ve been going out more.”

Jisung paused. He turned, narrowing his eyes. “What does that have to do with anything? I can go
to a party without it meaning something.”

“We lived together for a year, Jisung,” Seungmin said. “And we’ve been friends for a while now. I
know when you’re going through something, and it usually comes out at parties.”

Jisung didn’t respond, instead focusing on lacing up his boots. He tied them once, then twice. He
could never get the bow to look quite right. Seungmin took his silence as a sign to continue.

“Is it your parents?”

“It’s not just my parents,” Jisung snapped.

Seungmin raised his hands in the air. “Chill, dude, I’m not attacking you. I’m just checking on you.
You’re my friend.”

Jisung softened. “Sorry. I guess I have been a little extra touchy recently.”

Seungmin sat up on the bed, scooting over. He patted the space next to him and although Jisung
rolled his eyes, he walked over and sat down.

“I’m just confused, Seungmin,” he admitted. “It’s… a lot.”

“What are you confused about?”

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I think the filming is just, like, messing with my head a little. It’s
unsettling.”

“How so?”

“Sometimes,” he said carefully. “When we are filming, it feels a little too easy.”
“Acting like you’re dating Minho, you mean?”

Jisung nodded. He wasn’t sure why it had all felt so natural. Some part of him blamed it on the fact
that he was writing the dialogue- he must subconsciously be molding the words around how they
already spoke, so it made sense to him that the script felt real. He didn’t even think it was a bad
thing, necessarily, it was just making him think a lot. Thinking was kind of exhausting.

“It’s been worse today,” he said. “Changbin asked us to kiss on tape.”

“Excuse me?”

Jisung smacked him. “For the movie.”

“Ah,” Seungmin said. “That makes more sense. Did you do it?”

“No,” he said. “But Minho brought it up again a few weeks ago.”

“No way.”

“Yeah. I assumed he was joking, cuz duh , but the more I’ve been thinking about it…”

He paused, choosing his words wisely. When he opened his mouth to continue, a voice came
booming from behind them.

“ Oh my God ,” it said. “Do you have feelings for him, Jisung?”

Jisung and Seungmin both jumped. Hyunjin waved from the doorway, pulling a tag off his new
pair of jeans with a sheepish grin. He bounded into the room on the balls of his feet, flopping down
in between them.

“Sorry,” he said, getting comfortable. “Couldn’t help but overhear.”

Seungmin snorted. “Yes, very accidental.”

“I may have been listening.”

“Nothing about you is subtle,” Seungmin said fondly. “And you’re a bad liar. Come on, Jin, bless
us with your wisdom.”

“That was my plan,” Hyunjin laughed. He turned to Jisung. “Dude, why didn’t you tell me you
were struggling so much with this? You always seem so confident when we shoot, I had no idea.”

“I’m not struggling with it,” Jisung said. “I’m just- it’s just a weird thing, sometimes. We’re best
friends and then we’re acting like a couple, and sometimes my brain just gets a little confused in
between.”

Hyunjin studied him, nodding as he spoke. “That makes sense,” he said.

“Every time we shoot, it just makes me feel like I’m not being honest. And that makes me feel
guilty.”

“Do you want to stop filming?”

“No,” Jisung said quickly. “It’s not that. I just want to stop… I don’t know, stop getting in my own
head every time we film.”

Seungmin leaned forward. “Just remember that, no matter what you’re feeling, there’s nothing
wrong with it.”

“I’m not feeling anything,” he insisted. Hyunjin narrowed his eyes.

“Did you write the kiss?”

“No!” Jisung said, raising his hands. “I swear, Changbin just threw it out at us the last time we
filmed. Minho and I both told him no.”
“Interesting,” Seungmin said, narrowing his eyes. “Which one of you said no first?”

Jisung paused. “I’m not sure? We both kind of jumped at the same time. I think it was pretty
mutual.”

“Interesting,” Seungmin said again, but he offered no other insight. Jisung turned to Hyunjin.

“That’s why I’m even thinking about this, I think,” he said. “If Changbin hadn’t asked us, I would
probably be happy just hanging out with my friend and none of this romantic stuff would be
swirling around my brain. It’s just a coincidence that it’s with Minho.”

“I don’t know about coincidence,” Hyunjin said, cocking his head. “I don’t think you’d have this
much chemistry with, say, Maura from our copywriting seminar.”

“Well obviously, Maura from our copywriting seminar is a girl,” Jisung said blankly. “And I am
gay.”

“That’s beside the point,” Hyunjin replied, shooing away his protests. “You’d be a lot less
comfortable if it was anyone else.”

“No, I’m sure I’d be like this with anyone Changbin had cast as my partner,.” Jisung insisted, but it
sounded like a weak protest even as he said it. “And Minho probably only brought it up again as a
joke.”

“Yes, because I joke about kissing my bros all the time,” Seungmin said. “Totally logical.”

“Please, I cannot think about this anymore,” Jisung groaned. “My brain is going to melt. It’s
nothing, I swear.”

“If you say so,” Hyunjin said. “You know you can tell us anything, though.”

“Seriously, it’s just the script! In fact, iIt’s my own fault for being such a good writer.”
 Seungmin laughed. “Whatever you say. I just wanted to see if you were okay, and let you know
we’re here if you ever want to talk.”

“Yeah, you know I’ve got you,” Hyunjin added. “Always.”

“Thanks, guys.” Jisung said, voice a little thick. He cleared his throat- he didn’t have time to be
sentimental about his friends right now. “Anyway, I’ve got to get going. I’m supposed to meet him
at 1:30.”

He grabbed his jacket from his closet, pulling the brown leather across his shoulders. He picked up
his keys from the table by the door and patted down his pockets, making sure he had his phone. He
gave his friends a wave as he opened the door, and Hyunjin gave him a thumbs up.

He made it halfway down the hallway when he heard Seungmin’s voice call out.

“Enjoy your date!”

“ It’s not a date! ”

Chapter End Notes

sorry about the month-long hiatus. my family is going through a difficult time, so I
haven't been in the best headspace to write.

please forgive any long breaks in the near future.

all my love,
MK.
 treacherous
Chapter Notes

the songs for this chapter are “Treacherous” by Taylor Swift and “Damage” by the
Band CAMINO

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Minho sat on one of the flat rocks that led up to the side of the mountain, settling down with his
back against one of the larger stones that was stacked on top. From there, he had a full vantage
point of the mountain range, with trees as far as the eye could see.

Winter was nearing its end and it was getting hard to ignore the whisper of warmer weather in the
air when he left the house for class each morning. He still had to wear a jacket, but the first day
above 50 degrees had hit that week, so he knew it was the beginning. Although he would miss the
cozy scarves and the smell of bonfires on the weekend, spring brought with it it’s own kind of
magic. The promise of something new. However, there was one place that he had wanted to take
Jisung to ever since he discovered it, and it was important that there was still a bit of a chill in the
air to get the full effect. Today was the day.

"How much longer do you think?"

"My dear Jisung," Minho said, turning to look over his shoulder with a smile. "Are you asking the
age-old question, are we there yet ?"

"No," he insisted, but he had the decency to sound a little sheepish. "I just don't think you realize
that all your hiking and training has turned you into a superhuman, and the rest of us mere mortals
need a break every now and then."

Minho laughed, offering a hand as Jisung climbed over a particularly large rock. He sat down next
to him, settling his own bag against Minho’s as he pulled the water bottle from the side pocket. He
took a deep drink, then passed it to Minho. He took a few sips.

It was true, the months of training had turned even difficult hikes like this one into a relatively
relaxed experience for him, but Jisung hadn't been training for months. He was used to the more
moderate hikes, ones that didn't include such large elevation increases, but they also didn't have the
one thing Minho was most looking forward to showing him.
"We’ve got just about one more mile, Ji, then I swear you'll be so excited you won't even
remember that we have to hike the seven miles back down."

" Seven ?"

"Shhh," Minho said, waving him off with a grin.

“I have to pee.”

“Go pee in that bush,” Minho said, pointing.

“Have you ever thought about how lucky we are to be able to pee in the woods?”

“I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it.”

“It’s a privilege,” Jisung said when he finished. “Girls have it tougher.”

“How would you know?”

“Have you ever seen that show Pimp My Ride ?”

Minho blinked at him. “I know I’m older than you, but I am not a millennial.”

Jisung laughed. “I’m just saying, I saw a few episodes and one of them had this girl that liked
camping- she had one of these contraptions that could help her pee in the woods.”

“What do you mean help her pee?” Minho asked, confused. “Can’t she just, like, squat?”

“I guess, but this was a device that she could pee in while standing up.”
“Oh, God,” Minho barked out a laugh. “What did it look like?”

“Literally I think it was just a funnel. Like, the kind you use to fill your olive oil dispenser.”

“I’ll never be able to look at olive oil the same.”

“I do what I can.”

“Well, even though you torture me I still have something I want to show you.” Minho said. "Grab a
handful of granola and regroup, then when you’re ready let's go."

Jisung grumbled a little bit, but he did reach inside his pack and grab some granola. He sprinkled
some into Minho's hand before throwing some back himself, munching a bit before getting their
second wind. They chatted a bit as they made their way up the mountain, a recap of how their
classes were going and the latest drama with the couple that lived in the apartment above Hyunjin
and Jisung. The weather had been cooperating, at least, with the fog from earlier that day finally
clearing up to reveal clear skies and relatively dry paths. When they finally made it over the last
stretch, Minho dropped his bag and turned back to Jisung with a grin that showed all his teeth.
Jisung thought he might even see his molars.

"What is it?" he asked, but the gentle roaring sound that had steadily grown as they walked gave
him a hint. He just knew Minho was excited to actually say it, so he wanted to give him his big
moment.

"It's a waterfall!" he cried, throwing his arms in the air. "The biggest one within an hour drive, at
the very least. I know you mentioned you always wanted to see one, so I thought this would be a
good end-of-winter treat."

Jisung grinned, dropping his own pack next to Minho's. Even though his feet were screaming at
him and he felt like a sweaty mess, the sight of the water coming down the side of the rocks had
his heart soaring. He remembered mentioning to Minho his love of waterfalls only once, months
ago when they were watching yet another nature documentary. He couldn't believe that he
remembered that- but that was just Minho. He always knew Jisung, sometimes better than he knew
himself.

“This is amazing,” he said. “I had no idea we had one this close.”

The waterfall itself was spectacular- clear water tumbling over rocks until it met the ground with a
roaring explosion of white foam. The sound rumbled in his ears in a way that he could almost feel
in his bones, the air up here a little cooler than back at the base where they started. Jisung took a
few big breaths in, feeling his shoulders relax a bit more as he took in the sight. He couldn’t
remember the last time he felt this alive.

Minho was facing the falls, too, glancing back to take in Jisung’s reaction every few seconds with
poorly-hidden glee. Jisung wondered how long he had been planning this surprise, when he had
hiked it for the first time and thought that Jisung would love to see it, too. He wondered if Minho
thought of him often when he was hiking, if the stillness of the forest and the gentle buzz that came
with completely disconnecting made him wish he was there, too. He wondered if sometimes, when
Minho was sleeping in his tent on the side of a mountain, if he wished that Jisung was there to keep
him company, to keep him warm. He wondered-

No .

He couldn’t keep wondering. Changbin had gotten into his head, damn him, and it was annoying to
have his friend’s voice ringing in his head every day. He pushed those thoughts away, for now,
shaking his head vigorously before turning to Minho and pointing at the roaring water.

"We aren’t getting wet, are we?" he asked. "It’s just a look-at-it kind of deal? Cuz it’s kind of cold
out."

"We can swim in the basin," Minho said. "It's much warmer than it looks because there’s actually a
hot spring a few feet down past the waterfall over there, and it's also a good spot for lunch. I
figured we could swim around in the warm parts and then eat before having to head back."

Jisung nodded eagerly, then paused. “I don’t have a suit.”

“I was just going to swim in my underwear,” Minho said, and Jisung nearly fell off the mountain.
“I know you’re not a boxers guy either, so I figured that would be okay with you?”

Jisung blinked at him. Minho shrugged.

“It’s basically a swimsuit.”

Jisung thought for a moment, considered backing out for half a second, but it made enough sense
for him to ignore how embarrassed he might become. This was probably the best solution- he’d
rather swim in his underwear than not get to swim at all. After all, his swimsuits weren’t exactly
that much more coverage than underwear, anyways.

“Sounds perfect,” Jisung finally said, finally breaking into a grin. "It's a date!"

He immediately flushed. He hadn't really meant to say that (God, he had spent ten minutes
practicing not saying that in the mirror!), but Minho didn't seem to mind as he looked at the roaring
falls ahead of them. Something about that made him feel a little lighter, so Jisung shook it off and
grabbed his pack, slinging it back over his shoulder.

"Let's go, Min," he said, stretching out his hand. Minho took it, lacing their fingers together
naturally. "We've got a waterfall to admire."

✩✩✩

The climb downhill to the basin was an easy one.

Although the hike up to the waterfall itself had been somewhat strenuous, the basin at the base of
the waterfall was just a gentle slope down one side, so it was fairly easy to navigate. Most of the
flowers in the area had long since given in to winter’s incoming presence, but to Minho’s delight
there were bright pops of green along the side of the rocks that the waterfall ran through that had
survived due to the heat coming from the water. The waterfall poured into the plunge pool below, a
murky deep blue-green that begged to be explored. Jisung couldn’t even guess how deep it must go
(although Minho’s guess of “to the center of the earth” was a compelling theory), and he noticed
that near the edges of the lake the water was lighter in color and much more shallow.

Minho could see, even from further away, that the light grey stones near the water had been
smoothed over time, the water wearing away at all of their rough edges to reveal a perfectly
polished surface underneath. He took a moment to just stop and drink in the sight, noting how
pretty it was down there with the sun filtering through some thin clouds. The sound of waterfall
flowing into the water below echoed to the spot where he and Jisung had dropped their stuff, and
when a breeze came by he was glad that the swim was warmer than it appeared to the naked eye.
Jisung reached down to the side of the basin, feeling the water temperature with one hand. His eyes
widened.

“It’s kind of cold,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Maybe it’s warmer further in.”
“It should be,” Minho said. “I haven’t actually been in before, but all the forums online said it’s
warmest near the spring itself. So I’m guessing about halfway between the waterfall and the edge
over here”

“Got it,” Jisung said. “Still, let me try this trick I learned from the one year I was on the swim team
in middle school.”

He grabbed the hem of his henley shirt, pulling it over his head in one fell swoop. He tried not to
think about much of anything as he leaned over and pulled his pants off, one leg at a time. He
peeled his socks off, folding them and tucking them into his boots so they wouldn’t get blown
away. He turned towards the water, ignoring how Minho’s cheeks had reddened in the few
moments he’d been ignoring him, and leaned down toward the lake. He reached down and scooped
up two handfuls, immediately splashing himself with the cool water. He threw the water on his
bare chest, gasping when the cold hit him, and rubbed the water along his arms so that his entire
top half was wet.

“It’s supposed to make it easier to adjust to the temperature if you splash yourself first,” he said,
pouring some on his legs. “At least, that’s what they always told us. I’m not sure if there’s any
actual science behind it.”

“If it works, it works,” Minho said with a shrug. “I’ll take the placebo effect.”

Minho followed his lead, removing his shirt and pants in silence. He tossed his socks and boots
next to Jisung’s, stripping down to his underwear. He was acutely aware of Jisung’s eyes on him,
and he repeatedly told himself that it was just like a speedo, there was nothing to be self-conscious
of. Jisung must have picked up on his nerves, though, as he turned to face the water again.

“Ready?” Minho asked.

Jisung nodded. “I think so.”

They lowered themselves into the water cautiously, squealing a bit when they hit chest-height and
the water was still cold. Minho kept them moving, slowly paddling closer to the center of the hot
spring. They both relaxed considerably when they reached the middle and the temperature
increased quite a bit.

“This isn’t so bad,” Jisung said, turning to float on his back. “It’s kind of cool to be in warm water
while the rest of the air is so cold.”

“I thought you’d like it!” Minho said. He grinned, accidentally swallowing a mouthful of water in
the process. Jisung giggled at him while he coughed, trying not to look too stupid, and rotated to
float on his back as well. A hawk flew overhead, soaring hundreds of feet above their heads.

“You know me better than I know myself.”

They took their time enjoying the area, slowly swimming circles around one another. Jisung broke
out into a smile every time they reached a spot where his toes couldn’t touch the ground, and
Minho let him point it out every time. They treaded water, trying to spot pretty stones at the bottom
of the water without actually sticking their faces in. It proved easier said than done, as they tried to
pluck rocks with their hands stretched out, but eventually resorted to using their feet. Jisung was
able to grab one with his left foot eventually, splashing as he lifted his leg to reveal a simple gray
stone tucked in his toes. Minho laughed, taking it from him.

“I’ll have to add this to my collection,” Minho said. “Although the quartz was a lot prettier.”

“But this stone is from the fancy hot spring water,” Jisung said. “It’s lived quite a life.”

Minho laughed. “I suppose.”

“It’s got personality,” he insisted, gesturing to the plain rock as though it was a diamond. “What
stories it could tell!”

“Fine, fine, I’m on board,” Minho said. “It’s a gem in disguise.”

“Will you add it to your pebble nest?”

“I will.”

Jisung sighed contentedly, floating closer to the waterfall as he hummed an imperceptible song
under his breath. Minho watched him as he floated, the sun hitting the planes of his chest as he did
the backstroke, and relaxed as the soft melody floated in the air. He looked peaceful, here,
completely separated from their stressful lives at school. Usually Jisung worked a mile a minute,
running from class to class and friends’ houses as though there was never enough time in the
world, so seeing him so perfectly still was refreshing. Minho wished he could keep him here, just
for a bit, so he could remember what it felt like to just breathe .

Jisung must have felt his eyes on him, because he lifted his head and waved at him.

“You’re thinking too hard.”

“I wasn't thinking about anything,” Minho lied. “Just enjoying the view.”

Without really thinking about it, Minho found himself floating over towards Jisung. The water
splashed around him as he swam over with slow strokes, coming to a stop right by Jisung’s side. He
leaned back, floating shoulder-to-shoulder, and sighed.

“This is so nice,” Jisung said. “Let’s just move to the woods.”

“Done and done.”

“I want it on record that I’m joking, I am very attached to my bed.”

Minho laughed. He wasn’t sure if Jisung heard him, though- the roar of the waterfall was loud
enough to mask any softer conversation, so his chuckle of acknowledgement may have very well
gotten lost in the wind. The sound filled his head, bouncing off the rocks, and he closed his eyes.
One of the things he loved most about the waterfall was the roar itself; it let Minho practice saying
something out loud, and even if he was right next to somebody, they wouldn’t hear unless he really
spoke up. He took advantage of it then, whispering a single sentence to himself. He said it again,
Jisung still not hearing him over the water, and hoped that he could be brave enough to say it
louder.

Just not yet.

Jisung watched him closely, reaching out to tug on his hand. Minho raised an eyebrow, but Jisung
shook his head and turned to look at the sky again. They remained like that for a few minutes, their
fingers just starting to prune as the clouds crept across a soft blue sky.
“Hey, Min?”

Minho sat up, treading water so he was face-to-face with Jisung. His friend was floating only
inches from his face, wet hair plastered to his forehead and sticking up in a wild display in the
back. His cheeks were flushed from the cold but his hands were warm as he reached out for Minho
under the water, lacing their fingers together. He gave his hand a squeeze.

“Thanks for bringing me here,” he said. “I needed this.”

He let go of Minho’s hand so they could keep treading water, heads bobbing a bit as they tried to
stay floating in the same spot. Minho pointed to the other side of the lake, where it was more
shallow but still pretty warm, and gestured that they should relocate. They eventually swam over a
bit, just far enough that they could touch the bottom of the lake with their feet again, and relaxed
with the knowledge that they didn’t need to actively swim anymore. It was almost weightless in the
water, and they floated there for a while taking turns pointing out shapes in the clouds and naming
the birds in the distance.

Minho whispered it to himself again, the one thought that was growing louder and louder in his
head, but even further away from the waterfall Jisung didn’t seem to notice. He was beautiful, like
this, with the sunlight refracting off the lake and boncing back up, dancing across his cheeks.
Every little movement led to a ripple that flowed across the surface of the water. It reminded
Minho of a story he’d heard once about the butterfly effect- a single flap of a butterfly’s wings
eventually evolving into a full flown hurricane on the other side of the earth. The science didn’t
pan out, obviously, but Minho loved the idea of it: that every decision, every little choice he made,
could impact the rest of his life along with those he loved. He hoped that all of his butterflies were
creating joy.

Jisung looked over at him, then, and Minho couldn’t handle the words existing only in his head
anymore.

“I’ve been thinking…”

“That’s new,” Jisung said, giving him a wink. When Minho didn’t respond, his smile fell a bit.
“Sorry, not the vibe. What have you been thinking?”

Minho could feel his heart beating in his chest, slamming into his ribs with every pulse, and tried
to sound casual.
“I’ve been thinking about Changbin’s film.”

Nothing about it sounded casual. Minho wanted to rewind and try again, maybe keep his voice not
so high, but Jisung just cocked his head and laughed at the little splash of water that came with the
movement.

“What about it?”

This is our butterfly, he thought. He took a deep breath.

“I think he’s right. I think it makes sense for the characters to kiss.”

Jisung stilled. He looked back and forth from Minho to his own hands resting just below the
surface, pushing and pulling water to create a little current. He stayed silent for a moment, still
faux-waterbending and Minho considered backtracking. Jisung looked up first, and he nodded.

“I think so, too,” he finally said. “Especially since it’s a romance at heart. It’s kind of the natural
conclusion.”

“I’m a little nervous about doing it on camera, though,” Minho admitted. “I don’t know about you,
but it’s kind of intimidating to think about kissing someone for the first time in front of your
friends.”

“On film.” Jisung offered.

“For the whole world to see!”

“I feel the same way,” Jisung said, watching him intently. “So, what do you think we should do?”

“I mean,” Minho paused. “I guess we could always…”

“Practice?” Jisung offered, and Minho nearly kissed him just for saying it so he didn’t have too.

“Yeah,” Minho said. “We could practice.”

“I guess maybe Changbin is right. It might help us to do it beforehand, first.”

“We can never tell Changbin he was right about something.”

Jisung laughed, stretching his hand out. They shook on it.

“I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Minho’s heart was in his throat. He was sure that if he was on land, his hands would be shaking
like a leaf, and he was suddenly thankful that the water was a little murky. Jisung looked calm at
first glance, but Minho noticed that he was biting his bottom lip. A nervous tick that usually came
out during a test or a close game of MarioKart, it was strange to see Jisung’s anxious movements in
this context. They were talking about kissing , but somehow Minho felt a little calmer knowing that
he was nervous, too. He floated another inch closer and heard Jisung’s breath catch. Minho cleared
his throat.

“So,” he said.

“So.”

He felt dizzy. “Do you want to try?”

“Now?” Jisung asked, looking around. “What if we drown?”

Minho laughed, a little bit of tension leaving his body. “I won’t let us drown,” he said. “In case you
forgot, swimming is part of my training regimen so I’m very capable of Baywatch-rescuing you.
You won’t need it though- remember, we can stand here.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jisung said, blinking quickly. He looked down at his feet, clearly planted on the sandy
bottom of the water. He took a deep breath. “Then yeah, let’s go for it.”

Minho stared at him. He took a step, water slipping across his shoulders, until they were standing
face-to-face. They stood in the water, just looking at one another, for another few seconds. It took
a moment for Minho to realize that Jisung was waiting for him to initiate it.

“I’m sorry,” Minho said with a shaky laugh. He looked up at the sky. “I have no idea how to do
this.”

“Hey,” Jisung said. His eyes were soft when Minho looked back down at him. “There’s no reason
to be nervous, Min. It’s just me. You can trust me with anything.”

“I know.”

“We got this.”

“I just don’t know how to even start. How do you kiss your best friend for the first time?”

Jisung thought for a moment. “Well, how do you usually kiss people? How did you kiss the last
person you were with?”

“I don’t think about it a ton in advance, or have some kind of plan,” he admitted. “I usually just
kind of do it.”

“Well, then,” Jisung said with a shrug. “Let’s just do it.”

Minho nodded. The first flap of our butterfly's wings, he thought . He tried to move, but felt as if
his muscles had been frozen from the neck down. Minho willed himself to just kiss him already,
God knows the anticipation would always be worse than actually doing something, but he only
succeeded in shifting forward enough for their foreheads to nearly touch. They both paused, Jisung
searching his face even so close together. When he still hesitated, too nervous to move, Jisung was
the one to finally lean forward and connect their lips.

Jisung kissed him.

The first thought Minho had was that Jisung’s lips were a lot softer than they appeared. He thought
they might be rough, considering how chapped they got in the winter, but they were warm and soft
on his mouth as Jisung closed the gap between them. He worried he might drown in it, the feeling
of his lips pressed cautiously against his own, because it felt so good . The second thought he had,
embarrassingly, was that he wished they were both fully clothed for this- there was no way he’d be
able to hide the full-body blush he could feel happening.

After that, though, his mind went stunningly and perfectly blank. There was no space to second-
guess his suggestion, or worry if he was a good kisser, or do much of anything other than relax into
the kiss. This was Jisung, his best friend, the one person that would never laugh at him when he
was being vulnerable. The waterfall roared in the background, but it sounded like a soft rumble in
the distance compared to the soft splashes of water in between their bodies as Jisung raised his
hand to gently cup Minho’s cheek. He held him gently, as if he was afraid that he might break him,
and Minho wondered if this is how he kissed all those other people, if they felt like they were
suddenly the only person in Jisung's entire atmosphere.

When Minho turned his head a bit, Jisung let out a soft sound that had his head spinning. He didn't
know if it had been three seconds or three days, but he could feel Jisung shiver in his arms. He felt
a small puff of air, the warmth of Jisung’s breath on his face as he pulled away.

His nose was still pressed against Jisung’s cheek, lips barely touching, and Minho couldn’t form a
single coherent sentence. All he could think and see and feel was Jisung. He leaned back just
enough to stare into Minho’s eyes, searching for some kind of sign of what to do next. Minho could
see the question in his eyes clear as day - what now? - and figured if Jisung had been brave enough
to start it, Minho could be brave enough to end it. He leaned forward, pressing one more quick kiss
to Jisung’s lips, before taking a reluctant step back. The moment of magic between them broke, and
just as quickly as it had begun, it was over.

“Woah,” Jisung said, and Minho’s stomach flipped. “Okay.”

“Was that...?” he asked, and it came out as a whisper. “Was that alright?”

“Yeah,” Jisung nodded immediately. “Yeah, of course.”

His eyes were huge, bright flecks of copper sparkling in the chestnut brown of his irises, and
Minho had to stop himself from leaning in for a third time. Jisung smiled at him, just a whisper of a
grin, but it was everything. Minho was struck with the fleeting thought that Jisung was probably
the one person in the world that could actually break his heart. The thought should probably scare
him more than it did, the knowledge that he was right in front of the person that could completely
 break him in two, but he couldn’t find it in him to worry when Jisung was smiling up at the sun and
Minho could still taste him on his lips as the water road behind them. Some part of him was so
attached, so far gone already, that he knew in his bones that he wouldn’t mind being collateral
damage in Jisung’s self-destruction. In a perfect world, though, he’d be able to stop the self-
sabotage before it even happened. In a perfect world, Jisung would let Minho love him.

He wondered if it was really possible to love somebody if they didn’t love themselves.

He wondered if he could at least try.

Chapter End Notes

thank you for all your kind words on the last update- my dad is moving to hospice so
these past few weeks have been hard, but you've all been SO lovely. thanks for letting
me dive into a story where I can give people a happy ending. I hope this update
brightens your day, feel free to tell me what you're enjoying :)

xoxo,
MK
 close isn't enough
Chapter Notes

hello again, friends ❤️

thank you all so much for your kind words & for being so patient with my hiatus. My
father passed away six months ago after a valiant battle with cancer & writing just felt
too hard for awhile. I took the time I needed a to just kind of fall apart & while I’m still
grieving, the days are getting a bit easier so I’m trying to get behind my keyboard
again.

In happier news- I actually got to attend the Maniac tour!! seeing skz irl was a bright
flash of joy in a dark time. Reading your comments has also given me so many smiles
on hard days. I love writing because I get to escape for a bit, & maybe build a brighter
little world where I can give people a happy ending. I hope this story can be a little
break from life for you, too. Papa MK would love knowing I have this community ❤️

The songs for this chapter are “Close Isn't' Enough” by daena & "Dreaming' by
Chymes.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The sun crept up over the side of the mountain at a glacial pace. Minho didn’t often go on sunrise
hikes, especially solo, but since he would be shooting around sunrise for Changbin’s film the
following week, he wanted to practice the timing of his lines with the rise of the sun. The last thing
he wanted was to ruin filming because he forgot his cues and made them miss the buttery pinks and
oranges of the sunrise in the background.

He was on his third run-through of the latest script when his phone pinged from its spot in his bag.
He reached over, unzipping the front pocket, and entered his passcode.

Jisung: I just woke up to the sound of Hyunjin singing a Dean song at an ungodly volume

Jisung: I was up all night working on this job application and he wakes me up at SIX!

Minho: For the publishing company?

Jisung: Indeed! (get it?)

Minho: Because you found the job posting on Indeed, lol I get it

Jisung: I’m really banking on this entry-level position they have opening in April. I could even
start while I finish the last of my classes.

Minho: It’s perfect!

Jisung: But back to my fucking alarm clock of a roommate

Jisung: I may kill a man today??

Jisung: If I murder him, promise me you’ll bail me out

Minho chuckled under his breath, typing out a quick response.

Minho: I know I said we’d be best friends for life…

Jisung: But??

Minho: but I don’t know if I’m cut out for writing prison letters

Jisung: Boooooooo

Jisung: You’re an awful prison wife

Minho snorted, fingers hovering over the screen as he thought about making another joke, but he
was afraid to push it too far. Minho had been worried that it would change something between
them, but so far Minho hadn’t noticed much of a difference. Ever since they had kissed, Jisung had
been texting him daily with funny videos or complaints about his latest paper without any hint that
something was bothering him. They still hiked every Tuesday morning, sent each other dumb
memes, and watched low-grade documentaries on Jisung’s cousin’s Netflix account. Minho had
offered to get his own Netflix account once, so they didn’t have to keep using the stolen family
one, but Jisung had rejected the idea.

“I don’t want to support capitalism,” he said with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Don’t let the
man keep you down.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it,” Minho had said. “I think you’re just cheap.”

Jisung had grinned. “Guilty!”

They still cuddled on the couch when one of them was having a bad day and even held hands
sometimes, but that was all pretty normal for them. Every now and then Minho thought he saw
Jisung watching him out of the corner of his eye, but every time he looked over Jisung would be
focused on the screen. He didn't seem to be affected at all. He didn’t even seem to think about it.

Minho, on the other hand, could not stop thinking.

Every time Jisung leaned in close to whisper a joke in his ear or held his hand as they navigated
through a crowd on campus, the hair on the back of his neck stood up straight and his brain went
into overdrive. It was driving him crazy, pretending like none of it was affecting him, but he was
worried that if he pushed the issue at all Jisung would shut down. Jisung always avoided conflict.

He thought about it all the time, asking him if he felt differently, but Minho had already tried once.
Jisung had laughed the question off, insisting everything was just peachy, but that night he got so
drunk Minho had to enlist Hyunjin’s help to carry Jisung from the elevator to his bed.

His phone pinged again.

Jisung: come back soon

Jisung: I’ve got a cup of coffee with your name on it

Minho smiled. At least some things never changed.

✩✩✩

It was March 30th, but it was 65 degrees.

Minho let out a sign of relief, quickly followed by a few panicked thoughts about climate change,
before deciding to just enjoy the warm front as much as he could while it was there. After all, if the
weather lady was to be believed (and Jisung insisted that she was, because “People with good
shoes are rarely wrong!”), then a cold front would hit sometime overnight, so he still felt justified
in packing the thicker blanket in his pack.

“You ready?”

Minho turned around to find Changbin stuffing the last of his stuff in the back of the car. He had
needed to clean out the trunk to make room for all the bags- his sister had left a box of her old art
supplies in the back of his car after he visited her over spring break, along with an upsetting
amount of empty drink containers that needed tossing. His main objective had been to show her
how to properly take care of the cats while he was on the A.T., but Anna had taken it as a chance to
turn her brother into her personal Uber for a week. Anna was supportive and funny and loved all of
Minho’s friends, but she was kind of a slob. Maybe that was why she and Jisung got along so well?

It had taken him a full twenty minutes to make room for their supplies. They had decided to pick
up Jisung and Hyunjin from the parking lot of their apartment complex in mid-afternoon, thinking
that they could utilize the warmer part of the day for some environmental shots of the mountain,
picking up the soft rustling of the weeds at the light hit just so . Changbin carried two bags of just
camera equipment while Hyunjin had one alarmingly large pack full of supplies. Minho worried
for a moment about them chipping the paint off his car, but then remembered how old it was.
Maybe a ding or two would make it look like the rusting was purposeful. Jisung snorted when he
saw Changbin’s caravan of supplies.

“Are you guys planning on camping overnight, too?” he asked. “Or making a permanent move to
the mountainside? It looks like you could sustain a small family of four with that much shit.”

Changbin turned around from the front seat, leaned over and flicked him in the forehead.

“Ow !”

“Don’t disrespect your elders,” Changbin said.

“You’re barely older than me.”

“Then don’t respect the creative process.”

Jisung rolled his eyes, but nodded.

“To actually answer your question,” Hyunjin interjected. “We’ll be staying the night, but not in the
tent.”

“It’s going to be too cold at night to not have some kind of shelter,” Minho said. “Trust me, the
temperature drops more than you think. You don’t want to be stuck completely outside.”

“We won’t be outside.”

Minho cocked his head, even as he was driving. “What do you mean?”

Changbin smiled sheepishly at them from the back seat. “We’re going to sleep in the car,” he said.
“We were talking earlier this week and realized that if we fold your seats down, we can fit both
sleeping bags in here. Once we finish the evening shots, we’ll hike back down & then drive the car
up to the clearing for the night.”

“That’s why we didn’t take Bessie?”

“Also your car isn’t as comfortable,” Hyunjin offered. “It still has too much of that new-car smell.”

“I’ve had it for two years!”

“Yeah but don’t your parents get it, like, professionally cleaned every time you go home? It smells
way too good and is way too clean to just be from you.”

Jisung stuck his tongue out at him, but didn’t deny it. He supposed there were some benefits to his
family being rich, even if they were insufferable.

Minho wasn’t quite over the betrayal yet. “Seriously?” he groaned. “Wimping out on one night? ”

“What happened to you guys should definitely have shelter ? Let’s bring back that Minho, he was
less judgemental.”

“It’s warmer!” Hyunjin said. “It’s technically a shelter, right? And it’ll be more comfortable than
sleeping outside.”

“Since when is hiking about comfort?”

“Seungmin told me if I slept outside an owl would scoop me up and hold me hostage in his nest.”

Minho frowned. “What?”

“Are you willing to put my life at stake?” he asked. He placed his hands on his hips, cocking them
to the side even from his seat in the car. “Just abandon me to the wild?”

“I don’t think an owl could carry you, though.”

“Jisung, are you calling me fat?”

“I am not, I just don’t think it’s something to be concerned about.”

“Well, I’m not concerned, either,” he said. “Because I’ll be in the car!”

“Wimps!” Jisung said, but there was no malice in his voice. “Are you sure? We can probably all fit
in two tents and I brought an extra.”

“No, the car is good,” Changbin insisted. “I’m pretty passionate about not sleeping on dirt.”

Jisung stuck his tongue out at him, and Changbin reached back again from the passenger seat, this
time to pinch his thigh. “Ow! ”

“That’s what you get for disrespecting your elders. We just went over this”

“I’d do it again!” Jisung yelled, and Minho nearly had to pull over to keep Changbin from climbing
into the back seat to wrestle him.

When they parked at the base of Sanctus, Minho took in the mountain with a deep breath as he
laced up his hiking boots. Changbin grabbed his camera, throwing the strap around his neck, and
gestured at Hyunjin to grab the other bag. When he complained about the weight of the bag Minho
rolled his eyes as he grabbed his pack- easily three times as big as the camera bags- and did a quick
review to make sure he had all of the supplies they would need for the night.

“Need me to carry anything?” Jisung asked, stretching out his arms. “I can help.”

“Yeah, you can handle the tent,” Minho said, handing him a pack. “Since Changbin and Hyunjin
are sleeping in my car, we only have to bring one.”

“We’re sharing a tent?”

“Is that okay?” Minho paused. “It fits two people.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Jisung rushed out, grabbing the pack. He threw it on his back. “You haven’t
blasted Twice at full volume while I was asleep, so you’re already a better roommate than Hyunjin
has been today.”

Minho laughed. They followed Changbin and Hyunjin as they started up the path. Santus
Mountain only had a small area approved for overnight camping, so they planned on doing most of
the filming in that spot. Changbin took a few shots of the hike itself, but by then he’d shot so many
different versions of Jisung and Minho hiking that he was eager to move on to new material.

They had done a few shots here and there over the previous week- some b-roll of Minho driving
and Jisung in the passenger seat, rocking out to a song that they’d definitely have to cut out in &
replace with something non-copyrighted in editing. They shot some dialogue where Jack and Ben
planned their overnight hike, how it would commemorate six months of dating, & Changbin had
even taken the time to shoot Minho just hanging out at their apartment. “You never know,” he had
said. “I could use it to set up before the date or something, we’ll see.”

Minho grinned as he watched his friends hike the last bit of the trail leading up to the area they
would spend the night. The site was less of a legitimate camping setup and more like a small,
empty clearing that people found decent enough to set up camp for a night or two. There was a flat
patch of land where people could park their cars if they took the route coming from east of the
mountain, but the dirt road was so narrow that it could only fit one vehicle. The rangers had
eventually relented to people staying the night, but refused to put funds into adding anything to the
area besides a designated fire pit and bucket to bring water from the nearby stream. When he told
Jisung there were no bathrooms, he had literally yelled. Minho loved it, though, because it was so
simple. Some camping areas he had been to had been so updated, so carefully curated that they felt
more like an outdoor version of AirBnB than an escape into the woods. Sanctus mountain wasn’t a
particularly popular tourist attraction, but it was well loved by the locals and always pretty clean.

Tall trees flanked both sides of the clearing, reaching up towards the sky and filling the air with the
relaxing scent of pine. Jisung took a deep breath in, sighing in contentment at the smell, and Minho
followed suit. There was nothing like the smell of the outdoors. Yankee Candle could never
replicate this.

There was enough room for a medium-sized tent across from the empty fire pit with some burned-
out logs (Minho made a mental note to fix that first- building and sustaining a proper fire was one
of the most important survival skills, even if just for one night, because you never knew how cold
it could get) and he scanned the treeline for some dry wood.

Jisung wrestled with the tent for a bit, prompting Changbin to get a few shots of him clumsily
trying to put the stakes in the ground before Minho came to his rescue. They laughed as they put
the tent together, Minho insisting that Jisung take the lead, but he could hear Hyunjin calling out
the instructions from his phone in a hushed tone any time Jisung got confused by all the different
poles.

About an hour before sunset, they ran a few scenes at the campsite.

Minho scanned his lines one last time, as if he hadn’t memorized them all the week before while
having a mild meltdown over how to perform a faux love declaration in front of his friends. He and
Jisung took turns running their lines, the words still feeling a bit awkward in his mouth, but
Changbin assured them that it would be better when the sun had gone down.

“Once we have the ambiance, you’ll both do great!” he insisted, ever the aggressive supporter.
Hyunjin threw them a thumbs-up from behind him.

While Minho unpacked the supplies, Changbin took some artsy shots of the camping setup,
promising to get some good b-roll of the fire, the crackling of flames licking up into the night sky.
The temperature began to drop around seven, just a degree or so every few minutes, so gradually
that Minho barely noticed the change in the air until the sun was starting to dip down behind the
mountain. Jisung insisted that they build the fire by hand, some strange sort of masculine urge to
create overpowering his rational brain that insisted they had an easy-start log in Minho’s pack. He
spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to light the kindling before he got his first spark.

“Yes!” Jisung screamed, and the flame went out with the puff of air his breath created. He hung his
head in defeat as the rest of them roared with laughter. “Bear Grylls would be ashamed .”

Minho finally pulled the easy-start long out (“Remember,” he said patiently. “Work smarter, not
harder.”) and got the fire going as Changbin and Hyunjin assembled their dinner- a delectable
spread of hotdogs that became more and more appetizing the less light there was. They dodged the
smoke as they roasted the hotdogs over the crackling fire, doing their best to scarf them down
without fully burning their mouths.

“Did you guys pack the s’mores supplies?” Minho asked, and Jisung’s eyes lit up at the idea of
sugar.

“Indeed,” Hyunjin said, pulling a bag of marshmallows out of his pack with a flourish. Changbin
began opening the packs of graham crackers. “The chocolate got a little melted because I left the
groceries in my car yesterday, but it’ll work. They’re just a little ugly right now.”

“We just melt the chocolate anyway, it’s fine to be ugly.”

Hyunjin clasped a hand to his chest, flailing the chocolate a bit. “You’re so supportive Jisung, and
for that you get the first draft pick of our marshmallows.”

“Ha!” He yelled. “Fantasy football can kiss my ass, this is the best draft in the world.”

They ate smores as the sun continued to set, sliding behind the peak at a slow, steady pace. The sky
was deliciously clear- not a cloud in sight and being far enough away from buildings meant that
you could see an infinite amount of stars twinkling down at them at night. It was easier to relax
with a full stomach, so maybe that’s why Minho wasn’t as anxious as before when the time finally
came to shoot the kissing scene.

The first few takes were just the dialogue, some cute banter back and forth to set the scene for the
characters. Although he tripped over his words in the second run-through, by the time Changbin
wanted to shoot a “full on smooch-fest”, Minho had gotten marginally more comfortable. Jisung
had been playing the guitar on and off (when the hell had Hyunjin snuck that into his car?) and
Changbin liked it so much he added in another angle of him playing before they moved on. He
zoomed in on his fingers moving across the strings, plucking music notes in a gentle harmony.
Jisung did one final strum of the guitar before setting it to the side. Minho could feel Changbin
adjusting behind him, turning the camera focus towards his direction.

Deep breath. He had the first line. He turned to Jisung and gave him a grin that he hoped came
across as relaxed on film. “That was amazing, Jack. Who taught you to play?”

“My dad,” Jisung said, throwing him a grin. “We used to spend all afternoon trying to get me to
develop muscle memory for the different chords and frets. Although I doubt he knew I would be
using it to seduce a cute guy I met in a coffee shop.”

“Or maybe that was his plan all along,” Minho recited. He felt himself getting more comfortable.
He paused for a moment while Jisung adjusted his position by the fire, tucking his legs under his
body and pressing their sides together. Minho took his hand. “I really love being out here with
you.”

Jisung tilted his head. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Minho said. They were pressed against each other, and somehow it still felt like he
couldn’t get close enough. He took a breath, trying to remember his next line. Jisung squeezed his
hand.

“Well I’m glad you asked me,” Jisung improvised when he realized Minho was stuck. “If you told
me this time four months ago that I’d be willingly following a man into the woods, I probably
would have laughed.”

The woods. That was his next line!

“I love the woods,” Minho said, relieved. He remembered the rest now. “And there’s not a lot of
people that would come stay the night out here with me like this. You're more adventurous than
you give yourself credit for.”

“You’re sweet,” Jisung said, and Minho’s traitorous heart did a little skip even though he’d run that
line countless times tonight. “You should know by now I’d take any excuse to spend time with
you.”

“I bet you say that to all your boyfriends,” Minho said, winking. “But I love spending time with
you, too.”
A soft breeze rolled by, pulling the smoke in the other direction so there was a perfect line of sight
for the camera. Changbin readjusted, refocusing the camera from behind them so the fire
highlighted their silhouettes. Minho waited for him to call cut, but before he could Jisung reached
abc down for his guitar.

“Can I play you something I wrote?” Jisung asked. Minho blinked back at him, a little confused.
That wasn’t in the script.

“Yeah, of course.”

Jisung slung the guitar strap back over his shoulders and readjusted. He leaned forward and started
to play, a soft melody. Minho recognized it as a tune that Jisung would absentmindedly hum
sometimes, when they were finishing up a documentary or doing their weekly granola handoffs. He
had always wondered what song it was, but maybe this was his answer. Maybe it was Jisung’s own
song. When Minho smiled at him, giving a little nod of encouragement, Jisung began to softly sing.
It was barely more than a whisper, but the air had grown so quiet and still that it carried
beautifully. Minho wondered how long he had known how to play like this.

When Jisung finished, Minho started clapping while he gave him a shy smile. “That was
amazing!” he said. “What’s the title?”

“It’s called Close.”

“It’s beautiful,” he said, genuinely overwhelmed. “I really lik-”

“I wrote it for you,” Jisung said quickly. Minho’s hands froze, mid-clap. He opened his mouth to
respond, but nothing came out. For him ? A song about trembling voices and new feelings, a
flower blooming in a heart that used to be empty? Jisung had written that for him? Maybe that
meant…

“Ben?” Jisung said, snapping him back to reality. “Come here.”

Ben. Of course, it’s a song that Jack wrote for Ben . For the script. That’s it- it was the reason they
were all out here in the first place. Minho flushed, grateful that the only light the camera was
working with came from the flickering fire to their left. God, how could he be so stupid?

Jisung took his hand and laced their fingers together, bringing them to a rest in his lap. Minho
knew that was his cue in the script, the sign that they were supposed to finally do the kiss. He took
another moment to try and clear his head.

I am Ben , he thought. He is Jack, and I am Ben.

Then Minho leaned down, connecting just enough to feel the pressure of Jisung’s lips against his
own. Jisung smelled the same as he always did, just the slightest whisper of cedar under the new
smell of the campfire smoke, and Minho had to stop himself from sighing. How long had it been
since they kissed? A week? Two weeks? His whole life? He waited a moment, slightly panicked
over what this must look like on film, before pulling back and immediately looking over at his two
friends behind the camera. For some reason, he had trouble looking at Jisung, even though he
could feel eyes on him.

Their friends shared a look as Changbin adjusted the lens, and Minho knew something was off
before they even spoke. They didn’t have to- he knew what they were going to say. Minho could
tell that the kiss he and Jisung had just shared on camera was different from the one they had
shared at the basin. The difference was night and day.
“Sorry,” he said, before they could offer any feedback. “Did it look weird?”

“It doesn’t look bad,” Hyunjin insisted. “All the lines were perfect and you both looked great on
camera.”

“The song was great too, Ji,” Changbin said, offering him a smile. “I wasn’t sure about it when you
asked last night, but I’m definitely keeping that whole section in.”

“The light from the fire is coming through super well, too. It’s hitting both of your profiles in a
way that the camera is loving.”

“So what’s the problem?” Jisung asked, a little out of breath.

“Well,” Hyunjin frowned, tilting his head as he thought to himself. He looked at Changbin, who
simply shrugged. “It’s just, like, a little tense?”

“What do you mean?”

“I knew it would be weird,” Minho groaned. “I knew I’d look weird kissing on camera.”

“I mean, it’s obviously weird to see your friends kiss at all,” Changbin said, furrowing his
eyebrows. “Let’s ignore that whole bit right now. The main thing is, these characters are supposed
to be in love, right?”

“And?” Minho wondered how he could ever look like he didn’t love Jisung. He practically felt it
oozing out of his pores every second- maybe he was a better actor than he thought?

“You guys just look really stiff when you touch. I would think that lovers are pretty comfortable
with each other.”

“We’re comfortable with each other,” Jisung said, looking over at Minho. “I haven’t ever felt
uncomfortable with Minho.”

Minho’s stomach swooped. Hyunjin looked unconvinced.

“You’re comfortable until he starts to lean in for the kiss,” Changbin admitted. “You’re totally fine
up until that moment- both of you are. Then you’re both very much… not comfortable.” When he
saw Minho’s face, he added, “At least, that’s how it’s coming across! I don’t want you guys to
second-guess yourselves.”

“I don’t really know how to fix that,” Jisung said. “It’s just how my face is.”

“Unfortunately,” Hyunjin sighed. Jisung threw a nearby stick at him, which he dodged without
even blinking. “You guys just look a little overwhelmed.”

“It has been a long day,” Minho offered. “Maybe we’re just too zapped to do it well?”

“Or maybe we’re just doomed.”

“Thanks, Jisung.”

“You guys are just a little stiff in this scene,” Changbin said, reassuring them with a smile. “I’m
sure it’s not a problem, seriously. You guys have been shooting for like two hours now. Maybe we
could try it again tomorrow, after we’ve all gotten some sleep. We can add it to the sunrise scene.”

“Oh, that could actually work well!” Hyunjin said, nodding. “I was kind of worried about not
having enough sunrise content, so that will fill out some of that time nicely.”

“That works for me,” Minho said. He turned, and asked, “How about you, Ji?”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “That’s fine.”

“Then it’s settled!” Hyunjin said, clasping his hands together. “Now, let’s get ready for bed.
Changbin & I are going to head to the parking lot and drive the car up here so we can start first
thing tomorrow. It’s it’s so fucking dark out here, I think as soon as the fire’s out I’ll immediately
be unconscious.”

Minho climbed into the tent, the sound of nylon swishing as he shifted around inside the structure.
He unrolled his sleeping bag, setting it next to Jisung’s so that they were both situated with their
feet towards the opening. “I think sleeping head-to-feet is kind of gross,” Jisung had said once, and
ever since then they always slept side-by-side. This would be the first time they were sleeping in
the same place since they had kissed, though, and Minho felt a little uneasy.

The vibe had been a little off all night. And he hated it.

Jisung crawled into his sleeping bag, white shapes printed along the black fabric in swirls and
circles. Minho’s own bag was the same purple as his bedspread (“You're nothing if not consistent!”
Jisung had laughed when he first unrolled it earlier in the day), but Minho had to admit that the
patterns were nice, too. Jisung snuggled down into the bag, getting comfortable, and zipped up the
side so he looked like a little bug in a cocoon. When Minho told him that, pointing out how only
his head stuck out of the fabric, Jisung finally laughed.

“Am I a pretty bug?” He asked, wiggling. The bag slid back and forth like a caterpillar, which
made both of them start laughing again.

“The prettiest bug,” Minho said. “It’s a shock you’re not endangered, everyone would want to keep
you.”

“What kind of bug am I?”

“Hmm… an Arctia Caja.”

Jisung frowned. “You know that I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a garden tiger moth. Really matches your vibe right now.”

“Are they pretty? Moths?”

“Well, these ones are,” Minho laughed. “They’ve got really cool patterns on their wings. That’s
what your sleeping bag kind of reminded me of.”

“I’ll take it,” Jisung said, sighing happily. “What else could I wish for than to be a pretty moth?”

“Living the dream,” Minho said, climbing into his own sleeping bag. The dark purple was not
quite as flashy, but extremely high quality. He would be taking it with him on his last stretch of the
A.T. “Just don’t fly into a lamp.”

They lay in silence for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of frogs and crickets interrupted only
by the sound of the car slowly approaching and parking nearby. They relaxed into the quiet of the
woods for a while, finally settling back into the easy silence that they were used to sharing on their
hikes. Minho had bought his tent specifically for the top, which had a zipper that revealed a mesh
panel. On dry nights like this one, he could pull the inner fabric back so he could gaze up at the
sky. Jisung pointed out a few constellations he remembered from a documentary they had watched
the year before, but Minho could never remember all the names. North Star was the only one he
really cared about. After a while, they could hear the car approaching from the other side of the
mountain, tires rolling through the dirt and coming to a stop in the empty clearing near their camp.
The sounds of Changbin and Hyunjin arguing over who got to sleep closest to the good heating
vent floated their way, and by the time they finally settled down the stars were shining bright
overhead.

The fire had been put out before they all retired to their sleeping spots, but Minho could still see
little bits of ash floating around in the air outside. He watched them pass by, like little snowflakes
made from fire instead of water, and he took a deep breath in. There was nothing quite as nostalgic
as the smell of a fire. He wondered if Jisung was thinking the same thing. He always wondered
what Jisung was thinking, lately.

He could feel the ground beneath them, somehow still hard and cold underneath the sleeping pads
he had placed in the tent earlier. He reached under his head to fluff his pillow a bit more, trying to
settle down, but nothing seemed to help him relax. The air was so thick Minho was worried he
might choke on it. He looked over to his right, to see if Jisung could feel it too, and found that he
was already staring at him. He looked equally tense.

“Do you think we seemed stiff?” Jisung finally asked. “Like, off or whatever?”

“Maybe?” Minho said. He unzipped his bag a bit so he could sit up, and Jisung followed suit.
“Probably more near the end of the shoot, I guess.”

“You mean when we have to kiss.”

It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t meet Minho’s eyes.

“Yeah,” Minho agreed. “I guess we’re fine until then.

“It’s strange. I’m kind of surprised, considering we…” He trailed off, but Minho knew what he
was saying.

“Or maybe we’re both just bad kissers,” Minho joked. Jisung barked out a laugh that made his
heart feel light. “Though I don’t really think that’s the case.”

“I can confirm that’s not the case. As someone who has kissed you.”

“Well,” Minho fought a blush. “Regardless, I guess the practice didn’t help very much.”

Jisung remained silent. He shifted his weight a bit, turning so that he could look at Minho straight
on. He chewed on his lip, biting down on the soft pink in a way that made Minho feel a little dizzy.
He needed to stop doing that.

“What are you thinking?” Minho asked, a little embarrassed. He usually never had to ask. Jisung
was typically an open book, rambling to the point where the rest of their friends would get a little
annoyed, but it had never bothered Minho before. Now, though, he was impossible to read. It was
driving him crazy.

“Maybe it wasn’t that the practice wasn’t good,” he finally said. “Maybe it’s that we didn’t
practice enough?”

Minho’s eyebrows shot up. “You want to kiss again?”

“I mean,” Jisung blushed, but kept talking like he hadn’t. “Isn’t that what they say, practice makes
perfect and all that? I just meant that maybe we’re still tense because we only practiced once.”

“And it was a while ago now.”

“Yeah, it was a while ago,” Jisung agreed. “Like fifteen days.”

“Fifteen?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a credible theory,” Minho said, still not quite meeting his eyes. “Should we.... test it?

It was Jisung’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “Should we?”

“I don’t know!” Minho whispered wildly. “I don’t know what the guidelines are for kissing your
best friend.”

“That’s fair.”

“I don’t know why we’re so tense, I have literally known you for almost four years. For, like, my
entire college experience you have been there with me and you’re my friend. My best friend! I’ve
never felt tense around you before and I know I can tell you anything so there’s no reason that we
should have to- oh!”

Jisung pulled Minho towards him right then, in the middle of his sentence, and pressed their lips
together with a pressure that startled him. Minho’s brain short-circuited but he managed to respond,
kissing him back for just one glorious moment before Jisung pulled back. It was too much, and
somehow also not enough. He blinked wildly.

“Sorry,” Jisung said, cheeks red. “You were spiraling.”

“Thanks."

“You seem less tense, now.” Jisung bit his lip again. He held it there, between his teeth.

“I guess I am,” Minho said, a little breathless. It was maddening, why was he still biting his lip?

“That’s good.”

“Maybe more practice really would help us relax more in front of the camera,” he finally said.
“Like, if I knew how you liked to be kissed, I could make it look more natural. We wouldn’t be so
surprised?”

Still biting his lip, and Minho couldn't focus on anything else. He wanted to bite it for him.

"Jisung?"

They were both silent for a moment. Minho was suddenly worried that he had fucked everything
up, that Jisung would run screaming out of the tent, terrified that his best friend was so desparate to
kiss him again. He imagined Changbin and Hyunjin shunning him from his own car, telling him to
take the Hike of Shame.

Instead, Jisung cleared his throat and sat up a bit straighter. His gaze flicked down at Minho’s lips
for half of a second before meeting his eyes. He finally stopped biting his lip.
 “I’m game,” he said quietly. “If you are.”

But Minho was already leaning in.

Chapter End Notes

Thank you again, kind readers. I truly appreciate each and every one of you!! Now
please scream in the comments with me :)
 alpenglow
Chapter Notes

The songs for this chapter are “Yours” by Jason Alexander, "Afterglow" by Taylor
Swift, and "Wherever You Are" by Kodaline.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Sunrise was usually between 7:15 and 7:30 that time of year, so Minho was startled when he heard
a faint phone alarm going off at 6a.m. sharp. He heard a car door open and a brief moment of
silence, then a loud slam. The next few moments followed the same pattern, and Minho finally
realized that Channgin and Hyunjin were probably setting up for their shoot.

Minho looked down at Jisung, still lying beside him. When did he end up in Minho’s sleeping bag?
Had they been sleeping like this, curled up in one another in a tangle of limbs, all night? They both
had a blanket of smoke deep in their clothes, the sweet smell of the campfire clinging to their skin
overnight. He could smell Jisung’s soap, mixed with a bit of sweat from sleeping pressed against
each other, and he leaned over to press his nose into Jisung’s hair. He placed a kiss there, just a
small pressure, but it was enough to rouse Jisung. He blinked awake slowly, and Minho could
almost see the moment he realized where he was. He saw the realization, the way his eyes grew
wide, as he became more awake and remembered the night before. They both turned onto their
sides- Jisung on his right, Minho on his left- so that they were facing each other.

Minho wasn’t sure how long he kissed his best friend, but he woke up with lips that felt bruised
and an impossibly dry mouth. He had been surprised to find Jisung curled next to him, head tucked
under his arm, but as Minho wondered when he had gotten there there was a flash of memory:
Jisung crawling out of his sleeping bag to slide into Minho’s, pressing his mouth down on his with
a soft little sound. Minho remembered holding onto the back of his arm, thumb just barely touching
the little mountain tattoo on his bicep, as Jisung started to stray from his mouth, and he thought this
definitely isn’t practice anymore.

Jisung pressed kisses down the side of his neck, pausing to press an extra kiss at the base of his
throat, before returning to Minho’s lips. He had tasted sweet, like Hershey’s chocolate and
marshmallows, like the entire evening hadn’t even mattered until this moment. Minho remembered
lying down, sighing into the easy routine of tracing Jisung’s lips with his own while the sounds of
nature floated by. It was slow and sweet and it made him dizzy, but…

It was just practice, he had tried to tell himself, but he couldn't seem to fool himself as easily
anymore. It had to be practice, he thought in the moment, or he worried that he never would have
stopped. He knew, felt in his bones, that this had finally crossed some invisible line like a tripwire,
and he didn’t want to think about what might explode soon after. Minho didn’t stop to think about
it too long, what else it could possibly mean, because it was simply too frightening. Instead he just
leaned in, meeting Jisung halfway, every single time. He didn’t remember how it had stopped,
which one of them had finally been the one to pull back and giggle into their pillow, insisting that
they get some sleep before they had to be on camera again. He knew it had happened at some
point, though, because here he was lying asleep by his side like a gift.

Jisung slowly blinked awake, cheeks round and perfect. Minho had to stop himself from reaching
out and touching him. Again.

“Hey,” he whispered.

“Hi,” Jisung shifted, meeting his eyes. “Good morning.”

His voice was still gravelly from sleep, and it did terrible things to Minho’s heart. He nearly leaned
in to kiss him again right there, morning-breath and all. He pushed the urge down. “I think it’s time
for the sunrise scene,” he whispered. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” Jisung grinned. He stretched his arms, a single crack coming from his back like someone
had stepped on a water bottle. Minho winced at the sound. “Let’s make a movie.”

“We should probably brush our teeth first.”

Jisung chuckled. “I guess that’s a good idea. I want to make a good impression.”

They climbed out of the tent slowly, pausing to adjust to the darkness outside as sunrise
approached bit by bit. Hyunjin and Changbin were setting up the cameras, one on a tripod facing
the sunrise and another facing the now-empty fire pit. A third, smaller camera was hanging around
Changbin’s neck as they adjusted focus and grumbled about how early it was. Hyunjin raised a
sleepy hand in a wave when he noticed them approaching.

“Hey,” he said, but then it turned into a long yawn.

“Sleep well in your palace?”

“Your car is surprisingly comfortable,” Changbin said with a nod. “Although nobody warned me
that Ms. Sleeping Beauty would be so awful to wake up.”

“Your alarm sounds like nails on a chalkboard.”

“It’s literally just the basic iPhone alarm sound.”

“As I said,” Hyunjin insisted. “Awful.”

Jisung left for a moment to change into a new sweater, this one a puffy white that made Minho
want to squeeze him. He had only packed yet another flannel to change into, his usual hiking jacket
slung around his shoulders. Maybe he should have brought something more camera-worthy. As if
he could read his mind (God he hoped not), Jisung smiled at him. “I like that one,” he said, tugging
on the sleeve of Minho’s shirt. “The navy looks nice on you.”

“Thanks,” Minho said. “You look nice, too.”

“Hold your horses, boys, we don’t even have the camera rolling yet,” Changbin called. “Hold all
the cute compliments and googly eyes until I say action.”

Jisung turned away, grumbling about how his eyes weren’t even that googly , but Hyunjin
immediately intercepted them both to set them up for the scene. He handed them both a few pages
of notes. Jisung read it over, then frowned. “Why aren’t we using the end I wrote?”

Changbin paused, glancing at Hyunjin. “We decided to go in a different direction.”

“Wait, what? I thought you guys liked it.”

“We do!” Hyunjin insisted, raising his hands up a bit. “It’s just, we really need to have a concrete
scene in, and we were worried that yours might be a little...”

“A little what ?”

“Intense?”

Jsung bristled. “Intense.”

“It’s just a lot, Ji,” Changbin said gently. “It’s really nice, we weren’t lying about that, we just
want to have the more toned down conversation shot for the film. But you can run it after this, if
you really want to, and we can see which fits in better. We just have a backup plan.”

Jisung begrudgingly agreed. They sat down around the firepit, the fresh ash still settling at the
bottom, and tried to get into the same posture they had been the night before. The moment that the
sun first peeked its first rays over the horizon, Changbin called a soft action. They ran the same
scene, the dialogue flowing easier than before, and were able to do the kiss without any awkward
tension from the night before.

They reached the part of the script that Minho had been equally dreading and awaiting, and
Changbin raised up one hand- that must be his cue for the kiss. Minho was embarrassed to find that
the practice actually had made him a lot less nervous about this. He reached out, taking Jisung’s
hand. He pulled him closer, resting one hand on his hip and the other on his cheek.

He leaned in.

He caught Jisung’s bottom lip in between his own, pressing against him the way he had done the
night before.

The camera is over there! his brain was screaming. It’s right there!

But Jisung is right here. His heart responded. He didn’t think much more after that.

His heart bloomed, that elusive shade of blue flashing behind his eyes as he kissed Jisung with
shaking hands. He felt him sigh into his mouth, gently pull on a lock of hair at the base of his neck
in a way that made him shiver, and it all felt too real, too genuine, to be completely acting. There’s
no way he wasn’t feeling this too, he thought. The tension was almost painful. They kissed without
any direction, then, tender and slow and completely ignorant of the fact that they were being
filmed. In fact, when they finally pulled away, it was so quiet that Minho could hear a bird settling
into a tree yards away. Changbin closed his camera and insisted that the one take was all they
needed.

“Wait, seriously?” Minho asked. “That’s it?”

“Yeah, it was great,” Changbin said. “Why, do you want to run it again?”

“No, I mean,” Minho sputtered. “I’m just surprised that’s it. The sun hasn’t even fully risen yet, I
don’t see how this is enough content for a full sunrise scene.”

“Well, you remember the scene that was planned for Thursday, at the apartment?” Changbin
asked.

“Sure,” Minho said. “I mean, I remember the general vibe, but you didn’t really specify. The script
just said talk about the mountains .”

Hyunjin laughed. “We figured you could just talk from your own experience. God knows you
know this place better than we do, so just talk about it. We can edit it all to fit in somewhere.”

“You think we could run that here?” Changbin asked. “It could be cool to have it actually in the
mountains. Probably even better than the original setting. You can run that conversation, and then
lead into Jisung’s ending. Simple.”

“I never got that script,” Minho said, frowning. “Did I miss that? I don’t know my lines.”

“No, it’s just Jisung’s dialogue,” Hyunjin said, a strange tone coloring his words. Minho couldn’t
quite read him. “You just have to listen, and react.”

“React how?”

Changbin snorted. “Well, I guess that’s up to you.”

“I’m going to look stupid with all of you staring at me, and me not knowing what to say.”

“That’s where my camera comes in,” Hyunjin said, pointing to the tripod facing them. “We are
going to leave you two alone for the next bit, so you can just kind of improv some conversation
and interactions without us breathing down your neck. This will be running, but don’t even worry
about looking at it.”

Minho sighed. “I guess that works.”

“What do we talk about?”

Changbin shrugged. “It was Jisung’s idea.”

Minho turned to his friend, who he could tell was blushing even in the minimal light. “I just
thought, I don’t know,” Jisung shrugged. “I wrote some dialogue that I thought could be cool but
it’s new so I didn’t want Changbin butting in every few seconds.”

“First of all, rude,” Changbin said, but he was gathering the rest of his stuff. “Second of all, let’s
see how the footage comes out before we worry about whether it makes the edit. I’m doing this
take for you, dude.”

“So the game plan is the mountain-y convo, then Jisung’s long-awaited ending.”

Jisung blushed again, for some reason. “Works for me,” he said. “You good with that, Min?”

“Yeah, of course,” Minho said. He turned to Changbin as he finished packing up his supplies.
“What do you want to know about the mountains, though? Just spitball some shit about the
outdoors?”

“Why don’t you tell him why you love the mountains?” he asked. Mihno opened his mouth, but
Changbin shushed him. “Wait until we leave, okay? Then say it to Jisung, not the camera. It’ll be
more natural that way, and I can edit around any pauses, so feel free to take your time. Talk like
I’m not here. Action .”

He hit the button on the camera and scurried over to the car where Hyunjin was waiting. The
climbed in the car, closing the doors.

Minho nodded to himself, turning to his friend. Jisung looked back at him patiently, like he was
waiting for the answer to some long-awaited question rather than hear about the woods like every
other week. Minho tried to think of something about the hikes, the trails, the experience itself, that
he’d never shared with Jisung before. He looked over his shoulder, out towards the sunrise that
was illuminating the field with bright flashes, and he smiled.

“So, Jack ,” he said, trying to make it sound natural. “You know how in the early morning dawn,
when the light is just coming in, the top of the sky turns a dusty shade of blue?”

Jisung smiled at him. “Yeah.”

“It’s a really stark contrast to the bright, bold oranges that usually bleed out from the horizon. I
actually looked it up once- I think my eloquent sentence was “ bright orange sunset mountain
why?” Jisung giggled. “I found out that the phenomenon does indeed have a name.”

“What is it?”

“Alpenglow.”

“ Alpenglow ? Isn’t that a Taylor Swift song?”

“No, you’re thinking of Afterglow .”

“Oh, yeah. You’re right.”

“So, alpenglow,” Minho said, turning back to the sky. “The best place in the whole county to
watch a sunrise is on the mountain, and the valley has one hike in particular that was especially
popular with students.”

“Sanctus Peak?”

“Yep, Sanctus Peak. It’s the very mountain we are on now, but we aren’t at the summit. That’s
really the best spot, I think. The scenery is breathtaking- the trail leads up to a point with a flat top,
and if you stand right in the center of the rock and look around, it almost feels like you’re flying.
The sides of the cliffs drop off in such a way that it feels like there is nothing but sky all the way
around.”

“That’s incredible,” Jisung said, following his gaze to the rising sun.

Minho always thought he’d take someone there someday, and he had tried a few times, but every
time he approached the turn that would take him up into the clouds toward Sancus Peak, he found
himself turning left instead, down another trail. He wasn’t quite sure why. Before he met Jisung, he
took in the views by himself, or with whatever group of outdoorsy friends he could convince to
camp overnight with him. The sunrises on the mountain were rare, but every one of them felt like
holding a little piece of the sky in his hands.

He thought of the hikes themselves, the feeling of overcoming physical pain to take in the beauty
at the end. If he was being honest, it wasn’t exactly the alpenglow that drew him in. He always felt
his eye drawn toward the edge of the light, towards that elusive blue that existed at the end of the
optical illusion. It always reminded Minho of his dad’s old fender guitar, with the paint chipping a
bit on the side. They used to spend Saturday afternoons on the back porch, his dad playing songs
way too loud for a neighborhood, and Minho singing his heart out. He had wondered if that’s why
Jisung gave his character the backstory of playing guitar with his dad, if his own stories had been
the inspiration. Minho loved those afternoons, and he loved that guitar. “ daphne blue ”, his dad
always called it, and every time he saw the sky turn past the bright oranges and finally settle into
that shade of blue, he felt alive.

It was out there, at the edge of alpenglow, where his heart really sang.
“I always felt most at home out here,” Minho admitted. “With the trees and the animals and the
sky. I just feel at peace.”

Jisung’s eyes were huge, but his voice was steady. “I feel that way when I’m with you,” he said
gently. He cleared his throat, just a small little rumble, but Minho figured that must mean he was
ready to run whatever lines he had written. He sat back and gave him a small smile of
encouragement.

Before he could speak, though, his phone let out a loud brrrring! Jisung frowned, then stood up
and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Oh, shit.”

“What?” Minho asked, leaning back. He figured the scene was over, at least for the moment.
“What’s up?”

“It’s that publishing company,” Jisung said, eyes wide. “Oh my god.”

“Well don’t just stand there, pick it up!” Minho said, grinning. “Get that job!”

Jisung beamed at him. “Okay, okay.” He swiped the screen, raising the phone to his ear. “Hello?”
Minho heard some mumbling on the other line. “No, no problem at all. I’m an early bird, totally
fine to call this early.”

Minho snorted. Jisung was hardly a morning person, but if he wanted to schmooze his new boss, he
wouldn’t interrupt him. He knew how hard Jisung had been working for this, and he couldn’t
believe his luck that he got to watch it happen in real time. Jisung put a finger to his lips, silently
shushing him, and Minho almost laughed again before he noticed Jisung’s posture suddenly shift.

He spoke quickly and quietly, and before Minho knew what had happened, the call was over and
Jisung spun around with the biggest grin he had ever seen. He just nodded.

“You’re fucking joking!” Minho yelled, but Jisung was already barrelling into his arms with a
squeal.

“I did it!” he screamed, laughter spilling out. “Oh my God, I actually did it!”

“Of course you did!”

“Oh my God, I did it, parents are finally going to get off my back. I’m going to work for a
publishing company !”

“And you’re going to crush it,” Minho said, poking him in the side. “You’re going to start this job
after graduation, and by the time I get back from the trail you’re going to be a total pro.”

Jisung’s smile faltered. “You’re leaving so soon,” he said, voice growing quieter. “I guess it’s good
that I’ll have the job to focus on, cuz I’m going to miss you like crazy.”

“I’m going to miss you too,” Minho said. “I’ll send you so many postcards, you’ll be able to
wallpaper your whole apartment.”

Jisung laughed. “You better!” They laughed together, then slowly drifted to quiet. Jisung shifted,
facing him. “Should we turn the camera off? I totally forgot we were even filming.”

“Yeah, we can,” Minho said. Jisung got up to walk over, but then Minho said, “Wait- what were
you going to say earlier?”
“What?”

“When we were filming,” Minho said. “The script. I never got to hear the ending you wrote.”

Jisung looked back at his bag, the papers sticking out of the top. He stood up, walked over and
bent down to pick them up. He read over them silently, then grinned and shook his head. “Forget
it,” he said. “It’s not important.”

Minho frowned. “But I want to hear-”

“No, no,” Jisung said, walking back over to join him. He sat down with a small plop. “I just mean,
I don’t need the script. I know what I need to say.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure,” he said.

Minho nodded, then waited. Neither of them spoke. The tension was so thick he felt like he could
cut it with a knife, and Minho wondered if Jisung was fighting it as much as he was.

“I had a good time last night,” he whispered, so quietly that Minho doubted the camera even picked
it up. “I like… I like being with you. Like that.”

Minho searched his eyes, his heartbeat pounding in his ears, and he found himself slowly reaching
out to Jisung. He didn’t think he was talking as his character right now, but he didn't want to
chance it. The camera was still rolling. He cleared his throat. “Jack-”

“Fuck the film,” Jisung said with a laugh. “I’m not Jack right now. And you’re not Ben.”

Minho felt his heartbeat catch. He looked at the boy sitting across from him with sleepy eyes and
huge smile and felt himself finally relax. He was just Jisung.

Jisung, who always puts the leftovers in the fridge when they’re having a movie night and Minho
falls asleep first. Who calls on stormy nights, “just to talk”, even though Minho never explicitly
told him that he’s afraid of thunderstorms. Jisung, who would drop anything, anytime, if Minho
needed somebody to sit in a rare moment of sadness with him. Jisung, who laughed at the same
obscure, old memes and vine references and never made fun of the way that Minho would snort a
little bit when he laughed too hard. He always gave him his extra pizza crust because he knew it
was Minho’s favorite part. He knew the names, birthdays, and zodiac signs of all his cats. He was
everything.

Maybe that was why it was so scary- because it meant admitting that he already meant more than
they had ever admitted. It meant being honest about what he had seen as he watched the movie-
how clear it was to him and everyone in the room that he was completely in love with him.

Minho closed his eyes. It was now or never.

“I guess I just thought you could have anyone,” he whispered. “Everyone that meets you loves you.
You were practically the homecoming king, you know?”

“What?”

“Every time you go out, you have a ton of people around you just because they want to be in your
orbit. You’re never shy, you’re so kind, and you make birthday cards for my parents every year
with some kind of pun that nobody else in the world would ever think of. You’re just so good . I
never could see why you’d want me when you could have anybody.”

Jisung jerked back, and Minho was surprised to find that he looked offended.

“Please don’t talk about my best friend like that,” he said. Minho tried to laugh and move on, but
Jisung put a gentle hand on the side of his jaw, turning his head back toward him. “Minho, are you
being serious?”

“Well, yeah.”

“But it’s us, Minho. You and me.”

“I mean, yeah we’ve kissed but that doesn’t mean that you-”

“You really think you’re just some guy to me?” Jisung looked bewildered. “Do you really not
know all the things that make you special?”

Minho shook his head. Jisung sat up straight, eyes determined and jaw set.

“You remember everything I tell you,” he said, keeping eye contact. “Even if it’s something stupid
that I say during a dumb rant that I don’t think anyone would ever notice. You make the best
cucumber salad in the world, and it makes me laugh every time that I eat it because it’s such a
suburban white mom thing to make.”

“You love that cucumber salad.”

“I do,” he said, grinning. “You send me songs that remind you of me, even if you know I’ll hate
the genre or the beat or the dumb cover art. You remember that I love when you can hear an
artist’s accent when they sing. When we have movie nights, you always wear fuzzy socks because
you think it’ll somehow help you focus on the movie more. Even when we tell everyone that we’re
watching some blockbuster or nature documentary, you secretly let me turn on the horrible, tacky
dramas because they’re my favorite, and you never make fun of me for it.”

“You love those dramas,” Minho said with a wet laugh. “Almost as much as the cucumber salad.”

“I love love .”

“You do love love.”

Jisung leaned forward, taking Minho’s hand. His smile fell a bit.

“You were the first person I called when my grandfather died,” he said gently. “And even though it
was three in the morning and you had class the next day, you drove over and sat with me on my
couch and let me cry and just existed in the dark with me.” He shook his head, like he couldn’t
believe his luck. “You never push me to be somebody that I’m not, even when I’m being unfair to
you, because you always believe that I’m going to do the right thing.”

“Of course you are, Ji, you’re a good person.”

“You believe in me even when I don’t believe in myself,” Jisung said, voice a bit softer. “I know
that I am such an insane fuckup sometimes and I honestly am working on it, but you have never
made me feel like less of a person for my mistakes. I have never had a friend like you, and I don’t
think I ever will again.”

There it was again, he thought, the word ringing in his head. Friend, friend, friend. In any other
life, he’d consider himself lucky to have a friend like Jisung, who could look at him and know
within seconds exactly what he was thinking, what he was feeling. He would be content to spend
life as friends, partners in all the things they loved to do together, but never more than that. They
could never be more than that, could they? He should be grateful to even have him like this.

“But Minho,” Jisung looked down at Minho’s hands in his own. He gave them a squeeze and took
a shaky breath. “You’re not just my friend. You haven’t been, for a long time.”

Minho’s brain short-circuited and Jisung squeezed his hands the way he knew Minho liked, the
way that calmed him down. He ran a thumb across the back of his hand, pausing in between each
knuckle.

“What are you saying?” he asked.

He was afraid to ask, fucking terrified really, that he’d say he had heard it wrong or misunderstood,
but Jisung just smiled at him with a blush in his cheeks that Minho could see even in the misty
morning light. He opened his mouth, and suddenly Minho knew what he was going to say before
he even said it- he could feel it in his bones, somehow. His heart soared.

“Min,” Jisung said simply. “I am in love with you.”

“Oh my God.”

“Just what I was hoping to hear!” Jisung laughed. “But seriously, you don’t have to be in love with
me back. You don’t even need to say anything back- I just needed to tell you how much you mean
to me before you leave again, because it would kill me to think of you out there, hiking through the
woods not knowing how loved you are.”

“Jisung,” Minho said, and he couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his cheeks. “Are you
being serious? This isn’t just about the film?”

“About that,” Jisung winced. “The truth is… I asked Changbin to pick us as the leads for his short
film.”

Minho wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it hadn’t been that. “What?”

“I didn’t know how else to do this,” Jisung smiled shyly at him. “I have been fighting how I feel
about you for over a year now, and I knew that if I didn’t do something I would just swallow up
my feelings and push them down forever, because that’s what I’m good at doing. And I overheard
Changbin talking to Chan about maybe finding a couple to do the shoot, and I asked him if he’d do
me a favor.”

“He never told me-”

“I asked him not to,” Jisung said. “Just in case I lost my nerve. I guess I’m still a little bit of a
coward, even now.”

“You’re not a coward, Ji.”

“Well, I didn’t have the guts to say it to you in real life,” he said. “But I thought that if I wrote it all
down in the script I could finally get the words out once and for all, even if I was just pretending,
and maybe I could finally let it go. I was so tired of holding back all the time.”

He sighed. “It didn’t work, though. It actually did the opposite- I went from thinking about you
every day to thinking about you every hour, then all the damn time. I’d close my eyes and you’d be
there, smiling at me and saying all the things I’d written down as dialogue in the script because
they were words I had always wanted to hear from you. It was driving me crazy. I thought I could
party it away or drink the feelings until they finally disappeared, but it’s impossible to forget how I
feel about you, Min. It wasn’t fair of me to use this project to live out all of this without telling you
how I really feel. I’m sorry for that.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

The first time Minho admitted, out loud, that he was in love with Jisung, he was halfway into the
hardest hike of his life. The terrain was unforgiving and the areas for tents few and far between,
but he could hardly contain his excitement when he took the first step on the trail that morning two
years ago. The hike had been running smoothly, falling into a gentle rhythm of step, step, step, and
he even caught a glimpse of a bald eagle somewhere in hour six. With the scent of pine thick in the
air, Minho had leaned down to re-tie one of his boots when he heard a twig snap in the distance.
He looked up quickly, scanning the tree line until he noticed a dark form crouched near one of the
rocks on the river. With a start, he realized that he was staring right at a mountain lion.

He had read plenty about how to handle wildlife on his hikes. He knew the steps- make yourself
big, be loud, fight back only if you have no other choice. Still, all of his training seemed to leak out
of his ears as the huge cat took a step forward, sun glistening off of his fur.

When the cougar took the third step, Minho could hear Jisung’s voice in his head.

Be safe , he had said the day before Minho left. Don’t get eaten by a bear or something, I need you
around.

At the time, Minho had laughed, but there was a gentleness in Jisung's eyes that had made his
throat feel a bit tight. Now, looking at a creature that could kill him in three seconds, all he could
think about was Jisung. Who would go hiking with him? Who would know how to make those
chocolate chip cookies the way he liked, with some oats sprinkled in? Who would remind him of
his Apple password for the third time?

His mind slipped, then, to where he usually didn’t let it go.

Who would hold his hand at night? Who would pull him in close when he got a hard call from
home? Who would get to live all those beautiful dreams with him?

The mountain lion looked up at him once more, then turned and slinked back into the forest
without a second look.

Minho was breathless, though, even as he pitched his tent at a campsite that night. The vision of
the cougar was still bright in his mind, but the feelings that had bubbled up in the moment of
danger had lingered.

“I think I’m in love with my best friend,” he had said to the stars. “And I think I always will be.”
The wind caressed the side of his cheek, but the sky didn’t respond. He fell asleep to the sound of
the forest and the memory of Jisung’s eyes the day he left, big and dark.

Now, though, he was sitting right in front of him. Real.

“Jisung,” he said. “I love you, too.”

Jisung beamed at him, leaning in to press a firm kiss to his lips. Minho could feel him shaking a
bit, so he reached out to cup his cheek. He was warm and woody and so very perfect for him. And
now he was his. He thought back to all the times he had thought about Jisung like this. All the
 times he had walked back and forth in his room, worrying about him or thinking about him or just
missing him. Maybe that’s what love was. Maybe it was when you were alone at home and
somehow found yourself saying his name out loud, just because you like the way it sounds coming
out of your mouth.

“I just want you to know that this is the beginning of me really taking responsibility for myself,”
Jisung said. “Everything- all the stress and the bullshit and the work, I’ll handle all of it without
pushing it down anymore. I’ve decided to quit drinking. Well, at least the way I have been
drinking. I might have one of those gross ciders you love so much on a camping trip or something,
but I’m done partying.”

“Wow,” Minho said. “What brought this on?”

“You just made me realize that I deserve more,” he said. “I never realized how much I was
blaming myself for the way my parents treated me, for every mistake I’ve ever made. You caring
about me all these years has just kind of opened my eyes to the reality that I deserve better. And
you deserve better, so I promise I’ll be working on myself, working to be an even better person.
Somebody that you can be proud of.”

Minho squeezed his hand back. “I’ve always been proud of you.”

“Well I’m going to make you more proud,” Jisung laughed.

“Not sure that’s possible,” Minho said. “But I can’t wait to watch you thrive.”

“Thanks,” Jisung said, looking back over the horizon. “The truth is, I feel like I’ve spent my whole
life looking for a silver lining.”

“Is that what I am?” Minho asked, pressing one more kiss against his neck. “A silver lining?”

Jisung shook his head.

“You’re gold.”

Chapter End Notes

I just really love them!!

I hope you all have enjoyed this little chunk of my heart ❤️ thank you for reading & for
being there while I took some time to grieve. Love & appreciate you, kind reader!!!

epilogue coming soon ✨

 epilogue
Chapter Notes

The songs for this chapter are “Wherever You Are” by Kodaline and “Boy Violet” by
Deza

See the end of the chapter for more notes

It was surprising how much had changed over the course of three months, and yet so much was
still the same when Minho stepped off the train.

He had spent the nights on the trail with Jisung’s scarf wrapped around his neck, the smell of the
forest swirling around him in a delicious cocktail of fresh air, firewood smoke, and dew. He spent
his days walking the trail with a blissfully empty mind, finally at peace in a way he had only
dreamed of. He knew that Jisung was back in Chester working toward a better future, starting his
dream job and slowly building healthy boundaries with his family. He kept in touch with sporadic
calls at small diners along the trail and wrote an obscene amount of postcards to his friends.
Sometimes it was just a few words ( GO HUG A TREE IN MY HONOR! ) and others it was as
many paragraphs as he could fit on the back of a glossy photo of whatever mountain town he had
stopped in.

His trip had started earlier than originally planned- graduation was, in large part, uneventful.
Minho’s sister had come down with the flu a few days before they were supposed to drive down,
so naturally she infected their parents as well. Minho didn’t exactly mind- sitting through a two-
hour ceremony in the equivalent of a trash bag in 80 degree heat wasn’t exactly something he was
looking forward to anyway, so he was totally fine with skipping the graduation ceremony. In fact,
it meant he got to get a jump start on his real adventure- the last leg of the A.T.

The eight friends had indulged in one last movie night, watching Into the Wild and binging on
pizza as they lounged over one another. They fought over who would get to drive Minho to the
train station, even going as far as to enact a bracket-style arm wrestling tournament, but in the end
Minho decided to just go on his own. Somehow, it just felt right that he would embark on this next
chapter on his own.

As he left for the station that morning, Jisung had walked over and given him one last hug.
“You’re going to do amazing out there, Min,” he had whispered as they clung to each other. “And
I’m going to do amazing here. I promise. Just be safe.”

“I will.”

“And when you get back, we can talk about what this is," he gestured between them. " Us . Until
then, you just focus on your badass adventure.”

Minho didn’t say anything, just squeezed him back for another moment. He boarded the train
without looking back, and by the time he took those first steps back onto the trail the tears still
hadn’t fallen. His heart swelled both with the pain of the upcoming solitude and the joy of finally
achieving his dream. He closed his eyes and sent a silent prayer for Jisung’s journey to be as
fulfilling as his was about to be, then grinned and opened his eyes.
Minho had walked into the woods, somehow feeling hopeful even as he left half of his heart
behind.

That final day on the trail felt almost transcendent. He saw the end of his path, the actual end, right
in front of him after so many years of yearning and imagining and preparing, and it was so
overwhelming that he actually had to pause for a moment and take it all in. He had done it. He had
hiked the Appalachian Trail, all 2,194.3 miles of it. He had travelled from Springer Mountain in
Georgia all the way to Mount Katahdin in Maine over the course of all those years, passing
through 14 states in total. He wasn’t ashamed to spot tears escaping down his cheek in the photo he
had excitedly asked a stranger to take for him. He didn’t even mind that the man’s thumb was in
the corner of the shot- if anything it made him smile bigger. How deeply human it all seemed, at
the end, to spend years of his life building toward a moment that he could frame and display, and to
always know that there was a whisper of a stranger there with him. He felt like it encapsulated the
spirit of the trail perfectly.

He had finished the trail feeling like an entirely new man. Somewhere along the rocky paths and
bright streams of sunlight over the past few weeks, Minho had slimmed down considerably. He
could feel the strong ropes of muscle in his legs as he walked through Chester, shocked at how
much lighter he felt compared to the last time he had been in town. As much as his body had
changed, he knew that the biggest change of all was in his mindset.

If his watch was correct, he had about thirty minutes to make it to Hyunjin and Jisung’s apartment
to carpool to the theater. Changbin’s short film had made it into the film festival, the local pick that
had one of the small slots of time in between the heavy hitters that the critics actually came to see.
Even though it wasn’t a huge festival, Changbin had felt like he had won the lottery, and he
insisted that the entire friend group go to the opening night. He didn’t know that they had all
prepared embarrassingly glittery signs with his face on it, had attempted to hide them under their
jackets so they could lovingly embarrass him with them, but Changbin luckily was able to intercept
them before they smuggled them into the theater.

He barely heard the excited “Minho!” before his friends were barrelling his way. Jisung looked
better than Minho remembered. Since leaving he had put on some muscle and his eyes were clear.
Mihno had wondered if the feelings had left him after so much time away, but his heart still
skipped a beat when Jisung immediately flung himself into his arms for a bone-crushing hug. He
found himself gripping his bicep, right on the tattoo they shared.

“I missed you,” Jisung whispered into the crook of his neck. “I’m so proud of you.”

Minho tried, and failed, to keep from giggling. He was so happy. “I missed you, too,” he said,
giving him a squeeze. “Every day.”

“Yeah, yeah, you guys can be in love later,” Hyunjin said, but his eyes were sparkling. “We’ve got
a premiere to catch!”

After the drive, in which Changbin had nervously changed the station no less than five times, they
finally arrived at the film festival. The theater was smaller than Minho had expected, but it had a
certain old-school vibe to it that he loved. Changbin still looked nervous about the premiere, but
the rest of them were beaming. They all settled into a seat near the back left of the theater.
Seungmin grumbled about the lack of snacks at the film festival ("What kind of movie theater
doesn't have popcorn for a premiere?"), but Hyunjin had hidden some mini bags of popcorn in his
bag in advance. They all took turns trying to subtly munch on their treats as the movies played.

When it was time for Changbin's film, they all grew quiet. The black screen slowly transitioned to
a bloom of color, a sunrise brightening the screen as a wide shot of Chester came into view. The
Edge of Alpenglow flashed into view, the title of the film taking up the whole screen in white block
letters. Minho could catch some strums of a melody Chan had created the previous year, music
slowly building as the main characters were introduced to the audience. To the tune of a long-lost
love song, Minho watched the movie for the first time with his heart in his throat. He watched
himself scaling a trail, then walking towards town to begin the bulk of the story.

There were some solo shots of Jisung that Minho didn’t recognize- they must have filmed some
extra b-roll while he was on the A.T. The audience followed along as Jisung worked at a desk job
(Minho recognized the local library’s study room rearranged to look like an office, as well as some
shots on their old college campus). He watched as the camera switched back and forth between
footage of Jisung and footage of Minho, the juxtaposition of daily monotony stark against the wild
freedom of the mountains playing along with a somber song in the background- Minho recognized
Chan’s smooth, clear voice.

Jisung appeared on the screen for their meet-cute at the coffee shop. He watched as they had their
“first” conversation, clutching paper coffee cups with their fake names scrawled on the side in
Mina’s clean cursive. He watched as each of the shoots they did came to life before him- there was
the scene where he tripped over the root, on that first shoot they had ever done. He could see the
concern paint Jisung’s face a flushed pink, the love in his eyes as he looked over his leg for scrapes
so obvious Minho was gobsmacked that he hadn’t seen it in real time. He had held his hands with
such gentleness, such care, that the viewer would almost want to look away. It somehow felt too
intimate.

He watched as both of their faces grew softer, a few quiet moments that they didn’t even know
were being filmed playing as the song reached a crescendo. Minho noticed some more extra scenes
that Jisung must have shot while Minho was gone, subtle b-roll that enriched the original plan for
the film with more backstory, with footage of Jisung looking longingly at the mountains or taking a
walk around town. Minho could feel everything Changbin wanted the viewer to feel- the longing
for something bigger in life, for someone that understood you. He was beginning to wonder if the
entire film had changed to be more of a drama when he finally saw himself appear on screen again.
Oh God, has his hair really looked like that?

Before Minho could spiral about his frizzy split-ends on the big screen, the scene changed. He
watched as they talked about Chasing Wildfires , the awkwardness before Ben and Jack finally
became official. “I’ve always felt comfortable with you,” he heard Jisung say on screen. He felt a
shock of electricity flash through him as the real Jisung, sitting to his right, reached out and
grabbed his hand. He found himself marveling at how comfortable it all felt.

He watched himself with Jisung’s scarf around his neck (the very one that he ended up taking on
the A.T. with him) and the green of the leaves popping against the fiery orange sky like little dots
of life freckling the view. Minho could almost smell the deep, earthy scent of freshly-turned soil as
he watched himself trek up the trail, leaving little pebbles flying behind him.

The film then turned to another Jisung solo shot. This time, the camera panned back to reveal that
he was talking to a friend back in Cafe Monarch. He could see Mina in the background, making a
drink- he wondered fleetingly if it was for a real customer, or for the film. It made him want to go
back and try their salted caramel hot chocolate that Jeongin wouldn’t shut up about. Minho almost
laughed out loud when he realized the other guy in the shot was Yunho-he never thought he would
have turned out to be such a good influence on Jisung, but it made him smile to see how he had
been supporting him, even as an extra in Changbin’s film. Jisung had told him about Yunho’s
boyfriend, how cute they were together, over one of their phone calls, and Minho felt silly for ever
having felt jealous of such a gentle giant. He smiled as they took up the screen.
“What’s on your mind, Ben?” Yunho said. Minho had zoned out before he could catch whatever
Yunho’s character was called. He supposed it didn’t really matter.

“I feel like…” Jisung trailed off. He sighed. “Like I’m changing.”

“In a good way or a bad way?”

“Good, I think. I mean, maybe not so much changing as realizing what I’ve had in me all along.”

“And what’s that?”

“I always thought that I was this person that was so in tune with my emotions, you know?” he said,
gripping his paper cup. Minho noticed that he seemed to have stopped biting his nails. “Like, I’ve
never been ashamed to cry during a movie or cheer on somebody when something great happens,
and I kind of thought of myself as someone who was a little weak.”

His friend frowned. “You’re not weak-”

“Hold on, I'm getting there,” he said. His friend was still frowning, but he nodded and leaned back
against the couch again. “I agree. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have agreed with you a few weeks
ago, but today things just seem so much clearer. I’m not weak just because I feel things, and I don't
need to push them all down anymore. If anything, I’m stronger than anyone else I know. I take on
the feelings of everyone around me and I hold onto them for them so they don’t have to feel it, and
somehow I haven’t suffocated myself yet. If I can carry so much hurt around for other people and
still see the bright side of things… I think I’m pretty fucking resiliant.”

"Hell yeah you are," His friend smiled. “What brought this on?”

“Nothing.”

“Ah,” Yunho’s smile turned to a wild smirk. “A boy?”

“ No ,” Jisung smiled to himself, a small blush rising on his cheeks. “Well, yes.”

“I knew it!” his friend yelled. “Come on, Ben, spill. Give me the details.”

“I tried to fight how I feel,” Jisung’s voice said as the camera flashed to a scene of Minho leading
Jisung up to a trailhead, zooming in on their intertwined hands. “But it was impossible.”

Minho could see his character slipping away, only in the way that he tilted his head to the side a
bit. Nobody else could tell, he was sure, that this wasn’t just dialogue. This was real. He noticed
that Jeongin was looking at Jisung with a raised eyebrow and a smug grin, but he didn’t seem to
notice. He was only looking at Minho.

Another of Chan’s songs started playing, the music swelling as Jisung began speaking. Minho
blushed as Jisung flew into a monologue peppered with compliments- compliments so specific,
they were clearly personal to Minho, but the viewer wouldn’t know that. He listened as he gushed
about “Jack”, and Changbin cut in scenes of the two of them walking along the trails on Sanctus
mountain. Looking out over the town, shyly taking each others’ hands, Jisung’s words rang out as
they took turns sneaking glances at one another. He watched himself on the screen, leaning in to
kiss Jisung with shaking hands. He thought he heard Felix squeal from two seats over. It cut to
another scene, just a wide shot of Jisung watching Minho pick a few stray wildflowers from the
side of a trail. Minho finally understood what people meant when they said that someone’s eyes
sparkled.
“He’s just so good,” Jisung’s voiceover continued. “Like, you always hope that you’ll fall in love
with someone who is nice to you and makes you laugh, who gets along with your friends. And he
does all that! But what I love so much about him is that he has this quiet kindness in everything
that he does. He takes care of people subtly, almost quietly, like he doesn’t expect anyone to
notice. On a good day or a bad day, he’s always the same. He’s just good. ”

It was almost funny, really, now that Minho was seeing it all from a third person’s perspective. As
a viewer, watching himself on screen staring at Jisung with stars in his eyes, he couldn’t believe
that he ever tried to convince himself he wasn’t in love with Jisung. He could see it there, in every
frame. They were quiet and yet so loud with love.

With a flutter, he realized that he saw it on Jisung, too. As the film ran its course he could see it
play out on screen, that slow slip into something you couldn’t pull yourself back out of if you tried.
Jisung, naturally turning his body towards Minho any time he spoke. The way his fingers twitched
any time his hand came close, the way he bit the side of his lip when he got nervous. He can’t
believe they had ever tried to fight it. They were inevitable.

The final shot was of Minho walking into the woods, Jisung standing at the edge of the treeline
watching him. A quiet voiceover said, “And you’re going to wait for him?”

“Of course,” Jisung’s voice responded, Minho’s figure growing smaller and smaller on screen.
“He’s the kind of person worth waiting for. It’s only thirteen weeks, right?”

Minho grinned. That’s exactly how long he was on the trail. He could feel Jisung shift next to him,
reaching out to take his hand as the film faded to black, and his voice rang out one last time
through the speakers.

“For him,” it said. “I think I’d wait forever.”

When the lights finally came up twenty minutes later, he realized he was gripping his armrest so
hard that his knuckles were white and he’d left a little divot in the red velvet. He joined his friends
in a standing ovation, whooping and hollering until Changbin could finally quiet them by dragging
them outside of the theater, one-by-one.

Jisung held his hand proudly, swinging their arms back and forth as they all walked back to the car.
While Changbin’s film didn’t win any awards that day, it was a hit for the locals of Chester and
they did get a few business cards from some smaller film companies (if you had asked Changbin,
he had essentially taken home an Oscar). He and Hyunjin were beside themselves at all the
opportunities, frantically talking through potential sequels and spinoffs for a digital series to post
on their newly minted YouTube channel. The film had been described as “honest” and “charming”,
and it seemed to be a beautiful first step towards jobs in their field of choice. They already had a
few hundred new subscribers when they got home from the premiere.

They all gathered at Hyunjin and Jisung’s apartment for an “after-party”. Felix insisted on baking
some treats to celebrate, and it was only after at least three brownies each that they all settled in for
the night. They toasted to Changbin’s film prowess, to Hyunjin’s production skills, to Chan’s
music, to Seungmin and Jeongin’s recent paper publication in a big psych journal, to Jisung’s new
job, and to Minho’s success on the trail. They cheered and raised up their glasses (or rather, their
mugs- each had a different one from Hyunjin’s short stint in a pottery studio a few years earlier).
They drank and laughed and insisted on watching the film at least two more times, the final time
with wild, drunken commentary from the director.

After a copious amount of alcohol, they each crashed in different parts of the room until only
Jisung and Minho were left awake. Jisung pulled him towards the front door, quietly leaning
against the wall as they watched their friends snore. Minho took a peek at the clock- it was nearly
5a.m- and he suddenly had an idea.

“Do you want to go watch the sunrise with me?” he asked.

Jisung grinned, already grabbing his backpack. “I thought you’d never ask.”

They walked in silence, the way they always did on their earlier hikes. After a gentle trek to the
top, they sat there on Sanctus Peak wrapped around each other as the sun crept into the sky. Minho
pressed a kiss behind Jisung’s ear, so soft it made him giggle, and he felt more at peace with
himself than he could ever remember. How strange to think that this time last year, he was still
fighting his feelings for his best friend. Now, they were a unified front, an unbreakable team. He
couldn't believe how lucky they were. They rested and kissed and talked in hushed tones as the
sunrise grew closer and closer.

“I have something to show you,” Jisung eventually said. He grabbed his backpack and slowly
pulled out his busted old laptop, the stickers starting to peel off of the front. He joined his phone’s
hotspot for wifi and pulled up a website in just a few clicks, tilting the screen toward Minho with
uncharastically shy hesitance. “It’s my passion project,” he admitted. “I’ve been working on it for
the past few months.”

The screen was rich hues of brown and green, a soft acoustic song playing from the speakers.
Minho smiled when he realized that Jisung had pulled up a blog, a personalized url with the
background image of a mountain silhouette and a deep, olive-colored typewriter font.

“ Trailing Behind. ”

Minho grinned at the title. He clicked through the index, noting that the first collection of posts
were tagged as “Series 1”. He selected the first entry in the series, posted a few months prior. He
realized with a jolt that it was the exact day he had left for his last leg of the A.T. The screen
booted up, the words “ Life and Love on the Appalachian Trail ” blinking back at him, and he
realized with a tinge of pleasant shock that Jisung had written a blog post for every week Minho
spent on the Appalachian Trail. He included little details from every time he had gotten an update
from Minho- every call, every postcard, he had turned into beautiful poems and short stories about
the towns Minho passed through and the areas of the country he was in. Minho was engrossed
from the very first few sentences, and he wondered how Jisung could describe things he had never
personally seen in such detail, with such depth, but then again- that was Jisung. Thoughtful to the
core, the kind of person who just had a way with words. He was terribly fond of him.

He knew that Jisung had always wondered if he could do it- if he could be not just a great
publisher, but a writer, too. Minho had often wondered what dreams were too raw, too special, too
close to his heart to even say out loud. What kinds of things could break his heart & mend it just
the same? What in this world did his soul ache for at its very core? Jisung somehow put all those
musings and feelings into words, all those emotions he had out there on the trail, and had poured
them all out on the page.

“It’s incredible,” Minho said, leaning in to kiss his boyfriend again. “You’re incredible.”

Jisung signed happily into the kiss, giving Minho’s hand a squeeze as they pulled away.

“You know,” he said. “I know we’ve only known each other for a few years, but I kind of feel like
I’ve loved you for my whole life.”

Minho blushed. Jisung laughed at him when he saw how red his cheeks are. “Sorry, I don’t mean
 to laugh,” he said, even as he was still giggling. “You’re just really adorable.”

“Let’s see how adorable you think I am once I stop giving you the good trail snacks.”

“Still adorable!” he insisted. “You’re always cute, Minho. And very resilient, too. You dealt with
me, after all.”

Minho squeezed his hand. “You’ve come so far, Ji. I’m really proud of you.”

“I’m still sorry that I put you through so much.”

“You know I forgive you,” Minho pulled back to look him in the eyes. “And I was never angry
with you, not really. I knew you were hurting. I just wanted you to see yourself the way I always
saw you, you know? And I couldn’t ever get you to see it.”

“I’m glad we were able to grow this summer,” he said quietly. “Both of us. While you were gone I
missed you so much it was honestly kind of embarrassing. Hyunjin called me Sad Korean Romeo
for a few weeks, it was gross.” Minho laughed. “But I really wanted to have my shit together by the
time you got back. I wanted you to see that I can be the kind of man that you can be proud of.”

“You’ve never needed to prove yourself to me.”

“I know,” Jisung said with a shrug. “I had to prove it to myself, though. You deserved that.”

Minho’s chest felt warm as Jisung settled back against him, leaning up to press a quick kiss to his
lips.

“So, my sweet explorer,” he said. “Now that you’re done with the A.T., what will you do next?”

Minho thought for a moment, watching the light creep up the sky. He had always assumed that
finishing the trail would trigger some kind of existential crisis, some feeling of floundering, so he
was a bit surprised to find that he felt peace- that itch to run, to explore, to find the next best thing,
was quieter now. Somehow it was a more gentle, exciting next next step rather than something
hanging over his head. He had thought a lot about what he would do- maybe becoming a park
ranger, or an environmental guide, or a hiking specialist. There were so many possibilities. He was
surprised to be content, rather than scared, about having accomplished a goal that he’d had for so
long and focused so much time on. Now, there was so much more room in his brain for the next
journey, which would definitely include the brilliant boy next to him. He buried his nose into
Jisung’s hair, heart tugging at the content little sound he let out. Maybe it’s always been him,
really. Whatever he did next, it was always going to be with him.

“I’ll find a new adventure,” he finally said.

"How?" Jisung asked. Minho gave him one more kiss as the sunrise bloomed in the sky.

"I have a feeling," Minho said. "I may have already found it.”

Chapter End Notes

 I can never thank you enough for all of your kind words, so here's a quick one:

Thank you for reading my stories & jumping into this little mountain-loving world
with me. You all have made me so happy by reading, reacting, and sharing your
thoughts with me. Please know I'm rooting for you & your happiness, always!

xo,
MK

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