#pairing:zihyo

After that comment, it took Minhyuk quite some time to be consoled. While initially Jaehyo had intended for it to be a joke, the type that friends would be offended by but would brush off because they were in a point in their relationship where the tolerance of jokes that would normally be slightly scathing existed, after a while he began to feel bad about it. Jiho had given him that look – funny, Jaehyo thinks, that he’s older than Jiho by two years, yet he heeds Jiho’s words like the rapper’s a mentor of some sort – that said well, what can I say, you went a little personal there, and after that Jaehyo knew he had to apologize.

But apologizing straight out never worked with Minhyuk. They’d all had experience with pissing him off at some point and they’d all respectively discovered that while he said “yeah, it’s fine” or “stop saying sorry”, he never actually meant it. Jaehyo wasn’t the only guy in the group with a stubborn temper: high up there in the ranks with him was Minhyuk, but the slightly older man was just better at not letting the irritation show on his face. Mostly because he already looked bothered half the time he was awake, which meant you couldn’t tell whether he was actually annoyed by something or just… well, wearing his normal expression.

Which would makes things decidedly hard for people when they were trying to reconcile with him.

“I can’t just say sorry,” Jaehyo points out to Kyung, who, for some reason, is Jaehyo’s confidante for today. The rapper has a surprising store of patience for Jaehyo and has, in the recent weeks, become an unlikely ear for Jaehyo’s problems and commentaries. “But I don’t know what else I can do, short of, I don’t know…,” he trails off and picks at the loose thread in his Piglet, pulling it out with a huff. “I hate that guy. Too much of a temper. Won’t be able to pick up girls with that attitude,”

Kyung just laughs because he’s looking at sheet of lyrics that Jiho’s given him, and there’s a jumble of random markings that Jaehyo can’t understand. “It’s the beat,” Kyung explains, tapping it out against the edge of a table. But Jaehyo still doesn’t get it. Jiho, he’s learned, has an exclusive way of doing everything and apparently only Kyung understands.

Sometimes, the two are closer than brothers and it irks Jaehyo. But only because he’s always trying to “fit in” to the type that Jiho seems to go for in close friends. Not like they aren’t already close, but Jiho’s interesting as hell.

And on top of that, while Jaehyo wouldn’t dare say it to anyone else, ever, whenever he felt as if he’d gotten Jiho’s approval it was as if he’d been bathed in sunshine.

Bathed in sunshine Jaehyo scoffs to himself, reddening immediately at the thought of such a corny sentence. Only you would, Ahn Jaehyo. Stop it. Stop trying to be imaginative and poetic.

“Well with that attitude you won’t be able to make him talk to you again,” Kyung pipes up, finally, and any bit of advice is helpful to Jaehyo at this point so the ulzzang things Kyung sounds kind of profound. “Buy him a meal,”

“I already offered,” Jaehyo replies with a whine. He glances at the laptop screen and fixes a few strands of hair while Kyung hums out the notes on the page. Kyung sees “notes” and Jaehyo sees “squiggly lines”.

“Then… then…,” Kyung doesn’t really finish his sentence but Jaehyo doesn’t blame him: Minhyuk’s just hard to please, unless you were U-Kwon. His soft spot for the fellow dancer has always been a fact in the Block B dorm. The two were like peas in a pod what with their endless dance routines that had worn out the floor of their practice room, even when the training wasn’t needed. When Jaehyo pointed this out to Jiho (Taeil ignores him, so Jaehyo’s turned to the person, he thinks, is second in terms of maturity), Jiho just stared at him and said: “so they like to spend time with each other, so what? Let them be. Kyung and I were worse during high school.”

Would you like to spend time with me like that? Jaehyo had wanted to ask, but he didn’t. So he’d resumed lying back on Minhyuk’s bed, leafing through a fashion magazine as Jiho wrote and rewrote dozens of lyrics.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Jaehyo grumbles and kicks his legs off the bed. “I’m just going to march into his room and tell him that if he doesn’t forgive me I’m never letting him borrow my cosmetics again,”

Kyung only half-listens but even in that state he reckons Jaehyo’s got a really bad idea of what’s a good plan and what’s not.

“Nope,” is all he says, though, and Jaehyo throws him a bewildered look before clinging onto his knee, shaking it slightly, wanting to divert Kyung’s attention away from that piece of paper.

“Look at meeeee,” he whines, knowing he looks quite hopeless. “Park Kyung, yah, stop reading Jiho’s doodles and help me out,” like a bro he wants to add, so he can be like Jiho. But he figures it’d sound lame coming from him.

“I don’t know,” Kyung barely even glances at him before wriggling his leg to get Jaehyo off him. “Go bother someone else. Like Yukwon,” he ends his sentence with a pointed look that said and you never thought of going to him before? Which sends Jaehyo off the bed and straight for Yukwon, who is in the kitchen.

“Yukwon-ah,” Jaehyo puts his arm around the dancer as he joins him by the stove. There’s a pot on it, and there’s a smell of something spicy-hot coming from the steam that escaped from beneath the lid. “What are you making?”

“It’s called dinner,” Yukwon doesn’t make an attempt to shake him off but he heads for the rice cooker and Jaehyo’s arms drops. “Nobody else was hungry so I figured I would just eat something simple,”

It was a Thursday and normally the boys would go out on Thursdays. Glancing at the clock on the wall, Jaehyo saw that it was almost six and nobody had said a thing about dinner. Taeil’s with his family, Jihoon’s out with his school friends and Jiho is due home soon from his studio.

“There looks like a lot in there,” Jaehyo comments as he lifts the lid and the steam scalds his skin, so he drops it with a hiss. Yukwon just laughs amiably as he scoops some rice into a bowl.

“You can have some if you want,” he closes the lid of the rice cooker and bumps his hip against Jaehyo’s as he re-joins him by the stove. “But Minhyuk hyung might kill you,”

“Minh—right. Yes,” Jaehyo clears his throat and brings a hand up to massage the back of his neck. “About him…,”

“Ah, I knew it,” Yukwon stirs the rich contents of the pot with a wooden spoon before sticking it into his mouth. “You’re trying to steal dinner and my secrets,”

“Secrets?” Jaehyo repeats. He gives a nervous chuckle and smooths his hand over his hair, which has grown to brush over his collar. “What secrets? I don’t know what you’re talking about,”

“Listen…,” Yukwon begins, but he’s cut off when the front door opens and they hear Jiho toeing his shoes off and throwing out a “I’m back” that Jaehyo’s about to answer when Kyung cuts him off.

“What? I’m coming, I’m coming,” Jiho’s form passes the kitchen door, hustling for Kyung’s room and Jaehyo inwardly grumbles at how unfair it is that Kyung always has Jiho  to himself.

“…it’s not that hard, honestly,” Yukwon gropes around in the shelf beneath their stove and finds the wooden coaster to put the pot on. “You just need to be sincere and a little persistent. Follow him around. The more you annoy him the more he realizes that the quicker he accepts you the sooner you’ll get off his back,”

“That sounds… painful,”

“For your pride maybe,” Yukwon flicks the stove off and leans against the counter, tapping his fingers against it. “Personally I think he’s already forgiven you, he just wants to play around with you a bit, you know?”

“Yah, yah, yah!” Jiho calls from within Kyung’s room and the two rappers dissolve into a peal of laughter. Yukwon furrows his brows and shakes his head, bemused, and Jaehyo frowns.

“That’s… that’s horrible,” Jaehyo sniffs. “He’s, like, my age, he should forgive me without having to resort to childish games,”

“Yeah, well, that’s my boyfriend for you,”

“That’s your—what?”

“I said that’s Minhyuk for you,” Yukwon repeats, and he’s got that wide smile on his face that has all their fans weak at the knees. “Now move aside, this pot’s hot and we all know what happens when you’re around hot things,”

With a huff, Jaehyo leaves the room for his own.

***

That night when everyone was in their respective rooms with the door shut, the tension is still totally unbearable between Minhyuk and Jaehyo. Jiho’s annoyed that he’s literally in the middle of it in a way, what if Jaehyo bunking above him and Minhyuk to his left.

He wants to mediate the situation but he also figures that these two had to learn how to deal with each other by themselves at some point. Jiho’s always been that guy to separate and dissolve arguments and he doesn’t want to do it again. He’s exhausted from the day’s work and all he wants to do is roll over in bed and fall into a deep sleep where he’d dream of girls playing beach volleyball in the scorching sun but his hyungs seem to have other plans.

“Minhyuk,” Jaehyo settles himself as comfortably as he can at the end of the dancer’s bed. The glance he gets is unnerving and he looks to Jiho for help, but all the leader does is sigh woefully.

“Minhyuk I have a question,”

Jiho sighs again and Jaehyo wonders if he’s got an itch on his back that he can’t reach. It’s happened before and while he’d also refused that one time, he’d gladly scratch Jiho’s back for him now if he asked.

“What is it,” the dancer grumbles, but it doesn’t sound like a question. He just sounds frustrated even though he’s doing nothing.

“Um,” Jaehyo wonders how he could go about this without bringing out anything about their face, but he really wants to talk about BB cream. “Can you… er… do you… you like Sunhwa right?!”

“I…,” Minhyuk shoots him a look of disbelief. Jiho does too but Jaehyo ignores it with a nervous chuckle. “Yes…?”

“Well what if I said I have her number?” Jaehyo whips out his phone and unlocks it with a few taps of his fingers. Jiho mutters something.

“You don’t,” Minhyuk points out flatly.

“Yeah, but… if I did, you’d forgive me if I had it right?”

Minhyuk says nothing. Because nothing’s needed. Jiho doesn’t pull his blankets up and just lies there, in the visual glory that he is when he wears a black shirt with its sleeves rolled up (even if it were short-sleeved originally) and that one particular pair of well-worn track pants with a drawstring.

Sigh, sigh Jaehyo purses his lips. When will I ever get to touch tha—

“So if I did try and get it,” Jaehyo leans closer to Minhyuk, and his forced chumminess makes Minhyuk’s stomach turn. “Even if I fail, the effort speaks for itself, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose,”

Minhyuk isn’t giving him much to work with, but Yukwon’s statement about him just playing with Jaehyo motivates the ulzzang.

“Okay,” Jaehyo slaps his hand against Minhyuk’s knee and winks as if they were sharing some private joke. “Give me two years. When we’re mega-famous because of me, I’ll ask her for it,”

The dancer scoffs but there’s an obvious laugh tugging at his lips as he rests back against his nestle of pillows and soft toys. “Sure. Sure, Jaehyo, you do that,”

Well that was easier than expected Jaehyo still feels a great sense of unease, and knows it’ll take another day or two before Minhyuk’s fully lightened up but a start’s a start and Jaehyo clambers onto his bed, making sure to brush his foot against Jiho’s leg when he does. The sensation makes Jiho budge in his position.

“You’re going to shut the lights right?” the younger boy grunts and Jaehyo nods as he sits atop his covers. Jaehyo always checks his mentions on Twitter and comments on random sites before he sleeps out of habit, and his two room-mates have had to learn to deal with having the light on while they tried to catch some shut-eye. While it’s been some time since they’ve been room-mates, Jiho always asks this and while at first Jaehyo had come frustrated with the repetition, he’s become to relish the sound of Jiho’s voice, like the question is equivalent to anyone else saying “sweet dreams”.

“Yeah of course,” Jaehyo replies and the rustle of bed sheets means Jiho is getting beneath his own blankets. Jaehyo wishes he could say something witty one day to make him laugh but he hasn’t got the smarts or the guts.

“Good,” Jiho mutters. “Or I’ll slit your throat,”

Weird, Jaehyo bites his lip as he taps open his Twitter app. He’s never said that before.

And he’s made so hopelessly giddy by that alone that it makes Minhyuk shake his head.

It’s kind of sad how Jaehyo thought nobody knew he liked Jiho when everyone did.

The way you walk and talk is just like her, yawning all the time, it's crazy. Everything is the same: a montage from head to toe.

Well, not really, Zico thinks. Jaehyo’s a bit different.

A bit. Yeah right. First of all, he’s male, the sarcastic voice that’s always so prominent in Zico’s head taunts. And Zico wants to say fuck you, but then he realizes he’d be swearing at himself, and how stupid is that?

You have so many similarities with the girl who hurt me so painfully. Whenever I see you, I doubt my own eyes. But strangely, I’m attracted to you more because of it. What do I do?

Zico tells magazines and TV interviews he’s never had a girlfriend. Never had time for one. But it’s a lie and he knows it is one as much as his fans suspect it is one. In the end there’s no point in admitting whether or not you’ve had a girlfriend because the reactions and speculations that followed were the same either way. Being the kind of person that he was, trekking about the streets rapping when he wasn’t housed in studying, it would’ve seemed rather impossible that Zico had never met a girl he had the strong desire to date. But in saying that he had only ever had just the one – and Zico had appreciated her as much as a guy could possibly appreciate his first girlfriend. Which was a lot. He was a young guy, frivolous, energetic, full of curiosity about stepping into the dating world. Experimental. And most of all easily lead on. And that had been Zico’s mistake.

But it was okay to make mistakes in life.

You just weren’t meant to make the same one over and over.

No wonder you seemed familiar when we first met: your body facial features, and unexpectedly, simple minded. The fact that half of your recent calls were with guys, and your daring move of pushing me to the corner when we kiss.

Jaehyo hadn’t really kissed Zico. Well he did, but it was very short and simple. Just a touch of two lips together, so quick that Zico blinked and it was over, and so soft that he questioned himself as to whether it had just been his imagination. But even in that case, why had he imagined it? So far as he was concerned his mind had never dwelled upon another guy as much it had upon Jaehyo. It was uncanny and part of Zico doesn’t like it but he knows denial is only a coping mechanism and that sooner or later he had to face the fact and it was better that it was sooner, because then that gave him time to figure out what to do with himself around the vocalist.

Inside and outside, all similar, like a carbon copy: the inside of my chaotic mind is a mess.

Jaehyo isn’t what Zico would call pretty, but he’s what he would call a pretty boy. That being said it was not like he was effeminate: he wasn’t like a girl. Zico knows the word “pretty” was so often associated with girls that if applied to anything, that anything was associated with femininity, but that isn’t the case with Jaehyo. It’s his glistening eyes teamed with his taut, smooth skin, kept in check with only  God knew how much BB cream… and, of course, superior genetics. Zico notices that even without the aid of make-up, Jaehyo’s skin is still luminous and pale and all kinds of nice. So whenever everyone else gave him crap about only being so handsome because of his products, Zico got a little bit annoyed. A firm believer in giving credit where credit was due despite anything else, it was only natural for him to feel so.

I’m scared that the break up process might be the same.

Was the attraction something he would act on? Without a doubt, yes. Zico had thought about it many times over when he was holed up in his studio, muttering over the spray of random lyrics on the paper in front of him. He’d thought about how it might be like to know that Jaehyo’s heart was his, to have his hand in his own, to know that the next time he wrote a love song it might actually be for someone instead of being a product of his imagination and dreams about what it would be like to be in love, be intoxicated by a curvaceous girl at a club or be have his heart stamped on. Maybe next time he wrote, he could detail what it felt like to have that one person on his mind all day long and all through the night. But at the same time, he knew that the relationship would also provide for him a well of depressing thoughts and chances for him to write about how much it hurt to love someone too.

Should I just quit?

The next time they kiss, Zico’s the one who initiates it. He pulls Jaehyo aside from the main area of their dorm, into their shared bedroom with Minhyuk, and he pretends to be having a talk with him, speaking in a semi-loud voice for the others to hear, and when he’s certain nobody’s keeping an eye or an ear out for them anymore he kisses him.

And this time it lasts longer than a second.

But my mind won't change.

The more time Zico spends thinking about it, the more time he wastes knowing he could have spent it doing something with Jaehyo.

How can it be this identical? The more and more and more I spend time with you, the more and more similar you are to her.

It doesn’t weird Zico out at all that Jaehyo reminds him of her. After all he’s only ever had one previous love. So it wasn’t like he could compare Jaehyo to ten or so other people. Whether that was lucky or not, Zico didn’t know. But he knows it’s for more reasons than that: Jaehyo does things in a way that convinces Zico he’s not just imagining the similarities, the correlations. Like how he’s always looking at his phone when they’re all out, and how he’s always speaking into in a low voice. At first Zico thinks that it’s because he keeps looking at his reflection, but then he smiles in a way that can only be explained away by mentioning a potential love interest.

I don't want to miss the love that I have found again. I’ll try it. I will trust you.

There’s a difference, though between Jaehyo and her: Jaehyo actually puts down his phone when Zico asks. And he can ignore it for as long as Zico wants. But after that, the discreet smiles pick up again in full force, as if Jaehyo had only put his other “commitments” on hold while Zico had been speaking to him. He hadn’t quit them completely – he was just staving them off temporarily.

Why again? Oh why do I do this to myself? Why am I like this?

But Jaehyo’s kisses keeps Zico’s mind on him. No matter how many times Zico forces himself to focus on other things, scolding himself that he doesn’t need to think about his rather neglected love life when he has something else called a career, but every so often, right on cue, Jaehyo will kiss him, play footsy with him under the table, indulge him in a little exchange of sweet nothings as he corners him in the bathroom late at night when everyone else is asleep.

You're so identical with her that I contemplate whether this is right or wrong.

Someone once told Zico – was it Taewoon? Zico can’t really remember – that there was no right or wrong when it came to love. Maybe to your friends said it was wrong, that it was illogical, but love more often than not did not call for the bounds of reason. It was unexplainable only because it made a person make decisions they otherwise would not make given another context. Some things said, some things done… sometimes, they could only be described by the concept of love. Whether it was right or wrong, whether it was stupid or smart, love was love and it was overpowering.

Whether I open eyes widely or just scan you in a glance, your words, your actions, everything: the same.

As if his handsome good looks had not been gravitating enough on its own, there were little things that Jaehyo did that would always make Zico look. And not just look, he would stare, sometimes mirror the action absentmindedly. Of course the others had noticed, but it wasn’t something they pointed out – he did it a lot when it came to girls, a strange habit they had come to familiarize themselves with. Like when a girl licked her lips, especially when a girl licked her lips. It was nothing unusual.

But when Jaehyo did that thing where he swept his fringe aside with pinches of his right index finger and thumb, or only licked his upper lip, it drove Zico mad.  Because it was just like her, because she used to do the same with her hair… and with her lips, but the bottom one, not the top, especially when she was reading her text messages.

I just followed my heart: I shouldn’t pay attention to the little details. Yeah, no matter what baby, even if I shed tears again because of the break up, so what?

Overanalysing things was, Zico knows, a sure-fire way to drive a person into insanity. He did not want to become one of those psychotic boyfriends that everyone hated, questioning why this and why that and why did you not reply to my text message, you had fifteen ample minutes. So he doesn’t ask Jaehyo why he keeps smiling and smirking at his screen and tapping a reply at the speed of light. He doesn’t ask where Jaehyo’s going 1:25 am in the morning, dressed like he has someone to impress. And he doesn’t ask why he looks exhausted and happy, buzzed with energy when he returns, even though it’s 3 am and he’s hardly had any sleep at all, and even though he can smell alcohol on his breath and the faintest whiff of the facial cleanser only girls use.

So what? You're the person that I choose. I will love you.

There’s really no other way to say it. Except with an I love you. But he’s not brave enough to say it, so Zico just thinks I love Jaehyo. It’s the only way he thinks it’s possible that he ignores everything if only for the hope of receiving another kiss or another short text message telling him to be strong and that Jaehyo’s thinking of him. It’s stupid, but its love and Zico can do nothing about it.

Did I or didn’t I say? I told you, told you not to get along with him… did I or didn’t I say?

No, Zico thinks, even as he pens the lyrics. I didn’t.

And even if it hurts, he’s fine with it. Because he has to be.