Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Joshua regretted it.

Regretted it with a heaviness that sat in his chest like an unyielding stone, pressing down with every breath he tried to take. The regret was not fleeting, not a passing thought he could brush away, but a slow-burning ache that consumed him whole.

He should never have let himself falter, never have allowed his heart to stumble at the sight of those deceptively innocent eyes, eyes that gleamed with a softness he mistook for safety. Those chocolate-brown depths, shimmering with unspoken promises, had looked at him as though they could undo every wound he carried. Yet beneath their warmth lingered a danger he had been too naïve to see, a sweetness that tasted of manipulation disguised as affection.

It was never meant to unravel into this.

They were supposed to remain nothing more than roommates, two strangers bound by practicality and necessity, not by fragile threads of emotions that now threatened to choke him.

This arrangement had been born of mutual convenience, not intimacy. Joshua, who desperately needed a roof to shield himself from the loneliness gnawing at his bones, and Seokmin, who required another body to split the burden of rent.

That was all it should have been. Just a solution. Just survival.

But somewhere between the quiet nights and the unintentional laughter, between shared silences and the haunting pull of those eyes, Joshua had lost his footing. What should have been simple had turned into a labyrinth of feelings, each step pulling him deeper into a place he swore he would never go.