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Chapter Text

Euijoo hadn’t planned to go. He never planned to go anywhere these days.

The original idea for the night was simple: stay home, heat up leftover curry, maybe skim a few pages of a securities case until his eyelids sank. He’d gotten good at those kinds of evenings, quiet, uneventful, heavy. 

Safe.

But Yudai and Fuma wouldn’t let him.

“Come on, you can’t hide in the office forever,” Yudai had said over stale drip coffee in the break room. “You’re going to shrivel into a briefcase.”

“It’s Halloween,” Fuma added, grinning like that qualified as a national holiday. “Even first‑years are allowed a night off.”

They’d been kind from the start, maybe too kind, like they could smell the loneliness on him. Maybe it was how he always ate lunch at his desk. Maybe it was how he slipped out of karaoke with polite excuses that made everyone nod and no one believe. He didn’t want to be noticed, not really, but invisibility had its own spotlight.

So, because refusing would have proved their point, he said yes.

He had no costume. Of course he didn’t. The office had been buzzing for weeks about face paint and wigs. Yudai was committed to samurai. Fuma had threatened to recycle an old Batman mask. Euijoo told himself lawyers didn’t need costumes, which sounded smug in his head and translated to I forgot.

Before leaving, he poured half a glass of red wine. Then another. Warmth loosened something in his chest, turned sharp nerves into soft corners. By the time he locked his apartment and descended into the subway, a faint hum had settled in his bloodstream.

Tokyo in late October felt bewitched.

On the train, a vampire scrolled his phone like eternal life was boring. A witch balanced a FamilyMart bag between her knees. A pirate and a nurse held hands and whispered in a language that was mostly laughter. Outside, paper lanterns swayed, neon hair flashed, plastic fangs caught light every time strangers smiled. It should have been ridiculous. It was ridiculous. Euijoo felt a grin tug anyway.

Optimism was foreign. He didn’t use it much. He didn’t trust it. But the city buzzed with a strange promise — as if anything might happen, as if the rules of ordinary living had been suspended. For once, he wanted to believe in unpredictable things.

The bar was impossible to miss: orange lanterns hung like crooked teeth over the doorway, jack‑o’‑lanterns glowed on the curb, fake cobwebs clung to the windows with the stubbornness of real ones. Music pulsed behind the glass, muffled by laughter. A gaggle of zombies stumbled past him in a cloud of perfume and beer, apologizing cheerfully to a mailbox.

Euijoo adjusted his tie. It hit him that he looked ridiculous, but not costume ridiculous. He looked like a tax return. A suit and tie wasn’t a costume unless the costume was Boring Lawyer. He pictured someone asking who he was supposed to be. What would he say? Tax season? Misery? A man who has drafted so many contracts he missed the exit for his twenties?

He almost turned around.

Then he saw them through the fogged window: Yudai and Fuma, waving like they were signaling a helicopter. Maybe they were waiting only for him. Maybe that mattered.

He stepped forward, heart thudding. He pushed the door open.

The air was sweet with pumpkin syrup and spilled beer, sticky and loud. Strobes washed the room in green, then blue, then a theatrical red. Bodies pressed and shouted and laughed into borrowed necklines. The floor vibrated like it had opinions.

And then he heard it.

A laugh that knifed through everything, sharp and magnetic, with an edge he couldn’t name. It came from behind the bar. Euijoo turned before he knew he was moving.

Dark hair falling into his face. Plastic fangs tipped crooked. Eyeliner smudged like he had tried to fix it and decided smudged was a lifestyle. He tossed a shaker as if bartending were a sport and tonight was the finals. He grinned at a customer, and his laugh rose above the noise, confident and a little reckless, like he had been born in a room exactly like this and had never left.

The bar was chaos: fake cobwebs, orange lights, a DJ who believed volume was a personality trait. Yudai and Fuma were in the corner, still waving, now adding urgent pointing, like airport marshals guiding a single plane.

Euijoo wove through the crowd, immediately regretting the wine. Or deciding it had been the correct pregame.

Yudai slapped his back the second he arrived. “See? I told you he’d come.”

Fuma gave Euijoo the once‑over. “You said he’d show up in a costume. This is Tuesday at the office.”

“It’s a look,” Euijoo said, tugging his tie.

“It’s an accountant’s look,” Fuma replied. “Or a high school principal who wants to shut down prom.”

Yudai snapped his fingers. “Principal Buzzkill.”

Euijoo tried to look offended and failed. The room was fishnets and capes and glitter. He was sweating in wool.

Underneath the banter, something else tugged. The way Yudai and Fuma leaned into each other, shoulder to shoulder, the kind of casual closeness that grows from permission. Too close, his brain whispered, purely out of habit. People are going to think you are like them.

“Earth to Euijoo,” Fuma said, pulling him back. “Zoning out already? We haven’t even bought you a drink. It’s theme night tonight. American style.”

“I’m fine.” He smiled the way you smile at dentists. “Just taking in the atmosphere.”

“Translation: silently judging,” Yudai said.

“Classic first year,” Fuma added, raising a hand to flag the bar. “One whiskey for our boy wonder. On me. Four months at the firm without quitting deserves alcohol.”

Heat crept up Euijoo’s neck. They were normal, perfectly normal, and he was here writing a panic memo about what strangers might assume. He exhaled. He could do this. He could be a person.

**

Earlier that night

Nico was attempting to merge with the couch when Yuma walked in wearing a halo and enough glitter to interfere with satellite signals.

“I don’t want to know what you and undercover man are getting up to,” Nicholas said.

“You’re working tonight,” Yuma replied.

“No.” Nicholas threw an arm over his eyes and groaned. “Tell the bar I have smallpox. Or polio. Make it vintage.”

Yuma dropped a plastic box on his chest. “You already told Sana you’d cover. Also it’s a good shift. Momo’s on door and Sakura’s doing the floor.”

“That was before I remembered Halloween is the worst. Everyone pretending to be someone else while spilling green sugar on my shoes. It’s a normal Friday but stickier.”

“You need the money,” Yuma said, patient in the way that meant he was about to win.

“I have savings,” Nicholas muttered.

“You have the ghost of savings,” Yuma corrected, heading to the kitchen. “Ever since your knee retired, you’ve been bleeding cash. You won’t make it to Christmas if you keep skipping shifts.”

Nicholas sat up, hair fighting gravity, and opened the plastic box. Fake fangs. Cat ears. A coil of black ribbon that seemed accusatory. “This is exploitation.”

“It’s five hours of pouring drinks while wearing cat ears,” Yuma said, peering into the fridge. “You’ve done worse.”

“Name one thing.”

Yuma held up a carton of milk Nicholas had forgotten in the door. “You drank this.”

Nicholas groaned. “Fine. But if anyone hands me pumpkin spice vodka, I’m quitting.”

“You’re not quitting,” Yuma said, smiling. “You’ll go, you’ll complain, you’ll flirt with people you shouldn’t flirt with, and you’ll come home tipsy and pleased with yourself.”

Nicholas shoved the fangs into his pocket. “You make me sound predictable.”

“You are,” Yuma said, shutting the fridge with the kind of click that felt like a verdict.

Nicholas stared at the ceiling. Staying home meant cheap beer and doom‑scrolling the highlight reel of a basketball career that had ended at twenty‑three. He was almost thirty and still bartending, still telling himself it was fine. He stood, grabbed his jacket, and followed Yuma out.

Halloween, he thought. Perfect night for pretending.

By the time the bar hit full swing, Nicholas was liking people again, which he suspected had something to do with a shot of pumpkin spice vodka that tasted like pie and poor boundaries. The place hummed. Taki, Maki, and Harua had set up camp near the jukebox in a glowing nest of glow sticks, hollering every time Nicholas flipped a shaker. They were chaos, but they were his chaos, and he worked better with an audience.

He was wiping down the bar when it happened.

Suit and tie. No mask, no cape, no neon. Just pressed lines and a tie you could use to measure right angles. The guy looked like he had taken a wrong turn out of a conference room and wound up in a lava lamp.

Nicholas froze.

Their eyes met. Not a glance. A held thing. The room tipped. The bass thinned to a hum. Bodies slowed like they were underwater. Nicholas saw only him, standing still in the middle of noise, watching back with the intensity of someone who had been waiting for a signal he did not know he had sent.

Handsome, sure. Too clean‑cut, probably. Nicholas saw handsome all the time. Handsome was inventory. This felt like something else. Recognition without the memory. A tug low in his gut. Déjà vu with better lighting.

He almost looks familiar, Nicholas thought, his head warm with sugar and liquor. Or maybe I have had enough pie vodka to invent soulmates.

The man’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. Nicholas’s throat went dry.

“Hey! Bartender!” someone shouted, slapping the counter and rattling the glassware.

Nicholas blinked and moved. He put on the smirk he wore for strangers and poured something neon into a plastic cup. The music surged. The crowd jostled. The moment dissolved like cotton candy.

Still, as he slid the drink across, he glanced back. Just once. Just enough to see the suit still there, steady, watching like the eye contact had not been an accident.

**

It was nothing. Just another bartender in a room full of noise.

Yet when Euijoo’s gaze caught his, everything inside him went strange. The heat of the crowd drained away, replaced by a cold, bright line that traced from chest to fingertips. His skin prickled like he had been stepped into the open.

The bartender’s stare was direct, sharper than it had any right to be. Dark hair fell across his forehead and into a pair of cat ears that had no right to look that good. Fake fangs tilted. Eyeliner blurred into a smudge that read, I meant to do that. He looked wild and careless, perfectly tuned to the room, but his gaze cut through the chaos and pinned Euijoo where he stood.

It was unbearable. He had come to be part of the blur, to be another face in the collage. Not this. Not seen.

His breath snagged. He gripped his tie like it could hold him upright.

The bartender’s mouth lifted, half a smirk, half something Euijoo could not translate. The noise dulled, the room narrowed. He felt exposed and almost, impossibly, welcome.

“Hey,” Yudai said at his shoulder, cheerful and oblivious. “Come help me grab drinks before Fuma orders something ridiculous.”

Euijoo blinked and the volume returned all at once. Behind the bar, the man had turned to another customer. Air rushed back into Euijoo’s lungs too quickly and not enough.

“Yeah,” he said, voice rough. He forced a smile for Yudai. “Sure. Let’s go.”

The crowd pressed like a tide as Yudai steered Euijoo toward the bar. Angel wings brushed his sleeve, plastic devil horns nearly claimed an eye, and the bass tried to massage his organs from the inside. He felt overdressed and underprepared, like he had wandered into the wrong party wearing the wrong life.

Halfway there, Yudai spotted someone and slapped Euijoo’s shoulder. “Go without me, I know that guy. Be right back.” He disappeared into the current, as if the club had a trapdoor labeled Social Butterfly.

At the counter, the sharp‑eyed bartender was mid‑juggle, shaker in one hand, bottle in the other, crooked fangs flashing whenever he laughed. Too bright. Too alive. The kind of person who made the room feel underdressed.

Euijoo cleared his throat, leaned in, and tried to order. His voice came out at museum volume. The music ate it like a free sample.

The bartender leaned closer, grin sharky. “Sorry, what was that? I can’t hear you.”

Euijoo tried again. The words snagged. Heat hit his cheeks. He muttered a curse in Korean at his own tongue.

The bartender paused, then smirked. “Now what kind of language is that?” he replied in Korean, casual as a shrug.

Euijoo’s head snapped up. For a second he thought he had imagined it. The bartender dipped even closer, still in Korean. “So. What do you want?”

Euijoo blinked. His pulse thudded so hard his tie felt tight. “Three Old Fashioneds,” he managed, louder now, steadier.

“Three Old Fashioneds,” the bartender echoed in Japanese, smirk still in place. “Finally, some volume.” He poured with unfair ease and slid the first glass across. “You sounded like a ghost trying to order a drink.”

“I said it twice,” Euijoo muttered.

“And I said I couldn’t hear you,” the bartender shot back. “Not my fault your inside voice is stuck on minimum security.”

Words deserted Euijoo. The bartender grinned like he had just won a small, private game.

The glasses landed. Euijoo took one, willing his hand not to shake, trying not to notice how hearing his language in that careless voice had lit up every nerve like pinball.

“Better?” the bartender asked in Korean, head tipped.

Euijoo nodded and took a long swallow. The burn in his throat was absolutely the alcohol and not at all the attention.

The bartender looked like he had another line ready, but a customer yelled his name. He gave Euijoo a look that might have been regret or might have been stage lighting and moved away.

“There you are,” Yudai said, materializing. “I was looking for you everywhere.” He eyed the glasses. “Oh, Euijoo. This is more dire than I realized. You drink like an old man.”

“I didn’t know what to order,” Euijoo said, already defensive and already aware that this sounded exactly like something an old man would say.

“Let’s get you a fun drink.”

**

On the other side of the counter, Yuma leaned into Nicholas, practically shouting over the bass while he swapped out a keg. “Why are you eye fucking that accountant?”

“What?” Nicholas nearly fumbled the coupling. Maybe that last shot had been aggressive optimism.

“Don’t what me,” Yuma said, waving off a customer like he was shooing a pigeon. “Also how many drinks have you had?”

Nicholas clicked the keg into place. “What?” he said again, mostly to be annoying. 

“You’re annoying,” Yuma said, and then smiled at a tourist like he hadn’t just threatened homicide with his eyes.

Nicholas smirked and scanned the room. There he was. Suit and tie. Pretty mouth trying not to be pretty. He hadn’t planned to take anyone home, but plans could be flexible. Like yoga schedules. Like morals after midnight.

**

“You can’t allow Takana to intimidate you,” Fuma said gently, calm voice wrapped around not such great advice. 

Euijoo had lost count of his drinks. Six, maybe seven.

“That is exactly the opposite of what that means,” Euijoo said. He was catching up to Fuma on volume if not on wisdom. “I’m the grunt. Bottom of the ladder.”

Yudai rolled his eyes and bumped Euijoo’s shoulder. “I used to feel that way too. Time flies faster than your anxiety thinks. Have confidence. Do not let bootlickers like Takana live rent‑free in your skull.”

Euijoo nodded to end the topic. He had worked too hard to get hired at Kanzaki and Partners, one of the top three firms in Tokyo this year. Years of academic grind, months of sleepless exam eyes. He refused to let shaky confidence and mild workplace bullying knock him off the rung he had finally reached.

Heat touched the back of his neck. He turned and met the sharp bartender’s eyes again, the look unblinking and entirely illegal.

He was tipsy enough to mouth ‘What’ at the man. The man smiled, shook his head like they had an inside joke they hadn’t earned yet, then turned away.

“What is his deal?” Euijoo said out loud.

“Pardon?” Fuma asked.

“Nothing. I’ll get another round.”

“Oh, we are goo—” Yudai started, but Euijoo was already shouldering into the crowd like a polite rhino.

At the bar he landed not in front of the one he intended but in front of a shorter, pink‑haired bartender with a lip ring and glitter dusted across his cheekbones. Angel halo on his head, demon energy in his eyebrows.

Euijoo pointed past him. “Oh, um, I was hoping to talk to—”

“Well, you got me,” the pink‑haired bartender said. “Order or move on.”

“This place is not known for its hospitality, is it?” Euijoo said before his brain could grab his mouth.

The man laughed. “That’s good, salaryman. Now order.”

Euijoo scanned the backlit menu and, because bad decisions often wear neon, ordered three Monster Mashes.

The pink‑haired man shrugged. “Your funeral.”

“Okay, sure, whatever that means,” Euijoo said, but the man had already vanished into the ice and bottles.

While he waited, Euijoo watched the room. Bigger crowd than he expected for a theme bar. English everywhere. Tourists practicing phrases like they were juggling. His original bartender switched between Japanese, English, and something that made Euijoo’s brain sit up straighter. Apparently a man of many languages.

His bartender.

God, he needed water.

The pink‑haired bartender returned with three radioactive green drinks. Euijoo decided to embarrass himself one last time.

“So, sorry, I don’t normally do this, but I was wondering—”

“Not interested,” the bartender said, already bored.

Euijoo wanted to crawl into a hat and disappear. “Oh no, not you.”

The man rolled his eyes. 

“Although you are very good looking. I’m just not, I’m not like that,” Euijoo stammered. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being that way. I just wanted to know his name, maybe.” He nodded toward the other bartender.

Another eye roll. “You’ll find out tonight, Mr. I’m Not Gay. Trust me. He’ll get to you.”

Euijoo jerked upright, nearly baptizing the drinks. “Hey. That was uncalled for.”

“And correct,” the man said. “Now clear my bar. I have customers who are not trying to unpack their childhood while I am cutting limes.”

Euijoo knew he would not win this skirmish. “Thanks for nothing,” he said, collecting the glasses.

“My pleasure,” the angel called, voice sugar and knives.

**

“Suit and tie was asking about you,” Yuma told Nicholas.

“Isn’t he adorable?” Nicholas said, snapping a martini tin shut. “I think I am taking him home.”

Yuma made a face. “Normally I would say fuck who’s  ever bouncing on it, but this one is giving deep closet. Like wardrobe inside a wardrobe.” 

“Aren’t half the guys in Japan,” Nicholas said. 

Yuma lifted a paring knife. “Be smart.”

“You told me you almost went to the clinic from the pretzel shapes that undercover man put you in last weekend,” Nicholas said. “I am still recovering from the sound effects.”

“One, I told you because for some reason you are my emergency contact.”

“I’m your emergency contact because Haura said no and that left you with Maki and Taki.” 

Two, I warned you he was coming over and to wear headphones or leave the apartment. Three, mind your business unless my business is on fire.”

Nicholas rolled his eyes and started another Monster Mash. His hands were going to be green until Wednesday. “Speaking of being sexiled, do not be shocked if Suit and Tie comes home with me.”

“Finish your side work before you abandon us, bitch,” Yuma said, flipping him off with customer‑service cheer. “And do not say I did not warn you.”

**

“That man was definitely not an angel,” Euijoo slurred as he rejoined Fuma and Yudai.

“Are you okay?” Fuma asked, catching his elbow.

“More like a demon,” Euijoo said, already charmed by his own melodrama.

“He needs air,” Yudai said.

“Air would be good,” Fuma agreed.

They had taken one look at the neon drinks and declared them illegal for their brand. Euijoo downed two in a row. The third was wrestled away. He could usually handle his liquor. Tonight he wanted out of his head. Maybe it was the loneliness. Maybe it was Yudai and Fuma being relationship goals with a side of enabling. Maybe it was the bartender with the carnivore smile.

Yudai stayed behind to settle up. Fuma shepherded Euijoo outside to call a car. Night air kissed Euijoo’s face. He closed his eyes and tried to be a person again. He was upright mostly because Fuma was a friendly lamppost. Embarrassment did jumping jacks in his stomach. Another feeling tugged a chair closer, the one that arrives when someone is kind without keeping score.

“I am sorry I ruined the night,” Euijoo said, eyes still shut. He could not face Fuma’s handsome face and the truth on it.

“You did not ruin anything,” Fuma said, warm laugh low. “We have all been victims of overstimulation and alcohol.”

Tears pricked. Euijoo dug his nails into his palm. “You and Yudai are so nice to me. Thank you.”

“You are easy to be nice to. Do not sell yourself short.”

The street hummed. Euijoo breathed. He would go home, shower, forget this, and buy enough lunches for his seniors that they would forget too.

“Dammit,” Fuma muttered, frowning at his phone.

“Everything okay?”

“I forgot Yudai gave me his wallet. He cannot get enough signal to pay with his phone.” Fuma looked Euijoo up and down like a doctor deciding on stitches. “Can I trust you to stay right here while I go in and pay?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

Fuma clapped his back and slipped inside. Without the human lamppost, Euijoo swayed, corrected, then realized that standing still while very drunk is an Olympic sport. He edged along the wall, bumping only three people. Only one returned fire. Progress.

There are types of drunk people. The crier. The fighter. The clown. The flirt. Euijoo was a wanderer. When he had promised not to wander, he had meant it the way people mean they will go to the gym on Monday. The alley beside the bar was well lit, if a bit fragrant. Privacy sounded like medicine.

Halfway down, he leaned his head against cool brick. Thank God he did not have work in the morning. He would have gone anyway, but the absence of a 7 a.m. desk call felt like a miracle.

A door swung open. Out came the bartender with a trash bag.

They locked eyes. His smile arrived slow and sure. Euijoo felt his own face do something unhelpful. The bartender tossed the bag and closed the distance at a saunter that deserved its own soundtrack.

“Were you waiting out here for me,” he asked, smirk forming, eyeliner ringing his eyes like a halo that had done community service.

“I am not stalking you,” Euijoo said at movie‑trailer volume.

The bartender laughed. It sounded like breaking glass in a way that made Euijoo want to hear it again.

“I’m Nicholas,” he said when the laugh faded. He leaned in close, heat and cologne and trouble. “What is your name?”

“Euijoo,” he said, dizzy and not entirely sure if it was proximity or alcohol. “Is Nicholas your real name?”

“Nope,” Nicholas said, popping the P. “That’s tier three friend lore.”

“Okay. Sure.” Euijoo gathered his dignity like loose change. “Why did you stare at me all night?”

“Why did you stare back at me all night,” Nicholas said, eyes glinting.

“What, are you twelve,” Euijoo said. “I asked first.”

Nicholas planted a hand on the wall and stepped in. He looked at him through mascaraed lashes. The height difference made Euijoo feel it in his knees.

“Because I think you are sexy,” Nicholas said, fingers catching Euijoo’s tie and giving it the lightest tug. “Your turn, Suit Man.”

Euijoo’s stomach lurched. He pivoted, leaned past Nicholas, and threw up in the alley.

Chapter Text

It is not that Nicholas had never been rejected. He was a person, not a coupon. He knew how no sounded.

He had simply never been rejected like that.

“Wow,” he said, slow clap engaged. “You could have said not interested. Throwing up is a lot as a sentence ender.”

Euijoo tried to speak between dry heaves. “No, no, it is not—”

“Stop. Breathe,” Nicholas said. “I will be right back.”

Inside, he ignored the twin glares of Sana and Yuma and snagged a bottle of water.

“You have to pay for that,” Sana called.

“Take it out of my check,” Nicholas said without slowing.

Back outside, Euijoo was kneeling, head between his knees like he was bargaining with gravity.

“Here,” Nicholas said, handing him the water.

“Thanks,” Euijoo croaked. His glasses had slid to the tip of his nose. He drank like the bottle owed him rent.

Nicholas tried not to look at the puddle two feet away. He preferred his romance without sound effects. Also, Euijoo looked like he might choose the sidewalk as a lifestyle.

To prove the point, Euijoo stretched his long limbs and announced, “I think I am going to lie down.”

“Oh no you are not,” Nicholas said. He grabbed an arm and hauled. Hidden muscles. Sneaky mass. “Up we go.”

He pulled out his phone one‑handed. He did not know where Euijoo lived. He and Yuma lived a few miles away. He doubted Euijoo was a murderer with a slow‑burn plan and the world’s weakest disguise. He requested a ride. Three minutes.

He texted the bar group chat: Found a drunk guy in the alley. Being a good citizen. Taxi duty.

Yuma called immediately. Nicholas declined and pocketed the lecture for later.

He got Euijoo moving toward the curb. “Up we go,” he said in English without thinking.

Euijoo gripped back with surprising strength and peered at him through glassy eyes. “You are really beautiful, you know.”

“Aww,” Nicholas said. “This would be a sincere moment if you did not have vomit on your shoes.”

They reached the car. Euijoo was asleep before the door latch clicked. Nicholas exhaled, looked back at the alley, and then at the quiet, dangerous softness that had snuck into his chest.

“Great,” he told the night. “I like the difficult ones.”

The driver pulled away from the curb. Tokyo blurred by like a screensaver. Euijoo’s head tipped toward Nicholas’s shoulder. Nicholas considered leaning away. He did not. He watched the city lights and decided that sometimes the plot chooses you.

**

It wasn’t the alarm that woke Euijoo. It was pain. A sharp kick to the shin, again and again, until the sound of his own alarm finally barged into his head.

And someone was kicking him.

“Turn it off before I kill us both,” a strange voice said, rough with sleep.

Euijoo’s head snapped up. His arm was draped over a warm body. A very naked, very male body. He yelped and launched himself away from the bed. Gravity launched him back.

A hand shot out and caught his wrist. “Make another loud noise and see if you make it out of here alive,” the man growled, then let go. Euijoo stumbled and landed on the floor with a thud.

A pillow hit him in the face. “Alarm.”

“Right. Sorry.” He scrambled to the nightstand, slapped at his phone, and killed the 6:30 a.m. bleat. The quiet felt louder than the alarm.

Now to figure out where he was.

“Excuse me,” he said to the lump on the bed. “I’m sorry but I’m a bit—”

“Didn’t I tell you to stop making noises?” The figure sat up and flicked on a bedside lamp shaped like Calcifer from Howl’s Moving Castle. Dark waves of hair. Pale chest. Eyes puffy from sleep and still somehow intimidating.

Nicholas.

Memory hit like a cold shower. The bar. Yudai and Fuma. Too much to drink. The bartender in the alley. The vomiting. So much vomiting.

“Oh God, I threw up all over—”

“Your shoes,” Nicholas said. “And your jacket when we got here.”

Heat flooded Euijoo’s ears. “I’m so sorry. I hope I didn’t throw up on you.”

“Nah.” Nicholas waved a hand. “I have experience in dodging splash zones.”

Euijoo glanced down. Boxers and undershirt. Nicholas appeared to be entirely unclothed under the blanket. Panic climbed his throat. “Wait. We didn’t. We didn’t fu—”

“Calm down, Princess.” Disgusted, affectionate, impossible to pin down. “I’m not taking advantage of a drunk man. You were covered in puke. Get a grip.”

“Oh.” The word tasted like relief and disappointment and shame, all at once.

“Yeah, oh,” Nicholas said, mocking him without malice. “I wasn’t going to screw you no matter how many times you told me I was beautiful.”

Euijoo’s mouth went dry. “I didn’t mean—”

“Get over yourself.” Nicholas sank back into his pillows. “Also call your friends. I talked to them last night and convinced them I’m not a serial killer, but they promised to have me tried and convicted in every court in Japan if one hair on your head went missing.”

“Fuma and Yudai,” Euijoo said, rubbing his temple. “They are never inviting me out again.”

“Probably for the best.” Nicholas closed his eyes.

Euijoo blinked at the room. Stranger’s bed. Stranger’s lamp. Not nearly enough clothing. “I should go,” he said, standing slowly.

“I guess you should.” Nicholas paused while Euijoo hunted for his clothes. “I’ll see you for dinner tonight.”

Euijoo fumbled for his glasses. “I’m sorry. What?”

“Dinner.” One eye opened. “You promised after we exchanged numbers.”

“Um.”

“It was technically this morning,” Nicholas went on. “You wanted to buy me lunch but I don’t eat lunch because I think it’s kind of stupid. Dinner, though. I love dinner.”

“I promised dinner?” Euijoo felt his brain turning to oatmeal.

“On account of you almost throwing up on me.”

“I thought you said I didn’t.”

“It was close.” Nicholas held up a thumb and forefinger with the tiniest space between. “Dinner close. Plus I have to give you back your suit jacket.”

“What happened to my jacket?”

“You threw up on it. You said you were worried about it settling, so your jacket is currently in my bathtub.”

“That is enough questions,” Euijoo said, crouching to check under a chair. No shirt. No dignity. He could feel Nicholas enjoying the show.

“You want to know where—”

“It would be nice,” Euijoo snapped.

Nicholas snorted and flipped off the blanket. Mercifully, he was in briefs. “Relax,” he said, standing.

Euijoo noticed the stiffness immediately. Nicholas moved carefully, then paused to stretch his right knee until something seemed to release.

“Are you okay?” Euijoo asked.

“All good.” The answer carried a little strain. “Let’s get your shirt.” He grabbed a maroon satin robe from the door, and Euijoo tried not to notice how the color made Nicholas look like trouble.

They headed into the hall. A tall figure slid out of one bedroom and into another room, somehow staying in the shadows the whole time. The movement was eerily smooth, like a big cat. A shiver ran up Euijoo’s back.

“Who was that?” he whispered.

“Yuma’s undercover man,” Nicholas said, like that explained everything.

“Okay. Sure.”

Nicholas stopped at a clothing rack under a vent. He pulled down a button‑up and handed it over. It smelled like lemons and near disaster.

“I think I got the worst of it out,” Nicholas said.

Shame pricked as Euijoo slipped into the shirt. He fastened each button like it owed him an apology. “I am sorry,” he said, eyes on the floor. “I made a fool of myself.”

“Stop.” Nicholas scoffed. “You are already buying me dinner and you apologized a thousand times last night. I brought you home. That part is on me.”

“Why did you?” It jumped out before Euijoo could catch it.

Nicholas smiled. “I thought you said no more questions.”

Euijoo opened his mouth, then closed it. He had nothing that sounded smart.

“Time for you to go,” Nicholas said, walking him to the door. “I have already done more talking than I like in the morning.”

Euijoo stepped to the threshold and did not cross it. The usual gnawing in his gut had gone quiet for a second, like a radio with the volume turned down. He was not ready to dial it back up. “Dinner tonight?”

Nicholas nodded. “Dinner tonight.”

**

Nicholas was standing in front of his closet like a man about to argue with God. The clock on his phone said 11:47 p.m. which made this officially the latest “first date” of his entire life. He had been home for maybe an hour after atleast pretending to have a job, long enough to shower, drink two fingers of whiskey, and start the dangerous slide toward “tipsy confident” that could at any moment become “sloppy idiot.”

Harua was sitting cross-legged on the bed, sipping the whiskey straight from Nicholas’s glass like he owned it. Maki was sprawled on the floor with his feet against the wall, scrolling his phone and heckling every five minutes without looking up.

“You realize you said this guy was straight,” Harua said, swirling the whiskey. “How does a straight guy turn into a date?”

Nicholas tugged at a shirt that was either navy or black depending on the lighting. He hated both. “Please. He is not straight. He is like aggressively not straight. I’ve got a better read on this than both of you combined and my reading is clear.”

“He could be bi,” Maki said from the floor. “People are bi. You’re bi. I’m bi. The math checks out.”

Nicholas pointed a hanger at him. “Thank you, Professor Kinsey Scale. My point is, he is into me. I’m not getting bad vibes. I’m getting positive gay. Warm gay. You know. The kind of gay where you just want to hold hands and maybe also ruin each other’s lives.”

“Romantic,” Harua muttered. “And you’re nervous. Which is hilarious.”

Nicholas flopped on the edge of the bed. “I have not been on a first date in years. Like years plural. Do you even know how long that is in gay years? It’s basically a century. I am out of practice.”

“Let’s rehearse,” Harua said. He tucked his hair behind his ears, pitched his voice unnaturally high, and chirped, “Hi, Euijoo, you look so cute tonight, teehee.”

Nicholas shoved a pillow at his face. “Oh my God why would you do that? Do I sound like that? If I sound like that, someonekill me.”

“Fine,” Maki said, sitting up. He dropped his phone and threw on a deep voice. “Hey, what’s up, bro.”

Nicholas stared at him, horrified. “Are you serious. That is not the vibe. That is the opposite of the vibe. I am not auditioning for Fast and Furious. I am trying to look approachable, not like I sell vape pens behind a gas station.”

Harua was wheezing with laughter. “You’re doomed. He’s going to show up, take one look at you, and realize you have no idea how to say hello.”

Nicholas grabbed another shirt, then another. Nothing looked right. He held up eyeliner and squinted at it. “What if I do eyeliner. Subtle. Just a little.”

“No,” Harua said immediately.

“Too much,” Maki added. “You’ll scare your straight guy off.” 

“You both are boring,” Nicholas muttered, but he set the eyeliner down. He tried the navy-black shirt again, then ripped it off in frustration. “Do I go casual or like hot casual. If I wear a jacket it says serious date. If I don’t wear a jacket it says frat boy. Why is clothing emotional math.”

“You’re overthinking,” Harua said.

“Of course I’m overthinking. He is probably over there ironing his tie and Googling if bartenders have real jobs. I need to look hot but not threatening. Fun but not clown.”

“You’re fucked,” Maki said cheerfully.

Nicholas picked up his phone, desperate for a distraction, and there it was: a text from Euijoo.

‘Sorry might be a little late.’

Nicholas snorted and typed back instantly: ‘Baby do not worry I am going to be a lot late.’ Then he threw the phone onto the bed.

“Did you just call him baby,” Harua asked, scandalized and delighted.

“Accidental,” Nicholas said. “Freudian slip or Whatever. It’s fine. It’s confident. He will either think it’s charming or he will block me. Fifty-fifty odds.”

Maki leaned back on his elbows. “So what are we eating at this late night dinner. Because if it’s ramen you better not wear white. You cannot pull off splatter chic.”

Nicholas looked down at the plain white button-up he had just put on. He groaned and yanked it off. “Why is everything I own either funeral or toddler.”

“You have that maroon shirt,” Haura said.

“That is too sexy,” Nicholas said.

“You wore it to brunch once.”

“Exactly. And half the restaurant fell in love with me. I cannot unleash that kind of chaos on a first date. I need middle ground.”

They bickered like this for another ten minutes until Nicholas finally ended up in street wear but not too try hard. His jeans hugged his body without screaming “thirst trap.” Which is what he wanted. Maybe. He shoved his phone, wallet, and gum into his pockets.

Haura clapped. “Look at you. Presentable. He might even kiss you.”

“Do not jinx me,” Nicholas said. He checked the mirror again, nervous energy sparking like static. “Okay. How do I walk in. Smooth. Cool. Confident. Let’s practice.”

He strolled across the room with exaggerated swagger.

“You look constipated,” Maki said.

Nicholas threw a sock at him. “You are dead to me.”

He tried again, this time with a casual wave.

“Now you look like you’re greeting your aunt at a wedding,” Harua said.

Nicholas collapsed onto the bed and covered his face with his hands. “This is impossible. Why do people date. Why is romance not just delivered in a box like pizza.”

“Because then you’d complain the box was too small,” Harua  said.

Nicholas peeked out between his fingers. “I hate you both.”

They laughed, and for a second his nerves softened. Maybe he was out of practice, but he could do this. He had survived bad shifts, drunk customers, a ruined career. He could survive one dinner with a lawyer in a suit.

His phone buzzed again. Another text.

On my way.

Nicholas stood, heart punching his ribs, and muttered, “Okay. Showtime.”

**

Euijoo sat on the subway like a man trapped in his own brain. He wanted to go to Nicholas’s apartment, he really did. At the same time he also wanted to jump off at the next stop and run back to his perfectly clean apartment where nothing unexpected ever happened. He had spent all day trying not to think about it, and why he’d left Korea all those years ago. He was failing spectacularly. 

After leaving Nicholas’ that morning and calling Fuma and Yudai who he had apologized to in length Euijoo had tried to nap but his body had laughed in his face. So he deep cleaned his already clean apartment until it looked like an IKEA showroom. He read case files until the words blurred into legal soup. He even ran on the treadmill at the gym, the whole time muttering to himself like a lunatic about how this was not a date, it was just a dinner, it was just repayment for embarrassing himself in front of a stranger. A stranger he had known for twenty four hours. A stranger who now had his phone number. A stranger he could not stop thinking about.

By the time he checked the clock it was close to midnight. He could not believe he was still awake. He could not believe he was dressed. He could not believe he was on a subway heading toward someone who laughed like a breaking glass chandelier.

He was not going to debate his sexuality on a Saturday night public train. Absolutely not. That was off the table. What was on the table was the fact that a very large part of him wanted to see Nicholas again.

When the train finally screeched into the right station, Euijoo stood up on autopilot, walked the familiar blocks, and felt relief flood his chest when he actually recognized the building. At least he had not hallucinated the whole night before.

He climbed the stairs, heart hammering. From behind the door came the sound of laughter. Not just one laugh but multiple, tumbling over each other. Euijoo froze. He was not prepared for an audience. His palms were already damp. He raised his fist, knocked lightly, and waited in absolute terror.

The door swung open. Nicholas appeared like some kind of magazine spread, leaning against the doorframe in an outfit that looked custom designed for art school Instagram. Black jeans that fit too well. A shirt with a neckline that was either accidental or criminal. A dark blue jacket that caught the hall light and made his skin look like porcelain.

Euijoo forgot how to swallow.

“Euijoo,” Nicholas said with a grin that belonged on a billboard.

Two heads popped up behind him. A short man with a   smirk sharp enough to slice fruit. Another taller one who waved lazily like this was all a sitcom and Euijoo was the guest star walking into the wrong set.

Nicholas gestured. “This is Harua. This is Maki. These are my bad influences.”

Maki tilted his head, eyes scanning Euijoo like he was a painting in a museum. “Wow. You really do have the most squeezable cheeks I’ve ever seen.”

Euijoo blinked. “What?”

Nicholas clapped his hands once. “Okay thank you everyone for your commentary. Out. Out out out.” He herded them with surprising force toward the hallway, ignoring their protests. “We will discuss your crushes later.”

The door shut behind them and the air immediately felt too thin. Nicholas turned to Euijoo with the grin still curling at the edges of his mouth.

“Sorry about that. They are impossible. But now it is just us. So.” He clapped his hands again, this time in mock ceremony. “Where to?”

Euijoo blinked again, brain lagging behind his mouth. “I… I have no idea.”

Nicholas stared at him for a beat. Then he broke into laughter, tipping his head back. “You invited me to dinner and you have no idea where we are going. Incredible. I love it.”

“It is midnight,” Euijoo said weakly. “What places are even open?”

“Only the sketchy ones and the legendary ones,” Nicholas replied, already pulling on his jacket like a man with a plan. “And lucky for you, I know both.”

Euijoo followed him out into the neon street, still buzzing with life. He could not decide if he was walking toward disaster or toward something else entirely. 

**

Nicholas led Euijoo through a narrow side street glowing with paper lanterns and humming vending machines that looked half-dead. He had offered another option earlier, but after admitting he had once dumped an entire tray of plum wine on the owner’s wife and then accidentally flirted with her, Euijoo had voted against testing fate.

So ramen it was.

Nicholas brought him to one of his favorite late-night haunts, the kind of place that looked like it could collapse if someone sneezed too hard. The noren curtains hung in tatters, the doorway was too small, the sign was cracked and only two characters still glowed. Inside, steam fogged the windows, the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and the smell of pork broth and garlic hit like a punch. Exactly the kind of place that terrified neat men in pressed suits. Exactly why Nicholas liked it.

The counter ran the length of the room, lacquered black with years of grease and elbows. An old man in a faded bandana stirred a pot big enough to drown in. There was no music, only the hiss of boiling soup and the sharp clink of metal chopsticks on ceramic.

Nicholas slid onto a stool with an easy grin, perfectly at home. Euijoo followed stiffly, shoulders tight, hands folded like he was bracing for judgment. Nicholas bit back a laugh. The poor guy was panicking so hard it was practically radiating off him.

For a while they ate in silence. The ramen was perfect, rich broth and chewy noodles, but Nicholas was too aware of how Euijoo sat beside him like he was testifying in court. He set his chopsticks down.

“Okay,” Nicholas said. “This silence is criminal. Let’s play a game. Twenty questions.”

Euijoo blinked at him. “Twenty questions?”

“Yeah. A thing I used to play when I lived in America. You ask me, then I ask you. Simple.”

“You lived in America?”

Nicholas grinned. “Yep, when I was little. See, you are already a natural. But I’ll still let you have another one.”

They slurped noodles as the game began.

“Where are you from?” Euijoo asked.

“Taiwan. The capital, Taipei.” Nicholas watched him closely. “And you? Where in Korea are you from?”

There was a hesitation before Euijoo answered, “Gyeonggi.” The word came out low, like it cost something to say.

Nicholas just nodded, storing that away. “How long have you been in Japan?”

“Four years.”

“Why law?” Nicholas pushed, because he wanted to know what made this man tick.

Euijoo smirked faintly. “That is two questions. Slow down.”

Nicholas rolled his eyes. “Fine. Your turn.”

“How long have you been bartending?”

“Three years. I can make a drink in under thirty seconds and juggle two shakers, so basically I am a circus act.”

That almost got a laugh out of him. Nicholas leaned in, pleased. “My turn. Do you always look this nervous on dinner dates?”

“This is not a date,” Euijoo blurted, too fast.

“Then you are just naturally tense. Good to know.” Nicholas winked and went back to his bowl, watching the red creep up Euijoo’s ears.

The questions flowed more easily after that. Favorite season. Worst teacher. Ghosts, yes or no. Euijoo said no, Nicholas said yes, and when the door creaked right then, Nicholas nearly cackled at the way Euijoo flinched.

And then Euijoo asked, quietly, “So why did you bring me home the other night?”

Nicholas paused. For once, the easy joke didn’t come. He tapped his chopsticks against the bowl, then shrugged. “I do not know. You just seemed… sad. I felt bad leaving you there. I did not know if you had friends. I did not want to put you in a taxi to nowhere. It felt wrong.”

The way Euijoo dropped his gaze told Nicholas he had hit something raw. He didn’t press.

“Next question,” Euijoo said quickly, trying to move on. “Is bartending what you always wanted to do?”

Nicholas laughed, shaking his head. “Obviously not. That is another tier of friendship. Not for tonight.”

Euijoo rolled his eyes, which Nicholas decided counted as progress.

By the time the bowls were empty, most of the questions had been spent. Only five floated unasked between them. Nicholas leaned back, smug. “This was good. Food, conversation, a chance for you to make awkward eye contact with me while pretending you were not.”

“I was not—”

“You definitely were.” Nicholas stood as Euijoo pulled out a few bills for the check. He stretched, satisfied, then flashed a grin. “Come on. Tokyo is still awake.”

“It is two in the morning,” Euijoo said. His voice was flat, but inside his chest his heart was battering itself against his ribs.

Nicholas’s grin widened. “You don’t  have work tomorrow, do you?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Then stop complaining. Live a little. Tokyo is not asleep, so why should we be?”

Before Euijoo could invent another excuse, Nicholas had already tugged him into the night.

**

They ended up at a 24-hour pet shop, one of those strange little Tokyo oddities Euijoo had only ever passed on his way home. The place was too bright, the air tinged with cedar shavings and something sugary from the snack machines in the corner. Puppies yipped from wire pens, all tripping over one another in their eagerness to be chosen. A row of kittens blinked at them from a glass box, paws tucked neatly under their chests. In the back, tanks held lizards glowing green under heat lamps like tiny, exotic royalty. Somewhere, a parrot screeched a word Euijoo did not recognize, but he was fairly certain it was rude.

Euijoo found himself smiling despite everything. It was ridiculous, but cute. “Which one is your favorite?”

Nicholas shot him a sly look. “Is that one of your twenty questions?”

“Just answer.”

“Cats,” Nicholas said, without hesitation. “They get me. Independent. Graceful. A little scary if you wake them wrong.”

Euijoo nodded. “Yes. That suits you.”

Nicholas looked smug, like he had won a point in an argument no one else was playing.

They wandered back out into the neon glow. The city was still buzzing. Couples weaving through side streets, bikes rattling past, vending machines humming like mechanical cicadas. A street vendor flipped taiyaki on a griddle, steam puffing from the fish-shaped molds.

“Let me buy you one,” Nicholas said.

“No, that is not—”

Nicholas cut him off, coins already in the vendor’s hand. A moment later he shoved a hot pastry into Euijoo’s palms. “Eat. Enjoy. That is an order.”

Euijoo bit into it and nearly burned his tongue on the sweet bean paste. The crisp batter cracked, warm and comforting. Against his will, he smiled. Nicholas saw it and looked unbearably pleased with himself.

They walked for what felt like hours, eating taiyaki and trading scraps of conversation. Nothing important. Nothing deep. Euijoo pointed out a convenience store clerk who was dancing a little behind the counter to stay awake. Nicholas speculated on whether the lizard they had seen earlier was secretly plotting world domination.

Then Nicholas asked, “So what kind of law do you actually practice?”

Euijoo explained about contracts and negotiations, the endless grind of business paperwork. He was halfway through an explanation of liability clauses when he realized Nicholas was still watching him, still listening. Not bored. Not dismissive. Actually listening.

It startled him. It made guilt rise uninvited, the way it always did when someone gave him more attention than he thought he deserved.

Nicholas tilted his head. “You don’t  have to feel bad about every little thing, you know.”

Heat crawled up Euijoo’s neck. He looked away quickly, embarrassed that Nicholas had read him so easily.

By the time they reached Nicholas’s building, it was close to four in the morning. The street was hushed now, only the hum of a vending machine and the faint buzz of a neon sign still clinging to life. The world felt smaller, quieter, like they had slipped into a pocket of time meant only for them.

Euijoo followed Nicholas up the stairs, his chest tight. At the door, silence pressed down on them. The whole night replayed itself in Euijoo’s head. Ramen, pets, taiyaki, the way Nicholas’s eyes had lingered too long, the way his own laughter had come easier than he expected. It struck him with brutal clarity. This had felt like a date. It had been a date.

Panic surged through him.

Nicholas leaned against the frame, studying him. “Look. I am not going to expect you to kiss me. But if you don’t want this, just stop me.”

He leaned in. Euijoo didn’t stop him. He didn’t want to stop him. 

The kiss landed like a wave breaking over him, pulling him under. His body responded before his mind could catch up. Lips parting, heat rushing through him, the city blurring away. It was dizzying, terrifying, exactly what he wanted. He felt himself deepening the kiss even as his thoughts splintered apart.

Nicholas pulled away first, lips curved in a small smile. “This was a good first date. I’ll text you, okay?”

Euijoo could only nod. His voice sounded faint when it finally came. “Yeah. Of course. Text me.”

The door clicked shut behind Nicholas.

Euijoo stood there in the dim hallway, heart racing, lips still tingling, brain overloaded. He knew one thing for certain. He was in way over his head.

And still, he also knew he would text Nicholas back. 

Chapter Text

Nicholas slept through most of Sunday. He woke around noon, ate cold gyoza from the fridge, then passed out on the couch again with the TV droning in the background. By the time the sun started dipping, he was back in bed, half-awake, mind drifting.

Every time he closed his eyes, Euijoo’s face appeared. That startled look in the hallway before the kiss, the way he’d leaned in anyway. Nicholas replayed it again and again, then shoved it away, then replayed it again.

By evening, Yuma came home and found him stretched across the couch like a dead man.

“You’ve been horizontal all day,” Yuma said, flopping into the armchair. “Your knee all good?”

Nicholas groaned, stretching. “Define good.”

“Do I need to run you an epsom salt bath?”

“Haha,” Nicholas deadpanned.

“Just sayin’,” Yuma shrugged. They watched TV in silence for a while before Yuma spoke again. “So how’d the date go last night?”

“Why do you care?” Nicholas asked without looking away from the screen.

“Damn, bitch. It’s called being a friend.”

Nicholas sighed. “It went amazing actually. Dinner, a pet shop, walking around talking. The whole package.”

Yuma perked up. “Did you get any action?”

“Don’t be crass.” Nicholas slapped at him with the pillow.

“Hey, watch it,” Yuma said, blocking the swing. “You used to love this type of talk.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk about Euijoo like that.”

That earned a pause.

“So no action?” Yuma pressed.

Nicholas groaned, burying his face in the pillow. “We kissed.”

Yuma clapped like an audience member at a bad sitcom. “Finally. How was it?”

“Great unfortunately.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem,” Nicholas said, dragging the pillow down to his chest, “is that you know I’m not a relationship type of guy and Euijoo is—”

“Straight?” Yuma cut in.

Nicholas swung the pillow again. “He is not straight.”

“Okay,” Yuma laughed, “but he is not exactly Mister Emotionally Available either.”

“Right,” Nicholas admitted.

Yuma leaned forward, elbows on knees. “So why him?”

That was the question Nicholas had been chewing on all day. Maybe it was that first night, the look across the bar when their eyes locked and time seemed to freeze. Cheesy as hell, but Nicholas had fallen into those eyes like a rom-com idiot. It reminded him of the old basketball days, those last seconds before the buzzer when he knew he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

Nicholas shook the thought off and muttered, “Some things you just know.”

Yuma smirked. “If nothing else, maybe we’ll get another roommate out of this.”

Nicholas barked a laugh. “Oh god, this is not a you-and-me situation.” 

“Nothing is a you-and-me situation, baby,” Yuma said with a wink. “Now, I must leave because some of us have actual real boyfriends.”

“You don’t even know your boyfriend’s name,” Nicholas shot back.

“And I like it that way.” Yuma slipped on his shoes, gave a lazy salute, and headed out. “Have fun couch-rotting.”

The door clicked shut.

Nicholas stared at the ceiling, then picked up his phone. He typed Hey. He stared at it like it was a live grenade. Then he deleted it, tossed the phone onto the other cushion, and pulled the blanket over his head.

Couch rot resumed.

**

Euijoo had been on edge all Sunday.

The apartment was spotless from the frantic cleaning he had done the night before, but he still wandered through it like something was out of place. He picked up a glass only to set it down. He stood by the window and then walked to the desk. He sat for a moment, then stood again. Equal parts wanting Nicholas to text, equal parts praying he would not.

Heeseung’s face slipped into his mind uninvited. Heeseung, the last crush, the one he had buried in the move from Korea. Four years ago, and still raw if he let himself touch it. He pushed it away immediately. He could not handle that door opening again.

It wasn’t that he had never dated. There had been two long-term girlfriends, both good women, both safe. But those relationships had been careful, passionless. They never pulled him into their orbit the way Nicholas had with a single glance. And in bed, he had trained himself to think of other things, distant things, just to get through.

Now here he was, a grown man pacing his apartment because of one kiss.

One kiss, and he could not stop touching his mouth like he was surprised it belonged to him. The taste of Nicholas lingered. The pull of it had ignited more heat inside him than anything in years, more than those girlfriends combined, more than Heeseung if he was honest.

For all his protests that he wasn’t gay, Euijoo knew. He always had. In the back of his mind there had always been a small, locked room where the truth waited. He had boarded it up with discipline and study and the relentless pace of work. He had fled Korea, fled Heeseung, fled the version of himself he was terrified to face. But here in Tokyo he couldn’t flee anymore.

So he stood in his own spotless apartment, waiting for a man to text him. Waiting for someone to break his life open.

The hours crawled. Afternoon slid into evening. Evening bled into night. Midnight came, and his phone was still silent.

He felt the sting behind his eyes and forced it down, teeth clenched, jaw tight. He was not going to cry over a bartender who hadn’t texted him. He would not give Nicholas that power.

Instead he went through his bedtime routine with mechanical precision: brush teeth, wash face, fold tomorrow’s suit. He slid into bed, pulling the blankets up to his chin.

Maybe it was for the best. Maybe Nicholas would stay silent. Maybe his world would stay intact.

Euijoo shut his eyes hard, as if he could force himself to believe it.

**

Nicholas stood in front of his closet with one hand on his hip and the other holding a whiskey glass. His room looked like a clothing bomb had gone off. Shirts were draped over the chair, sweaters thrown on the bed, and his friend and neighbor, Taki, was sprawled right in the middle of the mess.

“You do not have to drink for every occasion,” Taki said, picking at a stray thread on the red sweater Nicholas had just rejected.

“I am not drinking for the occasion,” Nicholas said, tipping the glass. “I am drinking to be prepared. That is very different.”

“I don’t think the lawyer boy wants to see you half-drunk every time he meets you,” Taki said as he started to bury himself under Nicholas’s clothes.

“I’m not drunk. I’m cheerful.”

“Mmmm,” Taki muttered. “You know what I did this morning? Got punched in the stomach by a five-year-old.”

Nicholas paused mid-hanger. “Before or after you got into the giant duck suit?”

“Penguin today,” Taki corrected. “Birthday party gig. The birthday boy didn’t like penguins. He liked sharks. He cried when he saw me.”

Nicholas barked out a laugh. “I would cry if you showed up at my birthday too.”

“Shut up,” Taki said, tossing a shirt at him. “Easy money. Parents pay in cash, and all I have to do is dance around for an hour.”

“And get assaulted by kindergartners.” Nicholas pulled out a grey sweater, held it to his chest, and frowned. “What about this?”

“You look stupid in that,” Taki said flatly. “Your face doesn’t match it.”

“Your face doesn’t match,” Nicholas said, lamely. “Why are you even here? Did Maki and Harua kick you off their couch again?”

Taki looked as if he was trying to nap under the pile of shirts. “They’re evaluating whether they’re in the right headspace to meet each other’s needs.”

“I’m assuming that came from Harua, and Maki is just trying to get lucky tonight.”

“I was told to come here and make sure you didn’t drink too much before your date.”

Nicholas was mid-pour on a fresh glass of whiskey. “I don’t drink too much.”

“Whatever you say. I’m going to nap. Don’t wake me when you leave.”

Nicholas took a swig and thought about dumping the rest on Taki but decided it would be a waste.

It wasn’t that he was nervous about tonight, more wary. Even though he and Euijoo had been texting on and off the past couple of days, Euijoo wouldn’t say where he was taking him. It was no surprise that Euijoo was a dry texter, but Nicholas had introduced gifs and the twenty questions game again. He’d found out that Euijoo liked the color blue, tangerines, and had been on his high school fencing team.

Nicholas still hadn’t told him about his ruined basketball career but figured the story would come out eventually. Why ruin their good time. Besides, Nicholas didn’t like talking about it.

His phone buzzed with a text from Euijoo: he would be there in fifteen minutes.

“I’m going to do my makeup,” Nicholas said out loud. If he couldn’t dress nice, at least he could have great cheekbones.

“Go naked. He’ll love that,” Taki mumbled from under the clothes.

Nicholas rummaged through the drawer again, pulled out his eyeliner, and leaned toward the mirror. He steadied his hand, dragging a sharp line across his eyelid. Not too much, just enough. He tilted his head and grinned at himself.

“Look at that,” he said. “Gorgeous.”

“Tragic,” Taki said from under the pile of sweaters. “The penguin I was wearing earlier had more natural bone structure.”

Nicholas grabbed a scarf off the chair and whipped it at him. “Go back to sleep.”

The buzzer rang.

Nicholas froze, his heart thudding in his chest before he forced it into a lazy rhythm. He slipped into his jacket, pocketed his phone, and ran his fingers through his hair one last time to make sure it looked deliberately messy instead of actually messy.

“Try not to scare him off,” Taki said, peeking one eye open.

“Shut up,” Nicholas muttered, though he was smiling.

He crossed the room, opened the door, and there was Euijoo. Clean-cut, tense, standing with his hands folded in front of him like he was about to defend a case instead of go on a date.

Nicholas leaned against the frame, grin slow and deliberate. “Well, Counselor. Ready to show me where you are dragging me tonight?”

For a second Euijoo just stared, like Nicholas had punched the air out of him. Then he cleared his throat and nodded.

Nicholas locked the door behind him, gave his reflection in the hallway mirror one last smirk, and followed Euijoo out into the Tokyo night.

**

The first words out of Euijoo’s mouth when they arrived at the planetarium were, “Maybe this was a mistake?”

He had no idea what possessed him to pick it. Maybe it had seemed respectable, maybe it had felt like something he could control. Dinner was already a disaster in his mind, he had nothing reserved, nothing planned, so a planetarium show had sounded like an easy first half. Sit in the dark, watch the stars, say nothing. That was the hope.

But Nicholas looked like Christmas morning. His eyes flicked to every sign, every display in the lobby, every glowing projection of constellations painted across the ceiling. He was grinning, bouncing almost, and it made Euijoo feel like the world’s worst curmudgeon.

“I can tell you hate this,” Nicholas said immediately.

“I do not,” Euijoo snapped.

“You do. Your lawyer face is extra tight.” Nicholas leaned in, squinting at him. “See. Wrinkle right there.”

Euijoo pressed his lips together, caught.

Nicholas only laughed. “I’ve never been here. I’m so excited. I kept trying to get someone to come with me, but no one ever wanted to make the time.”

That shut Euijoo up. He bought the tickets, let Nicholas pick the show. Nicholas picked the one about the creation of the universe, of course. He said, “If we’re going to sit in the dark for an hour, it might as well be cosmic.”

Inside, they found seats halfway up the dome. The lights dimmed. Euijoo folded his hands in his lap and told himself to focus on the science, on the comfort of facts. But then the first projections spun across the ceiling, galaxies and stars swirling in blues and purples, and when he glanced sideways, he caught Nicholas’s face.

The screen illuminated his skin, sharp cheekbones cut with light, lips parted in awe. His eyes reflected the stars like they had been placed there on purpose. For a second Euijoo forgot to breathe.

He had never seen someone look like that. Not a face, not a person, not this perfect composition of slope of nose and curve of jaw. He thought about Heeseung without wanting to and then shoved the thought down hard. This was different. This was terrifying.

Nicholas turned his head and caught him staring. He smirked, reached across, and laced their fingers together.

“Don’t look so serious. It’s just the beginning of everything,” he whispered.

Euijoo flushed to the roots of his hair. He looked back at the dome, refusing to pull his hand away, and tried to let the narrator’s deep voice wash over him.

When the show ended and the lights rose, Nicholas clapped once, grinning wide. “Ten out of ten. Would watch the world get created again.”

Outside on the street, Euijoo shoved his hands into his pockets. “I didn’t plan dinner.”

“Perfect,” Nicholas said instantly. “Then we improvise.”

Euijoo groaned. “We could go hom—,”

“That is Tokyo,” Nicholas cut in. “Street food on every corner. Pick anything.”

They ended up at a takoyaki stand, eating octopus balls hot off the grill, standing shoulder to shoulder on the busy sidewalk. Nicholas talked with his mouth full, Euijoo shook his head, and somehow the chaos felt easy.

Nicholas asked about his day. Euijoo told him about the contract he was working on, two companies circling each other with demands that refused to align. He expected Nicholas to tune out, but he didn’t. He asked questions. He laughed at the petty tricks each side played. He actually listened.

In return Nicholas said he had the day off from the bar, which he had spent cleaning his apartment and arguing with Maki about music. It was nothing special, but it filled the air between them like they had known each other for years.

When they finished, Nicholas wiped his hands on a napkin. “So. Ready for part two?”

Euijoo froze. “Part two?”

“Your date plan. There’s always a part two.”

Euijoo wanted to tell Nicholas it wasn’t really his plan if Nicholas was leading, but instead he said, “I am ready if you are.”

That was how Nicholas ended up pulling him into a cat café.

Nicholas practically squealed when the first kitten batted at his sleeve. Euijoo stood frozen by the door, mortified, while Nicholas crouched to the floor, camera out, taking a dozen photos in quick succession. “Look at him. He’s tiny. Look at his little paws.”

“You are ridiculous,” Euijoo muttered, but he followed him in, sat down at a table, and let the cats come to them.

They spent an hour there. Nicholas took pictures of every cat that moved, of cats stretching, of cats blinking, of cats falling asleep on the cushions. Euijoo watched him, dazed, because Nicholas’s delight was so unfiltered it filled the whole room.

One particularly bold cat crawled into Nicholas’s lap and dozed off. Nicholas stilled, grinning like a child, and Euijoo could not resist pulling out his own phone and snapping a picture. He would never admit it, but it was the best thing he had seen in years.

“Twenty questions,” Nicholas said, scratching the cat’s chin. “Do you have siblings?”

“An older sister,” Euijoo said. “You?”

“Also an older sister.” Nicholas grinned. “When is your birthday?”

“September seventh.”

“No way?” Nicholas grinned. 

“What? Don’t tell me yours is the same?” Euijoo said suspiciously. 

“July ninth. So close. It’s like—,” Nicholas halted. 

“What?” 

“Like destiny.” 

Euijoo groaned. “That is nonsense.”

“That’s fate.” Nicholas winked.

They kept playing. Favorite movies. Euijoo said Ponyo, mostly because the animation still comforted him. Nicholas said Howl’s Moving Castle, and Euijoo accused him of being predictable. Nicholas shrugged and said he liked dramas more anyway, the sad kind with happy endings. 

The cat stretched in his lap, purring. Euijoo looked away quickly, throat tight.

When the café announced closing time, they stood reluctantly, brushing fur off their clothes. Nicholas pulled out his phone, flicked through the gallery of cat photos, and laughed to himself.

Euijoo followed him out into the street, the night air cool against his face. He told himself he was fine, that this was still casual, that he could still control this. But when Nicholas turned and grinned at him, eyes bright, Euijoo felt the ground tilt again.

This was not safe. This was not what he had planned. But it was happening anyway.

**

The train ride back to Nicholas’s neighborhood felt too short. Euijoo spent most of it convincing himself to say goodnight at the door, to go home, to be reasonable. He had work in the morning, an early meeting, contracts waiting for him. He repeated it like a mantra. He was not the kind of person who stayed out all night.

So when Nicholas leaned casually against the railing outside his building and said, “Come up for a drink,” Euijoo’s mouth betrayed him.

“I have work tomorrow.”

“So do I,” Nicholas said.

“You start at five in the afternoon.”

“That does not mean I do not have work tomorrow,” Nicholas countered with a grin. “It means I have more stamina for this than you.”

Euijoo sighed. “One drink.”

Nicholas’s grin widened like he had already won.

They climbed the narrow staircase, the air between them tight with anticipation. As they turned down the hall, a door cracked open and a familiar head popped out.

Maki blinked at them. “Hi guys.”

Euijoo froze. Nicholas groaned. “Go away, Maki.”

Maki smirked. “Have fun tonight. Be safe.”

Heat shot through Euijoo’s neck, but Nicholas just waved him off. “Shut the door, nosy.”

Maki chuckled and disappeared again.

“That was embarrassing,” Euijoo muttered.

Nicholas shrugged, unlocking his door. “That’s Maki and Harua’s place. Sometimes Taki’s too.”

“You like having your friends as neighbors?” Euijoo asked as they stepped inside.

“Sometimes,” Nicholas said, kicking off his shoes. “Sometimes they steal my whiskey.”

The apartment was small, cluttered, but warm. Records stacked by the stereo, a cat-shaped mug abandoned on the counter, a jacket draped over the back of the couch. Nicholas went to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of red wine, and poured two glasses.

“Did you guys meet when you moved here?” Euijoo asked.

“It’s mostly a boring long story,” Nicholas said, handing him a glass. “I met them all through Yuma. Years ago now. They never left me alone after that.”

Euijoo nodded, settling on the couch. He held the wine like a shield. For a minute, neither of them spoke. They drank. The quiet stretched, awkward and heavy.

Then Nicholas leaned in. “You know, I’ve been wondering about something.”

Euijoo’s chest tightened. “What is that?”

Nicholas’s grin softened. “Do you mind?”

“Mind what?”

Nicholas reached forward, slid Euijoo’s glasses off his face. “This.”

Euijoo blinked, suddenly bare. He felt exposed in a way that went deeper than eyesight. Nicholas tilted his head, studying him.

“You’re good looking with them on,” Nicholas said softly. “Adorable, even. But without them… you have a face that could really break someone’s heart.”

Euijoo’s breath caught.

Nicholas blinked, realizing, and muttered, “I said that out loud, didn’t I.”

Euijoo just stared at him, heart hammering.

Nicholas’s voice dropped. “How much can you see without them?”

“I can see your face perfectly,” Euijoo admitted. “Otherwise only shapes and colors. No details.”

Nicholas’s eyes darkened. “Do you mind if I do something else?”

“Do I really have a choice?” Euijoo said, his voice rough.

Nicholas laughed quietly. He swung one leg over, straddling Euijoo’s lap, settling in like it was the most natural thing in the world. Euijoo’s hands froze at his sides. Nicholas smirked.

“You never know what to do with your hands. It’s cute.”

Euijoo’s face burned.

Nicholas guided his hands up to his waist. He leaned in close, their foreheads almost touching. His voice dropped to a whisper. “If you want to stop me, say so.”

Euijoo didn’t.

Their mouths met.

The kiss was fire and relief all at once, like something Euijoo had been starving for without realizing it. He parted his lips, and Nicholas deepened it, teasing, coaxing, until Euijoo forgot about morning meetings, forgot about contracts, forgot about everything but the taste of him.

Nicholas pressed closer, their bodies grinding together, wine forgotten on the table. Euijoo felt dizzy, lost, exhilarated. For once he let go.

Which was exactly when the front door banged open. Two figures filled the doorway, blurry to Euijoo’s eyes, one short and one tall.

“Oh my God,” Yuma’s voice called. “Don’t you have a bedroom?”

Euijoo nearly fell off the couch. He buried his face in Nicholas’s chest, mortified. Nicholas swore.

Yuma stood there with the so-called undercover man, who said nothing. Yuma smirked. “Evening.”

Nicholas glared. “Undercover man, hello. Yuma, fuck off.”

Yuma waved lazily. “I’d introduce you properly, Euijoo, but maybe not while you’re climbing my best friend like a tree.”

Euijoo groaned into Nicholas’s shirt. He wanted the earth to swallow him whole.

“This is fucking awkward,” Yuma said. “Undercover man and I are going to my room. Expect a lot of noise. Five minute warning.”

Their door slammed shut.

The apartment fell quiet. Euijoo’s face was still hidden, blazing hot.

Nicholas rubbed his back gently. “You okay? Your face is red.”

“I’m fine,” Euijoo muttered. “I don’t know why I did that.”

“It’s okay,” Nicholas said softly. “But maybe it’s time for you to go. Things get loud around here.”

Euijoo nodded, fumbling for his glasses. “Probably best.”

They stood. Nicholas walked him to the door. The air between them buzzed with everything unsaid.

At the threshold, they hesitated. Nicholas leaned close, their foreheads brushing. For a moment, Euijoo thought he might kiss him again.

Then Nicholas pulled back, smiled faintly, and opened the door.

“I want you to text me first this time, okay?”

Euijoo swallowed. “I can do that.”

“Good. Then I’ll be expecting it,” Nicholas said. “Night.”

“Goodnight.”

Euijoo stepped out, heart racing. He pressed his back to the hallway wall after the door shut, glasses fogging, breath short. He realized he was in trouble.

He was really falling for him.

**

Euijoo refused to think about it.

He refused to think about the word gay, about what it might mean, about what Nicholas’s mouth on his had stirred awake. He told himself it was simple. He liked Nicholas. That was it. He liked being around him, liked the way he pulled him out of his routine, liked the way his laughter filled a room. It did not have to be bigger than that. A kiss was just a kiss. It did not have to define him.

That was the thought he clung to as he sat in his office Thursday morning, papers spread neatly across his desk while his mind drifted far from contract law. He stared at his phone more than his notes. He had been debating all of Wednesday night what to text. He still had not decided.

He typed, I can’t stop thinking about you. He stared at it, horrified, and deleted it.

He typed, I can’t stop thinking about your mouth. His thumb hovered. Delete.

He typed, What would have happened if we hadn’t stopped kissing. Delete.

His chest ached with the need to say something, anything, and the terror of saying the wrong thing.

By mid-morning, Fuma stopped at his doorway. “You are unusually quiet. Everything okay?”

Euijoo jumped so hard his phone nearly flew out of his hand. “Of course. Fine. Completely fine.” He dropped the phone face down and started typing nonsense into a contract draft just to look busy.

Fuma stepped inside, calm as ever. “You know you can talk to me if you need to.”

“I am fine,” Euijoo said quickly. His cheeks burned.

Fuma gave him a long look, then shifted the subject. “How has everything been going lately?”

“It’s going good.”

“Yudai and I would love to have you around for dinner. If you’re free.”

Relief flooded Euijoo at the change of subject. “I would love that. Seriously.”

“Just tell us when it is good for you and we will plan it out.”

“Okay. Thanks,” Euijoo said, forcing a smile. Fuma nodded and left him to his papers.

The second the door closed, Euijoo slumped forward in his chair. His stomach twisted. He thought about Nicholas’s smirk, about the warmth of his hand guiding his own, about the whisper against his mouth: If you want to stop me, say so. He had not said stop. He had wanted more.

He shook his head sharply, turned back to his work, tried to bury himself in liability clauses and indemnification. The words swam uselessly on the page.

By mid-afternoon he gave up and went to the break room. He set the kettle boiling, grabbed a mug, and leaned against the counter. The quiet buzz of the office pressed in on him. He thought about their twenty questions game, about how Nicholas had grinned every time he gave an answer, how every detail had seemed important to him.

Before he could overthink it, Euijoo pulled out his phone and typed: How do you take your tea?

He stared at the message. It was boring. It was stupid. It was the kind of thing that would make Nicholas block him for being the least interesting person alive. His thumb hovered over delete. Then he hit send.

Instant regret.

His stomach tied in knots, tight and painful.

A response came almost instantly.

A laughing face emoji. 

Euijoo’s ears went hot. Of course. Stupid.

Then another text followed. Black with two sugars. How do you take yours?

Relief surged so quickly it left him dizzy. He typed back, Green. No sugar. His fingers hovered. He wanted to add more, to say I was thinking about you all day, to say I wanted an excuse to talk to you, but he stopped. He sent the plain truth. Green. No sugar.

The reply came back just as quick. Boring. But respectable.

Euijoo sat at the table, mug steaming in front of him, a grin spreading across his face before he could stop it. His heart lightened. The tightness in his stomach eased. He sipped his tea and read the words again. Boring. But respectable.

For the first time all day, he let himself breathe.

**

Friday should have been a good day. It should have been a great day. He and Euijoo had been texting all Thursday into Friday. He was scheduled for an early evening shift at the bar, which meant he would get off early enough for a late-night date. God only knew what they were going to do, but it did not matter. Nicholas was going to see him.

Except for the stupid knee.

Nicholas had woken up with it stiff and throbbing, swollen nearly two sizes bigger than normal. He blamed the way he slept on it. Or maybe the fact that he had ignored physical therapy for two months. Or maybe the fact that he ignored everything that reminded him of what he used to be.

Basketball was the subject he refused to touch. Not with friends, not with Euijoo, not with himself. Thinking about his knee meant thinking about the career he lost, the kid who flew to Korea than Japan with a duffel bag and a future, the young man who tried to tape an injury into silence until the silence became permanent. He did not want to think about that kid. He wanted alcohol instead.

By the time his shift started, he was limping badly. He leaned against the bar like it was a crutch.

“Talk about it,” Yuma said from the other side of the counter.

“Talk about what?” Nicholas muttered, polishing a glass that did not need polishing.

“The fact that you are hobbling.”

“I am not hobbling.”

“You are dragging your leg across the bar,” Yuma said flatly.

“Oh please. You are dragging your ass across the bar.” Nicholas smirked, though it was thin. 

“You wish you had my ass,” Yuma fired back.

Yuma’s expression did not budge. “Stop dodging. When are you going back to PT?”

Nicholas groaned. “Soon.”

“Soon is not a date.”

“Get off my ass, Dad.”

“What ass?”

Nicholas opened his mouth to fire back, but a customer shouted an order, and he used it like an escape hatch. “Gotta go.” He limped off before Yuma could say anything else.

It did not matter. Yuma had seen enough. Everyone at the bar had seen enough. By nine o’clock, Sana was sending him home early.

Which should have been fine. Except Nicholas was supposed to see Euijoo. And there was no way he was going to let Euijoo see him like this, swollen and limping, knees betraying him before the night had even begun. He sat on the couch with his phone, typed out I’m sick, and hit send. Then he opened a fresh bottle of whiskey.

It was a coward’s move, but it was better than pity.

By the time Euijoo’s reply came, Nicholas was two drinks in. ‘Can I do anything for you?’

Nicholas stared at the screen, heart twisting. He had told him it was just a cold, nothing serious. He typed, ‘No, don’t worry. I don’t want you to get sick, and left it at that.’

The pain was awful. His knee throbbed like someone had jammed a knife inside the joint and left it there. He got up for an ice pack, hobbled back to the couch, and pressed it against the swelling until his skin went numb. He washed down three ibuprofens with whiskey, knowing how stupid it was, telling himself it was fine. He would wake up tomorrow, sore but functional. Fine enough for another night.

By his fifth drink, he was missing Euijoo so badly it made his chest ache. The apartment felt too quiet. His phone sat on the armrest like a dare.

He found a bottle of old prescription painkillers in the bathroom drawer. Leftovers from months ago. He told himself one would not hurt. Just one, to get through the night. He took it, washed it down with more whiskey, and collapsed back onto the couch.

The buzz was warm, heavy, dangerous. His head swam. His chest buzzed with liquid courage and reckless need.

He scrolled to Euijoo’s name.

Typed a message. Deleted it. Typed another. Deleted it. Then, without thinking, he opened the camera, angled it down, and snapped a series of shirtless selfies. He smirked at the screen, eyes glassy, sent three in a row, then added: Come over if you want.

He laughed to himself, a sharp, bitter sound. It was stupid, reckless, but the thought of Euijoo seeing him tonight, even like this, thrilled him.

Nicholas stretched out on the couch, phone in hand, ice pack slipping off his knee, whiskey glass teetering on the edge of the coffee table. He was a mess. He knew it. He also knew one thing with absolute clarity.

He wanted him.

**

Euijoo knocked on Nicholas’s door, soup container warm in his hands. He still wasn’t sure what the hell he was doing here.

He remembered the text from earlier that evening: I’m sick. His chest had tightened immediately. Sadness, because he had been looking forward to seeing Nicholas all day. Worry, because he imagined Nicholas alone with a fever, too stubborn to ask for help. And a shadow of panic, because maybe Nicholas was not sick at all. Maybe it was an excuse. Maybe Euijoo had done something wrong without realizing it.

He had resigned himself to a lonely night of instant ramen and paperwork. He had even changed into sweats, convinced he would not leave the house again. Then came the pictures. Not just pictures. Shirtless, smirking, blurry selfies, Nicholas sprawled in sweatpants. Then the message: Come over if you want.

Euijoo had stared at his phone until his face burned. Confusion battled every other emotion. Sick one minute, half-naked the next. It made no sense. But his hands had already been ladling soup into a container before his brain caught up.

The door opened. Nicholas stood there, shirtless, sweatpants hanging low on his hips, one leg rolled up to his knee. His eyes were glassy, his grin too wide.

“Are you drunk?” Euijoo asked immediately.

Nicholas giggled. “Something like that.”

Then Euijoo saw it. The swollen knee, the way Nicholas leaned his weight on the other leg, refusing to stand evenly.

“Oh my God, what happened to your knee?”

“It’s stupid,” Nicholas mumbled, still smiling.

Euijoo pushed inside without asking, setting the soup on the counter. He grabbed Nicholas’s arm to steady him. “You are not even standing properly. Sit down.”

Nicholas let himself be guided, swaying a little, laughing under his breath. “You brought me soup. That’s so sweet. I really wanted to see you.”

Euijoo steered him toward the bedroom, heart pounding. Nicholas was heavier than he expected, warm against his side, and entirely too relaxed about being half-carried.

“What happened?” Euijoo pressed as he lowered him to the bed.

Nicholas flopped back, staring at the ceiling. “I fell. Too embarrassed to tell you so I said I was sick. Took some medicine. Drank too much. Sent you stupid photos. God, I sent you those photos.”

“It’s okay,” Euijoo said quickly, even though his face was on fire. “Don’t worry about it.”

Nicholas turned his head, eyes hazy. “Come lay down with me. Please.”

Euijoo hesitated, then slipped off his jacket. Nicholas giggled.

“What?” Euijoo asked.

“I’ve never seen you not in a suit.” Nicholas grinned, pointing at his sweats.

Euijoo rolled his eyes. “I just hurried over.”

Nicholas’s grin widened. “Did you like the pictures?”

Euijoo fumbled. “I mean. Yes. I—yes.” His words tumbled out uselessly.

“Good. Get in the bed.” Nicholas shifted to the side, patting the mattress like it was an invitation to another universe. “Watch tv with me.”

Euijoo sat gingerly. Nicholas reached for the remote, flicked on the TV, and suddenly the opening notes of Friends filled the room.

“Have you ever watched Friends?” Nicholas asked.

“No,” Euijoo admitted.

Nicholas gasped, hand to his chest. “You haven’t lived. This is culture. This is religion. This is—” he waved his hand grandly, “—Ross and Rachel.”

He queued up the very first episode. Euijoo sat stiffly, wine-colored blanket pooling at his side, while Nicholas gestured at the screen with excitement, narrating plot points like a professor.

Euijoo half-watched it, half-watched Nicholas. His profile in the glow of the screen was distracting.

Nicholas reached to the nightstand and shoved a glass at him. Whiskey. Full.

Euijoo frowned.

Nicholas grinned. “Don’t make me drink alone.”

Euijoo sighed. “What is happening right now.”

“This is called bonding.” Nicholas raised his glass.

Against his better judgment, Euijoo sipped. The burn traveled down his throat, heavy, sharp. He set it aside, but Nicholas only laughed.

“You are hopeless,” Nicholas teased. 

Euijoo picked it up again, took another sip, then another. By the time the first episode ended, the glass was half empty. His head buzzed.

An hour passed in strange increments. More episodes, more sips, Nicholas laughing so loudly Euijoo jumped, Nicholas explaining jokes he barely understood. Euijoo found himself laughing too, though he wasn’t sure at what. His face felt warm. His stomach buzzed. He realized, with faint alarm, that he was drunk.

It wasn't until they were on the third episode that he realized he wasn’t struggling to understand the language. He turned to Nicholas. “Why are we watching this in Korean?”

Nicholas shrugged. “That’s how I first watched it. Just stuck.”

“You know Korean too well,” Euijoo muttered. “I’ve been meaning to ask. How?”

Nicholas smirked. “That’s a long story.”

“One of your many long stories?”

“Okay, damn,” Nicholas laughed.

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I like it when you’re a bitch.”

Euijoo choked on his drink.

Nicholas’s voice softened. “When I was little, my parents lost our house in Taiwan. I went to live with my aunt in America for a while. Later we moved to Korea. I went to high school there. That’s when I started basketball. That’s where I first watched Friends. That’s how I know Korean.”

A shadow passed across his face as he said the word basketball. His grin faltered for a second, just a flicker, but Euijoo noticed. He wanted to ask, but Nicholas kept talking, his voice bright again.

“I was obsessed with Ross’s bad haircuts. Still am.”

“You’ve lived a very interesting life,” Euijoo said softly.

Nicholas laughed loudly, throwing his head back. “You can say that again.”

Euijoo smiled despite himself. He drained the last of his whiskey, realized his vision was blurring a little. He was drunk, and the hour had passed in a blink.

At some point Nicholas reached over, took his glass, and set it aside. “Come here.”

Euijoo hesitated. Nicholas’s eyes were glazed, his grin loose. He stood, muttering, “One moment.” He ducked into the bathroom, splashed water on his face, braced his hands on the sink.

“You are in control,” he whispered to himself. “You’ve got this.”

When he returned, Nicholas was sprawled on the bed, shirtless, blankets low.

“Come here,” Nicholas said.

Euijoo crossed before his brain could argue. Nicholas tugged him down, arms looping around his waist.

“I’m cold,” Nicholas whispered. “Be my weighted blanket.”

Euijoo froze. “But your knee—”

“Let me worry about that.” Nicholas’s breath brushed his ear.

And Euijoo climbed on top of him.

**

Heat. Everywhere heat. Lips and skin, and laughter spilling out of him like he can’t hold it in. Nicholas thinks he is talking but he doesn’t know what he is saying. Words slide out of his mouth, nonsense, but he knows one of them is baby. He keeps saying baby. It feels right.

Euijoo’s mouth tastes like whiskey, sharp and sweet, mouth on mouth, breath on breath. Nicholas feels hands, too many hands, sliding over him, his own and Euijoo’s, everywhere at once. He doesn’t know who is touching who. He doesn’t care.

The pain in his knee is gone, floated away, evaporated like smoke. He feels weightless. He feels invincible. He feels like if he could bottle this exact second he would drink it forever.

Sweatshirt pulled. Tugged. Gone. Chest to chest. Heat pressed together, ribs rising in rhythm, his heartbeat stumbling under the pressure of Euijoo’s skin. Nicholas laughs into the kiss, muffled against his mouth, forehead pressed close.

He fumbles for the glasses, slides them off, sets them on the nightstand like they are the most fragile thing in the world. He wants to see Euijoo blurry, wants to memorize him as light and shadow and glow. His hair falls soft between Nicholas’s fingers, a mess Nicholas never wants to smooth out.

Tongues brushing, mouths open, sloppy, drunk. He murmurs something, maybe I want you, maybe I need you, maybe nothing at all. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care.

The bed dips under them. He doesn’t remember lying back but suddenly Euijoo is above him, pressing down, the weight perfect, the kind of weight that feels like safety. Nicholas closes his eyes and lets it happen. His hands wander, dragging down his back, clutching at his waist, mapping every line.

Everywhere burns. Everywhere hums. He grinds against him without thinking, moaning against his mouth, the sound too loud but not loud enough. Euijoo is hard against him, and Nicholas gasps at the shock of it, the euphoria of it, the wild truth that it is real.

He laughs again, dizzy, voice shaking. “Baby,” he whispers, and he doesn’t even care if it makes Euijoo freeze. He just says it again, softer this time, like it’s the only word left.

And for once, there is no pain. No memory of basketball, no echo of failure, no broken career. Only this. Only him.

**

Nicholas slid the glasses off his face, and the world blurred. Euijoo’s heart lurched so violently it felt like it might tear free from his chest. For one absurd second he thought Nicholas must be able to hear it, the drumbeat pounding between them.

He wanted to breathe but every inhale stuck in his throat. It was almost a panic attack, he knew that, the same spiraling edge he sometimes felt before a big case or when he was cornered. But he could not stop. He did not want to stop. If this stopped, he thought he might actually unravel.

His hands were everywhere. Nicholas’s shoulders, his hair, the sharp line of his jaw, the dip of his spine. He wanted to crawl inside him, to disappear into him completely. It was too much, but not enough. Never enough.

Heat pressed against heat. He was distantly aware that his sweats were down, that he was nearly naked, that there was nothing left between them but skin. Every movement sent sparks racing across his body. Their mouths crushed together, sloppy, frantic, both of them too desperate to find rhythm. Breathless, wet, intoxicating.

Nicholas kept whispering to him. Words he could not hold onto, sentences that dissolved against his lips. But one word stuck, again and again, soft and husky. Baby.

He hated it. He hated how much he loved it. Every time Nicholas said it, his body buckled closer, his chest aching with want. He wanted him to keep saying it forever.

The world shrank to nothing but touch and sound and blur. He could not think. He could not last. He knew it. He was too close, too far gone. Nicholas murmured it one more time, that cursed word, baby, and something inside him broke open.

Everything snapped, white-hot, rushing through him like a flood. He clutched at Nicholas like he was falling, buried his face against his neck, muffled the sound that tore out of his throat. The world dissolved into release, frantic and unstoppable.

And Nicholas followed him. He felt it, the tension in him breaking, the shudder running through his body. Their bodies pressed tighter, both of them caught in the same unraveling, both of them shaking, gasping, clinging.

For one brief moment there was nothing but silence. Nothing but weightless quiet, as if the entire world had paused.

Then terror. Pure, unadulterated terror.

Euijoo wanted to run. To run from Nicholas, from himself, from what his own body had betrayed. He could feel the fear swelling up, the shame, the need to bolt.

But before it could crest, darkness closed in. His thoughts blurred. His chest heaved one last time, and then, mercifully, he blacked out.

**

Nicholas woke up cold, naked, and alone.

His head pounded. His mouth was dry. His stomach turned like it was trying to crawl out of him. He blinked against the light spilling through the blinds and groaned. The first thought that came to him was that he was thirsty. The second was that his knee still hurt.

Still hurt. Still swollen, stiff, twice the size it should be. It was almost funny. Almost.

He rubbed his eyes and sat up, the sheet sliding off him. He looked around the room. No glasses on the bedside table. No clothes that weren’t his. No trace Euijoo had ever been there at all.

Nicholas stretched his knee, hissed at the pain, and shuffled to the bathroom. He peed, washed his hands, splashed water on his face, brushed his teeth far too long, like scrubbing his mouth might erase whatever the night had been.

Back in his room, he checked his phone. He half expected a text. A missed call. A voicemail. Something. But the screen was blank.

That was fine. That was okay. Last night had been intense. Maybe Euijoo just needed a minute. Maybe he wasn’t even home yet. Maybe he was walking back through the door right now. Nicholas was not hopeless enough to be a romantic, but he could give a guy space. He was adult enough for that.

Twelve hours later, there was still nothing.

Nicholas dragged himself to his shift at the bar, ignoring the way his body ached. He ignored Yuma asking about his knee. He ignored Sana asking about his knee. He ignored everyone’s pitying looks at his knee. He didn’t want to talk about it. He wanted to make drinks, serve the idiots who filled the stools, and go home. Was that too much to ask?

Apparently.

Taki stopped by, plopped on a stool, and Nicholas thought, perfect, one more person to avoid. But Taki looked rough, circles under his eyes, so Nicholas softened. When his shift ended, they drank together. A few rounds turned into a lot of rounds, both of them laughing at nothing while Yuma closed up.

The buzz put Nicholas in a mood. Reckless, sentimental. He pulled out his phone and snapped a picture. Bar lights, neon glow behind him. He sent it to Euijoo with the words: Miss you. Wish you were here.

A little desperate. But flirty enough. Nonchalant enough. He convinced himself it was fine.

The next morning he woke up hungover again, knee throbbing, mouth bitter. He rolled over, checked his phone, and found nothing. No reply.

“Fuck it,” he muttered. “Whatever. He needs time.”

Nicholas could be mature. He could give space.

Two days passed. No text.

Three days passed. No call.

A week. Nothing.

Mature flew out the window.

“Fuck being mature,” Nicholas said aloud while stocking bottles. “Fuck being an adult. Fuck giving space.”

He typed out messages. Deleted them. Called up the draft screen, closed it again. He thought about storming up to the office, barging into some law firm conference room, demanding answers like a lunatic. But even drunk, he knew that was insane.

One night he stepped into the alley for a cigarette he didn’t have. He didn’t want to flirt with strangers just to bum one, and he wasn’t about to buy a whole pack. He stared at his phone instead. His thumb hovered, then he typed a single line: Thinking of you. He hit send before he could stop himself.

The message delivered. At least he wasn’t blocked. That was something.

He wanted to call. He wanted to hear his voice. He racked his brain for the name of Euijoo’s firm, tried to picture the logo on the papers he’d seen. He imagined walking in, demanding him at reception, shouting down the hall like a madman. He wanted to. But he didn’t.

Another week passed. No response.

His moods bled into everything. He snapped at customers, poured too heavy, poured too light. He slammed bottles too hard on the bar. Harua pulled him aside once, firm hand on his shoulder, voice low.

“I love you and you’re one of my best friends, but If you snap at Maki one more time, Nicholas,” he said, “I will tear you into pieces. I might be half your size but I will do it.” 

Nicholas knew from the look in his eyes that he would. 

Yuma stopped dropping by his room. Even Taki quit stealing his whiskey.

By the fourteenth day, Nicholas gave up. He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, convinced.

He had been ghosted.

It had to happen to him at least once. That was life. Sometimes a guy walked into your bar, walked into your life, ruined it and your sheets, and then left.

Nicholas said it aloud, testing the weight of it. “That’s it. It’s over.”

It was almost funny, if it didn’t hurt so much.

He poured himself another drink. He pulled the blanket over his head. He told himself to stop caring.

And then, two days later, he saw Euijoo on the subway.

Chapter Text

The subway was packed, Saturday night tiredness pressed into Sunday morning faces. Nicholas stood swaying with the car, earbuds in but no music playing. He was halfway through telling himself to stop caring when he looked up.

And there he was.

Euijoo, standing three people down, hand gripping the pole, suit immaculate as if nothing in his life had ever come undone.

Nicholas’s stomach flipped. The ghost, alive.

For a second he almost laughed. For another second he almost shouted. What he did instead was nothing. He stared, throat dry, mind empty, letting the train rattle on.

Euijoo’s eyes flicked up, and their gazes locked. Just for a heartbeat.

For a second Nicholas just stared, breath caught. For another second he thought maybe he would laugh, maybe shout, maybe do nothing at all. He told himself again, be mature. Do not run up on him.

And then Euijoo’s eyes flicked up. Their gazes met.

Nicholas felt it like a punch. For the space of one heartbeat, Euijoo looked at him. Then, as if it were nothing, Euijoo looked away.

The fury hit fast.

Who the hell did this guy think he was? Two weeks of silence, nothing but emptiness on the other end of the phone, and now what, he could not even hold eye contact?

Nicholas stormed through the crowd, boots heavy on the floor. At least today he looked amazing. Black jeans, Doc Martens, leather jacket over a red shirt. Hair perfect, face sharp. He was heading to his favorite thrift shop on his day off, trying to cheer himself up, and thank God he had dressed for it. If he was going to confront his ghost, at least he would look good doing it.

He stopped in front of him, voice coming out sharper than he meant. “You’re actually alive.”

Euijoo froze, deer in headlights, eyes wide, stupid, beautiful, unmissable.

Nicholas laughed without humor. “Don’t. Don’t look at me with those stupid big eyes. Do you not know how to answer a text?”

“Nicholas—”

“What? You lost your phone? Forgot my number? Slipped into a coma?”

“Nicholas, I—”

“Why do you keep repeating my name?” Nicholas snapped.

“Because you’re not letting me talk,” Euijoo said, voice low. “I wanted to text you. I really did. I just… didn’t.”

“You just didn’t,” Nicholas repeated, voice climbing. “Didn’t what, exactly? Didn’t know how to type? Didn’t think I’d notice?”

Euijoo flinched.

Nicholas exhaled hard, shaking his head. His throat ached with everything he had been holding in. “Look, I get it. If you were scared, if what happened between us freaked you out, fine. I get that. But get over yourself. You could have said something. You could have been an adult. You could have sent me a message, a call, a smoke signal, anything. Not just vanish.”

Silence stretched between them. Euijoo’s face was tight, unreadable, but Nicholas could see the panic in his eyes. The same panic he had seen that night, right before everything broke open.

Nicholas’s voice cracked anyway. “I really liked you. We could have been something great. But you were too much of a coward, and you ruined it.”

The train screeched into the next station. Doors opened. Nicholas knew it wasn’t his stop, but he moved anyway. He stepped off the train, boots loud on the platform, throat burning, vision blurring like maybe he was close to crying, though he would never admit it.

He marched away, jaw set, shoulders stiff, telling himself to keep walking, to never look back.

But he didn’t have to. He heard footsteps behind him. Quick, hesitant, then certain.

Euijoo had followed him.

**

The past two weeks had been hell.

Not a loud, cinematic hell. Not fires or falling buildings. His was a quiet hell. Silent nights, long days, the kind that gnawed instead of burned. The kind you lived through but weren’t sure you wanted to.

He hadn’t been sleeping. He hadn’t been eating. His body still felt raw from that night, from Nicholas’s hands and voice and everything else, and his mind hadn’t stopped replaying it. It was the most intimate moment of his life, and it had also been unbearable.

He had wanted to crawl out of his skin and into Nicholas’s at the same time. He had wanted to erase the memory and tattoo it permanently. He wanted, he wanted, he wanted, and wanting terrified him.

There had been a thousand times he almost texted. A thousand times he typed something out, stared at it, deleted it. He didn’t even know what he was feeling, so how could he explain it to another person. Every attempt died in his drafts.

He lived at the office. He buried himself in contracts and case files. Yudai told him he looked like hell. Fuma kept dropping by his office, saying things like “You have circles under your eyes” and “You don’t look well” and even “If you need time off, you should take it.” Euijoo brushed it all off with mechanical politeness. He was fine. He was functioning. He was working.

Except he wasn’t.

He was sad. That was the word. As simple as it was devastating. He was sad like he hadn’t been in years.

The sadness brought everything back. He thought about Heeseung in Korea, the reason he’d fled. He thought about why he didn’t call home much, why he kept his family at a distance. He thought about how he lived in Japan like a ghost, always at work, never letting anyone too close. He told himself it was fine, that he was built to be solitary.

And then Nicholas had happened, and the whole fragile system had collapsed.

Seeing him on the subway should have been confirmation. Proof that it was over. That he’d tried to be honest with himself and it had failed. That he wasn’t cut out for this. That he didn’t deserve someone like Nicholas, someone loud and wonderful and larger than life.

But then Nicholas saw him. And came storming over. And spoke to him like a man who had been waiting weeks to unload.

And Euijoo panicked.

The confrontation had been like standing in the sun. Too bright, too exposing, too much. He couldn’t handle Nicholas’s voice, Nicholas’s anger, Nicholas’s hurt. But when Nicholas marched off the subway car, Euijoo’s body betrayed him again. His legs followed.

Now he was calling out on the platform. Shouting Nicholas’s name in public like a man possessed. “Wait! Please wait.”

Nicholas turned, face thunderous, hair shining under the harsh lights. 

“What,” Nicholas snapped.

Euijoo froze, throat closing. “I—just wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Please. Just give me a minute.”

Nicholas crossed his arms. “You have one minute.”

“That’s not fair,” Euijoo said weakly.

“Life isn’t fair. Go.”

And then it poured out.

“I was overwhelmed,” Euijoo blurted. His voice shook. “I didn’t know what to do. You are so wonderful, Nicholas. So amazing, so larger than life, and I feel like I don’t deserve you. I can’t give you what you want. And I want you so badly, I can’t even describe it, and it terrifies me. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to be this person. All I’ve ever done is lock myself away and work and study and not feel anything. That is how I’ve survived. That is all I know. And then you happened, and I don’t know what to do, and I wish you could just tell me, tell me what to do, because if you told me I could do it for you. Just please. Just tell me.”

He was shaking by the end, voice too loud, begging without meaning to. He saw people staring at them, commuters lingering with curiosity, and wanted to vanish.

Nicholas sighed, anger dissolving into something tired. “Stop. Just stop.”

The word cut clean. Euijoo closed his mouth.

Nicholas grabbed his arm, firm but not cruel, and pulled him through the crowd, out the doors, onto the street. Euijoo followed blindly, no idea where they were going.

A few blocks later they stepped into a small coffee shop. The air smelled of cinnamon and milk. Nicholas got in line, still holding Euijoo’s sleeve.

“What are we doing?” Euijoo asked, bewildered.

“Ordering chai lattes,” Nicholas said simply.

“Chai?”

“You like chai?” Nicholas asked with a strange grin.

“I—I don’t know,” Euijoo stammered.

“Then you’re trying it.”

Minutes later, Nicholas shoved a steaming cup into his hands. Euijoo sipped. Warmth spread through his chest. “It’s good.”

“Good,” Nicholas said. “Now let me talk for a minute.”

Euijoo nodded quickly.

“I don’t know what I’m doing either,” Nicholas said. His voice was lower now, stripped of performance. “I have problems too. Plenty of them. I don’t have everything figured out. But one thing I know is this: you are not a burden. If you need time to figure yourself out, that’s okay. I can watch you figure it out.”

Euijoo blinked. “What does that mean?”

“It means that I’m willing to be in your life in any way you need me to be whether that’s as a friend or something more?” 

“You’re willing to be in a relationship with me?” Euijoo said, surprised. 

Nicholas’s laugh was rough, but his eyes softened. “Yes. More than anything.”

The word hit like a bell, clear and undeniable.

Nicholas leaned closer. “But if we’re doing this, you can’t ghost me. You can’t shut down and pretend I don’t exist. That shit won’t fly. If you’re scared, fine. Say you’re scared. But don’t vanish on me.”

“I won’t,” Euijoo said quickly, almost tripping over the words. “I promise.”

Nicholas nodded. “Okay. Because I like you too much to deal with games. And I’m telling you right now, I’m not perfect either. It’s been years since I was in anything real. I don’t know if I’m good at this. But if you’ll try, I’ll try.”

Euijoo’s throat closed. Relief, terror, hope all churned together.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Then I’ll try.”

And Nicholas grinned, that wild, impossible grin, and lifted his chai like a toast.

“To trying.”

**

Nicholas had a boyfriend.

Even thinking the words made him laugh. He caught himself smiling like an idiot while chopping limes at the bar or folding laundry. It was absurd. He felt like a schoolgirl with a crush, except the crush was real and he was actually dating him.

The end of November had crept in with cold winds and shorter days, but for Nicholas the weeks blurred around one person. His phone buzzed constantly. Texts from Euijoo arrived at every hour, dry but steady, punctuated by Nicholas’s gifs and teasing replies. His days revolved around when he would see him, nights revolved around when he could get his hands on him.

He was drinking less, which Yuma noticed immediately. “Who knew all it took to get you sober was a boyfriend.”

Nicholas flipped him off, but it was true. He wasn’t drowning himself every night anymore. He had even started doing some of his physical therapy exercises at home, grudgingly, awkwardly, muttering under his breath but still doing them. His knee still hated him, but at least he was trying.

He and Euijoo were making out constantly. Any excuse, any time. Nicholas would find himself pressed against the kitchen counter, against the couch cushions, or once disastrously against the washing machine until Taki walked in and told them to invest in a lock. Euijoo was over almost every night. It was ridiculous, wonderful, and Nicholas couldn’t get enough.

One night, they were tangled on the couch, halfway through a marathon of Friends, when a sound erupted from Yuma’s room. It was high-pitched, strangled, and deeply unsettling.

Euijoo froze, eyes wide. “Should we help him? That sounded like a kitten drowning.”

Nicholas barely looked up from his phone. “No. That just means Undercover Man must have slipped in when we weren’t paying attention.”

“He sounds like he’s being interrogated by the CIA.”

“That’s normal.”

“Normal?” Euijoo repeated, horrified.

“Pretty tame tonight, actually.” Nicholas found the remote and flipped it toward him. “Come on. We just finished season two. Time for season three.”

“I don’t think I can focus with that noise.”

“Get used to it,” Nicholas said. “This is the soundtrack of my life.”

Euijoo buried his face in his hands while Nicholas grinned and hit play.

The night finally came when Euijoo met the whole gang at the bar.

It was Saturday night and Nicholas was closing for once. The bar was packed, lights low, music loud. Nicholas worked the counter with his usual swagger, flipping bottles, pouring fast, charming everyone. He had warned his friends earlier. “Behave. He’s mine.”

“Sure,” Maki said with a smirk. “It’s like leaving a piece of meat with a tank of sharks.”

Euijoo arrived in his usual uniform: neat suit, tie straight, posture stiff but eyes darting nervously around. Nicholas’s friends pounced immediately.

Taki leaned in close, mock-serious. “So, you’re the one who stole our Nicholas.”

“I wouldn’t say—” Euijoo started, but Harua cut in.

“You better not break him again,” Harua warned. “We’ll know.”

Taki smirked and lifted a glass. “Buy us drinks, Suit-and-Tie Man.”

Euijoo’s ears turned crimson. Nicholas had to hurry back behind the bar, but he caught the sight of his boyfriend’s flushed face, glasses slipping down his nose. His heart flipped. Euijoo was beautiful, even when terrified. Especially when terrified.

The night roared on. Nicholas worked, flipping shakers, shouting orders, but his eyes kept flicking back to the table. Euijoo looked stiff at first, but after a few rounds his shoulders eased, his laugh loosened. He was still being grilled and teased relentlessly, but he was holding his own.

By the time closing rolled around, Nicholas strode over, wiping his hands on a bar towel. “Looks like you survived.”

Euijoo gave him a look that was equal parts fond and exasperated. “They’re terrifying.”

Nicholas leaned close, eyes sparkling. “But you like them.”

Euijoo hesitated, then admitted softly, “I like them.”

“You’re drunk,” Nicholas teased, brushing his finger over his cheek.

“I’m fine,” Euijoo protested, though his glasses were sliding off his face, his smile sloppy.

“Oh my God, what did you do to my poor boy?” Nicholas demanded, turning to glare at the table.

“We just bought him a couple,” Maki said innocently.

“Or five,” Harua added with a smirk.

Nicholas shook his head. “You’re monsters.”

He felt a tug at his waist and looked down to see Euijoo leaning against him, whispering loudly, “Every time I ask who Undercover Man is, they just laugh at me.”

“Baby, not even Yuma knows who Undercover Man is,” Nicholas murmured back.

“That’s the beauty of it all,” Yuma shouted from the back.

Later, as Nicholas half-carried Euijoo up the stairs to his and Yuma’s apartment, Euijoo mumbled, “I like your friends.”

Nicholas smiled, steadying him against the wall. “My friends like you too.”

“Good,” Euijoo said, swaying, “because I’m trying very hard.”

“You’re doing perfect,” Nicholas whispered.

At his door, Euijoo leaned heavily on him, glasses askew, hair falling into his face. Nicholas looked at him, heart twisting. This was his boyfriend.

**

Mid-December and Euijoo was losing his mind.

One month. They had been together for almost a month, and it was the happiest, strangest, most disorienting month of his life. He had never been so activated. That was the word that came to him. Activated. Everything felt charged, sharper. He walked through the world and everything became about Nicholas.

He saw the color pink and wanted to tell someone, My boyfriend loves pink. He passed a display of strawberries and thought, My boyfriend loves strawberries. He heard a song on the radio and nearly blurted, My boyfriend would hate this, to a stranger on the bus.

Everything, everywhere, circled back to Nicholas.

Fuma and Yudai had noticed the change immediately. They cornered him in the break room one afternoon, both of them leaning against the counter with matching smirks.

“You look disgustingly happy,” Fuma said.

Yudai nodded. “Are you dating someone?”

Euijoo had nearly choked on his tea. “No. I mean I why would you ask that?”

“You have circles under your eyes, but you’re smiling,” Fuma said. “That combination only means one thing.”

“We don’t need to know details,” Yudai added. “Just tell us when you’re ready. We’d love to meet him. Dinner’s on us. As long as you don’t disappear like you did last time.”

Euijoo mumbled something about being busy and fled back to his office, face burning. But the truth sat warm in his chest. I do want you to meet him, he thought. Just not yet. Not yet.

Because everything was going great. Actually, everything was going too great.

They were making out constantly. Nicholas kissed like a man who had invented the practice, and Euijoo had the bruised lips to prove it. His mouth was swollen so often that even Fuma commented once, asking if he had developed a citrus allergy.

But that was all they had done. Kissing. Endless kissing. And though Euijoo wanted more, though his body ached with it, the thought of crossing that line terrified him. Every time Nicholas’s hand slid lower, every time heat threatened to tip over into something else, Euijoo froze. The panic clamped down and stopped him cold.

He told himself it was fine. One month was not long. People waited longer. But deep down he knew Nicholas would expect something for their anniversary, and the thought of disappointing him made his stomach turn.

So he decided. He would host Nicholas at his apartment. For the first time.

The night arrived.

Nicholas showed up in black jeans and a red scarf, grinning like he was about to raid a candy store. The second he stepped inside, he began snooping.

“Medicine cabinet,” Nicholas announced, striding into the bathroom.

“Seriously?” Euijoo trailed after him.

“Of course. This is boyfriend initiation. If I don’t see what vitamins you’re taking, how will I know you’re not secretly eighty years old?”

“My vitamin D is in order,” Euijoo muttered.

“Sure it is.” Nicholas opened the cabinet, peered inside, and whistled. “Wow. So organized. You alphabetized your toothpaste.”

“That is not possible.”

Nicholas shrugged. “Looks alphabetized to me.”

He drifted back to the bedroom, threw himself onto the bed, and peeked under it. “No monsters. Good. What about the closet?”

“Do you have to?”

“Yes.”

Nicholas opened it, surveyed the neat rows of pressed shirts, and gasped. “This isn’t a closet. This is a department store display. Did you buy the showroom at Ikea?”

Euijoo crossed his arms, embarrassed and defensive at once. “It is practical.”

“It is terrifying,” Nicholas corrected, grinning. “But kind of hot.”

By the time dinner was ready, Nicholas had poked through every drawer, every shelf, and declared the apartment “clinical chic.” Euijoo nearly told him to leave, but Nicholas kissed him until he forgot why he was mad.

Dinner was steak, medium rare, with sides delivered from a restaurant Euijoo trusted. There was wine. They weren’t drunk, but the buzz softened Euijoo’s nerves. The air outside was freezing, but inside the apartment it was warm, comfortable, almost cozy.

And then came the cake.

Euijoo had baked it himself. A strawberry cake, lopsided, uneven, more honest than pretty.

Nicholas froze when he saw it. “You baked?”

“I attempted,” Euijoo said stiffly.

Nicholas’s grin was so wide it looked like it hurt. “My boyfriend bakes. Oh my God. I am never letting you go. Do you understand? You are mine forever. This is the best cake I have ever seen in my life.”

“It’s not even straight,” Euijoo muttered.

“Neither are we,” Nicholas shot back, and kissed him so hard the wineglass almost tipped.

They ate. The cake tasted better than it looked, sweet and soft, and Nicholas made such exaggerated sounds of delight Euijoo buried his face in his hands.

Afterward, the wine kept flowing. They curled together on the couch. Nicholas kissed him slow, then fast, then not at all, then again, until Euijoo’s head spun.

It was time.

Euijoo led him to the bedroom, heart hammering. His hands shook as he reached for the drawer. He pulled out the box and held it like a shield. “I bought these,” he said.

Nicholas blinked, then grinned slow and wicked. “Condoms. Look at you, planning ahead. Very responsible, Suit-and-Tie.”

“I’ve never with a man—,” Euijoo started, but Nicholas kissed him before he could finish.

When Nicholas pulled back, his voice was softer. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Euijoo said. His throat was tight. His hands trembled. “But you’ll have to tell me what to do.”

Nicholas cupped his face, thumb stroking his cheek. “Of course.”

Euijoo’s face burned. He blurted, “I even prepared earlier. For you.” He’d touched that part of himself before when he jerked off but never for someone else. 

Nicholas’s eyes darkened. His grin turned hungry. “Baby,” he whispered. “You’re going to kill me.”

Nicholas was the first to take his clothes off, his jeans pooling on the floor. Then before Euijoo knew it Nicholas’s hand was on his belt, and his whole body jolted.

“You okay?” Nicholas asked quickly, his voice softer now, steady even though his eyes burned with hunger.

“Yeah,” Euijoo said. His throat was tight, his heart wild. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

Nicholas’s grin softened into something gentler. “Good. Because I want you.”

The words landed heavy. Euijoo felt his chest squeeze, heat crawling up his neck, but he nodded anyway. His hands trembled as he reached for Nicholas’s shoulders, as if grounding himself there would stop the spinning.

“You don’t have to be perfect,” Nicholas whispered, leaning in to kiss the corner of his mouth, slower this time, calmer. “Just be here with me.”

Euijoo exhaled shakily. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath.

The kisses grew again, messy and hot, Nicholas’s laughter breaking between them, Euijoo’s nervous sounds swallowed into Nicholas’s mouth. Their bodies pressed close, chest to chest, every inch a reminder of how close they were, how real this was.

When Nicholas pulled back just enough to look at him, eyes searching, Euijoo thought he might combust again. “You sure?”

“Yes,” Euijoo said, though his voice cracked. He hated how desperate he sounded, but Nicholas only kissed him again, as if that was the only answer he needed.

The rest blurred, the slide of fabric, the heat of skin, the way his own heartbeat filled his ears until it drowned everything else.

And then there was nothing but Nicholas’s voice, steady and playful even in the middle of the chaos. “I’ve got you. Just stay with me.”

Euijoo shut his eyes and let go.

**

Euijoo woke up the next morning feeling the same, but different.

He waited for the panic to hit. It had always hit before. After their first kiss, after their first night tangled on the couch, even after the way Nicholas called him baby in a voice that stripped him bare. He braced himself for the usual spiral — the racing heart, the shame rising, the desperate need to flee.

But it didn’t come.

When Nicholas stirred beside him, hair sticking up in every direction, face soft with sleep, he smiled lazily. “Morning. You good?”

Euijoo swallowed. “Yeah. I think I am.”

“Good.” Nicholas kissed his shoulder and rolled back onto the pillow. “Just tell me when you’re not good.”

Something broke open in him then, but not in a bad way. It was like a pressure valve had been released, steam pouring out, leaving him lighter. It scared him, but in the kind of way roller coasters scared him: terrifying and thrilling all at once.

From there, everything shifted.

They went from not having sex at all to doing it constantly. All the time. As if a dam had burst and there was no putting it back together. At Nicholas’s apartment, at his own, mornings before work, evenings after, sometimes in the middle of the day when Nicholas dragged him into his room with zero regard for schedules.

Euijoo should have felt drained, but instead he felt both exhausted and electrified. He told himself this must be what climbing Mount Everest felt like,  impossible, painful, but the view from the top leaving you undone. If he had thought he was happy before, he had been wrong. Now he was ecstatic. Something inside him was being healed, something he had buried under years of work and denial. Nicholas was peeling it back, piece by piece.

As December passed and the year tilted toward its end, Euijoo felt like he was living in a dream.

But dreams didn’t last.

That night, Nicholas was at the bar. Euijoo had gone over to his place to wait for him, as he often did. The apartment felt different without Nicholas in it. Too quiet. Too still.

Yuma was home, which only made it more awkward. They weren’t unfriendly, but they weren’t close either. They sat for a while on opposite sides of the couch, half-watching some variety show on TV, the silence stretching.

Finally, Euijoo spoke, because there was only one topic they both had in common. “How long have you known Nicholas?”

Yuma glanced over, thoughtful. “Since a few years ago. We met at a club downtown. It was in this old warehouse, used to be a meatpacking place. I think it’s a fashion space now.”

“Oh.” Euijoo nodded, picturing Nicholas in some neon-lit warehouse, laughing too loud, shining in a crowd. Of course.

“Yeah, it was wild,” Yuma continued. “And ending up as roommates after a pretty nasty breakup was even wilder.”

Euijoo blinked. “Breakup?”

Yuma nodded. “Yeah. I used to date Nicholas. I’m sorry I thought you knew.”

The words landed like a physical blow.

“No,” Euijoo said. Too sharp. Too fast. “No, I didn’t know that you two—” His brain turned to static. Boyfriend. They were boyfriends. Yuma. Nicholas. Together.

Yuma shifted uncomfortably. “It’s ancient history. We figured out we’re better as friends than as partners. Honestly, he’s one of my best friends now. We just work better that way.”

But Euijoo couldn’t hear him. His mind was stuck in a loop. Nicholas and Yuma. Yuma and Nicholas. The two of them in this same apartment, maybe on this same couch. Heat crawled up his neck.

“Have you two… since breaking up?” Euijoo blurted.

Yuma stood quickly, cutting him off before the question could land. “I’m going to head out.” He slipped on his shoes and grabbed his keys.

“Wait, this is your apartment,” Euijoo said, stunned.

“Sorry,” Yuma muttered, and ducked out the door before Euijoo could stop him.

The room fell silent again.

Euijoo sat on the couch, feeling like he’d just been shoved off a cliff, air knocked out of him, staring at the empty doorway.

He had never felt more like an idiot.

**

When Yuma walked into the bar, Nicholas knew something bad was happening. He felt it in the weight that dropped into his stomach, in the way Yuma’s eyes scanned the room like they were hunting for trouble.

“Oh no,” Nicholas said as Yuma slid onto a stool. “Did you and Undercover Man get into a fight?”

Yuma laughed. “Between me and him? No. But you and Euijoo? You’re definitely going to have a fight tonight.”

Nicholas’s throat went dry. “Why?”

“Because I told him.”

Nicholas blinked. “Told him what?”

Yuma gave him a look. “God blessed you with looks, not brains. Our dating history.” He pointed between them.

“Oh my God,” Nicholas muttered, pressing a hand to his face. “Why would you do that?”

“Because he asked. And because he didn’t know. Which is insane. You never told him?”

“I feel like I mentioned it,” Nicholas said weakly.

“You didn’t,” Yuma said flatly. “Because if you had, he wouldn’t be sitting in our apartment right now looking like someone just drop-kicked his ribs.”

Nicholas’s stomach twisted. “You left him there?”

“What was I supposed to do?” Yuma said. “It’s my day off. I’m not babysitting your boyfriend through an existential crisis.”

Nicholas’s hands shook as he untied his apron. “I have to go.”

“You’re in the middle of a shift.”

“You’re covering it.”

“This is your mess.”

“I’ll owe you one,” Nicholas snapped, already storming toward the back. “A big one.”

The cold air outside did nothing to ease his nerves. He jogged the few blocks home, coat half-buttoned, his mind running every possible script of what he could say. None of them sounded good.

When he opened the apartment door, relief hit — Euijoo was still there. But the sight of him made Nicholas’s chest ache. He was sitting stiffly on the couch, glasses low on his nose, staring at the muted TV. His whole body was wound tight, like he was holding himself together with strings.

“Hey,” Nicholas said carefully, shutting the door.

“You’re home early. So I guess you talked to Yuma,” Euijoo said, still not looking up.

“He came by the bar.”

“Is there something you want to tell me?”

Nicholas rubbed the back of his neck. “I hate when people say that. Because if you already know—”

“That’s a pretty crappy thing to say, given your position, don’t you think?” Euijoo’s voice was sharp enough to cut.

Nicholas winced. “Okay, fine. I should’ve told you Yuma and I used to date. But it was years ago. We figured out we were better as friends. It’s not a big deal anymore.”

Euijoo’s head snapped toward him, eyes burning. “Have you slept together since you broke up?”

Nicholas froze. Opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

That silence was louder than any admission.

Euijoo stood, jaw tight. “That’s all the answer I need.”

He started for the door. Nicholas lunged, catching his arm. “Stop. Okay. What do you want me to do? Give you the full history? Every single person I’ve ever been with? Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” Euijoo snapped, his voice trembling.

“Nobody wants that,” Nicholas shot back. His heart was pounding. “Why are you being like this? Yuma and I were together a long time ago. There’s nothing between us now. He’s my best friend. That’s it.”

“You made me look like a fool,” Euijoo said, his voice cracking. “You made me look stupid.”

Nicholas dragged a hand through his hair. “Why are you making this about me? That’s not what this is.”

“Then what is it?”

“I have a roommate,” Nicholas said, his voice sharp. “And yes, my roommate and I slept together once upon a time. But there is nothing between us now. Nothing. Why can’t you just trust me?”

“I do,” Euijoo said quickly. “I do trust you. It just… it just feels like a lot.”

And Nicholas, stupid, reckless Nicholas, said the wrong thing. “Everything feels like a lot to you.”

The second the words left his mouth, he regretted them. He saw Euijoo flinch, saw his face shutter closed.

“Okay,” Euijoo said, voice flat. “Well, I’m going to take all of my emotions and go.”

He moved for the door again. Nicholas stepped in front of him, desperate. “Are you going to call me tomorrow at least?”

Euijoo stared at him for a long moment. His face was unreadable, pale and still. Then he nodded once. “Yeah. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He slipped out the door.

Nicholas stood in the silence of the apartment, heart hammering, throat dry, the smell of the bar still clinging to his coat. He wanted to punch a wall. He wanted to rewind the last ten minutes. He wanted to chase after Euijoo, drag him back, hold him until he believed him.

Instead, he just stood there, staring at the empty hallway.

**

They made up.

Not right away. Not cleanly. It took about a week for the tension to thaw, for the air between them to stop feeling sharp. They never actually solved it. They just stopped talking about it. Nicholas never brought it up again. Euijoo never asked. The silence was the fix, the way it sometimes is when neither side knows how to patch the break.

It was the first real crack in their relationship.

But then the days stretched, and life did what it always did. It carried them forward.

Weeks passed and if Euijoo had been happy before, he didn’t have words for what came next.

He fell. Harder than he expected, harder than he’d ever fallen for anyone. Nicholas drew him in like gravity, weaving him deeper into his world. Suddenly Euijoo found himself playing game nights with Nicholas, Maki, and Harua, sitting cross-legged on the floor while Harua accused Nicholas of cheating at cards. He found himself at the bar more often, pulled into a circle of neon lights and loud music that had once felt foreign but now felt like an extension of Nicholas himself.

The only sore spot was Yuma. Things were tense, more on Euijoo’s side than Yuma’s. Yuma avoided him politely, and Euijoo, out of some strange pride, let him.

But mostly things were good. Great, even.

Except he was bickering constantly with Nicholas. About everything.

What to eat for dinner. What show to watch. Where to go on weekends. The temperature in the bedroom. Whether the blanket should be on or off. Even what position they should have sex in.

Half the time, Euijoo felt like he was being slowly driven insane. The other half, he realized Nicholas found it hilarious.

“You argue like you’re filing a lawsuit,” Nicholas teased one night when they were standing in front of the fridge, debating takeout. “Closing arguments, exhibits A through Z.”

“Because you never listen,” Euijoo muttered.

“I listen,” Nicholas grinned. “I just disagree. That’s different.”

There were moments Euijoo caught himself wondering: Is this what relationships are supposed to be? Equal parts irritated and obsessed with someone?

The answer seemed to be yes.

There were also the moments Euijoo would never give up.

Walking with Nicholas through the snow, hands shoved deep in their coat pockets, Nicholas laughing as he tried to catch snowflakes on his tongue.

The day Nicholas finally convinced him to call in sick to work, dragging him back to bed, piling junk food on the covers, switching between TV and sex and laughter until the day blurred into something golden.

Or the night Nicholas stayed over at Euijoo’s place. Afterward, when Nicholas climbed off him, Euijoo felt cracked open, raw and vulnerable, like he could fit the entire universe inside himself. He pulled Nicholas close. He was half-asleep when Nicholas murmured, “You like watching me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” Euijoo whispered. “You’re my favorite thing to look at.”

Nicholas kissed him then, tender, sweet, almost reverent. It was probably the best kiss of Euijoo’s life. If he could tuck it into a box and keep it forever, he would.

But good times never stayed pure.

Euijoo started noticing more things about Nicholas. Things that unsettled him.

The drinking, for one. Supposedly Nicholas had “cut back.” If cutting back meant being drunk three or four times a week, Euijoo was terrified to imagine what Nicholas had been like before.

The knee, too. It was obviously hurting him, but Nicholas refused to talk about it. Every time Euijoo asked, Nicholas brushed it off with a joke or snapped, “Why are you trying to ruin a good time?” Eventually Euijoo stopped asking.

Then came the conversation about exes.

They were lying in bed, Nicholas scrolling through his phone, Euijoo tracing patterns on the sheet. The question tumbled out before he could stop himself.

“You’ve dated women?”

Nicholas glanced over, smirked. “Yeah. Quite a few, actually.”

“Oh.” Euijoo blinked. He hadn’t expected that.

“What, you thought I only liked men?”

“I just… assumed.”

“Nope.” Nicholas grinned wider. “I like who I like. You happen to be a man. Congratulations.”

“That’s not what I expected,” Euijoo admitted.

“Then stop expecting.” Nicholas kissed his forehead and went back to his phone like the conversation was over.

Euijoo lay awake, staring at the ceiling, realizing how little he actually knew about him.

Then the topic of friends came up more and more.

Nicholas wanted to meet Euijoo’s.

“I don’t have any friends,” Euijoo said once, too quickly.

“Sure you do,” Nicholas said, sprawled across the couch. “What about those guys from the bar that first night?”

“Fuma and Yudai? They’re my coworkers. My bosses, really. I wouldn’t call them friends.”

“You get dinner with them sometimes.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re friends.”

Nicholas sat up, eyes narrowing. “So what, you just don’t want to introduce me?”

Euijoo flinched. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

“I’ll introduce you if that’s what you really want,” Euijoo said at last.

Nicholas leaned back, watching him. Then he smiled. “Good. When?” 

“Soon.” 

Lying in bed one night, Euijoo turned it over and over in his mind.

He was falling in love. He was sure of it. He had never felt this way before. But he was also terrified. Was he doing a good job in this relationship? Was he being a good boyfriend? Or was he already failing?

He didn’t know enough about Nicholas. Nicholas wouldn’t let him in. Nicholas drank too much, laughed too loud, buried pain behind jokes. Nicholas could be the sweetest man in the world and also the most infuriating.

And then there was the other fear, the one he couldn’t shake. He still wasn’t comfortable being gay. He wasn’t ready to bring Nicholas into his real world, to introduce him to Fuma and Yudai, to stand in the daylight with this relationship on display.

He hated himself for it. He hated the conflict of it. But the fear sat heavy in him, even as he curled against Nicholas’s chest, even as Nicholas kissed his hair and whispered nonsense in his ear.

He was falling in love. He was scared of who he was falling in love with. And he was scared of himself.

Chapter Text

A late Thursday night found Nicholas sitting at the bar, hunched over his phone, pretending a stupid game would shut off his brain. It didn’t. His knee ached, the lights were too bright, and the beer in front of him was his third. Maybe fourth. He’d lost count.

Yuma and Momo were running the bar like clockwork. Glasses clinked, music hummed under the noise of the crowd. Nicholas was supposed to be relaxing, but he kept replaying the argument from earlier in his head, each line sharper the second time around.

Someone slid onto the stool next to him.

“Isn’t it considered lame to hang out at your place of employment when you’re off?”

Nicholas looked up to find Taki grinning like an uninvited therapist. He flipped him off without looking away from his phone.

Taki laughed. “Still so classy.” He waved Yuma over.

Yuma’s face said he didn’t have time for this. “What do you want?”

“Whatever this diva’s drinking,” Taki said.

“Depression martinis all around,” Yuma said, grabbing two glasses.

Nicholas muttered, “That’s not even a real drink.”

“It is tonight,” Yuma replied. He set the beers down with a thud.

Taki turned, resting an elbow on the counter. “So what’s got you all glum?” 

“Don’t get him started,” Yuma warned, drying a glass.

Nicholas ignored him. “I got into a fight with Euijoo.”

Taki raised his eyebrows. “Already? It’s only Thursday.”

Yuma snorted. “You won’t believe over what.”

Nicholas gestured with his glass. “He didn’t want ramen.”

Taki blinked. “That’s it?”

Nicholas sat up straighter, indignant. “He had udon for lunch. Apparently, that means he can’t have ramen for dinner. I told him they’re not the same thing.”

Yuma leaned over the bar. “They’re literally both noodles.”

“Different noodles,” Nicholas argued. “Different texture, different broth. Ramen is a lifestyle.”

“So what happened?” Taki asked.

“I said he could eat something else while I got ramen. He said he didn’t like that.”

Yuma sighed. “You two are exhausting.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nicholas asked.

“It means you’re both big losers,” Yuma said.

Nicholas’s mouth dropped open. “Excuse me? I am not the loser here. Do you think I’m the problem?”

Yuma and Taki exchanged a look.

“Yes,” they said in unison.

Nicholas stared. “That was fast.”

“Because it’s true,” Yuma said. “You’re like a Rubik’s cube that argues back.”

Taki added, “You get angry at parking meters. I once saw you argue with a vending machine.”

“It ate my coins!” Nicholas protested.

“It ate your patience,” Taki said.

Nicholas groaned. “You’re supposed to be my friends.”

“We are,” Yuma said. “That’s why we tell you the truth. And the truth is you and Euijoo are both stubborn, dramatic, and weirdly perfect for each other.”

Nicholas frowned into his beer. “Perfectly disastrous, maybe.”

Taki laughed and took a slow sip of his drink. “Couldn’t you have just eaten what he wanted?”

“Why would I do that?” Nicholas said, eyes wide with disbelief. “We’re two grown adults. We can have separate meals.”

Taki shrugged. “Seems like you picked the hill you wanted to die on, and it was covered in noodles.”

Nicholas slammed his glass down. “You don’t get it. He’s the difficult one. He’s got everyone fooled with his big boba eyes and his polite voice and his lawyer calm. But he’s impossible. You know what he said to me the other day? He said he wanted to crack open my chest and live inside of me. No sane person says that.”

Yuma choked on his drink. “That’s romantic? Creepy? I can’t decide.”

“Exactly!” Nicholas said, pointing. “You can’t decide because it’s insane! He looks at me like I hung the moon, and then we argue about whether the blanket should be on or off, and I want to throw him out the window. Lovingly.”

Taki laughed. “You realize how ridiculous you sound, right?”

Nicholas kept going, words spilling faster with every sip of beer. “That charming, goofy smile, that stupid tiny waist, how he always says the most romantic things at the most random times. It’s like being haunted by a poet. He’ll say something like, ‘The world feels lighter when you laugh,’ and I just sit there like an idiot thinking, Oh God, I’m in love with him.”

Yuma stopped wiping the bar and stared. “Congratulations. Took you long enough.”

Taki patted Nicholas on the back. “I’m proud of you, man. Self-awareness looks good on you.”

Nicholas groaned, dragging his hands over his face. “No, you don’t get it. I can’t fall in love with him. The last time I fell in love, it broke me for life.”

The words hung there, heavier than the music.

Yuma sighed, reaching for another bottle. “Great. Now I have to get us more drinks.”

He walked away, muttering something about bartenders needing hazard pay.

Nicholas groaned again and dropped his head onto the bar. “I’m doomed.”

“Probably,” Taki said cheerfully.

Yuma returned, setting another round of drinks in front of them. “You two are my least favorite customers.”

“Cheers to that,” Taki said, clinking his glass with Nicholas’s.

Nicholas took another drink. The buzz was starting to hit, not the fun kind, but the fuzzy, emotional kind that made everything feel a little too close.

They drank in silence for a while. The bar hummed with low chatter and clinking glasses. Nicholas felt the warmth of it, the comfort of friends who teased instead of pitied. He was grateful for that.

But when he closed his eyes, all he could see was Euijoo’s face.Tired, sweet, too sincere for his own good. The way his voice softened when he said Nicholas’s name. The way he always kissed the corner of his mouth before actually kissing him.

Nicholas’s chest tightened. He exhaled. “I can’t lose him,” he said quietly.

Yuma's eyes seemed to soften, pouring him another drink. “Then stop trying so hard to win every argument.”

Taki grinned. “Start with the noodles.”

Nicholas huffed a laugh, shaking his head. “You two are the worst therapists.”

Yuma shrugged. “We’re cheaper than the real thing.”

Nicholas raised his glass. “To my doomed love life.”

Yuma clinked his glass against his. “To your poor boyfriend.”

They drank. Nicholas’s phone buzzed on the counter. For a second, his heart leapt, maybe it was him, but it was just a delivery alert. He sighed, turned his phone over, and ordered another round.

The night dragged on in a blur of laughter and half-baked wisdom. But even when the lights dimmed and the stools went empty, Nicholas couldn’t shake the thought that had been burning in his chest since the first argument over noodles:

He was already in too deep.

**

Nicholas used to believe he was made for motion.

The first time a basketball hit his palms, something inside him clicked into place. It was the sound, the rhythm, the clean bounce of control. He was ten and awkward, the foreign kid with a heavy accent who sat alone at lunch. Then came basketball, and suddenly language didn’t matter. On the court he was fluent. He could speak in layups, answer in jump shots. For once he didn’t have to translate himself.

He started in America, on cracked asphalt courts behind apartment buildings, chasing older boys who let him play only when they needed an extra body. By middle school he was taller than most of them, faster, stronger. The game taught him how to belong. It was the first time he’d ever been in love. 

When his parents moved the family to Korea, he thought the world had ended. But he found a gym and a team, and eventually a small crowd of kids who called his name the right way. Basketball wasn’t popular there, not really, but he played anyway. He played everywhere, school tournaments, underground leagues, half-lit gyms that smelled like dust. By seventeen, he’d been scouted by a Japanese team, a rare opportunity for any Korean high school kid. He told himself this was it. Destiny, finally paying attention.

He moved again, learned another language, pretended to understand coaches when words failed him. He didn’t care. The court was the only language he needed. When he played, his mind went still. His life was a blur of sneakers, travel, sweat, and the sweet exhaustion of knowing who he was.

He thought he’d play forever.

Then came the injury.

It happened during a winter scrimmage, one of those meaningless games that no one would remember. A pivot, a sharp turn, and something inside his knee tore like fabric. He went down hard. The trainers said it was bad but fixable. Surgery, rest, therapy. Easy words.

He didn’t rest.

He couldn’t stand the stillness. Couldn’t stand being left behind. He played on it, taped it, lied about the pain. He thought he could outplay it the way he’d outplayed everything else. But every game hurt more than the one before, until one night the knee gave out entirely. A single drive toward the basket, a familiar jump, and then nothing. The noise was a gunshot. When he hit the ground, he knew it was over.

They told him it was repairable, but not enough. He would never play the same again. He was twenty-three and finished.

He tried therapy. He went to every appointment, stretched until he cried, listened to professionals talk about progress. He hated all of it. The smell of the clinic made him sick. He hated the way people looked at him, like he was brave. There was nothing brave about losing the only thing that ever felt like home.

He stopped going.

He drifted.

He told his parents he was fine, but he couldn’t bear to go back. In Korea, he’d been the family trophy. In Japan, he was just a man limping to the train. So he stayed. He took a bar job. One month became two, then a year, then five.

He told people he liked bartending, that he liked the noise and the lights and the strangers. It wasn’t true. It just helped drown the silence. He drank more than he should, slept with people he didn’t care about, laughed too loudly at jokes he didn’t find funny. He became good at pretending.

Sometimes, when he caught his reflection in the backbar mirror, he barely recognized the man staring back. The face was the same, but the light in the eyes was gone.

He used to think time would fix it. It didn’t. Time just stretched. He blinked and five years disappeared. His body still hurt. His savings could barely cover rent. He was twenty-eight, nearly thirty, with a bad knee and a drinking problem he refused to name.

And then Euijoo.

The first time he met him, Nicholas thought nothing of it. Another customer, another conversation. But Euijoo kept coming back, and somewhere between the awkward smiles and careful words, Nicholas felt something crack open again. He told himself it was nothing, a distraction. He told himself he wouldn’t get attached.

He was wrong.

Now he was deep in it, deeper than he had any right to be. Euijoo was steady where he was reckless, soft where he was sharp. Being near him felt good in a way that scared him. Because it wasn’t just liking someone. It was wanting to live again.

That was the part that terrified him.

He’d already learned what happened when you loved something too much. You lost it. You watched it turn to pain. Basketball had taught him that. It had taken his youth, his confidence, his sense of purpose. Now here he was, years later, on the edge of something that could take the rest of him.

When he tried to picture the future, he saw nothing. Just a long stretch of nights behind a bar, drinks he didn’t need, a limp that would never heal. But lately, when he thought hard enough, he saw flashes of Euijoo there, his laugh, his eyes, the way he said Nicholas’s name like it meant something.

And that was worse. Because it meant he had something to lose again.

He couldn’t tell him any of this. Couldn’t explain the constant fear humming under his skin. Euijoo still looked at him like he was someone worth trusting, someone worth falling for. Nicholas couldn’t bear to shatter that illusion.

He wanted to tell him, I’m not brave, I’m broken. I’m not a mystery, I’m a mess. But the words never came. Instead, he drank, he joked, he kissed, he pretended.

When the bar closed and the streets went quiet, he sometimes sat alone on the curb outside, tracing the edge of his bad knee through his jeans, feeling the faint ache pulsing under the skin. He’d think about who he used to be, the boy who could fly, the man who thought the world would never catch him, and realize that version of himself was long gone.

What was left was this: a man still running from silence, still terrified of standing still long enough to see what came next.

He took another drink, the cold air biting at his throat, and stared into the empty street.

He didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t know who he was anymore.

All he knew was that, for the first time in years, the future scared him.

Not because it was empty, but because it wasn’t.

**

Nicholas told himself it was just dinner.

Dinner with Euijoo’s coworkers. Dinner with Fuma and Yudai, the two men who probably owned matching cardigans and asked questions that started with “So when are you two going to get married?” It was just dinner. No big deal. 

Except it was.

The night before, Euijoo had been so sweet that Nicholas couldn’t stop thinking about it. They had fallen asleep on the couch, limbs tangled. Euijoo had buried his face against Nicholas’s shoulder, voice soft when he murmured, “My Nichol.”

The nickname was new, but Nicholas had replayed it in his head all day like a favorite song.

Now, less than twenty-four hours later, Euijoo was pacing around the apartment in silence, folding and refolding the same sweater. Every time Nicholas opened his mouth to say something reassuring, Euijoo’s jaw tightened just a little more.

Nicholas knew that look. It meant don’t poke the bear.

So he didn’t. He did what he always did when he didn’t know what else to do, he drank and worried about clothes.

By late afternoon, Euijoo was dozing in bed while Nicholas stood in front of the mirror, a half-empty bottle of strawberry wine on the counter. He FaceTimed Harua from the kitchen.

“What about this?” Nicholas asked, stepping back to show a bomber jacket and flared black jeans.

Harua squinted at the screen. “You look like a backup dancer who got lost on the way to a Kpop music video.”

Nicholas sighed. “You’re right.” He peeled the outfit off and tossed it on a chair.

Next came linen pants under a skirt and a cropped sweater. “What about now?”

Harua leaned closer. “Angel dove, I know you said Euijoo’s friends seemed like two old queens, but this is dinner, not Paris Fashion Week.”

“Blah,” Nicholas said and took a long swig from the wine bottle.

“Also,” Harua added, “maybe slow down on the wine. You don’t need to pregame your charm.”

Nicholas ignored him, rummaging through the pile of clothes.

“Ooooh, is Nicholas giving a free show?” Maki’s voice piped up from the background. “I thought your dreams of being a cam boy ended in 2023.”

“It was one joke!” Nicholas yelled, pulling on a dark green cardigan. He swapped the skirt for wide black pants and spun for the camera. “Well?”

Harua tilted his head. “You look great but also like you might overheat. It’s March, not January.”

“I’d rather sweat than look basic,” Nicholas said, pulling the cardigan tighter.

Maki leaned into the frame, smirking. “You’re going to smell like fear and strawberry wine.”

“Worth it.” Nicholas grabbed the bottle and raised it like a toast. “Do I at least look like a man who could survive dinner with lawyers?”

“You look like a man auditioning to survive dinner with lawyers,” Harua said. “Curl your lashes, add jewelry, maybe you’ll distract them.”

Nicholas saluted with the bottle. “Perfect.”

“Dude, don’t drink anymore,” Maki warned.

“Too late,” Nicholas said, grinning. “Thank you for helping me not dress like a tragic ex-boy band member. Love you, bitches.” He hung up before they could scold him.

The apartment was quiet except for the soft hum of the fan and Euijoo’s steady breathing from the bedroom. Nicholas stared at himself in the mirror one last time.

He looked good. Maybe too good. The kind of good that said please don’t ask me about my career or my intentions with your friend.

He took another drink straight from the bottle and tried to picture the evening ahead. Fuma and Yudai would smile politely. Euijoo would fidget and probably pretend not to hear any personal questions. Nicholas would charm his way through it, or at least try.

He capped the bottle, set it aside, and muttered to himself, “All I have to do is get through this dinner.”

Even as he said it, he wasn’t sure if he believed it.

**

The night hadn’t started badly.

In fact, for about an hour, Nicholas almost believed it might go well.

He’d even convinced Euijoo to have one drink before they left. That was a victory. Euijoo had frowned at the glass like it contained poison, then sipped once and smiled in that polite, distant way that meant he was already regretting it. Nicholas had ignored the question of how much he’d already had. He was pacing himself. By his standards.

The subway ride was quiet except for Nicholas’s running commentary on everything from advertisements to the guy playing guitar two cars down. Euijoo laughed once, which Nicholas counted as a win. But the closer they got to the restaurant, the quieter Euijoo became. His face went pale, eyes darting toward the windows.

He knew why Euijoo was tense. Meeting friends meant exposure, and Euijoo still treated being gay like a secret password he was afraid to say out loud. Nicholas didn’t want a lecture, and he didn’t want a fight, so he let it go. 

By the time they stepped into the steakhouse, Nicholas was starving. The place was sleek and expensive, all glass and low lighting and soft jazz that made everyone talk in quieter tones. His stomach growled the moment the smell of seared meat hit him. He realized he hadn’t eaten all day.

Fuma and Yudai were already there, waving from a corner table. They were tall, stylish, and intimidating in the way people are when they seem effortlessly sure of themselves.

When Euijoo made the introductions, Nicholas blurted, “You’re a gorgeous couple,” before he could stop himself.

They both laughed. Euijoo winced.

Nicholas grinned wider to hide his embarrassment. He couldn’t help staring. Yudai was towering and broad-shouldered, and Fuma looked like he could model expensive watches in silent commercials.

“You clean up nice,” Fuma said with a smile.

“Thank you,” Nicholas said, tilting his head. “So do you. Both of you. Seriously, this is like sitting down with a Calvin Klein ad.”

That got another laugh. For a minute, things actually felt easy.

They sat, and the waiter took drink orders. Nicholas ordered a double whiskey, neat. Euijoo’s hand rested briefly on his thigh under the table, a quiet plea not to overdo it. He ignored it.

Introductions turned into small talk, which quickly shifted into Fuma and Yudai discussing one of their recent cases.

Nicholas listened while drinking, pretending to understand half the legal jargon. They were talking about corporate acquisitions and merger clauses like it was the plot of a thriller, both of them sharp and animated. Fuma gestured with his fork as he explained how one company had nearly sunk the deal by leaking insider info, and Yudai added dryly that the client was now “learning about consequences the hard way.”

Nicholas nodded at the right times, laughed when they did, and thought, Thank God they’re carrying this conversation. His own work stories—angry customers, spilled cocktails, the occasional karaoke proposal—sounded small and ridiculous next to billion-yen lawsuits and courtroom drama. He was grateful no one had asked him about the bar. It would have been like comparing fireworks to a scented candle.

It was going well. Great even.

Then Fuma tilted his head. “I’m sorry, but you look so familiar. Do I know you?”

Nicholas froze. There was only one direction that question ever went, and it was downhill.

He laughed awkwardly. “I just have one of those faces.”

“No, it’s not that.” Fuma tapped his temple. “It’s something else.”

Yudai lightly elbowed him. “Fuma, don’t interrogate the guests.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Fuma said quickly, waving it off. “Ignore me.”

Nicholas smiled, trying to ignore Euijoo’s curious glance from across the table. Conversation moved on to something about office gossip and the rising price of rent. Nicholas let himself breathe again. Maybe that was it. Maybe he was safe.

Then the food arrived. Steaks, perfectly charred, sides glistening. Nicholas was halfway through his first bite when Fuma snapped his fingers.

“That’s it! That’s where I know you from,” he said. “You played for the Golden Wizards.”

The bottom dropped out of Nicholas’s stomach.

For a heartbeat no one spoke. Yudai frowned, confused. Euijoo looked between them, waiting for Nicholas to confirm or deny.

“Wow,” Fuma continued, unaware he’d set off a bomb. “I used to be a fan. That game in Osaka—what a season. It was tragic what happened to your knee, though. What have you been up to since then?”

Nicholas’s mouth went dry. He managed a smile that felt like it belonged to someone else. “You know. Working. Doing other things.”

“What kind of other things?” Fuma asked.

Nicholas gripped his fork tighter. “Bartending.”

Fuma blinked. “Oh.”

Yudai kicked him under the table. “Fuma.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“It’s fine,” Nicholas said. The words sounded robotic. He could feel Euijoo’s eyes on him, the gentle pressure of curiosity that made his skin itch.

He forced himself to take another bite, to nod along to whatever Yudai was saying about restaurant recommendations. The steak tasted like sawdust. The noise around him blurred into static. He could feel the weight of his past pressing down like a hand around his throat.

Halfway through his drink, he pushed his chair back. “Excuse me. Bathroom.”

He didn’t wait for a response.

The restroom was empty, white marble and soft lighting, too clean, too quiet. Nicholas gripped the edge of the sink, staring at himself in the mirror. His reflection looked fine—normal, even. No sign of the panic clawing up his throat. He splashed water on his face, trying to slow his breathing, but all he could hear was Fuma’s voice saying, What happened to your knee?

What happened was everything.

He left the bathroom and went straight to the bar instead of back to the table. “Whiskey,” he told the bartender. “Double.”

He drank it in one swallow. Ordered another. The warmth spread, dulling the sharp edges of embarrassment. He checked his phone. A text from Euijoo: Are you okay?

Nicholas stared at it. Then he put the phone face down, tossed cash on the counter, and muttered, “Fuck this.”

He walked out.

The next bar was smaller, darker, cheaper—the kind of place that smelled like spilled beer and bad decisions. Nicholas only came here when he wanted to disappear. The bartender didn’t ask questions. He liked that about the place.

He drank. Then he drank more. The world blurred into laughter from strangers, neon lights reflected in puddles, the buzz in his head a steady hum.

Every few minutes his phone vibrated. He didn’t check it. He didn’t have to. He could already picture Euijoo’s messages, the polite concern, the unspoken disappointment. The image made him drink faster.

At some point the room tilted. He steadied himself on the counter, blinking through the haze. All he could see in his mind was Euijoo’s face, the same face from earlier, the one that had looked at him across the table with quiet admiration, confusion, maybe even pity. He thought of Fuma’s words, It was tragic what happened to your knee, and wanted to laugh.

Tragic. What a stupid word.

He remembered the last game he’d ever played, the snap, the silence that followed, the way the crowd’s noise turned into a distant ocean roar. He remembered lying on the floor, staring up at the lights, thinking about how unfair it was that something could end in one second.

And now, five years later, he was here, sitting on a broken stool in a bar that didn’t even serve decent whiskey, still ending things one drink at a time.

The bartender asked if he was all right. Nicholas waved him off. “Fine,” he said. “Never better.”

The bartender gave him a look that said otherwise.

Nicholas ordered another anyway.

When his phone started ringing, he glanced down long enough to see Euijoo’s name. He hit decline. A few seconds later, it rang again. He declined that too.

He thought about calling him back. He didn’t. Instead he called Yuma.

It took three rings. Then Yuma’s voice came through, tired and familiar. “What did you do now?”

“I’m at The Green Room,” Nicholas said. “Can you come get me?”

There was a pause, a sigh, the kind of sound that said again? Then Yuma replied, “On my way.”

Nicholas stayed where he was, staring at the condensation on his glass until Yuma appeared twenty minutes later.

“Oh honey,” Yuma said, sliding onto the stool beside him. “You don’t look too good.”

Nicholas laughed, low and humorless. “Story of my life.”

Yuma waved at the bartender to close the tab. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

Nicholas stood, wobbling. The room swayed with him. Yuma’s arm came around his shoulder, steadying him.

“You’re a mess,” Yuma said gently.

“I know,” Nicholas muttered. “It’s my best quality.”

They made it to the door. Cold air hit his face, sharp enough to sting. Nicholas squinted up at the sky. It looked too big, too far away.

“You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?” Yuma asked.

Nicholas didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

The night spun, colors melting together. He tried to focus on the sidewalk, on Yuma’s voice, on anything, but everything kept fading.

The last thing he heard before the dark took him was Yuma’s voice, soft and resigned. “You’re gonna kill yourself like this, Nicholas.”

Then the lights went out.

**

Someone was calling his name.

It took Nicholas a few seconds to realize the voice wasn’t in his head. He blinked himself awake, groaning, his skull pounding like a bass drum. His tongue felt like sandpaper. The room was dark, but the faint smell of vanilla lotion told him where he was. Yuma’s room.

“Nicholas!” The voice again, louder this time.

He sat up, squinting. It wasn’t Yuma calling. It was Euijoo.

The sound made his stomach drop.

He could hear voices in the living room now—Yuma’s, sharp and irritated, and another that sounded suspiciously like Harua’s. He rubbed his face and muttered a curse. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t going to be good.

Nicholas swung his legs off the bed, searching the floor for clothes. He found only one of Yuma’s oversized T-shirts and pulled it on, the fabric swallowing him whole. The shouting continued.

When he stepped into the hallway, the scene was pure chaos.

Euijoo stood near the door, flushed and wild-eyed. Yuma, wearing pajama pants and a robe, was shoving at him with one hand, while Harua stood beside them holding a metal baseball bat like he was guarding a castle.

“Will you please leave?” Yuma was saying. “It’s almost eight in the morning!”

“I just want to talk to him!” Euijoo’s voice cracked, desperation spilling through it.

“Try texting like a normal human,” Harua said, waving the bat.

Euijoo turned toward the sound of footsteps. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Nichol.”

The way he said it broke Nicholas in half.

For a moment, no one moved. Yuma’s hand froze mid-push, Harua’s bat lowered slightly. Euijoo looked exhausted, hair a mess, his usually polished appearance undone.

Nicholas swallowed hard. “What’s going on?”

Yuma huffed. “Your lawyer boyfriend refuses to leave. He’s been shouting for ten minutes. Harua came over with his bat because we thought we were being robbed.”

“I wasn’t shouting,” Euijoo said softly.

“You were absolutely shouting,” Harua said.

“I just need to talk to him,” Euijoo insisted. His eyes found Nicholas again. “Please.”

Nicholas looked at Yuma and Harua. “Can you guys give us a minute?”

Yuma crossed his arms. “If you two start screaming again, I’m calling the cops.”

“We’ll be fine,” Nicholas said.

Harua eyed them both and set the bat by the door. “We’ll be in Yuma’s room. Try not to break anything.”

When they disappeared down the hall, silence settled like dust. Nicholas walked into the kitchen, opened a cabinet, and reached into the back. His fingers brushed against a crumpled pack of cigarettes. He pulled it out, found a lighter, and lit one.

The first drag burned his throat in the best possible way.

Behind him, Euijoo said quietly, “I didn’t know you smoked.”

Nicholas blew out a stream of smoke without turning around. “Apparently there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“I guess so.” Euijoo’s voice trembled slightly. “Where did you go last night? Why did you just vanish?”

Nicholas stared at the ashtray, watching the smoke curl. “I went to a bar.”

“You just… disappeared,” Euijoo said. “Do you know how terrified I was? I called everywhere. I thought something had happened to you.”

“I asked Yuma to pick me up,” Nicholas said simply.

“Of course you asked Yuma.” Euijoo scoffed, the anger finally spilling through.

Nicholas turned, eyes narrowing. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means every time something happens, you call him. Not me. Not the person you’re supposed to be with.”

Nicholas took another drag and exhaled slowly. “I’m tired of this. You and Yuma. It’s the same argument every time. He’s been there before you, Euijoo. He’ll be there—”

“After?” Euijoo interrupted, voice shaking. “That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it? He’ll be there after.”

Nicholas said nothing.

“What’s going on with you and him?” Euijoo demanded. “Because I’m starting to think you care more about him than you do about me.”

“Stop.” Nicholas’s tone snapped like a whip. “You’re twisting things.”

“Am I?”

Nicholas rubbed at his forehead. “We’re too different. You and me. This… whatever this is, it doesn’t work.”

Euijoo’s expression faltered. “I thought you liked that. You said you liked that we were different.”

“I did,” Nicholas said, voice cracking slightly. “Before. But now it’s too much. You’re too much.”

The words hit like a slap.

Euijoo’s mouth parted in disbelief. “Too much?”

“You don’t know me,” Nicholas said. “You never try to know me. You only see the version of me you want to see. If you actually knew who I was, you wouldn’t like me.”

Euijoo stepped closer. “Don’t do this. Don’t push me away because—”

“Because what?” Nicholas snapped. “Because you found out I’m a complete loser? Because I’m an almost-thirty-year-old bartender who used to be a hotshot ballplayer until I fucked it all up?”

Euijoo was silent for a long time. Then he said quietly, “You know, you leave your ID lying around everywhere. It wasn’t that hard to find out your real name. To look you up.”

Nicholas froze.

Euijoo met his eyes. “You think I haven’t known who you are for months? You think I haven’t known your past since the start?”

The world seemed to tilt. Nicholas felt like someone had punched a hole through it.

“Come on, Nichol,” Euijoo said softly. “You really thought I didn’t know?”

Nicholas stubbed his cigarette into the sink. “Get the fuck out.”

“Stop it,” Euijoo pleaded. “You’re angry because you feel like you’ve lost control. I get that. But I’m not trying to shame you. I’m trying to tell you that I love you. That I want to know you.”

The word love landed like a knife.

Nicholas shook his head, his voice breaking. “You don’t even know yourself, Euijoo. You can’t even call me your boyfriend to your friends. Don’t give me that ‘I love you’ shit when you hate what you see in the mirror.”

Euijoo flinched like he’d been struck. The silence that followed was unbearable.

“Get out,” Nicholas said again, louder this time.

“Nichol—”

“Get the fuck out!”

He shouted so loud the sound bounced off the walls.

Within seconds, Yuma and Harua came running back into the room. Yuma grabbed Euijoo by the arm, trying to pull him toward the door while Harua muttered something about neighbors calling the police.

Euijoo’s voice cracked as he said, “I love you, Nichol. Please.”

Nicholas didn’t look at him. He stood by the counter, jaw clenched, staring at the pack of cigarettes.

Yuma shoved Euijoo out the door and closed it behind him. The apartment fell silent except for Nicholas’s ragged breathing.

Yuma turned toward him. “You all right?”

Nicholas didn’t answer right away. He stared at the door Euijoo had just walked through, the air still heavy with everything unsaid.

“Nicholas,” Harua said softly, stepping closer. “Hey, talk to us.”

Yuma’s voice followed, gentler than before. “You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

Nicholas shook his head. “I just need some space.”

“Nic—” Yuma started, but Nicholas cut him off, his voice low and rough.

“Please. I don’t want to talk. I just… need a minute. Don’t follow me.” Then he moved, slow and mechanical, to his room.

He opened the closet, reached behind a box of old clothes, and pulled out a half-empty bottle of vodka. He twisted the cap off and took a long swallow. It burned all the way down.

He locked the door, sank onto the bed, and stared at the floor.

His heart still echoed with Euijoo’s voice. My Nichol.

The sound of it felt like something dying inside him.

He took another drink, hoping it would kill the rest.