hello stranger

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at [Link]

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: NCT (Band)
Relationship: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Nakamoto Yuta
Characters: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun, Nakamoto Yuta, Original Characters, Zhong
Chen Le, Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Business Boys, Future Fic, set 2029, Post-breakup,
Unfinished Business, Chronic Pain, unauthorized prescription drug use,
Drinking, Angst, dilf!jaehyun, mention of human trafficking, Conflict,
injury care, Mentions of Needles and Injections, Kissing, Oral Sex,
mention of gagging, Anal Sex, mention of omorashi, Catharsis, Outing,
the trauma of being outed, unresolved romantic arc
Language: English
Series: Part 2 of this is what they say
Stats: Published: 2021-07-19 Completed: 2022-01-16 Words: 65,286 Chapters:
6/6
 hello stranger
by sneakiest

Summary

Yuta needs to secure a deal if he wants any chance at climbing the corporate ladder. If only
his past wouldn’t keep interfering with his future.

Notes

Hi, everyone! I'm still wrapping my head around the fact that the sequels I swore up and
down I wouldn't write are in fact being written! It turns out when you say "but I'm never
going to write it," that's actually a curse and you'll spend six to eight months plotting, making
extensive timeline notes, and dragging out the inevitable. At last, I'm super happy to be here,
and I hope everyone enjoys what I've got in store. We're going into the future with this one!!!
Exciting.

A few important notes before we get started:

- This fic, "hello stranger," is actually the first of two main fics in this series (I say "main"
because there might be some backstory one-shots and such to fill in the gaps). This
installment focuses on Yuta and Jaehyun, while the second tackles the wider ensemble cast of

curtains on Yuta and Jaehyun, because it isn't!

done.
😎
characters. So don't get to the end of this fic and assume that's where I'm dropping the
Everyone has a ways to go before I'm

- Because I am who I am as a writer, I can promise a HEA, but only at the end of the series.
Until that point, please heed the tags on each work and hold on tight through the ride.

- Big thanks to Anne, not only for their superior beta skills and big juicy brain (which I put to
use in researching Japanese corporations and all manner of things!), but also because they're
a kind, thoughtful, enthusiastic person and a great friend. I don't think I could have written
this without their support.

- Big thanks to C., M., and the group chats where I mercilessly torment my friends with
regularity.

Oay, all of that said, it's time to dive in. I hope you enjoy!

See the end of the work for more notes

 Chapter 1

Lisbon, Portugal
2029

Yuta fishes herbs out of the weird spritz the server recommended. He gulps it down, and by
the time he looks up, Katsumi has already been swallowed by a sea of jetlagged men in suits.
She promised to text him updates within the hour. His phone sits on the low table in front of
the chair he’s claimed. Yuta brushes a trembling droplet of condensation from its face and
orders another medicinal spritz while he waits.

He hates having to sit here, covered in stale plane air and old sweat, crumpling a rosemary
sprig in a cocktail napkin. It should be Yuta tracking executive assistant gossip like
breadcrumb trails from airport to hotel to bar, not Katsumi in her viciously high heels and
pencil skirt. But he knew in hour one of a twenty-hour flight that his knee would lock up, that
he was doomed to immobility. There was no room to stretch it in coach.

He hates coach too, but it would have been rude to leave Katsumi on her own.

She knew from the way he favored his leg through disembarking to immigration that she
would have to run point on locating Xiang Shan. Katsumi left Yuta at the sumptuous but
shockingly crowded Ritz bar—the last location one of Xiang Shan’s envoys was rumored to
be spotted at—and went on the hunt alone, despite Yuta only being senior to her by virtue of
his surname. This isn’t even her responsibility. It’s Yuta’s own fool’s errand.

But it’s Yuta’s shot out of middle management. He has to take it, no matter what it costs him
in pride to rely on Katsumi to do his legwork.

Yuta drains the second spritz and orders water when the next server appears. His knee throbs,
though he’s got his leg as extended as politeness allows, given how few empty seats there are.
The terrace was full up, or he would have waited outside to escape the noise of too many
conversations in too many languages with the tinkling of piano overtop.

In the process of a Google manager complaining about his flight and accommodations as he
stakes out the cherry-red armchair closest to Yuta’s, Yuta has to retract his leg in a hurry, lest
it get jostled.

Just that motion ratchets up his pain. He goes still but for his hand, which clenches around his
phone so hard the plastic creaks. Yuta gives in well before he planned to and reaches into his
jacket pocket for his discreet little black case. He slips the pain pill into his mouth once the
water arrives. It can take up to an hour to hit, though he hopes for less. If Katsumi comes
back in ten minutes and says they’ve struck out and need to attempt to locate Xiang Shan
tomorrow, when his schedule is less inscrutable, Yuta will need to be able to walk out of here.

To distract himself, he gets out his phone and texts his sisters that he’s arrived safely, then
goes through his news alerts. He ignores the spikes of pain radiating all the way down to his
toes from his knee. He ignores the fact that the Google manager recognizes some of his
associates and waves them over, which makes the section of the bar Yuta’s inhabiting get
even louder.

Katsumi texts him: They’re supposedly in one of the restaurants. I’ll order a salad and find
out.

Yuta responds that she should use his surname if she has any trouble getting access. He adds
that he’ll reimburse her for the salad. She ignores him.

Not long after, Makiko texts him back as she winds down for the night after putting Yuta’s
favorite nephews to bed. She asks about his flight, how he’s finding Portugal. Yuta sends her
a screenshot of the weather app on his phone, along with a few pictures he snapped in the car
ride from the airport. 32 degrees, in September. Lisbon’s enduring another ultra-long summer,
this one breaking more records than the last, like everywhere else on Earth, but Yuta has no
time or desire to soak it up.

The pianist seems to be playing even louder, to account for the unseemly amount of noise in
the upscale bar. Yuta wishes them good luck and regrets that he put his AirPods into his
carryon and sent his luggage ahead to the hotel.

It’s been fifteen minutes, and Katsumi hasn’t checked in since her last text. He has no idea
how much longer he’ll sit here, or whether Katsumi is going to show up to every restaurant in
the hotel to order a salad at each in pursuit of Xiang Shan. Yuta will pay for all of them if she
does. It’s the least he can do. The stipend they were provided for meals is enough for a salad
and a half, at most, at the Ritz.

When Yuta’s father returned from work trips, his mother tenderized him with a good meal
and top-shelf whiskey, so eventually, he’d be drunk and relaxed enough to admit how many
people paid handsomely for minutes of his time. Yuta grew up on his father’s quiet disdain
for foreign investors bankrolling lavish nights out in far-flung places, all for the opportunity
to present him with pitches in penthouse suites or the backseats of limos. His father always
brought the good news of a new partner, a new deal, back to the board in time for a Christmas
bonus that could put one of his daughters through college. During the most boring hours of
studying for his MBA, Yuta liked to imagine how far he could push the flattery and
hospitality. What could he take from them, if Yuta had something they wanted? How deep
were these sorts of pockets? How many of his terrible habits could he entice them to finance?

Yuta used to have a lot of ideas about his future, before his father left the company. Those
fantasies of being wined and dined belonged to someone who’d never worked a day in his
life. Back then, he was like a kid dreaming of all the ice cream and melonpan they’d eat for
dinner when they grew up.

The thought nearly makes him smile, which is how he can tell the pill is hitting. A warm,
prickling sensation is spreading throughout his body, bringing with it a pleasant distance from
pain that lets him cautiously re-extend his leg.

Yuta hides a grin when the Google manager moves on at the polite request from staff that
they keep their voices down so other guests can enjoy the ambiance.
Left in relative privacy again, Yuta opens Grindr, recently re-downloaded to his phone in an
airport bathroom, with the confidence of someone on a narcotic in public.

He’s got broad enough shoulders to protect his screen from prying eyes, and there are far
more interesting people in this bar anyway.

A selection of gorgeous men—or rather, their abs, occasionally their cocks—vie for Yuta’s
attention. He flicks through them dispassionately, wondering how many of these stubborn
chins and chiseled abs are here for the summit too, how many potential hookups could get
him an in with certain executives.

He’s not interested in that, particularly. He is interested in getting his dick sucked. It’s been a
while. Yuta lets loose rarely, and usually when traveling. He’s too busy, and his name too
well known, to sleep with men in Osaka. A hookup or two after long hours on the exhibition
floor will be a consolation prize if this summit turns out to be as fruitless and exhausting as
he thinks it will.

At the end of this trip, Yuta may still be stuck in a job he hates with an embarrassing salary
and no personal life to speak of, but at least he’ll have gotten to take a man to bed in the
standard hotel room Nakamoto Corp provided.

Mike, 27, four hundred feet away, looks promising, with “vers” in his profile and nothing else
in there that would put Yuta off. He weighs the benefits of messaging him now, when he’s
still waiting to hear back from Katsumi. He may end up limping to another location in pursuit
of Xiang Shan and unable to keep any appointment he tries to set up. It might not be worth it.
On the other hand, Mike, and his charming throwback of a mirror selfie, won’t be available
for long.

Yuta hovers his thumb over the screen, lip between his teeth, and considers sending the tap
despite all the reasons he shouldn’t.

Whatever. He can tell Katsumi to give up for the day and relax before they have to hawk
upcoming product launches to sweaty, tired people stuffed with catering food.

Yuta sends the tap and smiles with a rush of decisiveness, and possibly horniness, his lip
pulling free of his teeth.

He’s still gazing down at Mike’s abs, waiting for his response before he calls Katsumi off,
when he hears a low, velvet voice straight out of his own brain, filtering in through the noise
he’s done his best to tune out. It takes a second, but recognition rolls over him like a wave,
physical enough to make his core tense.

“Yuta? I thought that was you.”

When the wave passes, Yuta fumbles his phone onto his lap, thankfully face down, and
glances up. He has no idea what his face looks like, but he tries to keep it still.

Jaehyun. Not a hallucination or a wire crossed from stress and a pill Yuta may or may not
have purchased illegally, but Jung Jaehyun. He’s standing near the pair of chairs across from
Yuta, one of which is vacant. Jaehyun has not committed to sitting in it. Not yet.

He’s smiling, is the worst part. Worse than his pinstriped suit and impeccable vest, than the
cobalt-blue tie knotted under his throat. Worse than the fact that he wears clothes in a way
Yuta doesn’t recognize. He’s more beautiful than Yuta’s memories ever conceived of, tall and
strong and substantial in a way that makes Yuta feel like a wire hanger bent out of shape, and
he’s not scowling or looking at him with the anger or old hurt Yuta might have feared, if he
ever imagined this nightmare unfolding. He doesn’t look upset to run into his dick of an ex at
the Ritz bar. No, he’s smiling, and unless Jung Jaehyun has become an excellent liar in the
last five—no, six? Seven?—years, it’s real.

“Hi,” Jaehyun says. The dimples, and the tiny lines around his eyes, intensify for one
moment before his face smooths and then gently winces an apology. “I’m sorry if this is
strange. I couldn’t not say something when I realized it was you, though.”

“Hi,” Yuta says, too loudly. English is primed to humiliate him, even if he did practice it on
airline employees and their taxi driver. He lifts a hand, the fingertips trembling, and gestures
big for Jaehyun to sit down in the vacant chair. His heart is pounding, and the clammy sweat
of travel is coming back. “You just surprised me. Of course it’s—fine. And strange. Sit,” he
instructs, when Jaehyun continues to stand.

“I actually have a reservation in”—Jaehyun checks his watch, a slim, octagonal steel Cartier
with a black leather band that Yuta’s neglected collection covets—“five minutes.”

“Oh, well, you should—”

Jaehyun, with astonishing smoothness, smiles at Yuta’s fumbling attempt at an out and speaks
over him. “I sent my assistant to enjoy a night off,” he says, eyebrows lifting. He’s so
handsome it’s disturbing. The pit of Yuta’s stomach, filled with liquor and mediocre plane
food and his dissolving pill, churns. “I don’t know if you have dinner plans, and I don’t want
to monopolize you when I know you’ve got to be busy, but if you have time for a drink, I’d
love to catch up.”

Jaehyun’s kept his English up. It’s just as good, if not better, than when they lived in Chicago.

The last thing Yuta wants to do, high and unprepared, is have a drink with Jaehyun,
especially when his English is so disjointed. If this reunion had to happen, why now? Why
not on day two or three of the summit, when the old rhythms and some of his vocabulary
have had the chance to filter back to him? Why does he have to stare down ghosts he created
now?

Yuta wishes he were enough of a piece of shit to turn and run away from Jaehyun twice in
one decade. He’s not. He’s a Nakamoto. He pays his debts. He owes Jaehyun restitution. The
very least of his debt is a drink. He’ll be on a plane by the end of the week anyway. Whatever
happens at the Ritz in Lisbon will stay at the Ritz in Lisbon.

But why couldn’t he have gone straight to getting his dick sucked at his own hotel? Why did
he have to chase the whale of an impossible handshake deal with Xiang Shan like he’s
Ishmael? Why did he have to be at this bar at the same time as Jaehyun?
Yuta smiles somewhat convincingly, thanks to the courage and plausible deniability of not
being sober. “Sure,” he says, and it’s bitter on his tongue.

---

Yuta agrees to one drink, having made excuses that his coworkers expect him to meet up with
them, which is the second of what Yuta is sure will be many absolute lies. He sends a text to
Katsumi to call her off, belatedly, though he didn’t need to bother, since she’s already
confirmed the restaurant was a dead end.

Yuta closes the Grindr app in a hurry, but he sees with something like hysteria that Mike, 27,
now eight hundred feet away, did message him.

The pill’s worked well enough to stop him from limping, or maybe Yuta’s panic at seeing
Jaehyun again for the first time in nearly a decade has rid him of all awareness of his body,
including its limitations and pain. Either way, he makes it to the restaurant without showing
too much weakness.

Jaehyun’s table is waiting, set beautifully for two. Yuta’s treated with such unobtrusive
deference by the staff that it makes him feel nostalgic. He’s not the biggest advocate of fine
dining, and nowadays he mostly endures it for his mother and his sisters and not for fun, but
it suits him just as well now as it did when he was twenty-five and throwing his black card
around without a second thought.

As Jaehyun sits, his pale, graceful hand undoes the button on his suit jacket, revealing more
of the vest and tie, more of the body Yuta used to know so well but which looks alien to him
now. He’s… big. He’s bigger than he’s ever been. Not hulked out, that would never be
Jaehyun’s style, but he’s not the lean sculpture he was before. Yuta remembers how hard he
worked for his body, steaming himself like a clam in the stupid infrared sauna his trainer
evangelized and nearly dehydrating himself for the sake of his abs.

Yuta buries himself in the drink menu and orders something at random. He doesn’t plan to do
more than taste it. He’s already in dangerous territory with what’s in his system.

“I’m not used to your hair being so…” Jaehyun gestures at Yuta.

Yuta’s black hair being long enough to flop into his eyes, and the two sedate earrings left in
his lobes, still garner him the occasional look at the office, but after giving up so much, Yuta
refuses to shed all his individuality.

Despite his small visible rebellions, Yuta is demonstrably not the manic twink with a different
hair color each month that Jaehyun remembers him as. He has to blend in now, they both
know that too well, and he doesn’t wear a suit or a Cartier watch nearly as well as Jaehyun.
Who definitely has some highlights in his hair, Yuta notes.

“It’s nice,” Jaehyun continues. “Suits you.”

Yuta nearly chokes on his sip of what turns out to be a brandy-based cocktail. How is
Jaehyun this easy? How is he this nice? “It’s getting a little long these days.”
“Not long enough to put into one of those little buns?” Jaehyun says, smiling, encouraging.

Yuta can admit to himself that Jaehyun’s utter disregard for the wreckage between them is
grating. While he doesn’t want a confrontation, he also doesn’t want to lie in wait or play
games. It’s unbearable to pretend they’re two old friends catching up. He doesn’t even know
Jaehyun, not anymore. Not really. And even if that was Yuta’s own choice, he isn’t sure how
much he wants to pretend he recognizes the beautiful stranger in front of him. It’s fake, it’s
making his skin crawl, to pretend that he can sit at this table and catch up with Jung Jaehyun,
whoever that is.

But that’s how Yuta feels about it, and it’s not up to Yuta how this goes. If Jaehyun wants to
pretend that it’s all water under the bridge, and if he wants to discuss Yuta’s corporate
transformation, then Yuta owes him indulgence. If Jaehyun wants to throw his drink in Yuta’s
face, Yuta will withstand it. Whatever Jaehyun wants to talk about, for the length of
Jaehyun’s vodka soda, Yuta will withstand it.

“Mmm, I don’t think I could make that work again. Too old for messy hair,” he jokes.

“I always thought it looked nice, when it was long.” As Yuta reels from that, how easily
Jaehyun said it, he moves right on. “I saw Nakamoto Corp on the partner list this year. I think
it’s the first time?” he asks.

If they’re talking business, Yuta can do that. Marginally. He swirls his cocktail and resolutely
does not take another sip. “The organizers made an offer we can’t refuse.” He knows they
have been invited every year for the last decade. This year, they promised a lot of press, and
extensive time on panels, and a truly ridiculous amount of floor space. Now the executives
have an excuse to feel important, and the summit can boast they have more than one Japanese
company in attendance.

For a supposedly global summit, there sure are a lot of American Google and Microsoft
employees milling around.

“Sohyun went in 2025, and my father went last year, before he retired, but this is my first.
First time in Portugal, too.”

“How is your sister?” He probably shouldn’t have gone with that. He should have asked
Jaehyun how he’s liking Lisbon. They could compare notes about the weather. At least it’s
polite to ask after family. Not too personal.

“She’s good. She’s got her hands full, so I came instead—she’s just back from maternity
leave for her second.” Jaehyun sips his vodka soda. A few of the ice cubes in the glass shift
around as he plunks it back on the table. “I don’t know if you remember I have a niece?”

Jaehyun seems to be waiting, head cocked, for Yuta to acknowledge the fact that yes, he’s
aware Jaehyun has a niece. Jaehyun cried because he wanted to fly back to Korea to be there
for the birth and didn’t manage to time it correctly. After he got back from his belated visit
and met her properly, Jaehyun went around showing strangers in coffee shops and grocery
stores pictures of her, red-faced with tiny fists curled next to her ears. Yuta used to catch him
smiling down at his phone, trailing his fingers across the glass, like he was trying to soothe
her through it.

It was two months before Yuta left. But he remembers.

“Yes, I remember.”

Jaehyun nods. “I have a nephew now too. He’s great. Very rambunctious.”

“Sounds like a family trait.”

This would be where Yuta tells him that both his sisters have children, all of them boys.
They’re both uncles now. Isn’t that funny?

He eyes the level of Jaehyun’s drink and wishes he would hurry up and finish it. Belatedly,
Yuta’s brain kicks back online and reminds him that staring unblinkingly at a drink is not
something a sober person does. He looks up to find Jaehyun studying him.

Yuta’s skin prickles under his gaze, how much is missing in it. It’s calm, casual, and too kind.
Then Jaehyun shifts, leaning forward to murmur over the cutlery and china. “Listen, I can tell
you’re uncomfortable. You don’t need to chain yourself to the table just because I asked. You
can go.”

Yuta should feel relief. He doesn’t. He suspects a catch. Not because he knows Jaehyun well
enough anymore to read him like he used to, but because he’s been around enough to spot a
shark in a suit. Jaehyun is one, now. “I don’t mind,” he lies. “It’s nice to see you. It’s just
strange, like you said.”

Jaehyun levels him a look, like Yuta told a joke, but then smooths back over into neutrality.
“It doesn’t have to be uncomfortable if we don’t want it to be. I’m honestly happy to see you.
And to see that you look so well.”

Yuta catches himself before he makes a face of his own. He knows he still looks good,
overall, but also like he doesn’t get enough good food and exercise, because he doesn’t, or
see the sun enough, because he doesn’t, and like someone who’s been wearing the same
clothes for too long, because he is. Jaehyun leveled up; Yuta leveled out. “Thanks. I’m glad
you look, uh, healthy. And good. And I like your watch,” Yuta offers.

“Thanks, Beatrice got— I got it for Christmas.” Jaehyun tilts it on his wrist and studies it, the
face glinting in the light.

Yuta doesn’t respond to that. Jaehyun said it on purpose. He had to have. He’s sitting in his
chair, far too perfect and unbothered, to not have intentionally dropped the name of his wife.

Ex-wife, Yuta knows, thanks to Ten and a news article he shouldn’t have clicked on. But the
move was still calculated.

Yuta’s bad at chess, worse at Shogi and Go. He’s still got enough pride, though, to maintain
an expression of interest, even if it strains at the corners.
He knew this was fake. He knew Jaehyun’s invitation was pointed. It couldn’t be anything
but pointed, with their history. Honestly, it would have been better for them both if Jaehyun
had been honest and started yelling at him or demanding the answers Yuta never gave.

“I am glad you’re well, Jaehyun,” Yuta says evenly. “I’m glad we could do this.” He puts the
pristine napkin from his lap back onto the table, onto the plate meant for Jaehyun’s assistant.
He assumes Jaehyun will have no trouble finding a dinner companion in Yuta’s absence. “But
I really should get going.”

Jaehyun nods, and a fraction of his composure has flickered and died. He glances away from
Yuta when he stands up. Yuta feels a sort of victory, knowing that he cracked Jaehyun’s shell
even slightly. It’s nice to know he’s capable of it.

At the same time, he knows what he’s getting away with. Jaehyun could demand they
continue the conversation, and Yuta would sit right back down. It’s a mercy to let him walk
away.

What he owes Jaehyun probably can’t be measured in dinners and drinks or tears and
accusations. That’s why Yuta lingers instead of simply walking away and ending the farce.
He waits to see if Jaehyun has anything else to say, and when it seems Jaehyun doesn’t, Yuta
coughs up what he can of his debt at once.

“I don’t remember if I ever said it,” he lies. He knows he never said what he’s haltingly
putting together. “But I am sorry for the way I left. I should not have done what I did.”

Jaehyun looks smaller from this vantage, seated while Yuta stands, though not an inch less
possessed. He’s able to look Yuta in the eye. It seems like it costs him nothing. “I forgave you
a long time ago,” he says. “Don’t worry about that.”

Jaehyun is a magnificent liar now. Gone are the days when Yuta could tweak the skin above
his elbow and call him out for being obvious, for his expression flattening, for his voice being
too measured. This was artful; it winds Yuta to hear the words I forgave you. It bothers Yuta
how much he wants to believe it.

“Well, anyway,” Yuta says. “I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you that, and I wanted to
say…” Yuta rolls it around in his mouth. “Fatherhood suits you.”

Jaehyun’s face, as handsome as he remembers but with attractive shadows under his
cheekbones that he doesn’t, furrows into an emotion Yuta almost recognizes. His mouth
parts, but he doesn’t speak.

He doesn’t know if Yuta means it or if it was a dig. That makes two of them.

“Yuta,” Jaehyun finally says, and there’s something there in his tone, something moving
behind his eyes, but nothing else follows. He doesn’t tell Yuta to shut up and sit down. He
doesn’t say anything else.

“Take care,” Yuta says, and walks away.

His knee gives him the grace of making it to the maître d station before it buckles.

After a moment to steady himself, Yuta walks on it stubbornly, refusing to acknowledge the
hitch in his step once he’s off the carpet, all the way to the hotel’s exit. He needs to get away
from the Ritz, from Jaehyun’s territory. He flags down a taxi and collapses into the back of it.

The sun isn’t even down yet. He’s whisked through the streets and doesn’t even bother to
look up and take in what is by all accounts a beautiful city. He doesn’t sightsee on business
trips, but usually he likes to look out the window and make up stories about the people who
live in the houses he can see, what their neighborhoods are like.

One hand rubs his kneecap, which he can admit is swollen. Yuta bears the pressure against
noticeable scar tissue, the lack of give in his skin over the area, the sharp tingles of pain from
damaged nerves. All of that from sitting still on a plane for too long.

He should have paid out of pocket for first class. He should change his flight home so this
doesn’t get worse. Yuta can’t bear coach for twenty more hours.

It all goes back to his knee, the dislocated kneecap and the torn ACL. It all goes back to one
wrong move, just practicing tackles for fun. It’s the reason why he’s sitting here in this taxi,
why he’s on this soulless corporate trip, working at a job he doesn’t want and with none of
the upward mobility he assumed nepotism would grant him.

His injury is why he went to Chicago all those years ago, to nurse his wounds and get his
degree where no one knew him. His injury is why he met Jaehyun. Why he had to leave
Jaehyun. Why it was so awful to see him again, after the disappearing act Yuta pulled. Why
Jaehyun’s pointed reminder of how he ran straight into the arms of heteronormativity the
minute Yuta left had cut like a knife.

In some other universe, one where Yuta’s body didn’t fail him, Yuta’s probably a
commentator by now, retired from the sport, and he can suck all the dick he wants and dye
his hair whatever color he wants it to be.

In a universe where Yuta was a good, filial son in the first place, he’d have his knee and the
career his father intended for him.

In this one, he’s high in the back of a taxi cab and massaging scar tissue so he’ll be able to be
a good little automaton on the floor tomorrow. In this one, he’s opening Grindr in the hopes
he can find someone to make him forget how Jaehyun looked, gazing across a table set for
two.
 Chapter 2
Chapter Notes

The reception to chapter one/this fic in general has been so incredible, oh my

goodness!!! I did notice a lot of you were reeling from the revelations in ch 1, which is
understandable (Jaehyun's a dilf???? He's divorced???), but I did want to remind folks
that Jaehyun and Yuta discuss the fact that their relationship is ostensibly temporary in
"round each other up," though it's fairly brief. I know, I know, it doesn't make it better,
but there was some warning this fic might hit a little hard. <3

And here's a reminder that, unless I state otherwise, this series (and others I write!) will
end happily. It just takes a bit to get there, sometimes. (And that's a reminder to read the
tags as we go!)

Onward, then, to the chapter!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Yuta’s at the pool before dawn. It’s deserted except for one old man doing laps.

Last night’s hookup lent him the small mercy of falling asleep quickly. He sent the man out
of his room after their mutual satisfaction and a courtesy breath mint, checking both ways
down the hall in case Katsumi or someone else from the company happened to be about. Yuta
slept alone, but he still woke up before five-thirty, sweating and trying to escape his dreams.

He decided to swim for a taste of normalcy in the middle of the highly abnormal. At home,
he does it two or three times a week. It’s the only physical activity his PT cleared for him
outside of the clinic, aside from modified yoga, which Yuta only does out of mulish
dedication to keeping himself somewhat limber instead of a creaking husk at his desk. But he
likes swimming; he likes the buoyancy, the silky sensation of being submerged, the sting of
chlorine that lingers in his sinuses. Swimming is the same in his apartment’s indoor pool in
Kadoma as it is in this hotel pool in Lisbon.

Admittedly, the air here smells better than the humid, sour air around the indoor pool; it’s
downright pleasant as it buffers his body once Yuta sheds his robe and maneuvers down the
pool steps. He stops and looks at the skyline when he’s on the last step, marveling at the way
dawn is teasing the edges of the sky but not fully ready to reveal itself. The old man
continues his laps, but even the splash of water sounds faint, easy to ignore. Yuta’s knee
sends a spike of pain down to his toes to make it clear that it’s cranky to be stood on, but he
withstands it for a few moments. It’s nice to look up and feel small and insignificant.

He doesn’t let himself linger in insignificance for too long, submerging himself to start his
warmups. He can’t afford much personal time, even this early, and he can’t afford his knee’s
stabbing agony either. A half hour in the water to give the joint some relief from bearing his
weight is as close to a remedy as he’s going to get. That, plus some industrial amounts of
ibuprofen purchased from the hotel’s kiosk, will have to keep him mobile through a long day.

Tomorrow does not look great, if Yuta’s being honest. He’s scheduled for an even longer shift
on the exhibition floor.

Yuta planned to use the pills to manage the inevitable pain after travel and so much walking
and standing around. He learned to be proactive after an extended recovery from a fruitless
surgery and a steroid injection gone wrong three years ago. The terrible experience pushed
him into finding his current dedicated care team, who he trusts and accepts treatment
recommendations from. He’s learned to mitigate issues as they come up from trial and error.
He’s learned the limits of what his body will let him do, and how drugs can push them.

However, he didn’t plan on Jaehyun. Awareness that Jaehyun will be in the same space as
him—a massive space attended by sixty thousand other people, but still, the possibility of
running into him again is worryingly not zero—has Yuta wired. It’s what has him up before
dawn, swimming off restless energy that a good orgasm and the sleep of the jet-lagged
couldn’t quell.

He can’t be ambushed the way he was yesterday. Yuta takes a break and sinks up to his chin
remembering his fumbling, painfully obvious shock and discomfort. The lies he told. He
hisses at the chilly water lapping against his sensitive ribs and forces himself to duck under
the surface entirely, closing his eyes against the chemicals. Whoever treated the pool’s
reclaimed water last was heavy-handed with the chlorine.

Yuta dislikes remembering last night through sober eyes, especially how seeing Jaehyun hit
him. How Jaehyun’s convincing attempt to pretend they could ever just sit down and catch up
got under his skin. How it still hasn’t left, given how just thinking about it has his eyes
squeezing shut even tighter and his teeth gritting.

It was not his best moment. He was exhausted and in pain, two drinks in, and high. Jaehyun
was none of those things, and it gave him the upper hand.

Yuta breaks the surface, sucking in air. When he opens his eyes, he sees the old man getting
out, all of his grace and ease in the water gone on land as he shuffles toward his flip-flops.
Yuta looks away to give him the illusion of privacy they were both enjoying.

While he can’t rewind the clock and confront Jaehyun with the benefit of hindsight and
sobriety, he can make sure last night never happens again. He’s well aware he’s a lightweight,
tipsy and flushed after one cocktail. Yuta’s even more aware that a single dose of oxycodone
puts him in a distant, muzzy headspace, let alone the amount he has to take to eliminate the
pain entirely.

He can take a dose and still talk to endless people about capacitors and circuit protection and
everything else he’s expected to be an expert on, even with his brain feeling like a balloon on
a string. That’s fine. Yuta’s well-practiced at bullshitting with a perfectly calibrated smile.
But the threat of seeing Jaehyun again under those conditions is too dangerous.
And frankly, Yuta considers as he commences some gentle stretching, Jaehyun isn’t his only
problem. Xiang Shan is as elusive as Yuta wants to be. He’s also likely to tell his staff to toss
Yuta out on his ass the second he gets close enough to give him his elevator pitch. Yuta needs
to be on point, clear headed, or he won’t get anywhere, not when so many odds are stacked
against him.

The Deputy Manager responsible for a sizable chunk of mainland China’s cargo operations
has no desire to talk to a peon. Yuta’s surname is barely a card to play when there are easily a
dozen Nakamotos with better titles roaming the floors of the summit. He’s a tiny fish in a
huge pond filled with hundreds of enormous, athletic, cannibalistic fish. He’s a guppy with
delusions of grandeur.

Yuta chuckles to himself at the image and nearly snorts water up his nose. He’d love to be a
fish and not have to worry about any of this. These moments in a pool, doing the exercises
Haru showed him, are the closest he can get. It’s always much easier when he’s submerged.
Yuta’s considered buying a giant jacuzzi and spending hours in it every day, but his apartment
is already too nice for the position he has as it is.

It’s funny—Yuta hated the idea of growing up to become an imperfect copy of his father,
flimsy and faded. He never wanted to be a pampered son gripping his father’s Vice-
Presidential coattails, but when his knee removed his way out, he figured nepotism was his
best shot.

Then a heart attack turned his proud, unyielding father into someone he barely recognizes. It
curved Yuta’s path sharply, from a son meant to preserve and uphold his father’s legacy to
just another random Nakamoto hanger-on, sniffing out their place in the corporation.
Unproven, and uninvited to a seat at the table of actual power.

His position is no less than he deserves. He’s painfully aware of the unimaginable privilege
of a father holding the door open for his son, which would have happened if his weak heart
hadn’t escorted him to an early retirement first. Yuta isn’t capable of climbing the same
ladder his father did, back when scheming cousins and the threat of mergers kept trying to
stop his ascent. His father never faltered. He nearly made it to the top, albeit the top of a not
very showy division. Yuta can’t climb beyond the middle, and he’s constantly in peril of
falling.

Yuta won’t ever be the Vice President of industrial solutions. He can’t be his father. He can,
however, secure a win that his superiors and the board can’t ignore, then use it to leverage
himself into a marketing role that actually suits his talents. He’ll hold tight to the lowest rung
on that ladder, if there’s a chance for him to actually climb. He’ll take marketing in a division
with the worst reputation and the most unappealing of products. He’ll take anything that isn’t
slowly becoming trapped in the amber of mediocrity, and feeling his father’s resignation and
disappointment in the rare moments he places a hand on Yuta’s shoulder.

He lifts his nose above the waterline to breathe, despite the sting. Yuta has another ten
minutes before he has to drag himself out of his more or less painless, weightless state. Once
his time is up, he has to prepare for a long day, starting with somehow getting himself to
Xiang Shan’s first scheduled panel of the summit.
Yuta decides to float now, not bothering with any more exercises. The water slips into his
ears until the world is shut out. Xiang Shan is not in this pool with him. His father is not in
this pool with him. Jaehyun is not in this pool with him.

Ten minutes until Yuta has to be a person instead of a miniscule body floating under a
fathomless, pinking sky.

---

Nearly an hour later, he’s showered—though the display beeped at him that he’s close to
running out of his allotted water for the next twelve hours—fed, and dressed. The ibuprofen
has quieted the shrill protests of his knee to a background moaning. The muffin he ordered
with his oatmeal-and-fruit breakfast is really good. His stomach isn’t rebelling at the thought
of food this morning, like he feared it would.

All of this is the potential for a good day. Yuta gives himself finger guns in the mirror after he
knots his tie and smooths his hands down the front of his best suit. This one has a lining thick
enough to hide the knee brace under his clothes, though it doesn’t breathe as well as some of
his others.

Yuta’s on his own until noon, when he’s due on the floor. That leaves him with time to chase
his white whale, maybe see one of the panels that actually interest him if all goes well, and
get back to the pavilions. If he’s lucky, he’ll have time to grab lunch.

Yuta collects his phone and charger, an emergency battery, the bottle of ibuprofen, his
exquisitely bound proposal for Xiang Shan, and an enormous amount of business cards and
secures them in his bag.

On his way out of the hotel room, Yuta checks his reflection again. He looks like every other
moderately handsome thirtysomething in a suit. His pocket square is a nice touch. The watch
on his wrist isn’t trying too hard—it’s a vintage Piaget. He’s thinner than he knows looks
good on him, but his skin is clear, his eyes bright, with no visible shadows under them. Pain
hasn’t made him wan and haggard yet, though by tonight, he may see an entirely different
person in the mirror.

He’s not Jaehyun, not a beautiful shark in a suit, but Yuta’s okay with that. Jaehyun’s a lot of
things he’s not.

---

“I thought I would find you here,” Katsumi says. She’s carrying a bag very similar to Yuta’s
and a tablet.

The panel’s wrapping up, and Yuta has made his way backstage through a combination of
charm, swapping his general attendee badge the company provided for an executive badge
Yuta bought himself, and acting like he belongs here. It’s a feat he’s proud of, and Katsumi
showing up out of nowhere takes some of the wind out of his sails.

“I’m lying in wait,” Yuta says, grinning. “I hope you had a good night off.”
Katsumi offers him no details of what she did on her night off, though Yuta did not expect
any. He thinks he knows her well enough to guess. She’s a quiet, calm person who radiates
those qualities so effectively that her propensity to keep moving goes unnoticed by most. In
their office, she walks brisk circuits around the perimeter of the room while she thinks and
spends her lunch hour in the gym. If she didn’t spend last night working out, over-preparing
for today, and squeezing in some sightseeing for good measure, he’d be surprised.

The particular ladder they share is much better suited to Katsumi.

“I can approach him, if you prefer.”

Yuta’s done the math on the chances of Xiang Shan brushing off the approach of a pretty
woman versus a man, and he’s still not sure of his conclusions. On one hand, Xiang Shan
works with a lot of women and is rumored to have slept with a few of them outside the
bounds of his marriage. On the other, that’s not exactly encouraging when it comes to
deducing how much of an asshole he might be. On a borrowed third hand, he feels deeply
uncomfortable with the idea of using Katsumi’s attractiveness as a way in more than he
would her razor-sharp professionalism.

But it’s his proposal. It’s his win if he can land it. He’ll gladly share the victory with Katsumi
if she’s the one to get her foot in the right door, but he hopes it won’t come to that. Selfishly,
he hopes he can do this on his own, with his lack of reputation and his knee brace and all.

He shakes his head. “I’ll try first. We’ll find him again and send you in to land the kill shot if
I fail.”

“I’m humbled by your confidence in my skills,” Katsumi says.

Yuta doesn’t laugh, since that would draw attention to him, but he wants to. He knows her
well enough to glean when she’s made a joke, though her face is impassive. She’s focused on
the tablet, never one to be idle even when waiting.

He appreciates that she came, that she predicted his next move—or rather, Xiang Shan’s
schedule—and showed up to make sure he had the best chance possible. He has no doubt she
would have smuggled him backstage if necessary.

There’s sudden, thunderous applause, so loud it sends Yuta rocking back on his heels. His
knee does not appreciate that, but it complains only for a moment until he shifts his posture.
There are men speaking into headsets and walkie-talkies in a combination of Portuguese and
English, and Yuta feels a chill go up his spine, knowing what is imminent.

He’s so close. He’s gotten this far; it’s only a little further to the finish line. His grip on his
presentation tightens in case it might slip to the floor out of his nerve-numb fingers. All he
has to do is convince a god to give a lowly mortal the time of day.

Piece of cake, he hears inside his head, his own voice in English. He used to love English
idioms. He picked a lot of them up in Chicago. A few of them still slip out when he’s roped
into acting as the office translator, if he isn’t careful.
Personal assistants are swarming the small backstage area in preparation for leading their
executives around like show ponies. Yuta resists the urge to make himself as flush with the
wall as possible; he can’t afford politeness right now. He gives a glancing smile to one of the
assistants, who smiles back, half-distracted, then turns her eyes on him again, much sharper.
He worries for a moment that she’ll spot that he’s not one of them, that his executive badge is
a joke, that he’s little better than one of those power-fetishizers asking a CEO for an
autograph or a quote for a blog, but her expression slides into interest.

Well, being appreciated is better than many alternatives. Yuta gives her an easy grin in return
and appreciates her right back, as is only fair, but then the applause builds into a second
cacophonous peak and the men and one woman on the panel finish waving and come
offstage.

Immediately, it’s chaos. The personal assistants are trying to clamber to their respective boss’
sides, the venue staff are trying to escort them to the green room, and Yuta and Katsumi are
stuck in the middle. Yuta’s not especially tall, but he can see over most of the heads present,
and relief and panic hit like a sledgehammer when he spots him.

His whale. Xiang Shan. It can only be him, with sleek glasses perched on his nose, his
attractively graying temples, his attention on something his assistant is showing him on her
phone.

Yuta ignores it all and steps forward, slipping his hand into his breast pocket for one of his
business cards. He plants himself directly in front of Xiang Shang and his assistant, digs up
one of his best smiles, and bows as briefly as courtesy allows so he doesn’t lose sight of
them.

“Hello,” he says, proffering his business card. By rote, the assistant takes it. It’s not a good
sign, but she’s not steering Xiang Shan away either. “Nakamoto Yuta.” He hopes his surname
buys him a few seconds at least. It should. “I don’t want to take up your time, but you may be
interested—”

“No,” Xiang Shan says, and cuts to the side to walk around Yuta.

He feels the metaphorical door closing on him, liable to hurt when it slams if he’s still in the
threshold, and does the unthinkably rude thing of keeping pace with him.

He’s rehearsed a few versions of this, but nerves have him going with the shortest route, the
least amount of words to trip over. “I know you’ve been trying to find an in with Japan. I can
get you something that Shenzhen doesn’t have. Exclusive, air and freight.”

He hasn’t been physically removed yet, though every step he takes is like walking through
lava made of his former humility and decency. He’s pathetic, and he feels it, but he can’t let it
show.

Legitimate proposals wouldn’t involve an ambush after a panel. But that’s all Yuta’s got—
that and some promising numbers.
Xiang Shan has been trying to get ahead of the dozens of new operations that seem to pop up
every day in Shenzhen, agile startups less inclined to bother with all the oversight his own
massive conglomerate requires. He knows Xiang Shan wants a foothold in Japan, and Yuta
can deliver him a sizable one; he can get him an exclusive deal with Nakamoto Corp.

Or he thinks he can. He thinks the higher-ups will go for it if he brings them Xiang Shan on a
silver platter.

Xiang Shan stops, his assistant casting Yuta an irritated look as she has to stop too. His heart
is pounding so hard he thinks it’s trying to climb out of his throat.

The venue’s security seems to have noticed that one of their guests has been waylaid, and
they double back, clearly ready to drag Yuta off at the smallest gesture from Xiang Shan.

Instead, his face a stone, he glances at Yuta’s badge and asks, “Who did you say you were?”

That’s something. He still has a shot. Yuta looks him in the eye and says, “Nakamoto Yuta.
On behalf of Nakamoto Corp.”

“Now why would Nakamoto Corp send an intern when I had dinner with your CEO last
night?”

The intern dig did hurt, just a little. But he’s not about to be daunted, not when he has Xiang
Shan’s scalding attention.

“It depends on which CEO it was, as we have a few,” Yuta says, because it’s true and it’s also
hopefully a joke Xiang Shan will respond to if it lands. “You haven’t had dinner with me,
sir.”

“I don’t want to have dinner with you,” Xiang Shan says, and that’s it.

That’s the door slamming, and Yuta’s locked out on the other side.

His breath seizes in his lungs, and he stands still as he watches Xiang Shan, his white whale,
move away from him without a second thought. The assistant glances back over her shoulder
at him, probably to make sure he doesn’t follow. Security keeps him in their sights too,
closing ranks around Xiang Shan like Yuta’s a threat and not a fly, swatted away.

Yuta forces himself to exhale.

He’s not unaware of Katsumi’s eyes on him. He’s humiliated by the witness to failure, but
he’s still grateful she came to bolster him or step in if he asked her to.

When Yuta rejoins her, mouth screwed tight and leaning back against the wall so heavily he
nearly cracks his head on it, all she says in her quiet, nearly toneless voice is, “Don’t forget
your kill shot.”

He gives her a grim smile.

---
The Nakamoto Corp exhibition area is located relatively close to the venue entrance, in the
second pavilion. It’s still a hike, and Katsumi went ahead when he told her not to bother
matching his pace. Not having to bear her company on his walk of shame after such thorough
humiliation is a blessing. It gives Yuta time to refocus and stop replaying it over and over, the
way Yuta didn’t warrant disdain so much as disinterest.

He can’t let that derailment shake him. He can’t let anything—not his pain, his failed attempt,
the fact that he’s aiming for a long shot, or even Jaehyun—shake him.

Thinking of Jaehyun and their encounter still sends jolts through Yuta’s nervous system when
he thinks about it, so he makes a concerted effort not to. He’s already well practiced at that.

When he finally arrives and has more or less stopped feeling sorry for himself, Katsumi has
already taken over wrangling their slice of the exhibit. Yuta watches her make sure the
touchscreens are all disinfected. Lights from the neighboring Siemens exhibit play across her
face in ripples, lending a surreality to a scenario Yuta already thinks is ridiculous.

They put Yuta and Katsumi on the exhibit schedule mostly because they didn’t want to pay
for more translators. Yuta’s job is monotonous and difficult, and his title embarrasses him
when he sees it on his business cards, but he’s high enough ranked that being forced to shill
like this is insulting. It is for Katsumi, too. They’re team leads, which should exempt them
from this work, but they’re also among the most fluent in English.

Nakamoto Corp is drawing in a fair amount of people, given the cachet of it being their first
year. There’s a small, carpeted stage in the center of the exhibit, and interactive projectors
and LCD displays, but that’s all the domain of the showier divisions. Most attendees want to
be wowed by cutting-edge automated home systems and that prototype electric self-driving
motorcycle that they’re probably still six years out from releasing, though the presenter keeps
lying through his teeth and saying it’s expected to hit the market by 2031.

The industrial solutions section is deserted in comparison to the main attractions, and they
have a few modest screens in addition to their prototypes. Yuta spends most of his first hour
on the floor carefully shifting his weight next to a 2D laser code reader.

There are few chairs. It’s clear they aren’t meant to be used, certainly not by employees; the
chairs were placed as a nod to accessibility for attendees, who mostly leave them vacant. At
one point, a Siemens employee, looking pale and tired, asks if they can leave their things on
an empty Nakamoto chair while they use the restroom. Yuta agrees.

The lone staff member Yuta and Katsumi were granted to help corral people has been on his
feet since nine a.m. Yoshito’s long overdue for lunch, and he’s starting to drag. Yuta sends
him off and tells him to take his time.

By two p.m., Yuta’s demonstrated the laser code reader six times and bowed a dozen, and
he’s covertly sipping an iced Americano Yoshito brought back as a thanks for Yuta
remembering he has basic human needs.

By two-thirty, his knee has increased the intensity of its complaints, to the point where his
vision blurs at the edges with each spike of pain running up his nerves. Yuta puts his back to
any passerby and takes another ibuprofen, and when he turns around, he focuses on keeping
his face friendly. He can’t lean on anything or sit in one of the empty chairs, because while
they’re clearly siloed in their own unremarkable space, occasionally employees from other
divisions pass them on their way to somewhere else. The last thing Yuta wants is to be
reprimanded for looking unprofessional because an overcompensating automotive supervisor
tattled to the VP.

That’s happened once already, at a conference in Tokyo where Yuta took five minutes outside
the room to lean against the wall and stretch his leg. He has no desire to repeat the
experience.

Either he’s doing a poor job of keeping his grimace at bay or Katsumi has a terrifyingly keen
sense of Yuta, because at three, she starts wiping down all the touchscreens again and uses it
as an excuse to quietly tell him he can leave.

“Yoshito and I can handle the rest,” she says.

Katsumi is already too nice to him, and she is not disposed to being nice. He has a strong
feeling it’s pity combined with an earnest attempt to get rid of her closest competition. Still,
he thinks he sees a shade of real concern in her eyes as he shifts his weight for the umpteenth
time and has to hold his breath against a fresh lance of pain. He doesn’t know how he feels
about it, except for the usual dull shame over being so obviously pitiful that even Katsumi is
moved by it.

“It’s only two more hours,” he says, feigning casualness. If he can’t afford to be seen leaning
or sitting, he definitely can’t afford to quit before his shift is up. He has to deal with it, though
he would much prefer to float in the pool or order a generous pour of scotch and try to
recharge for his last shot at Xiang Shan. “I’ll take this opportunity to use the facilities,
though,” he says, when her impassive blink makes him feel foolish despite what he knows he
can and can’t afford to do.

He might be able to lock himself in a stall and sit for five or ten minutes. That would be a
nice change of pace. As he grabs his bag so Katsumi and their employee aren’t responsible
for keeping track of it, Katsumi steps closer, to the point where he can smell her shampoo and
her breath mint, which is honestly rattling, considering how much personal space is usually
between them. She mutters that he needs to change his badge.

Yuta forgot to switch back. This badge identifies him as an executive. He’s extremely lucky
no one has bothered to pay much attention to him.

He quickly flips it around and gives her a nod. He’ll fix it in the bathroom, where he won’t be
seen doing something as strange as trading out badges.

Yuta’s lucky in that the pavilion floor is swarmed with people, which means he has an excuse
to walk at a slowed pace. He smiles and apologizes on the few occasions he has to part a
huddle of people or slip through a line. Some exhibits have music and other media blasted to
crowds; others are making hourly presentations on their own mini stages. It’s a cacophony of
noise and light and people, and dragging himself through it to the restrooms feels like
walking through mud.
By the time he pushes open the gender-neutral restroom door, where it’s mercifully quiet in
comparison to the pavilion floor, he drops his smile. He can’t pretend he isn’t sweating from
pain and the too-thick material of his suit.

Yuta shuts himself in a stall and awkwardly contorts himself on the toilet until he finds a
position that relieves some of the pressure on his knee. It grants him some relief, and he
presses his fingertips deep against the surrounding muscles, at least where he’s able to, given
the brace.

On top of the toilet-paper dispenser, there’s a map of all the pavilions and their various
exhibits, likely left behind by an attendee. He stares at it until his eyes burn; it’s something to
focus on, aside from his body, aside from the smell of urine and bleach. He almost picks it up
to read it, but the idea of handling anything in a bathroom stall that he doesn’t have to is
grotesque.

He ends up searching for the digital version of the map on the summit website.

Jung Enterprises is in pavilion three, next to a lot of the start-ups and entrepreneurs despite
being neither. That’s a good bit of distance away from Yuta, but still too close for comfort—
until he reminds himself that there’s no chance Jaehyun would ever be on the floor mingling
with the rabble. It’s been a while since Yuta checked or Ten casually dropped information
about Jaehyun’s life, but he’s pretty sure Jaehyun has a C-level title. It’s unlikely his schedule
is filled with anything but panels and cocktail hours with others of his ilk.

Morbid curiosity, an impulse like pushing at a sore tooth with his tongue, has him searching
for Jaehyun’s name in the event calendar. He wants to know exactly how far nepotism can
take a person, when it utterly failed Yuta.

Jaehyun is on two panels. Yuta recognizes one of them. He’s seen the name before; it’s noted
in his phone, though it conflicts with Yuta’s schedule on the exhibit floor tomorrow.

Xiang Shan and Jung Jaehyun are speaking on the same panel about scaling, along with the
chief innovation officer of some European fintech company Yuta’s never heard of and a
Portuguese elected official. Jaehyun’s photo stares out at Yuta from his phone. The
suggestion of dimples is visible in his mild smile, his skin so perfect it looks airbrushed, yet
somehow, he’s not as handsome as he was last night.

Yuta laughs, bitter and echoing in the stall.

---

They end up staying in the exhibit until an hour after its close, mostly because of people who
take their time exploring the pavilion on their way out. Yuta does the day’s final wipe-down
of every surface in their space. His knee throbs so badly that he’s doing it primarily to
discourage people from conversing with him; he’s not sure how much longer he can look or
sound neutral. It’s taking all of his energy and focus just to stay upright and perform simple
tasks.
He’s starting to rethink his policy of staying completely sober and alert during the summit.
Tomorrow, he has an even longer shift, and he needs to plan a second attempt at snagging
Xiang Shan’s interest. He can’t do either of those things if he can’t walk. Maybe he’ll take
one pill once he’s ordered room service and collapsed onto his hotel bed. He’ll get better
sleep that way, and his knee might calm down enough overnight to risk standing on it for
eight hours.

Just when he thinks he’s finally done and can leave, Katsumi pulls him aside. He noted her
speaking to employees from other Nakamoto divisions as everyone cleaned up for the day.
Usually, Yuta likes to covertly listen to these exchanges, mostly because he enjoys seeing
how deftly Katsumi ends conversations she doesn’t want to be in.

But this time it’s different. He can tell. Her eyes are narrowed before she leans in and
murmurs, “The director wants us all at a company meal. The reservation is at seven.”

He knows from her tone and the tension around her eyes that this is not optional and that she
resents having to show up.

She’s not the only one.

“Where is it?”

Yuta gives up on looking professional, given how empty the pavilion is now, and leans
against a sturdy display. His heart thuds and sweat prickles the back of his neck at the idea of
all the steps to the exit, then to a cab, and then into a restaurant. Walking out of here seemed
surmountable when he thought he was going to go rest and nurse his misery in private, but
now he has to find the reserves to go to a company dinner.

“Nine or ten kilometers away. It’s sushi.”

Sushi. Portugal is a food mecca with a storied history reflected in its cuisine, and his
superiors have decided to take everyone out for a subpar version of what they can get at
home. Yuta and Katsumi trade a restrained look.

“Given the travel time, we should start heading over there now,” Katsumi says.

Useless anger fills him up like boiling water in a cup, and Yuta has to breathe deep so it
doesn’t overflow. Every emotion is just beneath the surface when he’s in pain, liable to crash
over him like a wave. Having his plans waylaid so he can attend a dinner and face exactly
where he ranks in the hierarchy has him wanting to lean into spite and skip.

But he hasn’t come this far, endured this much, to give up because of a bad day or a pointless
company dinner.

He waits a few moments until the anger sloshing around inside of him settles down. Yuta
doesn’t have the leeway for a temper, even if he has the proclivity.

“Text me the address. I’ll take a cab on my own.”

It’s half so Katsumi doesn’t have to match his pace, and half so Yuta can rub the tense,
knotted muscles in his thigh where only a cab driver might see him.

---

The sushi restaurant is inside a literal palace.

After checking the address twice to make sure he’s at the right place, Yuta takes a picture of
the building for Makiko on his way in.

Katsumi warned him about the two sets of stairs, including a grand staircase, though she
disguised it as part of her instructions to find the correct restaurant on the third floor. The
ground floor is teeming with people and little eateries. He spots a burger joint, and his
stomach rumbles unhappily at the idea of having to miss out.

On the grand staircase, he discovers he put his phone away too quickly; the be-winged golden
lion suspended from the ceiling requires documentation. Yuta pretends to be preoccupied
with photographing every inch of his ascent, including a closer view of the golden lion, the
frescos, and the coat-of-arms design in the stained-glass window behind him. It’s beautiful,
with the mellow evening light pouring in through the colorful panes and making the whole
space glow, but he can’t enjoy it; he’s too focused on dragging his knee up step after step and
not making noise with every impact. Two or three people pass him on his way up.

He’s definitely taking a pill when he limps back to his hotel. Or maybe he’s ordering a giant
glass of beer when he sits down for dinner. Staying clear-headed is not worth this.

Yuta takes a moment to pause at the landing at the top of the stairs, to sweep his hair smooth
in case it’s been mussed through the day, and to blink away the moisture in his eyes.

He spots Katsumi as he walks into the sushi restaurant; Nakamoto employees take up two or
three tables in the bustling dining area not at all suited to group meals, and she’s seated across
from Yoshito. Her table, and the others occupied by the company, has already ordered a
round of drinks. Yuta is on the edge of being unfashionably late.

Yuta already knew he wasn’t going to be seated anywhere near the director and the high-level
managers, but they’re nowhere to be found. A restless, petulant feeling stirs up and wants to
look for trouble. He ignores it.

It helps, somewhat, that the department manager for automotive doesn’t look happy to be left
out of whatever private fine-dining experience his superiors are enjoying elsewhere.

Yuta slides into the seat Katsumi saved for him, returning some of the slight nods of
recognition he receives from nearby employees. He gives her a quick, forced grin and says,
“Which intern booked this place?”

Katsumi sips an uncharacteristically lurid blue cocktail and cuts her eyes to the table in front
of them, where the appliances team sits.
Yuta smiles again, this time genuine. There’s no real rivalry between industrial solutions and
the more noteworthy divisions, and Yuta guesses he could end up anywhere, in any division,
if he successfully manages to branch into marketing, but he enjoys that Katsumi indulges in
petty in-group, out-group dynamics on occasion too.

“Did you see they have a Philadelphia roll?” Katsumi intones. Yuta’s gotten good enough at
reading her to hear the drollness in it.

“Delicious,” Yuta says, in an equally even voice. His leg has stopped screaming at him now
that he’s seated, but it’s still throbbing in time with his pulse. He eyes the drink menu.

He ends up ordering one of what Katsumi’s having, and something from the menu, all in
Portuguese, that he can parse as involving tempura and uni.

When the bright blue cocktail is placed in front of him, he drinks it far too fast and orders
another.

---

The downside of gulping down two cocktails before he even starts eating is that he has to piss
halfway through the meal—which isn’t as bad as Yuta’s general mistrust of sushi outside of
Japan and the seemingly bizarre menu options made him suspect. He even manages to make
some conversation with the automotive employee seated with their table, because the man
looks pitiful and maybe deliberately shunned from his division.

He wishes he had any sort of privacy to converse with Katsumi, though, since they need to go
over their plans for tomorrow and the day after. He’s still determined to send Katsumi after
Xiang Shan; he can’t leave Portugal without being able to say he tried his best and used every
tool in his arsenal. If he’s committed himself to such a momentous task, he has to accept that
it will not be easy. He can’t give up. Not yet.

Whatever they put in the blue cocktail is effective enough to make his worries and distraction
over Xiang Shan and the rest of the summit seem far away, less important. It’s a nice relief.
He hasn’t eaten much through the day, which helps the alcohol soften the edges of the dining
room, though it does nothing to decrease the urgency in his bladder.

He asks a staff member where the restrooms are, and he’s relieved to find out there’s one on
this level and that he doesn’t have to make a drunk, injured trek back down the stairs and then
somehow get up them again.

Even the bathroom is exquisite. Yuta snorts to himself and wonders if Makiko would
appreciate a photo of the ornate walls and fixtures, if he tastefully excludes the urinals. Then
he lines himself up to piss.

When he’s done, he sees in the mirror that his drinking flush has caught up with him. He
looks tired, somewhat rumpled from the day, but not too bad. Yuta washes his hands, then
splashes water on his face, and tries again to smooth out his hair. Something about the
weather here has it looking fluffier than usual.
As he exits the bathroom, slow and trudging while he’s still unseen, he nearly swerves into
the wall. Alcohol hits his depth perception harder than he’d like to admit; he has to steer
himself into a trajectory that isn’t so obviously impaired.

When he reenters the sparsely occupied bar area under the watchful gaze of the golden lion,
he changes his stride to something more unhindered. He’s almost past all the little tables and
chairs intended for people more set on drinking than eating when he hears it.

“I think serendipity’s got it out for us.”

Yuta freezes. All sensation in his body vanishes for a moment, even the pain in his leg. His
hearing filters out, then back in. His knee recommences throbbing.

Right. Of course, of course this would happen.

He turns around, gripping the wooden back of a thankfully unoccupied chair to make sure he
doesn’t fall over or do something stupid like sprint away. He’s only a meter or so away from
the restaurant entrance. It’s tempting to try to escape.

Jaehyun smiles at him wryly. He’s wearing a gray suit that looks even better on him than the
pinstripes did, hands slung in his pockets. Amidst their gaudy, gilded surroundings, he looks
disarmingly sleek. He must part his hair to the side all the time now, since that’s the same
style he wore yesterday too.

It can’t have been less than twenty-four hours since he saw this man. It can’t have been seven
years either, yet it’s both. Yuta swallows and reminds himself to look normal.

“I was on my way to the bathroom when I saw you leaving,” Jaehyun says.

Great, that means he saw Yuta drunkenly stagger into the wall and the limp he didn’t bother
to conceal. Everything’s coming up Yuta, he thinks in a voice that sounds suspiciously like
Johnny Suh.

Being around Jaehyun drags so much back.

“I thought you might have seen me.” Jaehyun moves forward so he’s not in the way of a
passing customer on their way to the bar at the back of the room, which puts him much closer
to Yuta than he would prefer.

The proximity makes all of him clench up. He’s too drunk for this. Again. He’s too drunk to
know what to say. It’s hard to look at Jaehyun’s face for long, especially when all his drunken
brain wants to do is catalog the small differences time has created. Yuta looks at the column
of his throat, then the neat knot of his tie. This one is maroon.

He reminds himself he’s been enough of a coward. Yuta raises his gaze and meets Jaehyun’s
again. It feels like a trap snapping around him. “I didn’t,” he says.

“Yeah.” Jaehyun makes no mention of Yuta’s clear drunkenness or his busted-up body, but
it’s all in his eyes, carefully holding Yuta in place. “You’re at the sushi restaurant?”
“Company meal.” Yuta relaxes his grip on the chairback, as his knuckles have started to
cramp. “You?”

“Company meal,” Jaehyun says. He smiles and half-turns to indicate the entrance behind him
off the other side of the bar space, which Yuta knows from reading the signage is a
Portuguese restaurant. “I don’t want to keep you, I just… don’t want to pretend you don’t
exist.”

“That would be pretty dumb,” Yuta agrees. His throat feels tight, like it wants to keep the
words from squeezing through to be heard. “Well, enjoy your meal. I’ve got some really
weird tempura waiting for me—” He lets go of the chair, ready to literally wave Jaehyun off
the way he would a casual acquaintance, and his knee erupts into agony.

He cuts off a yelp and grabs onto the chair again, and it squeaks against the floor as he puts
his weight on it. Yuta grimaces as he straightens out his feet so they’re not turned in two
different directions.

He has to keep standing there, supporting his weight with the chair, unable to move until the
pain loosens its leash on him again.

A customer seated at the next table glances up at the small commotion, and Yuta grimaces a
smile in apology.

He knows without looking that Jaehyun has moved closer. He can smell his cologne.

“I’m fine,” Yuta says to head him off. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Jaehyun tries to help,
tries to touch him. Jaehyun used to ease Yuta into seats on bad knee days. He can almost feel
the phantom weight and warmth of his palm on the small of Yuta’s back. Can hear him, years
ago, gently teasing Yuta until he pulled his leg up onto the couch for Jaehyun to massage. He
used to cup Yuta’s heel in his hand and rub that too, even though Yuta kept insisting feet were
gross. It made him melt like a pat of butter in a hot pan, though, every single time.

Fuck.

“You need to sit down,” Jaehyun says gently.

“I’m aware,” Yuta snaps. He sucks in a deep breath through his nose and exhales through his
gritted teeth. The pain is still bad, he did something bad by turning like that, too drunk and
eager to get away to maintain his coordination, but it’s lessening slowly. “Sorry,” he adds.

Jaehyun doesn’t say anything. He pulls out the chair next to the one Yuta’s got a death grip
on.

“Sit, please.”

Yuta looks at him to see Jaehyun’s mouth in a thin line of worry or irritation and realizes he
doesn’t have a choice. He can’t limp away to the safety of the restaurant, not in this much
pain, and he can’t stand here holding onto the chair until it subsides. He’s already made
enough of a spectacle.
Knowing Jaehyun can see how carefully he has to move, how he has to shut his eyes and let
another flare of agony pass over him, makes the entire experience that much more
excruciating. Finally, though, he’s in the chair, with his bad leg half extended, half bent,
under the table.

“I’ll get you some water,” Jaehyun says, calm and decisive, and walks off briskly to the bar.

It seems like he comes back immediately, like Yuta has had no time to get his thoughts in
order or to think about what he needs to do for his knee to be able to stand back up again.

Jaehyun sets the water and a cocktail napkin on the table in front of him, then seats himself.

It’s starting to feel like a recurring joke. Jaehyun on one side of the table, an unnerving calm
pool, and Yuta on the other, a roiling, enormous wave about to burst through a dam.

He’s going to need two of the oxycodone to sleep tonight.

“It’s the same injury?” Jaehyun asks, a ghost of a frown keeping him too serious. Yuta can
see a furrow between his brows that will give him wrinkles, if they haven’t started already.

“More or less. I had another surgery on it a few years ago that did not go as planned.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I’m fine, most of the time. It just didn’t appreciate all the travel, and I was standing for the
exhibit—“

Yuta cuts himself off and curses his liquor-loose tongue. If Jaehyun doesn’t know the details
of Yuta’s life, Yuta should not be offering them up. He can’t stand Jaehyun, with his Hermes
suit, perfectly able body, and executive title, to know exactly how far behind Yuta has lagged.

Jaehyun gestures for Yuta to drink more water. Yuta can’t help the instinctive eye-rolling
expression he gives in return; it speaks of the way they used to talk, the ease with which
conversations used to come. It doesn’t belong here.

But then again, frankly, neither does Yuta.

He wishes fervently that he had stayed home and that this were all a particularly vivid
nightmare.

Then he sighs internally and sips the water. It’s so cold, his mouth feels numb.

“Do you think seeing a doctor here would help?”

Yuta swallows his mouthful in a hurry and shakes his head. “No, it’s good. I mean it’s fine.
I’ve got medication back at my hotel.”

Jaehyun blinks in a way that Yuta is unfortunately aware means he’s not liking what he’s
hearing. Fortunately, he’s not in any position to vocalize that. “Do you want me to call you a
car? The sooner you can get back to your hotel, the sooner you’ll feel better.”
“My knee is injured. My hands work just fine. My ears too.”

This is why he didn’t want to be compromised. This is why he promised himself he would
stay alert. Jaehyun is already an attack just existing in the same space as Yuta; Yuta being
drunk, not to mention distracted by pain, is a recipe for disaster. He’s not able to modulate his
responses, to think them through.

He can admit it’s a little funny, though. Seven years, countries apart, paths diverged, and
they’ve run into each other twice in two days. Jaehyun’s like a needle in a haystack that keeps
impaling itself in Yuta’s palm.

“You’re lucky I’m not offering to carry you down the steps,” Jaehyun says. Yuta clenches his
fingers around the cold glass and finds himself studying the shape of the cubes in it. “This
looks bad, Yuta. I’d be a monster to leave you here to fend for yourself.”

“Not a monster. It’d be more polite to leave and let me save face, honestly,” Yuta says.

“Are we being polite?” Jaehyun asks. “I wasn’t aware.”

Yuta wants to laugh. He doesn’t. Instead, he sets the water down on the lacquered tabletop
and carefully shifts his thigh, tensing the muscles in his glutes to do most of the work. It
hurts, and air hisses out of his mouth like a bike pump, but he gets settled. He’s very aware of
Jaehyun tracking his movement, and how the furrow between his brows gets deeper.

He might need to text Katsumi to help him down the stairs, once everyone—including
Jaehyun—has left. That’s preferable to the image of Jaehyun slinging Yuta over his shoulder
and playing superhero. His shredded dignity can’t take that, even if the image does something
funny to his insides.

“I guess I deserve this,” Yuta says. “It feels… What’s the word? Punishment-like?”

“Punitive,” Jaehyun finishes. “I’m not here to punish you.”

“No, I meant the knee,” Yuta says. “You’re too nice to punish me. You forgave me already,
didn’t you?” Yuta asks, as airy as his still very tight throat will let him be. He smiles a little,
at the end of it.

Jaehyun’s body visibly moves with his sigh, then with a lazy chuckle. He shakes his head,
mouth twisted so one dimple peeks out at Yuta to let him know Jaehyun’s not entirely
serious. “You know, when I imagined us talking again, I thought it would be cathartic.”

“I’d get on my knees and beg for forgiveness, but…” He gestures at his leg.

That gets Jaehyun’s tiny smile to disappear entirely. He leans forward in his seat, like Yuta
really needs to hear what he says. “I did forgive you. A long time ago.”

That makes blood roar in Yuta’s ears. It feels like an insult. He doesn’t believe it, no matter
how earnestly Jaehyun says it for this second time, and he hates the fact that he wants to be
forgiven just as much as he knows he never can be.
But truly, for how uncomfortable this is, it’s easier than last night. Maybe Yuta’s drunker than
he was then, or maybe the shock of seeing Jaehyun is fading. Maybe it’s being worn down
from two days of pain and exhaustion.

“Okay. I appreciate it.”

“I’d like us to talk, really talk, but I’m not going to use the fact that you can’t walk away
from me to do it.”

“Very noble.” He’s proud of himself for remembering the word.

“Yuta,” Jaehyun intones, his eyes sharp and suddenly sad. His broad shoulders seem to droop.

“Sorry.” Yuta swallows and finds his throat is remarkably dry. He drains the rest of his water
glass.

“I don’t want you to be sorry. I just wanted to talk to you. A real conversation, not this
bullshit pretense.”

There’s a perfect circle on Yuta’s cocktail napkin from the condensation on the glass that he’s
still holding. He switches the glass to his left hand and wipes a drop on his fingertip directly
in the middle of the circle with his right. “I’m sure you remember how I get.”

“Like a cornered rat? Yeah, I do.”

Yuta continues making patterns in the napkin with droplets of water from the glass. It’s
something to focus on, instead of the way he knows he’s being observed. “I told you I’m
sorry, and I mean it, and I understand that you want to talk to me, but what good does it do?”

He pushes on before Jaehyun can answer a facetious question.

“I left and I cut everyone off. Yes, it was cruel of me, but life went on. You got married, you
had a child, and we both have careers. It’s ancient history. We’re different people.”

Jaehyun’s voice is low, serrated at the edges when he says, “I thought we were friends. Under
everything, before everything, I thought we were friends.”

Yuta’s eyes blur. He wants to hold it back, he has to hold it back, or Jaehyun will do
something unbearable like offer him sympathy. “We were,” he says simply. “But not
anymore.”

“And you’re… okay with that? With that being the ending?”

Yuta can understand his frustration. He knows what he did, and he can guess from knowing
Jaehyun—and Johnny, and Mark, and Donghyuck—how much it hurt. How Yuta robbed
them all of closure. It was like cutting off a limb when he stopped returning texts and
deactivated his American phone. The decision was brought on by too-little sleep and the
maddening constant rhythm of monitors, of beeps and hissing, in the ICU, but he knew he
had to do it or he’d never make a clean getaway.
He can almost smell the disinfectant, the plastic from the tubing, and hear the squeak of
nurses’ shoes on the floor. He remembers throwing his iPhone in the trash on his way out of
the hospital for the night. He remembers crying in his shower, his shoulders heaving with the
force of his sobs. It’s like it happened yesterday, not seven years ago.

But he’s not in Japan, saying goodbye to a life he never should have lived in the first place.
He’s in Portugal, facing down the consequences of his actions. Yuta firms his lips, then has to
clear his throat so he doesn’t croak. “It’s the only ending we were ever going to have.”

Yuta does regret that he didn’t send a final goodbye text. Maybe then Jaehyun would have
had the opportunity to rage at him, to work through whatever it is he’s carried around as
unfinished business since, but he couldn’t do it. It was too risky. With half an opportunity,
Jaehyun would have moved mountains to convince him to stay, and Yuta is—was—weak
enough to let him. So he made up his mind, scheduled the movers to pack his things at the
Chicago apartment he shared with Sicheng, and set about destroying his old life as quietly as
possible.

He avoided the conversation, and it’s caught up with him far too late.

There’s a long silence, long enough that Yuta is nearly coaxed out of staring at the napkin,
before Jaehyun says, “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

When Jaehyun stands, Yuta isn’t expecting it. He thought there would be more, that Jaehyun
would use this opportunity to lay him out with all the things he’s been carefully avoiding.
That the truth of Jaehyun’s supposed forgiveness would show itself.

Instead, all he sees is Jaehyun fastening the buttons on his suit jacket and looking clear over
Yuta’s head.

“Thank you for being honest,” he says. Yuta watches his eyes trace their surroundings. His
ears are red. Yuta used to tug on them when they got this way, when Jaehyun was upset or
embarrassed or very pleased at the things Yuta whispered to him. “If you change your mind,”
he continues, and glances down to make searing eye-contact with Yuta, who has held his
breath in anticipation of the blow, “you can ask Ten for my number.”

As parting shots go, it’s not nearly as brutal as Yuta expected. He exhales shakily and tries to
smile. It still hits, though, that Jaehyun knows about his secret line of communication to Ten.
“Yeah, I should have assumed he’d tell you.”

It wasn’t like Yuta thought he got Ten in the divorce, so to speak, but he knew Ten could
compartmentalize his relationships enough to keep it a secret when Yuta texted him from his
new Japanese number a few months after everything went down.

It turns out he didn’t keep the secret. But he never gave Yuta’s number to anyone either, and
he imagines Jaehyun would have gone to great lengths to convince Ten otherwise.

“If you want to know about me, just ask me,” Jaehyun says. Yuta feels a prickle of alarm over
what that implies. Jaehyun gains a tired smile. “Please see a doctor about your knee before
you fly home.”
That flicker of care, of concern, sets Yuta’s teeth on edge. Even now, when he’s not getting
what he wants and is walking out of Yuta’s life with clear reservations, he’s worried about
him. He’s trying to take care of him like he did in Chicago. “Stop being such a dad at me, it’s
weird.”

It’s a sour note, another comment meant to emphasize the gulf between them, the
circumstances of their very disparate lives.

Jaehyun gives him a look that says he knows exactly why Yuta said it, but he doesn’t seem
ruffled. If anything, he looks sadder.

It makes Yuta’s chest squeeze to watch him walk away just as much as he wants to slump
over the table with relief.

They were never built to last. Yuta could have engineered a kinder end, he could have called
Jaehyun from the ICU hallway and told him they were over, that he wasn’t ever coming back,
and it would have been more honorable of him, but there was always going to be an end.
They went into the relationship knowing it was temporary.

Jaehyun was always going to end up working under his sister at Jung Enterprises, with a wife
and a kid at home to cement his status; his divorce is honestly the biggest divergence. Yuta
was always going to honor his father, though he never could have imagined how hard that
would be in practice.

He shut Jaehyun out, he shut out everyone but Ten and Sicheng on a very intermittent basis,
and it hurt him to do it. It still hurts. Seeing Jaehyun’s pain, and his apparent optimism that
they could ever be friends, makes Yuta want to crawl under the table or drag himself toward
the other restaurant to apologize again. Even if he knows it won’t change anything for him.

Yuta closes his eyes and breathes. Soon, he’ll have to leave this table. He’s surprised Katsumi
hasn’t come looking for him already. He hates that he might need her help getting down the
stairs, but there’s nothing to be done about that. Though he fights it, Yuta feels a second
round of misery threatening to subsume him. It’s not like he’s unaware of what a broken-
down failure he is, but nothing brings it home like needing help to get down the stairs.

“Wow,” he hears, startlingly near. “That was very awkward. Like, wow.”

Yuta’s eyes pop open, and he’s confused and off-put as he stares up at a man, probably in his
mid-twenties, standing so close it’s like he’s about to perform dentistry on Yuta. Then he
realizes it’s the same customer he made eye contact with earlier, when he nearly fell over and
had to cling to the chair.

The man’s suit is better than Jaehyun’s. The jacket for it is draped over one shoulder, hanging
precariously by a thumb. He grins at Yuta, which is the second-most bizarre thing to happen
to him tonight.

“Excuse me?”
 He can’t wrap his head around what’s happening. Yuta’s usually bewildered when confronted
by rudeness, which is funny, given how rude he’s been to Jaehyun on this trip.

“I’m Zhong Chenle,” he continues in his careful English. His grin spreads, turning him
impishly handsome. “You look like you could use a drink.”

Chapter End Notes

Huge thanks yet again to Anne for the glorious beta work (seriously, they're always on
the ball), and to Caitlin for literally listening to me scream about restaurant/palace
layouts for twenty minutes at least. You're both excellent pals.

Also, I base a lot of locations on real places in Lisbon, but since I'm not, uh, there, I
have to rely on maps and photos and descriptions, so if I mess something up, it's usually
because of those limitations, not because of artistic liberty. (Okay, sometimes it's artistic
liberty.)

Come bug me on twitter @sssneakiest!!

 Chapter 3
Chapter Notes

You might have noticed that the chapter count expanded slightly—we're in for two more
after this one! Ch 4 is… a lot. Tbh, this chapter is also a lot. Okay, this whole fic… a lot.
Thank you so much for coming on this ride with me!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Yuta sips his overfull iced Americano, the taste lingering bitter on the roof of his mouth from
a poorly calibrated espresso machine, and navigates the pavilion floor. The lines for various
exhibits are much shorter today, and it’s nearing lunchtime, which means attendees have
explored the pavilion’s mediocre food offerings or gone off-site for something more
palatable. Yuta ate a terrible, limp panini so he wouldn’t have an empty stomach for his half-
dose of painkillers. With the pain at bay, he should have enough energy left over at the end of
the day to commit to tracking down Xiang Shan.

Yuta’s stomach thrashes to consider the many logistics of how he and Katsumi will locate
him, let alone convince him to listen, but he only has tonight and tomorrow before his
window closes. And with Yoshito off until two p.m. and the industrial solutions section of the
Nakamoto exhibit as deserted as it will get today, now is when he needs to get serious and
compare notes with Katsumi.

He can’t spare focus for anything else.

Especially not the unread text messages from Ten. This morning, when the euphoria of pain
relief hit him twenty minutes after the pill he washed down with orange juice, Yuta made the
mistake of reaching out.

His phone feels extra heavy in his jacket pocket. He’s doing his best to ignore it.

Someone on a Segway nearly mows him over right by the Nakamoto exhibit, and Yuta has to
juggle to secure the coffee carrier and his Americano. A few drips still end up on his fingers.
He’s covertly licking them, wincing when he realizes he can’t remember the last time he
washed his hands or used sanitizer, when he realizes he has another problem. Not just the
pain, or Xiang Shan, or the mess he created with Ten that he’ll have to deal with.

No, the problem is Chenle, the unlikely good samaritan—and benefactor, as Yuta vaguely
remembers him paying for the taxi to Yuta’s hotel—who hauled him out of the palace last
night. Yuta only let him help because he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt dinner and ask
Katsumi to half-carry him down the steps.

Chenle’s in another gorgeous suit, tailored to make him look much broader than he is, his
hands slung in his pockets as he nods along with whatever Katsumi is saying to him.
Having experienced Chenle for a good half hour last night, and after having no expectation of
ever seeing him again, Yuta’s heart skips a beat.

It’s weird that Chenle is here. It’s weirder that he’s talking to Katsumi.

It’s not like Yuta hasn’t made fast friends in his life. Akio, who Yuta met during football
tryouts and who loved Ultraman Cosmos probably more than Yuta did. Ten, in front of the
sinks at that dingy gay club once they were done cleaning up. Johnny and Mark, who
accepted Yuta as a tagalong to brunch with no explanation, or even Sicheng—fuck, did Yuta
meet all his Chicago friends through Ten?

But Chenle and Yuta did not have an instant friendship connection so much as Chenle kept up
one-sided chatter as he bore Yuta down the steps, ignoring the physical strain and Yuta’s
contained whimpers of pain to monologue about how tacky the golden lion was. He got Yuta
into the cab, nagged him into putting on a seatbelt, and waved at him until the cab pulled
away. He didn’t try to get in for the ride, to walk Yuta up to his hotel room. He didn’t even
get Yuta’s phone number.

Yet he’s here now, going out of his way to complicate Yuta’s day, because people can’t just
do a good deed and leave it there.

Chenle spots Yuta, Yuta sees that he does, but he still takes his time talking to Katsumi. He
doesn’t wrap it up and excuse himself; Yuta feels distinctly ignored. Katsumi doesn’t look
perturbed or suspicious either, so Yuta doesn’t even get the entertainment of watching her
shrivel Chenle like a raisin in the sun.

Eventually, the conversation concludes. Yuta is still standing at the entrance to the section,
holding coffee with a sticky hand. Katsumi comes over to him to collect her black coffee with
a murmured thanks and doesn’t stick around for Yuta to interrogate her.

It’s as if Chenle is any other summit attendee and not the stranger who witnessed an awful
moment in Yuta’s life and then made sure he got home safely.

Right. Well, he’s not going to contribute to whatever play Chenle’s starring in. Yuta schools
his features into blandness, walks over, and bows. “It’s Chenle, right?” he asks.

“Yeah, you remembered.” Chenle meets his blandness with politeness that is fairly
convincing, except Yuta remembers enough of the previous evening and his colorful
commentary and the slightly too-familiar questions he tried to ask after Yuta shut down his
offer of a drink. Sooo, bad breakup, huh? “I was just checking out the pavilion,” he begins.

Yuta may owe him something for the good deeds of last night, but patience is not it. “Chenle,
not that I didn’t appreciate your help, but why are you here?”

He doesn’t drop the polite facade so much as skillfully ignore the awkwardness of being
called out. “Checking on you, obviously,” he says. He leans in to murmur, “Your coworker is
terrifying, but I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that.” There’s something like admiration
etched on his face when he says it, brightening his eyes.
“She’s very good at her job,” Yuta says. “And as you can see, I’m fine.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t expecting to see you walking around.” Chenle grins. “Well, now that I’m
here and you’re...” He gestures to Yuta and then vaguely the wider space of the industrial-
solutions corner of the exhibit. “Any chance I can get a tour? Since I have an in with one of
the pros, I mean.”

“You want a tour,” Yuta repeats slowly. Whatever Chenle’s motives, he is certainly
committed to the bit. “You came to see me and you want a tour?”

“There’s no reason to sound so skeptical,” Chenle says cheerfully. “I’m very interested in…”
Yuta sees him glance at the nearest screen. “Semiconductors.”

Yuta doesn’t want to lean against the nearest sturdy object, but standing with his leg locked
like he is means the pain builds so fast and sharp that he has to, even though it makes
Chenle’s smile fade at the corners.

Chenle shrugs. “I’ve been known to be handy. With electronics.”

Yuta can’t extract himself from this, not if Chenle is going to commit to the guise of an
interested consumer. At least, Yuta can’t extract himself politely. And it doesn’t sit well with
him to be openly impolite to the person who helped him, who ignored Yuta’s gasps and
ragged, barely repressed moans as they jostled down the stairs together.

But, Yuta considers, he does have a very boring job. And if Chenle’s going to pretend he
came here to learn about semiconductors and not to perform acts of service or to satiate his
own curiosity about Yuta’s train wreck of a life, Yuta will tell him absolutely everything there
is to know about semiconductors.

Yuta takes a sip of his too-bitter coffee and swirls the ice in his cup. “I can give you a tour,”
he says.

When Yuta gestures Chenle over to a demo and then delivers a spiel that he would normally
only give to people asking very specific questions, he notes Chenle’s blinks are slower, his
omnipresent smile nearly gone. Yuta keeps his own sly victory off his face. “We’ve got a
patent-pending substrate that makes IC chip stabilization about fifty times better than our
competitors.” Yuta pauses. “Fascinating, right?”

“Absolutely,” Chenle says. His glazed expression clears. “Over at Siemens, they’ve got a 3D
stacked package that is, like, mind-blowing. You said this one’s 2.5D? But it’s fifty times
better, somehow? How does that work?”

Chenle’s eyebrows are up, expectant, and Yuta experiences something like recognition
zinging in his blood. It feels like when he used to play tennis against a new opponent and
they volleyed him something he had to fight to return and clear over the net.

Whomever Chenle is, whatever the reason he’s come sniffing by the Nakamoto exhibit, he’s
not an idiot. But Yuta still has no idea what his angle is.
---

Twenty minutes of a boring tour does nothing to compel Chenle to leave.

Yuta still has no idea what Chenle wants from him, though it’s obvious he’s not here because
he likes the cut of Yuta’s jaw. It’s possible he’s interested in Yuta’s work, and he certainly
seems knowledgeable, asking questions that Yuta had to admit to not really knowing the
answer to, since he’s more in sales than anything else. But after the tour concluded and the
moment came for Chenle to move on, he planted himself in the exhibit like an invasive
species instead.

Yuta tried to encourage his exit, in the gentlest terms possible, and Chenle just pretended he
had another question for Katsumi and walked over to strike up conversation with her again.
She’s at least clued into something strange going on, casting him a few curious glances, but
to Yuta’s regret, the smooth panes of her face reflect amusement and not consternation. He
can’t rely on her forcing Chenle out unless he tells her everything that went on, and what is
he supposed to say? This man did me an incredible favor and now he’s asking about
microcontrollers. Be mean to him until he leaves, please?

He thinks Katsumi will say something when Chenle takes to standing by one of the display
cases with a stack of pamphlets he passes out to anyone who walks by. She doesn’t.

None of the staff on the floor are expected to actually distribute pamphlets—they’re there if
people want to take one—but Chenle saw Yuta organize a stack and seems to have made
assumptions.

Whatever favor Chenle clearly thinks he’s doing for Yuta or Yuta’s knee would be nice if it
weren’t also baffling and annoyingly presumptive. And a distraction in his workplace. Yuta
lets that annoyance fill him up until he feels fairly confident that he can use it to tell Chenle
to leave.

When he tries, though, his sense of fair play—of owing Chenle, remembering the crisp smell
of his cologne and the edge of sweat as he supported Yuta’s weight—erases the stern words
he had ready and replaces them with a compromise. “If you want to talk to me, we can…
have dinner after my shift.”

He’s never letting a stranger help him again. This is unacceptable. He can’t waste an evening
on Chenle.

“Great. I didn’t have dinner plans. At least not any I wanted to go to.” Chenle’s still scrolling
through his phone, pamphlets at the ready in his other hand. “Did you know they had a
basketball court in one of the pavilions a few years back?” he asks, apropos of nothing. “Best
one I’ve been to. I whipped ass for eight hours straight. Nothing but buckets.”

“Please pick a time and place and I’ll see you then. It’s”—inappropriate, fucking bizarre,
ridiculous—“not ideal for you to lurk in the exhibit like this.”

“They have a meditation room this year. And hot yoga. God,” Chenle says, sighing. “I hate
these fucking things. Everyone at my company is like a hundred years old.” He lowers his
voice to add, “Look, you can’t blame me for checking on you after last night. I thought you’d
be in the hospital, not… passing out pamphlets, you know?”

“I don’t actually pass out— Look, I appreciate it, but you’ve done enough for me. I don’t
need the hospital. I don’t need your help. Okay?”

He thinks he gets it now, though. These events are brutal. Yuta’s been to his share of them in
Asia, though he’s never staffed the sales or exhibit floor before this summit. The culture
around them—the networking, the boring programming, the ludicrous spending, the boys-
club attitude, the drinking until five in the morning and showing up to events the next
morning showered but still drunk, the acrid smell of alcohol seeping from everyone’s pores—
grinds his patience in the best of times. And now is not Yuta’s best of times.

Honestly, a basketball court would be a nice change of pace, if he had the free time and could
rely on his knee not to crumple under him after two dribbles. Right now, the idea of playing
basketball seems like a dream from someone else’s life. Yuta can barely remember a time
when walking or standing didn’t make him want to lie down and weep—but that’s just the
flareup talking, because Yuta takes the subway and walks into work most days.

It’s just his luck that he has the worst flareup of his life the same week he sees Jaehyun again
and has to chase his white whale. It’s just his curse, more like.

“I guess it’s not,” Chenle says simply. He lowers his phone and says, in a tone of tired and
begrudging honesty, “You don’t need to go to dinner with me. I’m sure I can find something
else to keep myself busy.”

That’s not what Yuta expected, not after how Chenle dodged Yuta’s other attempts to get him
to leave. Relief squeezes Yuta’s insides and then lets go. “Lisbon is a beautiful city.
Somebody at this summit should get to explore it.”

“Maybe I’ll do a tour,” Chenle says. “If you’re sure you don’t want a charming dinner
companion with, like, great core strength after all?”

Yuta lets himself laugh again now that he’s finally gotten his way out of Chenle’s well-
meaning clutches. “I’m sure.” He swats Chenle’s bicep. “Get going. Find someone else’s
mess to fix.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chenle says, but he’s smiling again. This one actually looks genuine. “Take
care of your knee, and call security if your ex shows up, I guess.”

Yuta’s amusement chills, but he keeps his smile and nods. “Take care, and thank you for
everything you did.”

When it becomes clear Chenle’s on his way out, Yuta seeks out Katsumi to finally discuss the
Xiang Shan problem.

She’s ready and waiting with her tablet. There’s a visitor in their exhibit behind her, but
they’re going through their backpack like they’ve lost something and look utterly unprepared
to be approached. It’s as good a time as any. “He’s finished with his panels,” she informs
Yuta. “It seems like, according to the personal assistant I know, he’s staying in his suite and
receiving visitors there.”

Yuta barely resists cursing. English has come back to him to the point where it wants to slip
out without thought, and while it’s nice to feel somewhat comfortable using it again, he
doesn’t need to start swearing in front of his colleagues. “Do we at least know what hotel?”

She shakes her head. “I can ask, but I am not particularly close with this PA. She will
probably want something in exchange.”

Yuta doesn’t want to force her into awkward professional or social situations. She’s done
enough for him already by being willing to be his kill shot. “We might be able to narrow it
down on our own. If you were Xiang Shan, where would you stay? Probably the best hotel in
the city—”

“Did you say Xiang Shan?” Chenle demands.

Yuta can’t afford to whirl around; he cranes to look over his shoulder instead. “Excuse me?”

“Mr. Zhong, you speak Japanese?” Katsumi says, in Japanese, like the rest of their
conversation has been.

Yuta turns his whole body to face Chenle, who waves a hand dismissively. “I took it to
impress a girl. I remember like four verbs. You’re looking for Xiang Shan?”

“Yes?” Yuta says.

Chenle’s expression tips almost comically into disgust. The smile that looks so natural on his
face is equally at home flipped in scowling reverse. “Why? He’s the worst.”

Yuta almost doesn’t process the whole of what Chenle’s said; his pulse thuds so hard he hears
it in his ears because this feels like something more solid than PA gossip. “You know him?”

Chenle’s disgust is replaced with incredulity. He scoffs. “You really didn’t look me up, did
you?”

“What—”

“I’m disappointed, you know. I looked you up.” The right corner of his mouth hikes, and the
way he’s looking at Yuta lets him know he has no plans to take a tour of the city. “How did
you like Chicago? I’ve always wanted to visit.”

“Chenle—”

“Yuta,” Katsumi intones, but the conversation barges on as Yuta’s head spins.

“Yes, that’s me. Zhong Chenle.” His mirth isn’t gone; if anything, it’s increasing as he stares
at Yuta.

“Who the hell—”

“You know him well, Mr. Zhong?” Katsumi interrupts. She’s moved to stand side to side with
Yuta, facing Chenle. Katsumi’s lack of reaction to Chenle’s insertion into a private
conversation is pinging Yuta like an alarm. She tends to turn to ice when protocol is breached
like this, and there’s no way the bait of Xiang Shan’s name would be enough to keep her
thawed. And yet Yuta detects no frost in her tone.

“Yeah, I know him. There’s not many people here from China I don’t know. If I don’t know
them, my dad does. And if he doesn’t, my grandfather does.”

Yuta recognizes that confidence—it’s not even arrogance, it’s dashed off so quickly and
easily—and wonders if he ever came across so flippant. Of course Chenle knows kings of
industry.

He is a king of industry, or at least a prince.

Yuta knew that suit was too nice for him to be slumming it in the pavilions. He glances over
at Katsumi, who he suspects already researched him after their initial conversation.

He’s right; she tilts the tablet so Yuta can see a Forbes article on someone with Chenle’s
surname, and Yuta scans it. A few lines down, his breath catches.

He doesn’t recognize the Zhong family, but he recognizes their investments.

Chenle isn’t smiling when Yuta reassesses him. He looks like a different person. Not so
harmless. Another shark in a suit. “Seriously,” Chenle says, “I can’t imagine why you’d want
to work with him. I have other people I can introduce you to—”

“Why would you help me?” Yuta says. “You don’t even know me.”

One shoulder shrugs. “Like I said, I’m bored. This is the most interesting thing to happen at a
conference since that crypto guy puked all over the cultural attaché to France.”

Yuta’s silent for a moment, thinking. Despite the racing of his pulse, his old competitive
instincts screaming at him that this is it, this is his in, he’s also experienced enough life to
know that gifts usually don’t come without strings attached. Even if Chenle’s strings appear
harmless, Yuta doesn’t know if he wants to owe a stranger this much.

Chenle recognizes his ambivalence. “It’s all who you know at these things. You’ve got to
know that, given your family. If you want to visit his suite or to go to the stupid dinner with
all the execs, I won’t have problems getting you in. It’s not a big deal. It’s just helping you
out.”

“Because you’re bored,” Yuta repeats in disbelief, not ready to accept what he’s hearing.

Chenle smiles. “Yep. They shouldn’t have gotten rid of the basketball court. It kept me out of
trouble.”

Yuta looks back at the image of Chenle’s father, his smile much stiffer than his son’s, his
entire countenance much more severe. He’s completely gray, his face cragged but still
handsome. Yuta skims over the bolded keywords.
He’s lived the reality of being a hanger-on long enough to know this is the best chance he
has. His father’s name no longer opens doors for him.

What’s he going to do if not this? Stalk Xiang Shan to his hotel and sneak in by hiding in the
laundry cart? Give up and go home and resign himself to his fate? Ask Jaehyun for help?

Yuta squares his shoulders and nods. “Get me into the dinner. I’ll do the rest.”

“Sure, let me make a call.” He’s already palming his sleek silver phone, flipping it
impatiently. His cuticles are ragged, and one looks red with irritation, the only thing that
doesn’t fit his heir image. “I’ll pick you up.” He doesn’t ask where Yuta is staying, which is
unsettling until Yuta remembers Chenle made Yuta repeat his destination twice once he was
in the cab, since the driver seemed baffled by Yuta’s accent and Yuta was held too tight in the
grip of agony to attempt conversation.

“I can meet you there.”

“No, we should really go together. You’re my plus-one.” Chenle grins, looking for all the
world like Yuta’s given him a present. “My date, if it comes to that.”

Yuta stifles a groan.

“I’ll get you at six-thirty. Take care of your knee,” Chenle insists. “I almost dislocated my
shoulder last night.”

Yuta feels Katsumi’s eyes on him. “Six-thirty. And if you call me your date, I’ll throw you
out of the cab.”

Chenle laughs unselfconsciously. “But then who’ll get you into the ball, princess?”

He’s gone after a waggle of his phone, striding onto the pavilion floor. Yuta takes a few sips
of the Americano to reshuffle his thoughts into order in the relative peace and quiet he left
behind with his exit, but it doesn’t help. Everything is all still a jumble.

Yuta looks over at Katsumi, wondering what her take on this is, if she thinks it’s as insane as
Yuta does. But she’s not looking at Yuta; she’s back on her tablet, a thin line between her
eyebrows. Then her face twitches with something unreadable. “This is him, right?” She holds
the screen up to show Yuta a video thumbnail of Chenle—much smaller, but it’s still
unmistakably him—in a tiny white tux, singing in front of an orchestra.

Yuta is completely unable to stop himself from hissing, “What the fuck?”

---

Ten: Oh so this is the once a year we’re acknowledging Jaehyun exists lollllll
Ten: We’re aheadof schedule!!!

In his hotel room, fresh out of the shower and relishing the little relief half a painkiller has
granted him, Yuta drips onto his phone and feels guilty.
For one, he should be spending his limited prep time researching who else might be at the
dinner. He doesn’t want to walk into a room and not know who is in it and what they do; Yuta
can bullshit with aplomb, but he’s already on thin ice and, if this trip has proven anything, not
operating at full capacity at present. He can’t afford any cracks.

But on the other hand, he can’t leave Ten on read until tomorrow. They already don’t text
regularly, and Yuta was the one to initiate this conversation.

There’s been entire years where Yuta and Ten don’t speak. Sometimes, when it’s been a
while, Ten FaceTimes him out of the blue when he’s out clubbing in Seoul or New York, and
Yuta aches to see him, what hairstyle he has, what new piercing or tattoo he giggles to show
off.

But usually, when it’s been months and months without any contact with his old life and what
ifs are making Yuta climb the walls, he’ll do the thing he always promises himself he won’t:
he’ll ask Ten about Jaehyun. Or Johnny and Mark, but Ten is much less likely to say anything
about them except in passing. Oh my God, I spilled red wine all over Johnny and Mark’s new
ottoman, I thought Johnny was going to start crying. Or I’m in town for Johnny’s birthday.

Ten doesn’t tell him much—just enough for Yuta to reassure himself that the world is turning
for everyone without him. That he made the right choice.

It came as a shock when, the last time he had the balls to ask, Ten let slip that Jaehyun was
getting discharged from his military service. Yuta forgot that was a thing Jaehyun had to do.
That was over a year ago now. Ten’s math is wrong.

The air conditioner has kicked on in his room, and the ghosting touch of air on his damp, bare
skin makes Yuta shiver and prickle, but he’s spent so long in suits, in smelly, crowded public
areas, that being clean and unencumbered is too nice to give up yet. He types his response as
water droplets roll down his neck and break him out in goosebumps.

Yuta: He didn’t tell you then

Yuta: And shut up, you know I hate asking

Yuta sees the three dots of Ten typing, and typing, and typing.

Ten: He hasn’t said anything to me about you!!!

Ten: Oh my god wait omg
Ten: Does this mean what I think it means
Yuta: It means we’re at the same event
Ten: !!!!

Yuta waits for more, but there’s nothing for almost a full minute. It’s as if he can feel Ten,
paused over his phone, lip between his teeth, wondering how far he can push.

It’s a testament to why Yuta decided to reach out to him in the first place, all those years ago,
that what comes through next is not poking at Yuta’s very obvious soft spots.
It’s the reason why Yuta is not confronting him over the fact that Jaehyun’s apparently known
all along that they’re still in contact. Ten can’t be blamed for being honest. His loyalty
primarily lies with Jaehyun anyway, as it should, no matter how he’s able to keep Yuta in his
life to a small extent.

Ten: He hasn’t said anything to me about it

Yuta: Well I’m glad I could break the news
Ten: Hahaha

While the awkward conversation lulls, Yuta finally gives in to inevitability—and how
painfully tight his nipples get when he’s cold—and decides what to wear to dinner. His best
suit is the obvious choice, given that it’s dry-cleaned and pressed and hanging in the hotel
closet. Wearing it is so stuffy, though. He finds his black dress socks and puts them on,
holding his breath when he has to work with his bad leg.

He’s decided he’ll bring the pills with him in case things get intolerable. The half of a pill he
took before his shower hasn’t done much, but it’s something, and despite Yuta’s best
intentions to remain sober and clear-headed, he won’t be able to walk if he follows that
precept. A little high is better than being rolled out of a five-star restaurant on an ambulance
gurney.

Yuta’s squeezing his hair dry with the towel, wearing an undershirt and trousers, when there’s
a knock at his door. Initially, he thinks Chenle somehow found his room number and is here
ahead of schedule. But as he frowns his way to the peephole, he realizes it’s Katsumi,
changed out of her business wear and into a dress with her hair pinned up.

“Going somewhere?” Yuta asks when he swings the door open and cautiously walks
backward to let her in.

She doesn’t respond until she’s inside of his room and the door is shut. Yuta has half a worry
that someone from the company might see them and assume things, but if he knows Katsumi,
she would have already checked to make sure she was in the clear before knocking. “I wanted
to make sure you don’t want me to go instead. If you do, I’m willing.”

“And dressed for the occasion,” Yuta notes.

Katsumi remains standing even after Yuta gestures that she can sit at the little table in the
room. He can’t afford to be so formal; he sits on the edge of his unmade bed, thinking.

They discussed this when Yoshito relieved them for a break. They weighed the pros and cons
extensively. Yuta’s aware this could blow up in his face, especially since Xiang Shan already
rejected him and might not take kindly to a second attempt. Katsumi offered once again to go
instead, to be his kill shot, but Yuta can’t afford the chance of things blowing up in her face
in public.

So he told her no, though his obvious ambivalence has brought her here at the last minute, in
case he’s changed his mind.
He hasn’t, though. Yuta has asked too much of her by filling her in on this plan in the first
place, let alone accepting her help.

Months ago, nearly half a year ago, Yuta sought Katsumi out in the company gym while she
did reps and barely sweated through her makeup. He filled her in, as the closest thing to an
equal and a confidant that he has in the division, on what he overheard of the employee from
transport and logistics complaining about all the hoops they had to jump through when
shipping to and from China. How Xiang Shan was a long shot. Then Yuta told her how he ran
the numbers himself because he was bored and out of busywork, and an impulse slowly
became something that looked feasible.

When he concluded, she looked him in the eye and asked, “Are you bringing these numbers
to transport and logistics?”

Yuta said, “I don’t know,” and Katsumi’s reliably neutral expression turned sharp and
knowing.

Handing it off to transport and logistics was likely to end in absolutely nothing. They quite
understandably wouldn’t want an outsider meddling around, making proposals. There was
also a slim chance that, if anyone in the division actually looked at his projections, it might
be enough to net the win they were looking for in China, and Yuta would be a footnote in that
story. Maybe someone might take him out to dinner as a thanks.

Or Yuta could court Xiang Shan himself, reel him in, and use it as leverage to get out of
industrial solutions once and for all. Could stop looking at internal job listings and knowing it
was a waste of his time to apply, after so many of his applications were rejected or never
responded to.

“I can’t make you take a risk this big. But thank you for being willing to.”

“Like I’ve always said, the math is good. And you know I enjoy a challenge.”

Yuta does know. He thinks that, along with Katsumi’s desire to remove him from her pool of
competition, is what made her take such an uncharacteristic stance and offer to help him.
“There’s a challenge, and then there’s being Zhong Chenle’s date. I couldn’t do that to you,”
Yuta says seriously. “What if he serenaded you with Memory?”

That makes Katsumi laugh, a rare, quiet snort Yuta’s always charmed by when he happens to
catch it. She’s so impassive, hard to rattle, hard to impress, but every once in a while, he sees
a shade of her that doesn’t fit with the severe lines of her personality.

It’s not like Katsumi knows him with any depth, either. Their relationship, minus this one
aberration, is very professional.

“You know what you’re walking into.” Katsumi is calm as a glassy lake again, like her laugh
never even happened. “Be careful. You can’t afford to antagonize him.”

“I know. Thank you.”

“This could very easily be a fiasco.”

“What happened to my kill shot? Where did that confidence go?” Yuta tries to joke, his
already nervous stomach churning from those words in her soft, no-nonsense voice.

“There’s a chance you can do it. You can’t be obvious.” They discussed this at lunch too, how
Yuta should approach Xiang Shan, and if he should apologize. The fact that she’s going over
it again means she’s worried.

“I’ll be subtle. I’ll be charming.” Katsumi eyes him, and Yuta tries to give her a reassuring
smile. “I am capable of that, you know.”

“I am very aware,” Katsumi says. “Good luck, Yuta.”

She bows and sees herself out, and Yuta’s left with two warring emotions in her wake: he’s
touched she came by, that she warned him, that she’s worried, and also uncomfortably aware
that he’s even less sure of tonight’s outcome than he was an hour ago.

He can’t let it get to him. He has this final shot. He can’t blow it.

To that end, Yuta heaves himself off the mattress and limps to the closet to pick out a tie, but
he’s distracted by his phone buzzing in his pocket.

Ten: Are you doing okay baby?

If Yuta’s eyes sting, it’s the week catching up with him. Jaehyun, and his constant pain, and
the madness of trying to convince Xiang Shan he’s worth his time. Ten being sweet to him is
an edge over the line of what Yuta can be expected to tolerate.

Yuta: I’ve had better weeks but I’m OK

Yuta: Thank you for asking
Ten: Okay well you tell me if anything changes. I know you have your own life but you
shouldn’t forget about little old me!! I still care about you
Ten: LOL

Yuta gives his phone screen a thin smile and sends a heart sticker back.

Then he opens the list of the most prominent summit speakers and starts trying to cover his
bases.

---

The private dinner is at the Ritz. The same hotel where he ran into Jaehyun that first night.

Yuta looks out the tinted window of the car Chenle picked him up in. Notably, Chenle was
not in said car when Yuta walked through the hotel’s glass doors to the pickup and dropoff
area, gently shaded by palm trees. Instead, Chenle was crouched low to the cobblestone
ground, petting a dog who kept putting its paws on his knees while Chenle had a
conversation with its owner.
Once they disentangled themselves from the dog and Chenle told the driver to take them to
the Ritz, Yuta felt a chill climb his spine. He quickly turned to the window so that, if his
trepidation was visible on his face, Chenle wouldn’t know.

Chenle didn’t seem to notice. He was still charmed by the quiet, tiny dog—some sort of
Pomerian mixed with a Chihuahua, judging by its uncanny resemblance to a stuffed animal—
and the softness of its ears.

“Do you want to see my old lady?” Chenle asks, as Yuta tries not to get ahead of himself as
the car makes slow progress through the busy Parque das Nações district. Outside, it’s the
blazing final hour before sunset; everything looks golden, and the many pale buildings set
against the cloudless blue sky seem to make everything brighter.

Yuta turns to squint at him. He’s pretty sure the colloquialism implies Chenle is married,
which seems impossible, given his lack of a wedding ring and the even more significant lack
of wife in the results of Yuta’s rushed Google search on Chenle. “What?”

Chenle has already pulled out his phone and is scrolling through his gallery. He makes a fond
noise and thrusts the phone at Yuta. “That’s my girl, Daegal. I got her on a vacation to
Seoul.”

The dog is a ball of cotton with two tiny pieces of coal for eyes. In the photo, she’s cuddled
under Chenle’s chin, and Chenle is wearing an oversized gray shirt pulling slightly off his
shoulder. It’s odd but strangely fitting to see him dressed down, when Yuta’s impression of
him has been sleek suits and fake smiles. “She’s cute,” Yuta says. “Her name is Korean?”

“Yeah.” Chenle reaches over and thumbs to another picture, this one of Daegal gnawing on a
toy. “I thought it should be, since she was born there.”

“What does her name mean?” Yuta asks.

Chenle clears his throat. “Can you believe this traffic?” He’s apparently done talking about
his beloved dog. He tsks. “We’re going to be more than fashionably late.”

“Everyone’s late to these things.” Yuta looks out the window again as the driver accelerates
in an area with less congestion. “Are you positive Xiang Shan is coming?”

“My assistant confirmed it with one of his employees,” Chenle says. An elbow nudges Yuta’s
side, but very gently. “Don’t be so nervous.”

“I’m not nervous. I just don’t want to waste time.”

Chenle lets him have that one. He’s proven to be good at ignoring the obvious.

Yuta’s underprepared. The list of prominent speakers was long, and Yuta can only guess as to
which of them are invited to the dinner or will actually attend. His assumption is they’re
going to be primarily Chinese, given that Chenle is on the list along with Xiang Shan, but
that’s a stab in the dark. Still, Yuta scanned the latest news articles for the handful of Chinese
companies and partners at the summit this year.
In terms of his tactics for engaging Xiang Shan, Yuta’s going to have to be even more off the
cuff. He left his proposal in his hotel room, since being overt about his intentions again can
only end in disaster. All he’s got is Chenle, his best suit, his arguable charm, painkillers in his
jacket pocket, and the memory of his father, weak in a hospital bed, saying it was up to Yuta
now.

He can’t waste the rest of his career in industrial solutions, bored and underpaid. If finding a
new path to honor his father takes charming a shipping magnate who already has reason to
dislike him, if it takes pulling off the impossible, Yuta can do that.

He wouldn’t be his father’s son if he didn’t at least try.

---

The restaurant is shut down to other guests to accommodate the enormous party of executives
and a few of their plus-ones. The mirrored walls make the tables—pushed together to form
giant, long, banquet-style rows—seem like they’re overflowing in the space. It’s sparsely
populated inside; he was correct in that they aren’t the only ones running late. Knowing he’ll
walk in and draw attention instead of being swallowed by a crowd has Yuta hesitating at the
threshold.

Chenle notices, because he loops his arm through Yuta’s and guides him the rest of the way
in.

“Don’t worry,” he says under his breath. “I got you.”

He does in fact have Yuta; as they approach a long table set far back in the room by the
kitchens, Yuta realizes Xiang Shan is already seated there. Yuta’s seat is across the table from
him, not quite directly across but definitely within conversational distance.

This whole thing has felt like a farce. Yuta was paranoid in the back of his mind that Chenle
would turn out to be somehow not who he and Google said he was, or that Yuta would at best
spend the evening staring out across a dining room and gathering the courage to take his
second shot at his white whale—but now it’s proven to be real. A weight Yuta didn’t realize
he was carrying lifts from his shoulders, though it’s immediately replaced by the larger,
bigger weight of knowing that he has to pull this off.

It helps that Chenle already knows other people seated at the table (Yuta recognizes the COO
of a Chinese petroleum company and the Taiwanese CEO of an electronics manufacturer, so
his research wasn’t a total waste), and that Chenle makes a production of catching up with
them and introducing Yuta. He says Yuta’s surname just enough for it to be noted, and with
every hand he shakes that is then extended to Yuta, Chenle makes sure to call him “my good
friend.”

Yuta’s hands aren’t shaking, but it’s still a relief to conclude with introductions and the smile
stretching Yuta’s lips numb.

But of course introductions aren’t over once they sit down; Chenle only pauses to glance over
the tasting menus they’re given. Then he looks up and smiles mildly at Xiang Shan, who
passes a glance over Yuta that doesn’t seem to register him, to Yuta’s simultaneous relief and
disappointment, and launches into a conversation in Mandarin.

Yuta plays it cool, studying the menu.

He needs to get it together. Yuta can’t do this if he’s off-balance, nearly sweating in his chair
from nerves. He’s spent months researching Xiang Shan, his deals and routes, even watching
videos of him in both subtitled Mandarin and his nearly fluent English to get a feel for his
personality. He knows about his wife and two children. His son plays football. His daughter
studies traditional dance. Surely Yuta can unclog his throat and talk about something the man
will respond to, at some point during the night.

As Chenle and Xiang Shan’s conversation continues, Yuta sees Chenle gesture to him out of
the corner of his eye. Yuta, still aping casualness, looks up with a carefully bored expression
and waits to be addressed directly.

But he doesn’t get a chance to enter the conversation, because someone standing to his left
claims his attention.

“Nakamoto-san? I thought that was you.”

It’s said in Japanese, which throws him. He glances over and up to see someone he… vaguely
recognizes. His quick math tells him the man is either a Nakamoto executive or a Panasonic
executive, since they’re the only other Japanese company represented at the summit. He
staples on another easy smile and bows in his seat.

It’s clear Yuta should know who this is, but his lack of access to real power at the corporation
after his father’s departure has him rusty. He’s a bit of an island, relegated to his division and
—he assumed, given all the evidence—forgotten.

As Yuta divulges how he’s enjoying Lisbon and the summit and asks polite questions along
the same vein, he desperately tries to attach this man’s face—mid-forties or early fifties, if he
had to guess, with a severe haircut and glasses—to a role. When the conversation starts to
spin its wheels, Yuta drags Chenle into it and watches the magic of Chenle’s surname take
hold.

Chenle is not even remotely C-suite, but he is a manager, and he’s the grandson of the
company founder. His father’s the CEO. Chenle’s got a seat at this table based on that alone.

It’s a big problem that decorum dictates he should be introducing them with their full names
and titles, but for obvious reasons, he can’t do that. “Ah,” Yuta begins, trying to find any
possible way to do this gracefully, but Chenle seems to sense his tension and takes over.

Thankfully, astonishingly, Chenle knows who the man is, somehow. “Mr. Endō-san, how are
you? We haven’t met, but my father and his associates speak very highly of you.”

Yuta can’t believe his own idiocy. He’s talking to a Senior Vice President of connected
solutions. There are a few other Senior Vice Presidents in the division, and probably ten
Managing Officers under that, but it’s no excuse. His ignorance only evokes shame in him,
but he forces it down. He can’t get thrown by something like this. Not with Xiang Shan just
across the table.

It’s an out-of-body experience to watch Chenle ingratiate himself with Yuta’s superior.
Chenle is so easy in conversation, Yuta isn’t even stung by jealousy so much as fascination.
He thinks he used to be like that when he was in university and his parents would require him
to attend functions over his breaks. But he was barely an adult then, and convinced he was
making his own way in the world outside of the family business and leaving behind all of the
stifling corporate politics. If anything, he used to navigate dinners like these with arrogance,
not confidence.

After his injury, and after he dropped out of the University of Tokyo, Yuta more or less kept
to himself when forced to accompany his parents to social events. Then he went to America,
and he learned an entirely new way of moving through the world. When he came back to
Japan and had to readjust to the nuances of social graces there, it felt like putting on an ill-
fitting suit.

Endō’s attention turns back to Yuta, once Chenle has sufficiently warmed him up. “I’ll leave
you to dinner,” he says in Japanese, switching out of English. “Nakamoto-san, please give my
regards to your father. His absence is still felt.”

Yuta assures him he’ll pass on his regards and uses his best honorific speech to do it.

Chenle gives him a flash of an encouraging grin, aware Yuta only narrowly avoided stepping
in it with that interaction. Yuta feels almost lightheaded with relief as he refocuses on the
menu. “How do you know so much about a Senior Vice President at my company?” he
murmurs.

“I keep telling you, Google is free,” Chenle says, and props himself on Yuta’s shoulder to
peer at his menu when he has his own. “I spent like all last night stalking you, not that you
made it very easy without any social media. Freak.” Yuta laughs, which jostles Chenle’s arm.
“What are you thinking of having?”

Truthfully, food is the last thing on his mind, but Chenle is furthering the image of their
supposed friendship, so he reads a few dishes at random and can’t help smiling to himself
when Chenle finds something to critique about each and every one.

Chenle really does have him, though Yuta isn’t foolish to think this association will last
beyond the summit or whenever Chenle finds something else to entertain himself. For now,
though, Yuta will grip tight to his coattails and hopefully ride them to victory.

---

Once the tables are crowded and there’s conversations in full swing, Yuta is distracted from
Xiang Shan’s presence, as the man is speaking little to anyone in particular. Tracking three or
four different conversations and attempting to politely ingratiate himself into them, following
Chenle’s lead, is a more productive way to spend the evening than staring at Xiang Shan out
of the corner of his eye.
It also helps when a few Americans join the table and it forces everyone present to speak in
English rather than Mandarin, which was dominant for a while. Chenle knows so many of the
CEOs and keeps finding the perfect places to chime in, somehow managing to be nothing but
respectful even when he’s making a remark with his tongue firmly in his cheek.

Chenle also keeps ordering more wine for the table and insisting people have it, which is
certainly one form of social lubrication. Yuta nurses the same glass of white wine and finds
himself laughing as the conversation gets drunker and friendlier. This is the sort of evening
where NDAs don’t need to be signed, except by the restaurant staff, because a leak to the
press—and the risk of it being traced back to a source—would be a declaration of war.
Tattling only invites destruction, so everyone’s lips will be sealed.

Some of them will be too drunk to remember most of what was said anyway.

These dinners used to be familiar to him, if not quite comfortable. As the night unfolds, Yuta
finds it easier to slip into that old, arrogant skin. Yuta’s not the polite, quiet employee aware
he shouldn’t be here in the first place; he’s the son of Nakamoto Ryuji. He’s the man who
stood on his own two feet in Chicago for years.

When a Chinese CMO of a beauty company recounts a celebrity brand ambassador’s recent
involvement in a scandal Yuta definitely saw making headlines, the whole table groans in
commiseration. It lasts for quite a while, with many scathing remarks about similar scandals
other companies endured and how they happily contributed to blacklisting the bad actors. The
Americans are absolutely rapt.

“What did he do, though?” one of them asks, leaning in with an expression of delight. Yuta
thinks he invented a dating app. He’s new to this environment; Yuta would bet he hasn’t been
to very many truly international events.

“Aside from cost me millions?” The CMO is stone-faced, repulsed to be asked the dirty
details. Discussing that is beneath him, which Yuta knows the Americans don’t get. The
perils of a mixed crowd like this. “We were about to break into Western markets with this
campaign, but now we have to put it on ice.”

Chenle offers him more wine, which gets some laughs.

Yuta leans forward to be heard by the CMO, since he bets the Americans are unsatisfied with
the answer and will probably keep digging for dirt. Yuta knows from the search results that
the scandal is definitely cheating with a side of a rumor of drugs, something that might
absolutely wreck the brand ambassador’s domestic career if PR doesn’t work overtime. “You
don’t need to put it on ice,” he offers. “That sort of scandal is what makes people famous in
America.”

That makes the people in Yuta’s vicinity laugh, though the Americans laugh the hardest. The
dating-app developer thumps the table.

“He’s lost value,” Xiang Shan says, one of the few times he’s spoken to a group. “You should
discard him and find someone new.”
“Mr. Xiang is right about his domestic value. But you can use an American campaign to
rehabilitate his image,” Yuta counters. “If anything, a scandal will help him stand out among
the pack. Ah, after he’s finished a treatment program, of course.”

“See, he—sorry, what’s your name?” the American who laughed the hardest asks, pointing at
him.

“Yuta. Nakamoto Yuta.”

A few people further down the table nod with recognition; they weren’t present for
introductions earlier. It’s a vicious burst of gratification to experience that again, the power of
his name working the way it used to. Yuta’s had not even half a glass of wine, but he feels
heady.

“Yuta gets it! K-pop and all that is fucking killing it here, and we love a sob story. It might
work.”

No one is interested in informing him that the brand ambassador is a Chinese actor, not a K-
pop idol. He’s roundly ignored; most eyes are still on Yuta himself.

“His agency might take on the cost of sending him on an apology tour,” Yuta adds. “I’d talk
to firms in Los Angeles. If it goes well…” He shrugs to let everyone else fill in the gaps.

“I know a guy,” one of the Americans says.

“I’m married to a guy,” the other one says. “Have your assistant talk to mine, I can get you a
deal.”

The CMO inclines his head, not committing to Yuta’s half-baked scheme but not rejecting it,
either. Yuta takes an exceedingly satisfying bite of squid and caviar, enjoying the burst of salt
on his tongue. The conversation moves on fairly quickly, but they lingered on the topic on the
edge of too long anyway.

Chenle leans over and whispers, “Buckets. Nothing but buckets.”

Yuta almost snorts at Chenle’s metaphor of choice. When he goes for a sip of water, he looks
up and notices Xiang Shan studying him, which sends a thrill of too many emotions through
Yuta. He doesn’t let himself freeze, as he might have at the start of the night; he secures the
edges of his old suit, of old Yuta, irreverent and charming, unshakeable on the football field,
and pulls it tighter. He cocks his head.

“Interesting supposition, Mr. Nakamoto,” Xiang Shan says.

“I lived in America for college,” Yuta explains. “As you can imagine, it left an impression.”

“I see.” He sips his water, having opted out of the many bottles Chenle had the waiters
recommend, and considers Yuta. “This dinner is certainly proving to be more interesting than
the one I had with your CEO.”
Yuta’s heart thuds so hard it feels like it’s trying to knock him over from the inside out. But
he’s riding the wave of this night, of Chenle as the ace up his sleeve, of being looked at like
he’s someone and not no one by the man he’s been trying to figure out how to crack for
months. Yuta smiles. “Please accept my apology if anyone at Nakamoto Corp has wasted
your time,” he says, sounding easy but so, so careful.

On his college team, Yuta became known for a few long-shot goals, risks other teammates
wouldn’t have taken, but Yuta trusted the power of his muscles and his read on the goalie to
know what he was capable of. He made the impossible look easy.

He thinks he’s done it here. Xiang Shan gives him a nod, this one thoughtful.

Under the table, Chenle knocks his foot against Yuta’s. Luckily, it’s his good leg, or it would
be less of a congratulations and more of a screaming agony.

“Sorry to intrude,” Yuta hears, in the same second he becomes aware someone is looming in
his periphery, “but can I borrow Mr. Nakamoto for a second?”

Jaehyun. He can almost smell his cologne, never mind the immediate way Yuta can place the
low, smooth sound of his voice and how it prickles the hair on the back of his neck.

He’s on such high alert, teeming with so much energy, that it’s a miracle he doesn’t recoil
visibly or start shouting.

Yuta doesn’t turn his head to see him again, the nightmare apparition that he is. Probably
dimpling at the table.

“He’s just too popular this week,” Jaehyun continues, sounding warm and casual, doing an
even more convincing job of it than Chenle has been tonight. “I promise I’ll bring him right
back.”

He’s not directing his little speech at anyone in particular; it’s all for Yuta. To make the
possibility of turning him down an act of public rudeness. Yuta’s teeth set on edge. He pushes
back his chair and smiles tightly, putting his napkin on the table, using the momentum of his
rage to lever him up from the chair.

“Yuta,” Chenle says, and Yuta pats his shoulder to let him know he can handle it. He doesn’t
want witnesses to whatever this is.

If this is Jaehyun’s punishment, long withheld to be delivered at the perfect time to ruin
Yuta’s life, it’s perfectly executed.

Yuta doesn’t wait to see if Jaehyun is following him to the bathrooms, catching a glimpse of
him from the corner of his eye as they stride over. Once they step inside, the bubble of the
gold and white, dimly lit bathroom swallows up the sounds of the kitchen and the dining
room outside of it. He puts his back to Jaehyun and waits for the lone occupant to finish
pissing, feeling a curious glance as they leave and the restaurant sounds filter in again for a
moment.
Having to wait a few moments gave Yuta time to control his temper, at least somewhat. He
can’t make a scene. He can’t start something with Jaehyun right now; he needs to nip it in the
bud.

Finally, when Yuta turns and leans against one of the sinks, Jaehyun is standing clear across
the bathroom by the accessible stall, with his sleek side-parted hair and an obnoxiously
modern navy-blue suit. Yuta sees him notice the way he’s using the sink for support and has
to convince himself not to push off it and stand on his own. It pisses him off to keep being so
obviously vulnerable in Jaehyun’s presence.

Maybe Jaehyun feels guilty that he made Yuta walk all the way over here for this bullshit. He
should.

Yuta forces each word from his throat at an even volume. “I’m not sure what you think
you’re doing, since I made it clear I don’t want to talk to you.”

Surprisingly, that makes an impact in Jaehyun’s irritatingly calm composure. His nose
wrinkles slightly and his mouth goes tight. “I’m trying to… help you, believe it or not,” he
says stiffly. “This isn’t for me.”

Yuta has a list of several places Jaehyun can shove his help. It’s so patronizing, so much like
Jaehyun lording over Yuta on his admittedly higher moral ground, that Yuta laughs. “Oh, I’m
ready to hear this. Hurry up and help so I can get on with my life.”

“Yuta, Jesus, just listen to me, all right? Your company—I’m sitting with Miyashiro Shinji
and the head of Avionics, and they know you’re here and they’re furious about it.”

Yuta’s anger turns for one moment into an ice block in his chest, cutting off his air supply, but
he forces himself to breathe and keep going so Jaehyun doesn’t know how much that
knowledge rattles him. This could mean trouble for him, if they think he weaseled his way
somewhere he doesn’t belong or is negatively impacting the company’s reputation.

He’ll have to rely on the Chenle connection. This is a mitigatable problem, and he can deal
with it later, though he dreads the idea of his superiors’ eyes on him as he tries to chip away
at Xiang Shan. “That’s my business, if it’s true,” he says coolly.

Jaehyun squints at him, his hands going to his hips, his stance the most aggressive it’s been
through their encounters this week. There’s flush high on his cheeks, Yuta notices, either
because Jaehyun’s been indulging in the impressive wine list or because Yuta has infuriated
him by not meekly accepting Jaehyun’s magnanimous attention. “That’s it? You’re pissing off
the higher-ups and—”

“Yeah, I’m leaving,” Yuta says. “You don’t need to protect me from my big, scary bosses, but
thanks for the... thanks for being a hero.”

“Yuta, stop,” Jaehyun says sharply, as Yuta pushes off from the sink.

Yuta does not stop.

But then Jaehyun asks, “Did you harass—did you approach Xiang Shan after one of his
panels?”

“What?”

“Are you here for Xiang Shan?” Jaehyun presses. Yuta hears the soft, crisp noises of him
stepping closer on the tile, two strides, as Yuta hovers by the door. “What do you want with
him?”

“How did you know about—”

“I had to sit through lunch with him after our panel, and he mentioned he was harassed by an
employee from Nakamoto Corp backstage. He was thinking of complaining to his superiors.
He might have done it already, for all I know. I… didn’t think it was you, why would you
have any reason—but then I see you here, talking to him, and I can’t figure out why the hell
else you’d be at this restaurant—”

“How many times do I have to say that I’m not your business,” Yuta hisses.

It would be so easy to go through the door and end this conversation, cut Jaehyun off from
Yuta’s embarrassment, and work on seeing this opportunity through. Yuta’s a fool for letting
this drag on, but Jaehyun shouldn’t know about Yuta’s first approach. He shouldn’t have the
temerity to walk over and pretend to be Yuta’s friend and claim to be helping him.

Yuta shouldn’t want to know what he has to say about Xiang Shan, either, but Yuta’s always
been too curious. His hesitation permits Jaehyun to keep talking, sounding infuriatingly
reasonable.

“Xiang Shan is bad news. Whatever your business is, he’s dangerous and you should stay
away from him.”

Yuta is torn between a dramatic exit and whirling around to punch Jaehyun in the face.
Dangerous? What a joke. “I don’t know what your game is, but—”

“I don’t have a game,” Jaehyun says. His voice doesn’t stay reasonable: it ricochets around
the tile and mirrors with emotion Yuta can’t identify. “Can you think logically about this for
one damn second?”

“Fuck you,” Yuta says, voice climbing too, all his intentions to keep this from exploding
vanishing by the second. “Seriously—”

The bathroom door opens, luckily swinging outward or it might have caught Yuta in the face.

Whoever it is would have to be very drunk to have missed the muffled sounds of an
argument. Yuta, guilty and startled, sees it’s Chenle, though, and not someone Yuta could
have risked offending. He looks determined and wild-eyed, then immediately relieved. The
door swings shut and encases them in relative privacy again.

“Oh, shit, I found you. You’re okay, right?” He spares a dark glance behind Yuta at Jaehyun
before grabbing Yuta’s wrist. “Come on, let’s go. Don’t listen to him.”
Yuta doesn’t let himself be moved.

He doesn’t need to be saved from Jaehyun like some sort of damsel in a tower. He doesn’t
need some younger, bored executive’s son thinking he knows what’s best for Yuta any more
than he needs Jaehyun’s sabotage or help or whatever the fuck it is.

Yuta knocks Chenle’s hand off his wrist. “Don’t fucking touch me.”

Chenle blinks. “Wow, okay, sorry, I won’t. But you need to get back out there and, uh, away
from this asshole.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Yuta snarls.

He walks a step back, though it puts him closer to Jaehyun, and the occluding rage he feels—
or the wine and painkiller, maybe even the endorphins of his little victories at the table—
manages to propel his movement like he isn’t injured.

“Both of you, stop trying to—” He pivots to address Jaehyun too, to send them both out so
Yuta can have a moment to compose himself and then get back to work, but his knee can’t
take such a sharp, sudden movement.

The hideous noise of pain Yuta makes as he starts to crumple and pitch forward, like all the
nerves and muscles in his leg are too busy being on fire to do their job and keep him
standing, resounds in the bathroom.

There’s a squeak against the tile as Jaehyun catches him. It’s a rough catch, jostling Yuta’s leg
more, and Yuta gives a cut-off keen. Everything hurts. He tries to stand up straight in
Jaehyun’s hold and can’t manage it, and Jaehyun hefts him up and supports the uninjured side
of him like particularly heavy luggage.

“I have no idea who you are,” Jaehyun says, voice drifting across Yuta’s awareness like
clouds in a distant sky, “but you need to get out. Now.”

“I’m not leaving him,” Chenle says. “Not with you.”

Yuta sucks in a wet, ragged breath, his nails digging into Jaehyun’s arm and side, the slick
material of his suit, as he rides waves of pain that won’t stop despite his weight being solidly
off his bad leg. Trying to straighten it is just as bad as putting weight on it. He’s standing, his
weight against Jaehyun, his bad leg lifted like he’s a fucking flamingo. “Go. Jaehyun’s not—
Just go.”

“I don’t… think that’s a good idea.”

Yuta clenches his jaw and squeezes his eyes closed. Chenle trying to protect him like this
would be endearing if it weren’t so annoyingly misplaced. “Leave,” he grits. “Now.”

There’s a long silence, and Yuta only realizes Chenle’s left when he hears a swell and dip of
noise from the dining room again as the door opens and closes.
Jaehyun gently attempts to shift him so he’s better supported. Yuta chokes on a spike of pain,
but they can’t stand here. He can’t hang off Jaehyun all night. If someone comes in who isn’t
Chenle—

“Put me… put me in a stall,” he whispers, blinking his damp eyes open. “Put me in a stall
and leave me there.”

“No,” Jaehyun says. “Fuck, Yuta, no. I’m sorry.”

Yuta strangles the sob in his throat.

Jaehyun takes an inhale so deep and deliberate, Yuta can feel it. “I’m going... I can take you
out of here. We’ll go out through the kitchens so no one sees. I’m getting you to a doctor.”

“No.” His arms feel like the noodles Chenle insisted he try from his plate, but he tries to use
them to push away from Jaehyun’s body. He can’t do it, he doesn’t have the coordination, and
Jaehyun’s hold is like a steel trap. “Fuck,” he snarls, not so much at Jaehyun as at the helpless
fury of his stupid leg. His voice cracks at the end, and it doesn’t sound solid as he says, “I
have to go back out there. I need him.”

“You need…? Xiang Shan?” Jaehyun demands, incredulous and angry despite the way he’s
carefully maneuvering Yuta to take even more of his weight. “He’s under investigation for
human trafficking, so no, you need to get the hell away from him.”

Pressure builds up through his sinuses. “No. No.” He crumples a handful of Jaehyun’s suit
jacket in his fist, wrenching it. He pictures Xiang Shan, his nerdy but expensive glasses. His
stilted, boring English. Disbelief builds in him the same as the tears do, threatening to spill.
“You’re lying.”

“I’m not. I’m not lying to you.” Jaehyun grunts with the effort of lifting him when Yuta starts
to slump. “Hold on. Hold onto me.” Yuta can’t follow the directive. It’s too much.

Jaehyun smells the same, under the new cologne. Yuta’s traitor of a body recognizes that
amidst his haze of misery and pain and confusion, the same way he recognizes that Jaehyun
feels so different against him, so much bigger, as he strains to keep Yuta upright and murmurs
poison into his ear.

“He’s— I would have—” Yuta would have found it. He found out about his mistresses and
their families. He found out about his wife’s gambling problem. How would he miss
trafficking? He knows what kind of garden-variety corporate monster Xiang Shan is. Doesn’t
he?

“It’s a secret, the investigation isn’t public yet, but I swear, I swear on my daughter’s life I
would not lie to you about this.” There’s silence while Yuta breathes unevenly against
Jaehyun’s shoulder, and he hears Jaehyun swallowing hard with a click. “Please, please let
me take you to a doctor. Yuta, you can’t walk.”

He wants to protest, but he’s out of words. He’s out of reasons, too; he can’t walk. He can’t
go back out there without help.
 He can’t believe that all of his hard work, his life raft out of hell, has been a waste of time.
He refuses to.

Jaehyun has to be lying to him. How would he know about some secret investigation into
human trafficking if Yuta never unearthed it after months? Is he saying whatever bullshit he
can to break Yuta down, now that he has the chance? Yuta deserves it, he knows he does, but
why this tactic? It seems insane.

“You’re in so much pain,” Jaehyun says. He sounds like he’s sorry, which can’t be true,
either. “You can’t keep going like this.”

The warmth of his palm against the back of Yuta’s neck feels singeing, cutting off his
spinning thoughts mid-rotation, and Yuta shudders. In the next second, before he can process
how he feels about Jaehyun taking the liberty of touching his bare skin like that, mimicking
his old embraces, Jaehyun drops his hand in a hurry.

Why would Jaehyun touch him like that if he wanted to ruin him?

Nothing makes any sense. He knew Jaehyun was dangerous.

Jaehyun’s voice buzzes against Yuta’s chest. “I’ll tell you everything I know about Xiang
Shan. Hell,” Jaehyun chuffs, “I’ll promise to leave you alone forever if you’ll just let me help
you. Can I do that?”

Yuta’s face crumples, glad for the shield of Jaehyun’s shoulder so it can’t be seen. So he
doesn’t have to look at him and see either burning sincerity or pity in his eyes.

Fuck.

“Yes.”

Chapter End Notes

Thanks, hugs, and eternal gratitude to Anne and Caitlin, especially as this chapter tried
its best to end me. Their patience and incredibly good advice is appreciated so much. As
are the like, seven-hour-long Discord calls, lmao.

Also, in case the bit about Daegal's name that I snuck in got past you, her name means
"big head" and Chenle is now old enough to be embarrassed by that when he's trying to
look cool around new people.

Come bug me on twitter @sssneakiest!!

 Chapter 4
Chapter Notes

Okay, I added another chapter last chapter, and I'm doing it again here, I think? Maybe
chapter five will just be enormous, idk. Originally, as I said on twitter, chapter four was
going to be 20k of them talking, more or less, but trust and believe this is the better
option. Instead, there's 13k of them talking. This fic refuses to behave.

Also, huge thanks to Anne especially for their help in drafting this chapter; I had them
help me out of a pit multiple times, and there are Anne Words sprinkled throughout this
chapter. (Kudos to anyone who can pick out an Anne contribution!) Get y'all a pal who
will write you out of miserable corners.

I hope everyone enjoys!!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Jaehyun leaves him to absolute privacy with the doctor he summoned. He’s absent for so
long, even after the doctor leaves, that Yuta can almost convince himself Jaehyun’s a
hallucination and he isn’t currently seated in the middle of his suite.

But he’s real; his jacket over the arm of a nearby chair, his preferred liquor bottles on the
mini bar, probably his favorite brand of toothpaste in the bathroom, are all evidence of Jung
Jaehyun, and not the shadow of the one Yuta knows in his anxious dreams. Yuta can shake off
memories, he’s got a lot of practice at that, but he can’t outrun the man in flesh and blood.

Especially since he can’t run at all, at the moment. Yuta smiles darkly when he pictures
himself attempting to. Probably he’d collapse in a heap in the hallway and Jaehyun would
have to carry him back to the couch.

Some of his sense started coming back to him as soon as the first needle retracted from his
skin, taking his pain with it. The blurry slideshow of impressions that came before were
dominated by agony and something beyond agony—maybe Yuta’s higher functions shutting
down, refusing to process anything but a vague awareness of Jaehyun’s grip on him as he
smuggled Yuta out of the restaurant and all the way here.

Yuta’s not new to the effects of a numbing agent, the cold relief after throbbing, all-
encompassing pain, but it brings a clarity he finds difficult to sit with.

It’s certainly a clarity he wouldn’t have on painkillers, he thinks, folding his arms and looking
down at the tastefully stupid zig-zag design in the carpet. The doctor gave him a prescription
for more for when the numbness wears off. This one is completely legitimate and legal, but
Yuta recoils from the idea of losing his ability to think clearly again.
His leg is outstretched and elevated on a nearby chair, knee swollen and red and bisected by a
thick scar over the patella. No bandages, because apparently the last thing it needs right now
is more constriction. There’s no bruising yet, but it hasn’t even been an hour since the steroid
injection. The numbing agent is supposedly long-lasting, and the steroid is fast-acting,
intended to kick in within twenty-four hours, but there’s a gap there that Yuta is very familiar
with. He dreads it since he doesn’t know when it’s coming and how much worse his knee will
hurt in response to the injection.

Or if it will turn bad, like the last one.

He’s staring at his wreck of his knee, his pale and skinny thigh in his blue briefs on the gray
couch, with too much catching up with him at once, when Jaehyun knocks on the door to his
own suite.

Jaehyun’s return is a distraction from fixating on his knee. Yuta will have plenty of that over
the next few days, hawklike in watching for signs of infection or any atrophy. He swore he
wouldn’t roll the dice after the nightmare injection three years ago, but here he is,
succumbing to needles again because he can’t manage his pain.

At least they didn’t have to aspirate his knee this time. That would have required going to a
clinic, and Yuta had a hard enough time convincing himself to let the doctor come near him
with a needle in Jaehyun’s neutrals-and-creams suite as it was.

“Yeah, come in,” Yuta says.

Jaehyun does. He’s shed his tie, unbuttoned the first of his shirt buttons and neatly pushed his
sleeves up to his elbows, and his hair is far less pristine than it was at dinner, with some
sections free of the gel and hanging over his forehead. He looks tired and uncertain.

“You look better,” Jaehyun says, standing near the door, hands slipping into his pockets. The
face of his watch gleams at Yuta in the pleasantly dim light.

He wants to say is that he’ll be out of Jaehyun’s hair in a few minutes, once he’s gathered
what’s left of his strength, and also his pants, but Yuta—numb and still injured, despite what
the lack of pain signals are telling him—is aware he’s not supposed to move around yet. At
the very least, he’ll need Jaehyun’s help to do so.

So he’s at Jaehyun’s mercy, and there’s still the matter of Jaehyun’s belief that Xiang Shan is
the oil-blighted great white equivalent of a white whale.

Now that he’s not on the edge of a meltdown, Yuta has more questions, and around eighty
percent of them aren’t paranoid.

Regrettably, he’s very aware that whatever Jaehyun’s motives are, whatever his feelings
about Yuta, he wouldn’t lie to him about something like this. That was the first of the
uncomfortable realizations Yuta faced when reality came into sharp focus after the numbing
shot. Jaehyun wouldn’t care to sabotage Yuta’s life. That’s not who Jaehyun is, even if the
new shape of him—the way he fills out a suit and his C-level title—doesn’t match Yuta’s
memories. Jaehyun wouldn’t have carted him out through the kitchens of a restaurant to spare
Yuta’s image and feelings if he wanted Yuta pilloried in the town square for what he did years
ago.

While he waited and stewed in awareness for the doctor to leave and then for Jaehyun to
return, Yuta actually did the math of exactly how long ago he cut ties and ran. He paged
through the memories he tries not to look at directly in order to narrow it down. His father’s
heart attack was in the winter, just before Christmas, of 2023. Yuta had the movers pack his
things just after New Year’s. Six years. Almost, anyway.

Jaehyun hasn’t changed so much in six years that he’d construct elaborate schemes to make
Yuta pay for his disappearing act. Still, how the hell does Jaehyun know about human
trafficking investigations when Yuta dug around in Xiang Shan’s business for months and
didn’t find a hint of it? Why would Jaehyun care about Chinese shipping magnates all the
way in Korea?

“I know that face,” Jaehyun says, with some tired humor. “Let me hydrate before the
inquisition, hold on.” He crosses to the mini-bar and the sink there and fills two crystal
glasses with water. “It’s potable,” he promises as he walks over, holding the glass intended
for Yuta with the very tips of his fingers from above, as if to minimize Yuta’s contact with his
fingerprints.

“Thanks,” Yuta says, not looking at him more than is required to collect the glass without
spilling.

This is awkward and stiff, but most of the jagged edges of tension disappeared along with the
bulk of Yuta’s pain. He’s aware it was mostly from him in the first place; he sparked like a
heavy storm cloud when Jaehyun was so much as in his vicinity.

He isn’t, he can admit, entirely rational when it comes to Jaehyun. It’s a character flaw. At
least he’s aware of it.

Yuta sips the water, which could stand to be colder, and considers the slight wobble in it like
a seesawing plane. There’s a tremor in his hands, which he attributes to the adrenaline
burning off.

Jaehyun sits across from him in a plush brown chair, commencing the busywork of sipping
his own water. He doesn’t look at Yuta’s bare legs, though he can hardly be unaware of how
stupid Yuta looks, in his blue-striped dress shirt, the hem draped across the tops of his thighs
in an attempt at modesty. He hasn’t looked at the increased scarring on Yuta’s knee, either.

“So, trafficking, huh?” Yuta says, voice thick with the gulp he just took. “And here I thought
he seemed like such a likable stuck-up philanderer.”

Jaehyun’s chuckle is barely voiced. “I can’t say much. I don’t really know much, if I’m
honest with you.” He looks over at Yuta, the glass hovering below his mouth like he intended
to take a sip but got distracted. His eyes burn with sincerity, tight around the corners, his
mouth pulled flat into the closest thing to a frown Jaehyun allows himself to make. “But ah,
Interpol is involved. Which I discovered… firsthand,” Jaehyun says meaningfully, head
tilting.
“Okay. Damn. That must have been… intense.”

“Well, I can’t say I was expecting to trip into this mess four months ago just because we
share some connections and he apparently invited me to be on the panel with him. But it is
what it is. I wasn’t able to be any help to them, unfortunately.” He takes another healthy sip
of water and flits his gaze to the corners of the room, like he’s never seen it before.

At first, Yuta wonders if Jaehyun is paranoid that Interpol is here in Lisbon, that there’s an
agent waiting outside the room for him to slip a secret to the wrong person, but if that were
the case, they wouldn’t be talking about this aloud at all.

No, Yuta realizes that Jaehyun is nervous to talk to him. Nervous to be in the room with him.
Nervous to look at him. He never showed any sign of it before, not during any of their
terrible run-ins, but now it’s emanating from him. Either he wasn’t nervous before, or Yuta
was so caught up in his own dread and panic that he couldn’t see beyond it.

The dread and panic have drained out of him, leaving behind emptiness and resignation.
Maybe Yuta would feel differently, might have something left of fight or flight left in him, if
he thought he could get up and walk out of here without answers. Or walk, period.

This moment, this conversation, is an inevitability. He knew it when he agreed to let Jaehyun
help, even if he was half out of his mind in that bathroom. He knew it when he saw Jaehyun
at the Ritz bar, and his past caught up with him all at once.

“Do you think he knows? That he’s under investigation, I mean.” Nothing in Xiang Shan’s
demeanor was nervous, or hunted, or suspicious—which is either because of obliviousness or
a downright chilling detachment.

Yuta’s heard a lot about the ugly sides of industry; his father disdained a few competitors and
silently, distantly rooted for their downfall because they played fast and loose with
regulations. Yuta heard secondhand stories about sweatshops and child labor, a few situations
with sex workers that were played off as scandals rather than abuse, and if there were worse
stories, they weren’t discussed where his ears could hear.

One of Yuta’s distant uncles is in jail for white-collar crime, based on a damning paperwork
trail, because it was the only charge that would stick. He’s guilty of far worse, supposedly.

“I think he might suspect.” Jaehyun’s expression turns wry. “Let me put it this way—there’s a
pretty good chance he’ll take a sudden vacation to somewhere without extradition laws
instead of heading home to Guangdong when the conference is over.”

Yuta nods, but he’s distracted by a pang in his stomach reminding him not only of how little
he ate but of how blasé he’s become. Lying, cheating, greedy, crooked figures are nothing
new or remarkable to him—he knew Xiang Shan was at least two or three, maybe all four,
and still saw him as a valid way out.

Not even two hours ago, he would have done almost anything to cinch the deal. Yuta’s skin
crawls to remember his own glee, his soaring confidence, when Xiang Shan set his beady
eyes on Yuta with interest.
He was so far up his own ass with feeling important again for once.

“You okay?”

Yuta shakes himself free of what he recognizes was the beginning of a spiral. “Just
processing. I’m fine.”

“How’s your knee?”

Yuta glances down at it. It remains mottled and swollen and scarred. He can’t feel it, which
has its own quality of discomfort, but it’s leagues better than it’s been in days. “Horrible, but
fine.” He meant it to sound funnier than it does. “Thank you for… calling the doctor. For all
this.” He gestures with his free hand to indicate himself, his underwear-clad ass on the couch,
Jaehyun bearing Yuta’s weight for as far and long as he did. “And warning me.”

“So you’re… you’re not going to pursue Xiang Shan?”

Yuta blinks. His hand trembles around the glass of water, though it’s so light since he’s all but
drained it. “No? I’m not—I’m not insane. Or corrupt.” He nearly bristles with indignation,
with disbelief, but he just doesn’t have the energy. And he realizes that, given how he took
the news when Jaehyun first tried to impart it, he might be somewhat reasonably concerned
Yuta would reject him. With less heat, he says, “I believe you, don’t worry.”

Jaehyun physically slumps like a puppet with its strings cut, then hurriedly deposits his glass
on the marble coffee table. The heels of his hands rub forcefully at his eyes, and Yuta stares
with something like fascination to watch him… react.

He’s more like the college kid in a Gucci snapback who blushed when Yuta complimented
his cooking than the shark in a suit Yuta’s been face-to-face with this week. The suit being
literally half-shed helps, maybe.

Yuta being pulled back from the brink of pain-induced hysteria and bad ideas might be
helping too. Who can say. Hindsight, 20/20, et cetera.

“Right, okay.” Jaehyun drops his hands and clears his throat. “Can’t say I was expecting that.
But good.”

“I mean, your story is a little thin on the details,” Yuta says. It’s a stupid impulse, but
Jaehyun’s mask is gone, and Yuta gets to watch his face flinch as Yuta reintroduces doubt.
Still, he doesn’t have the energy or impetus to really go for it, and he concludes with, “But I
don’t think you’re creative enough for Interpol.”

“Thanks,” Jaehyun says archly.

“And you’re too… You swore on your kid.” Yuta cringes to bring it up. It’s the moment that
made him realize Jaehyun meant it, that Jaehyun was serious, that filtered through his fog.
Jaehyun would never use his child as a pawn. “I do get how serious that is. I get that you’re
not...” Yuta is not quite comfortable enough to detail the many ways in which his thoughts
ran off the rails and insisted Jaehyun was engaged in cartoonish sabotage. “This hasn’t been
my best week,” he mutters.

“No, I got that. I picked up on that.” He cracks a smile, and the faint lines around his eyes
Yuta noticed before look deeper. They suit him. “Truthfully, this hasn’t been one of my finer
weeks, either.”

Yuta salutes him with his glass and drains the last drops of water. “So, thanks for rescuing me
from moral… ah, from doing something I would regret with Xiang Shan. And for your help
getting the doctor.”

“I know you don’t want to get into it, and that’s fine,” Jaehyun says, “but I can’t... I don’t like
seeing you in pain. Whatever else you think of me, please know that.” His voice is solid and
serious until the end, when it crumbles slightly, almost imperceptibly.

Yuta lets that be said without immediately holding it up to the light to check for signs of
counterfeiting. It does ring very true to the man he broke all his rules for. Jaehyun is very
sweet. Jaehyun is kind to his own detriment, and it seems time has not particularly altered
that. Yuta has not altered that. “I think I have the qualities of a baby bird,” Yuta says. “All
these people coming along to help me like I fell out of the nest.” Katsumi’s pity, Jaehyun’s
cocktail of emotions and motives, and Chenle’s mysterious boredom all seem to have
something in common.

Jaehyun laughs like he’s surprised. “Maybe.”

“It’s weird,” Yuta says. “But I’m—I’m in much better shape than I would be if you had
listened to me and left me in the bathroom, so. Thanks.” He made a noise like closed-mouth
laughter. Almost a harrumph. “I feel like I should be keeping track of how many times I’ve
thanked you.”

“While you’re feeling generous,” Jaehyun says, “before I fulfill my end of the deal”—the
specifics of the promise Jaehyun made filter back to Yuta, the chagrin and relief of Jaehyun’s
agreement to leave him alone when it’s not the heat of the moment and it’s honestly a little
embarrassing, that Yuta couldn’t be a grown man about things—“I wanted to talk about
logistics for tonight. Because I tried to book you a suite here, but they’re full up.”

“A suite?”

“I figure… you probably don’t want me carrying you to a taxi and then to your hotel room.”
Yuta does not relish the idea, no, not without the buffer of pain to haze over every awkward
and pathetic moment. “But with the conference—”

“My dignity is literally on the floor with my pants, I don’t care about—”

“—I can call you a taxi, I just don’t think you should be walking—”

“—right, so—”
“I don’t want you to feel like you’re trapped here,” Jaehyun says, his eyes pinning Yuta with
their clear frustration in his desire to be understood. “And I really don’t want you to feel like
you owe me.”

“Right,” Yuta says again, slow.

“So I can get you a taxi, I can have my assistant help you if you don’t want me to do it, or
you can call someone, or you could sleep— I can sleep on the couch.”

“You’re offering to let me sleep here,” Yuta says. A new kind of numbness spreads through
his limbs. A new realization.

Jaehyun looks even more apologetic than he did when he made himself blurt out the offer. “I
know you don’t want to be around me, but it’s the best solution I can think of. There’s a door
to the bedroom you can close. You wouldn’t even know I’m here.”

Yuta’s woken up from countless dreams of Jaehyun crying, yelling, begging him, asking for
answers. Occasionally, the dreams involved Jaehyun fighting to change his mind and
tormenting Yuta with possibilities. Sometimes Yuta imagined a rage he’d never witnessed
from Jaehyun, one that matched the intensity of his own feelings. But never, not even on the
loneliest of nights, in the aching of his feelings, did he imagine Jaehyun squirming with
apology for daring to suggest Yuta sleep in his hotel room. For having to be in the same space
as him.

The clarity brought with it a stinging embarrassment for how he’s acted this week. That’s
been the hardest to face. He’s sick of himself, fed up with his continued scrabbling and
running and dissembling, when none of it has helped. It only dug him deeper in the muck. It
very nearly linked him with a criminal. “You’d really let me sleep here? And let me go in the
morning? Never see me again?” He doesn’t even know why he’s asking. He knows the
answer.

He probably always knew the answer. He just couldn’t stand to look it in the eye.

“Yes?” There’s a furrow between Jaehyun’s thick brows that suggests confusion, but he has
to be aware of how uneven those terms are. How laughably kind they are to Yuta. How
saying them out loud sounds insane. “Or if you give me your room card, I could go sleep at
your hotel—”

Yuta’s laughter cracks like lightning. Jaehyun looks singed, wide eyed in the silence after.
“You’re still such a martyr sometimes. Sleep on the couch, Jaehyun, for fuck’s sake.” He’s
trembling to concede to it, to insist on it himself, but he’s tired of running. Tired of
shadowboxing the Jaehyun inside his own head.

“You... Really?”

Yuta doesn’t have the reserves or the words to tell Jaehyun exactly how much of this mess
has been Yuta refusing to be held accountable for his own bullshit. “I am capable of acting
like an adult, you know, most of the time. It’s fine.”
Jaehyun is so still, like Yuta’s shocked him so completely he’s rebooting. “Sure. All right.
That’s good.” His tone is almost emotionless with careful neutrality. He blinks and then
squares his shoulders, pushing his fist into the soft give of the chair’s cushion as he levers
himself up. “But let me, um. Let me get you set up.”

“Okay,” Yuta says, to fill the silence and to hopefully prompt Jaehyun into looking slightly
less like an automaton.

After witnessing real emotion tonight, shades of the Jaehyun he used to read like a book, it’s
unsettling to lose it again so quickly. But Jaehyun has already been too nice. Yuta quietly
adds tonight to the tally of what he owes him.

He hasn’t made any meaningful progress on that debt. He’s done nothing but make it worse
all week, acting like an irrational, possibly even spiteful loser.

As Jaehyun starts to set things to rights, collecting Yuta’s glass and politely asking if he needs
a charger for his phone, Yuta’s stomach rumbles so loudly Jaehyun glances over at him from
the mini bar in alarm.

“Uh… Well,” he starts sheepishly. “Could you also get me the room service menu?”

------

Sleep, despite the resilience of the numbing agent, did not come easily.

Yuta had first endured Jaehyun helping him, his arm crinkling against Yuta’s shirt as he
supported each step, to the pristine, sharp-edged marble bathroom—where Yuta tried
Jaehyun’s whitening toothpaste to see if the formula had changed since using it in Chicago,
which it had not—then the cozier bedroom, where the bed was half-turned down and the
room was strewn with more hints of him. The closet door was open to show a row of suits
buffered at each end by a tracksuit and what looked like a clubbing outfit. Jaehyun set Yuta
up in the bedroom with a robe, a spare phone charger, and the room-service salad with the air
of someone freshly awake and stumbling through the motions.

Then, after Jaehyun’s brief goodnight—like he wanted to get it over with before whatever
was prompting Yuta’s tolerance ran dry—Yuta had to slide between sheets that smelled like
Jaehyun. He’d offered to call housekeeping to change the bedding, but Yuta was fed up with
being catered to.

In his underwear under the cone of light of the bedside lamp, eating a salad he could barely
taste, Yuta tried to manage the strangeness of the circumstances, his background worry about
the steroid injection, and the mess he’d made of his work life.

He texted Katsumi to let her know he was indisposed and wouldn’t be able to work the floor
tomorrow because of his knee. She confirmed simply, wished him a quick recovery, and
asked no questions. Not even about the dinner. It was a small mercy.

He texted his sister so she wouldn’t worry, given how spotty his communication had been
since flying to Portugal. He mentioned his knee giving him trouble so she wouldn’t overreact
if she heard something secondhand.

He drafted a few texts to Ten that he didn’t send.

And then he stared at the ceiling, his phone on his chest, and thought about how close he
came to disaster. How some of the execs in other divisions were likely to complain to his
director. He had no plan for handling that, because being honest was too much of a liability.

He tried to sleep, he did, but it eluded him for hours. He kept ping-ponging between burning
embarrassment and a detached, exhausted humor, that six years later, despite all of his
rigidity and running and the walls he put up, he’d ended up in Jung Jaehyun’s bed. In a
manner of speaking.

Every time he smelled his shampoo, it hit him again.

Eventually, he drifted off.

In the morning, Yuta checks his phone first thing—or not quite, since he sees the time and
realizes he slept longer than he meant to—and closes his eyes with relief that nothing blew up
overnight. His knee is still mostly numb, though he thinks he can feel a deep, subtle throb,
but he’s determined to ignore it.

Within ten minutes of being awake and wondering how the hell he’s going to call Jaehyun to
carry him to the bathroom, there’s a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Yuta says, and clears his throat when his voice comes out hoarse.

All traces of the tired and rattled Jaehyun Yuta saw the night before are gone. He’s put
himself together again, showered and changed into clothes he definitely didn’t grab from the
bedroom last night, and he smiles at Yuta so politely and easily, he feels himself blink.

“Need help getting to the bathroom?”

“Yeah, that would be good.”

Jaehyun nods and steps into the room, though he waits a few feet away from Yuta, who is
bundled in covers and starting to sweat. The A/C didn’t turn on at all during the night;
Jaehyun must have recalled Yuta strongly prefers it off while he sleeps.

“Oh, and if you want to shower, I’ve got a seat thing you can sit on.”

That has Yuta throwing back the covers with a hair too much enthusiasm, especially once he
remembers he’s only wearing his boxers. Too late to be weird about that. Luckily, he was too
tired the night before to do more than set the terrycloth robe Jaehyun gave him on the end of
the bed, and it’s still there now, so he puts it on as best he can.

Yuta has never been more aware of how much thinner he is than the last time Jaehyun saw
him shirtless.
Jaehyun doesn’t touch him until Yuta starts to stand up. His hands are warm even through
fabric but impersonal, the same as they’ve been each time he’s helped. It’s a short but
graceless trek through the bedroom to the bathroom, and Yuta wants to make conversation,
wants to play things off as confidently as Jaehyun is, but he can’t. He’s still too aware of how
precarious this is. It feels like if he says one wrong word, he’ll break their equilibrium.

He had a lot of time, last night, to think about how stupid he’s looked. Minimizing his
chances to make it worse seems to be the best strategy, especially since Jaehyun’s mask is
back in place.

“Holler if you need any help,” Jaehyun says with a half-buried yawn as he deposits Yuta
against the wall near the toilet and then walks away. It’s like he does this sort of thing every
day.

Maybe he’s had a lot of practice carrying his kid into bathrooms, Yuta concedes.

Yuta hops on one foot to position himself to piss and balances himself against the wall with
his free hand, and ignores the skinny, pathetic shape of himself in the bathroom’s many
reflective surfaces.

The urgency in his bladder is taken care of in short order, and then he maneuvers using the
walls and one particularly dangerous hop across the slick floor to the shower. There are still
droplets on the glass walls and the interior, and the room has the leftover smell of Jaehyun’s
shampoo that Yuta thought he was nose-blind to after a whole night rolling around in it, but
no, it permeates the room.

There’s a medical-looking white chair inside the shower, and Yuta shakes his head, a
knowing, sad smile on his face as he gets inside the stall.

Jaehyun has to stop being so fucking nice.

Yuta is the last person to deserve it.

------

Yuta’s glad he had time alone to brace himself in the shower, and that he got to do it sitting so
he’s not swamped with discomfort, because Jaehyun throws him a curve ball immediately
after he sets Yuta down on the couch in the sitting room.

At least he didn’t do it while they were traversing the dangerously slick bathroom.

“So,” Jaehyun says casually, stepping to an overly polite distance again, his hands in his
pockets. The watch he wore last night is nowhere to be found. “I can get you back to your
hotel whenever you want. But I was thinking I might as well test my luck and order
breakfast.”

Despite the elephant in the room, Jaehyun can navigate this, and nearly all of their run-ins
this week, with so much ease. Even if Yuta knows it’s fake. Last night proved it. Yuta makes
Jaehyun nervous. At least sometimes.
“It’s more like brunch now,” Yuta points out after checking his phone to get a sense of time in
what feels like an otherwise liminal space. “And sure, that sounds good. I promised I can
behave myself, didn’t I?”

“Okay, good, just… let me know if you want to leave. Because it’s all set up on the balcony.”

Jaehyun didn’t waste any time, did he? Likely ordered it before Yuta even showered in case
the idleness of sitting in the room together waiting for its arrival would turn Yuta feral again.

Fuck. Okay. Yuta’s ready for this. He wishes he were dressed, but Yuta already agreed to
Jaehyun’s offer to send his suit to be cleaned and it was whisked away during his shower.
Yuta tightens the tie of his robe so there’s no skin visible, like Jaehyun’s going to want to take
peeks at his sharp collarbones in the first place, especially since he saw all of Yuta’s skinny
chest already, including how he took his body piercings out long ago.

But he nods and reaches his hand out for Jaehyun to lift him from the couch. The smile he
adds isn’t convincing, but Jaehyun matches and then outshines it. For a second, Yuta sees
himself succumb to klutziness at the worst moment like an anime protagonist, leaning just
wrong enough to where he stumbles into Jaehyun’s hold.

Picturing it makes him feel like it might happen, the same way when he’s up somewhere high
and convinced he’ll tip over the edge and fall. Yuta breaks away out of instinct, when
Jaehyun’s still positioning his arm around Yuta’s waist. Jaehyun freezes, arm outstretched
midair where Yuta snatched himself away. Jaehyun’s face is a mask of politeness.

Stupid. All he does is make things worse. He told Jaehyun he can act like an adult, and here
he is disproving the theory.

Yuta still needs help out onto the balcony if he doesn’t want to take fifteen minutes to hobble
from furniture piece to furniture piece. Yuta is required to press up against him, like he did
earlier, like he did last night, and if it was going to be tolerable before, it is less than that now.

The result is a rote transfer, and Yuta forces himself to process the details once they’re out the
doors. At least the fresh air feels less stifling than being tucked under Jaehyun’s arm. He’s
always been so warm.

The balcony overlooks the track attached to the hotel, which means Yuta feels like the people
walking or jogging in the late-morning sun can look up and see him in his robe and self-
consciousness. He looks past it to the red-orange roofs and pale buildings, to the glimmering
river in the distance. It’s nice out. The smallest warm breeze flutters his hair into his eyes and
the hem of his robe over his knee, which he declines to prop up on the spare chair Jaehyun set
up for him. Sometimes it locks up when he has it elevated like that for too long.

“Are you sure?” Jaehyun is using the most neutral of tones—not stepping on any toes, but
keying Yuta ever so gently into disapproval.

Yuta ignores him. “How much food did you order?”

On the table, a spread of food covered with gleaming silver domes is set out, along with
carafes of coffee, water, and orange juice. There are pastries. Fruit. Salt and pepper shakers.
Sweetener and creamer.

“I didn’t know what you might want.” Jaehyun doesn’t sound embarrassed about the excess.
“Figured I’d aim wide.”

Yuta’s about to comment on how he’d be fine with an omelet like a normal person, but then
he lifts the dome on one of the dishes nearest his seat and laughs. It’s an onsen egg, and the
next thing he reveals is miso soup. Yuta’s hotel offers so-called continental breakfast, but the
Ritz is on another level. “So the entire menu?”

“No,” Jaehyun says, and grins as he picks up the coffee. “I didn’t get the healthy options. Just
a mix of things I remembered you like.”

He’s tempting Yuta into eating. Yuta has always had a finicky stomach; at the first sign of
stress, his appetite disappears and his guts gets cranky. Jaehyun learned to make Yuta rice and
soup on bad days.

The fact that Jaehyun still falls into old habits with Yuta is sobering. But it’s not like he’s not
going to eat the egg. Yuta slowly transfers the dish to his place setting.

“I promised anything you don’t want to my assistant, so if you don’t like it, don’t touch it.”

“Does your assistant usually eat your leftovers?”

Jaehyun fills Yuta’s coffee cup. Yuta watches the stream with fascination; it feels like deja vu,
like the hundreds of times Jaehyun served Yuta before himself. Like there hasn’t been a
many-year gap since the last cup he poured. “No, I hand-feed her,” he says blandly. “You
know I hate wasting food.”

Yuta appreciates the joke, but Jaehyun didn’t exactly take the segue into a somewhat neutral
topic as intended. Yuta collects a little bowl of miso and blows over the top, gazing out at the
houses and buildings up against the shore of the river. “I don’t think I noticed her. Your
assistant.”

“She’s sneaky like that. And I prefer a long leash. She has today off, so she’s seeing the
sights. I probably won’t see her again until we head to the airport, unless something comes
up.”

There’s a lot buried in that, in Jaehyun’s casual, easy conversation—his assistant is not up his
ass the way a lot of PAs are, handling their client with white gloves and making sure every
little thing is taken care of. Yuta deduces that Jaehyun took today off too, to babysit Yuta, or
whatever it is they’re doing. Otherwise, he’d probably be off to more meetings, more meals,
more endless handshakes.

The fact that he chose to stay here, eating room service on his balcony, with Yuta, says a lot,
and none of it flattering to the summit.
They’re kicking the elephant in the room back and forth between them, burying the awkward
pauses in small sips, and Yuta is still only taking glances at Jaehyun across the table from
him. Part of him doesn’t want to ruin this picturesque scene, or start something that would
destroy what meager eagerness he feels for food, but Yuta can’t keep avoiding reality forever.

Yuta steels himself for the potential of their polite, adult brunch being ruined and begins with,
“So I guess you have questions—”

The buzz of his phone in his pocket startles him. He tries to push past it, but then it buzzes
again as he’s sipping from his glass of ice water to regroup and try again.

“I don’t need to rehash everything,” Jaehyun says slowly. He’s using the side of his fork to
cut into an omelet intently. “I thought it might be nice to… catch up. End things on a better
note.”

Yuta’s phone buzzes a third time, and out of exasperation he pulls it out of his robe pocket to
silence it.

Before he does, he notices the country code is 86. Which means it’s a Chinese number.

His heart kicks in his chest, and Yuta’s filled with hot, horrified fear that he’s summoned
Xiang Shan at last and has to deal with that mess, but he slumps the second he realizes it’s
just Chenle.

Unknown number: You’re not out on the floor today

Unknown number: You better not be dead somewhere 😒
Unknown number: I’ll give you a touching eulogy if you are though
Yuta: I’m alive, I’m fine
Yuta: Jaehyun and I are exes, he isn’t a serial killer
Yuta: How did you get my number??

“You all right?” Jaehyun asks, as Yuta types at the speed of light.

“Chenle found my number somehow.”

“Zhong Chenle, right? He was your da— He was the one at the dinner?”

Yuta flicks Jaehyun a look he doesn’t overthink as he watches the dots of Chenle’s typing
appear on his screen. “He was not my date, thank you. He latched onto me because I’m a sad
baby bird. And I definitely didn’t give him my number, but somehow he found it.”

Jaehyun’s fork clinks gently against his plate. When Yuta glances up, Jaehyun’s elbows are
on the table, his hands steepled in front of his face, and he looks somewhere between amused
and thoughtful as he chews and swallows. His jaw tics when he does. “I could get your
number in… fifteen minutes? A half hour, if my assistant was really busy.”

Unknown number: That’s some intense ex energy you have there, in case you weren’t aware

“Not all of us pay people to do our dirty work,” Yuta manages, caught between two
conversations where he’s flailing to keep his head above water.
Yuta: I’m very aware
Yuta: Thanks for checking on me but I’m fine

Unknown number: I already have! 😏

Yuta: You can find someone else to entertain yourself now

Unknown number: Katsumi is way more interesting than you are

Yuta: Chenle. Leave her alone.

“Mm, I don’t buy it. There’s no way you don’t at least have a cleaner,” Jaehyun says.

Every reference to before, how well Jaehyun knew him, lingers in the air between them like a
discordant note. It’s true, Yuta has a cleaner, because if left to his own devices he’ll leave his
things in odd places and trip over them with regularity. He works very long hours, and the
last thing he wants to do when he gets home is vacuum.

Yuta approximates a casual smile. “I pay someone to clean my apartment twice a week, not to
manage my whole life.” He gives a fake wistful sigh. “That’s not a job perk for us mortals.”

Unknown number: Katsumi is fully capable of getting rid of me if she wants to

Unknown number: But she won’t
Unknown number: I think she likes me
Yuta: She doesn’t
Yuta: She’s using you for free labor
Unknown number: It isn’t exploitation if I like it 😜
Yuta scowls and slaps his phone on the table, face-down. Jaehyun is looking at him with
obvious amusement as he chews.

“Don’t ask,” Yuta says, and gulps down miso soup.

Jaehyun doesn’t. Instead, he says in a tone like he’s earnestly thinking about it, “If I wanted
to do my own dirty work, I could get your number in five minutes.”

Yuta nearly chokes on a piece of tofu. “Uh, that’s assuming Ten would give it to you.”

“Mmm, no, I wouldn’t ask Ten. I’d have to call…” Jaehyun sits back and thinks, drumming
his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Maybe just one person? I know someone who works in
life solutions at Nakamoto Corp. They’d be able to hunt you down.”

The point-blank surety of that, how close Jaehyun was at all times to being able to contact
Yuta, makes him laugh. “It’s a small world after all.”

With every passing minute, Yuta notices the slack in their tension increase as they eat and
talk and continue to skirt around the reason why this brunch is happening in the first place.
But he knows it’s not going to last forever; they’ll run out of more pleasant topics sooner
rather than later.

The fact is, Yuta ran from Jaehyun, cut him off without warning, made himself an
impenetrable fortress on an unreachable shore, and now, six years later, he finally has to
explain himself. Yuta needs to man up and do it.
He shovels down a few bites of the onsen egg, doesn’t even taste it, and feels the weight of
Jaehyun’s gaze on him.

“I want to explain myself,” he says, throat thick. “If we want to catch up, act like adults, it
can’t be with us pretending the whole time.”

“I told you, you don’t need to rehash it. I’ve had a long time to think about what happened,
and I know why you did what you did.”

Yuta takes a moment to sip the coffee, black with no sugar or creamer, so the first brittle,
bitter retort on his tongue is pushed back. Jaehyun’s presumption doesn’t exactly surprise
him, since Jaehyun’s always tried to scry Yuta’s motivations, but he doesn’t appreciate it now
the way he did in Chicago. “I doubt that. And I owe you the explanation, even if you think
you know it.”

The look Jaehyun gives him is calculating, but his eyes soften with each moment Yuta bears
it. “You cut me off because you were terrified I’d convince you to stay. You thought you had
no choice but to make it a clean break.” He’s gentle but matter-of-fact.

Tightness wells in Yuta’s throat, behind his eyes. Hearing it—infuriatingly close to right, but
with none of the fluctuating ambivalence and defeat Yuta endured that exhausted night in the
ICU when he decided to give in to his preordained fate, to return to his real life and stop
pretending he had a choice in the matter—rocks him. And irks him all over again. It’s been
six years since Jaehyun’s had permission to make assumptions.

“It was pointless to drag it out. It would have gone on and on for no reason.”

Jaehyun makes a noise of disagreement and shakes his head. “Not no reason. I wanted you in
my life even if it was on the other end of a phone.”

Yuta curls his hand around his coffee cup, numb to the warmth against his palm. He doesn’t
know why this is bothering him so much. Jaehyun said a lot of things that cut much deeper in
Yuta’s imagination. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry, but it wasn’t going to happen like that.” He has to
dig deep to find the phrase he wants; his English is not nearly agile enough for such a serious
personal conversation. It’s a pity they have to rely on it. “I didn’t want that kind of a
consolation prize.”

“I know,” Jaehyun says.

Yuta’s jaw tightens, his mouth firming. There’s that presumption again. “Can you let me
apologize? Or do you know what I’m going to say, so I shouldn’t bother?”

“I’m not trying to—”

“You can’t read my mind. You don’t know why I make the choices I make unless I tell you,
okay?”

“Okay, so tell me.” Jaehyun leans forward, gaze not moving from Yuta’s face, not giving him
ground. “Tell me why you ghosted everyone. Tell me why Ten was the exception.”
“Ten and Sicheng were the exceptions,” Yuta snaps. “You fucking know-it-all.”

Jaehyun is unfazed. He doesn’t even blink. “But why them? I get why you iced me out, but
why Mark too? What did he do?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m going to stay in contact with one of your best friends, when he’d call me
every week, crying—”

Jaehyun gives him an incredulous smile, eyebrows climbing. “But you’re fine with making
my best friend report on me? Telling him to keep it a secret? You’re fine with giving him that
burden?”

“Ten isn’t Mark. Ten can compartmentalize.”

Jaehyun snorts, but for as heated as Yuta is, the back of his neck burning, his face stiff from
maintaining a semi-neutral expression when he wants to scowl, Jaehyun’s not matching that
energy. He’s contained. “Okay, if that’s what you want to tell yourself. Ten’s a human being.
He just cares about you enough to put up with being treated like shit.”

“He didn’t keep it a secret, though,” Yuta says mutinously. He’s aware he’s slipping into the
same terrible headspace that has done nothing but embarrass him this entire week, but he
can’t stop. It feels too good to expose their pretense. To finally argue with Jaehyun, when
he’s spent the last six years rehearsing it all in his head. “How long did he hold out? Did he
tell you that day?”

“I saw a text notification on his phone,” Jaehyun says. “He would never have told me on his
own.” He takes a moment and punctuates it by munching on a grape, the dramatic asshole.
“Your ultimatum was a real dick move. But I’m sure you know that.”

Yuta bares his teeth in a smile. Under his skin, his taut muscles throb in time with his
pounding heart. “Oh, I do. I’m very aware of what a dick I am, Jaehyun, don’t worry.”

“You know, so there’s nothing else to be done about it, right? You’re going to explain
yourself, and then we go back to being strangers. Still making choices for everyone, yeah?”
Jaehyun’s tone is silky with an edge of mocking, a new, real frustration in his eyes.

Yuta has well and truly pissed him off. It feels like an accomplishment, peeling back the
mask again, but this was supposed to be about Yuta apologizing.

Still, knowing he got under Jaehyun’s sanctimonious skin is like a high, and Yuta isn’t ready
to come down. “What do you want to happen? You want me to cry about it? Say that I missed
you, that I’m sorry, that I regret it? I’m not going to say that. I’m not going to apologize for
going back to real life instead of playing house with you in Chicago. And you can’t tell me
you regret it either,” Yuta sneers, hand a rigid claw around his cutlery, “not when you moved
on with the first woman you saw. I’m sure you were so sad for the whole month you weren’t
getting your dick wet, and then you went on your honeymoon.”

He manages to stop himself from continuing, but lancing that particular wound leaves him
feeling almost woozy, his breathing too labored, his tired, overworked body shaking.
He’s ashamed as much as he’s relieved, as he’s viciously gratified.

Yuta did what he did to spare them both from the agony of a doomed long-distance
relationship. Every time Jaehyun brought up what they’d do when they left Chicago, or made
a joke about installing Duolingo on his phone to prep for visits to Japan, the naive hope in his
eyes made Yuta sick. His leaving was the best thing for them both; they’d be able to move on
without distractions, and Jaehyun wouldn’t be able to convince himself—or more
dangerously, Yuta—that there was any chance of a future that didn’t involve taking flights to
equidistant destinations to fuck in hotels every six months. To slowly fall out of each other’s
lives, or worse, to sour on each other.

He knew it would hurt, he knew it was cold, but it was better than watching something good
die or listening to Jaehyun beg for a chance while Yuta watched machines struggle to keep
his father alive. He couldn’t endure it, and there was no point. There was no place for
Jaehyun in Osaka, and there was absolutely no place for Yuta in Seoul; their space was
Chicago, and it was always liminal.

Yuta just didn’t expect Jaehyun to move on quite so enthusiastically, or so quickly. He didn’t
expect to see a press release announcing a wedding six months after Yuta ended things and
wonder if Jaehyun had been as in love with him as he claimed. But that doesn’t exactly give
him the right to use it against Jaehyun; what Yuta did was crueler than marrying someone
else. He knows that.

But Jaehyun doesn’t point out Yuta’s thin hypocrisy. He doesn’t match Yuta’s accusations.
Instead, he inhales, sharp and almost like a laugh, and rolls his shoulders in a tense shrug.
“Fuck, finally,” he says. “Was that so hard? Jesus.” He still looks—angry, or upset, but
there’s something else too. He’s mastering himself in exactly the way Yuta can’t seem to,
around him. “I knew I should have ordered mimosas,” he mutters.

Yuta stares at him, uncomprehending. This is what Jaehyun says in response to the shit Yuta
just hurled at him? Some quip about mimosas? He’s making fucking jokes? “Don’t,” he grits.

“Don’t what?” Jaehyun seems utterly immune to what Yuta said as the dark, ugly cloud of it
surrounds him. Yuta’s choking under it, infected with old wounds, and Jaehyun is casually
returning to his omelet. “You don’t want me to be honest?”

“I don’t want you to— Will you stop fucking eating?” Yuta demands. “Why are you letting
me say that? Why aren’t you mad at me?”

Jaehyun does stop eating, setting his fork down with a gentle clink. He pushes his plate away
too. “I don’t enjoy hearing it, but you need to get it out.”

Yuta can’t find anything in response to that. The indignant anger, the burden of all the things
he never got to say, either to lob as an accusation about Jaehyun moving on and running
headlong back to heterosexuality to do so, or to grovel, to offer up as payment for his selfish
choices, abandons him as quickly as it filled him. He’s just sitting there, in a hotel robe, a
frail, pathetic version of himself, exposed and at Jaehyun’s mercy.

“I’m not here for me. I’m trying to give you closure.”
“Yuta,” Jaehyun says, on a tired exhale. “It’s not closure to let you talk us into hating each
other.”

Yuta blinks.

Jaehyun keeps refusing to stick to a script Yuta is prepared for. This conversation, so terrible
in his mind’s eye, is somehow worse than he imagined, but it’s because he can’t predict it.
Jaehyun isn’t red-eared and glassy-eyed, his handsome face twisted with betrayal and rage.
He isn’t meting out punishment even when Yuta actively deserves it, when he’s crossing
lines.

He can’t keep getting this so wrong.

“I don’t… I don’t want that. I don’t hate you.”

If anyone is hated at this table, it should be Yuta.

“It’s simpler than being honest, though.” Jaehyun rubs the bridge of his nose, then collects
himself and nods at Yuta’s half-eaten egg, his half-drunk soup. “Eat, please. It’s getting cold.”

Yuta, uncomfortably seen and without a reliable roadmap to this conversation, meekly picks
up his bowl and sips.

------

Jaehyun steers them past the flaming wreckage and into more neutral territory, then offers to
split a crepe with Yuta. Yuta, stunned by the way Jaehyun got them out of choppy waters
without breaking a sweat, accepts.

Jaehyun does all the heavy conversational lifting until Yuta starts answering him with more
than one word at a time. Slowly, around finishing his omelet and refilling his cup of coffee,
he asks about Yuta’s family, about his nephews and how old they are, if Yuta secretly has any
favorites. Then he asks how Yuta’s dad is doing. The seriousness on his face prompts Yuta,
already sheepish for the mess he’s made of this brunch and being called out so thoroughly, to
give him a sanitized but relatively honest answer.

“Very weak still, and he’s had a few stays in the hospital, but he’s alive. I’m grateful he is.”

The whole truth is that his father is a shadow of who he was, stuck at home most days,
fighting congestive heart failure with nothing but tired, stubborn will and a CRT pacemaker.
When Yuta comes over twice a month for family dinners, observing the shrunken, fragile old
man at the head of the table is difficult. It’s worse when he invites Yuta into his study and
tries to give him advice by telling him more stories about the sacrifice of long hours, hard
clients, and big wins, then breaks down coughing in the middle until Yuta excuses himself
and goes home to his cold, lonely apartment.

But it’s better than the alternative. His father is still here. Yuta can still make him proud. Even
if he can’t do it with Xiang Shan.
“I’m sorry it’s been so rough,” Jaehyun says, and Yuta only sees sincerity, more solemn
kindness that makes him nod and look down at his plate so he doesn’t have to withstand it.
“From what you’ve told me, he’s a strong man. He’s going to be around for a long time.”

“I hope so,” Yuta says, and scrapes powdered sugar from the top of his crepe.

Talking about his father with Jaehyun, who heard him choke up every night over the phone
when he came back to his parent’s house from the ICU, in terror that he’d lose him, that he’d
slip away while Yuta slept, who texted him every few hours with reminders to eat, with
reminders that Jaehyun was here for him, brings things back he hates to remember.

The last thing Jaehyun texted him that Yuta saw was an article about panda cubs causing
some sort of adorable havoc at the zoo, along with a quip about one of the pandas reminding
him of Yuta when he hadn’t gotten enough sleep. Going downtown with Johnny, but I’ll have
my ringer on. Call if you need anything.

Yuta stared at it for twenty minutes, considering what he might say. I’m sorry. I’m not coming
back. I love you. I can’t do this anymore. In the end, he powered his phone off and threw it in
the trash. It was the only thing he could do, the best of terrible options bladed on all sides, so
he did it.

“How is your family? Are your parents well?” Yuta asks so he can stop fucking thinking
about it.

Jaehyun glides over discussion of his parents—well, traveling a lot since his father’s
retirement—which is about what Yuta expected, but he’s happy to spend more time talking
about Sohyun, her rough start taking over as CEO, how happy he was to come work under
her. Jaehyun’s baby niece is now definitely not a baby but a full-fledged kid in primary
school, wearing glasses as thick as her architect father’s, and Jaehyun’s nephew is starting to
talk, when Yuta didn’t even know he existed before this week.

When Jaehyun starts to talk about his daughter, Yuta keeps his mouth occupied with chewing
so he won’t be expected to say anything. Not that he needs to; Jaehyun barely pauses once he
gets on the subject. Her new school, her proclivity for reading, how good at languages she is,
how her mother is trying to get her into taekwondo.

He’s been aware of Jaehyun’s daughter for as long as she’s been alive, but seeing Jaehyun
glow with fondness as he talks about his child is… a lot.

To Yuta, Jaehyun being a father was just more evidence of the lengths he’d gone to move on,
of his attempt to hide that he’s anything less than straight; to Yuta, this unknown child was set
decoration for picture-perfect life in Seoul, not a human being. He never felt much of
anything about her, just at the idea of Jaehyun filling the void Yuta left.

But Jaehyun loves her so much. It’s all over him. When there’s a lull, Yuta clears his throat of
the stinging, tight sensation and lingering pastry to say it. “I can see how in love with her you
are. Look at you, you’re such a dad now.”
Jaehyun’s smile widens, but for some reason, the glimmer in his eyes retreats behind
something a little more complex. “Yeah, I am. It’s just that she’s lived in New York with her
mom since we split, and I did my military service after, so I—” Whatever he was going to
say, whatever disclosure Jaehyun seemed prepared to make, he seems to think better of. He
takes a sip of coffee. “Anyway, she’s great, but I’m kind of lagging behind. Every time I see
her, she’s a whole new kid.” He shakes his head, huffing. “Next thing I know, she’ll be a
teenager and, like, dating.”

He didn’t know Jaehyun’s ex and his daughter lived overseas. Ten never told him—not that
Ten was ever anything but pointedly, icily silent when it came to Jaehyun’s family. All he
said was that Jaehyun got divorced, and he did that well after it was announced to the press.

The clear message was that it wasn’t Yuta’s business to know about Jaehyun’s family. Yuta
didn’t think otherwise, even if he was morbidly curious. Being told these details to his face,
by Jaehyun, is almost too bizarre to process.

If you want to know about me, just ask me.

It can’t be that easy. This brunch, this reunion, can’t be so easy, but impossibly, when Yuta
gets out of his own way and lets Jaehyun lead, it is.

“You’re not that old yet, please,” Yuta scoffs. “If you’re that old, I’m that old. Older than you,
remember?”

Jaehyun laughs and asks about Yuta’s skincare routine, like his own skin isn’t a miracle.

It goes on like that, baggage weighing them down but not stopping them. The equilibrium
sees them through Yuta’s explanation of why his knee is so much worse than Jaehyun
remembers it; when Jaehyun hears about Yuta’s pointless surgery and the compounding
nightmare of the steroid injection damaging his cartilage and infecting the joint, his frown is
so deep, his dimples appear. But even that darker moment passes quickly; Yuta asks about
Jaehyun’s military service, and it turns out Jaehyun actually enjoyed it, would have stayed in
longer if it weren’t for his daughter and the life waiting for him on the outside.

“It turns out I need basic structure to function,” Jaehyun says. “Give me a list of rules and
I’m golden.”

Not a shock that you love being told what to do. Yuta doesn’t make the joke, it’s what the old
version of himself would have said, the one from before he threw his phone away, but it’s a
thought he can’t avoid. Yuta smiles to himself, just a little, as he declines a second pastry.
Jaehyun’s eating at twice Yuta’s rate, which is another surprise; Jaehyun loves food, but he
was rigid with it back in Chicago, with his portions and tracking. Now he’s slathering butter
on bread and going back for more to top up each bite and not making noises about putting in
hours to work it off at the gym later. It’s nice. It looks good on him.

“If my knee would let me, I might like it too,” Yuta considers. “But don’t you have to share
rooms with a bunch of sweaty other guys? No thanks, never mind.”
“It wasn’t that bad, honestly.” Jaehyun wipes a smear of butter from his upper lip. “I made a
lot of friends for life.”

“Manly bonding,” Yuta nods. “I get it.”

“It was during my divorce, so I got to blow off steam.”

There’s something in that, all the jokes and rumors Yuta’s heard about male bonding in the
military, that makes him want to ask if that’s what Jaehyun means. But he can’t, and he
doesn’t actually want to know, so he finishes his final bite of fruit and tosses his napkin to the
left of his plate. “I’m done, I can’t eat anything else.”

“You want more coffee?” Jaehyun asks, hand already on the carafe.

Yuta eyes him. “Are you trying to have brunch forever so I don’t leave?”

“You can leave whenever you want.” That’s only true if Yuta wants to leave without his suit,
either in a robe or Jaehyun’s tracksuit, but he takes his meaning. “Coffee, yes or no?”

“No, I’ve still got some. And I’m fine, I know we’re not… done talking.”

“You don’t have to make it sound like that,” Jaehyun says. He’s taken up the carafe to pour
himself more, and he’s still got food on his plate he looks intent on demolishing. His assistant
is going to have a time trying to eat what they’ve left untouched. “I want us to put it behind
us, at least for today. If you want to give me closure, give me that.”

“Sure,” Yuta says after a beat.

Jaehyun doesn’t seem to like Yuta’s hesitance; he adjusts his seat in his chair and nearly spills
his overfull coffee. “What else is there to get into about it? Unless you have more to say
about my marriage.”

Jaehyun’s expression is mild, his tone equally so, but the flash in his eyes as he looks over at
Yuta tells him a lot.

“Your marriage isn’t my business,” Yuta admits. “I was over the line.”

“Yeah, whatever. You’re allowed to have opinions. Even if they aren’t based on anything.”

“Right.”

Jaehyun snorts, dropping the last bite of his bread to his plate and sitting back, arms propped
on the seat rests. He shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “Yuta, just ask me.”

Yuta takes a deep breath. He thinks it isn’t a trap, but how can it not be, when it’s such a sore
subject and the only rejoinder he has to his own shitty behavior? He doesn’t want to know
more about Jaehyun’s marriage than he already does, even if it is over. Learning more about
Jaehyun’s daughter was one thing, but learning that Jaehyun actually loved that woman and
didn’t marry her because he was rejecting his sexuality, erasing Yuta, would be too much to
bear on top of everything else. Yuta wanted Jaehyun to move on, of course he did, but that it
happened so fast hurt. “How are Johnny and Mark? Ten won’t tell me much about them.”

Jaehyun doesn’t conceal his disappointment, but he moves on from it. “Fine. They moved to
the city a year or so ago. Johnny’s still doing photography, Mark’s a broadcast tech. Johnny’s
going to propose next month. He keeps sending me menus at like, three a.m.”

“Wow, shit. Good for them.” The fact that Johnny and Mark are still together when so much
else from that time fell to pieces makes Yuta feel the best he has all morning, save for when
he woke up and realized that his knee still barely hurt. “They always were solid.”

Jaehyun looks like he’s going to say something and changes his mind; his reply comes a few
beats suspiciously late. “They worked hard to get to this point. But they’re doing really well.
I’m gonna pay for their honeymoon whether they want me to or not.”

“You better,” Yuta says. “Make sure it’s nonrefundable, or Johnny will try to stop you. Mark
will try to pay you back, probably, so you’d need to find a way to shut that down too.”

Jaehyun gives a sliver of a smile. “For the record, if you wanted to reach out, I could—”

“No, no thanks. It’s better to not… It’s better to just leave that alone. They don’t need me
barging in.”

“Well, look, I don’t know about Johnny, but Mark at least—”

“Jaehyun, no. This isn’t a negotiation. But I appreciate the thought.”

Jaehyun clamps his mouth shut in a frustrated line but nods and drops the subject. It’s another
point in Jaehyun’s favor, that he doesn’t push.

What little he managed to say before Yuta cut him off did confirm what Yuta suspected all
these years—that he’s dead to Johnny and that Mark would welcome him back with open
arms. It still stings to hear, despite everything. Knowing beyond a hypothetical that Johnny
hates him.

Yuta was very aware they wouldn’t accept what he did to Jaehyun; he knew when he threw
his phone away he was cutting everyone out, with the exception of Sicheng, who already had
Yuta’s new Japanese number and no vested interest in other people’s business. He made one
comment about it, asked how Yuta was, and imbued their conversations with a lot of telling
pauses, which was about all Yuta could handle. Reaching out to Ten months later, after Yuta
saw Jaehyun’s wedding announcement, was a moment of weakness, and he can’t take it back,
so there’s no point regretting it.

But maybe he should regret it. Maybe he does, even though Ten has been a lifeline in
moments he sorely needed one, and Yuta has always believed that the minute Ten got fed up
with his shit, or Yuta crossed a line, he wouldn’t hesitate in ending their arrangement.

He would have, wouldn’t he? If Yuta asked too much? If his loyalties felt that divided, if
Yuta’s mumbled request that he not tell Jaehyun weighed on his conscience, and he actually
couldn’t compartmentalize—

“You okay?” Jaehyun asks.

Yuta opens his mouth to answer in the affirmative, and maybe he could have if Jaehyun
hadn’t asked, ironically. He wants to laugh, but he thinks the pain in his esophagus would
choke it on the way up. He clears his throat. “I think this week has proven that I’m not,” he
tries to joke, and it might not be noticeable, he hopes it isn’t noticeable, but his chin wobbles
with his effort to hold back tears. “Fuck, this is embarrassing.” It shouldn’t matter that
Jaehyun is watching this, watching him almost cry, especially considering the state he saw
Yuta in last night, but it does.

“Nah,” Jaehyun says. “You’re fine. This is a lot to ask of anyone. We can change the
subject.”

That makes his chest feel even tighter. Jaehyun needs to stop giving Yuta the option of
running away from this like he’s gentling a feral animal into handling. He sniffs back the
congestion in his sinuses and forges ahead. “I know what I did. I know I was awful. Maybe
now I can see a better way to end things, but it’s been too long to fix, you know? Everyone is
different. And everyone is— You’ve got your daughter, and your family, and your life in
Seoul. Johnny and Mark are getting married. Ten’s thriving with his choreography and his
studio and everything. Everyone moved on.”

“It’s not too long to fix. We’re not strangers. We’re different, but we’re not strangers.”

“So what, we’re gonna magically fix all this shit over brunch?” Yuta snorts. “Then we’re
friends again? Pen pals?”

“Why not, if you wanted to? Or do you want to keep telling yourself you’re awful? That I
hate you?” Jaehyun is so sure of himself, and it’s surety that Yuta doesn’t recognize. Jaehyun
said they weren’t strangers, but either Yuta has forgotten who Jaehyun was in the first place,
or he’s become someone else, someone at home in his skin and his convictions. It’s
exhausting to pit himself against, maybe as much as the idea of facing Jaehyun’s pain and
condemnation always seemed.

“I just don’t see the point.”

Jaehyun’s next words are velvet soft but a blade at his neck they’re so pointed. “You said
everyone moved on, but did you? Are you happy, Yuta?”

Yuta could almost laugh. Having to answer feels mean, but Jaehyun already gave him an out
he didn’t take. “Oh, clearly.”

“Then figure this out with me. Put it to bed. Move on, if that’s what you need. Give us both
closure.” Before Yuta can determine what this means, he finishes with, “You might not want
to be forgiven, but I do, for whatever made you so damn mad at me.”

“Dramatic,” Yuta scoffs on instinct. The soft breeze flutters his air-dried hair around his ears
and a strand tickles the socket of his right eye.
Jaehyun doesn’t say anything. He knows Yuta’s thinking.

It was never supposed to be like this. Jaehyun was supposed to be out of reach, and he wasn’t
supposed to still like Yuta after all these years and all this wreckage. But somehow, under the
new confidence and the new life and the new muscle, Jaehyun is still Jaehyun. He’s still kind,
even when Yuta did his best to ensure he wouldn’t be.

“If we’re doing this,” Yuta declares, feeling like the slight breeze might lift his shaky, brittle,
skinny body out of his chair, “I need to be wearing actual clothes.”

Jaehyun’s smile is slow and restrained but painfully genuine.

------

“Did you know you were going to do it when I took you to the airport?” Jaehyun asks, a
modest cushion of distance between them. He’s settled comfortably, one arm propped against
the couchback and his hand beneath his chin, a bottle of seltzer water and two glasses on the
coffee table. Yuta is dressed in clothes Jaehyun had hidden in a dresser, a simple black shirt
and slacks, new with the tags on, which is good because no part of his psyche could
withstand being dressed in Jaehyun’s clothes for this. To say nothing of how they’d hang off
him.

“What, ghost you? No. I wasn’t thinking about anything but getting to my father.” That time
is blurry, a numb, horrible mess with a few moments of excruciating clarity, but ending things
was very low on his list of priorities when he hurriedly packed a suitcase and Jaehyun
hovered, trying to be helpful, ready to take him to the airport in the middle of the night. He
was fixated on hoping his father wouldn’t die before he could get to the hospital.

Jaehyun nods, his unstyled hair flopping with the movement. “Full disclosure, I knew we
were about to break up anyway.” He sounds like he’s describing a simple fact, something as
neutral as the weather. Yuta wants to marvel at it, but there are too many other things to get
through to dwell. “It was pretty obvious it was coming. Once your internship ended, it was
like there was a ticking clock.”

“Yeah,” Yuta agrees. It was another part of his calculation, assuming Jaehyun was aware of
the persistent tick in the background that grew louder with each passing day. “There was.”

“It never got anywhere when we talked about it“—the understatement of the century; they
spun their wheels and either got snippy or made bad jokes about private jets—“so I kind of
did expect to get home one day to find you on my couch, giving me sad eyes.”

Yuta can feel it in his body; he remembers Jaehyun’s couch painfully well, and he knows how
sad eyes shape his own face. He can almost envision Jaehyun walking in, with the body he
used to have. He stops there. “Right. Is that what you wish I’d done?”

“Well.” Jaehyun seems to pinch the question in his mouth, then rolls his head back onto the
top of the cushion with a sigh. “No.”

That response is so entirely out of Yuta’s realm of expectation. “No?”

“No, I—” Jaehyun thins his lips and rocks his head back to center, fingertips idly stroking the
material of the couch. “I would have, at the time, but I can’t regret who I am and what
happened because of it.” A bizarre expression of humor and affection drifts into Jaehyun’s
expression when he says, of all things, “You really fucked me up.”

Even with the conviction Yuta had that fucking Jaehyun up like that was the better of bad
options, he feels his stomach drop to hear it. This is where he should say sorry, but he’s
already said that and taken it back, so he’s stuck and says what he shouldn’t. “Moved on
pretty quickly.” It’s out there now, feeling foreign and impolite and far too small.

“I guess it would look like that, but I didn’t.” Jaehyun looks Yuta’s way with a humorous
sincerity that Yuta is obliged to sit with. “Listen. It’s like… I don’t know if you ever heard
about how I was with Johnny, and Mark, uh. When you first cut ties with me, and I went
through my whole… my whole gay awakening?”

Somehow, this feels like the worst possible memory Jaehyun could invite him to partake in.
There’s a sort of spark in Jaehyun’s eye, and Yuta is wholly unprepared to understand it.

Jaehyun continues. “I had to sit with the fact that I’d fucked up really bad with them. That I’d
been shitty. I know I’m not a shitty person, but I’m not… I’m not the best at…”

Yuta doesn’t know how to process any of this—Jaehyun struggling to put this into words, as
if he hasn’t rehearsed possibilities for hours on end like Yuta has. It’s scriptless. Jaehyun is
being heartfelt.

Jaehyun huffs a breath, and his laugh is barely there. He says, “Every time, living with my
mistakes has made me… an infinitely better person. Even if it was painful. I don’t regret
anything.”

It hits Yuta like the ceiling falling in slow motion: he doesn’t recognize Jaehyun, because he
grew, and Yuta has only become smaller. Jaehyun managed what Yuta hasn’t been able to
even grasp, and all fucking because Yuta—

Maybe he—

Yuta pulls in a steadying breath and finds his insides shaking. He says the right thing. “I’m so
happy for you.”

“Fuck,” is Jaehyun’s startling response, and where his gaze had drifted, it returns again to
Yuta. “I didn’t mean to make things about me.”

“Well”—Yuta feels outside his own body—“at least you’re going somewhere. I’m just
walking in circles.”

Jaehyun purses his lips.

“Please don’t,” Yuta blurts. “I think…” He’s not thinking at all. There are too many big
things staring him in the face, and he feels like if he moves an inch under their sight, he may
shatter.
In the silence Yuta leaves, Jaehyun says, “What do you want to talk about? What… what do
you need? I’m here. What can I answer?”

Yuta rubs his hands over his face and feels defeat. “Did you miss me?” It’s there, past his
lips, even if it’s muttered because Yuta feels his own patheticness so profoundly it disgusts
him. It’s the worst fear that still gnaws at his insides. It’s why he found Ten’s phone number
and called him at some ridiculous hour in the U.S, to see if Jaehyun really had moved on so
easily from him, if Yuta was already relegated to a past mistake.

“Yes,” Jaehyun says. “Yeah. I still miss you.”

It’s awful to hear for all the reasons Yuta shouldn’t indulge in, and he doesn’t know how to
integrate the information. He has no way of going back in time and assuring himself that
Jaehyun missed him; he has no idea what to do with it now. So he makes a feeble attempt to
grab a ledge, jam his foot in some kind of hold, break above the honesty he thought he could
handle. “You really just say things now, huh?” he laughs. He doesn’t know what else to do.

Jaehyun laughs with him—a hauntingly familiar sound—and Yuta still doesn’t know what to
do with himself. “I try to be honest. I manage it most the time.” And there’s that hesitation
again. He’s being so careful with his words, so gentle, and Yuta is not remotely capable of
that. The honesty, or the care.

“Yeah,” he replies, insane and emphatic. “Good job. It’s admirable.”

The silence Jaehyun gives him is thoughtful—and terrifying because of it.

Rightfully.

“I know,” Jaehyun begins with the same honest care. “I know it hurt you. To let everything
go. To be the bad guy. I think… That’s what I’ve thought. I couldn’t hate you if I tried,
because I’m grateful I am who I am, where I am, and I know it hurt you. I’m sorry if you
wanted something different from me.”

Yuta barely feels himself break. He heaves an awful, raw breath in, stares at the ceiling with
sightless incomprehension, and the hurt slides its fingers into his cracks and barely has to try.
He weeps, silently, because he’s miserable.

He’s so fucking miserable.

“Damn it.” His abdomen is convulsing with emotion like a struggling heartbeat under this
brand-new shirt. He thinks Jaehyun said what he needed to hear, not the thousand variations
on accusations and hatred and blame he rehearsed and numbed himself to, and he hates it. It
sucks.

He struggles to breathe. His eyes are hot and dripping, his nose starting to run, and he drags
the side of his hand under his nose to keep himself from looking disgusting.

“Yuta.” Barely more than a whisper. Jaehyun probably talks to his daughter like this at night,
before bed, trying to ease her to sleep, and all Yuta can feel is a sick gratification and
 resentment all at once. He gave this up. He gave Jaehyun up and his soft baritone voice and
stupid emotional intelligence.

Yuta tries to respond, and it gets caught between his trembling lips.

“It’s okay if you miss me too,” Jaehyun says.

It’s a lucky thing he can’t talk. He can’t respond. If he nods his head in agreement, he’ll hate
himself wholly, ruthlessly, and he wants to anyway. Because if he shakes his head, he’ll be
lying so badly it’ll hurt worse than whatever this is.

He doesn’t think he’s ever cried like this.

Chapter End Notes

Yuta's getting dragged to a mirror to face his worse self and his worst fears AGAINST
HIS WILL, but it is happening. Proud of him? Proud of Jaehyun the most, tbh. He's a
good guy who did a lot of growing.

Thanks AGAIN to Anne, who saved my life, and to Caitlin and the gang for putting up
with me. Also, thanks to everyone who is putting up with me as I continue to add
chapters to this fic, lolol.
 Chapter 5
Chapter Notes

Saddle up, y’all! This chapter is a doozy, and there’s only one more to go for hello
stranger after this!

Thanks again to Anne, Caitlin, and extra special thanks to tetrahedra! Shoutout to the
folks in my Discord crew throwing down and attempting Nano and keeping me
company on calls during agonizing sprints (I’m definitely failing Nano, but that’s not the
point!!! The point is it’s fun to create alongside friends!!). Everyone’s been patient and
helpful while I screamed about this chapter/fic/my life decisions.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

“—I was not expecting the bar to be packed, let alone to see you in there,” Jaehyun says,
leaning forward and grinning the way he always does when he gets too into telling a story. “I
swear I thought I was hallucinating—” He starts laughing and loses himself in it for a few
moments.

Yuta finds himself laughing too, but quieter, because the lethargy in his veins from crying all
over the hotel room’s pseudo-vintage couch has kept him mellow. He’s still marveling over
how it feels to laugh in the wake of everything that’s gone on today, to be calm after such an
intense storm.

After Yuta collected himself and Jaehyun rode out the raw, somber mood by keeping up an
even murmur of one-sided conversation until Yuta could start contributing, it’s been a
cautious back-and-forth that’s gotten easier with every minute. What seems impossible, them
sitting and talking or sitting and laughing, keeps proving itself.

Yuta still feels a lingering hollowness like he’s been scooped out with a sharp instrument, but
it’s an improvement. It’s like coming out of a pool after long hours doing laps and feeling
lighter than gravity should allow.

It’s nice. To talk to Jaehyun.

“And then—” He knuckles away moisture from the corner of his eye. “Fuck, I knew it was
you because, uh, there’s no other way to say this, but only you would be on Grindr in a bar in
the Ritz.”

Yuta barks. “You saw?”

Jaehyun slaps his thigh and laughs harder as his answer. Yuta tries to remember what he was
looking at before Jaehyun interrupted him and has a sheepish idea that it was full-on dick.
“Fuck yes I saw your screen,” he says, shoulders hitching with what Yuta might describe as
giggles if Jaehyun weren’t a fully grown man. “Anyone walking by could see your screen,
sorry to break it to you.”

Yuta tries to determine exactly how embarrassing this is, as Jaehyun continues to shake the
couch with barely contained laughter.

On one hand, he isn’t embarrassed about a hookup; he’s human, he has needs, and he’s not in
a relationship. On the other hand, considering the mountain of baggage Yuta brought over
with him on the plane to Lisbon, maybe it’s obviously pathetic that Yuta waits for the few
times a year when he travels to enthusiastically grab the opportunity, the risk, of sleeping
with men.

He does date, or he tries to. His last relationship lasted eight months, right up until she started
being overt about wanting to move in or make progress toward some other demonstrable
commitment. When she understandably gave up on him, Yuta knew it was for the best; the
breakup had the added benefit of keeping his parents from asking when he’d settle down for a
while, since Mina left and Yuta needed time to mend.

Yuta liked Mina. He liked having her over, eating take-out on his couch and watching shows
with her. He liked the way she tucked her cold feet under his thighs; he liked the way she
traded knowing smiles across tables, her sense of humor, how she surprised him after work
with excursions to parts of the city he would have otherwise neglected. Yuta liked the way
she gripped the sleeve of his coat as he steered them across Ebisu Bridge, keeping close in
the crowd but keeping pace. She never brought up his knee on bad days, but she rubbed the
tired, strained muscles in his thigh, the way Jaehyun used to.

One day, with time and dedication, he could have loved her. But he didn’t.

Ultimately, enjoying someone’s company and the warmth they brought to his bed isn’t
enough. At least not in the timeframe Mina was looking for. Yuta’s complicated, ambivalent
feelings and his thoughts about marriage—something he won’t feel ready for until he has a
sense of accomplishment in his career, until he wouldn’t embarrass her with his title—didn’t
have enough time to resolve themselves before she was ready to move on.

Even if Yuta’s personal life is what it is, it’s still a little funny that Jaehyun saw him being
desperate for dick in public, Yuta decides. All the other stuff doesn’t need to intrude on the
moment.

“What can I say,” Yuta says, grinning. “I’m an opportunist. And so were like two hundred
other guys, the app was on fire.” There were so many obvious tourists fresh off the plane,
trying to line up their nights before they had to buckle down and work the summit the next
day.

He hopes the loud Google employees from that evening got nosy and regretted it when they
saw what Yuta was occupied with.

Jaehyun laughs harder, a deep, open sound Yuta hasn’t heard in a long time. “I almost said
something. But I thought that on top of the shock might kill you.”
“It would have,” Yuta agrees. The bottle of water Jaehyun brought him when Yuta’s crying
jag ended has been cradled on his lap and is half full. He takes a distracted sip while he
imagines the nightmare he might have lived, if Jaehyun had a worse sense of humor. It seems
impossible that their reunion could have been more of a disaster than it was, but Yuta knows
that one wrong word—or commentary on the dicks Yuta was looking at—would have done it.

“What if I’d loaded it and messaged you?” Jaehyun says, climbing deeper into the ridiculous
rabbit hole. “Would you have screamed in public?”

“You’re enjoying this too much,” Yuta accuses. He’s trying not to visualize it, let alone what
Jaehyun’s Grindr profile must look like. He would bet his bank balance that Jaehyun’s face
isn’t visible, the same as Yuta’s. But recognizing Jaehyun’s bellybutton would have been
enough to give Yuta a full-tilt breakdown in the bar. “Mean.”

“C’mon, it’s hilarious.” Jaehyun shakes his hair out of his eyes and settles deeper into the
cushion on his side of the couch, one leg drawn up. “Unless you want me to ask you about
the weather in Osaka—”

“Nope, no thanks.” Equilibrium is a nearly physical presence here in the room with them.
Yuta feels like if he gets off the couch, if he acknowledges the surreality of him sitting and
laughing with Jung Jaehyun, their balance will collapse and won’t come back together. If
they stop this strange, raw-nerved honesty, they might not get it back. “If you want to be
weird, be weird.” He squints, screwing the cap back onto the water bottle belatedly. “Have
you been thinking about this all week?”

“Yeah,” Jaehyun agrees. “I kept wanting to bring it up, but there was like… not a good time.”

Yuta concedes that, snorting to imagine Jaehyun across the table set for two that first night,
segueing into it. “No, if you wanted me to scream, you should have done it at the palace.”

“Oh, you’re right. Good audience for it there. Better than the Ritz.”

Yuta gives Jaehyun a droll look. This is exactly his sense of humor, imagining absurd
situations playing out to maximum effect while Yuta or Johnny egged him on. Jaehyun, still
the same, yet so very different. “Yes, the audience was Chenle.”

Jaehyun makes a face. “Is that where he—” Jaehyun’s phone chimes, the same notification
sound he used so many years ago, and he fetches it from the coffee table with a lazy stretch
forward. “Sorry, I need to—”

“It’s fine.” Yuta gingerly lifts his own phone to see if there’s been any developments there,
but no, it’s the same. There’s still an unanswered text from his sister, as well as Yuta’s unsent
draft of some tangled mess he’s trying to send to Ten. He’ll probably need to call Ten to air
out their own series of ugly truths, but that can wait until after the summit, until Yuta’s gone
home and figured out how he feels about what’s happened.

He’s leaving Lisbon tomorrow morning. The idea of what he faces when he’s off the plane,
including the wrath of Nakamoto Corp superiors, is daunting. But if he’s done this much, if
he’s been honest with Jung Jaehyun, he can live through a scold or a slap on the wrist.
The threat of censure is nothing compared to the bleak realization that Yuta’s one long shot
for his career is gone, worse than gone, and that he’s even further from progress than he was
when he had the idea six months ago. He’s toiling in mediocrity with no visible way out. It’s
like he’s paddling in a lake of tar.

“Huh,” Jaehyun says, and clicks his tongue. “My assistant says Xiang Shan’s assistant
tracked her down and asked if I was available.”

“I assume you’re not… friendly?”

“I’m always friendly,” Jaehyun corrects, typing distractedly. “But with him, only enough so it
wouldn’t tip him off. We had lunch twice, in a group both times, and it was all about the
panel.” He glances at Yuta, one faint wrinkle between his brows, and chews on his lower lip.
“I’m saying I’m unavailable. But it’s…”

“Awkward?” Yuta offers.

“Yeah.”

Yuta checks his phone again, like Xiang Shan’s assistant might have materialized in the last
ten seconds, but it’s still nothing. It’s a bitter, revolted edge of relief that Yuta doesn’t merit
what Jaehyun does.

Jaehyun turns off his screen, sighs, and sinks down until his neck is propped by the
couchback’s edge. He rolls his neck to look over at Yuta. The position’s given him the tiniest
double chin; Yuta doesn’t fight feeling endeared. “I don’t want to tempt fate, but I hope they
hurry up and arrest him already. I’m ready for this to be over.”

“I get it. You had to socialize with him, knowing what you know. That must have been hard.”

“Yeah,” Jaehyun says, a little distant, like he’s thinking about it for the first time. It wouldn’t
surprise Yuta if it was the first time he considered his own role in things, however minor;
Jaehyun’s not going to care about his own comfort when so many other people are in deeper,
and there are so many suffering when it comes to Xiang Shan.

“At least I was clueless when I tried to ingratiate myself.” He wonders if anyone else at the
dinner knew about Xiang Shan’s monstrous empire and what they thought of Yuta’s sidling
up to him. It was subtle, he thinks, but it was definitely present.

Jaehyun snaps back to the moment, looking back over at Yuta. “You’re going to be okay? At
work, I mean?”

“I’ll be fine. I could have a bad month, I don’t know. But they wouldn’t think about firing
me.”

Jaehyun nods and doesn’t ask questions, like Yuta’s dismissiveness on the subject is all he
needs to be reassured. Yuta isn’t lying, even if he’s not quite as confident as he sounded that
it won’t be an issue. At the very least, he’s assured of his place at Nakamoto Corp, even if the
place itself leaves a lot to be desired. “That’s good. I’m glad this trip pulled some punches for
you.”

“Not enough,” Yuta says, but he’s smiling faintly. He’s still on the couch, in the eye of the
storm. “I still feel very punched.”

“Yeah. I mean, realizing it was you in the bar and not some random hot guy with a similar
build was one fucking big punch for me.” Jaehyun’s smiling again too, but restrained. “Left a
bruise.”

Yuta fidgets under that. Seeing Jaehyun again is going to be etched in his memory for the rest
of his life, and knowing it’s the same for Jaehyun is complicated. Somewhat nice. Mostly
mortifying. “What if it wasn’t me?” he asks to distract them both. “And it was just some man
on Grindr.”

“Then I’d have to apologize a lot, I think.”

“See, this is the scenario I think is funny,” Yuta says. “I hope this Yuta lookalike wouldn’t
speak English.” He pictures Jaehyun pantomiming and snickers.

“Damn,” Jaehyun chuffs, shaking his head. “And you said I’m mean.”

“No, no, play this out with me,” Yuta insists. If Jaehyun can return to old habits, so can Yuta.
It’s easy as breathing to find that spark of mischief and fan it brighter. “You interrupt, and
you start with my name—”

“No, I start with ‘Hey, nice dick,’” Jaehyun says, with a smirking poker face, and they can’t
keep it up.

Yuta hiccups into laughter, his head going back. Jaehyun laughs too, a lower counterpoint.

As the moment washes over him, he wonders what Donghyuck would say, given how much
he loved a dick joke, or what Mark would, usually several beats behind in getting the
punchline.

But he reels himself in before he can get that deep. This is enough. It’s more than he
deserves, getting to make these dumb jokes.

There’s a brief, comfortable silence; Yuta finishes off his water, and Jaehyun clears his throat
after all that laughing.

The same ringtone Jaehyun’s used since Chicago starts up, piercing the easy quiet, and Yuta
glances over to see Jaehyun check the caller. He sucks in a quick breath, then curses under it,
and turns to Yuta.

“Sorry, I do need to take this, it’s my daughter. I call Val every morning before school, I’m
late—”

“Go, go,” Yuta says, frowning at the apology in Jaehyun’s tone that implies this is the
disruption in Jaehyun’s life and not Yuta. “Say good morning to your daughter.”
Jaehyun gives him an appreciative nod and pops off the couch, heading toward the bedroom
while already speaking in a happy murmur. It’s in Korean, obviously, but Yuta recognizes the
melody enough to hear the love in it.

How Jaehyun is managing to live an ocean away from her, Yuta has no idea. If he can stand
the imposition, he might ask about that. Yuta has relearned a lot of things about Jaehyun, and
the idea that he’s separate from the person he must love most in the world can only be
heartbreaking for him, even if he hasn’t shown it.

But then again, Jaehyun’s left the couch. He’s unbalanced their equilibrium, and it was
probably about time. They’ve said everything Yuta thinks he can stand to say or hear; he’d
need another ten weeks straight to sift through the rest of their mess, and they don’t have that
kind of time.

He tests his leg, slow to lower it from the coffee table, sipping more water to keep himself
occupied. It’s instinct at this point, after days of so much pain, to tense up his whole leg, but
that’s the last thing the muscles and tendons need. After he rests his foot on the carpet and
feels nothing more than an odd over-awareness of bones and sinew shifting under skin, and
residual numbness and heat around the cap, he exhales carefully. It’s the usual weird after an
injection. The pain flares for a bit after a treatment for Yuta, typically, but the numbing shot
they gave him lasted long enough to see him through it without any real issue. He’s… “fine”
is an overstatement, but nowhere near the depths of agony and immobility he was last night.

Yuta will need to walk a fair amount over the next two days: first from Jaehyun’s hotel to a
taxi back to his own, then tomorrow through two airports and finally through the lobby of his
apartment once he lands. With an edge of paranoia, he walks it all in his mind’s eye, gauging
how much progress his knee will make if he takes it easy today.

His leg is being held together by modern medicine and sheer force of will, but it should hold.
He refuses to be wheeled out of arrivals, gawked at by his colleagues and superiors; it’s not
an option he can entertain. If he has to limp, he’ll limp, but he’ll get himself through
tomorrow.

And then his care team can yell at him and start the long haul of recuperation after such a big
setback.

Whatever conversation Jaehyun and his daughter have is short, and Yuta hopes his presence
didn’t cause Jaehyun to truncate it. He gives Yuta a flash of a questioning smile when he
passes into the sitting room and sees that Yuta has moved his leg from the coffee table.

“You good?” he asks.

“Yeah, just testing it out. I think, I think I should go, actually.” His suit was returned to the
room during his crying jag, which made for a moment of bizarre levity where Jaehyun tried
to navigate retrieving it from the hotel employee and not leaving Yuta to sob on the couch
alone. “It’s been good, but I need to start packing, get ready to go home. It’s been good, to do
this, but...” He shrugs to allude to the reality of what’s waiting for them beyond this room.
Jaehyun hides his disappointment well. Yuta appreciates the effort, but he knows him too
well to not see the shades of it in the tense muscles of his face. But he nods and moves
forward anyway. The same quality Yuta’s been preoccupied with showing itself again, like an
endlessly repeating pattern. “Let me help you stand, at least, just in case.”

“Sure.”

Jaehyun’s long, graceful fingers curl around Yuta’s, the most personal and reciprocal of the
leverage Jaehyun’s offered him. There’s hesitation to accept somewhere deep in the shell of
Yuta’s chest, old paranoia, but he ignores it. He stands the best he has in days, slow and
cautious and with one wobble that Jaehyun tightens his grip to stabilize. After a moment,
Yuta nods, and Jaehyun drops his warm hands.

“I’m going to change.”

“Let me know if you need anything,” Jaehyun says.

Yuta grins at him as he makes his way to the bedroom, trying to look casual about gliding his
hand along various pieces of furniture just in case. “I will.”

---

Yuta looks more like himself out of the clothes Jaehyun procured for him, his hair combed
and tamed smooth. He left the suit jacket and tie off, but in his own freshly starched shirt, he
recognizes himself in the mirror. A night of good sleep, a shower, and a lot of water have
mitigated some of the damage he’s done, though he doesn’t look good by his own standards.
Acceptable.

The strides he takes back into the sitting room are stronger. His balance and range of motion
are coming back to him, though Yuta is still careful. He thinks he might get through
tomorrow without limping too badly, at least until the end of the day.

Jaehyun has been pacing. Yuta catches the tail end of it, and Jaehyun gives him a sheepish
grin to show he’s been caught.

“Still not over seeing you in a suit all the time,” Jaehyun says.

“You too. You have a good tailor.”

That gets a pleased narrowing of Jaehyun’s eyes, though this is just pretense, false at the
edges. A conversation suspended above inevitability. They’ve both broken equilibrium by
getting off the couch, after all. “It’s half my tailor, half my trainer,” he jokes. “But thanks.”

There’s so much Yuta could say. There’s so much he has said, though it’s nothing compared
to all the restless rehearsals he’s performed on his own. Today has been unlike anything he
could have fathomed for the end of their story, even—or especially—on the heels of last
night.

Maybe they’ve discovered that this can be the epilogue; they met up in Portugal, had a long,
long brunch, and put some old ghosts to rest. Not all of them. Maybe only the loudest of
Yuta’s. Maybe Jaehyun really did forgive him. Maybe Yuta was honest, at least some of the
time.

Maybe they actually have their goodbye.

“Thank you,” Yuta says, just as Jaehyun rubs the back of his neck and blurts out, “This is so
weird.”

That gets Yuta to laugh, to the point where he rocks back on his heels and steadies himself on
the couch.

“Don’t you dare fall over,” Jaehyun says. He came closer when Yuta wobbled again, but still
keeps a polite distance. “I’ll carry you out of here, and that’ll make this even more awkward.”

“I don’t know if that’s possible.”

“It’s good enough for you to walk out on? You don’t need…”

Yuta shakes his head. “No, I’m okay. The shots worked. Just getting used to it.” Every word
comes out like artifice, like a script, and it’s frustrating because they were so recently on the
same page. “I think I already said, but I’m sorry for being difficult this week. You’ve been
very patient with me, and I appreciate it. All of it.” Jaehyun opens his mouth to no doubt tell
him not to worry about it, but Yuta barrels on, bracing himself: “And I’m sorry I couldn’t find
a better way to end things. I spoke a lot of shit, but I… Yeah. I regret it.”

His earlier self is screaming, but Yuta of right now is manning up. It’s their epilogue, so it
should have some sort of weight to it, right?

Jaehyun’s blank for a moment, like Yuta’s surprised him, and then smooths over into
restrained emotion. He thinks he spots the same frustration over finding the right words to see
this off in the work of Jaehyun’s jaw. “Yuta, is it… Tell me if I’m out of line, but can I hug
you goodbye?”

It sounds like a bad idea, and like the best idea Yuta’s ever heard. It also sounds like a better
way to say goodbye than standing there, stammering at each other. “Yeah, why not?”

They’ve already said and done things Yuta would never dream of saying or doing to another
person. What’s a hug compared to all that?

He doesn’t know what he expects. Jaehyun’s hugs were always sudden, relatively brief; he
wrapped people up in a quick, warm, tight embrace and then let them go with a friendly
squeeze, most of the time, unless things were more private. The times Jaehyun’s hoisted him
around this week have been impersonal, inasmuch as half-carrying someone can be. Yuta was
too focused on his pain and humiliation to care much about how Jaehyun touched him,
frankly.

But Jaehyun coming close to him, carefully bridging the distance and shyly extending his
arms, thumps deep in Yuta’s chest. He’s cautious, like he’s not sure it’s okay to put his hands
on Yuta in such overt kindness. Yuta is, admittedly, stiff with trepidation now that this is
happening, heart pounding like a drum, but he tries to loosen up and reciprocate.

Then Yuta gets a lungful of Jaehyun’s gentle shampoo, the way his soap and cologne and
aftershave melt on his skin, and it fills up the ache in Yuta’s chest. It slows his pulse almost
immediately.

He pulls Jaehyun closer and notches his chin over his shoulder, eyes falling shut.

Minutes could pass, the same limited awareness of the outside world like Yuta’s floating in a
warm pool, submerged in sensation. He can hear and feel Jaehyun’s steady breathing more
than his own, feel the minute shift in his posture. His strong, solid chest, his shape, is new
and familiar.

Yuta is holding him now, but he’s also holding him six years ago, eight years ago, all at once.
It’s the same man he cared too much about to let him become a causality of Yuta’s life. It’s
the same man who brought him a taste of home for a birthday present when he couldn’t even
name his feelings for Yuta.

It’s the first person he fell in love with. To date, the only. Yuta tucks himself closer, chasing
the memory of what he used to have, suffused with painful gratitude for it despite the way he
shattered it. He’ll never admit that shit out loud, but he thinks Jaehyun can tell.

Jaehyun, when Yuta sinks even deeper into his arms, sighs, his hands gently resting on Yuta’s
back, his own chin hooked on Yuta’s shoulder. One palm moves up and then down his spine,
soothing but prickling goosebumps under Yuta’s clothes in its wake. Jaehyun swallows hard;
Yuta feels the tension of him bracing himself, enough to get Yuta to open his eyes and
prepare to let everything back in, but whatever Jaehyun was going to do—pull away, most
likely—is stalled out.

Jaehyun holds him tighter instead. The embrace is nearly desperate now.

Jaehyun laughs. It isn’t voiced, but Yuta feels it, like a sob pressed against his chest. “Sorry,”
he says. His lips are so close to Yuta’s ear, breath stirring his hair. “I keep thinking about how
I’ll never see you again, and I can’t let go.”

Yuta’s eyes squeeze closed. That’s the stupid bargain Yuta made Jaehyun swear to in the
bathroom, which has only gotten more dramatic and stupid since they made it. He wants to
tell Jaehyun to forget that stipulation, but there’s no point. When would they see each other
again, once they leave Lisbon? They live on parallel lines in an Euclidean space; they’re not
built to intersect again. “Yeah.”

“Yuta, I missed you.” He sighs, and Yuta trembles, back wanting to arch under Jaehyun’s
gentle petting. “I mean it.”

This tight embrace should be suffocating. It shouldn’t make Yuta grip a fist in Jaehyun’s soft
sweater.
He needs to be the one to pull back, one final time. He needs to collect himself and navigate
the Ritz and climb into a cab, put kilometers between them. He needs to go back to his
straight line of a life. He needs to let go of the past. He’s done it once, under far more duress;
this time should be simple.

Yuta tilts his head and gets a stronger hit of Jaehyun’s aftershave, sense memory knifing
through him. That smell used to linger on his pillows and even Yuta’s clothes until his
housekeeper came and did his laundry twice a week; after a while, he smelled it even above
the fabric softener she used, like some element of Jaehyun refused to be purged from the
thread.

He has no idea what happened to all his bedding in Chicago. He thinks maybe he gave it to
Sicheng.

“Yuta,” Jaehyun says again, his name a litany now. His lips kiss the shell of Yuta’s ear, so soft
and gentle there’s plausible deniability that it was an accident.

It wasn’t an accident. He knows how sensitive Yuta’s ears are, how he shivers when Jaehyun
traces one with a careful fingertip or pulls on the lobe with his teeth. It cascades sensation
down that entire side of Yuta’s body, particularly in his neck, and he feels like he’s going to
fucking convulse.

A pressure builds in his chest that Jaehyun can probably feel the same way Yuta’s been able
to track all of his tiny variations in inhalations. He feels like he’s going to cry, start pouring
out hot tears, or—

Jaehyun murmurs, in his velvet voice that used to lull Yuta to sleep, “Sorry, I—”

The noise Jaehyun makes when Yuta turns his head and kisses his jaw, smearing hot and
open-mouthed on his way to his lips, thrashes Yuta. He feels molten inside, grunting to smell-
taste Jaehyun’s skin, his eyes open and barely seeing at this closeness. The slope of Jaehyun’s
nose. The iris of his eye, nearly the same color as the pupil. The heaviness of an eyebrow
with a few hairs sticking out from the grain.

And then the terribly intimate tiny click of their mouths touching, Yuta’s open, Jaehyun’s
following in a split second, the dip into comfortable warmth and the same taste. Jaehyun still
gives it up so easy, so gentle, one of his hands coming to cup Yuta’s cheek. He rubs over
Yuta’s cheekbone like he’s memorizing it.

They break to breathe because Yuta isn’t doing a very good job of regulating his bodily
functions with Jung Jaehyun’s eager tongue in his mouth. But Yuta doesn’t get much of a
chance to recover; kisses ghost over the bridge of Yuta’s nose, between his eyebrows, and he
feels Jaehyun’s fond, disbelieving chuff as Yuta reels and refuses to open his eyes.

“Stay,” Jaehyun says, hoarsely. “I don’t have anything to do but sit here and think about you
the rest of the night if you go. I’ll get you a cab—”

Yuta kisses him meanly, eating the rest of his words, and Jaehyun nearly takes a step back
with the force of it, balancing himself with a hand on Yuta’s hip. He responds
enthusiastically, though, chewing on Yuta’s lower lip in that way he always did when he got
too into it. His thumb and pointer finger slot into place on either side of Yuta’s right ear, and
he rubs the lobe, shifting the piercing in it, until Yuta whines.

“Let me be good to you,” Jaehyun cajoles, pulled back and breathing heavily as he waits for
an answer, like there’s anything on Earth Yuta can respond with that won’t condemn him.

On paper, staying is not much more bizarre than the things Yuta’s allowed himself to do this
week. A month ago, a year ago, he never would have capitulated to a reality where Jaehyun
helped him over and over, where he sat and answered Jaehyun’s questions. Where he laughed
with him.

Maybe this is the epilogue. Maybe he walks out of here with a parting gift. Maybe he sleeps
with a man he knows, a man who knows him and his body.

He never got to kiss Jaehyun knowing it was the last time. He never got to touch him
knowing it was the last time. It kept him awake on lonely nights, imagining what he might
have done differently if he’d known he was saying goodbye.

Yuta can’t say it, but it’s easy enough to nod.

---

The way Jaehyun’s thick, glossy hair threads through his fingers is a memory Yuta had nearly
repressed. He’s got a firm grip, though it’s less like he’s directing Jaehyun and more like he’s
holding on for his own benefit as Jaehyun sucks his cock just the way Yuta likes. The way
Yuta taught him.

Better, actually. Yuta’s moaning louder than he wants to, and it’s involuntary, almost
bewildered, as Jaehyun bullies himself further down Yuta’s cock than he used to be able to
go. Once or twice there’s a hitch of him gagging, but he pulls back up smoothly, jerks Yuta’s
spit-slick cock on the edge of too rough, and grins up at him, lower lip shining and dimples
fully deployed.

The second time it happens, Yuta tightens his fist in Jaehyun’s hair and watches as Jaehyun’s
eyelashes flutter to his cheeks and his mouth drops open with a grunt. Yuta slides home to the
back of his throat and fucks incrementally back and forth there, marveling in the sensation, a
soft, wet squeeze he’s rarely experienced for more than tentative moments, and Jaehyun holds
still and lets him.

It’s on the tip of his tongue, moans banked behind it, to call Jaehyun a good boy for the truly
spectacular head. Or simply for the way Jaehyun used to, probably still does, curl up with
pleasure over it, then double his efforts until his mouth and chin are sloppy with spit and
precome.

Yuta seals his mouth against saying something that monumentally stupid and tugs Jaehyun’s
head back up so he can breathe instead. He’s insane for doing this, but he’s not far gone
enough to call a divorced father with an ocean of history between them a good boy.
Though in the next ten seconds, after Jaehyun’s gulped down air and rolled his shoulders
before enveloping Yuta in perfect warmth again, Yuta ends up unsealing his mouth to gasp,
“Close.” Yuta’s abs tense, his back arching up from the pillows—his dress shirt half-
unbuttoned, his undershirt rucked up to his navel but both still on and keeping him too warm,
though at least they managed to get his pants off—as he chases the bloom of an orgasm just
out of reach.

He came a few days ago, on the face of a stranger he’s already forgotten, but it was nothing
like this. He hasn’t come like this, at Jaehyun’s mercy, in so long; he’s worried he won’t be
able to hold still or that he’ll lock up his thigh and tweak the very delicate tissue around his
knee.

Jaehyun takes the warning as incentive and adjusts himself so gravity’s doing more of the
work, dropping his head onto Yuta’s dick, and he hums with his lips stretched around the
base. It’s excruciatingly good. Yuta feels his balls draw up and gasps again. “Fuck, fuck, pull
off—”

The sounds of Jaehyun throating Yuta’s cock as he starts to shoot, refusing to be budged even
when Yuta tries one last time to drag him off, are the nastiest things he’s heard in a while.
Yuta whines as he comes, his whole body locking up, his hips wanting to push himself
impossibly deeper, while Jaehyun pulls it out of him.

The release of tension when it’s over and he’s wet and sensitive and throbbing does hurt. He
was right; his body is weak after being so rigid. Yuta lets himself go limp against the
mountain of pillows Jaehyun insisted on propping him with. His fist is numbly still holding a
handful of Jaehyun’s hair, and he belatedly releases, fingers twitching.

“Oh shit,” Yuta curses as Jaehyun hums again with a final, showy swallow, keeping Yuta
warm inside of his mouth. He likes being oversensitive, though slightly less than he enjoys
making other people endure it, and Jaehyun didn’t forget that either.

He’s syrup-slow to pull off, though he does as Yuta’s breathing starts to even out. He kisses
the glistening head where it rests, spent.

Jaehyun rubs his forearm over his face to clear the mess, saliva mingling with a couple of
tears, meeting Yuta’s very come-drunk eye contact, and then hauls himself upright. His jeans
sag low enough to show the band of his briefs as he knees his way up the mattress, since Yuta
yanked the belt off somewhere between the sitting room and the bedroom. Yuta felt all that
skin and muscle but didn’t get a good look at it, given how quickly Jaehyun had his mouth on
Yuta’s dick.

Seeing it now, as Jaehyun kneels above him, near Yuta’s hips, makes him throb and his
nipples tighten with a surge of arousal that his body absolutely cannot deliver on. It makes
him wince, even, and Jaehyun notices, smiling. His hair, despite recently being pulled in
Yuta’s fist, looks perfect, falling boyishly over his glittering eyes. “Should I jerk off for you?”
Jaehyun asks, voice a ruin and thumb flirting with the fly of his jeans. “Or do you want to do
it?”
Yuta has missed the fat, pinkish cock currently unmistakable in those tight jeans. He’s
somewhat distracted, though, by so much supple, perfect skin, pale and waxed, and the
sturdier frame it seems unfair Jaehyun be allowed to have. There’s… more of him now, from
his shoulders to his hips, like Jaehyun’s finally embraced that his body wants to be the
slightest bit barrel-chested. His musculature is still impressive, but there’s no way he encases
himself in a plastic bag and sits inside a sauna to sweat until his abs look shrinkwrapped
anymore. Now, his ab muscles are present, mostly discernable, but they’re soft. Healthy. He
looks like a meal, poised above Yuta, chest heaving, brown nipples peaked.

“I guess that means I’m doing it,” Jaehyun says, and can’t help but cough as his wrecked
throat protests any further use.

Yuta knocks his hand out of the way to unzip him, and it isn’t lost on him how Jaehyun
shudders, his chin dropping to his chest for a second, his knees spreading for balance on the
mattress so he doesn’t fall forward.

It’s been six years, but Yuta has spent a lot of time getting Jaehyun off; he honed it to a fine
art in Chicago, and it’s muscle memory, easy to recall. He knows how to grip him, how to
draw it out and make it last, how to go past that and make it torturous, how to edge Jaehyun
until he’s incapable of speech.

Edging him would be too much like how they used to be, so he’s quick and sure, drawing him
out of his fly. He lets go long enough to spit in his own hand and slick him up, and then it’s
like a hundred moments after a night out, or a lazy night in, when he put all his focus in
making Jaehyun feel good.

Yuta is either reckless or indulgent enough to watch Jaehyun’s face as much as his fist around
Jaehyun’s dick while he takes him apart.

---

“Would you believe I did just want to talk?” Jaehyun asks, breathless and staring with a
prickling intensity at Yuta on the mattress next to him.

After he watched the grimace of Jaehyun’s pleasure, the same rending sight it always was,
Yuta tried to ignore the way Jaehyun looked at him: comfortable, steady, propped up on his
elbow so he could actually see Yuta over the pillows he’s still reclined against like some sort
of czar. “Uh-huh,” he says, forcing himself past the post-orgasm awkwardness before it has
any time to set in. “That’s why you wore the shirt with the deep V. In the color I like.”

Yuta debated keeping his own shirt on to spare his ego, but when he realized he and Jaehyun
were equally, oppositely half-dressed and he definitely had the unflattering half of that
equation, he mustered the energy to sit up and yank his shirt off. Jaehyun, as he distractedly
wiped come from his abs and the band of his underwear where Yuta’s handjob got sloppy,
sharpened the intensity of his attention.

There isn’t much to look at these days, not with the piercings gone and Yuta’s wiry frame
turned wirier with maybe half the muscle Jaehyun would remember. Some part of Yuta
anticipates a comment on the difference, but even as Jaehyun keeps cutting his eyes to
different parts of Yuta’s bare body, he doesn’t comment. He shakes his sweaty bangs out of
his face and says, wry, “Is it my fault you like what I look good in?”

It’s such a little shit thing to say, straight out of the Jaehyun playbook, that Yuta doesn’t think
before he reaches over and tweaks his nipple. That gets an outraged noise, then a laugh, and
Jaehyun tamps down the edge of Yuta’s pillow nest with one of his sturdy arms to loom over
him.

This close, his skin is still a miracle. His mouth is redder than usual, courtesy of Yuta’s abuse.
The intent in his eyes is promising.

“So that was a bad idea, probably,” Yuta says. To undercut his bluntness, he slides his hand
over Jaehyun’s obliques to cop a feel of his ass still encased in soft denim, albeit sagging
denim. It’s a tricky game, because Jaehyun likes—loves—to be touched, stroked, admired no
matter where it is, and that—much like calling him a good boy, stroking his vanity, is an edge
too close to things Yuta can’t give him anymore. But even bulked up, Jaehyun barely has an
ass, and it’s an irresistible charm in the massive pile of Jaehyun’s unfathomable curation.

He’s gone this far already. He’s indulging himself as much as he can.

“I don’t think so—” Jaehyun’s eyes flare wide and he glances down at the way they’re
positioned, body going tense. “Shit, am I on your knee—”

“It’s the other leg,” Yuta reassures him. “You would know if it was the bad one.”

Jaehyun settles, half his body draped warm against Yuta’s good side, drawing his leg up so
his clothed knee is dangerously close to Yuta’s balls. “Like I was saying,” he drawls, satisfied
and content to sweep his fingers over Yuta’s ribs, “I don’t think it’s a mistake. It’s an ice
breaker.”

Yuta laughs to cover his shiver. Jaehyun’s greedy. Yuta used to tease him that he should have
been an only child, with the leeway he took. Yuta gave him an inch, and Jaehyun is already
set on claiming more territory. That’s confirmed when he dips his head to push his lips lazily
into the hollow above Yuta’s collar bone. “You’re still insufferable when you win, do you
know that?” Yuta asks.

“Mhm. But I got you in here, in bed, and you’re relaxed and hopefully less terrified of me—”

“Don’t get cocky,” Yuta says, smiling faintly with his own self-awareness, though Jaehyun’s
in no position to see it, working his mouth across the topography of Yuta’s chest and
shoulders.

“—and now we can get started on pillowtalk.” Jaehyun looks up again, his calm gaze not
pointed but not easy to withstand. There’s a beat while Yuta considers if he wants to agree, if
he wants to play along, but it’s easier to just lie here and let himself soak up Jaehyun’s
warmth and the old way they used to talk to each other than it is to argue. “Or,” Jaehyun says,
head cocking, his hand trawling up Yuta’s chest to his neck, “not talk?”
Yuta knew what he was signing himself up for when he agreed to the hug. He was embracing
a shark in a suit—cashmere sweater and jeans, but still. Jaehyun teed Yuta up to this moment
perfectly with his dumb jokes, his patience and dimples and the earnest ask for a hug. Yuta
can’t even be mad about it. “Not talk. I thought you said you wanted to be nice to me?”

“I’m very nice,” Jaehyun breathes, right against Yuta’s mouth, which is tingling with
readiness to let him in again.

Jaehyun’s a fucking good kisser. He always has been. It makes it easier for Yuta to close his
eyes and lose himself in it, this savoring of a bad idea.

They kiss until Yuta starts to get hard again, until his mouth is sore, and Jaehyun’s starting to
squirm on top of him. Then they change positions so Jaehyun’s on his back on a stolen pillow
and kiss while Yuta acquaints himself with the shape of Jaehyun’s chest.

“Did you change your training in the military?” Yuta asks, when they’re backing down from
turning each other on again.

It’s impossible to avoid getting horny, when they’re finally both naked and burrowed in high-
quality bedding, a warm cocoon, but there’s no urgency behind it.

“Mmm, a little before then. I fell out of working out a lot, with my job and a new baby, and
then…” Jaehyun yawns, flicking his wrist to indicate what Yuta thinks is a passage of time.
“My marriage was ending; Bea was moving to New York. I don’t feel like myself when I’m
not active, and I needed to feel like myself, so I started a new regime, with a new trainer, and
they talked me out of, like. Vanity muscles?”

Yuta almost resists telling him that it looks good on him, in case that pinks Jaehyun’s ears and
steers them into something he’s not willing to do. Then he figures the minutes he’s spent here
rubbing Jaehyun like a prized thoroughbred have communicated his enjoyment already.
“Your whole body is a vanity muscle,” he says, senseless, and pats Jaehyun’s stomach.

“Thank you,” Jaehyun says, happily smug. Yuta is relieved he didn’t take it too deeply to
heart. “But yeah, the military broke a lot of my old, bad habits.” Yuta nods, considering, and
Jaehyun’s tone gets low and amused when he says, “And now Ten says I’ve got a DILF bod.”

That rings a bell in Yuta’s mind. He hesitates only a moment before asking, “You and Ten,
you’re really close now.” They were close in Chicago, but there’s a depth to the way Jaehyun
talks about Ten now that was absent before. “You said you’re best friends.”

Jaehyun nods, and the thigh under Yuta’s tenses and then adjusts slightly. The familiar weight
of Jaehyun’s dick and the tickle of his pubic hair grazes Yuta in similar, sensitive places
occasionally. “I thought you wanted to not talk?” he says, light and careful.

“I can talk a little,” Yuta hedges. “I don’t… I don’t know how to do this. It’s very odd. But I
can talk about Ten.”

At least this newest seesaw in mood has killed the erection he was trying to ignore.
Jaehyun’s lips purse, and Yuta watches him select every word of what he says next. “Ten and
I got closer, yeah. It helped that he moved to Seoul too, at least part time.” Jaehyun smiles
briefly. “He says he came for his career, but I think it was because he missed me.” He shifts
again, and Yuta gets the feeling he’s enjoying the drag of their skin together. “We’re only a
little codependent.”

Yuta picked Ten because he trusted him to be honest, to not care about divided loyalties; he
did crude math and decided Ten wouldn’t care about being used, at least not by Yuta. The
math was wrong; it was asking too much. They all became close in Chicago, since people
were always over at the house, but Yuta didn’t give enough credit to the bond between
Jaehyun and Ten.

Yuta can acknowledge how annoyingly influential Ten’s been in his life. But they were never
close like best friends.

“I’m sorry again, then. I shouldn’t have been bothering your best friend.”

Jaehyun squints at him. “Why, though? Ten is your friend too. I don’t mind that you talk to
him. Just asking him to keep it secret was shitty, is all.”

Jaehyun means that. Of course he does; it’s weighing him down as he studies Yuta, a slight
frown of worry that Yuta might think he isn’t somehow entitled to keeping Jaehyun’s best
friend. Yuta lolls his head against Jaehyun’s pec and lazily feels up Jaehyun’s abs again. “I
chose Ten because I thought he would tell me to fuck off. But then he didn’t.” Yuta amends,
“Okay, he did, but he kept talking to me anyway. It was sad, but it was my only way to see
how everyone was.” Especially once Sicheng, only tangentially involved with that friend
group, moved back to China when he was offered a place in a touring company. Not that
Sicheng is the type of person to pass on gossip anyway.

“It’s not sad, it’s human,” Jaehyun says mildly. He yawns again, covering his mouth with the
back of his hand before resettling it on Yuta’s hip; Yuta gets the feeling his night on the couch
wasn’t as restful as it could have been.

“Most people wouldn’t like it if their asshole ex talked to their best friend, even if it wasn’t
secret,” Yuta points out.

“Good thing I’m not most people, I guess.” He pokes Yuta’s rib, an area where he’s viciously
ticklish, and laughs to himself when Yuta instinctually yelps. When Yuta warily settles, he
adds, “But if you’re going to talk to him, don’t just talk to him about me.”

“Okay, I get your point.”

“Be friends with him,” Jaehyun continues, firmer. There’s nothing censorious in it. It feels
like Yuta’s getting a pep talk while naked, actually, which is shockingly not the first time he’s
experienced that, though the other time was in Bangkok and the model he slept with
moonlighted as a life coach. “Don’t just text him when you feel bad and want to flagellate
yourself with updates about me.”
Yuta ignores how it feels to be called out so precisely and asks, “I should just ask you, right?”
He lets the danger of that imbue his tone, his eye contact.

Jaehyun’s hand tightens on his hip, then loosens. “Right.” One dimple emerges as his mouth
lifts on the right side. “And I guess… speak now or forever hold your peace,” he says, a
shadow passing behind his eyes.

They only have until tonight to say everything they want to say, ask everything they want to
ask. Or at least until Yuta’s glutted himself on Jaehyun and can will himself away.

It’s not like he doesn’t have questions. Bothering Ten with them, and only getting an answer
maybe half the time, isn’t going to work anymore, not now that Yuta has a better idea of what
an untenable position he put Ten in. To say nothing of how odd he’d feel to do it after these
strange encounters in Lisbon. “Fine. I’ll ask”—Yuta sits up as fluidly as his precarious leg
allows, the covers rising with him like a huge cape before tumbling softly down his back to
pool at his hips—“but I demand more food.”

Jaehyun, sporting one faint bite mark and a few red spots from where he bore Yuta’s skinny
limbs digging into his skin, smiles up at him for a few beats too long, then shakes his head
and goes up onto his elbows. “Yeah, I’m getting hungry too. I’ll get us some robes and the
room-service menu, hold on.”

Yuta imprints the memory of his plush, corded thighs moving to the other side of the room.
Just in case he might forget, after.

---

“So.” Jaehyun brushes crumbs from the spotless white of his robe with one hand and sips
sparkling water with the other. “Did you have anything you wanted to ask me? Or do you
need more small talk and risotto?”

“I described you as insufferable, yes?” Yuta asks. He pushes a bite of the aforementioned
risotto around, vivid with saffron on bone-white china.

“You did,” Jaehyun affirms.

“I stand by it.”

Jaehyun smiles and mimes tapping a watch he’s not currently wearing, like Yuta needs
reminding.

They spent a lot of time on that couch. Hours slipped through Yuta’s fingers like grains of
sand, and now he feels the clock ticking on the rest of their time together, like it did in the
final month of his internship and he ran out of good excuses to linger in America.

Then, once they climbed out of bed, it took quite a while for them to decide on food, and
even longer for their room service to be delivered, despite the fact that it’s currently a dinner
hour only common for children and the eldery. The sunset is in prelude now—everything is
brilliant in burnished tones—but it’s still hours before it’s properly dark.
The motion Jaehyun made pulled at the sleeve of his robe and exposed more of his trap. The
robe is fastened sloppily; it got sloppier as he reached over the table to serve himself and
pour water and tea for Yuta. There’s a gap where Yuta can see part of his sternum. His skin
looks softer than the robe—which is a fact, as Yuta’s recently verified. Yuta’s robe is tied
almost too tightly, but that’s because of the slight breeze out on the balcony, where they’ve
set up this second attempt at a meal together, and he doesn’t enjoy shivering. “If you don’t
start asking, I’ll start offering information,” he warns.

Yuta tries to delve in to head that off. “How did you… When did you… Your wife, Beatrice,
when did you meet her?” To distract himself, and hopefully Jaehyun, from the sting of
humiliation on his cheeks, Yuta eats an enormous bite of risotto. It’s tasteless on his tongue,
but he remembers it was delicious thirty seconds ago.

And if he eats continually, it might dissuade Jaehyun from asking any follow-up questions.

Jaehyun looks unsurprised and unfazed by the fact that it’s the first thing Yuta asks. He sips
more sparkling water. “Bea was in Ten’s troupe. I think we’d both met her before, actually, at
a club or at one of Ten’s shows.”

Yuta vaguely remembers someone named Beatrice, Bea, mentioned by Ten, but he can’t trust
his memory. Ten’s dancer friends were a rotating cast of characters, and a lot of them came
by the house when Yuta was there, but he knew them by face and not necessarily name.

The pictures of Beatrice he saw online with the wedding announcement were of a petite,
beautiful Asian woman with a lovely but serious expression, long black hair in a neat bun. He
didn’t recognize her. She was smiling up at Jaehyun in one, eyes creased with happiness,
which was the one that turned his stomach and made his hands shake. He’s seen a few more
pictures of her since, mostly those of her accompanying Jaehyun at events, a slim shadow in
a series of black cocktail dresses, the perfect wife at his side. All he knows is that she’s from
New York, that she used to dance, that Jaehyun married her half a year after Yuta left, and
that somewhere after that, she divorced Jaehyun and took her daughter back home.

“I see,” Yuta says, in a tone that gives him away, his throat thick with old sorrow and maybe
the risotto he’s been shoveling down.

“And she’s my ex wife.”

“You know what I mean.” Yuta is above knowingly sleeping with married men, even
Jaehyun. The bar is low, but not that low.

“Yeah, and I also know why you asked.” Jaehyun sits back, dabs his mouth with his napkin,
and makes a fist around the fabric, pulling it taut with his other hand. “What you want to
know is if I married Bea to get over you. To replace you.”

Yuta doesn’t confirm or deny. He pushes more rice around on his plate. The fish meunière
Jaehyun ordered is nearly polished off, but Yuta’s a slower eater. It’s to combat his own
inherent messiness; his mother and sisters had to refresh his table manners after so long
eating casually in America. He got pretty handy with a Tide Pen.
“I didn’t. But I guess I did, at the same time.”

The words wash over Yuta without any impact. He’s numb to them, even their contradictions.
He’s not sure why it matters now, why he asked when Jaehyun’s proven an interest in Yuta to
this extent, proven it wasn’t something he grew over like a wound the way Yuta did. But the
Yuta who sat in his room, heart escalating its rhythm in his chest as he spiraled with questions
he had no answer to, who gave in and found Ten’s number to try to make any of it make
sense, he would have done anything for this information.

Ultimately, what little Ten told him only made Yuta feel worse. He determined on the bare
facts that Jaehyun let him go like last season’s sweaters and found something shiny and new
and publicly acceptable. Even if what Yuta did was worse, that still hurt. Possibly it hurt even
more because it was in response to Yuta’s cruelty in the first place. Then there was the bitter
aftertaste of Jaehyun’s conformity. The hypocrisy of Yuta returning home to play the model
straight son too and doing a lousy job of it.

“You don’t have any follow-up questions?” There’s a tinge of incredulity in Jaehyun’s tone.

“No. You answered me.”

“I was deliberately— Yuta, this isn’t a monologue. Look at me. C’mon, look at me.”

He does, still numb enough to radiate blankness, and Jaehyun’s brows are furrowed, his eyes
sorrowful, his jaw tense. The breeze ruffles his hair, and the intensity of the late-afternoon
light makes him glow. He looks like something Yuta would invent in his memory when
feeling especially maudlin.

He tilts his head and looks at Yuta like he’s trying to figure him out. “You never did the math
on it?”

“The six months?” Yuta says neutrally, like the number isn’t emblazoned on a bone
somewhere, it’s so deep in him. He takes another reticent bite so he doesn’t slip and say
something that obvious again.

“The six— The fact that Val was born five months after my fucking wedding? That math?”

Yuta stops chewing. Jaehyun’s daughter was born five months after the wedding. It doesn’t
seem like something he would want to know even if he had the urge to go digging. But it
meant that Bea was pregnant before marriage, and that the wedding happened in a hurry not
because of Jaehyun’s eagerness to enclose himself in a closet or move on from Yuta but
because— He struggles to swallow. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. I can’t believe…” Jaehyun pauses, breathes, and then starts over in a monotone.
It’s hard to hear over the ringing in Yuta’s ears. “It was a scandal. My parents put us in media
training and had Bea hidden from the minute we got back from our honeymoon until three
months after the birth.” Despite Jaehyun’s calm, almost matter-of-fact tone, the words linger
bitterly. “I married her because we wanted to make it work for Val.”
The numbness Yuta felt is replaced with a shiver chasing its way up his spine, then turning
around to crawl back up and squeeze his throat. It doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter at this
point, but he’s carried the night he found out for years. “Not because you were in love with
her?”

Jaehyun’s expression doesn’t change, probably purposefully. “I love Bea. I always will. She’s
one of my best friends and the mother of my child, and I fell in love with her. We tried, but
we weren’t made for it.”

Yuta tries not to curl inward and curses himself for caring. He nods. He manages a sip of
water without his hand shaking.

Jaehyun keeps up his steady regard. Then the calmness lifts the veil enough to show his hurt,
resentment, even amusement: “But no, I didn’t immediately love the person I started fucking
in a drunken haze to get over you abandoning me.”

That squeezes Yuta’s throat tighter. He thought he was done with this, the skin-deep emotions
punctured by simple words. He thought he cried it out on the couch. “I don’t— I didn’t mean
—”

“I didn’t say that to hurt you. None of it was to hurt you. Fuck, it wasn’t about you, not once I
realized you were really gone and I had a baby to worry about. I just…” He shakes his head
like he’s dazed, then rests his elbows on the table and pushes his graceful, long fingers
against his mouth, thinking. It takes him a few beats to say, with a renewed veneer of calm,
“Sorry, I’m fine. We’re good. I’m just adapting to the idea that you looked at my shotgun
wedding and newborn baby and didn’t do, like, simple math.” He cracks a generous, wild-
edged smile at the end, not that Yuta doesn’t deserve some amount of condescension.

He hopes the distant street sounds and the breeze drown out Yuta’s careful, difficult exhale.
The truth is that after finding out Jaehyun was married, it took Yuta nearly a year to muster
up the courage to check in on him again. When he realized he had a daughter, the shock
precluded learning anything else, including her age. But Yuta just says, “In my defense, I am
very bad at math.”

Jaehyun laughs, dropping his hand, then gapes at Yuta and laughs more. It’s one of the deep,
stupid ones. It’s hard to teeter on the edge of an embarrassed meltdown when Yuta hears that
laugh. It’s easier to pick up his water and take another sip, focusing on the way the cool water
trickles down his throat and into his tense stomach.

“I thought I remembered everything about you,” Jaehyun says, his gaze as warm and
illuminating as the slowly migrating sun, “but I forgot how funny you are.”

Under his robe, Yuta’s nipples tighten traitorously. The way Jaehyun looks at him, that
fondness and edge of knowing after such a sharp drop into what might have been another
fight, his body is weak to it. And to Jaehyun’s compliments. “Or I got funnier.”

“You got hotter, so maybe that too.”

“Your lines still need work, just saying.” Yuta, smiling, looks down at his plate. He’s done
with the risotto, he thinks, but he could be tempted into some fruit or something to finish off
the meal. He kind of wants to replace the heaviness of the dinner lingering on his palate
anyway. “Is there fruit? Where did you put the fruit?”

“It’s here.” There’s a dish hidden behind the bread basket that Jaehyun moves forward and
uncovers. “Are you done with your food? Do you want dessert now?”

Yuta is mercurial. He likes that word in English; one of Ten’s dancer friends used it to
describe him. He likes it less when it’s describing the worst parts of himself, how steeply his
lows hit, how easily a good day can turn bad. But—when he’s not enduring the second-worst,
or at least weirdest, week of his life—he’s proud of his resilience. That he rolls with punches,
moment by moment. That the mood changes when he does; Yuta at his best can lift up a room
just as much as he can disappear in a corner of it.

Jaehyun has always been in tune with that changeability, or at least more than most people,
who humor him or try to comfort him. Yuta’s family learned as he grew what to ignore and
what to call out, when to breeze past something that might set back Yuta’s whole day, but
Jaehyun read him on day one. And he’s reading him again, right now.

Yuta’s matured; he’s less susceptible to extreme ups and downs, better at managing himself.
He’s not an overgrown kid in a foreign country posturing all the time. But it’s nice to
experience a low and then a quick switch to a high. To be on the threshold of tears and
humiliation one minute and then lifted into feeling flirted with.

“Yeah, I want dessert.”

The plate of fruit looks great, juicy and fresh, cut perfectly, but he only sort of means the
fruit.

Jaehyun grins at him, and he picks up the fruit, then puts it back down to tighten his robe. It
was getting precariously close to opening entirely and giving Yuta and any neighbors out on
their balconies a show. Yuta’s peered across to nearby balconies several times and seen
nothing, but still, the fact that they’re technically outdoors and Yuta’s bare legs are tickled by
the wind adds a certain something. “Can you stand for a few? I wanted to look out at the
city.”

“While we eat fruit? Kinky.” Yuta gingerly moves his chair back and stands, his fingers on
the table in case his knee protests and he loses his balance. He’s tired of sitting anyway. He’s
ready to move on.

“I was more interested in seeing you in front of the view. It’s stunning.”

“Still kinky.” He maneuvers past the table and chairs, moving slowly, to lean his good side
against the balcony railing.

Jaehyun follows him, gaze locked on Yuta, like Yuta’s anything to look at bundled up in a
hotel robe and gesturing to be handed the dish of fruit. “Maybe a little.”
Yuta grins, pleased to be admired even if he thinks Jaehyun is overselling it, as he eats a
grape, then turns so he can see the view for himself. He’s seen it, obviously, there’s not much
to look at out here otherwise that isn’t the table or Jaehyun himself, but he hasn’t seen it from
this vantage. Underneath them, there’s glimpses of common areas of the hotel, the running
track most prominent, but the same houses and buildings and contrast of colors he saw before
seem to go on forever.

At this angle, it feels like he’s suspended. Like he’s flying over Lisbon. Like he could glide
over roofs—okay, maybe once he put underwear on—and fly low enough to dip his hand in
the lake. It looks like it would be warm, given the golden quality of the sunlight and the
unseasonal September heat, courtesy of climate change.

Yuta bites into a fig and hums around the gritty explosion of sugar on his tongue. “It’s
beautiful.”

Jaehyun comes to stand next to him, selecting a cube of watermelon from the dish balanced
on the railing, secured by Yuta’s hand. “It’s really beautiful in the morning,” he says, once
he’s swallowed. “I’ve been going on jogs right after sunrise, and the park is right nearby, so
there’s lots to explore. The hills are killing me, but it’s good for my glutes.”

Yuta smirks but lets the opportunity to comment on Jaehyun’s glutes pass. Though a creature
as beautiful as Jaehyun could use a routine weeding of his ego, that’s just not Yuta’s job
anymore. “I’ve seen… the airport, the pavilions, one of the stages, the palace with the
freaking lion statue, and two hotels,” he rattles off. He watches the mechanism of traffic
perpetuate like a marvel. The vehicles look like toys from this distance. “I don’t make a point
of sightseeing on business trips, though.”

“I didn’t used to either, but the jogging is good for getting a feel of the city, and I need to
work out anyway. And it gives me a chance to try coffee other than Starbucks or room service
too.”

Yuta can picture him, unobtrusive but never blending in somewhere so far from home, sweat-
soaked and pushing himself up steep hills, trying to understand what Portuguese he
overhears. Stopping by a farmer’s market or something equally picturesque; he got Yuta to go
to Chicago’s farmer’s markets and art walks with some regularity, and he loved to look but
hated to disrupt the vendors to actually buy. Yuta ended up buying him the treats or organic
vegetables Jaehyun was making eyes at, more often than not.

He used to be able to keep up on those excursions, and even steep hills wouldn’t be a
consideration, but now, Yuta would need a day to recover, at minimum. Maybe a taxi to bring
him home early.

It’s an old, persistent disappointment, the way his body has drifted away from who he used to
be and what he used to be capable of. Yuta does his yoga and his swimming and PT and tries
to forget about things like running or kicking a ball around. Going on jogs after sunrise.

He stops himself before a dip in his mood and doesn’t let himself linger. The fruit is nice,
sweet and replacing the heavy memories of the meal they just had. Jaehyun’s standing next to
him, studying Yuta’s profile, his robe whispering every time he reaches out and compulsively
eats another piece of fruit.

“Leave some for me,” Yuta complains. He takes a cherry and makes quick work of it,
wondering whether it’s too rude to leave the pit on the dish.

“Yuta.”

He gestures at a boat on the river after he’s done fishing a cherry pit out of his mouth,
fingertips stained red. The tartness tingles his tongue. “My sister planned this family boat
trip, and I nearly sunk it,” he says, which is a huge exaggeration of the four minutes the crew
member let him steer, after all Yuta’s nephews had a turn, and then took back over when Yuta
got scared of a passing boat. “Or ran us around—aground?—or whatever. My nephew, Kota,
he’s the youngest, he was crying—”

“How big was the boat?”

“Umm, maybe—” Jaehyun’s palm is at his waist, right where the robe belt is, and then all of
him is behind Yuta. He’s pressed to Yuta’s back, palms going to either hip, notably careful of
knocking their legs together. Yuta feels his breath on the back of his neck, the nuzzle of his
nose, and hiccups. “Maybe nine or ten meters? I don’t know how big boats are.”

Yuta resists tipping his head forward. He keeps a sturdy grip on the dish. He’s afraid he’ll
forget where he is and what he’s doing and nudge it over the railing to drop from a great
height if Jaehyun keeps kissing the back of his neck. There’s no one out on the running track,
but still.

Jaehyun’s hands slide forward, pulling Yuta’s ass against him, rucking up the robe. “I missed
you,” Jaehyun says. Every time he says it, it does something different to Yuta. “I can’t stand
next to you and not touch you.” He laughs, a deep thrum Yuta feels in his back, and Yuta gets
goosebumps. “Even when you’re lying your ass off.”

He always could tell. It was part of the game, to see at what point Jaehyun would call his
gleeful bluff.

“I need—to put the fruit down.” When Jaehyun’s hand dips into his robe at the neckline, Yuta
tries not to moan. He fails when Jaehyun gropes his way across newly exposed flesh to Yuta’s
neck, gently sliding his hand up to cup Yuta’s jaw. He’s so warm.

“Will you let me fuck you?”

Yuta dips his chin to force Jaehyun’s fingers into his mouth and nods enthusiastically. The nip
of his teeth against the wet pads of Jaehyun’s fingers earns a grunt into his ear, then a delicate
bite to the top of it.

Jaehyun pulls at him, urging him away from the railing, while Yuta’s processing his own
squeak and the deep, dizzy relief that Jaehyun asked to fuck him and not the other way
around.
---

It’s probably better he can’t see Jaehyun’s face. He doesn’t know what this would be like if
he could.

It’s been years since they’ve done this: Yuta on his side and Jaehyun wrapped around him,
working his slippery dick between Yuta’s thighs and chewing on his ear, Yuta’s knees
sandwiching a pillow with Jaehyun’s arm anchored around his waist. It turns out it’s muscle
memory along with everything else.

The same as his memory, only Jaehyun’s learned to be especially annoying in the interim.
Yuta wonders who taught him, then gets distracted by the pressure of Jaehyun’s dick gliding
past his balls.

He puts his palm down to rub over the head of Jaehyun’s cock when it pokes through the gap
in his thighs. The condom is already on, Jaehyun’s got him stretched and he’s as prepped as
it’s possible to be without the proper hygiene supplies, but Jaehyun’s teasing him instead of
giving him what they both want. “Put it in,” Yuta groans.

“Aren’t you enjoying yourself?” Jaehyun thumbs Yuta’s ass open and he shifts his hips so he
can maneuver his cock out of the lock of Yuta’s thighs to tease his hole instead. “You used to
like to make me work for it.”

“I haven’t been fucked in a year and my shoulder is going numb,” Yuta snips, but Jaehyun
fitting the head of his cock to Yuta’s asshole, flaring him wider than his fingers did, makes
him moan and drop his head forward. He tastes the fading mint of his toothpaste and the
smell of Jaehyun’s shampoo on the pillowcase as he pants on it.

“Hold still, then,” Jaehyun says, but it’s gentle, tender, even, and he starts a considerate, slow
slide in. “I’ve got you.”

It’s exactly what Yuta likes. He squinches his eyes shut, curls his toes, and stalls his breathing
to feel it, even though it tenses him up and makes the progression a sharper sensation, more
like pain. Jaehyun doesn’t let up, though, pushing steadily forward, making Yuta take it.

Yuta’s always enjoyed the sensation of being stretched, even the twinge of soreness, as the
best part of bottoming. The physical awareness of getting fucked is one thing, the weight and
heat of someone on top of him or underneath him, and he’ll get heady in that.
Psychologically, he can get off on the nasty thrill of being a hole, being used, being fucked.
His prostate adds to the experience, but he’s not like Jaehyun, who could be milked into
multiple orgasms with a finger and some encouragement. When a partner manages to hit it, it
feels good, but more specifically it feels intense—like a signal his body isn’t sure how to
interpret.

After Yuta exhales, his body finally attempting to relax, Jaehyun doesn’t try to angle for his
prostate straight away. He just sheathes himself until there’s nowhere further to push, until
he’s breathing rabbit-quick in Yuta’s ear, tiny moans slipping through, his thumb stroking
Yuta’s stomach.
“Fuck, you’re tight,” Jaehyun grits. “You okay?”

“I told you, it’s been a year.” Yuta clenches experimentally and enjoys it when it feels like too
much. “Mmm, again.”

Jaehyun obeys, bracing himself and pulling out just as slow as he pushed in. “The same?” he
asks.

Yuta gets a grip on his own cock, which stayed interested but not entirely hard during the
prep and the ache of being penetrated. His hand is slick from touching Jaehyun’s cock, and
there’s plenty of lube between his thighs if he needs it, so he pushes his foreskin down to
circle the head and sighs at the perfect friction. “Yeah, slow, break me—ah—break me in.”

Jaehyun delivers; it feels like his cock won’t end, that he’ll fill Yuta up to his throat, and right
when he wants to stop touching himself and put a cautioning hand on Jaehyun’s thigh,
Jaehyun bottoms out. It’s so good, Yuta realizes his mouth is hanging open and he’s half-
smothering moans into the pillow.

“I’ll pull all the way out.”

Yuta nods, letting go of his dick now that he’s all the way hard again. If he comes too soon, it
won’t be pleasant to wait until Jaehyun finishes. He’s not built for multiple rounds when he’s
the one taking it. And after so long without the opportunity or even inclination to let someone
see him this way, do something this brutally intimate to his body, he doesn’t want it to be
over too soon.

When he thinks back to the way Jaehyun used to top him, he always remembers how Jaehyun
used to give it to him on lazy Saturday afternoons, trying to keep quiet because they heard
Johnny and Mark puttering around in the kitchen or walking down the hall, Jaehyun putting a
hand over Yuta’s mouth when he got close.

No one fucks like Jaehyun. No one bottoms like Jaehyun either, but Yuta can’t go there. It
already feels too dangerous to let Jaehyun make him feel more than he already does.

Jaehyun rubs Yuta’s hip as he pulls out, but he doesn’t give him time to do more than process
that he’s empty before he’s notching his cock right back inside. It isn’t long before he’s
picking up a rhythm: in, out, almost to the tip, teasing Yuta with the threat of pulling out
entirely again so he can feel himself close up, but never quite.

Yuta bites down on his lip when Jaehyun grazes his prostate, chuffing startled air out of his
nose. His belly tingles, his thighs clenching, and it’s the same weird prod of not-pleasure,
not-pain it always is. Jaehyun notices, and he shifts his hips so he’s clear of that dead-on
angle. He goes harder like he’s apologizing too, which is nice.

“You feel so fucking small when you’re like this,” Jaehyun says, throaty and quiet. He gropes
Yuta’s waist, an old favorite haunt, even narrower than it used to be. “Tight fucking
cocksleeve I can do anything I want to.”
Yuta whimpers and hurriedly replaces his hand on his dick. The hotel bedroom, lit from the
open window, fades to dark again as he closes his eyes. This is what he was missing, what he
wanted, the way Jaehyun pushes just the right buttons and doesn’t set off the wrong ones in
his search for them. He hates when strangers take liberties like this, but Jaehyun— “Fuck.”

“Yeah?” Jaehyun splays his fingers wide on Yuta’s abdomen, torquing himself harder and
somehow deeper on the next thrust in. He grinds while he’s there so Yuta really feels it.
“God, Yuta, fuck I missed this. That’s it, make noise for me.”

Yuta does, breaking loose a shout when Jaehyun, accidentally or otherwise, puts pressure on
his prostate again. He’s already sweating, already too warm and slipping into the
mindlessness of being fucked, of needing to come, and he’s starting to leak over his fist.
When it becomes obvious he’s going to come with a few more tugs, Yuta whines and lets go
of himself again, slapping the mattress in frustration that he was so close, that he’s
withholding from the kind of orgasm he dreams about.

“Gonna bust that easy? You needed to get fucked that bad?”

Yuta garbles something, desperate agreement, the whining coming from his throat
indistinguishable from the whining in his ears. When Jaehyun pops out and stumbles in his
rhythm, Yuta makes embarrassing mournful noises and shoves his hips back.

“I got you,” Jaehyun pants. He groans as he slips back into Yuta’s hole, which is already raw,
already going pleasantly numb, just a tight, hot funnel for Jaehyun to fuck into. Jaehyun
sucks on Yuta’s earlobe and unearths more noises from Yuta’s mouth that add insult to injury.

It wasn’t like this when Yuta bottomed in Chicago. It got intense, it got loud sometimes, but it
didn’t feel like this. Like the bed is quicksand and Yuta never wants to leave. Like he wants
Jaehyun’s hands to brand him. Like he needs Jaehyun’s fingers in his mouth to stop him from
saying things he can’t afford to.

Yuta clamps his mouth shut and feels his body rattle with the force of Jaehyun’s thrusts. He
might be able to come like this, no hand on his cock, or he might cry. The pleasure building
in him is menacing.

When Jaehyun starts jerking him off, mouthing over Yuta’s shoulder, licking up his sweat,
Yuta hurtles toward orgasm so fast he can barely stammer out a warning. Jaehyun’s hand is
relatively dry, a counterpoint to Yuta’s slick foreskin gliding up and down his shaft, Jaehyun
still trying to get a rhythm in tandem with his thrusts. “C-coming,” he says, voice thin on the
edge of a gasp.

Jaehyun fucks him hard and fast finally, forcing the orgasm to ratchet in intensity. “It’s okay,
baby, come, come on, shoot for me,” he lulls, distant to Yuta’s ringing ears.

It hurts it feels so good. Yuta shoots thin and messy, feeling it splash as high as his rib,
feeling Jaehyun’s grip get wetter. He thrashes in Jaehyun’s arms, which hold him and make
him take it, make him endure the slam of Jaehyun’s hips, the intrusion of his cock when his
insides, when all of him, feels so sensitive.
Yuta’s twitching with aftershocks from coming harder than he has in years when he feels
Jaehyun’s movement turn ragged. A spike of awareness that Jaehyun’s about to come too
lances through him, and he whimpers helplessly. All he can do is lie there, perfectly used,
Jaehyun taking up too much space inside him, and shiver.

“Yuta, Yuta, fuck, just a second,” Jaehyun says, strangled. “I know, you’re taking it so good,
just—” Jaehyun’s loud as he slams deep and stills, groaning as fills the condom, pulses Yuta
imagines he can feel. He’s loud the way he is when he’s in subspace and forgets people in the
house can hear him.

He’s quick to pull out after, gentle as Yuta quakes and silently seeps tears. He hears Jaehyun
discarding the condom, hears him rustling around on the nightstand, and feels the bed dip as
Jaehyun gets back onto it. Yuta’s still on his side and stomach, pillow trapped under his thigh,
knee fortunately neutral, body wracked with cascading shivers.

He goes along like a ragdoll as Jaehyun draws him onto his chest and pulls the covers over
them. He’s murmuring words Yuta can’t stand to listen to as he hides his wet face on
Jaehyun’s hot skin. A hand runs through his hair, and it seems like he feels every one of
thousands of individual strands gently tugged at once and shivers harder.

It was never like this when Jaehyun fucked him. It was only ever Yuta who performed
aftercare, when Jaehyun was praised and edged and wound up, occasionally gently nudged
into subspace, Jaehyun who needed a tall glass of water and a lot of stroking after. Yuta can’t
imagine doing that again, doing that now, seeing Jaehyun that trusting and vulnerable,
without queasy guilt overtaking him. It’s why he took the risk of doing it this way, in addition
to missing the base experience of being stuffed full of real cock and not a toy.

Yuta will appreciate the irony once he’s done falling apart.

“You’re okay. It’s just me,” Yuta processes Jaehyun saying. He’s rubbing the small of Yuta’s
back, working out residual tension and soreness right above his ass. Yuta’s going to get them
stuck together with lube and come if he lies here and continues to fail to get himself together,
but he can’t stop slowly leaking tears, let alone lift his head up or move, just yet. “You’re
okay.”

“Am I,” Yuta croaks into Jaehyun’s chest. “This doesn’t seem normal.” Yuta considers
whether he dropped out of subspace and if he’s spiraling because of that, but he doesn't think
so; his one experience with going under was an entirely different beast. He’s just a mess.
Jaehyun makes him a mess.

Jaehyun cups the back of his neck and then squeezes it fondly. “Nothing about us is normal.
Which means you’re free and clear.”

Yuta is too overwhelmed to laugh, but he puts energy and determination into drawing a long
breath, holding it, and then breathing out. “I think you broke me.”

Jaehyun makes a curious, sympathetic noise and starts rubbing circles on Yuta’s sweaty back.
“Only temporarily.”
Yuta thinks he’s starting to stop shaking, and the fact that he’s verbal again is promising. He
sniffs back the last of his tears with finality and rears up so suddenly he startles Jaehyun. He
wipes his cheeks with his forearm in a hurry. “Can we pretend that didn’t happen? Hand me
the wet wipes.”

Jaehyun does. Now that Yuta can bear to look at his face, he can see his hair’s a wreck and
his cheeks are flushed like he’s feverish. Sex always looks so good on him.

Yuta’s too far removed from dignity to care about wiping himself down in front of Jaehyun,
but he makes quick work of it and shudders when he just barely presses his wet-wipe-covered
fingertips into himself. He’ll do a thorough job later; for now it’s enough to get rid of the
worst of the stickiness.

It’s still awkward, though Jaehyun doesn’t stare.

When he's done and the wipes are tossed into the trash, Yuta collapses on the pillow next to
him, realizes he’s on one of the towels he put down for extra protection against mess but
can’t be bothered to remove it, and stares at the ceiling. It’s a futile exercise in calling up the
person Yuta was an hour ago, when he hadn’t yet let his biggest regret and the only man he’s
ever loved fuck him.

“Remember that time you made me come so hard I pissed and I freaked out and got a new
mattress and everything?” Jaehyun asks, apropos of nothing.

“What? Yes, I remember, but what?”

Jaehyun laughs and turns onto his side, covers pulled just below his chin despite how fucking
hot he runs, and gazes at Yuta. “I’m just saying, that was way more embarrassing.”

“Was it? You and I remember that differently.” He remembers it being one of the hottest
nights of his life, the way Jaehyun yelped and went rigid and couldn’t control himself.

Jaehyun’s eyes, lit with satisfaction and something Yuta can’t name, not when he’s still so
unsteady, when there’s a space in him Jaehyun so recently filled that he feels the hollow of,
narrow with mischief. “Yeah, I think we’re going to remember this one differently too.
You’re really hot when you lose it.”

Yuta breathes out past that, what it does to him to hear. He’s like soft fruit, tenderized under
Jaehyun’s hands. “If you say so,” Yuta murmurs. He’s over-aware of the rise and fall of the
comforter over his chest, the way he wants to roll onto his side and tuck himself into
Jaehyun’s hold again.

For obvious reasons, he shouldn’t. The clock has resumed ticking, now that Yuta’s not
mindless with the best, most vulnerable sex he’s had in years.

“I do say so.” Jaehyun’s chin lifts, and he raises the comforter to show off the way he’s
opening his arms for Yuta, welcoming him back.
Jaehyun’s eyes dare him to say no, which is the flimsy excuse Yuta needs to allow himself to
be folded up, embraced, held safe the way he never thought he would again.

---

“Wait, what is your job?” Yuta asks, nearly unseating the cup of lukewarm tea he’s balancing
on his thigh with the force of his incredulity.

They raided what was left of dinner on the balcony, and Jaehyun ordered another round of
room service—tea for Yuta and dessert. The sun is finally setting now, so they have a light on
in the bedroom, eating in bed because only in hotels is that crime permissible. Jaehyun
finished his rice pudding but kept trying to offer Yuta bites of the cheesecake he ordered.
He’s more or less given up now, and the plate sits on the nightstand.

“Complicated,” Jaehyun says. “I guess technically I’m a director of communications, but I

also—”

“You also plan events?” Laughter burbles up in him, not mockery but because it’s so off the
wall. “Seriously? How did you get into that?”

“We had a cocktail hour in prep when our party planner was, uh, arrested, and it was too
close to the wire to get anyone good to take over. I’ve seen my mother plan a thousand
parties, I knew what we were missing, and I figured it couldn’t be that hard if she gave me
some of her contacts.”

Yuta prods him with his toes, delighted. Jaehyun’s facing him, sitting cross-legged at the foot
of the bed, wearing just underwear and the robe the same as Yuta because neither of them
enjoy eating and drinking naked. “And you just… kept going?”

Jaehyun shrugs, but there’s a smug smile playing at the corners of his lips. “I have a knack, it
turns out. I taught myself how to do floral arrangements and everything.” Yuta whistles his
appreciation. “After I handled the cocktail hour and a few other things, Sohyun told me to go
for it. I’m cheaper than outsourcing anyway. So now I work two days a week as our in-house
event planner. Though it’s more like I work until midnight six days a week.” He rubs over his
chin and mouth, sighing. “We’re partners on this new horrible shared working space in
Sinchon, and I’m planning the ribbon-cutting bullshit. When I left for the summit, everything
was on fucking fire. I think it’s taking years off my life.”

“Is it official knowledge you’re the party planner?” The image of Jaehyun arguing with
caterers and jogging around hotel ballrooms in a suit clutching a to-do list is the best thing
Yuta’s envisioned in months. It’s such a juxtaposition to the executive, the shark, that
Jaehyun inhabits only three days a week.

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t have an official title for it yet. Still figuring that out.” He chuckles to
himself. “Sohyun said I should just go by CEO—Chief Events Officer. I told her people
might think I have her job, so probably not a great idea.”

Yuta laughs again, sloshing his tea around in the cup as he lifts it to finish. “Oh, I bet she
wants you to do it anyway.”
“Yeah,” Jaehyun says, smile widening when Yuta laughs harder.

---

Jaehyun checks his phone a few times in the space of minutes and murmurs apologies for
stalling their conversation to return a text. It’s only notable because he’s left his phone
untouched for hours until now.

“Am I keeping you from important party-planning work?” Yuta teases.

Jaehyun’s head snaps up, and he gives Yuta a look that tells him he’s immune to jokes about
his side gig. “No, sorry, it’s Ten. He’s having another meltdown since I keep dodging his
demands for updates.”

Yuta freezes, realizing in one swooping moment that Ten will likely learn everything that
happened today. This week. It’s well within Jaehyun’s rights to tell his best friend about his
personal life; if Yuta were actually a good friend to Ten and not a selfish leech, he’d bring it
up himself. Ten would think it was funny, probably, or at least highly entertaining. “You don’t
have to… You can just…” He struggles to say it, though.

Jaehyun ceases texting and lowers the phone. “You want me to tell him we fucked?” he says
bluntly, eyebrows raised. “You’re really prepared to deal with those consequences?”

“No,” Yuta admits. “I’m prepared to deal with none consequences. But Ten will know
anyway, won’t he?”

Jaehyun hesitates. “I won’t tell him if you don’t want me to.”

Yuta shakes his head. “No, I can’t tell you how to live your life.” He forces a grin, though the
idea of giving Jaehyun unneeded permission to disclose to his best friend is sitting heavy in
his stomach. “Besides, Ten’s not a stranger to our personal lives.”

“Right. Well. I’m sure it’ll come up. But I’m not telling him now. He’ll FaceTime me, and
none of us are ready for that.”

Yuta nods, though Jaehyun is already engrossed in finishing his text again. He wonders if
Johnny and Mark know about their accidental reunion, all of the mess and drama that’s gone
on; he wonders if talking about Yuta is a dicey prospect around Johnny, who was always so
protective of his friends.

It’s not a new ache, and it’s relatively small in the scheme of things, but there’s no better time
to square up with the fact that he misses his old life than when he’s in Lisbon, ass throbbing
because of Jaehyun’s cock.

---

With the day past, nighttime out the window hovers like a reminder. Yuta almost brings it up,
once, twice, and then when he’s thinking about it a third time, Jaehyun preempts him.
“You should stay the night,” he says, frank and casual in one breath. He studies Yuta’s face
without any attempt to disguise it, curled up on his side, gazing at Yuta propped up against
the headboard. “We can set an early alarm to get you back to your hotel to pack.”

“I couldn’t get hard again if I tried, sorry,” Yuta says, and squawks when Jaehyun lazily flicks
his forearm.

“I’m not suggesting more sex. I’m suggesting you sleep here, with me, and not go back to a
lonely hotel room and get lost in your own head all night.”

Yuta is silent as he considers that, begrudgingly noting how likely Jaehyun’s prediction is. If
he goes back to his hotel, tender and reeling from intimacy, he’ll second-guess and relive the
entire day over and over, questioning his motives and damning his choices. If he sleeps here,
in the bubble of surreality, he might actually sleep. Then he can have a breakdown on the
plane. It might distract him from his knee.

He makes a mental note to upgrade to first class, even if it means he has to get a later flight,
and sighs at his own lack of resolve. “I guess this sleepover means more talking?”

“We can just stare at each other until we fall asleep, if that sounds better to you,” Jaehyun
deadpans.

Yuta wrinkles his nose, and Jaehyun laughs. He rolls forward, draping his arm over Yuta’s
lap, then gingerly inches his head over in the same direction.

“It’s my knee that hurts,” Yuta says patiently, “not my thigh.” He doesn’t think twice of
stroking through Jaehyun’s soft hair, though once pleasure registers on Jaehyun’s face,
peering up at him from behind his forearm, he nearly stalls out. He pauses, fingers burrowed
in thick, soft hair, and then nudges himself to continue.

It’s too easy to slip into intimacies with him. That’s the downside of staying, not just what
their words can do to each other.

“Does it hurt now?” Jaehyun asks quietly. He tugs the covers to accommodate his sideways
angle.

Yuta hums. “It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t feel normal, but it doesn’t hurt.” He’s lucky he didn’t
further injure himself during sex, but Jaehyun had plenty of experience being careful of
Yuta’s knee back in Chicago.

“That’s good. You were in so much pain.” He’s going rumbly with sleepiness, less than the
frank alertness he had a few minutes ago, when he asked Yuta to stay. Now that he’s gotten
his answer, it’s like he’s letting go. “I couldn’t believe you were on your feet so much.”

“Drugs,” Yuta jokes. “Drugs and stubbornness.”

“It tracks. You’re the most determined person I’ve ever met,” Jaehyun says, and his eyes
flutter closed and stay that way for a few moments. When he opens them, it’s with the
suddenness of a random thought. “Why were you working the summit when your knee was
so bad anyway?”

He stops stroking Jaehyun’s hair again, but he’s trying to think of what he can possibly say
that will sum up the yoke of his career. “I’m not high enough on the food chain to sit
anything out.” Jaehyun looks up at him, gaze interested but not intense, and nudges his head
into Yuta’s fingers to get them started again. “Not all of us have CEO sisters,” he says mildly.
“I’m clawing my way up the old-fashioned way.”

Whatever Jaehyun knows or has pieced together from this week about Yuta’s job, he seems to
grasp it’s less than ideal. He gets a faint, puzzled wrinkle between his browns, which Yuta
uses his thumb to smooth out. “Is that why… Xiang Shan?”

“Yes.” He taps his temple. “My attempt to think outside the box. Brilliant.”

Jaehyun rolls his eyes at the joke, or at the self-deprecation. “You never know, it might have
worked. If he weren’t a fucking monster.”

“It doesn’t matter. He was, and I need to figure out what I’ll do instead.” The light of interest
in Jaehyun’s narrowing eyes makes Yuta push his palm over his mouth before he can open it.
“No, I do not need your help, shut up, thank you,” he teases in a sing-song, though he raises
his eyebrows to make sure Jaehyun gets the point.

Jaehyun gives him wide eyes and a sad noise muffled by Yuta’s palm before he drops it to let
him speak. “Hey, I was just going to ask what you wanted to do, if it’s not industrial
solutions,” he says, mock petulant. “Sorry for being interested in your life.”

“Mhm. Sure. You weren’t going to say something to the person you know at Nakamoto and I
wouldn’t come home to a transfer on Monday.”

Jaehyun refuses to look guilty. He lifts his chin, which shows off the glorious angle of his
jaw, like cut marble. “Fine, don’t believe me.”

“I don’t. You forget, I saw you get four people jobs. You have a sickness, Jaehyun, and it’s
helping people.”

“Yeah, I stopped doing that,” Jaehyun says easily. “It’s called character growth. Now I wait
until people ask.”

Yuta laughs, scritching Jaehyun’s scalp, in the back of his mind trying to weigh that with the
behavior he’s seen from him this week. He certainly didn’t wait to be asked to help Yuta. But
he supposes they both break from their best intentions when it comes to each other.

“You don’t need my help, anyway,” Jaehyun continues. He rolls his head on Yuta’s thigh until
he finds a spot he deems comfortable for his cheek and closes his eyes. “You’ll figure it out.
No one works harder than you do. You’re unstoppable.”

Yuta tugs on his earlobe, once again pleased by the compliment but too filled with caveats to
accept it verbally. Jaehyun nuzzles into Yuta’s lap and sighs.
---

Once he’s taken the world’s laziest, quickest shower and brushed his teeth, Yuta pads out to
the bedroom in a borrowed but clean pair of underwear, slipping low on his hips, and climbs
into bed. Jaehyun’s already in it, more alert than he was earlier, when he dozed in and out on
Yuta’s lap until he carefully guided him back to the pillow. He’s on his phone, and Yuta is
startled to realize he’s wearing glasses.

They’re round, almost owlish silver frames. Yuta’s seen Jaehyun wear glasses a few times,
but mostly as accessories; he watched him put in or take out his contacts a hundred times in
Chicago. No one who hasn’t seen Jaehyun getting ready would realize his vision needs
correction. It was part of his carefully curated image; it might still be.

These glasses suit him, though he looks younger in them than he is. That could also be the
faint smile he’s wearing, pushing up his cheeks.

“Ten again?” Yuta asks. He’s got his phone too, fetched from the couch in the sitting room,
drained low. Jaehyun set up the spare charger on the nightstand while Yuta was in the shower,
so he plugs in, checks his notifications, sees nothing worth panicking about, and sets his
alarm. He sets two alarms, actually, in case Jaehyun manages to distract him in the morning.

Their goodbye is going to be strange. Yuta can feel it brewing, a bittersweet nostalgia. He
puts it off for now. It’s not time to start thinking yet. He gets this one last night of indulgence
before he has to go back to real life.

“No, it’s Val. Bea just dropped a week’s worth of pictures on me.” He glances up, gaze warm
on Yuta, dimples deepening when he sees Yuta’s damp hair hanging in his eyes. “She’s just
started kindergarten.” He hesitates, though his smile is still present, his voice still pleasantly
low. “Do you want to see?”

Yuta saw a baby picture of Jung Hyeseok, apparently also called Val. It was a family
Christmas photo, with the baby held securely on her mother’s lap, wearing a huge red bow on
her short dark baby hair. He hasn’t exposed himself to much beyond the concept of Jaehyun’s
daughter, and it’s on purpose: the last thing he needs to develop is any negative emotion
toward a child. But Jaehyun’s daughter is a part of him, and Yuta decides he wants to know
more of that part while he can. Besides, it’s a picture, not a commitment to meeting a little
girl.

He’ll never have to think of Jaehyun’s daughter again after tomorrow morning. He probably
will, but it’ll be a moot exercise.

That thought feels… too heavy, so Yuta bats it away. “Yeah, show me your baby girl,” he
says, holding out his hand for Jaehyun’s phone.

There’s a tiny human being with Jaehyun’s dimples and delightfully chubby cheeks wearing
leggings and an oversized sweater, her dark hair up in a sloppy high ponytail. Yuta’s heart
clenches. She’s very cute. She’s wearing soft ballet flats, like actual dance shoes, on a
gleaming wooden floor, and in one she’s tugging on an adult’s arm, looking intent. In another,
she’s beaming at the person taking the picture. Probably her mother.
There’s another of her with an adult, positioned in front of mirrors, and Yuta realizes it looks
very familiar. “Isn’t this… Ten’s studio?” he asks.

“Yeah, it’s actually Ten and Bea’s. And mine. I’m the third partner, and I, uh.” He clears his
throat, but Yuta is fascinated by imagining Jaehyun’s daughter in Ten’s space. Or he guesses
her mother’s space? Bea used to be a dancer; apparently she is again. “I financed it so Ten
would have something that was his, something to tether him. And Bea wanted to get into
teaching, so it worked perfectly.”

Yuta flips through the dance-studio photos until he sees pictures of her walking down a street,
unmistakably in New York, dwarfed by a shiny, holographic pink backpack. “Chief Events
Officer, communications director, and studio investor,” Yuta murmurs. He feels like he’s
looking at something he shouldn’t—who is he to witness this precious little girl’s first week
of school? He’s just a ghost, given temporary form in Jaehyun’s life again. “She’s beautiful,
Jaehyun. She looks happy. She’s a dancer like her mom?”

Jaehyun accepts the phone Yuta returns and smooths his fingers around its case, like the
screen is a framed photograph; it’s the same thing he used to do when he looked at pictures of
his baby niece. “Yeah, but she likes gymnastics more. And bossing people around.” He
switches off the display and lets his smile fade. It drifts further away than Yuta would have
expected, until he looks pained, but when he continues, Yuta gets why: “I miss her so fucking
much. I feel like the worst father in the world.”

“You’re not,” Yuta says immediately. He’s not an expert on parenthood, but he still knows
Jaehyun. The core of him. “You’re doing your best.”

“Sure. But that’s not good enough. I left her—I had to enlist, but it was two years apart from
her while she had to move across the fucking world.” He frowns and rolls his shoulders. “I’m
fixing it. It’s just taking a while.”

“It matters that you’re fixing it,” Yuta says. It sounds uninspiring to his own ears, but it’s all
the insight he’s got.

“Yeah. I’ll tell myself that when she needs therapy later,” Jaehyun says, chuckling darkly and
scrubbing a hand over his face. His fingers bump the edge of his glasses and knock them
askew. He takes them off and sets them on the nightstand with a clatter. “I love that kid so
much. I love being a father. It’s the best thing in my life. It’s harder than I ever thought it’d
be, though.” He slides down in bed, checking his phone screen again before decisively
turning off the display. “Sorry for going on and on.” He gains a mimicry of his smug smile,
half-hearted though it is. “I know what a pain in the ass it is to listen to me talk. Should we
start the staring now?”

“You can talk about how much you love your daughter all you want. It looks good on you.”
He waits while Jaehyun arranges the covers the way he likes, and then he returns to a stray
thought he had earlier. “Is her full name Val?”

“Well, she has like three names at this point,” Jaehyun says. “Val’s short for Valentina,
though.” That sparks a memory of the month Mark called Jaehyun nothing but Valentine Boy
because of his birthday, and Yuta can’t decide if it’s appropriate to ask if that’s why his
daughter has that name. “Bea is super into women’s fencing,” he continues. “So she named
her after Valentina Vezzali.” He laughs, low and raspy.

Yuta chuckles too, though he has no idea who that is. He’s somewhat relieved Jaehyun’s
daughter isn’t named after her father’s birthday, however. “It suits her, I think. She looks a lot
like you.”

“We look like twins in our baby pictures, but she’s more like Bea as she gets older.”

Jaehyun’s hand is on top of the covers between them, a silent invitation. Yuta takes it.
Jaehyun squeezes gratefully, then sets to an old habit that makes Yuta want to close his eyes
and savor it—the gentle rhythm of Jaehyun’s thumb stroking over the top of his.

“I’m glad we could do this,” Jaehyun says. “Aside from all the heavy shit, I just missed
talking to you.”

Yuta swallows, forcing down his joke about staring time starting now, actually, to avoid this
conversation. This prelude to a goodbye.

Every minute he’s spent with Jaehyun that’s felt like a balm rather than a condemnation has
tempted him into the half-formed thought of this not being the last. Would it be so bad if they
exchanged numbers? If Yuta slipped into a narrow space of Jaehyun’s life that let them be
friendly exes, people who were once friends and could manage casual, infrequent contact?
It’s a needy, optimistic urge he already knows Jaehyun would agree with, would encourage.
He can’t commit to hope, but: “Me too.”

“I didn’t stop caring about you when you left, or when I got married. Just remember that,
okay?”

“Okay,” Yuta whispers.

Jaehyun reaches to switch off the light with his free hand, shrouding them in darkness that’s
calm and companionable.

Yuta falls asleep within a half hour, despite those feelings beating their wings in his chest.

---

The shrillness of a ringer penetrates Yuta’s dreams, but he only becomes fully aware of
what’s happening when he recognizes Jaehyun’s voice, muzzy with sleep.

“You’re sure it’s not? How do you know?”

Yuta’s lying on his side, pressure on his bad knee; there’s a soreness present that he’s too
sleepy to get frustrated about yet. He flops over onto his back and squints unhappily when he
realizes Jaehyun’s turned on the light on his side of the bed.

After long moments of extended silence, during which Yuta wakes up a little more, he
realizes something might be wrong. He set his alarm early, but not before sunrise; it’s pitch
black outside, with a quality of silence that reinforces the lateness of the hour. “What’s going
on?” Yuta whispers, crackly with sleep.

Jaehyun jerks when he hears Yuta speak, and he turns wild eyes on him. The phone is pressed
to his ear tightly enough that Yuta can’t hear what’s on the other line. Jaehyun’s face, his
stricken expression, gets Yuta to push himself up.

“Is it your family?” Yuta asks. Maybe it’s having seen pictures of Jaehyun’s daughter not
long ago, and she’s in the forefront of Yuta’s thoughts, but he can’t think of what else could
hit Jaehyun so hard. “Is it Val?”

Jaehyun shakes his head, but it’s slow and unconvincing. Yuta, impatient and increasingly
worried, scrabbles for his own phone as if it might have answers, still plugged in on the
nightstand.

Yuta sees a series of notifications and feels a thud of dread; his phone was silenced, or Yuta
would have probably woken up to the deluge of calls from Katsumi. Makiko.

His mother.

His hands start shaking. Yuta opens his texts and sees Chenle, of all people, is at the top. The
messages increase in intensity as they progress, but Chenle never says exactly what they’re
about. He just stresses that Yuta needs to call him—or call someone.

Unknown number: Just tell me if you’re OK

“I understand. I understand. Jesus.” Jaehyun’s voice is shaking. “I have to go.” He hangs up

without ceremony, and Yuta opens the next unread message he has, not even noting who it’s
from. “Yuta, wait—”

Yuta has been rapidly inventing bad news that goes from the plausible—he’s fired for all his
bullshit this week, despite his father’s legacy—to the far less plausible—he’s implicated in
Xiang Shan’s operation, somehow. For one horrible second, he wonders if his father died, but
logic kicks in to remind him no one would contact Jaehyun about Yuta’s father.

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, but it isn’t a shitty, grainy picture of Jaehyun’s fingers
in his mouth, Yuta gripping the balcony railing with one hand as Jaehyun grinds against his
ass. It looks like someone took it from a neighboring balcony and zoomed in as much as they
could.

“Fuck,” he whispers. His hand shakes, holding the proof of his ruin.

“It’s not… it’s not in the media yet,” Jaehyun says. “My lawyers are trying to find out…
They’re trying to bury it.”

Hearing that is like a pistol shot in Yuta’s mind. He rips the covers off and staggers to his
feet, coltish, stumbling and having to brace himself on the nightstand to avoid hurtling into
the wall. “I have to… I have to…”
 Jaehyun’s out of the bed and around it to Yuta’s side before Yuta manages to wander
anywhere. He doesn’t have anywhere to go, except maybe the bathroom to cry or vomit or
hole up and never come out. He’s going to need to get on a bunch of calls—he needs to call
his mother. He needs to put on a shirt and call his mother.

He can’t call his mother. He pictures her seeing what Yuta just did, her son moaning for
another man, and thinks he nearly blacks out for a second. He registers Jaehyun urging him
back to the bed.

“Breathe,” Jaehyun says. “Yuta, breathe. I can’t—you can’t lose it right now. You with me?”

He tries to form words, but horror is rippling through him in waves. He isn’t crying, but it’s
only because this is beyond tears. He eventually manages, “My mother knows.”

There’s a brief touch to the crown of his head, and then it’s gone, Jaehyun too restless to stay
still and comfort him. “My parents do too.” Jaehyun keeps speaking—something about PR—
but the words wash over Yuta. He hears them, but he can’t process them.

His mother’s unread texts wait for him. He can’t open them. He can’t even try; Yuta’s phone,
which he was somehow still holding, slips from his numb hand and tumbles to the carpet.

Chapter End Notes

So, that all… happened!!! A few things I wanted to talk about:

I’m a queer person who is personally very tired of outing narratives and how prevalent
they are. One of the reasons this fic took so long to get off the ground is frankly because
I wasn’t excited to write them being outed. However, after a lot of consideration (and a
few attempts to change it, lmao), I knew it was the way the story needed to go. Forced
outings are something queer folks are afraid of and face. I hope I’m tackling this
sensitively and realistically inasmuch as I can for a fic; it isn’t my goal to make this a
soap opera but to explore the violation and the repercussions of something this scary. It’s
a necessary part of Yuta and Jaehyun’s journey in this fic/series.

Next chapter will obviously get into some of the repercussions and ugly emotions, so
here’s my head’s up for that in case anyone needs it. I’m sure I’ll add tags and notes as
needed to chapter six.

It might? Be a good time??? To remind folks that I do promise a happy ending for this
series, hahaha.
 Chapter 6
Chapter Notes

Here we are, folks! I’m so happy and sad to finally be at the end of hello stranger,
which has been such a ride for me as an author. Please stay tuned after the end of the fic
for my notes as to what’s coming for the series, and thank you so much for coming
along with me.

As always, thanks to the glorious Anne and their big juicy brain, as well as to my patient
and supportive friends who put up with far too much complaining.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

It’s just the two of them sitting there in the quiet, Yuta and a stranger, when Jaehyun heads to
the bedroom for his turn to have an excruciatingly personal call with some semblance of
privacy.

Not quite a stranger, technically; they were introduced. Jaehyun’s assistant is called Daeun,
and she arrived armed with Starbucks and several electronic devices. She did not seem
surprised to see Yuta in Jaehyun’s room, red-eyed and wearing a robe, his face stiff with dried
salt. Wearing an objectively absurd combination of a starched white blouse under a well-cut
maroon blazer and fuzzy pajama bottoms, with her hair up in a bun, glasses perched low on
her nose, she handed Jaehyun one of the hot coffees in her drink caddy, which Jaehyun
passed to Yuta, and then she asked Yuta directly if he’d called his lawyer yet.

“I’m waiting for him to call back,” he confirmed. When she asked if Yuta’s lawyer spoke
English, he confirmed that too.

“Could you give me his number, please? So we can coordinate?” Her English was quiet but
extremely fluent, especially when Yuta had to locate and evaluate every syllable of his own,
force it past numb and uncooperative lips.

Yuta showed her the contact on his phone, his outstretched hand trembling. It wouldn’t seem
to stop. At one point, to try to curb the tremor, he curled both palms around the steaming
coffee cup until they hurt and eventually went heat-numb. He’s erased many attempted texts,
most of them to his mother, riddled with typos and false starts.

He wondered how much hotter the coffee would need to be to burn off his fingerprints. Erase
some of the proof of Nakamoto Yuta.

Now that Yuta has checked in and acknowledged the crisis, his mother is not texting much.
Just that she wants to talk to Yuta as soon as he’s available. She doesn’t sound angry, only
distantly worried, but each word—what’s behind it, her avoidance of acknowledging why she
needs to speak to him so early in the morning in Lisbon—pierces like a lance.
Strangely, it’s easier to think about the specifics of the hell he’s in, the damning details like
the pleasure contorting his face in those images, Jaehyun’s grip covetously tight on his hips.
The pain is less severe when he dwells on what his mother and many strangers must have
seen. How lewd it was, despite neither being terribly uncovered. The proof of his mistake, his
lust, his sexuality. If he doesn’t dwell, he feels worse. The coil of tension and nausea in his
stomach starts creeping up his throat, spinning his head. He feels like he’s being subsumed,
with too much of it in every direction; like he’s drowning. But examining it up close, detail
by detail, makes it bearable, somehow. Awful, but bearable.

Wondering how he’ll possibly explain himself to his family is his newest fixation.

He has to call his mother when Jaehyun leaves the bedroom, he knows. Yuta used his first
round of privacy to call his lawyer’s assistant, and now he has nothing to do but wait and
field texts.

He’ll have to come up with explanations for a whole host of people, once he can swallow his
horror and call his mother. No phone calls have come from Yuta’s superiors, at least not yet,
which is a blessing as much as it is an axe suspended above his head.

His stomach tightens again, and Yuta recognizes the onset of spiraling in ambiguity, so he re-
opens the images, the screenshots of a WhatsApp chat in Mandarin he can’t parse, and
studies himself ruining his own life in terrible resolution.

Jaehyun looks good, in the shots where you can see his face. Yuta looks degenerate. Easy. His
profile is visible in every single one, wearing a wash of pleasured expressions that are
discernable despite the grain and pixelation.

Yuta can hear Daeun’s soft but incessant typing. He takes a sip of coffee that has gone
remarkably cold. He realizes he has no idea when Daeun arrived, how much time has passed.
Enough for several terrible conversations. Enough that the sun is rising, lifting the lamp-
dimness in the suite to an unbearably cheery yellow from natural light.

Then Yuta hears the click of a door opening.

Yuta’s queasy stomach clenches. It feels like it’s knocking around in his body like a rat in a
cage, like it wants to claw out of him.

Jaehyun sits next to Yuta on the couch. He doesn’t look much different than he did when he
went into the bedroom earlier. He’s still too pale. When his eyes meet Yuta’s, the hints of
crow’s feet at the corners crinkle with concern. He looks very tired. His lips are chapped.

“Bedroom’s yours again, if you need it,” he says.

Yuta doesn’t have it in him to speak, not to acknowledge it or make a bitter comment,
something like a joke. He just nods and picks himself up from the couch. His knee, as he
walks, feels like it has no bones or muscle or tendons in it at all; it feels like there’s air there,
maybe fluid. Yuta takes an especially heavy step once he closes the door behind himself,
seeing if that brings a spike of pain. Something familiar to remind him this is the same body
he’s inhabiting.
Still nothing.

He can barely feel anything that isn’t mounting dread. Even the dull ache of Jaehyun inside
him, the lasting effects of that memory, feels unreal. Like it happened to someone else.

---

The first call Yuta takes is from his personal attorney, who startles him while he sits on the
rumpled bed and chews his lip raw, hovering over his mother’s number. He tells Yuta he’s
coordinating a conversation with the corporation’s legal team. Yuta is primarily silent. He is
not asked what happened. He is asked if they’re going to be cooperating with Jaehyun’s legal
counsel.

“The primary focus right now is containing the spread and determining how far it’s reached,”
he drones.

Yuta’s earring clacks against the plastic of his phone as he adjusts it against his ear. He
agrees.

“If we combine resources with Mr. Jung’s team and your employer’s, we will have a better
idea of what we’re dealing with.”

Yuta makes a vague sound of confirmation.

“Are you available for a conference call later in the morning?”

Yuta agrees again.

It’s a farce that Yuta is allowed to have any say in what happens, after the judgment he’s
demonstrated. He knows that once Nakamoto Corp’s team is involved, as everyone catches
up and the wildfire of this gossip spreads, he won’t be consulted. That his attorney will be
relegated to reviewing paperwork the company demands he sign, a cursory nod to the concept
of Yuta having any agency. He doesn’t kid himself. He has no say. Control slipped out of his
fingers the moment he was stupid enough to walk onto that balcony. From here, it’s just a
matter of how it will play out. Whether it will make it to the public or stay confined to
summit gossip.

As if the people attending the summit aren’t some of the most powerful people in the world.
It doesn’t need to hit the media to blow up Yuta’s life; that happened when the pictures
reached any Nakamoto employee.

But for now, his attorney feeds him platitudes that this is under control, and reminds him to
keep his phone to hand for further instructions. To wait for the adults to get informed and
decide what they’re going to do with the mess Yuta’s made.

After, before he can think about it, he makes himself call his mother. Each ring lasts an
eternity.

Her voice is tight with nerves, with sorrow, but he fills himself up with a desperate breath
when she still calls him Yuta-kun. It aches in his lungs, unexpelled for too long, until she asks
careful questions. When is his flight. Has he scheduled a new one, since he’s going to miss
his plane. Would he like to charter a private jet and fly to a smaller airport in case the news
makes it to the public. Has he talked to anyone from the company yet. Does he need
anything.

The fact that she is polite to him is another lance. It feels like a sucking wound. Yuta rubs his
chest, pushing hard on soft tissue until he feels the immediacy of bone underneath. “No,” he
whispers. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I have worried about you since the day you were born,” she says. “Before that, even. Oh,
Yuta.”

She doesn’t cry. It’s a mercy; proof he made his mother cry will undo him once and for all.
“Does Father know?” he asks, before his throat closes entirely.

Her silence is long and illuminating. Yuta squeezes his eyes shut and pulls the phone away
from his mouth so she can’t hear the ragged breath he takes.

“Can I talk to him?” he asks. “Will he… Can I try to explain?”

She’s gentle when she says, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Is he—” Yuta can’t hide his panic, his horror, that his father knows the truth of what Yuta’s
done, what Yuta is. His father was never going to know; once he had the heart attack, he
couldn’t know, because Yuta thought it might kill him.

His mother would not blame Yuta if it did. She would also try to shield him from the truth if
Yuta had killed his father with his shame, but he desperately hopes she wouldn’t be able to
hide her distress this well if he had.

“He’s fine.” Yuta slumps with relief. “I called the doctor to the house to make sure.”

“Good.” He says other things; they slip out of him like blood, babbled apologies, and he can’t
staunch them. He tries to forget them instead.

She cuts him off before he crumbles too far. “Don’t worry about your father right now. You
have many things you have to be strong for. Don’t think about him or me.”

He knows what it means that his father will not speak to him. He’s known all his life what
would happen. What he would lose, for being himself. For failing.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks, though he’s said it before and immediately wished he hadn’t. “I’m so
sorry, Mama.”

“I know,” she says.

---

Yuta emerges dressed and halfheartedly cleaned up, his hair combed, and walks with a
stiffness of limbs he thinks he hides well. He finds the sitting room has come to resemble a
war room. Daeun sits in the heart of it with two laptops, a tablet, and two phones around her
on the small dining table.

He has to do this, so he’s doing it. There is nothing to do but withstand. Withstand the fallout;
withstand the conference calls; withstand the threat of more bad news. He’s made his bed,
and this is him lying in it.

“The lawyers want to get on a call,” Jaehyun intones. He’s giving Yuta space, perched on one
end of the couch and not leaning any closer when Yuta sits down. It’s as if Daeun isn’t even
there, despite her prominent presence in the room. She’s ignoring them, typing away.

“I have to wait until the company contacts me before I agree to anything.”

“Sure,” Jaehyun says, with a slow blink. “How long before that happens?”

“Could be in five minutes, could be in four hours.” Yuta checks his phone and sees he has a
new message from Chenle, who refuses to be assuaged by Yuta’s clipped assurances that he’s
okay and things are under control, and one from his sister, who probably heard from her
husband what’s going on.

Yuta swallows down another round of nausea. He stills and lets it pass over him. This will
keep happening; he has to get used to it sooner or later. Like the way the sting of a hot coffee
cup against his palms subsided.

He texts Makiko that he’ll call her when he can, and she tells him she loves him. Yuta slides
his phone back into his pocket and stares ahead at nothing.

“Do you have five minutes to go into the bedroom and talk?” Jaehyun asks, low, studying
Yuta’s profile.

Yuta turns his head like a marionette on a string, a slow, deliberate movement. “What do we
possibly have to talk about?”

Jaehyun inhales, pauses, and exhales. He doesn’t look away from Yuta when he says Daeun’s
name and something in Korean. Yuta hears a clatter of electronics, and then Daeun is the one
heading to the bedroom, carrying one of the laptops.

“That’s stupid,” Yuta says. “She’s holding your life together, she shouldn’t—”

“Do you want me to talk to Nakamoto Corp?”

Yuta almost recoils. “No,” he bites, once he can form words out of his shock. “Do not do
that.”

“This happened to both of us,” Jaehyun says, a shade insistent but still low. “We should work
together, deal with it together. Our lawyers are already collaborating. If this reaches the
media, we’ll both need to release statements—”

“I need to wait until I hear from my boss before anyone makes any kind of statement.”
“Okay.” Jaehyun rubs the bridge of his nose and looks unconvinced, but he lets the boundary
stand. “I’m going to go insane if I just sit here and wait, personally.”

“Feel free.”

“I’ve got people trying to figure out the source of the leak.” He leans forward and angles his
laptop screen to Yuta, displaying an Excel sheet with what looks like a handful of names that
Yuta doesn’t bother squinting to read. “I’m making a list of suspects. If we can triangulate the
angle where the pictures were taken, or find out who was staying in nearby rooms—”

“I’m not going to help you with this, sorry.” Yuta doesn’t know how to triangulate an angle
or how to get access to the hotel’s roster of guests. All he can do is wait for the attorneys or
the crisis management experts to come to a conclusion and go from there. “Just tell me once
you’ve figured it out, I guess.”

The identity of the person who took the photos is not very important. Maybe they would be if
they were intent on blackmail, but all they did was leak the pictures. If Yuta were to draw up
a list, he’d suspect every attendee staying at the Ritz; he’d suspect employees of the hotel;
he’d suspect Xiang Shan, who was only hours ago trying to get ahold of Jaehyun for
mysterious reasons; and in the deeply paranoid part of his brain still waiting for retribution,
he’d suspect Jaehyun. Only the last option is unrealistic, and it’s the only one that would
matter in the scheme of things.

The specifics of how his life was ruined don’t matter. Ultimately, Yuta orchestrated it all
himself by being the way he is, by fucking men, by fucking Jaehyun. The picture-taker’s
involvement is secondary.

“Okay,” Jaehyun says again, after a lengthy pause and scrutiny of Yuta that Yuta lets pass
unremarked on. “So you’re just going to sit there, doing nothing, until your bosses tell you
what to do.”

“Yes.”

That pierces Jaehyun’s thick armor of self-control. Yuta, in his periphery, sees him ball up his
fists on his thighs and then stand up in a rigid push. He tightly says, “Well, I’ve got to go
explain bisexuality to my parents and the shareholders, so let me know if you find some time
in your busy schedule of waiting around to talk about what happened to us.”

Yuta’s teeth are set on edge, but before he can generate a response, Jaehyun strides to the
bedroom and closes the door with emphasis. Not a slam, never a slam, but enough to prove
he’s irked.

Well, Yuta thinks, drawing a cushion onto his lap and squeezing it tight, Jaehyun can join the
club.

---

It takes an hour for the Zoom meeting invite to arrive, during which Yuta cultivates a zenlike
calm, sitting alone on the couch in the sitting room. He’s learned enough meditative breathing
exercises in physical therapy to last a lifetime, and they come in handy now, slowing his
pulse and letting him drift on numbness. The calm means Yuta doesn’t flinch when he enters
the meeting and sees that, along with the general counsel for both Nakamoto Corp and Jung
Enterprises, the CEO of industrial solutions is also present.

Yuta used to go with his parents to Sugawara-san’s New Year parties every year, until Yuta
left for America. Now that he works for the company and isn’t just part of his father’s
retinue, Yuta hasn’t warranted an invite.

He’s so distracted by the CEO’s presence, his impassive, well-lined familiar face and large
ears, that he nearly misses the fact that Jaehyun’s father is in the call too, going through
murmured and serious introductions, when Jaehyun hasn’t even appeared yet.

Yuta is calm. The panic and guilt and shame can overtake him later, when he’s alone. Still,
despite his best attempts at denying it, something curdles inside of him seeing Sohyun and
Jaehyun come into the call, the polite but complicated smile on Jaehyun’s father’s face when
they do.

It doesn’t make sense that Jaehyun’s father is here. He’s retired. Sohyun is the only one who
should be speaking on behalf of the company.

But he is here. Jaehyun’s father is in this horrible Zoom meeting when Yuta couldn’t even get
his father on the phone to apologize to him.

Yuta blinks when he realizes Sohyun said his name, a soft, “Hi, Yuta, it’s nice to see you,”
and that it took him several beats too long to understand that he was being addressed.

Yuta remembers how to string words together to answer her, to say the right things, but it’s
hard to look at her. It’s easier than looking at Jaehyun, though, or his father. He looks so
much like Jaehyun—and it’s clear he passed his dimples on to both of his children. Yuta has
seen quite a few pictures of Jaehyun’s parents, but seeing a glimpse of how Jaehyun will look
when older, gray, and statesmanlike is too bizarre to withstand.

Sohyun seems to have barely aged. In the Zoom window, she could be the same age she was
in every picture he ever saw of her. She’s lovely and put-together, with the same striking
eyebrows and dimples as her brother but a narrower jaw and forehead. The only remarkable
difference between the Sohyun of years ago and now is that her hair is long and styled in
waves, and the way she immediately takes over the call with her lightly British-accented
English speaks of confidence in her role he never got to experience.

He only met her once on the weekend trip to Paris Jaehyun managed to cajole Yuta into. He
remembers her as nice, and funny, and she planned a walking trip that was suspiciously
generous to Yuta’s knee with plenty of unnecessary stops to sit down in cafes and museums.
She ruffled Jaehyun’s hair, bought him a hat with a French pun on it only she understood, and
insisted Yuta have second servings of the custard they both found they liked. Under the dusty
blue awning at Café Blanc, she smiled across the table from them with her lip tucked
between her teeth like she was holding in a secret.
And now she’s a CEO, and a mother, and not pretending like this is the first time they’ve met,
which would certainly be a surprise to the majority of people in the call. Or so Yuta assumes.
Maybe everyone was briefed. Maybe even Sugawara-san knows the details of how they met
in Chicago, that they were a couple then.

He doesn’t know what’s known about him and Jaehyun, what’s secret and what’s in the open,
not anymore. He doesn’t know anything except that this is among the worst moments of his
life, and he’s alone.

---

Ten texts him in the middle of a discussion of press releases. Yuta isn’t the type to check his
phone during one of the most important meetings he’s ever been in, but it vibrates against his
thigh a few times over the space of two or three minutes, one text after another. After tilting
the laptop to ensure his hands can’t be seen, he covertly investigates.

First, he sees Ten tried to Facetime him. When Yuta didn’t accept or respond, the texts
started.

Ten: Yuta I just heard I am so sorry

Ten: You ok????
Ten: Don’t answer that lol
Ten: I know you’re not ok

He waited a minute before sending the latest:

Ten: I’m here if you need me just let me know

Yuta, sour and surprised, doesn’t take long to realize this is Jaehyun’s doing. Jaehyun told
Ten what happened, which Yuta can’t determine through the numb muck of his emotions if it
bothers him.

He types back a brisk “Thank you” and sets his phone aside on the coffee table, trying to
refocus on the meeting. He was right; he doesn’t even need to be here, not trustworthy
enough to consult when it comes to managing the fallout of his decisions, though Sohyun and
Jaehyun direct questions at him occasionally.

Yuta’s phone vibrates again, probably Ten’s reply, and Yuta flips his phone onto its face to
deal with it later.

The meeting has crawled by, as there’s a lot of long pauses for virtually everyone present to
digest concepts in their second or third language. The general counsel for Nakamoto Corp is
impassive and keeps going to the same two talking points: the company will not comment on
personal matters, and they would like to review any potential statement Jaehyun or Jung
Enterprises prepares.

“If this does get out, there are going to be people confirming that Jaehyun and Yuta knew
each other in college. That’s almost a guarantee.” Sohyun’s polite but no-nonsense, circling
back to the same topic Nakamoto Corp keeps trying to politesse out of. “I know Yuta’s
deleted his social media and Jaehyun has reviewed his, but there could be pictures of them
together on an old classmate’s Instagram, and we should be prepared to acknowledge there’s
an existing relationship—”

“As I’ve said, whatever Mr. Nakamoto wants to say on the topic of his private life is his
business,” the corporation’s lawyer says. Yuta has a text from his personal lawyer indicating
there’s a clause in Yuta’s employment contract that says pretty much the opposite, but for
now, Nakamoto Corp is playing nice with Jung Enterprises. Yuta doesn’t want to wager on
how long that will last if Jaehyun and Sohyun do decide to move forward with some sort of
statement. “The company will not endorse or deny his statement regardless.”

“That’s fine, then,” Sohyun says. “You don’t need to endorse anything. If the photos hit the
press, Jung Enterprises can put our considerable resources into spinning this as voyeurism
instead of a scandal.”

The crisis management expert Jung Enterprises brought on board is British and far too
caffeinated for the energy and hour of the meeting. She’s been typing at a breakneck pace
through most of the call and had to be reminded to mute herself twice. She comes off mute
again and smiles encouragingly. “It’s not even a spin. It’s two people with history in a really
intimate moment, right, and we can pull on heartstrings by pointing out it’s a violation.”

Yuta doesn’t have to look at any of the people ostensibly on his team to determine how much
they dislike that. He hates it too, for an entirely different reason. His history with Jaehyun
getting dredged up and spun into a narrative is untenable. He wants to bury it, not polish it
and send it out for distribution. Yuta’s father, his family, doesn’t need to read any of the
sordid details. He’s embarrassed them enough.

The coffee Yuta managed to choke down earlier sloshes around in his stomach. He swallows
compulsively and uses a shaky hand to unmute himself. “Sorry, but—I don’t want to give
anyone information. If they find it, that’s one thing, but I don’t want to disclose anything.”
He feels his lip tremble with the embarrassment of speaking up. It doesn’t appear on camera,
which is a small relief.

Sohyun’s eyes lose some of their sharp seriousness and turn almost concerned, which only
drives home how fucked up this is. She feels sorry for him, in the middle of everything. She
should be worried about her brother, but Yuta’s so pitiable he gets a share too. “I understand
that, Yuta, I do. And there’s a very good chance it won’t hit the media, and all of this planning
is just an abundance of caution. But if it does, we need to be ready so people won’t make up
their own theories, which could be a lot worse.”

“If people make things up, I can’t control that. But I don’t want to humiliate myself with
some star-crossed romance PR lie.”

Jaehyun looks jerks back from the camera, and there’s a silence that drags on several seconds
that Yuta knows can’t be attributed to lag.

The crisis management expert clears her throat. “Well, that’s understandable. But I’m not
sure the alternatives aren’t worse?”
Yuta wants to look away from Jaehyun’s face, the brittle mask of an expression that’s
concealing things Yuta doesn’t want to examine. He can’t, though. He takes in how Jaehyun’s
mouth is a harsh line, making him look older than he is. He’s staring at Yuta and still sitting
back from the camera. “If we play into this, it will follow us around for the rest of our lives,”
Yuta says, making it obvious who he’s speaking to. It’s the first time they’ve said anything to
each other directly since Jaehyun went into the bedroom over an hour ago.

“Yes, that’s the worst possible thing that could happen.” Jaehyun is utterly void of inflection,
though his mouth tips up on one side with a humorless smile. “People getting the idea that we
care about each other.”

We’d be turning down joint interview requests until one of us died, you idiot, Yuta thinks, but
he stays silent long enough for the tension to climb in the call. “My employer doesn’t want to
confirm or deny, and neither do I,” Yuta says. “Jung Enterprises can do what they want, but I
hope you’ll take my… I hope you will consider what I want.”

Yuta sees two people unmute at the same time, and a delicate furrow appears between
Sohyun’s eyebrows, but the first person who speaks is Jaehyun. “Do whatever Yuta wants,”
he says. “Sohyun, can you…?”

Sohyun blinks, her mouth parted slightly like she was preparing to speak and stunned out of
it. A second later, she smooths her expression into neutrality and moves on as though nothing
happened. “Sure, I can take it from here—” But Jaehyun is gone.

Gone, but lurking in the bedroom. Yuta can almost feel him behind the door, an emanating
dread.

“Please tell me if anything changes,” Yuta says. He inclines his head in a bow and murmurs
indistinct thanks and signs off too.

It’s not like he needs to be there anyway, especially not now. Nakamoto Corp will end up
getting their way, and Jaehyun just told his sister to hold off on any narratives. If this does
explode, Yuta expects to see nothing more substantial than “no comment” from any direction.

He should feel relieved. He doesn’t. He’s shaking harder than he was on the call. Yuta slumps
forward, propping his elbows on his knees, and there’s an almost pleasant pinch of pain when
one digs in too close to his injured tissue. He rubs his hands over his face and tries to control
his breathing, the tremor in his limbs, the nausea filling him up.

He tells himself it could have been worse. That it can still get worse, and he has to withstand
it.

---

Five minutes after Yuta logs off the call, Daeun exits the bedroom and takes her devices with
her. She doesn’t relocate to the dining table; instead, she shuffles from the hotel room
overloaded with electronics and gives Yuta a strained smile on her way out.
It’s ironic timing, given that Yuta is scanning the sitting room to determine if he left anything
in the bedroom or bathroom or if his bag is sufficiently packed. His pulse is ticking in his
clenched jaw as he considers what he might encounter outside this room. Before, Jaehyun’s
hotel room was almost a liminal space; a respite from the real world, and they both lost their
minds to the headiness of it. Now, it has all the comfort of a fallout shelter.

In some ways, hiding out here is preferable to worrying about being ambushed at his own
hotel room, or at the airport, but he has to leave. He has to go home. There’s nothing more
that hiding can give him.

He knows he hasn’t left anything in the bedroom except potentially items of clothing he can
replace. Every part of Yuta wants to leave now and be done with it, but disappearing again
would read as something he doesn’t intend. It would prove Yuta a coward when he’s told
himself all these years that he’s a realist.

He sets his bag on the couch, walks over to the closed bedroom door, presses his ear to it,
hears nothing, and gives a rap to announce that he’s twisting the knob and coming in all at
once, like ripping off a Bandaid.

Jaehyun is in the middle of the room with his back to the door, a hand on his hip, his shirt
pulling slightly off his left shoulder, and he doesn’t turn around when Yuta comes in. For a
second, Yuta thinks it’s passive-aggression, but then:

“No, I know.” His voice is gravelly, pained, which immediately makes Yuta want to back out
of the room. He can’t do that, though, since Jaehyun starts pacing, restless. He could shift and
spot Yuta on his way out, and that would be… worse.

Yuta spots a white earbud in Jaehyun’s ear. He’s speaking English, which—

“Johnny, I do, I know I can’t fix him.” He gives a rough chuckle. “Don’t forget I’ve been
through a divorce already, okay, I recognize a lost cause.”

Yuta should leave. He’s not supposed to be here, hearing this. He’s not supposed to feel those
words like a blow and get pissed off and guilty in the same breath. He’s supposed to say
goodbye and leave.

Jaehyun starts to turn when he reaches the dresser, switching the trajectory of his pacing, and
Yuta realizes his moment to escape is already gone.

“Jaehyun,” he says, just as Jaehyun notices him.

When Yuta sees Jaehyun’s face, his heavy-lidded eyes and flushed cheeks, he almost takes an
involuntary step back. Jaehyun gazes at him, not surprised, barely a shift in expression when
he realizes; his phone is held limply in his hand, Johnny probably still murmuring comforting
vitriol across the line.

Yuta stands in the threshold, heartbeat in his ears, and hopes his face is clean of any
expression.
“I gotta call you back,” Jaehyun says slowly, and ends the call without another word. He slips
one earbud out of his ear, then the other, just as slow. Then he tosses his handful of earbuds to
the rumpled bed. “Did you hear?”

Well, if that’s how Jaehyun wants to tackle this, no holds barred, Yuta won’t hide behind
courtesy either. “Not much. I came in just in time for your charming divorce joke.”

Jaehyun blinks, then shakes his head with a low, humorless chuckle. Despite the atmosphere
of the bedroom, the mix of tension and exposed wounds, his movements are smooth, almost
languid. He tosses his phone aside on the bed too. “I meant about Xiang Shan.”

“What?” The words sink in, and he surprises himself with how much dissonant emotion he
can feel at once. “Is he the one who leaked—”

“No, I have no idea.” Yuta feels like he’s drunk and trying to play ping-pong. In a day filled
with surreal conversations, this one is somehow teetering on the edge of absurdity. “He was
arrested trying to sneak onto a flight to the U.S. It was the middle of the night, but it’s
breaking now.”

Yuta doesn’t know what to say. He barely knows how to feel; relieved, because a monster has
been stopped in its tracks, and even more relieved when he realizes something this huge
happening at the end of the summit dwarfs two attendees groping each other on a balcony.
Xiang Shan’s arrest is international headline news; Yuta and Jaehyun’s dalliance is petty
gossip.

He feels dizzy, almost weak, and tries not to sway where he stands. “Lucky break,” he
manages eventually when it becomes clear Jaehyun is waiting for him to say something.

Jaehyun laughs bitterly. “Yeah, sure. We should pop champagne, huh?”

Yuta ignores that. “I came in to tell you I’m leaving.”

“Of course you did.” Jaehyun looks even more agitated, his shoulders rising. He puts his back
to Yuta again but doesn’t resume his pacing; instead, he stands stock-still, hands in fists at his
side. Yuta watches his broad back move with deliberate breaths.

Yuta truly has no idea how to navigate this. He’s rarely seen Jaehyun telegraph his emotions
so openly, and he’s definitely never dealt with anything like this situation. Yuta’s barely able
to ride the swells of his own feelings right now, let alone Jaehyun’s. He considers the worst
thing he could say, what could spark an ugly fight that would at least end things cleanly, and
then wonders if Jaehyun would take another apology.

Then he notices Jaehyun’s breathing has changed. He’s shuddering, trying to hide it, head
drooping forward. “Are you—crying?” Yuta asks, stupefied.

Jaehyun turns around and wipes under his nose with his wrist. He takes in a tremulous breath
and looks mad at himself for it. “I’m a fucking human being, Yuta, and this is… a really bad
day. Of course I’m crying.”
Yuta has seen Jaehyun cry. His pale face goes blotchy and red and crumples in on itself. He’s
not loud, but he seeps constant tears and furiously, futilely, wipes them away. He’s doing that
now, and making far less of an attempt to hide it than he used to. It makes something deep
inside Yuta squirm; sympathy, maybe, or discomfort. “I’m… Xiang Shan is good news,” Yuta
says.

His sisters are good at comfort. Yuta is not. He usually tries to gently ignore when people are
crying, to give people their dignity, because it’s so often what he wishes for himself in
moments of vulnerability.

“I’m not crying about Xiang Shan,” Jaehyun says, congested and incredulous.

No, Yuta knew that. He’s just at a loss. He doesn’t know how to make Jaehyun stop, or if it’s
reasonable that he should try. “Do you… want me to leave?”

Jaehyun laughs and shakes his head. As Yuta watches with increasing bewilderment, he
calmly shuffles on his bare feet to the nightstand, plucks two tissues from the ornate box, and
blows his nose like a goose. Then he sniffs, rubs at his nose again, and clears his throat the
way he always did in the way that used to make Yuta shudder. Bad American etiquette
Jaehyun never quite shook. “No, I don’t. But you’re going to anyway.”

Yuta meant to give Jaehyun a few minutes to collect himself, but he takes the point. “We both
have to leave,” Yuta says. “We can’t hide out here forever. We were always going to go
home.”

Jaehyun tosses the tissues into the nearby bin, which Yuta remembers holds the used condom
and wet wipes from when they fucked last night. That detail feels like he made it up, though
he has vivid reminders in the form of those photos and the throbbing in his body that it
happened. They had sex; they held hands; they slept close; they were kind to each other. For
a moment, Yuta almost had hope. And then reality asserted itself.

“You’re going to leave, and you’re never going to talk to me again, and this whole week—
was just a mistake to you. And I understand it, I do, but I’m allowed to be fucked up about
it.”

Yuta realizes with klaxon clarity that this is a facsimile of the conversation he should have
had with Jaehyun years ago. That Jaehyun would have cried then. Would have understood,
and would have asked him to stay, and it would have broken Yuta’s heart to see his face when
he said no. He preempted the conversation then and cut off all pathways to it, thinking to
spare them both, and now here they are, having a version of it anyway.

Jaehyun is trying to master himself, but Yuta sees his chin tremble. An ache blooms in his
chest from knowing he can’t do anything about it. Knowing he’s responsible. Yuta doesn’t
want to make it worse by acknowledging that Jaehyun is right; that this was a mistake and
that Yuta is never going to talk to him again.

He isn’t heartless. He could never hate Jaehyun, no matter how deep it cut to the core of him
when Jaehyun married and moved on in a hurry. He regrets what they did in this hotel room
and on its balcony, but he doesn’t blame Jaehyun for it. He blames himself.
Yuta, a lump in his throat, walks forward cautiously and opens his arms. Jaehyun’s eyes
widen, and then close as if with a swell of pain, and he slides into Yuta’s embrace and buries
his face against Yuta’s shoulder. His fingertips press tight against Yuta’s back, and Yuta
knows Jaehyun can feel or even hear his heart pounding, but he has to do this.

Jaehyun cries for a minute, dampening Yuta’s shirt and piercing Yuta’s sore heart with each
tiny whine or choked breath, then goes quiet and pliant in Yuta’s arms. Yuta closes his eyes
and commits this to memory.

I’m sorry, he thinks, stroking the back of Jaehyun’s neck. He doesn’t say it. It’s far too late
for apologies. This is all that’s left.

---

Jaehyun walks Yuta to the door, subdued even if the evidence of his crying has long since
faded. His skin looks perfect, his hair in order, his expression mild. Now that they’re here,
Yuta’s bag slung over his shoulder, his phone in his pocket with a mounting collection of
texts and emails to answer on the taxi ride back to his own hotel, he’s not sure what to do.

Yuta’s hand is on the knob, but he doesn’t make the motion to open it. He waits, in case
something profound comes to him in these last moments.

Unsurprisingly, nothing does.

As Yuta tries to come up with something, anything, Jaehyun looks at him evenly and says, “I
don’t think it’s going to get any bigger. But if it does, you have my word we won’t release a
statement.”

Yuta nods. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

Jaehyun smiles the slightest amount, a bemused pull at the corner of his mouth. “You know, it
would be funny,” he says, “if it was Xiang Shan. But I think it might be funnier if it was some
random person.”

“I’m not sure if I remember what funny is, conceptually,” Yuta says, but he gives his own
tired, bemused half-smile, “but maybe.”

Jaehyun huffs and dips his chin, then comes back up with a somewhat more braced
expression. “So this is it.”

“Yes.”

“Safe travels,” Jaehyun says wryly.

“You too.”

They trade another small, extremely ironic smile, and then Yuta turns the knob. The door
opens, and he catches a glimpse of the outside world, the golden glow of the wall-mounted
lamps and the subtle floral-and-cream carpet of the hall, and hopes his knee will hold as long
as he needs it to today.
“I’m moving.”

Yuta’s foot is out the door, but most of the rest of him is still technically in the room. He turns
carefully. “What?”

Jaehyun gnaws his lower lip and then sighs. “I’m moving to New York.”

“Okay?”

He shoves a hand into a trouser pocket, then surprises Yuta by coming up with something. It’s
a small, off-white rectangle; a business card. Jaehyun glances down at it, then up at Yuta, his
eyebrows raised as if in question. “I’m leaving Jung Enterprises and starting over in New
York as an event planner.”

Yuta blinks. That was not remotely what he would expect to hear about the trajectory of Jung
Jaehyun’s life. But it does make sense that he would cross an ocean and upheave his life and
legacy to be with his daughter. He said he was fixing it, and Jaehyun doesn’t say things he
doesn’t mean.

“It’s… I would like to talk to you again,” Jaehyun continues, slow and clear. “I would like to
be your friend. That’s all.” He doesn’t extend the card. It’s held loosely in his fingers, a few
inches from his body. “No pressure.”

Yuta swallows and considers what Jaehyun’s offering. The hope he tamped down on, the
tentative path forward their indiscretion destroyed. He shouldn’t be associated with Jaehyun
ever again; he shouldn’t torment himself or Jaehyun with the idea that something, anything,
even a friendship between them, could survive.

But Jaehyun’s face as he looks at Yuta is resigned around the edges of his calm mask. “You
don’t have to take it,” Jaehyun says. “But just in case you want to talk, one day…”

Yuta sees Jaehyun’s hand tremble. He remembers Jaehyun’s words to Johnny, how it lanced
him to hear Jaehyun giving up on Yuta. A small, bitter part of him wants to remind Jaehyun
that Yuta’s a lost cause, that he said so himself.

Yuta looks at Jaehyun’s face, his averted eyes and his slowly reddening ears. Yuta’s a lost
cause, but he’s trying one last time anyway.

He takes the card. The stiff, pointed edges press pleasantly into his palm before he puts it in
his pocket.

“Maybe someday,” Yuta hedges. “Bye, Jaehyun. Take care.”

He feels Jaehyun’s eyes on him all the way down the hallway to the elevator. When he turns,
though, the door to his suite is closed.

---

Katsumi is sitting on the hall floor in front of Yuta’s hotel room, looking entirely out of place
with her rolling hard-case luggage propped next to her. When she sees him, she climbs to her
feet with impossible grace in a skirt and heels.

She should have left hours ago, on the same flight Yuta was scheduled to take back to Osaka.
But she’s here. She doesn’t say anything; she looks at him, a scan from head to toe, the
smallest crease between her eyebrows, her mouth tight, and stands to the side so he can open
his room and get the rest of his things.

Inside, the bed is made, but Yuta’s belongings are strewn on various surfaces. Katsumi, still
silent, starts collecting some of it. It should feel terribly personal, his coworker pulling his
shirts off hangers in the closet and handing them to him to pack, but Yuta has had his
boundaries of privacy shattered and can’t muster anything other than mild amusement when
her manicured hand holds out a pair of his socks.

When he’s packed his toiletries, he zips up his suitcase and looks over the room one more
time in case either of them missed something. It’s not likely, Katsumi is too thorough, but it’s
still good practice to double-check.

“Have you eaten?” she asks, the first thing she’s said.

Yuta hasn’t, and he won’t be able to for a while. The concept of food is alien to him right
now. “Why are you here? You missed your flight.”

Katsumi lifts Yuta’s suitcase from the bed and sets it on its wheels before he can, and she
gives him a look when he tries to reach for the handle. She goes to the door, opens it, and
gives him a second look when he doesn’t hurry to move through it. “Do you want to eat at the
airport or stop somewhere on the way?” she asks, ignoring his question like he ignored hers.

Despite her refusal to let Yuta steer either of the suitcases, she’s walking faster than Yuta can
manage, and when she notices, she slows down. Yuta takes it easy, in no hurry to test the
limits of his body after all it’s been through. “You don’t have to do this. You aren’t
responsible for my mistakes.”

“It’s not about responsibility,” she says, neatly dodging someone not respecting the lanes of
the hallway. “You shouldn’t be alone.”

Yuta doesn’t know what to say to that. It feels as strange as Jaehyun nervously holding his
card. He keeps giving Katsumi glances, like her familiar visage will resolve into something
else. It doesn’t. It’s the same woman, the same impeccable coworker with a steel trap of a
mind he dragged into his schemes months ago. She should have left him alone in his
humiliation, should distance herself from Yuta, not only for his failures surrounding Xiang
Shan but for directing scandal at their division.

But she’s here. Pulling his suitcase.

When they arrive at the elevators, she notices him staring, and one eyebrow lifts.

“I’ll pay for your ticket,” Yuta says, embarrassed and cautious fondness and relief making
him sound tight and awkward. “First class.”
 The elevator dings for their floor. Katsumi’s face does not soften, but her tone belies her
strange, quiet amusement. “Obviously.”

---

On the plane, kilometers in the air, Yuta can scarcely believe he’s here, that this is reality.
He’s in a mask, his leg and head aching from the brutal amount of walking he had to do to get
here. When they boarded, he got a curious look from the man in the row across from him and
Katsumi, but he doesn’t know if it’s because he’s Asian or because they saw the photos and
might recognize him, somehow.

When the fasten seatbelt sign goes off, Yuta extends his seat’s leg rest and nearly whimpers
when his knee finally gets the support it needs. The first-class flight attendant has already
taken his order of whiskey to hopefully send him to sleep for a few hours, to curb the edges
of pain. Just one, though, and no pills. He needs relief, but he’s learned his lesson. He has to
be careful.

After he wakes, he’ll pull out his phone and start trying to mend the tattered edges of his life
together. Makiko texted him while they were in the taxi to the airport, and it was a taste of
what’s waiting for him back in Japan. Just hours away, now.

His mother equivocated, but Makiko didn’t. He can always rely on her for honesty. She was
the one who took charge when he was caught with a boy in private school, who kept it from
their parents and helped him hold his life together. Makiko told him that upon hearing the
news of Yuta’s indiscretion, Yuta’s father had to be medicated and sent back to bed, and he
made it clear that he will not speak with his son. That Yuta was not allowed at the house.

Yuta can admit he expected that. But seeing it in his sister’s forthright but gentle texts caught
his breath in his throat and set him to staring out the window. Thinking. Eyes burning until
they eventually stopped.

The whiskey is delivered, along with an option of snacks and hot towels, and Yuta distantly
hears Katsumi requesting two meals. Yuta, as he tugs his mask down to drink the malty, briny
alcohol and look out at the clouds and sky, the endless expanse of something no human
should see, and feels a loosening in his chest over Katsumi’s crusade to feed him.

He manages to gulp down the whiskey before the flight attendant moves on, and she collects
the cup and napkin without a hint of judgment and asks him if he has any other trash.

Yuta thinks of Jaehyun’s card in his pocket. He considered throwing it away at the airport, but
that seemed untenable. He could hand it over now for her to dispose of. He could leave it on
the plane, an orchestrated accident. He could leave this last piece of Jaehyun behind for good.

Jaehyun, his every bad decision. Jaehyun, the only man he’s ever loved.

“No,” Yuta says. “Thank you.”

Chapter End Notes

As for what’s coming in the next fic, well…

[Text: An image of a wedding invitation that reads:

John Suh & Mark Lee invite you to celebrate their wedding
Saturday | 10.5.2030 | 3:30 P.M.
Harold Pratt House and Peterson Hall
New York, NY
DINNER AND DANCING TO FOLLOW]
👀👀 Heeeyyyy!!!!! Now we’re at the end of hello stranger but nowhere near the end of
the story--for Yuta and Jaehyun as well as Johnny, Mark, Ten, and a lot of the major
players from the series. I don’t have a time frame on when I’ll start the next fic, as I
want to take a little bit of a break (Yuta’s POV, it turns out, is utterly exhausting), but I
have major plans and I’m excited to take y’all along with me.

In the wrap-up for the story, I wanted to talk about my original idea for the fic and how
it changed, because it really, really did.

- I had no plans to write a sequel to REOU because I knew that Yuta and Jaehyun would
live extremely full lives after the breakup, and I didn’t want to have to write all of that,
lolol. But! A few friends kept asking me, and I had this one image for how Yuta and
Jaehyun would come together again, and it was this: Yuta and Jaehyun having
ridiculous, bad-idea sex in a hot tub at a snowy resort (I was thinking Switzerland), and
someone sees them and leaks photos to the press.

- As you know, they don’t have sex in a hot tub at, like, a ski chalet, and they were outed
but not to the press. Big, huge difference there! While early on in the actual plotting for
HS, I’d changed the setting to Lisbon and scaled back the outing, I was still really
attached to the hot-tub image. But then I realized that Yuta’s knee would not allow for
any shenanigans, and full-on sex on a hotel balcony was just not going to happen. The
crystal-clear image I had that generated the entirety of the fic just never came to be.

- Speaking of Yuta’s knee, that was the biggest surprise to me. I knew I wanted HS to
deal with Yuta’s crushed expectations for his life/career and his body (he has a hard time
with his chronic pain), but I had no clue how deeply that would impact his mental state
and the overall tone of the fic. I saw HS initially as being more of a romp, a bit messy
and a bit sad but ultimately cathartic, and it was not really any of those things. Fics
frequently get a life of their own when you actually sit down to write them; when I
decided to have Yuta be miserable in his job and physically and emotionally very taxed,
the tone got decidedly sadder/darker. Yuta is going through it, and I’m sorry to him and
all the readers for it, but I promise it’s ultimately for the best.

- One of the other scenes I’d played around with that didn’t end up making it in (mostly
because of tone) was going to be in a hotel jazz bar, Jaehyun and Yuta having a tense but
polite conversation over dinner or drinks, as the jazz singer delivers an increasingly
soulful cover of Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball. I thought it was hilarious, but it just didn’t
fit. Alas.

- Just a reminder that there is a happy ending ahead for these two, and that this fic is just
part of the journey.

- Thank you so much for reading!!!

I’m excited to finally share my playlist for this fic, because it absolutely dominated my
brain and my listening habits for, uh, eight months?? Songs with asterisks are CHEFS
KISS.

Here’s the hello stranger playlist (Spotify link):

Fletcher - Bitter (Yuta POV, pre-fic) *
Troye Sivan - Postcard (Jaehyun POV, pre-fic)
Nick Jonas - Spaceman
Sam Smith & Normani - Dancing With a Stranger
UPSAHL - People I Don’t Like
Rebecca Black - Worth It for the Feeling *
Kai - hello stranger *
A R I Z O N A - Nostalgic
Miyavi - We Can’t Stop (Rewind)
YVA - Pink Lemonade *
Muna - So Special *
VÉRITÉ - good for it *
Beach House - Space Song
Gemini Rising - Best Case Life
Leslie Clio - Twist the Knife
Aly & AJ - Church
Mother Mother - Ghosting
Rina Sawayama - Akasaka Sad
Vaundy - しわあわせ
Springtime Carnivore - Name on a Matchbook
End Notes

👀👀👀👀 So.... that went well!! Swimmingly, even! I'm sure no one has any pointed
questions for me, or Jaehyun and Yuta, at all!!!!!

I can't promise a rigid update schedule at the moment, but I plan to be working on this as my
priority, and I'm already knee-deep in chapter two.

Follow me on Twitter to watch me struggle to make this fic do literally anything I tell it to
@sssneakiest.

Playlist to come at the end of the fic.

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