Seungho’s answer was quiet. “If you’re going to stay, stay still.”
Haneul smiled into the pillow. “Yes, sir.”
Outside, thunder rolled once and faded, a summer rainpour brewing in the distance.
Seungho didn’t reach for him.
But his fingers curled slightly in the sheets between them,
as if remembering the shape of someone they’d not been allowed to hold in this lifetime yet.
??????
Sleeping side by side became the new normal.
Not discussed. Not labeled. Not even acknowledged beyond the occasional grumble when Haneul kicked the blanket off or muttered bird facts in his sleep.
But it happened.
Night after night.
And with it came the tension.
Not the loud kind. The kind that settled in the bones and refused to dissipate. A slow fever. A tether stretched too thin.
Haneul didn’t know what to do with it—this quiet, simmering ache of proximity. Of Seungho’s scent lingering on sheets. Of brushing shoulders when they reached for the same glass. Of catching him staring at the back of Haneul’s neck like it held answers to a question he hadn’t dared ask yet.
Ever since the party—and that night—Haneul had waited for something more.
Not a declaration. Just... a crack in the silence. A shift. A hint that Seungho felt it too.
But Seungho had gone quieter instead. More careful. As if afraid that one wrong word might tip the scales into a place he couldn’t climb back from.
And Haneul—
Haneul was dying.
From the want of it.
From the wondering.
From the memory of a voice thick with drink and vulnerability whispering “when I see you, it feels like I’ve lost something I didn’t know I had.”
And so the summer blurred.
Deadlines. Business trips. Boardrooms where Seungho bled charisma and precision by the gallon. Velvet Eclipse struggled through heatwaves and dwindling clientele, barely keeping up with the rising costs.
Haneul juggled college projects, assignments, brutal critiques, late-night ramen, too many bruises, not enough sleep. A few short trips with Cha Yul’s troupe. A few mornings when he woke alone in Seungho’s bed and wondered if he’d dreamed the whole thing.
But nothing moved.
Not them. Not the silence.
Until the end of September.
Until the blood.
??????
