summary: the nightmare always ends at 3:47 AM: someone's hand in yours, a desperate voice, but you don't know who it belongs to. everyone thinks you're better off not knowing what happened. but your apartment has two sinks, books marked with someone else's initials, and a locked door no one will explain.
then you meet joshua hong—a stranger at a bookstore who feels impossibly familiar. he has a kind face. you tell him so. he flinches like you've struck him. because you said those words to him once before, in a marriage you don't remember, in two years everyone wants you to forget. now he's back in your life as a stranger—kind, patient, everything he never was before.
and he has to decide: tell you the truth and lose you again, or stay silent and fall in love with his own wife for the second time.
main genres: arranged marriage, forced proximity, marriage of convenience, estranged spouses, second chance romance, amnesia, memory loss, strangers to lovers (again), emotional hurt/comfort, very heavy angst, slow burn, mature themes, mental health crises, character studies; a lot of the tags and warnings change depending on the chapter. please read through them very carefully!
a very long author's love note 💌
i started writing twice fallen a month after seeing seventeen during their right here world tour in 2025. the idea came at me like a war flashback on the way home after the concert, exhausted but very much happy and giddy. at first, i wrote this for myself because i needed an outlet of some sorts. and then i realized that hey, maybe i can share this with others? maybe someone out there might feel the same feelings i was feeling and so here we are more than a year later <3
a lot of this story is already written but as i've mentioned in this ask, i tend to edit a lot and ruminate on the plot. there are days when i feel completely content about the story's direction, but there are moments of my life when i'm like, you know what, let me destroy this fic once more and rewrite everything all over again hahaha
that's the story of my life, really.
so if you're here in whatever shape way or form, thank you for giving this fic a chance. i hope it makes you feel a certain way, but most of all, i hope reading my stories give you some sense of comfort and that you leave this space feeling lighter and with the knowledge that you're not alone, you are seen, you are loved.
if you ever want to let me know your thoughts and feelings, you are always welcome to drop me a message. you best believe i will get back to you whenever i have the chance!
here is the taglist for twice fallen. there are also other options in there, let me know your preference!
also! for the lovely readers who left me messages on my taglist form, you can find my response here 💛
CHAPTER ONE
⤷ 001, 002
CHAPTER TWO
⤷ 001, 002
CHAPTER THREE
⤷ coming soon ⏰
A FEW FAQS
💛 when will you update?
i don't have a set schedule! we roll as we go, my dear, and i hope you'll stay for the ride. as i'm typing this on the 16th of march, there's a high chance that chapter 3 will be posted before i leave for BTS' Tokyo concert in April! please refer to this update!
💛 will this fic have a happy ending?
there's a big spoiler already indicated in the genres part hihi
💛 will there be explicit tags/smut
the original draft has it, yes. but who knows, let's see what my brain comes up with in the future!
💛 do you have a beta reader?
no, i don't! i'm pretty sure my readers will find some inconsistencies here and there that i might have missed. please do let me know if anything about my stories bother you. i'm always open to feedback for as long as they're respectful. otherwise, i tend to ignore unwelcome comments.
A FEW MORE LINKS
my works are also posted on AO3, though i have to say, my updates are very slow and incomplete in terms of author's notes. you're always welcome to download my fics from there and read them from your device of choice. i know i do!
that being said, i only have my works posted on tumblr and ao3. if you see any of my works on other platforms, that's not me. please do let me know if you do see them floating around, though?
all posts related to twice fallen has the hashtag #twicefallen so please check here first if your question was already answered. i'm generally a patient person and i will probably answer you anyway, but just in case, the tag exists and it's there!
Hi, I just discovered your fic "Twice Fallen" and it was so devastatingly beautiful that I've been sobbing about it since I started reading chapter 2. They way you portray the need in reader's body while being close to Joshua and the yearning/penance/self-inflicted punishment that Joshua has going on are just *chef's kiss*.
I'm definitely waiting for your fic, it doesn't matter how much time you need, I'll be happily waiting for more 💕
oh no, i hope the tears weren't super sad ones! thank you for being here and reading my work! i always love hearing from and talking to my readers 💛
thank you endlessly for waiting on the next update and for being kind 🥺
HOW DOES THEE CONTINUOUSLY WRITE SUCH FANTASTIC WORKS????
Like Every time I’m reading something new of yours, my heart is getting pulled, my breath is snatched. I am physically unwell.
Also I’m cramping (girlhood kills me) SOOO bad and reading about Joshua (the LOVE of my life) helps so much. Lowkey Imma start digging back into your past works again and find Jeonghan and Wonwoo.
I feel like you would write a REALLY REALLY good x reader fic with Dino. Idk. You give that vibe to me.
But the way you portray the guys is so good 😭😭😭
Much Love!!
Cake Anon 🍰
hi there, dear cake anon 🍰 thank you always for being my hype person! and i'm honored that you'd think of me as someone who can pull off a story based on our beloved Chan 🩷 i have a few stories in the line up and although Chan isn't on there yet, he's definitely something i will consider writing about in the future! fingers crossed i'd be able to write for you guys a long, long time.
I know you're looking for hannie and wonu inspos, but I just love how you write about Shua so far. ❤️ I like the idea of idol Shua who falls for his neighborhood restaurant owner over fresh baked goods, hot food and coffees. They start off as friends, Shua visits the tiny restaurant as it's the only food option late at night. They make him hot wholesome meals. Talk about life, stress and relationships. Ahahahahaha
first of all, my sincere apologies for answering this only now! i like this prompt, dear anonie! my brain is already swimming in ideas as we speak. will turn this into a story sometime soon, i hope you'll stick around 🩷
summary: loving a man the whole world loves is a specific kind of complicated. good thing he's very, very good at reminding you that you're the only one he comes home to.
genre: romance, light angst (idk, i don't think it's angsty but i'll just put it here), fluff, established relationship, smut, canon compliant universe with canonically accurate member dynamics, but the relationship is fictional
additional tags: wonwoo is emotionally intelligent (we love our men like that don't we), insecure reader, post-concert scenarios, members being supportive and chaotic, tender smut, edging (multiple), orgasm denial/delay, praise kink, oral (female), penetrative sex, aftercare, minors dni, there i said it
word count: 10.5k because i love you all
a/n: a bit late, i'm sorry! i was supposed to post this two days ago but then i had this eureka moment about the smut that allowed me to connect it to the emotional theme of the whole story.
also the four times thing at the end? that was wonwoo's idea. i just wrote it down. if you made it all the way to the end of this very long, very self-indulgent oneshot—thank you. genuinely. i hope it felt like being held.
as always this is fiction, a product of too many feelings and too much (wild) imagination. be kind to real people. and if you're new here, hello, this fic is the product of a poll i had a month ago 🩷
sending love to my taglist 🌷 @deathby-lost @chocolate-cake-enthusiast @eskoupe
The thing about loving Jeon Wonwoo was that it was the easiest and the most complicated thing you had ever done, sometimes within the same breath.
It’s easy, because he made it easy. It’s easy because he was steady and quiet and consistent in all the ways that mattered, because his love for you wasn't loud but it was deep. It’s easy because when he looked at you—really looked at you—you never once doubted that you were seen.
But it’s also complicated because of days like today.
The stadium was enormous.
You'd been to concerts before, obviously—you'd been to his concerts before—but there was something completely different about being inside one before it became a concert. The raw, skeletal version of the night ahead. Crew members moved in every direction with the urgency of people who knew exactly what they were doing, cables snaking across the floor, eerily empty seats that fill the venue, lighting rigs being adjusted overhead, the sound system emitting occasional booming test tones that reverberated through you.
You stood a little to the side of the organized chaos, just close enough to the stage to have a clear view, but far enough back to feel like you weren't in anyone's way. You had a laminated ID around your neck—Guest, All Access—and everyone had been perfectly polite but there was still that awareness that prickled at the edges of your consciousness.
It’s a low, quiet hum of not quite belonging.
Everyone here had a job. Everyone here had a purpose, a direction, somewhere to be. You were the only one standing still, watching, waiting.
Wonwoo's girlfriend, you imagined them thinking whenever they glanced your way. You told yourself to stop being ridiculous. You smoothed your hands down the front of your jeans and focused on the stage.
Seventeen were running through their soundcheck with efficiency that came from years of doing this together. Even from here you could see the difference in Wonwoo—the way he held himself on a stage versus how he held himself anywhere else. There was an ease to it, a quiet confidence that settled over him like second skin the moment he stepped under the lights. He wasn't performing yet but even now there was something magnetic about him that you couldn't explain.
Then, like he felt it, he looked up.
He found you immediately without searching and smiled.
It’s not his stage smile; it’s not the practiced, brilliant one that sent stadiums full of people into hysterics. This smile is his other one. It’s the small, private one that lived only at the corners of his mouth, that he gave to very few people and most often to you.
It’s the one that said I know you're there. I'm glad you're there.
You smiled back and he held your gaze for one more second before the music started again.
You watched the rest of the soundcheck from your spot and it was easier after that. You watched him work—watched all of them work, really—and felt that familiar swelling pride that came with loving someone who was genuinely extraordinary at what they did.
Seungkwan hit a note that bounced off every wall in the venue and grinned at his own reflection in the stage monitor. Mingyu tripped over a cable, caught himself with grace, and looked around immediately to see if anyone noticed. Chan had noticed. He was already laughing.
And Wonwoo—Wonwoo stood at his position, ran his lines, hit his marks, and every few minutes without fail, his eyes would find the wings where you stood.
Every single time.
The break came about an hour in. The members scattered: some toward water bottles, some toward staff with questions, some collapsing dramatically onto equipment cases. You were checking your phone, composing a reply to a message when you felt it.
You looked up and Wonwoo was crossing the stage toward the steps, his eyes already on you.
"Hey," he said when he reached you, his hair slightly damp at the temples.
"Hey yourself," you said. "Don't you have a break?"
"This is my break." He said it like it was obvious.
Something warm unfurled in your chest. "Wonwoo, you should be resting—"
"I'm rested." He stepped close enough that he had to look down slightly to hold your gaze. His hand came to find yours. "You okay? You've been standing this whole time. Did anyone get you a chair?"
"I'm fine," you laughed softly. "I don't need a chair."
"I'll have someone get you a chair."
"Wonwoo—"
"A tall one," he decided, "so you can see the stage better."
You looked up at the quiet determination on his face and felt something pull tight and sweet in your chest. "I can see the stage perfectly fine."
"Mm." He studied your face for a moment in that way he had, like he was reading something between the lines of your expression. Whatever he found there made something in his eyes soften further. "You sure you're okay?"
"I'm sure," you said and you mostly meant it. "Go focus."
He didn't move right away. His thumb traced a slow arc across your knuckles. "You have water? Did you eat?"
"Yes and yes. I'm not a plant, I can take care of myself for an hour."
The corner of his mouth twitched. "That’s debatable."
"Jeon Wonwoo—"
He reached up then and the teasing dropped from his expression into something gentler. His fingers found a piece of your hair that had come loose. He tucked it carefully back into place. Then his eyes dropped to your collar where a small part of your jacket had folded awkwardly at the lapel and he straightened it without comment. He just fixed it with gentle and certain fingers.
You stood very still and let him. Your heart did something entirely disproportionate to the simplicity of the gesture.
"There," he murmured more to himself than to you.
You looked up at him. He was already looking at you.
"I have to go back," he said quietly.
"I know."
He didn't go back.
His hand came up to cup the side of your face instead, tilting your chin up slightly, and then he kissed you. He kissed you like he meant it: slow and deep and thorough, his other hand finding your waist to draw you closer. It was the kind of kiss that made you forget for a moment that you were standing in the wings of a massive venue surrounded by crew members.
When he pulled back, he rested his forehead against yours for a moment.
"I'll find you after," he murmured.
"You'll find me after," you confirmed, a little breathless.
He straightened, held your gaze for one more beat, and then turned back toward the stage. You watched him go and it was only when he'd disappeared back into the chaos that you became aware of the crew member approximately three feet to your left who had very professionally found something extremely interesting to look at on their clipboard.
Your face went warm.
The hours between soundcheck and the actual concert had a texture all their own. There was a kind of electric waiting in the backstage corridors, a kind of energy that you could feel like a change in air pressure. The crew moved faster. Voices got sharper. The whole enormous machinery of a concert started pulling itself into final position.
You'd been settled into a better spot—Wonwoo had, true to his word, quietly arranged for someone to bring you a chair near the stage left wing with a clear sightline—and Jeonghan had found you approximately twenty minutes after all this happened and planted himself beside you like he'd been invited.
"He set up a chair for you?" Jeonghan said looking at it, then at you, with an expression of great delight.
"He mentioned it in passing," you said.
"He arranged it. I watched him arrange it." Jeonghan settled in beside you, apparently unconcerned with wherever he was supposed to be. "Did he also check whether you'd eaten and hydrated?"
You said nothing but you smiled.
Jeonghan looked extremely pleased with himself. "Right. I've known that guy for over a decade and I've never once seen him arrange seating for anyone." He paused thoughtfully. "Or check if I'm hydrated."
"You're a grown adult, you can check yourself."
"That's not the point."
Despite yourself, you laughed. This was the thing about Jeonghan. He had a particular gift for making you feel at ease without making a show of it. He just slotted himself into your space and made it warmer.
Chan appeared on your other side twenty minutes later because apparently the pre-show ritual now included adopting you. He was in his stage outfit, already restless with pre-concert energy, bouncing slightly on his heels.
"You nervous?" you asked him.
"I'm never nervous," he said immediately, then, "I'm always nervous. How does Wonwoo look so calm? He always looks so calm. I don't understand it. I've been standing next to him for years and I still don't understand it."
"He's not calm," you said, thinking of the way Wonwoo's jaw had set slightly during the final run-through, the barely perceptible tension in his shoulders that you'd learned to read. "He just keeps it very quiet."
Both Chan and Jeonghan looked at you with varying degrees of fond consideration.
"You really know him," Chan said like this was something he'd just confirmed rather than already known.
It hit you somewhere soft. "I try to," you said.
It was somewhere in that pre-show hour, while the energy backstage continued to build and the venue began to fill with the distant roar of thousands of people finding their seats, that the feeling crept back in.
It’s not loud. It never came loudly. It was more like a slow tide. It’s gradual enough that you didn't notice until you were already ankle-deep in it.
You watched a group of staff move past, talking rapidly in the shorthand of people who'd worked together for years. You watched the way everyone here operated as part of a system, a world that had existed long before you entered it and would continue long after tonight. It’s Wonwoo's world. The one he lived in for years and had shaped him into who he is now.
And then, from further down the corridor, you heard the members getting louder and above the noise you heard a fan chant drifting in from the venue—thousands of voices in perfect unison calling their names—
You thought about the ending ment. You didn't know why your mind went there specifically. You hadn't even heard tonight's yet. But you'd heard enough of them across videos and past concerts to know what they sounded like. Wonwoo’s voice telling a stadium full of people that they were the most important thing.
Carats will always be the number one in my heart forever.
You pressed your lips together and told yourself, firmly, to stop it.
Because you were not foolish enough—or at least you were trying very hard not to be foolish enough—to be genuinely threatened by this. You understood, intellectually, that there was a distinction between what Wonwoo felt for the people who had loved him across his entire career and what he felt for you. You understood that they were different categories, different kinds of love that are not comparable or competing.
You understood this. Rationally.
And yet.
There was something different about being the person who loves him privately, quietly, in a world that couldn't know. It’s something that made the public enormousness of his other life feel, sometimes, like standing outside a lit window in the dark. You could feel the warmth. You just weren't quite inside it.
And sometimes on days like this, surrounded by evidence of how extraordinary he was, how beloved, how necessary to so many people—sometimes a small, treacherous part of you wondered if you were enough. If what you offered in your ordinary, private, unspectacular way, could possibly measure up to all of this.
He chose you, you told yourself with some firmness. He chose you and keeps choosing you.
The rational part of your brain acknowledged this. The irrational part remained unconvinced.
A hand appeared in front of your face holding a bottle of water.
You looked up. Minghao was watching you with an expression that was softer than his usual brand of performative nonchalance. He nodded toward the water and you took it automatically.
"He talks about you constantly," Minghao said without preamble. His voice was quiet under the backstage noise. "I don't mean in a sentimental way—though he does that too but you'll never get him to admit it." He paused. "I mean in the way where you've just become part of how he thinks. It’s like you're a given… a variable he calculates around." He tilted his head. "I don't think he even notices he does it anymore."
You looked at Minghao.
"I'm just saying," Minghao continued in his easy and unbothered voice, "whatever you're thinking right now—" He tapped his temple meaningfully. "—you should probably think about something else instead."
You didn't ask him how he knew. You just breathed in through your nose and nodded and looked back at the stage being set for the night.
"Thank you," you said quietly.
"Obviously." He twisted the cap back on his own water bottle. "Also, he'd be devastated if he knew you were sitting here feeling like that and then I'd have to deal with a devastated Wonwoo so really I'm being entirely self-serving."
You laughed and the tightness in your chest eased a fraction.
Nothing could have fully prepared you for watching Wonwoo from the wings.
You'd seen footage. You'd been in the audience before. But this—standing close enough to feel the bass in your ribs, close enough to see the shift in his expression as the music swelled and the lights blazed—this was really different.
The moment they walked onto that stage, the sound from the crowd hit you like a physical blow, a wave of human love so enormous it almost staggered you. Thousands of people, all of them carrying pieces of these thirteen men's work inside their own lives.
And Wonwoo—
Wonwoo walked out and became something else.
He’s not a different person, of course. It’s still him, still the man who had kissed you in the wings three hours ago and arranged a chair for you. But expanded somehow. It’s like the stage gave him permission to take up more space than he usually allowed himself. His shoulders were back, his movements were certain, his expression carried intensity that made it impossible to look away.
You gripped the edge of the barrier in front of you and watched.
He was extraordinary. You had always known this—but knowing it in the abstract and standing fifteen feet away watching it happen in real time were two entirely different things. The way he moved with the music. The way his voice, when it came, hit something in your chest that had nothing to do with volume and everything to do with resonance and with the frequency of a sound you loved.
The crowd sang every word back at him. Thousands of voices completed his sentences, filled in the spaces he left, loving him in that bright way that a fandom loves its artists.
And there it was again.
You felt it move through you even as you watched—even as your whole chest was full of pride and awe and the aching tenderness of loving someone who was worth loving—the shadow of that earlier feeling returned, slipping in through the cracks. Because Wonwoo was extraordinary. He was magnificent. And he belonged, in some real and significant way, to all of these people who were screaming his name.
What do you offer that this doesn't? the small traitorous voice whispered. What could you possibly be to him that all of this isn't?
You watched him move across the stage, watched him turn toward the wings for just a moment, and even though the lighting was such that he almost certainly couldn't see you clearly—his eyes found you.
He found you like a compass finding north.
He held his gaze for half a second, barely long enough to be visible, and then he was turning back to the crowd with that larger stage smile.
But the half second had been enough.
He finds you first, you told yourself. Even here. Even in all of this. He finds you first.
You breathed in slowly.
He chose you. He keeps choosing you. He crosses stages during breaks to make sure you've eaten. He tucks pieces of your hair back into place. He kisses you like he means it.
He means it.
You exhaled and let yourself enjoy the rest of the concert.
The ending ment came the way they always did—the music fading, the lights softening to something warmer, the members gathering in a loose formation at the center of the stage. The crowd quieted from a roar to a reverent hush that was honestly even louder in its own way.
Wonwoo spoke with the same careful deliberation: his voice low in the mic, words chosen with the gravity of someone who doesn't speak carelessly. He talked about gratitude, about what this meant, about the people in front of him.
Carats will always be number one in my heart. Forever.
You heard it. Felt it land somewhere tender. Watched the crowd respond like a field of flowers turning toward the sun—thousands of people feeling seen and claimed and loved by these words.
You bit the inside of your cheek.
You reasoned with yourself. You knew the difference. You knew what existed between you and Wonwoo in the private quiet of ordinary life and you knew what existed between him and this stadium full of people and they were not the same thing. They were not competing for the same territory.
You knew this.
But it didn't entirely stop the small ache.
But you breathed through it and you watched him and when his eyes found the wings one more time in those final moments, you let yourself be found.
The last note fell and the lights changed and then the concert was over.
The members came offstage in a wave of noise and sweat and adrenaline. Seungkwan was already talking at full volume about something. Chan was still vibrating with energy. Joshua and Mingyu were shoulder-to-shoulder, laughing about something you didn't catch.
And Wonwoo came off the stage and scanned the wings immediately—not the crew, not the staff, not his members. The wings.
He crossed the space between you and the look on his face was just relief. Quiet, private, enormous relief.
"Hey," you managed.
"Hey," he said and then his arms came around you and he was warm and solid and real and he held you like you were something he'd been wanting to get back to all night.
You pressed your face into his shoulder and let him.
The van was loud.
Specifically, the section of the van containing Jeonghan and Chan was loud, which was unfortunately the section directly behind you and Wonwoo.
"I'm just saying," Chan was saying with the energy of someone making a very important point, "that you started it."
"I did not start anything," Jeonghan replied with the serenity of someone who absolutely started it and had no intention of acknowledging this.
"You absolutely—hyung, you told me to—"
"I suggested. Suggesting does not mean ‘starting.’"
"That is not—that's not a real distinction!"
"It's a very real distinction. Would you like me to explain the distinction?"
"I would like you to be normal for five minutes—"
"Chan-ah, that's just not something I can offer you."
You pressed your lips together to contain a smile. Beside you, Wonwoo's head was tipped back against the headrest, his eyes closed, a faint crease between his brows that meant he was somewhere between awake and asleep. He'd changed out of his stage clothes, washed his face, let the production coordinators do their post-show rundown with him but the exhaustion had settled visibly now that the adrenaline had worn off. He looked tired and was now running on the dregs.
The van moved through the city. You were looking at your phone, not really reading anything when you felt it.
His hand finds yours in the dark.
He didn't look at you. His eyes were still closed, his head still resting back. He didn't say anything. He just reached across the space between you and found your hand and held it.
His fingers threaded through yours. His thumb settled against your knuckle. That was all.
You looked at his profile for a long moment—the line of his jaw, the shadows under his eyes, the stillness of him even in sleep's wanderland—and felt something in your chest settle with a completeness that made the earlier doubts seem very far away.
He finds you first, you thought again.
Behind you, the Jeonghan and Chan situation had escalated into what sounded like a disagreement about proper van etiquette that neither of them would be conceding anytime soon.
You squeezed Wonwoo's hand gently. His fingers tightened around yours without him waking. You looked back out the window and let the city lights carry you home.
The hotel bathroom was still humid from Wonwoo's shower. You leaned against the doorframe, watching him towel-dry his hair. His hair stuck up in soft, damp spikes, and without his glasses, there was something even more gentle about the way he looked at his own reflection.
Then he caught your eye in the mirror and gave you that smile—the one that was just for you, small and warm and utterly sexy despite how exhausted he must be.
"Wonwoo-yah," you called softly at the exact same moment.
He turned slightly, towel still in his hands, dark eyes curious.
"Do you love me?"
The question came out smaller than you'd intended.
Wonwoo went completely still. The towel lowered slowly from his hair. "Of course I do," he said and there wasn't even a heartbeat of hesitation in his voice.
But you bit your lip and something uncertain flickered across your face.
That was all it took. Wonwoo crossed the small bathroom in three strides. He stopped right in front of you, close enough that you had to tilt your head back to meet his eyes, close enough that you could smell his shampoo and the faint scent of his skin.
Your hands moved on instinct—reaching up with his glasses that you'd been holding, unfolding the arms with careful fingers. Wonwoo immediately dipped his head lower, bending at the knees just enough to make it easier for you. It was such an automatic thing between you now, this little choreography you'd developed. You slid his glasses gently onto his face, adjusting them at the bridge of his nose, and his eyes came into sharper focus behind the lenses.
"What is this about?" he asked quietly.
Your fingers lingered on the frames for a moment before dropping to your sides. You felt silly now but the words tumbled out anyway. "It's just... your ending ment tonight. You said Carats will always be number one in your heart forever and I know it's ridiculous but I—" You huffed a small, embarrassed laugh. "I got jealous."
Wonwoo's expression transformed. His eyes went impossibly soft and something like wonder and tenderness washed over his features. He looked at you like you'd just said something precious.
"YN," he whispered and his hands came up to cradle your face with a gentleness that made your chest ache. His thumbs brushed along your cheekbones. "You are my heart."
And then he leaned down and kissed you; so soft it was barely there, just a whisper of his lips against yours. When he pulled back, it was only enough to speak.
"They are important to me," he murmured against your mouth and kissed you again. He lingered a little longer this time. His lips were warm and careful. "But you..."
Another kiss, this one to the corner of your mouth.
"You are the person I come home to."
A kiss to your cheek, feather-light.
"The person I want to share everything with."
He pressed his lips to your forehead and you felt him breathe you in.
"When I'm on that stage—" Another gentle kiss to your temple. "—and I say those things—" A kiss to your other temple. "—it's because I'm grateful."
His nose brushed against yours as he tilted his head and he kissed you properly again, slow and sweet. Your hands had found their way to his waist, fingers curling into the soft fabric of his t-shirt.
"But when I come back here," Wonwoo whispered, his breath warm against your lips, "when the lights go down and the crowds go home..."
He kissed you again and this time his hands slid from your face to wrap around you, pulling you closer.
"You are what I think about."
Kiss.
"You are who I miss."
Kiss.
"You are the one I love in a way that's just..." He paused, seeming to search for words, and settled for kissing you again instead—deeper this time. When he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours. "Completely different."
"Wonwoo," you breathed and you didn't even know what else to say.
His hand came up to cradle the back of your head, his fingers threading gently through your hair. "What we have—what you are to me—it's not something I could ever say on stage," he murmured. "It's too big. Too private. Too... mine."
He kissed your closed eyelids, one and then the other.
"They have my gratitude and my dedication," he whispered against your skin. Another soft kiss to your cheek. "But you—"
Wonwoo pulled back just enough to look at you. His eyes searched for yours with such open affection that you almost couldn't breathe.
"You have all of me."
The kiss that followed was different from the others.
It started the same way: slow and tender. But there was something underneath it now, something that had been building all day without either of you naming it. Soundcheck. The dark of the van. The words he'd just pressed into your skin like promises. You have all of me.
You felt it shift.
His hands moved from your face to your waist, pulling you closer than before and the quality of the kiss deepened—still gentle but with a warmth that spread through your whole chest and downward. You made a soft sound against his lips without meaning to and something in him responded to it, his arms tightening, his breathing changing.
He pulled back just enough to look at you.
His eyes behind those glasses were very dark and very warm, and the look in them was so tender.
"Hey," he said quietly.
"Hey," you whispered back.
He reached up and took his glasses off again, setting them on the counter beside him and then he looked at you again, softer without them, the way he always was. His thumb traced your cheek once.
"We don't have to," he murmured. "You know that."
"I know," you said. And then softer: "I want to."
He held your gaze for a moment with that careful, searching quality. He was making sure before he nodded, barely perceptibly, and kissed you again.
He walked you backward out of the bathroom and into the low-lit warmth of the room. His hands were everywhere in the quietest way—at your waist, at your face, at the back of your neck—attentive in the way he was attentive to everything, noticing things, responding to things, adjusting. He was always adjusting, always paying attention.
When you sat on the edge of the bed and looked up at him, something about the moment made your chest feel very full. He was looking at you like he had in the wings after the show—that same quiet relief, that same recognition—and you understood, in a way that bypassed the rational and settled straight into your bones, that this was what he came home to. Not a stage. Not a crowd. This. You.
"What are you thinking?" he asked, sitting beside you, his hand finding yours.
"That I'm sorry for doubting," you said honestly.
He shook his head slowly. "Don't be sorry." His fingers tightened around yours. "I understand it. I know what my life looks like from the outside."
"It's not really about the outside."
"Probably not entirely." He turned toward you, expression open. "It's about whether I'm really here. Whether I actually—" He paused, trying to find the word. "Whether I'm really yours."
The accuracy of it hit you. Your eyes stung slightly and you blinked it away.
"Are you?" you asked, barely audible.
"Yes," he said, without hesitation. "Completely."
He kissed you again and this time it carried the full weight of everything: all the things he'd whispered in the bathroom, all the small gestures of the day, all the ways he reached for you in the dark without looking because he already knew exactly where you were. The kiss was slow and deep and certain and he kissed you like he was trying to leave no room for doubt.
You let it fill all the places the doubt had lived.
His hands were careful with you. Wonwoo had always been this way. Always deliberate, always present, always paying the kind of attention that made you feel like the most significant thing in whatever room you were in.
He laid you back against the pillows and looked at you for a moment before following and the look on his face was so unguarded that you had to reach up and pull him down to you because you couldn't bear the distance.
"I've got you," he murmured against your hair.
"I know," you whispered. "I know. I've got you too."
He pressed his lips to your temple. Your cheek. The corner of your jaw.
"You have all of me," he said again against your skin. "You've had all of me for a long time."
And in the low warm dark of that hotel room, with the city humming somewhere below and the rest of the world at a comfortable distance, you believed him completely.
"You're wearing my shirt," he said, his eyes surveying your body.
"You said you liked it better on me."
"I do." He reached out and touched the hem of it, his fingers brushing your thigh. "I also want to take it off you."
"Then do it."
Wonwoo’s eyes met yours. "Not yet."
What followed was the most deliberate undressing of your life.
Wonwoo didn't rush. He never rushed but this was different—this was him taking his time with intention. He started with the shirt but not by pulling it off. Instead he leaned down and pressed his mouth to the bare skin just above the collar, a slow, warm kiss that made your breath catch. Then another, slightly lower. Then another, and another, each kiss a punctuation mark, each one a word in the language he'd been speaking all night.
I am here. I am yours. I am not going anywhere.
"You're so warm," he murmured against your collarbone. His fingers found the hem of the shirt and pushed it up slightly, exposing a strip of your stomach. He kissed there too and you felt the muscles beneath his lips jump.
"Wonwoo—"
"Shh." His breath was warm against your skin. "Let me."
He pushed the shirt higher and you lifted your arms so he could pull it off entirely. The cool air of the hotel room met your bare skin but before you could react to it, his hand was already there—his palm warm and broad, spreading across your ribs, his thumb tracing the underside of your breast with maddening slowness.
"How long has it been," he said, almost to himself, "since I've taken my time with you?"
You tried to think. The words came out uneven. "We've been—busy—"
"Way too long." He kissed the hollow of your throat. "Too busy. I've been too busy." His mouth moved lower and his hand moved higher and when his thumb finally brushed across your nipple, you made a sound that was half gasp, half his name. "I want to make up for it."
"You don't have to make up for anyth—oh."
The interruption came because his mouth had found the spot just below your ear that he knew about. He smiled against your skin—you felt it—and his hand continued its slow exploration.
"You were saying?" Wonwoo asked with a soft smirk.
Your brain has officially turned into mush. "I forgot."
"Hm." He lifted his head to look at you and his expression was so tender and so focused that it made your chest ache. "I want you to stop thinking. All those thoughts from today—all those doubts. I want them gone." He kissed you, slow and deep. "Can you do that?"
"Yes," you breathed. "Yes.
Wonwoo spent an eternity on you.
There was no other word for it. He mapped your body with his mouth and his hands and his quiet, undivided attention. When he kissed down your stomach, he paused to press his lips to the curve of your hip with reverence. When his fingers hooked into the waistband of your underwear, he looked up at you first—checking, always checking—and only continued when you nodded.
"Tell me if you want me to stop," he said.
"I won't want you to stop."
"Humor me."
"Wonwoo." You reached down and touched his face. "I'll tell you."
He held your gaze for a beat and then he pulled the fabric down and away and then he settled between your thighs like he was coming home.
The first touch of his mouth made your back arch.
Wonwoo was so gentle. So impossibly, devastatingly gentle. His tongue moved against you in slow strokes, learning you all over again even though he already knew your body better than anyone ever had. He was patient but this was patience deployed with intent, with the goal of dragging you toward the edge and then pulling you back, over and over, until you were trembling.
"You taste so good," he murmured against your skin and the vibration of his voice made you gasp. His hands were holding your thighs open, his thumbs tracing circles on the sensitive skin there and when he pressed his tongue flat against you and then drew it up slowly, you reached down and gripped his hair.
He made a sound. Low and pleased. Encouraged.
"Wonwoo—please—"
"Please what baby?" He lifted his head just enough to look at you and the sight of him—his mouth wet, his eyes dark, his hair disheveled from your fingers—made something clench tight in your stomach.
"Please don't stop."
"I wasn't planning to." He pressed a kiss to your inner thigh. "But I want you to wait. Can you wait for me?"
"I've been waiting—"
"I know." Another kiss, higher this time. "Just a little longer. I want to feel you fall apart on my tongue." His mouth returned to you and this time his fingers joined it—one sliding inside you with the same careful slowness he brought to everything, and then two, curling exactly the way you liked. "Like that?"
You couldn't form words. You nodded, frantic, your grip on his hair tightening.
"Good," he breathed. "Good. Let me take care of you."
Wonwoo adjusted when your breathing changed, responded when your hips lifted, learned in real time what made you gasp and what made you moan and what made your thighs tremble around his head. When he added a third finger, his mouth never stopped moving and when your sounds became higher and more breathless, he stayed exactly where he was, pushing you steadily toward the edge.
"Close," you managed. "Wonwoo, I'm—"
He stopped.
His mouth lifted. His fingers stilled. He looked up at you with those dark eyes and the expression on his face was almost apologetic.
"Not yet," he said softly.
"Wonwoo, what the—"
"I know." He pressed a kiss to your hip. "I know, baby. But I want you to come around me. Not yet."
You made a sound that was somewhere between a groan and a laugh. "You're torturing me."
"On the contrary, I'm loving you." He said it so sincerely, with so much quiet conviction, that the protest died in your throat.
He crawled up your body, kissing his way back to your mouth, and when he settled against you, you could feel how hard he was through the fabric of his sweatpants.
"You've been holding back this whole time," you realized.
"Yes."
"Why?"
He looked down at you, his forehead nearly touching yours. "Because I wanted to focus on you. I wanted to show you—" He paused, searching for words. "—that you're worth taking time over. That you're not something I rush through. That you're the one person I want to pay attention to the most."
Your eyes stung. You blinked it away. "I know that. I've always known that."
"I know you do." He kissed the corner of your eye where the dampness had gathered. "But I still wanted to show you."
He didn't move from where he'd settled above you.
His forehead still nearly touched yours, his breath still warm against your lips, and the weight of him pressed you into the bed in a way that felt less like containment and more like being held together.
"How many times?" you whispered.
His eyes searched yours. "How many times what?"
"How many times were you going to stop before you let me finish?"
Something flickered in his expression. It’s not guilt but something closer to recognition. "I hadn't decided."
You groan but also chuckle. "Wonwoo."
"I was reading you." His thumb traced the curve of your jaw. "Watching your breathing. Listening to the sounds you made." A pause. "You were close twice. Did you know that?"
You hadn't. The realization made something flutter low in your stomach. "You can tell?"
"I can tell." He said it simply. "I know your body better than I know my own at this point. I know what your breathing does seconds before you come. I know that little sound you make right before—the one you don't even realize you're making. I know when you're holding back and when you're letting go and when you're somewhere in between." His thumb moved down to your lower lip, tracing it with the same attention. "So yes. I can tell."
You stared up at him.
"Why do you look surprised?" he asked quietly.
"Because I didn't know you paid that much attention."
"YN." He said your name like it was the beginning of a sentence he'd been writing for years. "Paying attention to you is the most natural thing I do."
He kissed you then—slow and thorough. When he pulled back, there was something new in his expression. Something resolved.
"Three times," he said.
"What?"
"You asked how many times I was going to stop. I've decided." He shifted his weight, settling more deliberately between your thighs. "Three times. I stopped you twice already. One more."
Your breath caught. "Wonwoo—"
"Unless you want me to stop entirely." His voice was very gentle. "If this is too much—if you need to come now—tell me. I'll take care of you. I meant what I said earlier. I want to show you that you're worth taking time over but I don't want to push you past what feels good." He held your gaze. "Is this still good?"
Your throat was tight. "Yes."
"Are you sure, baby?"
"I'm sure." You reached up and touched his face. "I trust you."
Right then and there, Wonwoo’s expression shifted. It softened and sharpened at once and he turned his head just enough to press a kiss to your palm.
"Okay," he murmured against your skin. "Then let me show you just how much I love you."
Wonwoo didn't go back down immediately.
Instead he shifted to lie beside you, pulling you onto your side to face him and the change in position made everything feel more intimate somehow. Face to face. Eye to eye. Nothing between you but the few inches of hotel sheets and the weight of what he was about to do.
"I want to watch you this time," he said and his hand slid down your stomach with deliberate slowness. "I want to see your face when you get close. I want to see you try to hold back for me."
You shivered. "You're going to make me hold back?"
"I'm going to ask you to try." His fingers found the crease of your thigh and traced along it, maddeningly light. "And if you can't—if it's too much—then you don't. That's the rule. You try, but you don't suffer. Okay?"
"Okay."
"That’s my girl." He kissed your forehead and then his hand moved where you needed it. "Now tell me what you feel."
His fingers parted you with the same care he'd used for everything else tonight. Slow. Intentional. Learning you all over again even though he already had the map memorized. You were still sensitive from earlier but he touched you like that sensitivity was something to be honored rather than avoided.
"You're so warm," he murmured. "So soft here. I forget sometimes exactly how you feel. And then I touch you again and it all comes back." His middle finger circled where you were most sensitive, not quite touching, just skating around the edge of where you wanted him. "Tell me."
"You're teasing me."
"I'm asking you a question." That small, private smile again. "Tell me what you feel."
"Frustrated."
Wonwoo laughed, low and warm, and the sound of it vibrated through you. "Besides that."
"Wanted." The word came out before you could stop it. "You make me feel wanted."
"Hm." He pressed a kiss to the corner of your mouth. "That's the point." His finger finally, finally touched you where you needed it—a single stroke, feather-light, that made your hips jerk. "Because I do want you. Every part of you. Every sound you make. Every way you respond to me." Another stroke, slightly firmer. "I wanted you through the entire concert tonight. Did you know that? I was up there doing my job and half my brain was down in the wings with you, wondering if you were watching, wondering if you were comfortable."
His finger circled again and this time he let it dip lower, let it gather the evidence of your arousal before sliding back up. "I could tell from the stage. Even with the lights in my eyes, I could see you standing there and I knew something was bothering you."
"How—"
"Because I know you." He said it simply. "The same way I know that sound you're about to make."
His finger pressed down more firmly and you made exactly the sound he'd predicted—a small, surprised gasp that turned into something needier.
"There it is," he breathed. "That one. I love that one."
He worked you slowly but this time it was different. This time you were facing him and he was watching your face with an intensity that made you feel completely seen. Every flutter of your eyelids. Every catch of your breath. Every time your lips parted and your hips shifted and your hands gripped the sheets or his arm or whatever solid thing they could find.
"You're getting close," he said after a while. It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"Already?" He sounded almost impressed. "I've barely touched you."
"You've been touching me for—" Your voice broke as his rhythm changed slightly. "—for a while."
"Not long enough." But he didn't slow down. His fingers continued their deliberate work, sliding through your wetness, circling and pressing and retreating in a rhythm that was starting to make your thoughts blur. "Can you hold it? Just a little longer? I want—" He paused and something shifted in his expression. "I want to see if I can take you all the way there and back again. Will you let me?"
You were trembling. The pleasure was building in that familiar way—the tightening, the heat, the sensation of your body preparing toward release. You could feel it approaching and you could feel your muscles starting to tense in preparation.
"I'll try," you managed.
"That's all I ask." He kissed your forehead. "Tell me when you're close. Tell me before—"
"Now," you gasped. "Wonwoo, now, I'm right—"
He stopped.
His hand stilled completely, fingers resting motionless against you, and the loss of sensation was so abrupt that you made a sound somewhere between a groan and a sob. Your hips bucked against his hand, seeking friction, and he let you—let you press against his fingers without moving them, let you chase the edge that had been right there a moment ago and was now retreating.
"Shh," he murmured and his free hand came up to cup your face. "Breathe. I've got you. Just breathe."
You were breathing—or trying to. Your chest was heaving and your skin felt too tight and the space between your legs was throbbing with a need that had been denied three times now. Three times he'd taken you to the very edge. Three times he'd pulled you back.
"That was three," you said, your voice rough.
"I know." He pressed a kiss to your temple. "You did so well. You did so beautifully for me."
"Why do you sound like it's over?"
"Because this part is." His hand finally moved again to cup you gently, holding you in his palm like you were something precious. "The edging part. I told you. Three times."
"And now?"
Wonwoo shifted, rolling onto his back and pulling you with him in one smooth motion. Suddenly you were on top of him, your thighs caging his hips, your hands braced on his chest, looking down at his face. He gazed up at you with an expression of such open tenderness.
"Now," he said, "you're going to come. And I'm going to feel every second of it."
His hands settled on your hips.
"Ride me, baby," he said quietly. "Take what you need. I want to feel you fall apart."
You positioned yourself above him with trembling thighs.
Wonwoo was already hard—had been hard for what felt like hours. You reached down and guided him to your entrance and the first brush of him against your over-sensitized flesh made you both inhale sharply.
"Slowly, babe," he said but it came out strained. "Take it slowly. You've been close so many times. I don't want it to be over before you're ready."
"I've been ready for an hour." But you followed his instruction anyway, sinking down onto him by inches, feeling every ridge and vein and breath of him filling you. Your body welcomed him, opened for him, and by the time he was fully seated, you were both trembling.
"God," he breathed. His eyes went very dark. "You feel—I can feel how close you are. You're already—"
"I know." You didn't move yet, just stayed there, feeling the fullness of him inside you. "You did that."
"I did." His hands tightened on your hips. "I wanted to. I wanted you desperate for it. I wanted you so close that the first time I let you have me, you'd—" He broke off, his jaw tightening. "Move. Please, baby. I can't—I need you to move."
You did.
The first roll of your hips made you both groan. You were so sensitive—three denied orgasms had left you on a hair trigger and every movement sent sparks cascading down your spine. You set a rhythm that was slow but deep, grinding down onto him in a way that made the base of him press against where you needed it most.
"That's it," Wonwoo managed. His head fell back, his throat exposed, and you watched the muscles in his neck work as he swallowed. "Just like that. Take what you need. I'm—I'm not going to last long."
"Good." You leaned forward, bracing your hands on his chest, changing the angle. "I don't want you to last long. I want you to let go."
"I've been letting go." His voice was rough and fraying at the edges. "I've been letting go all night. You have no idea—" He broke off as you rolled your hips again. "—no idea how hard it's been to hold back with you. To stop when all I wanted was to keep going. To watch you get close and not let myself follow."
"Then don't hold back now." You picked up the pace slightly and his hands flew to your hips just to hold on. "I want to hear you. I want to feel you. I want you to come with me."
"Sweetheart—"
"I'm close." You were. The pleasure was building again, that familiar tightening, and this time no one was going to stop it. "Wonwoo, I'm—"
"Look at me." His voice was suddenly urgent. "Look at me. I want to see your face when it happens."
You opened your eyes—you hadn't realized you'd closed them—and met his gaze.
What you saw there undid you.
Wonwoo was looking at you like you were the only thing in the universe. His eyes were dark and wet and so full of love that it felt like its own kind of touch. His mouth was slightly open, his breathing ragged, his hands gripping your hips with a desperation he'd been holding back all night. He was completely unguarded. Completely present.
Completely yours.
"Come for me," he breathed. "I've got you, YN. Let go."
The permission hit you like a wave.
The pleasure crested and broke. It rushed through you in a flood of sensation that made your back arch and your rhythm stutter and his name tear from your throat. You felt yourself clench around him, felt the way your body gripped him and released in waves and through it all his eyes never left your face.
He watched you come apart like it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
"God," he groaned and then his own control shattered. His hips bucked up into you, once, twice, and then he was coming too—a broken sound, your name tangled up in his breathing, his fingers gripping your hips hard enough to leave marks. You felt him pulse inside you, felt the warmth of his release, and the sensation triggered another aftershock that made you clench around him again.
For a long moment, neither of you moved.
You stayed there on top of him, both of you trembling. His hands were still on your hips. Your hands were still on his chest. His breathing was harsh and uneven and yours wasn't much better.
Then he laughed.
It was a small sound, breathless and disbelieving, and he let his head fall back against the pillow with a soft thump.
"Three times," he said. "I edged you three times and you still—" He shook his head slightly. "You're incredible. You know that?"
"You're the one who held back through all of that." You were still catching your breath. "I just lay there."
"You didn't just lie there." He reached up and touched your face, his thumb tracing your cheekbone with that same care. "You trusted me. You let me take you to the edge three times and pull you back and you didn't fight it and you didn't get frustrated and you let me show you what I wanted to show you." His eyes were very soft. "Do you understand what that means to me? That you trust me like that?"
"Of course I trust you."
"I know." He pulled you down against his chest and you went willingly. You settle against him with your head in the hollow of his shoulder. "I know you do. But it still—" He paused. "It still hits me sometimes that you let me love you like this."
You tilted your head to look up at him. "Like what?"
"Completely." He said it simply. "Without holding back. Without making me feel like I'm too much or not enough or any of the things I worry about being." His hand traced slow circles on your back. "You just let me love you and you love me back the same way."
"That's because you're easy to love."
"I'm not." He pressed a kiss to your hair. "I know I'm not. I'm quiet and I'm in my head too much and I have a job that takes me away for months at a time and makes you stand in the wings feeling like you don't belong. I know all of that. And you love me anyway."
"Wonwoo—"
"Let me finish." His arm tightened around you. "I edged you three times tonight because I wanted to show you something. I wanted to show you that I pay attention. That I know your body. That I know exactly how much you can take and exactly when to stop and exactly what you need to get there." He paused. "I wanted to show you that you're the person I want to spend time with. The person I want to focus on." Another pause, longer this time. "Did it work?"
You lifted your head to look at him. "Did what work?"
"Did I convince you? That you're the most important person to me? That the ending ment are just words on a stage and this—" He touched your face again. "—you, here, in my arms—is the one thing that actually matters to me?"
Your eyes stung. You didn't try to blink it away this time. "Yeah," you whispered. "You convinced me."
"Good." He kissed your forehead, soft and lingering. "Because I meant every word. I have never loved anyone the way I love you. I didn't know I could love someone the way I love you. You're it for me." He held your gaze. "You're it."
You kissed him then because you didn't have words, because sometimes the only adequate response to being loved like that was to love back in the same language. He kissed you back with the same tenderness, the same certainty.
When you pulled apart, both of you were smiling.
"We should probably clean up," you whisper against his lips.
"Probably."
Neither of you moved.
"In a minute," he amended.
"In a minute," you agreed.
The aftercare was slow like everything else tonight. Wonwoo insisted on taking care of you—a warm washcloth, a fresh t-shirt from his bag, a glass of water that he watched you drink before he let himself do anything else.
"You're fussing," you said as he adjusted the blanket around your shoulders.
"I'm taking care of you."
"Same thing, really."
"It's not the same thing." He climbed into bed beside you and immediately reached for you, pulling you against his chest with the ease of long practice. "Fussing implies it's unnecessary. This is very necessary."
"For who?"
"For me." He said it without embarrassment. "It's necessary for me. I need to take care of you. It's how I—" He paused a beat. "It's how I settle after a day like today and after being on stage and giving everything to everyone else. I need to come back here and take care of you. It reminds me who I actually am."
You were quiet for a moment. Then: "Who are you actually?"
He considered the question. "Yours," he said finally. "Before anything else. Before the stage and the music and the fans. I'm yours." He pressed a kiss to your hair. "That's who I actually am."
You closed your eyes and let that settle into you—the words, the meaning, the weight of his arm around your shoulders and the steady beat of his heart beneath your ear.
Later when the city outside had gone quiet and the only sound was the soft hum of the hotel heating system, you spoke one last time.
"Wonwoo?"
"Mm?"
"The three times thing."
"What about it?"
"Next time, can we try four?"
His hand stilled on your back. Then he laughed—a real laugh, surprised and delighted, the sound of it filling the quiet room. "You want me to edge you four times?"
"I'm just asking."
"You're just asking." He shifted to look at you and even in the dark, you could see that small, private smile. "What happened to 'you're torturing me'?"
"That was before I knew what the payoff felt like."
He kissed you, still smiling. "Four times, huh?" he murmured against your lips. "I'll see what I can do."
"Okay."
"Still jealous?" he asked after a long comfortable quiet and you could hear the smile in his voice.
You laughed, muffled against his chest. "Shut up."
His arm tightened around you, delighted to have made you laugh. "Still mine?"
You tilted your head to look up at him. He was looking down at you, his hair thoroughly disheveled, his eyes warm and dark and certain.
"Still yours," you said.
"Just making sure." He kissed your forehead. "Because that was—" He paused, searching for a word. "—the best I've ever had."
"Wonwoo."
"I'm serious."
"You say that every time."
He shifted to look at you and there was something very earnest in his expression. "I do but I mean it every time. It keeps getting better because you keep being you." He tucked a piece of hair behind your ear. "I love you. You know that, right?"
You pressed closer to him. "I love you too."
"Wonwoo," you said softly, reaching out to touch his wrist as he adjusted his glasses and opened to their bookmarked page. "You don't have to read tonight. You must be exhausted—you need to rest."
He looked down at you and that gentle smile played at his lips—the one that made the corners of his eyes crinkle softly behind his frames. "I'm fine," he said, his voice that low, soothing rumble. "I want to."
"But—"
"YN." He shifted, moving the pillows so he could lean back comfortably against the headboard, and then he opened his arm in invitation. "Come here."
You went without further protest, curling into his side. Your head found its home on his chest, right over his heart where you could hear the steady, reassuring thump of it. Wonwoo's arm came around your shoulders, holding you close, his hand settling warm and secure on your upper arm. With his other hand, he held the book at an angle where he could read comfortably.
"Ready?" he murmured and you felt the word rumble through his chest.
"Mmhm," you hummed, already relaxing into him.
Wonwoo started to read, his voice quiet and measured. There was something hypnotic about his reading voice—the deep timber, the way he knew exactly when to pause, how he gave different characters subtle variations in tone without it ever feeling performative.
You listened, your fingers absently tracing patterns on his stomach through his t-shirt. When the protagonist's twist revealed itself, you gasped softly.
"No way," you breathed.
You felt more than heard Wonwoo's quiet chuckle. His arm tightened around your shoulders and he pressed a lingering kiss to the top of your head before continuing.
Three pages later, there was a moment of unexpected humor—the protagonist's internal monologue taking a self-deprecating turn that was both relatable and perfectly timed. You laughed a soft, delighted sound before tilting your head to look up at Wonwoo's face.
He was already looking down at you, his reading paused, and the expression on his face was so unbearably tender it made your heart flutter. The corner of his mouth quirked up in that small, private smile and he leaned down to kiss your forehead, his lips lingering there for a long moment.
"Keep reading," you whispered, settling back against his chest.
"So bossy," he murmured but there was so much affection in it. His fingers traced absent patterns on your arm as he found his place again and continued.
The story unfolded in Wonwoo's steady voice. You made small sounds of acknowledgement when something particularly poignant happened and each time, you felt him respond—sometimes his hand would squeeze your arm gently, sometimes he'd adjust his hold to tuck you closer, sometimes he'd pause long enough to press another soft kiss to your hair. It was like a conversation communicated in touches, in the language you'd privately developed that didn't need words.
He continued reading but you were fighting a losing battle with consciousness now. The exhaustion of everything was pulling you under in long, gentle waves. Your hand had stilled on his stomach, your breathing deepening and slowing.
Wonwoo noticed. He'd been reading for another few minutes when he felt your weight change. He paused mid-sentence, tilting his head to look down at you.
Your face was peaceful, your lips slightly parted, your lashes dark crescents against your cheeks. One hand was still resting on his stomach, the other curled up near your face. You looked so young this way and he held the sight of you for a long moment.
Carefully, moving with painstaking slowness, he marked the page and set the book on the nightstand. Then he reached up and removed his glasses. He folded them beside the book.
He shifted slowly, sliding down until he was lying flat, adjusting everything with the patience of someone who would rather contort himself into an awkward position for an hour than disturb you. You made a small sound in your sleep and burrowed closer, your nose pressing into the hollow of his throat and his heart did something quiet and enormous at the same time.
He tucked the blanket around your shoulders before spreading his hand warm and wide on your back.
"You fell asleep on me again," he whispered into the darkness. "I don't mind. I never mind."
His thumb moved in slow circles.
"I meant everything," he murmured. "Everything from tonight. In the bathroom and after. All of it." He pressed his lips to your forehead, soft and lingering. "You are the person I think about when I'm up there. You are who I'm coming home to. You are—" He exhaled slowly. "You are the part of my life that's entirely mine. That no stage can have."
You shifted in your sleep, your hand sliding to rest over his heart. He caught it gently and threaded his fingers through yours.
"I'm going to marry you someday," he breathed into the quiet. "When the time is right. I'm going to make it so you never have a single doubt again."
He brought your joined hands to his lips and kissed your knuckles, one by one.
Wonwoo watched you sleep for a long while after that—the way the city light from the curtains touched your face, the slow rise and fall of your breathing, the furrow between your brows that appeared even in sleep like you were concentrating on your dreams.
He memorized it.
"Sweet dreams, my love," he murmured finally before pressing one last kiss to your hair.
He let his eyes close, his hand still moving in those slow gentle arcs on your back, matching your breathing, following you down into quiet.
The last thing Wonwoo was aware of was your heartbeat against his chest—steady and sure. And the weight of you in his arms is the best weight he'd ever known.
hi my loves! just dropping by to say a quick hello 🩷 i am currently traveling around japan again and one of my agendas here is to find joshua’s realbarrier displays, particularly the promo where you buy the original moisturizing cream + mask set and you get 4 photocards.
happy to report that i got them! i was so giddy the first time i saw the display and bought the set right away! i happened to see him again in another store but i didn’t buy anything anymore ksksks i just took photos so please enjoy 🦌
i miss you all! i’ll be back with stories sooner than you think 💭
p.s. the moisturizing cream is so legit; my skin was already suffering from all the traveling i’ve been doing this month but realbarrier helped heal it overnight!!
i'm happy to share that two days ago, i was officially cleared by my doctor. i'm still on some medications and taking things one step at a time, but i'm doing well—genuinely, quietly, peacefully well. healing isn't always loud and mine has been slow and full of small mercies and i am just grateful for everything.
i'm easing back in gently, which means i can only really hold one muse in my heart right now; and if you know me even a little, you already know who. i'm sorry in advance: it is, and perhaps always will be, a joshua world, and we are all just living in it 🩷
but here's the thing: i want to write something you want to read.
so i'm leaving the choice in your hands. vote below for the prompt you'd like me to write because there will be one winner—though the others may find their way here someday too (no promises, but never say never, the chances may be low but never zero). and if there's a story on the list that's keeping you up at night, drop it in my inbox or the replies. i will genuinely consider it 🫧
🩷
joshua; christmas, fake dating (kind of) + a second chance, cold car rides
wonwoo; post-concert comfort, gentle love, promises, wc less than 10k
joshua; mornings, hell of a lot of banter when they're both horny, emotional
joshua; childhood friend turned lover turned ex, love never rly left, depression
Voting ended onMay 11
the winning prompt + chapter 3 of twice fallen will be posted sometime in june or july. good things take time and i don't want to rush either of them!
thank you for waiting. thank you for staying. thank you for being the kind of readers who make coming back feel like coming home. i love you all so much and i cannot wait to write for you again.
hey everyone 🩷 i am currently traveling in thailand and while the heat is draining the life out of me, accessing tumblr here is weird ksksks sometimes it’s blocked, other times it isn’t.
just popping in real quick to say that there’s only 2 more days before this silly little poll closes! ✨
the tentative results of my recent pick-a-prompt poll is making me giggle (and honestly a bit surprised) y’all could’ve just told me you were foaming at the mouth for a wonwoo fic all this time
i'm happy to share that two days ago, i was officially cleared by my doctor. i'm still on some medications and taking things one step at a time, but i'm doing well—genuinely, quietly, peacefully well. healing isn't always loud and mine has been slow and full of small mercies and i am just grateful for everything.
i'm easing back in gently, which means i can only really hold one muse in my heart right now; and if you know me even a little, you already know who. i'm sorry in advance: it is, and perhaps always will be, a joshua world, and we are all just living in it 🩷
but here's the thing: i want to write something you want to read.
so i'm leaving the choice in your hands. vote below for the prompt you'd like me to write because there will be one winner—though the others may find their way here someday too (no promises, but never say never, the chances may be low but never zero). and if there's a story on the list that's keeping you up at night, drop it in my inbox or the replies. i will genuinely consider it 🫧
🩷
joshua; christmas, fake dating (kind of) + a second chance, cold car rides
wonwoo; post-concert comfort, gentle love, promises, wc less than 10k
joshua; mornings, hell of a lot of banter when they're both horny, emotional
joshua; childhood friend turned lover turned ex, love never rly left, depression
Voting ended onMay 11
the winning prompt + chapter 3 of twice fallen will be posted sometime in june or july. good things take time and i don't want to rush either of them!
thank you for waiting. thank you for staying. thank you for being the kind of readers who make coming back feel like coming home. i love you all so much and i cannot wait to write for you again.
summary: it's a bad night for rain and joshua has neither a proper jacket nor the sense to text you first. you've already put the kettle on.
genre: fluff, established relationship, domestic fluff, slice of life
additional tags: bickering, just two idiots in love, slow burn energy but they're already together 🙄, there's no angst and therefore, no explicit warnings. all that's in here is warmth, coziness, and love in small gestures.
word count: 7.2k
a/n: brought to you by that one joshua video where he got so soaked under the rain during an encore concert and his makeup was apparently waterproof 🧎🏻♀️i wrote this on the plane so there might/will be mistakes, but at least my seat mate didn't think i was weird. maybe.
i'll see you all again in june, my loves 💕 i will check in now and then for asks and messages, please don't hesitate to yap! for those who sent asks i haven't answered yet, i will get to them soon. i promise i'm not ignoring you 🌸
The rain had started sometime around four. By six it had made up its mind about it.
It came down in the particular determined way of autumn rain: relentless and the kind that didn't announce itself so much on weather apps or with thunder but it simply arrived and stayed. The more it poured, the more it soaked through things quietly. The streets reflected rain water because of the many neon lights of stores and buildings. Umbrellas turned inside out on corners. People walked with their chins down and their shoulders up, moving fast, pretending that if they moved fast enough they wouldn’t get soaked.
You'd been watching it from the window of the restaurant for the better part of an hour.
The last table had cleared out just after five-thirty, earlier than usual, driven home by the weather. You'd let your last server go at quarter to six because there was no point keeping her in on a night like this and you finished closing up alone. The chairs were up on the tables. The floor was mopped. The till was counted and the lights in the dining room were off except for the warm one above the counter where you'd been doing paperwork and audits while you waited.
This was the routine: Joshua finished work, walked over, and you walked home together. It was not a long walk. In good weather it was pleasant; ten minutes through the residential side streets, past the little park with the playground. You'd been doing it for three years now, which meant you'd walked it in every kind of weather and had opinions about which season did it best.
Tonight the weather had disrupted that routine because Joshua was supposed to finish at five-thirty.
At six-fifteen you got a message.
joshua 🤍: running a bit late sweetheart, leaving now
joshua 🤍: don't go anywhere please i'll come to you
joshua 🤍: is the restaurant locked up
you: I haven't locked the front yet. Are you okay? It's really coming down out there.
A pause. Three dots appearing and disappearing.
joshua 🤍: i'm fine! almost there
You looked at the window. The rain had not calmed down.
You put the kettle on.
You heard the door before you saw him. The little bell above the restaurant entrance gave a sound that cut through the quiet of the empty restaurant and you looked up from your paperwork at the counter and there he was.
He was—you stood up immediately.
Joshua was soaked through.
He wasn’t caught-in-the-rain damp. Definitely not slightly-wet-jacket damp. Through. His hair was flattened against his head, darker than its usual color with the weight of the water in it. His jacket wasn’t a proper rain jacket, it never is a proper rain jacket, this was a recurring issue you’ve had with him. Joshua was scanning the room with that slightly dazed look of someone who had just come in from something and hadn't quite made the transition yet and when his eyes found you across the room his expression shifted to that of relief, warmth, and something that moved through his face like a quiet exhale.
You were already moving toward him.
He started to say something—your name maybe, or hi, I'm okay, sorry—but you didn't let him.
"Come here," you said. "Come here, right now, Joshua."
Up close it was worse. His hair was dripping at the ends. There was a raindrop tracking down the line of his jaw. His eyelashes were wet. You could see, even in the low light of the entrance, that his lips had gone a shade too pale.
"How long were you walking?" you demanded.
"It wasn't—"
"How long."
He did a small, slightly guilty calculation behind his eyes. "Maybe twenty minutes."
"Joshua."
"I couldn't get a cab. Everything was full and the taxi app was—" He made a gesture with his hand that indicated something had gone wrong with technology and he had decided to solve the problem with his body, which was, you were coming to understand, a recurring approach as well. "I figured it was just a short walk."
"It's a twenty minute walk."
"In good weather it's ten."
"It's not good weather."
"You’re right about that."
"You should have called me."
"What were you going to do?"
"I would have figured something out."
"Sweetheart, you were closing up. And our car is in the shop."
"I was done closing up. This place has been closed since six." You took his arm. "Come and sit down. I'll get you tea."
You brought him to the stool at the far end of the counter. It's the one closest to the radiator that ran along the back wall, chunky and reliable, the kind that actually generated heat. You'd been grateful for it all evening while you did the close. You were more grateful now.
You took his jacket without asking. It was heavy with water and you brought it to the hook inside the kitchen door where the staff coats usually hung and you pressed your fingers to the inner lining and even that was damp.
When you came back he was sitting with his hands wrapped around the mug you'd left for him on the counter. It was tea you'd made when you put the kettle on before he arrived because you knew him and he was looking through the front window at the rain with an expression that had some peace in it now. The look of a person who has been out in something and is no longer out in it.
You came around the counter and stood across from him. You looked at him.
His cheeks had gone slightly pink from the cold-to-warm transition, the way they did, and his hair was still damp and beginning to dry in directions it didn't usually go and he looked, honestly, a little like something that had been left out by accident.
"You look so pretty," he said.
You crossed your arms and ignored what he just said because you’re supposed to be mad. "Are you actually okay?"
"I'm warm now." He lifted the mug slightly. "This was exactly right. How did you know I'd want tea?"
"Because you always want tea when you're cold." You watched him. "You're shivering."
"Barely."
"Your shoulders are doing the thing."
He looked at his shoulders as if checking for the thing. "I'm fine, love."
"You're not not fine. But you're also not completely fine."
He smiled at that—his crooked one, the one that meant you'd said something he found quietly funny. "That's a precise diagnosis."
"I’ve been dating you for the past three years." You reached for your bag on the hook behind the counter, the one you'd had there all evening alongside the restaurant copy of the keys, and began to rummage inside it. "I have hand warmers in here somewhere. I always carry them in autumn so before you say anything—"
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You were going to say it was excessive."
"I was going to say it was thoughtful. I’ve been dating you for the past three years, too. In love with you for much longer than that, really."
You paused in your rummaging to look at him briefly. He raised his mug.
"I love you," he declared with a sly smile.
You huffed, muttered, “you’re so annoying” to the air, and went back to rummaging inside your bag.
You found one. A single-use hand warmer, the kind you snap and shake, still in its foil sleeve. You'd had it at the bottom of the bag since you'd bought a small packet of them at the start of October and distributed them throughout your different bags and jacket pockets the way some people layered a home with candles or safety pins: quietly, preparedly, just in case.
You cracked it between your hands, shook it, felt the gentle chemistry of it beginning to work.
"Give me your hands," you said.
Joshua set the mug down and held them out across the counter.
You looked at them and your breath caught slightly.
His hands—the knuckles, the backs of them, the edges where the wind and the cold had really gotten in—were red. It’s not the healthy pink of someone who'd been in the warm for a while. It’s the kind of red that comes from sustained cold. His fingertips especially, the color deepening there and when you turned his hands over his palms were cold enough that you felt it through your own.
"Oh," you said. The word came out small.
"It's fine—"
Your eyes came up to him and he stopped because of what was in them—something immediate and wordless, the expression of someone who hadn't been expecting to feel as much as they suddenly felt.
"They're so cold," you said.
"I really am okay," he said gently, trying to reassure you.
You pressed your lips together and looked back down at his hands. You placed the warming pack against his palms first, folding his fingers around it, and then closed both of your hands around the outside, sandwiching the warmth in, your hands over his, squeezing slowly.
Joshua watched you do this.
"You should have texted me," you said to his hands because you were looking at them. Your tone of voice had changed a bit: careful and a little tight. It’s the voice you use when you are being practical instead of saying what you mean. "I know the taxi app wasn't working but you could have texted me and I would have come to the door with an umbrella. You could have waited under the awning wherever you were and there's the big one out front—you could have stood there and I would have come to you—"
"I didn't want you standing in the rain on my account."
"I wouldn't have been standing in the rain, I would have been under the awning which is why most buildings have awnings, Joshua—"
"You'd been on your feet all day."
You looked up at him. He was looking at you steadily, his hands still between yours, the hand warmer doing its slow work.
"That's very sweet," you said after a moment, "and also infuriating."
"I know." He didn't sound particularly sorry. "It could be both things."
You exhaled through your nose and looked back down. Then you started rubbing your thumbs slowly over the backs of his hands, over the red knuckles, working warmth in. He stayed very still and let you.
"You don't have a proper rain jacket," you said.
"I have a jacket."
"A jacket is not a rain jacket. A rain jacket repels water. Your jacket absorbed water like it was gladly enthusiastic about it."
The corner of his mouth turned up. "I'll note that for next time."
"Joshua." You said his name with a kind of exasperated tenderness that didn't quite manage to be the scolding you'd intended. "The weather’s getting cold now. You can't just walk over here in the rain with no hood and a jacket that's basically more decorative than—"
"It's a nice jacket."
"It's a nice jacket, yes, and now it's soaking wet on a hook in my kitchen and you're sitting here with red hands because you walked twenty minutes in the rain—" You stopped and steadied yourself. "I'm not—I know you're fine. I know it's just a bit of cold and rain. I just—"
You didn't finish the sentence. Joshua waited.
"I just saw your hands," you said at last.
Joshua looked at you for a long moment. At the bent angle of your head, the careful movement of your thumbs across his knuckles, the slight tension in your expression that you hadn't entirely been able to put down since he walked through the door.
His chest did something. Something warm and unasked for and it’s taking up exactly as much space as it needed.
You cared. That was the thing. You just genuinely, quietly cared about what happened to his hands. You'd had a hand warmer in your bag since October. You'd put the kettle on before he arrived because you knew he'd want tea. You'd looked at his hands and made a small sound and not been able to hide what it meant to you.
He thought of a word he'd been circling for a while without landing on it.
Lucky. He thought: I am so lucky.
"Does that feel better?" you asked, still looking at his hands.
He turned one of them over, gently, beneath yours. His fingers curled up and held yours loosely. You stilled.
"Much better," he said.
You looked up. He was looking at you with that expression: the one you'd called the thing, in the entrance, the soft and present and completely undisguised one that he wore when he wasn't trying to be anything but exactly what he was.
"You're doing the thing," you said.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're looking at me."
"You’re the love of my life. I'm allowed to look at you, aren’t I?"
"Not like that when I'm trying to be annoyed at you."
"Are you still annoyed at me?"
A pause. You looked at your joined hands.
"A little," you said.
He brought your hand up and pressed his lips to your knuckles. Just because. You closed your eyes for exactly one second.
"That's not fair," you said.
"I'm warming up," he said innocently. "You said I was cold."
"I said your hands were cold, not—" You made a small, helpless sound and shook your head and the residual annoyance finished dissolving. He could see it go. "You're impossible."
"But I’m warm now."
You looked at him.
"Getting there," you whispered and squeezed his hands. "You’re getting there."
You made Joshua stay until he'd had a second cup.
You'd moved around from behind the counter while he wasn't paying attention, pulled down the stool beside him and settled onto it, close to the radiator, close to him. You told yourself it was so you could keep an eye on whether he was still shivering. He let you tell yourself that.
You'd also given him your scarf.
It had happened somewhat naturally. You'd reach behind you for your jacket off the hook, the motion pulling the scarf loose and you'd looked at it and looked at him and simply handed it over. It was a soft scarf, cream-colored, slightly oversized in the way you liked your scarves. He'd wrapped it once around without comment and you'd looked at it, adjusted it slightly, and then looked away.
He was wearing your scarf and drinking his second tea and the rain was still doing its thing against the front window and you were beside him with your own drink and the kind of quiet that settled when the urgency of something had passed and what was left was just warmth. The restaurant felt different like this: chairs up, lights low, just the two of you at the counter with the radiator ticking beside you. Smaller. More like a room than a business.
Joshua looked at you.
Your elbow was on the counter. You were watching the rain with the same expression you'd probably had all evening: attentive, relaxed, comfortable. A strand of hair had come down against your cheek and you hadn't pushed it back, either hadn't noticed or didn't mind. He tucked it behind your ear and you look at him with a smile, a quiet thank you.
A quiet I love you.
You've had hand warmers in your bag in October. You'd put the kettle on before he arrived. You'd taken one look at his hands and your face had done something unguarded and worried and entirely real, in your own restaurant, at the end of a full day on your feet, while he dripped water onto your clean floor.
He turned back to the window.
Outside, the rain went on, relentless, doing what autumn rain did. He was on the right side of it now, the warm side, with a scarf that smelled like you and his hands almost entirely back to their usual color and a second cup of tea he hadn't had to ask for.
He thought: I walked twenty minutes in the rain and this is where I ended up.
He thought: I would do it again.
You left when you'd run out of reasons to stay: the tea finished, the paperwork done, the rain outside at least became consistent enough to plan around.
You gathered your things with the efficient, automatic energy of someone who had closed this place enough times to do it in the dark. Bag. Keys. Phone. You did a last pass through the kitchen out of habit, checking the things you'd already checked.
Joshua quietly observes you as he retrieves his jacket from the hook in the kitchen.
You appeared at his shoulder, inspected it, made a quiet sound.
"Still damp," you said.
"I'll survive."
"You can wear it open. You have your scarf." You said it like this was a plan you'd already made.
"Your scarf."
"Temporarily yours." You reached up and adjusted the fold of it—a small, tucking gesture, securing it slightly against his neck, your fingers quick and light. Then you straightened and looked at him. Satisfied, apparently.
He did up the buttons on his jacket. You looped your bag across your body. You turned the last light off and for a moment the restaurant was dark around you both, just the soft orange of the streetlight coming through the front window and the sound of the rain. Then you unlocked the front door and pushed it open.
At the threshold, you opened your umbrella and held it over both of you the moment you stepped outside.
He looked at it. Then looked at you.
"You had that the whole time," he said.
"Yes."
"You had an umbrella the whole time."
"I did."
"I walked twenty minutes in the rain—"
"Because you didn't text me." You said it pleasantly and pulled the door shut behind you, checking the lock. "Come on. Let's go home."
Joshua stood outside the restaurant for precisely one second in the rain, under the umbrella you were holding at an angle to cover him, looking at you.
You glanced back.
"Joshua."
He caught up.
You held the umbrella between you, tilted slightly toward him because he was taller and you'd made this adjustment without remarking on it. He walked close enough that it worked. The rain tapped steadily on the fabric above you.
He gently took the umbrella from you. Then he put his arms around you so you can both be under the umbrella.
You walked.
The streets were quieter now. Puddles reflected the orange of the streetlights. His jacket was still slightly damp at the sleeves but the scarf was warm and your body was warm and you were walking in the same direction and the distance was not far. Ten minutes in weather like this. You'd walked it in worse.
Joshua didn't say anything for a while. Neither did you. After a stretch of comfortable quiet, you said: "Next time, text me."
"Next time," he agreed.
"I mean it."
"I know you do."
A pause.
"I had another hand warmer," you said. "In the other pocket. So."
He looked at you. You were looking straight ahead, face neutral, but something at the corner of your mouth gave you away.
"So…" he repeated.
"So I was prepared."
"You're always prepared."
"One of us has to be."
Joshua pressed a kiss to the side of your head, walking on without breaking stride. You turned your head and looked at him and then looked forward again and the corner of your mouth finished doing what it had been trying to do.
The building came into view. Above you, the rain tapped on.
Joshua held the door and you went in ahead of him. The warmth of the entrance hall came up around you both and he thought—standing there in your scarf, hands warm, the cold fully behind him—
There is nowhere I would rather have ended up.
He pulled the door shut against the rain. The elevator was slow. It always was. The building had the particular character of somewhere that had been standing long enough to have opinions about being rushed and the elevator made this known through a leisurely ascent that Joshua had stopped being impatient about months ago. You stood inside it in companionable quiet, your umbrella dripping a small patient puddle on the floor, his jacket still carrying the faint smell of rain. Joshua’s hand was now in yours.
You were looking at the numbers above the door. He was looking at you.
You had a habit, in elevators, of watching the floor indicator. He'd noticed this early on and had never mentioned it. He just liked knowing it was there—one of the small, specific things that were only visible if you were paying the right kind of attention.
The elevator doors finally opened.
Inside, you went immediately into the familiar choreography of arriving: lights on, bag on the hook, umbrella stood in the little tray by the door. Joshua was shrugging out of his jacket when you turned around and looked at him properly in the light.
Under the warm overhead glow of the entryway, the state of him was somewhat more apparent than it had been in the soft light of the restaurant. His hair had dried in transit but unevenly and there was still a chill coming off him that you could feel when you stepped close.
You put the back of your hand against his cheek.
He stilled.
Your expression went the particular way it went when you were confirming something you'd already suspected.
"You're still cold," you said.
"I'm warmer than I was."
"That's a very low bar." You took his jacket from him, turned it in your hands, pressed your fingers to the lining the same way you had at the restaurant hook. Still damp at the seams. You draped it over the back of a chair where it could breathe and turned back to him. "Okay," you said with the quiet decisiveness of someone who has made a plan. "Shower."
He blinked. "I'm fine—"
"Joshua." You said it gently but in the particular register that meant the discussion portion was concluding. "You walked twenty minutes in the cold rain and you're still cold and your jacket is still damp and I can feel it coming off you from here." You crossed your arms. "Hot shower. Now. It'll warm you up properly."
Joshua considered you.
He had, over time, developed a fairly accurate internal map of the difference between when you were open to a gentle counter-argument and when you had already reached a conclusion and were offering him the courtesy of framing it as a conversation. This was clearly the latter. The particular set of your expression, the arms, the now at the end; all of it indicated that the correct move was to agree and not make you repeat yourself.
Joshua knew this because he has been loving you for three years, maybe more. He also couldn't quite help himself.
He tilted his head at you, something leisurely and playful entering his expression. "You could always join me," he said. "Speed things up. Conserve water."
You stared at him.
He maintained eye contact with the peaceful composure of a man who had made a reasonable practical suggestion.
"Conservation," you said flatly.
"We’re being environmentally responsible. Doing our civic duty with the SDGs and all that."
"Joshua Hong."
"It was just a thought."
"It was not just a thought, it was —" You put both hands on his chest, flat-palmed, and pushed, not hard, barely enough to rock him back an inch.
He caught one of them.
Joshua wasn’t resisting the push. He was already going, already moving back, but his hand came up and closed around yours with an easy certainty and he lifted it and pressed his lips to your knuckles, his eyes on yours the whole time. He’s warm. Amused. Completely unbothered. The corner of his mouth curved up against your hand.
You stared at him.
He let go, still smiling, and went.
"Go," you said to his retreating back, a beat too late to be authoritative. "Shower. Now. By yourself. Like a normal person."
Joshua was already moving down the hall and he looked back once over his shoulder with a grin that you met with a look of supreme composure, eyebrows raised, pointing very firmly toward the bathroom.
He went.
You stood in the hallway for a moment after the bathroom door clicked shut. Listened to the sound of the water beginning to run.
Then you pressed your lips together and looked at the ceiling briefly and smiled. The full one, the one you didn't always let people see, the one that took over your face somewhat against your will. You stayed very still and let it happen and then it passed and you straightened and went to find him something warm to change into.
You were not flushed. Your face was just warm from the—the indoor heating was quite high, actually. The radiators in this building ran hot. That was all.
You pulled open his side of the wardrobe.
You found his softest things. The grey sweatpants that had been washed enough times to lose all their structure in the best possible way and the long-sleeved thermal top you'd personally bought him last November after observing that his sleepwear choices did not account for winter adequately. You folded them on the end of the bed. Added socks: the thick ones, the ones with the ribbed cuff because his feet were probably cold too.
You went to the bathroom cupboard and got the big towel. You put this and his clothes on the heated rail just outside the shower so it would be warm. Then you pulled the duvet back on your side of the bed and settled against the headboard with your knees up and your phone in hand and tried to look like you hadn't just spent five minutes making sure everything was exactly right.
The shower ran for a good while. You could hear it through the wall. You let yourself feel the quiet satisfaction of that. He was warming up. He was on the other side of the wall standing in heat and steam and by the time he came out the cold would be entirely gone and you would not have to feel the chill of him anymore.
You checked your phone. Answered a message you'd been ignoring. Put it down. Picked up the towel you'd brought in and folded it across your lap.
When Joshua came out, he came out in a cloud of warm air and the smell of the soap he used—something clean and faintly woodsy—and he was wearing the grey sweatpants you'd left out and the thermal top and he was visibly, entirely warm. Color back in his face. Shoulders dropped from wherever they'd been. The tension of the cold and the evening are fully gone.
He looked at you on the bed and at the towel across your lap. Something in his expression did a quiet thing.
"Come here," you said.
He came to you without argument.
He settled on the bed in front of you, cross-legged, facing away. He understands without instruction. You shifted forward slightly, moving the towel, and brought it up to his hair.
Your hands were gentle. You didn't rush it. You pressed the towel against his head first, cupping the shape of it through the fabric, absorbing the water in sections—the top first, then the back, working down. He sat quietly under it. His hands rested in his lap and he was very still, the way a person went still when someone was doing something kind to them and they didn't want to disturb it.
You rubbed in slow circles at the back where his hair was thickest. He exhaled.
"Better?" you asked.
"Mm." The sound he made was less a word than a general affirmation of everything. You felt the small vibration of it through your hands.
You worked toward the sides, gentling your touch where you knew he was sensitive and he tipped his head incrementally toward the pressure without seeming to realize he was doing it. This small involuntary thing, the trust of it, moved through your chest in a way you didn't examine too closely. Just noted, quietly, and kept on.
"You scared me a little," you said after a while. Conversationally, carefully. "When you walked in."
He was quiet for a moment.
"I know," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize. Just—" You lifted the towel and resettled it at the crown of his head. "Text me. That's all. Just text me."
"I didn't want you to worry."
"I know that. But I worry more not knowing. So the text actually helps." You kept your hands moving. "And I was already done with the close. I could have come to the door. I could have met you halfway. I could have —"
"I know." He said it softly. "I know. I'll text next time."
"You keep saying next time like there's going to be a next time."
"There's always going to be a next time. I'm not built for weather planning."
"You are built for weather planning. You just choose not to do it."
He made a sound that was not quite agreement but was not disagreement either. You pulled the towel away and looked at his hair. Still damp but no longer dripping. You set the towel to one side and lifted your hands to his hair directly, fingers spreading through it gently, helping it along. You weren’t styling it, just moving the warmth through, smoothing it back from his forehead. He made a sound you weren't sure he knew he'd made.
You smiled where he couldn't see it.
"You know," you said, keeping your voice light, "a rain jacket isn't even an extravagant purchase. It's a practical item. They sell them everywhere. I've seen them in places that also sell—I don't know, batteries and fizzy drinks. They're not—"
He turned around.
It wasn’t a quick shift. He just turned, the unhurried pivot of someone who had made a decision and before you'd quite finished processing the shift you found him facing you properly, close, your hand still half-raised from his hair. His expression was warm and quiet and very present, his eyes finding yours with that kind of attention that always made you feel, unreasonably, like you were the only thing in the room worth looking at.
"Joshua, I'm not yet done—" you started.
"I know," he said.
And then he kissed you.
It wasn't rushed. That was the first thing. The kiss was not rushed at all, which somehow made it more. His hand came up first, cupping the side of your face with a care that was almost unbearable, his thumb settling at the curve of your cheekbone and then he leaned in and his lips met yours slowly like he'd been thinking about doing exactly this and had decided to do it properly.
You went still for exactly one breath.
Then you were kissing him back and your raised hand had found the front of his thermal top and was holding it loosely as if you needed something to do with the feeling that had arrived without warning in the center of your chest.
His mouth was warm. Warm from the shower, warm from the tea, warm in that specific Joshua way that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the fact that it was him, that he kissed you like you were something he finally found, like he had all the time in the world and had chosen to spend it here. His other hand came to rest at the side of your neck, his thumb tracing a slow line along your jaw.
The towel slid off your lap somewhere. Neither of you noticed.
The rain outside made its soft sound against the glass. The lamp threw its warm small light. You were aware, faintly, of the weight of the evening behind you: the cold of his hands in yours at the counter, the walk home, the umbrella, the whole long accumulation of small, careful things, and all of it seemed to press forward into this moment, into the steady warmth of him, his hand gentle on your face, his presence so certain.
Joshua pulled back slowly, just enough. His forehead stayed close, almost touching yours, his hand still cradling your cheek. His eyes opened and found yours and the expression in them was the completely unguarded one.
You were aware your hand was still balled lightly in the front of his shirt.
"You…" you whispered and had to stop and collect yourself, "...are doing that on purpose."
Joshua tilted his head to the side, the corner of his mouth lifting as he looked at you with those ridiculous, beautiful eyes of his. "Doing what?"
"That." You loosened your grip on his shirt, smoothed the fabric with your palm, not quite meeting his eyes yet. "Kissing me when I was making a valid point."
"You were making several valid points, sweetheart."
"I know I was. I had more to make."
"You did." There was a smile in his voice. "You were going to tell me about the rain jacket."
"I was going to tell you that rain jackets are available in most high-street shops for a very reasonable—" You finally looked up. He was watching you with that easygoing smile, the one that reached his eyes and it made the rest of the sentence harder to think about. "You can't just do that," you said. "You can't just kiss me in the middle of a perfectly reasonable point and expect me to—"
Joshua leaned in just slightly. "To what?"
"To not lose my—" You exhaled through your nose. "You know what you're doing."
"I really don't," he said in a tone that indicated he really did.
"You walked twenty minutes in the rain," you said, trying to maintain composure, "without a proper jacket, without texting me, without any apparent—"
He leaned in a little more.
You kept yapping, refusing to acknowledge what he was trying to do. "—regard for the fact that it was cold and that you were wearing a jacket that is more fashionable than functional and that I was—"
Closer. Joshua’s eyes were soft and solely fixed on yours with the kind of attention that made it very difficult to remember what you were saying.
"—I was right there, I was ten minutes away, you could have just—"
Closer still. You could feel the warmth of him now, the slight tilt of his head, the way his gaze had dropped—just briefly, just once—and come back up.
"Joshua." It was a warning. But a weak one.
"Mm." Not quite an answer. His eyes were still fixed on you and you’re now finding it hard to breathe properly.
"I'm being serious."
"I know you are," he whispered. And he was. That was the thing—the teasing had died out somewhere in the last few inches. His expression had settled into something that wasn't a game anymore, something that was simply and directly him, present and warm. His hand came up to your face again, the same as before, gentle and sure.
You had run entirely out of sentences.
Joshua kissed you again.
This one was softer than the first. His hand hadn't moved from your cheek and when he kissed you this time there was something in it that was less I've decided and more here, let me just—as if the first kiss had been the intention and this one was the elaboration. His lips moved gently against yours, lingering, and you felt yourself exhale into it, felt the last tense thread of the evening's worry loosen and let go.
You didn't hold his shirt this time.
You brought your hand up to his jaw instead and his stubble was a familiar texture under your fingers and you could feel the warmth of his skin all the way through now. There was no more trace of the cold, no echo of the rain, just him, entirely and properly warm, your hand against his face the mirror of what you'd done in the entryway except now he was leaning into it, his cheek pressing gently into your palm.
He took his time. So did you.
When the kiss ended, it ended the way these things usually do between you both—Joshua pulled back slowly. The space between you stayed small. Neither of you did anything about that.
You spoke first.
"That's not fair," you said. Your voice came out quieter than you'd intended.
Joshua smiled. This time, his smile was something slower and more private.
"You had a hand warmer in your bag since October," he said. His thumb moved once along your cheekbone. "You put the kettle on before I even got there. You looked at my hands and—" He paused, his eyes focusing on you.
"You look at me like I'm worth looking after."
You were quiet.
"I just—" He stopped. Started again, more carefully. "I know you were scared when I walked in. I know I should have texted, should have waited, should have—" His hand was still on your face, warm and steady. "But I walked in there cold and wet and you were already moving toward me. You didn't even think about it. You just came."
He looked at you intently.
"You always just come."
The rain tapped softly against the window. You didn't say anything for a moment. You were aware of your hand still resting against his jaw, of the warmth between you.
"You're not being fair," you said again but it came out soft and without any real complaint left in it.
"I know that too," he said. He turned his head slightly and pressed his lips to the inside of your wrist. "I promise I’ll get the rain jacket."
You let out a breath that went more than halfway to a laugh. "You'd better."
"You can come with me. Make sure I get the right one."
"I will absolutely be there."
"I know you will." Joshua said it like it was the best thing he knew.
"You can lie down," you said. "If you want."
Joshua rearranged himself, settling back against the pillows with an ease that suggested every part of him had wanted to do exactly this for the last several hours. You moved with him, resettling on your own side, angling toward him.
He looked at the ceiling for a moment. You looked at the side of his face.
His color was completely back now. All traces of the cold, the damp, the too-pale quality of him in the restaurant doorway now gone. He looked warm and clean and settled, his hair going softly in whatever direction it pleased, the thermal top you'd bought him fitting in all the right places.
You had picked that top out. You remembered the afternoon. You were standing in the men's section last November, your phone in hand with his measurements in the notes app, deliberating over thickness and fabric with more focus than the task probably required. You'd bought two. He hadn't commented on where they came from. He just started wearing them, which was its own kind of answer.
Joshua turned his head and looked at you.
"What?" you said.
"Nothing." He turned back to the ceiling. "You're looking at me."
"I'm allowed to look at you."
He smiled his slow, private smile. "I said that last time."
"That you did.”
A short comfortable silence.
"Thank you," he said after a while.
You looked at him and hummed.
"Thank you for the tea." A beat. "The hand warmer. The towel." He paused. "The socks."
You glanced down. He'd put them on at some point while you'd been repositioning on the bed. You hadn't seen him do it.
"You saw the socks," you said.
"I see most things," he said, which was almost word-for-word what you'd said to him earlier in the evening and you shook your head at the ceiling and heard him breathe a quiet laugh.
After a while, you reached out and pressed your hand to his cheek.
Joshua stilled the way he had in the entryway of the restaurant, that same complete and immediate stillness. His eyes stayed on yours.
He’s still warm. Properly now, all the way through, the chill is entirely gone. You let your palm rest there for a moment.
He covered your hand with his and held it there. His eyes found yours and stayed and whatever was in them was entirely unguarded, soft and full, and completely his.
You thought, not for the first time, that he had one of the most honest faces you'd ever encountered. Right now, what was in him was something very certain. It sat in your chest, reassuring and settled.
"Your hair's still a bit damp," you said.
"It is." He didn't move.
"You'll be cold again."
"I have the socks," he said, gravely.
"The socks aren't on your head, Joshua."
"I trust the socks."
You let out a breath that was halfway to a laugh and reached for the towel. He caught your hand before you could.
"In a minute," he said.
You looked at him.
He looked back. The quiet certain thing is still in his face, fully.
"Just—" He didn't finish the sentence. He just kept hold of your hand loosely, his thumb moving once across your knuckles. The same way you'd move your thumbs across his at the counter. You wondered if he knew he was doing it.
"Okay," you said. "In a minute."
The room had gone quiet around you both.
Outside, the rain had eased. The pitter-patter is lighter now and less insistent than it had been. More like company than weather.
Joshua thought about the evening. The tea was already waiting. The hand warmer cracked and ready before he'd asked. The small oh when you saw his hands. The umbrella you'd had the whole time.
Small things, each of them. Together, they were everything.
She took care of me, he thought.
He turned his head on the pillow.
You were looking out the window. The rain. The strand of hair is still against your cheek. He didn't mention it. Just looked at you in the low, quiet dark and let himself be still.
I walked in from the rain, he thought, and she was already there.
Joshua couldn’t help himself. He reached over and tucked the strand of hair back from your cheek. You turned toward him with soft eyes and let him.
"I'm glad I came to you tonight," he said.
You were quiet for a moment. "Me too."
He kissed you gently. You made a small, soft sound against it and your hand found his.
When he pulled back, he pressed his forehead to yours.
this is??? so beautifully written????? the prose is PHENOMENAL oh my gosh and they're so adorable and sweet??
i was like "huh slowburn energy when they're already dating what is that" and then i read it and i went OH I GET IT NOW I GET IT THIS IS SLOWBURN ENERGY BUT THEY'RE ALREADY DATING
i just. oh. this is so beautiful i can't even lfjhgdfkghkdg???!!?!?!!
summary: it's a bad night for rain and joshua has neither a proper jacket nor the sense to text you first. you've already put the kettle on.
genre: fluff, established relationship, domestic fluff, slice of life
additional tags: bickering, just two idiots in love, slow burn energy but they're already together 🙄, there's no angst and therefore, no explicit warnings. all that's in here is warmth, coziness, and love in small gestures.
word count: 7.2k
a/n: brought to you by that one joshua video where he got so soaked under the rain during an encore concert and his makeup was apparently waterproof 🧎🏻♀️i wrote this on the plane so there might/will be mistakes, but at least my seat mate didn't think i was weird. maybe.
i'll see you all again in june, my loves 💕 i will check in now and then for asks and messages, please don't hesitate to yap! for those who sent asks i haven't answered yet, i will get to them soon. i promise i'm not ignoring you 🌸
The rain had started sometime around four. By six it had made up its mind about it.
It came down in the particular determined way of autumn rain: relentless and the kind that didn't announce itself so much on weather apps or with thunder but it simply arrived and stayed. The more it poured, the more it soaked through things quietly. The streets reflected rain water because of the many neon lights of stores and buildings. Umbrellas turned inside out on corners. People walked with their chins down and their shoulders up, moving fast, pretending that if they moved fast enough they wouldn’t get soaked.
You'd been watching it from the window of the restaurant for the better part of an hour.
The last table had cleared out just after five-thirty, earlier than usual, driven home by the weather. You'd let your last server go at quarter to six because there was no point keeping her in on a night like this and you finished closing up alone. The chairs were up on the tables. The floor was mopped. The till was counted and the lights in the dining room were off except for the warm one above the counter where you'd been doing paperwork and audits while you waited.
This was the routine: Joshua finished work, walked over, and you walked home together. It was not a long walk. In good weather it was pleasant; ten minutes through the residential side streets, past the little park with the playground. You'd been doing it for three years now, which meant you'd walked it in every kind of weather and had opinions about which season did it best.
Tonight the weather had disrupted that routine because Joshua was supposed to finish at five-thirty.
At six-fifteen you got a message.
joshua 🤍: running a bit late sweetheart, leaving now
joshua 🤍: don't go anywhere please i'll come to you
joshua 🤍: is the restaurant locked up
you: I haven't locked the front yet. Are you okay? It's really coming down out there.
A pause. Three dots appearing and disappearing.
joshua 🤍: i'm fine! almost there
You looked at the window. The rain had not calmed down.
You put the kettle on.
You heard the door before you saw him. The little bell above the restaurant entrance gave a sound that cut through the quiet of the empty restaurant and you looked up from your paperwork at the counter and there he was.
He was—you stood up immediately.
Joshua was soaked through.
He wasn’t caught-in-the-rain damp. Definitely not slightly-wet-jacket damp. Through. His hair was flattened against his head, darker than its usual color with the weight of the water in it. His jacket wasn’t a proper rain jacket, it never is a proper rain jacket, this was a recurring issue you’ve had with him. Joshua was scanning the room with that slightly dazed look of someone who had just come in from something and hadn't quite made the transition yet and when his eyes found you across the room his expression shifted to that of relief, warmth, and something that moved through his face like a quiet exhale.
You were already moving toward him.
He started to say something—your name maybe, or hi, I'm okay, sorry—but you didn't let him.
"Come here," you said. "Come here, right now, Joshua."
Up close it was worse. His hair was dripping at the ends. There was a raindrop tracking down the line of his jaw. His eyelashes were wet. You could see, even in the low light of the entrance, that his lips had gone a shade too pale.
"How long were you walking?" you demanded.
"It wasn't—"
"How long."
He did a small, slightly guilty calculation behind his eyes. "Maybe twenty minutes."
"Joshua."
"I couldn't get a cab. Everything was full and the taxi app was—" He made a gesture with his hand that indicated something had gone wrong with technology and he had decided to solve the problem with his body, which was, you were coming to understand, a recurring approach as well. "I figured it was just a short walk."
"It's a twenty minute walk."
"In good weather it's ten."
"It's not good weather."
"You’re right about that."
"You should have called me."
"What were you going to do?"
"I would have figured something out."
"Sweetheart, you were closing up. And our car is in the shop."
"I was done closing up. This place has been closed since six." You took his arm. "Come and sit down. I'll get you tea."
You brought him to the stool at the far end of the counter. It's the one closest to the radiator that ran along the back wall, chunky and reliable, the kind that actually generated heat. You'd been grateful for it all evening while you did the close. You were more grateful now.
You took his jacket without asking. It was heavy with water and you brought it to the hook inside the kitchen door where the staff coats usually hung and you pressed your fingers to the inner lining and even that was damp.
When you came back he was sitting with his hands wrapped around the mug you'd left for him on the counter. It was tea you'd made when you put the kettle on before he arrived because you knew him and he was looking through the front window at the rain with an expression that had some peace in it now. The look of a person who has been out in something and is no longer out in it.
You came around the counter and stood across from him. You looked at him.
His cheeks had gone slightly pink from the cold-to-warm transition, the way they did, and his hair was still damp and beginning to dry in directions it didn't usually go and he looked, honestly, a little like something that had been left out by accident.
"You look so pretty," he said.
You crossed your arms and ignored what he just said because you’re supposed to be mad. "Are you actually okay?"
"I'm warm now." He lifted the mug slightly. "This was exactly right. How did you know I'd want tea?"
"Because you always want tea when you're cold." You watched him. "You're shivering."
"Barely."
"Your shoulders are doing the thing."
He looked at his shoulders as if checking for the thing. "I'm fine, love."
"You're not not fine. But you're also not completely fine."
He smiled at that—his crooked one, the one that meant you'd said something he found quietly funny. "That's a precise diagnosis."
"I’ve been dating you for the past three years." You reached for your bag on the hook behind the counter, the one you'd had there all evening alongside the restaurant copy of the keys, and began to rummage inside it. "I have hand warmers in here somewhere. I always carry them in autumn so before you say anything—"
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You were going to say it was excessive."
"I was going to say it was thoughtful. I’ve been dating you for the past three years, too. In love with you for much longer than that, really."
You paused in your rummaging to look at him briefly. He raised his mug.
"I love you," he declared with a sly smile.
You huffed, muttered, “you’re so annoying” to the air, and went back to rummaging inside your bag.
You found one. A single-use hand warmer, the kind you snap and shake, still in its foil sleeve. You'd had it at the bottom of the bag since you'd bought a small packet of them at the start of October and distributed them throughout your different bags and jacket pockets the way some people layered a home with candles or safety pins: quietly, preparedly, just in case.
You cracked it between your hands, shook it, felt the gentle chemistry of it beginning to work.
"Give me your hands," you said.
Joshua set the mug down and held them out across the counter.
You looked at them and your breath caught slightly.
His hands—the knuckles, the backs of them, the edges where the wind and the cold had really gotten in—were red. It’s not the healthy pink of someone who'd been in the warm for a while. It’s the kind of red that comes from sustained cold. His fingertips especially, the color deepening there and when you turned his hands over his palms were cold enough that you felt it through your own.
"Oh," you said. The word came out small.
"It's fine—"
Your eyes came up to him and he stopped because of what was in them—something immediate and wordless, the expression of someone who hadn't been expecting to feel as much as they suddenly felt.
"They're so cold," you said.
"I really am okay," he said gently, trying to reassure you.
You pressed your lips together and looked back down at his hands. You placed the warming pack against his palms first, folding his fingers around it, and then closed both of your hands around the outside, sandwiching the warmth in, your hands over his, squeezing slowly.
Joshua watched you do this.
"You should have texted me," you said to his hands because you were looking at them. Your tone of voice had changed a bit: careful and a little tight. It’s the voice you use when you are being practical instead of saying what you mean. "I know the taxi app wasn't working but you could have texted me and I would have come to the door with an umbrella. You could have waited under the awning wherever you were and there's the big one out front—you could have stood there and I would have come to you—"
"I didn't want you standing in the rain on my account."
"I wouldn't have been standing in the rain, I would have been under the awning which is why most buildings have awnings, Joshua—"
"You'd been on your feet all day."
You looked up at him. He was looking at you steadily, his hands still between yours, the hand warmer doing its slow work.
"That's very sweet," you said after a moment, "and also infuriating."
"I know." He didn't sound particularly sorry. "It could be both things."
You exhaled through your nose and looked back down. Then you started rubbing your thumbs slowly over the backs of his hands, over the red knuckles, working warmth in. He stayed very still and let you.
"You don't have a proper rain jacket," you said.
"I have a jacket."
"A jacket is not a rain jacket. A rain jacket repels water. Your jacket absorbed water like it was gladly enthusiastic about it."
The corner of his mouth turned up. "I'll note that for next time."
"Joshua." You said his name with a kind of exasperated tenderness that didn't quite manage to be the scolding you'd intended. "The weather’s getting cold now. You can't just walk over here in the rain with no hood and a jacket that's basically more decorative than—"
"It's a nice jacket."
"It's a nice jacket, yes, and now it's soaking wet on a hook in my kitchen and you're sitting here with red hands because you walked twenty minutes in the rain—" You stopped and steadied yourself. "I'm not—I know you're fine. I know it's just a bit of cold and rain. I just—"
You didn't finish the sentence. Joshua waited.
"I just saw your hands," you said at last.
Joshua looked at you for a long moment. At the bent angle of your head, the careful movement of your thumbs across his knuckles, the slight tension in your expression that you hadn't entirely been able to put down since he walked through the door.
His chest did something. Something warm and unasked for and it’s taking up exactly as much space as it needed.
You cared. That was the thing. You just genuinely, quietly cared about what happened to his hands. You'd had a hand warmer in your bag since October. You'd put the kettle on before he arrived because you knew he'd want tea. You'd looked at his hands and made a small sound and not been able to hide what it meant to you.
He thought of a word he'd been circling for a while without landing on it.
Lucky. He thought: I am so lucky.
"Does that feel better?" you asked, still looking at his hands.
He turned one of them over, gently, beneath yours. His fingers curled up and held yours loosely. You stilled.
"Much better," he said.
You looked up. He was looking at you with that expression: the one you'd called the thing, in the entrance, the soft and present and completely undisguised one that he wore when he wasn't trying to be anything but exactly what he was.
"You're doing the thing," you said.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're looking at me."
"You’re the love of my life. I'm allowed to look at you, aren’t I?"
"Not like that when I'm trying to be annoyed at you."
"Are you still annoyed at me?"
A pause. You looked at your joined hands.
"A little," you said.
He brought your hand up and pressed his lips to your knuckles. Just because. You closed your eyes for exactly one second.
"That's not fair," you said.
"I'm warming up," he said innocently. "You said I was cold."
"I said your hands were cold, not—" You made a small, helpless sound and shook your head and the residual annoyance finished dissolving. He could see it go. "You're impossible."
"But I’m warm now."
You looked at him.
"Getting there," you whispered and squeezed his hands. "You’re getting there."
You made Joshua stay until he'd had a second cup.
You'd moved around from behind the counter while he wasn't paying attention, pulled down the stool beside him and settled onto it, close to the radiator, close to him. You told yourself it was so you could keep an eye on whether he was still shivering. He let you tell yourself that.
You'd also given him your scarf.
It had happened somewhat naturally. You'd reach behind you for your jacket off the hook, the motion pulling the scarf loose and you'd looked at it and looked at him and simply handed it over. It was a soft scarf, cream-colored, slightly oversized in the way you liked your scarves. He'd wrapped it once around without comment and you'd looked at it, adjusted it slightly, and then looked away.
He was wearing your scarf and drinking his second tea and the rain was still doing its thing against the front window and you were beside him with your own drink and the kind of quiet that settled when the urgency of something had passed and what was left was just warmth. The restaurant felt different like this: chairs up, lights low, just the two of you at the counter with the radiator ticking beside you. Smaller. More like a room than a business.
Joshua looked at you.
Your elbow was on the counter. You were watching the rain with the same expression you'd probably had all evening: attentive, relaxed, comfortable. A strand of hair had come down against your cheek and you hadn't pushed it back, either hadn't noticed or didn't mind. He tucked it behind your ear and you look at him with a smile, a quiet thank you.
A quiet I love you.
You've had hand warmers in your bag in October. You'd put the kettle on before he arrived. You'd taken one look at his hands and your face had done something unguarded and worried and entirely real, in your own restaurant, at the end of a full day on your feet, while he dripped water onto your clean floor.
He turned back to the window.
Outside, the rain went on, relentless, doing what autumn rain did. He was on the right side of it now, the warm side, with a scarf that smelled like you and his hands almost entirely back to their usual color and a second cup of tea he hadn't had to ask for.
He thought: I walked twenty minutes in the rain and this is where I ended up.
He thought: I would do it again.
You left when you'd run out of reasons to stay: the tea finished, the paperwork done, the rain outside at least became consistent enough to plan around.
You gathered your things with the efficient, automatic energy of someone who had closed this place enough times to do it in the dark. Bag. Keys. Phone. You did a last pass through the kitchen out of habit, checking the things you'd already checked.
Joshua quietly observes you as he retrieves his jacket from the hook in the kitchen.
You appeared at his shoulder, inspected it, made a quiet sound.
"Still damp," you said.
"I'll survive."
"You can wear it open. You have your scarf." You said it like this was a plan you'd already made.
"Your scarf."
"Temporarily yours." You reached up and adjusted the fold of it—a small, tucking gesture, securing it slightly against his neck, your fingers quick and light. Then you straightened and looked at him. Satisfied, apparently.
He did up the buttons on his jacket. You looped your bag across your body. You turned the last light off and for a moment the restaurant was dark around you both, just the soft orange of the streetlight coming through the front window and the sound of the rain. Then you unlocked the front door and pushed it open.
At the threshold, you opened your umbrella and held it over both of you the moment you stepped outside.
He looked at it. Then looked at you.
"You had that the whole time," he said.
"Yes."
"You had an umbrella the whole time."
"I did."
"I walked twenty minutes in the rain—"
"Because you didn't text me." You said it pleasantly and pulled the door shut behind you, checking the lock. "Come on. Let's go home."
Joshua stood outside the restaurant for precisely one second in the rain, under the umbrella you were holding at an angle to cover him, looking at you.
You glanced back.
"Joshua."
He caught up.
You held the umbrella between you, tilted slightly toward him because he was taller and you'd made this adjustment without remarking on it. He walked close enough that it worked. The rain tapped steadily on the fabric above you.
He gently took the umbrella from you. Then he put his arms around you so you can both be under the umbrella.
You walked.
The streets were quieter now. Puddles reflected the orange of the streetlights. His jacket was still slightly damp at the sleeves but the scarf was warm and your body was warm and you were walking in the same direction and the distance was not far. Ten minutes in weather like this. You'd walked it in worse.
Joshua didn't say anything for a while. Neither did you. After a stretch of comfortable quiet, you said: "Next time, text me."
"Next time," he agreed.
"I mean it."
"I know you do."
A pause.
"I had another hand warmer," you said. "In the other pocket. So."
He looked at you. You were looking straight ahead, face neutral, but something at the corner of your mouth gave you away.
"So…" he repeated.
"So I was prepared."
"You're always prepared."
"One of us has to be."
Joshua pressed a kiss to the side of your head, walking on without breaking stride. You turned your head and looked at him and then looked forward again and the corner of your mouth finished doing what it had been trying to do.
The building came into view. Above you, the rain tapped on.
Joshua held the door and you went in ahead of him. The warmth of the entrance hall came up around you both and he thought—standing there in your scarf, hands warm, the cold fully behind him—
There is nowhere I would rather have ended up.
He pulled the door shut against the rain. The elevator was slow. It always was. The building had the particular character of somewhere that had been standing long enough to have opinions about being rushed and the elevator made this known through a leisurely ascent that Joshua had stopped being impatient about months ago. You stood inside it in companionable quiet, your umbrella dripping a small patient puddle on the floor, his jacket still carrying the faint smell of rain. Joshua’s hand was now in yours.
You were looking at the numbers above the door. He was looking at you.
You had a habit, in elevators, of watching the floor indicator. He'd noticed this early on and had never mentioned it. He just liked knowing it was there—one of the small, specific things that were only visible if you were paying the right kind of attention.
The elevator doors finally opened.
Inside, you went immediately into the familiar choreography of arriving: lights on, bag on the hook, umbrella stood in the little tray by the door. Joshua was shrugging out of his jacket when you turned around and looked at him properly in the light.
Under the warm overhead glow of the entryway, the state of him was somewhat more apparent than it had been in the soft light of the restaurant. His hair had dried in transit but unevenly and there was still a chill coming off him that you could feel when you stepped close.
You put the back of your hand against his cheek.
He stilled.
Your expression went the particular way it went when you were confirming something you'd already suspected.
"You're still cold," you said.
"I'm warmer than I was."
"That's a very low bar." You took his jacket from him, turned it in your hands, pressed your fingers to the lining the same way you had at the restaurant hook. Still damp at the seams. You draped it over the back of a chair where it could breathe and turned back to him. "Okay," you said with the quiet decisiveness of someone who has made a plan. "Shower."
He blinked. "I'm fine—"
"Joshua." You said it gently but in the particular register that meant the discussion portion was concluding. "You walked twenty minutes in the cold rain and you're still cold and your jacket is still damp and I can feel it coming off you from here." You crossed your arms. "Hot shower. Now. It'll warm you up properly."
Joshua considered you.
He had, over time, developed a fairly accurate internal map of the difference between when you were open to a gentle counter-argument and when you had already reached a conclusion and were offering him the courtesy of framing it as a conversation. This was clearly the latter. The particular set of your expression, the arms, the now at the end; all of it indicated that the correct move was to agree and not make you repeat yourself.
Joshua knew this because he has been loving you for three years, maybe more. He also couldn't quite help himself.
He tilted his head at you, something leisurely and playful entering his expression. "You could always join me," he said. "Speed things up. Conserve water."
You stared at him.
He maintained eye contact with the peaceful composure of a man who had made a reasonable practical suggestion.
"Conservation," you said flatly.
"We’re being environmentally responsible. Doing our civic duty with the SDGs and all that."
"Joshua Hong."
"It was just a thought."
"It was not just a thought, it was —" You put both hands on his chest, flat-palmed, and pushed, not hard, barely enough to rock him back an inch.
He caught one of them.
Joshua wasn’t resisting the push. He was already going, already moving back, but his hand came up and closed around yours with an easy certainty and he lifted it and pressed his lips to your knuckles, his eyes on yours the whole time. He’s warm. Amused. Completely unbothered. The corner of his mouth curved up against your hand.
You stared at him.
He let go, still smiling, and went.
"Go," you said to his retreating back, a beat too late to be authoritative. "Shower. Now. By yourself. Like a normal person."
Joshua was already moving down the hall and he looked back once over his shoulder with a grin that you met with a look of supreme composure, eyebrows raised, pointing very firmly toward the bathroom.
He went.
You stood in the hallway for a moment after the bathroom door clicked shut. Listened to the sound of the water beginning to run.
Then you pressed your lips together and looked at the ceiling briefly and smiled. The full one, the one you didn't always let people see, the one that took over your face somewhat against your will. You stayed very still and let it happen and then it passed and you straightened and went to find him something warm to change into.
You were not flushed. Your face was just warm from the—the indoor heating was quite high, actually. The radiators in this building ran hot. That was all.
You pulled open his side of the wardrobe.
You found his softest things. The grey sweatpants that had been washed enough times to lose all their structure in the best possible way and the long-sleeved thermal top you'd personally bought him last November after observing that his sleepwear choices did not account for winter adequately. You folded them on the end of the bed. Added socks: the thick ones, the ones with the ribbed cuff because his feet were probably cold too.
You went to the bathroom cupboard and got the big towel. You put this and his clothes on the heated rail just outside the shower so it would be warm. Then you pulled the duvet back on your side of the bed and settled against the headboard with your knees up and your phone in hand and tried to look like you hadn't just spent five minutes making sure everything was exactly right.
The shower ran for a good while. You could hear it through the wall. You let yourself feel the quiet satisfaction of that. He was warming up. He was on the other side of the wall standing in heat and steam and by the time he came out the cold would be entirely gone and you would not have to feel the chill of him anymore.
You checked your phone. Answered a message you'd been ignoring. Put it down. Picked up the towel you'd brought in and folded it across your lap.
When Joshua came out, he came out in a cloud of warm air and the smell of the soap he used—something clean and faintly woodsy—and he was wearing the grey sweatpants you'd left out and the thermal top and he was visibly, entirely warm. Color back in his face. Shoulders dropped from wherever they'd been. The tension of the cold and the evening are fully gone.
He looked at you on the bed and at the towel across your lap. Something in his expression did a quiet thing.
"Come here," you said.
He came to you without argument.
He settled on the bed in front of you, cross-legged, facing away. He understands without instruction. You shifted forward slightly, moving the towel, and brought it up to his hair.
Your hands were gentle. You didn't rush it. You pressed the towel against his head first, cupping the shape of it through the fabric, absorbing the water in sections—the top first, then the back, working down. He sat quietly under it. His hands rested in his lap and he was very still, the way a person went still when someone was doing something kind to them and they didn't want to disturb it.
You rubbed in slow circles at the back where his hair was thickest. He exhaled.
"Better?" you asked.
"Mm." The sound he made was less a word than a general affirmation of everything. You felt the small vibration of it through your hands.
You worked toward the sides, gentling your touch where you knew he was sensitive and he tipped his head incrementally toward the pressure without seeming to realize he was doing it. This small involuntary thing, the trust of it, moved through your chest in a way you didn't examine too closely. Just noted, quietly, and kept on.
"You scared me a little," you said after a while. Conversationally, carefully. "When you walked in."
He was quiet for a moment.
"I know," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize. Just—" You lifted the towel and resettled it at the crown of his head. "Text me. That's all. Just text me."
"I didn't want you to worry."
"I know that. But I worry more not knowing. So the text actually helps." You kept your hands moving. "And I was already done with the close. I could have come to the door. I could have met you halfway. I could have —"
"I know." He said it softly. "I know. I'll text next time."
"You keep saying next time like there's going to be a next time."
"There's always going to be a next time. I'm not built for weather planning."
"You are built for weather planning. You just choose not to do it."
He made a sound that was not quite agreement but was not disagreement either. You pulled the towel away and looked at his hair. Still damp but no longer dripping. You set the towel to one side and lifted your hands to his hair directly, fingers spreading through it gently, helping it along. You weren’t styling it, just moving the warmth through, smoothing it back from his forehead. He made a sound you weren't sure he knew he'd made.
You smiled where he couldn't see it.
"You know," you said, keeping your voice light, "a rain jacket isn't even an extravagant purchase. It's a practical item. They sell them everywhere. I've seen them in places that also sell—I don't know, batteries and fizzy drinks. They're not—"
He turned around.
It wasn’t a quick shift. He just turned, the unhurried pivot of someone who had made a decision and before you'd quite finished processing the shift you found him facing you properly, close, your hand still half-raised from his hair. His expression was warm and quiet and very present, his eyes finding yours with that kind of attention that always made you feel, unreasonably, like you were the only thing in the room worth looking at.
"Joshua, I'm not yet done—" you started.
"I know," he said.
And then he kissed you.
It wasn't rushed. That was the first thing. The kiss was not rushed at all, which somehow made it more. His hand came up first, cupping the side of your face with a care that was almost unbearable, his thumb settling at the curve of your cheekbone and then he leaned in and his lips met yours slowly like he'd been thinking about doing exactly this and had decided to do it properly.
You went still for exactly one breath.
Then you were kissing him back and your raised hand had found the front of his thermal top and was holding it loosely as if you needed something to do with the feeling that had arrived without warning in the center of your chest.
His mouth was warm. Warm from the shower, warm from the tea, warm in that specific Joshua way that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the fact that it was him, that he kissed you like you were something he finally found, like he had all the time in the world and had chosen to spend it here. His other hand came to rest at the side of your neck, his thumb tracing a slow line along your jaw.
The towel slid off your lap somewhere. Neither of you noticed.
The rain outside made its soft sound against the glass. The lamp threw its warm small light. You were aware, faintly, of the weight of the evening behind you: the cold of his hands in yours at the counter, the walk home, the umbrella, the whole long accumulation of small, careful things, and all of it seemed to press forward into this moment, into the steady warmth of him, his hand gentle on your face, his presence so certain.
Joshua pulled back slowly, just enough. His forehead stayed close, almost touching yours, his hand still cradling your cheek. His eyes opened and found yours and the expression in them was the completely unguarded one.
You were aware your hand was still balled lightly in the front of his shirt.
"You…" you whispered and had to stop and collect yourself, "...are doing that on purpose."
Joshua tilted his head to the side, the corner of his mouth lifting as he looked at you with those ridiculous, beautiful eyes of his. "Doing what?"
"That." You loosened your grip on his shirt, smoothed the fabric with your palm, not quite meeting his eyes yet. "Kissing me when I was making a valid point."
"You were making several valid points, sweetheart."
"I know I was. I had more to make."
"You did." There was a smile in his voice. "You were going to tell me about the rain jacket."
"I was going to tell you that rain jackets are available in most high-street shops for a very reasonable—" You finally looked up. He was watching you with that easygoing smile, the one that reached his eyes and it made the rest of the sentence harder to think about. "You can't just do that," you said. "You can't just kiss me in the middle of a perfectly reasonable point and expect me to—"
Joshua leaned in just slightly. "To what?"
"To not lose my—" You exhaled through your nose. "You know what you're doing."
"I really don't," he said in a tone that indicated he really did.
"You walked twenty minutes in the rain," you said, trying to maintain composure, "without a proper jacket, without texting me, without any apparent—"
He leaned in a little more.
You kept yapping, refusing to acknowledge what he was trying to do. "—regard for the fact that it was cold and that you were wearing a jacket that is more fashionable than functional and that I was—"
Closer. Joshua’s eyes were soft and solely fixed on yours with the kind of attention that made it very difficult to remember what you were saying.
"—I was right there, I was ten minutes away, you could have just—"
Closer still. You could feel the warmth of him now, the slight tilt of his head, the way his gaze had dropped—just briefly, just once—and come back up.
"Joshua." It was a warning. But a weak one.
"Mm." Not quite an answer. His eyes were still fixed on you and you’re now finding it hard to breathe properly.
"I'm being serious."
"I know you are," he whispered. And he was. That was the thing—the teasing had died out somewhere in the last few inches. His expression had settled into something that wasn't a game anymore, something that was simply and directly him, present and warm. His hand came up to your face again, the same as before, gentle and sure.
You had run entirely out of sentences.
Joshua kissed you again.
This one was softer than the first. His hand hadn't moved from your cheek and when he kissed you this time there was something in it that was less I've decided and more here, let me just—as if the first kiss had been the intention and this one was the elaboration. His lips moved gently against yours, lingering, and you felt yourself exhale into it, felt the last tense thread of the evening's worry loosen and let go.
You didn't hold his shirt this time.
You brought your hand up to his jaw instead and his stubble was a familiar texture under your fingers and you could feel the warmth of his skin all the way through now. There was no more trace of the cold, no echo of the rain, just him, entirely and properly warm, your hand against his face the mirror of what you'd done in the entryway except now he was leaning into it, his cheek pressing gently into your palm.
He took his time. So did you.
When the kiss ended, it ended the way these things usually do between you both—Joshua pulled back slowly. The space between you stayed small. Neither of you did anything about that.
You spoke first.
"That's not fair," you said. Your voice came out quieter than you'd intended.
Joshua smiled. This time, his smile was something slower and more private.
"You had a hand warmer in your bag since October," he said. His thumb moved once along your cheekbone. "You put the kettle on before I even got there. You looked at my hands and—" He paused, his eyes focusing on you.
"You look at me like I'm worth looking after."
You were quiet.
"I just—" He stopped. Started again, more carefully. "I know you were scared when I walked in. I know I should have texted, should have waited, should have—" His hand was still on your face, warm and steady. "But I walked in there cold and wet and you were already moving toward me. You didn't even think about it. You just came."
He looked at you intently.
"You always just come."
The rain tapped softly against the window. You didn't say anything for a moment. You were aware of your hand still resting against his jaw, of the warmth between you.
"You're not being fair," you said again but it came out soft and without any real complaint left in it.
"I know that too," he said. He turned his head slightly and pressed his lips to the inside of your wrist. "I promise I’ll get the rain jacket."
You let out a breath that went more than halfway to a laugh. "You'd better."
"You can come with me. Make sure I get the right one."
"I will absolutely be there."
"I know you will." Joshua said it like it was the best thing he knew.
"You can lie down," you said. "If you want."
Joshua rearranged himself, settling back against the pillows with an ease that suggested every part of him had wanted to do exactly this for the last several hours. You moved with him, resettling on your own side, angling toward him.
He looked at the ceiling for a moment. You looked at the side of his face.
His color was completely back now. All traces of the cold, the damp, the too-pale quality of him in the restaurant doorway now gone. He looked warm and clean and settled, his hair going softly in whatever direction it pleased, the thermal top you'd bought him fitting in all the right places.
You had picked that top out. You remembered the afternoon. You were standing in the men's section last November, your phone in hand with his measurements in the notes app, deliberating over thickness and fabric with more focus than the task probably required. You'd bought two. He hadn't commented on where they came from. He just started wearing them, which was its own kind of answer.
Joshua turned his head and looked at you.
"What?" you said.
"Nothing." He turned back to the ceiling. "You're looking at me."
"I'm allowed to look at you."
He smiled his slow, private smile. "I said that last time."
"That you did.”
A short comfortable silence.
"Thank you," he said after a while.
You looked at him and hummed.
"Thank you for the tea." A beat. "The hand warmer. The towel." He paused. "The socks."
You glanced down. He'd put them on at some point while you'd been repositioning on the bed. You hadn't seen him do it.
"You saw the socks," you said.
"I see most things," he said, which was almost word-for-word what you'd said to him earlier in the evening and you shook your head at the ceiling and heard him breathe a quiet laugh.
After a while, you reached out and pressed your hand to his cheek.
Joshua stilled the way he had in the entryway of the restaurant, that same complete and immediate stillness. His eyes stayed on yours.
He’s still warm. Properly now, all the way through, the chill is entirely gone. You let your palm rest there for a moment.
He covered your hand with his and held it there. His eyes found yours and stayed and whatever was in them was entirely unguarded, soft and full, and completely his.
You thought, not for the first time, that he had one of the most honest faces you'd ever encountered. Right now, what was in him was something very certain. It sat in your chest, reassuring and settled.
"Your hair's still a bit damp," you said.
"It is." He didn't move.
"You'll be cold again."
"I have the socks," he said, gravely.
"The socks aren't on your head, Joshua."
"I trust the socks."
You let out a breath that was halfway to a laugh and reached for the towel. He caught your hand before you could.
"In a minute," he said.
You looked at him.
He looked back. The quiet certain thing is still in his face, fully.
"Just—" He didn't finish the sentence. He just kept hold of your hand loosely, his thumb moving once across your knuckles. The same way you'd move your thumbs across his at the counter. You wondered if he knew he was doing it.
"Okay," you said. "In a minute."
The room had gone quiet around you both.
Outside, the rain had eased. The pitter-patter is lighter now and less insistent than it had been. More like company than weather.
Joshua thought about the evening. The tea was already waiting. The hand warmer cracked and ready before he'd asked. The small oh when you saw his hands. The umbrella you'd had the whole time.
Small things, each of them. Together, they were everything.
She took care of me, he thought.
He turned his head on the pillow.
You were looking out the window. The rain. The strand of hair is still against your cheek. He didn't mention it. Just looked at you in the low, quiet dark and let himself be still.
I walked in from the rain, he thought, and she was already there.
Joshua couldn’t help himself. He reached over and tucked the strand of hair back from your cheek. You turned toward him with soft eyes and let him.
"I'm glad I came to you tonight," he said.
You were quiet for a moment. "Me too."
He kissed you gently. You made a small, soft sound against it and your hand found his.
When he pulled back, he pressed his forehead to yours.
summary: it's a bad night for rain and joshua has neither a proper jacket nor the sense to text you first. you've already put the kettle on.
genre: fluff, established relationship, domestic fluff, slice of life
additional tags: bickering, just two idiots in love, slow burn energy but they're already together 🙄, there's no angst and therefore, no explicit warnings. all that's in here is warmth, coziness, and love in small gestures.
word count: 7.2k
a/n: brought to you by that one joshua video where he got so soaked under the rain during an encore concert and his makeup was apparently waterproof 🧎🏻♀️i wrote this on the plane so there might/will be mistakes, but at least my seat mate didn't think i was weird. maybe.
i'll see you all again in june, my loves 💕 i will check in now and then for asks and messages, please don't hesitate to yap! for those who sent asks i haven't answered yet, i will get to them soon. i promise i'm not ignoring you 🌸
The rain had started sometime around four. By six it had made up its mind about it.
It came down in the particular determined way of autumn rain: relentless and the kind that didn't announce itself so much on weather apps or with thunder but it simply arrived and stayed. The more it poured, the more it soaked through things quietly. The streets reflected rain water because of the many neon lights of stores and buildings. Umbrellas turned inside out on corners. People walked with their chins down and their shoulders up, moving fast, pretending that if they moved fast enough they wouldn’t get soaked.
You'd been watching it from the window of the restaurant for the better part of an hour.
The last table had cleared out just after five-thirty, earlier than usual, driven home by the weather. You'd let your last server go at quarter to six because there was no point keeping her in on a night like this and you finished closing up alone. The chairs were up on the tables. The floor was mopped. The till was counted and the lights in the dining room were off except for the warm one above the counter where you'd been doing paperwork and audits while you waited.
This was the routine: Joshua finished work, walked over, and you walked home together. It was not a long walk. In good weather it was pleasant; ten minutes through the residential side streets, past the little park with the playground. You'd been doing it for three years now, which meant you'd walked it in every kind of weather and had opinions about which season did it best.
Tonight the weather had disrupted that routine because Joshua was supposed to finish at five-thirty.
At six-fifteen you got a message.
joshua 🤍: running a bit late sweetheart, leaving now
joshua 🤍: don't go anywhere please i'll come to you
joshua 🤍: is the restaurant locked up
you: I haven't locked the front yet. Are you okay? It's really coming down out there.
A pause. Three dots appearing and disappearing.
joshua 🤍: i'm fine! almost there
You looked at the window. The rain had not calmed down.
You put the kettle on.
You heard the door before you saw him. The little bell above the restaurant entrance gave a sound that cut through the quiet of the empty restaurant and you looked up from your paperwork at the counter and there he was.
He was—you stood up immediately.
Joshua was soaked through.
He wasn’t caught-in-the-rain damp. Definitely not slightly-wet-jacket damp. Through. His hair was flattened against his head, darker than its usual color with the weight of the water in it. His jacket wasn’t a proper rain jacket, it never is a proper rain jacket, this was a recurring issue you’ve had with him. Joshua was scanning the room with that slightly dazed look of someone who had just come in from something and hadn't quite made the transition yet and when his eyes found you across the room his expression shifted to that of relief, warmth, and something that moved through his face like a quiet exhale.
You were already moving toward him.
He started to say something—your name maybe, or hi, I'm okay, sorry—but you didn't let him.
"Come here," you said. "Come here, right now, Joshua."
Up close it was worse. His hair was dripping at the ends. There was a raindrop tracking down the line of his jaw. His eyelashes were wet. You could see, even in the low light of the entrance, that his lips had gone a shade too pale.
"How long were you walking?" you demanded.
"It wasn't—"
"How long."
He did a small, slightly guilty calculation behind his eyes. "Maybe twenty minutes."
"Joshua."
"I couldn't get a cab. Everything was full and the taxi app was—" He made a gesture with his hand that indicated something had gone wrong with technology and he had decided to solve the problem with his body, which was, you were coming to understand, a recurring approach as well. "I figured it was just a short walk."
"It's a twenty minute walk."
"In good weather it's ten."
"It's not good weather."
"You’re right about that."
"You should have called me."
"What were you going to do?"
"I would have figured something out."
"Sweetheart, you were closing up. And our car is in the shop."
"I was done closing up. This place has been closed since six." You took his arm. "Come and sit down. I'll get you tea."
You brought him to the stool at the far end of the counter. It's the one closest to the radiator that ran along the back wall, chunky and reliable, the kind that actually generated heat. You'd been grateful for it all evening while you did the close. You were more grateful now.
You took his jacket without asking. It was heavy with water and you brought it to the hook inside the kitchen door where the staff coats usually hung and you pressed your fingers to the inner lining and even that was damp.
When you came back he was sitting with his hands wrapped around the mug you'd left for him on the counter. It was tea you'd made when you put the kettle on before he arrived because you knew him and he was looking through the front window at the rain with an expression that had some peace in it now. The look of a person who has been out in something and is no longer out in it.
You came around the counter and stood across from him. You looked at him.
His cheeks had gone slightly pink from the cold-to-warm transition, the way they did, and his hair was still damp and beginning to dry in directions it didn't usually go and he looked, honestly, a little like something that had been left out by accident.
"You look so pretty," he said.
You crossed your arms and ignored what he just said because you’re supposed to be mad. "Are you actually okay?"
"I'm warm now." He lifted the mug slightly. "This was exactly right. How did you know I'd want tea?"
"Because you always want tea when you're cold." You watched him. "You're shivering."
"Barely."
"Your shoulders are doing the thing."
He looked at his shoulders as if checking for the thing. "I'm fine, love."
"You're not not fine. But you're also not completely fine."
He smiled at that—his crooked one, the one that meant you'd said something he found quietly funny. "That's a precise diagnosis."
"I’ve been dating you for the past three years." You reached for your bag on the hook behind the counter, the one you'd had there all evening alongside the restaurant copy of the keys, and began to rummage inside it. "I have hand warmers in here somewhere. I always carry them in autumn so before you say anything—"
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You were going to say it was excessive."
"I was going to say it was thoughtful. I’ve been dating you for the past three years, too. In love with you for much longer than that, really."
You paused in your rummaging to look at him briefly. He raised his mug.
"I love you," he declared with a sly smile.
You huffed, muttered, “you’re so annoying” to the air, and went back to rummaging inside your bag.
You found one. A single-use hand warmer, the kind you snap and shake, still in its foil sleeve. You'd had it at the bottom of the bag since you'd bought a small packet of them at the start of October and distributed them throughout your different bags and jacket pockets the way some people layered a home with candles or safety pins: quietly, preparedly, just in case.
You cracked it between your hands, shook it, felt the gentle chemistry of it beginning to work.
"Give me your hands," you said.
Joshua set the mug down and held them out across the counter.
You looked at them and your breath caught slightly.
His hands—the knuckles, the backs of them, the edges where the wind and the cold had really gotten in—were red. It’s not the healthy pink of someone who'd been in the warm for a while. It’s the kind of red that comes from sustained cold. His fingertips especially, the color deepening there and when you turned his hands over his palms were cold enough that you felt it through your own.
"Oh," you said. The word came out small.
"It's fine—"
Your eyes came up to him and he stopped because of what was in them—something immediate and wordless, the expression of someone who hadn't been expecting to feel as much as they suddenly felt.
"They're so cold," you said.
"I really am okay," he said gently, trying to reassure you.
You pressed your lips together and looked back down at his hands. You placed the warming pack against his palms first, folding his fingers around it, and then closed both of your hands around the outside, sandwiching the warmth in, your hands over his, squeezing slowly.
Joshua watched you do this.
"You should have texted me," you said to his hands because you were looking at them. Your tone of voice had changed a bit: careful and a little tight. It’s the voice you use when you are being practical instead of saying what you mean. "I know the taxi app wasn't working but you could have texted me and I would have come to the door with an umbrella. You could have waited under the awning wherever you were and there's the big one out front—you could have stood there and I would have come to you—"
"I didn't want you standing in the rain on my account."
"I wouldn't have been standing in the rain, I would have been under the awning which is why most buildings have awnings, Joshua—"
"You'd been on your feet all day."
You looked up at him. He was looking at you steadily, his hands still between yours, the hand warmer doing its slow work.
"That's very sweet," you said after a moment, "and also infuriating."
"I know." He didn't sound particularly sorry. "It could be both things."
You exhaled through your nose and looked back down. Then you started rubbing your thumbs slowly over the backs of his hands, over the red knuckles, working warmth in. He stayed very still and let you.
"You don't have a proper rain jacket," you said.
"I have a jacket."
"A jacket is not a rain jacket. A rain jacket repels water. Your jacket absorbed water like it was gladly enthusiastic about it."
The corner of his mouth turned up. "I'll note that for next time."
"Joshua." You said his name with a kind of exasperated tenderness that didn't quite manage to be the scolding you'd intended. "The weather’s getting cold now. You can't just walk over here in the rain with no hood and a jacket that's basically more decorative than—"
"It's a nice jacket."
"It's a nice jacket, yes, and now it's soaking wet on a hook in my kitchen and you're sitting here with red hands because you walked twenty minutes in the rain—" You stopped and steadied yourself. "I'm not—I know you're fine. I know it's just a bit of cold and rain. I just—"
You didn't finish the sentence. Joshua waited.
"I just saw your hands," you said at last.
Joshua looked at you for a long moment. At the bent angle of your head, the careful movement of your thumbs across his knuckles, the slight tension in your expression that you hadn't entirely been able to put down since he walked through the door.
His chest did something. Something warm and unasked for and it’s taking up exactly as much space as it needed.
You cared. That was the thing. You just genuinely, quietly cared about what happened to his hands. You'd had a hand warmer in your bag since October. You'd put the kettle on before he arrived because you knew he'd want tea. You'd looked at his hands and made a small sound and not been able to hide what it meant to you.
He thought of a word he'd been circling for a while without landing on it.
Lucky. He thought: I am so lucky.
"Does that feel better?" you asked, still looking at his hands.
He turned one of them over, gently, beneath yours. His fingers curled up and held yours loosely. You stilled.
"Much better," he said.
You looked up. He was looking at you with that expression: the one you'd called the thing, in the entrance, the soft and present and completely undisguised one that he wore when he wasn't trying to be anything but exactly what he was.
"You're doing the thing," you said.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're looking at me."
"You’re the love of my life. I'm allowed to look at you, aren’t I?"
"Not like that when I'm trying to be annoyed at you."
"Are you still annoyed at me?"
A pause. You looked at your joined hands.
"A little," you said.
He brought your hand up and pressed his lips to your knuckles. Just because. You closed your eyes for exactly one second.
"That's not fair," you said.
"I'm warming up," he said innocently. "You said I was cold."
"I said your hands were cold, not—" You made a small, helpless sound and shook your head and the residual annoyance finished dissolving. He could see it go. "You're impossible."
"But I’m warm now."
You looked at him.
"Getting there," you whispered and squeezed his hands. "You’re getting there."
You made Joshua stay until he'd had a second cup.
You'd moved around from behind the counter while he wasn't paying attention, pulled down the stool beside him and settled onto it, close to the radiator, close to him. You told yourself it was so you could keep an eye on whether he was still shivering. He let you tell yourself that.
You'd also given him your scarf.
It had happened somewhat naturally. You'd reach behind you for your jacket off the hook, the motion pulling the scarf loose and you'd looked at it and looked at him and simply handed it over. It was a soft scarf, cream-colored, slightly oversized in the way you liked your scarves. He'd wrapped it once around without comment and you'd looked at it, adjusted it slightly, and then looked away.
He was wearing your scarf and drinking his second tea and the rain was still doing its thing against the front window and you were beside him with your own drink and the kind of quiet that settled when the urgency of something had passed and what was left was just warmth. The restaurant felt different like this: chairs up, lights low, just the two of you at the counter with the radiator ticking beside you. Smaller. More like a room than a business.
Joshua looked at you.
Your elbow was on the counter. You were watching the rain with the same expression you'd probably had all evening: attentive, relaxed, comfortable. A strand of hair had come down against your cheek and you hadn't pushed it back, either hadn't noticed or didn't mind. He tucked it behind your ear and you look at him with a smile, a quiet thank you.
A quiet I love you.
You've had hand warmers in your bag in October. You'd put the kettle on before he arrived. You'd taken one look at his hands and your face had done something unguarded and worried and entirely real, in your own restaurant, at the end of a full day on your feet, while he dripped water onto your clean floor.
He turned back to the window.
Outside, the rain went on, relentless, doing what autumn rain did. He was on the right side of it now, the warm side, with a scarf that smelled like you and his hands almost entirely back to their usual color and a second cup of tea he hadn't had to ask for.
He thought: I walked twenty minutes in the rain and this is where I ended up.
He thought: I would do it again.
You left when you'd run out of reasons to stay: the tea finished, the paperwork done, the rain outside at least became consistent enough to plan around.
You gathered your things with the efficient, automatic energy of someone who had closed this place enough times to do it in the dark. Bag. Keys. Phone. You did a last pass through the kitchen out of habit, checking the things you'd already checked.
Joshua quietly observes you as he retrieves his jacket from the hook in the kitchen.
You appeared at his shoulder, inspected it, made a quiet sound.
"Still damp," you said.
"I'll survive."
"You can wear it open. You have your scarf." You said it like this was a plan you'd already made.
"Your scarf."
"Temporarily yours." You reached up and adjusted the fold of it—a small, tucking gesture, securing it slightly against his neck, your fingers quick and light. Then you straightened and looked at him. Satisfied, apparently.
He did up the buttons on his jacket. You looped your bag across your body. You turned the last light off and for a moment the restaurant was dark around you both, just the soft orange of the streetlight coming through the front window and the sound of the rain. Then you unlocked the front door and pushed it open.
At the threshold, you opened your umbrella and held it over both of you the moment you stepped outside.
He looked at it. Then looked at you.
"You had that the whole time," he said.
"Yes."
"You had an umbrella the whole time."
"I did."
"I walked twenty minutes in the rain—"
"Because you didn't text me." You said it pleasantly and pulled the door shut behind you, checking the lock. "Come on. Let's go home."
Joshua stood outside the restaurant for precisely one second in the rain, under the umbrella you were holding at an angle to cover him, looking at you.
You glanced back.
"Joshua."
He caught up.
You held the umbrella between you, tilted slightly toward him because he was taller and you'd made this adjustment without remarking on it. He walked close enough that it worked. The rain tapped steadily on the fabric above you.
He gently took the umbrella from you. Then he put his arms around you so you can both be under the umbrella.
You walked.
The streets were quieter now. Puddles reflected the orange of the streetlights. His jacket was still slightly damp at the sleeves but the scarf was warm and your body was warm and you were walking in the same direction and the distance was not far. Ten minutes in weather like this. You'd walked it in worse.
Joshua didn't say anything for a while. Neither did you. After a stretch of comfortable quiet, you said: "Next time, text me."
"Next time," he agreed.
"I mean it."
"I know you do."
A pause.
"I had another hand warmer," you said. "In the other pocket. So."
He looked at you. You were looking straight ahead, face neutral, but something at the corner of your mouth gave you away.
"So…" he repeated.
"So I was prepared."
"You're always prepared."
"One of us has to be."
Joshua pressed a kiss to the side of your head, walking on without breaking stride. You turned your head and looked at him and then looked forward again and the corner of your mouth finished doing what it had been trying to do.
The building came into view. Above you, the rain tapped on.
Joshua held the door and you went in ahead of him. The warmth of the entrance hall came up around you both and he thought—standing there in your scarf, hands warm, the cold fully behind him—
There is nowhere I would rather have ended up.
He pulled the door shut against the rain. The elevator was slow. It always was. The building had the particular character of somewhere that had been standing long enough to have opinions about being rushed and the elevator made this known through a leisurely ascent that Joshua had stopped being impatient about months ago. You stood inside it in companionable quiet, your umbrella dripping a small patient puddle on the floor, his jacket still carrying the faint smell of rain. Joshua’s hand was now in yours.
You were looking at the numbers above the door. He was looking at you.
You had a habit, in elevators, of watching the floor indicator. He'd noticed this early on and had never mentioned it. He just liked knowing it was there—one of the small, specific things that were only visible if you were paying the right kind of attention.
The elevator doors finally opened.
Inside, you went immediately into the familiar choreography of arriving: lights on, bag on the hook, umbrella stood in the little tray by the door. Joshua was shrugging out of his jacket when you turned around and looked at him properly in the light.
Under the warm overhead glow of the entryway, the state of him was somewhat more apparent than it had been in the soft light of the restaurant. His hair had dried in transit but unevenly and there was still a chill coming off him that you could feel when you stepped close.
You put the back of your hand against his cheek.
He stilled.
Your expression went the particular way it went when you were confirming something you'd already suspected.
"You're still cold," you said.
"I'm warmer than I was."
"That's a very low bar." You took his jacket from him, turned it in your hands, pressed your fingers to the lining the same way you had at the restaurant hook. Still damp at the seams. You draped it over the back of a chair where it could breathe and turned back to him. "Okay," you said with the quiet decisiveness of someone who has made a plan. "Shower."
He blinked. "I'm fine—"
"Joshua." You said it gently but in the particular register that meant the discussion portion was concluding. "You walked twenty minutes in the cold rain and you're still cold and your jacket is still damp and I can feel it coming off you from here." You crossed your arms. "Hot shower. Now. It'll warm you up properly."
Joshua considered you.
He had, over time, developed a fairly accurate internal map of the difference between when you were open to a gentle counter-argument and when you had already reached a conclusion and were offering him the courtesy of framing it as a conversation. This was clearly the latter. The particular set of your expression, the arms, the now at the end; all of it indicated that the correct move was to agree and not make you repeat yourself.
Joshua knew this because he has been loving you for three years, maybe more. He also couldn't quite help himself.
He tilted his head at you, something leisurely and playful entering his expression. "You could always join me," he said. "Speed things up. Conserve water."
You stared at him.
He maintained eye contact with the peaceful composure of a man who had made a reasonable practical suggestion.
"Conservation," you said flatly.
"We’re being environmentally responsible. Doing our civic duty with the SDGs and all that."
"Joshua Hong."
"It was just a thought."
"It was not just a thought, it was —" You put both hands on his chest, flat-palmed, and pushed, not hard, barely enough to rock him back an inch.
He caught one of them.
Joshua wasn’t resisting the push. He was already going, already moving back, but his hand came up and closed around yours with an easy certainty and he lifted it and pressed his lips to your knuckles, his eyes on yours the whole time. He’s warm. Amused. Completely unbothered. The corner of his mouth curved up against your hand.
You stared at him.
He let go, still smiling, and went.
"Go," you said to his retreating back, a beat too late to be authoritative. "Shower. Now. By yourself. Like a normal person."
Joshua was already moving down the hall and he looked back once over his shoulder with a grin that you met with a look of supreme composure, eyebrows raised, pointing very firmly toward the bathroom.
He went.
You stood in the hallway for a moment after the bathroom door clicked shut. Listened to the sound of the water beginning to run.
Then you pressed your lips together and looked at the ceiling briefly and smiled. The full one, the one you didn't always let people see, the one that took over your face somewhat against your will. You stayed very still and let it happen and then it passed and you straightened and went to find him something warm to change into.
You were not flushed. Your face was just warm from the—the indoor heating was quite high, actually. The radiators in this building ran hot. That was all.
You pulled open his side of the wardrobe.
You found his softest things. The grey sweatpants that had been washed enough times to lose all their structure in the best possible way and the long-sleeved thermal top you'd personally bought him last November after observing that his sleepwear choices did not account for winter adequately. You folded them on the end of the bed. Added socks: the thick ones, the ones with the ribbed cuff because his feet were probably cold too.
You went to the bathroom cupboard and got the big towel. You put this and his clothes on the heated rail just outside the shower so it would be warm. Then you pulled the duvet back on your side of the bed and settled against the headboard with your knees up and your phone in hand and tried to look like you hadn't just spent five minutes making sure everything was exactly right.
The shower ran for a good while. You could hear it through the wall. You let yourself feel the quiet satisfaction of that. He was warming up. He was on the other side of the wall standing in heat and steam and by the time he came out the cold would be entirely gone and you would not have to feel the chill of him anymore.
You checked your phone. Answered a message you'd been ignoring. Put it down. Picked up the towel you'd brought in and folded it across your lap.
When Joshua came out, he came out in a cloud of warm air and the smell of the soap he used—something clean and faintly woodsy—and he was wearing the grey sweatpants you'd left out and the thermal top and he was visibly, entirely warm. Color back in his face. Shoulders dropped from wherever they'd been. The tension of the cold and the evening are fully gone.
He looked at you on the bed and at the towel across your lap. Something in his expression did a quiet thing.
"Come here," you said.
He came to you without argument.
He settled on the bed in front of you, cross-legged, facing away. He understands without instruction. You shifted forward slightly, moving the towel, and brought it up to his hair.
Your hands were gentle. You didn't rush it. You pressed the towel against his head first, cupping the shape of it through the fabric, absorbing the water in sections—the top first, then the back, working down. He sat quietly under it. His hands rested in his lap and he was very still, the way a person went still when someone was doing something kind to them and they didn't want to disturb it.
You rubbed in slow circles at the back where his hair was thickest. He exhaled.
"Better?" you asked.
"Mm." The sound he made was less a word than a general affirmation of everything. You felt the small vibration of it through your hands.
You worked toward the sides, gentling your touch where you knew he was sensitive and he tipped his head incrementally toward the pressure without seeming to realize he was doing it. This small involuntary thing, the trust of it, moved through your chest in a way you didn't examine too closely. Just noted, quietly, and kept on.
"You scared me a little," you said after a while. Conversationally, carefully. "When you walked in."
He was quiet for a moment.
"I know," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize. Just—" You lifted the towel and resettled it at the crown of his head. "Text me. That's all. Just text me."
"I didn't want you to worry."
"I know that. But I worry more not knowing. So the text actually helps." You kept your hands moving. "And I was already done with the close. I could have come to the door. I could have met you halfway. I could have —"
"I know." He said it softly. "I know. I'll text next time."
"You keep saying next time like there's going to be a next time."
"There's always going to be a next time. I'm not built for weather planning."
"You are built for weather planning. You just choose not to do it."
He made a sound that was not quite agreement but was not disagreement either. You pulled the towel away and looked at his hair. Still damp but no longer dripping. You set the towel to one side and lifted your hands to his hair directly, fingers spreading through it gently, helping it along. You weren’t styling it, just moving the warmth through, smoothing it back from his forehead. He made a sound you weren't sure he knew he'd made.
You smiled where he couldn't see it.
"You know," you said, keeping your voice light, "a rain jacket isn't even an extravagant purchase. It's a practical item. They sell them everywhere. I've seen them in places that also sell—I don't know, batteries and fizzy drinks. They're not—"
He turned around.
It wasn’t a quick shift. He just turned, the unhurried pivot of someone who had made a decision and before you'd quite finished processing the shift you found him facing you properly, close, your hand still half-raised from his hair. His expression was warm and quiet and very present, his eyes finding yours with that kind of attention that always made you feel, unreasonably, like you were the only thing in the room worth looking at.
"Joshua, I'm not yet done—" you started.
"I know," he said.
And then he kissed you.
It wasn't rushed. That was the first thing. The kiss was not rushed at all, which somehow made it more. His hand came up first, cupping the side of your face with a care that was almost unbearable, his thumb settling at the curve of your cheekbone and then he leaned in and his lips met yours slowly like he'd been thinking about doing exactly this and had decided to do it properly.
You went still for exactly one breath.
Then you were kissing him back and your raised hand had found the front of his thermal top and was holding it loosely as if you needed something to do with the feeling that had arrived without warning in the center of your chest.
His mouth was warm. Warm from the shower, warm from the tea, warm in that specific Joshua way that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the fact that it was him, that he kissed you like you were something he finally found, like he had all the time in the world and had chosen to spend it here. His other hand came to rest at the side of your neck, his thumb tracing a slow line along your jaw.
The towel slid off your lap somewhere. Neither of you noticed.
The rain outside made its soft sound against the glass. The lamp threw its warm small light. You were aware, faintly, of the weight of the evening behind you: the cold of his hands in yours at the counter, the walk home, the umbrella, the whole long accumulation of small, careful things, and all of it seemed to press forward into this moment, into the steady warmth of him, his hand gentle on your face, his presence so certain.
Joshua pulled back slowly, just enough. His forehead stayed close, almost touching yours, his hand still cradling your cheek. His eyes opened and found yours and the expression in them was the completely unguarded one.
You were aware your hand was still balled lightly in the front of his shirt.
"You…" you whispered and had to stop and collect yourself, "...are doing that on purpose."
Joshua tilted his head to the side, the corner of his mouth lifting as he looked at you with those ridiculous, beautiful eyes of his. "Doing what?"
"That." You loosened your grip on his shirt, smoothed the fabric with your palm, not quite meeting his eyes yet. "Kissing me when I was making a valid point."
"You were making several valid points, sweetheart."
"I know I was. I had more to make."
"You did." There was a smile in his voice. "You were going to tell me about the rain jacket."
"I was going to tell you that rain jackets are available in most high-street shops for a very reasonable—" You finally looked up. He was watching you with that easygoing smile, the one that reached his eyes and it made the rest of the sentence harder to think about. "You can't just do that," you said. "You can't just kiss me in the middle of a perfectly reasonable point and expect me to—"
Joshua leaned in just slightly. "To what?"
"To not lose my—" You exhaled through your nose. "You know what you're doing."
"I really don't," he said in a tone that indicated he really did.
"You walked twenty minutes in the rain," you said, trying to maintain composure, "without a proper jacket, without texting me, without any apparent—"
He leaned in a little more.
You kept yapping, refusing to acknowledge what he was trying to do. "—regard for the fact that it was cold and that you were wearing a jacket that is more fashionable than functional and that I was—"
Closer. Joshua’s eyes were soft and solely fixed on yours with the kind of attention that made it very difficult to remember what you were saying.
"—I was right there, I was ten minutes away, you could have just—"
Closer still. You could feel the warmth of him now, the slight tilt of his head, the way his gaze had dropped—just briefly, just once—and come back up.
"Joshua." It was a warning. But a weak one.
"Mm." Not quite an answer. His eyes were still fixed on you and you’re now finding it hard to breathe properly.
"I'm being serious."
"I know you are," he whispered. And he was. That was the thing—the teasing had died out somewhere in the last few inches. His expression had settled into something that wasn't a game anymore, something that was simply and directly him, present and warm. His hand came up to your face again, the same as before, gentle and sure.
You had run entirely out of sentences.
Joshua kissed you again.
This one was softer than the first. His hand hadn't moved from your cheek and when he kissed you this time there was something in it that was less I've decided and more here, let me just—as if the first kiss had been the intention and this one was the elaboration. His lips moved gently against yours, lingering, and you felt yourself exhale into it, felt the last tense thread of the evening's worry loosen and let go.
You didn't hold his shirt this time.
You brought your hand up to his jaw instead and his stubble was a familiar texture under your fingers and you could feel the warmth of his skin all the way through now. There was no more trace of the cold, no echo of the rain, just him, entirely and properly warm, your hand against his face the mirror of what you'd done in the entryway except now he was leaning into it, his cheek pressing gently into your palm.
He took his time. So did you.
When the kiss ended, it ended the way these things usually do between you both—Joshua pulled back slowly. The space between you stayed small. Neither of you did anything about that.
You spoke first.
"That's not fair," you said. Your voice came out quieter than you'd intended.
Joshua smiled. This time, his smile was something slower and more private.
"You had a hand warmer in your bag since October," he said. His thumb moved once along your cheekbone. "You put the kettle on before I even got there. You looked at my hands and—" He paused, his eyes focusing on you.
"You look at me like I'm worth looking after."
You were quiet.
"I just—" He stopped. Started again, more carefully. "I know you were scared when I walked in. I know I should have texted, should have waited, should have—" His hand was still on your face, warm and steady. "But I walked in there cold and wet and you were already moving toward me. You didn't even think about it. You just came."
He looked at you intently.
"You always just come."
The rain tapped softly against the window. You didn't say anything for a moment. You were aware of your hand still resting against his jaw, of the warmth between you.
"You're not being fair," you said again but it came out soft and without any real complaint left in it.
"I know that too," he said. He turned his head slightly and pressed his lips to the inside of your wrist. "I promise I’ll get the rain jacket."
You let out a breath that went more than halfway to a laugh. "You'd better."
"You can come with me. Make sure I get the right one."
"I will absolutely be there."
"I know you will." Joshua said it like it was the best thing he knew.
"You can lie down," you said. "If you want."
Joshua rearranged himself, settling back against the pillows with an ease that suggested every part of him had wanted to do exactly this for the last several hours. You moved with him, resettling on your own side, angling toward him.
He looked at the ceiling for a moment. You looked at the side of his face.
His color was completely back now. All traces of the cold, the damp, the too-pale quality of him in the restaurant doorway now gone. He looked warm and clean and settled, his hair going softly in whatever direction it pleased, the thermal top you'd bought him fitting in all the right places.
You had picked that top out. You remembered the afternoon. You were standing in the men's section last November, your phone in hand with his measurements in the notes app, deliberating over thickness and fabric with more focus than the task probably required. You'd bought two. He hadn't commented on where they came from. He just started wearing them, which was its own kind of answer.
Joshua turned his head and looked at you.
"What?" you said.
"Nothing." He turned back to the ceiling. "You're looking at me."
"I'm allowed to look at you."
He smiled his slow, private smile. "I said that last time."
"That you did.”
A short comfortable silence.
"Thank you," he said after a while.
You looked at him and hummed.
"Thank you for the tea." A beat. "The hand warmer. The towel." He paused. "The socks."
You glanced down. He'd put them on at some point while you'd been repositioning on the bed. You hadn't seen him do it.
"You saw the socks," you said.
"I see most things," he said, which was almost word-for-word what you'd said to him earlier in the evening and you shook your head at the ceiling and heard him breathe a quiet laugh.
After a while, you reached out and pressed your hand to his cheek.
Joshua stilled the way he had in the entryway of the restaurant, that same complete and immediate stillness. His eyes stayed on yours.
He’s still warm. Properly now, all the way through, the chill is entirely gone. You let your palm rest there for a moment.
He covered your hand with his and held it there. His eyes found yours and stayed and whatever was in them was entirely unguarded, soft and full, and completely his.
You thought, not for the first time, that he had one of the most honest faces you'd ever encountered. Right now, what was in him was something very certain. It sat in your chest, reassuring and settled.
"Your hair's still a bit damp," you said.
"It is." He didn't move.
"You'll be cold again."
"I have the socks," he said, gravely.
"The socks aren't on your head, Joshua."
"I trust the socks."
You let out a breath that was halfway to a laugh and reached for the towel. He caught your hand before you could.
"In a minute," he said.
You looked at him.
He looked back. The quiet certain thing is still in his face, fully.
"Just—" He didn't finish the sentence. He just kept hold of your hand loosely, his thumb moving once across your knuckles. The same way you'd move your thumbs across his at the counter. You wondered if he knew he was doing it.
"Okay," you said. "In a minute."
The room had gone quiet around you both.
Outside, the rain had eased. The pitter-patter is lighter now and less insistent than it had been. More like company than weather.
Joshua thought about the evening. The tea was already waiting. The hand warmer cracked and ready before he'd asked. The small oh when you saw his hands. The umbrella you'd had the whole time.
Small things, each of them. Together, they were everything.
She took care of me, he thought.
He turned his head on the pillow.
You were looking out the window. The rain. The strand of hair is still against your cheek. He didn't mention it. Just looked at you in the low, quiet dark and let himself be still.
I walked in from the rain, he thought, and she was already there.
Joshua couldn’t help himself. He reached over and tucked the strand of hair back from your cheek. You turned toward him with soft eyes and let him.
"I'm glad I came to you tonight," he said.
You were quiet for a moment. "Me too."
He kissed you gently. You made a small, soft sound against it and your hand found his.
When he pulled back, he pressed his forehead to yours.
i’m getting my wisdom teeth pulled tomorrow and i’m reading your fics to cope with how nervous i am😭😭😭(its working cause you’re one of my fav writers on tumblr🫶)
oh nooo 😭 ok i’m honored my fics are apparently pre-wisdom-teeth emotional support material lol. genuinely that means so much, especially you calling me one of your faves 🩷
good luck tomorrow, sweet anonie!! hoping it goes super smoothly and you’re rewarded with pain meds, mashed potatoes, and a dramatic post-anesthesia update in my inbox after 😭
hey everyone! have we all seen that viral joshua video of him asking carats if he could borrow their phone's mirror cam or whatever during their encore con? he looked so handsome and unreal, right? if you haven't yet, what are you doing ksksks
well i'm traveling in 24 hours but i just wanted to let you know that i started writing a scenario related to that because my brain won't stop thinking about it. if i don't fall asleep on the plane, i might just start writing the rest and post it by the time i come home. my seat mate on the plane will probably think i'm weird and silly if they happen to snoop and read my draft ksksks that's how spur of the moment this story is going to be 🩷
heyy are minors allowed to read/interact with your fics? esp twice fallen bc i read the synopsis and it seemed soo interesting 🙏🏼
thank you for asking! i want to be honest with you: twice fallen will include mature content in future chapters, including intimate scenes between the main characters. while i'll always provide clear warnings at the start of each chapter, i can't control who reads my work or guarantee a completely 'safe' reading experience for everyone.
as for my other fics, there are clear warnings in them already. i kindly ask any reader of mine to read them carefully. the reason why i do not explicitly say "minors please do not interact" in every fic is because it's assumed that minors aren't supposed to engage in online content that is considered inappropriate/explicit/mature. just because i do not indicate that warning in any of my stories does not mean i am giving implied permission for minors to engage with any of them. i trust my readers to know their own boundaries and what they can and cannot tolerate. i'm not here to police anyone as we all have personal autonomy and agency.
if sensitive content makes you uncomfortable, it might be best to step back from twice fallen. there's no shame in that at all. your comfort matters more than any fic. but if you choose to keep reading, just know the warnings will be there to help you make informed choices about what you engage with.
summary: there is a version of this story that starts the day you helped a stranger in a pharmacy and thought nothing of it. that version belongs to him. yours starts later: a bus stop in april, a shared route home, a man who remembers things you've long forgotten and loves you in the specific language of going back to the store twice.
joshua stays. in every sense of the word.
genre: strangers to lovers, mutual pining, slow burn, light angst, hurt/comfort, fluff, slice of life
additional tags & warnings: mentions of illness, grief, caretaking roles, brief mention of hospitals here and there, some melancholy but it isn't heavy (at least i don't think it is)
word count: 12.9k
a/n: this one took a long time to feel right but i'm so glad i let it. i wanted to write joshua the way i see him: quiet, never performing warmth, just genuinely good in a way that sneaks up on you. he happened to be my bias wrecker this way because my very first bias was actually jihoon 🩷 i also wanted to write a reader who isn't defined by her softness, but by her endurance. someone who has been holding things together for so long that being held feels almost foreign. her learning to receive care felt just as important to me as the love story itself.
if you are someone who takes care of others and forgets to let anyone take care of you; this one is for you.
i also wanted to thank everyone who sent me their well wishes since i last posted! health-wise, i am slowly recovering! this one shot will be my last for a short while. i honestly feel like this isn't my best work, but i still wanted to give my lovely readers something small and soft before i go. thank you for waiting all this time. 🩷
sending love to my taglist 💐 @deathby-lost @chocolate-cake-enthusiast
spring: encountering
The first thing Joshua Hong notices about Seoul is that it smells like something he can't name.
It isn't unpleasant, not really. It's layered the way old cities tend to be, like the air itself has collected memory. Street food and exhaust and rain-damp concrete and something floral underneath all of it. He stands outside Incheon Airport with his single large luggage and his carry-on backpack and his completely inadequate Korean. He breathes it in like he's trying to recognize it.
He doesn't. At least not yet.
He takes the train into the city alone, watching the Han River appear and then stretch wide and silver outside the window and he feels the particular loneliness of arriving somewhere new. He chose this: the alone part. His friends had offered to come, his mom had offered to come, and he'd said no to all of them gently and without fully being able to explain why. This was something he needed to do on his own. He needed to be no one's companion, no one's obligation, no one's something to worry about. He needed to just be here.
He is here because of her.
His halmoni—his grandmother—passed in January. She passed quietly, the way she had apparently lived: without fuss, without demanding anything of anyone. He had never met her in person. He'd grown up in Los Angeles knowing she existed the way you know a star exists: present, distant, real, maybe unreachable. His mother had left South Korea before Joshua was born and the distance had calcified slowly over years into something neither of them had known how to undo. Phone calls on holidays. Photographs sent in envelopes. A voice on a crackling connection saying his name in a way no one else said it, the syllables sounded differently, Jisoo-ya, and him not knowing enough Korean to say back what he wanted to say.
He had been planning to come for three years, always the year after next, always when things settled, always soon. And then it was January and the phone call came and soon was gone.
So here he is in April instead, standing in the city she grew up in, breathing in the air she breathed for seventy-eight years, trying to find her in a place he's never been. It is grief and it is guilt and it is something else too. Something quieter and more stubborn and a need to know the part of himself that came from her. He is Korean American and the Korean part has always felt like a door he stood in front of without opening. He is here to open it even if he's late, even if she isn't here to let him in anymore.
His Korean is functional in the way a bicycle with one flat tire is functional. He can read Hangul slowly, sounding it out the way a child does, lips moving. He knows the basics—annyeong haseyo, gamsahamnida, igeo eolmayeyo—and a handful of words his mother taught him when he was small. He downloaded three different apps before coming here. He bought a phrasebook at the airport bookstore and has already dog-eared half of it. He is trying earnestly and with the full sincerity that characterizes everything he does and he is still spectacularly lost approximately forty percent of the time.
The neighborhood he's rented a relatively spacious room in is in Mapo-gu—residential and still, it’s the kind of neighborhood that has a market and a laundromat and a row of small restaurants that don't need signs because everyone already knows they're there. His room is on the third floor of a narrow building, clean, with a window that looks out over a courtyard where someone has arranged potted plants in a way that suggests some type of affection. He likes it immediately. He sets his bags down and sits on the edge of the bed and says out loud, to no one, to the room, to maybe her: "I made it, halmoni."
Joshua doesn't cry. He will later, in private, more than once. But right now he just sits with it.
Joshua is two and a half weeks into Seoul when he gets a cold.
It is the ordinary result of new weather and a new city and the specific vulnerability of a human body adjusting to a life it doesn't recognize yet. His throat scratches. His nose runs. He wakes up on a Tuesday morning feeling like something has gently sat on his head overnight and decided to stay.
He needs cold medicine.
He looks for the nearest pharmacy on his map, pulls his jacket on, and walks the four minutes there with the confidence of a person who has purchased cold medicine many times before. The pharmacy is clean and organized and completely, entirely in Korean. This is of course correct and expected but it still manages to catch him off guard every time.
He finds the aisle he thinks he wants and stands in front of it.
The boxes stare back at him.
There are no fewer than fourteen different options and they are all in Korean and the Hangul is small and the hanja on some of them is completely beyond him and he has his phone out translating as fast as it will go but the translations keep coming back slightly strange—"for heavenly nasal passage," one of the boxes says, which he is quite certain is not right—and he is now squinting at a box that has a cartoon nose on it when he becomes aware that someone has appeared beside him.
He doesn't notice you right away. You’re just a presence in his peripheral vision also looking at the shelves. He inches to the left slightly to give you more room and goes back to his phone.
He hears you ask quietly in careful but almost perfect English: "Are you looking for something specific?"
Joshua turns.
You are looking at the shelves, not at him, like the question was directed generally into the air between you and he is just welcome to answer it if he chooses. You’re holding a paper bag loosely in one hand, pharmacy-branded, already filled, and your other hand is in the pocket of a pale green jacket that looks soft enough to have been washed many times. Your ash brown hair is pulled back. Joshua thinks you look like someone who has been very tired for a very long time and has learned to carry it so naturally that most people wouldn't notice.
But Joshua notices.
He also notices that your eyes are slightly puffy. The puffiness is the kind that takes hours to develop. It’s the residue of something earlier in the day that is none of his business and that he thinks about anyway without meaning to.
"Yeah," he responds and his voice comes out a little rougher than usual, the cold making itself known. "I have—" he gestures vaguely at his face, "—all of this going on. A cold, I think. Or allergies. Probably cold."
You nod once and step forward, your eyes move over the shelf in a way that is efficient. You pick up one box, read the back, put it down. Pick up another. Read. Your Korean is quiet, your lips moving slightly.
"Do you have a fever?" you ask.
"I don't think so. Just the nose and throat thing."
You pick up a box: blue and white, nothing like the confident cartoon nose one, and hold it toward him without quite handing it over, giving him the chance to look at it himself. "This one. It's a general cold formula. It’s not too strong. No drowsiness either."
He takes it and looks at it and then looks at you. "How did you—I was standing here for like ten minutes."
The corner of your mouth moves. It’s not quite a smile but in the likes of one. "You were translating the wrong part," you said. "The front is the brand name. The ingredients are on the back."
"That's…" he says hesitantly, "incredibly useful information that I wish I'd had ten minutes ago."
This time you do smile, even though it’s brief. You turn back to the shelf, already retreating, the exchange clearly complete in your mind.
He looks at the box in his hand and then back at you. You’re reaching for something on a lower shelf now and there is something in the way you move that suggests a person accustomed to errand-running, to managing the logistics of someone else's needs. The paper bag. The efficiency.
"Thank you," he says and he means it the way he means most things: fully.
You glance back at him over your shoulder. "Feel better," you say and turn away.
Joshua stands there holding the cold medicine for a moment longer than is necessary.
Joshua does feel better by the following week. The blue and white box works exactly as advertised, which matters because he spends most of his days walking, learning the neighborhood through patient and unhurried accumulation. He has a small notebook he carries everywhere and he writes down words he encounters, things he wants to look up later, small observations about the streets. His halmoni's address is written on the first page. He hasn't gone yet. He's working up to it.
On Thursday he is standing at the bus stop attempting to understand the route map.
The routes are color-coded and numbered and there is a legend and he understands approximately sixty percent of it, which is not enough apparently. He’s tracing a line with his finger, lips moving, when he hears the sound of someone setting a bag down on the bench beside him and he looks up.
It takes you a second.
He watches you register him and then your expression settles into something neutral and not unwelcoming. "Oh," you utter.
"Hi," he says and smiles. It's the easy kind of smile, the one that just lives on his face when he's not thinking about it. "Pharmacy girl."
You raise an eyebrow to the faintest possible degree.
"Sorry," he says immediately, still smiling. "That was—I don't actually know your name. So in my head that's just been—anyway. Hi. I'm Joshua."
You look at him for a moment with an expression he can't really read—it’s not unfriendly, just considering, like you’re deciding something. "YN," you then say.
"YN," he repeats and the way he says it is careful. "Are you waiting for the bus?"
"Yes."
"Which one?" He gestures at the route map with perhaps more helplessness than he intended.
But you’re also quite perceptive. You look at the route map. "Where are you trying to go?"
He tells you. You point to a number on the map without hesitating and say when it comes and where to get off and he takes a photo of the relevant section with his phone because he is a person who has learned his lessons. "I'm going the same way," you add, almost like an afterthought, and then you pick up your bag again and look out at the street.
He takes this as the end of the conversation and takes it gracefully. He puts his phone away and stands beside you and says nothing, which he is actually good at. Silence doesn't make him nervous nor does it make him want to fill it. He stands with his hands in his pockets and watches the street and is just there and if you notice that he is very deliberately not making demands of you, you give no indication either.
The bus arrives and it is full in the way Seoul buses are full at this hour—bodies arranged in the quiet compromise of people who do this every day. You and Joshua board and he follows you toward the back where there is standing room and you end up side by side at a pole near the rear doors, each with one hand on the rail.
You are looking out the window. He is looking at the city moving past and also, occasionally, not looking at you.
You’re wearing a different jacket today, it’s darker and charcoal, and you have your bag on one shoulder. You have earphones in but you’re not playing anything through, he notices, because he could see the earphone jack is connected to nothing. The earphones are armor, he thinks. A way of being unavailable that doesn't require explaining. He understands this. He respects it.
The bus moves through the neighborhood and at the third stop a wave of passengers exit, then at the fourth stop a couple near the front gets off too, and suddenly there is rearranging happening, space shifting, and two seats open simultaneously near the back.
You and Joshua look at the seats and then the seats are just there and it would be strange to keep standing when there's somewhere to sit, so you both sit, and now you are closer than you were at the pole.
Joshua doesn't say anything immediately.
Then, because he is who he is and the silence has been comfortable enough to speak into: "Is it always this busy in the morning?"
You glance at him briefly. He notices you removing your earphones. "Depends on the line. This one, yes."
"I've been taking the subway mostly but I got turned around yesterday and ended up on the bus by accident and I thought…might as well figure it out properly."
"How long have you been here?"
"About three weeks." He pauses. "Almost four, actually. Time is strange."
You don’t respond to that right away but you’re listening. Outside, a street he half-recognizes passes by. He has been learning the city in fragments, little by little, until they come easily to him as breathing. Hopefully.
"You speak English," he says, then almost immediately: "Obviously. I just mean…your English is really good."
"I studied it for a long time," you said. A pause. "You're American?"
"Korean American. LA." He says it the way he always says it, the two parts held together without hierarchy. "My Korean is—" he tilts his head, "—let's call it improving."
Something passes across your face. He thinks it’s amusement but the suppressed kind. "It's a difficult language."
"My grandmother would probably disagree with you about that. She seemed to do it effortlessly." He says it lightly, the way he's learned to, the easiness of the tone not quite matching the weight underneath but sitting with it peacefully.
You look at him for a moment and don't ask the follow-up question, the one most people ask, and he is grateful in a way he doesn't completely expect. You just nod once, a small acknowledgment, and look back out the window.
The bus moves through two more stops. He watches a woman outside walking a very small and very serious-looking dog. He watches a man unlocking the grill of a small restaurant. He watches the city do the ordinary things: opening up, beginning again. He thinks about how strange it is to be new somewhere, how everything that is invisible to locals is vivid to him, how he is reading Seoul like a text he doesn't have the full vocabulary for but is beginning to understand.
"It's interesting," he says, half to himself, "learning a city. Like… there are all these rhythms you can't see at first and then slowly you start to feel them."
You are quiet for a moment. Then: "How does it feel? Seoul."
The question surprises him a little, not because it's strange but because it's genuine. You asked because you wanted to know.
"Like something I half-remember," he says. "Which doesn't make any sense because I've never been here. But it feels like…you know when you read a book someone loved and you can feel that they loved it because it has a lot of annotations? It feels like that."
You are looking at him now and he can't read your expression but there is something in it that is less guarded than before. Then the bus slows and the recorded announcement says the stop name and you straighten slightly and look out the window and say: "This is us."
This is us. He notices it—the casual plural—and says nothing about it and follows you off the bus.
You and Joshua stand on the pavement in the mild April morning and the bus pulls away and you are in the neighborhood, their neighborhood apparently, the one they have somehow both ended up in.
"Thank you," he says, "again. For the bus thing. And the pharmacy thing."
"It wasn't anything," you say as pick up your bag on your shoulder in that way you have- the gesture that means you are about to go.
"It was, though," he says with ease and without pressure. "To me it was."
You pause, look at him for a moment with that expression he is becoming familiar with: considering and the faintest hint of something you’re deciding whether to let show.
"Feel better," you say, an echo of the week before. Then you turn and walk in the direction of whatever comes next for you and he watches you go the way he watched you the first time: a beat too long, two beats, before he puts his hands back in his pockets and turns the other way.
He doesn't know your last name. He doesn't know what you do or how long you’ve lived here or why you looked like you’d been crying in the pharmacy. He knows your name and your bus stop and that you read medicine labels from the back and that you asked him how Seoul feels with real curiosity.
He walks home in the April morning and the city smells like something he is starting, maybe, to recognize.
summer: circling
You see him before he sees you.
This is how it usually goes, you've noticed: you tend to clock your surroundings with the specific vigilance of someone who has learned that the world requires managing and Joshua Hong moves through his with the specific unhurriedness of a person who isn’t bracing for anything. He's at the convenience store on the corner of your street, standing in front of the refrigerated section with his head tilted slightly, studying the canned coffee options with what can only be described as serious deliberation.
You almost leave. You came for one thing: ramyeon and maybe something cold to drink and the store is small and you are tired in the way you are always tired now. Your mother had a difficult night. You were at the hospital until almost eleven and you have work in the morning and the last thing you have room for right now is a conversation.
You get your ramyeon. You are nearly at the refrigerator when he turns and sees you and his face does the thing his face does: opens, brightens, like encountering you is just really good news.
"YN."
He says your name like he practiced it. You don't know why you notice that.
"Joshua," you say.
"Do you have strong feelings about canned coffee?" he asks and gestures at the rows in front of him with helplessness. "Because there are so many and I've been trying them in order but I'm starting to think I've been doing it wrong."
You look at the shelf. You reach past him; he steps back to give you room without being asked and you take one from the second row. The blue one. You hand it to him.
"This one," you say.
He looks at it and then at you. "That's it? No explanation?"
You shrug. "It's the best one."
"See, I need to know why though—"
"It just is."
He laughs. It's a quiet laugh and you are already moving toward the register because you don't have time for this and also because the laugh does something small and inconvenient to the tired feeling in your chest and you would prefer not to examine that.
You hear him behind you, still lightly amused: "Okay. Noted. Thank you."
You nod without turning around. You pay and you leave and you walk back to your apartment and you eat your ramyeon standing over the sink because sitting down feels like a commitment you can't make tonight.
You don't think about him. You are very busy not thinking about him.
Joshua sees you for the second time that week on Wednesday evening.
He is coming back from the park. He has started going in the evenings, a habit that formed over time, his guitar left at home because he’s still not certain of the etiquette—and you are coming from the direction of the main road, walking with your head slightly down, bag on your shoulder, and you look tired in a way that is becoming familiar to him.
He falls into step beside you without planning to, matching your pace, because you are going the same direction anyway.
You glance at him.
"Hello," he says.
"Hi," you respond.
You and Joshua walk. The evening is warm in that early summer way and the neighborhood is doing its evening things: the smell of someone cooking, a child being called in, a convenience store spilling yellow light onto the pavement. He walks with his hands in his pockets and you walk with your bag on your shoulder and the silence is comfortable in a way he has stopped being surprised by.
"Long day?" he asks eventually.
A pause. "They're all long," you say, which is not really an answer and also somehow is.
Joshua nods and doesn't push. You both walk another half block in silence. A cat sits on top of a parked car and watches you pass with profound indifference and interest at the same time.
"There's a cat," he says.
"I see it."
"It's judging us."
You look at the cat and then look back at the pavement but the corner of your mouth moves and he counts it.
At the point where your paths diverge—Joshua goes right, you go straight—he stops and you stop too, half-turning.
"I'll see you around," he says and it's easy and undemanding because that is all this is and he is careful not to make it more than you’ve offered.
"Probably," you say and there is something almost dry in it. It’s an acknowledgment of the frequency with which you both keep appearing in each other's lives and it is the closest thing to a joke you have made in front of him and he carries it home like it's something.
You learn things about him the way you learn things about a place.
Joshua is a musician. You find this out because one evening you are passing his building. You aren't seeking him out, you just happened to pass by a few times—and there is a guitar sound coming from a third floor window and it takes you two full days to confirm that the third floor is his. The playing is good. It’s the kind that exists for the player, not the listener.
Joshua knows the woman who runs the small market on the main road. You discover this when you're buying vegetables one Saturday morning and you hear her laughing and you look up and it's Joshua saying something you can't hear and the market woman is waving her hand at him in the way old women wave at boys they've decided to adopt. He is carrying a basket and he has apparently bought the wrong kind of sesame oil and she is explaining this to him with enormous satisfaction and he is nodding with the earnest expression of someone taking extensive mental notes.
Joshua reads. You see him at the bus stop with a book more than once: Korean novels, you notice, which must be slow going for him and which he’s doing anyway.
Joshua smiles at strangers. He has a face that rests in openness, an expression that defaults to gentle, and people respond to it without quite knowing why. You have watched this happen and you understand it and you still cannot quite account for it. It is not a facade. It is just who he is.
This bothers you more than it should.
It's the third week of June when he sits beside you on the park bench.
You are there most evenings. This is your place: the bench near the small fountain where you come to decompress after the hospital, after work, after the specific performance of holding yourself together in public. You have your earphones in, not playing anything. You have your eyes half-closed. You are simply existing, which is all you can manage tonight.
You hear him before you see him. Footsteps, then the familiar cadence of his presence. He moves differently than most people. It’s without the urgency the city tends to install in everyone. Before you know it, he’s standing at the end of your bench looking not at you but at the fountain, his hands in his pockets.
"Is this bench taken by anyone other than you?"
"No," you say.
He sits. Not close; he leaves space. He has his own something to drink but it’s not the canned coffee. It’s a convenience store cup of something iced and he stretches his legs out slightly and looks at the fountain and says nothing.
You sit beside him and say nothing.
This lasts perhaps five minutes, which is a very long time to sit in silence with someone who isn’t a stranger anymore but isn't exactly anything else either.
"Bad day?" you ask and you're not sure why you ask it, only that the angle of his shoulders is slightly different tonight.
He is quiet for a moment. "Not bad," he says. "Just…one of those days where everything is fine and you still feel a little lost. You know?"
You know. You know exactly. "Hm," you mutter.
He nods like you've confirmed something. He doesn't elaborate and you don't ask him to. You sit in the comfortable space of two people who have mutually agreed that tonight words are not the main thing.
A child runs past chasing something. The fountain runs its small sound beneath the noise of the evening. Somewhere close by someone is playing music from a phone and Joshua tilts his head slightly when it reaches you both like he's listening for something in it.
"Do you come here a lot?" he asks eventually.
"Most evenings."
"I've been coming here too. I must have just missed you."
"Or I missed you," you say and then hear yourself say it and look at the fountain.
"Or that," he agrees and there is something quiet in his voice that you don't dare analyze.
You stay until the light goes fully and then you both leave separately without making a plan to do this again. But you both know you will.
The phone call happens on a Tuesday.
Joshua is there for it without meaning to be. You are both at the park bench again and you are in the middle of saying something about something inconsequential when your phone goes and you look at the screen and your face does what it does when it's the hospital.
"I have to—" you start.
"Go," he says.
You stand and walk several feet away and answer and your voice shifts into the register you keep for medical staff: clear, composed, asking the right questions in the right order. You have had a lot of practice. Your mother's condition. A change in her levels. The doctor wants to discuss adjusting her medication. You say yes and when and thank you and hang up.
You stand for a moment with your back to him, trying to collect yourself back into the shape required. Then you turn around.
Joshua is looking at you with an expression that is careful and clear and completely without pity, which is the only kind of looking you can tolerate right now and he says nothing which is exactly right.
"I have to go," you say.
"Okay," he says. "I hope everything’s alright."
You nod and pick up your bag and go and you do not look back. If you had you would have seen him watching after you with an expression he doesn't bother to moderate when there's no one to see it: worry and something older than worry and the particular helplessness of caring about someone who hasn't asked you to yet.
July arrives and with it the real heat.
Joshua has stopped pretending the convenience store visits are about coffee.
He roughly knows your schedule not because he has studied it but because he has simply paid attention the way he pays attention to everything and you move through the neighborhood in patterns that have become familiar to him. He knows you go to the market on Saturday mornings. He knows you passed the park around seven on weekdays. He knows that when you have earphones in with nothing playing, you have had a hard day, and when you don't bother with them at all it's been a manageable one.
He knows you take your coffee without sugar, straight from the blue can, because you said it just is and he believed you and tried it and you were right.
He knows that you laugh quietly, like the laugh is for you rather than the room, and that when something genuinely catches you off guard it arrives before you can decide whether to let it.
He knows that there is something you’re carrying and it’s something serious. He knows that you carry it with a discipline that is both impressive and a little heartbreaking and that you will tell him when you’re ready or you won't and either way he will still be here on the bench at seven o'clock.
Joshua knows that he’s in a considerable amount of trouble.
He sits with this thought on a hot July night, alone in his apartment, guitar in his lap, and plays the same chord progression he's been working on for a week. It doesn't resolve. He keeps returning to it anyway, turning it over, looking for the note that makes it make sense.
He hasn't found it yet. He thinks maybe he's not supposed to yet.
The last week of July, you are at the bench when he arrives and you have bought two canned coffees and you hold one out to him when he sits down without saying anything about it.
He takes it and looks at it and looks at you.
You look at the fountain.
"Thank you," he says.
"It's just coffee," you say.
"I know," he says and opens it and you both know it isn't just coffee and neither of you say so and the summer evening settles around you and this—this small ordinary thing—is how everything starts to tip.
autumn: opening
The city changes before you're ready for it.
Seoul in autumn doesn’t transition so much—one morning the air is different, carrying something crisp and faintly sweet underneath the usual city smell and the trees along the main road have started their slow deliberate burning: amber and rust and gold appearing in the green. You notice it on your walk to the bus stop and you stop for a moment, just a moment, bag on your shoulder and the morning doing its morning things around you and you breathe it in.
You have always loved autumn. You used to tell your mother this every year without fail—eomma, it's here, it's finally here—and she would look up from whatever she was doing and smile in that way because your enthusiasm was one of her favorite things about you. You haven't said it out loud to anyone in two years.
You say it quietly now to no one in particular. "It's finally here."
Then you pick your bag up again and keep walking.
The long walk happens on a Saturday.
It doesn't start as a long walk, honestly. It starts as a coincidence: you are both at the market at the same time, which is not unusual anymore, and when you leave Joshua is leaving too and you are going the same direction so you walk together, which is also not unusual anymore.
What is unusual is that neither of you stops.
The market is behind you and then the main road is behind you and then somehow you are in a part of the neighborhood you don't usually walk through: a stretch of quieter streets where the buildings are older and there are persimmon trees in some of the small front gardens. He points one out with the delight of someone encountering something new and real.
"What is that?"
"Persimmon."
"Can you just—they're just growing there? In someone's garden?"
"People grow them everywhere here."
He stops walking to look at it properly and you stop too because the way he looks at things has a quality that makes you want to see what he's seeing. He’s quiet for a moment, head slightly tilted, and then he says: "My halmoni had a persimmon tree. My mom told me once. In the garden of the house she grew up in."
You look at him. It's the most he's said about his grandmother since the first bus ride. He says it the way he says things that cost him something: lightly, easily but with a weight underneath that he isn't hiding so much.
"Tell me about her," you say and you mean it. You’re asking because you want to know, which is something you haven't done in a while—wanting to know someone.
He looks at you for a moment like he's checking that you mean it and then seems satisfied that you do. He starts walking again and you fall into step beside him and he talks.
Joshua tells you about a woman he never met in person but knew through photographs and phone calls and the mythology of an absent family. He tells you about her voice on the phone—the way she said his name, Jisoo-ya, softening the syllables in a way no one else did. He tells you about the plan to come, always the plan to come, always next year, and then January. He tells you he came here to find her in the only way still available to him and that some days it works. He'll turn a corner and something will catch: a smell or a sound or an old woman's hands at a market stall and some days it doesn't and on those days the not-knowing-her feels very large.
He says all of this without self-pity, without asking for anything. He talks about his loved one the way a person speaks when they've made a kind of peace with something that still hurts. His voice is even and warm and underneath it is grief that has been lived in long enough to become familiar.
You walk beside him and listen completely.
"I keep thinking," he says, "that if I learn the language properly, I'll find her somehow. Which I know doesn't make sense."
"It makes sense," you affirm.
He glances at you.
"Language is where people live," you say. "The real parts of them. If she lived in Korean then, yes. It makes sense."
He is quiet for a moment. The street turns and opens onto a small elevated path overlooking a pocket of the city, rooftops and the far glint of the Han river, and you both stop without discussion because it is the kind of view that requires stopping.
"Can I ask you something?" he says.
"Sure."
"The neighborhood market ajumma told me your family has lived here for a long time."
You raise an eyebrow. "You asked about me?"
"She volunteered it," he says with the specific dignity of someone being accurate. "I might have mentioned your name."
You look at the city below and you are doing the thing you do: deciding how much, deciding whether, and then the autumn air moves through the space between you and you think about your mother and you think about how long you have been rationing yourself, how carefully you have been filtering out what you give to people and you think that maybe, just maybe, you are very tired of it.
"My mother grew up here," you say. "I grew up here. It's always just been us."
A pause. He waits.
"She's sick," you say. "Has been for a while. It's manageable, mostly. Some days less so."
You say it looking at the city because it is easier that way. You have told very few people. There is something about saying it out loud that makes it more real and you have been trying, for a long time, to keep it at a manageable level of reality.
He doesn't say I'm sorry first, which is what most people do, the reflexive condolence that is kind and true and also somehow closes the door. Instead, he says: "Is it you? Taking care of her?"
"Yes."
"Alone?"
"Yes."
He slowly nods once.
"That's a lot to carry," he says. Simply. Without making it a question or a diagnosis.
"It is," you say, which is the first time you have said that out loud to anyone.
You stand there a little longer than makes practical sense, looking at the city. Then you walk back, the long way, and by the time you reach your street the afternoon has gone and the evening has arrived and you realize you have been walking for almost two hours without noticing.
"Same time next week?" he says at the point where you part.
It’s the first time he has ever suggested something forward, the first time he has extended a hand into the future.
You look at him. The autumn evening is golden behind him and he is waiting with that expression he has: open, warm, entirely without pressure.
"Same time," you agree.
Autumn deepens and you keep your Saturdays.
You walk and you talk and you learn each other in the way the season seems designed for, the city golden and cooling around you, everything in the process of becoming something different.
You learn that Joshua is meticulous about small things: his notebook, his guitar strings, the way he folds receipts. You learn that his sense of humor is dry and quiet and tends to arrive without announcement. You learn that he calls his mom every Sunday, that he has two close friends back in LA who send him voice messages that he plays while cooking, that he misses the ocean.
Joshua learns you too. He learns that you know this neighborhood down to the bone, every shortcut and old building and which restaurants have been here twenty years. He learns that you are funnier than you let on, that the dry observations you make mostly to yourself are very funny if he's paying attention, which he always is. He learns that you become slightly more yourself when you're walking than any other time and he files this away with everything else he's filed away about you.
He does not tell you he remembers. Not yet. He keeps waiting for the right shape of moment and it keeps not arriving or maybe he keeps not letting it arrive, because there is something frightening about it; not the telling itself but what it means, that he has been carrying you with him since April and that this is not something a person can un-know once it's known.
Joshua finds out your birthday in the second week of October.
You are talking about the cold arriving and you say, offhand, that you've never minded cold weather because you were born in it and he asks when and you tell him.
One night he was on his phone for a long time.
He starts with a simple search: Korean birthday traditions and then the search leads him to miyeok-guk and he reads about it for longer than he expected to, sitting on his floor with his back against the bed and the lamp on. He reads about the seaweed, the broth, the tradition of mothers making it for their children every year on their birthday, the connection to birth and to being remembered and to the particular love that says you were here, you arrived, I have not forgotten the day the world had you in it.
He reads it and thinks about your mother in the hospital and thinks about you carrying everything alone and thinks about the small exact way your face changed when you said it's always just been us.
He puts his phone down. Then he picks it up again and looks up where to buy the right kind of dried miyeok.
He gets it wrong the first time. The woman at the specialty grocery store tries to help him with hand gestures and basic English and he buys what he thinks is the right thing and takes it home and looks it up again and it is not the right thing. He goes back. He is not embarrassed about this or rather he is but it doesn't matter. There are things worth being mildly embarrassed for.
He watches two video tutorials and pauses them repeatedly to take notes in his small notebook. He calls his halmoni's old neighbor, a woman his mom helped him find months ago, who speaks some English, and asks her to confirm he has the right ingredients. She asks why he's making it. He tells her it's for a friend's birthday. There is a pause and then she says, in Korean and then English both: "You're a good man."
He makes it the evening before your birthday. The apartment smells like the sea and like something warm and old and specific, a smell he has encountered in small wafts from restaurant kitchens and market stalls and once from a stranger's open window, and he stands over the pot and stirs it and thinks that maybe this is one of the ways a person finds someone they've lost: in the doing of the things they did, in the learning of what they once knew.
Halmoni, he thinks. I think I'm getting it right.
Joshua brings the miyeok-guk to you in a container he bought specifically. It’s not a takeout box but a proper one made of stainless steel with a lid that seals.
You open your door and he is standing there in the early evening of your birthday and you almost didn't think about it being your birthday because there has been a lot today: a hospital visit in the morning and work and more hospital and the day has been its own particular weight. You had forgotten or tried to.
He holds the container out with both hands, slightly formal, the way you hold something you want the other person to know you carried carefully.
"Happy birthday," he says.
You look at the container. "What is this?"
"Miyeok-guk," he says and his pronunciation is careful, practiced. "I looked it up. I know it's supposed to be… I know it's traditionally from your mother and I know she can't right now and I just —" he stops, lets out a small breath. Starts again. "I probably made it wrong. I watched a lot of videos and I went back to the store twice and I called someone who knew my grandmother to check but I've never made it before so—"
"Joshua," you say.
He stops and his yes was small.
You are looking at the container and your throat is doing something you are trying to manage. The last time you had miyeok-guk on your birthday your mother made it in this kitchen, standing right where you are standing now. That was four years ago, before the diagnosis, before everything shifted into before and after. Four years ago and you can still smell it: the same smell that is coming from this container right now, held out to you in both hands by a person who went back to the store twice.
You take it with both hands. It is still warm.
You look up at him. He is watching you with that expression—it’s careful and clear— and there is something in his eyes that isn’t new, you realize. It has been there all along, patient and warm and very sure of itself, and you have been not-examining it for months and you cannot quite not-examine it right now.
"Come in," you say. "Have some with me."
Joshua smiles and comes in.
You heat it on the stove together, him standing slightly behind your shoulder asking questions about your apartment because he's never been inside before, pointing at the plants on your windowsill with curiosity, noticing the books on your shelf in that way he has, storing everything away. You tell him the soup needs a little more time. He says okay and sits at your small table and looks at home there in a way that does something to you that you tuck away carefully to examine later.
You sit across from him and eat miyeok-guk on your birthday and outside the autumn evening presses soft and gold against your window and he tells you about going back to the store twice and the expression on the woman's face and you laugh, actually laugh the full kind, and he looks at you like he has been waiting for exactly that.
Later, after he goes, you stand at your kitchen window and hold your own elbows and look out at the dark courtyard below.
You are in trouble, you think.
You have been trying not to want things for so long that you'd almost forgotten what it felt like. You had put it away. You had decided, without quite deciding, that your life had a shape that did not have room for this.
And yet.
You look at the stainless steel container with a lid that seals, clean now, sitting on your counter. He brought it with both hands. He went back to the store twice. He called someone who knew his grandmother.
Happy birthday, he said.
You stay at the window for a long time after.
winter: aching
The cold arrives the way grief does: gradually and then all at once.
You wake up one morning in late November and the courtyard outside your window is different. The potted plants huddled under their covers, the air through the gap in your window blowing a new kind of sharpness that reaches your face before you're fully awake. You lie there for a moment and register it and then your phone goes and it is the hospital and you are up before the second ring.
Your mother's levels have dropped again. More significantly this time. The doctor speaks in the measured cadence of someone delivering news they have delivered before and you sit on the edge of your bed with your feet on the cold floor and you listen and you ask the right questions and you say you'll be there by nine.
You hang up and sit for a moment in the early winter silence of your apartment. Then you wash your face, make coffee you won't finish, and go.
Joshua notices immediately.
Not that day. He doesn't see you that day but the Saturday after when you don't come to the market at your usual time and he waits longer than he means to before accepting that you aren't coming. And the week after that, when you appear at the park bench briefly and there is something behind your eyes that is different from tired. This is something older. This is a person who has gone back behind the glass.
He gives you space. This is a conscious choice and it costs him and he makes it anyway because it is what you need, or what you seem to need, and he’s not going to be one more thing requiring management in a life that is already full of things requiring management.
But he adjusts. He leaves a coffee on the bench on Wednesday evening when he knows you might pass and it is gone when he checks Thursday morning, which tells him nothing definitive and still makes him feel a bit better. He stops at the market and mentions your name to the ajumma and she tells him you came by Tuesday, you looked thin, she gave you extra, and he says good and means it deeply.
He goes home and sits with his guitar and the chord progression that resolves now. He found the note, somewhere in October, and now it goes somewhere and he plays it through and the going-somewhere feeling is both better and worse than the not-resolving was.
He doesn’t text you anything demanding. He sends one message on a Tuesday night that says: hope you're okay. no need to reply.
You read it standing in the hospital corridor, your coat still on, waiting for the elevator, and you press your phone against your chest for a moment like you're trying to keep something from getting out.
You don't reply. You meant to. The days close over it. But that night while waiting for the elevator, your eyes feel a kind of burn you haven’t allowed yourself in a very long while.
December arrives grey and resolute.
You haven’t seen him properly in three weeks. This is not a decision so much as a consequence. The hospital visits have increased, the paperwork has multiplied, your mother's care has expanded to fill every available hour and then some.
You think about Joshua in the margins. In the elevator at the hospital, in the queue at the bus stop, in the ten minutes before sleep when your defenses are down and things you've been managing all day arrive uninvited. You think about the miyeok-guk. You think about sitting across from him at your small table and laughing the full kind of laugh.
You think about how long it has been since you let yourself want something and how efficiently you are currently dismantling the small careful thing you had started to build.
You know this about yourself. This isn’t new–this retreat. When things get hard you go inward and you become very small and very contained and you survive. It has worked. It has always worked. The problem now is that it’s beginning to feel less like surviving and more like something else, something with less air in it, and you are not sure when that changed.
Joshua sees you on a Wednesday evening in the second week of December.
He is coming back from the small grocery on the main road, bag in both hands, and you’re coming from the direction of the hospital—he knows this because he knows which direction the hospital is, he has quietly learned the geography of your life the way he has learned everything about you—and you don’t see him until you’re almost level with him.
You stop.
Joshua thinks you look like someone who has been standing up for a very long time and is tired in a way that sleep doesn't touch. There are shadows under your eyes that weren't there in autumn and your coat is buttoned wrong, one button off at the bottom, and you haven’t noticed, and for some reason this detail is the one that gets him.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi," you say and there is something in your voice that is both relieved and slightly pained, the way a person sounds when they've been avoiding something and have run out of reasons to avoid it.
He doesn't say I haven't seen you or where have you been or any of the things that would be true and would also be a kind of pressure. He looks at you for a moment and then he says, quietly: "Have you eaten?"
You open your mouth and close it.
"Come on," he says and adjusts his bag and tips his head in the direction of his building, easy and uncomplicated, leaving the door open without pushing you through it.
You come. He isn't sure you decide to so much as run out of energy not to but you come and he takes it.
Joshua’s apartment is warm and smells like whatever he was cooking earlier. You stand in the doorway for a moment taking it in: the guitar against the wall, the notebook on the table, the small collection of Korean novels on the shelf with handwritten vocabulary notes tucked between them.
He’s already in the kitchen, setting his bag down, moving with the competence of someone who knows their own space.
"Please sit," he softly offers. "I have ingredients. This won't take long."
You sit at his table and you put your bag on the floor and you look at your hands. Your coat is still on. You realize after a moment that he hasn't asked you to take it off, hasn't assumed you're staying, has left that choice to you.
You take it off.
He glances over from the kitchen as you remove your coat and says nothing and cooks the food and you sit in his warm apartment and listen to the small sounds of someone taking care of something, the quiet industry of it, and something in your chest that has been clenched for weeks begins to release ever so slightly.
He sets a bowl in front of you a few minutes later and sits across with his own and doesn't make it a thing. He doesn't watch you with concern or ask how you're feeling or perform care in a way that would require you to perform gratitude back. He just eats and occasionally says something small, something easy, and lets you exist without demands.
You eat. You didn't realize how hungry you were.
Halfway through the bowl you say without fully planning to: "She's worse."
He puts his spoon down and gives you his full attention and waits.
"Her levels keep dropping and they've adjusted the medication twice and it's—" you stop. The clinical language runs out and underneath it is just the actual thing. "I'm scared," you say, which you have not said to anyone, ever. You’ve been too busy managing the situation to say the true thing about the situation and here in his warm kitchen with the street lamp outside making the window glow it comes out simple and plain. "I'm really scared."
"I know," he says quietly, directly, without softening it into something easier. "I know you are."
"I don't know how to—" you start and stop and press your lips together, look out the window.
"You don't have to know," he says. "Not right now. Right now you just have to eat."
It’s such a simple thing to say. It’s exactly the right thing to say. You look at him across the table in the warm kitchen and you think (not for the first time but more clearly than before) that this person is something you are not prepared for.
You finish eating. He makes tea without asking and sets it in front of you and you wrap both hands around the cup and feel the warmth travel up your arms.
"I'm sorry," you say. "I've been…I disappeared. I know I did."
"You were trying your best," he says. "That's allowed."
You look at the tea. "I was avoiding."
Joshua is quiet for a moment. Outside a car passes, its headlights sweeping briefly across the ceiling. "I know," he says again and there is nothing accusatory in it, just honesty, the kind that trusts the other person to receive it.
"I do that," you say. "When things get hard I—I make myself very small. It's kept me going for a long time."
"It has," he says. "And it costs you."
You look up at him. He is watching you in that careful, clear way, not looking away, and there is something in his expression again. It has always been there, you realize. Since summer at least. Maybe longer. It’s an expression that’s patient and warm and very certain that has been waiting quietly this whole time.
"Joshua," you say and your voice is slightly unsteady.
"You don't have to say anything," he says. "Tonight you just be here. Okay? Just be here."
You nod. You don't trust your voice.
You stay for another hour. You move to the couch at some point and he sits beside you and puts something on low in the background, music, something instrumental, and you don't talk much after that. The warmth and the quiet and the weeks of running on nothing finally arrive all at once and your eyes are closing before you fully register it, your head finding the angle of his shoulder, and he goes very still.
Joshua stays very still.
You sleep for forty minutes while the winter street hums outside and he sits beside you and watches the lamp on the wall and thinks about nothing and everything and when you stir he is still there, exactly where you left him, because of course he is.
You don't talk about what you almost said that night. Or what he almost said back.
But something has been named, or nearly named, and you both know it, and the shape of things between you is different now in a way that cannot be undone.
You start coming back. Not all at once, though. You are still at the hospital, still managing, still carrying what you carry, but you text back. You appear at the park bench. You let him walk you home sometimes in the cold evening, shoulders close, your breath making small clouds in the winter air and it is the warmest thing in the world and it undoes you a little every time.
The almost-confession happens on a Sunday night in the third week of December.
You are at his apartment again. This has become a real thing. Dinner sometimes, or tea, or just sitting in the warm while the neighborhood is cold outside and you are laughing about something he said, the dry quiet kind of funny that arrives without announcement, and the laugh is the real one, the full one, and he is watching you laugh with an expression that is completely unguarded and you catch it, you catch him in it, and the laugh fades and you are looking at each other across the warm space of his living room.
Joshua opens his mouth to say something.
You feel it coming. You feel the shape of it in the air between you, something large and true and waiting to be said, and your heart is doing something complicated and you are very still.
"YN," he says and the way he says your name is different, the weight of it different, and you breathe in and—
His phone rings.
The sound is very loud in the quiet apartment. He closes his eyes briefly for a millisecond and then looks at the screen and his expression shifts into something apologetic. "It's my mom. Sunday call, I—I completely forgot—"
"Answer it," you say. Your voice is remarkably steady. "Of course. Answer it."
He answers it and steps toward the window and you pick up your cup and look at the guitar against the wall and breathe.
You stay for another twenty minutes while he talks to his mother, laughing at something the way he laughs and you sit with the thing that almost happened and you turn it over and examine it and you think that you are done being afraid of it.
You leave before he gets off the phone, with a small wave, and he mouths sorry and you shake your head and smile, you're fine, go, talk to your mom.
You walk home in the cold with your hands in your pockets and the winter city glittering around you and you make a decision somewhere between his door and yours.
You find Joshua on the quiet street.
Of course this is where he is—the street with the old buildings and the small front gardens, the one you wandered into together in October without meaning to, the one that gave you persimmon trees and his grandmother's garden and the first real thing he told you about himself.
You turn the corner and there he is, stopped in front of the same tree, hands in his pockets, looking up at the bare winter branches the way he looked at the full autumn ones: with that open unhurried attention he gives to everything that deserves it.
The tree is bare now. All the amber and gold gone, the branches reaching up into the grey winter evening. He doesn't hear you at first. You stop a few feet away and look at him looking at it.
Then he turns.
Something in his face settles when he sees you. It’s not surprise; it’s something quieter than that, something that looks like a person who has been waiting and is simply relieved the waiting is over. His expression doesn't ask anything of you. It never does.
"Hey you," he says.
"Hi…" you say.
A beat. The cold street hums quietly around you. Somewhere down the road a door closes, a light comes on in a window, the neighborhood doing its evening things entirely indifferent to the two of you standing here.
"I was just walking," he says. "I keep ending up here."
"I know," you say. "Me too."
He looks at you for a moment with that expression: patient, warm, reading something in your face that you haven't said yet. He doesn't push. He just stands there in the cold with his hands in his pockets and waits, the way he has always waited, like time is something he has plenty of and would spend all of it here if that's what you needed.
You look at the tree. You think about standing here in October with the persimmons hanging heavy and him saying my halmoni had a persimmon tree. You think about how long you have been standing at the edge of something, looking at it, deciding.
"I came to find you," you say to the tree more than to him.
A pause. "You found me," he says quietly.
You look at him then. He is already looking at you and something about the steadiness of it makes the thing you came to say feel suddenly very close to the surface.
"Give me a second," you say. "I've been rehearsing this for three days and now that I'm here I've forgotten all of it."
The corner of his mouth moves. "Take your time," he says.
"That's the problem," you say. "I've been taking my time. I've been taking my time for months."
Joshua goes very still.
You take a breath. The cold air fills your lungs and the lamplight is warm on the pavement and above you the persimmon tree holds out its bare patient branches and you think—now. It's now.
"I don't know how to do this," you say. "I want to say that first. I've spent a long time not letting myself want things and I'm out of practice and I'm probably going to be terrible at it."
Joshua is very still.
"But I think about you constantly," you say. "I have been thinking about you since summer and I've been telling myself it was, I don't know, manageable, something I could just…but it isn't. It isn't manageable. You brought me coffee and you remembered my birthday and you went back to the store twice and I can't—" you stop. Breathe.
"I don't know what to do with you," you say, honestly, helplessly. "I just know I don't want you to be something I’m too scared to reach for."
The street is very quiet.
Joshua looks at you for a long moment and his expression is doing something you have never seen before. It’s no longer the careful warmth and it’s not the patient sunshine. It’s something more open than that, something that has been kept below the surface and has finally, finally been let up.
"There's something I need to tell you," he says.
His voice is quiet in a different way.
"Okay," you say. You internally brace yourself for impact.
He glances once at the tree and then back at you. He's choosing this place deliberately. He wants this said here, in the place where it started becoming real. He looks at you and stays looking at you.
"The first day," he says. "The pharmacy."
You wait.
"It wasn't just a day for me. I wasn't just lost with a cold." He pauses. "I had just come from my halmoni's neighborhood. The house she grew up in. I'd finally gone and it was—it was a lot. More than I expected. I was having a hard time."
You are very still.
"And you helped me," he says. "With the medicine. And you were—you were carrying something yourself, I could see it, but you helped me anyway without thinking about it. And then you said feel better and you left." He looks at you. "I thought about you for days. The way you just…did that for me without asking for anything."
Above you the bare branches of the persimmon tree are very still in the cold evening air.
"And then you were at the bus stop," he says. "And I recognized you right away. You took a moment longer."
"Joshua," you say softly.
"I've been careful with you," he says, "because I already knew something about you before you knew anything about me. I knew that you were the kind of person who helps a stranger on one of their hardest days and doesn't even think twice. And I didn't want it to be strange or for you to feel like you owed me something for remembering. I just—" he stops. "I just never forgot. I tried to at first. And then you were here and I couldn't even try anymore."
You realize, somewhere in the middle of this, that your eyes are starting to burn that familiar burn you haven’t allowed yourself to let out for months.
You look at him in the winter lamplight of the quiet street and you think about a girl running on empty in a pharmacy, going through the motions, helping a stranger without thinking because it was just what you did, because your mother raised you to be someone who helps and it had become so automatic you didn't even register it. You think about the fact that this person—this warm, careful person—saw you in that automatic kindness of your worst seasonvand decided you were worth remembering.
"You remembered me," you say.
"I never stopped," he says.
Joshua closed the distance between you. He leans forward slowly and you meet him halfway because of course you do, because he has spent months, since the bus stop in April, crossing every distance you put between you without ever once making you feel the weight of it. And the least you can do, the thing you want to do, is meet him here.
His hand comes up to your face slowly, his palm cupping your jaw, his thumb at your cheekbone and he holds you like that for just a moment before his lips meet yours. He wanted to look at you one more time first because he needed to make sure you were real.
The kiss is soft. Warm in the way he is warm; it’s the kind of kiss that knows it has nowhere else to be. His other hand finds your waist and draws you in gently and you go, your arms coming around his neck, holding on.
He pulls back just slightly—barely an inch—and you feel him breathe, feel the exhale of it against your lips, and then he rests his forehead against yours and stays there. Eyes closed. The snow starts to fall around you both, with the bare tree above you and the lamplight making everything amber at the edges.
A long moment passes. Neither of you moves.
Then, quietly, so quietly it arrives like something he's been holding for a very long time: "I'm really glad you came to find me."
Something in your chest opens all the way.
"I know where you walk," you say just as quietly. "I've known for a while."
You feel him still. And then the smile moves through him slowly. He pulls you closer and tucks you against him properly, his chin coming to rest at the top of your head and you close your eyes and listen to the snow settling on everything it can reach.
spring again: arriving
The persimmon tree on the quiet street has new leaves.
You notice it on a Saturday morning in late March on the walk you have been taking together long enough now that your feet know the route without consulting your mind. Joshua is beside you holding one of your hands inside his jacket pocket and he is talking about something, something about the market ajumma trying to teach him a new word this morning and you are listening and also watching the tree and you stop walking without meaning to.
He stops too, the way he always matches you.
"The leaves," you say.
He looks. "It's the same one.”
Joshua looks at it for a long moment and you look at him looking at it and you think that you love him. You have been thinking about it in fragments for weeks.
You don't say it yet. You just stand beside him and let it be true.
"She would have liked this walk," he says softly.
"Tell me something else about her," you say.
He smiles the slow kind, the one that starts in his eyes. He has been telling you things about her in small installments since autumn, parceling her out in the careful way of someone who is learning to share a grief they've been private with, and each time he does you listen with everything you have because you understand, more than most, what it means to love someone you are trying not to lose.
"She used to sing while she cooked," he says. "My mom told me. Old trot songs mostly. Like the kitchen was a concert hall."
"I would have liked her," you say.
He looks at you. "She would have loved you," he says certainly and simply and you feel it land in your chest and stay there.
Your mother is better.
You have made a careful peace with the fact that better and fixed are different countries and she lives in the first one now, stably, the new medication doing what the doctors hoped it would, her levels holding. She sat up in bed last week and asked you to bring her a snack from the market near the hospital and you went immediately and came back and sat beside her while she ate it and she looked at you with those eyes she has and said you look different lately.
“How?” you asked.
She considered it. “Lighter,” she said.
“I'm okay, eomma,” you said. “I think I'm really okay.”
She patted your hand and finished her snack and you sat with her in the mild hospital afternoon and for the first time in a very long time the sitting was just sitting. Just a daughter beside her mother in the early spring light.
Joshua is teaching himself a new song.
You know this because you can hear it through the wall of his apartment sometimes when you arrive. One evening in early April you arrive and the music stops when you knock and he opens the door with the guitar still in his hand, a habit he's stopped apologizing for because you told him not to and you come in and take your shoes off and he sits back on the couch and picks up where he left off without ceremony.
You make tea. You have learned where he keeps everything: the mugs on the left, the tea in the small tin beside the kettle, the honey he takes in his because he thinks no one notices but you always notice and you make two cups and bring them and sit beside him and he plays.
It’s the song he has been working on. You have heard the pieces of it before but not the whole thing and now it moves all the way through, finding its way. You cannot say how or why but you recognize the shape of it, the warmth of it, the way it knows where it's going.
He reaches the end and lets the last note go and the apartment is quiet.
"That's the one," you say. "The one you've been working on."
He looks at you. "Since July," he says.
You look back at him. "July," you repeat.
"Give or take," he says and the corner of his mouth moves and you understand completely and say nothing and take a long sip of your tea while he tunes a string that doesn't need tuning.
"Does it have a name?" you ask.
He considers. "Same stop," he says.
You are very quiet for a moment. Outside the spring evening is blue and mild and somewhere below in the courtyard the potted plants have come back, tentative and green, and someone has added new ones for the season.
"Play it again," you say.
Joshua plays it again. You sit beside him with your tea and your eyes half closed and the music fills the small warm space and you think about a bus in April, standing room only, shoulders almost touching, and a voice saying this is us like it was nothing, like it was just geography, and you think about how long the world was quietly arranging things before either of you knew.
Your mother meets Joshua on a Sunday in the middle of April.
You don't make it a big thing. You bring him to the hospital and he brings flowers, the yellow kind, because he asked the market ajumma what would be appropriate and she told him with great authority and he listened.
Your mother looks at him for a long moment when you walk in and he smiles at her and says annyeonghaseyo in his careful Korean and she replies and says something that makes him look at you for translation.
"She says your pronunciation is improving," you say.
"She's heard me before?"
"I talk about you," you say, which you have never admitted directly and you watch what your words do to his face: the soft brightness of it, the way it moves through him and you think: there is the thing you fell in love with. The realness of him, the way nothing you give him gets wasted.
Your mother pats the chair beside her bed and he sits in it and she asks Joshua questions in Korean that you translate and he answers and she listens and at some point she switches to careful slow English just for him and he lights up at it.
Before you leave she holds your hand for a moment and says, "He looks at you like you're something he found."
Joshua’s residency status comes through on a Wednesday.
He calls you before he tells anyone else. You are at work and you step into the corridor to answer and he tells you and you lean against the wall of the corridor with your hand over your mouth and your eyes doing something embarrassing.
"You're staying," you say.
"I'm staying," he says.
He came here for his grandmother. He came to find her in the streets and the language and the air, and he did, in small increments, in the patient accumulation of a year of learning. He found her in the market ajumma's kitchen vocabulary and the persimmon tree on the quiet street and the smell of miyeok-guk on a birthday evening. He found her in the language he is still learning.
And he found something else. Something he didn't come looking for which is the way the best things tend to arrive.
"Joshua," you say.
"Yeah."
"I have to tell you something."
A pause. "Of course."
"I love you," you say in the corridor of your office building on a Wednesday afternoon with absolutely no ceremony because you have been carrying it since a persimmon tree in March and it has been patient long enough. "I just… I wanted you to know. As a separate thing from the residency, I mean you can just—that's just true regardless of any of it."
He is quiet for three full seconds.
Then he laughs. You can hear the smile in it and you feel it’s enormous and unguarded.
"YN-ah," he says.
"Hm?"
"I have loved you," he says, "since a very long time ago."
"December?" you say.
"Before December," he says. "Since a bus stop in April. Since the same stop and a name I didn't know yet."
You close your eyes in the corridor and you smile so wide it almost hurts.
Outside your office window the city is doing what it does in spring: beginning again, the cherry blossoms on the main road dropping their petals in the mild wind like they have somewhere to be. Somewhere across the neighborhood a man is learning the language of the city he has decided to stay in and somewhere in a hospital a woman is getting a little better and somewhere on a quiet street there is a persimmon tree putting out its new leaves again, patient as it has always been, asking nothing, giving everything.
You stay on the phone a little longer than you need to just to hear Joshua breathe.
