Dan likes his coffee black, one cup before breakfast and another after dinner if he’s pulling an all nighter. He likes orange juice with breakfast, and for breakfast to be yogurt with fruit. He likes matching pajama sets, which is the dorkiest thing Jaekyung has ever heard. But when he comes padding into the kitchen and beelines for the coffee maker, stretching onto his tip toes to get a mug down, hair ruffled, eyes half closed, the dark blue and grey stripes wrinkled from good sleep, Jaekyung can’t help the funny thing that happens in his chest.
Kim Dan can’t stand ramen. It was always the cheapest food option available for him before he moved in with Jaekyung, so he ate it enough that the smell of certain brands gave him a headache instantly. When Jaekyung took him to Insaeng Hanwoo to celebrate after a match, Dan acted like everything in the restaurant was going to cost enough to put them both out of house and home. Dan hated spending money on himself, and moreso, he didn’t know how. He transitioned from his grandmother supporting him and barely taking care of herself to doing the same for her, so a person like Jaekyung who spent with both hands and got returns 10 fold was completely foreign. The better he got to know him, Jaekyung understood why Dan was in the predicament he was when they met.
What he didn’t understand was why he chose to work 4 dead-end jobs instead of working in what he went to medical school and got into debt with the mob for, but Dan clammed up about that worse than when he was avoiding Jaekyung. He also didn’t understand why he demanded Jaekyung take him to the same hospital Jaekyung went to for his checkups instead of the bigger hospital with shorter wait times. The way he clutched Jaekyungs forearm, fingernails almost breaking skin like he had threatened to crash the car with them both inside.
Dan liked TV dramas where both romantic leads had lives outside of their relationship, and ones where the asshole guy had to grovel for the girl to give him a chance. An appreciation he apparently learned from his grandmother. Dan had been more than a little wine drunk when he revealed that to Jaekyung, and the fighter waited with bated breath for him to realize what he just said and get embarrassed at the implications of their own relationship, but he never did. He also didn’t seem to understand why, later that night, Jaekyung had pinned his chest down with one hand on his sternum and worked him over with his mouth and fingers for almost an hour, until he had come three times and was shaky and teary with overstimulation.
As he looked down at Dan, face red, lips bloody from biting them, tear tracks tracing down into his hairline, Jaekyung wondered if Dan accepted, or even understood this as his version of repentance. He can’t get down on his knees and beg for forgiveness. His pride, his past, his reputation act like splints that keep him looming over the man, no matter how much he knows he deserves Hollywood-level grand gesture after gesture to make up for the things he went through because of Jaekyung.
So he repented in his own way. He made sure they always had his favorite food stocked. He signed up for a service that delivers imperfect produce for cheap to avoid it being wasted, assuming his saint of a boyfriend would appreciate both the healthy food and the lack of spoil, which he wholeheartedly did. He bought him a few sets of real silk pajamas, and insisted he actually wear them instead of leaving them in the closet for fear of ‘ruining’ them. He scheduled weekend visits with Granny twice a month, and got them set up so they could project the newest episodes of their favorite dramas onto the wall of the cafeteria, so the other patients could watch along with them.
Dan still cooked breakfast most days, mainly because now that they were sharing a bed, Dan woke first while Jaekyung made up for a decade of lost sleep, so he had time to while also packing their lunches. But Jaekyung tried to split dinners evenly between them, even learning new recipes, since he knew other people couldn’t eat the same thing every day without losing it.
It was weird. Dan had less relationship experience than Jaekyung did, and there was so much that they had to feel out on their own, and with the help of more than a few google searches. Jaekyung figured out that Dan was solitary because he was too polite, never dropping formalities no matter how long he knew someone, in fear of being rude, but ended up keeping them at arms length instead. It was interesting, how they ended up in the same boat, (alone save for those they worked with) for such drastically different reasons.
Jaekyung made sure Dan had friends. They went in to the gym together every morning, and left together every night. If the other fighters were having a night out, or another event, Jaekyung would drop him off, demanding he keeps his phone on him and on, but otherwise letting him enjoy their company. He bit his tongue when Dan helped them stretch and recover, maybe grabbing his hand and holding it under his on the gear shift on the way home if he was finding that too difficult. He bought Dan a video game, one that looked right up his alley, where you control a cute sock puppet to navigate terrain, and watched as he played, eyebrows furrowed, tongue between his teeth, until he hauled them both off to bed. He subscribed to medical magazines, and half-listened as Dan spouted out interesting tidbits while he read them over breakfast.
He watched as Dan gained weight, going from 60 kgs to a much less concerning 68, making sure to take him shopping regularly so he always had scrubs and plain clothes that fit comfortably.
And as much as it pained him, he tried to file down his own fangs. He started keeping lube in his car, shower, gym bag, the nightstand of both the master bedroom and the hostel he bought for when they visited Granny and, much to Dan’s embarrassment, the kitchen, hidden in an empty tea tin they left on the counter. He agreed to treat the weekends with Granny as his rest days, only jogging in the morning, and maybe swimming in the ocean if the weather was right. He stopped lashing out at the guys at the gym so much, and bought ‘thank you’ gifts for all the managers and trainers. He read books, got back into watching sports and paid attention to the news, so he and Dan actually had things to talk about.
Most importantly, he started paying some goddamn attention. He noticed when Dan wasn’t eating, and asked about it. He watched his face closely as he talked, looking beyond the words to figure out what he really meant. He prompted him when he looked like he had something to say, and shut up when he looked like he didn’t want to. He realized Dan didn’t have any hobbies, by nature of never having the time or money, and forced him to do something about it. Remembering his love of board games, he found board game clubs (for adults) nearby and signed him up without a second thought. He suggested Dan do health analysis and recommendations for the other gym members, and stopped him from overdoing it on research.
He put Kim Dan first, where he always, at least subconsciously, know he deserved.
