still warm
pairing: joshua x (f) reader
summary: there is a dinner you both have to sit through, a wall he can't find the door to, and a bedroom at midnight where two people who love each other figure out how to say the hard things out loud
genre: established relationship, angst with a happy ending, hurt/comfort, domestic angst, soft ending
additional tags & warnings: still the same soft joshua we all love but he's also human and can be defensive for his own sake, arguments, reader shuts down, dinner with svt members, reconciliation, bedroom conversations, they find their way back
word count: 5,321
a/n: still warm takes place in the same universe as there it is; the same joshua, the same you, just on a harder day.
i strongly suggest to read there it is first before this one for the sake of context. you can find this series with the tag #the margin notes
may we all live softer lives with even softer landings <3
It starts the way most things start between people who love each other and are also, very much, human.
You'd had a day. Not a bad day, really—nothing catastrophic—just the kind of day that accumulates. Small frustrations stacking on top of each other like dishes nobody washed, until by evening the pile is just precarious and you are tired and you just need somewhere to put it down.
Joshua is the somewhere you always put things down. That's not a burden—you've never thought of it as a burden and you don't think he does either. It's just what you are to each other. The person the other one comes home to.
So you'd come home to him.
He's in the living room when you get in, laptop open, something playing low on the speaker in the kitchen. He looks up and smiles when you come through the door—that immediate smile, the one that means you're here—and you feel some of the day's ease.
"Hey," he says softly.
"Hey." You drop your bag. Sit on the arm of the couch for a moment, not quite settled. "Can I tell you something?"
"Of course." His eyes drift back to the screen.
You watch him for a moment. The half-presence of someone whose attention is divided and hasn't fully chosen yet. You know this look. You start anyway because you've been carrying it all day and the carrying has gotten heavy.
"So there was this thing at work—it's not a big deal but it kind of got to me more than I expected and I've been thinking about it and—"
"Mm," he says. "Yeah."
You stop.
He doesn't notice you've stopped.
You sit with that for a moment. The mm, yeah. It’s automatic, unprocessed, the verbal equivalent of a nod from someone looking the other direction. You know he didn't mean it. You know he's tired too. You know all the reasonable things that could be.
But it still lands the way it lands.
"Never mind," you say. Perfectly even.
He looks up then. "Sorry—what was that?"
"Nothing. It's fine." You start to stand. "We should start getting ready, we're going to be late."
Something moves across his face. He’s reading you the way he always reads you. "You sure?"
"Yeah," you say. Forced. "I'm sure."
You go to the bedroom to change.
He follows you a few minutes later. Joshua has never been able to leave things alone—it is one of the things you love about him and sometimes find exhausting, this inability to let an unresolved thing sit or go. Usually it works in your favor. Tonight you're not sure yet.
"Hey," he says from the doorway.
"Hey." You're at the wardrobe, suddenly thinking that deciding what to wear felt like a monumental task.
"You're not fine."
"I said I was fine, though."
"I know what you said." He comes in, sits on the edge of the bed. "What happened?"
You turn around. You look at him, and you try—genuinely try—to find the words for the thing that is small and also, inexplicably, not small.
"I was trying to tell you something," you say. "And you weren't listening."
He looks at you for a moment. And you see it—just barely, just at the edges—something tightening in his expression. Something pulling back, perhaps.
"I was in the middle of something," he says.
You blink.
"I know," you say carefully.
"I didn't even know you were going to—" He stops to run a hand through his hair. "You could've said you needed to talk. I would've put it down."
There it is. The slight shift in his voice—it’s not cruel, not even unkind, but tilted somehow, maybe angled away from accountability and toward explanation. Toward but.
"I did say I needed to talk," you say. "I said can I tell you something."
"I know, I just —" He exhales. "I had three things open and I was trying to finish before we had to leave. It wasn't intentional."
"I know it wasn't intentional, you say. But under your breath, “I know it wasn’t.”
"So then—" He gestures slightly. "I mean, I said sorry, I asked you to tell me again—"
"You said sorry, what," you say and your voice is still even, still measured, still so very fine. "That's not the same thing."
He looks at you. There is something in his face now that you recognize but rarely see directed at you—a kind of bracing, a slight squaring off like he is deciding how much ground to hold.
"I don't know what you want me to say," he says. "I was busy. I looked up. I asked you to continue. You said never mind."
"Because the moment had passed."
"I'm not a mind reader." It comes out more clipped than he means it to. You can tell, you can always tell with him, but it comes out nonetheless and it lands the way clipped things land.
Sharp at the edges.
You look at him.
And something in you makes a quiet decision.
"You're right," you say. "Let's just get ready."
You turn back to the wardrobe.
Behind you, there’s silence.
"That's it?" he then says.
"That's it," you say pleasantly.
"You're just going to—"
"Joshua." You take out what you need, your voice perfectly warm, perfectly level, the careful neutral of someone who has folded something up and put it somewhere he cannot reach. "We're going to be late. It's fine. I'm fine. We don’t have to talk about it."
He opens his mouth.
He closes it.
He hears it then—not what you said but what you didn't say. The fine that isn't fine. The warmth that has no heat in it. The wall going up in real time. It’s polite and total and impenetrable and he is standing on the wrong side of it.
"I didn't mean—" he starts.
"I know," you cut in.
You go to the bathroom to finish getting ready and you close the door and the click of it is the quietest, most complete sound he has heard all evening.
He sits on the edge of the bed.
I'm not a mind reader.
The words come back to him the way words do when you've said something you can't take back. They arrive fully formed, exact, carrying their weight. He hadn't meant them the way they landed. He'd been tired and caught off guard and a little defensive and he'd said the thing that came out instead of the thing that was true and now you are on the other side of a closed door being perfectly fine with him and he has no one to blame for that except himself.
He puts his head in his hands briefly.
Then he gets up and goes to change.
The car ride is its own particular thing.
He tries to talk and you answer everything. Every question, every observation, every tentative reach with the warm attentive responses of someone who is absolutely present and absolutely unreachable at the same time. You ask about his day. You laugh at something on the radio. You are so entirely fine that it is like sitting next to a very convincing approximation of you and he would almost believe it except that he knows. He has always known exactly what your real fine looks like.
This isn't it.
He quietly reaches for your hand at a red light, palm up, the same way he always reaches. You let him take it. Your hand sits in his but it doesn't curl around his fingers, doesn't press back. It’s present. Polite. Gone.
He stares at the road.
I'm not a mind reader.
He thinks about the way your face had done nothing when he said it. Not flinched, not crumpled, just gone very still and very smooth, the expression of someone receiving a thing they'd half expected and are now quietly filing away somewhere he can't follow.
He thinks about what you'd said before that. The moment had passed. And before that: I was trying to tell you something and you weren't listening. And before that, standing in the living room, trying to start a sentence while he sat there with his laptop and his three open tabs and his mm, yeah.
He'd been defensive. He knew he was defensive. He'd felt himself doing it—the pulling back, the slight pivot toward justification. And he'd done it anyway because he was tired and felt caught out and something in him had gone but before the rest of him could stop it.
That's not an excuse. He knows that's not an excuse.
He just didn't realize the damage until he heard the bathroom door.
He glances at you. You're looking out the window, your eyes distant and shining, the city moving past in streaks of light, your expression composed and unreadable and somewhere very far from here.
He looks back at the road.
He drives with your hand still in his.
The restaurant is warm and full of people you both love and for a while that almost works.
Seungcheol pulls you into a hug the moment you walk in and says something that makes you laugh genuinely and properly. It’s a laugh that reaches your eyes and for just a moment Joshua watches the tightness in your face ease and something loosens in his own chest. Seokmin is already mid-story about something that makes no sense and you slide into the seat next to Minghao who gives you a kiss on the cheek. You let the noise of them wash over you.
Joshua takes the seat directly across from you. He always chooses it deliberately because it’s close enough to see your face, close enough for the small private language you speak without words. Normally you catch him choosing it and raise an eyebrow and he shrugs and looks away. Tonight you don't look at him when you sit down.
He unfolds his napkin.
The evening moves the way these evenings do—loud and overlapping, food arriving in waves, conversations splitting and merging. You are good at this. You like these people. You laugh at the right moments because the moments are truly funny and you contribute to the conversation because you have things to say and from the outside you are probably completely fine.
But then the food comes.
The main dishes arrive and Joshua reaches across the table toward your plate—automatic, the same thing he always does, the reaching without thinking because putting food on your plate is something his hands do before his brain has to decide—and you reach for the serving dish yourself, quietly, a half second before he gets there. You serve your own plate and set the spoon down and reach for the next dish.
It's nothing. Three seconds. Nobody would notice.
Jeonghan notices.
He doesn't say anything. He just reaches for his own bowl with the particular ease of someone who has just registered something and kept quiet for now.
Joshua withdraws his hand. He picks up his chopsticks. He doesn't look at you.
Across the table Seungkwan is telling a story that has taken several left turns and Minghao is laughing and you're watching them with your chin in your hand, warm and open and entirely somewhere Joshua can't reach. He watches you tilt your head at something Mingyu says. He watches you smile at Vernon’s punchline. He watches you be completely, convincingly present with everyone at this table except him.
He tries, a few minutes later, to catch your eye. Just that—just the small private reach across the table, the thing he does without thinking, the checking in that has become as natural as breathing. He looks at you at the moment you turn to say something to Minghao. He looks again when you're reaching for your drink. He looks when Seokmin says something that makes the whole table erupt, because he always, always looks for you first when something is funny—always wants to see your face in the moment of it, always finds you first in a room full of people.
Each time, you are looking somewhere else.
Not deliberately—or maybe deliberately, he can't tell anymore and the not being able to tell is its own particular ache. You're not punishing him. You would never. You're just…closed. Present in every way that involves the people around you but quietly, politely absent in the one way that involves him.
He passes the dish to his left when Wonwoo reaches for it. He laughs at Seokmin's next story. He answers a question Seungcheol asks about next month's schedule. He is, from the outside, probably completely fine.
Then you look at him.
It lasts maybe two seconds—your eyes finding him across the table, the first time all evening you've let them land there. And in those two seconds he sees it: underneath the polished composed surface of you tonight, the thing you have been carrying since the bathroom door clicked shut. Not anger. Something smaller and more tired than anger. A quiet hurt and behind it a kind of watching—patient, waiting—to see what he does with the space between you.
He holds your gaze.
You look away first. Back to Minghao, back to the warmth of the table, your expression rearranging itself seamlessly. The two seconds close like water over a stone.
He looks at his plate.
I'm not a mind reader.
He would give a great deal to take it all back.
Jeonghan materializes at Joshua’s side between courses the way Jeonghan does—sliding into a vacated seat with a glass in hand and the expression of someone who has been watching for a while and has reached some conclusions.
"So," Jeonghan says, not looking at him.
"So," Joshua says.
The corner of Jeonghan's mouth moves. He takes a slow sip. "She seems fine."
"She is fine."
"Mm." A pause weighted with everything he's decided not to say yet. "That's the problem, isn't it."
Joshua is quiet. Sometimes he hates how well his people are able to read the love of his life in all the ways he seems to lack.
"What happened?" Jeonghan asks and his voice has dropped the lightness, becoming the thing it becomes when he actually means something.
"I wasn't listening," Joshua says. Quiet. "She came home and she wanted to tell me something and I was on my laptop and I gave her a mm, yeah. And then when she told me what was wrong—" He exhales. "I got defensive real fast. I said I wasn't a mind reader."
Jeonghan is still for a moment.
"Yeah," he says. Just that.
"It came out wrong,” Joshua says.
"I imagine."
"I wasn't trying to be mean."
"I know you weren't." Jeonghan sets his glass down. "That's almost the harder part, isn't it? When you say the thing you didn't mean and you can see the exact moment it lands and there's nothing you can do about it."
Joshua looks at the table. "She closed the bathroom door."
"Mm."
"She never closes the bathroom door."
"No," Jeonghan agrees. "She doesn't." He's quiet for a moment, watching the table. Across it you're laughing at something Seokmin has said, your head tipping back, your whole face giving itself to it. Jeonghan watches it. "She's good at this," he says. "Being fine."
"Too good," Joshua mutters under his breath as he catches a droplet of condensation falling from his glass.
"That's not a criticism of her."
"I know it's not."
"It means," Jeonghan says carefully, "that when she shows you something is wrong, it costs her something to show it. And when you responded to that cost with a but—" He leaves it there.
Joshua closes his eyes briefly. Opens them. "I know."
"Do you?" Jeonghan asks. Not unkindly. "Or do you know it in your head but not yet in the place where you'll remember it next time?"
The question lands. Joshua doesn't answer it because there isn't a good answer, only an honest one, and the honest one is that he's still working on it.
Jeonghan seems to understand this. He picks up his glass again. "She'll let you back in," he says. "She always does. That's who she is." A glance sideways at Joshua. "Just make sure that when the door opens, you walk through it with the real thing. Not the version that starts with I was tired or I didn't mean it. The actual thing."
"Which is…" Joshua asks.
"That she came home and needed you and you made her feel like that was inconvenient." Jeonghan's voice is even. Within reason. Without cruelty. "That's the actual thing. Everything else is an explanation."
Joshua is quiet for a long moment.
Down the table you laugh at something again and he watches it the way he always watches you, the particular way you laugh when you mean it, the thing he has loved about you since long before he knew he loved you. He thinks about the living room and the mm yeah and everything he was one bad moment away from missing entirely.
"Yeah," he says. "Okay."
Jeonghan nods once. "Good. Now eat something. You've been moving your food around for ten minutes."
Seungcheol finds him by the coats at the end of the night as the evening breaks up and people gather their things.
He doesn't say anything at first. Just stands beside Joshua with the quiet solidity he has always carried, watching the room. Across it you're saying your goodbyes—hugging Mingyu who says something into your ear that makes you laugh, the real one, the full one. Joshua watches it happen and feels the familiar pull of it and the familiar distance of tonight sitting between that pull and him.
"She's not mad," Seungcheol says. It’s a statement, not a question.
"No," Joshua agrees.
"Worse."
"Yeah."
Seungcheol is quiet for a moment. "I tried to read the table all night. Couldn't figure out exactly what happened but I could see the shape of it." He glances at Joshua. "She passed the dishes herself every time."
"Yeah."
"Laughed at everything Seokmin and Mingyu said."
"I know."
"Didn't look at you for about forty minutes."
"I know." Joshua's voice is quiet. "And when she finally did—"
"I saw," Seungcheol says simply. "Two seconds." He folds his coat over his arm. "What did you say to her?"
"Wrong thing." Joshua looks at his own coat, not yet putting it on. "She came home wanting to talk and I wasn't paying attention and when she called me on it I went sideways. I said I wasn't a mind reader."
Seungcheol absorbs this. "And now she's—"
"Perfectly fine," Joshua says. "All evening."
"That's not nothing."
"No," Joshua agrees. "It's not."
Seungcheol is quiet for a moment, the particular stillness of someone choosing their words. Then: "You know what to do."
"I know what I should've done three hours ago."
"That's done. You've got now." He puts a hand on Joshua's shoulder, brief and solid. "Go home. Say the real thing, not the version of it that makes you look better. She'll know the difference."
"She always does."
"That's why you're with her." His hand drops. "Go."
Across the room you look up and your eyes find Joshua's. Just for a moment, held across the warm noise of the restaurant. Your expression is still composed, still carrying that particular waiting quality he has been sitting across from all evening. But in it, underneath it, the thing that has always been there: you, still here, still his, giving him the space to find his way back.
He holds your gaze.
The corner of your mouth moves and your eyes smile—barely, just barely—before you turn back to finish your goodbyes.
He puts on his coat.
The ride home is quiet in a different way than before.
The sharp edges have worn down. They’re not resolved. Not yet. But the warmth of the evening has softened the texture of the silence between you. You rest your chin on your palm as you look out the window. He drives. The city moves past in the way it moves past late at night, slower and more golden.
At a red light he reaches over without looking at you, palm up. The same reach as before.
You look at his hand.
You put yours in it.
And this time—slowly, after a moment—your fingers curl around his.
He doesn't say anything. Just holds on tighter, careful, like something he wants to keep.
The light changes. He drives you home.
Home.
Coats off. Shoes by the door.
You go to the kitchen. He follows because he cannot not follow, because the distance has been building all evening and he has been waiting for the door of the restaurant to close behind you and now it has.
You're at the counter, your back to him, hands around a glass of water.
He stops a few feet away. Not touching you. Not yet because he hasn't earned that yet.
"I've been trying to figure out what to say since the drive back home," he says. Low. Careful. "I keep starting and it keeps coming out as an explanation and I don't want to explain. I just want to say it."
You don't turn around. But your hands go still around the glass.
"You can say it," you say quietly.
A pause. The kind that means he's finding the real thing, not the comfortable version of it.
"I wasn't there," he says. "You came home and you needed me and I gave you a mm, yeah and that was already bad enough. And then when you told me… when you did exactly the right thing and told me… I made it about myself. I went straight to but instead of just—" He stops.
"I said I wasn't a mind reader. And that was wrong and it wasn't true and I knew it the moment it came out and I let you walk away anyway."
You stare at the counter.
"Why?" you ask. Not accusatory. Genuinely asking, the way you always genuinely ask, even now.
"Because I felt caught," he says. "And when I feel caught I justify instead of listen. I've done it before in smaller ways and you've never called me on it and I think I got comfortable not being called on it. And tonight you called me on it and I didn't know how to just—receive that." A pause. "That's mine. Not yours."
Something loosens in your chest. That honesty. The specific difficult generous honesty of someone who has had an entire evening to sit with something and is now handing it over fully.
You turn around.
He looks tired. Not just from the evening but from the whole night of carrying it: the dinner and the distance and the careful ride home. There is something open and a little raw in his face, the look of a person who has been sitting with guilt and is only now setting it down.
"It's hard," you say. "When I say something hurts and the first thing I get back is but."
"I know." He doesn't look away. "You came home and you needed me to just be there. And I couldn't even manage that. And then when you told me I made you feel like it was your fault for telling me." His jaw tightens slightly. "I'm ashamed of that."
"I'm not trying to make you feel bad," you say.
"I know you're not. I'm not saying it for sympathy. I'm saying it because I want you to know I understand what I actually did. Not just the laptop. The but."
You look at him for a long moment.
"Can I tell you something?" you say.
"Always," he says. And the word comes out the way it always comes out: like a door swinging open.
"I don't think you don't care," you say. "I've never thought that. Not once." You find his eyes. "But sometimes when I try to say something and it goes nowhere I think… maybe it wasn't worth saying. Maybe the things I want to share are too small or too frequent or—" You stop, your eyes shining. "I know that's mine to work on. But tonight when you said what you said it felt like… like evidence. That maybe I'd been right to wonder."
The words land and you feel them land and you feel him feel them land and the silence afterward is very honest.
"You are not too much," he says. Quietly. Firmly. He takes a step forward. "There is no version of what you want to tell me that I don't want to hear. There is no small thing."
Damn it all because he crosses the room then and stops in front of you and his hand comes up to your face—his thumb at your cheek, the gesture so familiar it lives somewhere permanent in your chest. "What I said was wrong and it wasn't true and those are not the same thing. My defensiveness and what I actually think of you. They have nothing to do with each other."
Your throat does something inconvenient.
"I hate that I can't just shake it off," you say.
"Don't." His voice is gentle but certain. "Don't make it smaller than it is because you think you should be able to handle it. You came home and tried to give me something and I dropped it. I should have tried to catch it."
You look at the space between you.
"Next time," you say quietly, "I won't say never mind."
"Next time," he says, "I'll put the laptop down before you have to ask." His thumb brushes across your cheek. "And if I'm tired and I miss it—you say Joshua, put it down. And I will. Every single time. Without the but."
You look up at him.
"Every time?" you say.
He leans closer. "Every time," he whispers against your lips.
Something in you that has been held carefully all evening finally, gently, sets itself down.
You lean your forehead against his. He exhales—long and slow, like something he has been holding since the bathroom door—and his arms come around you properly, solid and warm and certain.
"I'm sorry," he says into your hair. "For all of it. For carrying it through the whole dinner."
"I know," you say. "You were doing your best."
You stay like that for a while, the kitchen warm and still around you. Not everything has been said—there are probably more conversations inside this one, smaller rooms you'll find your way into eventually. But the main thing is here, in his arms, already softening into something that will become okay.
"What was it?" he says eventually, softer now.
You pull back enough to look at him. "What?"
"The thing," he says. "The small warm thing you were going to tell me."
You look at him for a moment.
"There were two things, actually," you say. "That's why it felt like a lot to carry."
He waits the way he waits: without filling the silence, just holding it open for you.
"The work thing first," you say. "There's someone on my team. You don't know her… and she's been struggling for weeks and she never says anything, she just gets quieter and I've been watching it and not knowing how to—anyway. Today she came and found me. She just showed up at my desk and said I don't know who else to tell this to and she sat down and talked for twenty minutes." You pause. "I didn't do anything. I just listened. And at the end she said thank you, I felt better and went back to her desk like it was nothing." You look at your hands. "And I just sat there thinking about how sometimes that's all it is. Just—someone showing up. Just being there."
He is very still.
"That's what you wanted to tell me," he says quietly.
"Yeah." You look up at him. "While it was still warm."
Neither of you says anything for a moment. The kitchen holds it.
"And the second thing?" he says.
Something in your face softens. "I found a bookshop," you say. "A new one near the office. I went in because I had twenty minutes and I found this whole shelf of poetry in the back and I—" You pause. "I thought about you. About Busan. About what you wrote in the margin. And I wanted to tell you that too, while it was still—"
"Warm," he says.
"Yeah." Your voice goes soft. "I had a whole day's worth of things and I just wanted to bring them home to you."
He holds your face in both hands. His eyes are soft and present and carrying something that looks a little like the specific weight of understanding; not just what he missed tonight but what it means that you wanted to share it, what it says about who you bring your days to and why.
"Tell me about her," he says. "Your colleague."
So you do. And then you tell him about the bookshop— the smell of it, the particular light, the poetry shelf and the specific feeling of standing there and thinking of him. He listens to every word of both. He asks one question and then another and the conversation opens the way it always does between you until the evening has lost all its sharp edges entirely.
He makes tea without being asked. He gets yours exactly right. You wrap both hands around it and look at him over the rim and think: there he is. Even after all of this, there he is.
A little while later, with your mugs empty, the quiet of the apartment settled around you, he reaches over and takes your face in his hands again—the same way he did before but slower now. More deliberate. He looks at you for a moment the way he looks at things he is glad to have and then he kisses you.
Not urgently. Not making up for anything or trying to. Just soft. His mouth on yours, his thumbs resting light at your cheeks. The kind of kiss that doesn't want anything except to say I'm here. I know. I'm sorry. I'm here.
You let him. You kiss him back the same way: slow and forgiving and certain, the way you are with each other when the hard part is over and what's left is just the two of you, still here, still choosing this.
He rests his forehead against yours when it ends.
"Come to bed," you say.
"Yeah," he says. "Okay."
Later, the lamp was still on. You are on your sides facing each other, the way you end up sometimes when the day has been too much to turn away from just yet. His hand finds your waist. Your eyes find him. The room is warm and small and entirely yours.
"What was the good moment?" he asks. Soft and sleepy. "The one from this afternoon. Tell me again."
You smile into the pillow.
You tell him again.
He listens to every word.
"Next time," he says quietly, already half toward sleep, "don't say never mind."
"Next time," you say, "put the laptop down before I have to ask."
A pause.
"Deal," he says, the corners of his eyes smiling.
You close your eyes, a smile on your lips. Joshua quietly leans in to kiss them.
Outside it is late and cold and the city goes on without you. In here, it is warm and resolved and whole, and tomorrow you will both be a little more careful, a little more honest, a little more practiced at finding each other when the distance creeps in.
That, you think, is what this is. Not the absence of distance. Just getting better at closing it.
His breathing slows. His arm stays where it is.
You sleep.