Chapter Text
With a stern look from Hongjoong and some gentle encouragement from Seonghwa, Jongho had managed to get himself out of their room and in front of Mingi’s door, only to find it slightly ajar and the lights off. To confirm no one was inside, he pushed the door lightly and poked his head in. Empty, just as he’d guessed.
“He’s in the living room.”
At the sound of Wooyoung’s voice, Jongho pulled his head back out. From midway down the hallway, hand resting on the knob to Yunho and San’s room, Wooyoung was watching him.
“Oh,” was all Jongho could say. Was he that obvious?
“Did you need him for something?” Wooyoung asked, peering curiously at him.
“Kind of, yeah,” Jongho answered vaguely.
“He’s just watching a show with Yunho and Yeosang.” Wooyoung gestured over his shoulder at the living room. “I’m sure he won’t mind if you interrupt.”
“Thanks.” Jongho stared in the direction of Wooyoung’s thumb.
“Don’t look so stressed, man. It’s just Mingi. I’m sure he’ll understand, whatever it is.”
On one hand, Jongho knew that Wooyoung was trying to be comforting, but Jongho was on the precipice of what could be the biggest emotional moment of his life, there wasn’t much talking him down at the moment. All of his emotions were swirling, filling him, threatening to burst out in a flurry of messy, uncoordinated sentences. He could feel it, the building anxiety that always came when he was facing the inevitability of laying himself bare in front of someone.
Jongho nodded with what he hoped was enough conviction to convince Wooyoung that he had a handle on the situation. “Right.”
Wooyoung gave him an encouraging smile and then disappeared into San’s room. Left alone in the hallway, Jongho lingered for a moment. He needed—wanted—to have this conversation with them but actually starting it was proving difficult. The conviction he had left his hyungs’ room with was slowly bleeding out of him as he stood there. The anxious feeling was building, twisting and rolling around in his gut.
What if they didn’t want to date him?
What if they felt he was intruding in their relationship?
What if he'd been reading everything wrong?
What if he’d only been projecting his own emotions onto the situation?
With a quick snap of his head, Jongho broke his spiraling train of thought. The only thing that would come from allowing that type of thinking would be talking himself out of talking to them. Which wouldn’t do him any good. No, he needed to do this and he needed to do this now.
He squared his shoulders and marched down the hallway towards the living room. No one noticed him lingering in the doorway as his gaze caught on Yunho and Mingi. The two of them looked so soft, with Mingi leaning his head on Yunho’s chest, one of Yunho’s arms wrapped around his shoulder. It was easy to picture himself on Yunho’s otherside, mirroring Mingi’s position, their fingers tangled together on Yunho’s stomach. Or if he let his mind wander just a little further, he could see himself nestled snugly between the two of them.
Yeosang shifted, reminding Jongho that he was also in the living room. Jongho suddenly realized that if he asked to speak with them now, Yeosang would probably be curious as to what he needed. While Yeosang was usually the more respectful of his hyungs, he also had a tendency to gossip with Wooyoung. That was something Jongho didn’t need. It was bad enough Wooyoung had caught him looking for Mingi. He didn’t need the two of them putting the pieces together.
Maybe he could catch them after dinner or in the morning.
Quietly, Jongho backtracked out of the doorway, down the hallway and into his bedroom. As he pushed the door shut, his eyes landed on the pen cup on his desk, an innocuous collection of pencils, a ruler, a pair of scissors and a few blue and black pens. A thought struck him as he moved towards his desk.
Carefully he lowered himself into his desk chair and plucked a blue pen from the cup. With deliberate movements, he rolled up his sleeve and stared down at the pale expanse of his forearm. He clicked the pen open and brought the tip to hover over his skin. With his best handwriting, he wrote, the foreign sensation of the cool pen tip dragging across his arm sending tingles through him. It only took a few moments to ink his thought into existence.
The first thing he could ever remember consciously writing to his soulmates.
I love you.
He dropped the pen on his desktop. There was nothing more to say. All he could do was wait and hope they saw it before he got hungry.
So wait he did.
Jongho considered himself a patient man, wasn’t quick to action, more than content to sit and wait, but this was different. His heart was on the line now. He had never loved anyone the way he loved them and he had just given them the opportunity to hurt him. Not intentionally—they would never hurt him intentionally—but unintentionally it would hurt just as much.
After a few moments of staring at the closed door, Jongho decided he was being ridiculous. It might take them minutes to notice; he shouldn’t expect them immediately. To distract himself, he picked up the book he’d been reading recently and moved towards his bed. Before he threw himself onto the mattress, he noticed the shopping bag he’d hastily chucked there in his rush to get to Seonghwa and Hongjoong.
Placing the book down, he pulled the jacket out of the bag. Carefully, he put it on a hanger, taking the time to set the shoulders neatly, and tucked it gently into his closet. Then he scooped the book up again and flopped stomach-first onto his bed.
After turning three pages and realizing he remembered exactly zero of the words he’d just read, Jongho stuck his bookmark back where it had been before he’d started. He rolled over and tossed the book the short distance to his desk. It landed with a soft thud and skidded to a stop against his desk lamp. After staring at the ceiling for another minute and considering the fact that they might not notice for quite some time, he’d pulled his phone out and started up a mobile game. A few too many deaths to low-level enemies caused by glancing at the bedroom door and he gave up on that idea too. Idly, he flipped through apps until he settled on watching YouTube videos he didn’t actually care about the contents of.
Midway through a documentary about sharks, he thought he heard something coming from the living room but he dismissed it. They were a loud group; if he started pinning hopes on what seemed like someone shouting in excitement, he was doomed to be let down. Repeatedly.
The footsteps racing down the hallway weren’t as easy to dismiss though. Before he could really process what was happening, the door was flung open as Mingi burst in, Yunho close on his heels. Flinging his phone away from him, Jongho sat up and stared wide-eyed at them. The door swung shut behind them, not completely but Jongho couldn’t bring himself to care at that moment.
“Do you mean it?” Mingi panted, holding his right arm out.
The t-shirt he was wearing had almost all of his arm exposed so it was easy for Jongho to see his own neat handwriting printed in blue on Mingi’s forearm. His hand was clenched in a fist, causing the muscles and tendons to stand out a little on his trembling arm.
“Min.” Yunho paused to gasp out a breath of his own. “I said don’t scare him.”
“I need to know, Yunho,” Mingi retorted, not taking his eyes off Jongho.
Jongho raised his eyes and met Mingi’s slightly wild expression. He hesitated a moment and then nodded. There was no point in denying the truth.
“Say it. Say it, please,” Mingi pleaded in a whisper. “I want to hear it, Jongho.”
“Mingi,” Yunho chastised, placing a hand on Mingi’s shoulder.
He could try to hide it, but Jongho could see that Yunho wanted to hear it too. It was in the way he kept glancing at his own exposed forearm, sleeve rolled up to his elbow to expose the writing. It was in the way he watched Jongho with careful, slightly guarded eyes.
There was no anger in either of them, only hope and a tinge of desperation. Almost as though they couldn’t bring themselves to believe the words on their arms.
Jongho slid his eyes over both of them before he swallowed thickly and said, “I love you. Both of you.”
Silence rang in the wake of his confession. No one moved. Just the three of them, breathing heavily in the small space. Jongho watched them and the two of them stared right back at him. He tried to will them to speak, to say anything. Anything to assuage the terrifying feeling of having made a mistake steadily rising in his body.
A teardrop hit his cheek and the spell was broken.
The two of them rushed forward, reaching for him and Jongho reached back. Mingi wasted no time, climbing into the bed and pulling Jongho between his spread legs. Yunho dried Jongho’s eyes with the edge of his sleeve, shushing him as he went.
“It’s okay,” Mingi whispered once he had Jongho’s back pressed to his chest, murmuring into the nape of his neck. “We’re here. I love you.”
“Don’t cry, Jjongie.” Yunho looked like he was on the verge of tears himself. “I love you, too.”
“Happy,” Jongho managed to force out through the thickness in his throat. “So happy. Wanted to tell you for so long.”
“How long?” Mingi asked, voice rumbling through Jongho’s back.
Jongho let out a wet laugh. What a question.
“How long have I loved you or how long have I wanted to tell you?” he asked.
Mingi and Yunho exchanged a surprised look.
“Both I suppose,” Yunho said, climbing into the bed with them.
It was a tight fit but they managed to make it work. Jongho reached out and pulled one of Yunho’s hands into his lap, intertwining their fingers.
“I’ve wanted to tell you for a few weeks now but I’ve loved you both since we were trainees.” He told them.
“That long,” Mingi breathed. “Why didn’t you—”
Jongho shrugged. “I didn’t want to force myself into your relationship. It wasn’t my place and you were so happy together. Are so happy together.”
“You can’t force yourself into somewhere you’re already wanted. We want to be happy with you too,” Yunho told him softly. “We’ve also wanted that for a while. ”
Despite himself, surprise washed through Jongho as he looked up at Yunho. “Really?”
Yunho hummed a noise of confirmation as he nodded. “Shortly after debut was the first time we ever talked about how we felt about you.”
“You’ve always been different for us, Jongho,” Mingi said. “Maybe it wasn’t love at first but I was drawn to you from the first time I laid eyes on you.”
“I was too,” Yunho admitted. “I tried not to think too hard about it though. I had Mingi and we were all trying to settle into our group dynamic. Convinced myself it was just what any hyung would feel for a maknae.”
“But it never went away,” Mingi continued. “Only grew as we got older and closer to you. It got so hard to convince myself I wasn’t falling in love with you.”
“We talked about how we were feeling late one night,” Yunho said.
“With the help of some soju,” Mingi threw in.
Yunho sent him a playful glare. “Talked about how special you had become to us. We realized we both felt the same pull towards you but we eventually decided we shouldn’t say anything.”
“We knew that you were aware we were soulmates by that time and we didn’t want you to think we’d just gotten bored and wanted a plaything or something. We decided that if you wanted to be anything more than a groupmate and a friend to us, that you would let us know.”
“We also weren’t sure how you would feel about dating people who weren’t your soulmate,” Yunho added. “Though I took a guess after that conversation we had.”
They were telling him everything he’d ever hoped, that not only did they love him in return, they had loved him before they knew he was their soulmate but he still had to ask. “You’re not saying this just because I’m your soulmate? Just because you’re supposed to love me?”
“No, no,” Mingi said while Yunho shook his head emphatically. “We would never lie to you like that.”
“I’d love you no matter what,” Yunho told him. “Knowing the universe said we should love you only confirmed my feelings, it didn’t create them.”
“We’ll never take you for granted, Jjongie,” Mingi whispered. “You’re precious to us, we want to make sure you know that every day we get with you.”
“Because every day you spend with us is your choice.” Yunho tilted his head to catch Jongho’s eye. “Saying you love us, and hopefully want to date us, isn’t a one time thing. You’re your own person. If something changes and it would make you happier to leave, I’d be sad but I’d let you go.”
“Me too. I only want you to be happy,” Mingi told him with a squeeze.
The tears were back, big fat tears spilling out of the corners of his eyes and down his cheeks. They were perfect and he didn’t deserve them, except the universe said he did. Yunho gave him a soft smile as he dabbed at the corners of Jongho’s eyes again.
It took a moment for the tears to stop this time but when they did, he told them in a thick voice, “I do, you know,”
“Do what?” Mingi asked.
“Want to date the two of you,” Jongho clarified, with a small sniffle. “If you want to date me, that is.”
Yunho’s smile brightened. “Of course we do.”
“I want to see you dressed up for us. Want to take you out to dinner. Want to take you to aquariums, theme parks, beaches and anywhere else you’ll let us,” Mingi listed happily.
Jongho playfully pouted a little. “I want to take you guys out too.”
Yunho giggled. “I think we can let you. Where do you want to take us, Jjongie?”
“Shopping in Paris, to coffee shops in New York city, sightseeing in London, and to explore Los Angeles together without having to worry about work.” Jongho ticked off each location on his fingers.
“Those all sound lovely,” Mingi said, nuzzling against the back of Jongho’s head. “Will you buy me anything I want in Paris?”
“Of course,” Jongho nodded sincerely. “Yunho too.”
“Good.” Jongho felt Mingi nod against him. “He deserves it. Spends too much of his own money on the rest of us.”
“You never complain when I’m buying for you,” Yunho retorted with a grin.
Jongho couldn’t see what Mingi did in response but it made Yunho laugh, bright and happy, eyes turning into the little crescents Jongho always found adorable. Mingi’s answering laugh rumbled through Jongho until he was giggling too. Sitting there, squished between Mingi’s legs, Yunho still holding his hand, laughing at nothing in particular, Jongho felt something slot into place within his soul. This is where he was meant to be. It had taken a while to get here and there were still things they needed to discuss but here, in this moment, just for the moment, life felt perfect.
“A lot of giggling happening in here.”
Seonghwa’s voice drew their attention to where he was standing in the doorway, watching them with a small, pleased smile.
Yunho choked back his laughter enough to say, “Good things, hyung. All good things.”
Jongho bit back another giggle of his own, feeling like his happiness couldn’t be contained. He could feel Mingi’s chest spasm with suppressed laughter.
“I’m glad to hear it.” Seonghwa’s smile brightened just a little. “I was just stopping by to let you all know that dinner’s ready. Wooyoung tried something new and he’d like us all to eat together so he can get feedback.”
“We’ll be right there, hyung,” Jongho told him.
Seonghwa gave all three of them a lingering, fond look before he walked off, leaving them to collapse into a fit of giggles again. It took a few more moments but they managed to gather themselves enough that they wouldn’t make fools of themselves at dinner. Probably. Maybe.
Yunho rolled off the bed first, landing gracefully on his feet. “We should go before Wooyoung comes and drags us out himself.”
“After dinner can we plan a date for our next off day?” Jongho asked as he crawled out of Mingi’s grasp, seemingly as reluctant to go as Mingi was to let him go.
“Please, Yunho!?” Mingi asked excitedly as he joined them on the floor.
“Why would I say no to that?” Yunho asked, faking affrontedness as he herded them out into the hallway.
“Food first, though,” Jongho said. “Feeling things makes me hungry.”
“Gonna have to remember to feed you often then,” Mingi said in a low voice. “I plan on making you feel things for the rest of our lives.”
Jongho came to a full stop in the middle of the hallway, blush growing on his cheeks as he watched Mingi walk off like he hadn’t just said that.
“Me too,” Yunho whispered as he brushed past Jongho’s frozen form.
Cheeks still warm, Jongho trailed after them into the dining room. With a smile, Mingi patted the chair between himself and the one Yunho was pulling out for himself. Feeling uncharastically shy, Jongho took the seat. Across from him, Yeosang raised an eyebrow but ultimately said nothing about Jongho not taking his usual seat. Mercifully, everyone seemed too focused on praising Wooyoung’s newest culinary creation to pay the three of them much mind—either that or for once they were practicing discretion. Either way, Jongho was grateful because his cheeks felt hot for the entirety of the meal and it was entirely Yunho and Mingi’s fault.
As they ate, both of them seemed to go out of their way to touch him. A hand resting on his knee, or brushing their fingers together when they passed him something, there was no shortage of physical contact from them. At no point did Jongho mind either; in fact he may have initiated some of the finger brushes. When they spoke to him, they seemed to pitch their voices just a little quieter as though their simple small talk was for his ears only. It had the added effect of emphasizing how deep their voices were, rumbling in their chest and making Jongho shiver just a tad.
The thought that he got to choose this for the rest of his life struck Jongho mid-bite. He could choose to feel this happy for as long as he wanted. He could choose to take each step of his life with these two men by his side and they in return could choose him.
He couldn’t think of a single thing that would make him happier.