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On some days, Jeonghan wakes up and thinks he's dreaming.
The empty half of the mattress next to him is still carrying the warmth of a familiar body, there is soft sunlight streaming through the windows and tinting the room a soft yellow-gold.
Jeonghan blinks, wipes the sleep from the corners of his eyes, and wiggles his second hand out from beneath the blanket to trace his fingertips above the part of the mattress where Joshua usually sleeps next to him.
If Jeonghan concentrates and breathes in, he can still smell Joshua's aftershave clinging to the pillow, can even procure the memory of Joshua laughing into his shoulder last night; when Jeonghan told him about Minghao's wild, nearly impossible ideas for the upcoming fall spread of the magazine with an exasperated voice but underlying fondness.
Last week, Minghao took Jeonghan to a quiet part of the Olympic Park, leaves already changing colours and slowly letting go of their hold on the tree’s branches, and unpacked his picnic basket on a bench. He made tea for Jeonghan and told him he's gonna propose to Jun soon. Ever since then, Minghao has been so elated by the idea of spending forever with his goofy, graceful, wonderful human of a boyfriend, that he has come up with the wildest ideas for the magazine. It hasn't been long since he tried convincing Wonwoo to get in front of the camera as a model. (Which didn't work. Not even Mingyu's puppy pout and glimmering eyes could convince Wonwoo. He didn’t even look up from where his eyes behind his glasses were focused on editing pictures on his computer.)
Jeonghan yawns and stretches out his arms. He leaves his thoughts behind and focuses on reality.
He can hear rummaging in the kitchen - the soft sounds of Joshua's mornings playlist filled with Chasing Cars, Pink Sweat$ and D.O., and Joshua's angel voice humming along.
Maybe he's making French Toast or trying to bake fresh buns to have with jam and eggs. Joshua has been very adamant about perfecting his breakfast cooking skills lately. Jeonghan loves teasing him about it. But he loves the satisfactory pride on Joshua's face, when Jeonghan compliments the finished food, even more.
With one swift motion, Jeonghan gets out of bed.
He kind of misses Joshua’s face every time he doesn’t see him. Looking back now he doesn’t understand how he could never hold himself back from staring into those man's eyes endlessly and watching his lips curve into all various kinds of smiles.
"Good morning Shua.", Jeonghan mumbles when he shuffles into the kitchen.
Joshua turns around, beanie on to hide messy bed hair and pretty, pretty features exposed. "Good morning, sleepyhead."
Jeonghan ignores the tease and walks straight into Joshua's arms. He wraps his own arms around Joshua's middle and buries his nose in between Joshua’s collarbone.
Joshua chuckles into his ear and runs a hand through Jeonghan's hair. "Someone's clingy.", another light-hearted tease. Jeonghan pulls back to pout at Joshua: "You know I hate waking up without you, it always makes me think I dreamt you up."
Joshua leans in and kisses Jeonghan's pout away. Jeonghan forgets his worries and gets lost in the kiss.
It has been months, even years, but he doesn’t think he will ever get sick of Joshua's lips on his. He doesn’t think he will ever get sick of Joshua’s love matching his.
It has only been a couple of months, since they moved in together into this apartment and it was Seungcheol’s and Misun’s turn to help with carrying boxes. And Jeonghan had already realized he wanted Joshua to stay with him, by his side, for a long time back then, but he feels like everything has only intensified since then. Both the love and the vulnerability too.
There has been a whole list of new firsts with Joshua, that Jeonghan has been checking off in his head. Their first Ikea trip, their first, silly and almost fun fight over interior design, the first package of sex toys Joshua had to go and pick up from a neighbour because it arrived when they were gone. The first breakfast, the first Saturday brunch with their best friends they could hold at their place, the first spilling of wine on the carpet and the hurried cleaning that turned into so much laughter.
“What did you make this morning?”, Jeonghan stops breathing kisses to Joshua’s collarbone and lifts his head again, to look over Joshua’s shoulder. On the stove, a pot of doenjang jjigae is simmering. “Hmm.”, Jeonghan breathes in through his nose, smiling at the warm feeling of home spreading in his inners at the smell.
“Don’t you think it’s a little bold of you to just assume I will just be in the kitchen, making something every day?”
Jeonghan looks back at Joshua, taking a moment to assess the teasing glimmer in his boyfriend’s eyes. This bickering routine Jeonghan and Joshua have fallen into over the course of their relationship still excites Jeonghan. It still causes tingles of happiness in his inners. It still feels like a challenge, like a promise that their relationship will never get boring.
“But you’d make such a good house husband, Joshua.”, Jeonghan deliberately uses the one of the countless of nicknames he’s given Joshua, that makes Joshua smile the most. And indeed – Joshua’s lips curve into a smile, even as he playfully rolls his eyes.
He gently pushes more space into his and Jeonghan’s bodies and breathes a kiss onto Jeonghan’s temple before he turns back to the stove. “Sit your ass down, Hannie. I’ll be there with the food soon.”
“See.”, Jeonghan points out smiling, as if Joshua’s actions are only supporting his earlier argument. He pats Joshua’s ass and then sits down, running a hand through his hair. It has been back to his natural dark brown for a while now. It was actually Joshua’s friend Jaebeom, the hairdresser, that dyed and cut it. Joshua was a little sad about the disappearance of the long strands, but if the way he fucked Jeonghan that night was anything to go by, he also liked the new hairstyle a lot.
“We could also get you a maid costume.”, Jeonghan wiggles his eyebrows, when Joshua walks towards the table with a tablet of two bowls of soup and two bowls of rice. “I will kill you.”, he threatens, as he sets down the tablet and hands Jeonghan a pair of chopsticks. Jeonghan just smirks, imagining how hot the flesh of Joshua’s thighs would look beneath a black skirt ruffled with white.
“You can try.”, Jeonghan counters. Joshua walks back to the kitchen to get each of them a coffee and then kisses Jeonghan’s cheek before he sits down. “Maybe one day, I will.”, he says. There is nothing but fondness in his eyes, though.
Jeonghan takes a sip of his coffee, eyes attentively watching Joshua spoon white rice into his stew. In his chest, his heart is smiling. A smile that has become so utterly familiar.
Jeonghan and Joshua both know neither of them would want to go back to a live without the other, but maybe that is precisely what makes their bickering so fun. They know how much they love each other, no matter what they say. (And also, the bickering spices things up. And that too, is something they love doing.)
Joshua begins eating and Jeonghan puts down his mug to pick up his chopsticks, letting his thoughts wander as comfortable silence lulls both of them in on this morning.
Jeonghan has realized Joshua is both his partner in crime, and the closest thing to a soulmate he can get himself to believe in.
Their kind of love is truly something Jeonghan has only ever allowed himself to dream of, before. To analyse thoroughly and dissect until that very dream didn’t cause anxiety anymore. But even on the days Jeonghan still feels anxious about the love he now has, anxious about losing it or simply and terribly fucking up because he doesn’t know how to handle it; even on those days, Joshua is still there. He is there every day now.
Home can become a person, if you allow it to be. And Jeonghan, after so many years of depriving himself off it and so many months of pulling away from Joshua, has finally allowed that to happen.
Now, Joshua and Jeonghan host their weekly Saturday brunch with Misun and Seungcheol at their place every second week. Now, Jeonghan comes home after work to Joshua tuning his guitar in the living room, trying a new recipe for dinner or lounging on the couch.
Now, Jeonghan is in love and Joshua is in love, and it’s the most wonderful thing.
It’s not perfect. They bicker, they disagree and they tease each other into varying states of annoyance sometimes. They turn a discussion about the open cap of the tooth paste into a fight about the unequal division of chores, and not seldomly Jeonghan gives into bad habits, pushes Joshua away and flees. Joshua lets him. He frowns deeply, the creases of it messing up his pretty face, but says nothing when Jeonghan storms out the door. (Well, mostly. Sometimes, he does shout a petty comment after Jeonghan. Then, it often ends in Jeonghan turning back, feeling like he needs to meet a challenge by responding to Joshua’s comment. Jeonghan will crowd Joshua against the wall then, eyes glimmering mischievously. And anger is something tedious quickly forgotten, when you are faced with the close proximity of the person you love. They end up making out and thereby making up most of the time…)
Other times, Jeonghan gets insecure and quiet, and every move Joshua makes towards him, is met with a kind of anxious hesitation, that makes Joshua feel like the depth of his emotions isn’t met on an equal level. Those fights are harder to navigate. They feel more intimate, thus making both of them more vulnerable. But they eventually get through those as well. Joshua cards hands through Jeonghan’s hair and Jeonghan buries his head in Joshua’s neck, nose pressed against Joshua’s pulse point, and their find their way back to each other again.
In the end, it is precisely the fact that their love isn’t perfect, that makes it so wonderful. All those expectations Jeonghan had about love – they might have been ideal, but they were never realistic.
Realistic instead, is the way Joshua smiles and greets Jeonghan when he gets home from work, and the way every single one of their touches against the other’s skin still feels like opening a map to discover a whole new world.
Jeonghan has learned he loves the reality of love much more than the ideal idea of it he used to focus on too much. Jeonghan has learned that giving up those ideals isn’t settling at all, but instead growing. It is the best kind of change.
“You have a rice corn on your lip.”, Jeonghan raises his spoon, pointing it at Joshua’s lip. Something mischievous, that familiar tingling feeling again, tugs his lips upwards as he says this. Maybe because he knows precisely what Joshua will reply.
“Lick it off for me?”, Joshua, predictably, replies, winking. Jeonghan doesn’t blush anymore, the tingles in his inners just intensify and almost mix in a delirious way with a simmering kind of desire Jeonghan has learned is kind of always present whenever he’s around Joshua.
So Jeonghan gets up from his place on the table across from Joshua and takes the one, two, three steps towards his boyfriend. Joshua pushes his chair back, opening his arms. His lap looks too inviting for Jeonghan to not plop into it, and so Jeonghan does.
He feels the muscles of Joshua’s thighs move beneath his own, and then leans in, poking out his tongue to lick the singular rice corn from the corner of Joshua’s pink mouth. Joshua watches him in an almost entranced way, eyes darkening with each of Jeonghan’s slow and calculated movements.
When Jeonghan leans back, lets his tongue disappear in his mouth again and makes a show out of swallowing the rice corn like it is the most delicious dessert, Joshua’s hands grip Jeonghan’s waist.
“You’re a tease.”, Joshua says matter-of-factly as Jeonghan smirks at him. Jeonghan lifts his hand and bops Joshua’s nose. A sweet shiver runs down his spine when Joshua grips his waist harder and he remembers how the tip of Joshua’s nose feels, teasing the soft inner skin of his thighs, before Joshua gets his damned mouth where Jeonghan wants it the most.
“What are you gonna do about it?”, Jeonghan keeps teasing, wiggling his eyebrows a little. Joshua responds not with words, but with a searing kiss.
Jeonghan smiles into it, and then loses himself in the movement of Joshua’s lips against his. In the travelling of hands and fleeting, teasing touches. In the love he has allowed himself to have.
This is better than any ideal and than any dream, Jeonghan decides.
Joshua agrees by standing up with Jeonghan in his arms, Jeonghan squeaking a little and then blushing (yes, he might have discovered a bit of a strength kink in the recent months. Joshua has been going to the gym with Seungcheol a lot). He bops Jeonghan’s nose with his.
“Bedroom?”, Joshua asks, desire and love mixing in his eyes. Jeonghan can’t help but smile. Crazy, stupid, love. What a dream of a man Hong Joshua is.
Jeonghan nods, no words needed for the moment, and then busies himself by dipping down and kissing Joshua’s neck.
Jeonghan doesn’t like to think too much about forever, it only leads to his anxiety thinking it’s time to mess things up again. But when it comes to Joshua, Jeonghan can’t help but at least hope for forever once in a while.
Luckily, Joshua always looks at Jeonghan like he is already sure forever is in the cards for them.