The week went by fast.
They arrived a little late, slipping into seats near the mid-court line just as the scoreboard flashed an uncomfortable truth—Jae-min's team was already down by twelve.
"We missed the start," Tae-hyun muttered, scanning the court until he spotted Min-woo a few rows down, waving them over with both arms.
They squeezed in beside him just as the opposing team scored again, the crowd around them groaning collectively.
Jihan didn't understand most of what was happening—didn't know the rules well enough to follow the calls, couldn't tell a foul from a travel—but he clapped anyway, loud and a beat behind everyone else, determined to at least look like he knew what he was doing.
The next basket came from the wrong hoop entirely.
Jihan shot to his feet, clapping harder.
Tae-hyun yanked him back down by the sleeve. "That's not his team, hyung."
Jihan sat, mortified, glancing around to see if anyone had noticed. Min-woo, unfortunately, absolutely had, and spent the next several minutes barely containing his laughter every time he glanced over.
By halftime, the scoreboard read 69 to 81, and the mood around them had gone distinctly grim.
During the break, Jae-min jogged toward the bench for water, sweat-soaked and breathing hard, and for a brief second his eyes found Jihan's across the court. Something flickered across his face—not defeat, despite the score. Something closer to a spark catching.
He looked, Jihan thought, almost excited.
The second half started differently.
Jae-min moved like a different player entirely, faster, sharper, weaving through defenders with a kind of focus that hadn't been there in the first twenty minutes. Min-woo leaned forward, squinting at the court like he genuinely couldn't reconcile what he was watching with the sluggish mess of the first half.
"Where has *that* been the whole game?"
Nobody had an answer, but nobody was complaining either. The gap closed steadily, point by point, the crowd's energy climbing with every basket until the arena had turned electric, every possession met with a roar.
With seconds left on the clock and the score dead even, Jae-min took the ball the length of the court alone, cut past two defenders, and finished with a dunk so hard the backboard shuddered.
The buzzer screamed.
The arena exploded.
Jae-min's teammates swarmed him instantly—someone hoisting him up onto their shoulders, others crowding in close, arms slung around him, one guy hugging him so tight he nearly toppled them both over.
Jihan, without quite meaning to, stopped clapping.
His jaw had tightened, something sharp and unfamiliar settling low in his chest as he watched hand after hand land on Jae-min's shoulders, his back, his waist, half the team practically draped over him in celebration.
"You okay, hyung?" Tae-hyun asked, entirely too amused for someone pretending to be innocent about it.
"Fine."
"You look like you're plotting a murder."
"I'm *fine*."
Tae-hyun's grin only widened, but he let it go, and Jihan forced his expression back into something neutral just as Jae-min made his way over, flushed and grinning, still buzzing with adrenaline.
"Did you see that last one?" Jae-min was practically vibrating. "I don't even know where that came from. I just—" He mimed the shot with both hands, laughing. "It just happened."
"It was impressive," Tae-hyun said, genuinely.
Jihan managed a small, tight smile. "You played well."
If Jae-min noticed anything strange in the shortness of it, he didn't comment, too high on the win to catch the undertone. But the image stayed lodged in Jihan's chest the rest of the evening regardless—all those hands, all that closeness, none of it his—no matter how carefully he tried to bury it.
They dropped Min-woo and Jae-min off afterward with a promise to be back within the hour.
---
Jae-min stood in front of the mirror turning sideways twice before Min-woo finally smacked his arm and told him to stop second-guessing the outfit.
The fitted shirt underneath was Min-woo's suggestion—tight enough to outline the shape of him without being obvious about it—layered beneath a looser button-down left open, the glasses perched on his nose adding something softer, almost deceptively innocent to the whole effect.
"You look like you're trying too hard and not trying at all, simultaneously," Min-woo said, admiring his own work. "It's very impressive."
"You're the one who dressed me."
"I have a gift."
The doorbell rang before Jae-min could argue further.
Jihan stood outside, dressed down from the golf-course polish Jae-min had gotten used to, something more casual and unguarded in the cut of his shirt. His eyes swept over Jae-min once, quick, and something flickered there he clearly tried to control and only mostly succeeded.
They climbed into the car. Tae-hyun was already settled in the back seat, and Jihan gestured toward the empty front passenger seat.
"Sit up front."
Jae-min hesitated half a beat, glancing between the empty seat and Tae-hyun in the back, before it clicked—clearly, obviously—exactly what this arrangement was meant to accomplish.
"...Sure," he said, sliding in beside Jihan, close enough that their shoulders nearly brushed with every turn.
---
The party turned out to be smaller than Jae-min expected—not the stiff, suited affair he'd braced himself for, but something looser, warmer, string lights strung along a private hotel terrace, low music, a bar set up in one corner already drawing a small crowd.
It didn't take long for the night to slide into something looser still.
Drinks kept appearing—champagne first, then something stronger passed around by Jihan's friends, a rotating cast of familiar and unfamiliar faces Jae-min lost track of somewhere around the third hour. The music got louder. Laughter blurred together. Somewhere in the haze, Jae-min noticed himself laughing at things that weren't especially funny, the edges of the night going soft and warm.
He was drunk—not completely gone, but tilted, unsteady in a way that made the floor feel slightly uneven beneath him.
Jihan was worse.
At some point, without either of them fully deciding to, they'd drifted away from the crowd, down a hallway, into a quiet room away from the noise. The door shut. The music faded to a dull thump through the walls.
Jae-min remembered Jihan's hands. The warmth of him. A kiss that started slow and turned intense fast, more intense than anything they'd shared before, the alcohol blurring the edges of every decision either of them was making.
After that, everything went dark.
---
Jihan woke to a headache that felt like it had physically split his skull in half.
The room was unfamiliar for a disorienting second before memory caught up—the hotel, the party, the room they'd slipped away to sometime past midnight. Sunlight cut harsh through a gap in the curtains, and he squinted against it, sitting up slowly, every muscle protesting.
He was alone.
His pants sat loose, half-fastened, and the sheets around him were tangled violently, twisted and pulled half off the mattress like something had happened here that neither of them had been fully steady enough to control.
"...Jae-min?"
No answer.
He pushed himself upright, head pounding, and the memories came back in disjointed, nauseating pieces—the kiss, intense and unraveling, Jae-min's hands against his chest, pushing.
*Pushing him away.*
Jihan's stomach dropped.
He remembered Jae-min trying to pull back, trying to leave—and then, in some blurred, horrifying fragment his mind refused to fully surrender, remembered pulling him back instead. Pinning him down.
After that—nothing. A total blank, the rest of the night swallowed whole by the alcohol, leaving him with only the wreckage of the room and the sick, cold certainty that something had happened here he had no memory of controlling.
"Jae-min?" he tried again, louder this time, panic climbing fast now.
The room stayed silent.
He scrambled for his phone, hands unsteady, and found it on the floor near the edge of the bed. He unlocked it and immediately tried calling.
*This contact has blocked you.*
The words hit like a physical blow.
Jihan sat frozen for a long moment, staring at the screen, his own pulse roaring in his ears loud enough to drown out the pounding in his skull.
He fumbled his pants back into place with shaking hands, and as he reached for his phone again, a new message flashed across the top of the screen.
*Tae-hyun.*
He opened it with a hand that wasn't quite steady.
*What have you done, hyung.*