ALL THIS TIME ― heejay ✓

feel like summer.

"Where's Jay?" he bursts into the dorm living room, startling Ni-ki and Sunoo, who were apparently edging toward a kiss. With flushed cheeks, Sunoo points towards Jay and Jake's room. He bolts towards it, saying, "pro tip: the living room isn't the best place for that!"

The pair gives him dirty looks, but Heeseung doesn't stick around to argue. He throws open the bedroom door and cries out, "Jay?!"

Jay looks up from his laptop, startled. "Huh?"

"We need to talk," Heeseung closes the door behind him and marches towards Jay, stopping just a few feet short. "Like, right now."

"Alright, we can do that," Jay says coolly, closing his laptop and standing up, walking around the table to stand in front of him. He's not as tall as Heeseung, but he's tall enough to not have to look up to meet Heeseung's eyes. "Now do you want do this, after that night?"

"I'm sorry, okay?" Heeseung pleads. "I didn't mean to. I was just overthinking and overstressing too much to even think without feeling like I'm going in circles and throwing up. My point is, that's not the case anymore."

"Yes, you kiss me and then run off, and then you come back to apologize," Jay says dryly. "You know very well that I don't care about that, unless you tell me exactly how you feel right now. I'm completely prepared to be rejected. You can't hurt me more than I already am, hyung."

"I love you!" Heeseung blurts out. Jay blinks, surprised beyond words, so Heeseung uses this as a chance to keep going, grabbing Jay's forearm and stepping closer. "Listen!"

"I'm listening," Jay says faintly, staring at Heeseung with wide eyes.

"I love you," Heeseung says, "and I've loved you all this time, Jay, all this time, and I was just too stupid to not realize it, that love doesn't mean I need to be feeling those—those butterflies and the nervously beating heart and all that! The truth is, I've always felt so warm, so safe and happy, when I'm with you! Without you, I feel like—like I'm not whole, like I'm empty, like I'm not Lee Heeseung—"

"Wait, hyung—" Jay looks so startled, like he doesn't know how to process this information, but Heeseung doesn't stop. He can't.

"I won't be me without you, not anymore," he gasps, realizing he's crying, choking the words out between his tears. "You've helped me grow up, you've been by my side, you've influenced me in ways you can't imagine! These last few weeks without you—the time I spent away from you—when we were mad at each other, when we weren't talking to each other—"

"Heeseung hyung, please, let me process—"

"It hurt, it hurt so, so much," he's fully sobbing now, "it hurt more than anything! To not be able to hug you, to hold you, to see your smiles, to see that your pain is because of me, because I had the nerve to kiss you and then run away from you! I had the nerve to take your heart, stomp on it—"

"Stop and take a breath—"

"I was just confused, Jay," he cries, realizing with a jolt that Jay's crying too, "just thinking too much, stressing it too much, challenging my feelings for you too much! If I had stopped for one moment to think, what is Jay to me? I would have known, but I didn't, because, I'm an idiot and you don't deserve to have someone like me—"

"Hyung," Jay shouts, "shut up. I've heard enough!"

Then he grabs Heeseung's face and pulls him forward him into a kiss.

Heeseung's brain kind of freezes along with the rest of his body, trying to process the fact that Jay apparently accepts his confession/apology/rant enough to yell at him to shut up and then kiss him. It doesn't really make sense, but then again, Jay's always been a person of extremes, so it does make sense, in a way.