Highness (Jeongcheol)

Seungcheol

One year later

"Dearest, darlingest, most bestest brother of mine."

Seungcheol looked up from his plate, narrowing his eyes at his younger brother across the table. Joshua had many nicknames for him. "Golden boy." "Jerk." "Asshole." But "dearest, darlingest, most bestest brother of mine" definitely wasn't one of them.

"I have a favor to ask you," Joshua said, his big brown eyes all wide and hopeful.

Seungcheol swallowed his bite of chicken carefully, unease growing in his gut. "Okay..."

"See, Seokmin and I have decided to have a proper honeymoon."

Seungcheol's eyes darted reflexively to their other dinner companion, Joshua's husband, whose bright-blue eyes were focused on Seungcheol in a way that was definitely intended to say, "Don't fuck this up for me."

Seungcheol ignored him easily enough. He was used to Seokmin glaring at him.

He turned back to his brother with a smile. "That's great, Joshua Boy."

Joshua nodded, grinning wide, his freckled cheeks pink. "It is. Super great. We're, um, spending three weeks in Bali."

"Three weeks?" Seungcheol's brows lifted. A little over a year ago, his brother would barely take a full weekend off, working way too many nights in a row as a nurse in their town's ER. Seungcheol worked as a doctor in the same hospital, and he'd hardly ever had a shift without his brother's face popping up at some point. Joshua had reduced to two shifts a week since settling down with Seokmin, but he'd still never taken any sort of significant vacation.

"Three weeks," Seokmin confirmed in a tone that just begged Seungcheol to make a fuss over it.

Seungcheol would never. Not anymore. He was done getting in Joshua's way. He wanted his brother to have...well, whatever the fuck he wanted. "Okay. That's still...great? Good for you, kiddo."

Seungcheol couldn't even be jealous of their vacation. Not really. Joshua deserved it. Seungcheol hadn't realized until he'd finally seen his brother happy just how unhappy he'd been before.

And how much of that was your fault? Seungcheol pushed the thought aside. Guilt was such a familiar feeling for him he barely recognized it anymore.

Joshua was still looking at Seungcheol as if this had anything to do with him. "Yes. But the thing is—I was hoping—"

"We need you to watch the mutt." Trust Seokmin to make a request sound more like a command.

"The mutt," Seungcheol repeated.

The mutt in question, a six-month-old blue heeler mix, was currently lying under the kitchen table, nosing at Seungcheol's feet, clearly hoping for some dinner scraps to drop down from above.

Seungcheol would have been offended on the puppy's behalf if he didn't know for a fact that Seokmin had chosen the dog himself, gifted it to his pet-starved husband, and could often be caught looking at it with a fondness he usually reserved for Joshua alone.

"Ferdy's just so young," his brother pleaded. "I don't want him with a sitter. He needs someone he knows."

Seungcheol cleared his throat. "What about your, uh...roommate?"

"Jeonghan?" Joshua laughed at the idea.

Seungcheol controlled his flinch but only barely. He found himself glancing around furtively, as if speaking the name out loud was enough to summon the little monster.

Seungcheol wouldn't even be surprised if that were true.

"He could help out," Joshua offered cautiously. "But I'm not so sure he could be trusted to remember that mortal puppies need to be fed twice a day. Or that they need water. Or bathroom breaks."