Lee Jihun awoke to an unfamiliar stillness.
It was not the sterile, regulated silence of his own perfectly soundproofed
apartment. This silence was softer, deeper, permeated by the faint scent of old
leather, spicy cologne, and fresh morning coffee. His eyes fluttered open to a
ceiling that was too high, walls that were too rough, and a beam of sunlight
slicing across the wooden floor that was entirely too bright.
He was in Minho's bed.
And he was naked.
The thick, heavy comforter was pulled right up to his chin, cocooning him
entirely. For a moment, Jihun mistook the warmth and safety for his own home,
but then the cold, hard memories began to bleed through the fog of alcohol and
exhaustion.
The confrontation. The rage, the desperate yelling in the morning,
Minho's wounded confusion. The escape. Running into the rain,
drinking—where? He couldn't recall, only the suffocating need for Minho, the
desperation to undo the distance he had created.
Then came the full-frame, devastating recall of the night before: the
frantic, drunken arrival at Minho's loft. The shirt, ripped off with savage,
clumsy desperation. The wet trousers discarded. The horrifying moment of
standing stark naked in the harsh, unforgiving light of
Minho's minimalist space, trembling, exposed, driven by a primal need for
physical contact.
And the kiss. It hadn't been a kiss of passion; it had been an
attack, an aggressive lunge fueled by alcohol, fear, and a terrifying, base
need. He had been a predator, or worse, a ruined creature begging for skin,
before he had simply collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
Jihun groaned, burying his face into the soft pillow. The shame was a
physical weight pressing down on his chest, far worse than any hangover. He had
broken every single one of his rules. He had shown Minho the truth: not the
meticulous, untouchable DP, but the desperate, scared man who loved him and
couldn't handle the consequences.
He glanced around frantically. His clothes were gone. Every piece of his
perfectly tailored suit—the charcoal trousers, the pristine white
shirt—vanished. The immediate, rational part of his brain—the part that always
focused on logistics—went into full panic mode. He was trapped.
He sat up, clutching the comforter to his waist like a shield. The bedroom
was simple, dominated by the huge mattress and windows. There was no sign of
Minho. He was alone, exposed, and horribly, profoundly embarrassed.
Just as Jihun was contemplating the strategic viability of using the
comforter as a toga to sprint for the door, the bedroom door opened.
Ryu Minho walked in, looking ridiculously composed for someone who had
hosted an exhibition of complete emotional collapse just hours before. He was
wearing dark sweatpants and a simple gray t-shirt, his hair still damp from a
recent shower, suggesting he hadn't slept at all. He carried a small tray
bearing a glass of cold water, a cup of steaming black coffee, and two
capsules—presumably painkillers.
He stopped, seeing Jihun sitting bolt upright, pale and wide-eyed,
attempting to weaponize the bedding.
The air instantly became thick, heavy, and excruciatingly awkward.
Minho broke the silence first, his voice soft, steady, and utterly devoid of
judgment. "Good morning, Jihun. Or, I suppose, good afternoon. It's almost
noon."
Jihun swallowed, trying to project a semblance of professional distance that
was utterly impossible while naked and shivering under someone else's blanket.
"Director Ryu," he managed, the formality sounding absurdly hollow.
"I… I apologize. I don't know what happened last night. I was—"
"Drunk, miserable, and very cold," Minho finished gently, walking
closer and placing the tray carefully on the bedside table. "And don't
bother apologizing. You weren't exactly in a state to be responsible for your
actions."
Jihun flinched. Responsible for his actions. The very phrase was a
death sentence to his perfect system.
"Where are my clothes?" Jihun asked, his voice stiff.
"In the dryer," Minho replied, moving toward the closet.
"They were soaked. Your suit is probably beyond saving, by the way. You
can't put wool in a commercial dryer without serious consequences. But I
managed to salvage your trousers somewhat. Your shirt, however, is now
essentially a rag."
Jihun stared at the closed closet door, feeling a fresh wave of humiliation.
His armor, his identity, was literally being tumbled and ruined in a machine he
couldn't control.
Minho opened his closet and pulled out an enormous, soft cotton hoodie—navy
blue, easily two sizes too big for Jihun—and a fresh pair of boxer briefs.
"Here," Minho said, holding them out. "Put these on. I think
dignity should precede coffee."
Jihun hesitated, not wanting to let go of the blanket. Minho simply set the
clothes on the end of the bed and stepped back, turning his back to give Jihun
privacy.
The small gesture of turning away, the deliberate respect for the
vulnerability Minho had witnessed, was almost too much for Jihun to handle. He
scrambled out of the blanket, snatching the clothes.
The minute he slipped into the hoodie, Jihun realized the true extent of the
size difference. The navy cotton swallowed him whole. The sleeves fell past his
hands, and the hem reached halfway down his thighs, turning him into a
strangely elegant, albeit humiliated, child.
"Okay," Minho said, turning back. He didn't laugh, but a small,
devastatingly tender smile touched the corners of his mouth. "See? Better
lighting already."
Jihun walked out, feeling like a caricature of himself. The huge hoodie only
emphasized his own comparatively slender frame.
"I need to leave immediately," Jihun stated, walking into the main
loft, his feet bare on the cool concrete floor. He went straight for the door,
intending to brave the subway in Minho's clothes, anything to escape.
"Jihun, wait," Minho called out, not stopping him, but his voice
was authoritative. "Your shoes are still soaked. And your cell phone is
charging here." Minho was now standing by the kitchen island, calmly
leaning against it. He looked up, his expression serious. "We are not
leaving this loft until we have established a new baseline. Don't worry about
work or the film. We are talking about last night."
Jihun stopped, leaning against the cold glass wall of the loft, the oversize
hoodie providing a false sense of security. "There's nothing to talk
about. I was drunk. It was a mistake. I apologize for the disruption and for
assaulting you."
Minho pushed off the counter and walked slowly toward him. "Assaulting
me? Jihun, you lunged and tried to eat my face for two seconds before you
passed out. If I was concerned about assault, I wouldn't have spent two hours
drying you off and carrying you to bed."
Jihun's cheeks burned. The image of Minho, the beautiful, charismatic
Director, carefully tending to his drunken, naked body, was overwhelming.
"You… you carried me?"
"Yes," Minho confirmed simply. "You're surprisingly light.
Like a sack of expensive lenses." He paused, his gaze fixed on Jihun's
face, his tone dropping to something serious and analytical, mirroring the
morning's film critique. "You wanted a fight yesterday morning, Jihun. You
wanted to know if I was still the risk you crave. I gave you compliance, and
you rejected it. You showed up last night and broke every rule you ever made.
Now, you want to use the 'drunk' excuse to retreat. I won't let you. The problem
is no longer the film. It's the reason you ran from the truth you saw
yesterday."
Jihun looked away, staring out the window at the chaotic street below.
"The truth is I was tired and stressed. That's all."
"No," Minho contradicted firmly. He reached out and gently took
Jihun's chin, forcing their eyes to meet. The touch was feather-light,
completely non-sexual, but devastatingly sincere. "The truth is you
screamed that you loved my chaos and hated that you couldn't focus because of
my cologne. And then you ran away and tried to annihilate yourself with
alcohol. That's not stress, Jihun. That's fear of loss."
Minho stepped back, letting Jihun absorb the weight of his words. "Look
at me, Jihun. You are literally wearing my clothes. You woke up in my bed. You
have broken your system beyond repair. You have nothing left to lose. So tell
me the truth."
Minho's words were the final turn of the screw. You have broken your
system beyond repair.
Jihun felt the truth of it deep in his bones. The perfectly linear path he
had carved for his life was gone. He couldn't go back to the sterile,
manageable life he had before because every inch of it now felt cold, flat, and
wrong. He realized with shattering clarity that the agonizing fear he had of
Minho destroying his life was nothing compared to the pain of living without
him. His perfect system could no longer function, because Minho was now
the necessary element.
Jihun took a shuddering breath. He wasn't crying, but his eyes were wide and
raw.
"I can't function," Jihun whispered, the words trembling out,
still framed in the language of his discipline. "My focus has been
compromised. The variables are unmanageable. Before you, my life was a perfect,
calibrated sequence. I knew the exposure triangle—ISO, shutter,
aperture—everything in perfect harmony."
He looked directly at Minho, his eyes shining with unshed tears.
"You are the fourth variable, Minho. You are the flaw, the chaos, the
unpredictable light source that throws all my readings off. And I realized
yesterday that... I can't find the correct exposure without you in the frame. I
tried to use my professional standards to keep you at a distance, to regain
control, but the moment I closed the door, I realized the distance was… a
negative space I couldn't bear."
Jihun's voice cracked. He moved forward, abandoning the cold wall, and stood
directly in front of Minho, the navy hoodie dwarfing him.
"I love you, Minho. I love the chaos. I love that you ruin my schedule,
that you challenge my work, and that the sight of you standing too close to me
makes my entire body malfunction. I was afraid that if I let you into my life,
my entire perfect world would collapse. But now I know… my world is
already collapsed, and I need your chaos to stabilize me. I need you
to break my system, because my system can't function without you in it
anymore."
Minho was absolutely motionless. His eyes, usually dancing with amusement or
challenge, were wide, stunned into silence by the sheer, devastating
vulnerability of the man standing before him. He had expected an apology, an
excuse, a flight back to professionalism. He had received a confession of
complete, panicked surrender.
He lifted a hand, and this time, Jihun didn't flinch or retreat. Minho
gently brushed the damp hair off Jihun's forehead.
"Jihun," Minho said, his voice husky, "You've been running
from this since the day we met. You've fought me, yelled at me, thrown my shirt
back at me, and ran out on me. And last night… you showed up, stripped down,
and tried to start a war with my lips."
Minho stepped closer, closing the final space between them. "I need to
know, Jihun. You were sober enough this morning to leave. You chose to stay.
You broke every one of your commandments to say that. So tell me honestly,
looking at me right now, knowing I will demand all your chaos and all your
truth, do you like me that much?"
Jihun inhaled sharply, the question—simple, direct, and overwhelmingly
sincere—unraveling the last thread of his pride. He looked down at the soft
cotton of Minho's chest, suddenly agonizingly shy.
He nodded once, the action small and almost imperceptible.
"Jihun," Minho urged, his hand moving to gently tilt Jihun's chin
up again. "Say it. You have to say it, or I can't believe it."
Jihun met his gaze. The shame was replaced by a terrifying, beautiful
purity. "Yes," he whispered, his voice barely audible, the word laced
with the unbearable embarrassment of a man admitting weakness. "Terribly.
I like you terribly, Minho."
The confession was so humble, so utterly unlike the arrogant DP Lee, that
Minho's heart fractured with tenderness.
Minho let out a long, slow breath, a mixture of relief and disbelief. A
gentle, genuine smile finally returned, one that reached the depths of his
dark, beautiful eyes.
"Okay," Minho murmured, his thumb gently tracing the curve of
Jihun's jaw. "Okay, Jihun. I like you terribly too. I've been living in
professional exile for two days because I was so afraid I'd broken you. And all
along, you were just scared of being fixed."
He leaned down slowly, giving Jihun every opportunity to pull away. Jihun,
however, only closed his eyes and leaned infinitesimally forward.
This time, the kiss was nothing like the aggressive lunge of the previous
night. It was slow, soft, and impossibly careful—a gentle exploration, tasting
of residual coffee and the pure, raw relief of acceptance. Minho kissed him as
if Jihun were the most fragile, precious, and long-awaited piece of art,
holding him gently by the shoulders, grounding him in the quiet stability he
craved beneath the chaos.
When they finally broke apart, Jihun rested his forehead against Minho's
shoulder, utterly spent.
"I'm sorry about the scene," Jihun mumbled into the soft cotton of
Minho's t-shirt. "And your shirt. I'll buy you ten new ones."
Minho chuckled, a warm, resonant sound. "Don't worry about the shirt.
It was terrible and needed to die a dramatic death anyway." He squeezed
Jihun lightly. "Come on. You need the painkillers and actual food, or
you'll dissolve. You have the worst hangover I've ever seen, which is saying
something."
Minho led Jihun—still dwarfed by the navy hoodie—to the kitchen. He poured
the water and handed Jihun the pills. While Jihun drank, Minho smoothly began
preparing breakfast: simple, perfect scrambled eggs and toast.
Jihun sat on a high stool at the island, watching him move. Minho was
concentrated, focused, yet completely relaxed, humming softly. The scent of
coffee and butter was heavenly. Jihun watched the light catch Minho's profile,
the sharp angle of his jaw, the way his hands moved with confident grace, and
realized he wasn't looking at the chaos anymore. He was looking at his
stability.
"Minho," Jihun whispered, savoring the simple, first name.
"Yes, my perfect little disaster?" Minho replied without turning
around.
"The film. The 400 Lux Problem."
Minho paused, spatula hovering over the pan. "Yes?"
"We'll shoot it," Jihun affirmed, his voice stronger now, infused
with the confidence of a man who had finally made a choice. "I don't care
about the budget. I don't care about the technical absurdity. We will find a
way to make it work. I'll break the camera myself if I have to. But it has to
be technically perfect, even in its chaos."
Minho turned, his face lit up by an incandescent smile that was the most
beautiful light Jihun had ever seen. "That's the Director of Photography I
wanted to meet," he said, setting the perfect plate of eggs down in front
of Jihun. "Welcome to the real project, Jihun. It starts now."
Jihun picked up his fork, the weight of the silver strangely reassuring. He
looked at Minho—his beautiful, chaotic, loving, exasperating Director—and
smiled back. His perfect system was dead, but the future felt wider, brighter,
and infinitely more focused than it ever had before.