Three days.
Duan had counted every single one.
Three days of Jun walking past him in the corridor without a glance. Three days of texts sitting on read with nothing after them. Three days of showing up at the usual spot after class and standing there like an idiot waiting for someone who wasn't coming.
He could handle a lot of things. He'd proven that over the past few months — the cold shoulders, the one word answers, the bus escape, all of it. He could handle Jun being difficult. What he couldn't handle was not knowing why.
If he knew what he'd done he could fix it. He could apologize, mean it, make sure it never happened again. But walking around with this open ended thing sitting in his chest and no way to close it was a different kind of pain entirely.
He checked his phone under the desk again.
Nothing.
"Duan."
He looked up. Dom was watching him with the flat expression of someone who had run out of patience.
"What."
"You've checked your phone six times since the lecture started."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. What's going on."
Duan put the phone face down on the desk. "Jun has been avoiding me for three days. He won't talk to me. He won't even look at me."
Dom and Fah looked at each other.
It was the kind of look that had an entire conversation inside it.
Then they both turned back to Duan.
"You idiot," Dom said.
"You complete idiot," Fah said.
Duan looked between them. "What—"
"How are you this dense," Dom said. "Jun is jealous. He has been jealous since that video came out and you have been walking around for three days genuinely confused about why he's upset."
"Jealous of what? The shoot was work. I didn't even want to be there I just—"
"Duan." Fah pulled out his phone and held the video up in front of his face.
Duan looked at it.
"Cherry likes you," Fah said. "She liked you when she came to the table. She liked you in that video. It is obvious to every single person except apparently you."
"And Jun saw it," Dom said. "And Jun felt something about it. And instead of dealing with that feeling he's been freezing you out for three days because that's what Jun does."
Duan sat back in his chair slowly.
Jun was jealous.
Jun had been ignoring him for three days because he was jealous.
Something warm moved through his chest immediately followed by something that felt a lot like panic. "I need to talk to him. If I just explain that nothing happened—"
"Don't," Fah said.
"But—"
"He knows nothing happened," Dom said. "That's not what this is about. He's not ready and if you push him right now before he's worked through it himself you are going to make everything ten times worse."
"So I just do nothing? I just keep walking past him every day while he pretends I don't exist and I do nothing?"
"For now yes."
Duan pressed his hands flat on the desk and stared at the surface of it. His leg was bouncing under the table. He hated this. He hated every second of this. The idea of Jun being upset and Duan not being able to do anything about it went against something fundamental in him.
He'd promised himself he would always make Jun happy. He'd meant that.
"Tonight," Dom said, dropping a hand on his shoulder. "Freshers party at P'Arm's bar. You're coming. You're going to drink something and breathe like a normal person and stop staring at your phone every thirty seconds."
Duan looked at him.
"Can you do that?" Dom said.
Duan exhaled through his nose.
"Fine," he said.
---
The bar was already loud when Jun arrived with Jet and Chawin.
The music hit them at the door — low and heavy, the kind that gets into your chest. The place was packed, seniors and juniors mixed together, drinks going around, the particular energy of a room full of people who had been waiting all week for this.
Jet found them a table deep inside, tucked away from the worst of the noise. A server came and Jet ordered without consulting anyone and within a few minutes there were drinks in front of all three of them.
Jun picked his up immediately.
Chawin watched him. "Are you alright?"
"I want to drink," Jun said and drank.
Jet didn't say anything. He watched Jun set the empty glass down and reach for the next one with the eyes of someone cataloguing information.
Jun had a high tolerance. Everyone who knew him knew that. But there was a difference between Jun drinking and Jun drinking like he was trying to get somewhere specific and right now it was very clearly the latter.
Another round arrived. Jun was already halfway through it.
"Did something happen with Duan?" Jet said.
Jun's hand tightened slightly around his glass.
"I don't know what I'm feeling," he said. His voice was even but something underneath it wasn't. "I don't know why I'm feeling it. I just—" He stopped.
Jet looked at him for a moment. Then he reached over and put his hand over Jun's the way he'd been doing since they were teenagers and Jun didn't know what to do with something that was too big for him.
"Do you like him?" Jet said quietly.
Jun opened his mouth.
The door opened.
Duan walked in.
He came through with Dom and Fah, laughing at something, his face completely open the way it got when he wasn't thinking about how he looked. He scanned the room once with those bright eyes and got immediately pulled toward a table of seniors who had spotted him and were waving him over.
Jun watched him cross the room.
Watched him sit down, still laughing, Dom dropping into the seat beside him.
Jun turned back to the table.
He picked up his drink and finished it in one go and set it down and didn't say another word.
Jet looked at Chawin.
Chawin looked at Jet.
Neither of them said anything.
---
Duan hadn't even fully sat down before P'Arm had a glass in front of him.
"You're late," P'Arm said, pointing at all three of them. "Late fee."
"P'Arm I literally just got here—"
"Late fee Duan."
Around the table people were already cheering. Fah picked up his glass with the calm of someone who had done this before and tipped it back cleanly. The table erupted.
Duan looked at his glass.
He looked at Dom.
Dom shrugged unhelpfully.
"My tolerance is really not—" Duan started.
He didn't finish the sentence because P'Arm had nodded at the person on his left and suddenly someone had his jaw and Jet was pouring the shot directly into his open mouth and he had approximately no say in the matter.
The burn went all the way down to his stomach.
Duan slammed the glass down and wheezed and the whole table lost it completely. Dom was bent over laughing. P'Arm looked satisfied.
It did not stop there.
The table had a momentum now and Duan was at the center of it. Every round that went around came back to him with extra. He screamed every time a new glass appeared. He downed every one anyway because there was no version of saying no that anyone at this table was going to accept. The room got louder and warmer and the edges of things started going soft and Duan was screaming something at Dom who was screaming something back and neither of them could hear the other over the music.
---
Jun's eyes had not fully left him.
He wasn't going to think about that.
He was on his fourth drink. Or fifth. The number had stopped mattering somewhere around the time Duan had started screaming at the shots and the table across the room had dissolved into chaos around him.
Jun watched him laugh with his whole body the way he always did — head back, completely unself-conscious, taking up exactly as much space as he wanted.
Something sat heavy in Jun's chest and had been sitting there for three days and drinking wasn't moving it.
"Jun." Chawin's voice was careful. "You've been staring at him for twenty minutes."
"I haven't."
Chawin said nothing else.
Jet tapped his arm suddenly.
Jun looked up.
Cherry was moving through the bar.
She'd spotted Duan's table from across the room and she was heading straight for it with the focused energy of someone who had seen an opportunity. She reached the table and sat down right beside him, close, and Duan turned with his slow drunk smile and acknowledged whoever had sat beside him the way he acknowledged everyone — openly, warmly, completely without suspicion.
Cherry's hand came up.
It settled on his chest.
Jun was on his feet.
He didn't remember standing up. He didn't remember crossing the room. One moment he was at his table and the next he was there, his hand closing around Cherry's arm, pulling her back and away from Duan in one clean motion, and he was standing between them and looking down at her and when he spoke his voice was quiet and completely without warmth.
"Stay away from him."
The table went dead silent.
Every head turned.
Cherry looked up at him and whatever was on his face made her go still. Jun held her gaze and didn't move and didn't say anything else and he didn't need to. She stood up slowly and took a step back and then another and then she turned and disappeared into the crowd.
Nobody at the table said a word.
Jun could feel every eye on him. He didn't care.
He turned to Duan.
Duan was looking up at him with glassy unfocused eyes, head tilted slightly, processing slowly. "Jun?" he said, like he wasn't completely sure.
"Get up," Jun said.
"Jun what—"
"Fah." Jet was already beside him. "We can help—"
"I've got him." Jun got his arm under Duan's and hauled him upright. "Leave it."
"Jun you don't have to—"
"I said I've got him." His voice came out harder than he intended. Jet stepped back. Fah stepped back. Dom looked between all of them and said nothing.
Jun got Duan's weight against his side and started moving him toward the door.
Duan was heavy and uncooperative and kept trying to turn around and say something to people as they passed them. Jun kept him moving. Through the crowd, past the bar, out the door and into the night air which hit them both like a hand.
Duan blinked slowly at the pavement.
Jun searched his pockets with one hand. Found the keys. Looked at the state of him — completely wasted, barely upright, head drooping toward Jun's shoulder.
"I can walk," Duan said.
"You cannot walk."
"I can—" He took one step and Jun caught him.
Jun cursed. Loudly. At no one in particular. At the whole situation. At himself for being here, for crossing that room, for the feeling that had been sitting in his chest for three days and still hadn't gone anywhere.
He got Duan to the car.
---
Getting him up to his condo was worse.
Duan had opinions about the elevator. He had opinions about the corridor. He had a lot to say about the door and none of it was coherent. Jun got him inside and steered him toward the sofa and let go and Duan dropped onto it like something that had been waiting for permission to fall.
Jun stood in the middle of the room and breathed.
His hands were not entirely steady. He looked at them.
Then Duan groaned and shifted and pushed himself upright on the sofa and blinked at the room until his eyes found Jun and something in his face changed. Whatever drunk did to people it had stripped Duan down to something unguarded and raw and Jun wasn't prepared for the way he was looking at him right now.
"Jun," he said.
"Lie down."
"Why are you mad at me."
"I'm not—"
"You are." Duan's voice was thick and slow and completely without armor. "You've been mad at me for three days and I don't know what I did and it's—" He stopped. His jaw worked. "It hurts. I can only take so little of this."
His eyes were wet.
Jun looked away from him.
"I'm not talking to you when you're like this," he said. "Lie down."
The sofa shifted.
Jun looked back.
Duan had slid off it entirely and was on his knees on the floor and his hands found Jun's legs and held on and he looked up at him from there and Jun felt something crack open in his chest that he did not know what to do with.
"Forgive me," Duan said. His voice broke at the edges of it. "Once. I'll never do it again. I don't even know what I did but I won't do it again just — please." His grip tightened. "Three days Jun. I couldn't even look at you and you couldn't look at me and I can't do that. I can't. Please."
He was crying.
Not loudly. Just quietly, the way someone cries when they're too tired to hold it back anymore, tears running without him seeming to fully notice them.
Jun stood there and looked at him and felt the tight thing in his chest pull so hard he almost couldn't breathe around it.
He reached down.
"Duan—"
The grip on his legs went slack.
Duan's eyes closed and his body tipped sideways and Jun caught him with both arms before he hit the floor and held him there for a moment, Duan's full weight against him, completely out.
Jun stood there holding him in the middle of the quiet condo.
He stood there for a long time.
Then he lifted him back onto the sofa, straightened him out, pulled the throw blanket off the back of it and laid it over him. He stood back and looked at him — face slack, lashes still wet, one hand loose at his side.
Jun pressed two fingers briefly to his own sternum like he could push the feeling back down.
He couldn't.
He turned off the lamp and walked to his room and closed the door behind him and sat on the edge of his bed in the dark.
His chest was tight and his hands weren't steady and somewhere in the living room Duan was asleep on the sofa with wet lashes and Jun had crossed an entire bar and grabbed a girl by the arm in front of everyone and he hadn't even decided to do it.
He hadn't decided.
He'd just moved.
He sat with that for a long time in the dark.
Then he lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling and didn't sleep.