Archive of Our Own

Beomgyu thought the kitchen was empty.

“You’re up late,” he says, lingering in the doorway.

“So are you,” Yeonjun observes.

“This isn’t late for me.” Beomgyu steps to the fridge. He casts a glance over at Yeonjun leaning lazily against the counter, scrolling on his phone. The kettle is on behind him, the blue heating up light glowing.

“Making something?” he asks, trying to sound as casual as Yeonjun looks.

“Tea. For my congestion.”

Yeonjun lowers his phone just as Beomgyu opens the fridge, hiding the hydroflask behind the open door.

“If you’re looking for a snack, Huening finished the clementines.”

“Nah. Just thirsty.”

Beomgyu pulls out the bottle of sparkling water, shutting the fridge. He tucks the hydroflask under his arm as he uncaps it, turning the back of his shoulder to Yeonjun as he pours.

“Maybe a hot shower will help with your congestion.”

“Beomgyu-ya, I’m not an idiot,” Yeonjun says. “You don’t even like sparkling water.”

Beomgyu’s glad he can’t see his face.

“Maybe I do now.”

“You don’t.”

Beomgyu gives up. It’s hard to pour the fizzy water into Soobin’s hydroflask in midair, anyway. He puts it on the countertop, in full view of Yeonjun.

“I just think—”

“Don’t start,” Beomgyu interrupts. “Hyung, I don’t need to hear it.”

He can practically hear Yeonjun pursing his lips.

“Can I say one thing?” Yeonjun says quietly.

Beomgyu huffs, re-capping the sparkling water.

“One thing.”

“Have you ever wanted to hang out with your ex? How do you think it would go if you had to spend a day together?”

Beomgyu glares at him, but Yeonjun just crosses his arms.

“We have four years left on our contract,” he says. “I don’t want them to be miserable for you.”

“Soobin-hyung will never be my ex,” Beomgyu says flatly. “Is that it? Was that your one thing? Because it was two things, actually.”

“Beomgyu.”

Beomgyu opens the fridge and jams the sparkling water in next to Taehyun’s protein shakes. It doesn’t quite fit there, but he manages to get the door to close again anyway.

“Good luck with your congestion, hyung,” Beomgyu says over his shoulder, escaping.

Soobin is propped up on one elbow in Beomgyu’s bed when he gets back to his room. His hair is all ruffled up in the back from leaning up on Beomgyu’s good pillow.

“Whatcha looking at?” Beomgyu asks, turning the light off.

“Your pictures,” Soobin says. The phone in his hand says BEOMGYU in permanent marker on the back of the case.

“What the fuck!”

Beomgyu makes a dive for the bed, but Soobin jams the phone behind his back, flattening it under his body.

“Why do you take so many flower pictures?” he snickers.

“Give it back, douchebag.”

“I liked the selfie with Taehyunnie. You should have posted that one. Great duckface.”

“Give me the fucking phone, hyung!”

Beomgyu pounces, hitting Soobin with the hydroflask, and Soobin cowers under his hands.

“Fucking ouch, that’s metal, Gyu-ya—”

The phone slips out from under Soobin’s body as he wriggles, glowing softly between the sheets. Beomgyu grabs it, flinging it to the foot of the bed.

“There was a passcode on that,” Beomgyu whines. “How’d you—”

“You left it unlocked,” Soobin says, tugging the hydroflask out of Beomgyu’s hand and starting to uncap it. “Tsk tsk. Poor personal security.”

“What else did you look at?”

“Why so paranoid? Nothing. I’m not actually a douchebag.”

Soobin lifts his bottle to his lips, and Beomgyu watches them wrap around the hydroflask’s wide neck. Even in the dark, he can make out the curve of his cupid’s bow.

Soobin swallows, lowering the bottle and smacking his lips. “Sparkling! You spoil me, Beomgyu-ya.”

“Yeah, never say I don’t care about you,” Beomgyu grumbles. “And what’s my thanks? A total invasion of privacy?”

Soobin drops the bottle onto Beomgyu’s nightstand.

“You know what your thanks is,” he says.

He shifts his legs, and Beomgyu becomes acutely aware that he’s straddling Soobin’s knees, a leftover from the hydroflask attack.

“You first this time, okay?” Soobin says. The shadows of his eyebrows lift. His hands find Beomgyu’s knees, squeezing them through his pajama pants. “Then me?”

“As always.” Beomgyu pushes Soobin’s hands off. He can feel their warmth lingering. It’s cold in his room.

“Flip over,” Soobin says. “Let’s see how fast I can do it this time. Your endurance is shit.”

“On second thought, maybe you don’t get a blowjob tonight,” Beomgyu quips. “Maybe I get two.”

Soobin rolls him over, grabbing him by the shoulders and yanking him to the bed. Beomgyu lets himself be yanked. It tugs behind his belly.

“Just for that, I get to go first,” he says.

“Rock-paper-scissors?”

Soobin sighs.

“A child. You’re a child.”

“Don’t say that when you’re about to suck my dick twice.”

Soobin makes a sudden gesture, like he’s about to smack Beomgyu in the face, and Beomgyu cowers, whining. Soobin hushes him immediately, as if it wasn’t his own fault that Beomgyu whined.

“They’ll hear if you whine like that.”

“They always hear, dumbass,” Beomgyu says.

“They do?” Soobin hesitates. His shoulders tighten under his t-shirt.

Beomgyu didn’t mean to say it. He never means to say anything about this, anything that acknowledges that it’s real. It might make it dissolve, the acidity of that conversation overwhelming the fragile constitution of whatever this is.

“No,” he lies. “Nah, the maknaes would have a heart attack if they heard, and hyung would slap you.”

“Why would he slap me?” Soobin furrows his brow.

Another acidic explanation. That one would eat away at Beomgyu’s facade, exposing too much of his raw, fresh skin.

“Just group dynamic stuff,” Beomgyu says. “He said something snarky about in-group hookups once. Look, can we get to the dick sucking?”

It’s as far as they’ll go: exchanging messy, needy blowjobs in the dark. Beomgyu’s not dumb enough to ask for more. Not when he’s never done more, and when he’s wanted to for so, so long.

Beomgyu should have remembered to fill up his own water bottle, too. He swishes his mouth with Soobin’s sparkling water when they’re both done, rinsing some of the bitter taste of Soobin out of the back of his throat. He hates the sharp sensation of the bubbles, but Soobin’s already passed out next to him, and he doesn’t want to get up to rinse in the bathroom and risk waking him.

Soobin usually goes back to his own room afterwards, but maybe tonight, he’ll stay.

One thing about Soobin is that he talks. It’s not that he’s a chatterbox, he just…says things, without thinking about them. He talks like he thinks he deserves to say whatever’s on his mind, and be heard.

Beomgyu’s never really felt like that, like he’s worth listening to. Beomgyu’s a chatterbox kind of talker, because when you chatter away, each word means nothing at all. But Soobin says things, and doesn’t think twice about how much space they’ll take up, or the way they’ll land in the ears of those around him. And to be fair, they always seem to land well with everyone who matters.

Like when he goes on a live radio show and talks about the showers that they all used to take together. It completely spits in the face of all their media training, but Soobin’s so damn cute and innocent about it that no one at the company grills him about crossing boundaries. They think it’s a good thing, actually, because of all the Twitter attention, and no one cares that it shocked the Enhypen boys.

Or all the times he calls Beomgyu beautiful, for seemingly no reason. Beomgyu’s so pretty lately, stated on a Vlive like a casual fact, over and over. Everyone nods and says it’s sweet of him, and all Beomgyu can do every time is smile appreciatively and shrug it off. The fans love it, and it’s supposed to be a compliment, right? He is pretty, after all. It doesn’t mean much to say it, and Soobin isn’t thinking about what it might feel like for Beomgyu to hear it.

Or when he calls Beomgyu his soulmate on a fan call. He just says it. He isn’t thinking. He even laughs after, like it was some cute little joke. What about your soulmate? Maybe Beomgyu. Another perfect piece of fan service. Beomgyu bookmarks the clip on Twitter and watches it over and over, analyzing that laugh. It could have been a shy laugh, like he had given himself away. Maybe he only said Beomgyu because he’d just called him his best friend, and Beomgyu’s name was stuck in his head. If anyone’s his soulmate, wouldn’t it be Kai?

Yeonjun walks into Beomgyu’s bedroom while the audio of the video clip is blaring out of his phone, and Beomgyu dodges his raised-eyebrow look. He deletes the bookmark.

Beomgyu supposes he compliments Soobin, too. Or he used to. It doesn’t feel right do it anymore, like it’s too much and not enough, and it makes his stomach feel queasy when Soobin accepts Beomgyu’s praise as if it’s nothing different from Yeonjun calling him a good leader or Kai calling him handsome.

Is it different?

The company throws Soobin a party to celebrate the last day of his MC gig. Someone hangs a banner reading Congratulations Soobin, Forever MC across the back of the practice room, and there’s a bunny-shaped cake, as if it were his birthday. Unfortunately, it means the other members don’t get the day off the way they usually do when Soobin is at Music Bank, because they’re supposed to be ready at the party when he arrives, and forced fun is really the worst kind of work.

“I dunno why you’re being so lame about this,” Kai says, handing Beomgyu another balloon to stick onto the helium pump. It’s not their job to decorate, but it’s not like they had anything better to do. Well, sleeping would have been better, but as long as they’re here, it’s dumb to not help.

“I’m not being lame.”

“You’re all quiet and mopey. And we’re having a party for our job. This is the best kind of work.”

“I’m tired.”

“You don’t like the cake?”

“I like the cake. Kai-ya, can you just…”

Kai stifles his questions. He doesn’t pry the way Taehyun would. Beomgyu’s starting to wonder if Kai just doesn’t know, somehow.

“Did you put makeup on? Because they might film this for the Youtube channel.”

“I’ll wear a mask,” Beomgyu shrugs. “They wouldn’t film me, anyway. It’s Soobin’s day. We’re just milling around in the background.”

They do film him, though. A half-hour later Soobin comes bouncing through the door in a hoodie and sweats with all his makeup still on from Music Bank, as if his face truly just is that rosy, and the camera switches on immediately to log his reaction to all the decorations. It doesn’t take long after they cut into the cake for Soobin to haul Beomgyu in for harassment.

“Tell me, Beomgyu-ya,” he says, brandishing his cake slice. “What was your favorite part of me MCing?”

Beomgyu presses his lips together behind his mask.

“When I pretended I didn’t know you.”

Soobin rolls his eyes.

“Yah, he’s lying,” he says to the camera. “He watches the whole thing, every week.”

“Do not.”

“Which costume was your favorite?” Soobin smiles, his dimples unmasked. “The cowboy one? Navy prince? Red prince?”

Beomgyu loved the red prince one. He bookmarked that clip, too. He wracks his brain for a suitably teasing answer, because he can’t say the real one.

“Hyung, I liked when you and Taehyunnie interviewed Taemin-sunbaenim,” Kai chimes in from the other side of the table, and the cameraman swings his handheld around, a merciful reprieve. Beomgyu looks down at his plate in relief, at the tiny bite he took from his cake. Someone at the company got custom-printed paper plates for the occasion, bedecked with a photo of Soobin and Arin during their viral Dolphin stage, and Beomgyu knows they’ll be eating off of them in the artists’ break room for months. Soobin’s face, beaming at him while he picks at his heated-up leftovers in the middle of a sixteen-hour workday.

The real party starts when the camera turns off and the executives start filing in, the suits from the Artist Management team and the Marketing and Partnerships group that landed Soobin the MC gig in the first place. There’s a lot of shoulder-clapping and hearty congratulating and my ten year old watched your show every week, Soobin-ssi.

Beomgyu clings to the wall with Taehyun, who’s better at this kind of thing than he is, but always willing to hang back with him. They watch as Yeonjun orbits the crowd with Kai in his wake. Soobin is too deep in the fray for them to really see him, other than the back of his head, bowing and bowing to every new face he greets. Beomgyu knows that Soobin hates this. He knows it, but it’s hard to believe it, when he looks so good out there.

“He’s gotten good at this,” Taehyun observes.

Beomgyu nods.

“Only because he had to,” Taehyun says. “It’s not like he likes this.”

“Yeah, duh. Who would like this?”

“Yeonjunnie-hyung might.”

“Yeonjunnie-hyung is a twenty-two-year-old ahjussi,” Beomgyu snorts. “He was born to network.”

“You should get out there, hyung.”

Beomgyu must not have made a very pleasant face, and Taehyun can see it from the crinkle of his eyes above his mask.

“Why? Don’t sell yourself short. You know all these people, it’s safe.”

“Yeah? If we know all these people, who’s she?”

Beomgyu points at a mystery woman, and Taehyun immediately slaps his hand down.

“It’s rude to point.”

“That’s not an answer,” Beomgyu says brattily.

Taehyun leans back against the wall, wincing as his spine collides with a pushpin. He’s leaning against a photo wall of Soobin’s MC selfies, printed out and painstakingly collaged by some intern. It’s a wall of Soobin dimples.

“I wish you wouldn’t turn this into another thing to be weird about,” Taehyun says, in that frustratingly even voice he uses for every observation, no matter how affecting. “You’ve been weird about all kinds of things lately.”

“I wish you wouldn’t…” Beomgyu can’t come up with a comeback in time, and Taehyun just crosses his arms.

“Do you think he’s gotten too big for Kai?”

“Never,” Beomgyu says immediately.

“So why do you think it about you?”

“I don’t.” Beomgyu’s fingertips crunch up around the cuff of his sleeve.

“Best friend,” Taehyun says. “He never says that about me.”

“Yeah, well, he’s not your best friend.”

“Is he yours?”

Taehyun looks at him expectantly, as if he’s truly expecting an answer, even though he must know there’s no way Beomgyu will answer it. When the pause drags out, Taehyun exhales, adjusting the straps of his mask and giving Beomgyu a flash of his little frown.

“I’ll leave with you if you wanna go home,” he says. “Just congratulate him before we do.”

“I already did,” Beomgyu lies. “Can you cook for me tonight?”

Taehyun’s thin fingers wrap firmly around Beomgyu’s elbow.

“Yeah,” he says. “Of course. You’ll do dishes?”

Beomgyu positions himself with his back to his door that night, tipping in his desk chair, so he can look casually surprised when Soobin plows in without knocking. He holds that position for longer than he’d like to. His bed would have been a lot more comfortable to sit in, but it faces the door.

It’s half-past-midnight when his headphones are yanked out by the strings from behind. He slaps his hands to his ears, but the buds are already gone.

“You know, you could hurt me like that,” Beomgyu complains as Soobin drops to his knees next to him, putting one of the earbuds in his own ear.

“What even is this? Sounds sappy.”

“Or you could break the earbuds. You could have ripped the string right out of the pod and left the ear part stuck in my ear, forever.”

“It can’t get stuck in your ear,” Soobin says dismissively, already losing interest in the music and dropping the earbud. “It’s not, like, a bead that a toddler can stick up there. I’m not taking you to the hospital to get any foreign objects removed.”

“If you knocked, I could have just taken them out myself.”

“Not used to knocking with you. You don’t get privacy from me.” It’s been months since they shared a room, but they still play this game; we’re still roommates, just with a wall up.

“Maybe I like getting privacy from you.”

“You?” Soobin grins, hauling himself up and tossing himself back down on Beomgyu’s bed. “You’ve been talking on every variety show about how much you miss me. Nice try.”

He taps the bed next to him, and Beomgyu makes a face.

“What’s that?” Soobin cajoles, imitating the face. “Come cuddle.”

“Maybe I don’t want to,” Beomgyu says. He regrets it immediately.

Soobin shrugs. “Fine, no need,” he says, and now Beomgyu’s lost the upper hand. It’d be too weird to go over now. He closes his laptop and turns to straddle the back of his chair, resting his elbows on it. A shield.

“So are you proud of me?” Soobin says, already back on their shtick.

“For what?”

“You know. Best MC ever.”

“I read your interviews,” Beomgyu says, rubbing his bare elbow into the rough texture of the chair. “All the ones of you reflecting on your last day. True poetry.”

Soobin frowns. “I thought I did pretty good with those. It’s hard to not just sound like a soundbite when all the questions are the same.”

“Yeah, you aced it. You made it sound like Music Bank birthed you,” Beomgyu says. “Like you discovered your true self in that backstage interview room.”

“Hey, don’t be like that,” Soobin says.

“Like what?”

“Like…bitchy.”

“I’m not being bitchy.” He was trying to be bitchy, and now he feels stupid about it.

“Well, I don’t like it when you act mean,” Soobin says, crossing his arms. “It’s weird.”

Beomgyu lets the analog clock on his nightstand click through five ticks. He stares at the hem of his comforter, coming untucked from under his mattress. He makes it every day just so that Soobin can mess it up again, and yet he always complains when he does. He likes to hear Soobin say sorry.

“Sorry,” Beomgyu admits, tangling his fingertips together.

“Yeah, no worries.”

“I’m really proud of you.”

“I know, Beomgyu-ya.”

Soobin pats the bed again, and Beomgyu won’t miss his second chance. He crawls in, tucking himself between Soobin’s body and the wall, and Soobin nestles his long arm under the hollow of Beomgyu’s neck. No other contact, though.

“How does it feel to be done?” Beomgyu asks. He rolls onto his side, his hands finding their way to the loose fabric of Soobin’s t-shirt. He twists the cotton, fingertips just barely grazing Soobin’s side underneath it, and Soobin turns his head to look at him. His face seems so much larger up close.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m not,” Soobin says, blinking his unblinking eyes away and flipping his head to look at the ceiling again. “It feels weird. It’s been such a big part of my schedule, you know? For over a year.”

“Yeah, and you blew up,” Beomgyu says.

“I did not blow up.”

“You did. You went viral.”

Soobin scoffs. “That was fucking ages ago. Wish you’d drop it.”

“People even spam me with the dolphin emoji,” Beomgyu says. “Everyone, like, knows you now.”

“Gyu-ya, we’re celebrities,” Soobin says. “People know who you are too. We’re literally famous.”

“You’re more famous, though. You’re the nation’s boyfriend famous.”

They’re quiet for a moment. Beomgyu tries to reposition his head an inch, but the skin of his neck has stuck onto the skin of Soobin’s bare bicep underneath it, and moving it would ruin something.

“Maybe,” Soobin says, finally. “Is that, um, bad?”

“Nah. Not bad.” Beomgyu lets go of Soobin’s shirt. He thinks he sees his chest drop when he does, exhaling. “You, like…bloomed.”

Soobin lets out a cackle.

“I bloomed?”

“Yeah,” Beomgyu says crossly. He thought it sounded smart.

“I bloomed on Music Bank?”

“You know what I mean. You’re…different.”

“No way.”

“You’re so good at all that now,” Beomgyu says, and Soobin knows what he means without elaborating.

“It’s our job, Beomgyu-ya,” he says. Beomgyu feels Soobin’s fingers gently twisting the ends of his long hair, seeking out one of the rough blond extensions. “We’re public figures. We’re a goddamn idol group. It’s not just about the music. People have to like us.”

“I know. And everyone does like you.”

Soobin coos out a long, teasing sound. “You jealous? You want me all to yourself?”

“Don’t be a dick,” Beomgyu says shortly, ripping his neck off Soobin’s arm and flipping one-eighty degrees towards the wall. He feels Soobin chasing him, rolling towards him as he pulls away, and he tightens himself into a tight little ball to keep him out.

“Beomgyu, I’m just fucking around,” Soobin says, curling into Beomgyu. He’s so long, so warm. Used to feel so safe. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Tired.”

“Do you really think I’m different?”

Beomgyu doesn’t answer. He feels Soobin’s hand cupping his waist casually, like it landed there by accident, and tries not to breathe.

“You know who’d have made a great MC?”

“Hyung.”

“You, Beomgyu-ya. I’ve been shaking like a leaf inside this whole year, but you, you’d really bloom out there.”

“Hyung, it’s not about that,” Beomgyu snaps.

He feels Soobin’s warmth retract as if he’d been slapped. The mattress shifts, a weight pulling away from Beomgyu.

“Fine,” Soobin says. “If you’re gonna be touchy, I’ll go. You’re being so fucking weird tonight.”

“I’m sorry,” Beomgyu complains, rolling onto his back. Soobin has his legs swung over the side of the bed like he’s about to stand, looking down at him almost disdainfully, and Beomgyu feels like every bit of the whiny, petulant child that Soobin’s expression says he’s acting like. Why does he let himself ruin the good things? “I just…”

Soobin lingers.

“Are you mad at me?” he asks.

Beomgyu huffs out a long breath.

“Not mad,” he says. “I’m sorry. I just spent a lot of time reading about Soobin the idol today, and it was…unsettling.” Unsettling to see him blooming. Glowing, growing without Beomgyu.

“Do you not want to do this? If it’s getting weird, we don’t have to do this. We can take a break.”

Beomgyu can feel the panic register on his face. He hopes he passes it off successfully as surprise.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I dunno,” Soobin says, carefully. His face is serious. “But we said when this started that it wouldn’t ever get weird.”

Beomgyu immediately looks back at the wall. It’s literally always been weird.

“It’s not weird for me.”

“Nor me.”

Beomgyu drags a fingertip along the wall.

“You wanna stop?” he asks.

“No,” Soobin says. “You?”

Beomgyu shakes his head.

“Good,” Soobin says. His body slithers back down the bed, and now his lips are in Beomgyu’s ear. “Maybe we celebrate more?”

Soobin sleeps in even later than Beomgyu does on Christmas morning, late enough that none of the others bother to wake him to open their presents. He’s already put his gifts for everyone under the table-top plastic Christmas tree that Taehyun’s parents dropped off at their dorm, and they’re all waiting to touch his until he wakes. The packages are identically sized. He probably got everyone sweaters again.

“I thought we were going to do a vlog today,” Kai observes, tugging the hat that Yeonjun gave him over his eyes. He already has the matching leather gloves on, and they clash wonderfully with his neon pajamas.

“We were,” Taehyun calls in from the kitchen. He’s mulling something that smells like fall on the stove. “Video team will be here in fifteen.”

“Beomgyu…” Yeonjun tilts his head towards the hallway and Soobin’s door.

“You do it,” Beomgyu says, chewing his lip.

“Nuh-uh. On you.” Yeonjun cuddles deeper into the couch, where he sits ensconced in Beomgyu’s gift for him, a flannel blanket with his initials in the corner. “Too cozy to deal with a grumpy Soobin.”

Beomgyu hauls himself to his feet, grumbling. He takes a step, then thinks twice and comes back for his gift for Soobin, neatly wrapped with Soobin’s name printed simply in the middle. Might as well bring something to banter about.

It’s not that they need props to hide behind. That’s what scares Beomgyu so much about Soobin. They don’t need anything at all to talk about. When there’s nothing to talk about, they talk for hours about nothing, and that’s when it gets dangerous. That’s when it turns into I’m so comfortable with you, Beomgyu-ya, and Beomgyu starts saying it back. I can tell you anything, Soobin-hyung. That’s how they ended up here, nearly six months into something that Beomgyu had never let himself dream about and Soobin had probably never considered until Beomgyu handed it to him on a silver platter. Three in the morning, laying together in Soobin’s bed during their first night in their new separate rooms, and Beomgyu had just fucking said it, like an idiot: do you think we’ll get lonely, hyung? Like…physically?

He’s still a bit wary of Soobin’s room. What do you mean, physically? Soobin had said, his hand inching across Beomgyu’s ribs in the dark, and six months later, they can’t talk about nothing anymore. Every time they do, Soobin says things that Beomgyu wants to hear too badly.

“I’ll give him his present in bed,” Beomgyu explains, tucking the gift under his arm as he heads for the hallway. It’s the perfect moment for a joke, but Yeonjun knows there’s nothing worth joking about in Beomgyu’s bullshit predicament, and honestly, at this point, Beomgyu thinks Kai actually doesn’t know.

“Tell him mine is edible,” Kai calls after his retreating back.

Beomgyu knocks twice, like a civilized adult.

“‘S open,” a bleary voice calls out. It’s always open. They’re not supposed to lock their doors.

Beomgyu pushes through Soobin’s door, into his pigsty. He can see Soobin’s face illuminated by his phone, but all the rest of his mess is hidden by the darkness of the closed blinds. It could smell a lot worse in this room, considering that both a hedgehog and a twenty-one-year-old man live in it, but it still doesn’t smell ideal. That’s another reason Beomgyu’s wary of Soobin’s room.

“You’re sleeping through Christmas,” Beomgyu says, flipping on the lamp on Soobin’s desk.

Soobin groans, dropping his phone. He buries his face in his pillow.

“Holidays are for sleeping, Gyu-ya.”

“Not this one. Gift for you.” Beomgyu flings his present at the back of Soobin’s head. It lands with a dull crinkle.

“That could’ve hurt,” Soobin whines, slapping his hand back for it.

“Yeah, but it didn’t,” Beomgyu snickers, perching on the edge of Soobin’s desk as Soobin tangles himself around in his bedding. “I know what’s in it, and it’s squishy.”

Soobin props himself up on one elbow. “Wanna give me a hint?”

“It’ll make you pretty.”

“Yah, are you saying I’m not already pretty?”

“Not like me,” Beomgyu bats back.

“True,” Soobin says, already picking open the tape on the wrapping paper. “Did you open mine yet?”

Soobin calls him pretty all the time. On fan calls, on Vlives, to their members.

“Beomgyu-ya? Did you open mine?”

“Nope. We were waiting for you.”

Soobin rips the paper free, and the fuzzy onesie falls into his lap.

“What’s this?” he says, smiling.

“Your favorite princess,” Beomgyu says, as Soobin sits up straighter to shake out the onesie. “Snow White. Cute, right?”

“And this’ll fit me?”

Beomgyu mock gasps. “You think I’d get you a princess onesie that wasn’t your size? Hyung, I have manners.”

Soobin rubs his face in the fabric.

“Cozy,” he says, muffled. “Thanks, Beomgyu.”

“Yeah, anytime. Merry Christmas.”

“Did you get them all princesses?”

“Um, no. Kai would rather have a plushie, you know that. And I got Taehyunnie a cookbook. Maybe get your ass up and come see what I got Yeonjun-hyung for yourself.”

Beomgyu pushes off Soobin’s desk, dropping to his feet.

“Anyway, I’ll tell them you’ll be—”

“Wait,” Soobin interrupts. “Lemme give you yours.”

“It’s out under the tree.” Beomgyu gestures out the cracked door.

“Um, no, it’s not. Not all of it.”

Soobin swings his legs out of bed, his pajamas all crumpled up around his knees. He ducks to fumble for something under it, and Beomgyu stands in the middle of the room, awkwardly frozen but for his thumping heart.

“I thought Odi might’ve chewed through it the last time he got out,” Soobin says, pulling out a small rectangular package. “But all he did was poop in hyung’s room.”

It’s wrapped in blue and silver paper, no ribbon, no card. The same wrapping paper as the four gifts from Soobin sitting under the tree in the living room, four lumpy packages that must be sweaters.

“But your gift is out there already,” Beomgyu says dumbly, flailing an arm in the direction of the living room.

“Um, I didn’t want to make it weird that I got you two,” Soobin says, proffering the box. “Unless you’re gonna make it weird. In which case I can just keep it.”

“No, I want it,” Beomgyu says.

Soobin smiles.

“Okay, so take it already. My arm’s getting tired. It’s heavy.”

Beomgyu furrows his brow. Heavy? He reaches out for the gift, dazed, and it is kind of heavy, even though the box isn’t particularly large. He fumbles at the paper, trying to peel it off neatly like Soobin had with the onesie, and then gives into his curiosity and just rips it off in one dramatic, violent blow.

“It’s one of those cameras they have at Studio Choom,” Soobin says quickly. “Not the big fancy video ones, obviously. One of the handheld ones that they have us play with, that takes three photos at once and then turns them into, like, a little moving image. You know what I’m talking about, right?”

“Yeah,” Beomgyu says, clutching the box between his hands. The image printed on the front stares up at him, a retro black camera with three circular lenses.

“You just really seemed to like it, and I saw that they had them at Shinsegae, and, um, yeah. Do you like it?”

“Yeah,” Beomgyu says again, turning the box over, blindly staring at the text on the back.

“But I didn’t want to not get you what I got everyone else too, so I just got you both this and the sweater. But don’t feel weird that you didn’t get me two gifts. The camera actually wasn’t even expensive. I kinda thought it would be, because the photos that come out are so cool, and I was like damn, Gyu’s gonna owe me for this forever, but maybe they were having a sale, because it wasn’t.”

“That’s good.”

“You sure you like it? You’re being, like…”

Soobin trails off. Beomgyu lifts his head from the camera, finally, and Soobin is hovering anxiously, his big hands knotted up in a very Beomgyu-like way.

“Yeah, I love it, hyung,” Beomgyu says. “I love it.”

“I knew you would,” Soobin says, failing to bite back his smile. “Um, maybe don’t tell them, because I don’t want to have to buy everyone another—”

“I don’t tell them lots of things,” Beomgyu says, and Soobin scoffs.

“Fair point.” He holds his arms out. “Merry Christmas?”

Beomgyu rests the box on the foot of Soobin’s bed and carefully, deliberately folds himself into his arms. He tucks his face into Soobin’s neck, the spot where his forehead naturally falls, and breathes in.

Soobin smells like he’s still sleeping, like sheets and pillows and clean pajamas, like his body isn’t fully booted up yet. He smells like he does when Beomgyu rolls over in the middle of the night and Soobin is still there, half-dressed and sticky, lips parted in the moonlight like he’s begging Beomgyu to kiss them.

He could kiss Soobin right now, kiss the pulsing vein in his neck where it’s thrumming to life under Beomgyu’s lips, but he can’t. They only kiss in the thick of those moments, and their kisses are always just heated, sloppy brushes of their lips on each other’s. Almost accidental, just side effects of all the touching and licking and humping. It means too much to kiss in any other way, and in Beomgyu’s darkened room, they don’t count.

Soobin’s lips are against Beomgyu’s scalp. He could have kissed him there, silently, and Beomgyu never would have known. He chooses to believe what he wants to believe. That one would have counted.

“Merry Christmas, hyung,” Beomgyu whispers back.

It’s only later, after the video team shows up and they all settle in for a round of mulled cider in the matching sweaters that Soobin got for them, that Beomgyu realizes that Odi hasn’t gotten out for over a month. Soobin’s had the camera for a long time, but Beomgyu won’t let himself dwell on it. Soobin is a good hyung.

Beomgyu always goes home for Seollal when his schedule allows for it. And it allows for it this year: two whole days off, for Seollal and the day after. The dorm clears out. Even Kai goes to visit his mother, and he’s usually the last one left in the dorm. It’s the whole reason Beomgyu took him to Daegu during their last big break.

But there will be no train to Daegu for Seollal this year. Beomgyu’s brother is spending the year studying in Beijing, and his parents are taking the holiday to visit him. Beomgyu whined to them about it being a family holiday, but the tickets leaving Korea were at a discount, so that was that. Kai offered to host him in return for the trip he took to Daegu, but honestly, Beomgyu doesn’t think having a few days off to just relax around the dorm sounds so bad.

And Soobin has a personal schedule on their second day off, a shoot for Marie Claire. He’s staying too.

Yeonjun comes into Beomgyu’s bedroom before he leaves for his parents’ house in Seongnam, his overnight bag already slung over his shoulder.

“Do something for the holiday,” he says, leaning into Beomgyu’s bed to hug him. “Get Soobinnie to buy you fruit. Dress up in that hanbok we had to wear for To Do filming.”

“If you think I’m going all the way into the company on my day off to drag out that hanbok…”

“Better than bumming around here with him, making mistakes,” Yeonjun says bluntly.

Beomgyu lets his body go limp, sliding out of the hug.

“Do you say this shit to him, too?” he says, crossing his arms.

“No,” Yeonjun says. “No, because I don’t think he totally gets it.”

“And you think you get it?”

Yeonjun purses up his full lips.

Beomgyu takes a glance into the central lens of the camera, perched on the shelf above his desk. They never talked about the camera after Christmas, but Beomgyu thinks of it every time he feels too small, every time he feels out of control. Sometimes he stares at that lens as Soobin takes him into his mouth, feeling that phantom kiss on his scalp as he surrenders down Soobin’s throat. That kiss might have been in Beomgyu’s imagination, but the camera isn’t.

“You just think I’m, like, a simp,” Beomgyu says angrily, looking back at Yeonjun. “Everything’s fine, hyung. I can take care of myself.”

“Hyung?” Soobin’s voice calls from down the hallway. “You’re still here?”

“You didn’t close the door?” Beomgyu mouths, panicked, as Soobin pushes through the door.

“Have a good time at home,” Soobin says, clapping a hand around Yeonjun’s neck. “You heard I don’t have to be alone today?”

“I heard,” Yeonjun says, eyes still fixed on Beomgyu. “Be safe here, okay?”

“We’ll stay away from the dangers of carpal tunnel,” Beomgyu says. “From all the dangerous gaming we’ll be doing.”

Yeonjun rolls his eyes.

“Keep an eye on this brat, Soobin-ah.”

“Always,” Soobin says, tossing himself down on Beomgyu’s bed and landing square on his calves, ignoring Beomgyu’s yelp of pain. “I’ll send you pics from the shoot tomorrow, okay?”

Yeonjun leaves the door open when he leaves. A lingering warning, his presence hanging around them. Be safe.

“So,” Soobin says, poking Beomgyu in the thigh.

“So,” Beomgyu says, poking Soobin back. “Wanna do something?”

Soobin flops off Beomgyu’s legs. “It’s nine in the morning. Too early for something.”

“Okay, back to sleep, and then something? Wanna go out to a movie? Just game?”

Soobin crinkles up his nose.

“Probably a movie, or else we’ll be lazy asses for twenty-four hours.”

“But I want to be a lazy ass.”

“Yeah, but I’m your leader, and slightly responsible for your well-being.”

“You’re, like, two seconds older than me,” Beomgyu complains.

Soobin crawls up Beomgyu’s bed, hogging his good pillow. It’s the usual one he crashes on when he conks out after they hook up, and Beomgyu doesn’t complain. He just squeezes into the little corner of it that his head can still fit on, the perfect reason to be close.

They don’t cuddle like this in the daytime as much as they did before it all started. It’s weird to see Soobin’s face on Beomgyu’s pillow in the sunlight, his features so clear, his eyelashes fluttering closed above his plush undereyes.

“How long a nap, one hour? Two?”

Beomgyu fumbles for his phone. Soobin’s arm is already draped across his chest, and it’s meaningless. Meaningless, it’s meaningless.

“Two hours,” he says, setting the alarm and trying not to melt into Soobin’s warmth. Finally, a holiday for sleeping in.

On the other side of their nap, the day unfurls like the plot of a movie itself. They mask up and pull beanies over their distinctive hair, sneaking out the back door of their dorm just in case security flags them to their protocol team. On the way to the movie theater they fight over what kind of popcorn to buy before settling on three. When they get there, they linger over the seat-selection screen at the ticket kiosk. The movie theater has one cinema with seats shaped like couches, but Beomgyu tells Soobin it would be idiotic of them to cuddle up on a couch in public.

“Why?” Soobin says crossly. “They’re so comfy. I’ve done it with Kai.”

“You hog all the space. I’d watch the movie from the floor.”

“I’m good at sharing! I’m good at sharing the bed, at least.”

Beomgyu laughs. “Really? You think you’re a good bed-sharer?”

“I’m not?” Soobin seems genuinely offended, and Beomgyu cackles harder.

“You’re a pillow hog,” he says. “And you elbow. You elbow so much. Even this morning, it was like I was sharing my bed with one-eighty-five centimeters of elbows.”

They get regular seats instead, even though there’s nowhere to put the three types of popcorn, and Beomgyu’s hand twitches on his lap in the dark, seeking something warm to fumble with. 

There’s a row of arcade games lined up in the hallway outside their theater, and when Spiderman finally spits them out of the dark two and a half hours later, they obviously indulge.

“Feels like we’re sixteen again,” Soobin says, watching Beomgyu aim for the largest plushie in the claw machine for Kai.

“Did you even know me when I was sixteen?”

“International age,” Soobin says. “You were so round. Eager, like a puppy.”

Beomgyu loses focus and misses the toy.

“Pathetic,” Soobin says, shoving him aside. “Make room for your leader, huh? Show you how it’s done?”

They spend forty-thousand won on Kai’s plushie. Beomgyu wins it in the end, and Soobin carries on about it the whole way home.

These are the days that make Beomgyu want to grab Yeonjun by the collar and jam his face into his life. See? See how fine it is. See how normal it is. See how well he can handle it. It’s a sad sort of irony that while so much of Beomgyu’s chest is hollow with the empty ache of nights with Soobin, the rest of it is brimming with him; half empty, half full. Soobin is his best friend, talking and bantering and slapping Beomgyu when he gets too annoying. Grabbing Beomgyu the tea he likes most from the fridge without asking if he wants one, letting him sit on the left side of the couch because he knows it’s Beomgyu’s favorite. This part of Soobin is so easy, and Beomgyu is well practiced at beating down everything that makes it hard, so he can escape into these moments. As long as they don’t talk about nothing. That’s when it gets too hard.

Sometimes Beomgyu wonders what life would be like if he was a regular guy, just a college student in a tiny apartment with a roommate and job applications and grades to worry about. He thinks it would be a lot like this, slurping down bowls of ramyeon over their laptops, hollering at each other about who sucked more during that last game of League. When dinner rolls around they order pajeon and bingsu for dessert, and Soobin insists on putting on an anime in the background while they switch to Overwatch. He drags out a bottle of whiskey that he had hidden in the space where Beomgyu’s camera had once lived under his bed.

“I promise you. The drunker you get me, the more I’m gonna shit on this anime,” Beomgyu says, watching Soobin pour. It’s a precarious situation; they’re both perched on the couch with their laptops, and Soobin is one wobbly hand away from a whiskey-meeting-keyboard disaster.

“And the more I’ll defend it, so what’s your point?”

He hands Beomgyu his glass. Beomgyu sniffs it and pulls a face.

“Fine. None for you, if you’re not gonna appreciate it,” Soobin says, making to grab the glass back, but Beomgyu veers away from him, taking a sip.

“Burns,” he coughs.

“Hey! You didn’t wait for me?”

“Hurry up, I wanna watch you fail again,” Beomgyu says, tucking his glass onto the coffee table and turning back to the game. “Sip for every death, okay?”

The drinking and the anime makes Soobin terrible at the game, which only gets him drunker. Eventually he gets too whiny to tolerate, and they give up on playing, stacking their laptops haphazardly next to their drained glasses and just sprawling out on the couch with half an eye on the show. Soobin busies himself with refilling, and Beomgyu seizes the moment to lower the volume. Soobin doesn’t notice.

“Do you think I could ever do voice overs?”

“Like, for animation?”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t that be, like, the coolest job?” Soobin sways dreamily. “Just watching a show with your friends, and they’re all like, Soobin, doesn’t that villain sound like you? And I’m like gee, maybe it does. Why don’t you look it up?”

“You mean you wouldn’t tell your friends what you’re working on?” Beomgyu chuckles. He reaches for his glass and his hand lands slightly off target. Soobin slaps his hand away, and Beomgyu realizes he hasn’t refilled his yet.

“Nah. For the mystery element.”

“You sound like a shit friend, then.” Beomgyu pokes Soobin in the shoulder. “You told them when you debuted, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess. But it would have been hard to keep it a mystery when my face was plastered everywhere. Voice acting would be different. And I didn’t have too many friends to tell, anyway.”

Soobin settles back on the couch again, holding out Beomgyu’s glass for him. It’s pleasantly fuzzy in Beomgyu’s body, like he’s cuddled up in a cozy blanket from the inside out. He wants to rest his head on Soobin’s shoulder. That would be so cozy.

“Can I say something that you’re gonna tease me for?” Soobin says, crossing his legs on the couch and watching Beomgyu over the lip of his glass.

“Shoot.”

“Okay. I was kinda hoping you’d invite me to Daegu for Seollal.”

Beomgyu narrows his eyes at him. Daegu, for Seollal?

“I’m not in Daegu either, though.”

“I know,” Soobin says, and laughs. “But when we found out about getting a break. I was like, Kai got to go. And I’m Beomgyu’s best friend. When do I get the invite?”

Beomgyu can’t figure out why he would tease Soobin for that. He thinks about it from every angle, but all it does is make him feel warmer.

“Ask me why I wanted to go to Daegu,” Soobin carries on, flicking his glass over and over now. It makes a beautiful sort of ringing sound.

“Why?”

“Because I wanna watch your hyung kick your ass.”

Beomgyu chortles. “You want to watch me get beat up? Tomorrow x Together’s leader, supporting violence?”

“I mean, metaphorically. Like, virtually. Kai says he’s a fucking good gamer. Oh, and I wanna go to E-World.”

“Ask me to Ansan,” Beomgyu says.

Soobin shakes his head. “There’s no E-World in Ansan.”

“I’m not gonna tease you for that, hyung,” Beomgyu says. “I like it.”

“You like it?”

“Yeah. Cute.”

Soobin swats him.

“You like me so much,” Beomgyu giggles, dumping his glass back onto the coffee table and hauling himself up onto his knees.

“Okay, don’t make it sound weird.”

“Want to skip out on your own Seollal to come to mine. You like me.”

“Yeah, and you skipped out on yours to play Overwatch and drink whiskey with me,” Soobin says. “No leg to stand on.”

“My parents are in China!”

“Whipped,” Soobin says, raising his glass and shaking his head dramatically, scornfully. “Whipped whipped whipped.”

“Can’t be whipped for a best friend,” Beomgyu scoffs. He makes a grab for Soobin’s glass, and tips into his lap instead, slamming him back into the arm of the couch, his chest sprawled out on Soobin’s.

“Oh, hi,” Soobin laughs. Beomgyu can feel the warmth of his breath on his forehead, smell the tinge of the whiskey on it. “You got close.”

“Yeah,” Beomgyu says, breathless. “Didn’t mean to.”

“Um, is this initiating that part of the night? Because I’m not horny yet. Nothing to suck.”

“Didn’t mean to do that either.” Beomgyu should get up, but he doesn’t. He just hugs Soobin around the waist, and Soobin wraps his free hand around Beomgyu’s back, stroking it.

“Nice,” Soobin says. “This is nice.”

“Mm.”

“We should hug more.”

“We hug, like, daily.”

“Yeah, but…”

Soobin falls silent.

Beomgyu hauls his head up to peer into Soobin’s face.

“What’d you mean, hug more?”

“Dunno,” Soobin says, eyes all over Beomgyu’s face. “Just…”

He’s still holding his half-full glass in one hand, teetering precariously as he stares at Beomgyu from inches away.

Beomgyu likes him up close the most. Close in the daylight, that morning, hogging the pillow. Close at night, invisible but for his wet lips on Beomgyu’s skin in the dark. Close is where Beomgyu can have him to himself, where he isn’t Soobin the Idol, where he isn’t Soobin the Best Friend. He doesn’t know what Soobin is when they’re inches away, locked onto each other’s eyes, but it’s the version Beomgyu wants more of.

Beomgyu kisses him. He thinks Soobin drops his glass from the noise, but he chooses to hear Soobin’s surprised gasp instead. He presses into Soobin’s mouth, not thinking twice, just taking what he wants, finally. His arms are all over Soobin’s neck, and Soobin clutches him too, tight on the small of Beomgyu’s back. Their tongues collide and Soobin moans, tilting his head to slot in deeper. He tastes like whiskey and the slightest hint of melon bingsu and Beomgyu must taste just the same, but this will be Soobin’s taste to him now, the one he thinks about when Soobin goes back to his bed in the morning.

They’re too tipsy to be neat about this. Beomgyu can feel Soobin’s spit all over his lips, down to the divot above his chin, and he doesn’t care. He crawls into Soobin’s lap, and Soobin grabs him under the ass, digging his fingertips into the meat of it. Someone’s teeth clash into the other’s, and Beomgyu’s lip is between Soobins’, and Soobin leans into him so heavily that Beomgyu bends halfway backwards to keep their mouths connected.

“Beom…gyu,” Soobin groans, kissing down to Beomgyu’s jaw, trailing spit as he goes. “Fuck.”

Beomgyu whimpers. Soobin’s lips suck at the hinge of his jaw, just for a second, far too lightly to leave a mark. It sears him.

“So fucking much. So much.”

“Me too,” Beomgyu breathes. Whatever it is, he is too. He’s more.

“Bed?”

“Carry me?”

Soobin grunts. He tries to haul both of them up, staggering as he gets his weight under them and almost dropping Beomgyu into the broken glass next to the coffee table.

“Weak as shit.”

“Shut up,” Soobin says, getting his bearings. He wraps Beomgyu’s legs around himself and no, he’s not weak at all. “You grew.”

This is why Beomgyu does it. This why he’s been doing this to himself for seven months: Soobin, long and limber and broad in the shoulders, baby fat lingering in his cheeks and bulk just barely growing in his biceps, stripping down at the foot of Beomgyu’s bed and moaning when Beomgyu does the same. Years of fantasies, Beomgyu’s first crush, first…first love, pouring himself over Beomgyu’s body, and Beomgyu knows this is all going to hurt in the end, but he’s used to living in these moments that feel so, so good.

Soobin’s hands are a waterfall down Beomgyu’s ribs, pooling between the points of his hip bones, his lips cascading down to meet them. Beomgyu can barely breathe, toes curling on Soobin’s shoulders, and Soobin kisses down his shaft, down further, down to kiss the soft skin between his legs.

“Beomgyu,” he whispers. “Do you want to?”

They’ve never had sex. Beomgyu’s never, never had sex, and right now, he wants to desperately. He feels so fucking much, and Soobin said he feels so fucking much too, and Beomgyu blinks into the center lens of the three-lens camera, watching silently from across the room. Yes, he wants to.

Beomgyu feels around for his phone to turn off his alarm, the sound hammering at his hungover skull. The bed is empty. Soobin’s side is cold.

It’s ten-thirty, and Soobin had that Marie Claire shoot this morning. Beomgyu scrolls through KaTalk over and over, as if he could summon a text into existence. Nothing. No good morning, no be back at four.

He hauls his body out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom, the dull ache between his legs reminding him of his mistake with every step. There’s no note on the counter or the coffee table. Just an uncorked, half-drunk bottle of whiskey and a shattered glass.

All Soobin did was say things Beomgyu wanted to hear. It’s all he ever does. Just…says things without thinking, without noticing how they shred Beomgyu’s ears on the way down. And it’s Beomgyu’s own fault for forgetting that this is just how it is. One heated, drunk kiss doesn’t make it different.

Beomgyu cleans up the broken glass and hides away the whiskey. He drags his laptop back to bed, but leaves it untouched on his nightstand, wrapping himself back up in his comforter instead and trying to think good thoughts. It was definitely good sex, at least. It hurt, but it didn’t just hurt. And it was with Soobin, the only person he’s ever wanted to have sex with. A year ago, he’d never have imagined successfully losing his virginity to Soobin, his best friend in the whole world. He’d never have imagined Soobin wanting to take his virginity, and he did, and it was good. That’s a good thing, right?

It’s noon, and then it’s two, and then it’s four. Beomgyu watches videos on Youtube until his laptop dies, and he can’t bring himself to get up to find the charger. He scrolls aimlessly on his phone instead, watching the battery drain on that, too.

At half-past five and fifteen-percent battery, Soobin texts him. It’s a mirror selfie, his face cut off, showcasing a floaty pink blouse with an elegant bow around the neck.

You’d look good in this, he captions it.

Better than you, Beomgyu sends back. When are you back?

Dunno. If you order, save something for me? :pleading_face:

Beomgyu orders mandu and wraps three of them up for Soobin. He puts all the rest in the fridge. He doesn’t have an appetite.

The other members are back by the time Soobin gets home, bubbling with energy from his shoot. Beomgyu’s on the couch with Taehyun, half-listening to him talk about his Seollal, when they hear the key code beeping in the front door. Taehyun keeps talking, but Beomgyu’s heart freezes up. He can hear Soobin’s shoes falling to the ground in the entryway, his feet padding down the hall as he swings into the kitchen, exclaiming at the plate of dumplings that Beomgyu left out for him.

“The best,” Soobin calls into the living room, interrupting Taehyun’s story. “You’re the best, Beomgyu-ya.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Beomgyu says, too quietly for Soobin to hear him.

Soobin looms around the corner, plate in hand, and Beomgyu looks away.

“How was the shoot?” Taehyun asks.

“So good,” Soobin says. “I think I was shy at first, but honestly, it was so fun. Beomgyu, did you show him the photo?”

“No,” Beomgyu says to his hands.

“Well, the clothing was so cool. And I think I looked good.”

He sits on the couch between them, and Beomgyu stands.

“Gonna take a shower,” he says, and escapes before anyone can act like it’s weird.

Soobin doesn’t come to his room until it’s safe, until everyone else has retreated to sleep off their trips. Beomgyu is already in bed, facing the wall, when he hears the door carefully unlatch.

“Um,” Soobin’s quiet voice says. “Is everything okay?”

“Super,” Beomgyu says, as if he hasn’t been staring blankly at a wall for multiple hours.

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

“Do we…”

Beomgyu sits up and spins to face Soobin. He’s in his pajamas, one hand still on the doorknob as if he’s ready to make a quick exit if Beomgyu throws him out.

“Don’t make it weird,” Beomgyu says. “It’s no different than anything else, okay?”

One of Soobin’s dimples quivers into his cheek and disappears.

“Beom—”

“Do you regret it?”

Soobin shakes his head slowly.

“Then it doesn’t have to be weird. Don’t make it weird.”

“I’m sorry I left this morning,” Soobin says. “I, um. I didn’t know if…”

“It’s fine. You had a shoot.”

Soobin’s hand twitches on the knob.

“Okay,” he says. “Um, would you…would you want to do it again? Sometime. Not tonight. I dunno if you’re…”

The laugh that Beomgyu spits out is far too derisive, but he can’t help it. Of course he wants to do it again, and that’s the problem. He shouldn’t want to, not when it’ll never be the way he wants it to be. Not when Soobin will just leave again.

“I’m not that sore,” Beomgyu says. “You’re not that big, god. You’re just slightly above average.”

“Wow. Brutal, Beomgyu.”

“But yeah, sometime.” Beomgyu flops back onto the bed, facing the wall again.

“Okay. Sometime.”

The air goes still. Beomgyu half wonders if Soobin snuck out, closing the door so quietly that he missed it.

“You want me to stay tonight?”

Beomgyu scrunches up his face into the comforter. Yes, so badly. He wants him to want to stay.

“Nah, it’s cool,” he says.

Another pause, even longer this time.

“Goodnight, Beomgyu-ya,” Soobin whispers.

“Good—”

The door latches behind Soobin before Beomgyu can finish.

Beomgyu buries his face in the center of the good pillow, inhaling slowly, getting a handle on his shaky, stuttery breaths. The pillowcase smells like Soobin’s hair.

No one guesses, and nothing changes. Soobin takes it in stride, and so Beomgyu does, too. It’s what he asked for: for it to be normal. Soobin comes to his bed once, twice a week, and outside that, Beomgyu tries to be exactly the same as he’s always been. He’s very good at it by now.

They’re busy with the upcoming comeback, too busy to dwell on it. Too busy to fuck again. It’s been over a month and they haven’t done it again, although Beomgyu can tell Soobin wants to. His hands wander more than they used to, to a place that pulls a hook behind Beomgyu’s navel. But every time he does, Beomgyu flinches, and Soobin hesitates, and they never keep going. They never talk about it, either. It’s easier to blame their late bedtimes and early call times than talk about it.

He worries that their body language gets sloppy sometimes, after so many months of this. Like when he pokes Soobin in the cheek in their Vlive and Soobin just pokes his tongue back at him. It might be…too comfortable. But Soobin barely thinks twice about it, so it would be weird for Beomgyu to say anything after, and he just doesn’t. And Kai bursts into that Vlive, like, two minutes after that, so any potential weirdness gets swept away. A third person always resets their dynamic fully back to best friends.

“It was cool that I came in earlier, right?” Kai says, alone in the artists’ lounge with Beomgyu afterwards.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t it have been?” Beomgyu pops his plate of leftovers in the microwave. It’s still a Soobin-face plate.

Kai taps a pen nervously on his leg, fidgeting on the couch.

“Dunno. I didn’t want to, like, third-wheel.”

“It’s a Vlive. The more the merr—”

Beomgyu freezes and stares at him, the words registering. Kai holds his gaze determinedly.

“Come on, hyung. You think I don’t know?”

Beomgyu buries his face in his hand. Fuck, he doesn’t need a third member harassing him about his mistakes. He was so sure Kai didn’t know, even though it’s been months. Almost nine months.

“With the amount Soobin-hyung talks about you? I have functional ears.”

Beomgyu drops his hand.

“What?”

Kai taps the pen even faster.

“Could you two just talk it out already?” he says.

“Talk what out?”

Kai shrugs. “Your feelings? I dunno. Imagine I’m saying whatever I’m supposed to say at an intervention. I’ve never done this before.”

He drops his eyes to his knees nervously. The microwave beeps, but Beomgyu doesn’t open it. He feels a bit like he’s been microwaved himself.

“I don’t need an intervention,” Beomgyu says dumbly.

Kai hits him with one of his biggest eye rolls.

“Look, I like when people are happy,” he says. “Are you happy like this? I know he isn’t.”

Beomgyu wants to fling himself onto the couch and shake Kai by the shoulders. He isn’t? Tell me everything, what has he told you, does he…does he like me, does he—

“And that’s all I’m gonna say,” Kai says. “I really have no idea what I’m doing. This is the most awkward conversation of my life.”

The microwave beeps again.

“Get your food,” Kai says. “And eat it. You don’t eat enough. Soobin-hyung worries about that, too.”

“He does?”

“Hyung, you know he does. Don’t be dumb.” Kai flicks the pen onto the coffee table and stands. “You’re both like this. Pretending you don’t know each other, when you know each other the best.”

“Don’t leave,” Beomgyu says desperately, as Kai makes for the door. “Are you serious? You’re gonna fucking drop that, and then just walk out?”

“Yeah. I told you, I feel too weird about it. And Yeonjun-hyung’s gonna murder me for sticking my nose in it.”

Hypocrite. Yeonjun lives with his nose in it.

Kai slips into the hallway, and Beomgyu stares at the door, frozen until the microwave yells at him again. I didn’t want to, like, third-wheel. Are they something that can be third-wheeled? How can you third-wheel whatever they are? They’ve never talked about the kiss that started that night, the one time Beomgyu truly took what he wanted from Soobin. And they’ve never talked about the sex, either.

They can’t be something if they never talk about it.

Beomgyu braces himself outside Soobin’s door that night, twisting his fingers. He can hear Yeonjun singing to himself in his own room, his hangers clanking around in his closet, and the maknaes are laughing about something in the kitchen. Escape routes are everywhere, if this conversation goes south.

He knocks.

“Yeah?” Soobin calls.

Beomgyu lets himself in. Soobin is sitting next to Odi’s frankly enormous enclosure, sealing up the container of mealworms. It smells marginally better than the last time Beomgyu was in here; it must have been an Odi-cleaning day.

“Oh, hey,” Soobin says. “Thought it might be you.”

“Why?”

Soobin shrugs. “It’s usually you or Kai, and Kai doesn’t knock.”

Beomgyu drops to the ground on the other side of Odi’s cage. He can hear the hedgehog snuffling around in one of his padded shelters, hiding. He’s never liked Beomgyu.

“We have to talk,” Beomgyu says.

“Okay, about what?” Soobin puts the box of mealworms down on the ground and leans back on his palms.

“Kai.”

Soobin frowns.

“What’s wrong with Kai?”

Beomgyu closes his eyes for a moment, regrouping. Not the right place to start.

“Remember how we said this wouldn’t get weird?”

There’s a pause.

“Yeah. Uh. Is it…”

“Kai said you told him some stuff about me,” Beomgyu says, opening his eyes again. Soobin hasn’t moved, staring at him with his pretty lips parted. “Um, and I wanted to know…what you told him.”

“What did he say I said about you?” Soobin looks genuinely confused, furrowing his brow.

“You know. Like, about us.”

“I’ve never said anything to him about us. Never,” Soobin insists. “Fuck, the last thing I want is to have to talk to Kai about…”

“Your sex life?” Beomgyu fills in, and Soobin makes a pained kind of face.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Well, you must have said something, because he knows. They all know, and today Kai was all like you two need to talk about it, and I’m…”

Beomgyu hesitates. He can feel his cheeks pinking up. He’s starting to forget why he started this conversation. The whole point is they don’t talk about it, or it’ll be ruined, and maybe this will ruin it. But it’s been nine months of this, and Kai says Soobin isn’t happy. He wants to know why Soobin isn’t happy, and maybe…maybe…

“I guess I just was wondering what you said to make him…make him say that,” Beomgyu finishes lamely, piling his hands in his lap and twisting them together. His fingertips pick at his cuticles.

Odi’s shelter wriggles. It’s a good place for Beomgyu to rest his eyes, instead of on Soobin. He can see Soobin cross his arms out of the corner of his eye.

“I didn’t say anything about you to Kai, Beomgyu,” Soobin says. “I know you don’t want me doing that. I don’t do shit you don’t want.”

Beomgyu scoffs.

“What?”

“You’re doing shit I don’t want right now. You’re being evasive as fuck, and I just want you to tell me whatever you’re hiding.”

“You want us to start telling each other things? Why don’t you go first, Beomgyu-ya?” Soobin says testily. “Because you tell me nothing, lately. You tell me less than nothing. You get all cagey about random things when I try to check in with you—”

 “You’re no better, hyung.”

“Are you kidding me? I tell you plenty. I tell you all about all my leader anxiety, and how much I hate the comeback concept, and how…how lonely I get, sometimes. I tell you the most. So if our friendship is measured in how much we tell each other, I win.”

Friendship. Beomgyu flinches at the word, and Soobin sees it.

“So what are we, then?” he says angrily. “Are you saying we’re not friends? Just because we fucked, we’re not friends anymore? We’ve been hooking up for most of a year, and now that we’ve fucked too, it’s—”

Beomgyu shushes him, shooting a terrified look at the door.

“You’re the one who said they all already know,” Soobin says. “Which I would have appreciated you telling me, by the way.”

“Okay, fine. We’re friends. But the fucking didn’t help with the friendship.”

“Then why’d you do it? You came onto me, Beomgyu-ya. You threw yourself at me, and it just seemed like the logical—”

“You fucked me because it was logical?” His own voice is too harsh now. This is getting away from both of them, careening madly into an ugliness that Beomgyu never wanted to shine a light on.

“Bad word choice. You know what I fucking mean. The amount of shit we’d already done, and you asking me to carry you to bed like that, and the way you fluttered your eyelashes at me… where the fuck else was that supposed to be going?”

Soobin is getting heated, his shoulders heaving. He talks too fast when he gets worked up.

“Don’t tell me now that you didn’t want that, Beomgyu,” he says. “You told me you wanted it that night. We both did.”

“I did,” Beomgyu says. “I do. But not like that.”

“Not like what? You want to do it differently? ‘Cause we can do it differently.”

“You left!”

Soobin pauses, losing momentum.

“You mean in the morning?”

“Yes, in the morning.”

“I had a shoot,” Soobin says, dumbly.

“Yeah, I fucking know. I know, hyung.” Beomgyu feels panic zipping through his nerves. He wants to shake it out of his hands and run from his room, but he started it, and he has to end it. “But you didn’t text me. Or wake me up, and say you were leaving. Or do anything.”

“I… I guess I thought you didn’t want me to make it weird,” Soobin says, faltering. “And you didn’t say anything about it. You said you wanted it like that, later that night.”

“Yeah, well, even so. I’d never have done that to you. I’d never have left you like that, not after that. Because we’re best friends, right?”

“Left you after what?”

“After…”

Beomgyu’s breath shudders to a halt. Something is dawning on Soobin’s face.

“Oh, shit,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“You… holy fuck, Beomgyu.”

“You really didn’t know? How the fuck didn’t you know?”

“You didn’t tell me!” Soobin hauls up on his knees, like he’s about to stand, and then settles back down instead, his hands flying to his hair. His body is malfunctioning. “Oh my god, you didn’t fucking tell me! You had that boyfriend when we were trainees, I always thought you and him—”

“Well, we didn’t,” Beomgyu says. “And then you just—”

“Beomgyu-ya! Why the fuck didn’t you tell me? You really think I would have done that, if I’d known?”

“You did it anyway. You left.”

“Because I thought it’s what you wanted!” Soobin is practically pulling his hair out, and Beomgyu shies away, his fingers tearing up his own cuticles frantically. “You’re always all don’t make it weird, it’s all cool — I thought you wanted…fuck, Beomgyu, you really think that little of me?”

Beomgyu hadn’t thought of it like that. Maybe he does think that little of him, although he isn’t sure why.

“You wanted it to be special, right? Your first time? And then you didn’t let me give that to you? Drunk sex in our dorm, and I go fucking ditch you afterwards, because I didn’t know?”

“Don’t make this my fault, hyung! I didn’t make you leave. You could have just sent me a text, or, like, when you got home, actually looked at me—”

“Fuck, what do you think of me, Beomgyu? Do you think you don’t matter to me? Is that what you think now?”

“It didn’t help!” Beomgyu yells.

“Beomgyu, I can’t do this if it’s gonna be like this,” Soobin says, dropping his hands. His voice is crackly. “I thought we were on the same page, and we’re not. We’re not.”

“What page are you on, then?”

“Why should I tell you, when you won’t even tell me the damn book you’re in?”

“Sick metaphor, hyung,” Beomgyu says sarcastically, before he can stop himself. “Really meaningful.”

Soobin lets out a frustrated groan.

“You want it to be special? Go fuck someone else. I’m not what you want, right?”

“Hyung. I—”

“You deserve special, okay? And you clearly don’t see me that way. I’ll never be that to you. So this has to be done, Beomgyu.”

Beomgyu rarely cries, and he won’t this time, either. It’s Soobin’s lip that’s trembling.

“I just wanted us to talk about it,” Beomgyu says. He feels numb.

“Well, now we talked about it.”

“I…I liked the sex. That wasn’t the issue.”

“And what’s the issue? Can you tell me what the issue is?”

Beomgyu freezes, the word on the tip of his tongue. He should just say it, shouldn’t he? Kai wants him to say it. He needs to tell him how he feels, but he freezes.

“Thought so,” Soobin says. His undereyes are creasing. “Fuck, Beomgyu. You can’t even fucking talk to me anymore. This is killing us.”

Beomgyu wants to shake his head, but it’s true.

“We’re friends,” Soobin says, like it makes it true. “Still friends. But I need space. I can’t do this anymore.”

It’s Soobin’s room, but Soobin’s the one who leaves. And when he does, Beomgyu lets himself leak tears into his hands, the pieces all connecting. It’ll never be special with Soobin. Soobin just said it himself.

It’s hard to work with your ex, especially when he’s not your ex. It’s even harder to sleep next door to him, hearing the faint sounds of his footsteps as he putters around his room, imagining him lying awake and restless on the other side of the wall. Beomgyu’s door stays closed every night, no one swinging it open and pouncing on his knees. No sparkling water on his nightstand. He turns the unused three-lens camera around to face the wall.

They stop talking. They don’t avoid each other, but they just…don’t talk, for days, except for when they have to at work. They barely even look at each other outside of glances that Beomgyu sneaks Soobin in the mirror, and he has no idea if Soobin is sneaking any back. Beomgyu feels deflated, drained of energy, like it takes twice as much effort to do anything without Soobin alongside him. He thinks Soobin doesn’t look great either, but that’s probably his imagination.

Beomgyu clings onto Yeonjun like a lifeline, hovering around him at the office and falling asleep in his bed. He doesn’t tell him the details, and Yeonjun doesn’t ask. “Talk to me if you want to,” he says, and Beomgyu doesn’t want to. Taehyun is the only one he wants to tell about it; Kai is obviously Soobin’s confidant, and Yeonjun might be too protective about it if he told him the story. None of it was really Soobin’s fault, and Beomgyu gets that, even in all his bitterness. But Yeonjun would get his claws up anyway.

“It doesn’t sound like you guys had a real fight,” Taehyun says, draped out on Soobin’s usual side of Beomgyu’s bed. It’s the third day of their ongoing silence, and Soobin’s pillow is starting to smell like Taehyun instead. “It sounds like things just got…untenable.”

“Fancy vocab.”

“I’m serious, though. I don’t get why you’re not talking to him. You said you wanted him to have been better to you, and he said he wishes he had been better to you. So… I mean, you see what I’m saying, right?”

Beomgyu plays with Taehyun’s pinkie finger, rolling it between his index finger and thumb.

“I see it,” Beomgyu says quietly. “I’m not mad at him. I’m just… I know where he stands now.”

“And it’s not where you want him to stand?”

Beomgyu doesn’t answer.

“I shouldn’t say this, but I heard him crying,” Taehyun says. “To Kai. So maybe talk to him, again. For real.”

Beomgyu swallows.

“He cries too easily,” he says. “About everything.”

“True, but this time it’s about you,” Taehyun says. “And we’re in a band together, so that’s not great.”

“Taehyun-ah, the band will be fine.”

“Only if you two fix it, hyung. It’s not gonna fix itself.”

Beomgyu isn’t sure if he can fix it. He doesn’t know which part of it is broken. He keeps thinking about that line that Soobin threw in his face: do you really think that little of me? Why does he? What has Soobin ever done to make Beomgyu assume the worst of him? Why is Beomgyu afraid to speak his mind to his own best friend? What kind of a best friend does that make Beomgyu?

It’s been so much easier to not even ask the questions, much less answer them.

Beomgyu isn’t sure what page he’s on anymore. Soobin will never be special. He knows that now. But what can Soobin be instead? What can he even want him to be, if not special?

That night, a tiny, cruel part of him lies awake, wondering greedily what Soobin was crying about. He doesn’t think of Soobin as someone who would cry over him. Beomgyu is supposed to be easy for Soobin, his fun, pretty friend, and he wishes he could grab Soobin’s hurt and judge it for himself. If his pain is a fraction of what Beomgyu has felt over years of longing for him, months of tasting him and never truly having him. In Beomgyu’s imagination, every muffled noise he hears through Soobin’s wall becomes a hysterical cry, a wail of Beomgyu-ya, I miss you.

If Taehyun wanted them to fix it soon, the next day slams the brakes on that suggestion.

“Quarantine?”

“Just Soobin,” their manager says, handing out nose swabs to the others. “It’ll be seven days, probably. And you’re all testing three times a day now.”

“When did he leave?” Beomgyu asks.

“His results came in the middle of the night. They sent a car out here to get him right away. I can’t believe he didn’t wake any of you. He must have crept out like a mouse.”

It’s two days before Beomgyu’s birthday, and on the plus side, he doesn’t have to worry about Soobin awkwardly handing over a birthday gift he probably doesn’t want to give him anymore. But seven days is by far the longest they’ve been apart since debuting, and Soobin goes radio silent. No texts, no calls. At least before, they were in the same room, ignoring each other but still orbiting in the same sphere. Now, Soobin’s voice is just missing, and their dorm feels empty.

Beomgyu catches himself staring at Soobin’s door, wistfully, and it makes him feel ridiculous. He’s not a fucking widow. He had a fight with his hookup buddy, that’s all. But having Yeonjun as a best friend just isn’t the same. He’s great, but things are just…tidier with Yeonjun. More going to the gym, fewer bags of gummies.

The things Soobin left behind have a gravitational pull that Beomgyu can’t explain. His shampoo, his mugs in the kitchen, his room.

Kai volunteers to feed Odi while Soobin’s gone, but the first time he flings open Soobin’s door, Beomgyu is already there with the mealworms.

“Sorry,” Beomgyu says quickly. “I’m working on getting him to like me.”

“Oh! Um, yeah, of course.” Kai is already backing out of the room as if he intruded on something deeply private. “Go ahead.”

“Don’t tell him, okay? He’ll…tease me.”

“Sure, hyung,” Kai says, but Beomgyu doubts he’ll stick to that. He has a feeling Soobin isn’t being radio silent with Kai.

The week just gets weirder. Kai goes down for the count too, and the days drag on, just three bodies in their too-large practice room. Beomgyu’s birthday flies by, a day of muted celebrations and a handful of gifts that barely register. Taehyun sleeps with Beomgyu every night, saying it’s too lonely in his room without Kai, and Beomgyu is glad for the company. He gets lonely in his room, too. That was the whole reason the shit with Soobin started, wasn’t it? Getting lonely. A friendship ruined by their new dorm, a near-fatal switch to single rooms.

Feeding Odi feels like penance. I’m sorry I ruined us. It’s the least I can do, if I can’t tell you.

On the eighteenth, first thing in the morning, Soobin comes home.

“Bin-ah!” Yeonjun exclaims from the hallway, and Taehyun immediately stares at Beomgyu from across the table, over their cereal bowls.

“Go,” he says.

“…never felt that bad, honestly,” Soobin is saying to Yeonjun. His voice sounds a bit hoarse.

“You can’t record like that,” Yeonjun scolds. “You sound like a smoker.”

“Go,” Taehyun urges again, and Beomgyu tries to stumble to his feet, his chair leg stuck in a crack in the floor. But Yeonjun is already dragging Soobin into the main room, still clutching his overnight bag, and Soobin pauses in the doorway.

“Hey,” Beomgyu says, awkwardly half-standing.

“Hi,” Soobin says, hoarsely. Beomgyu hasn’t seen his face in a week, hasn’t looked at it in longer. He thinks it seems thinner, less meat to his cheeks, and his skin is visibly ashier, lacking some of its color. It makes the pink of his full lips stand out even more.

“Feeling better?”

“Feeling great.”

“How was the quarantine room?” Taehyun asks, getting to his feet much more successfully than Beomgyu.

“Boring,” Soobin says, letting Taehyun take his bag. “I get the morning off, apparently, to settle back in or something.”

“We’ve got a schedule at eleven. Costume fittings. And then dance practice all afternoon for Opening Sequence.”

“I’ll make the practice,” Soobin tells Yeonjun. “Not the fittings, though.”

“Do you want something to drink?”

Soobin looks over at Beomgyu, obviously surprised to hear his voice speak up again.

“For your throat,” Beomgyu explains. It’s a normal thing to offer someone, right?

“Yeah, thanks,” Soobin says.

“Sparkling?”

“Yeah.” He smiles. “Thanks about Odi, by the way.”

“Don’t mention it,” Beomgyu mumbles, already padding towards the kitchen.

It doesn’t shock Beomgyu that Yeonjun and Taehyun make themselves scarce. It only shocks him that they do it so soon. They’re both gone when he comes back with the glass of sparkling water, and Taehyun even managed to take his cereal bowl with him.

“I know,” Soobin says, as Beomgyu walks back into the room and stops in his tracks. “They weren’t subtle. They really do know, don’t they?”

Beomgyu hands him the glass and sits on the other side of the dining table, watching Soobin take a long sip. He swallows heavily, letting the cool fluid soothe his rough throat.

“Hyung,” Beomgyu begins. “I’m—”

“Did you hear what happened at Cube?” Soobin interrupts.

Beomgyu closes his mouth and shakes his head.

“Nothing fancy. Just a trainee taken off their debuting group ‘cause of a dating scandal.”

“Oh,” Beomgyu says. It’s a regular occurrence, but his anxiety flares anyway. “How’d you hear?”

“I spent a lot of time on Pann in quarantine,” Soobin says, settling down further in his chair. He surveys Beomgyu across the table, and Beomgyu fumbles with his collar self-consciously.

“I suppose we’re supposed to say it’s a good thing we’re done with that shit, then,” Beomgyu says. “Because we are. Done with it. Right?”

Soobin nods somberly. “Yeah. Safer without it.”

So that’s that. Done. They’re really done. It feels…numb, not painful.

“We weren’t dating, though.”

“Yeah? So what were we?”

Beomgyu twists his lips to the side, dodging it.

“Don’t you dare say best friends,” Soobin says. “I’m so fucking sick of calling you my best friend.”

“We can try something else, then. Call me your highness.”

Soobin cracks a smile, shaking his head.

“I missed you so much,” he says. “I really missed you.”

Beomgyu exhales. He can tell him how he feels. He used to be able to do that, before all of this.

“I missed you too, hyung.”

He lets his hand fall onto the table, and Soobin stares at it. Beomgyu wants to move it, immediately, but now it’ll be weird, and he just leaves it there.

“I hate this, Beomgyu-ya,” Soobin says, quieter. “I hate not talking to you.”

“You should have texted me.”

“I didn’t think you’d want me to.”

“I did,” Beomgyu admits. “I do.”

“Would it hurt too bad to hang out again? Because I think I can handle it.”

Beomgyu’s heart pounds.

“Why would it hurt you?” he asks.

“Oh, I mean. Just, like. Weirdness.”

Soobin lifts his glass again, and Beomgyu tries to sort that out in his brain. Soobin hurts about it.

“Do you want to?” Soobin asks, his voice uncertain. “Just… um, well, no more of the…”

“Yeah,” Beomgyu says quickly. “Yeah, it wouldn’t hurt. Not to hang out.”

“Are you sure?”

Beomgyu chews his lip and nods.

“Beomgyu, I’m so sorry,” Soobin says in a rush, leaning across the table and grabbing his hand. “Everything about…about Seollal. I ruined it.”

“You didn’t know. It’s okay.” Beomgyu hadn’t told him. He’d thought too little of him.

“You have no idea how sorry I am,” Soobin says, squeezing. “No idea.”

Me too, Beomgyu thinks.

“Hyung, I get it. Could we just not talk about it?”

Soobin looks like he wants to say more, but he swallows it back.

“Yeah, sure,” he says, letting go of Beomgyu’s hand. “Whatever you want, Gyu-ya.”

Whatever you want is Soobin’s new mantra. He keeps saying it like it’s armor, like everything will be safe between them if it can all be what Beomgyu wants. Of course, what Beomgyu really wants is the least safe thing of all, but if he’s not allowed to want that any more, at least this way he gets to pick where they order dinner from. Silver linings.

Beomgyu has his own mantra: keep moving. Keep his eyes moving past Soobin’s face in the practice room mirror, instead of lingering on his dimples, the way he’s done for years. Keep conversation moving, never sticking in one place too long, not getting caught up on Soobin’s casual compliments. Don’t stop to think about what it means when Soobin saves Beomgyu all the green Skittles. When their arms brush together on the couch, Beomgyu scoots over.

Beomgyu can master this if he tries. It’s better than the alternative, than that cold, lonely week of no Soobin. Beomgyu never wanted that, not at all. And it would never work to go cold turkey on Soobin. Soobin is too ever-present. He’s on the other side of the wall, and in Beomgyu’s texts, and barging in without knocking to steal a pair of socks. He’s everywhere in Beomgyu’s thoughts, no matter how hard he tries to keep him out. Beomgyu doesn’t want to have to keep him out.

Soobin isn’t an ex, because they never dated, and maybe that’s a blessing. It means they can slip back into a version of themselves with only a few edits. They’re glaring edits in red ink, but it’s better than starting from scratch. All they have to do is go back a few drafts, to the one before that night when Beomgyu asked do you think we’ll get lonely?

It was always going to end. It was…untenable, Taehyun had said. And Beomgyu needs to find those silver linings. It ended, and the pain wasn’t too bad. The band is still together. They’re friends, always friends. Best friends, even.

Beomgyu wants to keep moving, and Soobin keeps saying whatever you want, Beomgyu-ya.

“The director asked me about soulmates today,” Soobin says.

Beomgyu whirls his head up from his laptop.

“Why?”

“Something about getting in the right mindset for the shoot,” Soobin explains. He’s on his back on Beomgyu’s bed, holding his hand up and making finger puppets with the shadows from Beomgyu’s desk lamp.

The door is open. It’s been two weeks since Soobin’s quarantine, and they haven’t closed the door once since. It’s safer like this.

“And what the fuck did soulmates have to do with Good Boy Gone Bad?”

“He said I wasn’t looking tormented enough, and I should imagine my soulmate had left me.” Soobin purses his lips, and those make a shadow, too. “Like, that would be the right amount of pain for this music video.”

“It’s a pretty melodramatic video,” Beomgyu says, watching the shadows swim on the wall. “I saw the storyboards.”

“Do you believe in soulmates?”

“Nope.”

“Oh, come on. Of course you do. You’re such a romantic.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Seollal swims into Beomgyu’s brain. He beats it away.

“So you admit it,” Soobin says gleefully. “Tell me about soulmates, then. You believe in them.”

Beomgyu sighs, leaning into his desk.

“I guess I do,” he says. “But not, like, one person, one partner. More like…maybe you find someone, and something about them makes you choose them, forever.”

Soobin thinks about that for a moment, and Beomgyu watches the silhouette of his lashes blink on the wall.

“I could get behind that,” he says eventually. “I dunno if I believe in a soul, though.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then it’s not a soulmate,” Soobin says. “Gotcha.”

“You called me your soulmate once,” Beomgyu blurts out.

“Oh?” Soobin rolls onto his side, dropping the finger puppets.

“Yeah. In a fan call. Guess you’re a liar, then, if you don’t believe in them, huh?”

It’s probably weird that he remembers it, and Beomgyu can perfectly imagine the way Soobin should react to that: teasing him, yah, Beomgyu, of course you’re my soulmate. Should I propose too?

“Maybe we could be soulmates,” Soobin says instead, pensively. “I mean, I’d choose you over most people. Maybe all people.”

“That’s not really what I meant when I said choose them forever,” Beomgyu says. His throat feels dry. Soobin just says things.

“No? So what’d you mean?”

“I mean…something more…indescribable. Intangible.”

“Sublime?” Soobin suggests, and Beomgyu furrows his brows at him. “What? I’m smart. I went to school, just like Taehyunnie.”

“Sure. Sublime, I guess. But I don’t think we’re sublime, hyung. No offense. You’re basically a beached whale on my bed right now.”

“Maybe we’re not soulmates, then,” Soobin says, shrugging it off. “But it was a nice thought. I’d like to have a soulmate.”

“What if we all had soulmates, and yours was someone annoying?”

“I already said it’s not you. Ouch, damnit, Beomgyu!”

Beomgyu had flung a book at him from the shelf above his desk, and Soobin bats it away, shaking his hand in pain.

“If I’m so annoying, and I’m your soulmate, what does that say about you, hyung?”

He goes back for another book.

“Hey, did you use it yet?” Soobin says, eyes fixed over Beomgyu’s shoulder.

“Use what?” Beomgyu follows his gaze.

“We should use it,” Soobin says, pointing at the camera on the shelf. The three lenses are still facing the wall. “It was so cool at Studio Choom.”

“Oh,” Beomgyu says. “Um. Yeah, I just…just haven’t had time to try it yet.”

“Is it charged?”

Beomgyu shakes his head. “It doesn’t get charged. It takes batteries, but I put them in.” He even refreshed the batteries once, just in case.

“So you set it up and never used it? Weirdo. Lemme see it,” Soobin says, grinning. He reaches out his hand, the one that had been attacked by the book.

Beomgyu hesitates, and Soobin falters.

“I mean, only if you want,” he says, lowering his hand. “It’s yours.”

The camera is from a different time, a time when their relationship was a mystery and everything was a clue. There are no more clues anymore. They’re just friends.

Beomgyu carefully plucks the camera off the shelf.

“You did like it, right?” Soobin says. “Because you never used it.”

“I love it, hyung,” Beomgyu says, turning it over in his hands. It’s retro-styled, made of textured black plastic. He runs his fingertips over the catch on the film compartment. He filled it the day after Christmas.

He lifts the camera to his eye, pointing it towards Soobin, and Soobin immediately hides his face in his hands.

“Don’t waste your film on me,” he says, muffled. “I’m nothing special.”

“Bullshit. You’re a celebrity. Music Bank veteran.”

“Gimme it.” Soobin catapults himself across the room, and Beomgyu tries to hide the camera behind his back. “Come on, Gyu!”

“Why? I want you to be my model, get back there!”

“That’s not fair, you’re so much better than me.” Soobin claws at Beomgyu’s hands, tight on the camera’s strap, and Beomgyu can’t help giggling. It kind of tickles.

“At what? Posing for—for 3D moving film photos?”

“At—modeling—ah-ha!” Soobin pries the camera from Beomgyu’s fingers, and Beomgyu scratches at his hands. “Victory!”

“It’s my camera,” Beomgyu whines, as Soobin hauls him up by his arm and shepherds him to his bed. “I’m supposed to be the photographer.”

“You’d regret wasting all your film on my big-ass ears,” Soobin says. “Lean against the wall, all your posters are so aesthetic.”

“They’re not posters, they’re prints.”

“Same difference.” Soobin pauses, watching Beomgyu clamber reluctantly onto the bed. “I mean, if you really don’t want to, that’s okay.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Beomgyu says. “Just make me look good.”

“I’ll try,” Soobin says, already looking through the lens. “It’s so hard to squint through these glass things. How did people take photos before cameras had screens?”

“It’s a viewfinder,” Beomgyu says, fake-scandalized. “Where do you want me?”

Soobin positions him with his head between two geometric prints that Beomgyu found at an antique store.

“Look towards the window. Chin up. Yeah, like that.”

“You sound legit.”

“Do I?” Soobin puts on an exaggerated director’s voice. “Lengthen your neck. Gorgeous. A model.”

Beomgyu plays along, batting his lashes, and he hears the shutter click too early.

“Hyung! I was probably blinking, it’s a film camera!”

“Oops,” Soobin giggles from behind the lens, advancing the film. “When do you make it 3D?”

“You have to develop it first. There’s an app after that.”

“Sounds messy. I like the part where I take pictures of you more.” Soobin lifts the camera back to his eye. “Another?”

Beomgyu tilts his head again, puffing out his lips a bit and letting his eyes settle over Soobin’s shoulder. They land on the empty spot on the shelf where the camera has lived since Christmas.

“Look at me, Beomgyu-ya,” Soobin says, and Beomgyu pulls his eyes to the center lens instead. Soobin is behind it, seeing him through it.

“Pretty,” Soobin says, pressing the shutter. “Always so pretty, Gyu.”

He lowers the camera.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s—”

Soobin lunges for him, reaching for Beomgyu’s face. It’s only when his thumb brushes Beomgyu’s lower lashes that he realizes there’s something wet there.

“Did I do something?”

Beomgyu blinks at him. His lip is trembling, and Soobin touches that instead, as if he could wipe tears from it too.

“N-no,” Beomgyu stutters. “Nothing wrong.”

Soobin’s hand drops down to Beomgyu’s shoulder. His eyes are wide and worried.

“Can I hug you?” he says quietly, and Beomgyu nods. Soobin drops the camera on the bed, the lenses staring up at the ceiling, and sits, pulling Beomgyu’s torso into his own.

Beomgyu buries his face into Soobin’s neck. Smells like how Beomgyu’s good pillow used to smell, but that’s gone now.

We should hug more. Beomgyu wants to say it, but he can’t. He can’t want that anymore.

Soobin squeezes tighter.

“I’m sorry I made you cry,” he says. He sounds slightly anguished, his voice thin.

“You didn’t,” Beomgyu sniffs. His tears are leaking into Soobin’s shirt.

“I did.”

“No, I…I made myself cry.”

Beomgyu breathes in slowly, even though it makes him inhale Soobin far too deep into his lungs. His tears are already slowing. It was just a little blip. He’s fine.

“Have I made you cry before?”

Beomgyu hesitates, and nods.

Soobin hugs him even tighter.

“Tell me,” he says. “Okay? Tell me next time. Before I do it again.”

“We should hug more,” Beomgyu says.

Soobin’s breath skates in a long line down Beomgyu’s shirt, along his spine.

“As much as you want,” he says.

Something about the now-full film roll sitting on his desk is making Beomgyu’s brain whirr. Soobin said he’d never be special. He said it, but a month before Christmas, he bought Beomgyu that camera. What if?

Beomgyu plays with the film-advance wheel in the dark, trying to work up his nerve. It’s been two hours since Soobin touched the camera, but in Beomgyu’s brain, it’s still warm from his palms. Soobin is just on the other side of the wall. Beomgyu knows he’s awake; he saw him posting on Weverse a half-hour ago. All he has to do is go and ask. Just walk down the hall and ask.

There’s nothing to lose now. There’s no delicate balance to tip, nothing to burn away. This shouldn’t be a hard question to ask your best friend, but it didn’t go so well the last time Beomgyu showed up in Soobin’s bedroom with a question. Soobin’s room feels mildly cursed.

Beomgyu puts the camera down on his desk. He wraps his hand around his doorknob for the fifth time, and this time, he forces himself to turn the knob. It’s five steps to Soobin’s room, and he hesitates again outside the door, fist hovering. It’s not too late to bail, but then he hears a laugh from the maknaes’ room, and he turns Soobin’s doorknob. Better to face his fears than get caught chickening out.

“Beomgyu?” Soobin asks from his bed, his face a square of blue light in the dark.

“Sorry,” Beomgyu says. “I should have knocked.”

“Nah. What’s up?”

Beomgyu shuts the door, and Soobin flicks on the light on his nightstand, locking his phone screen.

“Weverse?” Beomgyu asks, even though he knows the answer, and Soobin nods. “Stealing Taehyunnie’s thing, huh?”

“Taehyun didn’t invent late-night Weversing.”

“Yeah, but he’s pretty much perfected it.”

“You wanna sit?” Soobin scoots over in bed, but Beomgyu perches himself at the foot of it instead of by his side. He sees Soobin’s eyes flicker to the closed door.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Soobin looks a bit like he wants to say something sassy, whine about the late hour, but he just nods, and Beomgyu immediately loses all his momentum.

“Cool. Um.” Beomgyu tugs at Soobin’s woven throw blanket, piled in a heap at the foot of his bed. “Sorry if this is out of nowhere.”

“Shoot, Beomgyu-ya,” Soobin says, sitting up straighter.

Beomgyu heaves one short breath, in and out, and forces himself to look into Soobin’s dark eyes.

“Why did you give me that camera?”

“What?”

“The camera. Was it just because you saw it at Shinsegae?”

Soobin doesn’t answer. His eyes are blinking under his shaggy bangs, too long when they aren’t styled.

“Hyung. Was it?”

Beomgyu’s hands feel jittery. He twists them even firmer into the weave of the blanket.

“No,” Soobin says.

“So why?”

“Beomgyu.” Soobin isn’t looking at him anymore.

“Hyung, tell me.”

Soobin sighs, playing with the web of his thumb and index finger.

“Wanted to get you something nice,” he says, shrugging.

Beomgyu can barely hear through the adrenaline racing in his ears.

“But why—”

“Beomgyu, what’s the point?” Soobin interrupts, staring him right in the eyes. His brows are raised, on the verge of angry. “It doesn’t matter anymore, okay?”

“It does matter. It matters a ton. I want to hear it.”

“No, it fucking doesn’t. It was stupid, and we’re done with all that shit now. Safer this way.”

“Hyung, I need to tell you something I want,” Beomgyu says. He tucks his knees under him and leans forward on his palms to stabilize himself from all the energy charging through him. “You want me to tell you things, right? Right?”

“Right,” Soobin says, frowning.

Beomgyu closes his eyes.

“I…want to kiss you,” he says.

It’s so much easier to say than he thought it would be.

“Beomgyu.”

“I still want to kiss you. I’ve never stopped. And I want to sleep here tonight, so you can’t leave me.”

He can hear Soobin breathing rapidly, and he waits.

“Beomgyu, I wanted to stay every night,” Soobin says finally. “You…wanted that?”

“Don’t say that,” Beomgyu says. His arms are giving out. “I can’t handle that.”

“It’s true. Beomgyu, look at me.”

Beomgyu opens his eyes. Soobin looks, frankly, terrified.

“You can’t kiss me. We can’t do that anymore.”

“I know, I know. But I want to. You told me to tell you what I want.”

“Why are you telling me now?”

“Is it too late?”

Soobin scrunches up his face.

“Beomgyu, I can’t do this. I won’t be special,” he says.

Beomgyu gropes for his foot through the blanket.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. You know how I feel. I already told you.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I told you. You…wouldn’t let me be someone special for you. And if casual is all you want from me, I can’t do that for you anymore. It's too hard to keep it up.”

“That’s not telling me how you feel. That doesn’t count.”

“What counts, then?”

“You know. Like… you know. Tell me you want to be special. That counts.”

Soobin doesn’t say anything. He’s breathing through his nose, staring at Beomgyu with his eyes gone all round.

“You do, right?” Beomgyu can’t keep the need out of his voice. He’s never stripped himself bare like this.

Soobin gives Beomgyu a single, tiny nod, like that’s all he can risk exposing of himself, but it’s more than enough.

“Hyung,” Beomgyu whispers. He feels his dumb lip trembling. “Hyung, you’re an idiot. You’re so stupid.”

“What? Why me?”

“You could have told me.”

Soobin shakes his head.

“I thought it’d scare you off. You didn’t want that from me, Beomgyu.”

“I did,” Beomgyu cries. “Hyung, I wanted it so bad.”

Beomgyu hauls the throw blanket up to his face. The fabric is scratchier than it looks, harsh on his tender, red eyes. He feels Soobin lunging across the bed, his hand landing on Beomgyu’s back between his shoulder blades, spanning the cavity.

“Fucking idiot,” Beomgyu sniffs. “Bought me a camera. You could have told me.”

“Beomgyu, come here,” Soobin says. His voice is cracking. “Please.”

Beomgyu doesn’t kiss him. He crawls into Soobin’s lap, and Soobin bundles him into his arms, the off-beat rhythms of their sniffles melting together. Beomgyu doesn’t think they’ve ever cried together like this, on the same page, feeling the same pain.

It’s a while before Soobin gets his voice back.

“I need you to—to tell me something. Another thing.”

“‘Kay.” Beomgyu feels raw on the inside. He wipes his nose on Soobin’s sleeve, pulling away to stare into his blotchy, red face, and Soobin lets out a throaty laugh.

“God, you’re a mess. I look worse, probably.”

“Ask me the thing, hyung.” Beomgyu rubs his knuckle into his teary eye.

“How much do you like me?” Soobin asks, chewing his lip. “Like, a lot?”

Beomgyu punches him in the sternum, burying his face back in his neck.

“I need to hear it for real,” Soobin says, grabbing Beomgyu’s fist. “Tell me.”

“A lot,” Beomgyu cries.

Soobin’s chest caves in under him.

“Feels fake,” he says. “That feels fake to hear.”

Beomgyu feels Soobin’s big hands weaving into his hair, stroking. One thumb drops to Beomgyu’s ear, lingering on the shell of it.

“Can I do this?” Soobin says, his breath still shaky.

Beomgyu nods, and Soobin traces his ear with the edge of his nail, catching it in the dips and whirls of cartilage. The feeling sends tingles all down Beomgyu’s core, filling up the hollows of his chest.

“You like me,” Soobin repeats to Beomgyu’s scalp. He sounds floaty, but Beomgyu thinks it might just be his own brain malfunctioning.

“Yeah,” Beomgyu breathes. “Yeah.”

Soobin sways, clutching Beomgyu’s chest to his own, and Beomgyu lets him rock him like a child. He needs a little time to process himself. He feels like he just crash landed after falling off a cliff, and everything is different, but he’s too discombobulated to look at his new surroundings.

“What the fuck do we do now?” Beomgyu whispers.

Soobin’s thumb stills.

“I can’t do what we did before. I can’t keep doing that to myself. I can’t. Beomgyu, I’m afraid.”

Beomgyu shivers in deeper. He thinks he is too, but he hasn’t noticed. It’s unlike him to not be the worrier between them. To be the reckless one, the one pushing his luck. Maybe he should push his luck more often.

“Just let me stay here tonight?”

“Please,” Soobin says. “Every night.”

Beomgyu bites back a hysterical laugh. Every night, every night.

“Um, my room smells better.”

“Your room, then. I don’t care.”

“But not when the protocol team—”

“Beomgyu-ya,” Soobin says. “Not the point.”

He scoots his butt back down in the bed, lifting the covers to make room, and Beomgyu crawls right in under them, no beating around the bush. It’s already warm from Soobin’s body heat, and Beomgyu twins up his limbs against Soobin’s, slotting right into their old position. Soobin always liked being the little spoon.

Beomgyu clutches Soobin’s larger body from behind, and Soobin clings onto his arms, tightening them around his chest like a seatbelt. The light is still on, but neither of them makes a move to turn it off. That would mean leaving this warmth, even for a second.

“Soobin-hyung,” Beomgyu says.

“Beomgyu.” Soobin turns his head back, and Beomgyu darts his nose to the corner of Soobin’s eye, nuzzling the soft skin that creases when he smiles. It’s pushing it, but Soobin doesn’t stop him. This isn’t how they used to touch. This is more.

“I’m freaking out, hyung. Feel like I’m gonna throw up.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“Not on you. Like, in general.”

“How could you throw up not on me? Your face is in my face.”

“Hyung,” Beomgyu says. “Hyung…”

He squeezes tighter, and Soobin squeezes his hands back. He’s close, right where Beomgyu likes him.

“It’ll be better,” Soobin says. “Right?”

“I think so,” Beomgyu whispers, squeezing his eyes closed. He can’t say for sure, but he needs it too much to not try.

Soobin sets an early alarm, so Beomgyu can get back to his own room before the protocol team shows up to prep them for the day’s schedule. But when the alarm goes off, Beomgyu doesn’t leave.

“I wish you didn’t do this,” Soobin says, tracing his thumb over Beomgyu’s torn-up cuticles.

“I don’t mean to. It just happens.”

“I don’t like when they bleed.”

“Well, I try not to during comebacks, so you’re in luck. At least a month off of me shredding up my fingers.”

Soobin doesn’t smile.

“Why do you do it?”

Beomgyu tries to shake his thumb away from Soobin’s, but Soobin’s hand is so much larger. He pins it down against his own index finger, still pressing the pad of his own thumb against Beomgyu’s raw, red skin.

“Habit.”

“You get anxious,” Soobin corrects.

“Maybe.”

“Who do you talk to?”

Beomgyu doesn’t answer. No one, really, lately. Yeonjun, sometimes.

“Me,” Soobin says. “Let it be me again, okay?”

Beomgyu feels a swell of something in his throat. He tugs Soobin’s hand to his own lips, pressing his knuckles to them.

“Beomgyu,” Soobin says warily.

“What did you cry about?” Beomgyu asks, dragging his lips over Soobin’s skin.

“When?”

“Taehyun told me you cried. When we weren’t talking.”

“Rat,” Soobin says.

“Hey! Don’t talk about my dongsaeng like that.”

Soobin sighs. “I mean, what do you think? You, obviously.”

“Why me?”

Soobin flips onto his side to face him. The gesture accidentally pushes his knuckles harder into Beomgyu’s lips, sharp bones into his teeth, but Beomgyu doesn’t drop his hand. Soobin’s body on his again, even just like this, feels like a second chance.

“Because that meant something to me too, Beomgyu. And it fucking hurt that you hid that from me.”

“Seollal?”

“Seollal. Like having a favorite movie, and then learning there was a second, shitty ending.”

That’s strangely poetic for Soobin, but for once, Beomgyu doesn’t feel like teasing him.

Soobin works his fingers free of Beomgyu’s hand, draping them over Beomgyu’s cheek instead. He cups it as if he’s going to bring him in for a kiss, but he doesn’t. He just strokes his fingers over Beomgyu’s skin, charting each inch of peach fuzz. Beomgyu’s never really had to shave much. Another thing Soobin compliments: his soft skin.

“What changes now?” Beomgyu asks, turning his head to find Soobin’s eyes. “I don’t want…to make you cry. Never.” Saying it is accepting it. Soobin cares about him enough to cry over him. Beomgyu’s probably always known that, somewhere, but it was easier to pretend he didn’t.

Soobin’s fingers tense up on his cheek again, but nothing. Still just stroking.

“I don’t want to do it to you either,” he says. “I think a lot of things have to change, Beomgyu.”

Beomgyu scoots towards him, and Soobin’s hand falls around the back of his neck, just his thumb left on Beomgyu’s cheek. Do it, do it, Beomgyu begs in his mind, but Soobin won’t, he knows he won’t. He’s too scared of it being the same, and he’s right to be that way.

“You know what would be different?” Beomgyu says.

“What?”

“If all we do is kiss. If this time, we start it that way, and not…not the other way.”

Soobin flinches at the word, but he doesn’t move.

“Hyung, I want this,” Beomgyu says. “That’s different, too. I can tell you how much I want this.”

“You have to tell me,” Soobin says.

“Then I want this so much.” Beomgyu closes his eyes. “I’m… I feel…”

Beomgyu hasn’t kissed that many people, but Soobin’s kisses are the gentlest of all of them. It’s his lips. They’re so soft. The lower one, especially, pressing into the pad of Beomgyu’s, lingering long and deliberately.

“No tongue,” Soobin’s voice says, pulling an inch away. “Morning breath.”

“No tongue,” Beomgyu says, breathless, and Soobin’s lips are on his own again.

Beomgyu doesn’t know what Soobin says to Yeonjun, but it must have been good.

“I will never approve of it,” Yeonjun says under his breath, arm around Beomgyu’s shoulders as they take a break in the corner of the practice room. Soobin is on the skateboard with Kai, playing chicken, and their bodies are comically large together, teetering on those four little wheels. “Never. This isn’t a rom com. It’s a terrible idea.”

“Lucky for you, there’s nothing to approve of,” Beomgyu says. It’s true. No dating, no names. Only Soobin’s hand squeezing Beomgyu’s, his eyes lingering on him again, a little heart emoji appearing in his goodnight texts when they crash in their own rooms at three in the morning. It’s only been a week, and they’ve barely had any time alone together, much less time to be alone together. Comeback season is no joke.

“I see you smiling. Don’t be coy. That’s a technicality.”

Beomgyu lays his head on Yeonjun’s shoulder. His shoulder is less bony than Soobin’s, layered with more muscle.

“Does hyung disapprove?”

Yeonjun sighs.

“I want you to be safe,” he says. “And him. I want him to be safe with you, too.”

“I think he is this time,” Beomgyu says. “I’m trying.”

Yeonjun reaches a hand around to pinch Beomgyu’s cheeks together.

“Yah, hyung, that hurts!”

“Please don’t break up the band,” he says. “Please. If you break up the band, you and I are done.”

“Band comes first,” Beomgyu promises.

“That’s a fucking lie, and we both know it. He’s always been first for you, Beoms.”

Yeonjun drops his hand, and Beomgyu settles in deeper. Across the room, the skateboard skitters out from under both Soobin and Kai, and they fall to the ground in a noisy tangle of limbs. You’re crushing me! Kai shrieks, and Soobin snaps his teeth at Kai’s arm.

“Maybe,” Beomgyu says, biting his smile. “A close second, at least. To the band.”

“I won’t tell him you said that,” Yeonjun says. “Not when he told me what he told me about you.”

“And you won’t—”

“Nope. Absolutely not.”

Soobin shoots a look into their corner, just a half-laughing glance, as if he could feel them talking about him. Beomgyu’s fingers fly together, a tiny spark of adrenaline igniting in his core. He can feel Yeonjun smile, his cheek tensing against Beomgyu’s scalp.

“And he’ll tell you anyway. Honestly, the way he blabs about you, he’ll spill it on a Vlive.”

But Soobin seems different on this side of things. A bit more guarded, more careful, like he’s thinking about his words for the first time. All his typical leader-y actions feel laden with a layer of self-consciousness that Beomgyu doesn’t remember seeing on him before.

“You don’t have to wear that shirt,” he says, watching Beomgyu pick at the slightly sheer blouse the stylists picked out for him for one of their comeback show filmings. “I can talk to them for you. They should have known you don’t like sheer clothing.”

“It’s not that bad,” Beomgyu says, finding his eyes in the mirror, and Soobin looks away, as if he’d been caught peeping. “Hyung. Can you even see my nipple?”

He tightens the fabric across his chest, thrusting it towards Soobin, and Soobin dodges him, averting his eyes even further.

“I absolutely can,” Soobin says. Is he…blushing?

“Hyung, you’ve licked my nipple,” Beomgyu says, starting to grin. “You can look at it.”

“When did he lick your nipple?” Kai pipes up, and oh. Right, they’re not alone in this dressing room.

“Slander,” Soobin says. “Lies. Never did that.”

“Don’t call me a liar. Want me to tell him the gory details?”

Beomgyu never, never thought he could talk about it like this. Not just talk about it — joke about it. Nothing will shatter, nothing will crumble. It’s exhilarating.

“Oh my god, he really did,” Kai says, his face falling. “I forgot about you two. Oh my god.”

“How did you forget? You’ve even meddled in it. Not so innocent, Kai-ya.”

“I’ve chosen to forget. It’s a mental block.”

“I’m going to pretend the last fifteen seconds never happened,” Soobin says, finally looking at Beomgyu again. His face is composed into something dignified, even though his cheeks are still pink. “Beomgyu, focus. Tell me how you feel about the shirt. Really.”

“I hate it,” Beomgyu says. “I feel naked.”

“Then I’ll get you another one,” Soobin says.

“So powerful, leader-nim.”

Soobin rolls his eyes, but his hand flies to the back of his neck, picking nervously at his collar.

“Just trying to help,” he says, looking away again. “Is that okay?”

Beomgyu leans his head towards him, trying to catch his eye. It takes two tries.

“Yeah,” he says. “You know it is.”

“Okay,” Soobin says, relieved. “Good. Then I will. Modesty tank coming up.”

He marches out of the room, and the back of his neck is pink.

“So when did he lick your nipple?” Kai says. “Now I need to know.”

“I am absolutely not telling you.” Beomgyu turns to the mirror again, finding Kai’s eyes this time. The maknae is on the verge of a giggle.

“I can’t believe you’re talking about it,” he says. “Taehyunnie used to say you’d rather live on shrimp alone than admit you liked hyung.”

“I didn’t admit anything, pabo,” Beomgyu says. “When did he say that?”

“Oh, a billion times. For ages. Years.”

Some secrets shouldn’t be kept for years. Beomgyu feels like he’s airing out a dusty room, gaining strength from every ray of sunlight he’s finally letting into his dark corners.

That night, he knocks on Soobin’s door and just asks for it. I want you to sleep with me tonight, and Soobin does. Soobin follows him right back to his bed, and scoots the good pillow into the middle of the mattress without even being asked. Beomgyu feels liberated.

“Never call me a pillow hog again,” Soobin says, when Beomgyu looks at it pointedly. “I’m very considerate these days.”

Soobin fans his hand out over the covers, and Beomgyu laces their fingers together as he crawls into bed. It’s the safest place to touch each other in Beomgyu’s bed, where their old patterns are the most heavily etched. So far, they haven’t slipped back into those well-worn tracks.

“Beomgyu?”

“Mhm.”

“I’m gonna say something about you.”

“It better be a good thing.”

“Yeah, it’s a good thing.”

Soobin pauses, maybe for strength, maybe for effect.

“You looked sexy as fuck in that shirt today,” he says.

“Oh.” Oh, fuck.

“Yep.” Soobin laughs. “I’m not a nun. You’re telling me you don’t think about it anymore?”

“No, I think about it.”

“How often?”

This feels dangerous. This feels very, very dangerous.

“This is okay,” Soobin says. “Don’t we want this again, one day?”

Beomgyu breathes out through his nose. Of course he does. So much he can’t let himself think about it.

“Yeah.”

“Then I’m not gonna pretend I don’t think you’re sexy,” Soobin says unabashedly. “I’ve always thought so. I used to wish I looked like you so badly.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Then I realized I just wanted to fuck you instead.”

“Hyung!”

“What?”

Soobin flips around to face him.

“When you started it,” he says. “The first time. When you asked me to touch you. How long had you wanted that?”

“Oh my god, hyung. We’re not talking about that.”

“Why are you still so shy with me?” Their hands are still clasped together, and Soobin brings them under the blanket, in towards his chest. Heat is radiating through his pajama shirt.

“I’m not shy. I’m just mature.”

Soobin raises his eyebrows at him. A challenge.

Beomgyu sets his jaw. When did he start wanting him?

“Maybe around Eternity,” Beomgyu says. “You looked pretty good that comeback.”

“Only pretty good?” Soobin hits him with both dimples, and Beomgyu draws on some deeply hidden bank of bravery. This is miles outside his comfort zone, but Soobin seems to feel safe here. He can dip his toes in, too.

“Sexy, so sexy,” Beomgyu says. “Remember when you caught me jerking off in our old room?”

“Which time?”

“Like, all the times.”

“You were thinking about me?” Soobin’s smile is turning incredulous.

“Fuck no. I was watching porn.” Soobin groans, and now it’s Beomgyu’s turn to smile. Now that the dam has burst, this feels so natural, as natural as any time they’ve bantered about sex and hormones and Beomgyu’s masturbation habits. But this time, it’s about them. “But I usually started watching the porn because of you. Getting me, um. Horny. Just kind of by existing.”

“That’s fucking hot,” Soobin says. “You should’ve told me. Literally any time in the last year, you should have told me.”

“Mhm.” Beomgyu works their fingers apart, feeling cool air around his knuckles again. He finds the buttons on Soobin’s pajamas instead, creating a new barrier between them, a neutral zone the length of his forearm.

“I want to talk about this shit with you,” Soobin says. “I’m gonna tell you every time you’re sexy. It was so hard not to, this whole time.”

“So why didn’t you? I wish you had.”

“Beomgyu…”

“Hyung. When we had sex.”

Soobin finds Beomgyu’s hand again.

“What do you wish you’d done?”

“Beomgyu, shit.”

“Tell...tell me,” Beomgyu says. “Tell me how it’d been different, if you’d known.”

Soobin hesitates, and Beomgyu stares him down. Another challenge, both to Soobin and himself.

“You have to tell me to stop, if this is too much,” Soobin says. “Promise. I don’t wanna scare you.”

Terrifying, but Beomgyu won’t back down. “Promise.”

“If I could do it again. Your first time, again.” Soobin’s eyes fall to Beomgyu’s neck. “I’d kiss you all the way down. From here…” He touches Beomgyu’s chin. “To your belly, the whole way. In a line.”

“Tickles,” Beomgyu breathes.

“Yeah. I’d end below your belly button, and you’d squirm the whole way. So cute.”

“What else?”

“Remember before I fingered you, when I kissed you there?”

Beomgyu nods, tiny. He thinks about it embarrassingly often, tender little kisses where Soobin had never touched him before.

“I’d have rimmed you, too. I wanted to that night, but I chickened out. Thought you just wanted to get to the action, and I was so nervous.”

Soobin is staring at Beomgyu’s throat, the inch of skin just above the neckline of his t-shirt, and Beomgyu doesn’t know how he’s saying all this without melting. It’s absolutely, totally mortifying to Beomgyu, yet Soobin is locked on, on a mission.

“It’s dirty,” Beomgyu whispers.

“I don’t give a fuck. I want to eat you out so bad. I’d lick you for so long we don’t need lube, that’s how wet you’d be.”

“Don’t know if it works that way.”

“Well, it would for us. But we’d use it anyway, so you’d be comfortable.”

Soobin hauls himself up on one elbow and his hand lands on Beomgyu’s chest, palm flat across Beomgyu’s skinny pecs. Beomgyu should stop this. He won’t.

“Would you… have kissed me, during?”

Soobin scrunches his eyelids up for a moment, and then refocuses, eyes finding Beomgyu’s again.

“Fuck, I’d have kissed you the whole time. I’d have kissed you while I pushed into you, and gone so slow. As gentle as I could. And I’d have given you my tongue to bite on if it hurt.”

“You were slow, hyung.”

“Slow enough?”

He pauses, and Beomgyu shakes his head.

“I will be. Next time. So slow. I’ll take my time, until you’re breathing normal again. Because you couldn’t breathe right, remember? And then as fast as you want. Would you want it fast?”

Beomgyu inhales. He nods.

“Then I’d give it to you fast. Beomgyu, I’d take you on your knees, let you sit back on me. Hold you tight while you bounce on me, and then you’d moan…”

“Hyung,” Beomgyu whimpers. His nerves are firing, something crawling over his skin everywhere, and Soobin’s eyebrows are furrowing like he’s in pain.

“Oh my god, I can’t stop thinking about the way you moaned, even when…when you weren’t talking to me, and in quarantine, I kept imagining it, I felt so guilty thinking about it…”

“Kiss me,” Beomgyu begs. “Tongue. Please, now.”

“Just tongue. Just that.”

“Just that. Hyung, now.”

They make it all through the comeback without giving in. Soobin holds firm, and Beomgyu knows it’s for the best, too. Jisoo-hyung from the protocol team practically moves in during the comeback, anyway, with all the late nights and crack-of-dawn rises, and the company can’t know about it. Even though they’re absolutely not dating, whatever they are surely would have gotten them booted from the debut team if they were trainees at Cube.

It’s the right way to start, whatever shaky, slow path they’ve found. Beomgyu feels it bolstering him, laying a foundation around his fragile bones. In all those years of knowing each other, he never believed that Soobin needed him, and the comeback gives him a chance to be what Soobin needs. Especially because Soobin absolutely hates the comeback concept.

“What d’you think? Selling it?” Soobin asks, hushed, looking down at his costume. Their black suits are tinged electric blue from the light trickling into the wings from the Inkigayo stage.

“You’ll never be able to sell bad boy. You’re a bunny,” Beomgyu whispers back, brushing off Soobin’s front too vigorously and almost knocking off his headset. “But somehow, it’s working.”

“You promise?”

“I promise. Shit— oops.”

“Fuck, Beomgyu.” Some tech assistant is already scurrying over to fix the now-loose wire, and Soobin trods on Beomgyu’s toe as punishment.

“Cursing! See, bad boy behavior.”

Soobin elbows him.

“Wait ‘til we tell the fans your real bad boy side: prolific game cheater.”

“Not true!”

“Hold still,” the tech chides, and Soobin glares at Beomgyu in the semi-darkness, frozen under the man’s nimble hands. Beomgyu takes the opportunity to peek into the audience, at the sea of lightsticks waiting for their filming to begin. The audience. They can have audiences again.

“Real fans,” he says, turning back to Soobin. “I feel like I’m in a dream.”

“Me too,” Soobin smiles. He reaches for Beomgyu’s hand, and Beomgyu squeezes it through their black costume gloves. “Nerves?”

“No nerves. I’m just antsy. Wanna go already.” He bounces on the balls of his feet. 

Soobin lets their fingertips glide together as he lets go, just a moment too long.

“Don’t make fun of me for this.”

Beomgyu grins. They’ve been prefacing their words with that phrase over and over, like it’ll shelter them from overexposure. It’s hard to be vulnerable, but they’re doing it.

“Say it, hyung.”

“You’ve been glowing out there this comeback,” Soobin says. “Blooming. Whatever you wanna call it.”

Beomgyu flips a head full of invisible hair, shaking off the compliment, but Soobin grabs him by the shoulder and anchors him in place, like he wants it to really sink in. Soobin doesn’t just say things the way he used to, and for the first time, Beomgyu wonders if he ever did.

“You’re born bad boy. Not a badass, though. More like…an imp. A devilish little imp.”

“Soobin-ah, you two get over here,” Yeonjun hisses from somewhere upstage at the commotion. “What the fuck are you doing? Stop with the kicking, we’re at Inkigayo, people know me here…”

Beomgyu does feel like he’s glowing out there. He feels hot, at least. Maybe it’s just the stage lights, or the stiff neck of his costume, or the warmth of hundreds of eyes fixed on him, but he thinks it’s something else entirely.

It’s not until Daegu that they cave. The moment they hear that they’re getting three days off before they leave for the States, Soobin’s eyes find Beomgyu’s across the conference room table, and Beomgyu just nods. E-World, he mouths, but a little knot ties in his belly. His parents are deep sleepers.

Soobin insists on wearing a dress shirt, even though it’s June, because he wants to make a good impression. Beomgyu wants to give him shit for it, he really does. But all he can muster up is a feeble, it’s June, hyung, do you wanna melt? Soobin just says that it’s worth melting to make Beomgyu’s parents like him, and he says it just like he says everything: unabashed, proud.

They take a late-night train, and all up and down the aisle, people are dozing in their seats. Soobin is the opposite. He’s so excited that he keeps jittering his leg, knocking into Beomgyu’s knee. Beomgyu pinches his thigh every time to get him to stop, but then five minutes later, he just starts up again. Beomgyu gives up after a half hour of it and just leaves his hand on Soobin’s bouncing thigh. They’re in the back of the train car, wearing masks. It’s gotta be safe.

“Remember when you were too cool to tell me you wanted an invite to Daegu?”

“Yeah, I got less cool,” Soobin says. “Whatever. Can we go to E-World right away?”

“Nope. At midnight, when my mother wants to feed you? Tomorrow.”

“Kai said I have to try the napjak mandu.”

“You will. You think I’d take you to Daegu and not do the food tour?”

“And your brother, is he back yet?”

“Yeah, but he’s staying with a friend so you can have his bed. He’ll be around tomorrow.” The knot tightens.

“What a good hyung,” Soobin smiles. “Less so when he games though, right? Kai said to prepare for him to destroy you.”

“I have some choice words for Kai when we get back.”

“You threaten Kai, you threaten me.” Soobin lifts his fist menacingly, but a second later he’s already dropped it to fiddle excitedly with Beomgyu’s fingertips. “I feel like you today. Just, like, fidgety.”

“I’m not fidgety!”

“You’re always—” Soobin jerks around in his seat, in some strange imitation of Beomgyu’s typical fidgeting, and Beomgyu laughs, dodging his elbow.

“It’s cute though. You think it’s cute.”

“Yeah, cute.” Soobin pushes his glasses up on his nose, but they’re already sliding down his mask again. “How long is left?”

“A whole hour, hyung. If you ask again, I’ll—” Beomgyu slaps Soobin on the back of the wrist.

“Whatever you say, abeoji,” Soobin deadpans, and Beomgyu slaps him again. He does it four more times before they pull into Dongdaegu Station.

Going home to Daegu usually settles Beomgyu’s nerves, but this time, he feels on edge. Soobin has met his parents before, but Beomgyu still hovers anxiously around them as his mother gives Soobin the apartment tour. He grabs Soobin’s overnight bag before his father can offer to help him with it, scurrying it off to the room he shares with his brother and flinging it onto his brother’s vacated bed. It’s made up with the nice linens, the ones his mother reserves for guests. Shame that no one will be sleeping in it.

He eyes his own bed suspiciously. His brother’s side of the room has aged up with them, still lived in whenever he’s home from university, but his own half of the room is mostly neglected, a time capsule of pre-trainee Beomgyu. The bedspread is childish, a space-printed relic from his middle school years that he’s never thought twice about before. He could rip it off the mattress and flip it around to the unprinted lining, and he has one corner of it untucked before he forces himself to slow down.

No. Soobin isn’t too big for Beomgyu’s childhood bedroom. That’s not Soobin — that’s not how Beomgyu wants to think of Soobin. He retucks the bedspread.

“Beomgyu-ya?” Soobin’s voice is coming down the hall. “Which one are you in?”

“Here, hyung,” Beomgyu calls, stepping quickly away from the bed just as Soobin’s too-large frame appears in the doorway.

“There’s dinner for us,” Soobin says happily. “Your mom says she wants to stay up while we eat it, so we have to come quick, because she’s falling asleep on her feet.”

“Yeah, she usually sleeps at, like, nine,” Beomgyu says, heading towards him, but Soobin’s eyes fall on the bedspread.

“So cute,” he says, grinning. “I had one just like it when I was a kid.”

“Space?”

“Mine was dinosaurs, but the same brand, I think.” He reaches for Beomgyu’s arm, linking his wrist around his elbow as Beomgyu steps back through the door. “So is this the full Choi Beomgyu experience?”

“Not even close. You’re missing the most important part.”

“What, childhood home videos?

“Toto. If he doesn’t like you, you’re out.”

“I gotta impress the parents and the parrot?” Beomgyu nods, and Soobin lets out an exaggerated sigh. “Yah, go easy on me. I’ll wilt under the pressure.”

“Hey, I’ve been working on getting Odi on my side, and he’s a lot more particular than Toto. Pricklier, you could say.” Beomgyu pokes Soobin in the side, pulling a face, and Soobin groans again.

“You’re so annoying. So annoying.”

Beomgyu can hear the clink of dishware in the kitchen, his mother ladling something out into bowls. He grabs Soobin’s hand right before they can round the corner into the dining room, wheeling him to a halt and dropping his voice.

“Hyung. Is this a date?”

Soobin laughs. “What, this? Dinner with your parents?”

“Daegu. Is Daegu a date?”

Beomgyu leans up closer, too close, and Soobin ducks his head.

“If you want it to be,” he says. “Whatever you want.”

His eyes look different, lidded. Little half-moons, magnified by his glasses. Beomgyu likes him the best like this, no makeup, up close.

“I want it to be,” Beomgyu says, and darts up to peck him on the cheek. Soobin lets out a startled noise, and Beomgyu yanks him around the corner, gleeful. He feels so powerful.

It’s the farthest thing from a date. It’s a rushed late-night dinner with Beomgyu’s mother lobbing questions at them about the comeback and the tour ahead and Soobin-ah, aren’t you hot in that shirt? Do you need to borrow one of Beomgyu’s? Tomorrow will be the date, and even then, Beomgyu’s brother will be there, playing bodyguard all day. Not much of a date.

But Beomgyu doesn’t think they need dates. They can stare at each other across any room. They can kick each other under any table. They can fit together in any bed and call each other best friends for the rest of their careers, and know what it means. They’re not dating. They can’t be dating. They’re something else, something better.

Beomgyu drops the slipper off his foot under the table and wiggles his toes into Soobin’s own fuzzy slide, and Soobin catches his eye, grinning in the middle of his sentence.

“…will be a good tour,” he finishes. “And I’ll make sure he eats in America.”

“Get him to stop screaming on those lives, and I’ll be happy,” Beomgyu’s mother says.

“I can’t promise that, eomeoni,” Soobin says. “I swear he’s only gotten louder since I’ve known him.”

“Ah, he’s always like that when he’s comfortable with someone. The happier he is, the more he talks. And when he really likes you, that’s when he finally shuts up.”

“Eomma! You’re supposed to love me,” Beomgyu complains.

“Can’t wait to get to the shut-up phase,” Soobin says, chortling. “Any day now, Beomgyu-ya.”

“Everything was better.”

“Everything?”

“Literally everything.”

Soobin frowns, thinking.

“Your pillow’s better at the dorm.”

“Everything but the pillow.

“And the pillow didn’t ruin the sex?”

Beomgyu scrapes his teeth on Soobin’s pec.

“Fuck! You’re a monster!”

“If you think a bad pillow can ruin sex, you’re having some weird-ass sex.”

“And was that weird—”

“Hyung! No!” Beomgyu flicks Soobin’s nipple this time. “It was…” Just say it. “Perfect.”

“Oh, perfect?” Soobin strokes Beomgyu's bare back, his hand settling on his ass underneath the space-printed bedspread. “And was perfect good enough for you?”

“Almost. It’d be better if we did it twice.”

Soobin’s chest vibrates under Beomgyu’s head. It’s a tight fit, both of them in Beomgyu’s single bed, but they’ll just sleep entwined. They probably should put clothes back on in case someone raps on the door for an early wake-up, but at least here, there are no managers showing up in the morning. Here, they can lock the door.

“Hyung, I don’t wanna go back,” Beomgyu whispers.

“We have another night. We’re not going back yet.”

“I hate what we have to be when we’re back.”

Hate is a strong word, but Beomgyu can use strong words. No need to hide. 

Soobin doesn’t respond. He shifts Beomgyu’s head slightly onto his arm, supporting it so he can lean over for the glass of water on the nightstand.

“Wish it was sparkling,” he says after he sips.

“Don’t avoid my problems.”

“What can I say, Gyu-ya? We’re dumb. This is a dumb thing to do.”

“How dumb are we?”

“Indescribably. It’s gonna suck a little bit forever, basically. It’s never gonna be what we want. Always sneaking out in the fucking morning.”

He shrugs, like none of it matters, and it doesn’t. Not to Beomgyu. 

Beomgyu lifts his head, holding his hand out for the glass. Sex is weirdly dehydrating. He’ll have to be better about keeping his water bottle filled back at the dorm, or else he’ll be cursed with the post-sex scourge of Soobin’s sparkling water whenever they find a blissfully free evening.

Soobin watches him drink, his pretty lips tilting upwards in a smile. Beomgyu drinks for longer than he meant to, and they just stare at each other as he drains the glass. Soobin’s smile grows, spreading across his whole face, and Beomgyu feels it warming him.

“You’re gonna piss the bed if you drink like that.”

“Hyung,” Beomgyu says wetly, coming up for air. “I think this means we’re soulmates.”

“What? What does you over-hydrating have to do with your soul?”

Soobin takes the glass back to replace it on the nightstand, snickering, and Beomgyu huffs at him.

“I mean choosing this,” he says. “Each other. Even with the sneaking out in the morning.”

“Are we sublime enough now?”

“Fuck being sublime. We’re soulmates if I want us to be.”

“Whatever you want, Beomgyu-ya.”

“You have to want it too. Want it?”

“Want what?”

Beomgyu makes a face.

“Me, hyung.”

Soobin taps one long finger to his lips, thinking, and Beomgyu makes to roll off of him as punishment.

“Fuck it, then. No Beomgyu for—”

Soobin grabs on tight.

“I want two of you, actually. More to love.”

Soobin’s eyebrows go up, and Beomgyu’s face must be the same. More to love. Love.

“You did not. You did not!”

“What? I’ve said it a trillion times!”

“Not like this!”

“You mean I can’t tell my—ouch! My soulmate that I—”

“After sex? Naked? Tacky, hyung!”

Soobin ducks from Beomgyu’s swinging pillow, but most of the squishy blows still collide with his skull. “I’ll redo it tomorrow, on our date,” he laughs. “And then you do it in a better way. Make it big.”

Beomgyu says it in Manila, on the last night. Their biggest venue of the tour. You’re my soulmate, and Soobin knows what it means.